

God, it SUCKS to be Shinji...

Dr. Venture: Why are you naked?

Brock: To prey on their fear, to move like an animal, to feel the kill!

Armor Is Useless? Why stop there? Why wear anything into battle? Anyone can be tough in Powered Armor, but it takes either a really badass hero or a really depraved villain to fight in the nude.

The motivation for this tend to be different for heroes and villains. For villains, it's usually done for creepiness; instead of being silly or titillating it comes off as really, really scary. The nudity emphasizes brutality and aggression instead of being sexy. It can also indicate that the villain doesn't care at all what people think about him. He left normal human behavior, like modesty and shame, behind him, or maybe he has an Übermensch-complex. Or, very creepy indeed, that bloodshed turns him on, not to mention speculations about what might happen to someone who gets overpowered by a villain who already enjoys fighting/stalking them naked... In any event, the naked villain generally is a Badass non-coat.

Naked heroes generally don't really have a motivation because they generally don't choose to do it; when a good guy fights in the nude it's usually out of necessity, from their clothes being stolen or destroyed. This is why a naked hero tends to come off as badass, while a naked villain usually comes off as insane.

For both alignments, nakedness can be associated with innocence and nature. The hero may be one with nature, while the villain isn't really human, more like a predatory animal or a natural disaster, see the fifth variant of True Neutral.

Another part is that it seems reckless to go naked in the face of carnage or combat. It implies that the character is so powerful he doesn't need armor, or they just don't care about defence.

See also Evil Is Sexy for villains who wear just enough...

Not to be confused with military frontal assault, or anything of the kind done by Neo Zeon forces. Also not to be confused with Informed Equipment, the trope formerly known as Fight in The Nude.

Oh, and a side note. When someone does this, its a good sign that they might be a Shameless Fanservice Girl.

Has nothing to do with the Char Clone from Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn. Who never pulled this in canon either, as far as one's aware.


