One Size Fits All

Come one, come all and see the incredible shrinking chainmail!

In many video games, clothing and armor can be worn by anyone, regardless of its source or the wearer's size or gender. These are usually Acceptable Breaks from Reality, as it's a pain to have exclusive sets of equipment for each character, but sometimes it just gets ridiculous.

Compare Informed Equipment, as well as Costumes Change Your Size. A default ability of the Adaptive Armor. Contrast Gender-Restricted Gear. Related to Magic Pants. See Universal Eyeglasses for when one lens prescription fits all.

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Examples:

Action Adventure

• Compared to other examples, it seems odd that this trope was averted in Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure. There is a second playable character named Popon, who is, just like Parin, a little girl. However, attempting to put on any of Parin's headgear will result in the message "It doesn't fit" greeting the player.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, all the weapons enemies use are scaled to their size. Even if a weapon is small or huge, they'll magically change to a size suitable for Link once dropped. Averted with the Thunder Helm, which was originally designed for the adult Gerudo woman Urbosa to wear and which slides around on the much younger Riju's head when the latter puts it on. The lack of this is also a plot point with the Zora Armor: Muzu refuses to believe that Mipha was in love with Link until Sidon points out that the chest portion of the armor she crafted, traditionally given by Zora women to their intended husbands, fits Link's Hylian physique perfectly.
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom continues the trend as well as adding some new ones thanks to the fusion system. Whatever items Link fuses to his weapon will generally scale up or down to fit on the attached weapon. For example, a huge iron spiky ball will shrink down when fused to a weapon for Link, but it'll scale up instead if used by a larger enemy like Moblins.

MMORPGs

• Averted in EverQuest. Most armor came in three sizes- small (e.g. halflings, dwarves, gnomes), medium (e.g. humans, elves) and large (e.g. ogres, trolls) sizes, and players aren't allowed to use any size that doesn't fit them. Played straight with some unique equipment, which usually doesn't have sizes, as well as with weapons; there's nothing stopping a dwarf warrior from picking up and using a sword looted off a giant.
• Final Fantasy XIV plays it straight 98% of the time:
  • Since gear doesn't bind on equip, but only when you actually do something with it, as long as they just equip the item, a max-size Roegadyn and a min-size Lalafell can pass the same plate armor back and forth all they like, and it'll fit them both perfectly. The "try on" command that lets you preview gear has similar results.
  • Most hats will change shape when equipped by Miqo'te, to accommodate their ears. Oddly, pants tend not to gain proper tail holes, but the tail will just clip straight through the model.
  • Averted in one story quest that has you Dressing as the Enemy — Yugiri has three Garlean soldiers that she Mugged for Disguise, and you have to pick the one that broadly matches your size. Not that this is hard — you're either tiny (Lalafell), giant (Roegadyn, male Au Ra, Hrothgar), or medium-sized (anything else) — but there's hilarious Flavor Text for trying to take the wrong ones.
    If there were three of you standing on each other's shoulders, you could perhaps fit into this uniform. Walking, however, would present a challenge.
  • Weapons also change size based on the size of the player, which averts the Giant's Knife; Human's Greatsword problem. One scene plays it straight where Rauhban gives his adopted son, Pipin, his sword and the lalafell has to hold the sword with both hands to wield it properly.
• The MMORPG Guild Wars is a notable exception, as all armor of any type (including gloves and shoes) must be custom-built by a merchant NPC and is only usable by the character that bought it, although it can be salvaged for crafting components or upgrades (always less than what went in). Weapons are sharable unless you want them customized, in which case they get a slight damage increase but can never be sold again either.
  • Further, you can recover mobs' armor as loot - but it's only usable for sale of to be broken into components.
  • The sequel game Guild Wars 2 implements a more traditional loot system playing this trope straight. Even more egregiously, sometimes weapons resize when drawn. For example, a full-sized sword is too large to fit on an asura's back, so it shrinks when sheathed and grows when drawn.
  • One personal story option for GW2 norn characters involves said norn wearing a dredge mining suit in order to infiltrate a dredge mine. Norn are 9 feet tall, and going off the cutscene art dredge are maybe half that. The suit fits perfectly.
• Played completely straight in Nexus Clash, in which all clothes fit you no matter what body you happen to be possessing at the moment. Since players usually respawn in a random body, this can lead to a situation where (for instance) someone dies in the body of a male bodybuilder and respawns in the body of a little girl — who comes back wearing the previous body's clothes, which still fit perfectly. Justified by the same random respawns — it wouldn't be fun to have to carry around a set of clothes for every possible body you could respawn in.
• Largely averted in Puzzle Pirates. All females are exactly the same size, so one size truly does fit all females. Ditto with males. However, cross-dressing is never allowed, leading to oddities such as bandannas that can never be worn by males.
• Averted in Retro Mud, where every equipment has a numbered size, as does your character. This makes it really annoying to find equipment if you're not playing as a humanoid.
• Runescape mostly plays this straight with male and female equipment although they can look different depending on what gender wears it. Even the gender-specific platelegs and plateskirts can be worn by both. Averted with armors for other races, such as goblins.
• Both averted and played true in the MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies. The same shirt or suit of armor can fit a 6-foot human and a 4-foot Bothan; however, Wookiees and Ithorians can only wear specialized clothing and armor, certain types of clothing (for humanoids) are gender-specific, and certain species cannot wear certain forms of headwear or helmets (partially due to the graphics issues).
• World of Warcraft provides extreme examples:
  • It's possible for a Tauren (an 8-foot-tall bipedal quasi-bovine) to wear gear looted from a leper gnome.
  • When worn by a female, gear instantly becomes not just smaller, but also more revealing/form fitting.
  • When worn by draenei or tauren, pants and robes magically sport tailholes.
  • Shoes lose the shoe part, and become something like legwarmers. Note that you can later give the shoes to someone without hooves and have the shoe part reappear.
  • The Cataclysm expansion brought Worgen to the table. In human form, shoes are just normal shoes, but in worgen form, they become leg warmers. Your shoes will magically switch between shoes and leg-warmers depending on what form you're in.
  • Also, any robes, pants or shoes that a Forsaken puts on will immediately have large holes ripped in the elbows, knees, and toes, all the better to show off their decaying skin and exposed bone.

