Four-Fingered Hands

Don't worry; base 8 is like base 10... if you're missing two fingers.

"Four fingers! I've got four fingers! Cartoon characters have four fingers!"

—Inspector Gill, Fish Police

Why do most cartoon characters only have four fingers? Simple, a four-fingered hand is SO much easier to draw than a five-fingered hand. Plus, it simplifies the design of the hand in the same way the rest of the body is simplified.

Why is it not a problem? Because we can't count while watching a show. Some tribes use only "one, two, many". When we don't focus, we count like them. There are some fingers opposed to the thumb, period.

Although this simplification has been on a recent decline in cartoons starring people, it has never completely gone away. This only appears in more "cartoony" styles; action or dramatic series won't usually use this, and it rarely shows up in Anime for several reasons:

  • The Yakuza used to chop off the little fingers of those who were unable to pay back a debt.
  • The four-fingered hand is taken as a derogatory reference to the burakumin social class (four fingers = four legs = animals).
  • The number four in Japanese also means death.

Quite often, Western four-fingered characters have to be edited to have a fifth finger -- Bob the Builder is one of many. Strangely enough, this does not include Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse, despite Disney's popularity in Japan. (Possibly because he actually is an animal, unlike Bob, or it could just be the Grandfather Clause at work.)

This trope is not limited to depiction of humanlike characters: Animal characters (from any point along the Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism) can also be depicted with a reduced number of digits on each paw when compared to its real-life equivalent—typically three visible toes on a given foot rather than four (although some of the earliest cartoons simplified it even further, depicting only two digits on a given foot). Actually, sometimes, the fact that the characters are not humans provides an excuse.

Funny Animals in particular often combine four-fingered hands with three-toed feet. This is excusable when human characters in the same context also exhibit Four-Fingered Hands, but it can be jarring if the humans have five-fingered hands, or if other animals in the same context are depicted with the correct number of digits.

Those with four-fingered hands are often seen wearing White Gloves.

Why these people use base 10 rather than the logical (for them) base 8 may be a Translation Convention. Also note that number of fingers doesn't necessarily imply a corresponding number system; numerous real life cultures have used counting systems based on numbers other than 10.

Examples of Four-Fingered Hands include:

Reduced Number of Fingers

Advertising

  • Spoofed in an Oreo commercial which shows the mascot (a giant Oreo cookie) struggling to get through a security system. At one point he comes upon a hand scanner and presses his left hand to it; when nothing happens, he adds one finger from his right hand, which is good enough to open the door.
  • Lampshaded in this commercial for Hamburger Helper Cheeseburger Macaroni; a greaser tells the talking-glove mascot to "Gimme five!" and he replies, "Would you settle for four?"

Anime and Manga

Card Games

  • The magi in the Magi Nation card game have four digits on each hand, though this stems from the original art style. They are also not human, but from a fantastic world. Of course, the animated series uses five-fingered hands.

Comic Books

  • On the other (ahem) hand, the elves and trolls of Elf Quest are not four-fingered representations of five-fingered characters. They really do have only four fingers on each hand. After a few issues, the authors realized that they should logically count in base-eight, and the elves are Ret Connned to do exactly that; Cutter gets the slightly less catchy title of "Blood-Of-Eight-And-Two-Chiefs".
    • Lampshaded at least once: Cutter, attacked by a human, proposes to rectify the man's problem of an overpopulated hand as he cuts off one of his fingers.
    • Much later in the series, a culture of elf-worshipping humans amputated the little fingers and surgically altered the ears of their ruling elite, believing this could make them immortal.
  • Marvel Comics
    • One of the effects of Ben Grimm's transformation into the Thing is that he now has four fingers and toes. In one What If comic where he continues to mutate, he actually develops (devolves?) down to three-fingered hands.
    • Another Marvel character, X-Men's Nightcrawler, has three-fingered hands and feet. The X-Men: Evolution version of Nightcrawler has some kind of holographic disguise that makes him look like a factory-standard human. Whenever he's in disguise, his fingers stick together in a Vulcan-salute formation.
    • So does his Alternate Universe daughter, Nocturne.
    • And the X-Man Longshot, though it's due to his alien/technomagical origins.
  • Every character in normalman. Well, sort of. When norm found himself in the American frontier in the 1800s, the frontiersman he befriended figured he was an inbred simpleton because he only had four fingers on each hand.
  • Three Fingers explores this; it is a pastiche of the Animated Actors idea, specifically the Who Framed Roger Rabbit? conceit that toons and humans coexist in the real world. Toons are born with a full set of five fingers, but the first toon actor to achieve real fame was Rickey Rat, a mutated toon born with only four. Toons were described as superstitious, and so many other toons began to mutilate themselves, having a finger removed in order to become successful in Hollywood; the book explores this shadowy ritual in-depth. The book is drawn in the narrative style of a TV documentary, like the True Hollywood Story or a Ken Burns film, mostly interviewees talking to the camera, with photographs intercut.
  • One episode of the Futurama comic takes place in a freak show. Exhibits include Zoidberg's uncle, a bearded lady, and a five-fingered man.
  • Ivy the Terrible in The Beano has four fingers, but oddly enough, other characters in her comic have five.
  • Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog series have both the four-fingered and five-fingered hands. The SEGA-based heroes and the normal humans have five fingers while those from the Saturday morning Sonic the Hedgehog series or Original Generation characters have four fingers. The humans with four fingers were given the name "Overlanders", while five-fingered humans are still referred to as "humans".
  • This happens to Steve Harmon when he's in his Slapstick form, since he was wearing his oversized four-fingered toon gloves when he got his powers.
  • The Smurfs have four-fingered hands and four-toed feet, while the humans they encounter have five-fingered hands. In their first comic book appearance in The Smurfs and the Magic Flute, they were originally drawn with five fingers.
  • Fire Breather Duncan Rosenblatt plays this for laughs in the comic book.
    • After being called to the principals office, a teacher stops him for a hall pass. He promptly tries various pockets, leaving one out to show the teacher. Once in the principal's office, he shows his his four figered hand and asks "Help me out, which one is "the bird"?"
    • Oddly, the animated film gives him five fingers.
  • Lampshaded in a long-running Polish series of comic books about a talking chimpanzee, when the said chimpanzee complains about 2002 movie because they "chopped off two of his fingers", while in the comic books he was always drawn with five fingers on each hand.
  • This was averted in Little Lulu, where the characters are drawn with five fingers.

