Modesty Towel

In media, characters who have just bathed or showered will often wrap themselves in towels to preserve their modesty, even if there is no one else around. This is often done to show that a character has been interrupted while or shortly after they were bathing, as they had no time to get properly dressed yet. Towels are also common attire in public baths, locker rooms, spas, and saunas. But while wearing a towel in Truth in Television, it's far less common in Real Life than media portrays, as people usually prefer the more reliable and modest bathrobes. As such, towels in media are often done to invoke fanservice.

Men will wear the towel wrapped around the waist hanging from their hips, while women will wear it wrapped around the torso hanging from their bust. This conveniently covers any body parts Moral Guardians might find objectionable, but is often Truth in Television just out of practicality: the towel wards off a potential chill and soaks up any water left remaining on the skin after bathing, plus those who are accustomed to covering themselves while others are around will often do so out of habit, even if they are alone. The differences in how males and females wear it probably stems as much from men and women having different places to hang their towels as their having different places that might require covering. Even more practical, those with long hair often wrap a towel turban-style around it.

Towels on men will be very low to best show their bare pectorals, while women will wear them with an Impossibly-Low Neckline to show off cleavage but also have them short on the waist for maximum leg exposure. This also follows the Theiss Titillation Theory, as it will be immediately clear that the towel is the only thing being worn, and it is in constant danger of slipping loose and falling off or being snagged away, a possibility that can be made even more imminent if the wearer makes a sudden movement or reaches for something, usually when surprised or when put in some kind of action sequence. If the towel does slip, the wearer will likely have a Naked Freak-Out and resort to Hand-or-Object Underwear to maintain some measure of modesty/dignity. Often, a towel actually serves as the "Object Underwear" for a character that has been caught while they were bathing. It can also be used in conjunction with Dress Hits Floor (when a character purposefully drops their towel) and Sexy Coat Flashing (when a character opens their towel to flash someone).

Wearing a towel can also be a subtle way of implying intimacy between two people, serving as a form of Sex Dressed. A common situation is a third party assuming the two characters have been intimate upon when finding one of them in a towel, even if the situation is actually innocent.

A common gag is for a character to wear one even when they shouldn't have anything to hide such as a Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal. Another common gag is to show effeminate males wearing their towels in the feminine style. However, as towels are often just worn for practicality, both situations actually make sense. In stark contrast, female characters can wear their towels in the masculine way (or a mock-up of that way, which has one towel around the breasts and another wrapped at the waist, baring the midriff), but this is impractical and does not preserve modesty, so this would pretty much only be for fanservice.

In televised anime, towels are often used to censor scenes like bathing, in which the characters really should be naked. When a towel appears in the localization that wasn't there in the original, it's a form of Digital Bikini. Many Video Games also feature towels as unlockable costumes, sometimes as purely cosmetic outfit, sometimes as an equipable item with actual stats.

See Censor Steam and Censor Suds for another common form of bathtime censorship. Related to the Modesty Bedsheet, with characters wrapping themselves up in a sheet to preserve their modesty in a similar manner, though that trope is far less likely to occur in Real Life.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A Flash cartoon advertisement for Monsavon Smoothie Care shower gel which can be seen here has a mother and daughter doing a dance in modesty towels.◊ With the last image, the towels fall.◊
• Isaiah Mustafa of the The Man Your Man Could Smell Like Old Spice adverts is known for wearing one. It's all he wears in the personalized Youtube response videos, and even mentions that the only way to do community service is in a towel. Eventually, it changes since whenever he changes the scene, he wears new clothes as the situation demands. But never a shirt.
• Many spoofs of advertisements featuring towel-only clad models have appeared through the years. However, North Scott High School in Eldridge, Iowa, took this a step farther in the spring of 2002 when members of the school newspaper, The Lance, published a "centerfold" featuring students — including several 18-year-old male and female students — dressed minimally, including some girls wrapped only in towels. Related pictures (which also appeared in a "minimal clothing calendar") appeared on the April 25, 2002, issue's back page. The student editor told the Moline Daily Dispatch that his staff had gotten the idea from reading ads for such items as perfume and shaving cream in magazines that circulated at the school's library. The resulting newspaper gained noteriety in the community for several days as several conservative-minded community members expressed their concern about the morality of the feature and, despite the absence of outright nudity and a disclaimer that the students were dressed, the fact that child pornography had inadvertently been published. (All of the students pictured in the issue were seniors, but the worry was that some had yet to turn 18.)
• A woman is painting a naked male model wearing only a towel over certain parts you can't show on TV, and she is even painting the towel on the portrait, but her biggest concern was the problem the model had, a discolored toenail. (This was, of course, an ad for a toenail fungus treatment.) If she wanted not to show that, why didn't she just have him wear a bathing suit or underpants?
• In a commercial for Bad Company, Chris Rock ends up pulling the same gag as James Bond in The Man with the Golden Gun, below.
• Subverted in this Diet Rite commercial. In the locker room a football player wraps his towel around his neck instead to the delight of the female reporter.
• This Proactiv commercial features Olivia Munn materializing out of nowhere to the shock of a young man in a towel to tell him that Proactiv will clear up his face quicker than the cleanser he was about to use. His towel falls, of course, and Munn tries to back out of the room.
• Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes, which has aired its "surprise" presentations of $1 million checks on live television (usually on Super Bowl Sunday), once caught a 21-year-old girl wrapped in nothing but a towel answering the door of a winner.

Anime & Manga

• Akame ga Kill!: In episode 12, Tatsumi tries peeking on Chelsea while she's bathing outdoors but he's the one surprised when he finds her wearing a towel, and she explains she foresaw he would try doing it. She lets him go with a warning that if she ever finds him peeking at her again she'll be "cutting it off".
• In Aldnoah.Zero, scenes of both episodes 9 and 10 had Rayet in nothing but a towel. The Fanservice expectations are turned around in their heads, however, because she has a mental breakdown, tries to murder Asseylum and then attempts to shoot herself dead. All while still wearing only a towel.
• Nino wears one while bathing (outdoors) in Arakawa Under the Bridge (much to Ko/Ric's disappointment). She didn't originally, but one time she was getting in just as a police car went by, and it was "a pain".
• In Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts, the extremely effeminate male Hideyoshi wears a towel wrapped around his chest like a girl, as seen in episode 6.
• In Chapter 519 of Anime/Bleach, the cover had Orihime and Rukia wrapped in towels, enjoying their time in hot springs.
• B-Project: Hikaru has the habit of walking around the apartment naked or in a towel, and in episode 11 ends up dropping his towel right in front of a mortified Tsubasa who gets a full-body blush at the eyeful while the rest of the boys reprimand him on his lack of modesty.
• Case Closed: Ran enters a murder scene wearing only a towel and Conan turns towards her right as the towel slides down, and he nosebleeds so much that he gets a Gory Discretion Shot.
• Chousoku Henkei Gyrozetter: In episode 5, Michie crashes into the hot springs where the female characters were relaxing by complete accident. Akira, the only one who wasn't in the water and thus was still in her towel, drops it in shock and he unintentionally gets a full eyeful of Akira. Cue a Skyward Scream from the poor girl.
• Code Geass:
  • "Imprisoned In Campus" has Kallen in a towel storming in on C.C. to complain about how their plan at the beginning of season 2 has her in a Playboy Bunny. Turned into a funny moment when she realizes C.C. is in the middle of a meeting with a few gentlemen from the Chinese Federation. In an oddly-effeminate (if understandable) moment she screams and runs behind a screen, despite the men having gotten a good look already. Angrier than ever, she continues to complain to C.C. and almost has the towel fall off in the process.
  • Special edition DVD revealed that the Aomori incident implied Kallen and C.C. fleeing wearing only towels. Other media showed that the Black Knights were almost caught by Britannia while they were at a hot spring and they had to run away.
• Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!: Often common due to the abundance of hot spring scenes, especially if they're out of the bath. Special mention goes to Akoya who even covers his chest like a girl.
• Dancougar Nova: The Intrepid Reporter that is investigating the protagonists manages to find their secret Island Base via helicopter just as Aoi and Kurara were Skinny Dipping at the beach, prompting them to hide behind a rock as their clothes were too far away for them to run to. The TV broadcast has both girls wearing Modesty Towels while the DVD version had them both nude, but still employing Godiva Hair or Hand-or-Object Underwear.
• Dash Kappei: Once Akane is kidnapped by a robot while she was bathing and is used as Damsel in Distress for Kappei wearing just a towel. Kappei uses the same towel to defeat the robot.
• In the Hot Springs Episode of Detective School Q, Ryu Amakusa arrives at the male side of the springs with a towel. Kintarou thinks this isn't manly enough and tries to force it off him. Hilarity Ensues.
• Episode 17 of Digimon Adventure has Sora and Mimi running and fighting Cockatorimon after escaping from the showers, wearing nothing but towels.
• In the Dirty Pair movie Project EDEN, Yuri and Kei are forced to fight against several alien-like creatures while in towels when their bubble baths get interrupted. They are then forced to retreat without getting their clothes and end up wearing the towels after modifying them in bikini form for the rest of the movie — which isn't any different than the skimpy clothing they already wear.
• Shizuka in Doraemon, sometimes after her usual bath. One occasion has also the towel fall down while she is on the phone with Nobita and Doraemon (that has added a video option to phone).
• Dragon Ball:
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Episode 2 has an anime-only scene where kid Goku takes a towel and doesn't understand how they work. When Bulma is telling Goku that the towel is supposed to go on his front, he puts it in front of his head.
    • Episode 6 has Bulma comes out of the shower in a towel and yells at Oolong for giving her his pajamas that do not fit her, forcing her to stay in a towel until her clothes get clean and having to sleep with no clothes on.
  • Dragon Ball Z: Another anime-exclusive scene had Mr. Satan, shortly after his "win" against Android 18, in the shower room in a towel when some Paparazzis burst in and started questioning him about his win against Android 18, and he claims to "not hide anything from the fans", and while laughing, accidentally dropping his towel in front of all of them.
  • Dragon Ball Super: Episode 43 has Goku suffering Power Incontinence and when trying to use his Instant Transmission, he accidentally ends up in Bulma's bedroom just as she stepping out of the shower in a towel, which infuriates both her and Vegeta.
• Eyeshield 21: Sena, Monta, Mamori, and Suzuna visit a bathhouse in order to talk to Kakei of the Kyoshin Poseidons, Mizumachi's attempts at peeping on the girls' side lead to the normally shy and quiet Sena having a vision of Suzuna, with nothing but a towel held against her front.
• Fairy Tail: Many of the characters wear these during the many Furo Scenes.
  • Lucy, in particular, gets to wear them a lot, since she's a Bathing Beauty with a Bathtub Scene in almost every story arc. During the "Grand Magic Games" arc, Lucy even orders Gemini to turn into her, and Gemini transforms into towel-clad Lucy, prompts the crowd to cheer and Lucy to have a Naked Freak-Out.
  • During the "Phantom Lord" arc, Erza is having a Shower of Angst in the guild, when the ground suddenly starts moving, she rushes outside wearing only a towel. When Erza sees that Phantom Lord is going to destroy Fairy Tail with a giant laser, she runs off dropping her towel activating her Instant Armor to try and stop it.
• Fist of the North Star: Rei walks in on Mamiya and Lin, who bathing at the water spring. Clad in a towel, Mamiya tries to fight him, but he easily avoids her punches and grabs her by her hair. He then removes one of the towels wrapped around her body and tells her that she is beautiful, and not worth sacrificing to the Fang clan.
• Full Metal Panic!: Kaname first meets Tessa after she's just stepped out of Sousuke's shower, wearing only a towel. This causes Kaname to think that Sousuke's been skipping out on their study sessions to make out with his girlfriend (a mistake Tessa is happy to leave uncorrected). Sousuke tries to explain to Kaname that the girl in a towel is one of his superiors at Mithril, but is not believed.
• Future GPX Cyber Formula: In episode 32 of the TV series, Asuka is taking a shower when Hayato opens the trailer door and asks her to help for dinner, not realizing that she is stepping out of the shower in a towel. Then her towel falls off and Asuka lets out a big scream and starts throwing stuff at him until she drives him out.
• As an effeminate male, Kazuki did this in the Get Backers anime (as well as Hevn and Natsumi, when the camera cut back to them), but he didn't bother in the manga version. He has a very nice rear...
• In an chapter/episode of Ghost Sweeper Mikami, the titular protagonist is attacked by Dr. Chaos (who pulled a Grand Theft Me on Yokoshima) when she's just out of the shower, thus only wearing a towel. It eventually comes off during the scuffle, much to Yokoshima's delight.
• In the Gintama anime, Gintoki and Hijikata got into a fight at a sauna, which consisted mainly of a lot of grabbing each other while wearing ridiculously tiny towels. Needless to say, it is AWESOME!
• Guilty Crown: In episode 5, Shu's alone in a room wearing only a towel after being knocked out by Ayase. Then, Ayase suddenly enters without knocking or anything and shocks Shu into dropping his towel, who gets embarrassed and tries to cover himself. Cue an Oh, Crap! and then a slap from Ayase. Unprovoked Pervert Payback
• Gundam:
  • After War Gundam X:
    • In the pilot Garrod is sneaking around the ship, when suddenly Toniya burst out from the bathroom right in front of him, clad in a towel to complain about the water going out, almost catching Garrod. A similar scene occurs in episode 20, this time with her bursting out of the bathroom in the same towel to complain about the room being flooded and distracting Miles as he was inspecting the ship.
    • In episode 7, Ennil is taking a shower aboard a vulture ship, when she hears someone enter the bathroom. She picks up her gun and pulls the shower curtain to point her gun at the intruder, now clad in a towel which she somehow quickly put on. The intruder turns out to be just Zacotte who came to invite her for some wine.
  • Gundam Build Fighters: In episode 22, Rinko and China visit Sei's and Reiji's with food for them. But then Aila comes out of the bathroom in just a towel, causing Sei to Face Palm while Rinko and China have Color Failure at the possible implications of girl showering in their room.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny: Meyrin Hawke Invokes this as part of an Indy Ploy to keep the ZAFT soldiers pursuing the runaway Athrun from looking inside her room and finding him. She answers them in a towel and claims they can't come in since she's naked. Sure enough, they tell her to Please Put Some Clothes On and go check the next room. And she wasn't even naked under the towel! She just got her hair wet and wrapped the towel over her clothes.
• Hajime no Ippo: Ippo wears one around his waist when he first showers with the guys simply because he's Shower Shy. Takamura mistakes this for size insecurity and removes it for giggles- which is how he discovered Ippo's actually a "heavyweight".
• There's a short Super-Deformed Hot Springs Anime Special for Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 3 that features Modesty Towels; and apparently it's entirely possible to swim underwater freely while wrapped in these. Also, considering the nature of the Haruka franchise, had the special not been drawn in the Super-Deformed style, it probably would've been much more valuable in terms of Fanservice...
• In HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!, the Cures wear color-coded fabric resembling a towel during transformation sequences to preserve their modesty. When forced to detransform, they wear this "towel" instead of their normal clothes, so it could be considered to act as a modesty towel.
• The unusual usage of towels as censorship in anime is lampshaded in Hayate the Combat Butler, where the narrator points out that the towels are added due to broadcast regulations and shouldn't be worn in baths because it's unhygienic and disliked by bath attendants.
• In Hetalia: Axis Powers, when France goes around in the Christmas Special, he catches Spain in the shower. He pulls the curtain towards himself, but only manages to cover his crotch.
• Hidamari Sketch: Yuno wears a towel wrapped around her breasts during a visit to a public Bathhouse due to her shyness.
• High School D×D:
  • Used to show how Rossweisse is more conservative than the other girls in the Club as she's the only that wears a Modesty Towel while the other girls happily go into baths naked even when Issei is present.
  • Gasper is very uncomfortable bathing with Issei and Kiba and keeps his Modesty Towel on the whole time. Issei calls him out on how unmanly he's acting, especially since Gasper wears the towel like a girl.
• How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend: Episode 10 has Tomoya's cousin Michiru walking around his house in the buff except for her panties and a towel around her neck, with the danglings ends that just barely cover up her breasts. At the end of the episode, the situation is inversed when he steps out of the shower in a towel and hears Michiru playing a song on her guitar and walks up to her to listen. Shortly after she finishes, his towel falls off and we're left with her awkwardly staring right at his crotch before fading to credits.
• The iDOLM@STER: Miki accidentally enters the men's bath wearing just a towel. She then "accidentally" lets it start to slip off while talking to the Producer.
• Infinite Stratos: Ichika catches Houki in one after he enters their shared dorm room for the first time, which starts off their relationship in the wrong foot.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War:
  • While the series is normally light on fanservice, Hayasaka spends most of Chapter 42 wearing nothing but a towel since Kaguya keeps dragging her away from her bath to help set up a Twitter account.
  • Shirogane's little sister Kei is seen this way in Chapter 73 as part of a brief gag when runs out of the shower for the sole purpose of telling him "I told you so" after he starts crying from the the manga she recommended to him (she didn't even bother to wash the shampoo out of her hair first).
• At one point in KonoSuba, Kazuma assumes that he's having a fantasy in the bathroom with Darkness. Unlike most examples, the latter doesn't even wear the towel since it's too tiny that it barely covers her naughty bits from the front.
• In the Love Hina manga, characters are normally naked when in the hot springs, while in the anime, they are often wrapped in towels. Evidently, even the Barbie-doll bodies of the manga are too risqué for anime.
• Lupin III: Episode 0: First Contact: Fujiko takes a shower in Jigen's apartment, comes out in just a towel, and tries to seduce him by leaning over to show her generous cleavage off, and then when he ignores that, starts to drop the towel. He uses the barrel of his magnum to hold it on her body while simultaneously threatening to shoot her if she tries that again. This is also an Establishing Character Moment for Jigen, as he is the only one consistently unaffected by Fujiko's feminine wiles.
• Lupin III: Travels of Marco Polo – Another Page: During Hiromi's Furo Scene, her bustline is covered by Censor Steam while the lower half is covered by a Modesty Towel.
• Present on every character during the Hot Springs Episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, though absent... everywhere else.
• In Majokko Meg-chan, Meg wears one in several episodes after a Shower Scene. Often something happens to make her lose the towel, such as being startled by Rabi calling her a witch in episode 3.
• In episode 52 of Mazinger Z Shiro's toy ends up in Sayaka's bathroom while she's in there brushing her hair with just a towel on. Not wanting to alert her, he tries using a fishing rod to get back his toy, but accidentally ends up snagging her modesty towel instead.
• Roughly half of the episodes in Miss Machiko show the main character in a modesty towel in one scene. In the vast majority of those scenes, the towel ends up being taken away one way or another.
• Moeyo Ken: Episode 8 has a Public Bathhouse Scene with the characters wearing towels as they bath. Ryunosuke ends up dying (yet again) because of Nekomaru's clumsiness with soap. When Nekomaru uses one of his nine lives to revive him, Ryunosuke is now in a female body. A rather shapely female body that causes the boys in the bathhouse to get quite distracted, especially since his Modesty Towel was only covering his lower half, giving them all an eyeful when he stands up.
• Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse: Yui wears one in episode 19, but its because she wasn't told to bring a swimsuit like the other women were. Inia and Cryska also have one, but at least in Inia's case, she chose not to bring it. All three of them either get the towel taken away, or it falls off them when they go in the hot springs.
• Censor Steam aside, this was quite common in Akamatsu's next work, the anime version of Negima! Magister Negi Magi, also done by Xebec. In the manga, however...
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • Rei wears one when Shinji goes to visit her apartment for a delivery, as she just finished showering at the time. Unfortunately, it falls to the floor when Shinji trips and falls on her... but being an Emotionless Girl, Rei barely reacts, despite Shinji's utter embarrassment.
  • In the manga adaptation, Asuka plays a prank on Shinji - after threatening death if he pervs on her in the shower, Asuka later steps out wearing a towel and asks if he wants to see what's underneath, only to reveal she's put her clothes back on.
  • Mana Kirishima from the Girlfriend of Steel visual novel one-ups both. After having Shinji swear that he absolutely won't peek, Mana comes out of the bathroom in a towel and, similarly to Asuka, asks if he wants to look before taking off the towel... but unlike Asuka, Mana is not baiting him but is actually naked. We don't get to see Shinji's reaction, only hear it - but Mana finds it amusing enough to laugh for the rest of the scene as the camera rapidly pans over her still frame, with a corner of the towel censoring her crotch (and Censor Steam over her breasts, though the latter is absent from the version in the visual novel's bonus materials).
• One Piece:
  • Used after Luffy defeated Crocodile while everyone is in their own gender baths. Gets averted when the guys are looking over at the girls and Nami decides to give them what she liked to call: Happiness... PUNCH! Made funnier by Vivi's horrified expression at Nami when she does this.
  • Many chapters later, Robin wears one she has taken a bath with Momonosuke and goes outside to ask for Momonosuke's kimono.
  • Oddly enough, Brook has been known to do this, despite being a skeleton and thus having nothing to hide.
• Penguindrum: In episode 15, Yuri dons one right before she fights Masako. When Masako defeats her by blinding her with a flashlight, her towel comes undone at the same time.
• Persona 3: The Movie: Just like in the game, all the guys are wearing these in Hot Springs Episode. This is played for faux drama when they realize the girls are coming to bathe and they have to leave without them noticing, but Junpei loses his Modesty Towel in the stream while they were swimming underwater. He invokes I Will Only Slow You Down but his fellow male teammates don't want to leave him behind. Their conversation drew the attention of the girls, followed by the guys's "Execution".
• After being pulled into the water by Corphish in the Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire episode "Gone Corphishin'", May appears briefly in one while the protagonists' are Hanging Our Clothes to Dry.
• In Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion, Mami Tomoe is briefly shown in a towel after getting out of the bath. Then she hears a Nightmare is on the loose, tugs her towel loose aaaand... Scene Transition to the battlefield, where she's fully clothed.
• The Quintessential Quintuplets has this trope a few times:
  • First in Chapter 5, Fuutarou enters the Nakano apartment to retrieve his wallet, and finds Nino in a towel drying her hair on the couch. She doesn't recognize him immediately due to not wearing her contacts and first thinks he's Miku.
  • Later, in Chapter 34, Fuutarou enters the apartment and sees one of the quintuplets in a towel, who tosses him a bag calling him "pervert". He doesn't identify her immediately because she was also wearing a towel in her head (thus covering her hair), and the next chapter is about finding out who it was (it was Ichika).
  • Reversed in Chapter 43. After having a Shower of Angst at Nino's hotel and telling her about his encounter with "Rena", he comes out of the bathroom wearing only a towel around the waist. Nino freaks out, but he calls it even because he already saw her the same way.
• Ranma ½:
  • While the title character really couldn't care less about being seen naked as a girl], Akane will wrap her in a towel anyway. Even if there's nobody but girls in the room. Left to his own devices Ranma wraps the towel around his hips male-style regardless of his current form. Towels get a lot of use since Ranma's Gender Bender curse is triggered by hot and cold water.
  • Akane herself dons the Modesty Towel quite a bit.
• Reborn! (2004) has these for all the guys during the Hot Springs Epic Battle in the OAV. Much to the fangirls' disappointment.
• In the Revolutionary Girl Utena manga, when Touga sees Dios's power for the first time and decides to get close to Utena to find out more about it, he joins Utena's household as a "shimobe" (personal servant). The first time Utena hears of this is the next day, when he waltzes out of her shower, clad only in a Modesty Towel.
• Rosario + Vampire In episode 7 of season 2, Tsukune bath is interrupted by Kurumu, who is only wearing a Modesty Towel and trying to seduce him. But she also gets interrupted by other girls, including Yukari, who bursts into the bathroom and slips on a bar of soap, accidentally pulling off Kurumu's towel as she falls. Tsukune gets a violent Nosebleed at the sight as Kurumu has a Naked Freak-Out.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Used in the Hot Springs Episode of the first season. Shingo is wearing one, female-style and embarrassed about bathing with his family. When Usagi teases him about it, he retaliates by stealing hers and leaving Usagi naked.
  • Used in one episode of Sailor Moon Stars. When Seiya is hanging out at Usagi's house while her parents are out (it's completely innocent, don't look at me like that...), Chibi-Chibi spills cake all over him, so he uses her shower to clean himself up while his clothes are being washed. Meanwhile, the other girls show up... just in time for him to come out of the shower in what appears to be the tiniest towel on the face of the earth, asking where his clothes are. Then Chibi-Chibi complains that he's using her towel and proceeds to do her best to get it away from him. Hilarity Ensues.
• Pacifica Casull from Scrapped Princess has an odd habit of bathing with a towel wrapped around her.
• When at a public bathhouse Kirito from Snow White with the Red Hair and several background characters are seen wearing towels around their waists implying that everyone is wearing them even though the others are submerged to the point that the towels wouldn't be visible.
• Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry:
  • Several scenes in the locker room show Sara and the other girls wearing towels.
  • Captain Vivian Medlock is betrayed by her main enforcer and lover Ralph while she was showering, as he traps her in the bathroom, leaving her there helpless while he finishes off the rest of her crew. When he comes back to take her prisioner, a towel is all he allows her to wear as he disposed of all her clothing, since her security pass was incorporated into her uniform, and depriving her of it leaves her dependent on Ralph. When she manages to flee from her the ship via an escape pod, she's still only clad in the towel and the heroes make fun of her when they arrest her, much to her continued humiliation.
• Soul Eater: In episode 12, The rest of the gang meet at Soul and Maka's pad for the first time when Ms. Fanservice Blair suddenly walks in wearing nothing but a towel, which falls off as she strikes a pose, giving them a Naked First Impression and causing the guys to stare.
  Kid: [Shocked] Is it always like this around here?
  Soul: [Nosebleeding] Yup. Anybody wanna take the sexy kitty home? She's free."
• In Stella Women’s Academy, High School Division Class C³, the first time Yura (and the audience) meet Sonora, she's just come out of the shower and is wearing nothing but a towel. The scene is then practically repeated in a later episode.
• Played for Laughs in Stellvia of the Universe: The cadets at the Space Academy are outfitted with tight-fitting flight suits. Shima and Kouta are notably shy about the cut of their uniforms and they come down to the flight deck with towels wrapped around the suits.
• Street Fighter II V: In "Special Orders to Iron Men", Cammy's Shower Scene is interrupted by the phone ringing, and she leaves the bathroom wrapped in a towel to answer it.
• Summer Wars:
  • Natsuki emerges from the bathroom in a towel to chase down one of her little cousins who had gone running from the bathroom without a stitch, when she runs into Kenji. She quickly darts back in to the bathroom, while Kenji averts his eyes and insists that he saw nothing.
  • Kenji has one as well when going in for his own bath.
• The The Anime of the Game Super Robot Wars: Original Generation The Inspector has a scene in episode 3 where a towel-clad Excellen takes Bullet's portrait of his girlfriend and teases him about it. When he demands it back, she puts the portrait in her cleavage and dares him to take it. He nervously attempts to, but trips and ends up falling to the floor, snagging away her towel in the process. She laughs it off while he runs away from the room blushing.
• Tales of Eternia Animated:
  • In episode 2, Reid tries to escape from Marone Bluecarno, the Bounty Hunter who captured him, while she's busy showering. In the middle of his attempt, he's foiled by her suddenly showing up, wearing only a towel. Then, just to mess with him she drops her towel... revealing she was actually wearing a bikini underneath.
  • In episode 6, all the girls go to search for a hot springs in the wild. When they find it, they all flung their clothes into the air and go bathing while wearing inexplicably towels now, which they clearly weren't carrying towels with them before. Both Farah and Marone do also flung away their towels when jumping into the water.
• Tekken: Blood Vengeance: Xiaoyu wears one after showering and chats to Alisa dressed like this for a few minutes before falling asleep on her lap. Alisa then carries her and tucks her into bed while she's still in her towel.
• Tenchi Muyo!:
  • Aeka and Sasami used these at times, even in the hot spring. This would be more of a character decision, though; it's hard to call it censorship when everyone else around them goes without. Ryoko once took the chance to humiliate Aeka by undoing the tie on her towel, exposing her in front of Tenchi.
  • In Tenchi the Movie: Tenchi Muyo in Love!, Kiyone is bathing in an oil drum when she's suddenly teleported to Washu's laboratory. Washu then gives her a towel to cover herself as a half-hearted apology for the Inconvenient Summon, which Kiyone wears for the rest of the scene.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:
  • In the uncut "director's cut" version of episode 6, the Hot Springs Episode, has the characters wearing these for most of the episode since they're attacked by the villain while bathing. When the villain kidnaps the women and displays them on a monitor, pixels covering the necessary areas and she offers to remove them if Kamina exits Gurren. When he does so, it reveals all the girls were wearing towels underneath. And later when their towels do come undone, it shows they were wearing bikinis underneath the towels.
  • Late into the anime, there is a fight scene in the prison bathroom between Simon and Viral, who are wearing nothing but ridiculously tiny towels.
  • In Lagann-hen the trope returns◊, but with an added touch of Magic Skirt.
• A particular example from To Love Ru, in the two-part story "War At The Public Bathhouse". Yami, along with Lala, Haruna and Mikan, is attacked by two bounty hunters in a public bath who use Rito (controlled by a device). All the girls (and Rito) wears towel. One of two hunters makes also Rito pull off Haruna's towel.
• The Voynich Hotel: The devil Ashkelon walks into the hotel's VIP suite just after the female devil Demona has apparently come out of the shower, with nothing on but a towel around her neck. She screams and calls him a pervert, but instead of trying to cover her body, she covers her single eye.
• Zoids: New Century: There are a number of scenes where the characters wearing towels for no readily apparent reason besides fanservice.

