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The Emperor's Nude Army.note 

Dr. Venture: Why are you naked?
Brock: To prey on their fear, to move like an animal, to feel the kill!

When Armor Is Useless, it makes sense not to wear any. But why stop there? Why wear anything into battle? Anyone can be tough in Powered Armor, but it takes either a really badass hero or a really depraved villain to fight in the nude.

The motivation for this tends to be different for heroes and villains. For villains, it's usually done for creepiness; instead of being silly or titillating it comes off as really, really scary. The nudity emphasizes brutality and aggression instead of being sexy. It can also indicate that the villain doesn't care at all what people think about them. They left normal human motivations, like modesty and shame, behind them, or maybe they have an Ãœbermensch-complex. Or, very creepy indeed, that bloodshed turns them on. For some it can also be a simple pragmatic choice. There's no chance of getting incriminating blood and viscera on your clothing if you're not wearing any.

Naked heroes generally don't really have a motivation because they generally don't choose to do it; when a good guy fights in the nude it's usually out of necessity, from their clothes being stolen or destroyed. This is why a naked hero tends to come off as badass, whereas a naked villain usually comes off as insane. If they are both badass and insane, this might be more Success Through Insanity for them. Bonus points if they combine this with This Means War Paint.

For both alignments, nakedness can be associated with innocence and nature. The hero may be one with nature, whereas the villain isn't really human, more like a predatory animal or a natural disaster (see the fifth variant of True Neutral).

Another part is that it seems reckless to go naked in the face of carnage or combat. It implies that the character is so powerful that they don't need armor, or just don't care about defense.

The Logical Extreme of Walking Shirtless Scene (male) and Chainmail Bikini (female). Contrast Panty Fighter for a downplayed version. If they have no weapons and no clothes, it's a No-Gear Level.

When someone does this, it's a good sign that they might be a Shameless Fanservice Girl. Not to be confused with military frontal assault, Informed Equipment (the trope formerly known as Fight in the Nude), the Char Clone from Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, and the "Ratchet and Clank" game.

Can be paired with Psychosexual Horror.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • In Apocalypse Zero, Kakugo can't remain clothed, and will even strip naked to battle most of the enemies of the series.
  • Armed Girl's Machiavellism: Satori attacks Nomura with her sword while naked, exploiting the fact that doing this distracts him so she can get the advantage. He eventually turns the tables on her by stripping naked as well. She gets distracted and he is able to defeat her.
  • In Attack on Titan, Titans lack any sort of clothes. Admittedly, they have Barbie Doll Anatomy, but the nudity helps emphasize how creepily inhuman they are.
  • Gyoubu from Basilisk not only strangles people to death in the nude, he spends most of his screen time like that. His ninja ability allows him to fuse with his surroundings, an ability that apparently doesn't apply to his clothes.
  • Dark Schneider, the lead character of Bastard!! (1988), does this frequently.
  • Berserk: The first time we meet Zodd, he's standing butt-naked and knee-deep in the corpses of Hawk members.
  • The title character of Birdy the Mighty does this in the original manga when she goes out to Tsutomu's house to confront an alien, ignoring Tsutomu's request to "Please Put Some Clothes On''. In the OVA's version, however, she obliges with the request.
  • In Blade & Soul, Alka attacks a peeping tom during her bath in episode 1.
  • In the Bleach Bount filler arc, Yoruichi briefly fights off a Bount like this when she changes from her cat form into her human form. She never does this in canon, but given her legendary lack of shame, she probably would.
  • Jo in Burst Angel. Though given her features, or lack thereof, it looks like she's wearing a nude bodysuit.
  • Buso Renkin: Alchemist Warrior Genji Ikusabe's Buso Renkin, Gekisen, gives him a Healing Factor that can quickly regenerate his body From a Single Cell but doesn't restore his cloths. As a result of this, after being blown to pieces early on Ikusabe spends the rest of his fight against Papillon totally naked as he is enjoying himself too much to care.
  • Case Closed sometimes has a case where the murderer has no evidence on their clothes due to having killed naked. One case's main evidence of the murderer was a picture of a mole on the collar bone... but no suspect had such a mole. Turns out the murderer killed naked and the 'mole' was actually a blood drop.
  • In Cat Planet Cuties, Aoi and Manami are in the bath when the burglar alarm sounds. Cue both girls rushing outside with their guns without so much as grabbing a towel (although Manami does grab her helmet).
  • A Certain Magical Index:
    • Right in the 1st episode, Index challenges Touma to use his Imagine Breaker, since she didn't believe in its powers (just as he doesn't believe in her magic). He uses it on her "Walking Church" (A magic priests robe to shield her from danger). Since the magic that sustained her robe was nullified, the robe goes into shreds and Touma gets an eyeful of her physique... And is bitten in revenge.
    • Touma and his father accidentally walk in on Kaori Kanzaki in the bath. She is enraged and attacks them with her sword.
  • In Claymore:
    • The awakened beings fight naked, justified because their monstrous forms are too large or inhumanly-shaped for human clothes. Examples of this happening when they are "human" include...
    • Riful is explicitly shown stripping before action so as not to ruin her clothes. Her lover Dauf apparently does this as well.
    • Agatha appears as a naked woman connected to a giant monster by her hair. Although technically the naked woman part isn't her real body.
    • The "Abyss Feeders" are monstrous yoma shaped into a human form. They appear as mindless, almost-naked women with their eyes and mouths sewn shut and possess ridiculous regeneration abilities. They can usually heal damage to their bodies as fast as their opponents can inflict it and only a well-aimed blow to the head can kill them outright. Since their scant clothes cannot regenerate, when fighting they will inevitably end up completely stark naked given enough time.
    • Priscilla also does this when fighting in awakened form note  and quite often in her human form too.note 
  • In Code Geass, Suzaku is wandering through a forest when he sees his classmate Kallen (who's secretly a member of the Order of Black Knights) showering in a waterfall. He makes the mistake of revealing his presence; she instantly grabs her uniform, whips out a knife and charges.
  • Crying Freeman, as part of its unintentionally hilarious portrayal of the criminal underworld. Apparently there is an unwritten rule among professional assassins that you cannot have a showdown without stripping first.
  • In Cutey Honey, the "outfit" of villain Jewel Princess contains nothing but jewelry covering her entire body. So technically, she's naked.
    • Honey herself has also fought naked on at least one occasion.
  • Invoked in Cyborg 009, when local Rubber Man 007 uses his powers to grow many times his size and attack some mutated animals charging against him, 006 and 009. In the 2001 series, he's in a Loincloth; in the original manga, he's naked.
  • Turning into a demon in Devil Man destroys people's clothing. This means that Akira in his Devilman form and all the demons are technically naked when they fight.
  • Sorta used in Digimon Tamers. When Takato, Jenrya, Ruki and later Ryo merge with their digimon, their clothes disappear and they're seen naked "within their Mons". Most likely symbolic, however.
  • Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?: Mamako's clothes get destroyed by a Slime. She angrily kills it with her magic swords.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • This goes all the way back to the first episode of Dragon Ball, where Goku goes fishing naked so he doesn't get his gi wet. When a giant fish attempts to eat him instead, he kicks it around clad in nothing but his wristbands.
    • Later, in the first Tournament Arc, Goku was fully prepared to continue fighting Jackie Chun naked after all of his clothes were destroyed by his Oozaru transformation. Luckily, Krillin was there to convince him to borrow his uniform before resuming the match. In Dragon Ball SD, he actually does fight Jackie nude.
    • At the end of the Red Ribbon Army arc, Goku chases down Pilaf and his henchmen to reclaim the last Dragon Ball he needs. During the fight, Goku's pants are burnt off, but does nothing to stop him from continuing the fight.
    • Alien anatomy aside, once Freeza reaches his 4th form in Dragon Ball Z he plays this trope straight. Nobody comments on it, though it may have been because they were terrified by his sudden switch from Axe-Crazy to Tranquil Fury.
    • Abnormal anatomy aside, the same can be said of Cell, whose appearance only changes slightly between forms.
    • In Dragon Ball GT, Goku's clothes are blasted off and he remarks that he doesn't really mind fighting naked, but Pan insists that he put some clothes on. The villain even pauses their fight so Goku can do so! Played for laughs, of course.
  • In Dr. STONE, Tsukasa is Naked on Revival after being Taken for Granite for 3700 years, and immediately proceeds to kill a lion with his bare hands. He wears clothes (at first the lion's skin) after that, though.
  • Aseo, protagonist of Elden Ring: The Road to the Erdtree, fights in a pair of Fundoshi and a cape. A latter chapter reveals that he's a germophobe and can't stand the thought of wearing someone else's clothes. Furthermore, his Endurance is so low that he begins vomiting blood if he tries to wear proper armor. So underpants and a cape it must be.
  • In Elfen Lied, Lucy, after having escaped from an underground vault where she was kept in a full-body straitjacket chained to a steel cage, spends her first scene wearing nothing but a helmet, killing people left and right very messily.
  • A hentai OVA called F-Force, featured the hero and his female fighters finishing the Big Bad off completely naked. No Barbie Doll Anatomy, naturally.
  • Heroic example: Gray from Fairy Tail is pretty prone to these. Even while in the Guild he can suddenly and inexplicably end up naked, and it always surprises him. It is revealed that is a result of his teacher's training, she made him and Leon train naked in the snow so Gray strips off when he's not paying attention. Later on it doubles as a Let's Get Dangerous! when the pair does synchronized stripping when fighting tough opponents.
  • Kei, the local Action Girl in Getter Robo: Armaggedon, pulls this right after an Out-of-Clothes Experience in which she finds the equally naked Go. Who actually is her older brother. Sort of. After this incident, she hops into her mecha in the buff and immediately attacks the enemy, curb stomping all of them.
    • She's done and opens her cockpit... and only then she realizes she's naked. But not before she gives her friend and partner Gai an epic Nose Bleed, much to her Parental Substitute Benkei's horror.
  • Subverted in Ghost in the Shell (1995). Motoko Kusanagi looks like she's making her naked body invisible, but it's really a skintight thermoptic camouflage suit, seen in better detail later in the movie which makes it more distinct from her skin. She doesn't wear anything underneath it, but this isn't revealed until the climax, when she tears her arms apart trying to pry off the hatch of the tank that's been hunting her. The camo suit shreds to pieces along with her body.
  • Gigant: Chiho Johansson can transform into a giant with great strength, but her growing sequence always shreds her clothes. So whenever she defends the city from giant monsters, she has to do it naked.
  • Sugimoto, Ogata, Tanigaki, Shiraishi, Cikapasi, and Kiroranke are ambushed by a group of blind robbers during a late night soak in a hot tub in Golden Kamuy. They then have to battle buck naked, with Scenery Censor for the most part in place.
  • The Hellsing TV series has Incognito. We never see him with even a stitch of clothing on, and most of the time he is fighting or planning to fight Alucard. Granted, he barely looks like a human and has no genitalia...
  • In Hetalia: Axis Powers, Greece references this a lot to Japan, and one can assume he has done it.
  • Mistress Centipede from Inuyasha, whose bottom half is a massive centipede, but whose top half is a very naked human woman. Also, Naraku. However, Naraku is only shown undressed when the lower portion of his body is covered in demons, he usually wears a pelt or robe of some kind, particularly with his newer form.
  • I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level: Flatorte ends up doing it against a herd of wild boars. Before that she also flashes her full naked body to some of Azusa's family members, and accidentally to some people at a river.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • Battle Tendency: After Joseph blows Vampire Straizo up with a bundle of grenades, he regenerates and continues to fight Joseph naked.
    • Stardust Crusaders: When Polnareff's sister is 'revived' by Cameo, she emerges from the ground without clothes and moments later, she attacks him as a feral beast.
    • Diamond is Unbreakable: Yuya's Highway Star, unlike most other Stands, is completely lacking in anything that resembles armor or clothing, leaving its Barbie Doll Anatomy easily visible to all.
    • Golden Wind: One of Giorno's alternate costumes in Eyes of Heaven is just him running around naked with a wispy floating cloth covering his private parts, a reference to one of the manga covers.
  • Voluntary heroic example: Kekko Kamen. Fights crime while wearing boots, gloves and a mask... and nothing else. As befitting of a Go Nagai heroine, it's used as a weapon, as her opponents will be too distracted by her (lack of) outfit to fight her at their best, even jumping with spread legs if she's cornered, while the mask allows her to not get too embarrassed to fight crime.
    • As the series goes on, a few other characters do the same: when minor character Ai Sapphire decides to follow Kekko Kamen's example she makes her own costume consisting of boots, gloves, Venetian-style mask, musketeer hat, and a ribbon to cover her crotch because she's too embarrassed to go out completely naked (and finds out too late that the ribbon ruins the combat value of going around naked); after suffering a Defeat by Modesty when a nearly beaten Kekko Kamen stole her loincloth, the Queen of the Jungle came back completely naked and wearing only a mask (a breakable mask, leading to a new defeat when Kekko Kamen breaks it); Satan's Toenail's most depraved henchman suddenly stripped naked during his fight with Kekko Kamen, much to her embarrassment; near the end Satan's Toenail and his assistant went after Kekko Kamen almost completely naked, much to everyone's disgust; and in the Grand Finale all the female students strip naked to help Kekko Kamen take down Satan's Toenail for good.
