It's either her feet or her mouth, and this causes less back strain.
One of the hallmarks of being primates is that our limbs were adapted for life in the treetops. Both our front and hind limbs were modified to grasp branches. When the ancestors of modern human beings descended to the ground and started to walk upright, our front limbs remained as mobile as ever, but the back limbs were adapted for stability and aren't normally used for manipulation.
However, this character is capable of using their feet with the dexterity of a human hand. There are two flavors to it:
1) Character that have human-like feet, but they have developed enough skill and precision to use them as a pair of extra hands. The reason behind it varies from case to case; maybe their hands have been immobilized or can't be used in a particular situation, possibly they are trying to multi-task, or perhaps they're just trying to be outlandish and/or goofy. In the most extreme case, when the character doesn't have hands at all, a nimble pair of feet is the second best thing one can rely on to replace their function. Paradoxically, they don't need a lot of special equipment and are just as able-bodied as regular people despite missing two limbs.
2) Characters which have special lower appendages adapted to be used as hands. Characters based on non-human primates tend to display this trait, (as their feet are more or less an extra pair of hands) but there are many variations of it, including creatures with Bizarre Alien Biology, robots/cyborgs of various kinds, and humans with Bio-Augmentation. It's also not uncommon for them to exclusively use their "feet" to manipulate their environment because their upper limbs are not appropriate for the task, such in the case of winged characters that lack Feather Fingers.
Expect this character to be the kind of individual who goes barefoot so as to keep their feet from being restrained.
Examples:
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Skilled Feet:
Advertising
- A commercial for Vodafone smartphones shows a man performing morning tasks with his feet, leaving his hands free to use the phone.
Anime & Manga
- Cowboy Bebop: Ed can type with her toes.
- Hiro Tsukiyama from Blood-C: The Last Dark can also type with her toes.
- Son Goku of Dragon Ball, being an expy of the Monkey King from Journey to the West, has uncommonly prehensile feet, frequently using them to grip things and, on one notable occasion, to fire a Kamehameha out of.
- One of the photos Nabiki sells to Kuno in Ranma ½ shows Ranma in female form eating watermelon with her feet. Ranma also shows incredible dexterity with his feet in combat on a few occasions when his hands were tied, busy or otherwise occupied.
- The titular protagonist from Artist Acro can use his bare feet as spare hands in certain situations. He can even make his toes form V-Signs!
- Erza Scarlet of Fairy Tail is capable of wielding four swords at once, holding two of them between her toes. (Helped by her ability to fly.)
- Meryl Stryfe from Trigun once fires a Gatling Good with her feet, as she was tied and in her nightgown at the time.
- Asuna from Sword Art Online tries to activate an interface with her toes after being restrained by two tentacled monsters, though she fails. She does manage to swipe an admin card.
- Sora from No Game No Life is shown controlling for separate game characters with four different controllers, holding one in each of his hands and feet and still manages to win.
- Yuuji from Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts is subject to this in the king removed Fumizuki Academy. He is tied up and presumably his socks were removed by the others so he could hold the card with his toes.
- Conan from Future Boy Conan always goes barefoot and often uses his feet, which share his enormous strength. The second episode has him hanging off the wing of an airplane that he grabs by the foot, and almost manages to pull himself up before falling off.
- The main premise of Ashigei Shoujo Komura-san is that Komura can perform any task with her feet, even ones that seem impossible. Justified in that she came from a long line of acrobats.
- Coorie from Bodacious Space Pirates can type with all four limbs when she needs to program quickly.
- Kaito from UQ Holder! once lived without his hands and did everything with his feet for six months to practice Instant Movement. He gets Touta to try this for a while too.
- Black Clover: When Asta suffered two broken arms, Noelle offered to feed him, but he ignores her and starts eating by holding his food with his feet. Noelle is absolutely disgusted and gets violent, while Asta doesn't understand why she is mad.
Comic Books
- In "Sawdust and Slow Death" in Jonah Hex #15 (original series), Jonah joins a circus and becomes the unwilling target of an armless knife-thrower who throws knives with his feet (possibly inspired by the silent movie The Unknown).
