Magic Pants

"Thankfully, his clothes also grew just enough not to bother the censors."

—The Narrator, Arakawa Under the Bridge

Heroes who can change their size or shape generally don't have to worry about ruining their clothes in the process. They must have Magic Pants.

Simply put, Magic Pants are the "civilian" clothing the characters wear as they go about their daily business. They may lose them during the Transformation Sequence, but once the dirty work is done, they'll appear back in them often right where they were standing. This can even happen if the transformations are shown to explicitly destroy the clothing, and in some cases, the rest of the clothing is destroyed but the pants mysteriously survive.

This doesn't apply to magical characters (who presumably can conjure up a fresh set), nor to characters with super speed (Superman, the Flash) who have the demonstrated ability to get dressed faster than the human eye can see; nor to heroes whose clothing is what makes them super in the first place. No, those would actually be aversions of this trope. This is for characters who seem to spontaneously regain their clothes even when it's inconsistent with what gives them their powers.

For costumes that can be tattered to almost any extreme just short of the point where they reveal the character's naughty bits, see Clothing Damage.

Compare to Impossibly Cool Clothes and My Suit Is Also Super. Not to be confused with Trouser Space and definitely not to be confused with Right Through His Pants. Related to Magic Skirt. This is also conceptually related to Out-of-Clothes Experience: Your clothes technically aren't a part of "you", so in spirit-space you're naked. Monster Modesty (a monster walks around almost naked for little reason) is often used in conjunction with this trope.

Examples of Magic Pants include:

Anime and Manga

  • Magical Project S in an episode both misao and pixy misa age to teenagers and grow and become very tall yet their clothes remain the same , also when they became babies their clothes were of the sane size too
  • Jiro, the titular android in Android Kikaider: The Animation. His transformation from "human" form to "robotic superweapon" shows not only his clothes but his face being shredded, revealing the "real" Jiro underneath. But after the Monster of the Week has been defeated, the next shot of Jiro is almost always his unscathed human form. I'd love to have his tailor. (The skin and clothes are actually made by Nanomachines out of random particles in the area, So...)
  • In the second season of Magic Knight Rayearth, the trio discuss what happens to Fuu's glasses whenever they transform. They're not entirely certain, but the glasses always come back afterwards, and her vision isn't impaired during her transformed state.
  • In Black Blood Brothers, when the "Old Blood" vampire Cain Warlock transforms into his blue wolf form, his clothes are torn to shreds and he triples in size, but those trousers remain unscathed.
  • In One Piece, many characters have eaten one of the fabled "Devil Fruits", which grant superhuman powers to the eater. "Zoan" Fruits grant the ability to turn into animal forms, "Paramecia" Fruits do all sorts of crazy stuff (like the main character's rubber body), and "Logia" Fruits allow the user to transform into natural elements. With the exception of one possibly non-canonical movie and one character with an age-controlling fruit, in every instance the user's clothes change size or transform in tandem with whatever powers their user has, even if they're new clothes.
    • The creator of the series, when asked how come when one of the characters (a woman that could extend any part of her body as a hard as metal spike) used their powers, they didn't shred their clothes in the process. He stated that if he had done it realistically, the manga would have had too much unnecessary nudity (not to be confused with necessary nudity, see below)
    • In one chapter, everybody becomes wax sculptures, and are freed by Usopp's flaming slingshot attack. Everybody who turned into a wax sculpture loses their shirts, (yes, including Nami and Vivi) but they keep their pants.
    • Jewelry Bonney seems to be an exception to this: when she uses her powers to turn some Marines into children their clothes stopped fitting and she wears loose, skimpy clothing with suspenders that fit even if she turns herself into a child.
    • Robin has come to rely on this a bit after the Time Skip. Before she would only use her power to temporarily create copies of her body parts on nearby surfaces to create individual parts like arms, eyes, or legs, which always remained bare. After the Time Skip, she learned how to create complete copies of herself, and also somehow gained the ability to create extra outfits with which to clothe those copies. Though this makes sense given Oda's reasoning in the entry above.
  • Averted in Fruits Basket; the characters transform back from their animal forms au naturel. The exception being when Kyo transforms into the super-ultra cursed version of the cat, and gets a pair of his very own magic pants even when in the form of a...lizard-cat-thing. Justified in that the size difference was small enough that they simply stayed on, rather than fall off as they do in most other cases.
  • Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star has a tendency to "hulk out" when facing foes he particularly despises or has difficulty defeating, destroying his jacket and undershirt in the process. He seems to have an infinite supply of these jackets and undershirts, as they are always replaced without explanation by the beginning of the next episode—and sometimes, by the beginning of the next scene. Justified in that he quite literally absorbs it and re-extrudes it when he's finished.
  • Pepper of Urusei Yatsura has the power to shed all of her skin at will. Her clothes are treated as if they were part of her skin, as when she uses the power both her and the shed skin are fully clothed.
  • Applied inconsistently throughout Ranma ½. Sometimes characters have their clothes on and intact when they transform back from their cursed state, but usually not, often causing people to realize that they turned back to humans but can't go anywhere because they're in public. The only one who always transforms back with his clothes is Genma, since presumably none of the audience wishes to see a fat middle-aged man naked.
    • This is especially noticeable in the case of Pantyhose Taro. All of the others transform into small animals (pig, cat, etc.) and their clothing either vanishes or crumples to the floor. However, Pantyhose Taro transforms into a multi-story bull/yeti/crane/eel/octopus chimera, and he always rips his clothes to tiny little shreds when he does yet they're always still there when he transforms back.
    • The people of Mt. Phoenix, when in their natural state, wear open clothes and boots that allow for their wings and talons to stretch out unimpeded. But if they transform to human, they add jackets and normal boots, which are ripped apart when they revert to their true forms. It doesn't seem to bother them.
    • Ranma himself deserves a mention. Unlike the others he changes genders instead of into an animal, causing his normal clothes to be too big and hang loosely when turned into his smaller girl form; it takes the space of a panel for "her" sash to tighten around her waist and for the rolled-up sleeves to adjust to her shorter arms. Conversely, almost any fitting clothes he gets put in while a girl end up streching as they are too small (but not small enough that they'll rip) if he returns to normal—the exception being a steel corset that was forced on female Ranma by a domineering governess, and which was small (and inflexible) enough that it crushed male Ranma's torso quite painfully and effectively locked him in female form for the duration of the ordeal.
    • The legendary (and semi-sentient) "Battle Dougi", essentially an elaborate Chinese-style blouse with long black leggings, will destroy its owner's clothing when invoked. Which is a problem for said owner if the Dougi is subsequently damaged, because she'll be wearing nothing underneath.
  • In Digimon Frontier, the Transformation Sequence involves clothes shredding, the better to facilitate a Sailor Moon-esque naked transformation. Clothes are always returned upon demorphing. Explained by the fact that in the Digital World, your appearance is based on your picture of yourself. That's why, in other seasons, the Digidestined's clothes automatically changed when they entered the Digital World no matter what they were wearing before.
    • In Digimon Tamers the final evolution's Transformation Sequence - Matrix Evolution - does not show what happens to the human partners' clothing during the process. Perhaps this has the same explanation as "Digimon have no gender" being the reason that the human partner has no naughty bits during the sequence - Digimon also technically don't wear "clothes".
  • Rosario + Vampire does a Lampshade Hanging on it in one of the Omake. Given that nearly everyone in the manga is some sort of monster taking on human form, Magic Pants must be part of the school dress code.
    • Averted somewhat in at least one scene in Capo2 of the manga where Kurumu's wings can be seen tearing through the back of her shirt as she transforms. There's no clear angle to see if her shirt has magically repaired itself after that. One panel in the first series shows that her wings have clearly ripped open the back of her shirt/sweater. She suffered further Clothing Damage during the battle so it's hard to say for sure what happened after that.
    • There's also at least one scene where you can see her tail pushing the top of her undies down from where it's sprouted, apparently around the base of her spine.
  • Averted in Moldiver, where in the heat of the moment Mirai sometimes forgets that her Transformation Sequence destroys clothing and finds herself naked after transforming back if she doesn't remove her clothes and fold them tidily away before activating the Mol unit.
  • This trope is inconsistent, but present, in the Dragon Ball Anime series.
    • When the saiyans transform into Giant Apes, they are naked when they change back to normal. And apparently Freiza's army, including the Saiyans, wore special armor that was literally one size fits all. Even when Vegeta transforms into a Giant Ape inside them, they still fit. Bulma later replicates this armor.
      • This is pushed a bit far in the Bardock special, characters that are clearly wearing cloth material in addition to their spandex or whatever bodysuits still have it on them in Oozaru form, but despite being stretched out so much, it still wears as loosely as it did on their normal sized form.
    • In Dragonball GT in a Filler), Goku's Super Saiyan 4 state always has his pants in a good condition, despite the fact that Goku has a child body with child clothes and the transformation makes him to grow in an adult. Also, the first time Goku reached that state, his clothes were previously destroyed because he had converted into a giant ape... and the pants (re-)appeared anyway. Vegeta gets a pretty much identical pair of pants (or possibly pants-like fur) when he makes the SSJ4 transformation, even though he was wearing his usual blue bodysuit before. The pants are apparently just a part of the transformation, which sounds like "more crap from GT" until you realize that using ki for a wardrobe change has been in place since the first season of Z, if not before.
    • Goku even lampshades this in first fight against Piccolo Jr. when the latter grew to gigantic proportions, with Goku asking how his pants grew with him.
  • Averted in Princess Tutu. The main character repeatedly turns from a human to a duck and back again, losing her clothes in the process and having to constantly hide somewhere to redress. However, it's played straight when Ahiru transforms into the titular Magical Girl.
  • Allen Walker, the protagonist of D.Gray-man, has a left arm made of Innocence. When he activates it, it becomes a huge, armored claw that goes all the way up to his shoulder, even though he usually wears long sleeves. Lampshaded in one of the manga volumes, where he answers a reader's question about it.