  • Happens to both Toshihiko and Kazuma near the end of Kemonozume due to Clothing Damage.
  • In Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple happen often with Shigure:
    • Shigure encountered a few assassins in the hot spring during the trip with Kenichi.
    • Later, Shigure is captured by the organization Yami and she is stripped naked, a reasonable precaution since she can turn anything, even a piece of cloth, into a deadly weapon. She manages to get needles into her mouth and break her restraints. Though her escape attempt fails, she kicks a lot of ass in the process.
  • Kill la Kill:
    • Sanageyama has twice attempted to continue a battle without his clothes on. Gamagoori would rather he'd not. For added awkward, one of this times has Mako taking... his measurements and not being impressed.
    • Later on we also have the appropriately-named rebel army Nudist Beach. They do wear belts and straps to carry their gear, but those don't cover much.
    • Ryuko, after she abandons Senketsu upon the revelation that she's a life-fiber/human hybrid wipes out a small army of Mooks and then storms Honnouji Academy wearing nothing but a bedsheet worn as a cape. Soon after, Satsuki breaks free of the cell where she was being imprisoned by Ragyo and wipes out some of the same mooks while wearing nothing but a pair of shackles (and fighting with a single metal toenail blade.)
  • Kaipan from Kochikame is a Played for Laughs version — he always removes his Speedo before fighting, and often insists on getting others in on the nudity as well.
  • In Lord Marksman and Vanadis, Elen comments that War Maidens like herself are trained to be ready to fight at all times, even when naked. We get an example when Ludmilla attacks Tigre after he walks in on her bath.
  • Maboroshi Panty has a teenage schoolgirl fight crime while clad in only boots, gloves, a scarf and two pairs of panties (one worn as a mask). On occasion, the heroine loses the panties she wears over her nether regions, which usually ends in her fleeing in humiliation while trying to cover up, but on occasion has resulted in her bucking up and going after the criminals as she is without a worry about her nether regions being exposed.
  • A voluntary heroic example in Madlax. In episode 16 the title Action Girl throws off her white dress to serve as a distraction before attacking the goons out to get her and Vanessa.
  • The Darkness of the Book of Darkness in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's. Since Reinforce Eins wears black leather, this was probably the only way to make her dark side more evil-looking.
  • My Hero Academia:
    • Toru Hagakure has a superhero costume consisting of only a pair of gloves and boots, which she takes off when things get serious. This is because she has the power of Invisibility with Drawbacks, the drawbacks being that it only affects her body, not her clothing, so she has to be an Invisible Streaker for her powers to be useful.
    • There's also Mirio Togata, whose Intangibility quirk makes him drop his clothes because he phases right through them. He doesn’t have this problem in his hero costume because it’s made out of his own hair fibers, and so turns intangible with the rest of him.
    • Himiko Toga can shapeshift to resemble anyone whose blood she's drank, but shapeshifting clothes to match theirs destroys whatever she's wearing and leaves her naked should she drop the disguise. Doesn't stop her from trying to shank Izuku and Aizawa during their raid on Overhaul's base.
  • Naruto:
    • Suigetsu is introduced this way since his main ability is to turn into water and a full body transformation doesn't always include his clothing when he changes back.
    • Zetsu always tears his Akatsuki cloak whenever he separates himself into two and he never wears anything underneath, resulting in this. Private parts showing are nonexistent, however, since he has Barbie Doll Anatomy (although he does have a butt and belly button). This also extends to the White Zetsu clones, which means the Allied Shinobi Forces are facing an army of 100,000 naked men.
  • Negima!:
    • Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
      • In the Kyoto arc, Negi finds himself alone with Setsuna at the hot springs. Setsuna senses his presence and thinking he's an enemy, proceeds to attack him with her sword and grab his balls while they're both naked. She gets really awkward when she realizes it's her teacher, who's ten years old by the way.
      • In one battle with Kurt Godel, Asuna actually Fake!Asuna aka Shiori gets her clothes blasted off by a disarming spell and attacks anyway, because she's used to the Clothing Damage at this point. She still gets owned.
      • Also, Homura, one of Fate's minions, tends to do this often whenever she transforms into a fire spirit, which results in her entire outfit being promptly incinerated.
      • Dynamis briefly does this after causing his clothes to explode and making everyone go "WTF?!". After one or two attacks, he clothes himself in massive battle armor.
      • Paio II is perfectly willing to Flash Step out of her clothes and use them as a Ninja Log so she can attack her opponent from behind. She comments that being willing to do a full frontal assault increases her potential as a fighter.
    • Negima's Stealth Sequel UQ Holder! also has its characters fight naked a lot, especially during the fight with the Mage of the Beginning-possessed Negi. During that battle, due to one reason or another, most of the heroes from the titular organization and Cutlass have lost their clothes and have to fight in the nude. Curiously, other than Cutlass, the rest of the enemies present during that confrontation all get to keep their clothes on, perhaps as a sign of how they overpower the good guys.
  • Ubume from Ninja Scroll: The Series prefers to fight nude, excepting for her gauntlet (which stores a whip) and the metal plates she seems to have grafted on her belly and groin.
  • Cuuko from Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! at first seems to wear something in her Cross Fire Sequence form. However, due to the fact that she is a humanoid alien, combined with Barbie Doll Anatomy, it's either that she is wearing body paint or that it is part of her skin and is going naked by that standards.
  • One-Punch Man:
    • This is the schtick of Puri-Puri Prisoner. When he's not chasing down handsome young men, he's frequently erupting pecs-first out of his sweater vest to deliver a beatdown to the Monster of the Week.
    • Saitama unintentionally does one when he takes out Mosquito Girl—his civilian clothes got scorched off by Genos' attack, but Saitama himself is much tougher than that. He seems completely oblivious to his nudity. Additionally, the monster on the receiving end of his killer slap didn't even realize that he was naked—not that she had time to. The scientists responsible for the monster, on the other hand, have to review the footage of the incident and are forced to ask why a butt naked bald guy just slapped their monster so hard she exploded.
  • In Outlaw Star, the first time we see Melfina she's stark naked and about to kick some tail with the rest of the crew, who seemed to pay no mind to her nudity. This happens again a few times in the manga.
  • Two characters have a nude final confrontation at the end of Paprika. Mercifully (or unfortunately), one has Barbie Doll Anatomy.
  • Episode 4 of the Patlabor OAV series had a scene where most of the SV2 members were in a communal bath, when the water on the men's side suddenly turned red. Everyone on that side screamed, to which Kanuka Clancy responded by jumping out of the bath, running over to the men's side, and pointing a gun through the doorway. (Yes, she had a gun with her even when in the bath.) Noa Izumi is the one to tell her to please put a towel on.
  • Pokémon Adventures: Sapphire and Flannery are relaxing in a hot spring together when they decide to have a battle right there, without bothering to dress. Granted, their Pokemon were the ones doing the fighting, but it's the same principle.
  • Tomoe from Queen's Blade's first appearance.
  • In the Rayearth OVA, the three Magic Knights pilot their Masshin in the nude. Made much less fanservicy than you'd think due to the horrifying injuries they get as well.
  • In Reborn! (2004), Ghost — who is the Big Bad Byakuran's trump card — walks onto a raging battlefield naked, scarring and stunning even his own allies into wide-eyed fear. Apparently, it isn't his lack of clothes that got them horrified...
  • Rebuild of Evangelion:
  • Adam from Record of Ragnarok wears only a single leaf over his crotch, and is otherwise completely naked. That doesn't stop him from being the single most powerful human to ever exist.
  • In the final arc of the original manga of Riki-Oh, the first confrontation between Riki and Mukai involves the latter completely naked... and completely dispassionate. The (accurate) impression is that Mukai has no interest in acceding to human desires and/or expectations. Since he also sleeps that way (and no, he didn't have any company), the point is pretty obviously that when Riki came calling, he didn't adjust any part of his routine for him.
  • In the first Sailor Moon anime, Usagi faces her final enemy in the nude with her soul displayed on her chest.
  • In the Tenkai Hen, fifth movie of Saint Seiya, Seiya and Saori do this to Apollo.
  • Turned up to 11 in the Senran Kagura OVA where 25 minutes in, all of the female characters power up to "Super Frantic Mode" and the energy shreds their clothing but they don't seem too fussed about it. They then attack a faceless mob shortly before also having to attack a naked Ryouna because she drank an enlarging potion she thought was a stamina drink. Also, Ryouna happens to be masochistic.
  • The Seven Deadly Sins: The demon Derrière looks like a human woman who wears nothing except wisps of dark energy that cover her privates. She can punch with the force of meteor strikes.
  • Mamiko Kuri from Shadow Star likes to go around naked and kills her rapists in the manga while only wearing a short school blouse, no panties or skirt there.
  • A bit of Fridge Logic applied to the Kishin in Soul Eater leads to the conclusion that the clothing he's seen wearing throughout the entire series is, in fact, still his own stretched out skin from when he was Naked on Arrival.
  • Sword Art Online: When Quinella achieves godhood, she declares she has no use for petty things like clothes and discards them. From then on, she fights naked.
  • Symphogear:
    • When she isn't wearing her incredibly skimpy Chainmail Bikini, Finé tends to torture or fight while only wearing high heels, stockings, and long gloves.
    • The explosions Adam makes destroy his clothes, but he doesn't care.
  • Heroic examples in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:
    • Second movie: Lordgenome, the former Big Bad, fights the final enemy naked while in his mech — thankfully, he has a flame of Spiral energy censoring his wiener. Justified, as he was an Oracular Head who recently had his body recreated. Shortly after, all of the Tengen Toppa Gunmen combine to form Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and Nia and Yoko are naked while it's formed for some reason.
    • Earlier, in the Hot Springs Episode, the main characters are enjoying a hot sauna bath when suddenly the whole facility turns out to be an enemy mech in disguise; intended to lure them in and catch the off-guard. Most of the rest of the episode then consists of the team fighting ninja / bunny girls and robots while buff naked. In most scenes, only a few, very obvious, Scenery Censor placements kept the naughty bits out of view. When Viral arrives moments later to duel Kamina, he breaks off his intro speech in order to tell them to Please Put Some Clothes On.
  • In one episode of the Tokkô anime, Kureha is attacked by phantoms while taking a shower, leading to a fight scene where she's slicing through a room full of phantoms completely naked. Also, since Kureha doesn't wear a shirt or bra under her leather jacket, a few of her other fight scenes are a minor version of this trope since her jacket is shown occasionally flying open during fights, resulting in her fighting with her breasts fully exposed (though, this is edited out of the tv version).
  • The deuteragonist of Tokugawa no Saru is deaf AND blind so she has to 'see' with her sense of touch, which works better the less she wears. This means she often fights nude or nearly nude.
  • In Tokyo Ghoul, the One-Eyed Owl is Naked on Arrival during The Reveal of her true identity as Sen Takatsuki, or better said, Eto Yoshimura. The sequel takes this a step further, with her frequently appearing covered in next to nothing. It is never a good thing, accompanied by horrifying scenes of mind rape, graphic torture, and maiming of anyone unlucky enough to be near her. Instead of being Fanservice, her nudity seems to be a combination Clothing Damage, psychological warfare, and a demonstration of her inhumanity and overwhelming strength.
    • More traditionally, recurring character Rize makes her first appearance in the anime adaptation wearing nothing but her long hair, the blood of several of her victims, and a smile, which makes her harder to recognise in her second appearance: acting like a shy, prudish girl to lure in the equally (but genuinely) shy and bookish protagonist on a date. Her voice actors even significantly change the tone she speaks in from seductive and brash to high-pitched and girly between scenes.
  • Knives does this a few times in the Trigun manga and Trigun Maximum. Made even more disturbing by the connotations of twincestuous rape at the end of the manga.
  • Koinzell from Ãœbel Blatt fights naked in the second chapter against the Fake Gustav after he escapes from her clutches by letting her rape him.
  • Undead Unluck has protagonist Andy spend a good chunk of the early chapters fighting nude due to a combination of regular clothing not regenarating with him and him living long enough to not have a sense of shame to care about being nude. Once he gets UMA Clothes to be his outfit, this stops happening for the most part.
  • Maria from the Witchblade anime when transformed with a Cloneblade.
  • In the original (unedited) version of Yu-Gi-Oh!, there are a few female monsters that are naked when summoned with the Solid Vision System, covering themselves with their hair (including Water Omotics and Dreamsprite). The dub version covers them with swimsuits.
  • Unusual example with Durbe/Dumon from Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL in that while Barian's anatomy is definitely different from human's, he's the only one to lack any form of "clothing" (Vector, Mizael, Nash and Merag) or armor (Alito, Gilag) making this more jarring.