Anime & Manga

  • Lucy from Elfen Lied, who, after having escaped from an underground vault where she was kept in a full body straitjacket chained to a steel cage, spends her first scene wearing nothing but a helmet, killing people left and right very messily.
  • Greece references this a lot to Japan, and one can assume he has done it.
  • Mamiko Kuri from Narutaru likes to go around naked and kills her rapists in the manga while only wearing a short school blouse, no panties or skirt there.
  • Seems like Incognito of the Hellsing TV series belongs here? We never see him with even a stitch of clothing on, and most of the time he is fighting or planning to fight Alucard. Granted, he barely looks like a human and has no genitalia...
  • Knives does this a few times in Trigun and Trigun Maximum. Made even more disturbing by the connotations of twincesty rape at the end of the Trigun manga.
  • Mistress Centipede from Inuyasha whose breasts is clearly exposed in the anime. Also, Naraku. However, Naraku is only shown undressed when the lower portion of his body is covered in demons, he usually wears a pelt or robe of some kind, particularly with his newer form.
  • The Darkness of the Book of Darkness in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha As. Since Reinforce Eins wears black leather, this was probably the only way to make her dark side more evil-looking.
  • Berserk: The first time we meet Zodd, he's standing butt-naked and knee-deep in the corpses of Hawk members.
  • Crying Freeman, as part of its unintentionally hilarious portrayal of the criminal underworld. Apparently there is an unwritten rule among professional assassins that you cannot have a showdown without stripping first.
  • Jo in Burst Angel. Though given her features, or lack thereof, it looks like she's wearing a nude bodysuit.
  • Two characters have a nude final confrontation at the end of Paprika. Mercifully, one has Barbie Doll Anatomy.
  • In Katekyo Hitman Reborn!, Ghost -- who is the Big Bad Byakuran's trump card -- walks onto a raging battlefield naked, scarring and stunning even his own allies into wide-eyed fear. Apparently, it isn't his lack of clothes that got them horrified...
  • In Saint Seiya, Seiya attacks Gemini Saga, which only destroys the Pope robe he's wearing; Saga ends up naked, in the shadows. Yeah, he dons his armor a few seconds after, but seeing him naked in the shadows during these seconds is pretty intimidating.
  • A voluntary heroic example in Madlax. In episode 16, the title Action Girl throws her white dress away and then attacks the goons out to get her and Vanessa.
  • Heroic example in Mahou Sensei Negima, when Fake!Asuna aka Shiori gets her clothes blasted off by a disarming spell and attacks anyway, because she's used to the Clothing Damage at this point. It doesn't work. It should be noted that she was completely channeling Asuna's personality and especially memories. Simply put, Asuna has been stripped so often, she stopped caring about it
    • Also, Homura, one of Fate's minions, tends to do this often whenever she transforms into a fire spirit, which results in her entire outfit being promptly incinerated.
    • Dynamis briefly does this after causing his clothes to explode and making everyone go "WTF?!". After one or two attacks, he clothes himself in massive battle armor.
  • Heroic version, Played for Laughs: Rebuild of Evangelion repeats the "toothpick" scene from the original series and 1.0 in 2.0 with Asuka instead of Shinji, with Misato's beer cans (and a plastic straw) instead of said 'picks. He's washing the dishes, then turns and sees her naked. And the trope happens.
    • That actually happened "earlier" (sorta), in the first Girlfriend of Steel game, during a brief attack on Tokyo 3. Shinji was staring through his window and Asuka was taking a shower; she had no idea that Shinji was at home so she ran outta the bathroom and to the balcony in the buff to see what was going on, but the enemy left extremely fast and she had no time to retrieve her clothes or a towel. As pictured above, Asuka then realised Shinji was at home and right behind her and kicked him to the face.
  • Heroic example: Gray from Fairy Tail is pretty prone to these. Even while in the Guild he can suddenly and inexplicably end up naked, and it always surprises him.
  • Voluntary heroic example: Kekko Kamen. Fight crime while wearing boots, gloves and a mask... and nothing else.
  • In Code Geass, Suzaku is wandering through a forest when he sees his classmate Kallen (who's secretly a member of the Order of Black Knights) showering in a waterfall. He makes the mistake of revealing his presence; she instantly grabs her uniform, whips out a knife and charges.
  • Gyoubu from Basilisk not only strangles people to death in the nude, he spends most of his screen time like that. His ninja ability allows him to fuse with his surroundings as long as he is naked.
  • In the final arc of the original manga of Riki Oh, the first confrontation between Riki and Mukai involves the latter completely naked...and completely dispassionate. The (accurate) impression is that Mukai has no interest in acceding to human desires and/or expectations. Since he also sleeps that way (and no, he didn't have any company), the point is pretty obviously that when Riki came calling, he didn't adjust any part of his routine for him.
  • In Claymore the awakened beings fight naked, justified because their monstrous forms are too large or inhumanly-shaped for human clothes. Examples of this happening when they are "human" include...
    • Riful is explicitly shown stripping before action so as not to ruin her clothes. Her lover Dauf apparently does this as well.
    • Agatha appears as a naked woman connected to a giant monster by her hair. Although technically the naked woman part isn't her real body.
    • The "Abyss Feeders" are monstrous yoma shaped into a human form. They appear as mindless, almost-naked women with their mouths and eyes sewn shut and possess ridiculous regeneration abilities. They can usually heal damage to their bodies as fast as their opponents can inflict it and only a well-aimed blow to the head can kill them outright. Since their scant clothes cannot regenerate, when fighting they will inevitably end up completely stark naked given enough time.
    • Priscilla also does this when fighting in awakened form [2] and quite often in her human form too [3].
  • A bit of Fridge Logic applied to the kishin in Soul Eater leads to the conclusion that the clothing he's seen wearing throughout the entire series is, in fact, still his own stretched out skin from when he was Naked on Arrival.
  • In the Sailor Moon anime, Moon faces her final enemy in the nude with her soul displayed on her chest.
  • In Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple: Shigure encountered a few assassins in the hotspring during the trip with Kenichi in an attempt to break him out of his Heroic BSOD.
  • Tomoe from Queen's Blade first appearance.
  • Major Motoko Kusanagi of Ghost in the Shell does this because of necessity - her cyborg body's invisibility does not affect clothes, which is quite logical for a Sci Fi series.
    • Batou is always there to hand her a coat when she's done kicking ass, though.
      • While it does look the part, she is not naked. She wears a VERY skintight, thin thermo optical camosuit, that can only be seen by the neckline (it´s more pale then her skin), and has to be accompanied by a headpiece with the same capabilitys. You cannot see her nipples with this suit on, where indeed you can in the opening.
  • Invoked in Cyborg 009, when local Rubber Man 007 uses his powers to grow many times his size and attack some mutated animals charging against him, 006 and 009. In the 2001 series, he's in a loincloth; in the original manga, he's naked.
  • Maria from the Witchblade anime when transformed with a Cloneblade.
  • Happens to both Toshihiko and Kazuma near the end of Kemonozume due to Clothing Damage.
  • Rare heroic example: Kei, the local Action Girl in Getter Robo: Armaggedon, pulls this right after an Out-of-Clothes Experience in which she finds the equally naked Go. Who actually is her older brother. Sort of.. After this incident, she hops into her mecha in the buff and immediately attacks the enemy, curbstomping all of them.
  • Luffy in the Amazon Lily arc. After he faints from eating a poisonous mushroom and mistaken for a female by the all women inhabitants, he awakens completely naked in a cell right in front of the curious populace (since most have never seen a man before). One asks what those "balls in his lower regions" are which Luffy responds as "Kintama" a.k.a "Balls of Gold".
  • Genji Ikusabe's kakugane ability gives him a near-instant Healing Factor as long as he's holding onto his spear. At one point during his fight with Papillion, his entire body is destroyed (along with his clothing,) leading to him regenerating and spending the rest of the fight stark naked.
  • Heroic example in the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann movie: Lordgenome, the former Big Bad, fights the final enemy naked while in his mech - thankfully, he has a flame of Spiral energy censoring his weiner. Justified, as he was an Oracular Head who recently had his body recreated.
    • Earlier, in the Hot Springs Episode, the main characters are enjoying a hot sauna bath when suddenly the whole facility turns out to be an enemy mech in disguise; intended to lure them in and catch the off-guard. Most of the rest of the episode then consists of the team fighting ninja/bunny girls and robots while buff naked. In most scenes, only a few, very obvious, Scenery Censor placements kept the naughty bits out of view. When Viral arrives moments later to duel Kamina, he breaks off his intro speech in order to tell them to Please Put Some Clothes On.
  • In Dragon Ball GT, Goku's clothes are blasted off and he remarks that he doesn't really mind fighting naked, but Pan insists that he put some clothes on. The villain even pauses their fight so Goku can do this! Played for laughs, of course.
    • Even before this, in Dragonball, Goku was fully prepared to fight an opponent naked after all of his clothes were destroyed by his Oozaru transformation. Luckily, Krillin was there to convince him to borrow his uniform before resuming the match.
      • Alien anatomy aside, once Frieza reaches his 4th form he plays this trope straight. Oddly, nobody comments on it, though it may have been because they were terrified by his sudden switch from Axe Crazy to Tranquil Fury.
  • Episode 4 of the Patlabor OAV series had a scene where most of the SV2 members were in a communal bath, when the water on the men's side suddenly turned red. Everyone on that side screamed, to which Kanuka Clancy responded by jumping out of the bath, running over to the men's side, and pointing a gun through the doorway. (Yes, she had a gun with her even when in the bath.) Noa Izumi is the one to tell her to please put a towel on.
  • A hentai OVA, called F-Force, featured the hero and his female fighters finishing the Big Bad off completely naked. No Barbie Doll Anatomy, naturally.
  • Detective Conan sometimes has a case where the murderer has no evidence on their clothes due to having killed naked. One case's main evidence of the murderer was a picture of a mole on the collar bone. But no suspect had such a mole. Turns out the murderer killed naked and the 'mole' was actually a blood drop.
  • In the Magic Knight Rayearth OVA, the three Magic Knights pilot their Masshin in the nude. Made much less fanservicy than you'd think due to the horrifying injuries they get as well.
  • In Devilman Lady, the heroine does this all the time, due to her transformation destroying her clothing and her genital areas being devoid of detail, especially in the anime.
    • In the original Devilman, Akira would do the same and for the same reason whenever he turned into Devilman. The first TV series gave him a speedo.