Roguelike

• A common complaint in Angband was that a gnome could wield a weapon that was heavier than him with strength-boosting equipment.
• Dungeon Crawl averts this completely. Characters of large or small sizes either have lowered AC gains from armour, or can't use some (or all) armour slots at all. The same goes for weapons - only Ogres and Trolls can use giant (spiked) clubs, and small races like Kobolds and Spriggans can only use normally-one-handed weapons as two-handed, no matter the character's Strength.
• The game of Dwarf Fortress abstracts this issue into size categories, so that clothing and armor is only usable by races of the same size category as the one that produced the item. Previously, there were also 'stout' and 'narrow' categories, which kept goblins, dwarves, and elves from wearing the same armor even though they were the same size.
• Averted for some items in the Roguelike Incursion: many weapons which can be wielded one-handed by normal sized beings must be wielded two-handed by small beings, and small beings can't wear normal sized backpacks.
• In NetHack:
  • Armor can be too small (when you're polymorphed into a creature too large to wear it), or the wrong shape, but never too large. Any creature that's vaguely human-shaped and no larger than human-size can wear any armor: gnomes can wear plate mail (though it may burden them because it's uncomfortably heavy)
  • Rings and amulets can be worn not just by humanoids, but by jellies, snakes, and intelligent clouds of vapor, but only if a humanoid ring-wearer is polymorphed into sucha creature. It's mainly a balance mechanic: the ring changes with you to prevent easily getting rid of cursed jewelry by shapeshifting into a form that can't wear it.

Real Time Strategy

• In the original Ogre Battle, any unit can equip any armor. Even armless creatures like dragons can wear mail or use weapons without problems.

