Censor Shadow

Thanks to that conveniently cast shadow, there's no possible way to tell what's in Jotaro's mouth. Is it a lollipop? A straw?

"I told her she would remain a beautiful silhouette against the warm light coming in through the curtains."

— David Lynch on how he convinced Laura Harring to do the nude scene in Mulholland Dr.

A character (male or female) is full-on naked, but the artist doesn't want to reveal all. Yet an outright Censor Box will be just horrible (unless this was a comedy). This is a dilemma. What to do? Eureka! Just add some crafty shading and voila! A convenient shadow! Now we can keep those private parts, well, private.

The shadow can be worked to fit in the scene naturally, or just inexplicably be there on a bright sunny day.

Not only used for nudity, it's often used as a result of Executive Meddling last-minute censorship of something gory, causing a random dark slash covering half the screen and the Gorn behind it. Almost like a Gory Discretion Shot, only a bit sloppy.

See also Censor Steam, Godiva Hair, Sexy Silhouette, and Scenery Censor. For the opposite effect, hiding nudity behind light, see Lens Flare Censor.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bleach uses this several times, including with Wonderweiss◊ with his privates conveniently obscured.
• Covered nicely in A Cruel God Reigns; the manga often pans away when Jeremy is raped, and when it does show any of what is happening, it is shadowed out or left blank.
• Fire Force: The anime initially didn't had this, but after the arson attack on Kyoto Animation in 2019, most scenes were bowdlerise and covered with shadow, especially the first ending theme, to tone down the fire effects.
• Junjou Romantica used this during the more explicit scenes. The shadows were removed for the DVD.
• Higurashi: When They Cry: The murder scenes and aftermath were shrouded in shadows for the TV broadcast. The DVDs were uncensored.
  • Lampshaded in Higurashi Parody Fandub 8.
  Rena: 'Cause if you do, you'll be killed. And then you'll be censored!
• Umineko: When They Cry's anime adaptation uses this to censor the gore.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. During the prison fight episode risky angles were covered by shadows.
• Black Cat does it, when Creed is naked and having nanomachine treatment to make him immortal. The camera pans extremely low, but his crotch is blacked out by the shadow of some of the machinery.
• Kaiji uses these in the losers' room on the Espoir.
• Change 123 uses a bit of shadow to hide the fact that Fujiko isn't wearing panties during her dance competition in chapter 4.
• Deadman Wonderland uses it to hide gorn.
• Soul Eater puts a shadow under Giant Asura's robes, as well as when Weapons are naked in, well, Weapon Mode.
• Blood-C does a number of shadows during incredibly violent scenes.
• Fairy Tail:
  • Lisanna when she is captured, stripped naked and thrown in a prison cell, since unlike Erza and Mirajane (who were also captured) she doesn't have long hair that can cover her breasts, and there are no conveniently-placed candles or bubbles that can cover her genitals.
  • Wendy has a panel of this to censor an upskirt shot when she fights a demon guarding the Face statue in that area.
• Another: This is used for several death scenes, but most noticeably the death of Yukari Sakuragi in Episode 3, where the most gory shots are noticeably darker than the reaction shots of onlookers, and a wide-shot showing her corpse has a conspicuous dark spot, right where the wound is.
• The Animated Adaptation of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure uses the Gorn version, as well as to censor smoking by Jotaro because he's a teenager. The latter lead to fans joking that Joseph and Polnareff should have been able to Spot the Impostor instantly, since Oingo-as-Jotaro didn't get censored when he smoked. Naturally, the DVD and Blu-ray releases remove them.
• In Danganronpa 3: Despair Arc, these are used to cover up the gorier parts of the first Mutual Killing Game in Episode 7, as well as the scene in Episode 9 in which a Reserve Course student decapitates himself with a chainsaw. The Blu-ray removes them.
• In the Blue Exorcist anime, Yukio has this when he's shown naked^note except for his glasses during a Battle in the Center of the Mind.
• Despite the many moments of Fan Disservice and Gorn, Innocent avoids explicitly showing genitals by using the white blur.

