Naughty Nurse Outfit

aka: Night Nurse

Lister: God, I went out with a lot of nurses, didn't I?
Kryten: I don't believe those are authentic uniforms, sir. Note the astonishing brevity of those hemlines. I believe all those girls are impostors, pretending to belong to the medical profession for some nefarious purpose as yet unknown.

— Red Dwarf

A sexy but impractical nurse outfit that plays to an apparently widespread fetish for nurses. It is far more Stripperific than the loose-fitting scrubs nurses of either gender wear these days, and which are more like baggy pyjamas.^note Although of course there's some appeal to that outfit as well. Most of the time, these costumes are worn by women who aren't nurses, but sometimes they pop up on actual nurses in material that's heavy on Fanservice or just written by someone who's apparently never seen a real nurse. Red-and-white stripes are not uncommon, referring to the outfits that gave hospital volunteers the nickname "candy stripers"; otherwise, the outfit is likely to be pure white.

Actual nurses tend to hate this trope, at least in part because they are often the target of unwanted sexual advances on a daily or near-daily basis while working a highly stressful job.

It is, however, something of a Dead Unicorn Trope in the West; in Japan, however, anime nurses are routinely underdressed. While at one point nurses did (and in some countries, still do) wear dresses or skirts as part of their uniforms, the hems were never more than an inch or two above the knee, at most. Nor did they show a Navel-Deep Neckline. An overly-sexy outfit (besides being impractical) would have been seen as unprofessional, and would have caused them to lose credibility with patients and/or their families.

The Giant Medical Syringe tends to occur alongside this outfit in Japanese media, as a wordplay is involved: "chu" means kiss, while "chuusha" means injection.

Not to be confused with Hospital Hottie (actual sexy nurses) or Florence Nightingale Effect (the relationship between caregiver and patient).

For prostitutes acting as nurses during wartime, see Camp Follower.

A Sub-Trope of Sexy Whatever Outfit.

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Examples:

Advertising

• The Most Interesting Man in the World is shown weight-lifting two beautiful Asian women in naughty nurse outfits. Stay thirsty, my friends.

