Four Fingered Hands / Western Animation

You can tell that he is from another universe just for having four fingers on his hands.

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• Most of the anthropomorphic animal Disney characters. And also many of the humans. But it's not always done consistently. Birds have only four fingers in real life, so this is anatomically correct for anthropomorphic birds, such as the Ducks.
  • In Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, for example, one can see five-fingered Aldrin Klordane and four-fingered Norton Nimnul in the same scene.
  • It gets lampshaded in one episode of DuckTales (1987).
  Scrooge: (when doing a high- four) Give me four!
  • Also lampshaded once in Bonkers, where one of the ways Bonkers can tell the Monster of the Week is not a "toon" is because he loses his four-fingered glove and Bonkers notices he has five fingers.
  • Strangely averted in the Goofy cartoon "Baggage Buster", where he has five fingers. This was most likely due to Goofy being rotoscoped here.
  • In the Donald Duck cartoon, Donald's Dilemma, Daisy's psychiatrist goes back and forth between four and five fingers between scenes. This is actually pretty common in Disney cartoons of the era.
  • Averted in early cartoons where Oswald the Lucky Rabbit originally had five fingers, but switched to four in later cartoons.
  • Mostly averted in 101 Dalmatians: The Series as most humans we see are shown to have the correct number of digits on their hands. Though, it does get lampshaded, when played straight in "Close, But No Cigar", when a TV announcer used his hands to visualise a $10,000 prize, then realised he was lacking in digits.
  • American men in Goofy shorts seem to be more cartoony and animal-like than women, so it's notable that men tend to have four-fingered hands while women tend have five. Goofy, even as his most human-like form, Mr. George Geef, still only has four; his wife, whenever her hands are seen, has five. This contrast is perhaps most obvious in Cold War: when Geef's wife takes his pulses, both her five-fingered hand and his four-fingered one are in the same shot. Mexicans in For Whom the Bull Toil look human, but still have four-fingered hands.
    • How to Be a Detective features four characters, three of whom are men of different species: Goofy as Johnny Eyeball, Pete as Al Muldoon, and a weasel guy. All three men have four-fingered hands. The Dame, who turns out to be Al's bride, is a veiled human-looking woman with five-fingered hands.
    • In Father's Day Off, a female phone operator is shown to be fully human with five-fingered hands, even though a different woman who shoves a milk bottle into Geef's mouth and asks him to babysit, her fully human baby, and every man in the same short (most men look like Geef, although the police chief looks like Pete), only have four. Geef's son, George Jr., also has four-fingered hands.
    • There are some exceptions, for example:
    • All Goofys in Baggage Buster and The Art of Self Defense have five-fingered hands.
    • Blackfoot from Californy er Bust has five-toed feet, yet four-fingered hands like all "dem pesky Redskins". This is perhaps one of the few cases, if not the only case, where the numbers of fingers and toes don't match for a single character. His feet, btw, are literally black, even though his skin elsewhere is very much red.
    • Princess Esmeralda in Knight for a Day, an earlier short, has a muzzle and four-fingered hands.
    • Geef's wife in Fathers Are People and Get Rich Quick has four-fingered hands.
    • George's mother in Teachers Are People (in which George isn't Goofy's son, but his most mischievous student), has four-fingered hands.
    • Greco-Roman soldier Goofy and ascetic Indian Goofy in How to Sleep inexplicably have five-fingered hands, even though other Goofys (caveman Goofy, Robin Goofy, and George Geef) have four.
    • Fully human men in How to Sleep and How to Dance have five-fingered hands.
• Likewise, most characters in Warner Brothers productions, such as Looney Tunes, Animaniacs, and Tiny Toon Adventures.
  • Inverted in the Looney Tunes short Rabbit of Seville, Bugs Bunny's hands are given five fingers for one scene to properly mime a piano melody played on Elmer's head. Rabbits' front paws normally have four digits.
  • The more (otherwise) realistic a four-fingered hand is, the creepier - note the hands of the (human) mailman at the beginning of Daffy Duck's The Great Piggy Bank Robbery.
  • Mary Melody has been depicted with both four and five-fingered hands. It seems to just depend on whoever animated any given episode.