Role Playing Game

• Averted in Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura where torso clothing comes in three sizes: small, medium and large, and Ogres can't use pistols and other small firearms due to their large hands. Of course everything else is one size fits all.
• This trope is fully in evidence in the Champions of Norrath series. In Return To Arms, for example, a piece of clothing will change from a form-fitting, cleavage revealing blouse on a female human mage to a pair of shoulder pads that appears to be made of leather and bone on a male lizard man.
• Divinity: Original Sin II: Equipment is equally wearable by any playable character, be they male or female; human, elf Lizard, or dwarf; or skeletal undead. Many pieces display differently based on who's wearing them, so a human's simple wide-brimmed hat could become an ornate headdress on a lizard.
• In Dragon Age: Origins, any suit of armor will fit anyone, be they a stocky dwarf, a slender elven girl, or a towering human male. To say nothing of your giant Qunari. Fortunately, averted with Shale, who uses a separate line of equipment.
• Dragon Quest V:
  • It's funny to give Bianca back the same clothes & armor that she wore as an 8 year old when you next meet her again as an adult or to swap armor with your own son.
  • Also used in-story for Zenithian helmet, which resizes itself to fit the Chosen One.
• Played mostly straight in Drakensang, who comines this trope with Form-Fitting Wardrobe too. Is sometimes averted by certain clothes and armor pieces who can only be worn by dwarves or can't be worn by dwarves at all. Plus, the Amazonian Armor set and dresses can only be worn by female characters.
• In Dubloon, you can even have your Team Pet Ricky wear armour if you wish so.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Morrowind:
    • Played straight for the non-beast races. You can loot a piece of armor off an Orc or Nord, then equip it to your much-smaller Bosmer and it will fit perfectly. After installing Tribunal or the "LeFemme" armor official plug-in, cuirasses will become Gendered Outfits. You can loot one off of a male NPC and equip it to your female character, and it will change to the female model.
    • Beast races avert it for closed helmets and boots. Because of their elongated faces and unusual feet, Argonians and Khajiit cannot wear them.
  • Both Oblivion and Skyrim:
    • Particularly jarring is that if you play as a female character and loot clothing or armor from a male character (or vice versa), the item actually magically changes appearance when worn - trousers become skirts and shirts become blouses. An extreme example is the "Huntsman's Vest", which, on male characters, is a simple fur vest. On female characters, it becomes a fur bra. Perhaps the most ridiculous example is that the historical artifact armors of men (Ex. Tiber Septim, Pelinal Whitestrake, etc.) adjust for women.
    • Ironically, the one armor set that should be custom tailored to your character in Oblivion, the Imperial Dragon Armor, is bugged so that it appears the same regardless of your gender.
    • Unlike Morrowind, this even includes helmets. All the beast race's horns, muzzles, spikes and foot long ears seem to just fold right up. Excusable as an Acceptable Break from Reality since beast races being unable to wear helmets in Morrowind was a major fan complaint.
• The Epic Battle Fantasy series uses both this and Gender-Restricted Gear. Anna and Natalie can wear the same outfits despite Natalie being considerably curvier. In game 5 NoLegs can wear the same male-specific armors as Matt or Lance despite being a cat who stands waist-high to either of them.
• In Fallout 3, you can blast your enemies limbs and head off and still take the armor, which magically becomes whole again. Vault-issued sewing kit, perhaps?
  • Some clothes have different appearances depending on the wearer's gender. If your character is male and you remove "pre-war casual wear" from the inventory of a woman wearing a dress, when you put it on yourself it will be pants and a shirt.
  • Earlier Fallout titles generally did not allow players to loot armour from corpses, but armour and clothing will fit any character just fine. The massive Sulik and the tiny Myron can both wear the same Leather Jacket with no problems.
  • Fallout: New Vegas provides perhaps the most absurd example in the Dead Money DLC. At one point you encounter the skeletal corpse of a female singer about whom you've heard much, and the skeleton has her dress still on it. You can take the dress, shown as a dress right in front of your eyes and well established as having been worn by a female, and it will instantly morph into a tuxedo if you're playing as a male.
• Many Final Fantasy games will have armor or clothes that can be passed around relatively universally, even if the sizes of your teammembers range from "7-foot-tall muscle-bound dude" to "8-year-old girl."
