Defeat by Modesty



"Suzuka: Give that back! Gene: Which one? (Her sword or her obi) Suzuka: Both of them! Gene: Hmmmmmmm. (sniffs the obi)"

- Outlaw Star

A (usually) male character incapacitates a (usually) female opponent by stealing or damaging her clothes in a way that threatens to expose her if she continues the fight. Somewhat related to Standard Female Grab Area in that both actions can incapacitate an allegedly strong female character who doesn't act (or refuses to be) soft and submissive.

Another version of this trope exists in which the enemy (or hero) launches an attack on or threatens to expose the hero (or enemy) while the latter character is either bathing or showering. Normally, this gets subverted and slides right into playing the Full-Frontal Assault trope straight, but not always.

Often subverted (especially if the female is the good guy) by having her beat the crap outta him anyway, waiting until after he's a bloody pulp to realize she needs to cover herself back up.

Can also happen to a guy, as not that many guys in fiction feel it's right to show their little selves in public.

The polar opposite would be, of course, a woman using her own body (usually with a Stripperific outfit) as a distraction to beat a guy to a pulp.

Be careful though. Defeat Means Friendship can still apply here as well, even if the circumstances seem odd. If the girl doesn't care about being disrobed and rushes you anyway, it's a Full-Frontal Assault. If baring all is done in order to escape rather than to keep fighting, it's Giving Them the Strip. Often employed by those who Wouldn't Hit a Girl.

Compare Hannibal Lecture (in which a character uses emotional shame to defeat an enemy), Shameful Strip (in which a character ends up naked as punishment), Wardrobe Malfunction (in which a character accidentally ends up naked), and Naked Freak-Out (Exactly What It Says on the Tin; this trope is often used hand-in-hand with Defeat by Modesty—unless a writer plays the "Let's subvert the Defeat by Modesty trope by using the Full-Frontal Assault trope" card).

Contrast Sexy Coat Flashing (in which a [usually female] character clad in an overcoat—or some kind of coat—willingly flashes someone).