Fan Works

Films -- Animation

  • Most of the cast of Monsters, Inc. have four fingers. However, the monster who counts down to the beginning of scare floor activities starts with "we are on in seven..." and holds out his seven-fingered hand.
  • Abu and the Genie have four-fingered hands while the rest of the human cast of Aladdin has five... except for the merchant who narrates the opening. Originally, he was supposed to be revealed as Genie at the end of the film, and while that was left off the final cut, the design remained.
  • The Blue Meanies in Yellow Submarine have six fingers. At least, their leader does.
  • In 1937's Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, Snow White and the Prince have five fingers on each hand, but the more cartoony Dwarfs only have four.
  • Pinocchio has four fingers as a puppet , but has five fingers after he's been turned into a human at the end of the film. Geppetto, Stromboli, Lampwick, and all the other humans have five fingers each, but for some reason, the Coachman only has four.
    • Justified for the Coachman: he's not really a "human..."
    • Jiminy Cricket usually has four fingers. Though in the educational short "You And Your Food", he suddenly has five when explaining the five food groups.
  • Madame Souza of The Triplets of Belleville has only four fingers, although given how realistic her hands were designed, it can be downright creepy looking.
  • Played with in the fourth Futurama movie, where Leo Wong is dealing poker to Bender who ends up with five kings (the regular four plus a coaster that has the "King of Beers" on it). To illustrate Leo holds up a single five-fingered hand long enough for the audience to go "what the hell, he has five fingers."
  • In Planet 51, Chuck Baker, the human astronaut, has five fingers on each hand, but the aliens have only four.
  • Subversion: in The Thief and the Cobbler, Evil Chancellor Zigzag has six-fingered hands.

Films -- Live-Action

  • Justified in Splice. Dren has three fingers and a thumb on each hand, which is due to the fact that she a hybrid creature spliced from a unholy mixtures of animals' DNA that widely varies in the amount of fingers each species has.
  • Lampshaded in the live-action Casper movie from 1995.
  • The Na'vi in Avatar have four fingers, four toes, and a base eight counting system. Given that the film's budget dwarfs many countries' annual budgets, this was probably just to be alien. The avatars have five, so it would seem intentional.
  • Bumblebee in the 2007 Transformers film has these, as does Jazz, Barricade, Megatron and Bonecrusher. Revenge of the Fallen has Mudflap, Skids, Jetfire and Wheelie. Dark of the Moon has Que, Brains, Soundwave, Shockwave and several generics. Laserbeak when disguised as a pink Bumblebee also has this feature (his normal form has wings, and thus, no fingers).
  • Inverted in Gattaca: the pianist has six fingered hands (which exists in real life, but often removed), and he plays music you couldn't play with five-fingered hands. Well, he doesn't, but just roll with it.
  • Zig-zaged by Grevious in Star Wars. At first he has two six-fingered hands, including two thumbs. But he can divide his arms, then he has four three-fingered hands.
    • Since they have only eight fingers, Hutts use a base-8 counting system. Zero through seven mean the same thing in both Huttese and Basic, but anything after that is just plain confusing, which many other races have been swindled by. To avoid this problem, Hutts use base-10.
  • Hellboy's stone hand has only four fingers.
  • Lampshaded in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, where Michelangelo shouts, "Gimme three!" to Leonardo.
  • A similar joke occurs in Short Cicuit 2

Johnny-5: Alright! Gimme five!
Ben: And you give me... three.

