Rummage Sale Reject/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character's outfit looks like it was assembled by the Random Number God.

  • Straight: Dave's everyday clothes are really mismatched and not very practical.
  • Exaggerated: Every single person in the setting has not one, but several costumes in his or her wardrobe, each ridiculously overblown.
  • Justified: All outfits are mismatched because the story is set After the End or During the War, and there is no clothing stores around. Or protagonists are just that poor. They have to get by with what they have.
  • Inverted: Dave wears a stylish black suit.
  • Subverted: Dave is first seen in ridiculous outfit... which he is using as a disguise at the moment. Normally he wears normal clothes.
  • Double Subverted: Dave is first seen in ridiculous outfit... which he is using as a disguise at the moment. Normally he wears even weirder clothes.
  • Parodied: Protagonists are members of La Résistance, and they are using mismatched outfits to channel the power of chaotic creativity against the Faceless Goons of The Evil Empire.
  • Deconstructed: Dave may like his outfit, but it's very inconvenient, constantly catching onto something. Searching through pockets for something needed when it's combat time is also not easy.
  • Reconstructed: But on the other hand, Dave can stuff unbelieveable amounts of useful things in all those pockets.
  • Zig Zagged: Characters' choices of dress vary wildly from plain old shirts to Coat, Hat, Mask ensembles to something resembling a drunk octopus.
  • Averted: Everyone in the story wears normal, reasonable clothes.
  • Enforced: "Dave's outfit needs to be distinctive. Let's see how interesting we can make it."
  • Lampshaded: "You bought your outfits in the discount section of second-hand clothing store?"
  • Invoked: "Why yes, that's exactly what we did."
  • Defied: "I'm going to save the world, but I'm going to do it in style!"
  • Discussed: "Are you wearing that for a bet?"
  • Conversed: "This outfit is ridiculous. She probably couldn't even move with that many ribbons and belts hanging off her, let alone use a sword."

Normal clothes are so boring. Back to our beloved Rummage Sale Reject!