- In Dennis the Menace (UK) book of 2001, a story involves him creating havoc in the Beano office, which results in all the Beano staff being injured, and as a result, he has to do all their jobs till they get better. He stirs the tea with one hand, and plays with a golf club in the other, while his bare feet are respectively used to draw and write the stories.
- Armless Tiger Man was a 1840s-era Marvel Comics villain who had lost his arms in an industrial accident and sworn to destroy all machines in revenge. Among other things, he was dextrous enough to throw knives with his feet.
Comic Strips
- Mentioned in a Phoebe and Her Unicorn strip when Sue says she can imagine Phoebe learning to play bass
:
Sue: Now I'm imagining you can play bass with your feet!
Fan Works
- This has become a common fanon talent for Ming-Hua from The Legend of Korra to have: Word of God confirms that she was born without arms, and fans speculate that she wouldn't always have had enough skill and precision at waterbending to create her trademark prosthetics.
- Nearly as soon as she was revealed, similar fanon sprung up for Handicapped Badass Kick Chick Yan from Indivisible. This is further facilitated by dancers having to be limber and the fact that her character design is mostly leg.
Films — Animation
- The Aristocats: Berlioz the kitten grabs his stretched-out toes on his back feet with his other back feet in the same way he grabs his stretched-out fingers with his hand/forepaw in a scene early in the movie.
- The wizard Avatar from Wizards has this ability, as he is frequently seen to smoke cigars with his feet.
- Disney's version of Tarzan, taking the idea of him (a human) being raised by (non-human) apes to its logical conclusion by having him grasp things with his feet. He even saves Jane from falling, by using them to grab onto her foot.
- White Snake (2019): After surfacing out of the lake she was bathing in, we have a shot of Blanca's bare legs as she walks up to her robe and picks it up with her feet before bringing it up, with the robe serving as Scenery Censor as she quickly gets dressed while the camera pans up.
- Early in Zootopia, Judy Hopps is ticketing multiple cars as a meter maid. In one scene, she stretches her body between two cars to leave one ticket with her fingers and another with her toes. Such are the advantages of being a Barefoot Cartoon Animal (more or less; her police uniform includes spats that leave her toes uncovered).
- Rapunzel demonstrates this talent twice, in Tangled, during her first musical scene.
- When cleaning the floor, she uses brushes strapped to her feet.
- When painting the wall, she hangs by her hair - gripping one end of it with her toes.
Films — Live-Action
- Flower from Without a Paddle uses her "monkey feet" to answer the radio with the guys. She teaches Dan to do so as well by the end of the film.
- Navi from Avatar, at least those who are not serving as avatars to humans anyway.
- The martial arts film The Barefooted Kid ends its final battle with Kwan the titular kid casting aside his shoes and using his toes to pick up his blade, kicking it into the main villain's chest.
- Allison from The Breakfast Club claims she can write, eat, and play the piano with her toes.
- In the Lon Chaney film The Unknown Chaney plays a circus performer "Alonzo the Armless" who uses his feet to light cigarettes, throw knives, etc. But he really does have arms, he's just hiding them because he's hiding out in the circus. He falls in love with a woman who doesn't know about his arms (or about his love) so he gets a doctor to cut off his arms, but - in a typical Chaney film twist - when he goes to his love to propose she's thrilled because she has just accepted a proposal from another man.
- Everything Everywhere All at Once: Evelyn winds up linking to a reality where humans evolved to have hotdogs instead of fingers and consequently do many things with their feet (such as play the piano).
- Invisible Wings is a semi-autobiographical 2007 Chinese film about a teenaged girl who loses both of her arms at the shoulder and learns how to live on her own using her feet.
- In Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears, Phryne uses her toes to pick up a dropped bullet in Sir Vincent Montague's office and pass it to her hand.
- In The Great Houdinis, Harry uses his foot to pick a lock during his prison escape.