Comic Books

  • Zarda in Supreme Power. After awakening from a centuries-long dormant state, she wandered into some Italian city, stole some clothes and killed everyone who got in her way (with a lance she broke off a statue, no less).
    • The Amphibian, a mutant Wild Child who lives in the ocean and doesn't wear clothes, killed a man who shot at her after she saved his drowning girlfriend (he thought the Amphibian tried to kill her).
    • Doc Spectrum's crystal once took control of him at night and had him confront one of his government superiors naked, because that's how he sleeps.
  • Very oddly lampshaded in the last regular issue of Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew, when Gorilla Grodd attacks Earth-C. Grodd looks exactly like he normally does in Flash comics: a realistically-drawn gorilla. To the cartoon animal population of Earth-C, though, it's a Full-Frontal Assault and makes him all the more horrible.
  • In his Sin City graphic novel appearance, the Yellow Bastard is fully nude during his final fight with Hartigan. Given boxers in the movie.
  • Ultimate Spider-Man loves this trope, though it usually tends to be out of necessity or accidental. For example, Sandman can't turn his clothes into sand, and Electro and the Hobgoblin burn right through their clothes.
  • Blade gets a reference. It's invoked accidentally when some vampires bust in on the title hero sleeping in the nude. Naturally they crap themselves when he suddenly awakens. Backup comes, but naked Blade tears them to pieces too.
  • In Secret Six, Catman spends an issues-spanning flashback running around naked (the better to show off his wicked cool scar) and expressing his displeasure towards the poachers that killed some lions. Seeing as this involves teaming up with the surviving lions and forcing the poachers to walk blindfolded through a field of their own traps, he is indeed scary enough to qualify for this trope.
    • In a later issue he beats up some guards at a zoo while starkers.
  • Played with in the Titans of Tomorrow arcs of Teen Titans, which features such such curiosities as Robin as a gun-wielding Batman; Superboy as a Superman who calls Lex Luthor "Pa"; and Beast Boy as a feral, nudist Animal Man!
  • Parodied in The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. Back in the 1960's, when airline security was very casual, the Brothers take a plane trip with a carry-on bag full of marijuana. First a hijacker takes over the plane, then a second hijacker overpowers the first, then a third one takes over... eventually, Franklin strips naked and screams, "Take us back to Nashville or I will DESTROY US ALL with what I have in this bag!" (After they make it down safely, they turn down a TV interview, saying, "We gotta go get destroyed.")
  • In The Umbrella Academy, Vanya is transformed into a nude White Violin.
  • Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan is an unusual case. The nudity symbolizes his detachment from the human race, as well as emphasizing his utter invulnerability: nothing can hurt him, so why bother covering up? The only times he bothers to get dressed are at the request of others.
  • Father, the first villain of Warren Ellis's run on Stormwatch. As if being a mass-murdering Implacable Man with no flesh on his face who quotes Nietzsche while killing people isn't unsettling enough, he is also naked, probably as a result of being an Artificial Human recently escaped from the base of his creator.
  • An issue of H.K., a comic by French creators Jean-David Morvan and Trantkat, features group of naked cybernetic women slaughtering the characters... in explicit detail, from a variety of angles.
  • Wolverine did this a bunch during the time he was experimented upon at Weapon X, in part to show how he was being dehumanized to the point where human decency wasn't relevant.
  • And in the Wolverine comic Get Mystique, the titular shapeshifter morphs away her clothes for no apparent reason before loading up with heavy weaponry and going into the final battle wearing an ammo belt and a Slasher Smile.
  • A Hulk comic from the 90s, where right after beating the hell out of Captain America, the savage Hulk had a particularly brutal fight with Thor, all while completely naked. The Hulk won.
  • In an issue of Uncanny X-Men, Rogue and Wolverine ended up in Genosha naked and tried to fight their way out like that.
  • In Slaine (a 2000 AD story), going into battle "skyclad" is only one of a number of outré battle customs used by Slainé Mac Roth's tribe to demonstrate their fierceness and unnerve the enemy.
  • Happens all the time in Crossed and its spinoffs, due to the Crossed being completely Ax Crazy, not to mention rape crazy.
  • The Savage Dragon frequently fights naked due to being Nigh Invulnerable but not having Magic Pants.
  • In his last moments before he got shot, Joe Ridgeway of Locke and Key leapt naked out of his bathtub quoting Shakespeare and hitting the Big Bad with a rocks glass.
  • In the "The Collective" arc of New Avengers (vol. 1), Alaskan mutant Michael Pointer is literally possessed by the vengeful spirit of a dead Chinese mutant who idolizes Magneto, who also happens to drag along the power sets of all the mutants who were depowered on M-Day. After the initial explosion, which destroys his entire home town, he starts walking to the lower 48 across Canada, obliviously destroying anything and anybody in his path. Throughout the four-issue arc, he is starkers -- his clothes were burnt off right at the start. At one point, he grows to giant size.
  • Burnout of Gen 13 once ended up in this situation when he saw an airplane going out of control and used his fire powers to fly up there, accidentally incinerating his swim trunks in the process.
  • The Silver Surfer is always naked, although he doesn't possess any visible genitals.
  • After Hera finds out that Zeus had an affair with Queen Hippolyta, and thus is Wonder Woman's father, she angrily attacks Queen Hippolyta with an axe while wearing nothing but her peacock-feather cape.
  • In one Knights of the Dinner Table storyline, one of the guys runs Sara's character in her absence. After Brian points out that lightening the character's encumbrance lets her attack faster, they carry this to its logical conclusion by having her charge into battle naked carrying nothing but her weapon. This works for a while, but ultimately gets the character killed. Sara is not amused.