Anime & Manga

• In the special of Ah My Buddha Katsu, the girls wear skimpy nurse outfit to attract a pervert ghost.
• In episode 16 of Bodacious Space Pirates one of the many Cosplay costumes shown is a Nurse's outfit.
• Misa wears a nurse's outfit as a disguise in Death Note. Of course, it's a cute one.
• Dominion Tank Police: Buaku and his sidekicks break into a hospital in order to destroy some sensitive information. They probably would have been less suspicious if Buaku weren't wearing an improvised arm cast large enough to hold an SMG, and if the two "paramedics" wheeling him in weren't dressed as Night Nurses. There's possibly a bit of Fridge Brilliance on that one; the Puma Sisters were sexbots and strippers before becoming criminals. They may have simply grabbed the nurse outfits from their own wardrobe and been ditzy enough to assume that that was what nurses actually wore.
• Erza from Fairy Tail wears one while trying to help out Wendy. The males definitely approve. So does Eclipse Ophiuchus in her human form.
• Haruko wears one in the first two episodes of FLCL.
• Ghost in the Shell:
  • The cyborg techs in the original manga are dressed according to this trope.
  • In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society, Aramaki's mentor Colonel Tonoda is bed-ridden and attended by half a dozen sexbots in backless outfits. Ironically, he's too far gone even to notice them.
• HappinessCharge Pretty Cure! invokes a subversion via Transformation Trinket. The nurse outfits are quite modest due to Proper Tights with a Skirt, and they are practical in that The Heroines actually do become Hospital Hotties while wearing them.
• Haruhi Suzumiya: Mikuru wears a nurse outfit in the Baseball Episode. It manages to stun the entire team.
• In Hayate the Combat Butler, Maria put on glasses and a nurse outfit in Chapter 140 as a disguise at the suggestion of Nagi's bodyguards. It didn't conceal her identity in the slightest, but viewers certainly didn't mind.
• England adorns one of these in the April Fools' 2011 event of Hetalia: Axis Powers. A male example, this was meant to be Played for Laughs ...probably.
• High School D×D: When Issei is left on a funk after being defeated by Irina and Xenovia, Asia goes to Kiryuu for advice to cheer him up. Kiryuu then lends her a very short, sleeveless nurse dress that she puts on for Issei. Somewhat downplayed given that Asia is more of a cute than sexy type, but Issei certainly likes it nonetheless.
• Maken-ki!:
  • After bringing Kai to her office, in chapter 16, Ms. Aki changes into a pair of nylons with garter-belts and a thong, instead of her normal uniform. Then proceeds to mount him in the '69' position to treat his injuries.
  • And in the 66.5 omake chapter, Usui dreams of being a hospital director with Himegami as his secretary, dressed in a fetish style nurse's uniform.
• Miia from Monster Musume wastes no time getting into one of these when Kimihito gets sick.
• In one episode of Nanaka 6/17, on the way to check in on her ill childhood friend/love interest, Nanaka encounters her fanboy friend, who convinces her to borrow a nurse's outfit from the local hospital. It does not have the intended effect, however. Actually, any effect that might've occurred was sorely hampered by the fact that, due to Laser-Guided Amnesia, said fanboy pal is unaware (but her childhood friend isn't) that 17-year-old Nanaka has the personality and mindset of a 6-year-old.
• Note the existence of the hentai anime Night Shift Nurses. It's an actual sub-genre, and you see the costumes often enough even in other hentai.
• Considering the type of show Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is, this comes up at one point. The show even goes into it’s Art Shift mode it uses for fanservice moments when the Anarchy Sisters dress as nurses.
• In the Ranma ½ manga, female-Ranma dresses up as an actual nurse to convince a sickly (and presumably moribund) boy to take the medicine that would save his life. Unfortunately, it only kicks his already blatant fetishes into overdrive.
• In episode 7 of the Tenchi Muyo! OAV, Washu wears a nurse's uniform to perform her... experiments on Tenchi. And then Mihoshi walks in the lab by accident....
• The Testament of Sister New Devil: Chisato wears a black garter belt with nylons, a skintight miniskirt, and stiletto heels as her standard nurse's attire. But with a body like hers, she'd look "naughty" no matter what she was wearing.
• Tenjho Tenge: At one point when Nagi is running away from Aya, he hides in the school's infirmary. She quickly finds him and, fittingly, dresses up in a pink nurse uniform.
• Usagi-chan de Cue!!: Miku dons a pink one during a school fundraiser. She makes a suggestive pose with a giant syringe prop that elicits hoots and cheers from the mostly male audience.

Comedy

• Pete Barbutti's "In the Sahara: the Hotel, Not the Desert" comedy album includes a joke in which one of Barbutti's high school buddies had explained why "nurses are easy." It's because "they know where everything is." He went on to say that he grew older and wiser, and realized that was sexist nonsense. Then he grew older and wiser and realized that it was essential.

Comic Books

• Subverted in one issue of The Ultimates. A sexily dressed nurse brings in breakfast to a hospital bed-ridden Tony Stark, except she's actually a model hired by Tony to brighten up the place.
• Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose:
  • Boo Cat does this for Tarot in The Shadow Witch part 3. It helps that she happens to own a costume shop.
  • The trope is also used to disturbing effect in Issue #53. (Link may be considered borderline NSFW.) Shockingly enough, these aren't the discarnate spirits of a bunch of strippers. They are, in fact, a group of nurses — which means that that's what Jim Balent thinks nurses look like.
• Subverted by the character Night Nurse in Marvel Comics; she wears a Florence Nightingale-type classic nurse outfit, and only serves to administer actual treatment (or at least, until Doctor Strange: The Oath when she hooked up with the Sorcerer Supreme.) Incidentally, she's also an MD, not a nurse, which makes one wonder if the getup isn't a form of Cosplay after all. (As she explains it, "'Night Nurse' is just catchier than 'Night General Practitioner'.")
• Empowered Volume 4 features, in a rare case of gender equality, improbably hot female and male nurses in equally skimpy outfits - mini-skirts for the gals, micro-shorts for the guys.
• In the Buffy Season 8 comic-book, Buffy is exploring her dreamscape and stumbles upon one of her own sexual fantasies, which consists of a nude Angel, a nude Spike and her wearing a nurse uniform◊. Artist George Jeanty said in a Q&A session of the website Slayalive that prints of this panel were extremely popular.
• In Lori Lovecraft: Back to the Garden, Ms. Fanservice Lori finds herself travelling through Voodoo Mansion and opening doors into different realities. As she does so, her clothing changes to match the reality she finds herself in. When she opens the door into her boyfriend's hospital room, she finds herself dressed in a naughty nurse outfit. So are the two 'nurses' who are smothering Allen in kisses.