Comic Books

• In the Comic Book version of Anita Blake, a wererat's genitals are covered this way.
• In Elektra Vol. 2 #3, Elektra's nudity was covered in shadow and obscured by panel borders. A reprint issue further added lingerie to her body.
• In a Story Arc in the Anthology Comic Marvel Comics Presents showing the origin of Wolverine (running away from Project X), he's nude the entire time, but for shadows. The one time the artist couldn't justify any shadows, he was suddenly in a pair of tighty-whitey briefs.
• ElfQuest: In "Siege at Blue Mountain Part 1" Leetah and Nightfall dance in the moonlight. In the first panel, a shadow covers Nightfall's genitalia.
  • In "Hidden Years Part 1", we get a full-frontal shot of Strongbow, with a shadow obscuring the (in)appropriate bits.
• For a female example, in X-Men Versus the Fantastic Four, Susan Storm momentarily becomes extremely fed up with her husband, Reed, because Reed is balking at using a machine to cure Kitty of permanent phasing. (It's complicated.) When in private, Sue uses her forcefield to blast off her entire uniform and most of her body is conveniently in shadow, but not so much you can't tell she's nude.
• In an early issue of The Incredible Hulk, Betty Ross is transformed into the Harpy sans culottes, with her breasts and genitals hidden by shadows.
  • The Ultimate Marvel version of the Hulk lacks Magic Pants, so he usually wears shadows instead.
• The Mercy Thompson: Homecoming comic uses anything — even shadows — to cover up Mercy's breasts and genitals.
• This happens quite frequently in Hellboy with Hecate, the Baba Yaga, and the occasional demon. Partially justified thanks to Mignola's black-on-white Chiaroscuro art style. Sometimes Mignola chooses to show nipples, so it must be a stylistic choice.
• Frequently happens to Wolverine when he ends up naked, especially in Weapon X flashbacks.
• Used in The Smurfs comic book story "The Smurf Threat", depicting the Smurfs who gave up their...uh, pants to create a Bedsheet Ladder for Papa Smurf, Jokey, and Hefty to escape the Grey Smurfs prison camp.
• In the Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) comics, there's just a black shroud under Amy Rose's dress, instead of the underwear shown in the games.
• Averted like the dickens in the first issue of Batman: Damned, which had Batman nude in the Batcave in very deep shadows that did nothing to conceal the outline of his penis. The result: a very severe controversy and the first run of this issue being subsequently recalled by DC so it could be replaced with a second run that didn't had this detail.
• Rulah, Jungle Goddess: In her Origins Episode, Jane Dodge has her clothing destroyed in a plane crash. She is left butt-naked with her modesty preserved only by shadows and strategically-placed vegetation until she fashions a Fur Bikini from the hide of the giraffe killed by her crashing plane.

Fan Works

• Vow of Nudity: Invoked by Spectra in one story, when she's hired by a goblin hunter to take his son's virginity. By the time she realizes the son is secretly gay they've already got an audience of his friends and hunting mates, so she casts minor illusion to create a small cloud of darkness to hide herself before shapeshifting into a masculine form to service him.

Films — Animated

• The Little Mermaid (1989) briefly does this to Ariel ,when she's in the shadows before she leaves Ursula's lair. However,you can see her butt in a few frames.
• Mulan has Yao, Ling and Chien-Po undressing with their bodies reduced to shadows, and the three are also like that when forced to share a rock (Mushu biting Ling's butt made them think there were snakes in the lake).

Films — Live-Action

• Used in Gone with the Wind to depict a woman in labor, as back in the days of The Hays Code, showing pregnancy and a woman going into labor was considered too risqué.
• When Rita unrobes in the bedroom in Mulholland Dr., we see little more than just her silhouette against the light coming in through the window behind her.^note Blurring had to be added to the actress' front part for the DVD release.
• Lifeforce (1985) presents a remarkably inconsistent use of this trope. The main antagonist of the movie, an otherworldly female vampire only known as Space Girl, is played by an incredibly hot Mathilda May and remains totally naked like 90% of her screen time. Shadows are used to censor some of the nudity, like when she's going up some stairs after escaping the autopsy room. Yet the rest of the movie doesn't bother and she's shown with her assets in full display. More jarring as this happens in the same sequence.
• Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan's genitals are often obscured by a nimbus of light. Not always, though.

