Too Many Belts

Lulu doesn't just wear belts with her dress. She wears belts as her dress.
Ladies, I hope you're wearin' two belts, 'cause I just charmed the pants off y'all!
—Homestar Runner

Wanna spruce up the look of your fantasy/RPG character? Just add an extra belt, preferably one with a nice, big buckle. What? Your character already has one? Just add another, draped casually across their hips! While you're at it, wrap two or three of them around their shin, and another four over their sleeves. Oh, and we can't forget two more making a big X on their chest... So what if they're not attached to anything? Decorate the belts with Power Crystals or Spikes of Villainy, and now even the skimpiest Spy Catsuit can be stronger than plate mail! Maybe they keep your guts from spilling out or something.

You're done! Well... maybe just ONE more...

Many characters in Fantasy, Steampunk, Anime and even a few sci-fi settings will sport more belts than they really need. Either they were having a clearance sale at JCPenney or they have some weird obsession with belts that borders on the fetishistic, especially when they don't even NEED a belt where it is, or even use it to carry things, and wear one anyway. One of the last places you will often see these people wearing a belt is tight around their waist.

This also goes well for zippers - zippers on your shirt, on your sleeves, on your pants, on your coat, on your hat...

This is extremely common in Japan in Real Life, hence its appearance in so many works of fiction that come out of there. This is also a trend in certain fashion subcultures in the West, though not as prominent.

Compare Goggles Do Nothing, Rummage Sale Reject, and Impossibly Cool Clothes. Contrast Chained by Fashion. If the belts are shown to serve an actual purpose besides holding up the wearer's trousers and/or looking cool, see Utility Belt. A subtrope of Useless Accessory.

Examples of Too Many Belts include:

Anime and Manga

  • Digimon tends toward this.
    • Some of them don't wear anything else... and not always as clothes...
  • Under his overcoat, Trigun's Vash the Stampede's outfit is 100% belts. There actually might be a decent reason for it though, considering how torn up Vash tends to get in fights, if it helps keep wounds closed...
  • Yugi from Yu-Gi-Oh! wore a multi-belted shirt during Duelist Kingdom. After that arc, he changed and a black sleeveless shirt, but he kept the two belts around the cuffs of his jacket and the one around his neck, while adding another belt around his waist. Kaiba donned eight belts, two on each of his arms and legs, from the second season on, in addition to the normal belt on his pants.
  • Liru the werewolf in Magical Pokaan has but a single belt across her chest that services as a top.
  • Maka from Soul Eater wears belts quite often. On her shoes.
  • Hiei of Yu Yu Hakusho has four thin white belts underneath his cloak on his standard outfit. Not as many as some others, but just enough to let you know he's a Noble Demon Badass. He later stopped doing this, probably because it took an hour to go to the bathroom.
  • Compared to others, the Barrier Jacket of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha's Fate didn't have too many belts when she was a kid. After all, it only had one red belt slung on her hips, another two around her chest, another one on her arm, and another one around her neck.
    • The first Reinforce, on the other hand, had red belts all over her legs and one arm.
  • Mizore in Rosario + Vampire has a couple of extra belts connecting her waist to her Zettai Ryouiki for no discernible reason.
    • Those are garter belts, which are intended to hold stockings up. What makes them count is that mizore doesn't actually attach them to the stockings, they just sort of hang there.
  • Kira Yamato always was partial to a snappy outfit, so even his SEED suit had some gratuitous belts, but when the things moved to Gundam Seed Destiny...
  • Lady Emmaniel's outfit in My Balls is all belts, including one big one with a hook clasp occasionally managing to stay fastened across her chest. Strategically placed shadows manage to provide whatever modesty she feels she needs to keep; Barbie Doll Anatomy and censorship take care of the rest.
  • Golden Darkness from To LOVE-Ru has five belts wrapped around each leg that do not seem to serve any actual purpose beyond... well, making you stare at her legs. Yeah, it's that kind of series.
  • Sasuke came back from his training for the Chunin Exam finals wearing a black outfit with belts around his left arm and both legs. This trope was actually cited as a reason for him returning to the blue outfit he started with at the beginning of the series - the belts were difficult to draw and animate on a regular basis.
  • In One Piece, Ace wears two belts.
  • Kurei wears quite a few in Flame of Recca.
  • When the Tsubasa gang visit Infinity, it seems like this is the general fashion.


