Fanservice Extra

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
A Fanservice Extra suffers Clothing Damage for your viewing pleasure.

Sometimes Fan Service is provided not by a major or supporting character, but instead by a very minor character who doesn't even appear in the story until almost the very moment of Fan Service. On the screen for a grand total of anywhere from 2 seconds to 2 minutes, she will provide the male audience with a Wardrobe Malfunction, a Marilyn Maneuver, a Panty Shot, or some other specific type of Fan Service. She will then never be seen or heard from again in the story. In essence, she is a glorified extra hired for the express purpose of providing the film with a precious few extra seconds of gratuitous T&A, hence the trope name.

If she receives any billing at all in the credits, it will be way, way down the cast list as "Buxom Waitress", "Skinny Dipping Cheerleader", "Showering Pageant Contestant #2", or some similar matter-of-fact description.

Fanservice Extras rarely play characters with actual names, much less actual lines of dialogue. Her presence is solely to provide titillation for the audience, and on some occasions, to play to a particular fetish a viewer might have. In fact, for the amount of screentime taken up, her scene will often turn out to be surprisingly memorable...

If a film or TV show has a scene set in a strip club, then any dancers on stage will probably be Fanservice Extras by default.

This trope is Ms. Fanservice minus the necessary character development and screen time.

Most commonly found in comedies, but sometimes also in action movies and horror movies. In Slasher Movies, she often falls victim to Death by Sex, and may be credited as "Fleeing Slumber Party Victim", or something similar. If the horror aspect of her scene is played too seriously, however, Fan Disservice may result.

While this trope exists mostly in "moving" media, Fanservice Extras do appear in manga and comics also. They will usually appear in only one panel, and will be drawn to a level of detail not normally seen in the rest of the panel.

Examples of Fanservice Extra include:

Anime and Manga

  • Mahou Sensei Negima: The Catgirl waitress in the lower left panel of one page[context?] adds nothing whatsoever to the story except some eye candy and a large number of fanservice tropes.

Comic Books

  • In the Judge Dredd storyline "Day of Chaos: Nadia", there is a scene in the girls' dorm at the Academy of Justice. One of the cadets apparently sleeps wearing nothing but a pair of panties.