Anime and Manga

 * In Outlaw Star, Gene defeats Suzuka by stealing her obi (belt), leaving her unable to attack him without her kimono falling open. The superior position and the hostage is then used for negotiation, to great effect.
 * In Mahou Sensei Negima, Jack defeats two female mages by stealing their panties, then flipping their skirts whenever they tried to attack or cast a spell.
 * He begins a repeat performance when he's taking on all of Fate's Minstra Magi at once and it works for awhile before they start taking on different physical forms that render the fact they're Going Commando a moot point. Made even funnier when you remember Fate, the one they revere so much, is actually watching this fight and even goes so far as to basically ask them what the hell are they doing.
 * Akamatsu Ken loves this trope. Negi uses it (through extremely conveniently timed sneezes) to win several arguments with Asuna early on, and against the evil older students in a dodge ball game.
 * Not to mention the Robot Army in the Mahorafest arc. Their primary weapons: Stripper rays.
 * Inverted by Takane D. Goodman who upon defeat is stripped due to her clothes being produced by magic.
 * Actually, this is a running gag, as Takane tries to get revenge on Negi stripping her with magic by picking multiple fights with him, where every one ends with her once again naked. At one point, she uses her shadow magic to magically generate her clothes. Naturally, Negi KO'ed her and the clothes disappeared as she loses consciousness. Then after that she ends up fighting Asuna. Then, trying to defend the campus against the robot hordes, she gets hit with their "nakey beams" at that point again. Her friend tells her to just give up, and resign herself to a fate of Innocent Fanservice Girl.
 * Tsukuyomi does this to Setsuna. The fact that it partially works makes Setsuna angry with herself, given that in earlier battles she had fought a previous opponent while completely naked without being affected at all. She takes it as a sign that she's getting rusty.
 * Fate accidentally did this to Asuna; he was attempting to petrify her, but her Anti-Magic made her immune. Her clothes, however...
 * Negi does this to the group of Ariadne guards when they attempt to arrest him, by combining a disarming spell with his Black Magic. In his defense, it was really the only way of ending the fight without hurting anyone.
 * And it was also recently done to Asuna (again) with a mild subversion; this time she shouts "Oh, like I care anymore!" and continues to attack anyway.
 * Oh, it's still a Crowning Moment of Awesome for her,.
 * The start of Urusei Yatsura; Ataru catches Lum by stealing her Fur Bikini, so she has to cover her breasts with her hands and can't fly as fast. Unfortunately what he said just before that made her think they were engaged right then.
 * He does it to get her to come to him, rather than him having to chase her around. In the anime, he uses a suction cup on a string, while in the movie Beautiful Dreamer he takes it up a notch and just reaches into his pants and pulls it out, saying, "Hey! Look what I got!"
 * King of Bandit Jing: Jing defeats his first round opponent in "The Masquerade Ball of Zaza" by stealing his butt-plate.
 * Flat-out averted in Rave Master. Action Girl Julia faces off with an especially perverted member of the Six Guard who enjoys using his powers to blow apart her clothing. Julia refuses to submit, and even rips off the remains of her own bra to prove the point that modesty will not defeat her. She eventually beats him down with no regard to her nudity, and in fact fully intends to tell her lover Let about all the onlookers who saw her to see what'll happen.
 * Turned on its head in both the manga and live action version of Lone Wolf and Cub. A female swordsman, after being defeated and raped by a swordsman who used a form of hypnotism and mind tricks, came up with a method that would allow her to revenge herself against him in a future match. It essentially involved having two incredibly realistic (and honestly disturbing) tattoos etched on her breasts and back. Whenever she was attacked, she'd rip off her clothes and expose the tattoos before rushing and killing her attackers, who were usually too taken back to defend themselves effectively. The fact that a mostly naked woman was running at them with a sword probably didn't help. Can also be seen as a very twisted version of Show Some Leg.
 * In Toradora!, Taiga get the edge on the much better swimmer Ami in a pool race by claiming she's showing down below, knocking her into the pool with a bunch of flotation devices, and then stealing her bikini top while she's still disoriented.
 * Used in Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple on occasion, usually used by Rachel Castor.
 * Subverted with Miu who, in spite of being the very embodiment of girlish modesty (and traditional Japanese politeness) in this manga, never gets upset about a Clothing Damage until after the fight is over.