  • Especially odd in Final Fantasy IX, when many people on your team aren't even the same species, with all the differences in physical build that would imply. However, they at least make an attempt to address this trope with some male/female specific equipment.
  • Partly averted in VI, which has armor only females can wear. However, considering they mean Terra, Celes, or Relm...
• Muppy, a slug-like alien from Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis roughly around a fourth of the size of the other playable characters, can still equip armor that comfortably fits his otherwise human allies.
• Mario & Luigi
  • The items you buy will always fit both Mario and Luigi, despite their size and body structure differences. Amusingly, the official artwork of the first three games featured Luigi wearing overalls that were a bit too short for him, exposing a pair of striped socks, so perhaps one size didn't actually fit all?
  • Averted in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story and Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, where the baby bros, Bowser and Paper Mario have different types of clothing.
• Averted in Mass Effect. All species use different types of armour, save for the asari, who are close enough to human (female) shape that they can wear human armour without hitch. On the other hand, all species use same type of weapons, even though it's a bit hard to see how the massive krogan even fit their fingers on human-sized triggers.
  • And still played straight, as human armour fits all sizes of humans and asari and has a form-fitting breast plate only when worn by a woman.
• Similarly in Might and Magic VI and on, where the same suit of leather, plate or chain is equally form-fitting and functional as it is passed from dwarf to elf to goblin to human to half-orc and from male to female and right back again. It does have limits, though — in VIII, helmets and boots can't be used by minotaurs (who have hooves and horns), and dragons can only use rings and amulets.
• Averted in Planescape: Torment - everyone who winds up in your party has their own armour or clothing, and refuses to take it off. You can buy armour for the party Action Girl, but you can't wear that (or the clothing it replaces).
  • This goes even further - one character cannot wear earrings due to the shape of his ears. Another, being a skull, is unable to equip anything except a set of teeth. This does not explain his large inventory.
    • The game lampshades Morte's large inventory space despite being a skull by telling you that you shouldn't bother thinking about it.
• Averted in Rakenzarn Tales, as armor types are restricted by the character's class. The exceptions are Kyros and Kyuu, whose Arxus classes allow them to wear all types of armor.
• Zig-Zagged in Secret of Mana. There are armor sets that can be worn by all three party members, but Primm gets a couple of clothing options that Randi can't wear and vice versa, while Popoi can wear some of Randi's gear and some of Primm's, but not all of either's. The fact that Popoi is about half the size of either of the human protagonists is apparently not an issue.
• In Sonic Chronicles The Dark Brotherhood, all the footwear that Cream and Amy can wear, Big can wear. Boots that can be worn by Rouge can also be worn by Eggman. Gloves can be worn by any non-robot.
• Messed about with in the first Star Ocean game - most characters are roughly the same size, but Ilia (a kung-fu-fighting woman and Pericci both have unique sets of clothing that only fit them. On the other hand, Phia (a female warrior) wears the exact same stuff as Roddick and Cyuss (male ones). Oh, and some characters have tails, but since the game takes place on a world where almost everyone has tails, the assumption is that the tail holes are always there but the human characters just ignore them.
• In the Game Mod Star Wars Conquest, the race of the characters is only a cosmetic feature. Droid parts, human-sized armours and helmets, alien-shaped helmets, woookiee bodies, etc can be worn by everyone.
• In Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars you can buy Work Pants that will fit any character, even though Bowser clearly wears no pants. In fact, the Work Pants are actually the best armor for Bowser until very late in the game.
• Averted in Trials of Mana, where each character has their own set of weapons and armor exclusive to them.
• Averted in Venetica: any armor found by the player has to be taken to the blacksmith to be tailored.
• In The World Ends with You, clothing plays a major part in the gameplay. As long as you have a high enough Bravery level, any character can wear any outfit. This includes the guys wearing gothic lolita dresses. However, they're Invisible to Normals, and you don't actually see the outfits.
• Played straight for the first six party members in Xenoblade Chronicles 1, who can all wear the same armor, even the diminutive Team Pet Riki. It also inexplicably takes on a different appearance for each wearer.

