Eggshell Clothing

It's the latest in hats this season.

"Snorlax is pretty lazy... but Togepi hatched, got halfway out of his shell and just said, 'Fuck it.'"

— Pokémon meme

A creature only partially hatches from an egg, and walks around with the remaining eggshell on him/her as though it was normal. It could be as little as wearing part of the shell as a hat, or as much as an egg with feet poking out.

Reasons for this are usually either Rule of Funny or Rule of Cute.

A Sub-Trope of Artistic License – Biology, Appropriate Animal Attire, and Improvised Clothes. Related to Edible Theme Clothing if the yolk and white are worn.

Contrast Removable Shell (the shell that's supposed to stay on can come off). Compare Egg Folk, where the egg is the creature in question.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Pippo from Doraemon: Nobita and the Steel Troops is a chick hatched from a robotic shell, and wears part of his shell as a hat.
• Many Digimon. Digitamamon takes it to the extreme, with a complete eggshell body and cracks for legs and eye slits. He can leap at an enemy and close all the cracks to basically use himself as a battering ram. (In case you're wondering, Digitamamon has a pocket universe in there. His attack is to pull you in for a few seconds. It is called Nightmare Syndrome. We saw the inside briefly and it goes on forever, and there's still no sign of what the Digitamamon's whole body within the egg looks like.) There's a so-far-cardgame-only evil version named Devitamamon with a head made of monstrous jaws and too many eyes coming out of the eye slot.
• In Kamisama Minarai: Himitsu no Cocotama and the rest of the Cocotama franchise, the Cocotamas wear white pants with a zig-zagged/curvy edge that are supposed to look like eggshells, since the Cocotamas hatch from eggs.
• Mikken, the chicken from the Kyoro-chan anime, wears a pair of pants that look like part of an eggshell. Whether they are made from his actual egg is unknown.
• Sanrio: Shakipiyo, a character associated with Gudetama, is a chick who wears half a pink eggshell as pants.

Asian Animation

• In A'yo the Meteornaut, the eponymous character is an alien bird who wears an eggshell as pants and a hat.
• In Happy Heroes, a number of Planet Guling residents, including the mayor, wear eggshells as hats or pants.
• In Pleasant Goat Fun Class: Travel Around the World episode 21, the Ugly Duckling wears eggshell "pants".

Comic Books

• A character in the (pretty dark) comic book series Gaspard de la nuit is an unhatched egg save two duck-like legs sticking out from holes in the bottom. The character at one point explains that it hasn't fully hatched because it is afraid of the world outside.
• One-shot villain Baby Bird from Empowered. See also the WMG.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), the character Speedy, heir to the leadership of the Battle Bird Armada, wears an eggshell around his crotch.

Comic Strips

• Sheldon of U.S. Acres, who read some newspapers before he was born and refused to completely hatch, only sticking his feet out. This was spoofed in an episode of Garfield and Friends, where Sheldon finally hatched, into another shell just like it.

Films — Animation

• Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget: The sneak preview shows Rocky and Ginger’s egg running around with just its feet sticking out of the bottom of the shell.
• He didn't stay this way of course, but Mumble in Happy Feet cracked through his shell with just his feet, and wandered around in this way until he slipped and the rest of it broke.

Puppet Shows

• Baby Sinclair from the pilot episode of Dinosaurs.
• Obscure 1990s puppet show Chicken Minute had a chick called Ulysses who would pop out of his shell wearing the top as a hat.

Video Games

• MapleStory: For the Evan class, Mir during his just-hatched Ridiculously Cute Critter moment.
• The eponymous hero of Ivy the Kiwi?
• In Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, your Chao can wear eggshells as hats. Once they absorb the ability from an animal, that is.
• Mario series:
  • Jr. Troopa from Paper Mario still wears his eggshell, both the upper and lower halves.
    • Averted with the Yoshi Kid from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, where his diaper/shorts only have a similar polka-dot pattern as a Yoshi egg.
  • The Dino Piranha (and Fiery Dino Piranha) boss in Super Mario Galaxy exhibit the "egg with feet" aspect of this trope until you deliver the first hit and crack the shell.
  • Peewee Piranha, the first boss in Super Mario Galaxy 2.
• Initially, the Moon Hamachao from the "Moonfish" sidequest of Skies of Arcadia: Legends — until you feed it enough Moonfish that it grows out of it.
• Pokémon
  • Most of Togepi's body is covered in the shell of the egg it hatched from. Its evolved forms Togetic and Togekiss have patterns on their body that match the one on Togepi's shell.
  • Vullaby may also look like this at a glance since it's a baby vulture, but it's actually wearing a skull as a diaper.
• Egbert from World of Warcraft is a pet you can get in the game. The egg covers the center part of his body.
• The Picky enemy from Ragnarok Online has two variants, one with half an eggshell on its head. For some reason, when the eggshell drops, it becomes large enough to be worn by player characters.
• In Odin Sphere, King Valentine hatches Leventhan, the Last Dragon, by placing his crown infused with his magic on its egg. When Leventhan hatches it still wears a piece of eggshell and the crown on it like a hat.
• SongBird Symphony has Egbert, a partially hatched bird met in the Gallus Kingdom. The only part of his body that's visible are his long legs.
• In Gem Smashers, the boss of Egg Island is a baby pterodactyl who wears an eggshell as a hat and overalls.

Western Animation

• Done in a couple of Looney Tunes shorts.
  • In one called "The Shell-Shocked Egg", a turtle egg gets separated and wanders around trying to hatch, and when he does he complains that he's still in a shell.
  • In another one called "Booby Hatched", a duck egg tries to find a place to get warm. The mother duck finds it and saves it from being boiled; as she picks him out of the pot, the duckling hatches and shouts "Aw, ma! Just when I was getting warm!" and jumps back in.
• In The Penguins of Madagascar episode "Paternal Egg-stinct", the duck egg the penguins are taking care of sprouts legs and wanders around the zoo.
• In Dexter's Laboratory, Dee Dee mistakes a turtle for one of these, and then a bird that is one of these for a turtle.
• One of the "Buttons and Mindy" sketches from Animaniacs has a Stone Age Mindy chasing a baby dinosaur where only the legs had hatched out of the egg.
• The eponymous hero chick of Calimero (pictured above) wears his egg shell as a hat. He sometimes takes it off to put it to other uses (like an improvised raft).
• Abby, the baby in Birdz, uses an eggshell diaper. Also, Mr. Nuthatch wears one on his head as a hat.
• In the U.S. Acres segments of Garfield and Friends, there is a chick called Sheldon who, unlike his brother Booker, never fully hatched out of his shell and wears it all the time, with only his legs sticking out. In one episode the shell cracked and fell off, only to reveal that he had another shell underneath it. In other episodes, it's hinted that the inside of his shell is like a whole room to him, and he even once attempted to hang pictures on his wall (which resulted in his shell partially cracking due to the nails piercing it, but it didn't come off nor did any part of him become more visible).
• In Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Ludo gets swallowed by a chicken-like monster and is released as an egg before hatching. He only has his eggshell to cover himself. When it later breaks, it turns out he has a diaper underneath anyway.
• Two eggs sprout legs and start dancing in the Silly Symphonies short "Cock of the Walk". During their dance, they accidentally bump into each other and crack open, revealing the chicks inside.

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