 * Also subverted by one of the combatants, Dou Koukyouku from the Nanken team, whose shirt is torn to shreds by Rachel, leaving her absolutely topless. Her response is to shout at her, "Hmph! I gave up my identity as a woman long ago!" and holds her stance. Doubly subverted by the fact that Dou still gets her ass handed to her by Rachel, who's pissed by the fact that Dou was getting more attention than her. And then to top it all off, RACHEL'S top then comes undone, which other characters note she did herself.
 * 20th Century Boys—interestingly Justified—It's the reason sumo wrestlers wear loincloths. Manbo/Yanbo convince their opponent that "clothing holds" are unfair and try to make the one kid willing to stand up to them, a girl, take off her shirt.
 * Done in Lee Kang Woo's Korean manhwa Rebirth, to prove a point. Shy priestess Millenear is sparring with vampire anti-hero love interest Deshwitat to prove to him that she is strong enough to help him save the world. Desh tears her clothes apart, making her drop to her knees to cover herself and yell at him for being a brute - whereupon he calmly puts his hand to her throat and tells her "you're dead".
 * Subverted in Dragon Half, where breaking Mink's platemail bikini top turns out to be a big mistake for Doug/Dug Fin, when she immediately punches him out of the ring while covering herself with one arm.
 * In the OVA it's played with further, when Mink gets a little overexcited at the sight of her friends cheering at the victory, causing her to throw her arms into the air and show her assets to the crowd.
 * The bad guys try to use this on Loretta in Wild ARMs TV, but they get distracted long enough for her to cast Corset, which shreds their clothes into strips.
 * A common trick used by Satou Kazuma - the Anti-Hero protagonist of KonoSuba- is to use magic to snatch the underwear of female opponents. Satou has quite the reputation of a dirty fighter.
 * In the Umineko no Naku Koro ni anime, Kanon defeats Lucifer in the third arc by slashing a hole in her shirt with his Laser Blade. As Lucifer put it, "I've never been this ashamed?!". It's funny because Lucifer represents the sin of Pride. This doesn't happen in the original game, though, where the fight ends when Kanon gets his sword against her throat.
 * In Violinist of Hameln manga, Vocal rips off Ocarina's bra when she is about to unload her most powerful attack on him, making her stop in the mid-move to cover herself. Considering that Vocal was lightyears beyond Ocarina's power level anyway, this was done purely for lulz.
 * Of all the people to fall to this in One Piece, it's Sanji.
 * In Grenadier, Rushuna is prevented from doing her trademark evasive acrobatics after a stray bullet rips her panties off. She still wins, though.
 * In the manga she doesn't even mind, which leads to Censor Shadow later in the fight.
 * Inverted in Ultimate Girls. The girls' clothing begins a disintegrating process from the moment they enter battle, and their shame and embarrassment at their pending nudity actually enhances their powers.
 * In her ploy to get the inheritance stone of the Sanzenin in Hayate the Combat Butler, Sonia begins to strip. When Hayate reveals that that ploy won't work on him, she threatens to call for his female companion and claim that he had tried to rape her. She does get the stone with that, but he returns later to get it back, with Nishizawa in tow, so that she can't try that tactic again.
 * Earlier, Hayate apologetically interrupted Sonia's Motive Rant to tell her that because of the pose she'd taken up and the fact that she was standing above him, her intended victims could see up under her skirt. She promptly crouched down to hold her skirt in a less revealing position.
 * In the Masaomi Kanzaki Street Fighter II manga, Chun Li is in danger of losing her match with Vega because the Spanish ninja exposed her right breast, forcing her to fight one-handed. The story treats this as a turning point for her; at the brink of defeat, she stops trying to cover herself and creates her Kikouken Ki Attack in time to claim victory.
 * The girls of Ikki Tousen usually avert this trope. Hakufu, one of the protagonists, will be mostly or entirely topless in her average fight against a challenging opponent. There are examples of those who play the trope straight as well.
 * In Psychic Academy, Ai once did this by accident. He made his first Jump (Teleportation), lost his balance on landing, and accidentally groped his opponent's breasts while regaining his balance. The woman he was fighting burst into tears and ran away.
 * In Code Geass, Lelouch is able to win an argument against Kallen by pointing out the fact she is only wearing a Bunny suit (the Playboy version, we mean). You may think the Ms. Fanservice who performed a Full-Frontal Assault on Suzaku would be immune to that, but apparently it's different when Lelouch is the one looking.
 * This is a favorite tactic of Goemon from Lupin III. In his fights against (usually male) Mooks, he often dispatches them by cutting off all their clothes with his Implausible Fencing Powers.
 * Inverted in Ranma ½, when Ryoga refuses to look at Ranma's unclothed female body and turns away from the fight until Ranma agrees to Please Put Some Clothes On. She doesn't.

