Naked on Arrival

""We are born naked, wet and screaming... then things get worse!""

- Bumper Sticker

A character's first appearance onscreen is without a stitch of clothing.

Depending on context, it can imply vulnerability, primality, being above silly human cultural standards, Fan Service or just symbolize the birth of the story.

Can be played with Naked First Impression, but it isn't necessary that these tropes go hand in hand, nor should they be confused with each other. Compare Full-Frontal Assault, Innocent Fanservice Girl, You Wake Up in a Room. Clones are usually Naked On Arrival (since you don't have clothes in your DNA). See Naked on Revival, a sub-trope.

Truth in Television (you cannot be born otherwise).

Anime & Manga
"Ryoko: You've seen me naked before. Remember? Inside the cave? Tenchi: Yeah, I remember... but, then you were just a mummy."
 * Fumiaki in Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin.
 * Melfina in Outlaw Star.
 * Lucy in Elfen Lied.
 * Ryoko from the Tenchi Muyo! OVA. Though she's in the form of a 700-year-old mummified demon... ugh. In her first appearance as a hot alien chick, she's fully clothed.
 * They discuss this in Episode 4, the first time Tenchi sees Ryoko's normal body naked:


 * At the start of Im Gonna Be An Angel, Yuusuke follows a trail of women's clothing to find a passed out, nude Noelle. It can also count as Naked First Impression.
 * Technically speaking, male Ranma from Ranma ½ -- she arrived to the Tendō home as a female, and the first time the audience (and Akane) saw him he was climbing out of the bath.
 * Akira Takizawa in Eden of the East. In front of the White House, no less.
 * Hikari (and possibly Akari) in This Ugly Yet Beautiful World.
 * In Gantz, Kei Kishimoto arrives at the room naked, having just killed herself while bathing. Let's just say a lot of the guys there were pretty happy with that surprise, and it was quite possibly the reason why the two main characters fell for her.
 * Tomihime is bathing naked in a lake in Ayakashi Samurai Horror Tales when we first see her. Everything comes full circle at the end, too: she's also naked at the end of the story.
 * Chii from Chobits is first seen only wrapped in some bandages that come off when she activates.
 * Horo from Spice and Wolf is naked throughout most of the first episode, being a mystical wolf-god who has just taken a human form.
 * Yuria from Yuria 100 Shiki is first seen naked in her creator's lab, and remains so for quite a while. Somewhat justified, as it's Hentai, and she's a Sex Bot. She also runs away from him before he has a chance to give her clothes, though it's not likely he would have.
 * Lily of Magical War Chronicles Lyrical Nanoha Force is first seen naked in an abandoned lab, strapped to a strange stone structure.
 * The first time we see Meru Otonashi, Abiru Kobushi, Nami Hitou and Harumi Fujiyoshi in the first episode of Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei, they are naked in a communal bath at an Imagine Spot from Kafuka. However, it probably doesn't count since it's only at Kafuka's imagination.
 * Miharu and Kirie in Girls Bravo.
 * Kaworu in Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0.
 * Rei in End of Evangelion. And she stays naked throughout the film until the very end where her spectral form dons her trademark school uniform.
 * Averted in Haibane Renmei. Despite bursting from a cocoon in a wet mess, Rakka appears wearing a white robe.
 * Naru in the Love Hina manga. Also counts as a Naked First Impression.
 * Yoruichi (at least in human form) and Wonderweiss (when he is "born") in Bleach.
 * Nozomi is discovered naked and unconscious by Kon.
 * In Soul Eater, we are introduced to Blair in the bath. Soul gets a nosebleed upon busting in her bathroom and crashing right into her cleavage.
 * Also Kishin Asura, who promptly freaks out and make himself some clothes out of his own skin.
 * In Darker than Black there is a contractor who can teleport, but that doesn't include clothes.
 * To Aru Majutsu no Index: Index actually is wearing clothes when Touma first encounters her, but Imagine Breaker makes short work of the Walking Church a few minutes later.
 * Little Jumper: A giant machine comes out of nowhere and melts away, leaving only a mysterious naked girl who quickly reveals herself to be a Time Traveler hellbent on saving her mother.
 * Puru Two in Gundam ZZ was nude in a suspended animation chamber upon her first appearance. Oddly, she didn't seem to mind at all when she woke up.
 * Michiru from Kono Kanojo Wa Fiction Desu first appeared inside Yuuri's bag naked.
 * Absolute Boyfriend: The Boy In A Box android and love interest Night is delivered naked.