Fan Works

• The Evangelion fic The Visitor has Shinji getting out of an Angel battle blind. While no one is around, Rei comes and... comforts him on the hospital bed without revealing her identity. Possibly subverted as her monologue afterward implies that she had a hand in his condition in the first place.
• Sonata insists that Fluttershy wear one during Adagio's Sick Episode in Sucker for a Cute Face.
• In Lady Luck's Favor, Raven, Starfire and Jinx wear these while tending to Danny Phantom after their battle with Professor Chang.
• Khaos Omega indicates early on in the chronology that Anise prefers this kind of outfit for any nurse who aligns with her. All but the high heels (platform sandals, in this case) are latex.

Films — Live-Action

• Night Nurse (1931), starring Barbara Stanwyck and Clark Gable, may have given birth to this trope. It features a surprising amount of Fanservice for its era.
• Appears in a porn film shown in The Bank Job.
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off has the singing (among other things) telegram somebody sent that poor sick boy down the street. Sadly interrupted when the wrong Bueller answered the door.
  "I heard that you were feeling ill
  Headache, fever and a chill
  I came to help restore your pluck
  Cause I'm the nurse who likes to..." [slam]
• Subverted in The Dark Knight, except for fetish fuel value. The nurse uniform itself appears to be somewhat more old-fashioned than what actual nurses are shown to be wearing, and wouldn't be half bad modesty-wise, though still sexy, but um, it's kind of on the Joker.
• Seen in Joey's dream from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Justified in that it's a teenage boy's sexual fantasy ... at least, until Freddy takes possession of the dream-nurse.
• The trope shows up in just about every Carry On movie about the medical profession, starting with Carry On Nurse, featuring a night nurse who is overpowered, and stripped (down to her slip — it was 1959, after all) by the male ward patients.
• Elle Driver in Kill Bill wears one of these outfits when she goes to assassinate The Bride.
• Prom Wars: Jen B. and Jen L. wear revealing nurse costumes while being on standby to provide first aid to anyone who gets pelleted too badly in the paintball contest (and to motivate the horny teenage competitors into trying harder).
• Played with in Rory O'Shea Was Here. Siobhan dresses as a nurse for a costume party but the costume is fairly modest, though she already has Michael eyeing her anyway.
• In Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!, Pandora's stripper outfit is a sexy nurse costume.

Literature

• Mentioned in the Women of the Otherworld novel Haunted. While they are planning how to infiltrate a hospital, Kristof tells his ex-girlfriend Eve that he needs to put her in a nurse's uniform — which turns out to be incredibly skimpy and tight. When Eve starts to change into scrubs, Kristof admits that he wants her to play a patient, and that the nurse's uniform was just self-indulgence and not related to their mission. He also reminds her of a time when he had a cold and she spent the entire weekend in his hotel room nursing him back to health, while wearing an appropriately revealing uniform.
• The World According to Garp has the hero's mother screw a catatonic soldier dying in the hospital because she wants a child but can't stand men.