Comic Books

 * In the DC comic, The Fury of Firestorm, this is how title character defeats the female terrorist, Plastique, who has started the detonation function for the bombs on her costume which she intends to use to either kill her hostages or make herself a martyr for her cause. Firestorm thwarts both aims with one movement when he turns her costume to vapor. The bombs instantly drop off her, allowing Firestorm to collect them so that they can be disposed of elsewhere, while she is reduced to a naked laughing stock.
 * Back when Genosha was a country where mutants were enslaved, the New Mutants were teleported there by a character whose powers didn't affect clothing, then had their powers neutralized. Most of them were a little embarrassed, but Wolfsbane (a devout Presbyterian) was paralyzed with shame.
 * Thanks to inept swordsmanship, this happened to both Mickey Mouse and Pete in the same fight in one of the older comics. Both rushed off . . . to find some empty barrels, using them for purposes of modesty but continuing the fight.
 * The Metal Men defeated Giganta by (accidentally) ripping her clothes off, and agreeing to act as a makeshift bikini in exchange for her turning herself in.
 * Tigra pulled this on Moonstone/"Ms. Marvel" by slashing the front of her costume, therefore leaving her, ahem, open for a crowd of paparazzi photographers.

Film

 * Antonio Banderas does this to Catherine Zeta-Jones during their Sword Fight in The Mask of Zorro. It was pretty much the entirety of the film's ad campaign.
 * In the kids' film Magic Island, the Action Girl slices a pirate's belt. While he's trying to pull up his pants (and giving the audience a good look at his silly boxers), she says "Don't be droppin' yer drawers in the presence of a lady!" and quite literally kicks his ass.
 * Inversion in RoboCop: When Murphy's partner Anne Lewis gets the drop on one of Boddicker's thugs, he's in the middle of relieving himself. He asks for a few seconds to keep his modesty back in his pants - and then gets the advantage when this distracts the officer.

Literature

 * Happens to Alanna in Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness quartet. Double points because she is a Sweet Polly Oliver and her companion has no idea that she's a girl. She manages to beat the crap out of the Ysandir anyway (though covering up with Jon's tunic first, of course).
 * Happens again in her duel with Duke Roger: He gets in a slash that cuts open her tunic and incidentally slices through the thing she was wearing to bind her chest. Extra points 'cause he had no idea that would happen.
 * Speaking of Tamora Pierce, Sandry manages this in Will of the Empress for a non-violent victory over her would-be kidnappers: A stitch witch, she unstitches their armor, weaponry, and much of their clothing.
 * Didn't she tie them up with it, though?
 * And for the hat trick, Daine in The Immortals fights her final battle with the big bad naked of both magic (because of exhaustion) and clothes (because there's no Magic Pants aspect to her shapeshifting ability) - naked except for.
 * Averted in Shatterpoint: Mace Windu is cornered by a pair of militia in a public shower and beats the crap out of them. As if you'd expect less of him.
 * Variation in the Redwall book Lord Brocktree. The (mostly male) vermin foraging gangs captured by the Bark Crew are forced to remove their clothes and walk back to the fortress naked. May not have the same impact as with human characters, though.

Live Action TV
""Get off my sheet." "Or what?" "Or I'll just walk away." "I'll let you.""
 * Jamie, in Mad About You, uses a threat to drain a man's bubble bath as a negotiating ploy.
 * During the final immunity challenge of Survivor's fourth season, Kathy lost her balance while attempting to stop a breast from slipping out of her shirt.
 * Sandy was able to neutralize Erinn in a challenge in Tocantins by pulling Erinn's bikini top strap backwards.
 * In the Heroes vs. Villains season, villain Sandra tried to do this to hero Sugar by pulling her top off during a challenge. Sugar, not the least fazed, won the round and flipped Sandra off with both hands.
 * Averted by Jon on Season 4 of The Amazing Race, when he did the final Roadblock naked.
 * Subverted in an episode of Jack of All Trades; Jack tries this on Emilia, draining the tub to get her to confess where she's hidden an idol they're competing over. She tells him it's under her bed...which is actually where she left a bunch of mouse-traps, and she was actually bathing with the idol.
 * Subverted in Firefly; Mal initially acts awkwardly indignant at being forced to strip and left in the desert, when the plan comes to fruition, he swaggers around with self-satisfied confidence before his crew, in no hurry to dress.
 * Played straight in an episode of Shasta McNasty.
 * Sherlock (in Buckingham Palace, wearing only a sheet) refuses to take a case and starts striding out of the room. Mycroft Holmes steps on his sheet.


 * Played with in "A Scandal in Belgravia," where Irene Adler strips nude to cancel out Sherlock deduction powers, a sort of mental Full-Frontal Assault.