Comics

 * Timmain in Elf Quest first reveals herself to the Wolfriders by shape shifting from wolf to elf form, naturally without clothing. This doesn't bother her in the least, although she does pay lip service to modesty by wearing Godiva Hair whenever she's in elf form.
 * In the Siege at Blue Mountain series, Leetah's first appearance is her nude, uninhibited dance with Nightfall. This is given a kind of inverted bookend at the end of the series when she's in bed with the sleeping Cutter, looking naked and vulnerable as she contemplates the future.
 * Supergirl: One of the more recent incarnations of Supergirl was found naked in stasis in her spaceship, Justified as allowing her to absorb more yellow sun energy, making her initially stronger than Superman.
 * Superman is usually depicted as naked on arrival as well—but that doesn't warrant as many comments as his cousin as he's always a baby coming out of the rocket.
 * The first time we meet Apollo and Midnighter in The Authority they are naked on the floor of an abandoned warehouse, something that is not explained or even mentioned—they just get up, put their costumes on and go out fightin' crime. And yet, some readers were still shocked—shocked, I say! -- when they finally realized these two badasses were a couple.
 * In Transmetropolitan our first introduction to Spider Jerusalem has him completely naked, save for his incredibly long scraggly beard and hair.
 * In the original Den stories in Heavy Metal, the title characters arrived in Neverwhere as physical ideals and completely nude, but find themselves never needing any clothes afterward.
 * Granted, it was a dream, but this is how everyone's introduced to Will Vandom in the comics version of WITCH.
 * In the Uncanny X-Men storyline that introduced the island nation of Genosha, Wolverine and Rogue were teleported there by a mutant code-named Pipeline. Their clothes however weren't.
 * Sassette in the comic book origin of the Smurflings in The Smurfs appears without any clothes when the boy Smurflings create her, leading to Please Put Some Clothes On.

Films -- Live Action

 * 28 Days Later starts with Jim naked in a hospital room.
 * Uma Thurman's first appearance as Venus in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a re-enactment of Sandro Botticelli's nude painting The Birth of Venus.
 * While the title character of Barbarella isn't naked in the exact moment she first appears on camera, she quickly corrects this.
 * The film Before the Devil Knows You're Dead starts with two of the main characters in a sex scene that is borderline hardcore.
 * In The Blood Spattered Bride, Lesbian Vampire Carmilla has a memorable entrance—she's discovered buried in the sand, naked, wearing only a breathing snorkel.
 * In "Buenos Aires Vice Versa" the main female character is shown completely naked in the first scene she appears.
 * In the beginning of Dark City, the main character awakes in a bathtub.
 * Julie Warner's character in Doc Hollywood is first seen emerging from a lake where she's been skinny dipping.
 * Rufus (Chris Rock) pulls this off literally in Dogma.
 * Remember Ursula Andress coming out of the ocean in the James Bond movie Dr. No, wearing only a bikini and a hunting belt? In the novel, it was just a belt.
 * Leeloo in The Fifth Element is shown getting reconstructed from her DNA. After a few moments of PG-13 nudity, the machine dresses her in fashionably revealing bandages.
 * Mr. Chow of The Hangover first appears naked in both films of the series. In the second it is rather low key, but in the first he.
 * In A Knight's Tale Geoff first appears walking down a road stark naked. In the commentary Paul Bettany laughs about how unusual a way this is for an actor to make his entrance into mainstream American film.
 * Gorgeous Mathilda May spends almost the entirety of space vampire movie Lifeforce completely naked.
 * In Overboard, Joanna is pulled out of the water wearing nothing but her panties. She lost her nightgown and robe in the ocean. This could be taken as symbolic vulnerability referring to her amnesia.
 * Done twice by Milla Jovovich in the Resident Evil movies.
 * The Brazilian film Sal De Prata starts with a woman naked—shown only from above the shoulders, however—explaining why the movie is rated "18+". Oh, and she's having implied sex from out the screen. Anyway, this woman is one of the main characters, and the scene is actually part of a Movie Within a Movie.
 * Several times in the Terminator series, since you can't take anything with you when traveling back in time.
 * From a canonical standpoint, this means anything nonliving. One might question why Terminators don't smuggle clothes in their various body cavities instead of having to go through that "give me your clothes" routine, but watching Arnold literally pull clothes out of his ass would undoubtedly Squick many viewers. On the other hand, only Rule of Funny can explain why the shape-shifting T-1000 also arrives naked, even though its "clothes" are part of its body.
 * Possible Fridge Brilliance: the T-1000 can't mimic anything unless it's touched it first, so it couldn't take on the appearance of a police uniform until it touched the cop. The bigger question is how it could travel back in time at all, since unlike the T-800, it has no skin grafted onto its surface.
 * This has been spoofed several times, including by Billy Crystal in the opening sequence to the 2003 Academy Awards ceremony, in which he arrives back in time naked, holds his gut in, then lets it go.