- In The Suicide Squad, Harley Quinn escapes from captivity by using her toes to pick up a key and to unlock her restraints. Margot Robbie, who plays Harley, even said in an interview, "I'm very dexterous with my toes. I could braid someone's hair with my toes."
Literature
- One of the drow characters from the War of the Spider Queen novels has such dexterous toes that he's able, when Bound and Gagged, to perform the necessary gestures to cast a spell with his feet.
- In Larry Niven's Known Space novels, people who grew up in space tend to be extremely slim and limber. One such protagonist has a habit of holding his cigarettes with his toes, leaving both hands free to work as he smokes.
- In the Old Norse legend of the Niflungs, as related in Prose Edda, Poetic Edda and Völsunga saga, King Gunnar of the Niflungs is thrown into a Snake Pit by his brother-in-law Atli. His hands are bound, but his sister Gudrun gives him a harp which he plays with his toes, and thus puts the snakes to sleep except for one. In Saga of the Volsungs, Gunnar even plays "so excellently well [...] that few deemed they had heard such playing, even when the hand had done it".
- The android Otho from the Captain Future books once shot a blaster with his feet when chained.
- In Blood of the Zombies from the Fighting Fantasy series, sadist jailer Otto in the introduction neglects to open your handshackles at lunchtime, forcing your character to learn to pick up food with his feet. He even mentally jokes about doing this as a party trick should he ever return home alive.
- A variant is used by the Houyhnhnms in Gulliver's Travels:
The Houyhnhnms use the hollow part, between the pastern and the hoof of their fore-foot, as we do our hands, and this with greater dexterity than I could at first imagine. I have seen a white mare of our family thread a needle (which I lent her on purpose) with that joint.
- In The Bluest Eye, Pecola has a habit of scratching her ankle with her toe, which she seemingly inherited from her mother. It actually triggers her father into raping her.
Live-Action TV
- Played for Drama in the season 3 finale of The Walking Dead; Andrea is chained up with only her feet free, and has to attempt to pick up the lockpick that's been left on the ground near her using her toes.
- When over-stressed due to a difficult choice on Malcolm in the Middle, Hal becomes paralyzed from the waist up for a few days. Before Lois snaps him out of it, he gets so good with his feet that he can use them to brush and floss his teeth.
- Jonathan Creek: In "The Wrestler's Tomb", the murderer tied themselves up and shot the Victim of the Week with a gun held in their feet, thereby giving themselves the seemingly perfect alibi of having been Bound and Gagged at the time of the murder.
- Victorious: There are a few jokes made about Jade using her feet to do things like hitting buttons on a remote or opening a locked door and one episode has Tori use hers to shoot a toy bow and arrow.
- Honestly, a lot of shows from Dan Schneider feature moments that fall under this trope.
- A Cutaway Gag in The Nutt House has a telephone operator running an old-style plugboard with her hands and feet.
Tabletop Games
- The Idiot, a villain from Dark Champions, normally wears a straitjacket and is an expert at using his feet as hands.
- In Crimestrikers, Nyx Marama is a anthropomorphic bat who sometimes uses her feet to pick up objects while she's flying.
- In Star Munchkin, the "Handy Foot" card allows you to use items that require a total of three hands, with card art of a character wielding ray pistols in each hand and one foot.
Video Games
- In Crash Team Racing, Ripper Roo, an Ax-Crazy evolved kangaroo, is stuck in a straitjacket, so he drives his kart with his feet.
Visual Novels
- Rin from Katawa Shoujo has no arms, so she's learned to do most things with her feet. Her introduction scene shows her eating a meal with her feet holding the fork, and she's later shown painting with them (and occasionally using her mouth to hold the brush instead). She is also permitted to wear trousers rather than the typical girls' uniform skirt, since a skirt would cause issues with her using her feet like that.
Webcomics
- Gabe of Penny Arcade is pointed out to have monkey-like feet in one strip.
Western Animation
- The Joker in The Batman for some reason.
- Mom and Dad from Cow and Chicken. Due to being an exaggerated case of He Who Must Not Be Seen. Apparently, they're both only a pair of legs each.