Video Games

 * In a rare male example, one section of Final Fantasy VI requires you to steal the uniforms from guards and merchants while trying to sneak into a town occupied by The Empire. Right off their backs, leaving them only in their underwear, causing them to flee from battle.
 * In a very rare non-sexual example, Meta Knight will flee any fight in which his intimidating mask is destroyed or otherwise removed. Why? Presumably because he doesn't want the world to know he looks like a blue Kirby with a cape.
 * In the PC fighting game Bikini Karate Babes, Venus, one of the boss characters, has a grab move that swipes the bikini top off certain fighters. This sends the opponent running off-screen while covering her breasts in embarrassment, thus ending the round.
 * In Conker's Bad Fur Day, to beat Buga the Knut, you must tear chunks out of his buttocks until they can no longer hold up his loincloth, revealing his "very small willy". This is really more Defeat By Shame.
 * In a rare heroic example, getting hit by a scimitar in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped will cut Crash's pants off, causing him to shamefully slink away while attempting to cover his pink polka-dot boxers.
 * Burt the Bashful, the first boss in Yoshi's Island falls prey to this trope. His pants descend slightly each time he's hit until he's left naked; as a result, he grows red with embarrassment, bounces around the arena, and explodes.
 * The Burt Bros. in Yoshi's Island DS are defeated in the same way.
 * The female wrestling game Rumble Roses actually has a Humiliation bar. When your enemy's h-bar is full, you can do an h-move, which is a very powerful submission. If you win, it is an H-KO. (Which isn't any different from a normal win, unless you set "H-KO only" from the options.) While there isn't any stripping, most of the H-moves and the moves use to fill the bar in the first place, would turn most people red. (However, some moves would make you scratch your head trying to find the humiliation in them.)
 * Really, they should call it the f-bar, for Fan Service.
 * H as in Ecchi sounds about right to me.
 * Almost everyone who's played Punch-Out!! knows how to defeat King Hippo; hit him in his big mouth to get him to drop his pants, then pummel his fat belly. This strategy has been kept untouched in the new Wii game
 * Elite Beat Agents in the "La La" stage the character you're trying to help, Cap White, gets nearly all of her(already quite revealing) dress torn off by her rival Mr. Virus
 * In Link: Faces of Evil, one of the major enemies is Militron, who for all intents and purposes looks like a big honking suit of armor. After beating him, his armor blows up, revealing a frail little man in his boxers. "Oh my goodness, this is awful!!"
 * In Samurai Legend Musashi, Malbec fights alongside his assistants, since cutting female lab assistants in half isn't very heroic, guess what happens when you attack them?
 * In Revenge of Shinobi among your enemies are women whose dresses are shredded when hit by enough shuriken, leaving them sitting on the ground holding up what remains of their clothes rather than dying.
 * When a knight performs a checkmate in Battle Chess, the unfortunate king is stripped of his robes from a couple of well-aimed sword strikes, covering himself in shame while the knight just laughs.
 * Two male (and one female) examples are found in Rampage. If any of the three giant monsters runs out of life points, they revert to human form, cover themselves in shame and slowly walk away.
 * H-Game Lightning Warrior Raidy has this whenever you completely drain out an enemy's HP.
 * Nearly every foot soldier in Rocket Knight Adventures and its sequels is defeated this way.

Web Comics
"Zeetha: What were you thinking, using Bunbury's trash?...He's why every smart actress from here to Paris wears special underwear!"
 * Played with in Girl Genius. The clothing disintegration was entirely accidental, but Zeetha was unfazed because, despite a misleading segue, the character was wearing disintegration-proof undergarments for just such an occasion, implied to happen often in this area.