Simulation Game

• Played straight in Animal Crossing series because having Your Reward not fit your Virtual Paper Doll wouldn't work so well with the sharing and communication aspects of the game.
• Flight Rising takes this to an extreme. Every piece of clothing can be worn by any adult dragon of any breed, meaning an overcoat worn by a 30-meter Imperial can be removed and placed on a half-meter Fae, and vice-versa, without any problems.

Turn Based Strategy

• In the Disgaea series, the only equipment restriction is that monsters have to wield monster weapons, and humanoids have to stick to the six other weapon types. Otherwise, any unit can wear any piece of armor (Even the dresses and bikinis) or weapon regardless of gender or species, and can even wear three pieces of the same armor type, like three pairs of shoes, or three pairs of glasses. The weapons used by humanoids are the only visible piece of equipment.
• In the handheld and NES Fire Emblem games any equipped weapons will magically adjust to the style that the character wielding them likes. A Hero using an Iron Sword will wield a massive broadsword. Pass that same sword to a Myrmidon and it's a katana. Finally give it to an assassin and it's a pair of daggers.
  • Some of the SNES entries, and Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn, have weapon appearance based on the weapon instead of the person holding it, however.
• In Heroes of Might and Magic, any hero can wear or wield any artifact, breastplate, sword, shield, boots, etc. regardless of the fact that some heroes shouldn't technically be able to (genies for instance shouldn't have feet).
• In Shining Force II, rings, bracelets and similar generic accessories can be worn by characters who don't have hands.

Wide Open Sandbox

• Averted slightly in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. In order to do some insanity, Tommy and his sidekick Lance ambush two cops in a garage. They tie them up and steal their uniforms. Lance says that his fits just fine, but Tommy declares that his are 'a bit tight in the crotch'. Lance then hastily claims the same. Oh, Lance.

Other Games

• Downplayed with Metal Slug Infinity. Every unit is able to ride any Slug (i.e. combat vehicles or attack animals) regardless of size difference or vehicle knowledge (especially with most nonmilitary units). Slugs with a visible cockpit has the larger unit shrink in size and/or be very cramped inside of it.

Examples Outside Video Games:

Anime and Manga

• Saiyan battle armor from Dragon Ball Z has this effect: the suits come in one size, but are extremely elastic, and can expand to fit any wearer comfortably... even when that wearer is a 50-foot tall giant ape!
• In Overlord, all enchanted equipment has this property. Enchanted weapons will resize themselves so they can be wielded properly by anyone. Enchanted armor will also resize itself to fit comfortably on someone no matter what. Some examples below:
  • When the goblin Jugem slew the zombified troll Guu, he took the troll's greatsword for his own use. Since the greatsword was a magical weapon, it shrunk down to a more manageable size.
  • When Ainz kills the Beastman bafolk warlord Buser in volume 12, he gives Buser's magical armor to his temporary squire Neia. The armor which was previously worn by a demi-human far larger than most humans shrank down to fit comfortably on a slim young woman.
  • The Guardian Armor, one of the Re-Estize Kingdom's National Treasures, was first seen worn by Warrior Captain Gazef Stronoff. Much later it is worn by Prince Zanac as he prepares to fight the Sorcerer Kingdom in a futile last stand. Zanac even notes that the armor being magical is the only way it could still fit him, especially since he's actually gained weight due to stress-eating.
• In Rebuild World, augmented suits are made of a special elastic metal weave that starts at a default size, but it can stretch or shrink based on data input to fit anyone.

Comic Books

• Batman: 5'8", 145 lbs Tim Drake wearing a Batsuit fitted for the 6'2", 210 lbs Bruce Wayne in Battle for the Cowl.
  • Interestingly, in Knightfall, when Tim gives Jean-Paul a Batsuit, Tim mentions that it's one fitted for him and that the original one worn by Bruce is on injured reserved.
• Averted in Harley's Little Black Book. Harley Quinn knocks out Wonder Woman and steals her costume, but then realizes that she's too short and lacks Wonder Woman's Amazonian bust. To get the costume to fit properly, she ends up having to use tape.

Fan Works

• Redemption in the Stars has a minor aversion: a Universal Translator designed for a batarian doesn't fit in ears of human Courier Ethan Sunderland, forcing him to purchase one from a human-run shop.