- The Simpsons:
- In "Smoke on the Daughter", one of the ballet dancers shows Lisa her ability to light and smoke a cigarette using only her toes.
- In "Gone Abie Gone", Rita LaFleur can play piano with her toes.
- Homer opens a wine bottle with his feet in "Homerland", and then holds a cigar with them.
- Some Popeye cartoons have Olive Oyl grab things with her feet, such as "Hold the Wire", "Olive's Sweepstake Ticket" and "The Marry-Go-Round".
- The Fairly OddParents! episode "Kung Timmy" features a cameo from Billy Blanks, who Timmy "rescues" from a group of "attackers". Blanks' response?
Billy Blanks: Now gimme five... HUNDRED PUSH-UPS! With these cinder blocks on your back! [places said blocks] While I break 'em with my bare hands, and play this piano with my bare feet! [does exactly that]
Timmy: Wow, that was amazing!
Billy Blanks: KEEP PUSHING! [happily continues playing piano while Timmy still does push-ups] - Spike from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has fairly standard, stubby little feet, but in "Power Ponies", he spreads his legs and holds a comic book up with his toes, reading it on his back, implying he can be dexterous with them if he needs (or, in this case, wants) to be.
- An episode of Teen Titans Go! has Raven becoming happier after losing her cloak and actually using her legs, and at one point, autographs a poster with her feet.
- In the Futurama episode "Fun on a Bun", Fry picks up a potato chip and dips it, twice, with his foot. Leela says that's gross, then clarifies she meant him double-dipping and uses her own foot to dip a chip.
- In an episode of Mickey and the Roadster Racers, Goofy uses his foot to hold a tea cup.
- In a classic Goofy cartoon, Goofy types with his toes.
- In an episode of Harley Quinn (2019), Harley tries to break into a vault on a train, only to find that the room needs two keys turned simultaneously. When she finds herself unable to reach both key slots with her arms, she takes off her shoes and socks and tries stretching her legs towards them with the keys between her toes. When that doesn't work, she stretches her body across the door and turns one key with her hands and the other with her feet. Unfortunately, she then finds that the vault needs three keys turned simultaneously. Not long after this discovery, the Joker shows up and has his goons throw her from the train - throwing her shoes and socks out after her.
- In an episode of Iron Man: The Animated Series, when a British swimsuit model and her photographer are tied up near an extinguished campfire, the model kicks off her shoe and uses her toes to pick up an ember; which she uses to burn the ropes. (Although where her shoe came from in the first place is a mystery, since she isn't wearing any shoes before or after that point in the episode.)
- At the end of the Animaniacs episode "Piano Rag", the Warners do a short song about a pianist that the studio employees mistakenly nabbed instead of them, during which Dot plays a short piano riff with her toes. (She also shows up Beethoven, in another episode, by playing the piano with her ears and her tail.)
- Tangled: The Series takes Rapunzel's Handy Feet talent a step further by having her frequently gesture to Willow using her bare feet and toes and vice versa.
Real Life
- People born without or who lose their arms at an age young enough to adapt typically use their feet for hands as a matter of course. Examples include American aerobics instructor and bodybuilder Barbara Guerra, who demonstrated driving a car and shopping for groceries with her feet on 60 Minutes, Chinese actress Lei Qingyao, star (and inspiration) of Invisible Wings and Italian dancer Simona Aztori, all of whom can be seen demonstrating their pedal dexterity on YouTube. Other people do have arms, but due to a disability, they are immobilized and are of little use. They can also learn to adapt to using their feet in place of their hands. Christy Brown was born with severe cerebal palsy who could only move his left foot, but became a writer and artist, whose autobiography My Left Foot inspired the film of the same name.
- Some able-bodied people with flexible toes will still use their feet to pickup small items as a simpler alternative to bending over.
- Some people have a habit of scratching one leg with the toes of the other foot, especially when they are lost in their thoughts.
- Contortionists who can touch their heads with their toes will incorporate this into their acts, such as applying cosmetic facial makeup with feet.
