Fashionable Asymmetry

Well, at least his shoes match.

Symmetry is supposed to be a natural attractive feature, and any deviation seen as ugly. Apparently, no-one told these guys, or their fans. They take Impossibly Cool Clothes to a whole new level. Why constrain yourself to pant legs of one length, or stockings that match, when you can wear one short and one long? It must be kept in mind, of course, that fashion is a fickle thing, and largely a matter of perspective. For every outfit listed here, some will fight to the death to say it looks cool, while others think it looks, in the words of Simon Cowell, atrocious. Keep squabbling about whether it's a "hot" or a "not" to yourselves, fashionistas.

Now, to be fair, a decent reason for mismatched arms and legs in armor is promoted movement in the dominant side, possibly with built in shielding on another side. There are reasons for this, often combat-related.

One would expect cybernetic eyes to come in pairs, but as often as not a character will only have one cyber-eye (usually glowing), while the other one is still organic.

For extra bonus points, why not have mismatched body parts? Nothing says Evil like a Hook Hand, a horn on one side of your head, or an angel with one wing! And it doesn't have to be that complicated: both good and evil can enjoy the duality that heterochromia implies.

Not to be confused with One-Winged Angel (though the song that named the trope got its name from the fact that the character it describes features Fashionable Asymmetry, with seven wings, and thus one more on one side than on the other side).

Examples of Fashionable Asymmetry include:

Anime and Manga

  • Both of the top-level angels from Angel Sanctuary, Alexiel and Rosiel, have three wings. This is explained in the manga, as being twins the 6 wings of angels their level would usually have were split evenly between them—i.e., 3 wings each.
  • Several of Sakura's outfits in Cardcaptor Sakura have one short and one long stocking.
  • Raphael in Tenshi ni Narumon is a single-winged angel.
  • Kei's Knight of Light outfit in the anime version of Prétear is asymmetrical beyond description.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
    • The belt-covered, body-marked Reinforce. As the cute, purified Reinforce Zwei, the high and low stockings even switch places.
    • That, and everyone's hair. Everyone's.
  • Bleach
    • A lot of shinigami accessorise their uniforms according to this trope. The king of this trope is Yumichika (both before and after the time-skip), but also included are (before the time-skip) Byakuya, Chojiro, Isane, Renji (in bankai), Nanao. After the time skip: Rukia, Ikkaku, Shinji, Uryuu.
    • Several arrancar display this as well, but mostly in mask-fragments. Justified with Ulquiorra, who has something you could call bangs above his left eye, because of that stupid half-helmet he wears.
    • Uryuu's Quincy Final Form, Justified in that the Quincy are depicted as monk-archers based largely upon eastern martial-artists who specialize in the bow and who often leave one side of their bodies completely bare to avoid getting clothing tangled in their bowstrings.
  • Several of the Cloths in Saint Seiya, most notably the Aquila Cloth, whose upper body has an armored (left) and unarmored (right) side .
  • Many characters from One Piece, including the main casts have significant bits on their left side which range from minor things like earrings, combovers and tattoos to a Hook Hand.
  • Naruto
    • Karin has hair that is long and straight on her left side, but short and unkempt on the other.
    • Killer Bee has a mark like an ox horn on his left cheek, mirroring the Eight-Tailed Ox that he is host to, which is missing the end of its left horn.
    • Temari wears two stockings: before the Time Skip the right one goes up from her sandals and ends just below her knee, and the left one goes from above her knee into her skirt. After the Time Skip, however, she starts wearing matching ones.
    • Sai has one sleeve on his crop top that's longer than the other.
    • The title character has that functionless spiral tie thing his pre-Time Skip outfit has on the left shoulder.
    • Guren (anime only) of the Three-Tailed Beast arc wore a green Badass Longcoat with a long left sleeve and a short right sleeve. Probably due to the fact that she was (from what the troper can gather) predominately right-handed and the Crystal Style Jutsu she used would have torn up the clothing she wore when she activated Crystal-Arm-Blade-Mode.
  • The poster for The Extravaganza of Haruhi Suzumiya, featuring all the cast in fantasy outfits, shows Mikuru wearing one fishnet stocking and Haruhi wearing two fishnet stockings of two different lengths—one that goes far enough up to disappear under her skirt and the other ending just below her knee. Haruhi's gloves are also different lengths.
  • Mira, the Token Girl of Bakugan: New Vestroia, wears a Spy Catsuit that goes halfway past the knee on the left side and barely past the waist on the right. This explains a lot about why they usually show her from the right side when not showing her from the front.
  • Kisara from Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple wears jeans with one leg cut off. Maybe somewhat justified, because her fighting style revolves around high kicks that would probably split her jeans constantly... but the real reason is pretty obvious.
  • In Soul Eater, Death The Kid has a fetishistic preoccupation with symmetry, to the point of OCD, making his naturally asymmetrical hair (which he's stated he was unable to dye) all the funnier.
  • Same with Chiri Kitsu of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, who has naturally curly hair, but straightens it and panics if it's off by a hair.
  • The flight suits worn by the Simoun Sibylla feature one bare shoulder and a large off-center gem.
  • Kaori Kanzaki, A Certain Magical Index‍'‍s resident Hot Chick with a Sword, has a pair of jeans that go all the way down on the right side and stop just below her waist on the left side. Justified, though, because the spells she uses apparently require the asymmetry.
  • Iceman Hotty from Basquash wears shirts and pants with sleeves and legs of different lengths and a glove on one hand. The shirt and glove may be to hide his cybernetic left arm.
  • Mahou Sensei Negima
  • Éclair from Kiddy Grade usually wears one legging. She also wears one cross-shaped earring.
  • Kanata's haircut in So Ra No Wo To.
  • With the same haircut, Lain of Serial Experiments Lain.
  • Digimon
    • Angewomon. The asymmetry of one glove has a reason, though; it forms the bow of her Celestial Arrow attack.
    • Most Digimons' design in general become asymmetric as they evolve especially at the ultimate level e.g. Zudomon's fur on one hand and not the other. But is averted by MegaKabuterimon and Lilimon.
  • Fairy Tail: Lucy's clothes are also pretty normal, but she mostly has that side-bun thing going on.
  • Yoko from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has one normal fingerless glove and one elbow-length one.
  • Nanael of Queens Blade has one full-sized wing and one half-sized one. This isn't commonplace for angels in that series, it's more an indicator she's The Ditz.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Sayaka's Magical Girl outfit has a diagonal cut on her skirt. Her hair is also done in an assymetry, her hair longer on her right side, while her skirt is longer on the left side.
  • Puella Magi Oriko Magica has Kirika, who's regular outfit has very little that's symmetrical. Her Magical Girl outfit is mostly symmetrical, but picks up an Eyepatch of Power.
  • Lind from Ah! My Goddess has asymmetric hair which is longer on one side than it is on the other.
  • Maximilian Pegasus from Yu-Gi-Oh, with the left side of his face covered by his hair, which hides another asymmetric fashion in the form of his Millennium Eye.
  • Manami of Glass Maiden/Crystal Blaze has two outfits where one sock comes up to her thigh and the other only to her knee.