    Art 

    Comic Books 
  • 300: The Spartans wear nothing but a helmet and cape into battle. The movie gives them leather thongs, for obvious reasons.
  • All-Star Superman: At one point, Jimmy Olsen mutates into Doomsday and fights Superman while in the nude.
  • Animal Man: Buddy Baker fights naked in the 1993 Annual that tied in to The Children's Crusade (Vertigo).
  • The Avengers: In "The Collective" arc of New Avengers (vol. 1), Alaskan mutant Michael Pointer is literally possessed by the vengeful spirit of a dead Chinese mutant who idolizes Magneto, who also happens to drag along the power sets of all the mutants who were depowered on M-Day. After the initial explosion, which destroys his entire hometown, he starts walking to the lower 48 across Canada, obliviously destroying anything and anybody in his path. Throughout the four-issue arc, he is starkers — his clothes were burnt off right at the start. At one point, he grows to giant size.
  • Batman:
    • In Batman Confidential #18, Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) is pursuing Catwoman who has stolen a notebook from Commissioner Gordon. In an attempt to lose Batgirl, Catwoman heads through a hedonistic nightclub where the guests are wearing masks but no clothes. Catwoman has no issues with stripping off. Batgirl is more hesitant, but rather than lose Catwoman and the MacGuffin, also disrobes and gives chase, both only wearing their masks. What follows is a running Fight Scene/Chase Scene that might be the finest long form example of Scenery Censor ever put to paper.
    • In the I Am Suicide arc of Batman (Tom King), Bane is completely naked for the entire story. And he's just as terrifying and effective as when he's in costume.
    • The Batman Vampire trilogy has were-cat Selina Kyle help Batman kill vampires in the nude when fully transformed in Bloodstorm, while the final entry Crimson Mist has Killer Croc depicted naked at all times and do his share of fighting and killing as well.
  • Blade: It's invoked accidentally when some vampires bust in on the title hero sleeping in the nude. Naturally, they crap themselves when he suddenly awakens. Backup comes, but naked Blade tears them to pieces too.
  • Blue Beetle: Jaime winds up naked when the Negotiator forcibly deactivates the Scarab and rips it from Jaime's body (since his Powered Armor destroys his clothes when it activates; were the Scarab still working, it could have recreated them). After being thrown in the brig, Jaime manages to escape and kick several butts before stealing himself some new clothes.
    "Pants. Then spaceship. In that order."
  • Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!: Very oddly lampshaded in the last regular issue, when Gorilla Grodd attacks Earth-C. Grodd looks exactly like he normally does in The Flash comics: a realistically drawn gorilla. To the cartoon animal population of Earth-C, though, it's a Full Frontal Assault and makes him all the more horrible.
  • Championess: In the first chapter, two women have a bar fight in the background while topless.
  • Crossed: This happens all the time in the series and its spinoffs, due to the Crossed being completely Ax-Crazy and rape-crazy.
  • DCeased: The concluding miniseries ''War of the Undead Gods" begins with the surviving heroes going to the sun to administer the cure to the Anti-Life equaition to the zombified Superman, who attacks the heroes naked as a consequence of spending the last several years in the sun's center.
  • Den: Especially in the early comics, the title character is typically nude at all times and he is typically the toughest character in Neverwhere.
  • Domino Lady: The Eros Comix version would often suffer extreme Clothing Damage that would result in her fighting the villains in nothing more than her Domino Mask.
  • Doom Patrol:
    • The seventh issue of Keith Giffen's run has Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man go on a rampage while completely nude.
    • Issue ten of that same run has the Porcelain Doll fight the Doom Patrol with no clothes on.
  • Gen¹³: Burnout once ended up in this situation when he saw an airplane going out of control and used his Flying Firepower to get up there, accidentally incinerating his swim trunks in the process.
  • G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (IDW):
    • Issue 210 has a revived Serpentor get into a brawl with Roadblock while not wearing any clothes.
    • The final arc features a freshly cloned Genghis Khan fighting while in the nude before he has the opportunity to be clothed.
  • Hex Wives: When the Mother of Witches escapes confinement in issue #6, she launches an attack on the Architects stark naked. Definitely Fan Disservice.
  • H.K.: One issue of the comic by French creators Jean-David Morvan and Trantkat features a group of naked cybernetic women slaughtering the characters... in explicit detail, from a variety of angles.
  • The Incredible Hulk: Occasionally his Magic Pants fail him and he's forced to battle in the nude; this is generally reserved for the more savage incarnations of the Hulk, especially when he's the threat, not one of the protagonists.
    • One comic from the 90's, where right after beating the hell out of Captain America, the savage Hulk had a particularly brutal fight with Thor, all while completely naked. The Hulk won.
  • Kingdom Come:
    • The Flash wears nothing but a helmet.
    • The Spectre likewise only wears his cape and cowl. Since he's basically the embodiment of God's wrath, he's not exactly worried about getting hurt, even in a nuclear holocaust.
  • Knights of the Dinner Table:
    • In one storyline, one of the guys runs Sara's character in her absence. After Brian points out that lightening the character's encumbrance lets her attack faster , they carry this to its logical conclusion by having her charge into battle naked carrying nothing but her weapon. This works for a while, but ultimately gets the character killed. Sara is not amused.
    • In another (one-panel) strip, the players' characters are attacked by a crazed naked man wielding a broken lance. Considering their usual attitude toward NPCs, the Knights are surprisingly tolerant of this.
    Bob: Hey, this guy seems pretty kewl. Maybe he'll join our party.
  • ''Lanfeust: Big Bad Thanos is left naked whenever he uses his teleportation power. He still, at one point, breaks his companions free and almost kill the heroes while being stark naked.
  • Lilith: Lilith does it often, as she is naked every time she time-travels.
  • Locke & Key: In his last moments before he got shot, Joe Ridgeway leapt naked out of his bathtub quoting Shakespeare and hitting the Big Bad with a rocks glass.
  • Lori Lovecraft: In Lori Lovecraft: Repression, Lori is filming a nude scene inside Big Ben (It Makes Sense in Context) when Thalia attacks her and attempts to murder her. Lori is forced to defend herself while wearing not a stitch.
  • Marvel 1602: Near the end of Spider-Man 1602, Henri Le Pym confronts Baron Octavius while gigantic and naked.
  • New Krypton: At one point, the Kryptonian lovers Az-Rel and Nadira Va-Dim find themselves surrounded by Science Police officers while they're in the middle of making love, prompting the couple to slaughter every one of them while naked.
  • Orphan Blade: Frau spends the whole final battle wearing nothing but a mask, because she arrives as a disembodied head, and after regenerating the rest of her body, she has no time to find any clothing.
  • The Powerpuff Girls: There was an unpublished comic drawn by Christopher Cook called "Powerbuff Girl" where Bubbles embarrassed her sisters by going through a nudist phase. The comic includes a scene of Bubbles insisting on staying naked while helping Blossom and Bubbles confront the Rowdyruff Boys and Mojo Jojo (who are easily defeated by the shock of Bubbles appearing nude in front of them), plus the three girls are all forced to take on a trio of naked criminals called the Mean Streaks while in their birthday suits because of a swarm of moths eating the clothes of everyone in Townsville.
  • Red Robin: Cass sums up her feelings on the matter rather succinctly in issue #25, (though the villain in question was naked mostly because she was planning on raping and murdering Tim):
    "Naked villains. Different."
  • Red Sonja: On a few occasions, Red Sonja has broken out of a harem and fought while clothed only with shadow.
  • Savage Dragon: The Dragon frequently fights naked due to being Nigh-Invulnerable but not having Magic Pants.
  • Secret Six: Catman spends an issues-spanning flashback running around naked (the better to show off his wicked cool scar) and expressing his displeasure towards the poachers that killed some lions. Seeing as this involves teaming up with the surviving lions and forcing the poachers to walk blindfolded through a field of their own traps, he is indeed scary enough to qualify for this trope. In a later issue he beats up some guards at a zoo while starkers.
  • Shirtless Bear-Fighter!: The title character was raised by bears and thus lives (and fights) in the nude. At least until the end of Issue 1 when FBI Agent Burke tells him to put on some pants.
  • Silver Surfer: The Surfer is always naked, although he doesn't possess any visible genitals. A planet-devouring cosmic entity probably doesn't see any need to give his servants the ability to procreate sexually.
  • Sin City: In his graphic novel appearance, the Yellow Bastard is fully nude during his final fight with Hartigan. It ends badly for him. Dwight's first encounter with Manute is this as well. He's just had sex with Ava and Manute has come to take her home. It doesn't go well.
  • Sláine: Going into battle "skyclad" is only one of a number of outré battle customs used by Sláine Mac Roth's tribe to demonstrate their fierceness and unnerve the enemy.
  • Spider-Man:
    • Kraven the Hunter's son Vladimir did this at least twice as a training routine. (While he didn't specifically say it, he was quite possibly trying to bring his bestial nature to the surface, something he deemed necessary for using his father's strength serums; the Kranioff family isn't exactly the best example of mental health.)
    • In the first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man (2014), Peter clashes with the White Rabbit and her supervillain team, the Menagerie. One of the members, Skein, uses her powers to unweave his costume, leaving him wearing nothing but a mask. He rapidly improvises some underwear using his webbing.
  • Star Wars: Emperor Palpatine in his clone body, in the comic Dark Empire. A ton of jokes ended up being made about the way he was rendered which made him seem to be missing a few, er, parts.
  • Stormwatch: Father, a Straw Nihilist cyborg, and the first villain of Warren Ellis's run. As if being a mass-murdering Implacable Man with no flesh on his face who quotes Nietzsche while killing people isn't unsettling enough, he is also naked, probably as a result of being an Artificial Human recently escaped from the base of his creator.
  • Supreme Power:
    • Zarda. After awakening from a centuries-long dormant state, she wandered into some Italian city, stole some clothes and killed everyone who got in her way (with a lance she broke off a statue, no less).
    • The Amphibian, a mutant Wild Child who lives in the ocean and doesn't wear clothes, killed a man who shot at her after she saved his drowning girlfriend (he thought the Amphibian tried to kill her).
    • Doc Spectrum's crystal once took control of him at night and had him confront one of his government superiors naked, because he Sleeps in the Nude.
    • Hyperion, when he flew so fast he mostly blew his super-suit off, and later his government boss detonated the super-bomb in the military base he attacked. Supreme Power was pretty fond of this one all around, as befitting its Darker and Edgier nature.
  • Tank Girl: The miniseries World War Tank Girl features Tank Girl and her allies fighting Nazis while naked.
  • Teen Titans: Played with in the Titans of Tomorrow arcs, which features such curiosities as Robin as a gun-wielding Batman; Superboy as a Superman who calls Lex Luthor "Pa"; and Beast Boy as a feral, nudist Animal Man!
  • Ãœber: A Nazi Geltmensch tries to exterminate the residents of Bletchley Park while stark naked. Justified since Stephanie realized that he was a Geltmensch just after she'd finished having sex with him.
  • Ultimate Marvel:
    • Ultimate Spider-Man loves this trope, though it usually tends to be out of necessity or accidental. For example, Sandman can't turn his clothes into sand, and Electro and the Hobgoblin burn right through their clothes.
    • The Ultimates: Only Jan's specially designed outfits can shrink with her. If she's in normal clothes and forced to use her powers, she ends up fighting naked. She doesn't seem to really care.
    • Ultimate X Men: Wolverine during the Gulf War. He was treated as little more than a dangerous savage animal, so he did not get any clothes.
  • The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: Parodied. Back in the 1960's, when airline security was very casual, the Brothers take a plane trip with a carry-on bag full of marijuana. First a hijacker takes over the plane, then a second hijacker overpowers the first, then a third one takes over... eventually, Franklin strips naked and screams, "Take us back to Nashville or I will DESTROY US ALL with what I have in this bag!" (After they make it down safely, they turn down a TV interview, saying, "We gotta go get destroyed.")
  • The Umbrella Academy: Vanya is transformed into the nude White Violin.
  • Venom: This happened a few times when Eddie was separated from the Symbiote. (Some artists portray him wearing shorts under it, but others are more realistic). The most notable case was during his first limited series when the Life Foundation forcibly removed it, and he had to help Spider-Man fight five mercenaries that had been given Symbiotes spawned from his Symbiote.
  • Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan is an unusual case. The nudity symbolizes his detachment from the human race, as well as emphasizing his utter invulnerability: nothing can hurt him, so why bother covering up? The only times he bothers to get dressed are at the request of others.
  • Wolverine: Wolverine did this a bunch during the time he was experimented upon at Weapon X, in part to show how he was being dehumanized to the point where human decency wasn't relevant. In "Get Mystique", Wolverine emerged from a body bag completely naked (he'd apparently blown himself up with a car bomb a few hours before) and didn't bother to get dressed before getting into "Senator Ralph Miles Brickman" (actually Mystique)'s bedroom, intending murder. And again in "Get Mystique", the titular shapeshifter switches off her powers before loading up with heavy weaponry and going into the final battle wearing an ammo belt and a Slasher Smile. Since her clothes are a product of her powers, she's naked for the whole fight.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Wonder Woman (1987):
      • At the start of George Perez' run, it is shown that Hippolyte fought in the nude when she led the Amazons in pushing back against Heracles and his soldiers enslaving them.
      • Barbara Ann Minerva frequently goes naked when she transforms into the Cheetah to murder people or fight Wonder Woman.
      • Near the end of John Byrne's run, Artemis confronts Morgaine Le Fay by stabbing her with a sword while topless.
    • Wonder Woman (2011): After Hera finds out that Zeus had an affair with Queen Hippolyta and thus is Wonder Woman's father, she angrily attacks Queen Hippolyta with an axe while wearing nothing but her peacock feather cape.
  • X-Men:
    • When Paige Guthrie, aka Husk (a founding member of Generation X and occasionally a member of other mutant teams) uses her powers to turn her body into iron, diamond, adamantium, or whatever to fight an enemy, she's usually technically naked, although the effect itself conceals it.
    • In an issue of Uncanny X-Men, Rogue and Wolverine ended up in Genosha naked and tried to fight their way out like that.
    • In Immortal X-Men, Sebastian Shaw fights a demon surrounded by Hellfire. The fire doesn't harm his body due to his Energy Absorption power, but his clothes aren't so lucky. Prior to the fight, he takes off his jacket so it at least won't burn.
  • Xombi:
    • Two minor villains are the twins Manuel and Manuella Dexterity, a pair of assassins who never wear clothes. Granted, they are giant hands from the waist down, so the only private parts exposed are Manuella's breasts.
    • The protagonist David Kim is mutated by the villains into a two-faced monster to attack his friends in the tenth issue, in the process having his clothes destroyed. His nanites return him to his normal form in time to have a nude brawl with Manuella Dexterity.

    Fan Works 
  • The central theme of Bare Squadron revolves around this trope.
  • In Stealth Parody fanfic Batman: Nemesis Fight by Peter Chimaera, Catwoman pretends to have switched sides so she can have sex with Batman. But then she reveals "That was a trick. I am not good like I said. I am always evil!!" and fights Batman and Robin naked.
  • In DC Nation, Hades forced the Titans to compete naked when attempting to win Donna Troy back from death. Part of the reason was to mess with their heads. Of course, Starfire casually drops her skimpy costume, turns to the rest of the bunch and announces they all have nothing to be afraid or ashamed of. Donna also strips, despite being the "prize" rather than one of the combatants because...well, it's the Titans. "Running into hell naked to rescue a teammate" has turned into a Running Gag in Nationverse when describing the team's mentality.
  • In the Discworld of A.A. Pessimal, Assassin Ruth N'Kweze comes from a fierce and proud warrior tribe in Howondaland. In one pitched battle, she has to be reminded to put some clothes on; surprised in bed by intruders, she automatically reaches for her weapons first. Then starts fighting. note 
  • Dungeon Keeper Ami suffers frequent clothing malfunctions, which are implied to be a subtle curse from the dark gods for trying to avoid Fanservice with her regular outfits. When she's magically rendered topless during a duel to the death, though, there's nothing for it but to fight on. When she sees afterward that her struggle has been immortalized in a statue, her friends try to reassure her that the previous competitors aren't any more dressed.
  • In Heart of Ashes, the four soldiers seeking their king's murderer storm in Kathryn's bedchamber where she's just made love with Smaug. The dragon in the form of a human kills the soldiers in a Curb-Stomp Battle while wearing nothing.
  • In How Xenophilius Lovegood Saved Britain, Harry and Luna are surprised by a Death Eater attack on her home when they're, shall we say, "occupied". They win that fight.
  • Played for Laughs in I'm a Marvel... And I'm a DC, in the Deadpool / Watchmen episode. Deadpool was not expecting Dr. Manhattan to do this, and the segment between the two takes about two, three seconds:
    Deadpool: Hi, I'm a Marv— [suddenly looks down and to his right] WHOA! [static cutaway]
  • In Kill Them All Taylor's body is significantly more durable than her clothes. As a result there are multiple battles where she ends up fighting in the nude. She ends up using a Reality Warper power to revert any damage done to her clothes.
  • In The Life of the Legendaries Noland ends up fighting two naked grunts aboard the Hikokyu II. Granted, he did steal their clothes beforehand so he could sneak by security.
  • The entire gay population in this Kuso Miso Technique fan video, though they all have flowers covering them.
  • Remnant Inferis: DOOM:
    • In the first chapter, the Slayer ends up slaughtering members of the White Fang while naked since he was deprived of his armor and weapons at the time.
    • During Chapter 24, Ruby fights against several demons while completely topless due to her upper body's armor and clothes being torn to pieces by a massive blast of demonic energy in the previous chapter.
  • In Tangled Fate, Ranma and Ryouga are forced to fight for their lives against Greyfalls' garrison in spite of being disoriented by a sudden dimension hop while they were bathing together. Being first-grade martial artists and Exalted, they proceed to kick a lot of ass — even if Ryouga is so bothered by his nudity that he steals a fallen soldier's pants on the way.
  • In Thu'um of a Distant Utopia, Arturia goes through much of Helgen unknowingly flashing everyone, not noticing that the dragonfire she withstood earlier burned off most of her clothing. She responds appropriately when Ralof points it out and accepts the robes he gives her.
  • In the Naruto fanfiction With Heart and Underwear of Fire, Itachi does this in order to fight Naruto's alter ego Boxer-sama.
  • Necessity type in the Firefly fic In Shining Armor (NSFW). Jayne went to take a shower and on getting out he finds that he forgot his towel. He then hears frightened sounds from Kaylee and finds Jubal Early back on the ship, trying to rape her. Jayne doesn’t have time to get dressed and couldn’t even if he did because Early locked the bunks like he did before in the episode he appeared in. Jayne has to grab some weapons and make a move to stop Early while still in the nude. It makes things rough when they get physical and Jayne takes a couple blows to unprotected skin, but Jayne disables Early by slicing the tendons on his legs and ends the fight. Kaylee then finishes Early by shooting him.
  • Krystal in Primal Journey is always naked and gets into a lot of fights.
  • Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse:
    • Shampoo is at one point forced to fight naked due to having been caught aboard a sinking ship, which resulted in her being dropped in the ocean and forced to assume her cabbit form until she got to dry land, where she was both able to consciously revert back and confronted by the people who shot the ship in the first place. When forced to surrender, she sarcastically asks if she can have some clothes.
    • On the island of Femille, combatants traditionally duel each other naked from the waist up. Which is rather a striking sight, given that on Femille, only women can be warriors..
  • Both protagonists of Vow of Nudity, as the name would suggest, frequently get into fights while naked. The first is a monk who eschews all material possessions (including clothes) as part of her devotion to Pistis Sophia, and the second is a warlock wearing a cursed necklace that causes any other clothing she wears to burst into flames.
  • Angel of What Is Written In Blood kills a room full of soldiers unarmed and naked in the fifth chapter. Additionally, Nana is forced to kill a soldier not only naked, but without her prosthetic limbs in chapter 12.