Comic Books

  • Rob Liefeld loves belts. He loves putting pouches on those belts even more. To the point where he doesn't need to draw the belt itself.
    • I present to thee Bloodpouch
    • As a result of this and Liefeld's popularity during the Dark Age, a lot of superhero costumes during this time had a lot of belts and pouches.
  • Superboy used to love belts. He wore a couple of them over his skin-tight one-piece outfit. They didn't hold anything up, they didn't even have pouches on them. They were just there because otherwise the outfit wouldn't be belty enough.
    • He also had a belt round one leg, for some reason.
  • A hallucination sequence in X-Men had Cyclops wearing a variant of his 90s costume. Only with even more belts than it had originally - tons, most of them with X-symbols attached somewhere. Oh, and a tutu.
  • Penance - the Generation X character, not Bleedball - has an outfit made almost entirely of belts. They might be a part of the body itself, given its origin.
  • Ghost Rider 2099.
  • DC's The Huntress has a lot of belts.
  • A number of The Scarecrow's costumes across media have featured a large amount of belts. Sometimes this is because a costume will be made out of a strait [dead link] jacket which actually needs a lot of belts in its intended use, but in examples such as his Batman: Arkham Asylum design, it's just for the hell of it.


Fan Fiction


Film


Literature

  • X Wing Series: Thin, brightly-colored loop belts are a staple of Adumari fashion, along with more, sturdier belts to hold their knives, blasters, and blastswords.
  • In the mid 70s a reader of TV Guide noticed that a cover illustration of Buddy Ebsen as Barnaby Jones had the detective (one would think mistakenly) drawn with both a belt and suspenders. As they wrote in a letter to the editor pointing out the error - 'How can I trust this man to catch a crook if he can't even trust his suspenders to keep his pants up?'


Live Action TV

  • The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Cameron likes her belts and her zippers - not to mention leather.
  • Too many belts is the In-Universe design style of a mark that Leverage runs into.
  • Every season of Super Sentai and Power Rangers have belts on their spandex suits (which obviously aren't going anywhere). While the single waist belt is justified as holding a sidearm holster, sometimes they keep going with it, like in Engine Sentai Go-Onger/Power Rangers RPM, where the costumes (fitting into a racing theme) have seatbelts on them.
  • A bit of fashion exists for two belts, shown in teen shows like Wizards of Waverly Place and Degrassi. The girl wears one belt on her pants in the usual manner, and a second belt over the midriff to adjust the flow of your shirt.


Music


Professional Wrestling

  • The J-Crown, the union of 8 different light-heavyweight Professional Wrestling championships from eight different companies MPW, NJPW, WDF, CMLL, UWA, WAR, WWA and WWF, which was represented by the champ wearing all eight belts. At once. As if this wasn't enough to lose the average wrestler in a sea of leather and gold, Ultimo Dragon was already the NWA World Middleweight Champion and won both the WAR World Six-Man Tag Team Championship and the WCW Cruiserweight Championship while also holding the J-Crown, giving him 11 championship belts to schlep around. Interestingly, one of the belts in the J-Crown was the WWF Light-Heavyweight Championship, making Ultimo Dragon the only man to hold both a WWF and WCW championship simultaneously until the latter was bought out by the former in 2001, although the WWF did not acknowledge the Light-Heavyweight Championship at the time.
  • In 2007, Kurt Angle simultaneously held the TNA heavyweight, X Division, and tag belts [1] and the (IGF) IWGP title. It really was too many belts - he had to defend all three TNA titles at the next PPV, and lost two of them.
    • And he pulled a similar gimmick back in 2000, holding the Intercontinental [2] and European belts, and losing both in a two-fall Triple Threat match against Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho.[3]
  • In 2009, The Miz was both the United States champion and one-half of the Unified Tag Team Champions, meaning at one point, he carried three belts to the ring; one on his waist and one draped over each shoulder.


Tabletop Games

  • Any and all artwork for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition (previous editions had the Chainmail Bikini instead).
    • Especially the Player's Handbook example Sorcerer, Hennet. His clothing appears to be nothing but leather belts.
      • It's mentioned in passing that he likes to be able to change it around; sorcerers tend to be on the chaotic axis.
      • Also it can be an optimization trick to have a character that wears several of the magic item called the belt of battle to get extra actions, which avoids the usual magic item restrictions by being a charged item.