Asian Animation

• Motu Patlu: Inspector Chingum is seen wearing one in "Water Problem". He's trying to take a shower, but he realizes that the water has suddenly gone from Furfuri Nagar and gives up.
• Simple Samosa:
  • In "Chutney Dam", when the Mayor discusses the disappearance of Chatpata Nagar's chutney supply with the townsfolk, Cham Cham appears in a towel, implying he had been taking a chutney shower before the events occured.
  • In "Jalebi's Birthday", Jalebi takes a shower and emerges from the bathroom wearing a towel.

Comic Books

• Alpha Flight: Played With in Issue #14. Aurora has finished showering and is drying herself with a towel, which blocks the view of her nakedness. But when she wipes the mirror she gets a Hallucination Mirror Scare of her Jeanne-Marie Split Personality trying to break free and Aurora falls to the bathroom floor, with her towel also falling on top of her in such a way that it conveniently covers her naughty bits. Played Straight next issue when she's back of her room with the towel properly wrapped around her.
• Aquaman: Vol. 7 #49 has an equal opportunity fanservice moment with Mera dancing around in a towel while Arthur is shirtless at their home. Until they're interrupted by officer Watson dropping in for a late-night call.
• Archie Comics: During one story, Betty enters her living room in nothing but a towel and panics when she finds Archie there. When she comes back wearing a bathrobe and still stressed out, Archie points out that the robe she is now wearing is the exact same material as the towel, covers even less, and she is somehow fine being seen in it.
  Betty: Well, it's... different.
• Astonishing X-Men Xenogenesis: Storm is seen dressed in a towel during a breakfast meeting with the rest of the X-Men.
• The Avengers: In issue #236, She-Hulk is having a bath at the Avengers manor when she is forced to abandon by the security alarms tripping, and she hurriedly throws on a towel on before rushing to confront the intruder... only for it to turn out to be Spider-Man, who broke into the manor with great fanfare to announce his desire to join the Avengers. Jen is so pissed she is ready to pummel him, until he points out how any sudden movements from her "daring outfit" would cause her to suffer a Wardrobe Malfunction and she backs off.
• Batgirl (2000): When Oracle visits Cassandra Cain's new apartment for the first time, she finds Cass stepping out of the shower in a fluffy towel.
• During Comet Man's Super Hero Origin story, Mister Fantastic is helping him learn about his Teleportation powers, but the first attempt ends accidentally teleporting him into the Baxter building bathroom, right while She-Hulk was showering. After she violently throws him out, she furiously comes to confront him and Reed while wearing a towel.
• In Crimson #5, Alex and Joe break-in into Vampire Hunter Scarlet's apartment while searching for her and end up catching her stepping out of the shower in only a towel. Assuming they're hostile, she immediately attacks them in just a towel and during the struggle, Alex accidentally snatches off her towel She quickly aims her crossbow at his face and demands his surrender, which was moot by that point, as he's too distracted by the view to keep fighting.
• Danger Girl: The first issue has a panel with heavy Male Gaze of Sydney stepping out of the shower in a towel, holding it in such a way as to show the maximum amount of skin possible while still keeping the important areas covered.
• The Darkness: In Issue #23, Jackie has been mortally injured and the Darklings take him to an acquaintance, Dr. Kim Fang to patch him up. They arrive at her house while she was showering and she lets them in while only wearing a towel. But one of the Darklings is so worried about Jackie that he yanks off her towel to use it as a bandage, leaving her naked in front of the Darklings, who have now stop worrying about Jackie to enjoy the sight while she has a Naked Freak-Out while furiously demanding her towel back.
• Elektra's first solo series has a few examples:
  • In Issue #8, Doctor Strange sends an Astral Projection to Elektra right as she's showering and she teases him by asking if he has nothing better to do than peeping on a girl in the shower. He dispels it and gives her a minute to get dressed. The second Astral Projection he sends finds her wearing a towel and she once again teases him by asking him if all Astral Projection can blush.
  • In Issue #10, she goes after crime lord by attacking his home while he was showering. He comes out of the bathroom in a towel, and is shocked to find all his bodyguards dead. Suddenly his towel is swiped away by Elektra's Sai, who shoves him against a bathroom mirror and begins to intimidate him, telling him if she doesn't do as he asks he'll be losing more than a bath towel.
• One issue of Excalibur has Nightcrawler wearing a Modesty Towel when another character bursts into the bathroom and tries to kill him. Conveniently, the towel remains firmly in place throughout the ensuing struggle.
• Freaks' Squeele: Everyone (including the camera crew) wears stylized sarongs at the pool that serve this purpose. Then the students are given the assignment to steal each others' sarongs. Chaos (and hilarity) ensues. According to Word of God, early storyboards used regular towels, but they looked like they would fall off too easily and weren't sexy enough, so the sarongs were invented.
• A variant is used with Bree, a character in Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash, who spends the better part of two issues running for her life, wrapped up in a sheet after Jason attacks her while she and her boyfriend are having sex.
• In Hulk Vol. 2, minor villainess Sandra Verdugo gets to wear a towel several times, one time she even threw it at her partner's face while teaching him about how her The Vamp routine works.
  Slater: You occasionally wear something other than a towel ?
  Verdugo: Done some of my best work in a towel.
• Monica's Gang had a story titled "Como Atravessar a Sala", where Monica left the bathroom in only a towel because her clothes were in her room. Unfortunately, two male friends and her crush were waiting in the living room, and Hilarity Ensues.
• Mr. and Mrs. X: Rogue and Gambit are on their honeymoon, so they are making love, it just happens that Kitty calls them right afterwards to give them a mission. And when Rogue agrees to go on the mission, Gambit loses the modesty blanket, to the horror of Kitty.
• In Mystique's solo series #19, Mystique is taking a late-night shower when someone breaks into her home. She throws on a towel and leaves to confront the intruder, which is curious since she's a Technically Naked Shapeshifter and could simply shapeshift some clothes on.
• In New Exiles #5, Sage's relaxing bubble bath is interrupted when she hears Morph and Cat getting sucked in by a portal. Sage hurriedly throws a towel on and dives into the portal after them at the nick of time. She spends the next few pages in a Fairy Tale-esque world in only a towel. When they get into a fight with a couple of evil knights, Sage deliberately throws her towel at one the knight's face to stun him and then takes him out with a Diving Kick. Morph finds her some clothes to wear soon after.
• In Nightcrawler: The Devil Inside, Kurt takes a shower in his Christine Palmer's apartment and come out wearing just a towel. She's very honest about appreciating the view.
  Kurt: Thanks for the shower, Christine.
  Christine: Not at all, Kurt. Anything to have you wandering around my apartment half-naked.
• Punisher foe Rosalie Carbone has several moments of this. In her first appearance, she shares a Meaningful Look with an undercover Punisher from her bathroom window while holding up a towel just big enough to obscure most of her breasts and her vagina. On a couple of other occasions, she's seen giving orders to her men while wearing just a towel (after being given news during a spa appointment and a bath, respectively).
• Mr. Fanservice Nightwing wore one a couple of times.
  • In New Teen Titans V2 #12, Dick is trapped outside of his apartment in a towel, when he pursuing the ghost of a little girl that kept appearing to him, much to the amusement and appreaciation of some of his neighbors.
  • When Bruce sent Tim Drake to Dick Grayson for Dick to start Tim's training (without of course giving Dick any warning about it) Tim arrived just after Dick had finished a shower meaning Dick answered the door in an open bathrobe with a towel preserving his modesty.
  • In Nightwing #56, Black Canary ends up catching him in the shower and he's quick enough to grab a towel to cover himself while she laughs at the situation.
  • Titans Hunt (2015) has him lounging in his room a towel when Lilith suddenly comes visit, as a vision.
• Sandcastle: The children use towels to cover themselves after they outgrow their bathing suits, but they discard them for the rest of the story not long afterwards.
• One Smurf got stuck wearing a towel throughout most of The Smurfs comic book story "The Smurfs and the Howlibird", and when Papa Smurf has to do a bullfight with a Howlibird stripped of its feathers to wear it down, he takes that Smurf's towel to do it!
• Spider-Man:
  • The Amazing Spider-Man (Dan Slott): In Amazing Spider-Man #677, Black Cat is arrested wearing only a towel when a bunch of cops breaks into her apartment while she was showering.
  • Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do: The story opens with Felicia talking in the phone wearing only a towel since the call has interrupted her shower. After finishing she just walks bath to the bathroom, drops the towel and resumes showering.
• Spirou & Fantasio In the One-Shot, "Fantasio is getting Married", Seccotine becomes Spirou's new roommate, much to the latter's annoyance. At some point, she comes out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel and Spirou tries his best to Ignore the Fanservice.
• Starfire (2015): Starfire comes out of the shower with just a towel on the head right in front of Boone, who shoves another towel at her, telling her to Please Put Some Clothes On, which confuses her.
  Starfire: Oh, thank you! But I do not need another towel. The sun and the wind dried my skin! It is only my hair that is wet.
• Superman:
  • In Krypton No More, Superman is stepping out of the shower plate, wearing a tower wrapped around of his waist, when he unexpectedly bumps into his cousin.
  • In Power Girl (2009) #9, Kara steps out of the shower, someone slides an envelope under the door containing pictures compromising her Secret Identity. Kara instantly bolts out clad in a towel to chase after the perpetrator, who's just a kid. Dashing down the stairs, she manages to collar him, at which point her towel falls off, giving both the kid and a neighbor a full-frontal eyeful, while covered by Scenery Censor to the viewer. She hastily covers herself with bread and a pie pan borrowed from her neighbor and flees to her room to get dressed and resume the pursuit in her hero outfit.
  • In the Smallville Season 11 comic, Diana (Wonder Woman) first adult encounter with her Childhood Friend Steve Trevors has her showing up at his apartment unannounced while he was showering. Thinking her an hostile intruder, he burst out of the bathroom wearing only a towel and ends up losing it during the struggle, awkwardly causing Diana to slip some Innocent Innuendo.
    Diana: You have... certainly grown...
    [Beat]
    Diana: I cannot believe I just said that...
  • During the The Supergirl from Krypton (2004) storyline, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman need help to get to Apokolips and go to visit their only former inhabitants on Earth, Big Barda and Mister Miracle. Barda answer the door to them wearing a towel, which noticeably makes it clear how absurdly tall she is when she towers both Clark and Bruce even while dressed in just a towel.
• Uncanny X-Men (2013): In issue #14, after showering, Benjamin (Morph) goes back to his room clad in a towel only to find his teacher Emma Frost casually waiting for him, which startles him enough to drop his towel. Nonplussed, Emma proceeds to talk to him about his powers and how they work while the poor boy backs up against the wall trying to cover himself back up with the towel.
• Ultimate X Men: The first time we see Jean Grey in Ultimate X, she's in the bathroom post-shower with a towel wrapped around her waist (bare back to the viewer) as she's dying her hair black for her new identity as Karen Grant.
• In Ultimate Wolverine Vs Hulk #6, Betty Ross, the Ultimate She-Hulk, is coming out of the shower in a towel, which she drops it in surprise when she sees Ultimate Wolverine broke into her apartment searching for Bruce. It soon escalates into a Full-Frontal Assault. A combination of Censor Shadow, Godiva Hair, and Scenery Censor are used to hide her nudity during the entire sequence after she loses the towel.
• Wet Moon: Natalie struts around with one these a couple of times in the series, to the point Malady even tells her that she should wear something like it for a dress.
• WildStorm Revelations #1 begins with Jodi Slayton (Backlash) and Kenesha (Savant) having some Bathtub Bonding. Jodi eventually leaves to get food, wrapping herself in a towel. In the way, she's suddenly ambushed by Lady Charis (Nemesis) and Jodi tries to fight her while keeping hold of her towel, causing Nemesis to mock her for caring about modesty during battle and proceeds to give Jodi a Curb-Stomp Battle.
• Issue 121 of Witchblade opens with Sara stepping out of the shower and answering the phone in a towel, holding the phone in one hand while stroking her hair with the other and using The Witchblade (a cosmic artifact of nigh limitless power) to hold up her towel.
• Wonder Woman (2011): Issue #36 shows Diana stepping out of the shower in only a short towel.
• X-Factor:
  • In issue #119 of the first run, Kyle Gibney / Wild Child is losing some steam in his room, working out in only a towel on. When his teammate Shard suddenly projects herself in his room, she scares him making him suddenly jump high in the air, right out of his towel. She laughs and picks up the towel to give him back while he picks up a skateboard to cover himself with.
  • In X-Factor (2006), Madrox gets a Naked First Impression of Sheila DeSotto when he finds her Skinny Dipping in her pool, arriving just as she's climbs out of the pool topless but she later wraps herself in a towel when her husband and his guards arrive.
• X-Men (1991):
  • In Issue #17, Cyclops walks in on Psylocke fresh out of the shower dressed in a skimpy towel. He gapes at her for a moment before stuttering an apology and bolting out of the bathroom, while an unperturbed Betsy smiles knowingly (this was the era where there was a lot of Unresolved Sexual Tension between them, as part of a Love Triangle subplot between them and Jean Grey).
  • In Issue #91, Rogue is wearing a towel in her bedroom post-shower, trying to pick a dress to use in a date with Gambit.
• Yoko Tsuno: In the The Rhine Gold, Yoko is seen wearing nothing but a towel after taking a shower.
• Zatanna (2010):
  • Played With near the end Issue #1, when Zatanna is climbing into her bath, a magically floating towel blocks the view of her naked body, preserving her modesty even if she does not actually have it wrapped around her.
  • On Issue #4, Zachary's assistant Bunny is caught wearing one in Zatanna's apartment when she comes home earlier than expected. Zatanna is quick to use her magic to clothe her and kick both her and Zachary out.