  • Averted with King Salazar in Wakko's Wish and justifiably averted by the realistic humans in The Flame segments, but played straight with all the other human characters in the original show.
  • Played with in Duck Dodgers. Most of the main characters and guest characters based on legacy Looney Tunes characters have four digits; Captain Star Johnson is the only recurring character with five digits. Guest stars based on real life people, such as Tom Jones, Ed McMahon, and the members of Megadeth have five digits. Additionally, in "The Green Loontern", many Green Lantern characters, specifically Hal Jordan and Sinestro, also have five-digit hands.
• Animaniacs (2020):
  • This trope is applied to the human characters inconsistently. Mindy and Miles Standish have four fingers, while Ralph, the Mime, and other humans have five fingers.
  • The rats fighting over a piece of meat have five finger hands, unlike the other animals in the reboot.
  • One of the bears in the Russia episode has four fingers and the other one has five fingers.
  • The Warners have their usual four fingers even in the chibi and anime forms despite actual anime and chibi styles having five fingers on characters.
• Lampshaded in 3-2-1 Penguins!; Jason states, "You're only five minutes older!" to his twin sister Michelle, holding up all his fingers on one hand, quickly holding up a finger on the other hand, because he's only got four fingers.
• Lucy, the only human character seen on 64 Zoo Lane, and she is usually barefoot, so you can see that she has four toes on each foot as well.
• Most of the Nicktoons made by Klasky Csupo Inc. mostly avert this trope, giving all the characters five fingers in each hand. Aaahh!!! Real Monsters is somewhat an exception. While all the human characters have five fingers in each hand, most of the monsters (at least the least grotesque monsters) have four in each hand.
  • Likewise, averted in both Rugrats and its Spiritual Successor (even if the latter was still running and the latter was not created by Klasky/Csupo) Recess, where the characters have five fingers.
• The Adventures of Puss in Boots has Dulcinea, a cat with more cartoonish proportions than the rest, including having four fingered hands instead of five like the other cats. This is what makes her The Chosen One
• Adventure Time is an interesting case, seeing as most (humanoid) characters, including Finn, often have Rubber-Hose Limbs that appear as three barely discernible fingers that quickly change into four-fingered hands when close-ups are required. The only instance a character was drawn with 5 proper finger was with Marceline, whose right hand momentarily had an extra finger in "Evicted!" when she shows Finn and Jake the Nut Creatures, and in Heat Signature while putting ketchup on her first two fingers. Billy the hero is an interesting case as he's drawn with 6 fingers.
  • This is parodied in the episode "Five More Short Graybles", where each of the five stories is apparently themed after one of the five fingers. But the storyteller reveals that the stories were actually themed after the five tastes (sweet, savory, sour, salty, and bitter), and says "No one's had five fingers in over twenty-mabillion glables!"
  • Many giant characters, such as Lemon John from "All Your Fault", have five fingers on each hand.
• The Chipmunks (as well as the Chipettes) in their first two animated appearances. In the Chipmunks' appearances, not only do the Chipmunks have four fingers, but so does Dave and the other human characters. Averted with how he appears in the 80s/90s.
• American Dad! lampshaded this trope in "Finger Lenting Good;" when Stan loses a finger, he remarks that he's down to seven. Oddly, moreover, on TBS airings, there are still censors over characters singularly elevating the finger next to their pinky, despite the fact that they technically don't have "middle fingers". This comes up in the same episode in fact, Francine flips off her family when asked which finger she's going to give up after they trick her into being the one to break her Lent promise first.
• On Amphibia, the inhabitants of the titular world have four fingers, while human characters all have five.
• The cast of Around the World with Willy Fog.
• Also lampshaded in the Finnish political satire-cum-GCI-animated comedy series The Autocrats, where one character calls another out on using the term "wrapped around my little finger" because they only have four. Later, two characters are seen bowling, and one advises the other to use their little finger for support... which he doesn't have, of course.
• In The Beatles, the characters have four-fingered hands most of the time, but occasionally have five- and even six-fingered hands.
• In the Ben 10, all human characters do in fact have 5 digits on each hand. However, the majority of aliens in the shows, including Ben's transformations, only have the four digits on each hand (one exception is the Anodyte aliens, which also have five digits per hand).
