History Main / WeWillNotHavePocketsInTheFuture

* During Creator/JMichaelStraczynski's run as writer of ''[[ComicBook/TheAmazingSpiderManJMichaelStraczynski The Amazing Spider-Man]]'', the lack of pockets in the title character's costume was directly addressed. Spider-Man spends some of his time hanging upside down, so conventional pockets wouldn't work (the contents would fall out). Zippers, and flaps secured by Velcro, make too much noise to be practical for a superhero who relies on stealth. A utility belt is the obvious answer, and Spidey has one -- but the compartments are all used for web fluid refills, Spider-Tracers, and a flashlight. He still doesn't have a good way to carry a wallet and keys -- or a camera (necessary during the periods when he earned a living as a freelance photographer). He kept a small camera attached to his belt as well. Early issues often featured panel showing him webbing it into place before a fight which somehow consistently produced well-framed shots (although JJJ at least once complained about poor composition). Along with every other benefit, he considered the symbiote suit a boon because it could form hammerspace pockets in its surface.

* ''Literature/MagicByTheNumbers'' series: When one of the characters is in training at the Cycloid Guild, he's perplexed that none of the robes worn by guild members -- not even the masters' black ones -- have pockets. Possibly justified, as the rituals of the Guild have such exacting requirements that one might be inadvertantly spoiled if a participant carelessly left an object in their pocket that was incompatible with the ritual's underlying geometries.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'' has certainly been guilty of this, those less so from Season 23 to the present. Possibly mocked by Season 10's "The Runaway Bride"- "Guess what I've got, Donna? Pockets!'

[[folder:Web Original]]
* This is just not the case in the future depicted in ''WebAnimation/MundoUltimateNewsCp''. Although Icetown citizens use fancy nanotech spandex-style clothing, they stil have pockets, through in a minimalist look, to keep their stylus and flexible devices in there.
[[/folder]]

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'': With a few minor exceptions, Starfleet uniforms are usually sleek, form-fitting one- or two-piece outfits without pockets. When crew are seen with equipment, they're either carrying them in their hands or have them clipped to a belt. Likewise, the SpaceClothes of civilian make often take the form of jumpsuits or robes that also typically lack pockets. The rationale is that they don't need pockets as there's no money in the Federation, and keys are irrelevant when you have voice-activated doors. Of course this causes a problem when you need to carry something plot-related--in "A Matter of Honor", Riker has to carry a TrackingDevice, so he puts it in his boot.

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'': With a few minor exceptions, Starfleet uniforms are usually sleek, form-fitting one- or two-piece outfits without pockets. When crew are seen with equipment, they're either carrying them in their hands or have them clipped to a belt. Likewise, the SpaceClothes of civilian make often take the form of jumpsuits or robes that also typically lack pockets.

** [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] Comicbook/{{Superman}}'s cape contained a hidden pocket where he keeps his (compressed-by-his-super-strength-somehow) Clark Kent clothes. Considering the way his power worked at that time, he probably supercompressed them...
* During Creator/JMichaelStraczynski's run as writer of ''[[ComicBook/JMSSpiderMan The Amazing Spider-Man]]'', the lack of pockets in the title character's costume was directly addressed. Spider-Man spends some of his time hanging upside down, so conventional pockets wouldn't work (the contents would fall out). Zippers, and flaps secured by Velcro, make too much noise to be practical for a superhero who relies on stealth. A utility belt is the obvious answer, and Spidey has one -- but the compartments are all used for web fluid refills, Spider-Tracers, and a flashlight. He still doesn't have a good way to carry a wallet and keys -- or a camera (necessary during the periods when he earned a living as a freelance photographer). He kept a small camera attached to his belt as well. Early issues often featured panel showing him webbing it into place before a fight which somehow consistently produced well-framed shots (although JJJ at least once complained about poor composition). Along with every other benefit, he considered the symbiote suit a boon because it could form hammerspace pockets in its surface.

* In Film/BackToTheFuturePartII, clothes do have pockets...but it's the style to wear them inside out, rendering them useless.