Films

  • Airplane!: The milestone 1980 comedy. The buxom Francesca "Kitten" Natividad pulls uncredited Gag Boobs double-duty here as both the jiggling passenger in the white T-shirt and the naked woman who appears directly in front of the camera from out of nowhere for no reason while the rest of the plane is panicking.
  • Airplane! II: The Sequel: From 1982. As in the first movie, Francesca "Kitten" Natividad makes another blink-and-you'll-miss-it uncredited Gag Boobs appearance as the jiggling woman in the "Moral Majority" T-shirt.
  • Back to School: The 1986 Rodney Dangerfield comedy. Early in the movie, he accidentally walks in on actress Leslie Huntly in the middle of her Shower Scene. Dangerfield and "Coed #1" have a brief Shower of Awkward played purely for Fan Service. Her 5 seconds of screen time earn her 26th billing in the credits.
  • Beerfest: 2006 comedy. Hilarity Ensues at Oktoberfest when a bar fight causes a guy to slip and grab onto the tube top of the nearest girl causing a chain reaction of top pulling ending with 6 uncredited topless blonde Fanservice Extras that has the men at Oktoberfest cheering at each stage.
  • Bruce Almighty: The 2003 Jim Carrey blockbuster. The girl in the blue sundress is on-screen for all of 5 seconds, during which Bruce (on whom God has bestowed all His powers) uses his powers to blow up her dress to do a panty check. Actress Rina Fernandez gets 32nd billing in the movie as "Beautiful Woman" , and we never even get a good look at her face.
  • Casino: 1995 epic crime drama. Millicent Sheridan as "Senator's Hooker" slips out of her gown in the senator's hotel room.
  • Commando, in which Matrix and Cooke unintentionally barge into the motel room of a man apparently filming a porn flick with a young woman. Interestingly enough, the extra who played said woman, Ava Cadell, then went to become a successful sexologist.
  • Charlie Bartlett: 2008 dramedy. The two girls who run topless down the hallway after Charlie has sold students drugs at the dance.
  • Colors: The 1988 crime drama with Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. A naked woman is among those arrested when the police raid a drug house. She does absolutely nothing in the scene—or for the scene—except be the subject of Penn's Male Gaze. The actress is uncredited.
  • The Covenant: A 2006 horror movie. Early on there is a scene at a roadhouse bar in which young men with supernatural powers are taking bets on what kind of panties a waitress is wearing under her skirt. One guy uses his magic to make her do a Marilyn Maneuver and settle the bet. It turns out the waitress is Going Commando. The whole incident takes about 15 seconds of movie time. Actress Basia Jasinski gets 13th billing as "Nicky's Bar Waitress" for about 13 seconds of screen time.
  • Easy Money: 1983 Rodney Dangerfield comedy. Rodney catches his improbably busty Innocent Fanservice Girl neighbor "Ginger Jones", played by actress Kimberly McArthur. She has about 20 seconds of screen time, just enough for a bit of hilarity to ensue as Dangerfield gets Distracted by the Sexy and fires off one of his typical one-liners.
  • Enemy of the State: 1998 Will Smith spy thriller. The underwear store and hotel scenes might count.
  • Eurotrip: 2004 comedy. The most glaring example is the all-female nude beach at the base of the workers' monument. Also, the orange juice commercial with the nude lesbians making out.
  • The Fast and the Furious film series: Pretty much any woman without speaking lines—and a few women with speaking lines—in any of The Fast And The Furious films fall under this trope.
  • Grandi Magazzini: 1986 Italian comedy. Two women do a Marilyn Maneuver dance on a ventilation grate. One woman is a Kelly LeBrock lookalike wearing the red dress from The Woman in Red. The other is a long-haired blonde wearing Marilyn Monroe's iconic white dress.
  • Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay: Pretty much every good-looking woman at the Bottomless Party belongs to this trope.
  • The 1980 comedy Hollywood Knights features a surprising number of actors who went on to later fame. Michele Drake plays "Cheerleader". Specifically, the cheerleader who forgets to wear panties while performing at a school assembly.
  • I'm Gonna Git You Sucka: 1988 Keenan Ivory Wayans parody of Blaxploitation movies. A topless hooker comes running out of a room as the heroes are rousting people out of a bordello. This trope is lampshaded somewhat by another hooker who is wearing a T-shirt that reads "Another Model Turned Actress".
  • The Kentucky Fried Movie: 1977 Sketch Comedy film by the same men who would later give us the Airplane! and The Naked Gun movies. Almost every actress in the fake trailer for "Catholic High School Girls in Trouble" segment falls into this trope. Uschi Digard, who appears naked in the shower with the front of her body pressed against the glass.
  • Liar Liar: 1997 Jim Carrey comedy. "Elevator Girl", played by Krista Allen, says hello to Jim Carrey then gets to pop him one after he tells her that her boobs are huge and he wants to squeeze them. One of the rare cases where a Fanservice Extra not only speaks, but actually keeps her clothes on and does something connected to the plot (i.e. demonstrate how Carrey is incapable of lying).
  • New Year's Eve: 2011 romantic comedy-drama. When 15-year-old Hailey Doyle (Abigail Breslin) is told by her mother, Kim (Sarah Jessica Parker), that she's too young to go to the festivities in Times Square, she briefly pulls up her winter coat and sweater to reveal a yellow bra while on a crowded stairway in the middle of a subway station, by yelling to her mom "This is not a training bra!". Kim, horrified, yanks down her daughter's shirt and coat and yells back, "And this is not Girls Gone Wild, my gosh!".