Fine art

 * The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli, c.1485

Literature

 * Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's original The Jungle Book is adopted by a pair of wolves as a naked baby, and spends most of his childhood and adolescence naked. Of course this doesn't make him a nudist, because he isn't naked for ideological reasons—it's just what he's comfortable with.
 * Discworld: Greebo's first appearance as a human. Nanny's reaction? "Cor." Even Granny Weatherwax turns red and starts hyperventilating.
 * In Magic Kingdom For Sale - SOLD! Willow greets Ben this way.
 * Zedd in The Sword of Truth. And in the adaptation, too.
 * In Sorceress of Faith, the second book in Robin D. Owens' fantasy/romance series The Summoning, the main character is summoned from Earth to a fantasy world while she attempts to work a skyclad Wiccan ritual ... meaning she's bare and embarrassed when she makes her first appearance before her summoners.
 * Touchstone of the Old Kingdom series makes his debut in this fashion in the first book. In this case, he's been enchanted into the appearance of a wood statue and stuck on the front of a ship, with his soul trapped in Death. Sabriel has to retrieve him, with some embarrassment on her part.
 * Turin's first meeting with his Love Interest Niniel is of her lying naked on the grave of the elf who had an unrequited crush on him. He takes this as a sign and later they get married..
 * in The Hunger Games, specifically Catching Fire. While she is wearing clothes, she then takes everything off in an elevator while casually talking to Katniss and Peeta, presumably because Naked People Are Funny.
 * Joan Smith, the slightly odd girl encountered in Robert Westall short story Hitchhiker first appears completely naked. She claims this is because her clothes have been stolen.

Live-Action TV

 * River Tam in Firefly, which definitely uses the "vulnerability" implication. The entire sequence seems like a metaphor for rebirth; River emerges from a box, screaming, crying, and confused, and immediately adopts a fetal position once she gets out of the box itself, and is naked until Inara, Serenity's mother figure, wraps her up in clothes.
 * The main character in the FOX series John Doe.
 * Kyle XY begins, My birth was unconventional at best. My first memory was waking up in the forest. Like a newborn baby, I had no idea who I was or what was happening. My eyes weren't sure what they were seeing. Every sight, sound and feeling was unfamiliar. Every species is born with instincts that ultimately create a balance with nature. Every species except the one I was born into.
 * Daniel Jackson's first appearance in season 7 of Stargate SG-1, after his de-ascension and just before his return to the main cast. This was so nice, they did it twice: in the season 8 episode "Threads", Daniel ascended again, then descends... in Stargate Command, a room away from the rest of SG-1, and immediately asks Jack O'Neill for something to cover himself up. And ends up using a flag. RepliCarter's first appearance is also naked.
 * In Doctor Who for "Journey's End"
 * Third Doctor—highlights a partial example, at the end of 'Spearhead from Space'. The Doctor talks about how he's landed on his feet... "I came to this planet with nothing but the clothes on my bac-- I've just realized these clothes aren't even mine!"
 * In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Deja Q", Q is turned into a human and literally dropped on the bridge, stark naked.
 * In the Smallville season four premiere, we see that Clark is flung back to Earth via lightning bolt, in the middle of a cornfield, stark naked. As far as he claims he is Kal-El so it is very much like a birth. As he's in his cold, emotionless Kryptonian mindset, he doesn't seem to realize or care at all that he's naked.
 * When Xena and Gabrielle arrive in Illusyia in "The Bitter Suite" episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, both are completely naked, having lost their clothes to the rapids that brought them there.
 * In the Eureka season four premiere, Fargo is in the shower when his cell phone rings. He answers it and gets dragged back in time to 1947.
 * He also has a short fantasy sequence where he imitates T-800.
 * Brooke Burns once opened Dog Eat Dog naked but pixelated.
 * In the Sherlock episode A Scandal in Belgravia, when Sherlock and Irene meet each other for the first time, Irene is completely naked. Of course, she does this to render his trademark scan useless against her. (Can't learn anything too important about somebody if they're not wearing any clothes.)

