The character may need to take a Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job and need to wear an animal costume to try to get customers to come into a store. A professional ice skater who's fallen on hard times might need to do Ice Capades, a kids' show, and dress like a dinosaur. A character might be getting married, or he's a Frat Bro joining a college fraternity, so his pals force him to wear the animal suit as a hazing. A character may need a costume for a masquerade or a Halloween party.
Having a character get a job that requires such a costume is a common trope in Anime. If a character, or group of characters, is forced to take on an odd job, it will involve wearing one of these.
May overlap with Dreaded Kids' Party Entertainer Job. Compare Goofy Suit.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Girls und Panzer, after Oarai loses their practice match against St Gloriana, Miho is forced to perform the Ankho dance in a parade while wearing a skin-tight anglerfish costume. Her friends and the student council also perform the dance in the same outfits as a show of support.
- In Gravitation this is one of Shinji's traits.
- The cast of K-On! are forced to do this to recruit more members to the Light Music Club. No-one is entirely sure what animals have to do with pop music, and the suits are weird enough that they put people off.
- There's a flashback in Naruto where Yahiko, Konan, Nagato and Jiraiya are all dressed up as frogs, for no reason other than that Jiraiya is the Toad Sage.
- In one episode of Slayers, the cast has to wear mascot-like stuffed critter costumes in order to infiltrate the tower of a mad toymaker-mage/demon/whatever (it's a complicated story). The only one who complains about his is Zelgadis, who has to wear a bunny rabbit costume.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: After losing a duel (and a bet), Joey is forced to wear a rather cartoony dog costume. Afterwards, Yugi has to play a game to get Joey out of it.
Comic Strips
- In an Easter's strip of Jon, Garfield looks grumpy while dressed in a rabbit costume.
Fan Works
- Ed, Edd, n Eddy: 20 Years Later EP: Eddy has been working odd jobs here and there. In "Home, Like Plank Did", he's shown wearing a rabbit costume that he hates.
- An X Files fanfic had Pendrell, who has a crush on Scully, show up at a costume ball in an animal costume.
Films — Animated
- In The Bad Guys (2022), during the attempt at a "heist for good" Professor Marmalade gives the Bad Guys the "makeover" they need to appear less menacing. Cue the gang dressed in ridiculously cute animal onesies, standing in Stunned Silence while a laughing Marmalade rides off.
Ms. Tarantula: Well, there goes our street cred.
Mr. Piranha: [happily snuggling his onesie] At least it's comfy. - In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, when Mario uses a Question Block and gains a Cat Suit as a power-up to aid in his fight with Donkey Kong, the ape is left laughing helplessly at how adorable and fluffy he is. This is before Mario proves the Cat Suit is actually useful due to granting him Super-Reflexes.
- In Turning Red, Mei wears a cardboard panda costume to Tyler's birthday party and ends up embarrassing herself while wearing it.
Films — Live-Action
- In All Superheroes Must Die and the comic book prequel. Rickshaw forces his minions to wear animal costumes.
- A Christmas Story. Ralphie is forced to wear the pink bunny pajamas his aunt got him for Christmas.
Literature
- in the first Bad News Ballet book The Terrible Tryouts the gang, as the Rat King's mice, wear old flannel mice costumes with padded bellies and tight hooded headgear with ears. The costumes are the only ones remaining from a production ten years ago (unlike the rest of the performers' costumes, which are all brand new) and don't fit them well at all. Fitting that the re-release was titled Drat, We're Rats!
- Durarara!! has a dramatic example: while fleeing from the Yellow Scarves, Anri is forced into a large pink bunny costume so she can escape unnoticed.
- In Haruhi Suzumiya, the SOS Brigade end up in an assortment of frog costumes as per the odd job rule mentioned above, and spend the day nearly overheating while making fools of themselves. For their hard work, they're allowed to keep the costumes.
Live-Action TV
- Alan Shore in Boston Legal, from wearing bunny ears in court to dressing as a girl for a Halloween party.
- On Cheers, Carla's husband Eddie loses his job with the Boston Bruins and gets a new job skating in a penguin costume for the Ice Capades.
- An episode of Family Ties had Mallory and Skippy, who has a crush on her, locked in the basement(?). Skippy is dressed as a chipmunk.
- Friends: For the first Halloween party after they get married Monica gets Chandler a pink bunny outfit to his horror. She justifies it by claiming it's a reference to The Velveteen Rabbit, his favorite book as a kid, but he's still embarrassed by it.
Chandler: The Velveteen Rabbit was brown and white!
Monica: Well, it was either a pink bunny or no bunny at all.
Chandler: No bunny at all! Always, no bunny at all! - The floor manager on Get Krack!n dons a rooster suit to appear as the Kash Kock, and later passes out from heat exhaustion.