Literature

• The Song of Hiawatha has an unusual example in print and in-universe: When Minnehaha blesses the cornfields by running naked around them at night, the darkness literally wraps around her so that no one watching will be able to boast about seeing her.

Live-Action TV

• Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Chain of Command": Picard would show his butt, and have five lights FOUR LIGHTS cast shadows, preventing anything from being seen.

Video Games

• In Devil Survivor, Astaroth is depicted as a nude man riding a giant snake; there is a shadow concealing his crotch.
• The "Anubis" enemy in the First-Person Shooter PowerSlave (Exhumed in Europe) has shadows under his kilt. Good thing too, because he does not know how to sit politely.
• Super Smash Bros.
  • The trophies depicting Peach, Daisy, and Zelda (their bases are translucent) from Super Smash Bros. Brawl actually did this to avoid showing a potential panty shot.
  • In Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, this was applied to a majority of the trophies as well as the in-game character models. For example, Rosalina’s dress has a cosmic texture underneath.
• Applied to Duke Nukem's kilt in the Medieval levels of Duke Nukem: Time to Kill (except in a Braveheart-inspired Easter Egg, where he moons the camera).
• Used when Female Shepard is wearing her little black dress in Mass Effect 2, due to the fact that they kept the body language identical between male and female Shepards, resulting in what would be a complete upskirt shot when she sits down if not for this trope.
• Metal Gear Solid: Snake is fully nude during the prologue briefing segments, with the camera cutting just above his waist or with a shadow on his crotch.
• Used in Pokémon X and Y with some of the shorter skirt options for a female PC to prevent panty shots.
• Similarly, due to being fifteen years old, Reynn from World of Final Fantasy has this and Magic Skirt for both her large and small forms.
• Necalli from Street Fighter V appears to have nothing but shadows under his Loincloth.
• Tormented Souls: When Caroline gets out of the bath in a dimly-lit room, we see her breasts, but everything below the waist is hidden by shadows.
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon: Several female characters wear a short skirt, either by default or for their Job. On the rare occasions that the camera lets you look up there (usually after falling awkwardly in a fight), you will only see shadows.
• Yandere Simulator was given an update that inserted a key-command that covers the girls' panties in shadow while keeping the panty shot mechanic in place.

Visual Novels

• Several instances in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc place the camera in the position to look up Kirigiri's skirt, with this trope coming into play (such as climbing a ladder or squatting down to look for clues). In the Updated Re-release that includes a What-If side-story called School Mode, this gets lampshaded by the game with each character's School Mode ending including a pair of their underwear as a prize: apparently hers are so dark that it's virtually impossible to see anything anyway. The same applies to Celestia Ludenberg's dress during her execution.
• ClockUp's Fraternite and Maggot Baits use this for Gory Discretion Shots, if you disable the Gorn CG variants.

Web Comics

• Used in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja to cover for a catastrophic failure of Magic Pants here.
• Used in Erfworld to discreetly depict the aftermath of Wanda's sexually charged torture and interrogation of Jillian.
• Laampros in The Young Protectors is always naked, but his demon-parts are obscured by this most of the time (the rest of the time, a character or special effect just happens to be in the way).
• One El Goonish Shive strip features Elliot climbing out of bed wearing nothing but a pair of boxers after having accidentally turned himself into a woman in his sleep. The lack of lighting is the only thing protecting Elliot's modesty.

Web Original

• Linkara laughed at such shadow in "Hardcore Station #1" for being so small that one could conclude that "Space Stalin has a tiny penis."

Western Animation

• The beginning episode of the 3rd season's plot in Jackie Chan Adventures includes the Enforcers going through a Transformation Sequence into Dark Chi Warriors. The last part of it has Ratso being stripped out of all of his clothes, but his modesty is preserved by some covering shadows.
• Steven Universe: In "Sadie Killer", Sadie biting into a jelly donut is made to look like something from a horror movie by showing her heavily shadowed figure chomping shark teeth into a mass of red goo.
• In The Legend of Vox Machina, when Scanlan sneaks into Vedmire's house to create a distraction, the window he picks turns out to be the privy toilet... and Vedmire is there taking a poop. Vedmire's penis is censored by Scanlan himself being in-between the camera, the camera then cuts to behind Vedmire after he stands up and one of his falling poops is not fully blocked from view but is obscured by a censored shadow.

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