Literature

  • The Kzinti from the Known Space universe have four fingers on each hand. Bonus points are awarded for having a base-eight mathematical system, which plays havoc with the humans they meet.
  • Most faerie species in The Spiderwick Chronicles (except ogres and giants which have 6 fingers).
  • In The Island of Doctor Moreau, the ape-man cites his own aversion of this trope as a sign that he's a better "man" than the other beastfolk, most of whom have four or fewer digits on each hand.
  • In Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit?, it's mentioned that Toon cigars resemble dynamite, and sometimes there's real dynamite mixed in—explaining why so many Toons have only four fingers. (Oddly enough, when Roger temporarily becomes human, he suddenly has five fingers, much to his confusion.)

Live-Action TV

  • Discussed on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Tara comments that if they were animated, they'd have to have four fingers, and wear White Gloves to compensate.
  • Walter Jones, the first-ever Black Ranger, was born with only three fingers and a thumb on one hand. He would often wear a prosthetic finger on set.
  • The Silence in Doctor Who.
  • While the title character on ALF has four-fingered hands, the humans (and certain Melmacians—maybe it's a genetic trait?) have five. When Brian is recovered from a crooked used car salesman (as in, selling stolen cars), this exchange happens over a high-four-and-a-half, to take the average:

Brian: Give me a high-five, so I know you're alive!
Alf: How about a high-four-- 'cause I ain't got any more!

Newspaper Comics

  • The majority of comic strips such as FoxTrot follow this rule.
  • Averted in Peanuts, where all of the characters have five fingers on each hand.
  • In Calvin and Hobbes, most of the characters have four fingers but in one panel Calvin is drawn with five fingers on one hand and four fingers on the other by mistake.
  • The Optimist occasionally loses a finger, seen here, here, and here.

Puppet Shows

Tabletop Games

  • Warhammer 40,000
    • The Tau only have four digits a hand. The fluff has them logically using a base 8 system.
    • The Orks, on the other hand (or possibly paw), have five fingers but use base six numbering. Which actually makes a certain amount of sense if you use the other hand for the second digit. Of course, this being Warhammer 40000 it all started as a joke on the theme of Orks being too stupid to count higher, to the point where they had specialist mutations (like Mekboyz and Doks) called "sumboyz" who were effectively Orky accountants because they knew the numbers that came after "lotz".
  • In the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, Minotaurs and Dragonborn are shown with having three fingers and a thumb on each hand. They're the only non-human races with this array of digits. Minotaurs also have cloven hooves for feet, while Dragonborn have four-toed paws.
  • The Aslan in Traveller have four digits per hand, and count in base 8. (Their leadership is called the "Tlaukhu", translated as "Twenty-Nine"; it's more literally 3 eights and five.) "Toons" has been mentioned as a derogatory nickname for them, because of the Four-Fingered Hands association.

Toys

  • Bionicle could never make up its mind:
    • The original figures had either no real hands, or only two fingers or three claws. Only much later figures received articulate, fingered hands, usually the larger ones, and these had four. In '09, this phenomenon reached the smaller and medium-sized toys, as they got four-fingered graspers.
    • All of the prominent characters from the first two Direct to Video movies had five fingers, save for those that had claws (Nidhiki, Pewku), no hands at all (Vahki robots), or had just plain weird-looking hands (Krekka). Then, by the third movie, all of the new or newly transformed characters were outfitted with only four. In the fourth movie, which wasn't part of the original trilogy, they also had four, but this time it was because the toys also had that many.
    • The video game Bionicle: Heroes also decided to give the Piraka and Toa Inika four fingers, which is an understandable example of Artistic License, since their figures had no fingers at all, save for Toa Nuparu's huge claws.