Allen: I have no idea. I'm just glad it doesn't rip.

  • In an early episode of Revolutionary Girl Utena, Utena rips off the (sleeveless) dress that she's wearing to reveal her usual (longsleeved) uniform meant for boys underneath. This is blatant enough to be (and knowing Utena probably is) a Lampshade Hanging.
  • When Chrono of Chrono Crusade transforms from his Sleep Mode Size into his true form, he goes from wearing a red coat over a 1920's-esque outfit into a Badass jacket (sans shirt) and pants. When he returns to his childlike form, his usual outfit reappears. (This causes a very interesting sight to happen later in the manga—when part of his coat is blown away before his transformation is triggered, after his switch back to his child form part of his coat is in tatters. Which causes one to wonder...how can his coat can be damaged by bullets, but doesn't get destroyed when he grows an extra foot or two and gains abs and a six pack?)
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist, Major Armstrong's shirt tends to explode with alarming regularity and he is seen shirtless for several scenes after he rips his shirt (and the gag/fight is over). His pants are far more durable.
    • Interestingly, this trope is averted by the wardrobes of the Homunculi, which explicitly regenerate if they suffer any kind of Clothing Damage (usually after being impaled, dismembered, burned, or all of the above).
    • In the anime, Edward Elric is constantly doing that to his trademark coat and, sometimes, even his shirt. And he doesn't take it off, he rips it off, as seen in the first chapter. He can make new ones with alchemy.
  • Whenever Astro Boy gets in a fight all his clothes usually end up getting shredded aside from his iconic belt, briefs and red boots. Note that this doesn't apply to the original manga where these were explicitly part of his body, whereas in later versions he is said to be designed to emulate humans perfectly.
  • Setsuna in Mahou Sensei Negima appears to go between releasing her wings by lifting the back of her shirt to having them appear directly through the cloth without tearing (possibly justified in that pactio-registered outfits can revive). Akamatsu, given the time, will occasionally illustrate her wings visibly appearing under the cloth, but falls into this when rushed (he focuses the camera at angles where the viewer can't tell). Also, Kotaro tends to this as he transforms into his beast form (pants perfectly intact).
    • When the cast use age-changing pills, their clothes do not transform. When Evangeline aged back to her younger form on Negi's 'date' during the Mahora Fair she had to adjust her dress to fit. When Konoka aged up to 20 her pants needed to be unbuttoned and her shirt was skin tight, when Chisame aged down her pants (and panties) fell off under her shirt (which was now as long as a dress). Negi and Kotaro are never shown aging up, but they change their clothes when they do. Making this a subversion, except...
    • Then there's Takane, who, tired of Clothing Damage, starts wearing literal magic clothes that double as armour. However, they have the glaring flaw of having No Ontological Inertia (as she experienced by fainting after a fight with Negi), and are of little use against Asuna... proving that in some cases, regular pants are superior.
  • Lampshaded by Yusuke in Yu Yu Hakusho Abridged. "His pants know just when to stop ripping, don't they."
  • Tsuna from Katekyo Hitman Reborn burns off all of his clothes save his boxers every time he gets hit with the Dying Will Bullet. Why only his boxers aren't burned off remains a mystery...
  • Averted in Spice and Wolf: When Horo has to transform into a Big Badass Wolf in an emergency, her expensive clothes are torn to shreds. To avoid having to buy an another set of clothes, she disrobes first when she has to transform again.
  • S-Cry-ed has a couple of takes on this. Some of the time, armor-like Alters just layer on top of clothes, but in the case of Kazuma's Shell Bullet arm, his actual arm is deconstructed and rebuilt (or just outright vaporized). When he changes back, the clothing on that arm is still there. Could be justified by the fact that they psychically rearrange matter to accomplish these feats and just instinctively know how to put things back together.
  • Averted in Claymore: the organization's ultimate weapon, Alicia, who transforms in a slightly-more-than-human sized creature with blades for arms, has a special uniform made of a material that apparently stretches to accomodate her changed form. How the hell it doesn't tear or dull the blades is, however, not explained.
    • Another character with similar transformation powers is seen disrobing before engaging in battle so that her transformation won't ruin her dress.
  • Inuyasha averts this in the Case of Naraku, whose outfits tear when he transforms in them. At one time, he is clearly shown to be unclothed after Sesshomaru cut him to bits - He regenerated, his outfit obviously didn't. He tends to carry a more transformation-friendly, loose-fitting baboon pelt robe with him to cover himself afterwards.
    • Speaking of Sesshomaru, we never learn what happens to his armor when he releases his true form. Then again, his clothes might literary be magical, given that his brother has a fire-prof, self-repairing magical robe that is as tough as armor and has lasted the entire 200 or so years of his battle-filled life.
    • In the "pants are indestructible" vein, whenever Inuyasha transforms into his full demon mode, usually his shirt has already been shredded in the process of gaining a life-threatening injury or will be completely destroyed in the ensuing battle - but his pants remain untouched, never even getting a bit ragged around the edges. Incidentally, he also regains his shirt (fully intact) after every battle with no explanation as to how it got there/was repaired.
  • In Naruto, the later stages of the title character's transformation constantly burn his skin (while it constantly regenerates), but leave his clothes undamaged; the one exception is when he was wearing a Badass Long Robe before one transformation, and it inexplicable disappeared by the time he got out of it. Likewise, Suigetsu's clothes changed into water with the rest of his body, though his weapon doesn't (and when he fuses with a body of water the clothes apparently dissolved into the water) and Choji's clothes grow with him when he turns giant.
    • Averted by the second stage of the Cursed Seals: Tayuya growing horns ripped up her hat, Kimimaro growing spikes out of his body and a tail destroyed his shirt and ripped a hole in the back of his pants (and he pulled down his shirt when growing bone weapons out of his body or ripped holes in it), and Sasuke growing wings ripped two huge holes in the back of his shirt (he starts wearing an open shirt which he can pull down easily after the Time Skip).
    • When Itachi was hit by Kirin for some reason his Black Cloak completely disappeared but what he was wearing under it didn't move at all.
    • Orochimaru (and temporarily, Sasuke) can shed his skin to regenerate, and like Pepper the clothes are treated like they were part of his body.
    • This becomes a plot point when Darui fights Kinkaku and Ginkaku: when Kinkaku did a tailed beast transformation which resulted in the weapon he was using being unreachable and thus eliminating the possibility of using it on him as happened to Ginkaku.
    • Impure World Resurrection appears to bring people back in whatever clothes they were wearing when they died; the only one we've seen immediately after being resurrected was wearing pants and a mask but not the shirt he took off a while before being killed.
  • Tokyo Mew Mew, aside from the whole Magic From Technology thing (being injected with Red Data Animal DNA actually turns one into a Magical Girl with all consequences), includes two characters whose cat genes cause them to turn into actual cats. When they regain their human forms, their clothes are intact. Furthermore, in the cat form, one of them winds up wearing an item not present in their regular costume at all.
  • The anime version of The Violinist of Hamelin is particularly Egregious about this, especially in the second season. Every time Hamel transforms into a demon his clothes explode off him dramatically, and they're almost always completely intact when he changes back. Made even more painfully obvious when his all-black outfit that Flute made him apparently becomes his trademark that people recognize him by in his travels. What the hell...?
  • Averted in Those Who Hunt Elves, where one of the characters was tricked into growing specifically because it would rip all of her clothes off. It Makes Sense in Context.
  • Averted in Seto no Hanayome, when Nagasumi turns into a giant after drinking some mermaid health concoction, mentally scarring several characters.
  • Extreme example in Pandora Hearts: When Alice turns into her Black Rabbit form, not only do her clothes change size with her, but her miniskirt turns into a pair of pants! (Could be justified by magic.)
  • Played straight in adult manga Wolf Guy Wolfen Crest: the main character Inugami once takes on an explosion at point blank (at the ground zero of explosion). Being a werewolf, he survives the blast, but his shirt is destroyed... but his pants don't even have a scratch on them.
  • In Xam'd: Lost Memories, turning into a Xam'd apparently rips through your clothes, yet when you turn back, the clothes are fully intact. Somehow. The similar Humanform Weapons also seem to tear through their clothing but we never really see what happens when they turn back to human (IF they even can).
  • The main character of Ultimate Girls, Silk, learns the hard way that this trope does not apply to her universe the first time she transforms into a 100 foot tall warrior justice and is naked upon reversion because her clothes were shredded in the magical girl style transformation. She and her fellow Ultimate Girls must from then on make a point of stripping prior to transforming.
  • Averted with the gold dragon Filia Ul Copt in Slayers. While she does seem to produce a new outfit every time afterward, she explicitly states that the old one gets destroyed during the transformation from human to dragon. This comes into play when she is locked up in a cell and mentions that she could simply change into her dragon form to escape, but would end up naked during the transformation and politely asks the guard to turn his head. The guard refuses. Not because she was trying to escape, but because he didn't want to miss a chance to see her naked.
  • Totally averted in Devilman Lady, where Jun destroys her garments every time she transforms into a muscular she-devil. Her handler Asuka remarks she needs to remember to bring extra clothes for her after missions.
  • In Kemonozume, the Flesh Eaters usually keep just enough of their clothes intact when they transform, and they still fit when they revert. However, when Kazuma transforms near the end, he is left totally naked.
  • Averted in the Wild Series. Whenever the characters transform back to human from beast form, they are naked. Mostly.
  • First averted, then played straight in New Grappler Baki due to an art continuity error. After Dorian gets set on fire, he inexplicably goes from being in his underwear (with his pants gone entirely) to wearing the convenient remains of his sweat pants over a couple of chapters.
  • In My Hero Academia, Mt. Lady downplays this Trope. Most of her costume is made of some super-stretchy material that can indeed grow as she does, but she seems unable to obtain shoes that can do the same. As a result, she often experiences foot pain, and while she can crush the bad guys with a Giant Foot of Stomping, she risks injuring herself if she does. In one storyline, she had to use a flatbed truck like a shoe in order to smash into All For One's Nomu factory.