    Film — Animation 

    Film — Live Action 
  • The killer in Charles Bronson crime-slasher mishmash 10 to Midnight commits almost all of his murders (including a Richard Speck-esque attack on a woman's dormitory) while completely naked.
  • Played for Laughs in the Jackie Chan movie The Accidental Spy. An hilarious fight scene starting in a Turkish bath has Chan's character fighting in the nude against a couple of Mooks, in a busy Istanbul market... all the while desperately trying to cover up using newspapers, hand brooms, bowls of spice and other objects.
  • Patrick Bateman from American Psycho will run after you naked with a chainsaw — provided you let him keep his tennis shoes on.
  • The 2017 French film Ava has a scene where the 13-year-old title character and her 18-year-old lover rob people at gunpoint at a nude beach while wearing nothing but twigs around their genital areas.
  • In the 2007 Beowulf film, after listening to the Queen perform a song, Beowulf begins casually stripping naked in front of her. When questioned about it, he tells her that because Grendel is naked he will fight him naked. Her reaction is priceless. He then goes on to battle Grendel naked as the day he was born.
  • In Beasts of No Nation, a NDF machine gunner is seen stark naked, aside from his non-genital-covering ammo belts.
  • In Black Rock, women being chased through the woods by killers are forced to take off their clothes when they get wet to prevent themselves from freezing to death (not played for Fanservice, it's very harsh and realistic). They then use a pocketknife to make spears out of branches and prepare to fight back against their attackers.
  • The Blacksheep Affair have a scene where the main villain, in a steaming hot sauna, gets cornered by some punks. Cue a fight scene in the nude. Including a naked Groin Attack (OUCH).
  • Black Wake: Dr. Jones is attacked and killed in an autopsy room by the two naked women who were brought in in body bags.
  • Mary Hatchet of Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet commits several murders while nude. More terrifying than Fanservice, considering how utterly deranged and creepy she looks, even before becoming a ghost.
  • Bloody Parrot have a fight scene where the hero is attacked by a prostitute... in the nude. And because of the camera angles, the audience can see everything.
  • Body Weapon, an Exploitation Film, has the main female lead stripping herself to intimidate the (homosexual) main villain, even throwing her discarded bra into his face after removing most of what she's wearing. It works, the villain eventually gives in and forces himself on her, only for the heroine (at this point wearing only her panties) performing a Groin Attack on said villain. (she gets up a moment later, and in a minor continuity error her bra is inexplicably back on her)
  • Borat has a downright repulsive (and downright hilarious) one where Borat catches Azamat, uhm, "admiring" his Pamela Anderson magazine. Suffice to say, these two are not guys you want to see naked.
  • In Seijun Suzuki's rather bizarre Yakuza film Branded to Kill the #3 killer in Japan's own wife (who has spent a significant portion of the film running around nude already) tries to shoot him in their marital bed. Unlike most examples this is played for comedy without any form of Scenery Censor. Supposedly none of the actresses Nikkatsu had on contract were willing to show full frontal nudity on camera so they hired a burlesque performer named Mariko Ogawa for this, her only film role.
  • The title character of Bronson has a tendency to do this, often combined with greasing up to make it more difficult for the prison guards to get a grip on him and subdue him. Despite Bronson being played by Tom Hardy, these are not Fanservice moments.
  • Cabo Blanco. British spy Clarkson is snooping about the island where the Big Bad lives. He enters a hut on a beach and finds evidence (diving suits and plastic explosive) that they blew up his bathysphere. Unfortunately the divers are also there, lying naked in hammocks with a couple of equally naked prostitutes. Heedless of their nakedness they grab guns and chase after Clarkson, wounding him as he's fleeing. He only escapes because they have to run back to get their clothes after he runs off into the jungle.
  • From 1971 comes an obscure Western called Catlow and this scene that is both a played-straight version of this trope and a subversion of Defeat by Modesty (of the "cornered while bathing" variety, not the "strip off clothes while fighting variety"). And yes, that is Mr. Spock kicking ass naked.
  • In the 2014 film Cat Run 2, an assassin posing as a hooker gets into a gunfight while sneaking naked around a military base.
  • During the fight in the spa in Chai Lai Angels: Dangerous Flowers, the flowers are clad in nothing but Modesty Towels. Inevitably, one of them loses her towel.
  • A blink-and-you-miss-it scene in Cthulhu. As the apocalypse begins we see people stripping off their clothes and/or rioting as the protagonists drive down the road; however this might have more to do with them returning to the ocean to become the Fish People.
  • In Dances with Wolves, when one of the local Indians is trying to steal John Dunbar's horse, John gets out of the bath to confront him. The sight of an angry, naked white man approaching is enough to scare off the thief, but not before taking the horse. Subverted because no actual fighting takes place, though John was fully prepared to do so.
  • Dead Again in Tombstone: When Gurrero storms the brothel, one of Madame Du Vere's girl comes charging out attempting to shoot him while wearing nothing but a flimsy pair of panties.
  • When Guerrero returns from the dead in Dead in Tombstone, he rises naked from the grave and does not retrieve his clothes until after he has made his first kill.
  • In Deadpool, at the start of his first fight with Ajax, Wade removes his tattered hospital robes when they catch fire, having nothing underneath. What follows is an extremely brutal brawl that Wade loses, and finishes with him being horribly Impaled with Extreme Prejudice. And by that time, he already has his trademark and VERY deforming scars.
  • In the DOA: Dead or Alive movie, the police enter Christy's hotel room while she is showering to arrest her. She flirts and flaunts her body to make them drop their guard, then kicks their asses.
  • In Duel to the Death, some female ninjas whip off their clothes to force a Shaolin monk to avert his eyes and be captured.
  • In Eastern Promises, Viggo Mortenson's mobster Nikolai Luzhin is attacked by two knife-wielding mobsters in a bathhouse. He's badly hurt, but you should see the other guys.
  • In Edge of Tomorrow, Kimmel is naked in his Powered Armor. The armor covers his crotch, but not his butt.
  • Weir from Event Horizon, who shows up bald, scarred-up and freaky for the final showdown in the gravity chamber.
  • Michael Caine, a cockney gangster displaced to Newcastle in Get Carter, sends two thugs packing by threatening them with a shotgun. He then calmly drives them down a street. Whilst stark bollock naked.
  • In Ghost Rock, Savannah emerges from under the water of her bathtub holding two pistols and guns down the man who had come to her room to kill her. She then gets out and walks all over the saloon naked, shooting all the intruders.
  • In the French film La Guerre Des Boutons — and the Irish remake The War Of The Buttons, the boys of two villages are at war. When somebody is captured, they cut off the buttons of his clothing. To avoid this, in one battle the boys attack naked.
  • Halloween (2007): Michael Myers attacks Annie Brackett after she just had sex with her boyfriend Paul. With no time to dress, she runs to the kitchen and draws a knife to fight back. She loses, but survives.
  • Halloween II (2009): Michael Myers attacks a naked stripper named Misty Dawn. When cornered, she throws a punch that damages his mask before getting killed.
  • The killer in Halloween Night is beaten up by a naked Lipstick Lesbian.
  • In The Hangover, Leslie Chow leaps out of the trunk of their car butt naked while attacking them with a crowbar. It is never explained exactly WHY his character is naked.
  • In It Follows, the "it" of the title often (though not always) takes the forms of nude or partially nude men and women (notably, the first time "it" is shown to the audience, it is in the form of a fully-naked middle-aged woman). This only serves to make it even more unsettling.
  • In the 1940 science fiction satire The Invisible Woman, the title character, while able to turn invisible, was naked when she did so (justified because her clothes could not turn invisible along with her) making many audiences at the time regard the film as slightly risqué.
  • Tate in Ken Park kills his grandparents while in the nude, to prevent blood staining his clothes.
  • Lady Marsh in The Lair of the White Worm attacks while nude in the end. The climax features her mostly nude in a Human Sacrifice scene.
  • In the Bruce Willis film Last Man Standing, the main character gets ambushed while he's in bed; his lack of clothes doesn't stop him from slaughtering his attackers.
  • In the 1975 TV movie The Legend of Lizzie Borden, Lizzie (played by Elizabeth Montgomery) takes off all her clothes before chopping up her father and stepmother with an axe. This has been suggested as a possible explanation for the lack of bloodstains on the real Lizzie Borden's clothing, which was one of the main reasons she was acquitted. note 
  • The space vampires from Lifeforce (1985). In particular, Space Girl's rampage in the research facility is a remarkably memorable example in cinema from the 80s.
  • Mackenna's Gold: A Skinny Dipping Hesh-Ke tries to drown a fully-clothed Inga.
  • Lenny in Memento isn't exactly given a choice, seeing as a would-be assailant attacks him while he's in the shower. Still, he improvises, beats him up, and locks him in the closet. (And when he comes back five minutes after getting help and getting dressed, he's already forgotten what happened; due to his anterograde amnesia, he can't remember recent events.)
  • In M.F.A., Noelle attacks one of the football players while he is in the shower. However, her first blow does not incapacitate him as she thought it had, and he fights back completely naked, nearly getting the best of her due to his greater strength..
  • In My Bloody Valentine 3D, Frank and Irene have sex in a motel, but he acts like an asshole afterwards and tries to leave. Irene angrily follows him into the parking lot without bothering to dress and pulls a gun on him. He tells her to put some clothes on and calls her bluff because the gun isn't loaded, but she throws it and nails him in the head. When she returns to her room, she gets attacked by the Serial Killer, and gets some good hits in before getting killed.
  • Inverted in the thriller Naked Fear. A serial killer (based on real-life murderer Robert Hansen) kidnaps women and then hunts them through the New Mexico wilderness. He strips them naked to increase their feelings of vulnerability and terror.
  • Alice Tseng's character in the Taiwanese movie Ninja The Final Duel (later edited into Shaolin Dolemite) fights off enemies after leaping out of a bath.
  • In No Hard Feelings, when Maddie and Percy go Skinny Dipping, a bunch of teens try to steal their clothes. Maddie rushes out of the water, beats them up fully naked and takes the clothes back.
  • The final battle in The Northman is this, with Amleth and Fjölnir wearing no clothing at all, with the exception of their swords and shields.
  • In the French movie Le Poulpe, a woman is attacked while bathing, but she hears the thugs coming, so she steps out and greets them with a gun. They comment that she doesn't have the balls to shoot them (and we're presented with an uncensored shot from navel to knee as evidence), until one pisses her off and she shoots him in the foot.
  • Revenge (2017): When Richard hears a noise, he step out of the shower and picks up his shotgun to go hunting for Jen. He never gets a chance to get dressed, and goes through the final game of cat-and-mouse and shootout completely naked.
  • Sorta used in Rush Hour 2. Lee and Carter are attacked when they're nude and in a massage parlor, so they have to both fight their rivals and try to preserve their own "modesties". At the end of the fight, they get thrown out of the place naked and have to resort to whatever's handy to cover themselves.
  • In School Ties, Matt Damon's Politically Incorrect Villain starts a brawl in the school shower, his hate directed towards Brendon Fraser's character in one of many racially-charged conflicts in the movie.
  • The ending of A Serbian Film, when Milos finally snaps from all the hell he's been put through on set and kills the entire film crew while in the nude. He even uses his penis to skull-fuck a man to death.
  • In 1973's Sex And Fury (aka Furyo Anego Den - Inoshika Ocho, "Story of a Bad Elder Sister - A Deer Amongst Wild Boars" (there needs to be a trope for movies with more flowery international titles, there really does)) Ocho is attacked by Yakuza while in a bathtub. She fights her way out into a snowy garden in spectacularly bloody fashion without donning her clothes.
  • The inhabitant of room 237 in the film version of The Shining, a nude, elderly lady-ghost who rises from a tub and immediately tries attacking Jack.
  • Shoot 'Em Up combines this with Destructo-Nookie, as the male and female lead doesn't let a squad of armed goons interrupt their lovemaking; Smith guns them down while he and Donna are still going at it. "Talk about shooting your load."
  • Cammi's husband charges Jack's car au naturel in Sideways when Miles sneaks into the house to steal back Jack's wedding ring. Justified by the fact that the couple are in the middle of makeup sex.
  • At the end of Sleepaway Camp, Angela — or should we say Peter — is fully naked and holding the severed head of her last victim. The reason for her notorious expression is because they put a mask on a college student stand-in for that last scene.
  • Pinbacker from Sunshine. Made worse as he's covered in 3rd degree burns.
  • Every Terminator, obviously. (Justified because time travelers cannot bring non-living objects with them, including clothing, and as a result, are always naked when they appear in the present day.)
  • The Angry Princess from the 2001 remake Thir13en Ghosts. Like the other ghosts of the house, she appears as she did in death — which in her case was brought about by slashing herself with a butcher knife in the bathtub.
  • The title character in TNT Jackson fights topless.
  • The five virgins from Virgins of the Seven Seas, after an extensive martial arts training montage, goes into battle against their captors, while in the nude.
  • Dr. Manhattan in the film of Watchmen, as per the original graphic novel. The difference is that moviegoers were absolutely transfixed by the glowing blue peen, to the point that it has been elevated to a co-starring role in many viewers' minds.
  • Waterworld: Helen attempts to gain the Mariner's favor by stripping and attempting to seduce him. When he refuses, she angrily draws a Harpoon Gun and starts making demands. However, he drops his boat's sail on her and knocks her out.
  • Alan Bates and Oliver Reed's (in)famous fireside naked wrestling match in Ken Russell's Women in Love.
  • Women on the Run (an Exploitation-kung-fu Genre Mashup, why'd you ask?) have the female lead stripping herself down to her underwear in order to save her friend from being raped, luring several rapists closer to her... before suddenly grabbing a crowbar and whacking some heads. She gets what little clothing she has ripped off in the process and continues fighting a bit until one of the rapists managed to trap her with an empty drum; cue a massive Fan Disservice moment where both female leads gets raped side-by-side.
  • X-Men Film Series
    • Mystique is always naked. This makes sense from a sci-fi point of view since her mutation only affects her own body and it works in a reptile-chameleon sort of way, so wearing clothes would simply be impractical; the 'clothes' she appears to wear are actually a part of her body, and she describes taking off these 'clothes' feels much the same as a snake shedding its skin.
      • She forms the basis for the mindset of walking around naked in her natural form in X-Men: First Class. While she's weightlifting in the appearance of a normal human, Erik drops a barbell on her to demonstrate that she's not using her full potential if she's simultaneously concentrating on maintaining a human appearance. Shortly afterwards, she attempts to seduce Erik in her human form, only for him to insist that her real form is "perfection", and that nobody looks at a tiger and thinks its beauty should be covered. Her subsequent exposure of her natural blue form is her embracing the "Mutant and proud" philosophy.
      • In X-Men: Days of Future Past, Mystique does most of her fighting in her mutant form, with no clothes on. This is lampshaded at one point when she's seducing a target and returns to her normal form, who up until that point was quite excited at the prospect of seeing her naked.
    • See also Wolverine's first rampage in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
  • The twenty-first Zatoichi movie, Zatoïchi goes to the fire, have Ichi entering a bathhouse owned by the Yakuza, who draws swords from under the tubs and tries slicing Ichi apart. Followed by an epic fight scene where Ichi slays twenty-odd naked assailants while being naked himself!