Video Games

  • The Ratchet and Clank games have an interesting subversion. Ratchet and any Girl of the Week characters will have five fingers. Everyone else, no matter the species, has only three. The official reason for this [dead link] is because Insomniac wanted to avoid any Four Is Death connotations when they shipped the game to Japan, thus everyone who was originally intended to have four-fingered hands instead has three. This includes Captain Qwark, who otherwise looks human.
  • The characters in the classic arcade game WWF Wrestlefest are fairly accurate representations of real WWF wrestlers of the time—except for their Four-Fingered Hands.
  • While most characters in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise have four fingers and one thumb per hand, the character Nack the Weasel Fang the Sniper has only three fingers and one thumb per hand. This is generally attributed to the Yakuza idea, since he is the ONLY Sonic character always drawn with three fingers. This was lampshaded in the original miniseries where a fish robot attacks a drawing of sonic on a rock, then mumbles about how he should have realized it was fake because it had four fingers. There is also the whole no sort of toes thing, which applies to all animal characters other than those in Sonics Schoolhouse. Just look.
  • Abe from the video game series Oddworld had four fingers in the original game. It was changed to three due to controversy from Japan.
  • The Tauren and Trolls in the Warcraft universe only have three fingers on each hand. The Tauren's hands are evolved hooves most likely. The trolls are just trolls. Gnomes, goblins, and worgen in beast-form have four fingers per hand, as will the upcoming pandaren.
  • It would normally be acceptable as he's a monkey, but Diddy Kong gets a special mention: he had four fingers when he was still owned by Rare (which is British), but (probably because of the Yakuza concern mentioned in the intro) he switched over to five fingers when Nintendo (which is Japanese) took over.
  • Amazingly, both Bowser and Yoshi have four fingers. While the former is supposed to be a villain, one would wonder why a cute little dinosaur like Yoshi have four fingers instead of five like other fictional Japanese heroes.
  • Many of the Non-Human characters in the Breath of Fire universe only have four-fingered hands. Garr and Jean are the most noticeable ones, though.
  • Oddly enough, in Psychonauts, some characters have four fingers whereas other characters have the normal five. To further confusion, certain characters (such as Dr. Loboto) have more joints on each finger than their compatriots.
  • All characters in Backyard Sports originally had four fingers on each hand. Somehow, they each grew another finger later.
  • All player characters in Fat Princess have four-fingered hands. Edited to be five fingers in the Japanese release. (See Above)
  • In Glover, you play as a four-fingered glove. Justified as the thumb and ring fingers are his arms, and the index and middle fingers are his legs. Having a fifth finger would be... yeah...
  • Half-Life: Vortigaunts have three arms, with the third one growing straight out of the chest, with two fingers on each, and their feet don't seem to have toes, instead ending in a pyramidal... claw, let's call it.
  • Character art from Torchlight shows that the characters have four fingers each, although it's hard to see in-game.
  • The Kilrathi in the Wing Commander series are shown (usually) as having 4 digits, and use Base 8 numbering.
  • In X-COM, most if not all Aliens only have four fingers.
  • The Mario Bros. and Peach in Hotel Mario. The official versions of those characters have five fingers.
  • Most Pokémon that have hands and feet usually have three fingers/toes, unless they have human-shaped hands, in that case they usually have five. However, some might have four in earlier game sprites. Many usually have two toes on each foot. Which can lead to unintentionally funny moments: see, with three fingers, the index finger is in the middle, so when certain Pokémon point in the anime, they're constantly flipping each other off.
  • The amateur-produced Interactive Fiction game The Mulldoon Legacy has a puzzle involving aliens whose solution involves realizing you're dealing with base-6 mathematical system, because that's the number of fingers the aliens have. The game includes an alien skeleton, with the appropriate detail mentioned, as a very subtle hint.

Visual Novels

  • The rather simplistic sprites used in the original Higurashi no Naku Koro ni novels all have very large, four-fingered hands. The anime changes to the more typical five.

Web Comics

  • All characters of Cat Legend have always been drawn this way.
  • In Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures, having three fingers and a thumb seems to be not just an artist habit but a species trait, with some characters having three fingers and a thumb while others, usually horses or cows, have only three digits on each hand. As for humans, they tend to have a normal amount. (And yet the artist draws herself with only four digits, fueling speculation that she is secretly a Fraggle.)
  • Mostly averted in Everyday Heroes, where all the human characters have five fingers ... although Uma and her father, being aliens, have only four.
  • All the characters of Freefall. This is justified only in Florence, an anthropomorphic wolf, and Sam, a squidlike alien who wears an environment suit.
  • Averted in Fuzzy Things, though the "tradition" is discussed in this comic
  • Homestuck follows this trope with one notable exception—the Midnight Crew have varying amounts of digits. It's likely just an artistic choice, although their Dersite origins may offer an in-universe explanation. In the Descend animation, Jade is seen with four fingers except in the Hero Mode pictures where she's slapping John.
  • Most of the characters in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob have four fingers—except for Ahem and the Nemesites, Starfish Aliens who have only two.
  • My Middle Names Adventure—with the exception of Winston, who only has two.
  • Newton the Newt has characters with this.
  • All of the characters in Order of the Stick have only three fingers. Well, this is a stick figure comic. They're lucky they have fingers at all.
  • Terinu being a gene-gineered alien, has four fingers and three toes (three and a dewclaw) like his animal predecessors. Strangely, every other alien in the series has five fingers.
  • Zebra Girl averts this. Demons and Funny Animals have four fingers, but all humans have five.
  • It turns out there's a reason for this in Dark Legacy Comics.
  • The characters in Our Little Adventure are drawn like this.
  • Penny Arcade as by Krahulik nearly always draws only three fingers and a thumb, even in relatively "realistic" stories like the recent "Sand". There are exceptions to this, such as the female assassin with the umbrella fighting the Cardboard Tube Samurai, but those are highly unusual. Compare this comic with this comic.
  • Lampshaded in User Friendly, while breaking the fourth wall.
  • The furries from Stubble Trouble have four fingers while the humans have five fingers. Some hoofed animals are seen with three hoof-fingers.
  • This concept art of Commander Badass (which predates the comic Manly Guys Doing Manly Things) shows him with four fingers, but in the comic itself, the Commander (and everyone else) has five.
  • Parodied in this French webcomic, Le Geektionnerd. The characters read a human hand has five fingers, writes over it, and complains about the blog being crap.
  • The Noob has four fingers on each hand, and is thus actually showing six fingers in this comic.
  • In the first few strips of The Whiteboard, Doc was depicted with 5-digit hands, but shortly after the strip's name became an Artifact Title, the character design was changed to have 4-digit hands, with a note by the author explaining the change.
  • In Goblins, humans and demons have five fingers per hands. The goblins and about every non-human races (including elves and dwarves) have four-fingered hands. Reptiles (like kobolds, yuan-ti or lizardfolks) tends to have three-fingered hands. All non-humans (well, those with legs anyway) also have three-toed feet.
  • Karate Bears: They usually have four fingers.
  • The Cyantian Chronicles averts this with most immigrant Cyantians, with the exception of foxes. Leading some fans to comment "that fox has too many fingers" when the artist slips up and accidentally draws one with five.
  • My Roommate Is an Elf. All characters have these, along with White Gloves.
  • Zack of Urban Jungle is only drawn with three fingers and a thumb on each hand. It isn't until this strip we learn why.
  • The Packrat. Makes one wonder how different playing keyboards is with only four fingers per hand.
  • Hijinks Ensue. Which eventually was lampshaded:

- Either of you seen a dude with 5 fingers on his right hand?
- Inconceivable.

Western Animation

Scrooge: (when doing a high- four) Give me four!

    • Also lampshaded once in Bonkers, where one of the ways Bonkers can tell the Monster of the Week is not a "toon" is because he loses his four-fingered glove and Bonkers notices he has five fingers.
    • Strangely averted in the Goofy cartoon "Baggage Buster", where he has five fingers. This was most likely due to Goofy being rotoscoped here.
  • Likewise, most characters in Warner Brothers productions, such as Looney Tunes, Animaniacs, and Tiny Toon Adventures.
    • Inverted in the Looney Tunes short Rabbit of Seville, Bugs Bunny's hands are given five fingers for one scene to properly mime a piano melody played on Elmer's head. Rabbits' front paws normally have four digits.
    • The more (otherwise) realistic a four-fingered hand is, the creepier - note the hands of the (human) mailman at the beginning of Daffy Duck's The Great Piggy Bank Robbery.
  • Lampshaded in one episode of Pinky and The Brain—while taking wild guesses at a secret signal, Brain attempts the Vulcan hand sign and visibly struggles with how to arrange his fingers.

Brain: Live long and... (shifts fingers) uh...

"Four-finger discount!"

    • Particularly of note, whenever God appears on the show, he has five fingers.
    • In one episode, Lisa tells Bart that in some magazine about the future they predicted that people would eventually have 5 fingers.

Bart: Five fingers? Ewwww! Freak show!

    • And the norm for a perfectly-shaped baby is "Four toes on each foot, four fingers on each hand."
    • In an Imagine Spot Homer had when his father and Marge's mother were dating:

Homer: If he marries your mother, Marge, we'll be brother and sister. And then our kids -- they'll be horrible freaks with pink skin, no overbites, and five fingers on each hand!