- Inverted with handstands. As the aforementioned compound word implies, it involves using one's hands as feet while moving about, leaving one's actual feet suspended in midair.
- A Not Safe for Work example of this would be a Footjob. A female adult film star/prostitute may use her feet to pleasure a man's penis. Some can even interlock their toes while doing it. Others can do it only using one foot.
Adapted Feet
Anime & Manga
- Monster Musume: Features Papi a Harpy who zig-zags with this trope as her legs are shown to be strong, dexterous, and viciously clawed while her wings contain a thumb like digit capable of grasping things if not being particularly dexterous.
Comic Books
- Justice Society of America: The Ultra-Humanite can grab things with his feet, as he has the body of a gorilla.
- X-Men:
- The Beast has this as a part of his mutation.
- As does his teammate, Nightcrawler, although his feet are shaped differently.
- Budroxifinicus' species in Copperhead have three large toes, one of which is opposable.
Films — Animation
- In Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, Ponyo's's feet act like hands. One scene has her toes wiggle very much like fingers, while Sosuke attempts to do the same to no avail.
- Disney's The Jungle Book. King Louie can use his feet like hands, which makes sense since he's an orangutan.
Films — Live-Action
- Ivan's armor suit in the second Iron Man movie could grab things with its feet.
- Star Wars:
- In The Phantom Menace we have champion podracer Sebulba, the Dug, who is an alien whose legs extend from his shoulders, and his arms extend from the bottom of his trunk.
- Rio Durant in Solo is a Ardennian, a species with four arms and prehensile feet. He uses his extra arms and feet to easily multitask while piloting the starship.
- The Ĉon Flux live-action film included Sithandra from the original animated series. See below for details.
- Beast in X-Men: First Class appears human other than his dexterous feet.
Literature
- Allen Steele's books include genetically modified trans-humans; a version engineered for life in the microgravity of outer space is purposefully designed with arm-like legs with hand-like feet, as more grasping appendages would be much more useful when you can't stand or walk.
- Similarly, in the Vorkosigan Saga, the Quaddies are a genetically modified race designed to live in free-fall. They have arms (and hands) instead of legs, but are otherwise basically human. They have a very hard time getting around in gravity, and use floater chairs when they can't avoid it.
- The Librarian of Unseen University in Discworld was transformed by a magical accident into an intelligent orangutan, and has since refused any offers to turn him back into a human. Being able to hang from the ceiling from one limb and shelve three books at once with the others is one of the many advantages.
- Unsurprisingly, used in the original Planet of the Apes novel. Ulysse (the protagonist, roughly equivalent to Taylor in the film) is still slightly astonished to see it. Not used in the aforesaid film though, due to the apes being people in ape suits - their feet were just regular human feet in vaguely hand-shaped shoes.
- In The Bas-Lag Cycle novels, wyrmen are bat-like urban scroungers and errand-runners, whose feet serve as hands.
- The Twosh from Jack Chalker's Well World books are bowling pin shaped creatures with only two limbs, which they use as hands or feet as the situation requires.
- The Gamerans in Old Man's War, being humans space-adapted to the point of no longer seeming at all human, are turtle-looking creatures with hands for each limb.
- The Thranx in Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth works are an eight-limbed insectoid species. They have two true-hands, four true-feet, and two hand-feet between them that as the name suggests can be used for either locomotion or carrying or manipulating objects.
- The "surge-monkeys" that Aya and the Sly Girls track in the fourth book of the Uglies series are humans who have modified their bodies in preparation for life in zero gravity to the point that their feet resemble a second set of hands:
"But the strangest thing was the inhuman's feet. Bare and misshapen, they looked almost like hands, their long toes curled up like a dead spider's legs."
- In This Alien Shore, the Salvationers, one of the groups of Variants, have prehensile feet that let them climb the support struts of the metroliner's observation dome.
- Sam from InCryptid is a Fūri, a Yokai (Japanese cryptid) whose natural form is somewhere between a human and a monkey. He also has a Prehensile Tail. He's very good on the trapeze, and Does Not Like Shoes.