Comic Strips

• FoxTrot In one strip, Paige is Singing in the Shower (the "The Love Boat Theme") when she notices a microphone hanging from the ceiling and abruptly stops. Turns out Jason was recording her and she angrily chases after him clad in a Modesty Towel.
• Spider-Man: Shortly after One More Day erased Mary Jane Watson and Spider-Man's marriage, Stan Lee had Peter waking as if from a nightmare to find MJ stepping out of the shower in a towel◊, in an alternate continuity where they were still married.
• A strip in Pondus, during the period where Jokke lives together with Tammy-Sue, sees him sitting and watching TV, bemoaning that there is nothing interesting while Tammy-Sue pass behind him, wearing only a Towel, which gets stuck halfway through the scene dropping the Towel, without Jokke noticing.

Fan Works

• Advice and Trust: At the beginning of chapter 3, Shinji sees Asuka wearing nothing but a towel and fails to stop from staring at her bare legs.
• A Familiar Void justifies the towel in bath when Louise goes bathing after being wounded: She doesn't want other students to see the black voidflesh where her stomach should be but still needs to soak in hot water, especially now.
• After: After showering, Tessa comes out of her shared dorm room clad in a Modesty Towel where she meets Hardin who's casually sitting in her roommate's bed while reading a book. She's obviously embarrassed but he doesn't care and when she requests for him to leave so she can get dressed he simply says "Don't flatter yourself, I'm not looking".
• Annals of Darkness: Naminé loses hers after a Shower Scene. Coincidentally, Roxas walks in right when she does.
• In the Danganronpa fanfic Believe It Or Not, Soushin is wearing one when the Chapter 4 victims are discovered dead. Since she never gets an opportunity to change out of it, she's actually wearing it throughout the trial.
• A Certain Unknown Level 0: As said in the sixth chapter, it's how Last Order dresses to greet Touma when he visits her home.
• Beyond the Outer Gate Lies...:
  • Serafall wears one of these when the girls are staying at Harry's house during the "Beholder" storyline, and she uses the shower in Harry's room with the excuse that she prefers the western-style bath he has in there, though it's clear to Harry, her and the reader that she's really just doing it for flirtation as she keeps toying with the knot that keeps to towel tucked in.
  • Averted with Sona when Harry accidentally walks in on her in the shower at Tsubasa's apartment (she put a silencing charm up while bathing and didn't hear him knock). She's wearing a towel, but is using it to dry herself off, meaning that Harry gets a partial view of her. He would later get an Erotic Dream about her wearing it in the same fashion.
• Cabin Fever: Parting Shot: Downplayed. Karen does use a towel in this fashion after she's done a Nude Nature Dance with Marcy. However, she doesn't do it for modesty reasons as (she seems to have drunk all her inhibitions away), but rather simply for warmth.
• In Child of the Storm, Betsy Braddock wears one of these when going into and coming out of the shower. Peter Wisdom finds her in one when he drops by to her place to recruit her, and she drops it purposely in front of him twice. The first time is calculated to get an idea of what Peter Wisdom's really like since she can't read his mind. His reaction is less titillation, more irritation. This leads to the second one, after they've talked, which is simply calculated to annoy him, which she succeeds as he tells her to Please Put Some Clothes On.
• Displacement: During the Clone Wars, a surprise attack drags Michelle out of the shower. The entire bridge gets Distracted by the Sexy when she comes in soaking wet and with a towel only wrapped around her waist. Evie in particular is more distracted by her abs than her toplessness. Not bothered with all the stares she hurries to join the battle dressed just like that.
• Earth-27: After showering, Kate Spencer comes out of the bathroom in a towel, but gets so into the song she was singing that she shrugs off the towel and starts dancing around her apartment in the buff... and naturally Vigilante finds that exact moment to sneak into her apartment. He tells her to put the towel back on, but she hesitates since she doesn't want to take her eyes off him so he can pull a Stealth Hi/Bye.
• In the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story "Smurfette's Evil Mirror", four Smurfs are waiting outside of Tailor's shop wearing towels around their waists in order for him to sew up new pairs of pants for them to wear.
• In the WWE story Fact or Faked, John Cena goes to the Divas dressing room to borrow a pair of socks. Gail Kim offers to lend him some, but as she has just finished showering, she is only wearing a towel. While she's bent over her gym bag to get socks for him, John sees Gail has a penis.
• In Fates Collide, Astolfo steps out of the shower and happily greets Ruby, oblivious to her getting embarrassed. He walks over to his clothes and drops his towel to put them on, and Ruby faints. He assumes she was just tired from her trip and carries her to bed.
• One of the Figuretoons at OAFEnet showed Wolverine wearing one of these towels on his way to the shower.
• Final Fantasy VII: Another Side: Sephiroth bumps into Cissnei when she's just out of the shower wearing only a Modesty Towel.
• In Frozen Wight, Elsa's Gorgeous Garment Generation abilities aren't limited to dresses and nightgowns, she can also make herself a modesty towel out of ice, which comes in handy when she's about to be caught naked. Anders struggles to understand how she's able to dry herself with the solid form of water.
  "If that made even a little bit of sense, it was a strange foreign kind of sense Anders wanted nothing to do with."
• During the second year of Harry Potter and the Prince of Slytherin, someone steals the Slytherin Quidditch team's clothes while they're showering after practice, and they have to run through the castle in nothing but skimpy wet towels while the rest of the student body laughs.
• Kara of Rokyn: After spending one hour swimming in a spa's pool, Kara wraps one towel around her naked body, even though she's reasonably certain that there're no employees or customers on the premises, enters the dressing room and bumps into her rival Jasmine, who was waiting for her to try to seduce her.
• Kitsune no Ken: Fist of the Fox: Mikoto and Yugao wear towels during their visit to Mabui's spa. They use them for the massages but do take off the towels when actually getting into the hot springs.
• In Kyon: Big Damn Hero, Mikuru had one of these the first time she arrived at Nagato's apartment for training as she's been teleported there while she was just after bathing.
• Lelouch of the Wings of Rebellion: The "Summer Vacation" arc has a Hot Springs Episode, with Milly tricking the boys into walking on the girl's side, who all have Naked Freak Outs despite all wearing towels. Milly herself is the one who isn't embarrassed and even poses for the boys in a towel, causing a few Nose Bleeds
• Code Geass: The Prepared Rebellion: Thanks to being more willing to exercise than he was in canon, Lelouch has developed a more athletic physique, which C.C. notices when she catches sight of him coming out of the shower in a just towel in Chapter 5. It causes quite a stir for C.C. since it's the first time she feels sexual attraction toward a guy and the incident ends up awakening her to puberty.
• In My Huntsman Academia, Izuku gets into tons of embarrassing situations, like running out of the shower with nothing but a towel on when he thought the girls were in trouble, giving them an eyeful of his six-pack abs to his embarrassment.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide: Asuka is wearing a towel when she shoves Shinji playfully, causing him to stumble and accidentally grabbing part of her towel, thus ripping it off, exposing her body and getting her a bit angry.
• Never Say Never:
  • Mondo is wearing one when Chihiro asks him to train her. Mondo is very nervous since he's half-naked in front of a girl, not knowing yet that Chihiro is actually a boy and isn't attracted to men.
  • When Hinata, Celeste and Toko go to peep on the boys as they're bathing, they find them all wearing their towels. Byakuya ends up losing his, causing Toko to nosebleed and turn into her Split Personality, almost causing them all to get caught. Even the usually aloof Celeste seems impressed by the sight.
    Celeste: Well, it seems Byakuya's ego is well founded.
  • Mukuro, Sayaka and Kyoka later have a Public Bathhouse Scene where they also wear their towels. Mukuro in particular makes sure to keep one towel tied on her hair, since she's disguised as Junko and the hair is actually a wig and getting it wet would ruin it. Nobody peeps on them, instead, they catch Hifumi trying to steal Alter Ego's laptop that was hidden in the lockers. Makoto and Leon confuse Hifumi's high pitched scream with the girls and rush inside the bathhouse for an Accidental Pervert moment where they see the three girls in just their towels, with even Kyoko blushing faintly at Makoto seeing her wearing so little.
• Noir Ange: Liz reads one passage in Kid's diary where he questions his own sexuallity after bumping into Crona fresh out of the shower in a Modesty Towel. Kid also notes Crona is very self-conscious and wears the towel all the way up to the chest, which keeps Crona having an Ambiguous Gender.
• Path of the King:
  • In Chapter 19, Shirou is naked save for the towel as Medea is drawing magic patters on his body. He finds it very difficult not to react to the feel of her slender fingers running on his bare skin.
  • Subverted in Chapter 28, when Shirou accidentally sees Yumizuka walked out of the bathroom with a towel only on her hair. She does untangle the towel to cover herself in the ensuing Naked Freak-Out.
• Remnant's Reclaimer: An example in Chapter 16 actually subverts the Theiss Titillation Theory part of the trope. Yang has borrowed Weiss's Modesty Towel without asking, which infuriates Weiss who considers it deeply unsanitary. When Yang steps out of the bathroom after showering wrapped up in the towel, Weiss tries to pull it off her but underestimates how firmly it was wrapped and just accidentally causes Yang to fall on top of her instead, in a Suggestive Collision.
• Princess of the Blacks: Cedric Diggory notes that as the prefect bathroom is communal bathing, new prefects generally wear Modesty Towels into the bath but eventually stop bothering, making Jennifer stand out as she walks in nude without a care in the world in her very first time, with her towel slung over her shoulder.
• Shattered Reflection: Subverted. Chrom has once again managed to walk in on Rose bathing just as she's reaching for her modesty towel. Feeling devious this time, instead of becoming embarrassed and covering herself with it, she hands it over to him and coyly asks him to use it to wash her back. The insinuation is enough to cause Chrom to flee out of the tent in a hurry, with her towel still in his grasp, while she laughs at him.
• Still Waters Series: Asuna is seen several times in one; in Chapter 3 of Book 2, it almost wasn't big enough and she nearly lost it.
• Stories and Tales from Dimension 63:
  • In chapter 7: Lincoln, forgetting he's a girl now, leaves the bathroom with his Modesty Towel covering his lower body only. Lynn(M) sees and promptly nosebleeds.
  • In Chapter 8: Linka, remembering she's now a boy, leaves the bathroom with her Modesty Towel covering her upper and lower body, then Lynn(F) jokingly pulls on it, causing it to fall to the floor.
• The Story of a Gardevoir That Became a Trainer: Gardy conspicuously gets one post-transformation and is seen with it upon waking up. It does slip off during her jubilant shout in realizing she's a human now, though. A mysterious benefactor does leave behind a box with supplies and clothes, so she isn't without clothing for long.
• Tales of the Otherverse: After taking a relaxing shower, Kara steps out of the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around her hair, and bumps into Rogue.
  Kara sighed as the hot water cascaded over her body. For a long moment she just stood there, allowing the shower to ease the tension away.
  After washing and drying, she stepped out of the restroom, towel wrapped around her hair.
  "Uh. I'm sorry."
  Kara stopped. There, seated on the foot of her bed, was Rogue.
• Teaching Darkness: Shadow does this in a chapter of "Flux", with him commenting on needing his clothes. Mephy points out the absurdity of the idea, as Shadow is a Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal most of the time, and that the only thing he wears regularly are shoes, socks and gloves.
• In Truth and Consequences, Alya and Chloe walk in on Nino wearing only a towel after using the Jade Colossus form caused him to grow several inches. Both girls' reactions are more than a little... flustered.
• Ultimate DCU Headverse: After taking a shower, Kate wraps herself with a towel, heads to her bedroom to get dressed, and she bumps into Linda, who was grabbing her breakfast tray instead of washing dishes in the kitchen as Kate expected.
• Viridescent: When Mineta and Kaminari had the rather bright idea to make off with Bakugo's clothes while they were in the shower, he comes after them in nothing but a towel... until he loses that too. Thankfully, Momo beans him with an encyclopedia before he can go far.
• In My Hero Academia The Waters of Lethe, the towel is justified during the bath. Aizawa has been rescued from quirk traffickers and was hit by a severe dose of a Trigger-boosted Identity Amnesia quirk. Present Mic is trying to help him get clean after everything and gets him into a tub. They’re married, but Hizashi doesn’t want to feel like a pervert seeing Shota’s private parts since Shota barely has a grasp on reality, let alone his own identity or his history with Hizashi. Hizashi persuades Aizawa to drape a towel over his lap while he’s sitting in the tub.
• The Wicked Lovely Slash Fic fanfiction Wishes has Niall wishing he had one of these.
• With this Ring... (Green Lantern): Subverted. Star Sapphire parades in front of a paralyzed Hector Hammond wearing a towel which covers nothing but her shoulders with the express purpose of screwing up with his head.

Films — Animation

• DC Universe Animated Original Movies:
  • Superman: Doomsday: This is used twice to imply the intimacy level between Superman and Lois Lane.
    • In the Fortress of Solitude, a dripping wet Lois emerges from the bathroom dressed in just a towel while she and Superman exchange some sexually charged banter about the possibilities of his heat and X-Ray Vision.
    • In their final scene together, Superman is wearing just a towel when he and Lois embrace in the bedroom of her apartment.
  • Superman/Batman: Apocalypse: Big Barda answers the door to Diana and Clark in a towel, and stays in it during the following discussion about them needing her help to go to Apokolips. At one point she goes into her room to get dressed and we see her Sexy Silhouette removing the towel and putting on her armor.
  • All-Star Superman: Lois briefly wears one after showering in Superman's Fortress, while she checks out the backless dress Clark left for her to wear.
  • Played With in Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay: At Scandal's penthouse apartment, Knockout is relaxing in the Jacuzzi while Professor Pyg is held hostage, tied to a chair. When Scandal enters tells Knockout to get ready, she does a Sexy Surfacing Shot in plain view of Pyg and Scandal, before she grabs a towel. But instead of wrapping herself in it, she just uses it to dry off and then throws it at Pyg's face while she embraces Scandal, giving her a passionate kiss while fully nude. All while Pyg complains about Girl on Girl Is Hot action he's missing.
• In the beginning of A Goofy Movie, Goofy barges into Max's bedroom wearing a towel around his body and on his head, despite having only three hairs on his head.
• Make Mine Music: In All the Cats Join In, the older teenage girl dries herself in one when getting out of the shower.
• ParaNorman: Mitch answers the door to Courtney in nothing but a towel, and her eyes clearly pan him up and down.
• Titan A.E.:
  • Cale narrowly escaped a Drej attack in space and loses consciousness. When he awakens, he finds himself naked in a ship's sickbay with Akima and Preed examining him. When he complains about his nudity, Akima snarks she "didn't notice it" before throwing a towel over his waist.
  • Cale walks in on Akima stepping out of the shower and she quickly covers herself with a towel. She doesn't hold a grudge and just invites him in as she gets into the stall to get dressed behind the force field curtain.