    Literature 
  • Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.
  • Battle is an Art: In chapter 6 of this web serial, the MC, Herah, precedes to kill a group of Oni after having her clothing blown away in an explosion. Later in this chapter, she gets into a fight with one of her teammates still unclothed.
  • P.C Wren (the author of Beau Geste) also wrote several short stories about the French Foreign Legion. In one a group of Legionnaires intent on killing "Sergeant-Major Suicide-Maker" gather naked to ambush him to avoid any tell-tale damage to their uniforms.
  • At one point in Cain by James Byron Huggins, a super-soldier gets right up from the operating table and proceeds to rip his way through every guard in the secret military lab facility on his way out, clothed only in the blood of his victims.
  • Another Stephen King instance: one of the more frightening "phone crazies" Clay encounters at the start of Cell is nude except for sneakers and is using car radio antennae as weapons.
  • Charlie Wilson's War. According to the father of Gust Avrakatos, the meaning of his family name (meaning in Greek "those without pants") is because the Avrakatos clan were descended from a tribe of Greek warriors noted for throwing off their clothes before charging the enemy, making them flee in terror. Though during family squabbles, his mother would sometimes suggest another explanation.
  • An unplanned example in the Ciaphas Cain short story The Little Things: when kidnappers go after a noblewoman (actually one of Amberley Vail's cover identities) Cain has his las pistol handy, but Vail had just gotten out of the shower. The only "weapon" she has available is the towel that had been wrapped around her moments before.
  • Karela the Red Hawk in Robert Jordan's Conan the Invincible. Twice. Once while fighting Conan, once while fighting lizard men who attacked her bandit camp. The second time, she was wearing a cloak with nothing under it at the start of the attack, but she removed it and used it as part of her fighting style. She seems to spend as much time naked as clothed in this novel.
  • In the Creature Court series, the shapeshifting characters' clothes don't change with them, usually leaving them fighting in the nude. They don't much care. Justified as their bodies in Lord form are difficult to damage, and they have a decent Healing Factor anyway.
    Velody, to Macready: Bring the clothes?
  • The Dark Tower example: Eddie Dean's Heroic BSoD in The Drawing of the Three involves shooting the hell out of the office of a mob boss while nude. Roland compliments him later on his courage; apparently, it's hard to be a badass while naked.
  • In Daystar and Shadow, Robin and Shadow are surprised by enemy soldiers right after Their First Time. Robin has Shadow run to safety with their clothes while he fights back naked.
  • Discworld:
    • The Fifth Elephant has a literary example in Angua's older brother Wolfgang. Wolfgang has the Ãœbermensch-complex in spades, and an assumption that humans are inferior to Werewolves. He does wear clothes on occasion, such as when attending public events, but when fighting or at home he's always naked.
    • Angua herself did this to a ship full of Klatchians in Jingo, being that she chased Ahmed there as a wolf. Ahmed, being the total not-idiot that he is, ignores the assault and proceeds to do go about things as he does.
    • In Interesting Times, Cohen says this is a "sign of a good berserk". "If anyone laughs, stab him one."
    • In Night Watch Vimes has been stuck in the past and when he's restored to the right time he doesn't have his clothes. Instead of trying to get any, he goes chasing after Carcer immediately.
  • Justified in The Divine Cities, where Sigrud chooses to fight a giant tentacle monster naked and covered in cow fat. This is to make it hard for the tentacles to grasp him.
  • In the web-novel Domina, the fey Ladies were always naked, up until they changed tactics midway through the story. A chapter from one of their viewpoints notes that they do it explicitly to throw their enemies off-balance. The Princess of Killing Sparrow muses that nudity is a better weapon than you'd expect, and militaries should train against it. Funnily enough, once they start wearing clothes, people are more disturbed by that, since it means that a group of insane women with armies of monsters at their command are changing unpredictably.
  • In Le Donjon de Naheulbeuk season 3 novel (and Comic-Book Adaptation), the party is ambushed on a river while traveling by boat, but the attackers are greeted by a naked Elf and her bow. She had actually stripped down in anticipation of an ambush, on the basis that she may have to abandon ship (and as a bonus, it allowed her to sunbathe).
  • Happens to Dorian Hawkmoon in one of Michael Moorcock's novels. It's even on the cover of one paperback edition.
  • Caramon Majere of the Dragonlance series has fought entirely naked on at least one occasion, and frequently wears little more than a Loincloth. Being nude doesn't bother him (mostly because he doesn't have anything to be ashamed of), and if you don't have any armor handy, fighting naked is safer than fighting clothed — a piece of loose cloth is something an enemy can grab during a scuffle, or it could get tangled in your weapon, or any number of other things.
  • Dragonvarld: The warrior women fight topless, which is described as astonishing Edward when he sees this.
  • The Dreamblood Duology: Warrior Prince Wana is attacked in his bath by an assassin who expects him to have a Naked Freak-Out. Wana doesn't share the assassin's culture's nudity taboo, so he deals a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown instead.
  • The Dresden Files:
    • Used for comedic suspense in Storm Front. Called out of the shower by an escalating series of unexpected guests, Harry Dresden winds up naked in a situation that just keeps getting worse.
      • The villains take a turn at this when Harry interrupts a sex-powered magical ritual in progress and the couple who are providing the lust-energy start firing guns at him, still nude.
    • Subverted in the third Dresden book, Grave Peril. This time, when Dresden winds up naked — in a vampire court's laundry room — he puts on a pair of duck-covered boxer shorts before going into battle. An insane vampire-groupie, however, remains unclad.
    • In Cold Days, Harry's clothes are disintegrated by Demonreach's wards, and he's naked throughout the ensuing climactic fight. Harry even invokes this trope as a tactic. Fix thinks Harry has had a Face–Heel Turn, and Harry deliberately enrages him because it makes him fight sloppily. He does so by playing up his own nudity and mentioning that he should show Fix's girlfriend what a real man is like, and laughing that it's good that visibility is so low, because Something Else Also Rises.
  • Dune:
    • In God-Emperor of Dune, an army of Face Dancers (shapeshifters) ambushes the titular God Emperor by impersonating Duncan Idaho, the leader of his Fish Speaker army. Duncan rectifies this by stripping down. He doesn't actually fight, but he does it mid-battle regardless.
    • Paul's sister Alia fights a training machine while naked in Dune Messiah.
  • In Ender's Game, Bozo and his friends confront Ender in the shower. Ender realizes that the most humiliating thing that he could do is beg for them to return his clothes, so he steps out and challenges them when he's still naked. Bozo actually strips himself so that the fight will be even.
  • In Ghosts of Tomorrow, Archaeidae attacks Griffin and Nadia's hotel room after they have sex, so Nadia is naked while she fights back. Archaeidae finds this distracting enough to give them the upper hand.
  • In Flinx Transcendent, Flinx removes his AAnn bodysuit to take a covert dip in a small pond, only to be spotted by an adolescent. He's forced to duel the young reptilian in the nude, to keep it from alerting its parents to his presence on the AAnn homeworld.
  • In the Heralds of Valdemar novel The White Gryphon, Hadanelith, a Serial Killer and Mind-Rapist, conducts a series of assassinations against prominent members of Haighlei society... by climbing into their windows nude. This has several purposes: it shocks the victims, who are mainly high-class females, into being unable to resist; it avoids leaving evidence in the form of scraps of clothing or shoeprints; it helps frame the White Gryphon delegation since no Haighlei would ever consider such an act; and it amuses him.
  • One of the Highlander Imagine novels, there’s a scene where Tessa gets surprised by an attacking immortal while in the bathroom naked, and she ends up beheading him while slipping around on the wet floor.
  • A battle-to-the-death in Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos occurs during "the Detective's Tale." Ambushed in bed, Brawne Lamia learns how harrowing — and yet disconcerting to her foes — it is to fight while naked.
  • A heroic example occurs in the last book of The Immortals, where Daine goes after Ozorne in eagle form. This trope comes into play when she changes back to a human: her clothes don't change with her.
  • InCryptid: In Midnight Blue-Light Special, when the Covenant captures Verity, they strip her naked to make sure she doesn't have any hidden weapons. She escapes and has to fight them unclothed.
  • In Iron Druid Chronicles, fighting in the nude was historically very practical if one was facing off against a druid, as they can perform all manner of hijinks on any natural fibres you might be wearing, such as binding them to the ground, leaving you completely helpless. Though nowadays, you can just wear synthetic fabrics, which are immune to their powers.
  • This happens all the time in the John Carter of Mars books. There's actually very little attention drawn to it, but it's also made clear that nobody on Barsoom wears any clothes other than jewelry and a harness on which to hang their weapons.
  • A number of Wild Children, such as Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book and Nanga in Jungle-Born (1924) by John Eyton, fight battles with villainous animals while in their accustomed state of nakedness.
  • Kris Longknife: Defiant has Kris lead several Marines on a hostage-rescue mission wearing nothing but paint and translucent bullet-resistant body stockings. Justified because their Powered Armor wouldn't fit through the Air-Vent Passageway that they have to use to infiltrate the building; the paint is to provide a semblance of modesty.
  • By the end of Lord of the Flies, all of Jack's tribe has discarded their clothing in favor of body paint. This is more of the animalistic type, though — it's a sign of how far they've broken off from the society they started out in.
  • In the Matthew Scudder novel Eight Million Ways to Die, a sexually perverted hitman for The Cartel lies in wait for Scudder in his flat and turns out to have stripped off while waiting. Lampshaded when the friend who Scudder is telling the story to asks whether Scudder was frightened to be attacked by a naked man who was visibly sexually excited, and Scudder responds that he was more frightened by the machete.
  • Due to a series of typical calamities, McAuslan completes a night exercise almost completely naked. His despairing officer, Lieutenant Dand McNeill, successfully bluffs an officer on the opposing team by assuring him that McAuslan is one of those men who likes to really go back to basics when stalking and killing the foe.
  • Mercy Thompson
    • The prequel comic "Homecoming" starts with a naked Mercy (who was going for a run as a coyote) fighting off a renegade werewolf pack, armed with only a wrench.
    • The climax of Iron Kissed has a Fan Disservice example. While under a mind-controlling spell thanks to a fae goblet, Mercy was completely naked as she is raped by Tim. She slowly regains enough consciousness to attack and kill Tim.
    • Mercy also naked as she fought Blackwood during the climax of Bone Crossed. She shifted into her coyote form to escape through the bars in her cell to which she proceeds to sneak up and attack Blackwood.
    • Adam slaughters his captors single-handedly both while naked and as a werewolf after he frees himself (with help) in Frost Burned.
  • Mistborn: The Original Trilogy:
    • A slight variation in the case of Vin, who twice ends up fighting in her underwear as a result of having to quickly discard a bulky and inconvenient Pimped-Out Dress. She also brings up the possibility that she'd need to fight off attackers naked while she and Elend are heading north in search of the Well of Ascension after their hasty wedding, sharing a tent, and apparently having lots of sex. His comment: "I wouldn't mind watching that."
    • Also Sazed gets himself stripped naked and thrown into jail so that he can bust Vin back out.
  • The Modesty Blaise novel The Silver Mistress has Modesty strip naked for her final battle with The Dragon. However, it's justified: he's at least as good at hand-to-hand combat as her, and much physically stronger. So she then greases herself up to make herself that much more difficult to get a grip on.
  • Nightfall (1990), written by I Saac Asimov and Robert Silverberg: During the titular climax, society goes insane. After the climax, one of the protagonists narrowly avoids an encounter with a feral man who hunts other people for food and wears nothing but a belt (to carry his knives).
  • Zabulon from Night Watch (Series) in the first part. One Magic Pants-less shift to demon form and one spell expiration later, he's still swinging at the agents of the Night Watch, trying to get them to break the truce. Anton even describes what Zabulon's junk looks like. In demon form. It's not something you want to know about.
  • In No Good Deed..., Elsabeth is dozing after a late-night tryst with a wandering minstrel at the inn at Friuli when she's awoken by an assassin attempting to knife her. She throws her covers over him as a distraction and finishes him off stark-naked. With her paramour of the night bewildered by the whole incident.
  • In The Otherworld Series, the demon Bad Ass Luke goes into battle fully naked.
  • In the C. S. Lewis novel Perelandra, Ransom fights the Un-man while totally naked. He doesn't really have a choice, since he was sent to the planet without any clothes.
  • Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure saga has a memorable Full Frontal Assault. Ylin-Ylan is one of the Yao, a people with an extraordinarily strict code of pride and etiquette — imagine the most exacting dictates of Victorian England melded with the complexities of court life in Ancient Japan. When Ylin-Ylan finally loses it over being slighted in love, she turns up at dinner completely naked, holding a gun and a knife: when she gives up on restraint, she goes all the way.
  • An accidental example occurs in A Practical Guide to Evil: Catherine fights some drow "Mighty" who use a highly corrosive fog of Night as weapon that destroys her armour and clothing and injures her. Being a fae noble however, she can easily regenerate her lost flesh, and fights on. Given that against the level of opposition she faces, Armor Is Useless, she doesn't even notice she is naked until after the fight.
  • The Ravirn series has the Furies. As living embodiments of Vengeance, they fight without any regard for human values like modesty. Since they're Nigh-Invulnerable enough that they don't need armor or protection against the weather, they don't see the point of wearing anything.
  • In Steve Alten's Resurrection, Devlin and Lilith both do this in Xibalba, the former because his mutant features would be difficult to fit in clothes and the latter because she loves being naked anyway.
  • The Saga of the Noble Dead has the ancient vampire Li'kan, who fights completely naked in the snow and ice high in a mountain range. Being undead, she isn't bothered by the cold.
  • In Steel Rain, one of Nyx Smith's Shadowrun novels, a corporate security officer with a samurai mindset is attacked in her apartment by a huge cyborg and chops him into junk. She then makes an emergency videophone call to alert her company's forces to the attack; it's not until the person she calls reacts to seeing her image that the reader learns she'd been butt-naked all through the fight.
  • In the climactic battle at the end of Sign of Chaos, one of the antagonists emerges from a fiery fountain wearing nothing but an eyepatch to battle the protagonist.
  • A female example is done in the Shanna series.
  • In The Silence of the Lambs, serial killer Buffalo Bill enjoys hunting his victims naked in his darkened basement, and does so when going after the hero, Clarice Starling.
  • The universe of Space Captain Smith features Wainscott, the leader of an elite commando team. Wainscott fights naked whenever he can (partly to unnerve his enemies), which is unusual for a combat officer in what is otherwise an Expy of the British Empire. He's possibly a shout-out to Orde Wingate; see the Real Life example below.
  • Star Wars Expanded Universe:
    • Shatterpoint. Mace Windu is cornered by some Mooks in what is effectively a locker room... who notice to their slight shock that, unlike most people would when confronted naked, he doesn't even flinch. Windu, being the badass that he is, proceeds to beat the shit out of the thugs.
    • The Echani culture, a Proud Warrior Race who view combat as a form of communication. Their personal duels, including courtship rituals, involve wearing as little as possible as to not impede movement (which they see as garbling the message). If they have to concede to wearing armor, it is as light and flexible as possible, often backed up by an energy shield (like the fighters in Dune). At least two Echani duelists became Jedi Masters, meaning the style is known to the Order, and probably translated quite well, seeing as Jedi rarely wear armor.
  • The Stormlight Archive: At least two brands of Fused have to do this as a consequence of the way their powers work: Husked Ones can't take anything that is not part of their body with them when they teleport, and Deep Ones can phase their bodies through rock but can't phase clothing or equipment.
  • In Stone of Tears, Kahlan leads a midnight raid on an enemy camp, full of formerly D'Haran soldiers, with her own forces (herself included) naked and painted white, to represent ghosts of an old tribe (which tended to fight naked and aroused) who scared the bejeezus out of D'Harans.
  • Tarzan was sometimes naked in the original works by Edgar Rice Burroughs, even as an adult. ("Clothing was a hindrance and a bother", claims the character in one story.)
  • The Terror. Lieutenant Irving encounters mutinous crew member Hickey dancing naked and assumes he's gone insane. When he goes to tell Hickey to Get A Hold Of Yourself Man, Hickey cuts his throat with a hidden knife. Being naked meant he didn't get blood on his clothes, and the dancing kept him from freezing in the Artic cold.
  • Inverted in A Time For Witches. Co-Protagonist Maddie is attacked by Creusa and several Triad assassins while in the middle of taking a bath. She spends the next several chapters running around the hotel quite naked, but unlike other examples on the list, is mostly on the defensive (although she's more than capable of holding her own and ends up killing every last one of her wouldbe assassins despite her handicap).
  • The Rukh from The Traitor Son Cycle are humanoid in appearance, but animalistic in behaviour, which means that they go to battle wearing absolutely nothing. Add to that the fact that they're far bigger than humans and Brain Bleach is in high demand among the heroes whenever they fight them.
  • In Michael Kurland's The Unicorn Girl, this is given a truly unique justification. The characters visit a Victorian-like world where most people cannot even see nudity, a fact which some thieves are very happy to take advantage of. When our heroes get accused of the crime, they end up resorting to a naked escape themselves.
  • Whateley Universe: This is seen a number of times, usually with protagonists due to Clothing Damage, though there is at least one instance where a retired super'hero' who was ambushed and killed au naturel (he was in bed, having sex with an underage girl — the same one who had just blackmailed him, and was setting him up for the attack).
    • The one this happens to most is Tennyo, who is far more durable than any normal clothing or armor might be — on more than one occasion, adult soldiers and security officers have to be reminded by their superiors that she's underage. Eventually a wealthy teammate buys her an Adamantium Chainmail Bikini for her to wear under her costume as clothing of last resort.
  • The Wheel of Time: The Aiel have no qualms about nudity, but a very strong taboo against showing their faces in combat. When a camp is attacked in the night, a fair few people join the defense wearing nothing but their veils.
  • In The Worm Ouroboros, King Gorice XI and Lord Goldry Bluszco engage in their combat by champion while completely buck naked.
  • In the Romance Novel "Whisper To Me Of Love", the hero, who Sleeps in the Nude, is attacked by the knife-wielding fully-clothed villain. Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs as he quickly realizes that despite them being of the same build and strength, his nakedness puts him at a major disadvantage—the blade painfully nicks him here and there (but NOT there) multiple times and at one point, the guy stomps on his foot, and it's only through pure willpower that he's able to fight off the pain. He's only saved when someone else enters the room and inadvertently distracts the guy.
  • Worm:
    • The Siberian, a member of the infamous mass murderers Slaughterhouse Nine, always goes around naked (apart from, maybe, Godiva Hair). Given that she is invulnerable, nearly a force of nature and famous for eating people alive, the nudeness only highlights her inhumanity.
    • One of the heroes, Narwhal, is always nude, for reasons that aren't made clear, but may have something to do with how her power altered her mind. However, she maintains some modesty by covering her body in a layer of purplish force fields (each about the size of a fingernail) produced by her superpower.