• In Beast Wars, Rhinox and Depth Charge were the most noticeable characters with this trait. Of course, they're not the only characters to have this in the Transformers Universe, some examples include:
  • Numerous aliens, such as Aron and Slizzardo in Transformers: Generation 1.
  • Grimlock, Scrapper, Waspinator, Warpath and Strika in Transformers: Animated
  • Bumblebee, Bulkhead, Breakdown, Soundwave, The Vehicons, Skyquake and Dreadwing in Transformers: Prime
  • In addition to Rhinox and Depth Charge; Cheetor also got four fingered hands in season three, keeping these for Beast Machines. Also in that series, Rattrap and Noble had them.
  • All of the Rescue Bots in Transformers: Rescue Bots, but all of the humans have five fingers.
  • All Transformers in Transformers: Cyberverse sport four fingered-hands.
• Everyone in Bob's Burgers has four fingered-hands, but in a crossover in the season 4 premiere of Archer, they are drawn with five fingers on each hand.
• Bob the Builder: All humans in the original series have four fingers on each hand. However, it was one of the most notable shows to be re-shot in Japan so that the characters have five fingers on each hand to avoid ties to the yakuza.
• Biker Mice from Mars: All humans and mice have with five fingers; the strange exception is Karbunkle, who is drawn always with four; it is one of the oddities about him that make fans think he is a Human Alien.
  • Plutarkians have four fingers, and they still mantain this when they disguise as humans, despite the rest of the disguise including Latex Perfection. The one exception is Romana, who has five fingers as Angela since she is using an Holographic Disguise.
• In Bluey, everyone's humanlike forepaws have four fingers each. It's more noticeable in "Blue Mountains", where Chilli, Bluey, and Bingo act out their characters using their hands.
• Strangely, in Bobby's World, most of the human characters have five fingers in each hand while the main character, Bobby himself, has only four in each hand.
• Much like the comic strip it was based on, this is averted by The Boondocks. Part of this aversion may also be owed to its animesque art style.
• Braceface's characters were drawn with four-fingered hands, but htheir general body designs were otherwise not too stylized, which reflects how the show tackles teen issues realistically.
• All of the animal characters in Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars! have four fingers on each hand. Averted with Willy DuWitt and the rest of the humans, though.
• "Stone Cold" Steve Austin once mentioned in an interview that it saddened him somewhat that the claymation version of him on Celebrity Deathmatch lacked a middle finger.
• In ChalkZone, all the human characters in the real world have four fingers. In the ChalkZone, it varies. Some characters have four fingers, others three, and then some (including Snap) don't have any fingers at all. Justified, as they're all drawings.
• Averted in Clarence. Although the character designs are very cartoony, everyone's drawn with five fingers.
• A humorous aversion occurs on Class of 3000 during an exchange between Eddie and Phily Phil. That said, Eddie has the standard four fingers the rest of the time.
  Eddie:I'm lucky that I still have all 10 fingers!
  Phily Pil: You have 10? Wow, you really are rich.
• All human characters on the Clifford the Big Red Dog and Clifford's Puppy Days series.
• Codename: Kids Next Door averts this trope... while simultaneously showing why most people do it. Those kids have absolutely huge, and completely disproportionate hands! If they had proportional hands it would be hard to fit that many fingers.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog averts this for most human characters. However, the anthropomorphic animals usually have 2-4 fingers on each hand.
• In Cow and Chicken, Chicken has four "fingers" and Cow has three. Lampshaded when the Red guy tries to give them piano lessons.
• Detentionaire notably averts this trope, with all the human characters being drawn with five fingers instead of just four.
• In Dexter's Laboratory, almost everyone has four fingers; however, some characters will have five fingers, such as the Blue Falcon.
• Dilbert averts this as well by having just about everyone drawn with five fingers.
• Surprisingly averted with the human characters in Disenchantment.
• Averted with the human characters of Doug, who all have five-fingered hands. Played straight, however, with the semi-anthropomorphic animals such as Porkchop and Stinky, who have four.
• Dora the Explorer: The titular Dora and pretty much every human character in general have five fingers, with the same applying to her monkey friend Boots. The most prominent characters who only have four, however, are Swiper and the frog of the Fiesta Trio.
