Basic Trope: A cartoon animal who doesn’t wear shoes and/or socks, but is otherwise fully dressed.
- Straight: Dirk the Deer wears a jacket, t-shirt, and jeans, but doesn't wear any shoes.
- Exaggerated:
- No animals in the work wear any shoes.
- Shoes aren't even established to exist in this setting.
- Dirk doesn't even wear anything at all on his lower half.
- Downplayed: Dirk only wears open-toed footwear, such as sandals.
- Justified:
- The shape of Dirk's hooves probably wouldn't allow for him to wear shoes properly.
- Dirk Prefers Going Barefoot, or lives in a society that does.
- Dirk doesn't need to wear shoes, at least not to protect his hooved feet.
- Dirk's friend Gary the Gorilla also doesn't wear any shoes because they'd get in the way of him using his feet to grab things.
- Dirk’s other friend Evelyn the Eagle also doesn’t wear shoes because her clawed feet would tear apart said shoes.
- Dirk is very poor and cannot afford to buy shoes.
- Animal society never had the impetus to invent shoes.
- Inverted:
- The animals wear shoes, but the people don't.
- Or the animals wear nothing but shoes.
- Subverted: Dirk owns a pair of shoes.
- Double Subverted: But he never wears them, they're just for display.
- Parodied: Dirk tries to put on shoes... and his feet instantly reject them.
- Zig-Zagged: Some animals in the work wear shoes, but some don't.
- Averted:
- All of the animals also wear shoes.
- To add to that, each of the animals' shoes are tailor made for them.
- There are no funny animals in the work.
- All of the animals also wear shoes.
- Enforced:
- Animals' feet are easier to draw than shoes.
- Alternatively, it's a potential Furry Reminder.
- Deer hooves are shaped rather differently than a human's feet, and the creators of the work couldn't find a way to put shoes on him without it looking uncomfortable or modifying the shape of his hooves altogether.
- Lampshaded: "Why do we not wear shoes? Our feet will get more dirty until the fur doesn't look like itself at all."
- Invoked: The mayor of the city decides to have a law that bans shoes.
- Exploited: Dirk is in a fight, and his lack of shoes make him an easy target for Agony of the Feet.
- Defied: Dirk decides to buy a pair of shoes.
- Discussed: "Have you ever noticed that shoe stores are always going out of business in this town?"
- Conversed: "Why don't any of the animals ever wear shoes?"
- Played for Laughs: Dirk doesn't wear shoes. The other animals find this quite distracting or gross, but Dirk is comically oblivious to their remarks.
- Played for Drama: Dirk is on a quest, but suffers a Heroic RRoD because he did not protect himself from the harsh terrain.
- Deconstructed: Due to having no shoes, the animals are a lot more prone to Agony of the Feet.
- Reconstructed: As a result, they start wearing more downplayed forms of footwear, such as foot bandages.
Back to Barefoot Cartoon Animal
