Did You Get a New Haircut?
In this Personal Appearance Trope, a character undergoes some monstrous or at least dramatic transformation. When approached afterward by one of his/her friends or acquaintances, (usually the Cloudcuckoolander or otherwise not the quickest of the bunch) they can't help but notice that something's different about them, but completely miss what the actual difference is.
"I got it! You got a new haircut, right?" Sometimes the person will continue guessing: "You lost weight? You got new glasses? New cologne? Don't tell me..."
Eventually the person undergoing the change tells, or some bystander who can't stand the ridiculous guesses does.
If the person has had a complete makeover to the point where they're not even the same gender ...well, then Something's Different About You Now.
Advertising
- Early ads for Viagra used this trope. It was left to the viewers to ask the obvious final guess, "Hey, Joe, got wood?"
Film
- Little Shop of Horrors. Seymour asks Audrey if she's wearing eye shadow, but it's actually a shiner caused by Orin.
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Seymour: Hi, Audrey. You look radiant today. Is that new eye make-up? |
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- The Little Mermaid. Scuttle the seagull does this after Ariel has made her Deal with the Devil and has legs and feet instead of a tail. Note that while he says this, he is standing on her legs and leaning on her toes!
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Sebastian: LEGS!! She's got legs you idiot! |
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- Lady and the Tramp has a scene where the former titular character shows off her collar to a friend who goes through a few such things ("You've had a bath") before noticing it.
- Highlander II the Quickening. After McCloud regenerates back into his younger self, he visits an old scientist friend of his who notices something different. "Have you had a facelift?"
- Inverted in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs with Flint Obfuscating Stupidity to cover his surprise at the Mayor's sudden weight gain.
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Mayor: It's me, the mayor. |
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- In Death Becomes Her, after Madeline has drunk a potion giving her eternal youth and beauty, her husband Ernest asks, "Change your hair?"
- Percy Jackson: When Percy meets up with Grover once more after Hades and Olympus, Grover asks if Percy notices anything different. Percy asks if Grover's been working out; Grover points out that he finally has his satyr horns as a full protector.
Literature
- In the Doctor Who New Adventures novel All-Consuming Fire, the Doctor leaves Benny Summerfield in India, and picks her up again two months later:
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"There's something different about you." He frowned, and looked me over again. "Don't tell me. Let me guess." |
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- In a book on arts and crafts featuring characters of Sesame Street (in the 70's), the adults show the kids how to make masks out of paper grocery bags. Mr. Hooper is given one that actually looks a bit like him and he goes outside wearing it. Big Bird sees him and asks him if he got a haircut.
- Brutally and seriously subverted in Norwegian Wood when Midori calls out Watanabe for being so lost in his thoughts and depressed that he does not notice her new haircut.
Live-Action TV
- Played with in an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Jenny really does get a horrible (and dramatically shorter) new haircut:
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Harvey: You look different. Are those new earrings? |
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- On Friends, when Chandler starts wearing glasses, he attempts to invoke this, but nobody seems to think that he ever DIDN'T wear glasses. Not his best friend of ten years, not his roommate of over five, not the woman he's in love with!
- On Eli Stone, Eli kept insisting that Maggie had a new haircut, rather than a shiny new ring.
- Subverted on Gilmore Girls when Jess asks Rory if she changed her hair. (She didn't, it was an excuse for him to talk about something else.)
- In The Sopranos episode "All Happy Families...", AJ's friends shave his eyebrows off while stoned. It takes Tony a minute to catch on the first time he sees him.
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Tony: (stares blankly) What's different about you? |
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- A M*A*S*H episode has Radar getting a pair of elevator shoes to make himself taller. The first person to see him after he dons them is Frank Burns, who can't place what looks different about him and guesses that he's gotten new glasses.
- There's a somewhat different example in Are You Being Served?, in the episode "It Pays To Advertise", when Mrs. Slocombe and Mr. Humphries have mannequins made of themselves, and Mr. Grainger mistakes the mannequin of Mrs. Slocombe for the real thing:
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Mr. Grainger: Your hair's looking nice today, Mrs. Slocombe. (after a few moments) Alright, ignore me, you bad tempered old cow. |
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- Happens on Pixelface when Kiki has illegally eaten one on the power-up fruits and turned into a giant. Rex sees her and comments that there is something different about her: her hair is glossier. A few seconds later, he realises that she is six times her normal size.
- In Scrubs Elliot's transformation actually includes a new haircut.
- On an episode of Hell's Kitchen, Chef Ramsay asked the three remaining contestants if they noticed anything different about him. New hair or a new jacket were guessed wrongly. (He was smiling for a change.)
Newspaper Comics
- When Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes transmogrifies himself into a tiger, he asks his dad if he notices anything different. His dad asks if it's a new haircut.