• In The Dragon Prince, elves only have four fingers while humans have five. Given the show's art style, it does a good job of making them seem slightly off, and becomes a plot point whenever Rayla has to disguise herself as a human. (Gloves help, as long as nobody notices that one of the fingers is flopping emptily.)
• Drawn Together uses the trope interestingly. In keeping with the general art style of the characters' source material, the more realistically drawn characters (Hero, Foxxy, Clara, and Xandir) have the proper number of digits, but the more "cartoony" ones (Toot and Wooldoor) have four. Toot is something of an unusual case in that although she has four fingers, she's often (though not always) drawn with five toes. This could be an animation goof, however.
• Lampshaded in Earthworm Jim, where the titular character high-fives his own detachable hand.
  Jim: Way to go, my five-fingered chum!
  Peter: Four-fingered Jim. What do you think you are, some kind of freak?
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: Everyone has four fingers.
• Neosapiens in Exo Squad had four fingers on each hand and four toes on each foot. This is a mild subversion, as the Neosapien hand is designed to have two thumbs on each hand, opposing the other two fingers like a capital letter C. All of the human characters on the show were portrayed with the normal five fingers.
• All the characters in The Fairly OddParents! have four fingers; however, their future selves in the Made-for-TV Movie Channel Chasers have five.
  • It was lampshaded by Juandissimo once, where he (working as a masseuse) declared "My Eight Little friends and I have work to do".
  • Very mildly averted in the No-Dialogue Episode "Pipe Down" when Timmy is trying to "charade" his wish. To show he means "for", he holds up his left hand and he does indeed have FIVE fingers; he folded his thumb so he could show four fingers for "for".
  • Lampshaded again where the fairy personification of April Fools raises his hand during a stand up comedy, suddenly realizes he only has four fingers, and so uses magic to conjure up a fifth one.
  • The characters in Danny Phantom (a show from the creators of FOP) have five fingers, though that may be due to the series having a more "realistic" and "serious" element as opposed to The Fairly OddParents. Again lampshaded in a comic strip from a Nickelodeon Magazine, when Timmy and his Fairy Godparents met Butch Hartman (the creator) and couldn't "give him five" as they had only four fingers per hand, but then Danny Phantom and his friends arrive and can easily do it, because they have five per hand.
• Everybody in Family Guy has four fingers. Strangely, despite the nature of the show, they've never lampshaded this (although "Petarded", "Friends of Peter G", and "Extra-Large Medium" reference high-fives).
  • Occasionally in cutaway gags and/or ArtShifts the characters have five fingers, such as the Disneyverse.
  • Some non-standard characters also have five fingers, such as G.I. Joe, Hank Hill, KISS.
• Varied in original Felix the Cat shorts where Felix would be depicted with four or five fingers while humans had five fingers. The later incarnations of Felix would have almost all characters (including humans) with four fingers.
• The characters in Fillmore! have four fingers on each hand. Considering this is at least a semi-action show, and the rest of the characters' bodies are drawn reasonably realistically, this is unusual.
  • Especially in an episode where one character says, "the next match starts at five"- while holding up all FOUR fingers on his hand!
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Everyone has four fingers except for Handy and, ironically, characters from films the cast is watching.
• Frosty the Snowman normally has four fingers, but mysteriously gains a fifth on one hand (while the other still clearly has only four) so that he can count to five. All the humans have four fingers as well.
• Futurama characters (the humans anyways) have four fingers. The show is created by the same people that make The Simpsons, so it explains the similar character designs. Averted in the Bendy-Boo and the Mystery Crew segment from "Saturday Morning Fun Pit", where everyone has five.
• In Gargoyles, all humans have normal five-fingered hands. On the other hand, the gargoyles have four-fingered hands.
• Strangely zig-zagged in Gravity Falls, where some characters have four fingers on each hand, while others have five. Aside from the show usually paying more attention to details, it's particularly odd because a six-fingered hand is an important Arc Symbol, and a character having them is a plot point.
  • The character designer of the show, Michael Rianda, has said that the differing number of fingers is primarily visual, and that he wishes that all characters had been drawn with five fingers to distinguish the six fingers on the journals more.