Fan Works

  • In Stealth Parody fanfic Batman: Nemesis Fight by Peter Chimaera, Catwoman pretends to have switched sides so she can have sex with Batman. But then she reveals "That was a trick. I am not good like I said. I am always evil!!" and fights Batman and Robin naked.
  • In the Naruto fanfiction With Heart and Underwear of Fire, Itachi does this in order to fight Naruto's alter ego Boxer-sama.
  • Played for Laughs in I'm a Marvel And I'm a DC, in the Deadpool/Watchmen episode. Deadpool was not expecting Dr. Manhattan to do this, and the segment between the two takes about two, three seconds:

 Deadpool: Hi, I'm a Marv-- (suddenly looks down and to his right) WHOA! (static cutaway)

Films - Live Action

  • Every Terminator, obviously.
  • Pinbacker from Sunshine. Made worse as he's covered in 3rd degree burns.
  • The space vampires from Lifeforce.
  • Weir from Event Horizon, who shows up bald, scarred-up and freaky for the final showdown in the gravity chamber.
  • In Eastern Promises, Viggo Mortenson's Badass Nikolai Luzhin is attacked by two knife-wielding mobsters in a bathhouse. He's badly hurt, but you should see the other guys.
  • Patrick Bateman from American Psycho will run after you naked with a chainsaw -- provided you let him keep his tennis shoes on.
  • The inhabitant of room 237 in the film version of The Shining.
  • In the 2007 Beowulf film, after listening to the Queen perform a song, Beowulf begins casually stripping naked in front of her. When questioned about it, he tells her that because Grendel is naked he will fight him naked. Her reaction is priceless. He then goes on to battle Grendel naked as the day he was born.
  • Heroic version in X-Men Origins: Wolverine when Weapon X turns on his creators.
  • Black Mask 2: City of Masks: Chameleon's ability to blend into her surroundings almost completely at will combined with inhuman speed and strength gives her an obvious (though not apparent) advantage in hand-to-hand combat. This ability does not apply to her clothes, but she is determined to use it to fight the many people she considers her enemy, so Chameleon charges into her fights already invisible, and naked. This is the major source of fanservice in the movie.
  • A blink-and-you-miss-it scene in Cthulhu. As the apocalypse begins we see people stripping off their clothes and/or rioting as the protagonists drive down the road; one of them is armed with an assault rifle (the soccer mum who opens up on them with an MP5 moments later is fully clothed though).
  • In the French film La Guerre des Boutons - and the Irish R Emake The War of the Buttons, the boys of two villages are at war. When somebody is captured, they cut off the buttons of his clothing. To avoid this, in one battle the boys attack naked.
  • In The Hangover, Leslie Chong leaps out of the trunk of their car butt naked while attacking them with a crowbar.
  • Alice Tseng's character in the Taiwanese movie Ninja: The Final Duel (later edited into 'Shaolin Dolemite') fights off enemies after leaping out of a bath.
  • In Duel to the Death, some female ninjas whip off their clothes to force a shaolin monk to avert his eyes and be captured.
  • In the French movie Le Poulpe, a woman is attacked while bathing, but she hears the thugs coming, so she steps out and greets them with a gun. They comment that she doesn't have the balls to shoot them (and we're presented with an uncensored shot from navel to knee as evidence), until one pisses her off and she shoots him in the foot.
  • Lady Marsh in Lair of the White Worm attacks while nude in the end. The climax features her mostly nude in a Human Sacrifice scene.
  • The killer in crime-slasher mishmash 10 to Midnight commits almost all of his murders (including a Richard Speck-esque attack on a woman's dormitory) while completely naked.
  • Mary Hatchet of Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet commits several murders while nude. More Nightmare Fuel than Fan Service, considering how utterly deranged and creepy she looks, even before becoming a ghost.
  • In the Bruce Willis film Last Man Standing, the main character gets ambushed while he's in bed; his lack of clothes doesn't stop him from slaughtering his attackers.
  • Inverted in the thriller Naked Fear. A serial killer (based on real-life murderer Robert Hansen) kidnaps women and then hunts them through the New Mexico wilderness. He strips them naked to increase their feelings of vulnerability and terror.
  • The film of Watchmen, as per the original graphic novel. The difference is that moviegoers were absolutely transfixed by the glowing blue peen, to the point that it has been elevated to a co-starring role in many viewers' minds.
  • The killer in Halloween Night is beaten up by a naked Lipstick Lesbian.
  • From 1971 comes an obscure Western called Catlow and this scene that is both a played-straight version of this trope and a subversion of Defeat by Modesty (of the "cornered while bathing" variety, not the "strip off clothes while fighting variety"). And yes, that is Mr. Spock kicking ass naked.
  • The title character of Bronson has a tendency to do this, often combined with greasing up to make himself more difficult for the prison guards to subdue. Despite Bronson being played by Tom Hardy, these are not Fan Service moments.
  • The Angry Princess from the 2001 remake 13 Ghosts. Like the other ghosts of the house, she appears as she did in death -- which in her case was brought about by slashing herself with a butcher knife in the bathtub.
  • Happens in kramer vs kramer were Jobeth Williams is full nake infront of young billy and ends up being quizzed by him whilst naked


  • Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.
  • Zabulon from Night Watch in the first part. One Magic Pants-less shift to dragon form and one spell expiration later, he's still swinging at the agents of the Night Watch, trying to get them to break the truce.
  • Discworld's The Fifth Elephant has a literary example in Angua's older brother Wolfgang. Wolfgang has the Übermensch-complex in spades, and an assumption that humans are inferior to Werewolves. He does wear clothes on occasion, such as when attending public events, but when fighting or at home he's always naked.
    • Angua herself did this to a ship full of Klatchians in Discworld/Jingo, being that she chased Ahmed there as a wolf. Ahmed, being the total not-idiot that he is, ignores the assault and proceeds to do go about things as he does.
    • In Interesting Times, Cohen says this is a "sign of a good berserk". "If anyone laughs, stab him one."
  • Heroic example is in a Star Wars Expanded Universe novel: Shatterpoint. Mace Windu is cornered by some Mooks in what is effectively a locker room... who notice to their slight shock that, unlike most people would when confronted naked, he doesn't even flinch.
    • Windu, being the badass that he is, proceedes to beat the shit out of the thugs.
  • A female example is done in the Shanna series.
  • A Dark Tower example: Eddie Dean's Heroic BSOD in The Dark Tower involves shooting the hell out of the office of a mob boss while nude. Roland compliments him later on his courage; apparently, it's hard to be a badass while naked.
    • Another Stephen King instance: one of the more frightening "phone crazies" Clay encounters at the start of Cell is nude except for sneakers and is using car radio antennae as weapons.
  • In Stone of Tears, Kahlan leads a midnight raid on an enemy camp, full of formerly D'Haran soldiers, with her own forces (herself included) naked and painted white, to represent ghosts of an old tribe (which tended to fight naked and aroused) who scared the bejeezus out of D'Harans.
  • A number of Wild Children, such as Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book and Nanga in Jungle-Born (1924) by John Eyton, fight battles with villainous animals while in their accustomed state of nakedness.
  • In Silence of the Lambs, serial killer Buffalo Bill enjoys hunting his victims naked in his darkened basement, and does so when going after the hero, Clarice Starling.
  • A heroic example occurs in Realms of the Gods, where Daine goes after Ozorne in eagle form. This trope comes into play when she changes back to a human: her clothes don't change with her.
  • In the novel Nightfall (based on Isaac Asimov's short story), when the titular climax occurs, many people are driven mad and civilization is turn upside down. After the climax, one of the characters narrowly avoids an encounter with a feralized man who hunts other people for food and who wears nothing but a belt in which he keeps his many knives.
  • Used for comedic suspense in Jim Butcher's Storm Front. Called out of the shower by an escalating series of unexpected guests, Harry Dresden winds up naked in a situation that just keeps getting worse.
    • Dresden takes out a Toad Demon with the dangerous power of a thunderstorm, all while naked and soapy from the shower.
    • Subverted in the third Dresden book, Grave Peril. This time, when Dresden winds up naked -- in a vampire court's laundry room -- he puts on a pair of smiley face boxer shorts before going into battle. An insane vampire-groupie, however, remains unclad.
  • Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure saga has a memorable Full Frontal Assault. Ylin-Ylan is one of the Yao, a people with an extraordinarily strict code of pride and etiquette -- imagine the most exacting dictates of Victorian England melded with the complexities of court life in Ancient Japan. When Ylin-Ylan finally loses it over being slighted in love, she turns up at dinner completely naked, holding a gun and a knife: when she gives up on restraint, she goes all the way.
  • By the end of Lord of the Flies, all of Jack's tribe has discarded their clothing in favor of body paint. This is more of the animalistic type, though -- it's a sign of how far they've broken off from the society they started out in.
  • Played with by a rather large portion of the Aiel cast of The Wheel of Time have absolutely no problem fighting in the nude when necessary. They do, however, have a problem about fighting without their veil.
  • In Steel Rain, one of Nyx Smith's Shadowrun novels, a corporate security officer with a samurai mindset is attacked in her apartment by a huge cyborg and chops him into junk. She then makes an emergency videophone call to alert her company's forces to the attack; it's not until the person she calls reacts to seeing her image that the reader learns she'd been butt-naked all through the fight.
  • In God Emperor of Dune, an army of Face Dancers (shape shifters) ambushes the titular God Emperor by impersonating Duncan Idaho, the leader of his Fish Speaker army. Duncan rectifies this by stripping down. He doesn't actually fight, but he does it mid-battle regardless.
  • The Modesty Blaise novel The Silver Mistress has Modesty strip naked for her final battle with The Dragon. However, it's justified: he's at least as good at hand-to-hand combat as her, and much physically stronger. So she then greases herself up to make herself that much more difficult to get a grip on.
  • Happens to Dorian Hawkmoon in one of Michael Moorcock's novels. It's even on the cover of one paperback edition.
  • Caramon the Warrior of Dragonlance has fought entirely naked on at least on occasion, and frequently wears little more than a Loin Cloth. Being nude doesn't bother him (mostly because he doesn't have anything to be ashamed of), and if you don't have any armor handy, fighting naked is safer than fighting clothed - a piece of loose cloth is something an enemy can grab during a scuffle, or it could get tangled in your weapon, or any number of other things.
  • Paul's sister Alia fights a training machine while naked in Dune Messiah.
  • In Ender's Game, Ender must fight while naked when he's attacked by a bully in the shower.
  • The Ravirn series has the Furies. As living embodiments of Vengeance, they fight without any regard for human values like modesty. Since they're Nigh Invulnerable enough that they don't need armor or protection against the weather, they don't see the point of wearing anything.
  • A battle-to-the-death in Dan Simmons' Hyperion occurs during "the Detective's Tale." Ambushed in bed, Brawne Lamia learns how harrowing - and yet disconcerting to her foes - it is to fight while naked.
  • The Saga of the Noble Dead has the ancient vampire Li'kan, who fights completely naked in the snow and ice high in a mountain range. Being undead, she isn't bothered by the cold.
  • In Flinx Transcendent, Flinx removes his AAnn bodysuit to take a covert dip in a small pond, only to be spotted by an adolescent. He's forced to duel the young reptilian in the nude, to keep it from alerting its parents to his presence on the AAnn homeworld.
  • In the Donjon De Naheulbeuk season 3 novel (and Comic Book Adaptation), the party is ambushed on a river while traveling by boat, but the attackers are greeted by a naked Elf and her bow. She had actually stripped down in anticipation of an ambush, on the basis that she may have to abandon ship (and as a bonus, it allowed her to sunbathe).
  • The universe of Space Captain Smith features Wainscott, the leader of an elite commando team. Wainscott fights naked whenever he can (partly to unnerve his enemies), which is unusual for a combat officer in what is otherwise an Expy of the British Empire. He's possibly a shout-out to Orde Wingate; see the Real Life example below.