Live-Action TV

• Are You Being Served? — those are blatantly not real nurses.
• Santana dresses this part in an episode of Glee.
• Brainiac: Science Abuse
• Gabrielle on Desperate Housewives used this as a guise to apply crabs medication to her husband, so that he wouldn't find out she was having an affair.
• "Las Vegas": Delinda dons a nurses' outfit to try to help Sam evade her husband (by letting her pose as a plastic surgery patient whose face is swathed in bandages). Afterwards Sam observes that she has a client who would pay a great deal to see her in that uniform.
• The Sopranos. In "Denial Anger Acceptance", a woman in a sexy nurse outfit comes to check on Jackie Aprile, who insists she's not his nurse. About the point her tits start falling out of her jacket, he realizes that she's one of the girls from the Bada Bing club, whom Tony hired to come out and show Jackie a good time. The difference in uniform becomes obvious when a real nurse tries to enter the room only to be hustled out by Tony.
• Cop Rock: the nurses in the musical number say the phrase Bigger Is Better and wear Stripperiffic dresses.
• In ER, Abby dresses up for Halloween in an old-fashioned white nurse's outfit, but naturally everyone assumes she's a sexy nurse.
• Scrubs:
  • In the episode "My Life in Four Cameras," JD has an extended fantasy of what his life would be like if it were — ironically — more like a sitcom (or as it were, more like a traditional sitcom). In the fantasy shots, Elliot and Carla are wearing sexier versions of their normal scrubs, with ample cleavage.
  • Earlier still, in the episode "My Interpretation," Turk has a sex dream featuring Elliot in an even more revealing nurse outfit. Ironic, considering that Elliot is a doctor and that Turk is married to an actual nurse.
• Farscape: Aeryn Sun is wearing one of these during John Crichton's fantasy sequence in "Won't Get Fooled Again."
  "I can find new places to take your temperature."
• Sarah Jessica Parker wears one to seduce Big in Sex and the City. It doesn't work.
• The TV show Mercy is supposed to be a serious, realistic television show about nurses working in a hospital, but they regularly wear things that Nurses Do Not Wear.
• Sarah Walker wears one as a disguise in the "Angel of Death" episode of Chuck.
• Subverted in the Friends episode "The One With the Halloween Party", when Chandler thinks Mona came as a 'slutty nurse', she insists she's dressed as a regular nurse.
• The Benny Hill Show featured a gag "commercial" for Night Nurse where the ill husband rejected his "Night Nurse"—only to have his wife reveal that she had hired a stripper in nurse costume to cheer him up. Cue the trademark "whaaaaa?" expression.
• Doctor in the House played with this in one episode. The main characters are at a strip club when one of the dancers falls ill on stage. They take her to St Swithin's where, out of boredom, she starts helping around the ward. The boys do their best to convince her to give up stripping and become a nurse, and it seems that they succeed. At the end of the episode, she is seen in a nurse's uniform but it's just a new costume for her latest routine at the club.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: In a Bride of the Monster host segment, Crow has a sexual fantasy of Tom Servo in a nurse's outfit - to Tom's horror.
• Robin wore one of these to a Halloween party in How I Met Your Mother. Turns out there was a specific reason - earlier that night she'd made an incredibly embarrassing commercial for adult diapers.
• When Angie of The George Lopez Show was feeling insecure about growing older, she traded in her kind of sexy Halloween nurse costume for something that would be at home in a porno (to the point where her bra was arguably covering more than the dress itself).
• In the pilot episode of Supernatural, Sam Winchester's girlfriend Jessica wears this as a Halloween costume.
• Faith donned one of these in an episode of Hope & Faith when she was employed as a receptionist at Charlie's work (he's an orthodontist). Charlie was not happy about it because a) he's married to her sister and b) the outfit was incredibly inappropriate.
• In the Halloween episode of The Neighbors daughter Amber decides that in order to fit in with the cool kids from school she and her boy neighbor should go as "hot doctor and slutty nurse." Unfortunately the neighbor boy is a Cloudcuckoolander alien and think that he's the one who's supposed to dress as a slutty nurse.
• In an episode of Leverage, Hardison and Spencer are interested in the prospect of Parker playing a nurse, until she points out that nurses don't dress like this.
• Towards the end of an episode (aptly entitled "From Nurse to Worse") of Saved by the Bell, Zack sees his crush Nurse Jennifer, instead of her standard white mini-dress uniform, don a black, tubed mini-skirt, black pantyhose and black pumps, a big waist hugging black Western belt (with a silver buckle), a purple pocketed t-shirt (with shoulder pads), plastic purple hooped earrings, her hair in a bun (which she would soon shake loose to further rile Zack up), and her white medical coat (which Jennifer soon takes off since it's "rather warm" in her office) for good measure.
• In The Office (US) episode “Costume Contest” Angela wears this outfit for the Halloween costume contest, she would’ve liked to have dressed as a cat but they were sold out and that was her only option.
• Frasier: A season 10 episode has Daphne don one for a post-heart surgery recovery night with Niles. A mix-up occurs when she and her obnoxious mother swap rooms before Niles gets there, but the event does convince Niles that he's good for sex, since if he can survive the shock of running in Daphne's mom, he can survive anything.
• The Brittas Empire: "Bye Bye Baby" has Helen don a very sexy nurse suit when she leaves to take care of Uncle Simon. It's one of the pieces of evidence that show that he is an Invented Invalid - whilst he exists, he's actually an affair of Helen behind Brittas' back.