• The Grim Adventuresof Billy And Mandy: Everyone normally has four fingers, but in Ecto Cooler, Billy briefly has six on his right hand when he's saying that he forgot the names of the six state capitals he knew. In the same episode, the realistically drawn ghosts all have five, as does Sperg's mother, who is also realistically drawn.
• Helga Pataki of Hey Arnold! names her fists "Old Betsy and the Five Avengers" despite only having four fingers on each hand.
• The characters in Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi inconsistently switch between four and five fingers.
• Used in Hilda, for both hands and feet of all the human characters.
• In Invader Zim, humans have four fingers, and Irkens like Zim have three. (Though there are three episodes where he has four, apparently an animation error.) An attentive viewer might have figured out Tak's true nature by the fact that her hologram doesn't conceal this detail.
  • Keef also only has three fingers, for some reason. The Tallest seem to only have two each, unless their thumbs are hidden in their gauntlets; Word of God says that they had them ritualistically cut off "to prove they can rule without them," for what that's worth.
• Downplayed in Jack the Explorer; only the title protagonist has these.
• In Johnny Bravo, all characters have four fingers, even the attractive women.
• In Justice League, Mongul and Doomsday both have four fingers on each hand. Justified, as they are aliens.
• While mostly averted for the most part in Justice League Action, gorillas are an exception as Gorilla Grodd and his army are depicted with this trope. Likewise, in a less extreme version of depicting the Penguin with fused fingers ala Batman Returns, the Penguin has four fingers on each hand instead of three.
• Henry and June from KaBlam!! flip-flop from either having four fingers or five Depending on the Artist. There have been some instances where one of their hands has five and another has four.
• Kaeloo: Everybody except for Olaf. Justified, since they're all animals. Even Quack Quack, who has Feather Fingers, has exactly four.
• The titular protagonist of Kappa Mikey is drawn following American Cartoon standards in his design, including having four fingers. His Japanese friends, who follow anime conventions, have five fingers.
• Averted on King of the Hill, with all the characters being drawn with five fingers on each hand, which is pretty appropriate for the show's realistic art style.
• Awful B Bad of Little Clowns of Happytown has four fingers per hand, even though every other character on the show has five.
• Lloyd Nebulon (the Lloyd in Space title character) has just three fingers. Justified, seeing Lloyd is an alien. Aliens on the show have two-four fingers each.
  • Meanwhile, Eddie, the Token Human of the show, has five-fingered hands, along with his dad.
• The humans in The Looney Tunes Show constantly either have four or five fingers from scene to scene.
• The characters of Lou and Lou: Safety Patrol, a series of shorts that aired on Playhouse Disney, had these. The male Lou character also wore gloves as part of his typical outfit. One of the times it was most notable was in "Don't Get the Flu," a special about cold/flu prevention in which three of the main characters were shown washing their hands.
• The Magic Roundabout: Dylan, Zebedee and the human characters, including Florence all have four-fingered hands. This is averted with the KFC figure of Florence from the 2005 film as she has five fingers on each hand instead of four.
• A lot of characters from Mr. Bogus have these, including the eponymous character. This also does not exclude the human characters!
• Not many characters in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic actually have fingers.
  • Spike and other dragons have four fingers on their claws.
  • Iron Will, Lord Tirek and Ahuizotl have four fingers on each hand, despite having many human features.
  • Really, any mythical creature with human traits have four-fingered hands, most likely drawn that way so they don't look too human.
  • Discord has four fingers on his lion paw (real lions have five toes on their front paw).
  • In one episode, one of Pinkie's clones sprouted four small fingers out of her hoof.
  • Averted with the humanized versions of the characters in My Little Pony: Equestria Girls. Their hands actually have five fingers. Then played straight when Sunset Shimmer and Snips and Snails transform into demons. Then they get four fingered claws. In this case, it's to emphasize that they really aren't human anymore.