Comic Books

  • The most obvious example is The Incredible Hulk, who seems to always wind up wearing those purple pants regardless of what Banner was wearing before the transformation:
    • In the live-action series, Ferrigno usually wound up wearing the same kind of pants that Bixby had on when he "Hulked Out". This led to amusing scenes in which the transformation would shred shirts, destroy heavy leather work boots, and even, in one case, crack open a motorcycle helmet—and yet those Magic Pants remained intact. One speculates that this was why the Hulk was so angry.
    • One issue of "The Ultimates", an Alternate Continuity version of The Avengers, plays on this, claiming that the Hulk, who was out of control, "murdered a fat guy and stole his pants" off screen after he transformed. Much of the time, he's just naked with Scenery Censor.
    • This was done to an even more ridiculous degree in the 1980s Hulk cartoon, where Banner's clothes spontaneously regenerated when he transformed back. (A side effect of Limited Wardrobe, probably)
    • In Hulk Vs, the Hulk is separated from Banner at one point, and both of them wind up with the Hulk's purple pants (the ones on Banner properly fitting him.) Huh?
    • Stan Lee once commented that he liked to work "science" (read: Techno Babble) into all of his stories, and that Hulk's pants were the only time he never had a clue how the exact science behind it worked.
    • Also used in She Hulk comics: magic pants and a magic top, although this was probably to escape the censors.
    • This even led Deadpool to believe there was some sort of power in the Hulk's pants, calling out "HULK PANTS, ACTIVATE!" while being held aloft by the Rhino. But, then again, Deadpool is a Cloudcuckoolander.
    • Parodied in a billboard in Alan Moore's Top Ten. "Super Stretchy Gamma Pants. You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Naked."
    • A possible parody is the giant green dragon Fin Fang Foom, also in the Marvel universe, who wears purple pants.
    • However, this is subverted in the Ang Lee movie version of the Hulk, where there does come a point (after several stacking annoyances to Mr. Banner) where the Hulk is apparently completely naked. However, by this time he is largely shadow-clad.
    • In "The Incredible Hulk" film, Bruce Banner is shown buying extremely stretchy pants several sizes too big. Presumably he has quite a collection of belts.
    • Also lampshaded in an early issue of Wolverine. Hulk, in his "Joe Fixit" gray Hulk persona has shown up in Madripoor. Wolverine, being a longtime foe of the Hulk recognizes him immediately. In an attempt to scare Hulk off and play a gag on him, Wolverine breaks into Hulk's hotel room, steals his expensive custom-made Hulk-sized Mafia suits, and replaces them with many, many pairs of large, ripped up, purple pants. (Hulk then goes to a tailor he knows who does excellent rush work, and shows up at Wolverine's place fully decked-out in a white linen three-piece suit.)
    • Lampshaded and averted simultaneously in the Crisis Crossover The Infinity Crusade. Due to experiencing atmospheric re-entry, all of the Hulk's clothes burn off, plus he passes out due to the stress (though being Nigh Invulnerable, he was otherwise unharmed). After he lands on an opponent, a new hero unfamiliar with the Hulk wonders "if he always goes into battle in such a... natural state."
    • The Hulk's son Skaar has a magic loincloth, which shrinks to fit his human alter-ego.
    • Hulk's pants have been destroyed on rare occasion. In one instance revealing that he wore orange and yellow boxers that were apparently even more invulnerable.
    • One assumes the reason Bruce keeps buying this same brand of hideous purple pants is that they're so stretchy. Though why, in all these years, he's never asked Reed for some unstable molecule trousers is anybody's guess.
      • He did get a full tuxedo made of unstable molecules for a 2011 storyline that parodied about as many spy tropes as possible. The tux was destroyed by the end of the storyline.
  • All of the Fantastic Four usually wear a uniform made of "unstable molecules", so Johnny Storm doesn't burn his own clothes when using his powers. However, if he's wearing normal clothing, he will burn it away, shirt, pants and all. In the second movie, he complains about being asked to leave from Sue and Reed's rooftop wedding to chase the Silver Surfer, because "[he] just bought this tux!" Later, when their powers are swapped, Sue accidentally burns off her own clothing.
    • Sue hangs a lampshade on this—based on her being embarrassed at stripping to hide her powers in the first movie (of course, they turned off at the exact wrong moment) and her burning her clothing off at the second (again, turning back to normal at the exact wrong moment), she mutters "why does this always happen to me" as she turns invisible to hide herself from the crowd.
    • In the cartoon version of the Fantastic Four (where many outfits that the characters had worked with their powers) Sue comments about the pains for shopping for people "That can burst into flames" and "need to be able to stretch 300 feet in all directions". Thankfully in this series her power to turn invisible was applied to whatever she wanted it to.
    • And in comics, the formula's been stolen by at least one villain too, so knock-off designs are available to bad guys.
    • Unstable molecules are common in the Marvel Universe. Reed Richards apparently licenses the formula to the Avengers and the X-Men, among others.
  • Done pretty well in the third Blue Beetle's (Jaime Reyes) run; the magical/alien scarab implanted inside his body generates his armour at will; it also apparently uses whatever spare molecules are lying around to make his clothes when he needs to. For the first couple of issues, he'd turn up naked after the scarab dissolved the armour, and had to resort to stealing clothes from charity bins or that sort of thing. When asked what happened to his clothing when he didn't need it, he noted that it "just sort of dissolved". Most characters experience a bit of Squick when they see the transformation.
  • X-Men goes back and forth on this.
    • When the Dark Phoenix persona is bound by Professor X, causing her to revert to plain Jean Grey, her outfit vanishes, despite her costume having been her previous clothes, rapidly rearranged into that form a molecule at a time. (That was her main method of suiting up during the Phoenix era.) There's really no reason for it to have disappeared, and normally, No Ontological Inertia would cause the outfit to revert to its previous form (which would have been her Hellfire Club outfit) instead of vanishing entirely. Can we say Fan Service? In the Animated Adaptation, she shifts from the Dark Phoenix outfit to the normal Phoenix outfit instead.
    • In an inversion Mystique shapeshifts fully clothed, and it's eventually revealed that she doesn't wear actual clothes, but shapeshifts them. Presumably, the same goes for any such shapeshifter.
    • On several occasions, Made of Iron characters get blasted. Sometimes just enough clothing remains to keep 'em decent, and sometimes it's the ol' Censor Steam (which X-Men just loves.)
    • Husk, Paige Guthrie, has the ability to transform her skin into any material she can think of; but she must tear off the existing layer to do so. This results in her being naked a fair amount of time, but censor steam is not used in all scenes if her new skin serves the purpose of costume. She has specifically refused to revert to her human form on occasions because of her nudity.
    • There is also the short-time X-man Marrow, a woman whose powers were to have bone weapons (knifes, spikes, armor plates) growing out of her body, constantly sticking out of her clothes. Strangely, while her entire wardrobe consist of nothing more than what she is wearing, her costume never got ripped apart. Even more strange, some artist actually showed her bones ripping her clothes apart, but others drew these as if they were fused to her clothes. This even got topped when she got a Progressively Prettier upgrade giving her something that was called a bone bikini by readers, with her pink bodysuit sometimes appearing out of nowhere.
    • Dust's transformation may or may not leave her naked, depending on plot.
    • The detail around how Pixie wears tops changes by artist (then again her wings change by artist). In New X-Men it appears she wears shirts with a low back (room for her wings) but in another scene she's wearing a jean jacket (but we never see her from the back). In X-Infernus we see the back of her costume and the wings are just "there" with no sign of how she put on the outfit. In Uncanny she's shown wearing a completely backless shirt when her wings are broken, but she is later shown wearing another low back spaghetti string top like in New X-Men. There is another scene of her in Uncanny wearing her X-Men Yellows but we never see her from the back so there is no sign how the wings fit there.
  • One Story Arc of Spider-Man features a hero in training whose pants are not magic. His clothes get fried on multiple occasions, forcing him to trade up to a sturdier black leather version. (Not much later, he winds up suffering More Than Mind Control. Coincidence? I think not.)
    • The epilogue to the "Spider-Island" storyline, "The Naked City', involves...a whole lot of people finding themselves naked after briefly becoming spider-monsters. The only ones not freaked out are the superheroes, who, as Hawkeye notes, spend all their time in skintight spandex anyway. Instead of panicking, they start pointing out things like Misty Knight still having her headband and T'Challa losing his beard but keeping his hair the same length. Hawkeye eventually hand-waves the whole thing. "We live in a world where Hulk grows ten times his size and his pants stay on. Roll with it."
  • Kimo in recent issues of Elf Quest learns how to shapeshift into a wolf. When he's in wolf form he wears a bandana around his chest, but when he changes back to elf form it apparently slips down his torso to conveniently become a sarong.
  • Very, very averted in Empowered. Of course, that is the whole point.
  • Justified through an aversion in Captain Atom. When Nathaniel Adam transforms into Captain Atom, his clothing disappears, but usually reappears when he transforms back, except for the one time, in issue #8, that he transformed back into Nathaniel Adam involuntarily while unconscious. Then he was naked. The implication is that, without realizing it, Nate was using his matter-creation and manipulation abilities to recreate the clothes he was wearing when he transformed. Some fans have even inferred that Nate was recreating his whole body in this manner.
    • Although there is a scene from Justice League Europe showing Captain Atom transforming to his superpowered form, and it appears that the clothes were just pushed underneath the silver layer.
  • The Witchblade generally turns its wielder into a battle form covered with sort of Stripperiffic "armor", but while it can transform clothes, the exact fate of said clothes and the amount of generated Fan Service mostly depends on the specific wielder.
  • When Iron Man's identity is first revealed to the Avengers, the villain literally melts his armour off leaving him in nothing but a red thong. This could also be female Fan Service.
    • It happens again during the Marvel Adventures run. But this time he gets some boxers.