- The first Christmas special of Ghosts (UK) sees Mike forced to wear a reindeer onesie for the occasion, much to his displeasure. Robin (who, for context, is a caveman dressed in animal skins) comments that "He look like dumb animal!"
- In Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, the team is about to transform into the Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger, but the team realizes there's only five keys. Not wanting her to be left out, Emiri hands Ahim her "Abare Pink" key. It works, but to the others confusion, they discover that "Abare Pink" is just a homemade, pig-themed costume, which leaves poor Ahim embarrassed. It's only then that Gai remembers that Abare Pink was what Emiri created in her imagination.
- In the show Medium, a person who happened to die wearing an animal costume uses it to his advantage by appearing to a young child and telling her to do stuff.
- Occurs in the first episode of Sorry!, where thanks to his mother deciding to wash all of his trousers at once, Timothy is forced to meet a girl he has an interest for in a cat costume from one of the plays which he participated in.
- Supernatural. Although we do not actually see the evidence, one of the things Sam learns about the residents of the Trickster-made town during his often repeated day in the episode "Mystery Spot" is that the town judge dresses up in a "furry bunny costume" at night. Upon overhearing that Sam knows this, the judge knocks over his drink in embarrassment.
- In the TV series of Sweet Valley High, Lila and Jessica are forced to work at a pork resterant to pay for a dress they damaged during an argument. Their uniform is essentially a pig outfit complete with a silly apron and bonnet. And that's before the manager states they must squeal like pigs while taking orders or the customer gets a free meal.
Music Videos
- Lou Reed wears a chicken costume in the video for "Modern Dance." Two female dancers cavort around, pluck, and eventually cook him.
Pro Wrestling
- In the AWA in the 1970's, there were a few times where Bobby Heenan would have to wear a weasel suit as a stipulation of one of his wrestlers losing a match.
- In the WWF in 1988, Heenan lost several "stuff your opponent into a weasel suit" matches at house shows against the Ultimate Warrior.
- The Gobbledy-Gooker.
Video Games
- In Audition Online, one mode has the losing team wear penguin costumes during the results screen.
- Two examples in Bully. The first one is Pete, who during Halloween, is forced into a pink bunny costume by Gary, leading him into getting bullied right away. The second one is Jimmy, who has to wear the school's mascot outfit in order to pull a series of pranks on the Jocks.
- Ittle Dew has enemies in frog and fox costumes, and the ending credits shows they were less than thrilled when these costumes were first handed to them.
- Segagaga: As recalled by the game, an incident involving a a ridiculous yellow bear suit, an unruly mob of customers and the guys from D. D. Crew is the reason of why the Lead Programmer lost his mind.
Visual Novels
- In Higurashi: When They Cry, the loser of the club's games is often forced into one as punishment, or at the very least, a costume with animal accents. Among them are a swan-like ballerina outfit, and a cat-eared-and-tailed maid.
Western Animation
- Beetlejuice: In "Laugh of the Party", Lydia's mom makes her dress up in a bunny outfit for Halloween. Moments later, she alters it into a werewolf outfit.
- Danger Mouse and Penfold are dressed in a camel costume as they make their initial confrontation with the alien Quark. When Penfold asks why they're dressed in a camel suit, DM explains it's because the animators couldn't draw horses.
- Dexter's Laboratory: In "Critical Gas", Dexter thinks he's going to die after eating a huge burrito (actually, he had flatulence), so he decides doing a list of things before his supposed death. The first thing he does is wear the bunny pyjamas he didn't like to make his mother happy.
- Family Guy: In the episode "Cool Hand Peter", a drunken Lois, Bonnie and Donna force Brian to dress as a bee.
- The Garfield Show: In one episode, after Nermal wins the Pawparazzi contest, Garfield tries to take a picture of him doing something humiliating so Nermal would lose the prize. Apparently, wearing a zebra costume is not just humiliating, but also considered taboo by the people.
- Gravity Falls: In "The Inconveniencing", Mabel shows a picture of a young Dipper in a lamb costume to Wendy, his crush. Later in the episode, Dipper ends up having to wear the costume and do the 'Lamby Lamby Dance' to save everyone.
- Hey Arnold!: At the end of the episode "Arnold Betrays Iggy", Arnold has to go out while wearing bunny pajamas in front of the whole town so that Iggy can forgive him for witnessing him in bunny pajamas and telling the whole school about it. And this is after Arnold did his chores for a week. Sid and Stinky convince Iggy that Arnold did nothing wrong, but it's too late by then.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Part of the ritual for Zap Apple season is dressing up in a bunny suit while jumping around watering cans and singing the ABCs. Diamond Tiara mocks Apple Bloom for her bunny suit, but she ends up being forced to wear one as punishment for talking smack about Granny Smith.
- Phineas and Ferb: In "Boyfriend from 20,000 B.C.", somehow, Major Monogram and Carl have tricked Perry the Platypus into dressing up as a magpie in order to enter his lair.