  • The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps: The 2000 Eddie Murphy sequel. Late in the movie, an age-regressed toddler version of Buddy Love rips open the shirt of "Receptionist" Julia Schultz. The trope picture comes from this scene. Dean Richmond in the immediate aftermath of Receptionist's Clothing Damage is a textbook example of Distracted by the Sexy.
  • The Outsiders: Two-Bit pulls up a female Soc's skirt, exposing her panties.
  • Piranha 3D: 2010 thriller. A falling cable rips off the bikini top of extra (Nancy Walters). However, within seconds this becomes Fan Disservice; note that Walters is credited as "Girl Cut in Half".
  • Pulp Fiction: 1994 Quentin Tarantino film. The Marilyn Monroe waitress at Jackrabbit Slim's Diner qualifies. She reenacts the original Marilyn Maneuver and then adds something the original never had: a Panty Shot. Actress Susan Griffiths has actually had a long and successful career as a Marilyn Monroe impersonator.
  • Q – The Winged Serpent: 1982 monster movie. The rooftop sunbathers qualify, particularly the one who takes off her bikini top and lotions herself right before being snatched away by the monster. Bobbi Burns gets recognized at the bottom of the cast list as "Sunbather" for being a good sport.
  • Speed: 1994 Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock action vehicle. Early in the film, the SWAT team are rescuing people from an office building elevator that's about to drop. As they help one woman in a business suit down, her skirt rides up revealing a white thong. Everybody in the elevator is credited at the end of the cast credits as "Elevator Passengers", but there's no easy way to tell which actress this is.
  • The Stunt Man: 1980 Peter O'Toole film. While doing a stunt involving falling through a window into a room, the hero falls on top of a nude woman on a bed, who is actually a stunt woman placed there to break his fall.
  • Used Cars: 1980 Kurt Russell comedy. Cheryl Rixon plays "Margaret", a model that gets her dress stripped off on live TV when it gets caught in the hood of a car that Russell opens.
  • Wedding Crashers: 2005 Frat Pack comedy: The Sex Montage of women falling into bed with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn is filled with Fanservice Extras. Most seem to be uncredited, but two that stand out: Owen's final girl is Diora Baird, who has since found steady work in the Gag Boobs area; Vince's final girl is Rachel Sterling, a former Juggy Dancer on The Man Show.
  • Weird Science: The 1985 John Hughes comedy. Gary and Wyatt try to create a second woman during the Wild Teen Party near the middle of the movie. Hilarity Ensues, and two Fanservice Extras make an appearance:
    • The "Girl in Upside-Down Bathroom" giggles while giving a gratuitous Panty Shot as the bathroom is rotating. Actress Alison Carole Lowe, whose only other film credit is as "Gymnast" in Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, gets her 5 seconds on the screen.
    • The "Girl Playing Piano" vs. The Invisible Nudifier, or whatever it is that is sucking everything in the room into the fireplace and out the chimney. Actress Kym Malin, who did her own stunts here.
  • Zapped (wiki): 1982 Scott Baio comedy. Baio acquires telekinetic powers and uses them for exactly the same thing every other man would use them for: rigging gambling tables and separating hot women from their clothing. Hilarity Ensues. Fanservice Extras abound. Some highlights:
    • The two uncredited girls in the convertible who get their tops ripped off. The redhead is Jewel Shepard, who made a career out of Fan Service bit parts in 80s sex comedies.
    • The prom scene. Everyone is uncredited, but rumor has it that the girl whose dress does not survive the Marilyn Maneuver now has a long-running Soap Opera career.
  • xXx: Xander has a stripper waiting for him in his bedroom, courtesy of the Big Bad.
  • When Sylvester Stallone gets to his private quarters in Demolition Man he immediately gets a wrong number on his video phone from a nude woman.
  • Almost all of the James Bond films. Particularly if Bond meets a contact/the villain/somebody else by the poolside; there are bound to be bikini-clad girls all over the place. Turned Up to Eleven in The World Is Not Enough, where Bond enters a bar and his X-ray glasses make all the random women appear as if they are only wearing their lingerie.
  • Pick a random spot in any Cheech and Chong movie. You're never more than five minutes away from this.
  • The naked girl seen getting out of Bud Fox's bed in Wall Street. Suzen Murakoshi is credited as "Girl in Bed".
  • Good Luck Chuck features a gaggle of nude women in various sex scenes with the main character, attempting to take advantage of his "curse" that they will then immediately meet the man of their dreams.
  • Die Hard. When armed terrorists crash the Nakatomi company Christmas party they interrupt a couple having sex in one of the offices and drag them out with the woman screaming and topless.
  • In Driven when Sylvester Stallone and Kip Pardue's characters are racing through the streets of Chicago in formula one cars, they speed by a girl so fast they blow her dress up for a rear Panty Shot.
  • In Tango and Cash during a car chase in a parking garage, one of the vehicles bumps into a parked car where a couple is having sex in the back seat. The girl is on top and her naked upper half is shown as they stop and see what's going on.
  • The gentleman's club scene in Mystery Team... right up to the point where it dives into Fan Disservice.
  • Joe Dirt: While taking some people hostage with a phony A-bomb (It Makes Sense in Context), Joe demands that an attractive woman in the room flash him reavealing some gratuitous Sideboob.
  • In the original Night of the Living Dead, the only "zombie" who is naked is female and young.
  • The 2011 Conan the Barbarian film has, toward the beginning, Conan and his crew rescuing a group of men and women from slavers, with the women uniformly being buxom and topless. They're collectively listed in the credits as "Topless Wenches".