- In James Tiptree Jr.'s short story "The Snows Are Melted, the Snows Are Gone" a young woman from a post-apocalyptic high-tech but mutation-plagued society has no arms, but manages quite well with her feet and the help of her uncannily intelligent wolf companion.
- Eight Worlds includes humans who have had their lower limbs surgically modified into "peds", which function as a second set of arms. A human with peds can't really walk anymore, so this modification isn't much use on a planet, but for humans who live in the zero-G environment of Saturn's Rings, it's extremely useful.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: Hadozee are gibbon-like humanoids normally associated with the Spelljammer setting. They have long, prehensile toes that they can use to grasp and manipulate objects almost as easily as they can with their hands.
- Eclipse Phase has the "prehensile feet" augmentation, bouncer morphs, neo-hominids, and neo-avians come standard with them.
- Wakyambi from the Nyambi sourcebook from Dungeons & Dragons are a species of elves from the setting equivalent of Darkest Africa who have these.
- Prehensile Toes is an adaptation your character can have in GURPS Bio-Tech. It's standard for Spacer parahumans.
Video Games
- Lanky from Donkey Kong 64 is an inversion! He can use his hands to walk up (and even run up) steep slopes.
- While they may not be fully prehensile, Raiden from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has no problems wielding a sword with his feet after he breaks one of his cybernetic arms to free himself from some rubble and loses the other while trying to hold back Outer Haven. It helps that his legs are no longer human, and it is unclear whether he can pull off similar maneuvers in mundane tasks, but it is still pretty impressive. The ability returns in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, where Raiden has several combos which involve holding his sword in his feet.
- The mole minions from Shovel Knight have hand-like feet. One of them was a mini boss in the King Of Cards expansion.
- Being a gorilla, Winston in Overwatch can use his feet as readily as his hands. In the "Recall" trailer, he types on his keyboard with his feet while he has food in his hands.
- Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity show the future Rito Champion fire his bow using his talons.
- Tulin, another rito and the Sage of Wind, can also fire his bow with his talon to assist Link in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Webcomics
- Implied with Ash from Latchkey Kingdom. Their feet are clearly hands, complete with finger-like toes and an opposable thumb-toe, although they have yet to use their feet as hands in the comic.
- Shadowpalm from L's Empire has a second pair of hands for his feet (it's mentioned as being a mutation). This actually hinders him since the Mana Drain effects of his Supernatural Martial Arts requires feet flat on the ground.
- In The Fuzzy Princess, one strip shows Chiro the bat carrying a box with her feet.
- The Yinglets of Out-of-Placers have no anatomical difference between their hands and feet, which means they can grasp things equally well with either kind of appendage.
Western Animation
- Ĉon Flux has Sithandra, who had a second set of hands grafted onto her ankles—a procedure which she highly recommends to Aeon.
- General Grievous from Star Wars: Clone Wars has this as a feature of his cyborg body. He can put all six of his limbs to good use as hands, though normally he sticks to being a humanoid, folding his extra arms and walking on his legs.
- Louie the orangutan appears again in the TaleSpin series, and he didn't lose this skill. During "A Touch Of Glass," Louie uses his feet to remove a swindler from the pilot's seat of the Sea Duck.
- Kim Possible villain Monkey Fist had his hands and feet surgically replaced with monkey-like appendages.
- Coco from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends has no arms, but instead plane-like wings so she essentially uses her feet as a substitute for hands.
- The titular heroes of Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys use their hands and feet interchangeably.
- One of the many one-shot cartoons from Oh Yeah! Cartoons was Tutu the Superina. This Dance Battler used her overly long legs and feet to fight crime as well as for any kind of mundane chore.
Real Life
- Many arboreal animals, especially Primates and birds. The feet of birds of prey are not only handy, they're also deadly.
- Drepanosaurs were a clade of reptiles from the Triassic with hands and feet designed for grasping. The name means "sickle lizard", in reference to their curved claws being used for grasping. They also had one on their tails.