Live Action TV

  • The Tattooed Man from Carnivale, to whom the recaps on Television Without Pity refer as Creepy Ugly Naked Tattooed Guy.
  • Tooms, (a mutant character in two episodes of The X-Files season 1) crawls into people's houses, through ducts and plumbing and such, naked. (It was the actor's idea -- he realized it was creepier.)
  • In an episode of Malcolm in the Middle, the cadets at the military school are preparing for a survivalism exercise. Each brags to the next about how few supplies he's taking with him (thermal blanket/hatchet/matches/water tablets, thermal blanket/knife/flint, blanket/knife, etc). Badass cadet Stanley walks in, wearing nothing but camo body paint. "Let's rock."
  • Marbod Whitefalcon (in Yulia Latynina's One Hundred Fields) once took over a castle from inside almost singlehandedly and wearing nothing but his sword; justified in that he was taken prisoner and stripped of all his possessions previously, and didn't have the time to get dressed to preserve the element of surprise after escaping. This whole scene (and the fact that Marbod celebrated by laughing maniacally and eating a chicken while still naked and surrounded by hideously disfigured fresh corpses) still freaked out the Earthman who happened to be in his retinue very much.
  • During the pilot for The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron beats the hell out of several men while completely stark naked.
  • Mock the Week: The round was Wheel of News and the subject was "Burglary". Andy Parsons contribution was to admit to sleeping nude as a tactic should he be burgled, as it would be more intimidating than confronting the burglar in "Paisley pyjamas". At the other end of the scale he said the idea could be improved by confronting the burglar wearing a gimp mask and saying "I'm so glad you came!"
  • In Dollhouse, the first time we ever see Alpha, although he's not attacking anyone, he is naked. Then the camera pans to show us a dead woman and blood all over the floor, implying this trope.
  • La Femme Nikita episode "War" begins with Nikita in the shower when several Red Cell agents come to kill her. She stalks and dispatches them while still nude.
  • In Spartacus: Blood and Sand, the title character and his rival get into a nude wrestling match.
  • The Trinity Killer from Dexter. The first kill we see from him is incredibly creepy and completely naked.
  • Inverted on NCIS, when Tony is awakened by an intruder in his room and Gibbs and Kate rush in, all three drawing their guns. It's an inversion because the intruder is a harmless iguana: a fact that compounds Tony's embarrassment at having his colleagues come at his startled yell, only to find him stark naked (he sleeps in the buff).
  • In a CSI: Miami episode, a divorce judge was murdered by two boys, one in a relationship with the daughter who stripped naked to avoid blood splashing their clothes when they shot him. Their plan succeeded but didn't work out as well as they wished... should've tested their gun first.
  • When Jackie is hurt in the line of duty on Roseanne, she acts as if she had faced a hugely dangerous situation. Her partner informs Roseanne that Jackie actually reached for a naked drunk man's equipment thinking he was going for a gun. He then tackled her and rolled down a flight of stairs with her. There is no end to her teasing.
  • In Angel when Cordelia, possessed by Jasmine is revealed to have killed Manny, the group theorize she must have stripped off her clothes as there was no blood on them and she wouldn't have had time to wash or had another change of clothes on her (see Real Life below).
  • In Justified, Quarles strips naked before torturing and sexually abusing Donovan, whom he is holding captive in his bathroom. Also, while Boyd's prisoner at Audrey's, Quarles opens his robe to annoy Jimmy. After Jimmy leaves the trailer, Quarles wraps a chain around Minerva's neck and threatens to strangle her, while his robe is still open.
  • In BBC's Sherlock, Irene Adler (a dominatrix from whom Sherlock is trying to gain some incriminating photos on behalf of the Queen of England), knowing Sherlock is coming, agonizes for a scene over what to wear, and finally settles on what she calls her "battle dress." Her totally unexpected entrance, buck naked, shuts up even the un-flusterable Sherlock; a major focus of the rest of the episode is Sherlock's fascination with her after she managed to completely outwit his deductive skills in this way.

Myths & Religion

Tabletop Games

  • Warhammer 40000 has a few examples of naked or nearly-naked combatants, including the Fetish Fuel of the Sisters Repentia, the Nightmare Fuel of the Arco-flagellants, and the Sealed Evil in a Human Can of the daemonhosts. Of course, these three are in the same army at the same time. It's Warhammer 40K afterall
    • Slaanesh's Daemons, daemonettes are occasionally seen fighting almost completely naked, though the most common offender of this is the Slaaneshi Keeper of Secrets, basically giant woman/demon-like giants with crab-claws and Multiple swords.
    • Ciaphas Cain fights a Slaaneshi cultist who sports leather thigh-high boots, gloves, and face mask... and that's about it. It's implied that Cain fights several cultists in a similar state throughout The Traitor's Hand. Then again, as followers of Slaanesh, public streaking is the least of their offenses...
    • The Kroot have sense organs spread about their body and decenteralized genitalia, so they prefer to go about nearly naked to better feel the environment. They only wear some straps and pouches for holding things, and maybe a few small ceremonial items.
  • Heshon, the Lost Atlantean Goddess of the Wilds from the RPG Scion, is described as an attractive, naked wild woman with bird talons.
  • The members of clan Gangrel usually aren't keen on wearing any clothes.
  • GURPS has the "Bulletproof Nudity" optional rule, for a certain kind of cinematic game - the less you wear, the harder you are to hit. For many players, this rewards you for dressing your character up in cheesecake armour. For a certain kind of player this rewards battlefield streaking.
  • In Exalted, the Deathlord known as the Bishop of the Chalcedony Thurible has a "war form" that actually exaggerates this - not only is it naked, it sprouts multiple sets of genitals. Not many people like the form (once described by a snarky freelancer as a "monster made of dicks"), but it's there.