    Live Action TV 
  • A very climatic one occurs near the end of the first season of Altered Carbon. Detective Ortega becomes trapped in a vault with a large number of recently grown (and thus naked) cloned sleeves of the villain. While she's there, Reileen re-sleeves into one of the clones and attacks her. Ortega promptly shoots her, causing Reileen to immediately download into the next available clone and repeat the process. She does this about half a dozen times until there are multiple dead naked clones lying around an exhausted Ortega.
  • Andromeda: In "To Loose the Fateful Lightning", Rommie makes her debut rescuing the ship and crew from people that had taken it over while completely naked.
  • In Angel when Cordelia, possessed by Jasmine is revealed to have killed Manny, the group theorize she must have stripped off her clothes as there was no blood on them and she wouldn't have had time to wash or had another change of clothes on her (see Real Life below).
  • Black Sails: Charles Vane killing the giant Albinus. Worth noting is the reason he's naked — he's just been buried alive and dragged himself out of the grave to take vengeance.
  • In Boardwalk Empire, Bugsy Siegel attempts to kill Gyp Rosetti while he's having sex. Rosetti is full-frontal in the resulting gunfight (in which he uses his girlfriend as a human shield), and then strides through the carnage covered in blood and swinging free. It's strangely awesome.
  • The Tattooed Man from Carnivàle, to whom the recaps on Television Without Pity refer as Creepy Ugly Naked Tattooed Guy.
  • Chuck: In "Chuck Vs The Suitcase", Chuck and Sarah try to sneak into the spy Sofia Stepanova's hotel room while she is showering. When Sofia detects them, she rushes out of the shower without bothering to dress and attacks them with a gun.
  • Continuum: In "Politics of Time", Garza breaks into Carlos' home while he's in the shower and tries to kill him. He fights her off while naked and manages to force her to retreat.
  • In a CSI: Miami episode, a divorce judge was murdered by two boys, one in a relationship with the judge's daughter who stripped naked to avoid blood splashing their clothes when they shot him. Their plan succeeded but didn't work out as well as they wished... should've tested their gun first.
  • Dexter: The first kill we see from the Trinity Killer is incredibly creepy and completely naked. He always kills in a three-victim pattern (hence the name); he's clothed for the latter two, but the first involves breaking into a young woman's house, stripping naked and overpowering her, then severing her femoral artery to make her bleed out in the bathtub.
  • In Dollhouse, the first time we ever see Alpha, although he's not attacking anyone, he is naked. Then the camera pans to show us a dead woman and blood all over the floor, implying this trope.
  • Foundation (2021): The Assassination Attempt on Cleon XVII in the Season 2 premiere happens while he's in the middle of sex, so he fights off his assailants nude.
  • Game of Thrones: After shrinking away when Jaime first joins her in Harrenhal's baths, Brienne rises to confront him when he mocks her failure to protect Renly. It's so sudden and powerful that Jaime apologizes immediately.
  • The Norwegian woman whom Bill Griffin rapes on Godless tries to shoot him and his men afterward, fully nude.
  • Horrible Histories: Fighting in the nude is one of the Badass Boasts made by the dueling Celtic warriors in the "Boast Battle" rap.
  • In Justified, Quarles strips naked before torturing and sexually abusing Donovan, whom he is holding captive in his bathroom. Also, while Boyd's prisoner at Audrey's, Quarles opens his robe to annoy Jimmy. After Jimmy leaves the trailer, Quarles wraps a chain around Minerva's neck and threatens to strangle her, while his robe is still open.
  • La Femme Nikita episode "War" begins with Nikita in the shower when several Red Cell agents come to kill her. She stalks and dispatches them while still nude.
  • In an episode of Malcolm in the Middle, the cadets at the military school are preparing for a survivalist exercise. Each guy brags to the next about how few supplies he's taking with him (thermal blanket/hatchet/matches/water tablets, thermal blanket/knife/flint, blanket/knife, etc). Badass cadet Stanley walks in, wearing nothing but camo body paint. "Let's rock."
  • The second episode of Marco Polo has Mei Lin taking on a group of soldiers completely nude. And winning!
  • Million Yen Women: Minami, the household Shameless Fanservice Girl, at some point fends paparazzi of by throwing a chair on them while in her usual (complete lack of) attire.
  • Mock the Week: The round was Wheel of News and the subject was "Burglary". Andy Parsons contribution was to admit to sleeping nude as a tactic should he be burgled, as it would be more intimidating than confronting the burglar in "Paisley pyjamas." At the other end of the scale, he said the idea could be improved by confronting the burglar wearing a gimp mask and saying "I'm so glad you came!"
  • The Norwegian crime series Monster has two naked ageing men try to kill each other after a confrontation in a sauna. Outside. In the snow. In Finnmark, the northernmost part of Norway.
  • Inverted on NCIS, when Tony is awakened by an intruder in his room and Gibbs and Kate rush in, all three drawing their guns. It's an inversion because the intruder is a harmless iguana: a fact that compounds Tony's embarrassment at having his colleagues come at his startled yell, only to find him stark naked (he sleeps in the buff).
  • In New Kids, Richard sees the police outside of his house at one point and he flips his lid, tears off his clothes and dares them to come at him. They weren't there for him or interested in him in the slightest. This has become a Running Gag in The Movie (And the sequel) where he does the same against a group of thugs and a bus full of zombies respectively.
  • Marbod Whitefalcon (in Yulia Latynina's One Hundred Fields) once took over a castle from inside almost singlehandedly and wearing nothing but his sword; justified in that he was taken prisoner and stripped of all his possessions previously, and didn't have the time to get dressed to preserve the element of surprise after escaping. This whole scene (and the fact that Marbod celebrated by laughing maniacally and eating a chicken while still naked and surrounded by hideously disfigured fresh corpses) still freaked out the Earthman who happened to be in his retinue very much.
  • Roseanne:
    • When Jackie is hurt in the line of duty, she acts as if she had faced a hugely dangerous situation. Her partner informs Roseanne that Jackie actually reached for a naked drunk man's equipment thinking he was going for a gun. He then tackled her and rolled down a flight of stairs with her. There is no end to her teasing.
    • In another episode, Roseanne begins to have an argument with their neighbors. Basically, they're nudists, and Roseanne and Dan are trying to convince them to plant a hedge to block their windows because they're really, really old. The couple tells them to basically get over it and don't look if they don't want to see it. Roseanne mentions that it kind of hard not to. When the couple says rather bitchily that they could, Roseanne simply retorts, "Oh, yeah?" '''(Rips open blouse.) "What color are my eyes?" The old couple runs screaming from the room.
  • Spartacus: Blood and Sand:
    • The title character and his rival get into a nude wrestling match.
    • When Crixus is introduced, he's naked in the gladiator's communal bathing chamber. No actual fight ensues, but Crixus is definitely aggressive towards Spartacus, and establishing that he (Crixus) is the alpha male of this group of alpha males. The actor actually chose to play the scene completely (and quite obviously) nude, to give it a different impact and energy.
  • During the pilot for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron beats the hell out of several men while completely stark naked.
  • Tidelands (Netflix): Leandra attacks and murders Zach Maney wearing only a small thong, her large breasts on full display.
  • In True Blood, the Shifters, Werewolves, Werepanthers, etc cannot take their clothes with them when they transform, so they end up fighting nude at least once.
  • Xena: Warrior Princess:
    • In "Altared States", Xena and Gabrielle are Skinny Dipping when some soldiers chasing a boy come across them. Xena emerges from the water, distracting a soldier. She goes, "Didn't your mother teach you not to stare?" and punches him out. She and Gabrielle quickly put their clothes on before taking on the others.
    • In "Adventures in the Sin Trade", a flashback to back when Xena was an evil warlord showed that she once tried to assassinate Cyane, the Queen of the Amazons, while Cyane was getting a naked massage. Cyane nearly effortlessly kicked her ass, and even stole Xena's clothes and put them on.
  • The X-Files: In the episode "Tooms", when Mulder finds Tooms' cocoon inside a shopping centre's escalator, Tooms emerges from his nesting place naked, feral and trying to kill Mulder. It was the actor's idea — he realized it was creepier.

    Myths & Religion 
  • Older Than Dirt: Enkidu fought Gilgamesh naked. After the fight, they became... friends.
  • In Classical Mythology, Antaeus was a giant who challenged everyone to wrestling matches, and much like the athletes in the Grecian Olympic Games, disrobed before doing so. Justified, however, because contact between his skin and bare earth made him stronger and invincible, as his mother was Gaia, the Earth Goddess herself.
  • The most badass act of the Biblical character of Samson from the Book of Judges was taking on hundreds of armed and armoured Philistines while he was butt-naked armed with nothing but a Donkey's jawbone.