"Your only mistake was melting Iron Man's pants!"

  • A very odd version of this trope (probably caused by an artist error) happens in the werewolf comicbook In the Blood. At one point in the first issue we see the main character strip down completely naked before he transforms into a werewolf, but a few pages later while he is still transformed he is clearly wearing tattered pants.
  • In earlier versions The Creeper has a device inside him that can make his costume reappear and disappear.
  • In the Extinctioners comic, they literally are magic pants: team co-leader Phenix uses a spell to create "memory pelts" that swap places with whatever they're wearing when they say their code names.
  • Justified with DC Comics supervillainess Giganta; it's explicitly part of her power that any clothing she's wearing grows with her.
  • Martian Manhunter's short-lived series claimed that Martian clothing is actually a bioengineered organism that shapeshifts according to its wearer's telepathic commands.
  • Averted with The Savage Dragon multiple times. He's a big green guy that can waltz through massive explosions without harm... the same cannot be said for his clothes. They get burnt off when this happens, leaving a naked Dragon to beat up the bad guys.
    • Question: Do police officers pay for their uniforms, or are they provided by the precinct/city government/etc.? Considering how many uniforms Dragon went through in his initial career as a Chicago cop, plus the likelihood that they were custom-made for his muscular frame, his uniforms were a significant drain on either the city's budget or his salary.
    • Oddly enough, this usually happened when he wore street clothes. Word of God states that he would buy his clothes (no mention of his uniforms) from Big and Tall shops. Considering this version of Chicago is a City of Adventure, it makes sense that there would be a lot fo them around.
      • There was one early issue in which he was changing in the police locker room and ripped his shirt simply by putting it on. He lamented that it was his last uniform that was fully intact. Another issue stated that he spends a lot of money buying clothes for this very reason.
  • In ClanDestine, the immortal and invulnerable Adam Destine suffers extreme Clothing Damage every time he gets into a fight... but somehow, his pants always survive, albeit tattered. Under the circumstances, we must presume that A Genie Did It. Adam's son Walter Destine is not so lucky; his transformations destroy all his clothes except his underwear.
  • The Super Goobers Goofy eats to become Super Goof somehow cause his clothes to magically turn into long underwear. When the Goobers wear off, the clothes magically revert.
  • Probably the earliest comic book example is Man O'Metal. When heat touched his body he would turn into metal and be surrounded by flames that could melt metal. His shirts always disappeared, but his pants (and shoes) stayed intact.


Fan Works

  • Averted in one case for DC Nation. Fauna's clothing doesn't "keep up" when she shapeshifts. This led to her fighting off a zombie horde and only realizing AFTER she had come out of her Hulking Out that she was wearing nothing at all. The only saving graces to the situation were that she grew up on a hippie commune and that Hades had forced the Titans to compete in the nude, so she was in good company. She later designed (and sewed) her costume to accommodate her shapeshifting.
  • Deliciously averted in Pretty Cure Perfume Preppy whenever Pittan turns human.
  • Averted in With Strings Attached; Paul cannot wear clothing, as he rips through it easily, so he has to use a cosmetic illusion to remain modest—when he feels like it. He does walk around naked on occasion, though rarely in public. On the other hand, George's clothing explicitly goes into his "closet" when he changes, so he keeps a whole wardrobe in there and can put on any stored outfit, any time.


Films -- Animated

  • In the animated movie Monsters vs. Aliens, there is a very blatant example - Susan's wedding dress. She grows from normal size to nearly fifty feet, and the dress (with minor shredding of the skirt) manages to cover as much as a one-piece bathing suit would on her giant form. Never mind that the amount of fabric in the torn wedding dress on her giant form would make maybe thirty normal-sized wedding dresses. It could be Handwaved by the dress absorbing some of the Quantonium, but obviously the real reason is that the movie couldn't have kept its PG rating otherwise.
    • A more justified example is the alien cat suit she wears after Gallaxar abducts her, which shrinks along with her as he drains the Quantonium from her body.
  • In Shrek 2, when Shrek takes the Happily Ever After potion, his old clothes become ridiculously baggy and he has to rob a passing noble for a new outfit... yet when the potion wears off, his stolen clothes transform into the old baggy clothes that he left behind in the forest!
    • Probably justified as the potion restores both Fiona and Shrek to their "pre-potion state". This is a magic potion, after all.
    • This continues a precedent from the first film, in which Fiona's dress always fits her, even when she transforms at sunrise or sunset.
  • Subverted in Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit as Wallace's Y-fronts do survive the transformation sequence, as they are clearly shown to be intact when they fly into the face of Quartermaine. When Wallace reverts to human form, it leads to some funny Scenery Censor items.
  • Lampshaded in The Incredibles since Edna Mode is a Magic Pants Tailor.
  • Averted and played straight in the same movie, Disney's adaptation of The Little Mermaid. Ursula turning Ariel into a human means Ariel needs to go fashion a dress out of some torn sails to cover up her human lower areas (she got to keep the seashells). When Triton re-turns her into a human she's given a sparkly blue dress, which shows that Titan's magic is much more gentle than Ursula's since he wants the best for her.
  • When Jack Skellington is shot down by the military in The Nightmare Before Christmas, his Sandy Claws outfit is shredded, but his tuxedo is completely unscathed. Also, at the beginning of the movie, when Jack rises out of the fountain, his bat-bow tie visibly straightens.
  • Averted in The Ant Bully where the wizard ant's magic for some reason cannot shrink clothing.
  • Rock-a-Doodle first averts this where Edmund actually falls out of his clothes after being turned into a cat by the evil Duke of Owls, but later plays this straight when he changes back into a human at the end of the film; the reason why his human self now has clothes again is because as soon he was turned into a cat, he immediately discovers that unlike all the other animals in the film, who wear clothing, Edmund is actually naked and as a result he immediately puts on a large shirt, but no pants. But why is Edmund wearing pants after he got turned back into a human?
  • When Yzma accidentally turns Kuzco into a llama near the beginning of The Emperors New Groove, Kuzco is still wearing clothing when his face becomes that of a llama's, but Kronk stuffs him inside a burlap bag as he is still transforming. When Kuzco is finally freed from said bag by Pacha, he has already finished transforming into a llama, and his clothes are nowhere to be seen! (they are replaced by red fur colored to resemble his clothing) At the end of the film, when Kuzco defeats Yzma and turns back into a human, he mysteriously gains his clothes back.
  • Completely averted (ultimately) in Pinocchio when Lampwick turns into a donkey. He retains all his clothes at first, with no damage to them except for a donkey's tail ripping through the seat of his pants. Once he's realized what's happened to him and starts to lose all remaining vestiges of his humanity, he panics and thrashes around so much that all his clothes fly off his body, leaving him naked and completing his degeneration into an animal.


Films -- Live-Action

  • In Cat People (1942), after Irena's first transformation to and from feline form the camera pans along tracks that change from paws to high-heeled shoes, which raises the question of exactly where her clothes go when she's a cat.
  • X-Men III: The Last Stand. Jean Grey (as Dark Phoenix) is disintegrating everyone and everything around her, and Wolverine gets near her. Her power disintegrates his shirt (and his chest), but not his pants.
  • The Van Helsing movie takes this to a more ridiculous extreme, where every werewolf that transforms visibly shreds their clothes upon transforming, but when reverting to human, their shredded clothes are right there on their body. Even odder, part of the transformation sequence is for them to rip their previous form off of themselves like tissue paper.
  • The werewolves in Blood and Chocolate transform along with their clothes. This is just one of many things changed from the book, in which it was made a point that werewolves had to remove their clothes before changing (either because they're get ruined or because of the risk of being seen as a wolf in human's clothing).
  • The Cutey Honey Live Action Adaptation movie averts this: Honey has to wear a bra and panties, because all her other clothing is conjured up by the AI System (which runs on onigiri—rice snacks). Bizarrely, though, she has to wear a towel for her first transformation—never mind that she's dry, alone, and in her own house (although one could argue that she wasn't exactly prepared to run around town naked)
  • In the film Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban there is a rather stupid inversion. Animagus Peter Pettigrew at one point turns back into his rat form and his clothes come off. Problem is, every other time Animagi turn into animals and back, their clothes morph together with them. Pettigrew had in fact morphed from rat back to human earlier in the film, fully clothed, so his own transformations aren't even internally consistent.
    • This problem exists in the book too, but at a different point in the story. It's mentioned that when Pettigrew framed Sirius for his own murder by turning into a rat, he left behind his finger and a "heap of bloodstained robes". So if he left behind his clothes when he transformed into a rat 12 years ago, was he naked when he got turned back into a human in the Shrieking Shack?
  • Lampshaded in the movie The Monster Squad, where the titular kids are having a debate on Wolfman and whether he can actually be called a "guy". One of the kids says, "What are you talking about? He walks around and wears pants..." and then the other kid explains, "He had to wear pants, see, those movies were made in the 40s. He had to wear them so we wouldn't see his...wolf dork." Later on in the movie, the kids encounter Wolfman and one of the kids "kicks him in the nards", revealing that yes, "Wolfman's got nads!"
    • And later, we learn that his pants are literally magic: Sean and his dad blow Wolfman to pieces with a stick of dynamite and he soon reassembles himself, pants and all.
  • Averted in the 1957 B-Movie The Amazing Colossal Man, as the angst-ridden protagonist reflects:

"Who else but a clown would have an expandable sarong like this? You know, it's adjustable. I can grow to be a hundred feet tall, and I don't need a change of wardrobe. Army ingenuity!"