    • Selma was seen to have five toes in Bart the Fink, possibly due to an animation error.
    • Worked around in one scene where Sideshow Bob is bench pressing weights. His Knuckle Tattoos are highlighted, but "love" and "hate" are spelled out with only 3 letters as "LUV" and "HĀT".
  • Futurama characters (the humans anyways) have four fingers. The show is created by the same people that make The Simpsons, so it explains the similar character designs.
  • All the characters in The Fairly OddParents have four fingers; however, their future selves in the Made for TV Movie Channel Chasers have five.
    • It was lampshaded by Wandissimo once, where he (working as a masseuse) declared "My Eight Little friends and I have work to do".
    • Very mildly Averted in the No Dialogue Episode "Pipe Down" when Timmy is trying to "charade" his wish. To show he means "for", he holds up his left hand and he does indeed have FIVE fingers; he folded his thumb so he could show four fingers for "for".
    • Lampshaded again where the fairy personification of April Fools raises his hand during a stand up comedy, suddenly realizes he only has four fingers, and so uses magic to conjure up a fifth one.
    • Again Lampshadeed when Timmy and his Fairy Godparents crossed over into Danny Phantom's universe, where the characters have the proper 5 fingers than the 4 fingers of Timmy's universe.
  • The characters in Danny Phantom have five fingers too, though that may be due to the series having a more "realistic" element as opposed to The Fairly OddParents.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants, though most Bikini Bottomites don't have fingers to start with. It can be justified, though, in that he's not human.
    • They Lampshaded this at least twice. Sometimes when SpongeBob counts on his fingers, he will magically grow each finger past four as he gets to it.
    • Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, though explicitly human, have four-fingered hands—despite having been shown with five fingers when they were younger.
  • Lampshaded in Three Two One Penguins; one of the characters states, "You're only five minutes older!" to his twin, holding up all his fingers on one hand, quickly holding up a finger on the other hand, because he's only got four fingers.
  • Almost all of the animated characters in the Schoolhouse Rock shorts have four fingers, except in certain instances of "Multiplication Rock", where the characters count on both hands.
    • Noah and his son in "Elementary My Dear" (x2) have five fingers when demonstrating "Two times 10 is 20," but otherwise have four fingers.
    • Everyone in "Ready Or Not, Here I Come" (x5) has five fingers, and they count off for hide and seek one finger at a time.
    • "That prince over there" in "I Got Six" (x6) has five fingers, to show off that he has "six rings on every finger" (6x10=60).
    • Of course the eponymous "Little Twelvetoes" has six fingers (and six toes) as the song is about multiplication by 12.
  • All human characters on the Clifford the Big Red Dog and Clifford's Puppy Days series.
  • Also true of Word Girl, another production of Scholastic. The WordGirl character wears gloves, though only when shown as WordGirl and not her secret identity, Becky Botsford.
  • The characters in Fillmore! have four fingers on each hand. Considering this is at least a semi-action show, and the rest of the bodies are drawn reasonably realistically, this is unusual.
  • Braceface's characters were also drawn with Four-Fingered Hands and otherwise-not-too-stylized bodies, clashing rather badly. Also, the show tackles teen issues realistically.
  • Neosapiens in Exo Squad had four fingers on each hand and four toes on each foot, which resembled hands, anyway. This is a mild subversion, as the Neosapien hand is designed to have two thumbs on each hand, opposing the other two fingers like a capital letter C. All of the human characters on the show were portrayed with the normal five fingers.
  • Spock has six fingers in a well-known artistic blooper from the "Yesteryear" episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series.
  • Actual exchange from Class of 3000: "I'm lucky that I still have all 10 fingers!" "You have 10? Wow, you really are rich." Played straight, as Eddy is drawn with four fingers in every other scene. Still funny.
  • A particularly baffling example from Sonic Underground: Sonic and his siblings are drawn with five fingers, but Robotnik has only four.
  • Lloyd Nebulon (the Lloyd in Space title character) also has just three fingers. Justified, seeing Lloyd is an alien.
  • Lampshaded in "Phineas and Ferb's Musical Cliptastic Countdown". Doofenshmirtz says that after the commercial, they'll show the final four videos, while holding up all of his fingers on one hand but with his thumb lowered. He glances at his hand and realizes that since he has Four-Fingered Hands, he is only holding up three fingers, so he starts holding up his thumb as well.
  • In Cow and Chicken, Chicken has four "fingers" and Cow has three. Lampshaded when the Red guy tries to give them piano lessons.
  • Everybody in Family Guy has four fingers. Strangely, despite the nature of the show, they've never lampshaded this.
    • Though they do have five fingers in the Disneyverse.
  • Lampshaded in Teen Titans. Beast Boy is making a verbal list, punctuated by the number of fingers he holds up. He reaches his third reason, and realizes he now only has four digits. Shaking his hand brings back his missing finger.
  • Stunt Dawgs lampshaded this in one episode, where Splat turns to the viewer and says " Don't try this at home. I am a trained professional and incidentally, a cartoon character." (Extends hand.) "See? Three fingers and a thumb."
  • Helga Pataki of Hey Arnold! names her fists "Old Betsy" and "The Five Avengers" despite only having four fingers on each hand.
  • Also lampshaded in the Finnish political satire-cum-GCI-animated comedy series The Autocrats, where one character calls another out on using the term "wrapped around my little finger" because they only have four. Later, two characters are seen bowling, and one advises the other to use their little finger for support... which he doesn't have, of course.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door averts this trope... while simultaneously showing why most people do it. Those kids have absolutely huge, and completely disproportionate hands! If they had proportional hands it would be hard to fit that many fingers.
  • Used in Yin Yang Yo, but subverted with the Manotaur.
  • Stone Cold Steve Austin once mentioned in an interview that it saddened him somewhat that the claymation version of him on Celebrity Deathmatch lacked a middle finger.
  • Drawn Together uses the trope interestingly. In keeping with the general art style of the characters' source material, the more realistically drawn characters (Hero, Foxxy, Clara, and Xandir) have the proper number of digits, but the more "cartoony" ones (Toot and Wooldoor) have four. Toot is something of an unusual case in that although she has four fingers, she's often (though not always) drawn with five toes. This could be an animation goof, however.
  • In Beast Wars, Rhinox and Depth Charge were the most noticeable characters with this trait. Of course, they're not the only characters to have this in the Transformers Universe, some examples include:
  • In the Ben10 franchise, all human characters do in fact have 5 digits on each hand. However, the majority of aliens in the shows, including Ben's transformations, only have the four digits on each hand (one exception is the Anodyte aliens, which also have five digits per hand).
  • In the The Beatles, the characters have four-fingered hands most of the time, but occasionally have five- and even six-fingered hands.
  • Characters in Tuff Puppy have four-fingered hands.