"Barging in on people like that. Very rude! I, Shu-Mai, Shaolin scholar, teach you a lesson in manners! ... So... Could you, um, hand me my clothes please?"
 * Not that she'd be fazed if it had worked. Modesty isn't exactly one of her weaknesses.
 * In the novelization she isn't wearing special underwear ... but the warriors of Skifander's "Double Guard" always train in the nude.
 * Subverted in Charby the Vampirate, during the fight between Zerlocke's sire and bunny!Mye.
 * Magellan has a character with the ability to turn himself but not his clothes into gas, rendering him unable to affect anything until he reforms... which he refuses to do without his clothes, so throwing them away during a fight is a smart move.
 * An interesting example in Exiern.
 * In the middle of a trial by combat with a female vampire in Sorcery 101, Seth slides his hand under her skirt and gropes her. She's so furious that she immediately summons a black fireball and slams him out of the ring, seemingly leaving her the victor. Unfortunately, someone was too upset to remember magic was prohibited.
 * "He is on my lawn unable to move! How exactly does he win?!"
 * Inverted in supplemental material for Twokinds. The Eastern General (who is from a puritanical country) is almost, but not quite, defeated when one of the two heroines realizes he reacted poorly to the other's bare feet—so she ripped the other one's entire outfit off. (Luckily, she's an Innocent Fanservice Girl.)
 * Male example in Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic: Eric Wouldn't Hit a Girl, so he attempts to impress his skill with a sword on Giovanna by removing her hat and corset. She responds by cutting his pants off, then clonks him on the head when he tries to cover himself.
 * A justified example is given in an early chapter of Flipside. Maytag's confidence is tied to her jester outfit, so having it destroyed by Voulger's sword leaves her unable to fight back.
 * Sinfest played it backwards in Ninja Theatre.

Web Original
"Blue Laser Commander: How could you ever possibly refer these to as pants?"
 * Subverted in Chaos Fighters II-Cyberion Strike. was suffering from Clothing Damage when  used a pyro attack on her, but the final blow that defeated her is
 * Inverted at the end of the Cheat Commandos Adventures episode played right before the music video "An Important Rap Song" by Crack Stuntman where the Blue Laser Commander's evil plan for that episode for some reason involved him taking off his pants in public. He is foiled by the Cheat Commandos who force him to put his pants back on while in the middle of his evil plan.