  • Also averted in both the original and remake of the B-Movie Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Naturally in the 50's original, it's not shown on camera, but in the 90's remake, it is. Also in its Rule 34 / Plot What Plot softcore parody Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfolds. (No, I'm not kidding.)
  • Completely averted in Village of the Giants—the teens grow to enormous size rapidly and their clothing proves to be utterly inadequate. Fortunately, some giant curtains are on hand to cover their shame.
  • This, also, was completely averted in The Incredible Shrinking Man. Scott Carey shrinks out of his clothes and is forced to wear first kids' clothes and then doll clothes. The final scenes of the movie in the cellar, he is wearing the ragged pieces from his doll clothes because he has SHRUNK out of those.
    • Elvin from Misfits of Science faced a similar problem, so usually carried a set of Ken's jogging clothes in a pocket in case he needed to shrink himself.
  • In the third Pirates of the Caribbean film, when the goddess Calypso grows from human-size to gigantic, the ropes she's bound with grow with her, modestly covering her bust and her lower-than-waist naughty bits. That's right, rope also serves as magic pants!
  • Averted in The Incredible Hulk: Every time he changes back, he has to buy new stretchy pants.
    • Played straight in Hulk where the Hulk continually grows everytime he transforms to the point where he is nearly the size of a small house at the end but still somehow manages to keep his pants on. However, Banner did end up naked after his second transformation, after which they give him pants that are even more magic.
  • Averted in Big Man Japan. The viewer might think this is going on at first, since the first time the title character is seen fighting Kaiju, he's clad in purple briefs, and when he subsequently comes back down to normal size, he's wearing the same civilian clothes he was in earlier. However, later in the film, his actual Transformation Sequence is shown, and it turns out he has to undress and stand inside of a gigantic pair of purple briefs, which he then grows into.
  • In Space Jam, the five Nerdlucks have basketball jerseys on when transform into the Monstars and when they revert back to normal, they're buried under their oversized jerseys.
  • At the climax of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, the Shredder consumes an entire canister of "ooze", morphing him into the gigantic Super Shredder. His costume does not grow with him, but the fabric becomes dark and leathery, while his blades grow longer and serrated.
  • Averted in Big Fish, where the circus ringmaster is stark naked after he changes from a werewolf back into a human. Even worse, said ringmaster is played by Danny DeVito.
  • Averted in Beyond Sherwood Forest. Every time Alina transforms into a dragon, her clothes are destroyed, leaving her naked and shivering when she changes back.


Literature

  • Played With: In the Animorphs series of books, the main characters are able to shapeshift into animals. Doing so leaves their clothes intact, or rips them up. During the first book they transform back, completely naked, and have to find clothes or store spares elsewhere to change into later—but as they become better at controlling their abilities they become able to clothe themselves in very thin skintight clothing, usually black and "spandexy", which usually causes more unusual attention than outright nakedness...
    • This didn't affect the cover artists, since many editions of the books show characters and their normal clothes transforming in stages (i.e., somebody wearing a red shirt transforming into a cardinal).
    • The TV series (when it showed transforming at all...) played this straight, with clothes transforming to and from animal forms with the wearer—for budget and decency reasons, one presumes.
  • Similarly, in the Discworld series of books, the werewolf Angua von Uberwald has to keep clothes stashed around the city of Ankh-Morpork. In Thud, when she and the vampire Sally both end up completely naked after transforming into a wolf and a flock of bats respectively, they end up having to borrow clothes from a nearby strip club. It is explicitly stated that male vampires can reincorporate their clothes after shapeshifting, but female vampires cannot. This is probably a direct reference to Fan Service.
  • Same thing in the Fablehaven books. This also applies to their Time Travel device—you can take nothing with you during time travel, including your clothes.
  • In David Eddings' Belgariad tetradecalogy, a sorcerer's clothes and equipment go "somewhere" when they turn into animals, and reappear when they change back.
    • Actually, they are still "there" for a given value of where, since Belgarion can still feel the Orb.
  • In the Tanya Huff book Blood Trail, the shapeshifters simply walk around naked or take off their clothes to change shape. Of course, there is also a very good reason for this—they are physically unable to shift form if wearing clothing (something about the 'unnatural' fiber interacting with their innate abilities).
  • Averted in The Dresden Files, in which the pack of heroic werewolves must simply deal with the fact that they need to remove their clothing before transforming and will be unclothed when they return. They're used to it by the time Dresden meets them and it's no big deal. The fact that their leader doesn't see why it was ever a big deal to anyone is the first sign that she's not what she seems.
    • Played straight later on with Injun Joe aka Senior Council Member Listens-To-Wind, when he fights the skinwalker and 'kicks its ass up between its ears'. Either that, or he wasn't wearing any clothes at all, and created an illusion for decency's sake...
  • In a short story by Brian Aldiss, a werewolf's transformation is described as a change in his "biomorphic field." This can include clothes as long as they are natural fibres, which will be absorbed into the wolf form and returned to their previous form with the rest of him. Artificial fibres would just be shredded.
  • Averted in the Anita Blake novels, lycanthropes transform by shedding their outer layer like, well, wet tissue paper. (If this sounds familiar, well, get used to it, it's Anita Blake.) This includes their clothes. Luckily for them, contracting lycanthropy apparently flips the brain's Body Modesty switch to "off".
  • Averted in the Piers Anthony Xanth books. When Nada, a shape-changing naga woman, becomes a snake, she slips out of her clothes and must then take the trouble of bringing them along and changing back into them when she becomes human.
    • Alternatively, there are other shape-changing characters in the same series who keep their clothes. In those cases, the clothing magically disappears when the character shifts, then re-appears when the character returns to their previous form. This has caused characters to remark on the difference in the story. A notable moment was one time when a clothing-losing shape-changer witnessed a clothing-keeping shape-changer, and wondered about the difference in their abilities (which was explained as one being a natural racial ability, and the other being a magical talent).
  • Averted in the Mercy Thompson series. Clothing is not kept during shifting—and for werewolves, who become larger when they shift, it is torn. Werewolves and other shapeshifters will therefore discard their clothing prior to shifting if there is time to do so. As a side effect, shapeshifters (and those who live with them) tend to be comfortable with casual nudity. The exception is Charles, who can make clothes magically appear on his body due to his background.
  • In the novel Lonely Werewolf Girl, clothes just disappear when a werewolf transforms, and come back when they shift back. When a human who witnesses the process asks Kalyx what happens to the clothes, she says no one really knows.
  • The shapeshifters in the Twilight series destroy their clothes when they transform. To solve this problem, once they get the transformation under control, they undress somewhere where no one will see them and tie them to a leg before transforming—apparently, this somehow saves the clothes. Characters often complain about this when they first begin shifting, Jacob even once getting angry that he accidentally shredded his last pair of underwear.
    • The movie doesn't really address this, but you can see scraps of destroyed clothing fly away whenever someone transforms into a werewolf.
  • Lampshaded in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
  • Averted in the Changeling series by Steve Feasey. Whenever Trey transforms into a werewolf, his clothing is destroyed. However, this trope is played straight on the covers, usually showing Trey wearing a pair of rather ripped trousers.
  • Generally played straight in Anne McCaffrey's Planet Pirate series. Wefts, the shapeshifting alien of the setting, are implied to shapeshift the appropriate clothing. Fanservice is generally avoided, however - they're naturally a species of crustacean with six sexes, and fall into the Uncanny Valley when assuming human form.
  • An interesting version in The Chronicles of Narnia: In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the Pevensies age to adulthood while in Narnia, and their original ages/clothes are magically restored upon their return to England. However, in other books, the characters change into their normal clothes before returning to England (Prince Caspian), or take their Narnian clothes back with them (The Silver Chair).
  • Alice in Wonderland makes this trope Older Than Radio. It's worth noting that the actual text of the story doesn't specify what happens to Alice's clothes when she changes sizes, but you'd think it would warrant a mention if she were either running around naked or constantly creating makeshift clothes for herself. John Tenniel's illustrations from the book's original publication show this trope is in effect, depicting Alice wearing the same now famous outfit throughout the story. Pretty much every film version has followed suit, except for the Tim Burton one.