This isn't as outlandish as you might think (see the RealLife examples below). Still, the lack of visible pockets in future clothes is a near ubiquitous trope in SpeculativeFiction.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Pockets are a [[NewerThanTheyThink fairly recent invention]] made possible in mass production thanks to the sewing machine, so lots of traditional cultural garbs come with carrying pouches and belts.
* There actually is a practical reason for this trope when it comes to high fashion formal wear: the slight bulge of a pocket could throw off the lines of a carefully-designed outfit. Many garments (shirts especially) tend to come with sewn-shut decorative pockets, with the idea being that you can convert them to a functioning pocket by simply cutting a few stitches if necessary.
* Most off-the-rack vests have decorative-only pockets, since most modern men don't carry pocket watches anymore. Pockets that do exist are often sewn shut.
* The uniforms for some fast food chains have fake pockets, presumably because they don't [[StealingFromTheTill trust their employees]]. Others do not.
* Both pants and suitcoats used as theater props frequently have the pockets sewn shut to prevent actors from putting their hands in their pockets.
* Vexingly enough, brands of ''sweatpants'' with sewn-up pockets have also been spotted in the wild. Given how the garment is almost exclusively worn as either workout clothing or loungewear and is all but antonymous with the concept of high-fashion, it's anyone's guess as to why a manufacturer would bother to do this.
* Academic robes, of the kind worn at graduation ceremonies, typically lack pockets, and only rarely have slits through which to access pockets in one's regular clothing. This is especially hard on photo-seeking graduates who have no place to carry a camera (however, some versions make it possible to carry things in the sleeves). Graduate students usually get generously pouched sleeves as well as a hood that is great for carrying lightweight items. Using hoods as pockets was actually pretty common among monks and academic people wearing robes in the long long ago.
* Inverted with [=KangaROOs=], a brand of shoes which incorporate a tiny zippered pocket for keys, change, or a handy condom. When they became a fad in the 80s, they were hyped as a brilliant new innovation, and their design actually did influence later designs of (pocketless) athletic shoes.
* Lots of (decidedly feminine) women's clothing either A)lacks pockets or B) have pockets too small to carry anything larger than a Chapstick.[[note]]"Boyfriend Cut" t-shirts are a notorious example of the latter. They're supposed to look like [[SexyShirtSwitch you were borrowing your clothes from your boyfriend]], but still be feminine; thus, the t-shirt comes with a ridiculously small breast pocket.[[/note]] Either way, they lack functional pockets. Ironically, only certain ''dresses'' seem to have decent-sized pockets, though some formal or long coats have them, too.
* Classical Greece had no pockets in everyday wear for most men (the garment everyone thinks of in this context really was little more than a bed-sheet wrapped around the body and pinned).
** Averted by the Romans, who had no pockets but realized they could carry rolled-up documents (or, as Julius Caesar discovered, large knives) in the folds of their togas.
** Similarly, traditional Chinese robes had wide sleeves that were used for storage and the occasional hidden weapon like a round metal ball that could shatter a skull on impact. Robert van Gulik (the author of the ''Literature/JudgeDee'' series) mentions an incident where Catholic nuns carried their missels in their sleeves, and when set upon by revolutionaries, the missels were seen moving in the sleeves and mistaken for said weapons, scaring the revolutionaries away.
* Breast pockets on button-up shirts. While formerly a standard part of male button-up shirts, nowadays sales of variants without pockets significantly exceed those of with pockets.
[[/folder]]

* Averted in UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks: the belted pouches that became such a cliché were particularly common accessories for time travelers. It wasn't just Creator/RobLiefeld and his cohorts, either: even the ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes members wore pouched and pocketed {{Utility Belt}}s that put Franchise/{{Batman}}'s to shame.
* During Creator/JMichaelStraczynski's run as writer of ''[[ComicBook/JMSSpiderMan The Amazing Spider-Man]]'', the lack of pockets in the title character's costume was directly addressed. Spider-Man spends some of his time hanging upside down, so conventional pockets wouldn't work (the contents would fall out). Zippers, and flaps secured by Velcro, make too much noise to be practical for a superhero who relies on stealth. A utility belt is the obvious answer, and Spidey has one -- but the compartments are all used for web fluid refills, Spider-Tracers, and a flashlight. He still doesn't have a good way to carry a wallet and keys -- or a camera (necessary during the periods when he earned a living as a freelance photographer).
** He kept a small camera attached to his belt as well. Early issues often featured panel showing him webbing it into place before a fight which somehow consistently produced well-framed shots (although JJJ at least once complained about poor composition). Along with every other benefit, he considered the symbiote suit a boon because it could form hammerspace pockets in its surface.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'' has certainly been guilty of this, those less so from Season 23 to the present.
** Possibly mocked by Season 10's "The Runaway Bride"- "Guess what I've got, Donna? Pockets!'
-->'''Andrew Cartmel:''' For years in movies and TV if it was the future, everyone was either wearing Roman togas or white zipsuits. ''Film/BladeRunner'' was a real turning point for that, because it recognised that fashion was cyclic and people in the future would wear fashions from the past, as people already do now.
* Averted in the German 1960s series ''Series/{{Raumpatrouille}}''. The Earth colony on the planet Chroma is ruled by women and they all have dresses with huge pockets.