    Podcasts 
  • The The Fallen Gods party has to fight a series of slugs and snails while naked in episode 4 after they get shrunken down out of their clothing.
  • Behind the Bastards dicusses this in its episodes on the Liberian Civil War, in relation to Joshua Milton Blahyi, aka "General Butt Naked", who true to his Nom de Guerre fought in the nude during the war.
    Shereen: [He is] naked and not shot by bullets. It feeds the legend.
    Robert: Exactly. And it's worth noting, in fighting — like what is happening in Liberia — fighting naked, does not expose you to much more danger than fighting with clothing on. This is before people outside of very advanced militaries have ready access to quality body armor. It does just not exist for most people in this fighting. And a t-shirt offers no more protection from a bullet than being naked.
    Shereen: That's fair, yeah.
    Robert: And in fact, there have been forces who have fought naked earlier in history, and one of things that was noted is: when they get stabbed or shot, they were less likely to die, cause they're not having a filthy matted fur or something pushed into a open wound, which causes infection. And there is also not a lot of access to great medical care. So, it sounds wacky and crazy, but it is not as irrational as it may seem.
    Shereen: It has its weird benefits.
    Robert: And also: seeing a naked dude charging you is terrifying.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Battlebabes in Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World RPG can have an ability called Impossible Reflexes that protects them from harm when unencumbered; the actual rules are Armour +1 when wearing normal clothes, and Armour +2 when naked or nearly naked.
  • In Atlantis: The Second Age you get additional experience from fighting naked (though simply not wearing any kind of armor is enough to get this bonus).
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • In some early editions of nymphs actually use their nudity as a weapon. Their beauty is so great that even seeing a clothed one can render a mortal blind, and seeing one naked can be literally fatal to the viewer. This was eventually changed in later editions; nymphs either focused their beauty as a sort of overwhelming aura, or in the most recent edition, didn't have powers based on their beauty at all. Seduction and trickery, however...
    • One of the villains in the 1978 module Vault of the Drow was Silussa, a succubus consort of the drow vampire Belgos. Both illustrations featuring her were of a fighting stance not wearing a thing, suggesting that's how she confronted the Player Characters. She would appear much later in Nodwick where Piffany's magic covered her with censor bars.
    • In the 3.5th Edition Weapons of Legacy sourcebook, one of the rituals to unlock the power of the magical scimitar Steadfast is "Life Before Modesty," requiring the wielder to defeat four opponents without any bonuses to their Armor Class but their Dexterity modifier. This is because the weapon's original wielder was a halfling outrider who was once enjoying a swim in a lake when she saw four gnolls preparing an ambush on the far side, leading her to swim as fast as she could back to shore before the gnolls circled around the lake to catch her. She made it just in time, grabbed her weapon, hopped onto her warpony, and charged into battle... without wasting a moment to put on her clothes or armor. "Worrying about modesty at the time would have meant swift death. As it was, only one gnoll lived to tell the tale, and whatever he saw that day, lighthearted Lunari didn't begrudge him."
    • Evil fighter-cleric Triel Eldurast is the big bad for the first part of 3.5 module Shackled City. If the heroes cause enough havoc when infiltrating her lair, she will fight them at the head of their minions, wearing spiked full plate armor. However:
      "If the player characters have managed to invade this far without triggering an alert, they find Triel naked and enjoying a soak in her hot spring; she responds to unwelcome intrusions with great anger and attacks at once, despite her lack of armor. If only one PC enters, she might try to seduce the character into joining her in the pool, at which point she’ll try to drown the gullible fool before suiting up and stalking through the complex looking for other intruders."
    • The 3rd Edition Book of Exalted Deeds sourcebook contains rules for a Vow of Poverty. Taking that feat forbids a character from using material possessions like armor or magic items, but grants increasingly powerful benefits to compensate, such as an "exalted" bonus to their Armor Class, a constant endure elements effect, ability score increases, saving throw bonuses, and more. While a character with the feat is allowed to own a simple set of nonmagical clothing, there's nothing stopping them (beyond modesty and public indecency laws) from enjoying the benefits of the feat while completely naked. One of the Celestial Paragons and Archangels from the same sourcebook, Pistis Sophia, is known as "the Ascetic" for shunning material possessions, including clothing, as "symbols of greed and insecurity," and fighting as a completely bare, Bare-Fisted Monk.
    • On the home-brew scene, some examples are Skyclad, a feat that grants heightened awareness and extra AC through near-nudity (you can't cover your chest or crotch, everything else is fair game), its sister feat, Skyclad Warrior, which give war-paint-clad fighters increased speed and Damage Reduction on top of that, and a Prestige Class, the Skyclad Practitioner, which takes away ALL of your armor slots (jewelry, belts, and backpacks are still fine) while helping alleviate the logistical pratfalls of never wearing clothes and giving added benefits, like heightened spellcasting, some at-will abilities (detect magic, freedom of movement, the aforementioned endure elements), and benefiting from more pieces of enchanted jewelry at once.
    • Fifth Edition theoretically allows for this with the Barbarian class and it's Unarmored Defense feature, which lets you add your CON modifier on top of the standard 10 + DEX for your Armor Class while not wearing any armor. Now, this is explicitly meant to involve you wearing simple clothing or maybe just a loincloth at the minimum, but nothing is stopping you from not wearing a stitch.
      • Monks get the same feature, just replacing CON with WIS plus the feature Unarmored Movement, which adds 10ft to your movement speed at certain levels while wearing no armor, up to a max of +30ft at 18th level. And you can run up walls and across water starting at 9th level. All while in your birthday suit.
      • One of the benefits the Oath of Redemption Paladins, or rather the Unearthed Arcana version, get is the Armor of Peace feature, which gives them an Armor Class of 16 + DEX when they're not wearing armor. It doesn't require not wearing clothing, but, like the Barbarian and Monk, there's nothing stopping you.
      • Some playable races have Natural Armor, like Lizardfolk, and Dragonborn with the Dragonhide Feat, both of which have an AC of 13 + Dexterity Modifier, and elephant-like Loxodon, which has an AC of 12 + Constitution Modifier, with all three possibly benefiting from the use of a shield, or they can wear armor, if that would be better. Again, it's usually asumed that they are wearing something, like a robe, or loincloth, or clothing in general, nothing's stopping you. Then there's the turtle/tortise-like Tortles, which have a Natural Armor Rating of 17 — same as Splint Armor — and while they benefit from a shield, and certain armor-boosting spells, along with withdrawing into their shell, they can't wear armor at all! Good thing they carry their homes with them.
      • Wizards and Sorcerers have access to the Mage Armor spell, which is 13+ Dex mod, and lasts 8 hours. While it's expected that the person is wearing some sort of clothing, nothing says that they must be wearing clothes! Likewise, the Draconic Bloodline sorcerer has a natural AC of 13+ Dex Mod due to their natural dragon-like scales — all because someone in the past had a thing for dragons.
      • With the release of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything comes the Barrier Tattoo, which can, depending on the type, give one the same level, and type, of protection as Studded Leather armor (12 + Dex Mod), Half Plate Armor (15 + Dex Mod (+2 max)), or Full Plate Armor (18), with the ability to add on a shield to the AC. Also, one doesn't need to be proficient in the equivilent armor, or need to meet any strength requierments. Also, no disadvantage on Stealth Checks. Thus everyone could potentially have the equivilent protection of Full Plate Armor, without wearing any obvious bulky armor.
      • Claire the Bare is a cleric build that manages to reach a naked 18* Armor Class at level 1, via use of an eldritch feat, arcana subclass, and shield.
  • In Exalted:
    • The Deathlord known as the Bishop of the Chalcedony Thurible has a "war form" that actually exaggerates this — not only is it naked, it sprouts multiple sets of genitals. Not many people like the form (once described by a snarky freelancer as a "monster made of dicks"), but it's there.
    • The Melkin Fool in Red; a Solar Night Caste who was captured, tortured and converted by the Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears, she looks like a harlequin... Except she doesn't wear clothes. Try not to think too much about it.
    • Lunars are also likely to do this, for all of the reasons mentioned above. Depending on personality and circumstances, of course.
  • GURPS:
    • There's the "Bulletproof Nudity" optional rule, for a certain kind of cinematic game — the less you wear, the harder you are to hit. For many players, this rewards you for dressing your character up in cheesecake armor. For a certain kind of player, this rewards battlefield streaking.
    • If you're a Super Hero with Super-Toughness and get hit by a high explosive missile while in your civilian clothes, or if you don't have the Costume advantage while in a superhero battle... Well, the GM is well within his rights to decides that while you are unharmed... Your clothes aren't.
  • The marilith on the cover of the Lamentations Of The Flame Princess boxed set: bare-naked, true, but creepy, pallid, serpentine, and decidedly not sexy.
  • Heshon, the Lost Atlantean Goddess of the Wilds from the RPG Scion, is described as an attractive, naked wild woman with bird talons.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade: The members of clan Gangrel usually aren't keen on wearing any clothes.
  • Warhammer 40,000 has many instances, although the official miniatures usually have it downplayed for censorship reasons (but not the books/artwork).
    • Sisters Repentia opt out of the Powered Armor their faction is normally associated with. Since they are sinners seeking penance, they believe themselves unworthy of the power armor (symbol of firmness in faith), and fight without any armor at all. Depending on author, this may be somewhere between light leather dress that only covers breasts and buttocks, and all the way to nothing but a few parchments that do not cover anything. Unofficially, a Sisters Repentia squad with their giant chainsaw weapons is sometimes called a "lumberjack brothel".
    • There is also a Penitent Engine mecha-suit that is armored everywhere except the cockpit, leaving the pilot completely defenseless: again, different authors draw them with either a light robe or nothing at all. The purpose of the machine is to fight while the pilot atones for their crimes by enduring damage (being kept alive by pumping their brain full of drugs), with only the Emperor's blessing to protect them.
    • Similarly, the horrors of the Arco-flagellants, and the Sealed Evil in a Human Can of the daemonhosts. Of course, their entire purpose is to die so their souls can be redeemed (hence the lack of armor). That's Warhammer 40K for you...
    • Daemonettes and other daemons of Slaanesh are occasionally seen fighting almost completely naked: this is not as sexy as it sounds because they often have multiple rows of breasts with mouths (or eyes) for nipples, tentacled privates (of both genders, sometimes at once) and other stuff their Love Goddess has had in mind when he/she/it created them. The most common offender of this is the Slaaneshi Keeper of Secrets, basically a giant woman/demon-like giant with crab claws, lashes, horns and multiple swords.
    • Ciaphas Cain fights a Slaaneshi cultist who sports leather thigh-high boots, gloves, and face mask... and that's about it. It's implied that Cain fights several cultists in a similar state throughout The Traitor's Hand. Then again, as followers of Slaanesh, public streaking is the least of their offenses...
    • The Kroot have sense organs spread about their body and decentralized genitalia, so they prefer to go about nearly naked to better feel the environment. They only wear some straps and pouches for holding things, and maybe a few small ceremonial items.
    • Dark Eldar Wyches have skimpy outfits as a general rule, and they tend to get skimpier as the Wych's battle prowess improves. The most skilled fight almost in the nude. This serves to allow maximum speed (and dodge), to better feel the kills, and to show off just how badass the fighter is.
    • A example from it's fantasy predecessor, Savage Orcs go into battle wearing no armor (only a loincloth and maybe a sash made from fur or scales, presumably of something they personally killed), believing their war paint will protect them. That's not to say they are wrong...
  • In the world of wargaming with scale figures, there are naked Celtic and Germanic warriors available. These are a good example, representing the sort of Germans who walked over three Roman legions in the early first century and made Rome realize their Empire stopped at the Rhine.

    Theatre 
  • In The Book of Mormon, General Butt-Fucking Naked earned his name by committing atrocities "butt-fucking naked." When preparing to deliver an Ass Shove to one of the protagonists, he starts stripping his clothes off. He's based on the real General Butt Naked of Liberia.
  • In Equus, Alan's attack on the horses is done in the nude.
  • The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden staged a production of Salome by Richard Strauss with a local busker strangely cast as a naked, blood-splattered executioner.