Video Games

  • Anything Tetsuya Nomura has worked on is likely to invoke this. His work on Final Fantasy has the most belts, particularly Lulu who has a skirt composed entirely of them as you can see in the above picture. The outer dress is lovely and creative by itself, so it didn't really need the belt-dress. In an interview, Nomura explained Lulu's design by saying that he wanted to provide "a challenge" to the character model and CG departments: namely, having to reproduce the exact layer order of every belt worn. Of course, there's probably more to it than that, but who can really say? (Or maybe he really hated someone in the CG dept). Oh, and the animators got around the problem by showing Lulu from the waist-up in most of the CG scenes.
  • Haseo from .hack//GU has 52 belts spread across his body. Of course, this is the self-created Player Character in a MMORPG of a standard Japanese teenage male who wanted it to look "cool", so it might be (relatively) justified.
    • That's right. 52 Belts. More than any other character in anime/video game history. He's actually More Belt than Outfit
    • Utilizing some Fridge Brilliance, note Haseo's wardrobe changes in each subsequent game. As he gains and grows closer to his Nakama, he actually loses belts.
  • While not an actual example (by much), female Fighters in Disgaea are often shown wearing an extremely wide belt for a bra.
    • Etna from the same game is a truer example. To wit, she has two belts on each boot, one on each arm, and four stitched to her skirt.
  • Guilty Gear loves its belts. Sol Badguy alone has at least 20 on his costume, and his rival, Ky Kiske, has around the same number. Also, every playable character except Justice, Anji and Baiken has at least 3 belts with them.
  • Unsurprisingly, the clothing textures in City of Villains include many distinct types of belts, zippers and chains at varying degrees of overkill.
  • The Hero Rosalyn from Okage: Shadow King has only two belts... but one is on her head.
  • Mike Haggar of Final Fight does not seem to understand that belts go around one's waist. He wear but a single belt, its gigantic, and its slung over his chest like a suspender. He even wears pants to accommodate this.
  • Lloyd from Tales of Symphonia wears two, although it's justified in that he carries two swords . In a truer example, Kratos wears six (and even more in his alternate outfit [dead link] ).
    • In fact, Kratos' alternate outfit has so many that it became a fandom in-joke that he has a belt fetish. Since Kratos' belts in that outfit are quite clearly patterned after a basic Japanese bondage harness, that's probably canon.
    • Forcystus's undershirt is pretty much just a mass of belts (or belt-like straps, anyway).
  • Folka Albark [dead link] from Super Robot Wars Compact 3 sports a lot of belts, and still does a lot of ass kicking... inside his Kung Fu Mecha.
  • The cover art for From The Abyss has a girl wearing three belts... but no pants.
  • Gado from Bloody Roar wears three belts in the first game.
  • The King of Fighters: Iori Yagami only has one belt...but its placement is what makes it so bizarre. It links together his two pant legs, which would be a concern considering how often he fights.
  • The Big Sister in BioShock (series) 2 wears a suit that possesses no less than thirteen belts.
  • Dante from Devil May Cry is has several belts on his vest and pants. The latter would appear to be a holster for his guns, but there's only the belts...
    • Trish has only one belt, but it does have two buckles. "Too many buckles"?
  • Castlevania: Judgment features characters from all across the Castlevania series. Unfortunately, they've all been given makeovers by Takeshi Obata, who decided that Dracula had two columns of golden nipples down his torso, Death was constructed out of discarded orthopedic braces, and the Belmonts were great big fans of belts. Oddly, the redesigned Alucard wears fewer belt buckles than he used to have.
  • Virginia of Wild ARMs 3 may be wearing too many belts for a western setting. For that matter, Clive's jacket pushes overkill with the belts in place nobody would ever want to buckle, and Janus seems to have that problem and also the problem of trying to use a belt in place of a holster.
  • Many of the class designs in Trickster Online, although the Warrior and Thief Master [dead link] may take the cake.
  • Skies of Arcadia's lead character Vyse uses belts to hold his sleeves together. He's also got belts on his cuffs. Combined with the necessary belt on his waist, that brings him up to five. He also has two belts on his shoes, as does his friend Aika. Aika's evil doppelganger, Anita, has extra belts, one on each shoe and one on her thigh. Interestingly, Vyze's doppelganger Vize has less belts.
  • Hwoarang from Tekken games wears a lot of belts on his trouser legs in the primary outfit.
  • Jack from Mass Effect 2 uses belts to make a bra. It looks about as comfortable as it sounds. Her unlockable and purchasable alternate outfits gives her slightly more normal clothes.
    • Quarians are also fond of belts. Space gypsies and all.
  • The Asari from Mass Effect 3's multiplayer feature this, with several belts wrapped around their torsos (though ironically they don't have one around their waists) and belt-like straps running up and down their arms and legs.
  • Lulu's Captain Ersatz, Morrigan of Dragon Age, also seems to favor a lower garment made entirely out of belts and leather strips.
    • Another Dragon Age example is Duncan, whose leather armor has six different belts, five of them around the waist. Must have been anxious to keep that skirt in place.
    • The Architect seems to wear pauldrons made entirely out of belts.
  • While the characters in Spellforce generally don't do this, the woman on the loading screen is wearing several belts on her Stripperiffic battle bikini. Including a belt that could only be holding up her bikini bottom.
  • Trinity Universe's Recit invokes this, wearing several including one as a headband. His character trait does seem to be collecting things though.
  • In The Force Unleashed, Starkiller's starting outfit has about five belts, maybe more.
  • The Prince from Prince of Persia seems to have picked up quite a few belts between Sands of Time and Warrior Within.
  • Fallout: New Vegas's NCR Ranger Combat Armor has five, as well as some bandaging/etc. being used to tie down a medical kit, the leather armor (Go figure) having 8 for men, and 3 for women.