• In the episode titled Back to the Past! of the show Oggy and the Cockroaches, Olivia makes Oggy, Jack and Bob go to school after they're turned into children because a witch thinks they have torn her hat (the real culprits are the cockroaches), so that she can be free to get the fixed hat back to the witch and get them back into their normal selves. In the math class, Jack is made go do the simple arithmetic "5 + 5 = ?" on the blackboard but he doesn't know the answer. Luckily, Bob signals at him that Oggy knows it, but also unluckily, he misinterprets Oggy's clue and proceeds to confidently write "8" on the board. The whole class laugh at him, he goes back to his seat confused, as is Oggy who keeps looking at his eight fingers.
• The Oscar-nominated short Oktapodi shows both octopus protagonists as having six, rather than eight tentacles, even though the names of both the species and the film actually mean "eight feet" when translated.
• Being a Japanese co-production, this is averted in Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures.
• An unusual variation with Pet Alien; all the human characters have four fingers on each hand, but five toes on each foot.
• Lampshaded in "Phineas and Ferb's Musical Cliptastic Countdown". Doofenshmirtz says that after the commercial, they'll show the final four videos, while holding up all of his fingers on one hand but with his thumb lowered. He glances at his hand and realizes that since he has Four-Fingered Hands, he is only holding up three fingers, so he starts holding up his thumb as well.
• Lampshaded in one episode of Pinky and the Brain — while taking wild guesses at a secret signal, Brain attempts the Vulcan hand sign and visibly struggles with how to arrange his fingers.
  Brain: Live long and... (shifts fingers) uh...
  • Interestingly, in the Animaniacs episode "Star Truck," Wakko, who also has four-fingered hands, does the sign with no problem!
• With the sole and obvious exception of the titular trio, everyone from The Powerpuff Girls has four fingers.
  • When Buttercup wakes up in Professor Utonium's body, she examines her hand with horror, which is now drawn with five fingers.
• Characters in the Popeye cartoons avert this trope, as they have five fingers. Played straight in cartoons from Famous Studios the 1950s, where the characters were streamlined and have four.
• In Project G.e.e.K.e.R. this is averted with most of the characters, who are drawn in a fairly realistic style. Geeker himself being an artificial human, combines this with Nonstandard Character Design. Lampshaded when the Big Bad uses this trait to allow people to identify him. It's also a sore spot for Geeker, which he refers to as a "tragic deformity."
• Averted on Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja, in which all the human characters are drawn with five fingers on each hand.
• Razzberry Jazzberry Jam plays this completely straight, and there isn’t really much else to say about it.
• Ranger Gord had these in the animated Ranger Gord's Educational Films on The Red Green Show.
• In Regular Show, the anthropomorphic animals and objects usually have four fingers on each hand. However, the human characters alternate between four and five fingers.
  • Skips can also be seen with five fingered hands.
• Title characters of The Ren & Stimpy Show usually have four fingers, while human characters normally have five. Strangely, during Ren's monologue in "Stimpy's Fan Club", he contemplates his "dirty" hands, which have five.
  • In "The Big Baby Scam" Mr. and Mrs. Pipe's hands switches back and forth from four to five fingers.
• The Disney animated show The Replacements is an unusual case. The early seasons had the characters with four-fingered hands, but in later seasons, they acquired more realistic five-fingered hands.
• All the anthropomorphic objects within Rock, Paper, Scissors have four fingers though it's less consistent with the animals who can have three or even five fingers.
  • Averted with the human characters as they all have five fingers.
• Ruby Gloom averts the trope by giving all the characters five fingers on each hand.
• In Schoolhouse Rock!, depending on the music video, the characters have either four or five fingers, or three or four toes.
  • Noah and his son in "Elementary My Dear" (x2) have five fingers when demonstrating "Two times 10 is 20," but otherwise have four fingers.
  • Everyone in "Ready Or Not, Here I Come" (x5) has five fingers, and they count off for hide and seek one finger at a time.
  • The prince in "I Got Six" (x6) has five fingers, to show off that he has "six rings on every finger" (6x10=60).
  • Of course the eponymous "Little Twelvetoes" has six fingers (and six toes) as the song is about multiplication by 12.
• Most incarnations of Scooby-Doo draw the characters with five fingers on each hand.
• Certain animated segments on Sesame Street feature human characters with four-fingered hands.
• Lampshaded ad nauseam on The Simpsons.