Live-Action TV

  • Somewhat enhanced in Power Rangers and other Tokusatsu series, where if a character covered in filth transforms, they'll be squeaky clean when they de-morph. Apparently the Morphing Grid does sheets, too.
  • Mostly averted in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—the shapeshifter Odo forms clothes out of his own substance, but seems to have a Magic Combadge. The Expanded Universe either implies that he'd usually put the badge on the inside of whatever he turned into (since he didn't need to actually make organs and so on). Which doesn't explain where it goes when he turns into things like puddles of water.
    • Played straight in TNG S6E7, in which a Negative Space Wedgie that turns people into children thoughtfully re-tailors their clothes at the same time.
    • Also played straight in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Tuvix". An alien plant gets mixed up in the transporter beam and merges Neelix and Tuvok into one new being, even merging Tuvok's uniform and Neelix's Talaxian clothes into a Starfleet uniform made of Talaxian-patterned fabric. Later when the procedure is reversed, Tuvix is separated back into Tuvok and Neelix, each of whom somehow have their own copy of Tuvix's uniform.
      • Justified in the fact that the clothes Tuvix had been wearing when he was split apart was not the merged Starfleet-Talaxian outfit but instead a regular Starfleet uniform. At the very least, the Magic Pants are consistent.
  • Very present in the Animorphs TV series. In the books, clothing had to be nearly skin-tight to morph with you.
  • Present in every episode of Manimal where Dr. Jonathan Crane (aka Manimal) transforms into a panther, hawk, dolphin, cat, or whatever animal-du-jour. In the pilot he transforms to a panther while wearing a tux, and the tux is nowhere to be seen. Upon retransformation to a human he is still wearing the same tux. This is repeated throughout. Sometime we even see the clothes he wears being torn up by the transformation.
  • Buffy:
    • In the Season 6 episode "Villains": when Willow kills Warren, she rips his skin from his body, but leaves his pants on.
    • Averted in the Season 2 episode "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered": Buffy loses her clothes when she is turned into a rat, leading to an embarrassing moment when the spell wears off and she turns back again. Not that she was wearing pants to start with.
    • Also averted with Oz. He is very much naked after a full moon night, even though his werewolf form isn't even that much bigger than his human form.
    • In the Season 3 episode Beauty and the Beasts: Angel somehow gains pants after coming back from the dead nude, despite having regressed to an animalistic state and living in the wilderness.
  • Present in Season 3 of Heroes: when Sylar is zapped multiple times by Elle, his shirt burns off him but his trousers appear completely undamaged.
    • Also in Season 1, when Nathan flies at a supersonic speed, his pants magically stay intact.
  • Averted in The Secret World of Alex Mack; Alex's first attempt at morphing into silver goo winds up with Alex naked and hiding behind a washing machine. The second time, she manages to morph her clothes with her.
  • Averted in Woof!—very much so—Eric Banks/Rex Thomas lost his clothes every transformation.
  • Averted in Being Human (UK). Poor George gets no Magic Pants when he transforms into a werewolf.
  • Averted in True Blood when Sam the shape-shifter changes back into human, he has to find things to cover up with and get people to bring him clothes.
  • Zig Zagged in Charmed:
    • Piper is wholly naked after she transforms back to human form after being a Wendigo. Same goes for Phoebe after she changes from mermaid back to human.
    • On the other hand, Prue is wearing the same clothes when she turns back from a being a dog to human. Same for all three sisters are also wearing clothes after they change back from being beasts during a blue moon.


Tabletop Games

  • In the game Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the pants very well can be magic. Although the shift from regular human to 900-pound killing machine pretty much reduces clothing to shreds, there exists a ritual called the Rite of Talisman Dedication that allows certain items, such as clothing, to become a part of the werewolf's identity. They grow and eventually turn into skin symbols as he grows larger, and return when he goes back to human. The Rite of Talisman Dedication also shows up in the game's "reboot", Werewolf: The Forsaken, as the "Rite of Dedication."
    • Appropriately enough for this trope, this Rite is sometimes called "the Rite of Pants" by players due to its most common use being ensuring the character isn't left naked after a few transformations.
    • The Rite of Pants also allows umbral travel without a side of Out-of-Clothes Experience.
    • Both Mage games likewise make clear that using Life magic to shapeshift into an animal doesn't protect your clothes. Your best bets to shapeshift and keep your modesty intact are to either use Matter magic to ensure that the clothes shift to fit you, or Correspondence/Space magic to put them somewhere else.
    • In Vampire: The Masquerade, shapeshifting disciplines handwave this by saying the vampire blood melds clothing into the vamp's body. Or some nonsense along those lines.
      • That being said, if your party had a vampire sufficiently advanced in the sneaky-hidey Discipline, you could have Virtual Magic Pants For All.
  • In Exalted, you'd think Lunar Exalts would go through a lot of clothing when changing shapes—especially to their massive "warforms"—but no, it just disappears into Elsewhere. On the other hand, if they're wearing Moonsilver Artifact Armour, it shifts with them no matter the form they assume—be it that of an unassuming housecat, or a bear the size of a small house. Complete with appropriately sized and shaped chainmail shirt/plate armour. No, really.
    • It comes back when they revert to their human true form, however.
  • In Dungeons & Dragons, most shapeshifting spells and powers either explicitly have your gear change with you, have your gear meld into your body, cause your gear to fall off unharmed, or some combination of the three when you change.
    • At least one supplement on weres (Night Howlers for the boxed set/Rules Cyclopedia edition) not only explicitly specified that the transformation ruined clothes, but included rules for how much damage a lycanthrope would take from shapechanging while wearing (and in the process probably destroying) armor.
    • The magical armor enhancement "Beastskin" makes it possible for the armor to morph into armor fitted for the creature you change into and then change back with the character.
  • In the superhero RPG Aberrant, characters can take points in a background called "Attunement" which allows them to keep items on their body from being destroyed by powers like shapeshifting, growing, or self-immolation. The lower levels allow them to protect their own clothes, and the higher levels allow them to protect a whole other person. There's also Eufiber, a material produced by a superpowered "Nova" that shifts at the wearer's will.
  • GURPS Supers had a buyable Advantage called "Costume"—a costume that works with and adapts to the powers and form of the wearer, similar to Marvel's "unstable molecules".