Films — Live-Action

• Parodied in the first Austin Powers like so many other things are. Austin and Vanessa follow two uniformed security guards who very obviously are completely different sizes and body types than either of them, brief sounds of scuffle ensue out of sight, and they come out wearing perfectly fitting uniforms.
• Birds of Prey (2020) features a piece of body armor which somehow magically fits the relatively svelte Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and the decidedly more full-figured Detective Montoya (Rosie Perez) perfectly.
• Downplayed in Ever After: Danielle repeatedly steals Marguerite's dresses to disguise herself as a courtier, and while the improbable fact that her stepsister's clothes fit her perfectly is never mentioned, Danielle does comment that "the shoes are too big," and she ends up wearing her ordinary servants' shoes to court.
• At the finale of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the Spengler kids and their friends don some of Egon's old Ghostbuster jumpsuits that they found in his hidden lab before going out to bust some ghosts. The jumpsuits, meant for a 6' tall man in late middle age, fit perfectly on two twelve year olds, a fifteen year old boy and a seventeen year old girl.
• In Hussar Ballad, Shura takes Vincento Salgari's uniform for her disguise to infiltrate the French camp. Though she is several inches shorter and has a different build, it apparently magically shrinks in-between the scenes and is shown to be a perfect fit.
• Pointed out in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of Space Mutiny. Hero David Ryder steals an Enforcer uniform, which fits perfectly despite Ryder being about half a foot taller and considerably more muscular. As Crow says, "So, he fits into a suit that was restrictive on a really small man?"
• In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne steals one of the warden's suits prior to his escape from the prison. Andy is quite a bit taller than the warden, yet the suit fits him perfectly.
• In Species Sil steals clothes from a female train conductor to blend in, yet somehow the overweight, middle-aged woman's clothes fit perfectly on Natasha Henstridge's model body.
• In Stage Beauty, Maria steals Ned Kynaston's dress to wear to dinner at the palace. Kynaston, being a man, has broad shoulders and a large torso, and Maria is much smaller than he is, yet the dress fits like it was made for her.

Literature

• Enforced in A Brother's Price: When Jerin and his sisters have nothing suitable to wear at the royal court, a team of tailors solve the problem by altering clothes that other people commissioned, but then refused to pay for. It's easier than making new clothes from scratch.
• In the Discworld novels, the Ankh-Morpork City Watch and the Borogravian First of Foot have uniforms described as "one size doesn't quite fit anyone", although extreme examples such as trolls do get custom uniforms (Sergeant Detritus of the Watch has a breastplate that was repurposed from war elephant armour, while Private Carborundum gets painted in Borogravian army colours).
• Averted in Dragon Blood: Tisala escapes from being tortured, and as she was stripped beforehand, she steals some clothes. After walking some miles in ill-fitting shoes, her feet look exactly like you'd expect them to look, namely, very bad.
• In Dragon Bones, Ward inherits his fathers ring, that gives him ownership over the family ghost/slave Oreg. After Ward has put the ring on, Oreg tells him that he can only take it off in the hour of his death. Apparently the ring has never been too small for any owner, and shrinks after you put it on.
• In the official novelization of Iron Man, Colonel Rhodes doesn't just look at Tony Stark's Mk. II armor and decide "Next time, baby"; he decides Tony might need his help out there; he goes for it; he... physically can't get the helmet more than halfway down before he risks getting himself hurt. ("Damn.")
• In a possible model for this trope, the titular Rings of Power from The Lord of the Rings are capable of altering their size fit their present owner (and to treacherously slip off their finger).
  • In the movie, when Isildur picks up the ring after destroying Sauron, it actually shrinks in his hand.
• In The Neverending Story, Auryn, the Childlike Empress' amulet was worn easily by a centaur, two boys, and a large luck dragon, all around their necks. The Childlike Empress also wears it, but she is the god of the world, so that can be justified.
• Saintess Summons Skeletons: Sofia is a little surprised that the Clothier needs to measure her feet to supply shoes. He tells her that it's possible for shoes to magically resize themselves, but it would cost extra.
• A Song of Ice and Fire. Tyrion Lannister has a custom-made suit of armor for his dwarf body, but it's back at Casterley Rock so whenever he needs armor he has to make do with what is available, leading to an ungainly combination that still manages to save his life.
• Averted in Thinks by David Lodge (Writer). When Helen visits the Messengers' rural retreat, she borrows Wellington boots to go for a walk; and being wealthy and hospitable, they have several sizes for visitors to choose from, rather than them happening to be a good fit.