Comic Books

  • The DCU
    • The Weird has a largely black costume with asymmetric red highlights, including a knee-length left boot, an ankle-length right boot, a wrist-length left glove and an elbow-length right glove.
    • Looker is known for her asymmetrical first costume.
    • Cyborg Superman's perpetual exposed Terminator look.
    • Teen Titans: Plain Cyborg, with a metal plate on one side of his head.
    • It is a comicbook tradition for characters who can take on the properties of various elements to strike poses changing body parts into as many different samples at once. Say, Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man. Ones like Metamorpho have it as their base look.
    • Deathstroke the Terminator with his mask split between black and orange. Underneath, one eye is cybernetic.
    • Batman: Two-Face generally feeds his obsession by wearing a suit split in two down the middle. Mostly it's just different colours but some interpretations use a different take, like clean/burned or normal/eye-hurting.
  • Marvel Universe
    • Psylocke's best known outfit with its varyingly placed strips. Though this can depend on who's drawing her.
    • Cable has one techno-organic arm and eye. His outfit tended to be a shifting mishmash of shoulder pads, pouches, and bandoleros.
    • His dad Cyclop's drifts in and out of this trope; while his original and X-Factor costumes, and Astonishing and post were symmetrical, one of his most iconic costumes (namely, the one from the 90's cartoon) had asymmetrical straps.
    • Shatterstar... oh dear gods, Shatterstar. One oversized shoulderpad, one eye with a starburst design around it... oy.
    • Hulk's Planet Hulk and World War Hulk getup.
  • Every other character in Image's Cyberforce.
    • Velocity wears an asymmetrical costume completed by a lightning tattoo over one eye.
    • Her sister Ballistic has one cybernetic arm and one glowing red eye.
    • Stryker has three cybernetic arms on one side of his body to go with his glowing, red, cybernetic eye.
  • In fact, many comicbook characters with a tattoo or some other decoration on one side of their face came out of the '90s.
  • The Sandman
    • Mazikeen has half her face simply missing. Whether this is cool or not is a matter of perspective. However, on Earth, she wears a half-mask to cover this up, and the intent is very much that people will think "oh, she's just a normal woman in a funky outfit."
    • To say nothing of Delirium.
    • It's eventually established that fashion has nothing to do with it. When she finds her face "fixed" Mazikeen swears vengeance on the good Samaritan.
  • Spider Jerusalem of Transmetropolitan has asymmetric Cool Shades—a green rectangle on his right, and a red circle on his left. The machine that made them was stoned on mechadrugs.
  • Hellboy: Hellboy's massive right hand of stone.
  • Several characters in Strontium Dog. Johnny has a big pad one one shoulder, to which is attached his blasterbelt that goes across his chest to his over hip. Wulf has the same arrangement, and in an early strip starts also wearing a Gronk's skin across the other shoulder. Middenface has a big tartan pad over one shoulder. Evans' mutation means that one of his arms is in the right place, but the other is attached directly to the side of his head.
  • In the Dutch series Franka by Henk Kuijpers, former minor villain, now supporting character Uschi Undsoweiter (Gratuitous German for "and so on") always dresses and does her hair asymetrically, frequently by assembling her clothes from parts of two or more different sets. But then she is an artist who now works for fashion mogul Laura Lava.
  • Magog from Kingdom Come has a single shoulder pad, a scarred right eye, and a gold/metallic left arm. He was originally imagined as an unflattering pastiche of Rob Liefeld characters like Cable and Youngblood, who were (in)famous for their hideously cluttered and asymetrical costumes. Surprisingly, artist Alex Ross ultimately decided that he rather liked Magog's design, and the character went on to get his own series.


Films -- Live-Action

  • Luke Skywalker's single black glove in Return of the Jedi, as a result of his prosthesis getting shot on Jabba's sail bark and him not having the time to repair/replace the burned-of synth skin.
  • The Tall Blond Man with One black Shoe and its remake, The Man With One Red Shoe.
  • A sharp-eyed viewer will note that the Tron Lines of some of the characters in Tron: Legacy are deliberately non-symmetrical for no apparent purpose other than aesthetics. Quorra has both asymmetrical Tron Lines and an asymmetrical outfit.
  • One piece of Alex's attire in A Clockwork Orange is a set of fake lashes on one eye.