Video Games

  • Eiji from Super Tokusatsu Wars has a transformation where he turns into a large, monstrous humanoid... completely destroying his old body in the process. Yet, if you use the Detransform action, he returns to his normal self, with the clothes he had on before he transformed.
  • In the Bloody Roar series of games, the transformations into the characters' beast forms explicitly tears the characters' clothing (almost always shoes, but often shirts, and sometimes their beast form is actually partially or completely naked). However, transforming back to human form also restores the torn clothing.
    • Lampshaded in this Bloody Roar fanfic (NSFW and free registration required); during a Foe Yay moment between clone-brothers Long and Shenlong, they compare underwear choices in regards to their transformations—Long wears customized thongs (with a little strap for his tail), while Shenlong goes commando. Also, in the Slap Slap Kiss fight between them beforehand, Shenlong removes his expensive shirt prior to transforming, not wanting to tear it up.
  • Appearing, whenever intentionally or not, in Unreal Tournament 2004. The weapons in this game look like they can take down a tank, especially when you get to the one shot super weapons. Probably most visible when the player is hit with the local version of a hand held nuke, the only thing that survives are his pants and the body parts they are covering. The rest is evaporated or gibbed.
  • In Nethack, a self-polymorph can destroy or forcibly disrobe you of all your armor, but when you return to normal form you can sit on a cockatrice corpse without turning to stone. Hence, your character must be wearing magic pants.
  • Averted with Rampage; when the player characters revert to human form, they cover themselves up with their hands and run off screen.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, Vincent Valentine's Limit Break involves changing shape into a beast. His clothes simply reappear when he changes back.
    • Advent Children seems to suggest that the cloak itself is part of his power. Possibly a holdover from when he was first transformed, since he was wearing a labcoat at the time.
    • Possibly Terra Branford in Final Fantasy VI, whose innate ability, Trance (Morph in the original release) turns her into a naked, fuzzy, pink Esper, although she still wields her weapons and enjoys the stat benefits of her armor and relics. Using the command "Revert" restores her and her clothes. Might just be a case where Power Glows so brightly that it prevents anyone from seeing her clothes underneath.
    • And again in Final Fantasy IX, with both Zidane and Kuja, whose trance forms have all their clothes vanish in lieu of fur, yet reappear as soon as it ends.
  • The Manaketes, Laguz, and Taguel in the Fire Emblem series don't have any issues with their clothing, despite the fact that their dragon/animal transformations are larger then their humanoid forms, and very different in shape, as well. It simply disappears when they transform, and comes back once they revert to human form.
  • Subverted in Killer Instinct with Sabrewulf's ending. After turning back into a human, his shirt rips more, and because he's only seen from the waist up for this final scene, one can only assume what's down there, or more so, what isn't.
  • In Altered Beast, the player characters can collect a series of orbs that causes them to become more muscular and less clothed with each application, until finally taking on the form of a fully nude (yet anatomically void) monster. It's a different monster on each level, with the player characters reverting back to their original (clothed) form at the beginning of each level. Then again, you start off wearing not much more than a tunic and a loincloth anyway.
    • Slightly subverted in Project Altered Beast, where upon first transforming into the werewolf all your clothes tear off, when you chnage back your shirt and Jacket are gone for good, yet your Jeans and boots somehow return
  • In World of Warcraft, Druids keep the statboosts from their gear despite not wearing anything in animal form. The gear also reappears when they tansform back. Same also aplies to any other class or mob with a shape-shifting ability. Notably, the Warlock's Metamorphosis (which temporarily turns the user into a demon) has Magic Pants, as does a Shaman's Ghost Wolf form.
    • In addition other players polymorphed by a mage, or otherwise transformed into a Sheep, Penguin, Frog or any other part of a wide ranging menagerie are also immune to unexpected nakedness, but it is magic after all.
    • Players can remove all their equipped gear, leaving the character naked except for a different kind of Magic Pants.
    • They finally going to play it real straight in later Expansion Pack Cataclysm, this is going to be standard issue for all classes of playable Worgens. They can alternate between human and worgen form, but always revert to worgen when combat is initiated. Unlike druids, they do keep their clothing/armor while in worgen form (not just strangely dissapear and reappear when returning human).
  • Werewolves in the game Majesty are naked while in wolf form (which is all the time when they are alive), magically gaining pants when they revert to human form after they die.
  • The X-Men Origins: Wolverine game plays this painfully straight. Despite the game having impressive effects where Wolverine's shirt, flesh and muscles get torn up as he takes damage, this only applies to his upper body. His pants stay completely intact.
    • Played even more ridiculously straight if you unlock the Classic Wolverine costume, where Wolvie's regeneration suddenly now applies to the whole outfit, so as not to ruin the iconic look of the costume with clothing damage.
  • Subverted in Morrowind. If you become a werewolf and transform, when it's no longer night, you won't be wearing anything (except your glued on loincloth). Though they won't be destroyed, since you can just equip them again, otherwise all your precious artifacts would be destroyed.
  • Link from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. When he's a kid he has no tights. When he wakes up in the Temple of Time...Tights. Magically.
    • While we're on the topic of Zelda, two words: Giant's Mask. Well, okay, it may be the mask that's magical and causes his clothes to grow in tandem, but it's still kind of humorous when you think about it. Also applies to the other masks.
    • Justified Trope in Twilight Princess, since the first time he transforms back to human Link's wearing entirely different clothes, provided to him by the spirits in recognition of his heroism. These clothes could very well be magical, and since the spirits already knew about the wolf thing, they could have prepared the clothes to appear and disappear in just that way. Strangely, the wolf keeps the earrings that Link wears in his human form, making this a rather mixed use of the trope.
  • Certain characters in the Touhou series have displayed shapeshifting abilities in the games they're in, either when introducing themselves (Orin changes into her humanoid form twice in the same game, complete with dress and wheelbarrow), or when the player uses a bomb (Flandre, Momizi; Remilia sometimes changes into a bat during certain attack patterns, and if the player bombs during her final patterns, she temporarily changes into a bat too).
    • On a different note, Mokou has a literal pair of magic pants that are immune to fire. And immune to her repeatedly dying explosively.
    • Similarly, fairies resurrect after being killed. One assumes this trope is in play when they resurrect, or there would be a massive clothes shortage among those with frequent dying miles like Cirno.
  • In Splatterhouse, during the fight against the mutated Jennifer, she transforms back into her human form after being hit enough times, with her clothes literally reappearing out of nowhere.
  • Used in one of the end credits scenes from Cave Story. Sue and Itoh are transformed from Half Dressed Mimigas to fully-dressed humans.
  • Jak and Daxter: When Daxter is turned into an ottsel, he's left with only his gloves and goggles. Similarly, Veger loses his coat, boots, and pants, and Tess loses just her shoes. And when Daxter's Super-Powered Evil Side comes out, his gloves and goggles grow while his pants are shredded from the knees down. Of course, upon returning to his cute lil' ottsel form, his pants are returned to normal.
  • Averted in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood and every subsequent game that uses the Rondo sprites for the Werewolf enemy. After losing all his HP, he transforms back into a naked man and bursts into flames as per the Castlevania tradition.
    • Played somewhat straight in the Rondo remake on the PSP, The Dracula X Chronicles. When the Werewolf transforms back, he's now wearing a black speedo, both in the new 2.5D remake and the port of the original Rondo. The Werewolves in the port of Symphony, however, remain uncensored.
    • Order of Ecclesia also uses edited Rondo sprites, but with a pair of boxer shorts (that spontaneously appears between frames) rather than the speedo from Dracula X.
  • Fawkes from Fallout 3 used to wear Vault 87 overalls. He still does, but having grown into twice as tall and large as he once was, the top half has been torn, clearly inadequate to house his new physique. The lower half fits just fine.
    • Though it does state in one of the computer terminals that Super Mutants have no reproductive organs.
  • Morrigan from Dragon Age has a bra on when her shirt is off, and only when her shirt is off.
  • In the climactic battle with Titan Joker in Batman: Arkham Asylum, the Titan formula has made the Joker a huge, hulking man-thing that stands easily ten feet tall. Needless to say, his purple suit is completely destroyed by the transformation - except for a pair of ragged purple shorts.
  • Alex Mercer from Prototype shapeshifts constantly and never has to replace his clothes - even taking the forms of his victims dresses him in their outfits, whether they were suits, pants, skirts or body armour complete with gas mask. This is because his entire body, including his clothes, is made from superdynamic biomass that can imitate anything. On the downside, that means conventional armour does nothing except complete the disguise and his 'gas mask' will not, in fact, protect him from gas.
  • If you give your female Soul Calibur 4 character the spyrobe (I have the German version and I`m not sure if this is the right translation) you can clearly see that your character wears no bra. However when the opponent destroys your spyrobe you suddenly wearing one.
  • In Golden Sun Dark Dawn, Sveta's clothing will magically expand to fit her Beast Form when it's activated, and then magically shrink back to their normal size when she reverts. No Clothing Damage is sustained in either transformation.
  • A variation of this trope, in Sonic Unleashed: Sonic's first transformation into the Werehog clearly shows his gloves being ripped to shreds, but when he reverts back to his original form, they magically reappear. This happens every subsequent transformation, even in the final one.
    • For that matter, his shoes change size and shape, even gaining spikes.
  • Rune Factory 3 has characters with shapeshifting ability: Micah, Pia, and Raven. When they transform, they lose or change their clothes, but when they revert to their normal forms. their clothes magically reappear.


Webcomics

  • Subverted in El Goonish Shive: Not only can shapeshifters lose their clothing if they aren't careful, at least one of them, Grace, prefers nudity even in human form. Later, an explicit form of Magic Pants was introduced so the author didn't need to use creative camera angles for most of the scenes. Ellen couldn't believe Uryuom suit fits her at all. Later we see it survives the wearer growing hedgehog spikes and remains perfectly fit on a squirrel.
  • Spoofed in Order of the Stick when Thog breaks out of prison and is actually seen wearing purple pants. After the raging is over, he wonders why his pants changed color.
  • Averted with the spellwolves in Dominic Deegan: Oracle For Hire. It's explicitly mentioned that they have to wear oversized clothes to accommodate the transformations if they wear anything at all, since they have many nudists in their homeland and are heartier than most humans when it comes to cold.
  • Sluggy Freelance generally averts this with Zoe's camel form in that the transformation will often leave her naked. One later plotline had her wearing a dress that quickly bunched up around her neck whenever she transformed, and a viewer mail comic explains that this is exactly how it works. When a follow-up question asked how exactly this was supposed to prevent her underwear from being destroyed, there's a beat, and it turns out we have no more time for questions.
  • Very, very averted in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja.
  • In The Dragon Doctors, a mage who specializes in shapeshifting can summon emergency pants [dead link] , saying "I had a very wild adolescence." This is because the Magic Pants trope is averted most of the time; Sarin's transformations do not apply to clothes, leading to many wardrobe malfunctions.
  • Averted in Peter Is The Wolf: the pants are not magical. That doesn't mean that people changing from human to their were form will RIP the clothing. That really depends on the size difference. The titular character is a similar size in both forms (mostly) and so, doesn't do much to his clothes. Other characters who increase substantially in size... aren't so lucky.
  • Averted due to Fetish Fuel in the perpetually NSFW Magnificent Milkmaid: every character with a transformation regularly destroys their clothing. The titular Milkmaid has the advantage of transubstantiation—and so, she can form her costume when she's powered up and reform her normal clothes as she powers down. Everyone else is saddled with being in whatever state of undress their transformation leaves them in.
  • The Wotch: Subverted twice in one arc, once when Ann in turned into a Pixi, and again when she changes back.
  • Eerie Cuties averts this in the case of Brooke Lynn's transformation, which left her panties where Blair could find them, but considering her shoes and socks returned, this might be Rule of Funny. Ace, a young werewolf, seems to be able to 'shuck' his clothes in one piece.
  • Averted and lampshaded in Magellan with superhero cadet Joe Berger (can change the density of his body). When he changes into his gaseous form he leaves his clothes behind and is naked upon resolidifying. This leaves the poor guy begging his teammates to get his clothes for him.
  • WiredWolf of Enjuhneer does not have magic pants, but does have a magic shirt. Her transformation tears the sleeves, but it's always back to normal when she's next seen. (It's also worth noting that she's been established to be significantly taller when transformed.)
  • Played straight and then averted in Dungeons and Denizens. When Min drinks a Growth Potion, his clothes grow with him . . . but they do not shrink with him when it wears off.
  • Homestuck. Lord English grows out to Doc Scratch's body, and in the process transforms from a skinny, four-foot-tall figure into something that looks a lot like The Hulk. (In fact, Andrew Hussie's comments imply that this resemblance was intentional.) And, like The Hulk, his pants are the only part of his outfit that aren't destroyed in the transformation.
  • In Wapsi Square, the golem girls have their clothes disappear when they take animal forms, but they reappear when they return to human. Phix is able to make her clothes change with her when she shapeshifts. Nudge is once left with a dress that is way too big because she can't do the same. Neither can Shelly
  • Piffany from Nodwick is always properly dressed no matter what. As most of such thigs in Nodwick, this was explicitly stuffed In-Universe just for fun, as the characters discover when robbed to the underwear:

Artax: Uh, Piffany? How'd you avoid this fashion "don't"?
Piffany: Easy! I'm wearing robes of modesty. It takes a wish to get them off!


Web Original

  • In Erika's New Perfume regressing Heather and progressing Sarah their clothes changed to fit their appearances. Only partially played straight for Heather because while her clothes do change to fit her new size, she does not get training pants out of it as her sister soon mentions.
    • Earlier than either of these, this is averted for Erika. Her needs in clothing (particularly underwear) change after she uses the perfume, but she keeps the same ones that according to the way everyone now remembers she's never supposed to have had.
  • Averted in the Whateley Universe by Shifters. Either they're not very good, and they lose their clothes, or they're so good that—like Jimmy T -- they fake their own clothes as part of their appearance.
    • The 'Hulk' problem is parodied in the story "Tales of the MCO" within the Whateley Universe, when one of the commercial breaks for the program the students are watching is for the upcoming Merchant-Ivory film "Hulk 1809", which includes in the trailer a Keira Knightley look-alike saying to the hero, "Good sirrah, where are your clothes? And why are your pants that hideous shade of purple?"
  • Averted in Small Problem, when Debby wakes up to find that she had shrunk out of her pajamas.
  • This trope is standard fare for characters who can grow, shrink, or stretch from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe.
  • In this interactive age-swap animation on Deviant ART, the girl's clothes stretch slightly for modesty's sake as she ages up, but the guy's pants actually shrink as he ages down.