- Subverted in that Calvin's transmogrification is only in Calvin's mind, therefore his father couldn't see it even if he wanted to.
- From Big Top, the leader of the Dark Tent Circus kidnaps Dusty and replaces him with a robotic clone. Upon seeing the bot, Wink asks, "Did you get a haircut or something?" Dusty-bot replies, "Tinted corrective lenses. For my corneas."
- Double subverted in one FoxTrot strip. Paige asks her mother if she notices anything different, and when Andy says no, Paige goes on a mini-rant about how she's resolving to be a person of depth and substance. That, and she trimmed her bangs.
Video Game
- At the end of Saints Row, your character is immolated in a massive explosion to set up the character customization in the sequel?reconstructive surgery in a burn ward is, after all, the perfect time to change one's gender and/or race. Nobody has much trouble identifying you when the plot calls for it, as well. Yet no matter what design choices you make, the only remark about the change anyone seems to have is to ask if the character has "done something with [his/her] hair." Lampshaded at one point when your character pulls out his/her gun and cuts someone off by shouting, "I didn't do shit with my hair!"
- Arcana Heart has the following if Yoriko fights Kamui in her Story Mode. Note that Michelangelo is a Demon King that had just been sealed as Yoriko's staff and that Kamui had a hand in that sealing.
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Kamui: It's been a while, Michelangelo. You look a little...different than I remember. Did you lose weight? |
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Web Comic
- Polk Out, here.
- Checkerboard Nightmare, here.
- This Looking for Group comic
- Skin Horse a particularly egregious example, because Moustachio doesn't even have hair.
- In Spacetrawler, Yuri gets both her arms and legs replaced with Artificial Limbs, as well as cat ears surgically attached to her head. Dustin is slow to pick up on this.
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[Yuri blasts off on her rocket feet] |
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- Real Life Fiction has it in this page: https://web.archive.org/web/20150428011652/http://rlfcomic.com/?comic=20100328-jes-nes-cest-paw
Web Original
- In one of the comics for Gaia Online's Halloween '09 storyline, The Overseer, a large clam, takes over Gino's body by clamping onto his head. Upon seeing this, Liam exclaims, "Holy crap, dude! ...Did you get a haircut or something?"
Western Animation
- Futurama episode "A Head in the Polls"
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Fry: You look different. Did you get a haircut? |
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- Jade did to a four-armed Hak Fu in Jackie Chan Adventures.
- In the episode "Arthur's Eyes" (based on the book), after Arthur gets new glasses, Binky tries at different points through the rest of the episode trying to guess what's different about him, including asking if he got new clothes.
- Probably a Lampshade Hanging, as the episode in question aired late in its season, and to the viewer, the Arthur without glasses was "something different" while the Arthur with glasses was business as usual.
- Not so, unless the previous troper is in a different market that the U.S. or something. "Arthur's Eyes" was the very first episode of the show.
- From The Simpsons
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Marge: There's something different about Bart... |
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- Also in The Simpsons, Homer is unsubtly replaced with McBaine, doing a bad impression of him. When Bart asks, he points out that he's wearing a new tie.
- In an episode of Rugrats, the other babies guess what's different about Tommy for a while, including asking if he got a haircut (while he has virtually no hair), before they realize he's completely naked.
- In The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, a Bad Future is shown where Mandy has transformed herself into an enormous worm creature to be immortal, and has hundreds of Billy clones at the ready for when one is inevitably destroyed. Her hair is exactly the same, even on a worm creature, but upon awakening, each Billy asks "Did you change your hair Mandy?"
- Lampshaded in Phineas and Ferb
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Stacy: There's something different about you |
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- Ben 10 Alien Force: Word for word.
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Argit: Something's different about you. Did you get a new haircut? |
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- SpongeBob SquarePants: The episode 'Squid Wood' has Spongebob making a puppet version of Squidward to replace the real one when he doesn't want to play with him. When Patrick comes up this conversation occurs:
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- Used in Mucha Lucha when Rikochet lost his mask. As Buena Girl comes up, he's standing there with a mailbox on his head, because it's horribly humiliating for a masked luchador to be seen without his mask. She asks if he got a new haircut. What makes it even funnier is the fact that she's never seen Rikochet's haircut before, since they never/rarely take off their masks...
- My Life as a Teenage Robot:
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Pteresa: There's something different about you. Did you get new contacts? |
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- Happens in an episode of Dave the Barbarian where Oswidge accidentally turns himself into a newt.
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Candy: Did you change your hair? |
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- Occurs in an episode of Family Guy. Brian finds his ex-girlfriend, Tracy Flannigan, and the two exchange the trope.
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Brian: Wow, you sure look...different then the last time I saw you. |
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- Turtles Forever: when the 1987 Turtles meet the Splinter of today:
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'87 Raphael: Did you get a perm job or something? |
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