Live-Action TV

• Arrow
  • Despite being noticeably shorter than Oliver Queen, in "Public Enemy" Roy Harper has no problem dressing up as the Arrow and surrendering to the police to clear Oliver from suspicion.
  • Averted in "Left Behind" where John Diggle poses as the Arrow and Laurel Lance as the Canary. Diggle complains that his costume is too tight and later switches to plainclothes, while Laurel just wears a different costume with the same wig and Domino Mask.
• Batwoman (2019). Much is made of the Batsuit being a multi-million one-of-a-kind high technology superhero outfit, yet in the pilot episode Kate Kane has no problem modifying it on short notice to fit her feminine frame despite it being constructed for a presumably larger man. In Season 2, Ryan Wilder finds the suit and dons it without Luke Fox being available to alter it.
• In Buffy the Vampire Slayer flashback Spike steals his leather coat from a dead Slayer, who naturally is much smaller than him, and who wears quite form-fitting clothing. The coat visibly grows between scenes when he pulls it off her.
• In Quantum Leap, it's established (usually) that Sam Beckett is leaping around in time in his own body, and he merely takes on the appearance or "physical aura" of the person he's leaped into. Despite this, his hosts' clothes always fit him perfectly, even when he leaps into people much smaller than he is. In one of the comics, Al mentions that the project programmer, Gooshie, has considered the problem and theorized that the leap causes a disturbance in the molecular structure of the clothes, making them unstable. Sam considers this theory for a moment and concludes, "Gooshie reads too many comic books."
• The Seinfeld episode "The Raincoats" has a button-up shirt originally owned by the short and stocky Frank fit the tall, slender Kramer perfectly. Season 9's "The Bookstore" averts it, in the cold open where Kramer (among many other things) puts on one of Jerry's (similar in build, but a good 3-4 inches shorter) suits and pretends to do a stand-up set. The suit is noticeably too small for him.

Tabletop Games

• BattleTech plays this trope ridiculously straight when it comes to Battle Armor. The Elemental Battle Armor worn by the Clans' genetically engineered, eight foot tall, musclebound infantry troopers was in canon able to be operated by Kai Allard-Liao, who was barely taller than five feet and slender of build, thanks to the use of "platforms" in the boots and "extensions" in the arms. Later forms of Battle Armor would have write ups that mention they were constructed specifically to allow wearers of a variety of sizes to fit in them.
• The tabletop Dungeons & Dragons both uses and avoids this. Armor and clothing are treated realistically, as individual pieces can't be worn by someone the wrong size and/or shape (a halfling can't wear chain mail designed for an orc). However, many magical items (aside from weapons) are explicitly stated as resizing themselves based on the user, so a giant can wear a normally human-sized magical ring, and a tiefling with goat hooves could wear a pair of magical boots.
  • Characters can typically use a weapon that is one size off of theirs with a penalty. For example, in 3.5 at least, one could use a "large" short sword, long sword, rapier, etc. with a -2 attack roll penalty.
  • Plate mail also only fits the character it was made for and has to be "fitted" to be worn by someone else. This is actually unrealistic; with adjustable straps it's possible to make a plate armour that will accommodate a fairly wide variety of people, as long as they aren't very far off from the average size in height or weight. It won't fit as perfectly as armour made by your measures, but grand majority of the Medieval soldiers and knights had no trouble using such equipment. Every LARPer or reenactment participant that has worn plate mail can attest to this, as the armors worn are just a little lighter than the real thing, and usually one tries a friend armor before buying ones own.
    • This also varies heavily by edition, with some saying to not worry about it, some requiring a massive fee almost the cost of creating a new set, and some allowing anything to change size as long as it's magic.
  • This can get beyond ridiculous at times, when the rules suggest specific magical items created for colossal dragons (like tail-guards and horn-covers) which will change shape entirely to fit the analogous part of a humanoid.
  • However, many video games based on D&D dispense with these rules,meaning you can freely swap that plate mail suit between a seven foot tall half-orc and a three foot halfling.
    • This makes sense though, since the designers want you allow players to roll up characters of different race/gender combos, it would take a lot more programming to whip up random items with a decent chance of actually being used rather than sold.
  • Earlier editions—up to 2d edition AD&D—were heavy aversions. One supplement had a chart for a percentage chance of swapping armour between species, and an additional modifier when gender comes into play. And reminded the DM that Rule Zero still applied, so they should definitely remind the 6' barbarian heroic human built like a square of muscle that he's not going to have any chance at all putting on the magic chainmail from the dead female elf.
  • 5th edition plays this trope straight by default ("within the bounds of common sense"), but has an optional variant rule requiring armor to be custom-fit to the character before it can be used.
• Averted in GURPS armor for characters larger that a normal human is heavier and more expensive. Some ultra-tech armor will resize itself within limits.
• Played straight in Magic: The Gathering, where those Swiftfoot Boots can be equipped to any creature card, ranging from humans to elves to snakes to fish to spiders to dragons... Justified in the meta sense since printing rules on each card about what creature types can and can't use a piece of equipment would overwhelm a single card.
• Averted in Shadowrun when armour for dwarves is actually more expensive than armour for humans, because 90% of the population are human so dwarves often need to order specially and end up paying as much as trolls. The same is true of vehicles, guns, you name it. (Well, guns are less of an issue for dwarves, but trolls still need them customised)
• The boardgame Talisman has armour that will fit anyone from a sprite or a dwarf up to a minotaur, a troll, or even a centaur. The minotaur cannot wear a helmet; a few other characters are debarred from armour use for arcane reasons, but none because it simply does not fit. What's more, if the troll picks up armour that the sprite was wearing it fits just fine and is fully effective with no adjustment whatever.