Films — Live-Action

• In the 2004 french film Five X Two, the lead characters go to a hotel after finalizing their divorce in order to have intercourse one last time. The woman takes a shower, emerges wrapped in a towel and keeps it on while getting into the bed. Her ex-husband asks her why she covers up like that and whether it is because they are no longer married. She responds that she does not know why.
• Aces Go Places 2: Played With. King Kong dresses up for his new Love Interest, just to see her fresh out of the shower and wearing nothing but a Modesty Towel. Thinking this is her being Ready for Lovemaking, he goes back to his room, undresses and returns clad in a towel himself. She, however, is dressed now and asks him if it isn't a bit cold without clothes on.
• In ...All the Marbles, Loise is shown coming out of the bathroom wearing just a towel wrapped around her waist.
• In Armor of God II there is a Running Gag with the female leads getting into action scenes clad only in towels and ending up losing them, usually getting both Jackie and the bad guys to be Distracted by the Sexy.
• Avalanche Sharks: The one girl from the ski resorts jacuzzi to take the main characters warning seriously and get out in time to avoid the arriving monsters spends the rest of her screentime racing around wrapped up in a towel after not having time to put on any more clothes before fleeing, partially for modesty, partially for warmth.
• Bedazzled (2000):
  • Elliot's third wish from the Devil is to be a superstar athlete and a Chick Magnet and he turns into a Hunk basketball player. He meets with his Lust Object, Alison is the locker rooms while he's only wearing a towel and she's clearly all over him... until he opens his towel and she's sorely disappointed as the Devil also gave him a Teeny Weenie.
  • Later, The Devil teleports Elliot into Alison's room to peek at her journal. While they're searching, Alison comes out of the shower wearing a towel, but they're both Invisible to Normals to her and Elliot takes advantage of the chance to go Eating the Eye Candy.
• The Blue Max: Kaeti (Ursula Andress) wears a towel carefully looped around her neck, with the dangling ends only just managing to cover both breasts. Yet while she moves around a lot, nothing ever get exposed.
• The Boy: Greta has a Shower Scene when preparing for a date with Malcolm, while an unseen Brahms steals the dress she had laid out to change into afterwards. This leaves her in nothing but a towel for the next few minutes of the film as she searches for first her missing clothes, and then the source of the strange noises she hears.
• Carry On Again Doctor: When Dr. Nookey is scared out of the shower room, he comes out wearing a Modesty Towel, revealing he also has a Carpet of Virility.
• In Chai Lai Angels: Dangerous Flowers, the flowers are undercover getting massages in a spa when a fight breaks out, resulting in them staging a Fight Scene dressed in nothing but modesty towels. Inevitably, one of the girls has her towel snagged away by a Mook and has a Naked Freak-Out, with the other girls stopping just to tighten the knot on their towels. ^note Rather than rely upon any editing tricks, the actresses themselves are clearly wearing white bikinis under the towels.
• Chasing Liberty: When Anna and Ben pretending to be newlyweds to stay at a strangers house, they have to share a room where There Is Only One Bed. To make matters even more awkward for Ben, Anna walks around the room in just a towel after showering (which is actually an intentional attempt at seducing him).
• In A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song, Katie briefly wears one before her little brother Victor deprives her of it and locks her out of the house.
• Clown Kill: After completing her shower in the office building, Jenny wraps a towel around herself.
• Clownface: Jenna wears one of these in one scene after having a shower.
• DOA: Dead or Alive: The Hong Kong police arrive at Christie's hotel room to arrest her while she was showering and opens the door wearing just a towel and keeps it while they try to interrogate her right there. She flirts and flaunts her body to make them drop their guard, then goes on a Full-Frontal Assault on them, unwrapping her towel and using it as an Improvised Weapon, whipping one guy in the face and using it to disarm another holding a gun to her.
• Doctor... Series:
  • Doctor in Love: A towel is all that Drs. Hare and Burke get to wear during their time spent in the Cold Room at the Foulness Anti-Cold Research Unit.
  • Doctor in Trouble: When Ophelia leaves her bathroom to ask Dr. Burke out to dinner, she is wearing nothing but a white towel with pink flowers.
• Used to keep a PG rating in Enchanted (and also because it's funny). When Robert accidentally walks in on Giselle stepping out of the shower, two doves move a towel in front of her just as he opens the door, providing Scenery Censor until she wraps herself in it. Soon after she gets into Suggestive Collision when she falls on top of him in just a towel, right in front of his Clingy Jealous Girlfriend. What makes it worse is that Giselle doesn't help Robert clear up that it's Not What It Looks Like because she herself doesn't understand the implications.
• Fantastic Four (2005):
  • Reed gets an Accidental Pervert moment as he accidentally walks in on Sue (Jessica Alba) when she's about to get into the shower. She responds by clutching the towel to her and simultaneously turning invisible... you'd think one of the two would be enough, but maybe it was just reflex.
  • Subverted in the sequel, where Johnny (Chris Evans,) comes out a shower and wrapped in a towel and is accosted by Captain Raye, the female military officer he's had his eye on. Johnny insists she was waiting there on purpose to catch him in a towel. She merely rolls her eyes and walks away.
• Fletch asks Mrs. Stanwyk when she answers the door wearing a towel: "Can I borrow your towel for a sec? My car just hit a water buffalo."
• Friday the 13th:
  • Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter: Sara puts one on after her shower sex with Doug, which she keeps on for the remainder of her screen time until Jason kills her.
  • Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday: The lady (who turns out to be an undercover FBI agent) that Jason chases in the opening throws one on when Jason interrupts her bath. Amazingly, she manages to keep the towel on during the chase, even after doing flips and jumps.
• Girl House: After her Shower Scene, there's a shot of Kate walks into her room in a towel, walking right past the Serial Killer loverboy hiding in her closet.
• In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Trillian is about to emerge from a shower when she asks Arthur for a towel, adding to the already well-established "Most Versatile Object in the Universe" gag.
• The House Bunny: Subverted Shelley likes to "air dry" and steps out of the shower topless with a towel wrapped around her waist and another on her hair. Natalie tells her she has to cover up because most of the girls in the house haven't seen their own bodies and seeing Shelley naked may be too much of a shock. She refuses and goes a step further by dropping the towel. Cue a horrified Reaction Shot from the girls.
• Subverted in Hot Dog!: The Movie. The heroes stop at a hotel and ring for service, whereupon we see the woman who runs it reach for a towel as she steps out of a hot tub. She then walks in... towel wrapped around her hair. It's the only thing she has on.
• H.O.T.S has a scene in which Honey Shane wraps one towel around her waist and the other around her neck and over her breasts in the locker room after she gets out of the shower to change clothes.
• I Know What You Did Last Summer:
  • Barry covers himself in one showering in the gym's locker room after he finds his own note from the Fisherman.
  • Julie walks around in a towel in The Stinger while talking to Ray on the phone and getting ready to shower. But her shower turns for the worse when she sees the "I STILL KNOW" message written on the foggy door Cue The Fisherman bursting through the glass for a final Jump Scare. This was Retconed in the sequel as a nightmare she had.
• James Bond:
  • Riffed in The Man with the Golden Gun when James Bond surprises Andrea Anders in the shower. She tells him to hand her a towel, so he does. Only it's a hand towel.
  • A Deleted Scene from Diamonds Are Forever has Plenty O'Toole, a minor character and almost one-night-stand of James Bond, returning to his apartment wearing nothing but a white towel after she had been thrown out of his hotel room's window and lands in a pool while wearing nothing but her underwear and high heels. She's outraged when she sees he's already in bed with another woman, but leaves in a fury without confronting him.
  • One scene in Thunderball has Bond encounter Femme Fatale Fiona in the bath, and she asks him to hand her something to wear. Bond hands her a pair of high heels. She eventually uses a face towel.
• Just Go with It: Danny's girlfriend Palmer walks up to in just a towel, dropping it and inviting him for some Shower of Love.
• La La Land: Mia exits the shower with a towel already wrapped around her while nobody else was around.
• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) comes out of the shower in a towel and is walking up to her wardrobe when she sees her butler Hillary holding a pair of heels and an elegant dress for her, which she is quick to dismiss.
  Hillary: I'm only trying to turn you into a lady.
  Lara: Mm... [walks right past him and indignantly tossing the towel she was wearing]
  Hillary: And a lady should be modest.
  Lara: Yes, a lady should be modest.
• Leap Year: Both Anna and Declan emerge from their respective showers wearing towels, both awkwardly aware of the small room they're sharing.
• Maid to Order (1987): Subverted. Jessie goes Skinny Dipping in a pool only to discover that Nick was already Skinny Dipping in the pool and they both have a Naked Freak-Out. Trying to be respectful, he gets out and passes her a towel and turns away. When he turns back she has wrapped the towel around her hair and is walking away otherwise nude back to the house.
• Mandalay: Tony sneaks a peek at Tanya while she’s showering. The Pre-Code Era element comes in when we see a shot of the towel falling down to her ankles when they're kissing.
• In Marley & Me during the sequence where Marley is tormenting his house sitter, we see him following her out of the shower pulling on her modesty towel until he eventually pulls it off her.
• McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force, a sequel film to McHale's Navy'' has one of the WAC's waling around in one briefly when she nearly runs into Parker after he wandered in their by mistake.
• Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates: Tatiana and Terry both wear towels in their scene at the sauna, but Terry wears two, one around her waist and another around her neck.
• Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day: Miss Pettigrew holds a towel to Delysia when she climbs out of her bubble bath providing Scenery Censor until Delysia wraps herself in the towel.
• The Musketeer: A Dirty Old Man is crawling through an attic, hoping to get a look at his niece Francesca as she's bathing. D'Artagnan, who heard the man and went up there to stop him, then falls through the ceiling and lands in front of her bathtub. He quickly composes himself, and turns his back on her, telling it's Not What It Looks Like. To his surprise, she believes him and is even amused at his nervousness and doesn't worry about him peeking while she gets out of the bath to wrap herself in a modesty towel.
• Necessary Roughness: Lucy wears one in the locker room, while waiting for the boys to shower so she can have her turn.
• In New York Minute:
  • Roxy and Jane end up having to shower at a hotel room belonging to Trey. When he comes in he finds Roxy is a bathrobe and Jane in a towel, with both doing flipping their wet hair back in Slow Motion while Sexophone music plays in the background. Naturally, after fiding two attractive half-naked twins in his room, he jumps to conclusions.
  Trey: Is today my birthday?
  • Later, when they're forced to sneak out of the hotel, Jane has to do so still wearing only a towel and slippers. At one point, her towel gets caught in the scaffolding and she ends up falling naked into a dumpster. She manages to get the towel back and has to walk around like that around New York until they find a change of clothes, but not before having a Suggestive Collision with her Love Interest when he crashes on her in his bike.
• Over Her Dead Body: When Ashley is showering at the gym, her boyfriend's Psycho Ex-Girlfriend, Kate does a fake announcement of there being an emergency evacuation, that only Ashley can hear since she's Kate is a ghost that is only visible to her. Ashley then rushes out of the showers in panic, with just a small towel around her hips and one arm barely covering her soapy breasts. She's naturally mortified when she finds there's nothing wrong and everyone is staring at her like she's insane.
• Pitch (2009): The fantasy version of Jim's old crush Mike appears in a locker room, drying himself off with a towel. He then approaches with the towel wrapped around his waist.
• The Proposal Margaret (Sandra Bullock) finishes showering and is searching the bathroom for a modesty towel, but all she finds is a cloth mitt that she then holds over her crotch while her other arm is across her chest and leaves the bathroom to get a proper towel. But she ends up running into the small annoying family dog that stands in her way yapping at her, preventing her search.
• Python: Theresa spends about twenty minutes in one after the Python attacks her while she's getting out of the shower and chases her for quite a while before she can find any clothes.
• In Romancing the Stone, Joan Wilder emerges from the shower with a towel around her.
• Subverted in the horror film Sorority Row. A girl does have a modesty towel but as a punishment for going into the seniors' bathroom, she is forced to remove it and walk across the house back to her bedroom in the buff.
• Run Fatboy Run: Blackmail: Dennis comes out fo the bathroom in a towel and Maya takes advantage of the opportunity, whipping away his towel and taking a polaroid of his bits and Blackmails him to agree to her ultimatum to kick him out if he quits the race and pay his back rent if he doesn't.
• Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker fight wearing this in a bathhouse during the second Rush Hour movie, replacing towels with bath robes. (They end up being thrown out naked anyway.)
• Subverted by Maxine Wasa in Savage Beach when she wraps a towel around her waist.
• In See No Evil, Hear No Evil the evil Femme Fatale killer Eve (Joan Severence) emerges from her shower wearing nothing but a towel but the deaf hero Dave tricks her into dropping said towel by passing off his erection as a gun.
• In Shallow Grave, the female lead wears her towel in the male fashion when emerging from the bathroom, giving the audience titillation in the form of a topless scene.
• Sherlock Holmes (2009): Irene Adler finds Sherlock trying to break into her room while only wearing a towel. She merely invites him in and doesn't hesitate to drop it in front of him while walking behind a dressing screen.
• So Close has playful Bathroom Brawl where Sue is trying rip off her sister Lynn's modesty towel after she burst in on her while she was bathing. Given they're both Action Girls, it involves a lot impractical acrobatics, flips, and spinning. It ends with Lynn Giving Them the Strip with Sue falling into the bathtub with the towel while Lynn quickly and skillfully wraps the shower curtain around herself like a towel and walks away triumphantly.
• Something Wicked: When Christine (Shantel VanSanten) thinks a stalker is peeking on her in the pool's shower, she covers herself in a towel and leaves to confront him, only to be attacked and pushed into the pool. She escapes from her attacker and runs back to her house while still clutching the towel around her.
• The Spirit: When the Spirit arrives at Sand Saref's place with the intent to arrest her, he becomes obviously distracted when he sees her stepping out of the steamy bathroom wearing only a towel. He tries to ignore it and demands her to put her hands behind her head. Amused, knowing exactly what will happen but wanting to mess with him, she raises her arms and strikes a pose causing the towel to slide off her. Flustered, he turns around and tells her to Please Put Some Clothes On.
• From the 2004 Starsky & Hutch movie:
  • All the cops at the locker room use these, but Hutch and Starsky are the only ones using hand towels.
  • Prior to that, an attractive blonde cheerleader wrapped a modesty towel around herself after undressing in front of Starsky and Hutch as they questioned her on a dirty ex.
• Summer Stock starts with Judy Garland Singing in the Shower, so she appears in this between getting out and changing into her overalls.
• Ted: When Ted goes to Lori's apartment to apologize, she answers the door wearing a short towel. Being a tiny Teddy Bear, he can get an eyeful of her under the towel, but since he doesn't want to make her even angrier at him, he covers his eyes.
• Lampshaded and lampooned in The Three Stooges short film A-Plumbing We Will Go. Curly has to evict a bather from a shower he needs to repair. After some bantering with the bather, Curly loses his patience and pulls the shower curtain, to reveal that the occupant had been showering with a towel already wrapped around him.
• The Unborn: Casey is wearing a towel in a locker room when she first notices one of her eyes changed color to match that of her unborn twin brother.
• Valentine: Kate is taking a shower in her apartment, but is interrupted when she hears a noise, and with shampoo still in her hair, puts on a towel and goes out to investigate, leading to an awkward encounter with her creepy neighbor.
• In What's Up, Tiger Lily?, Teri is in Phil's apartment, wearing only a towel:
  Teri: [seductively] Name three presidents.
  Phil: Roosevelt, McKinley... [opens towel] ...Lincoln?
• In Youngblood (1986), Dean's (Rob Lowe) towel falls off to the delight of Jessie (Cynthia Gibb).
• Welcome Home (2018):
  • Cassie wears a towel covering her privates after a shower, which turns on her boyfriend Bryan. He tackles her and they almost start having sex, but the visions he has of her cheating on him gets the better of him.
  • One scene shows Federico watching Cassie with his hidden cameras coming out of a different shower also wearing a towel, which she takes off to get dressed (with her back to the cameras).
• My Week with Marilyn: Played With. Marilyn comes out of the shower wearing a towel around her hair, but unravels it to wrap herself in it when she notices Colin is in the room and she just gave him an eyeful.

Literature

• In The Alice Network, Eve wraps herself in towels after the Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me so that she won't have to take her clothes off again after having just put them on.
• Jerin from A Brother's Price averts this - he puts on a "bathing gown" in order to be somewhat more clothed in case he meets one of the female guests of the house. He does.
• Cassandra Palmer: In Hunt the Moon, Cassie's relaxing bath is interrupted by her ghost sidekick, Billy Joe. She hurriedly covers herself with a towel, which he tells her it's a useless gesture for a ghost who's Seen It All. He gets a sponge throw at him in response, which naturally just phases through him harmlessly.
• Because she had just been showering, Amberley spends most of the two-page Ciaphas Cain short story "The Little Things" wearing only a towel. The exception is when kidnappers trying to grab her (or possibly her wealthy cover identity) break into her hotel room and she attacks one of them with the towel. After subduing the last attacker Cain is disappointed she already had the towel back on now that he had time to appreciate the view.
• Crystal Singer: After traveling on a stinking Selkite vessel, Killashandra is so eager for a shower when she gets to her room that she forgets she didn't have any fresh clothes on her, forcing her wear just a towel until Lanzecki brings her clothes.
• Divergent: After showering, Tris is trying to get dressed, but notices that she's beginning to develop muscles she never had before, and her clothes no longer fit. So she walks back to the dormitory from the showers in her towel but crosses path with her bullies along the way, Peter, Molly, and Drew, who immediately begin taunting her. Peter pulls away her towel, leaving her completely naked in public, forcing her to go streaking the rest of the way while they laugh at her.
• Dream: Played Straight with Alania, but inevitably gets knocked off whenever Sekiya is wearing one. Which, considering her love of taking long relaxing baths, happens often.
• Shows up a few times in The Dresden Files.
  • In Storm Front, he's just out of the shower when the date he'd forgotten about (because he took a few blows to the head) shows up. He covers himself with a towel, then a demon shows up and the towel falls off while he's fighting it. This is made more complicated when he realizes said date accidentally drank a Love Potion instead of an escape potion.
  • Harry gets into trouble because of someone else's modesty towel in Proven Guilty. He's letting Molly, his friend's 17-year-old daughter, get cleaned up in his hotel room while waiting for her mother, Charity, to pick her up. Molly steps out of the bathroom, wearing a towel which is perhaps less modest than it should be, just as Charity is asking Harry where Molly is. She decks Harry in the jaw, orders Molly to put her clothes on, and storms out.
  • In the short story "Day Off," he is again getting ready for a date when business interrupts in the form of two naked werewolves. This time he does have time to get some clothes on before everything goes pear-shaped.
• The Eldest Curses: The Red Scrolls of Magic has two scenes featuring towels
  • Magnus is showering when he hears Alec yelling in the living room. He swathes a towel around his hips before rushing there, only to find it was simply Alec having an argument with Shinyun. The sight of Magnus bare-chested and wearing only a towel is enough to cause them both to stop, with Shinyun averting her eyes and Alec blatantly staring. Curiously, Magnus later just conjures some clothing on him, making one wonder why he bothered with the towel.
  • Later, a towel-clad Shinyun intrudes on Magnus bathing, and he conjures a towel for himself for the sake of modesty. After their Bathtub Bonding moment, they both leave the bath while using magic clothe themselves.
• Gone: In Plague, Diana has a Shower of Angst while thinking about her Near-Death Experience in the last book. She walks back to her bedroom wrapped in a towel to find Caine sitting on her bed. He gives her an Anguished Declaration of Love that quickly progresses into them having Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex via a Sexy Discretion Shot caused by Diana letting her towel hit the floor.
  "Diana took a step back, unwound the towel, and let it drop. Caine made a sound like a strangling animal."
• In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry puts one on while in the bath after realizing that Moaning Myrtle is spying on him.
• The Hollows: In The Good, The Bad, And The Undead, Rachel wears a pink towel after bathing and is getting ready on her room when her Fairy Companion Jenks drops in and she spends some time trying to shush him away while holding the towel while he laughs at her efforts.
• Iggie's House: A neighbor lady, Mrs. Axel, wears a towel and nothing else when sunbathing in her backyard, according to Winnie.
• The Immortals: In The Realms of the Gods, Daine' is interrupted in a lake by a tauros. She improvises a sling with her towel and decides she can't bathe unarmed again.
• Iron Druid Chronicles: Due to Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing, Atticus ends up naked a lot, and Modesty Towels are normally his go-to piece of cloth for him to cover himself with. At one point one of his friends demands him to put a towel on before he gives him a car ride, not because of modesty, but because he doesn't want Atticus bare ass sitting on his car.
• In Kate Daniels, shapeshifters are all either very modest or very open, since their changes leave them nude afterward. Thus Dali drops her towel after drying off without seeming to notice that she's in a crowded room.
• Looking for Alaska: Miles first meets his roommate Chip when he's fresh out of the shower and only wearing a towel.
  Chip: I'd shake your hand, but I think you should hold on damn tight to that towel till you can get some clothes on.
• In The Lunar Chronicles, Jacin has a towel draped over his waist when he's woken up from a Suspended Animation chamber. This is made notable because, in the Acknowledgements, Marissa Meyer thanks some friends and adds "There, I put Jacin in a towel. Are you happy??"
• The Magic For Idiots: Rokuro accidentally sees a near-naked Akemi, covered only by her underwear and a towel, when he hides in the girl's locker room.
• Millennium (1983): One of the people Loise Time Travels to the past to replace is an airline stewardess that was in the middle of a bath when Louise arrives and wraps herself in a towel when she goes to investigate, but Louise quickly takes her out with a Tap on the Head. Her towel comes undone as she drops, and Louise, who comes from a Crapsack Future, takes note she's certainly the Sexy Stewardess type.
  "Lord, to look like that with no skinsuit, no prosthetics. She nearly broke my heart."
• In the book of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, McMurphy greets Nurse Ratched wearing one on his second day at the hospital, as he had just showered. When she says he can't walk around like that, he threatens to take it off. He's actually wearing boxer shorts underneath.
• One Fat Summer: Bobby is kidnapped by Rumson and his gang who take him in a Blindfolded Trip to Make-Out Island, where is suffers a Shameful Strip and put on display in an effort to humiliate him until they abandon him there with no clothes. It takes a bit of searching, but Bobby manages to find a serviceable Modesty Towel in the shack he takes shelter in. It shows up in the Film of the Book as well, despite neither the island or the shack ever being referenced previously as a spot people go to.
• Subverted in Prelude to Foundation. The day after their second trip to Billibottom, Seldon interrupts Venabili not long after her morning ablutions, he's only dressed with a towel from the waist down, and so is she while she carelessly dries her hair with another towel. One causes a bit more awkwardness.
• Safehold: Nimue Alban learns just how "fully functional" her robotic body is when, as the now male Merlin Athrawes, learns that the Safeholdian version of rugby is played in the nude, and Nimue, for all her body was male, was still a woman where what was attractive to her was concerned. Merlin makes sure to be the last to leave the water, and quickly wraps a towel around the waist, not for overall modesty but to hide the physical reaction his body has due to all the eye-candy. When Cayleb learns Merlin's true identity and is reminded of this incident, he finds it absolutely hilarious.
  Cayleb: Oh, my God! That was why you stayed in the water! Why you were so damned careful about that towel!
• Stephanie Plum: Stephanie is showering in her house when Morelli suddenly barges in on her, looking for his car keys that she took. He hands her a towel and handcuffs her to the shower rod, while he searches her apartment, all while they have some Snark-to-Snark Combat. When he can't find his keys, he comes back to her and takes away her towel before he goes away, leaving her completely naked and handcuffed to her shower rod. She has to call her male friend Ranger to cut out the cuffs, while she can barely keep herself covered with the curtain. The One for the Money film version adapts the scene, using Toplessness from the Back and Shoulders-Up Nudity to preserve Stephanie's (Katherine Heigl) modesty and keep a PG-13 rating.
• In Things Not Seen, Bobby stumbles out of bed, takes a shower in the dark and only realizes that he's invisible upon looking in the mirror. Despite this, he puts on a towel before telling his parents. It does help them know where he is, though. At one point he gets angry and wants them to think that he's stormed out of the house, so he just throws off the towel and moves a few steps away from them.
• Twilight: In Breaking Dawn, Edward and Bella arrive at their honeymoon destination and before they have Their First Time, she decides to take a shower. After, she goes out on the beach in a Modesty Towel where Edward is. She takes her towel off, he pulls her into his arms and... Oh look, it's the next morning.
• The Firefly novel What Makes Us Mighty has Wash cover his frontal area with a towel when Zoe and Mal walk into his and Zoe’s hotel suite without knocking because Mal and Zoe feel things are getting dangerous in town and Mal wants Wash and Kaylee to get off world to safety. Wash is naked and startled. He was just leaving the bathroom, so it’s likely they caught him just after a shower.
• Zero Sight: Dieter wears one in the lockers, where his Jerkass teammate Roster is teasing about Dieter's time with their Friendly Neighborhood Vampire teammate Rei and if she didn't the chance to nibble on him. Roster wipes off his towel to "check if she went for the femoral" and runs off with his towel while Dieter chases after with Hand-or-Object Underwear, being particularly embarrassed since their female teammates were also present and are now giggling at him.