Kitty Katswell: I'd rather use my TEN CLAWS! (she holds up her hands, with only 8)

Teacher: How much is 5+5?
(Candy is nervous)
Random Girl: Use your fingers.
Candy: Hmmmm. EIGHT!

  • In Invader Zim, Dib (and everyone else) has four fingers, and Zim has three (except for about 3 episodes where he has four, but that might be just an animation error), but then again all the irkens only have three fingers. This is used subtily with Tak, who has three fingers in both her Irken and Human forms.
  • The cast of Around the World with Willy Fog.
  • The humans in The Looney Tunes Show constantly either have four or five fingers from scene to scene.
  • Everyone from The Powerpuff Girls has four fingers, but the Powerpuff Girls themselves have none!
  • The Disney animated show The Replacements is an unusual case. The early seasons had the characters with Four-Fingered Hands but in later seasons, they acquired more realistic five fingered hands.
  • Henry and June from KaBlam!! flip-flop from either having four fingers or five Depending on the Artist. There have been some instances where one of their hands has five and another has four.
  • Averted in both Rugrats and its Spiritual Sucessor (even if the latter was still running) Recess, where the characters have five fingers.
  • All of the animal characters in Bucky O Hare and The Toad Wars have four fingers on each hand. Averted with Willy Du Witt and the rest of the humans, though.
  • Frosty the Snowman normally has four fingers, but mysteriously gains a fifth so that he can count to five.
  • Certain animated segments on Sesame Street feature human characters with four-fingered hands.
  • Adventure Time is an interesting case, seeing as most (humanoid) characters, including Finn, often have Rubber Hose Limbs that appear as three barely discernible fingers that quickly change into four-fingered hands when close-ups are required. The only instance a character was drawn with 5 proper finger was with Marceline, whose right hand momentarily had an extra finger in "Evicted!" when she shows Finn and Jake the Nut Creatures, and in Heat Signature while putting ketchup on her first two fingers. Billy the hero is an interesting case as he's drawn with 6 fingers.
  • How is the cast of The Mr. Men Show not mentioned here? All the shape humans within that show have only four fingers there.
  • Characters in the Popeye cartoons avert this trope, as they have five fingers. Played straight in cartoons from Famous Studios the 1950s, where Olive Oyl streamlined and have four.
  • In Project Gee Ke R this is averted with most of the characters, who are drawn in a fairly realistic style. Geeker himself being an artificial human, combines this with Non-Standard Character Design. Lampshaded when the Big Bad uses this trait to allow people to identify him. It's also a sore spot for Geeker, which he refers to as a "tragic deformity."
  • Special Agent Oso had an unusual case when it did a Crossover with Handy Manny. The human characters on Oso normally have the correct number of fingers, but in the crossover episode, they had four-fingered hands. This was probably because the characters on Handy Manny, including Manny, have four-fingered hands and it would have been weird to draw depict Manny with five.
  • Ironically in Team Umizoomi , a show about math, 2 of the main characters, Milli and Geo, have 4 fingers. Yes, they can magically grow a 5th finger, But Bot has none!
    • Door Mouse has the proper 5 fingers.
  • All the human characters on Todd World (a show that aired on Discovery Kids before it became The Hub) have these.
  • Ranger Gord had these in the animated Ranger Gord's Educational Films on The Red Green Show.

Real Life

  • Hippopotamuses have four toes on each foot.
  • Amphibians have four clawless digits on each hand, but have five digits on their back feet.
  • Paleontology
    • Inverted with Tyrannosaurus Rex, who has two fingers on each hand, but four toes on each foot.
    • Yet also inverted with Mononykus, whose name even means "one claw".
    • While the "standard" number of digits was really five at the beginning of their evolution, the carnivorous dinosaurs usually only had four (especially the more primitive ones), but three-fingered hands were the most prominent by far. However the tyrannosaurids and alvarezsaurids (to whom Mononykus belongs) weren't the only groups to have reduced their finger numbers: abelisaurids had virtually no fingers, just stubs, and, of course, there are the birds, the most obvious examples.
    • Pterosaurs had four digits on their forelimbs, one of which was modified to support their wings.

Reduced Number of Toes Variant

Anime And Manga

  • Many Pokémon with feet will usually have less digits than their upper limbs (barring wings, fins, claws, scythes and tentacles). The best example is Pikachu, who has five tiny digits on each "hand" and three digits on each foot. Other examples include Clefairy, Cubone and Marowak, Rhyperior and Hitmonlee and Conkeldurr. Although, the reverse is also true, especially for Kyurem (in normal form), Bagon, Raichu, Anpharos, Growlithe and Chansey.
  • Ditto with Digimon. Some digimon, including more animalistic types, have three-toed feet with four or five fingered hands such as Veemon. However, others may have the same exact number of toes and fingers such as Agumon (who has three digits) and Leomon (who has five digits). And then there are the digimon who have their feet covered, such as Beelzemon or Knightmon....