Western Animation

  • Spoofed in The Simpsons in the episode, "I Am Furious Yellow". Through a series of pranks by Bart, Homer winds up covered in green paint and shirtless, throwing him into a whirlwind of rage. What's Bart's only reply after beholding the sight he's put into motion?

Bart: Thank God his pants stayed on.

    • In the Simpsons comic book, Homer once ended up becoming 50 ft tall as a result of an experiment performed on him by Mr Burns. Most of his clothes are destroyed in the transformation, including his pants.

Marge: Thank goodness for Super-Stretch underwear.

  • The question of what exactly happens to Beast Boy's uniform on Teen Titans whenever he changes into an animal is never explained, or even attempted to be explained. In an episode where he is infected with a virus that turns him into a werebeast his clothes are shredded—in fact the second time he transforms into the monster he completely tears off his clothes (pants included) and yet when he changes back his pants are intact. In the comics, Beast Boy's outfit was some sort of unstable molecule suit similar to the Fantastic Four outfits. The thing would basically break apart and float on his skin, then reassemble when he scaled back to human form.
  • In Ben 10, Ben's clothes are outright said to be a memory of what he was wearing when he booted up, so they're incorporated into what the alien form is wearing when he transforms. When the alien isn't wearing clothes, then they just sorta disappear most of the time, though in a few cases, most notably Cannonbolt, they look like they're incorporated into the alien's skin. Good thing, as he only has one outfit.
    • And in the What If episode "Gwen 10", where Gwen gets the Omnitrix. When Gwen accesses an alien form with clothing, the outfit is blue to match her shirt instead of Ben's white-with-black.
  • Some characters, like Alex Mack and Danny Phantom are given the ability to transform/affect anything in physical contact with them as well, including their clothes.
    • In the pilot, Alex Mack didn't have this ability (although only on her accidental first try), but obviously they couldn't get away with having their (underage) heroine end up naked every few minutes, could they?
  • Spoofed in Futurama. When Leela tells her parents she is Clobberella, she rips off her usual outfit of tank top, pants and heavy boots to reveal a sleeveless, leg-baring superheroine costume beneath. A few moments later, she rips this off too, revealing...another tank top, pants and boots. (Her explanation: "It was brisk. I dressed in layers.") Extra-absurd because the original tank top wouldn't have covered the shoulder pads from her costume, her costume had bare legs that wouldn't have covered a hidden pair of pants, and her long pair of gloves simply appeared and vanished at a whim.
    • Also handwaved in the episode "A Bicyclops Built For Two": Leela meets the the only other cyclops—Alkazar—who turns out to be a shape-shifter using the "I'm the only other member of your species" tack on four other last-of-their-kind females. When asked why he made the foolish mistake of trying to marry all of them at the same day he points out that a tuxedo that shifts shape with its wearer is very expensive to rent.
  • Gandhi in Clone High shrinks in a "trippy adventure through his subconscious" and happily notes that his clothes shrink and his voice raises in pitch miraculously in proportion with his body.
  • In the BBC Wales cartoon Super Ted, the eponymous teddy bear would transform by unzipping his skin revealing his costume beneath. He was also seen to transform back by the same method with his skin underneath the costume. This led to a certain amount of Nightmare Fuel on my part as I imagined his body gradually shrinking to microscopic size while still attached to a normal sized head.
  • In The Spectacular Spider-Man, the Sandman inverts this trope. Other than some discretionary Scenery Censor, no effort is made to hide the fact that he was nude during the Freak Lab Accident that changed him into living sand. Thusly, any clothes he manifests are a function of his Voluntary Shapeshifting.
  • Justice League occasionally dips into this, but the most egregious example occurs in the episode "Double Date", when Villainous Glutton Mandragora charges at Black Canary and she hits him point blank with her Canary Shriek for about 10 seconds. His shirt, naturally, is completely incinerated, since the attack should be fatal at that range, but (luckily) his pants are fine. And oddly enough, his shoes don't survive the attack, suggesting that they're literal magic pants.
    • Averted after Flash defeats the Luthor-Brainiac merger. Luthor's very clearly naked for the rest of the scene afterward. Granted, Luthor wasn't wearing pants in the first place, but it's still surprising they had him outright naked even if nothing was shown.
    • The villainess Giganta's outfit always fits when growing to giant size. Anything she's wearing seems to grow at the same pace she does. However, as Shade learned to his delight, keeping the same relative size does nothing to prevent people from looking up.
  • In Gargoyles, when a gargoyle turns to stone during the day, any personal possessions he has on him (including clothing) will turn to stone with him. Word of God says A Wizard Did It in Roman times with a "spell of humility", and that there's a story there to tell (if the series would stop getting Screwed by the Network long enough to actually tell it).
  • The "Grande Size Me" episode in the fourth season of Kim Possible, aside from being an Anvilicious episode espousing healthy food choices, also had Ron turn into an enormous, yellowish, Incredible Hulk-like thing that talked in Hulk Speak and craved fast food. When he turned back, they oddly went with the Running Gag and had him reduced to his boxers—which were intact.

"ARG! RON Lose pants..."

    • Not to mention the episode where he transformed into a large, naked, mutant beaver, and when he got better his clothes spontaneously regenerated.
    • And then there was the time Ron put on the muscle enhancing ring and suddenly got all buff...his clothing survived the transformation perfectly intact. This seems to be a hidden theme with Ron.
    • Sort of played straight and sort of not in the episode that introduced DNAmy. She combined Mr. Barkin and Rufus into a naked but not particularly childhood-scarring monster. When the two were separated again, Rufus was wearing a miniaturized version of Mr. Barkin's original outfit, and Mr. Barkin was urgently requesting pants.
  • In one episode of Phineas and Ferb Doof invents the de-evolution-inator to de-evolve everyone to take over the Tri-State Area. The ray from said Inator hits Doof until he is a single cell organism. When Doofenshirtz uses the Inator to evolve back to human, he finds interesting that his socks and underpants evolved with him.
  • In an episode of Robotboy, Tommy tries to drink a potion that he knows will turn him into a savage giant, because that's the only way to save Robotboy. However, the potion slips out of his hand, and Lola catches it. Knowing that they're running out of time, Lola drinks it instead. Even though she immediately grows nearly twenty times her original size, her dress never even gets as much as a single shred.
  • Used almost literally in Fairly Oddparents, where Juandissimo will flex, ripping off his shirt and showing off his muscles...and then uses magic to poof another shirt onto his body. Sometimes he goes through several shirts all at once just by holding his pose.
  • Surprisingly averted in the pilot of Generator Rex. When Rex cures a man who has mutated into a skyscraper-sized monster, the man is naked when he reverts to normal. Apparently this is common enough that the goon squad following Rex had a towel on hand in anticipation. It's played straight in later episodes, as most Evos revert to fully-clothed humans, or at most have a ripped shirt. This would seem to suggest that the poor bastard in the pilot was already naked when he turned.
  • In Batman the Animated Series, the episode featuring the return of the Man-Bat (a person who was effectively a werebat) has in addition to a Magic Pants, a Magic Shirt. Rather than being the prime suspect, it's his wife, and though her transformation shreds quite a bit of her shirt, it's still enough to keep her decent when she turns back. Except for the earlier times when the Man-Bat had no shirt at all, but we never got to see the times when she turned back then.
  • Used by Samy on Jimmy Two-Shoes, during a Jekyll and Hyde plot.
  • Averted and played straight in Dexter's Laboratory, to ridiculous extents. Dee Dee eats one of Dexter's experiment cookies while donning a rat costume, and her costume turns to shreds when she becomes huge. Somehow, her normal clothes stay intact as she transforms into a 50ft giantess.
  • In Operation D.O.G.H.O.U.S.E. all the weredogs have magic clothes that appear as they change back even though they ripped off as they were changing into weredogs. It is a kids show, though ...
  • In American Dragon: Jake Long, when Jake transforms into his dragon form his clothes disappear, same goes for the other dragons. When he transforms back into human form his clothes reappear. This is lampshaded beautifully by Jake's dad in the last episode:

"When they turn into dragons what happens to their clothes?"

  • Merrily played with in 'The Tick (animation) vs. Dinosaur Neil'. As the titular Dinosaur Neil, grown huge and apparently nude, rampages through the city, the mad scientist character who appears occasionally has somehow already built a pair of appropriately-sized pants. The pants (held up by something that looks sort of like a shuttle gantry) are promptly struck by lightning, and Dinosaur Neil is subdued by other means, shrunken back to human... where he is once again wearing his dinosaur costume. I'm not sure if this counts as a subversion, an inversion, an aversion, or what...

Scientist: Bring him to zhe pants...

  • Carter in the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series always have his clothes intact when reverting to normal after his mutated transformation. Averted the first time he transforms, but played straight on all subsequent occasions.
  • Averted in the 13th episode of Sym-Bionic Titan when Ilana is turned into a monster by a virus implanted from a reptilian beast her clothes are shredded bit by bit, when she changes back she's naked Lance quickly gives her his sweater to cover her up.
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender, during the climactic duel, Aang and Ozai end up wearing nothing but their trousers, which seem to be fireproof. Must be that high-quality Fire Nation design....
  • In Kassai And Leuk, Marana's clothes transform with her whenever her Involuntary Shapeshifting kicks in.
    This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.