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'': The actors, at least, [[FridgeLogic have wondered]] about this very impractical lack of pockets (sure, most of the time they're only carrying around their phasers, and the science officer gets a Tricorder, but still).
** One justification is that there's actually very little ''need'' for pockets: there's no money in the Federation, keys are irrelevant when you have voice-activated doors, and apparently [[http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/USS_Prometheus_(Prometheus_class) experimental ships have holographic projectors everywhere]] presumably so one can simply summon a holographic version of what they need. Of course this causes a problem when you need to carry something plot-related -- in one episode Riker has to carry a TrackingDevice, so he puts it in his boot.
** Another justification is that the lack of pockets in uniforms is deliberately done for security reasons; it prevents anyone from being able to smuggle hidden weapons without great difficulty.
** In James Blish's Star Trek novel ''Spock Must Die!'', Scotty bemoans the lack of pockets for his tools.
** Some officers, however, are seen with vest pockets; also, "The Cage" and the TOS movies gave us field jackets with visible pockets. Otherwise, Starfleet tends to stick to hard-sided cases and the odd tool belt. Miles O'Brien of ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'' was occasionally seen with a bunch of tools (or dental implements, it's hard to tell) stuffed into a breast pocket. No one else seemed to have this pocket.
** Especially bad in one ''Deep Space Nine'' episode that featured a Starfleet infantryman (or possibly Marine; in any case, apparently not just a shipboard security officer) deployed in combat on a planet. Not wearing any kind of armor might be understandable ([[ArmorIsUseless presumably it's useless against 24th century weapons]]); the same with not carrying any secondary weapon or "ammo"/energy cells for his phaser rifle (who can say how many shots it could fire, or if it could be recharged in the field)... But he didn't have any ability to carry ''anything'' without holding it in his hands, or over his shoulder. Not even a ''canteen''.
** The jumpsuits on ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', being based on NASA jumpsuits, had zipped pockets.
** Some uniforms do have pockets: the one-piece coveralls from ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'', and the cadet uniforms seen in the later series[[note]]actually the same costumes, simply dyed and modified[[/note]] both had cargo pockets. Also, on several occasions we see characters removing things from their pockets, usually small hand phasers. In "The Mind's Eye" Geordi [=LaForge=] clearly has a phaser hidden in a small hip pocket. It was implied that the futuristic materials made pockets (as well as fastenings) virtually invisible until they were needed. Somehow.
** The second uniforms of TNG ''did'' have small pockets roughly near the hip with the openings facing outward toward the camera so you could quickly tuck a phaser or a tricorder in there, but half would stick out. Picard's later "Captain's jacket" uniform had pockets in the lining.
** On the DVDCommentary of ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'', Nicholas Meyer says that he wanted the new uniforms to have pockets, but the budget wasn't high enough as they would have had to make pockets for each individual uniform. The field jackets Kirk and Bones wear on Regula, though, ''do'' have some hefty pockets in that movie.
*** Kirk's regular uniform was at least ''implied'' to have a pocket, as he had to pull out his reading glasses on the bridge during the initial confrontation with the ''Reliant''. William Shatner is framed in that shot so that the location of the pocket would be below the frame, and his right hand remains below the frame until he lifts it up, glasses case in hand.
** In the fourth season of ''[[Series/StarTrekVoyager Voyager]]'', B'Elanna Torres was often wearing a vest with tool pockets while in engineering. However, this was only used because [[HideYourPregnancy Roxanne Dawson was pregnant at the time and it couldn't be realistically worked into the plot]]. The character would get pregnant later on anyway.
* ''Series/TheBoys2019''. [[SuperheroesWearTights Superheroes have this problem too]], as Stormfront points out when she has to stop and get her mobile from her purse.

* Averted in ''Franchise/MassEffect''. While there's not really visible pockets, Tali mentions that her exosuit has "more pockets than you'd think", apparently with sufficient space to allow her to cart around a significant amount of geth parts.
** The various Alliance military uniforms and armour tend to avert this, containing multiple pockets or utility belts.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline''. Most of the game-original sets of uniform trousers have pockets baked into the model.

* Averted in the trailer for ''[[http://www.captainbucky.com/ The Adventures of Captain Bucky and his Space Marshals, in Outer Space]]'' with a closeup montage of the heroic captain doing up each zipper on his jumpsuit, [[RuleOfFunny ending with his fly.]]

* WordOfGod is that the creator of ''Series/BabylonFive'' made sure the uniforms had visual pockets as this trope has always bothered him. However, one episode featured a pickpocket stealing a pouch hanging from a person's belt in a market, which would have been a lot more at home in the Middle Ages, as would the method of the theft (literal cutpursing).
** [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in ''Series/{{Crusade}}'', when a clothing designer comes aboard the ''[[CoolStarship Excalibur]]'' to make new uniforms for the senior officers. [[TheCaptain Gideon]] complains that these uniforms lack pockets, to which the designer replies that a captain shouldn't have to carry things around. There are subordinates for that.

* When one of Creator/LyndonHardy's characters is in training at the Cycloid Guild, he's perplexed that none of the robes worn by guild members - not even the masters' black ones - have pockets. Possibly justified, as the rituals of the Guild have such exacting requirements that one might be inadvertently spoiled if a participant carelessly left an object in their pocket that was incompatible with the ritual's underlying geometries.

** He kept a small camera attached to his belt as well. Early issues often featured panel showing him webbing it into place before a fight which somehow consistently produced well-framed shots (although JJJ at least once complained about poor composition).