  "Four-finger discount!"
  • Particularly of note, whenever God appears on the show, He has five fingers.
  • In "Bart's Friend Falls in Love", Lisa tells Bart that Eternity magazine has predicted that humans will eventually grow an extra finger.
  Bart: Five fingers? Ewwww! Freak show!
  • And the norm for a perfectly-shaped baby is "Four toes on each foot, four fingers on each hand."
  • In an Imagine Spot Homer had when his father and Marge's mother were dating:
    Homer: If he marries your mother, Marge, we'll be brother and sister. And then our kids — they'll be horrible freaks with pink skin, no overbites, and five fingers on each hand!
  • In "I Married Marge", Marge is pregnant with Bart and Homer rejects all her proposals for names because of potential derisive rhymes (like "Screwie Louie" or "Marcus Mucus"). Until...
    Marge: What about Bart?
    Homer: Let's see. (counting on his fingers) Bart, Cart, Dart, E-art... (runs out of fingers, and thus does not reach "Fart") Nope, can't see any problem with that!
  • Selma was seen to have five toes in "Bart the Fink", possibly due to an animation error.
  • Worked around in one scene where Sideshow Bob is bench pressing weights. His Knuckle Tattoos are highlighted, but "love" and "hate" are spelled out with only 3 letters as "LUV" and "HĀT".
  • "Principal Charming" has Homer's line "I've got five words for you: Greasy Joe's Bottomless Barbeque Pit!" He counts off the words on his fingers, and needs to move to his other hand for the last one.
  • This was half-averted when the show was marketed in Japan. Some VHS and video game box arts gave characters five-fingered hands.
  • A Wham Shot in "Treehouse of Horror XXXIII", shows that the workers of the Simpsonsworld theme park have normal skin color and five fingers on each hand, looking like Disenchantment characters.
• Can be justified in Space Goofs for the characters being aliens, and lampshaded in the school episode.
  Teacher: How much is 5+5?
  (Candy is nervous)
  Random Girl: Use your fingers.
  Candy: Hmmmm. EIGHT!
  • This joke was later replicated in Oggy and the Cockroaches, by the same creators. In this case, an age reduced Oggy and Bob tried to silently help out an also age reduced Jack in a school problem. Once the other students laughed at Jack's mistake, Oggy and Bob merely shrugged in confusion to each other.
• In Sonic Underground, Sonic and his siblings are drawn with five fingers, but Robotnik has only four. This is a result of the show using the game design for Sonic (unlike previous cartoons, which used more simplified designs), and basing Manic and Sonia on it. Robotnik, instead, uses his SatAM design, which had four fingers like all characters in that show.
• South Park characters usually have clefts for fingers and a thumb, with fingers only appearing when needed. When they do, they alternate between four and five.
• Special Agent Oso had an unusual case when it did a Crossover with Handy Manny. The human characters on Oso normally have the correct number of fingers, but in the crossover episode, they had four-fingered hands. This was probably because the characters on Handy Manny, including Manny, have four-fingered hands and it would have been weird to draw depict Manny with five.
• SpongeBob SquarePants, though most Bikini Bottomites don't have fingers to start with. It can be justified, though, in that he's not human.
  • They lampshaded this at least twice. Sometimes when SpongeBob counts on his fingers, he will grow each finger past four as he gets to it. In Sailor Mouth, when SpongeBob was counting the thirteen bad words Mr. Krabs was saying, he had six fingers on his right hand, and seven on his left.
  • Karen sometimes has robotic arms with only four fingers per hand.
  • King Neptune and other merpeople usually have a full set of five fingers. Sometimes they flip-flop between five and four fingers, depending on the scene.
  • Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, though explicitly human, have four-fingered hands — despite having been shown with five fingers when they were younger.
    • Their nemesis Man-Ray has five fingers.
  • The Flying Dutchman also has only four fingers.
  • In the second movie, SpongeBob normally have four fingers, but when he became the Invincibubble, he had five.
    • This applies to Squidward as well, Squidward don't have fingers, but as Sour Note, he had five.
• Squirrel Boy averts this for every character, even the animal characters.
• Spock has six fingers in a well-known artistic blooper from the "Yesteryear" episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series.