Literature

  • In Larry Niven's Known Space stories, asymmetrical beards are cultivated by upper-class Wunderlanders as a fashion statement (specifically, the statement "I have the free time and money to cultivate this bit of elaborate grooming").
  • In The Mote in Gods Eye, moties are described as being incredibly asymmetric. They have one large arm with a three-fingered "gripping hand" on one side and two smaller arms with five-fingered hands on the other for fine manipulation. The rest of their bodies are asymmetric to accomodate the design, including a much larger shoulder and no ear on the "gripping" side. The Gripping Hand is also the name of the sequel.
  • High-ranking Seanchan servants in The Wheel of Time series shave the hair off half their heads, then braid the other half. This symbolizes their dual nature (lower-class people have full heads of hair; nobles have mohawks or shaven heads).
  • In Talon of the Silver Hawk, in the Riftwar Cycle, Tal spends a few pages mentally mocking high fashion in the kingdom of Roldem, which, at the moment, includes a jacket specially designed to be worn on one side and slung over the shoulder like a cape on the other. He, quite frankly, thinks it's ridiculous... but not half as ridiculous as some of the other things he's seen there, like a woman whose only upper body garment was a necklace so huge it very nearly kept her completely covered.
  • Played for Laughs in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: a character with a horrible burn scar on one arm consistently wins masquerade-ball costume competitions because while all the women's dresses are provocatively cut, hers always have one long sleeve, which the judges think symbolizes "something."
  • Star Wars Expanded Universe: Aayla Secura does the long sleeve/no sleeve version of the trope.
  • Pippi Longstocking wears a pair of mismatched stockings.


Live-Action TV

  • Star Trek has several examples of this:
    • The Original Series' episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" gave us the Cheron people, who are all painted white on one side and black on the other... and get into a genocidal civil war over which side they're painted on.
    • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
      • Judging from General Martok, missing eyes seem to be the Badass asymmetry of choice.
      • Deep Space Nine's final season introduces the Breen ships, which use asymmetry in their design to look as alien as possible.
  • Power Rangers SPD: Emperor Gruumm has one horn, though it was revealed that he originally had two until Da Chief hacked one off in battle in his younger days. In his final appearance, Da Chief (now a Sixth Ranger) fights him again, and is poised to kill him... but instead cuts off his remaining horn, saying "Now they match."
  • Kamen Rider Kabuto
    • Another example would be Sou Yagaruma. He even gets some good old fashioned badass-styled insanity to go with his asymmetry, and nifty psychological reasons behind it!
    • Daisuke pulls this too, while transformed into Kamen Rider Drake at least, with a single giant dragonfly wing on his chest.
    • Kamen Rider Double is all about this as the show's premise but special mentioned goes to the Cyclone form, which has a gray muffler on the right shoulder.
    • Kamen Rider OOO: Ankh's shirt has one red sleeve on the arm where his Red Right Hand is.
  • In an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Sabrina changes the color of one Libby's knee-high socks from black to yellow in an attempt to embarrass her. Libby avoids embarrassment by turning mismatched socks into a fashion trend amongst her friends.
  • In Serenity, River wears a dress that has one very long, poofy sleeve on one side, and no sleeve ont he other. Its not made clear whether this is how the dress is supposed to look or if its a modification she made herself, but it looks pretty nifty.


Music

  • Ziggy Stardust. Happens quite a bit with David Bowie's stage outfits from the period - striped unitard with one short leg and one long leg, anyone? Plus the pseudo-heterochromia. From getting punched in the eye.
  • Freddy Mercury's black and white unitard.
  • Michael Jackson's glove.
  • The StingRay. While things like the Moderne and X-Plorer tried to invoke this, the StingRay was the only one of the offbeat designs to not change the shape of the guitar itself, and to use asymmetricaly as an intentional aesthetic choice.
  • Love front-man Arthur Lee was said to have invoked this trope in an attempt to get recognized in the Los Angeles scene of the 1960s, walking in with a different shoe on each foot and sunglasses which had different colors on each side.
  • When Jack Casady auditioned for bass in Jefferson Airplane, he was told he could get the job if he shaved off his facial hair. Moments later, he came back with only half of the side of his face shaved, saying he could use that half for performances.
  • Many of Lady Gaga's outfits invoke this trope.