Live-Action TV

  • CSI: Miami: By the dozen whenever the action takes us to a beach full of women in skimpy bikinis, or a nightclub full of women in skimpy dresses. Which happens a lot.
  • Entourage: The only purpose most women have on this show.
  • Las Vegas: The now-cancelled NBC show starring James Caan and Josh Duhamel. The entry for CSI: Miami applies here, too. Just replace the beaches of Miami with the hotel pools of Las Vegas.
  • The Sopranos: Any stripper we see on stage at the Bada Bing qualifies, unless, of course, one of them becomes part of the episode's plot.
  • Burn Notice: Everything stated for CSI: Miami also applies to this show.
  • In Casualty and its Spin-Off, Holby City, the Fanservice Extra characters occur and re-occur multiple times, and with names, too. They are Mary-Claire (now an Ascended Extra), Nikki, Kate, Rita. It's only the tan-skinned Portuguese/Asian-looking woman who does not get named.

Theatre

  • The corset model in The Women. Though she gets a couple of lines, her obvious main purpose is to show off the kind of body that doesn't really need a corset. IMDb notes that Judith Allen, who played her (uncredited) in the 1939 film version, had previously done modeling under the name Mari Colman.

Video Games

  • Duke Nukem 3D: Set in an alien-infested future world, and for some reason features scantily clad women prisoners but with no plot relevance at every turn. To quote Duke, "No one steals our chicks and lives."
  • God of War: The unimportant, unnamed women who offer Kratos sex in each game of the series.
  • The Witcher: Many, many women in game will have sex with Geralt in exchange for stuff like flowers or drinks - and most of them aren't major NPCs. A few of them even have generic names like "Farmer girl".
  • In the 2007 Conan the Barbarian video game, random topless slave girls are hidden around the map like trophies, and you are rewarded if you free them.
  • Like the The World Is Not Enough example above, the James Bond game Nightfire featured bond at an art gallery with x-ray glasses. And a number of waitresses and female party goers.
  • A bonus level in The Warriors (showing how musclemen Ajax and Snow joined the gang) starts off with the pair being ambushed by the Destroyers (the Warriors' main rivals on Coney Island) and being stripped of their trademark red vests (leaving Snow bare-chested and Ajax in a black tank top). Ajax and Snow pursue the vest-thieves deep into Destroyer territory, and Snow soon gets his vest back after he and Ajax corner a few Destroyers in one of their hideouts and beat the living crap out of them. Ajax then tracks another one of the thieves to an apartment building, where he catches the guy in an amorous embrace with a girl who is wearing nothing but a pair of panties and his vest. Ajax beats the guy unconscious and then confronts the girl, who gladly agrees to give up the vest if Ajax will sleep with her. Their mission accomplished the next morning, Ajax and Snow try to sneak out of enemy territory, only to spot a huge party of Destroyers rounding the corner down the street. The boys frantically try to duck out of sight, only for the girl from the night before to appear on the fire escape overhead in her bra and panties and innocently call out: "Ajax! Make sure you call me!" The gang members down the street overhear and immediately spot the two Warriors, triggering a wild chase sequence down the boardwalk that ends with Ajax and Snow fighting off a seemingly endless stream of thugs before they are rescued by their fellow Warriors.
  • While not very explicit, Mass Effect 3 adds a few relatively minor characters as romance options, including a reporter you can invite onto the Normandy.

Web Comics

  • Greg: These attractive non recurring women are often seen with the comic's second lead character Ted. They're usually shown after he's had his way with them or shown trying to murder him after breaking their hearts.

Western Animation

  • Family Guy: Sometimes has scenes with large groups of unnamed attractive girls in swimsuits/underwear (such as the girls at Stewie's Sexy Parties, or the Asian girls that Quagmire often kidnaps). These scenes have become more frequent post-uncancellation.
  • Miss Kitty from The Great Mouse Detective has a suggestive song and dance number, which starts fairly tame, but ends with a 20's style stripper act.
  • Phineas and Ferb has lots of this, usually the background dancers in the Once an Episode music video.