Western Animation

 * An odd variant occurs in Total Drama Island. Heather essentially does this herself while attempting to sabotage Harold's water-skiing. A low hanging branch rips off her bikini top forcing her to abandon her sabotage in order to preserve her modesty. However, Harold is sufficiently distracted by his brief glimpse of Heather's boobs to wipe himself out of the competition.
 * Usually, this trope is subverted on Samurai Jack, as Jack just keeps fighting even after he's been stripped of his ghi and is clad in only his fundoshi (which, to the delight of fangirls everywhere, has happened). However, the episode "Jack's Sandals" had this trope played straight (even though no Clothing Damage was involved). Jack has to find a replacement for his geta sandals that were broken by some motorcycle robots. He at one point tries out a pair of Combat Stilettos with spikes for a heels. With these spike heels, he performs such feats as running up walls and slicing a parking meter into pieces. Indeed, they seem even better than his geta sandals! He leaps in to confront the motorcycle robots- and immediately starts receiving catcalls from the robots and bystanders. Jack slinks off to try a new pair of shoes.
 * Aang's dreams anticipating his fight with the Fire Lord involve him being defeated by the Fire Lord pointing out that he's not wearing pants, at which point he gets too embarrassed to fight and flees. Until he finally turns the tables.
 * "No, Firelord Ozai, you're not wearing pants!"
 * "Oh no! My royal parts are showing!"
 * Male (mostly) example: in Kung Fu Panda: The Secrets of Furious Five, we learn that the Monkey's preferred tactic was to take the opponents' pants. "But master Oogway didn't need pants..."
 * The Animatrix episode "The Final Flight of the Osiris" opens with a fight where this is threatening to happen, with two combatants gradually cutting off more and more of their opponents' clothes...
 * Of course, that wasn't "combat" so much as "foreplay" . ..
 * A rather...uncommon example can be seen in Turtles Forever, where during a fight with assorted mutant beasties (including mutant bowling balls, leprechauns, and slices of pizza), 1988 Michelangelo defeats a mutant banana by...um...peeling it.
 * Kim Possible: Ron Stoppable will have this happen to him ALL THE TIME. It doesn't bother him though because it happens so much. Although, the only time he will take the time to pull his pants up is when he has been completely denuded (except for his boxers), and there's a break in the action, or his pants get wrapped around his ankles, which would be an actual hindrance.
 * Robot Chicken acknowledged how the Fetish Fuel of Sailor Moon can lead to an easy victory:
 * The infamous "Flight as a Feather" episode of The Mask Animated Series had the Mayor's ex-girlfriend Cookie BaBoom, an Ambiguously Brown, green-eyed, Stripperific Yandere with strategically-placed suicide belts around her body and a plan to kill herself, the Mayor, and all bystanders/witnesses just because the Mayor dumped her. The Mask (impersonating a bartender with a British accent) pulls the suicide belts off her (and uses the belts to make a cocktail in a blender) and she's left completely naked (albeit tastefully—it's still a kids' show) and gawked at by Lieutenant Kellaway and his detective partner Doyle. She soon flees (clad in the trenchcoat she wore earlier) in shame, though one has to wonder why a stripper -- of all people -- would be embarrassed over having what little clothes she is wearing taken off in public. It was a defeat, no question, and clothes-stripping was involved to make the antagonist helpless (and provide a much-needed distraction), but the antagonist is a strip—er, "exotic dancer," so just how loosely should the word "modesty" be used in this case?
 * In the "Hooky" episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, SpongeBob is finally convinced to not play with hooks anymore after he gets one stuck in his pants, at which time he has to take them off. Then he has to take his underwear off, which he almost doesn't do, but then they're just ripped off anyway.
 * This seems to also be SpongeBob's Laser-Guided Karma in the episode "Ripped Pants" if not just a final joke. After a whole episode of making silly "ripped pants" jokes and annoying everyone, and making them think he drowned, he rips his underwear and it falls off.
 * In addition, there are a couple of video games based on the franchise in which underwear is the representative of SpongeBob's health. There's even one where you see them come off and he covers himself.
 * Disney's short The Prince and The Pauper, starring Mickey Mouse, had the titular hero defeat Pete, simply by slicing at Pete's pants so they fell down, revealing a pair of very frilly heart-print bloomers. Cue howls of laughter from everyone present, instant loss of respect and abject humiliation.
 * In the Kids Next Door episode OP:BUTT, the Delightful Children tried to us that tactic to get Nigel to surrender himself, having a robot crab steal his swim trunks and take a picture of his exposed butt.
 * Ironically,.
 * Happens to Zeke The Big Bad Wolf at the end of Three Little Pigs, which also caused him to devolve back into a non-anthro wolf.
 * Once when Yosemite Sam was supposedly an Arab -- in traditional robes -- and attacked Bugs Bunny, Bugs remarked calmly, "Your slip is showing." Sam immediately stopped attacking and crouched down, doing his best to hold the hem of his robe to the ground all around him.
 * In an episode of Around the World In 80 Days, Fogg foils Mr. Fix by swiping his pants, causing Fix to run and hide, because being seen in his underwear is "undignified".

Real Life

 * In water polo, grabbing at an opponent's bathing suit is against the rules. The tighter the suit, the easier it is for the referees to see when it happens, so most teams and players use extremely tight suits, which are easily damaged, even by legal play. In international competition, this gives an advantage teams from cultures with more relaxed attitudes towards nudity. Americans typically respond to suit damage by immediately covering themselves, becoming useless to their team, while Europeans will just let it all hang out until the next stoppage of play.
 * In May 2000, Sumo wrestler Asanokiri was disqualified in his match against Chiyohakuho when his mawashi came undone. He was the first wrestler to lose in this way since the rule was established in 1917. (Reports vary as to whether or not his privates were exposed on National TV.)
 * In a German subway, a man makes an aggressive move towards a woman, driving his leg forcefully into the chair next to her. This is then met with possibly the funniest RL Crowning Moment Of Awesome most have been allowed to witness. Thank you internet!