Web Comics


Western Animation

  • In early seasons of The Venture Brothers, Henchman 21 refused to wear his utility belt because it made him "look fat." After the death of Henchman 24, even his boots have their own utility belts.


TV Tropes


Truth in Television

  • Tanker Boots Good idea for tankers, bad idea for infantrymen.
  • Historical sword belts and scabbards can often have multiple straps, loops and buckles for comfortable, efficient and non-obtrusive carry. The simplest functional western sword frogs and belts have at least three straps. A belt for more than one weapon would have at least five. Unfortunately, most modern artists and costumers have no idea what the belts are for, and it becomes belt city.
  • Gun belts, particularly the sort seen in media set in The Wild West, are a justified example: Holding a heavy revolver, a couple of dozen spare rounds and your trousers in place is a bit much for one belt to handle. Also, a revolver holster sat low on the hip, and a belt couldn't hang low enough to hold it and still be high enough to hold your pants up.
    • Peace officers routinely wear two belts: one to hold their pants up, plus a much heavier duty belt carrying their equipment and pistol. The two are typically fastened together with snap-loops.
    • Officers of the United States Marine Corps. are authorized to wear a Sam Browne belt (with included shoulder strap) to carry their sword for ceremonial use.
  • Some belts are specifically made to look as if they are two or three separate belts—or possibly even to be worn two at a time, due to being so thin. Also related: Wearing a necktie through your belt loops. That's obviously just for show.
  • The Metallic Power line of New Rock shoes definitely evokes this trope for most of the boots.
  • Rule 34. This concept comes from fetish fashion and was adopted by the punk, goth and metal subcultures.
  • A kidney belt is a very, very thick belt worn to protect ones internal organs. Some models come with 3 smaller belts to properly fasten it.
  • Typical infantry battledress uniform includes at least one Utility Belt around the waist and a set of webbing straps across the chest, containing enough pouches to keep Rob Liefeld happy. Unlike most of his characters, however, said pouches actually serve a purpose.
    • A common complaint amongst infantrymen before current MOLLE-loop body armor came into common use was the overabundance of straps, loops and belts. It wouldn't have been highly unusual for a late 20th century light infantryman to be wearing 3-4 belts around his waist with several sets of shoulder/chest straps.
    • Some individual military personnel can get a bit carried away if allowed to bring privately-purchased gear along, as parodied here
  1. ↑ by himself, due to a couple of Gimmick Matches; Sting won another one to become Angle's partner
  2. ↑ North and South America
  3. ↑ Benoit pinned Jericho for the IC title, then Jericho pinned Benoit for the Euro title
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