Comic Books

  • Ben Grimm has three toes per foot. The Hulk did too in some very early apparances.
  • In Cerebus the Aardvark, Cerebus' otherwise human son had three toes per foot, just like his father.
  • The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles take this a step further—each of the turtles has only three fingers on each hand, and only two toes on each foot. Lampshaded in the 2003 version when he rates Leo's performance of a kick.

Leonardo: Hey, Raph, only a six?
Raphael: Bro, it's all I got!

Comic Strips

Films -- Animation

  • Mittens from Bolt plays this trope straight by having three-toed paws, but Bolt adverts this trope by having the proper four-toed paws.
  • The lions in The Lion King advert this trope by having the proper four-toed paws, but the hyenas and meerkats play this trope straight by having three-toed paws. The lions also show dew-claw-lumps (thumbs) on their front paws.
  • Scratette from Ice Age: Dawn of The Dinosaurs has three-fingered hands and two-toed feet, while Scrat from all three Ice Age movies has the standard four-fingered hands and three-toed feet.
  • The humans in Ratatouille were animated without toes according to Word of God.
  • Ducky, the animated hadrosaur from The Land Before Time, has the correct number of digits on all four limbs (four-toed front feet and three-toed hind feet), although her opposable thumbs are out of place.

Literature

  • Happens even in literature! In Animorphs, when Rachel morphed into a cat and scratches someone, she notes that it left "three red lines" on the back of his hand. Also, ankles "reversed" when morphing anything four-footed. Applegate, a grown sci-fi author, apparently don't know about digitigrade and plantigrade feet.
  • An inversion in Eragon. Dwarves and Urgals have seven toes on each foot.
  • Tolkien did that inversion first, with the seven-toed Treebeard.

Live-Action TV

  • The Diffys on Phil of the Future have five-fingered hands... but they have four-toed feet, which is a plot point when Phil has to go barefoot on a field trip.

Western Animation

  • On Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, characters not only have only four fingers, but only three toes.
    • In the same vein, Mike, Lu & Og.
    • However, in Ed's story in "Once Upon An Ed", a close-up of the giant Kankers' feet shows four toes.
  • The Flintstones characters go one step further by having four-fingered hands, and three-toed feet.
    • Though in "Dripper" a close-up of Fred's new "brake pads" show four toes.
  • Jerry from Tom and Jerry has two-toed feet.
  • Speedy Gonzales from Looney Tunes also has two-toed feet.
  • Most Disney animal characters have three-toed feet.
  • Nearly all Warner Bros Looney Tunes, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Animaniacs animal characters have three-toed feet too.
    • And Bugs Bunny's feet have three dots on the bottom, two small and one large, suggesting pads like on a dog's paw. This doesn't match the number of pads a three-toed mammal ought to have: one per toe, plus a bigger pad for the sole. To make matters worse, real rabbits' paws don't have pads at all.
  • Woody Woodpecker has two-toed feet.
    • Woodpeckers in real life have feet with their toes in a kind of X formation—two forwards (the 2nd and 3rd digits), and two backwards (1st and 4th digits), to allow for clinging to rough vertical surfaces like tree bark. These are known as Zygodactyl feet.
  • Both protagonists in Sam and Max Freelance Police, a dog and rabbit team, have three-toed feet.
    • Lampshaded in "Moai Better Blues", when a tribe of foot-worshiping ocean chimps mentions that, despite fitting some general descriptors of their prophecies of the true high priest, he's ineligible for any role holier than sidekick to the high priest, because while he was blessed with feet, they're not complete. Max claims he never noticed before, and is suddenly repulsed by Sam's freakish feet.
  • The cast of Tale Spin.
  • The cast of Around the World with Willy Fog.
  • Averted in the Popeye cartoons, where the characters have five (or in the 1950s, four) toes on each foot. Played straight by Popeye in "A Job For A Gob" and Olive in "Beach Peach".
  • Used on Little People, a series of claymation shorts based on toys by Fisher-Price.
  • In Regular Show, Mordecai the Blue Jay has two-toed feet.

Real Life

  • Guinea pigs and capybaras have four-toed front feet and three-toed hind feet.
  • Parrots and owls have two toes that point forward and two that point back.
  • There's a tribe in Africa known as the "Ostrich-Footed People" due to having four-toed, birdlike feet as a result of a hereditary mutation. Apparently it's related to what Lobster Boy had.
  • Inverted with the cats living in Ernest Hemingway's Florida home. There are over 100 cats living there, and about half of them have six "toes" on each paw.
  • Two-toed sloths, as their name implies, have only two clawed toes on their forefeet, with three toes on their hindfeet. Three-toed sloths, on the other hand, have three toes on all of their limbs.
  • The blind, snake-like amphibious underground Olm is notable for having only three tiny "fingers" on their front limbs and two stumpy digits in the rear http://natural-wild-life.blogspot.com/2011/08/olm.html.
  • The all-famous Tyrannosaurus Rex has only two functioning fingers (with a residual nonfunctional third finger) on their forelimbs and three clawed toes on their hind feet.
  • Horses have only one toe on each foot—and their hooves are their "toenails".
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