Pro Wrestling

  • WWE's Zack Ryder wore one-legged tights in his ECW run. He has since reverted to traditional trunks.
  • WWE wrestler JTG often wrestles in baggy jeans with one leg cut off at the knee.
  • "Rowdy" Roddy Piper painted his body half white and half black for his Wrestlemania VI match with Bad News Brown.
  • Several other wrestlers have elbow pads or wrist bands only on of their arms, usually for practical purposes as that's the arm they usually attack with.


Sports

  • If cars can count, the British American Racing Team in the 1999 Formula One Season. Initially the team's two cars had entirely different liveries (one for each sponsor), which was deemed illegal by the FIA. After a failed arbitration process, the team opted to have each their cars sporting one sponsor livery on one side and the other sponsor livery on the other side, resulting in the famous livery with blue on the right side and red-white on the left side. This was dropped next season in favor of the red-and-white livery (when the sponsor for the blue color was let go).
  • Former Benetton driver Alexander Wurz used to wear mismatching colored shoes when racing. Reportedly they were good luck charms.


Tabletop Games

  • Dungeons & Dragons
    • The Third Edition Player's Handbook uses asymmetrical outfits for the iconic characters representing the Paladin, the Ranger, and the Sorcerer.
    • Agents of the Order of the Emerald Claw in Eberron wear half-helms as part of their uniform that cover the right half of their faces, leaving only an eye-hole.


Theater

  • For Susan Hilferty, the costume designer in the Broadway musical Wicked, this was one of the guiding principles for designing for the chorus, intended to give an otherworldly feel to the outfits of the Ozians. It helped win her a Tony Award for Best Costume Design.


Toys

  • Most of McFarlane Toys' original character designs fall under this trope. One particularly notable example is their obsession with peg legs; for a few years it seemed like every other figure they produced had one.
  • Mantax, the Toa Hordika, the Piraka, and two of the Toa Mahri, Matoro and Hewkii, from Bionicle, had one arm shorter than the other. Lariska, a character not released as a set, had a mechanical arm as the result of punishment from The Shadowed One.
  • Bionicle's successor, Hero Factory, seems to have this as one of its signature traits, especially in the early 2011 sets. Nitroblast is the zenith of this trait, with Drilldozer a close second.