Music

• AKB48 members wear semi-transparent nurse uniforms in the MV for "Ambulance".
• Worn on the cover and album art of blink-182's album Enema of the State by porn star Janine Lindemulder. She also appears with it in the music video for lead single "What's My Age Again?", being the only thing that makes the naked and running bandmembers to go out of their way.
• Yoshiki Hayashi has played around with this - on both sides.
• The Russian music video "Nurse" by Philipp Kirkorov has the singer interacting with an animated nurse wearing an extremly lewd Nurse outfit.
• Fedde Le Grand's "Put Your Hands Up 4 Detroit" features a striptease by a gynoid in a nurse uniform.
• In the early 2000s, Brazil had a "Funk Nurse" dancer. Once legal action from an actual nurse union regarding her appearing on Playboy made both the magazine and the dancer not able to the use that identity, she became the "Funk Forbidden", with the nurse cap and surgical mask painted pink.
• Megan Thee Stallion and the extras in her "Thot Shit" music video wore pretty revealing nurse outfits.

Pro Wrestling

• One of the options for the Fulfil Your Fantasy battle royal at 2004's Taboo Tuesday PPV, along with School Girl and French Maid. The School Girls got the most votes. We do get to see the nurse (and maid) outfits in the video game Smackdown vs Raw 2006.
• Michelle McCool dressed up as a nurse for a 2006 Halloween battle royal.