Live-Action TV

• Altered Carbon: In "The Wrong Man", Ortega is shower is interrupted when she hears her Abuela screaming at Kovacs. She comes out of the bathroom in a towel to defuse the situation between the two.
• Angel:
  • In "Rm w/a Vu", Angel comes to the door of his apartment wearing a towel and nothing else. In the episode commentary by writer Jane Espenson, she notes, "I put that scene in there because, frankly, I knew there wouldn't be a woman on the planet who wouldn't enjoy seeing David Boreanaz shirtless and dripping wet."
  • "Spin the Bottle", Cordelia decides to shower while she's not in an Abandoned Warehouse, and naturally gets surprised by Angel wearing only a towel.
  • "Harms Way" has a scene showing Harmony's daily routine, starting with her coming out of the shower in a towel.
• Angie Tribeca
  • Angie has worn a modesty towel around her waist a few times, usually in the police locker room with Pixelation on her chest. The pilot al has her wearing around her waist while doing pull-ups on the shower rod with her back to the camera.
  • Parodied in one episode. To enter a locker room, Geils and Tanner cover themselves up with bath towels... over their street clothes. Later, the villain whips the towels off them and runs off while the two cover themselves in embarrassment, even though they're fully dressed.
• Arrow:
  • "Nanda Parbat": There's a scene with Ray only clad in a Modesty Towel with Felicity trying (and failing) to Ignore the Fanservice.
  • "Invasion": The second scene has Oliver and "Laurel" sharing a Shower of Love clad only in Modesty Towels.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003): In The Documentary episode "Final Cut", Apollo uses a Modesty Towel, although he is apparently unable to properly fasten it around his waist. Starbuck, who's standing behind him, apparently gets quite a view as she can be seen smirking when the towel falls open.
• The Big Bang Theory: Penny plays the trope straight in the pilot episode while using Leonard and Sheldon's shower. It never seems to occur to her later that Howard's constant hitting on her might have something to do with first meeting him in a towel.
• Blood Drive: Grace wears one after she showers in the diner they're staying in "Welcome to Pixie Swallow".
• Parodied in Blackish, when Bow and Dre are standing by the bathroom sink getting ready. Dre wears his in the feminine style, representing his conservative upbringing, while Bow's is in the masculine style, representing her carefree personality.
• In one episode of Boy Meets World, Shawn answers the door wearing just a towel when he first meets Angela, who would soon become his Love Interest. He's clearly smitten with her immediately, and Corey, who's been recording everything in Shawn's apartment a la The Real World, is standing off to the side, muttering that he should drop the towel. At this prompting, Angela actually kisses Shawn for Corey's movie, while he's still only in a towel.
• Broad City:
  • Bevers is wearing one when Abbi first meets him. He's considerably slimmer and more muscular than he is in every other episode.
  • Abbi changes in the locker room with a towel wrapped around herself, even while everyone around her casually gets naked.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: In "Stakeout", during the eponymous stakeout, one of the things Charlies does that pisses of Jake is walk around in a towel in the female style and Jake puts it in their "No-No List".
  Jake: No lady-style towels!
• In the Burn Notice episode "Better Halves", Michael and a Russian agent get into a fight in a sauna wearing nothing but white terrycloth towels. Defying several laws of physics, at the end of the fight, both towels are still firmly in place.
• Castle: In "The Limey", Beckett and Castle storm a suspect's hotel room and find him just stepping out of the shower in a towel. Beckett orders him to hold up his hands and the man reluctantly complies, leaving his towel to fall to the ground and soon identifies himself as Detective Inspector Colin Hunt. Castle tries to cover Beckett's eyes with his hands, but she coyly moves her head aside to get a peek.
• On To Catch a Predator, Chris Hansen has provided these on more than one occasion to "guests" that stripped naked when entering the house.
• On Cheers, Rebecca accidentally locked herself out of a hotel room wearing only a towel, which was caught in the door.
• In an episode of Cold Case, the second half of a gay couple emerges from the shower already wearing a towel around his waist, joining his partner, who is similarly clad. Despite the fact that by this point in their relationship, they'd likely be quite comfortable being naked around each other.
• Cougar Town:
  • The Pilot episode has Jules walking out of the shower in a towel. She walks up to the mirror, and is disappointed at finding her body is getting older, and drops the towel to fully inspect herself.
  • A later episode has Laurie walking in on Jules coming out of the shower with a towel half wrapped around her. Feeling insecure Jules actually opens the towel to ask Laurie if she still looks good and it's relieved when Laurie says she looks great.
• Dark Angel: In "Out", one mission ends with Max falling into a mud pit. The next time we see her is at Logan's apartment, having just showered and is walking around wearing only a towel since her clothes are still wet after they were washed.
• Dark Matter (2015): In the beginning of episode 7, While going to Two's room to give her a status report, One finds her in only a towel fresh from the shower and tries to leave but she tells him it's fine to stay. She casually drops the towel while he's in the middle of his report which he finds very frustrating as he knows she's very aware of his attraction to her yet doesn't consider her behavior as flirting. The episode ends with the opposite scene, with Two coming to his room while he's in a towel asking for a "status report". But this time she admits she is attracted to him and the scene ends with a Sexy Discretion Shot.
• Dark Skies: In "The Warren Omission", John is ambushed fresh out of the shower by Juliet while he's only wearing a Modesty Towel. After being beaten up by her as a warning, she gasses him and once he's out, she rips off his towel and leaves him naked on the floor, seemingly just to humiliate him further.
• In Degrassi: Next Class, a rival school pranks the girls by stealing the clothes in the lockers and sounding the fire alarm, forcing all the girls out of the school in their towels. Frankie's towel gets caught in the door as she's getting out, leaving her briefly naked outside the school before her friends come to her rescue.
• Desperate Housewives: In Pretty Little Picture, Susan's ex-husband comes to visit her for their "talk" while she was showering and she answers in a towel. When she lets him in and tells him to wait while she gets dressed, he just snarks he's already seen it all anyways. They get into a heated argument, making him leaves the house with her hot on his heels still in a towel. The end of her towel gets caught on his car's door and it ends up being ripped off her body while he drives away leaving her to have a Naked Freak-Out in the sidewalk. To make matters worse, when she rushes back home, she finds the door closed and locked her out and she needs her new Love Interest help to get back inside.
• Devious Maids: In "Setting the Table", Spicy Latina maid Carmen goes Skinny Dipping in her patron's pool, after both he and the governess are out of the house. She's later seen playing in his piano clad in only a towel, when her co-worker Sam chides her about her behavior. They're interrupted when Odessa the governess comes back earlier than expected. When Odessa walks into the room, she finds Sam wiping down the piano with the towel, covering for Carmen while she is hiding inside the piano, completely naked.
• Doctor Who
  • In the TV movie, the Eighth Doctor escapes from a morgue wrapped in the funeral shroud they put his body under.
  • "The Lodger": The Doctor, under the (mistaken) impression that his roommate is being attacked, races out of the shower to rescue him, barely managing to wrap a towel around his waist beforehand. Considering that this is the Eleventh Doctor, it is rather impressive that he remembered to grab a towel at all.
• Dollhouse: Whenever the Dolls shower in their large shower room, they clad themselves in red towels when stepping out from behind the convenient shoulder lenght glass walls that obscure their nudity.
• Eastwick
  • In episode 3, Joanna is in a towel at her house, getting ready for a shower, when she hears someone break into her house. Scared, she just out the window of her house still in a towel, and runs all the way to Roxy house in it.
  • On episode 11, Kat is talking in the phone in her towel when she's startled by her boyfriend's son and ends up losing the towel in front of him, with her later angsting that her boyfriend's son saw her naked before he did.
    Joanna: Just tell the kid to report to his dad how good the goods were! If anything, it could move things along quicker.
    Kat: Gross!
• In the 2003 sitcom Eve, a towel-clad Rita steps out of her house in the morning to grab the paper, and finds a crowd of paparazzi waiting for her. Startled, she ends up losing the towel in front of them, but decides to use her hands to cover her green-cream-masked-faced instead of her exposed body.
• Fairly Legal: In "Start Me Up", Lauren catches Kate walking around the office in only a towel, since she has been homeless for a couple of days after her divorce and had to shower there.
• Family Matters:
  • During the house party scenes of the first-season episode "The Party", Shawn Harrison makes an appearance as "Boy in Towel," a classmate of Eddie's who is dressed only with a towel around his waist; the kid still has just a towel on when Carl comes home early and kicks everyone out. (Although he was nameless in this episode, the "Boy in Towel" had the same mannerisms and voice as Waldo Faldo, whom the character (fully dressed in future episodes) eventually became.)
  • In the seventh-season episode "The Naked and the Nerdy", during a bathroom scene Urkel humorously wears his towel high up on his chest, somewhat in the female manner. (Laura wears one too ... only after Urkel accidentally sees her in the buff.)
• The Flash (2014): Used on The Stinger of "The New Rogues" when Caitlin finds out she's turning into Killer Frost. She's having a Shower Scene but is shocked when the water suddenly freezes. She comes out of the shower in a towel and is terrified when she looks at herself in the mirror, finding she now has blue lips and a white streak on her hair.
• Flashpoint: "Attention Shoppers" ends with Sam walking in on Jules in the lockers clad in a towel while checking her bruised shoulder she got in the last job. He checks it for her in an awkward UST fueling moment.
• The Fosters:
  • In the Series Finale, the moms Stef and Lena are locked outside a hotel beach resort naked after losing their robes while Skinny Dipping in the ocean. They hurriedly take some used towels from a hamper then have to walk up to reception clad in their towels to get a new key to their room where they run into their son's soon-to-be parents-in-law.
• Frasier: In the episode "Junior Agent", Frasier and Kenny go to a steam room, wearing giant, blanket-like towels from slightly below the chest to slightly above the ankle. Junior Agent Portia storms in on them, and Kenny hides, exclaiming several times that he's naked.
• Friends:
  • Discussed by Chandler in "The One Where No One's Ready" in a Seinfeldian Conversation:
    Chandler: You know what's weird? Donald Duck never wore pants. But whenever he's getting out of the shower, he always put a towel around his waist. I mean, what is that about?
  • In "The One With The Flashback", in a flashback, Chandler finds a sad Monica in her apartment, wearing only a towel. When prompted she confessed she's upset that Phoebe moved out and she wonders if she's difficult to live with. Chandler comforts her and they have a heartfelt moment that ends in them hugging. Chandler then breaks the ice by asking if her if the towel she's wearing is 100% cotton since it feels so nice.
  • In "The One With The Boobies", Rachel is a victim of an interesting case of malfunctioning modesty towel.
    Chandler: That's a relatively open weave and I can still see your... nipular areas.
  • Parodied in "The One With The Hypnosis Tape". Chandler uses a hypnotic tape to help him quit smoking, which offers such encouragement as "You are a strong, confident woman who does not need to smoke". He then spends the rest of the episode behaving in a very effeminate manner, including coming out of the shower wearing a towel all the way up to his armpits the way a woman would, along with having another wrapped over his head.
  • When the girls learn that George Stephanopoulos is staying in the apartment across the street from Monica's they camp out on her terrace to try and catch a glimpse of him. After finally spotting him they start chanting for him to drop the towel he's wearing...and let out awe-struck "Wow!"s when he finally does (not that the audience gets to see him).
• Gotham: In "Under The Knife", Lee is having a relaxing bath when she hears a noise around the house. A dripping-wet towel-clad Lee tiptoeing around her apartment until she discovers that the intruder was actually a cat. When she lets the cat around she's scared again, this time by Gordon suddenly barging in.
• Grand Hotel: Alicia finds out Carolina slept with El Rey and cheated on her fiancé when she finds her coming out of the shower of El Rey's room wearing only a towel.
• Grey's Anatomy: Dr. Sloan's first appearance. His very first appearance was actually hitting on Meredith in the hospital, although the scene with the towel is probably his most famous.
• Hellcats: Marti gets her clothes stolen in the locker and is forced to go to the boys locker room for a towel, but she hears them coming in while she's sneaking and has to hide in a stall. Thankfully for her, the only one that catches her is Lewis who helps her out by taking off his towel in front of her stall, giving her his towel and clearing out his playmates from the locker room since they don't want to see him naked.
• The BBC's 2012 production of William Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2 decided that a short conversation between the Prince of Wales and his "friend" needed to be in a sauna. With wet towels.
• How to Get Away with Murder: "It's All Her Fault" has Rebecca showing up at Wes's door at 4 in the morning asking to use his shower (hers is broken) while wearing just a towel, which furthers the Unresolved Sexual Tension between them. She even drops the towel when the bathroom door is still open, causing him to get distracted by her Toplessness from the Back before she closes the door. The visit turns out to be plot-important as she hid a cellphone under his sink before she got arrested, implying the towel shenanigans were indeed an effort to distract him.
• The Incredible Hulk (1977): In the episode "The Lottery", Banner is Hulking Out halfway up an emergency ladder in a block of flats, he busts his way through the wall, and into a room with a couple looking on in shock and confusion. He then bursts through another wall, and the scene cuts to a sexy lady stepping out of the shower and wrapping a towel around herself. The Hulk steps into the bathroom and looks her up and down and smirks before leaving the room by breaking down another wall. The scene ends with both the couple and the towel-clad lady in the shower just looking on confused through the giant holes in the wall. It really has to be seen to be believed.
• In Plain Sight: Humorously Played With in "In My Humboldt Opinion", where Rafe asks for Mary a towel from inside his shower. She goes to look for them, she finds them all missing except a washcloth, explaining a towel filled suitcase earlier in the season which was thought to contain drugs. She leaves the washcloth hanging on the handle and joins him in the shower.
• Kim's Convenience:
  • Jung's ex-girlfriend Grace comes out of the bathroom in Jung and Kimchee's apartment wearing only a towel, essentially confirming her and Jung's date the night before was a success. Jung's mother is unfortunately also present when she appears in this manner.
  • Jung comes out of the shower with just a towel around his waist in one episode when Kimchee's date arrives at their apartment. Kimchee is annoyed to no end because he was trying to get Jung, the Mr. Fanservice of the series, to stop "stealing" his dates.
• La reina del sur: The very first scene starts with Teresa enjoying a bubble bath before she's interrupted by a cell phone ringing. She hurries out of the bath in a towel since the cell phone is the one her husband warned her would only ring if he's dead.
• Leverage: In The Maltese Falcon Job", Tara (Jeri Ryan) uses one as part of a con where she pretends to be an unlucky woman who got trapped outside her hotel room in just a towel to trick a waiter into opening a door for her. Then also drops the towel to short-circuit his brain enough so he won't question her story.
• Life: In "Badge Bunnies", Bob goes to Crews' house to get his sister Kathy who is Skinny Dipping at Crews pool. When she leaves wearing only a towel, he tells her to Please Put Some Clothes On and she makes a move to take off her towel right there in front of everyone before he yells at her to get dressed outside.
• Life with Derek: In one episode, Casey is seen reviling over the disorganization of the bathroom, clad in only a Modesty Towel. About as hot as you'll ever see on Disney Channel.
• Lois & Clark: In the pilot episode, Lois arrives at Clark's apartment to give him a ride to work. He answers the door wearing nothing but a towel.
  Lois: It's nine! I thought you'd be naked. Uh, ready.
• Lucifer: In "Manly Whatnots", Chloe (Lauren German) hears an intruder while she was showering, grabs a towel and a gun and goes to investigate. It turns out to be Lucifer, who's casually barged into her house to cook her breakfast, but ends up startling Chloe, who drops her towel in shock. Lucifer is impressed with what he sees.
• Hilariously subverted in an episode of Lucky Louie where a male character enters the kitchen wearing a towel the way a woman would, the "hem" barely concealing his package. Then, standing with his crotch a foot in front of Louie's face he casually bends backward revealing what the towel was meant to conceal.
• Mad About You: The first episode of season 7 had Jamie trapped outside her gym in just a towel after she's wrongly directed to an outside door instead of the showers. She spends the entire episode wandering the streets still clad in it, trying to get back home.
• Married... with Children: In "What Goes Around Comes Around", Bud tries to make amends with Alpha Bitch Heather McCoy who humiliated him back in sixth grade, but he just ends up being humiliated by her yet again when she leaves him with just a towel on the stage of the Homecoming Dance party. In a rare moment of Big Sister Instinct, Kelly tells him she'll "work things out" with Heather for him. Cut to a distressed Heather gagged and with both arms bound to a bank of lockers with a huge sign taped to her that reads "DON'T MESS WITH A BUNDY" and wearing nothing but a towel that is attached to a rope being held in Buck's jaws. Then Kelly walks in and calls Buck to her, and he runs to her, dragging away the towel by the rope, just as the bell rings and students come flooding out of the classrooms.
• M*A*S*H had many.
  • "Requiem for a Lightweight" begins with the P.A. system announcing the arrival of wounded, while newly arrived nurse Margie was in the shower. She runs through the camp in only a towel and accidentally bumps into Hawkeye, before extricating herself from him and dashing away causing the towel that was still on his grip to be snagged off. The sight of her as she streaks through the camp prompts a rare salute from Hawkeye and Trapper.
  • In "The Sniper", a sniper is shooting at the camp, Radar (who was in the showers with Col. Blake) tries to make a run for it in his modesty towel. He loses it just before he gets back to the showers, but gets another while he's inside.
  • In "Fallen Idol", Radar is out delivering mail and encounters nurse Perry wrapped in a towel. She asks if he has any mail for her but he's too stunned to answer. He manages to blurt out, "I don't think so. If I may say, that's a very nice towel you're wearing, Lieutenant." But by then she has closed the door on him.
  • In "Father's Day", Margaret's father calls the 4077th and she ran through the camp wearing only a towel to take the call.
  • "None Like it Hot", where Hawkeye and BJ get a portable bathtub during a Heat Wave, has several:
    • When Hawkeye first tried out the tub, he had just wrapped his modesty towel around himself when Margaret came in.
      Margaret: I want it. I want it.
      Hawkeye: Women often have that reaction when they see me naked.
    • Later, two soldiers get in a fight while line waiting to use the tub (one accused the other of cutting). During this, Charles pointed out the fight and as people in line went to watch, he moved forward. The last person he mentions it to is the soldier using the tub, who runs out in a towel to check it out.
    • Near the end, Margaret finally gets to use the tub, until Klinger (who had been trying again for a Section 8 by wearing winter clothing during a Heat Wave) jumped in the tub with her. Margaret runs out of the tent wearing only her towel, humiliated.
• Men in Trees: Marin, a Fish out of Water, moves from New York to Alaska. When she's seen wearing nothing but a towel, she's asked earnestly if that's the current style in New York.
• Midnight, Texas: The pilot has a scene with Olivia walking around her room fresh out of the shower in a towel. Since she's a Hitman with a Heart, instead of clothes her room is comically filled with Wall of Weapons.
• The Messengers: In "Path to Paradise", when Alan tracks down Vera in her hotel room at Houston she answers the door only wearing a towel, implied to have been taking an offscreen Shower of Angst.
• In the first season of McLeod's Daughters, Nick walks into the bathroom while Tess is dressing. She holds a towel to her chest to cover herself, but doesn't realize until he leaves that he could see her exposed rear in the mirror.
• Monday Night Football: An infamous pre-show skit aired November 15, 2004, as a takeoff of Nicollette Sheridan's Edie Britt character on Desperate Housewives. Sheridan, in-character as Edie and dressed only in a towel, enters the Philadelpia Eagles locker room and seduces wide receiver Terrell Owens. Owens remains focused until Edie drops it, after which Owens remarks that the Eagles "are gonna have to win this game without me" as an ecstatic Edie jumps into Owens' arms. Afterward, two women — perhaps reflecting the soon-to-come negative criticism over the incident (and it did come, despite the absence of outright nudity) — scoff at the skit before shouting to the camera, "Are you ready for some football?!"
• Modern Family: In "Las Vegas" Gloria goes into Claire and Phil's room to borrow Claire's hair products dressed in a towel, which gets stuck in the door between their rooms. While she struggling to get it free, Phil and the leader of the secret magician's society (Patton Oswalt) walk into the room. She abandons her towel runs into the closet before they see her and Phil places a French Maid Dog Statue named Rebarka in the same closet, not knowing Gloria is hiding in there. Phil then performs his magic trick, but Oswalt isn't impressed... until Phil accidentally causes smoke and Gloria pops out now dressed in the French Maid Outfit she took from the statue, making Oswalt believe that it was all part of the trick.
• In the Korean drama ''My Love From Another Star" main character Do Min-Joon takes this trope further by repeatedly wearing a towel while showering, although this can be explained by the fact that he is secretly an alien.
• NCIS:
  • Starting with the sixth season, NCIS simply covered the bodies with towels.
  • On female corpses, they are often shown with the chest cavity already open and a towel covering the lower half, thus using a sort of "Modesty Flesh" and reducing the need for a towel up to the neck.
  • Given the fact Ducky's lab is often visited by not only assorted NCIS personnel but sometimes outsiders as well, it's not unreasonable to imagine that Ducky might cover up genitals and breasts with towels out of respect for the dead if there's no real reason to expose those parts of the body—this is actually very touchingly and genuinely invoked as he prepares to autopsy Caitlin Todd:
    Caitlin's Spirit: I appreciate you keeping me covered up, in front of the others, Ducky.
    Ducky: Yes, I know how modest you are.
• NCIS: Los Angeles: In "Neighborhood Watch", Kensi and Deeks are living together in an Undercover as Lovers situation, and one of the situations that fuel fueling their Unresolved Sexual Tension is when Deeks barges on her in the bathroom while she's only wearing a towel, causing her to freaks out.
• Neighbours:
  • Matt volunteers to model for a life drawing class, on the basis that his wife Lauren was the only person who signed up, and Lou makes a bet that Matt is too laced up to go through it. When Matt steps out into class in a Modesty Towel, he is shocked to find that at least a dozen people have turned up, as Lou bolstered the numbers by spreading the world and a lot of Lauren's girlfriends showed up just to make it embarrassing for Matt. Right when he's about to drop the towel, the fire alarm goes off (pulled by his son Bailey, having been alerted to Lou's prank) and everyone is forced to evacuate. Matt's still left embarrassed, though, as he's now trapped outside in a towel until the fire brigade has declared the building safe.
  • In one episode, Hot Teacher Elly had her clothes stolen and towel stolen while she was showering in Erinsborough High as a prank by one of her students, a bully that Elly has a feud with. Elly then improvise a poster, wrapping herself around like a modesty towel, before make a run to her office.
• Off the Map:
  • In "Smile. Don't Kill Anyone", Lily, Tommy and Mina's first meeting with Dr. Ryan is when they stumble upon her taking a Waterfall Shower in the wild. But she has keeps a Modesty Towel nearby, wrapping herself in it before properly greeting them.
  • Later in the same episode, Lily decides to take a Waterfall Shower herself, but it turns into a Naked People Trapped Outside situation when her modesty towel falls into the water and is washed away... right into her Love Interest Ben, who was just strolling by and gets an eyeful which causes Lily to have a Naked Freak-Out. When he returns her towel, he warns her she's bathing on the main hiking trail.
• One Tree Hill: Used a couple of times, usually involving Nathan or Brooke.
  • In "Near Wild Heaven", Hayley is talking with the girls when Nathan walks up to them wearing only a towel. Brooke playfully sneaks behind him and snatches it away causing him to flee with Brooke and Peyton laugh, until they notice Hayley is giving them a Death Glare for ogling her boyfriend.
  • In "Lifetime Piling Up", Nathan is showering in the locker room when a towel-clad joins him with the intent of seducing him which leads to an awkward time for him.
    Brooke: [entering the shower while eyeing him up] So I guess the rumors are true... Mr. Size 14.
    Nathan: [nervously grabbing the nearest towel to cover himself] Uhh, I think you're in the wrong locker room.
    Brooke: [feigning innocence] But the sign says boys [drops her towel] doesn't it?
    Nathan: [averting his eyes] Ooookay.
    Brooke: [unashamed] Oops.
  • In "Deep Ocean Vast Sea", one of Nathan's commercial shots involves him wearing just a towel. When it's abruptly canceled one of the set assistants snatches it away from him while his female co-star Kylie stares appreciatively and quip "What a pity, I just found my motivation".
  • "Valentine's Day Is Over" has a gratuitous scene with Quinn lotioning her legs while wearing a towel.
• The Originals: In "Alive and Kicking", Elijah confronts Haley (Phoebe Tonkin) while she's in a bathtub, about her witch massacre. Hayley isn't really in the mood for his judgment and defiantly climbs out of the tub, taunting and challenging Elijah (whom she has tons of UST with) to look at her. Elijah, unamused, wordlessly reaches for a Modesty Towel and holds it to her, though he doesn't avert his eyes. She rolls her eyes at it, but takes the towel and wraps herself in it before walking away.
• Pandora: When Jax showers in her room, the shower doesn't seem to use water, spraying some mist against her body instead, yet when she comes out of the Hard Light door at the stall, she still uses a Modesty Towel despite not being wet, meaning modesty really is the towel's only purpose.
• A Passion for Revenge: Arturo's attraction for the villainous Isadora (thus starting the main Love Triangle of the story) begins when he Accidentally walks in on her room to find her clad in a towel post-shower, which she happens to drop just as he comes in.
• Private Practice: The show starts with Addison coming out of the shower dressed in towel and in good spirits. She decides to celebrate her new life at her new beachfront home by dancing around her home in just the towel. She even flings the towel away right as the moment screeches to a halt when she notices she's in front of the window where her next-door neighbor (who is also her coworker) can clearly see her. She immediately drops to the ground in mortification.
• Pretty Little Liars:
  • In the pilot, Emily is wearing a towel in the locker room when she finds A's note in her locker.
  • In "The Perfect Storm", a flashback with Alison and Emily in the locker has the former dropping her towel in front of the later, who's gets visibly distracted since she's a Lipstick Lesbian.
  • In "It Happened 'That Night" Toby showers at Spencer's room because the plumbing at the loft he moved into is broken and comes into her room wearing only a towel. Spencer starts ogling him and tells him she can hardly remember why she had said she wanted to wait to have sex.
  • "Hot Water" has Spencer is wearing a towel in the sauna, when A traps her, and leaves her in there to die (Aria rescues her in the nick of time).
• During the height of the "classic-model" era of The Price Is Right, Bob Barker frequently made a joke that the "Barker's Beauty" who was modeling a spa or sauna was "completely naked", all which drew laughs from the audience; of course, the model was dressed in only a towel, but she was laying inside in such a way that only her bare shoulders and up could be seen above the ledge. The joke went away after Dian Parkinson's departure from the show (after her ill-fated affair with Barker and subsequent sexual harassment lawsuits).
• The Professionals. In "Killer With A Long Arm", Bodie has to knock on every door of an apartment block looking for the Villain of the Week. He's looking bored until his knock brings an attractive women in a towel to the door. A short time later he has to enter her apartment again and she's wearing a short kimono (and their dialogue shows he's already made a date with her).
• Rizzoli & Isles: In "Class Action Satisfaction", Jane and Maura have to take a decontamination shower after being exposed to a potential pathogen. Jane is extremely distraught at the excessively small Modesty Towel she's given and amusingly spends most of the scene trying to keep a medical waste bin between her and anyone else.
• Secret Invasion: Used in "Beloved" to reveal that the Skrull who is impersonating Col. James Rhodes is a woman. She is shown taking a shower, then putting on one of these towels, then she looks herself in the mirror and takes on Rhodey's appearance.
• Sisters: The first two seasons (summer 1991-1992) of this weekly serious-drama featured the four main female leads sitting in a steam sauna, towels wrapped around their chests and chatting about whatever.
• Smallville
  • In "X-Ray", the second time that Clark's X-Ray Vision activates, he ends up seeing through a wall and into the girls' locker room, with many of them wearing towel, including Lana Lang who actually drops hers causing Clark to grin widely.
  • In "Visage", Psycho Lesbian Tina Greer shapeshifts as Chloe to sneak into Lana room, whom just got out of the shower in a towel. Tina immediately starts acting like a creep, even coming close to Lana for some Perverted Sniffing.
  • Played With in "Fade". Lois is showering at the Talon when she hears the Invisible Graham (who was using his powers to peek on her) sneaking out of the bathroom. Suspicious, she arms herself with a steel brush but doesn't bother with a towel, before rushing out the bathroom to investigate her apartment... only to find a flabbergasted Clark on the other side of the door. She stands still like a statue for a moment before closing the door at his face. Only then does she wrap herself in a towel and comes out of the bathroom to confront the awkward Clark.
  • In "Crossfire", Lois visits her ex-boyfriend and know The Casanova Oliver, and finds his apprentice, Mia coming out of his shower wearing only a Modesty Towel and thanking him for the "workout". Lois naturally jumps to conclusions, and he only makes things worse when he tries to explain to Lois that he and Mia were only sparring. Lois even ends up nicknaming Mia "towel girl".
  • On "Escape", Chloe possessed by the Silver Banshee walks into Clark's shower wearing a towel and drops it in an attempt to seduce him. Trying very hard not to look, Clark hastily wraps her up in it again while covering himself with another towel.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • In "Playing God", when Arjin comes to Jadzia Dax quarters earlier than she expected, he is rather surprised to find her in the company of an alien man named Trajok and wearing only a towel.
    • In "Dr. Bashir I Presume", Leeta greets Dr. Zimmerman at her door wearing a towel before going to get dressed. But then distractedly runs out her room without it when he tells her about a new job opportunity. When she notices his stare she quickly grabs his flower bouquet to cover herself and dashes back to her room.
  • Star Trek: Picard: In "Nepenthe", Kestra hands one to Soji after she uses the Rikers' outdoor shower.
  • Star Trek: Voyager. In "Drone", B'Elanna Torres is not amused when the EMH calls on the Video Phone while she's having a sonic shower. She hurriedly covers herself with a towel while the Doctor nonchalantly replies he's a doctor and she has nothing he hasn't seen before. She promptly throws the towel on the Video Phone in annoyance.
• Smash
  • The pilot's Singing in the Shower scene with Karen shows her stepping out and wrapping herself in a towel, while still singing.
  • Bombshell's "Don't Say Yes Until I Finish Talking" number takes place entirely in a steam room filled with towel-clad executives.
• Played straight in an episode of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody when one of the title characters spent a good part of the episode wearing a towel that reached from his ankles to his ribs. Was it a towel or a carpet??
• In Ted (2024), Ted wears one after getting out of the shower, despite him being a teddy bear who doesn't wear clothes to begin with (and doesn't have any genitals to even cover up)
• Teresa: When Teresa visits her ex-boyfriend Mariano to confront him the day before her wedding, she catches him half-naked wearing only a towel and her jaw almost hits the floor. Unsurprisingly, after some Slap-Slap-Kiss exchanges they end up in bed soon after.
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: In "StrangeThings", Jesse is coming out of the shower wearing a towel when she finds her apartment ransacked, with all the pictures she secretly took of John out in the open and Derek waiting for her, clearly angry about them.
• Three's Company had an episode where they played Strip Poker, ending with a "winner take all" hand. As all the losers left the apartment where the game was held, it showed Larry, Jack and Furly were wearing newspaper, boxes or pillows while the two girls Furly brought with him had Modesty Towels on.
• Tidelands (Netflix): When she's caught in the nude by Colton after exiting from the bath, Cal covers herself with a towel, though not before he's seen it all (the audience gets a shot of her topless).
• In the Titans episode "Together", Dick wears one when coming out of the shower. He loses it when he and Kory start making out, before they fall onto the bed and the scene ends with a Fade to Black.
• Um Anjo Caiu do Céu: Raphael appears draped in one during one episode, where Cuca visits him. Curiously, Raphael seems to wrap his towel in a way that hides most of his torso but keeps his chest exposed, somewhere in between the male and female variants. After Cuca kisses him on the cheek and leaves, he becomes so giddy he throws his hands in the air and ends up pulling his towel off in the process, quickly covering himself for precaution once he realizes what he just did.
• The Vampire Diaries:
  • In "Friday Night Bites", Elena is wearing one in the morning before getting ready for school.
  • In "162 Candles", Lexi (Stefan's vampire Best Friend) is wearing one when she meets Elena at Stefan's house, causing Elena to assume she has a thing with Stefan and getting visibly jealous. Elena even nicknames her as "Towel Girl".
  • Played With in "Bring It On". Elena, having turned off her emontions forgoes it and comes of the shower in the buff, right in front of Damon and Stefan. But once she seems to get bored of their blatant ogling she does wrap herself in a towel.
  • "True Lies" has Damon barging in Caroline dorm room to talk to her while she's in a towel. She's indignant, but he couldn't care less.
    Caroline: Damon! Towel! Knock!
    Damon: Caroline! No one cares! No!
  • In "Handle with Care", Katherine sneaks into Caroline and Elena dorm room to shower. She's in a towel when Caroline finds her, and being Elena's Evil Doppelgänger she can't even tell who she really is until Katherine makes it clear, since normally the way they dress is what tells them apart.
  • In "No Exit", Katherine has finished showering, when she hears Stefan in the bedroom. Acting coyly she comes to the bathroom door wrapped in a towel and plays the "could you pass me my clothes" game, deliberately holding the towel as low on her chest as possible. After he does she lets the door open ajar enough to see her dropping the towel.
• V.I.P.: Nikki meets one target at a spa's sauna, with both of them wearing only towels. When he's suspicious of her wearing a wire underneath it, she removes it to prove she isn't, framed with a Between My Legs shot. Then she walks up to him in a slow and seductive fashion to keep him distracted and starts strangling him with the towel when she gets close enough.
• Wheel of Fortune: Vanna White was one of the few models who never (if not, rarely) was seen in a towel to model a spa, sauna, etc. However, that did not stop her from one time sitting, bare-shouldered, in a spa alongside a bare-chested Pat Sajak at the end of one episode.
• White Collar: "Master Planner", opens with Elizabeth and Peter had just walked out of a Shower of Love, wearing Modesty Towels and still bantering about it.
• Xena: Warrior Princess: In "Here She Comes... Miss Amphipolis", Xena and many other women wear one during a scene in a steam room. Xena gets locked inside and she escapes by taking off her towel and using it as a whip to snap open a vent.

