Clothing Damage/Film

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Films -- Animation

  • The Great Mouse Detective
    • Professor Ratigan has severe clothing damage during the end climax.
    • Basil's clothes are also heavily damaged after Ratigan's vicious beatdown on him.
  • The Animatrix short "Final Flight of the Osiris" opens with a blindfolded swordfight with nothing but Clothing Damage, until both man and woman are almost naked. Mind you, it was intended as foreplay.
  • Anastasia: In the final battle, Rasputin gets his minions to rip and tear Anya's ball gown.
  • Disney's Cinderella has the scene where the evil stepsisters tear Cinderella's ball gown to shreds in anger.
    • In A Twist in Time, Cinderella in a white gown gets transported inside a pumpkin carriage by Lady Tremaine. Once Cinderella is inside the pumpkin, her dress somehow gets all torn up, and she's now barefoot.
  • Peter Pan: Captain Hook's clothes get destroyed in his encounters with the crocodile. It's really incredible how the crocodile can eat up most of his clothes without harming him at all, especially considering harming him is presumably what the crocodile is trying to do. Also interesting how later on Hook wears the same outfit which got destroyed.
  • Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid. Twice in the film, from being in the ocean his boots come off, and his pant legs get ripped.
  • A similar thing happens to Gepetto from Pinocchio. When Monstro destroys the raft he loses his shoes and socks and his pant legs rip.

Films -- Live-Action

  • Buster Keaton loses his shirt and trousers (through not his shoes, undershirt, or boxers) to a threshing machine in The Scarecrow.
  • Galaxy Quest
    • Happens gradually to Sigourney Weaver's character, Gwen DeMarco. Surely this is a lampshading of the trope, considering her character's stated purpose in the "original" show is simply to repeat computer instruction, i.e. no real purpose except looking pretty and occasionally having Clothing Damage. Rare example of a Defied Trope, as her movie-character despises her show-character being treated as a sex object. Of course, one of the themes of the movie is the various characters end up becoming like their show-characters.
    • This is also parodied with Tim Allen's character, Jason Nesmith. Captain Taggart's clothing damage is also lampshaded. This is fitting, since he's a Kirk parody and Clothing Damage was always happening to Kirk in fights that didn't even muss other character's hair.
  • Wolverine gets caught in a disintegrating attack in X Men the Last Stand. His body regenerates; his shirt does not. (And his Magic Pants remain invincible throughout.)
  • This happened several times in the Stephen Chow movie Shaolin Soccer, generally to comedic effect (or unfunny effect, depending on how one felt about the movie).
  • Used in The Mask of Zorro, where Zorro fights Elena and manages to, essentially, cut her nightshirt off, though she still had pants (and Godiva Hair). In fairness, she attacked his clothes first.
  • Fantastic Four (2005):
    • Susan Storm (Jessica Alba) suffers the extreme form of this in Rise of the Silver Surfer. When she accidentally swaps powers with the Human Torch, she immediately lights up in flame, burning off her non-fireproof clothes, leaving her in the buff on a crowded street. Note that when the same thing happens to Ben Grimm, he doesn't suffer from the same problem, only burning minor holes in his shirt rather than being covered in flame. She even lampshades it by quipping "Why does this always happen to me?"
    • Also happens to Johnny in Surfer. When Sue and Reed's wedding is beset by the Surfer's arrival, Reed tells Johnny to follow him, much to Johnny's chagrin since he didn't want to incinerate his tux. He was wearing his uniform beneath the tux, though.
  • Clothing damage in Die Hard is just one part of why John McClane is such a freaking Badass.
  • Star Wars Episode II: The Attack of the Clones
    • A Nexu beast attacks Padme (Natalie Portman), tearing her shirt to expose her midriff and one arm. The scratches on her back from the nexu's claws disappear almost immediately. Her abs do not.
    • Non-fanservice example: During the final battle in Return of the Jedi, Luke gets the collar of his black suit torn open, showing the light gray lining of his jacket underneath. This is arguably to show us that he's overcome the Dark Side that was building up since the beginning of the movie.
  • Zhang Ziyi's character in House of Flying Daggers gets her clothes partially ripped off quite frequently.
  • In Mystery Men, a gang of female furriers is taken down by use of a fabric-adhesive liquid projector, shrinking their clothing sizes "from junior to missy petite". The fanservice is lampshaded by spectator Ben Stiller: "My pants feel like they're shrinking, too."
  • The first Get Smart film (which would probably be considered Fanon Discontinuity if it were more well-known) is titled The Nude Bomb. Guess what the bad guys have, and use. Being a PG film from 1980 you don't see much.
    • Then in the 2008 Get Smart film, the pants damage done to Max during the SUV/train/plane chase.
  • Happens to Fay Wray in the original King Kong, after Kong peels off most of her dress.
  • This has happened to Spider-Man in all three live-action movies.
  • Lampshaded in Diary of the Dead. While filming a B-grade horror movie an actress objects to the cliched idea of the mummy yanking down her dress to expose her breasts, saying that it's just not going to happen. Later on when the actor playing the mummy gets turned into a zombie this happens for real, whereupon she shouts at the DOP (who's been filming all this instead of helping her): "I hope you're happy, you son-of-a-bitch!"
  • In Future War, we are supposed to believe that the male kickboxing lead gets his shirt knocked off in the final battle, even though we can clearly see him quickly slip it off despite it being tucked in and fully buttoned to the collar in the previous shot. We don't know how he did it, either.
  • Hot Shots Part Deux. The female rips part of her shirt off to make a bandage for one of the male soldiers, so several other soldiers also startfaking nonexistant cuts and injuries to get her to rip more of her shirt off.
  • The heroine in Der Clown ? Payday is shown with clothing damage as she is tied to the front of a tractor-trailer. There isn't even a logical explanation as to where this damage may come from.
  • In the 1930's movie version of The Most Dangerous Game the male main character's shirt became unbuttoned and ripped up.
  • A male, and hilariously gratuitous, version occurs in The Beatles' film Help! The villains attack the boys with a booby-trapped hand dryer that starts sucking away their clothes.
  • Batman Returns. Catwoman's catsuit gets gradually more and more torn as the movie goes and her psyche is more damaged.
  • In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the right sleeve of Indy's shirt gets torn off by the big Thugee as he's pulled into the rock crusher.
  • In Coffy, a Blaxploitation movie starring Pam Grier, the title character gets into a fight with a bunch of female Mooks, seemingly making a point of ripping each and every one of their shirts wide open and exposing their bare breasts.
  • In Kung Pow! Enter the Fist near the beginning Chosen One attacks a henchman, ripping his outfit until his torn clothing takes the appearance of a bikini.
  • In |Dead Air a female victim of the Technically Living Zombie infected gets her shirt torn during the attack, exposing a breast. This can go into Fan Disservice for some as she soon rises as a zombie herself, snarling and bleeding from her eyes and mouth.
  • In Cape Fear (1991) Max Cady's shirt is damaged when Danielle sets him on fire.
  • In Home Alone 2, Harry's coat collar is charred after he soaks his burning head in a toilet filled with kerosene, blowing the house up.
  • Most of The Return of Captain Invincible features the title character struggling to control his magnetic powers, causing metallic buttons and zippers to randomly tear loose of the items they are supposed to hold closed.

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