Video Games

  • It's become so deeply associated with Final Fantasy that fashionable asymmetry is now considered the norm with JRPG's. Their outfits tend to be so busy (see picture), you can't help but wonder how long it takes to get into or out of them. How does Lulu go to the bathroom? While people seem to think pretty much entirely Tetsuya Nomura's fault, Yoshitaka Amano's clothing was never big on symmetry either. People blame Nomura because his were the first designs to keep their details in the games. Despite Final Fantasy getting so much flak for this, it's something of a Dead Unicorn Trope, as most Final Fantasy games have perfectly symmetrical clothing. Only FF10 and FF7 have much asymetry, and FF7 doesn't have much, mostly armored bits and shields. Final Fantasy VIII, curiously, tends to avert this, as everyone's clothes are generally practical and symmetrical.
  • Soul Series
    • Nightmare/Siegfried reaches new heights of this in Soul Calibur 2; one of his alternate costumes is his partially corrupted self, missing most of the armor but still having the giant monster-arm, one gold (pupiless) eye and one blue eye, and having a raised arc of flesh identical to the arm across his shoulders. Note that one arm is bigger than the other because that's the arm Soul Edge possessed, which is why it's different from the rest of his body. Ditto with the eye. It's not fashion, it's plot-related!
    • Certain costumes from Talim and Xianghua include leggings of different lengths.
  • The Elder Scrolls
  • Sheogorath, of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, wears a crazy purple-and-yellow suit with twisting designs so complex it would take another page to describe. This fits in quite nicely with his role as God of Madness.
    • Similarly, in the previous game Morrowind, the god-king Vivec had gold skin on one side of his body and dark gray skin on the other. Also, you and some NPCs can wear gauntlets and pauldrons on only one side.
  • Guilty Gear
    • Dizzy has one white and one black wing.
    • Also Venom's robe, Testament's coat and Slayer's handker-cape thing.
  • Kalas from Baten Kaitos. Born with only one (swan-like) wing, so his grandfather made him a mechanical one to go with it.
    • Not to mention Savyna, who wears one thigh-high boot and one regular boot.
  • Rita from Tales of Vesperia has one a long boot and white stocking on one leg, and a short boot with a red-and-yellow striped sock on the other leg. She even gets a costume where she wears a long black pantaloon-thing (held up by what appears to be half a garter belt) on one leg and merely a shin-high red stocking under normal black shoes on the other. The really asymmetrical part, though, is that her pantaloon is on the leg that's usually bare, and her bare leg is the leg that's usually covered by her long stocking. It's honestly kind of disorienting if you've been using her original costume all game.
  • Extended to ship designs in EVE Online. Very few of the ships are symmetrical, though the amount of asymmetry varies widely.
  • David Nassau, Marquis of Athlum wears a coat like this in The Last Remnant. One side is green while the other is red, representing the colours of Calapeleis, Athlum's sovereign city.
  • The fifth patch for Spore has allowed asymmetrical creatures, costumes, and vehicles. Whether the creations are fashionable depends on the viewer, but it is likely 90% of those creations won't be fashionable with anyone.
  • At least in Jedi Outcast, the big bad's apprentice Tavion (seen here being force-choked by the protagonist) wears some sort of leotard with one pant leg.
  • In all Jak and Daxter games, Jak from wears a single plate of armor on his left shoulder. It presumably protects him from having his friend-turned-ottsel digging his claws into his flesh, though he wore it prior to having a passenger in the Parrot Pet Position. Also almost always part of his outfit are a three-strap bag and uneven goggles.
  • The gunner armor in Monster Hunter. Most have heavy armor on the left side, and little to no armor on the right side. Justified in that fighting a giant, fireball spitting wyvern, one would want to protect the side facing the monster, while the little armor on the other side justifies Gunner armor's universally lower defense.
  • Eternal Sonata
    • Allegretto also has one epaulet.
    • Claves wears only one stocking (on her right leg), as well as sporting a claw-like gauntlet on her right arm.
  • Touhou Project
    • Nue Houjuu has her wings. Her right ones are red and look metallic, and her left ones are blue and look more like tails.
    • Prior to her, Reiji Utsuho was rocking her control-rod-right-arm and concrete-encased foot.