Music

• The cover of Beauty and the Beat by The Go-Go's uses this trope for all five members.
• Captain & Tennille: The duo wears them on the cover of "Keeping Our Love Warm", during the sauna scene.
• "Girl on the Billboard" by Del Reeves.
• The cover of Heart's Dreamboat Annie album shows sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson sitting back to back, seemingly topless, but the image is cropped below the shoulders. Other publicity photos from the same session make it clear that they were wearing modesty towels.
• Little Mix: Jesy Nelson wears nothing but a towel for her part of "The One I've Been Missing" music video.
• PSY and two other men sport one in the sauna scene of "Gangnam Style"; however PSY wears his around his chest (i.e. the way women traditionally do it).
• Trisha Yearwood: A music video for "There Goes My Baby" featured a scene at the beginning where Yearwood exits a bath and is seen returning to her bedroom to sit on the bed while wearing only a towel wrapped around her.

Pro Wrestling

• At the WWF's 1987 "Slammy Awards," "Ravishing" Rick Rude, having The Gimmick of a sexy ladies'-man chippendale, did a strip-tease act when he came onstage to accept the "Jesse 'the Body'" award for best-looking male wrestler. At the height of his act, Rude began taking off his pants when "Mean" Gene Okerlund ran out and began wrapping a towel around an annoyed Rude's waist (Rude, of course, was wearing a thong). After his acceptance speech, he took one of the showgirls backstage and threw a towel on-stage, giving the impression that Rude was completely in the buff (off-stage).
• WWE's Val Venis (Sean Morley), as part of his "porn star" gimmick, wore a modesty towel around his waist during his standard ring entrance during the late 1990s. (Yes, a pair of wrestling trunks was underneath).
  • Unfortunately for Stevie Richards, when doing a copycat gimmick in his first cup of coffee stint in WWE, forgot to put his trunks on before the towel.
• In a 2002 episode of Raw, Chris Jericho and Christian come out of the shower wearing towels and find out their bags (and along with them, their clothes) have been stolen by The Dudley Boys. Jericho and Christian spend much of the rest of the episode wandering backstage trying to find something to wear. Later, the Dudleys came out to the ring and began throwing Jericho and Christian's clothes into the crowd, prompting them to come out on the stage. Once the Dudleys finish throwing their clothes and their bags into the crowd, Spike Dudley comes out and relieves Jericho and Christian of their towels.
• Subverted on WWE No Mercy of 2006: William Regal was wearing a towel during a segment with Vito. While Regal was moving around, his penis was exposed.
• A week after the Terrell Owens-Nicolette Sheridan Monday Night Football "towel skit" aired and gained negative criticism by conservative critics and women's groups, a parody skit aired on Monday Night Raw. Shelton Benjamin was initially in the Owens role, while — despite wearing a nose brace due to a legit injury suffered a week earlier — babelicious blonde Diva Trish Stratus was the towel-clad Edie Britt (Sheridan's Desperate Housewives character), this time with Benjamin trying to prepare for a match and Trish doing her best to turn on her sexual charms. WWE owner Vince McMahon entered the locker room to express (mock) outrage, claiming the swift downfall of society would result by solely said actions being aired on TV. Benjamin walked off disgusted, and after he left McMahon immediately focused entirely on Trish... who took it all off (with her back to the audience). Cue the Monday Night Football theme as an orgasmic McMahon gleefully said, "Are you ready for some wrestlin'?"
• In a spot in 2005 WWE Raw where John Cena is trying to poll backstage to find out how they feel about Kurt Angle, he ends up in the Divas' locker room. A flirtatious Candice Michelle steps in front of him and drops her towel.
• After their Face–Heel Turn, Velvet Sky came to ringside in a towel, then flashed the referee, distracting him and allowing Angelina Love to cheat and win.
• On the July 3, 2013 episode of OVW TV, Heidi Lovelace was seen wearing one of these when she overheard Manipulative Bitch Taeler Hendrix bragging to Nikki St. John in the locker room about having Heidi wrapped around her little finger, as seen here◊.
• After defeating Barbie Boy for the vacant World Wrestling League Diosas title, the camera next showed Ivelisse Vélez in the locker room, covering herself with a towel when Wonderful Xander barged in to flirt with her.
• During Mickie James and Melina's Falls Count Anywhere 2007 match, it spills into the locker room and a towel-clad Candice Michelle orders them out. Melina pulls Candice's towel off and the camera crew cuts away.
• In a 2007 RAW, when Melina was "dating" Hornswoggle, he came upon Melina while she was showering, causing her to cover herself in a towel and flees from him causing him to give chase and eventually managing to pull it away, leaving her to have a Naked Freak-Out offscreen.
• WWE Raw, September 6, 1999. The hardcore WWE Women's Champion Ivory vs. Tori match started with them in the locker room before going into the bathroom, causing a towel-clad Jacqueline to come running out of the shower.
• In WWE SmackDown 04/10/2003, Sable invades Torrie Wilson's bathroom while she's showering to brag that about her Playboy is selling better than Torrie's. Sable then takes the towel outside the stall and holds it open for Torrie, forcing her to walk across the bathroom to get it while, with the towel covering Torrie from the shoulders down as she does.
• In WWE SmackDown 01/06/2005, Kurt Angle was tricked into walking on Joy Giovanni in the shower. She has a Naked Freak-Out and covers herself with a towel while fleeing the bathroom. While he's trying to explain himself he reaches for her and accidentally snatches off her towel leaving her naked offscreen.

Theatre

• In Cactus Flower, Julian enters Toni's apartment one evening and is surprised to find Igor Sullivan wearing nothing but a towel.
• "Ah, But Underneath" in Follies (used in some productions to replace "The Story of Lucy and Jessie") has Phyllis executing a striptease to increasingly Double Entendre lyrics. At the end, she appears in only a towel and says:
  Sometimes, when the wrappings fall,
  There's nothing underneath at all.