Web Comics

• Averted and lampshaded in this Awkward Zombie comic, as the Tauren from the WoW example above learns the hard way.
• Similarly to the above, this is averted and lampshaded in Castlevania RPG, and in addition Link spells out why this trope doesn't plausibly work.
• Dollar and Wolfe: "it's magic, it fits everyone"
• Amusingly Subverted in Girl Genius when circumstances lead Agatha to try and steal the clothes from a male guard, she can't fit into his pants, which Dimo points out was never going to happen with her generous posterior.
  Dimo: Dun be ridiculous. Hyu gots vay too moch Heterodyne ham for doze pants.
• Goblins generally averts this trope; size modifiers have been discussed in relation to large weapons, and the goblins sometimes reject human-sized gear if it's unusable to them. The Axe of Prissan and the suit of armor associated with it notably play this trope straight, justified by the fact that they're magical and designed to reshape themselves to suit the needs of whoever uses them.
• There are special suits of clothing in El Goonish Shive that fit this. It is justified in that they were designed to be worn by shapeshifters, which can change body size considerably.
• In Gunnerkrigg Court Annie made boots as a gift, so she had to compensate for lack of bootmaking experience and lack of measures with excess of magical skill. It works.

Web Original

• Cracked Photoplasty advertises one-size-fits-all armor for entry #6 in "26 Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games".

Western Animation

• The Adventures of Puss in Boots features magical artifacts that vary on if one size fits all is included in their set of powers. While a magic gauntlet doesn't causing Puss to get stuck inside it, a pair of magic boots does, and even lets him wear the boots on top of the boots he already wears. A magic crown designed for The Chosen One will only shrink to fit said chosen one.
• Batman Beyond: The high-tech Batsuit Bruce Wayne built to compensate for his declining physical prowess is used by Terry McGinnnis twenty years later, despite Terry's distinctly slimmer build. Given it's high-tech nature, self-refitting is a plausible function.
• The Trollhunter armor from Trollhunters. The first time Jim summons it, it summons at the size it was for Kanjigar, but then quickly resizes to fit Jim better.
• Transformers: Prime: The Apex Armor is a suit of ancient Power Armor crafted by Solus Prime that is usually just a small chest piece. When placed on a cybertonian body it extends armor that adjusts to the wearers size and body shape. In season 3, we find out that it is even compatible with humans, though it doesn't shrink below a certain size.

Real Life

• The best armors in history were always bespoke and made to measure, but for the majority of soldiers in times and places in which a lot of armor was worn, armorers also made off-the-shelf munition sets in volume that could fit different people with the same general build, sometimes with the help of some slight modification. You might be able to get a breastplate that's a bit too big to fit better with some extra padding, or add a couple of patches to a mail hauberk or fabric gambeson to expand its girth. You could only take this so far, however, especially with pieces of plate armor such as the greaves which require a very precise anatomical fit in order to work properly. Armor that really doesn't fit is no good at all, since a set that's way too big will weigh you down with unnecessary metal and fit too poorly for the load to rest on the right parts of your body, while you would only hurt yourself by trying to squeeze into pieces that are too small.

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