    • And let's not forget Shikieiki Yamaxanadu's haircut.
  • Legend of Dragoon
    • The Divine Dragon has 7 wings (3 pairs and a single wing with a stump opposite it). The asymmetry carries into Dart's Divine Dragoon form, and actually gets worse since one arm takes on a likeness of the Divine Dragon's head and neck (this is used for the form's strongest attack).
    • Rose's outfit, which shows some leg on one side and Zettai Ryouiki on the other.
    • There's also Dart's normal outfit which seems to have a bracer of some sort on his off-hand, presumably for combat purposes.
  • Assassin's Creed
    • Ezio Auditore da Firenze, protagonist of Assassin's Creed 2, has a comparatively subtle example with his assassin attire. Over his left shoulder he wears a half-cape, with the opposite shoulder not similarly covered. His left hand, meanwhile, is bare; his right is gloved. It goes even further than that; the bracer of the first blade is on his right arm, decorated with the assassin crest, and worn over the sleeve. The blade on his right arm is silver and with a finish that makes it look like a feather. The second hidden blade's bracer is concealed under the sleeve on his left arm, and the blade has a black finish.
    • It's worth mentioning that capes like that were in-fashion at the time for people of Ezio's social standing. It's also sensible for someone who does a lot of sword-fighting with his right hand—it keeps the hand protected and the arm free.
    • In Brotherhood, Machiavelli's outermost garment is missing a right sleeve.
  • Maeda Keiji from Sengoku Basara, who is rather eccentric to say the least, wears an almost completely asymmetrical outfit that would make any Final Fantasy character proud.
  • Fallout. One-sleeved leather jackets (Mad Max-style) seems to be the norm. When you finally do find a jacket with both sleeves still on, the game remarks that you might make a fashion statement with that one....
  • Dr. Steinman from BioShock (series) takes this to a very unsettling extreme with his patients.
  • Dragon Age
    • Armour is asymmetric in the one way that actually makes sense. The left, or shield, side is heavier (more armour plates, bigger pauldron) to facilitate defense, and the right is lighter to increase mobility and make attacking easier but has a heavier gauntlet since the forearm would be vulnerable while striking.
    • Morrigan's oufit is probably patched together from junk she found in her swamp, but you do have to wonder why she didn't even try to make her skirt an even length.
    • Isabela in the second game has light armour on her left arm while her right arm is mostly bare.
    • The Champion Armor for the Mage!PC has Hawke's right arm completely unarmored. This allows for full motion for casting spells.
  • The cover art [dead link] of Spellforce.
  • Pokémon
    • The protagonist of Pokémon Colosseum. Partly justified, as that is actually the machine used to snag shadow Pokémon on his arm.
    • This even extends to many species, such as Absol, which has a horn jutting out of the right side of its head, and Sneasel, which has a feather growing instead of its left ear and fangs showing on one side. Some fans dislike the latter's evolution Weavile precisely because it loses the asymmetry.
  • Team Fortress
    • Team Fortress 2: Engineer wears one welding glove on his right hand, unless the player is using the Gunslinger, which replaces the glove with a mechanical hand. Sniper also wears just one fingerless glove on his left hand.
    • As one of the Pyro's hats is a rubber glove much like the Engineer's, it's often joked that he stole the other glove, but that hat is also a right glove.
  • Skies of Arcadia largely averts this; almost every outfit in the game is symmetrical. The only major exceptions are Vyse and Drachma's eyepatches, Drachma's (weaponized) bionic arm, and Aika's left-hand glove, which she uses to prevent her giant boomerang from taking her arm off when it returns.
  • Mad Moxxi from Borderlands is "ragdoll sexy" in her asymmetrical attire, most notably her stockings: one fishnet, one striped.
  • Realistic example in Drakan: Order of the Flame - Two of Rinn's armor, the Chainmail and the Plate Mail, had the left arm armored while the right (sword) arm was unprotected.
  • Bao Sanniang in Dynasty Warriors 7.
  • In Kingdom Hearts, Terra and Ventus each have a single armored pauldron on their left shoulder. In Terra's case, it also comes with bits of an armored gauntlet, and Fingerless Gloves. It's functional, though. Hitting hte pauldron allows them to summon the rest of their armor, which is symmetrical, so it's simply a matter of traveling light, as it were. Aqua has bits of armor on both arms, instead.