  • The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden staged a production of Salome by Richard Strauss with a local busker strangely cast as a naked, blood-splattered executioner.
  • In Equus, Alan's attack on the horses.

Video Games

  • Bethesda sandbox games such as Fallout and The Elder Scrolls allow your character to (almost) go commando. Needless to say it sparks several witty remarks from NPCs...
  • In Grand Theft Auto IV the Lost And Damned, Johnny meets the crooked politician Tom Stubbs in a massage room... completely naked. His private parts are covered up by convenient camera angles for most of their encounter, until the very final moment. If you're curious, head over to the video games page for "Fan Disservice".
  • Adult Alma in First Encounter Assault Recon. The most disturbing part about her being naked is that in Project Origin, she rapes you!
  • A Dance With Rogues, this can be done by the player, if they wish.
  • Mentioned but not shown in Jade Empire: one of the Black Whirlwind's exploits before joining your party was singlehandedly storming an enemy fortress "piss-drunk, buck naked and screaming like a maniac" in his words. It's heavily implied (or outright stated) that this worked because the soldiers thought he was crazy.
    • It's Black Whirlwind we're talking about. He makes Minsc look sane. Checking his journal during the battle where you control him directly reveals he has a checklist upon waking, one of which is "do I have clothing?" And how to handle the inevitable fight if there is no clothing.
  • Also mentioned but not shown in Time Splitters: Future Perfect. In the second level (1928 Scotland), Captain Ash says, "In the best tradition of the British, I suggest a full-frontal...dahhh, assault, that is." The game is full of double- and triple entendres.
  • Pigsy, the criminally insane, chainsaw-wielding maniac from Manhunt. Don't worry, he isn't completely nude... he's wearing the decapitated head of a pig as a hat.
  • The Shade class in Anarchy Online was added to the game during its first expansion. All classes in AO get a class specific type of armor. The Shades'? Their class specific armor is nanite laced tattoo ink. In other words, Shades in their class armor fight essentially naked covered in magic bodypaint. Barbie Doll Anatomy abounds.
  • The Diseased in Penumbra (although they are heavily mutated by that point).
  • Governor Vicus Cassus from Clive Barker's Jericho, who doesn't wear a stitch of clothing. This is made worse by his extreme obesity, and the fact that his stomach is slit open vertically (which he uses to help him attack -- he pulls his stomach open and spews the contents of his intestines at the protagonists).
  • Alexia Ashford from Resident Evil Code Veronica, when she mutates. She is completely naked, with monstrously large veins covering her lady bits.
  • The Werewolves in the Morrowind expansion Bloodmoon would attack the player while naked. This wouldn't have been an issue if they didn't attack you while human.
    • In Skyrim, while this never happens in the actual game, one of the in-game books describes the Forsworn hero Red Eagle going into battle alone equipped with only his sword and war paint. He still managed to kill many of his enemies.
  • Although Kratos from the God of War series never appears entirely naked, during the design phase the developers realized that he became more primal and aggressive in appearance when drawn with less armor (and less hair).
    • The monsters appear mostly naked as well. In one of the bonus features, Dave Jaffe explains that he wanted the monsters to be like wild animals, which meant making them naked. The gorgons got to spend the whole game topless, but they weren't able to keep the penis they modeled for the cyclops (Jaffe remarked: "Poor cyclops").
  • It is up to debate what, if anything, Seth of Street Fighter IV is wearing. Some assume he's outright naked.
  • When you fight Fontaine in Bioshock, he is completely naked, although he has the genital anatomy of a Ken doll.
  • The title ninja from Nikujin, and his enemies too!
  • Something like this, though it's the hero: Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark starts out with the player character having to fight a drow assassin as naked as the game allows after she steals all their gear.
  • Dantes Inferno pushed the limit to this; in the circle of Lust alone, we've got nearly-naked concubines with tentacle stinger clitorises coming out of their groins, and the circle's boss, Cleopatra, has naked breasts with vagina-nipples that spew knife-armed babies from them. Oh, and Satan himself is naked and packing a glaringly obvious Biggus Dickus. The only thing that could have made it scarier is if they had gone whole hog, and made Lil' Satan into the phallic dragon head it was, in ancient depictions of the guy.
    • Oh, is THAT why Zorc had that unfortunate design aspect?
  • The boss "Saiki" in King of Fighters XIII. He is the first boss in the series history to be fully naked.
  • Rome: Total War, the Europa Barbarorum mod, where the "Gaesatae" unit fight in the nude, and generally kick ass unless you have javelins or arrows.
    • In the original game, the Spanish, Gauls, Germans and Dacians can all train a unit called Naked Fanatics. They are Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and the unit description makes this point abundantly clear. For the sake of keeping the 12+ rating, however, their actual skin has them wearing loincloths.
      • One of the Germanic units in the Rome: Total Realism mod was actually naked in-game.
  • Throughout the entire level "A Thousand Cuts" in Kane and Lynch: Dog Days, both Kane and Lynch are bloody naked, literally.
  • The Brood Mother(s) from both Dragon Age games especially "The Mother" in the Awakenings expansion.
  • The infamous endgame sequence from Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty, where Raiden runs around bare-assed for quite a while.
  • In Knights of Xentar, the main character starts out totally buck naked due to a really bad case of Honor Before Reason as well as being hung over that leads to him being stripped entirely of his equipment.
    • And then he beats those thieves who robbed him single-handedly afterward while still being naked. Unfortuntely, he never gets his equipment back.
  • The Naked Emperor from Fairytale Fights.
  • Most of the specimens in Killing Floor.
  • Near the end of the final case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations, Maya suggests that Godot can't be the killer because he would have gotten blood on his clothes (and not had any opportunity to change them). Phoenix suggests this trope as an explanation, but Godot points out that it was way too cold for that.
  • Anything inorganic that's brought to Improbable Island has a good chance of turning into something else, so everyone who goes there is sent naked. It's feasible to fight naked for the first few levels before buying armor (and much later in the game, if your character becomes part-cat, you'll actually get advantages from fighting naked.)
  • Fatal Frame III has the Tattooed Priestess, who is topless for the whole game. However, since her whole body is covered in dark blue tattoos, this doesn't mean much. Also, you'll be spending too much time running the hell away to look too closely.
  • The 2 sequels to Saints Row gives the player the option to fight naked, though your naughty bits are covered up in pixels.
  • In the non-censored version of The Witcher, you fought several types of naked female foes, from hot, floating vampires to fat, sagging, old witches.
  • A downplayed exampel can happen in Fire Emblem Fates and Fire Emblem Warriors, where certain weapons (and in Fates, a personal skill) can damage the heroes or enemies' armors AND clothes.