Video Games

• Kira Daidohji's entrance in Arcana Heart starts with her wearing one that she dramatically flings away at the same time that she puts on her School Swimsuit.
• Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia features Modesty Towel as a battle costume for Aurica. Somehow, it gives away most stats of all her clothes selection.
• Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica also has Modesty Towel as a battle outfits for Luca called "Bathgirl". Jacqui and Cloche also have towel outfits, but they're only for their Dualstall cutscenes and aren't battle costumes. Of note both Luca and Cloche wear their towels in the traditional female manner, but Jacqui wears two short towels, one around her waist used to cover her lower part and the other draped around her shoulders and made to cover her breasts.
• Assassin's Creed Origins: The "End of the Snake" quest sees Bayek infiltrating a Public Bathhouse disguised as a regular visitor, wearing only a towel and his hidden blade, in order to assassinate The Snake while he's bathing. After the mission, the player unlocks the Bathhouse Towel outfit, which has Bayek wearing the towel; the toggleable "hood" is another towel draped over his head and shoulders.
• Blue Reflection has a "Bathing Towel" DLC outfit for all the girls, complete with Jiggle Physics.
• Bravely Second: The player can purchase a Modesty Towel costume called "Washcloth" for all the party members in Chompshire for 200000 pg. During the Yunohana Hot Springs Episode (and whenever using the bathhouse thereafter), the character models are actually wearing towels under the opaque water, but since the camera never shows anything bellow the shoulders of the girls or the waist of the guys, the player can't tell.
• Bully: In the mission "Paparazzi", female Jock Mandy Wiles wears a towel right after you take a picture of her in the shower.
• The Caligula Effect Overdose: The female Go-Home Club members (and the Player Character if female) have to go to the female hot springs facility to confront Sweet-P. Kotono nonchalantly strips down and dresses in a modesty towel, which all the other girls consider as "bold" and are embarrassed at the prospect, but Kotono insists they can't go inside the hot springs wearing their clothes. Even Aria gets to wear one, while hiding inside Kotono's towel cleavage.
• Code Vein: Despite being an abandoned and ruined church, the Hub Level and the Player Character main base come with fully functioning hot spring where the player or any other resident can go for a soak, always clad in modesty towels. There's also a Bath Towel costume for both genders, and due to the game's lack of Clothing Damage, these towels might as well be Made of Iron, since nothing under the sun could damage or cause them to fall off. Originally, it was only a pre-order DLC exclusive to Japan, but a later patch added the Bath Towel costume available to owners of the Deluxe Edition.
• Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled: One of Nitros Oxide's costumes has him clad in nothing but a bath towel, shower cap and flip flops and carrying a brush.
• Daily Life With Monster Girl Online: Hydra the Hydra's care event has her getting out of the shower wearing a towel only around her waist, with her snake-hair to covering her chest.
• Dankira!!! -Boys, be DANCING!-: For April Fools' Day in 2020, the Dankira matches take place in a hot springs, with the cast in nothing but a towel and a white light to censor the 'naughty bits'.
• From the Dead or Alive series, Dead or Alive 5: Last Round has Ayane, Helena, Naotora, Nyotengu, Rachel and Tina having this as a costume.
• Dead Rising 2: One of the survivors, Kristopher Bookmiller is humorously wearing only a towel for the entirety of the game as he did not have the time to dress properly while escaping the zombies.
• Fairy Fencer F: Modesty Towels are costumes for the Hot Springs Set DLC. A Collab with Famitsu had red bath towels with the Famitsu logo as costumes.
• The first Fear Effect game features a sequence in which Hana is showering and is interrupted by a zombie attack and forced to fight her way through the jungle village wearing only a towel. Careful use of the combat roll command during this level reveals only impenetrable darkness underneath. At the end of her segment, Hana is ambushed and held at gunpoint by a random mook and the player must quickly select the towel from the inventory, which causes Hana to take it off, Distracting the mook long enough for Deke to arrive and perform a Neck Snap. When Deke starts looking at her, she admonishes him for staring.
  Hana: Not too long Deke. I've killed men for less.
• Fire Emblem Fates has a Bath Towel available in the Accessory Shop. Gifting it to your soldier can get quite a few humorous reactions. Noticeably the Bath Towel is the only risqué body pieces that Nintendo hasn't Dummied Out for the Western release.
• Fire Emblem Heroes: Ryoma and Camilla wear towels during the Hostile Springs event. They both can suffer a Wardrobe Malfunction when they take damage, which reveals they are clearly wearing Modesty Shorts under their towels.
• Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage 2 has a Modesty Towel as a costume option for Mamiya. It's cut very low, but it stays glued to her no matter how much damage she takes.
• F-Zero GX: Lily Flyer bonus movie has her clad in a towel as she washes all her clothes at a laundromat.
• One of the people you must possess in Geist is a woman taking a shower. After you scare her out of the shower, she wraps a towel around herself. A different woman with glasses is also in the shower, also wearing a towel. After scaring her a bit and possessing her, you have to go get dressed before she'll leave the locker room.
• Haunting Ground: The opening cinematic has Fiona awake in the cellar of Castle Belli in nothing but a bedsheet to cover herself. However, the "modesty" part is questionable, considering it's semitransparent and you can see she isn't wearing anything underneath it.
• Hitman: Absolution: 47 shoots Diana Burnwood while she's taking a shower. Despite being clearly nude seconds before the shot, she's suddenly in a well-wrapped towel lying on the floor of the bathroom later.
• Ganbare Goemon 2: Kiteretsu Shōgun Magginesu: There are hot springs in certain towns for recovering health. If Goemon enters the females' side of the bathhouse, he is shocked to tears when all the women surrounding him drop their towels and reveal bearded faces.
• Gravity Rush: At the end of the ninth episode, Kat is clad in a Modesty Towel back in her Pipe House white she's washing the only outfit she has. Syd drops by to visit her, and after they interact, she jokingly punches him in the arm, which causes her towel to accidentally fall off, right in front of Syd. Cue Naked Freak-Out.
• Grand Theft Auto V: Amanda is wearing one during the scene where Michael finds her banging the tennis instructor.
• Infectonator! has a ridiculously attractive News Reporter that keeps track of the player's progress. Most of the games have several unlockable Sexy Whatever Outfits for her, one of them being a Modesty Towel.
• In Little King's Story, the picture for the Hidden Hot Spring Wonder Spot features Apricot in one.
• MapleStory has these as an equip. Oddly enough, it's one of the best items a pure can have/make, as it's one of the few relatively cheap pieces of overall armor that can be scrolled numerous times for a specific stat.
• Max Payne 2: When Max finally finds Mona in her secret hideout she is taking a shower. She is rather calm about this, and just casually asks him for a towel, wraps herself in it and walks to her room to get dressed.
• Muramasa: The Demon Blade: Momohime and Kisuke can talk to monkeys, who lead them to a hot spring in the mountains, which serves as a healing pool, or a place to resharpen any broken blades and fanservice as Kisuke wears a Fundoshi while Momohime is clutching a modesty towel to her chest, leaving most of her side exposed. It's noticeably the first (and aside from one ending, the only) place you meet the protagonist you didn't pick to plays as. Momohime is particularly mortified at Kisuke seeing her in only a towel, lamenting he has "seen what she hasn't even shown her lord." Kisuke also finds his Love Interest Torahime during one his hot spring visits, and she's also only wearing a towel, and unlike Momohime, actually has it fully wrapped around herself.
• In Monster Hunter Portable 3rd taking a bath, which grants a temporary stat boost, causes the player-character to automatically doff their usual 24-Hour Armor in favor of a Modesty Towel.
• Onimusha 3: Demon Siege: Michelle Aubert's unlockable special outfit (acquired by clearing the game with an "S" ranking in Normal difficulty or higher) is a tiny bath towel, which she can wear in all cutscenes.
• Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad: The opening cutscene has Aya having a Shower Scene before being interrupted by news of zombie attack. She only has time to put her panties on before dashing out of the shower while her sister Saki throws a towel around her neck, with both ends falling down to conceal her breasts.
• In Persona 3:
  • Both the boys and the girls are all wearing these during their visit to the hot springs in the Kyoto trip. They're worn around the waist and around the bust, respectively, as one would expect, but where the boys' character portraits are positioned (moreso in the portable version) makes it seem as if they aren't wearing them at all.
  • Also, during the July Full Moon operation, Yukari comes out of the shower, dressed only in a towel, to greet the Player Character (and presumably do more than that)—she's under the influence of the Shadow of the Lovers Arcana. She comes out of the Lovers Shadow's trance immediately upon seeing him and slaps him for seeing her in that state. The P3P version of the game also has this happen if you pick a female protagonist, with the person coming out of the shower being Akihiko instead. In his case he only gets embarrassed, and the player even has the opportunity to tell him to Please Put Some Clothes On.
  • In "The Journey", Mitsuru also comes out of her private shower (the only one in the dorm, at that) and lounges around her room in a towel while musing about her friends and fashion. She only doffs it when she walks out of frame again... which is lucky, since she was being recorded by a surveillance camera and was none the wiser.
• Persona 4:
  • All the Hot Springs Episode have both the boys and the girls wearing these, Of particular note, the is when the girls find out Naoto is actually a Hidden Buxom, with all the girls being in awe of her.
  • Golden had a few of the hot springsEpisode scenes animated, all still featuring all the characters in towels, with plenty of Male and Female Gaze. During one of them, Yosuke is trying to peek on the girl's but is caught and ends up losing his towel and ends up being seen naked by the girls instead.
  • There are various gag costumes the Player Character and the party can wear during dungeon explorations, including Bath Towels for the guys. They will usually chastise you for forcing them to wear a towel in dialogue, and when the protagonist is wearing the towel, the responses from the party will vary from asking him if he's feeling hot to getting Distracted by the Sexy, even from the guys!.
    Yosuke: [talking to Yosuke while he's in the bath towel outfit] So, this is what you wanted? I'm in nothing but a towel. ...I don't think this is appropriate. I'm not comfortable with this! Is there an HR department I can report you to?
    Rise: Whoa, I didn't know that's what you were into, Senpai. That's disappointing...
    Yosuke: I hate you, Hello, [Insert Name Here].
• In Persona 5 the Player Character wears these when he visits the Public Bathhouse to raise his Charisma. One story event has him visiting it along with Ryuji and Yusuke, who also wear towels.
• Persona 5 Strikers: A trip to Kyoto leads the Phantom Thieves to the same hot springs S.E.E.S. visited nearly 10 years ago. They also recreate the same scene which due to misunderstanding with the schedule, the boys are caught by the girls in the bath and get their asses kicked, complete with everyone wearing modesty towels.
• The Queen of Heart: Yu's stage in Party’s Breaker takes place in an onsen, with the characters standing on the hot water, and toweled girls as background NPCs.
• In Ridgeside Village, during Flor's 2 heart event, she greets the player character in the hallway outside of her room at the Log Cabin Hotel while covered only in a towel, she doesn't realize this until the player character points it out to her, after which she flusters out.
• Samurai Warriors 4-II: The "Women of War" story mode starts with Naotora Ii meeting Gracia and Koshōshō while they're all dressed in towels in a hot spring, with Gracia getting very handsy with poor Naotora before recruiting her for Gracia's Amazon Brigade. Completing it will unlock the option to have a towel costumes for Naotora and Gracia to use while fighting. Completing Kosh?sh?'s story "Love and Fear" will unlock her towel costume.
• In Secret Agent Clank, Ratchet and the more humanoid enemies wear these in the showers (and lose them upon taking damage, leaving them with Censor Boxes).
• In The Sims 3, if a character has their clothes stolen while Skinny Dipping, they immediately cover-up in one of these on emerging from the pool.
• SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy: Sylvie Paula Paula has a Modesty Towel as a costume option.
• Elh wears one during the two Shower of Awkward scenes in Solatorobo. It's perhaps implied that Red tried to steal it the first time.
• The Spellcasting Series: When Ernie uses his magic to dispel the Censor Steam hiding the showering girls at Barmaid University, they each go for their towels to cover themselves with.
• Star Ocean: The Last Hope: Edge is watching Reimi's Sexy Silhouette while she's showering. When she hears him make a noise, when leaves the shower stall wrapped in a towel to investigate, apparently having the towel inside the stall with her the entire time.
• Stella Glow: Ewan wears his bath towel in the Furo Scene in the "female" fashion, covering his entire torso. Rusty and Archibald poke some fun at him for this.
• Street Fighter V: E. Honda's story takes place in his bathhouse. In the illustrations, he fights Laura, Rashid and Ryu while they're clad in nothing but Modesty Towels, but in gameplay, Laura and Rashid are wearing their casual story costumes and Ryu is at least fought wearing his Jin fundoshi outfit.
• Tales Series: Shows often throughout the series, usually during the Hot Springs Episode. Sometimes they're even unlockable costumes.
  • In Tales of Phantasia, all the party members have custom sprites of all of them dressed in towels when they visit the hots springs at the Ninja Village.
  • Tales of Symphonia: Both the boys and the girls are wrapped up in towels when they soak in the hots springs.
  • Tales of Hearts, the Hot Springs Episode is shown via event CG, showing all the characters are wearing towels white bathing.
  • In Tales of Vesperia, Karol reluctantly wears one as his employee "uniform" (They ran out of proper ones) while working part-time at a hot spring with the rest of the party. He gets to keep it as a costume once the job is done called "Towel Fanatic" and is rather displeased by it. Leaving it on him for long enough starts a skit where all the girls avoid him. At one point he starts Leaning on the Fourth Wall, yelling to the player how he's mean and made him wear it only because he thought it was funny.
  • In Tales of Xillia 2 the animated Hot Springs Episode has all the characters wearing one while bathing.
  • In Tales of Zestiria, the party has a Hot Springs Episode while visiting the inn, with one event CG showing the boys dressed in towels at the sauna, while another event CG shows the girls are bathing in the hot springs in their towels.
  • Played With in Tales of Berseria. During the Hot Springs Episode, as a result of a special effect of the baths, the girls and guys of the party end up switching bodies and Hilarity Ensues. The dialogue makes it pretty clear the character actually aren't wearing towels with many having a Naked Freak-Out over the body swap, and their modesty is concealed instead with Censor Steam, Scenery Censor or Shoulders-Up Nudity. But after the event, all the characters gain "Hot Spring" costumes that are all Modesty Towels. ^note It's likely the towel costumes were being used during the hot springs scene but were concealed from the player via above mentioned Censorship Tropes and camera trickery. But the dialogue makes it pretty clear the characters aren't wearing anything.
• Trails of Cold Steel: In Cold Steel IV, towels are an unlockable outfit, for the girls and the boys.
• Trauma Center: Maria's introduction has her just coming out of the shower to answer a call, wearing only a towel around her neck, with the dangling ends covering her breasts.
• In Until Dawn Sam is wearing one while being pursued by the killer. Miraculously, it stays on even when she's running.
• Valkyrie Anatomia: The "Hot Spring Incident" awards the player with Modesty Towel costumes for Caradoc, Brahms, Cloe, Bedelia, Leny, Aelia and Wylfred. In-Universe, characters lament Jeanne doesn't get one, since it would be an opportunity to see her face, since it is always half-hidden by her outfit.
• Yakuza:
  • Yakuza 2: One scene has Kiryu coming to Serena, only to find Kaoru wearing nothing but a Modesty Towel after helping herself to a shower closeby. She even casually drops the towel to get dressed while he's still in the room. He's obviously awkward the whole time.
  • Yakuza 6: The first time Kiryu goes to confront Takumi Someya, the latter is relaxing in the sauna of a hotel, wearing nothing but a towel. Before the fight can actually start, however, Someya throws said towel in Kiryu's face as a distraction and scampers back to his suite to put something on while leaving his guards in Kiryu's path. By the time Kiryu catches up to him, he's just managed to put on a pair of athletic briefs. Notably, Someya's lack of clothes is also used dramatically, since it shows that he has no irezumi on his back despite being a high-ranking yakuza.
• Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana: Post-prologue, Laxia's first appearance is her wearing a Modesty Towel. When Adol finds her, she takes a rapier with the hand holding the towel and attacks him; Adol parries the attack, causing her to lose her grip on the towel, rendering her nude. Cue Naked Freak-Out.

Visual Novel

• Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc:
  • In Chapter Two, Kiyotaka wears one during his "sauna battle" against Mondo who is fully clothed in the sauna. It noticeably shows that Kiyotaka is actually extremely ripped under all his clothes.
  • In Chapter Three, if the player got the "A Man's Fantasy" item during Chapter 2, it will trigger an opportunity for a bonus cutscene during Chapter 3 where Makoto will gather the courage to go peeking at the girl's when they go to bath. The player gets a fanservice event CG with Sakura, Aoi, Kyoko, Toko, and Celestia all clad in modesty towels while bathing. Amazonian Beauty Sakura, the most masculine of the girls, is notably wearing a towel around her waist, her modesty concealed by having her bare back turned to the camera, though she's still showing a generous amount of sideboob.
• Subverted in Melody on a couple of occasions when the title character is staying at the protagonist's apartment. Melody walks in front of him wearing a towel, but it doesn’t sufficiently cover her chest. Sometimes, he can get points by bringing this to Melody’s attention, and at other times, it’s better just to keep quiet.
• Muv-Luv Extra: Mikoto keeps an Ambiguous Gender by using a Modesty Towel like a woman during the group's stay in the hot springs.
• Never 7: Yuka and Makoto wear one in the Hot Springs Episode.
• Roommates: Isabella has no problems waltzing around the house in just a towel in front of her roommates, causing Dominic to scold her and tell her to Please Put Some Clothes On.
• Snatcher: Gillian walks in on Katrina showering on his apartment prompting a Naked Freak-Out following by her kicking him out. When she comes out to talk to him, she has a towel wrapped around her hair and body, and even does a Shaking Her Hair Loose when unwrapping the head towel. During the following conversation, the player has the option to try to investigate said towel.
  Gillian: I'm going to need to check out your towel...
  Katrina: Don't you ever quit!? I know what you have in mind!
• Time Tenshi 2: One event with Kyo has the Player Character bumping into a freshly showered Kyo wearing just a towel, with her boobs being so big they almost spill out of the towel.

Web Animation

• Subverted in Homestar Runner. While Coach Z is talking to Homestar about girls, an alien is shown in the background showering, while wearing a modesty towel... and then the towel falls down to reveals the alien's butt.
• In the RWBY episode "Burning the Candle", Ren is stepping out of the shower in a towel when Jaune grabs him and drags him into their dorm room. Jaune says he needed someone to confide to, and drones on about his failed love life, while Ren awkwardly sits there and tries to grab his clothes.