Visual Novels

  • SHUFFLE! has Asa, who has one long lock of hair on her left side which she ties together with a brown band.


Web Comics


Web Original

  • Yang Xiao-Long's original outfit in RWBY included a diaphonous skirt-like wrap around her hips that was cut diagonally and hung mostly on her right, and stockings of different heights.


Western Animation

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: In the 2000s animated series, the Shredder's wrist-worn blades are on one hand only.
  • Wilt, of Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends, has one wonky eye, and one arm waaaay shorter than the other. This is explained in the season four TV movie, and in the pilot he mentions it may freak people out.
  • Hallmark of fashionable ladies' eveningwear throughout the Noughties—from about 2000 to 2010 the red carpet showed gowns with some sort of asymmetric neckline- draped over one shoulder, one diagonal strap, one sleeve, etc.. The 2011 Oscars were the first in years not to feature this heavily, but the styles in stores still have this trend going strong.
  • On another continent, Venger from Dungeons & Dragons has the one-horn thing going.
  • A number of Transformers have transformations that give them asymmetrical robot modes, but some are asymmetrical just to be stylish even though their transformation does nothing to prevent symmetry, including all of the Transmetals 2 from Transformers: Beast Wars.
  • The Snake Armour from the 200X version of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, though "Fashionable" is arguable; it looked daft. Given it was armour, one has to wonder why half of it appears to be missing...
  • Teen Titans villain Slade wears a mask that is black on one side and orange on the other, and has only one eye (because Slade himself is missing an eye, in an incident only detailed in the comics.)
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender
    • The minor character the Mechanist has several marks in one eyebrow and High-Class Glass on the other, and Jet has a larger piece of armor on one shoulder than the other.
    • Towards the end, Aang changes up his robes and goes for the over-one-shoulder look, and even his belt is off to one side.
  • Many of the fashions in Jem and The Holograms are this way, especially for the Misfits. You can blame the '80s.
  • Discord from My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic features body parts that can be identified as being from many different animals, all to go along with his general theme of chaos and, you guessed it, discord.
  • Grune from both Thundercats series is an anthropomorphic saber toothed cat with only one fang.
  • Code Lyoko: Yumi's Lyoko avatar in season 4 is a bit asymmetrical, with a shorter sleeve on one side, a buckler-like bracer, one stocking different from the other, and sakura petals on her thigh.
  • The Trishas from Rated A for Awesome are identical except for the fact that they're mirror images of each other. One has a single earring on her left ear and her hair parts to the right, while the other has a single earring on her right ear and her hair parts to the left.


Real Life

  • Side-ponytails, single earrings, etc.
  • Mounted combatants' armor often had asymmetrical pauldrons, which helped them brace lances. Whether or not this is fashionable is left as an exercise to the reader.
  • Further, lots of styles where one uses different weapons in each hand (sword + shield for instance) would have the armor or protective elements take the weight and defense needs into account. For example, Greek hoplites would only wear a shin plate on the left shin, as that would be the one exposed to the enemy.
  • Monocles.
  • Many people have clothing of unusual cuts or asymmetrical patterns to hide physical deformities. Hairstyles can apply for facial (or back-of-the-neck) coverage. Of course, many don't bother.
  • The European Medieval and early Renaissance periods made a whole fashion out of this, with asymmetrically colored clothes, for example tights where both trouser legs are of two (or more) different colors, a style called called mi-parti.
  • A lot of cultural clothing tends to be asymmetrical, due to being made of one piece of cloth that is wrapped or tied around the body.
  • Archers have one shooting glove for their string arm to keep their fingers from getting cut by the bowstring when they draw, and a bracer for their bow arm to keep it from getting cut by the bowstring when they release.
  • Little Miss Matched.
  • Automotive designer Luc Donckerwolke loves to include a bit of assymetry his cars, most notably in the Lamborghini Murcielago which features a larger than normal intake for its oil cooler on the left side (compared to the smaller brake duct on the right) as well as an asymmetrically designed dashboard.
  • The AMC Gremlin used to have asymmetric doors. The left door was longer than the right door.
  • Wristwatches. One is fashionably asymmetric, two will net you weird looks. Three would be overkill.
  • Doublet sleeves and stockings of different colour were common in medieval and Renaissance periods (well, at least for those who could afford such clothes). The colours of city or ruler's arms were sometimes reflected in the coluring of guards' livery. With two colours involved, the whole livery could be divided along the longer axis of the body, or the livery could be cross-coloured (i.e. right arm and left leg in one colour, left arm and right leg in the other).
  • Some gangs wear their identifiers on one side of their body. For example, the People Nation identify on the left. They might wear earrings on their left ear or roll up their left pant leg.
  • Spartans who displayed cowardice in battle were marked by having half of their beard shaved. It was legal to beat up any man you found with a half beard.
  • Lady Fiddler crabs find male crabs that have ONE claw much, much larger then the other one to be a fashionalbe as the males use them to compeate for females, by waveing in the air and fighting with them.
  • Often, people with mobile phones or similar devices have cases with clips on them, allowing them to attach the phone case to their belt or pocket. More often than not, people clip their phones on the left/right side and nothing on the other side. Unless they have two phones for some reason.
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