Music

 * In "The Fountain of Salmacis" by Genesis, based on Greek Mythology, Hermaphroditus sees the nymph Salmacis "in a cloak of mist alone".

Print Media

 * In one of her earliest appearances as a model, Cindy Crawford was topless in the March, 1989 issue of Vogue Magazine/NSFW She was modeling makeup in the photo. A year earlier she posed nude in Playboy.
 * Marilyn Monroe as the first Playboy Playmate in 1953.

Video Games

 * In Lunar: Eternal Blue, Lucia is naked when awakening on the Blue Star, and arrives on Lunar several seconds before her clothes.
 * Breath of Fire
 * Ryu in Breath of Fire III—once when he's a child and once when he's a teenager. Definitely to give off an impression of vulnerability. Deis /Bleu is also naked at first, both while sealed in a magic pyramid and asleep and after being awakened. She is not vulnerable however, giving Big Guy Garr the beating of his life while berating him. Interestingly enough, Ryu, who himself has many many instances of being Naked on Arrival, is shown to be extremely shy around her, turning beet red and looking away.
 * Ryu starts off this way in Breath of Fire IV The first character who he meets after his arrival promptly points him to a box of clothing.
 * The first time we seen Johnny in the Metal Gear Solid series, Meryl has just stripped him naked and stolen his uniform, establishing his status as the series' Butt Monkey. Surprisingly, Metal Gear Solid 4.
 * Although he'd appeared in the Metal Gear games first (and in glorious 12x32 resolution), the first appearance of Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid series is during the Briefing videos, in which he is naked - possibly to show off his brand new character design and to establish that he's supposed to be sexy now.
 * Cortana from Halo starts off as a naked computer Exposition Fairy, and stays that way throughout three games. This is not the case, however, with other A Is.
 * Sera in Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga. It happens in the sequel, too.
 * Sera in Mega Man Legends 2. Mega Man got quite an eyeful there.
 * Bill Rizer in Contra ReBirth, after waking up from time travel. Brownie helpfully hands him his bandanna (but not pants).

Web Animation

 * Broken Saints: While he is not immediately introduced this way, in the first chapter in which he appears, Gabriel Dunn strips down to his skin for his fire-walking trial.

Webcomics

 * In Sluggy Freelance, the probably-not-robot ninja assassin Oasis is introduced in this strip, producing a phrase that has become the title of an entire book of Sluggy comics: "Game Called on Account of Naked Chick".
 * Naturally, most of the characters in The Bare Pit qualify, since it's a naturist comic. In fact, lots of people get this impression of Zoot, since the first story arc features him absentmindedly strolling into town naked.
 * Angora from The Meek appears nude on the front cover of the very first chapter, and runs around nude for some time after that.
 * Grace in El Goonish Shive comes close, but wears a trench coat because it's the middle of winter.
 * Neko in Blade of Toshubi.
 * Gren (and probably others) in Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic.
 * In Narbonic, Caliban is kicked out of hell in human form, stark naked. Mirroring that, Mell herself gets kicked out of heaven, similarly starkers.
 * In Templar, Arizona, we first meet Ben as he's waking up, and he sleeps in the nude. He gets dressed as soon as he gets out of bed, though.
 * When Anaïs first arrives in Corporate World she doesn't have any clothes on.
 * The gods in Vanadys: Tales of a Fallen Goddess are all naked in the prologue, which takes place before clothes have been invented.
 * In Shifters Ferrah ends up in this trope when she arrives in a, though she quickly employs Hand or Object Underwear. Seen here.

Web Original

 * Quite a few ournalRoleplay settings feature this, often also having the unfortunate characters arrive Covered in Gunge. Examples include Roleplay/Trans9, where hundreds of people "podpop", and Roleplay/Edensphere, where they break out of cocoons and find themselves to have Laser-Guided Amnesia.
 * In Small Problem, Debby Small has shrunk out of her pajamas.

Western Animation

 * SpongeBob SquarePants:  Bob is in his underwear or naked most of the time, but in the episode "Stuck in the Wringer", the first scene is SpongeBob in the shower with his whole body showing and he's naked for two minutes until he puts his clothes on.
 * Thundercats: The first episode has all the heroes naked until Jaga gives them clothes.
 * The World of David the Gnome: David first greets the viewers while taking a bath. He explains the purpose of the show in this manner until his wife brings him a towel, and then continues his introduction while getting dressed.
 * In Disney's version of The Little Mermaid, Ariel's lower body is unclothed when she receives it.

Real Life

 * You, duh.