Webcomics

• Dangerously Chloe: When Triana confronts Teddy in the girl's locker room, shes's actually wearing three modesty towels: one around her bust, a second around her hips and a third thrown over her shoulders like a cape. She's all covered up because she's convinced Teddy is faking his Gender Bender and is shocked to discover that he isn't.
• Appears in DevilBear after the Daivas share some time in the Hot Springs.
• Eerie Cuties makes use of them to preserve the comic's PG-13 rating, during bath and shower scenes.
  • First seen in chapter 6 ("See no Evil"), when the Hellrunes were in the school's shower. wherein, a ghostly message from Nina sent them running down the hall clad in towels.
  • Tiffany was also seen in one, after stepping out of the shower at home.
• El Goonish Shive: In the Lucky Bunny Bounty Show, Unusagi and Travis wear the female and male versions, respectively, during a Public Bathhouse Scene.
• On the first page of issue 4 of Flying Sparks, Johnny Benvinuti has just come out of the shower wearing only a towel, which suddenly slips off his body, leading to a Full-Frontal Assault.
• Freefall:
  • Florence wears one after taking a bath at Winston's place, until he donates one of his shirts to provide for her modesty.
  • Florence is called to the videofone.
• Girl Genius: Agatha actually invokes the trope while on the Corbettite Railways, using it as a ploy to distract anybody entering her compartment, giving time for Krosp (and later Wooster) to take them out if they happen to be hostile. Unluckily, all those coming to visit are either allies or just train attendants, and thus she gives each of them an eyeful for nothing. She has pretty much given up on the pretense when an actual assassin shows up.
• "Around the Universe in a Bath Towel" is the fourth Girls in Space story. Scarlet "Red" Macrumble spends almost the entire story wearing only a towel.
• On page 306 of Girls Next Door, Jareth inverts this trope. While a Modesty Towel is usually used to... well, preserve one's modesty, Jareth uses it as an opportunity to blatantly invoke a Shirtless Scene. This is made even more egregious by the fact that Jareth can (and frequently does) magically poof into different outfits—he has no need to ever be only partly dressed. Also, the towel he wears seems to be a hand towel, not a bath towel.
  Sarah: ...Jareth we don't even own a towel that small.
• Instinctively wrapping her towel girl-style is just one of the things programmed into Roxanne the Gender Bent cheerleader by The Good Witch along with a full set of cheer routines, causing Roxanne some cognitive dissonance and making her wonder if any other parts of her brain were affected by her transformation.
• The cover for the first print collection of Housepets! shows Peanut and Grape wearing the male and female versions, respectively, of a modesty towel, even though they almost always walk around wearing only a collar in normal conditions.^note In the comic, even pets soaked down to the bone aren't any more detailed about their mostly undressed state than when dry.
• Living with Hipstergirl and Gamergirl: Erika is prone to wear tiny towels around the house, much to Arthur's frustration. Though there are a few times she didn't even bother with the towel.
• Lotta Svärd: Women of War: The characters are sometimes depicted sitting in the sauna, and most of the time they are sitting there wearing towels. This gets lampshaded in chapter 5 with a caption saying:
  In sauna you're supposed to be naked, but let's keep this comic worksafe.
• Magick Chicks is rated PG-13 like its parent comic, Eerie Cuties (see above), and also uses bath towels to preserve that rating. As seen here, for example, when Faith steps out of the shower to check on Sandi's progress with the wand.
• In MeatShield, it's more like Modesty Blankets for Jaine and Dhur after they get mugged.
• Megatokyo: In strip 1319, Miho and Piro are in a Public Bathhouse when Miho nonchalantly starts stripping in front of Piro so they can talk while they're bathing. This freaks him out so she covers herself with a modesty towel, while he does his best to Ignore the Fanservice. Later when they're done talking, Miho covers herself back in a towel as she walks out, but she also ends up getting into a quick Bathroom Brawl with Yuki and seemingly loses both towels offscreen. When Piro rushes to see what's happening, he gets smacked in the face by a washtub on grounds that Yuki isn't as shameless as Miho.
• The idea behind Okashina Okashi's Beauty Man Garden, introduced here, staffed by Bishōnen wearing nothing more than towels with the restaurant's logo. Unless they're washing dishes, in which case it's a Naked Apron.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Haley wears one for a quick Interrupted Bath gag on the bottom of "The Crayons of Time: Breaking Up is Hard to Do".
    Haley: Zfq bq nzml? (Are we back?)
  • And in "A Dish Best Served with +1d6 Cold Damage", to add insult to injury, Haley kills Crystal by ambushing her in the bathroom while she's just wearing a towel.
  • Roy gets such a scene post-resurrection. Did you know you arrive naked when you're resurrected...? Though it's not even a towel; that's V's cape.
  • As a gag to the name of "Empire of Sweat", a flashback comic shows Queen Shvitzer having a meeting with her two "advisors" in a sauna with everyone only wearing towels, including an Mook standing guard.
• Pocket Princesses: Ariel, whenever she has just changed from her mermaid to human form and has yet to put clothes on, will wear a towel around her waist (her top staying covered by her Seashell Bra).
• Former magical girl Tessa Quinn in Sleepless Domain wears a modesty towel in the scene that reveals the scar where her Power Tattoo used to be.
• In the Sluggy Freelance "GOFOTRON" arc, Princess-Princess actually puts a towel on for the naked part of her Transformation Sequence.
• Sticky Dilly Buns: In this strip, Ruby and Dillon are already Eating the Eye Candy at the sight of Ray in only a towel, and their staring only gets more intense when he suffers a Stripping Snag accident off-screen.
• In one strip of Val and Isaac Isaac's sister summons him to save her from a bandit, and he arrives wearing a wet towel complaining about the timing of those bandits.
• In White Noise (not the one that has a trope page), Teige wears his modesty towel female style. He also wears a tight, cropped undershirt reminiscent of a sports bra in his human disguise. It's foreshadowing the eventual reveal that he's transgender.

Web Original

• A CollegeHumor sketch featured a POV of a "typical" dorm bathroom, wherein The Protagonist takes note of another student stepping out of the shower and wrapping a towel over his swim trunks. After asking, "How self-conscious can you be?" another student steps out of the shower fully-clothed and wraps himself in a towel.
• Done by Kate in the KateModern episode "Tariq Attack" and by Gavin in the episode "A Close Shave".

Western Animation

• Played for Laughs on Adventure Time: a paranoid Jake wears one in the shower after finding out that Marceline sometimes sneaks into his house, then puts on a second one when he steps out. Note that he's a dog who always looks naked anyway, though technically he claims to wear spider-web pants too thin to see.
• The Animaniacs (1993) episode "Meet Minerva" start with Minerva Mink walking out of home with just a towel (and another for the head), causing affectionate reactions (Tex Avery-styled) to males of every species, before bathing naked in a lake. Then again, this trope was applied to Ms. Mink every chance the writers got in the comics.
• Used on Archer, when Mallory hires a black Jewish man to fulfill minority hiring requirements, and Archer confronts him in the locker room. When they end up nearly fighting, both towels fall off.
  Archer: He's uncircumcised.
  Lana: Okay, glossing over how you know that...
  Archer: We touched penises.
  Lana: Glossing over!
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: In "The Winter Solstice Part 1" after the Earthbenders capture the naked Iroh, they wrap a towel around him off-screen so they wouldn't "experience" what Zuko did earlier. Later:
  Zuko: [after beating up the Earthbenders] Now would you please put on some clothes?!
• After soaking in his bathtub in a previous scene of Beast Wars, Megatron comes out with a towel wrapped around his waist. Considering that he is a robot and thus always naked just like everyone else, and considering that he has a rubber ducky in his bathtub, this is pretty much due to the Rule of Funny.
• In the opening credits of Bobby's World, Kelly, clad in this, runs from Bobby just after coming out of the shower.
• Both girls and boys wears this in few episodes of Braceface. In the "prank episode", Sharon scares Connor with a rubber cockroach causing him to drop his towel in public.
• Bugs Bunny, is always naked except for his gloves, wears a towel in the short The Wabbit Who Came to Supper, during a scene in which he's coming out of the shower.
• Bathtub Granny from ChalkZone wraps herself in a towel in the rare instances of her leaving her bathtub.
• Code Lyoko:
  • Yumi Ishiyama is seen in a Modesty Towel in at least two episodes, most notably the first. To be fair, the boys are seen wearing one even more often over the run of the series.
  • Near the end of "Bragging Rights" has a scene with Odd dancing around for "breaking the record of fastest shower", while wearing only a Modesty Towel.
  • In the opening of Season 4 episode "Bad Connection", Ulrich is stuck in the hallway wearing just a towel. When Aelita and Yumi walk in with Jérémie, the girls at first pretend to be looking away, but spend pretty much the rest of the scene ogling.
• The Crumpets: Caprice wears a towel in at least two episodes, one of them where she wears a towel while showering (appearing as a Sexy Silhouette through the curtain) and emerging out the bathroom after one of her Trickster Twins siblings changed the water temperature for a prank, and the other episode where when half of her family lives in a shanty house with no electricity, she has hairy armpits and complains of her hair remover not working while wearing a towel. Her father also wears a towel in at least another episode.
• One episode of Daria has the title character visit a special boarding school for gifted, and rather elitist, students. One of them bitterly mentions leaving his old school after the quarterback of the football team told everyone that he wore a towel in the locker room shower.
• DC Animated Universe
  • In the episode "Renevant" of Batman Beyond, Dana, Chelsea, and other schoolgirls wear towels while getting ready to shower in the girl's locker room, when the showers start to go haywire due to a "ghost" (actually a remote-viewing telekinetic) forcing them all the flee the locker room in their towels.
  • Batman: The Animated Series: In the April Fools' Day episode "The Last Laugh", Bruce walks to the bathroom in a towel for the bath Alfred "draw" for him. But he finds the bathtub empty and Alfred proceeds to give Bruce an actual literal drawing of a bath as a joke. Bruce is not amused.
  • Justice League
    • In the episode "Metamorphosis", Green Lantern visits an old friend, Rex Mason and is introduced to his stunning fiancée, Sapphire Stagg, who had stepped out from the showers with nothing but a towel on.
    • At the end of "Initiation", Green Arrow comes out of the Watchtower's shower room in a towel, but hilariously still has his mask on.
  • Superman: The Animated Series: In "Mxyzpixilated", a towel is one of the many Fanservice Costumes Ms. Gsptlsnz wears in her attempt to distract Mr. Mxyzptlk from his from his crusade against Superman. It fails.
  • The Zeta Project: In "West Bound", Zeta and Ro are in a train, hiding from Agent West in a private room. When Agent West comes into their room, Ro hides and Zeta changes into an old woman in a towel and pretends to have a Naked Freak-Out for West to back off.
• Disenchantment: "For Whom the Pig Oinks", Bean enters her room wearing a towel after bathing, and almost drops it before noticing Elfo is in the room, Eating the Eye Candy. She then turns his cage around and so she can get dressed, throwing the towel at Luci from offscreen when he starts snarking.
  Elfo: I was just admiring the towel! My people don't have terrycloth.
• Donald Duck wears a Modesty Towel after taking a shower. Given that he doesn't wear pants, presumably it's done because it's funny.
  • A Brazilian animation had Donald being interviewed, questioned about this, and saying he's impressed why people don't understand: "It's to dry my huge butt!".
• Used by Judy Funnie in Doug when she's waiting for her brother Doug to get out of the bathroom so she can take a shower.
• Drawn Together
  • Subverted when Princess Clara discovers Captain Hero sleeping with her cousin Bleh. She gives her a towel and instructs her to "...cover your shame!" Bleh takes the towel and wraps it around her head before skipping back to her room otherwise naked.
  • In "Terms of Endearment", Clara, Foxxy and Toot are wearing towels when confronting Captain Hero about him peeking on them showering with his X-Ray Vision.
• Duck Dodgers: "Too Close for Combat", has The Martian Queen and the Commander meeting with an assassin at in a Steam Room, with both of them wearing towels. Played for Laughs when the Centurtions come in and are also wearing towels, despite being Mecha-Mooks with nothing to hide.
• DuckTales (2017)'s first episode begins with Donald getting ready for a job interview; he wants to wear his usual sailor suit, but the triplets force it off of him, saying that he needs a suit. Donald quickly pulls on a towel, despite the obvious Fridge Logic that a.) Non-Humans Lack Attributes and b.) he wasn't wearing pants before anyway.
• The Fairly OddParents!: In "The Zappys", The Tooth Fairy makes her first appearance wearing one, after Timmy's knocked out tooth lands under a pillow earlier than expected, resulting in her having to leave in the middle of a shower.
• In Family Guy
  • "Viewer Mail #1", Peter wishes he had no bones and is turned to a shapeless blob. At one point he gets thrown out of the Teacups ride at Disneyland and through a window into a locker room, where Michael Eisner comes out and uses him as one of these, tucking his face into the inside as he walks out of the room.
  • Subverted in "Whistle While Your Wife Works" with Jillian. When Brian is trying to break up with Jillian, his incredibly attractive but intellectually challenged girlfriend. He goes to her apartment and she answers the door wearing only a towel, which she absent-mindedly removes to dry her hair. Needless to say, he was too Distracted by the Sexy to go through with the break-up.
• The Fantastic Four (1978) shows The Thing wearing a towel in the episode "The Impossible Man".
• Final Space: In Episode 6, Quinn sees all of Gary's old video messages to her. In one, it shows him, dressed in just a towel, trying to sing a balad he wrote for Quinn. While playing on a small, improvised guitar he made from scrap since HUE wouldn’t let him have an actual guitar.
  • In episode 3, Gary wears a towel after his new arm rips off his clothes.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Eduardo spends most of "The Big Cheese" in one due to having taken a shower early in the episode and being called outside the house by Mr. Herriman so the latter can demonstrate the new security system he bought to keep Cheese out before the former can get dressed.
• Futurama: Happens in the episode "War Is the H-Word":
  • A joke similar to Hot Dog!: The Movie was used with Zapp Branningan stepping out of the shower.
    Richard Nixon: Damn it, Brannigan, I didn't live for thousands of years and travel millions of miles to look at another man's gizmo!
  • Subverted seconds before also: Pvt. Lee Lemon suggests that his her Captain puts on a towel after exiting the shower. He obliges by putting a towel on his head. Considering in the world of Futurama there's no nudity taboo, it leads you to think what's wrong with Zapp's anatomy. Or, more likely, the sight of him brought shameful memories to mind. ^note  Considering that, in a later episode, when Amy is cooing at Kif that he's her "greenie weenie" and Brannigan covers his lap and says it's a medical condition before realizing that it wasn't directed at him... Yikes.
  • Leela herself wears her towel wrapped around her entire torso in the same scene, but nobody notices that she's a Sweet Polly Oliver. (Well, Zapp seems to notice subconsciously.)
• The Manotaurs in Gravity Falls wear towels all of the time as their only clothing. A scene near the beginning of the episode also shows Dipper with one in the bathroom.
• In the Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi episode "Dis-Harmony", Ami and Yumi quickly start wearing towels when they find their mud bath disturbed by their Loony Fan Harmony.
• Hotel Transylvania: The Series: In the Halloween Episode, "The Legend of Pumpkin Guts", Mavis is ordered not to go outside by her father, which she naturally ignores and Lydia spends most of the episode trying to find her. When Mavis sneaks back inside, she makes sure to walk out of the bathroom in a towel in front of Lydia, to claim that she's been in the shower... for the last ten hours.
• Kaeloo:
  • In one episode, Kaeloo does a painting of Quack Quack wearing no clothes except a leaf covering his crotch. Once she's done, Quack Quack wraps a towel around his waist.
  • A different episode has Quack-Quack wearing a towel because Stumpy set his underpants on fire and he had nothing else to wear.
• The Madballs episode "Escape from Orb" had a scene where Slobulus and Aargh accidentally fire their ship's bathtub at the spaceship of Wolf Breath and the Badballs. Freakella isn't happy about this because she was going to take a bath, and is seen wearing a towel and a shower cap. Since the Madballs are heads with arms and legs and therefore don't really have any visible naughty bits, this was most likely done for comedic effect rather than modesty.
• In the episode "Hot Lava Shower" on Mixels, Vulk wears one after coming out of the shower. This actually ends up being more than he normally wears.
• Played for Laughs with Jimmy Five during the first half of a Monica's Gang cartoon named "Quero Entrar" ("Let Me In").
• Phineas and Ferb
  • In "Gaming the System", Candace spends almost the entirety of the episode in one that, despite running, jumping, and fighting her way through a video game, stays put. Technically, she even went on her date wearing it under her dress. That must have been kind of uncomfortable to dance in (well, that or she went on the date with nothing underneath).
  • Linda in "Tour de Ferb" with Candace take her out from the home without others dress. What's with this trend?
  • Doofenshmirtz wears, and loses, one in "Where's Perry."
• Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: In "Night Terrors", Daphne steps out of the shower in a towel and is soon attacked by what looks like a giant Medusa. Curiously, before she runs out of the bathroom, she also throws a robe over her modesty towel.
• In the She-Ra: Princess of Power episode "Flowers for Hordak", Mantenna, perpetual Butt-Monkey of the Evil Horde, is called into Hordak's throne room over an issue, as per the norm. This time, he was in the middle of a shower, so he's dripping wet and only in a shower cap and Modesty Towel. Hordak's more irritated over the fact he's dripping water on the floor, and sends him down the trapdoor, as always.
• The Simpsons episode "Bart Gets Famous": When Homer comes out of the shower at the nuclear plant to answer the phone: "You'll have to speak up. I'm wearing a towel."
• South Park: In "Towelie", the military is destroying all towels to stem the threat posed by Towelie. In one scene, Mr. Garrison is getting out of the shower in a towel when the soldiers storm in and rip off. He cries out, "Oh, all right, have your way with me, you sick freaks!"... and is immensely disappointed when they leave once the towel's destroyed.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series: Felicia Hardy wore a light blue towel in the opening of "The Vampire Queen" before suiting up in her Black Cat attire.
• In Star Trek: Lower Decks background character Ensign Hans Federov is better known to the cast as "Towel Guy" as we mostly see him in a modesty towel. Of the main cast we see D'Vana Tendi in the female variant in the episode "The Least Dangerous Game".
• In Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Marco wears one the traditionally feminine way, including with a towel wrapped around his (short) hair.
• Sym-Bionic Titan: In the second motel that Lance and Ilana stay episode 19, Ilana comes out of the shower and in a towel before setting beside Lance in bed while he's watching the news.
• Krang in the '80s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon wears one in his robotic body after Shredder contacts him on his communicator and "interrupts his shower" in one episode.
  • Krang dons a towel again in one scene in the 2012 Crossover episode "The Big Blowout".
• Dr. Vic on the Toonsylvania episode "Love Potion Number Nein!" was wearing a towel the feminine way (covering from under the armpits to around the knees) and had another one wrapped around his hair when he came out of the bathroom to find Igor being chased by the ghost woman Natalie Nightshade.
• Total Drama: Only a few characters wear a bathrobe. Most go to and from the showers wearing towels.
  • Heather records her audition video when she's fresh from a shower and wrapped in a towel. The appeal is part of her strategy to get on the show as she promises good ratings if she's selected. She then walks out of view and throws her towel back behind her.
  • The Screaming Gophers win a shower in "X-Treme Torture". The girls go first and come out wearing towels.
  • In "Hook, Line, and Screamer", DJ finds Heather in the communal bathroom draped in a towel and in the process of shaving her legs. She's later still in a towel when she tries to shower, which causes her to be eliminated when the "killer" catches her. She's still wearing it when Chris lectures her about her Genre Blindness in showering alone during the horror film-themed challenge.
  • The contestants get the opportunity to shower in "3:10 to Crazytown", but have to share the same barrel. Harold goes first while Duncan, Justin, Beth, DJ, Lindsay, Owen, and Heather wait in line dressed in towels. Owen goes the feminine route by wearing his towel up high and another as a turban, while Leshawna is the only contestant to wear a bathrobe. Trent is off to the communal bathroom, both wearing a towel and using another one to dry himself off.
  • "Rock n' Rule" starts with Lindsay coming out of the communal bathroom in a towel while singing.
  • In the "That's Gonna Leave a Mark!" segment of "Aftermath III: O-wen or Lose", an outtake of "One Million Bucks B.C.", Harold walks around the trailer wearing a towel. It comes flying off when he slips on soap.
  • In "Get a Clue", Lindsay needs to get Courtney's footprint for a challenge, and she tries it by getting her to walk in paint and then on a sheet of cardboard while she only has a towel on after showering.
  • Duncan walks around in a modesty towel in "Mutiny on the Soundstage".
  • In "A Mine is a Terrible Thing to Waste", Jo is wearing just a towel while bragging in a confessional about having the girl's side of the cabin to herself, so she can now workout while naked.
• Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race: In "I Love Ridonc and Roll", Don wears one while introducing Finland, and the Finnish Don Box for the "Spa Day" all-in. It falls off at the end of the segment.
• Totally Spies!:
  • "Matchmaker" Clover wears one when spying on a posh and wash spa, along with several other women.
  • "Freaky Circus Much?", The Reality TV Show Crew that Clover signed up for is very intrusive and even sneaks up on Sam while she was showering and she wraps herself in a towel to complain to Clover about it. She's still wearing it when Jerry WOOHPed'd them to his office, with her holding on to it to keep it from falling off. Jerry also just happens to have a camcorder recording their interactions, and at one point, he does a close-up on the towel-clad Sam, before he blushes and sends them to put on their Spy Catsuits.
• In the VeggieTales song about Larry's hairbrush, Larry is shown in a Modesty Towel (even though he doesn't wear anything other than the occasional period-appropriate headdress in the regular animated stories or on one occasion, in a corporate setting, a tie when his character was promoted) coming out of the shower, and everyone who walks into him still recoils in embarrassment. At the end, the Peach shows up and is also wrapped in a towel. The two are shocked and slightly embarrassed at the sight of each other.
• Wander over Yonder had a gag in the episode "The Day" where Sylvia has to fight some Watchdogs in the Skullship's locker room and is disgusted that the Watchdogs directly in front of her are butt naked. They comply Sylvia's request that they put towels on before fighting, but wear the towels around their heads before Sylvia clarifies she meant for them to wear the towels around their waists.
• In episode 4 of Wakfu, almost the whole cast wears one, though not just to keep modesty but also to hide the "ugly princesses" disguises. Unfortunately, the only one to have the towel fall off is Ruel.
• Winx Club: Helia is seen in one during episode 21 "The Red Tower" in season 3. Perhaps it was a little Fanservice, since we hadn't seen him much in that season.

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