• In Star vs. the Forces of Evil, the human characters have four fingers. The non-human characters either have the same number, higher, or lower. Notably, in "Monster Arm", Star uses magic to turn ordinary items into living human hands, and they have five fingers. The characters are shown on one occasion using pinky swears so apparently they do in fact have pinkies at least.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: General Grievous is depicted with four fingers per hand (until he splits them in half to make four arms, that is), as opposed to the six fingers per hand (including two thumbs per hand) he had in Revenge of the Sith. He was depicted with five fingers per hand in the original Star Wars: Clone Wars microseries.
• Stunt Dawgs lampshaded this in one episode, where Splat turns to the viewer and says "Don't try this at home. I am a trained professional and incidentally, a cartoon character." (Extends hand.) "See? Three fingers and a thumb."
• Superjail! has most of its characters with the standard five-fingered hands. Jared and Charise are intended to have only four fingers on each, but sometimes appear with the average amount due to artist oversight. Ash also has a reduced amount of digits due to the fact that his hands are horribly burnt and deformed.
• Ironically in Team Umizoomi, a show about math, two of the main characters, Milli and Geo, have four fingers. Yes, they can magically grow a 5th finger, but Bot has none!
  • Door Mouse has the proper five fingers.
• Lampshaded in Teen Titans (2003). The characters normally all have five fingers, but when Beast Boy is making a verbal list, punctuated by the number of fingers he holds up. He reaches his third reason, and realizes he now only has four digits. Shaking his hand brings back his missing finger. Mumbo Jumbo has five fingers, but in "Bunny Raven", all the giant White Gloves inside of his hat have only four despite being modeled after his own five fingered gloves.
• All the human characters on ToddWorld (a show that aired on Discovery Kids before it became The Hub) have these.
• In the original Tom and Jerry shorts, all of the characters had four fingers. In the movies however, likely due to higher budgets, all of the humans have five and only Tom and Jerry themselves, along with the other animals, have four. Notably, even in Japan, Tom and Jerry still kept their four-fingered hands.
• Everyone from The Tool Street Gang has four fingers per hand.
• Everyone from Total Drama and its spinoff The Ridonculous Race has four fingers, but for some reason, one of the characters, Trent, wears a T-shirt with a five-fingered handprint on it.
  • However, 6teen, Stōked, and Grojband, which are also all produced by Fresh TV, avert this by using five fingered hands. In these cases, the more grounded and realistic natures of 6teen and Stōked justify this, and while Grojband is much Denser and Wackier, the 5-fingered hands seem to be there to let the characters play their instruments more accurately to match the music.
  • Total DramaRama follows its predecessors. But with Jude from 6teen added as a transplant, he is now drawn with four fingers instead of five like in his home series.
  • Total Drama Island (2023) has two instances where a character suddenly gains a fifth finger. First instance occurs in "Launch Back of Notre Game", where Zee is awestruck by this during his Disney Acid Sequence. Second time it happens "Severe Eggs and Pains", where Julia sprouts a fifth finger while counting the votes in the confessional and she's surprised when she notices it.
  • Looped, a series from Grojband creators Todd Kauffman and Mark Thornton (but not produced by Fresh TV), also averts the trope by using five-fingered hands.
• Used for the human characters in True and the Rainbow Kingdom. It's especially noticeable in "Frookie Sitting", where True has to hold up a finger from her other hand to show five fingers.
• Characters in T.U.F.F. Puppy have four-fingered hands, just like in FOP.
  Kitty Katswell: I'd rather use my TEN CLAWS! (she holds up her hands, with only 8)
• On Victor and Valentino, characters have five fingers instead of four. This is lampshaded in the crossover with Villainous, where Valentino quickly identifies the Villainous characters as not from their world due to having the traditional four-fingered hands instead of five.
• Used in Will and Dewitt.
• Also true of WordGirl, another production of Scholastic. The WordGirl character wears gloves, though only when shown as WordGirl and not her secret identity, Becky Botsford.
• Work It Out Wombats!: If a character has hands, they'll have four digits on each hand.
• The characters on Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum only have four fingers on their hands.
• Used in Yin Yang Yo!, but subverted with the Manotaur.

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