Web Comics

Web Original

Western Animation

  • Brock Sampson in The Venture Brothers once went on a naked rampage while fighting off Phantom Limb's goons.

 Monarch: Nice ass, Samson.

  • Played for laughs in an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants where Plankton switches places with Mr. Krabbs thanks to a reality-altering device. Plankton wears the pants at the Krusty Krab, and Krabbs takes his place trying to steal the formula -- butt naked.
  • The Flesh from the Ka Blam!! short "Action League NOW!" is "super strong, yet super naked." However, unlike most other characters who fall under this trope, he's not insane or villanous so much as heroic and goofy.
  • Pam is Implied to have given one to Malory in the Archer episode El Secuestro. Bonus points go to Pam for having the terrifying third stanza of The Destruction of Sennacherib tattooed on her back under thirteen tally marks.
  • In episode of Matts Monsters, the protagonists had to fight a monster that stole clothes, forcing them fight him in the nude.
  • In an episode of Lego Ninjago, Jay is in the bathtub when another character goes in to fight him. Jay puts on a towel and fights the other character. Jay defeats him by hitting him with his towel but well doing so exposes his privates to his enemy even thought the viewer cant see it.

Real Life

  • The Picts would sometimes charge into battle naked, upping the ante by painting themselves blue.
    • Not just the Picts: all Celtic peoples.
  • Various Greek heroes were often depicted naked in art, to display their heroic proportions. (By the way, that's not a double-entendre. Greeks thought large genitals were unattractive. They wanted to show off a muscular body.) Some military historians claim that the Greeks also fought naked except for their armor because clothes would give their enemies something to grab.
    • It was similar with sports. They competed against each other naked and women weren't allowed to watch the competitions.
  • There is a video of a man on PCP, totally butt-naked leaping onto a cop car. In full view of the camera. It's on TruTV.
  • And early episode of Cops had officers having to deal with a large, bald, sweaty naked man. They remarked how it is a bit hard to get a grip.
  • During the brutal Liberian civil wars, many fighting bands took to wearing strange outfits to instill fear in the enemy. "General Butt Naked" (Joshua Blahyi) went into combat naked, and led a band of soldiers called "The Butt Naked Brigade". Their whimsical name belies the horrifying atrocities they committed. And the naked soldiers of the Butt Naked Brigade were children.
  • If Marco Polo is to be trusted, the warriors of India used to go into battle carrying a spear and a shield and stark naked.
  • The original natives of the Canary Islands (the Guanche) would walk into battle with just a spear and a handfull of sharp stones... and they still managed to slaughter an army of conquistadors once.
  • According to Vietnamese legend, during the Trung Sister's rebellion (A.D. 43), male Chinese soldiers fought naked in order to shame the female rebels. Official Chinese history denies the claim, but then they barely recognize the rebellion at all.
  • One theory for why no bloodstained clothing was found at Lizzie Borden's house--the primary reason she was acquitted--is that she stripped naked before chopping up her dad and stepmom. This is portrayed in the Elizabeth Montgomery TV movie as well. This is referenced in the Angel example above.
  • General Orde Wingate, a chaotic good British officer of the Crazy Awesome variety, Badass Preacher and leader of the Gideon Force and the Chindits irregular forces in WWII, had the rather -ahem- eccentric habit of receiving visitors, even visitors above his rank, bare naked. The reasons why he indulged in such behaviour are disputed, the general consensus being that he was just completely nuts in that and any other aspects.
  • Many feminist groups, following the lead of the Ukrainian group FEMEN , this as a protest tactic. They show up to something lik, get topless, and wait for the media to show up and cover their protest. Which often backfires, since people talk more about naked women than any ideas they may have.
  • The 1806 duel between the Earl of Barrymore and Humphrey Howarth was averted because the earl could not bring himself to duel with Howarth, who had prepared for the duel by undressing. The earl thought Howarth was making a farce of the duel, but in fact it was justified, as Howarth had been an army surgeon who knew that the worst thing about gunshot wounds was the risk of infection caused by bits of clothing in the wound, rather than the loss of vital organs.
  • Swedish policeman arrests fugitive drugs user when they're both naked in a sauna.


  1. "Thank you very much!"
  2. in which it can be excused since despite being humanoid she is just too big for the clothes she wear in human form
  3. where it can either be the result of her clothes being destroyed or else the result of her complete lack of understanding why she should wear anything