Video Games

• Batman: Arkham Asylum replaces Harley Quinn's traditional black and red jester catsuit with a blue and red corset, kinky thigh-high platform boots and an extremely abbreviated nurse outfit, in keeping with her role as the new warden's sidekick.
• Darkstalkers. Q-Bee under the effect of Demitri's Midnight Bliss.
  • Morrigan also sometimes dons a nurse outfit, like in Pocket Fighter.
• From the Dead or Alive series, Ayane, Christie, Helena, Hitomi, Honoka, Kasumi, Kokoro, Lisa, Lei Fang, Mai, Marie Rose, Mila, Momiji, Naotora, Nyotengu, Rachel, Sarah and Tina have one as a costume in Dead or Alive 5: Last Round.
• Saluted in the Persona 4 video game, where your Devil social link is a lascivious nurse at your evening part-time job on a hospital's janitorial staff... Only for it to turn out that most of the Social Link is spent witnessing her angst about her life and helping her out of it, like all other S-Links. Although she will "admire your muscles" with the right responses early on.
• Elite Beat Agents - athlete Bill Mitchell's white blood cells are all pink-haired nurses. The leader even gets a nude scene (well, it's censored, but still).
• Kingdom of Loathing has the Naughty Sorority Nurse, although since the only visual aid is a stick figure, we're kind of taking the game's word for it. (But since it's supposed to be an orc, maybe that's for the best...)
• League of Legends: Players can enjoy the "Nurse Akali" skin for a modest fee.
• Season 9 of Player Unknowns Battle Grounds temporarily had for sale a "Bloody Nurse Outfit" which combined this with blood stains, as part of a Halloween themed special.
• Anesthesia from Rumble Roses.
• In Silent Hill 4: The Room, Eileen has a secret extremely Stripperific nurse outfit. Ironically in the Youtube video showing it, she herself is bloodied and bandaged up.
  • In the original game, nurse Lisa wears red high heels and an outfit that shows more than most hospitals would allow.
  • And of course, the Monster Nurses would be this, were it not for the fact that their heads are just large, bloated pustules, they're filthy and ragged, and their proportions are just off enough to be disturbing rather than enticing. In Silent Hill 2 they, like most monsters, represent James' sexual frustration, and are based off the fact that his wife apparently wore such outfits earlier in their marriage (and probably also the fact that, during her illness, James probably would have found himself noticing a lot of nurses).
• Smite: This is one of Neith's alternate outfits. Amazingly, this outfit covers more than her standard outfit.
• Valentine◊ from Skullgirls, the game's resident purveyor of Fanservice and medical-themed Body Horror.
• Miss Cummings, the school nurse in Wasted Youth.
• In My Time at Portia, Phyllis dresses in one of these, complete with Cleavage Window. What makes it even more blatant is that she's not a nurse, she's a medical student.
• 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 Naughty Nurse Outfit.

Webcomics

• Dominic Deegan: the "nurse's outfit" Pam wears after Rachel gives her a makeover. In this case, Pam really is a nurse, but her usual uniform is much more modest.
• Galen from Wiglaf and Mordred. Despite being a, uh, practicing physician, she's not actually licensed.
• Persia in Jay Naylor's Intensive Care pornfolio.
• Uncle Rafi in Friendly Hostility has a thing for nurses.
• In Black Adventures, N's latest Attractive Bent-Gender crossdressing stunt was this. Fans rejoice.
• In a pinup for Sunstone, Ally wears one while Lisa is strapped and struggling on an operating table.
• El Goonish Shive ran a sketchbook in which the characters dressed as nurses for an unstated reason with one wearing this. They were wearing the outfits of a stereotypical, sexy, and actual nurse from left to right.
  • Subverted for laughs during "Goonmanji 2", where four characters play a transformation-themed board game developed by a well-intentioned but naive immortal. Catalina tries to transform into a nurse, and ends up in normal medical scrubs.
• Ménage à 3 features such a costume on a stripper (in a club where the girls wear a wide range of costumes) in strip #184 (July 31 2009, NSFW). To give the comic credit, the character Peggy, who is actually a nurse, is shown in completely realistic scrubs when she's on duty (and, being as sexy as any woman in the cast, she looks just fine in them, in a businesslike way). She does wear a sillier outfit on the cover of one print volume, but that doesn't represent anything that happens inside the book.
• C. Tori, the nurse of Awful Hospital, is very curvy and wears a form-fitting nurse outfit. She is also a a sentient system of blood vessels.
• During the Halloween story arc of Misfile Ash makes a comment about how women use the holiday as an excuse to dress up in sexy costumes. Emily vehemently denies it and says that Ash is just making sexist assumptions. Ash asks Emily what she wore for Halloween last year and Emily reluctantly replies that it was this trope.

Western Animation

• Futurama:
  • One episode has Bender use one of these while on the internet (disguised as a human, not his usual self) in order to take money from people.
  • The episode "Stench and Stenchability" has Amy in a nurses outfit completely backless and with ass cleavage.

Real Life

• The waitresses at the restaurant Heart Attack Grill all dress in Stripperific nurse outfits. Subverted in that they are definitely not real nurses, although everything they serve you will likely put you in the hospital at some point. The effect is augmented by the patron being dressed in a hospital gown before being seated.
• The "sexy nurse" is one variety of the numerous "sexy [X]" Halloween costumes which are marketed toward women and apparently will be until the end of time.

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