    Video Games 
  • In the MA-rated Age of Conan, it's possible for your female character to partially be this if you unequip her armor. She still has a thong, but she can fight mobs topless. (Not a good idea to make a habit of it, as she loses armor benefits, but still interesting.)
  • The Shade class in Anarchy Online was added to the game during its first expansion. All classes in AO get a class specific type of armor. The Shades'? Their class specific armor is nanite laced tattoo ink. In other words, Shades in their class armor fight essentially naked covered in magic bodypaint. Barbie Doll Anatomy abounds.
  • In Ancient Domains of Mystery there is the option of "true berserking": if you use the berserk tactic while bare of anything but jewelry, you'll get additional bonuses. Of course, between the berserking penalties and the lack of armour you're guaranteed to both deal and take tons of damage, but it can be worth it for classes with low starting PV who otherwise wouldn't be able to fight half as well clothed.
  • Kirk Langstrom's Man-Bat form in Batman: Arkham Knight doesn't have his traditional Monster Modesty and thus until Batman cures him, he's running around nude. Thankfully, Nonhumans Lack Attributes and thus the player doesn't see Man-Bat Jr.
  • Bayonetta wears a skin-tight suit which is actually made out of her hair. When she casts her most powerful spells (usually during Boss Battles) the hair comes to life, leaving Bayonetta herself nude.
  • The Binding of Isaac: Every character except Mom is naked by default and the whole game centers on the selected character fighting for their lives underground against grotesque monsters. In Isaac's case, Mom stripped him as part of the Voice From Above's tests, and almost everything else is an alternate version of him. Satan's statue portrays him as wearing clothes, but he sheds them in his fight proper. Uriel and Gabriel likewise are robed in their statues, but when fighting them they both only appear to be in blue or red cloths that do not cover them.
  • When you fight Fontaine in BioShock, he is completely naked, although he has the genital anatomy of a Ken doll.
  • Bloodhound has succubi as a recurring enemy, who attacks you wearing only gauntlets and boots.
  • In BLUE GUARDIAN: Margaret, Margaret can be rendered completely naked after suffering Clothing Damage (she can get a replacement outfit at a save point) or the player can choose to remove her clothes at a save point and play the entire game naked. Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs as this renders her unable to take too many hits before getting killed. Being naked also raises her "Excitement Meter", as high levels of arousal make her even more of a Glass Cannon.
  • Demon-lady enemies from Castlevania usually don't wear anything more than a pair of knee-high boots. Maybe a corset, but that depends on the game. The official art for the Succubus in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night has exposed breasts with defined nipples.
  • Conan Exiles allows player characters to be completely nude if the Adjustable Censorship settings are set to "full." Indeed since all characters start off crucified nude your first couple of fights will have to be this.
  • Invoked in Civilization VI. While their models are mercifully kilted, the Civilopedia entry for the Gauls' Gaesatae unit states such:
    "Very terrifying too were the appearance and the gestures of the naked warriors in front, all in the prime of life, and finely built men."
    Polybius, a Greek historian
    • Lampshaded by the next sentence: "Regardless of why they fought nude, the Gauls won the first few battles, but a better-prepared Rome won the war. Perhaps armor was a good idea after all."
    • The game also features Michelangelo's famously nude David as a Great Work of Art, complete with a sling to screw up Goliath with.
  • Governor Vicus Cassus from Clive Barker's Jericho, who doesn't wear a stitch of clothing. This is made worse by his extreme obesity, and the fact that his stomach is slit open vertically (which he uses to help him attack — he pulls his stomach open and spews the contents of his intestines at the protagonists).
  • Due to the game's Adjustable Censorship, Cyberpunk 2077 lets you do this, albeit with a pair of pants covering V's crotch. There are various mods for the PC version of the game that let you remove the pants, however.
  • A Dance with Rogues frequently strips the Player Character of her armor, leaving this the only option if she gets into a fight before reclaiming her gear. This is generally a very bad idea, however.
  • Dante's Inferno pushed the limit to this; in the circle of Lust alone, we've got nearly-naked concubines with tentacle stinger clitorises coming out of their groins, and the circle's boss, Cleopatra, has naked breasts with vagina-nipples that spew knife-armed babies from them. Oh, and Satan himself is naked and packing giant, um, equipment. The only thing that could have made it scarier is if they had gone whole hog, and made Lil' Satan into the phallic dragon head it was in ancient depictions of the guy.
  • Darkstalkers: One of Lilith's special moves, Splendor Love, turns her clothes into a swarm of bats that damage her opponent, while she floats in the middle of them completely nude.
  • Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Jensen's fight with Jaron Namir happens to take place in a strange, Body Worlds-style living statue gallery, which is convenient for Namir as his fully-augmented body is designed after the human musculoskeletal system. With the element of surprise on his side, Namir stripped out of his clothing and armor to blend in with the statues and ambushed Jensen while his attention was elsewhere. Namir remains effectively nude for the rest of the fight.
  • Doom (2016): The Doom Guy starts the game completely naked and Strapped to an Operating Table before breaking out of his chains with his bare hands, smashing a demon's head open, picking up a gun, and shooting more demons before he can even find any clothes.
  • The Brood Mother(s) from Dragon Age games especially "The Mother" in the Awakenings expansion. This is not remotely sexy — they look like bile-spewing, half grotesquely obese humans, half slugs with way too many breasts. The Desire Demons are topless as well, and tend to feel themselves up while talking to you.
  • Elden Ring: Malenia is nude during the second phase of her boss fight, as releasing her full power makes her clothing and armor rot away. There's more Fan Disservice here than titillation though, as much of her body is covered in rotting flesh due to her own power eating away at her from within.
    • Also done by famous fandom summon Let Me Solo Her, whose entire schtick is that players could summon him when available and rely on him to challenge Malenia by himself while wearing an old pot on his head... and nothing else. The one thing granting him the slightest bit of modesty is the mandatory underpants on the player model. Otherwise he's naked, skilled, and a little bit crazy.
  • The Elder Scrolls
    • This is an option for the Player Character throughout the series, and it will spark witty remarks from NPCs who witness. It doesn't confer much of an advantage in combat, save for making you less encumbered if you actually drop your clothing and armor. The games include default underwear on non-Khajiit and Argonian characters.
    • In Daggerfall, this is the case for Nymphs. They are nature spirits who take the form of beautiful, naked women. They attack with magical fire spells while being stark naked.
    • In Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion, NPC werewolves attack in this state during the day when they are not in wolf-form. Notably, this makes them much less threatening.
    • Skyrim:
      • An in-game book describes the Reachmen hero Red Eagle going into battle alone, equipped with only his sword, and dressed only in war paint. He still managed to slay countless enemies.
      • This is an option for the Player Character here as well. The NPC comments should they go through with it are snarky and often somewhat prudish.
      • This can be advantageous for stealth-based characters, especially earlier on in the game, as the lack of any armor/clothing makes them a lot quieter.
    • In the series' backstory, Emperor Pelagius the Mad certainly lived up to his nickname with Axe-Crazy outbursts and other extreme eccentricities. It was when he stripped naked in public and began attacking visitors that his advisors knew something was very wrong with him, and that he needed to be removed from the throne. He was institutionalized and died only a few years later, but his legacy as the Mad Emperor lives on.
  • Eternal Evil has a nude female ghoul in the hotel's penthouse who attacks you the moment you enter. Her jugs are bouncing and in plain sight... just as she's about to chew your face off with razor-sharp fangs.
  • Downplayed in a gameplay element in the first Fable game. Most quests feature "Boasts", or optional self-imposed challenges that you can choose to bet gold on your chances of completing the challenge. Nearly every group of Boasts includes completing the quest in only your underpants.
  • The Naked Emperor from Fairytale Fights.
  • This is an option in the Bethesda era Fallout games as well. Like its Elder Scrolls sister series, this is known to spark witty remarks from NPCs as well.
  • In Far Cry 4, Ajay is at one point kidnapped, stripped naked and forced to fight in an arena against tigers and Royal Army troops. You can even briefly get a glimpse of his penis. It makes his eventual victory all the more badass.
  • Fatal Frame III has the Tattooed Priestess, who is topless for the whole game. However, since her whole body is covered in dark blue tattoos, this doesn't mean much. Also, you'll be spending too much time running the hell away to look too closely.
  • Fate/EXTRA: Saber Nero tells the protagonist tales from back when she was alive and an ordinary human. In one, Nero once fought a lion in an arena naked and killed it with her bare hands. Strangely, none of her subjects were impressed by this feat, and when the protagonist hears this story, they only pay attention to Nero saying she did it naked.
  • Final Fantasy XIV
    • When Thancred exits the Lifestream in Final Fantasy XIV, between A Realm Reborn and Heavensward, he winds up appearing 'in the altogether', as he says. He quickly knaps some obsidian into weapons, but acquiring skins for even a vestige of clothing takes him a fair bit longer. The cutscene shows him fighting an oversized bear like that, with a carefully-placed nutkin in the appropriate places.
    • For the players' part, you're free to strip down to your undergarments and go into battle with nothing but your weapon, though it's inadvisable even at the lowest levels. However, the glamour system allows you to inflict any piece of equipment with the appearance of any other piece of equipment, so if you store "The Emperor's New" attire in your glamour dresser, you can wear your best gear into battle while appearing to fight in your smallclothes.
  • Fire Emblem:
  • Adult Alma in First Encounter Assault Recon. The most disturbing part about her being naked is that in Project Origin, she rapes you!
  • The final stage of the Amiga beat'em up Franko: The Crazy Revenge features green-mohawk-haired coat flashers that wear absolutely nothing under their coats. They love to show off whenever they'd get to hit the player character.
  • Hailey, the player character in Gamer 2, is trapped in a virtual reality machine for almost the entire game. Her clothes don't make the journey with her.
  • Gears of War: In Gears 5, the swarm character Queen Reyna in multiplayer mode is fighting naked with only her tentacles covering her butt and genital area and implying that underneath them there is no underwear.
  • Delphi in Giants: Citizen Kabuto is a sea nymph who fights completely topless, at least in the uncensored European version. There is no good justification for this and none of the other characters ever mention it.
  • Although Kratos from the God of War series never appears entirely naked, during the design phase the developers realized that he became more primal and aggressive in appearance when drawn with less armor (and less hair).
    • The monsters appear mostly naked as well. In one of the bonus features, Dave Jaffe explains that he wanted the monsters to be like wild animals, which meant making them naked. The gorgons got to spend the whole game topless, but they weren't able to keep the penis they modeled for the cyclops (Jaffe remarked: "Poor cyclops").
  • Gwent: The Witcher Card Game: Dryads are nearly always in the nude, but censored strategically to meet the teen rating. Lesser female vampires such as Bruxa and Alp are assaulting in the nude albeit without visible nipples. The monster leader Gernichora is fully nude and 3d modeled, much to nobody's delight.
  • There is an achievement in Half-Minute Hero for defeating three Evil Lords wearing no equipment. Although the only way to do this is to be under a pact with a demon, and you'll kick all three Evil Lords' asses whether you have equipment or not.
  • In Hyrule Warriors, Darunia, Ruto and Midna all fight while completely nude. To a lesser extent, there's also Twili Midna, whose lower body is covered, but her chest (which has visible breasts) is completely bare. All four of them get away with it by virtue of not being human.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has Link's armor fully removable. His model is wearing a pair of Modesty Shorts, but dialogue from NPCs has them reacting as though he's completely starkers... if he doesn't have anything on his torso. Whether or not he wears armor is usually up to the player, but Eventide Island and the Trial of the Sword are both NoGear Levels that strip him of his armor (the latter gradually gives you temporary substitutes as you progress).
  • Anything inorganic that's brought to Improbable Island has a good chance of turning into something else, so everyone who goes there is sent naked. It's feasible to fight naked for the first few levels before buying armor (and much later in the game, if your character becomes part-cat, you'll actually get advantages from fighting naked.)
  • Mentioned but not shown in Jade Empire: one of the Black Whirlwind's exploits before joining your party was single-handedly storming an enemy fortress "piss-drunk, buck naked and screaming like a maniac" in his words. It's heavily implied (or outright stated) that this worked because the soldiers thought he was crazy. Checking his journal during the battle where you control him directly reveals he has a checklist upon waking, one of which is "do I have clothing?" And how to handle the inevitable fight if there is no clothing.
  • Throughout the entire level "A Thousand Cuts" in Kane & Lynch: Dog Days, both Kane and Lynch are bloody naked, literally.
  • In Karin's Skin Diving Diary!, Karin can take a dive in her birthday suit after she reaches the Sea Trench. This actually has a practical use: It increases the chance of encountering the elusive golden swordfish, and decreases the chance of encountering those annoying dolphins.
  • Most of the specimens in Killing Floor.
  • Saiki in The King of Fighters XIII. He is the first boss in the series history to be fully naked. It should be noticed that he doesn't start fighting in the nude, but after killing and absorbing his Anti-Villain subordinate Mukai, his white suit poofs and from then on he's butt naked, with his black flames covering his face, hands and feet. Thankfully, his crotch isn't on display.
  • In Knights of Xentar, the main character starts out totally buck naked due to a really bad case of Honor Before Reason as well as being hung over that leads to him being stripped entirely of his equipment. And then he beats those thieves who robbed him single-handedly afterward while still being naked, though he doesn't get his equipment back from them.
  • It's possible for the player to remove the clothes of protagonist of Lakeview Cabin and have him fight his demonic wife and unborn baby while completely nude. Lakeview Cabin Collection gives you this option as well in most of the films. Meanwhile, a few of the Hillbilly Horrors in IV are also naked and will attempt to kill the protagonists.
  • In League of Legends both Zyra, the Rise of the Thorns and Nami, the Tidecaller both go into combat technically naked. Zyra's tricky bits are covered by tastefully-positioned leaves — which are of course part of her body, meaning she's not actually wearing anything — while Nami at least wears a few strategically-placed jewels, a crown and some sort of armour plate at her hips, but is otherwise nude. Unlike traditional mermaids, however, her scales don't stop at her waist and cover her entire body up to her neck, but split down the middle of her torso to expose creamy white cleavage for reasons we can't quite understand...
    • Averted with Nami's Koi skin, though, which clearly shows her wearing some kind of plate bustier over her breasts. She also has no visible genitalia in any of her skins.
  • Like a Dragon:
    • Subverted in Yakuza 6. The first time Kiryu goes to confront Takumi Someya, the latter is relaxing in the sauna of a hotel, wearing nothing but a Modesty Towel. Before the fight can actually start, however, Someya throws said towel in Kiryu's face as a distraction and scampers back to his suite to put something on while leaving his guards in Kiryu's path. By the time Kiryu catches up to him, he's just managed to put on a pair of athletic briefs. Notably, Someya's lack of clothes is also used dramatically, since it shows that he has no irezumi on his back despite being a high ranking yakuza.
    • The Like a Dragon: Ishin! spin-off has a very steamy gratuitous bathhouse fight between Ryoma Sakamoto and Kichinosuke Saigo (portrayed by Kazuma Kiryu and Ryuji Goda, respectively).
  • Pigsy, the criminally insane, chainsaw-wielding maniac from Manhunt. Don't worry, he isn't completely nude... he's wearing the severed head of a pig as a hat.
  • The infamous endgame sequence from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, where Raiden runs around bare-assed for quite a while (though he does cover up his crotch).
  • In Mileena's first appearance in the story mode of Mortal Kombat 9, she is wearing only strategically placed bandages. She's also utterly batcrap insane and has a mouth like a tyrannosaurus rex.
  • Something like this, though it's the hero: Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark starts out with the player character having to fight a drow assassin as naked as the game allows after she steals all their gear.
  • Unlike the other two playable androids in NieR: Automata, A2 fights wearing a single scrap of cloth that only covers her midriff and nothing else. Since she's an older model of android that's been in operation for a long time without maintenance at the Bunker, however, she's sporting Barbie Doll Anatomy and missing large patches of her synthetic skin, exposing the black material underneath that conveniently resembles a top and pair of hot pants.
  • The title ninja from Nikujin, and his enemies too!
    • This trope applies on other games from Ikiki too. In his games, there are many protagonists and enemies that don't wear any clothing.
  • The main character does this for the final battle in Octodad: Dadliest Catch...outing himself as an octopus to his family for the first time. (Stacy knew already, Scarlet and Tommy were surprised.)
  • In Odin Sphere, normal Vulcans in their transformed state become completely naked.
  • In One Way Heroics, the Hero class learns a skill called Zenura Weave, which gives the player a substantial increase to physical and magical attack power, while permanently preventing them from wearing equipment of any kind for that run.
  • Outlast has the Twins, machete-and-cleaver-wielding cannibalistic lunatics who are also completely nude. This makes trying to hide from them all the more tense, as no clothing means they barely make a sound while stalking the asylum.
  • Overwatch gave us an unintentionally retroactive case of this regarding Genji Shimada, who — after being rebuilt as a cyborg — spent a while traveling and fighting unclothed, but equipped with plenty of natural armor and cybernetics that it didn't seem out of place (in addition to plenty of other robots in the world opting in and out of wearing clothes). However, by the time of Overwatch 2representing him finding peace between his place between machine and man — he was given a new redesign consisting of a hoodie and casual pants. His artists originally planned for him to just get a jacket, but felt it weirdly made him seem more "naked" until they dressed him entirely.
  • The Diseased in Penumbra (although they are heavily mutated by that point).
  • Near the end of the final case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations, Maya suggests that Godot can't be the killer because he would have gotten blood on his clothes (and not had any opportunity to change them). Phoenix suggests this trope as an explanation, but Godot points out that it was way too cold for that.
  • In Princess Maker, two of the contestants in the Martial Arts tournament fight completely naked, except for some accessories like jewelry. Consequently, their defense sucks and they take lots of damage.
  • Resident Evil:
    • Alexia Ashford from Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, when she mutates. She is completely naked, with monstrously large veins covering her lady bits.
    • Resident Evil 2 features naked male zombies, although their genitals aren't visible, possibly due to the graphical limitations of the time (or maybe they just... fell off).
    • The infamous Regeneradors from Resident Evil 4. And this is the least terrifying thing about them.
  • If you have just started a new colony in RimWorld, the first raid usually consists of just one raider — and sometimes this raider is literally just equipped with a knife or club and/or headgear, wearing nothing else.note  The minimalist graphics of the game mean you cannot see their lower bodies at all, though. The Ideology DLC takes this further, allowing you to select whether one or more nudist tribes will spawn on the map upon generation (or letting you play as a wholly nudist faction yourself); while these tribes usually start out friendly, if relations turn sour, they won't wear armor while raiding your colony either.
  • Rome: Total War:
    • The Europa Barbarorum mod, where the "Gaesatae" unit fight in the nude, and generally kick ass unless you have javelins or arrows.
    • In the original game, the Spanish, Gauls, Germans and Dacians can all train a unit called Naked Fanatics. They are Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and the unit description makes this point abundantly clear. For the sake of keeping the 12+ rating, however, their actual skin has them wearing loincloths (although one of the Germanic units in the Rome: Total Realism mod was actually naked in-game).
  • In the sandbox MMO shooter RUST, you literally start off stark naked and are forced to fight that way until you manage to scrounge up or craft some clothes. Later on, in some PVP battles, you will see characters charging around wearing nothing but a weapon so they aren't risking their more valuable wearable gear.
  • The sequels to Saints Row give the player the option to fight naked, though your naughty bits are covered up in pixels. In fact, in the Saints Row: The Third mission "Pimps Up, Hos Down", the Boss ends up fighting their way out of a Morningstar brothel while stark naked and high as a kite, and in Saints Row IV you fight your way out of captivity on Zinyak's ship while completely naked. Saints Row: The Third originally had a "Nude" customization option for your gang, but it was Dummied Out.
  • Sharpshooter 3D sees you crossing a prison's showers, and attacked by two naked, overweight mooks. Luckily, the game has the decency to throw a fuzzy circle around their crotches, despite the heavy amount of onscreen gore left and right. There's also an indoor sauna which sees you cornered by a dozen overweight, naked enemies.
  • It is up to debate what, if anything, Seth of Street Fighter IV is wearing. Some assume he's outright naked.
  • Sunset Overdrive: The default "The Maurader" outfit, which is intended for combat since that's the main point of the game, is just the Maurauder Pads shoulder pads, and the Maurader Helmet, both being spiky. No shoes, and only underwear for the bottom half of the Player.
  • In Swords and Claws all characters fight in the buff.
  • Terraria: The Nymph enemies pose as women stranded in the caves, naked. They stay naked even after revealing their true form and trying to kill the player, and by the standards of the early-game they're threatening enemies.
  • Also mentioned but not shown in TimeSplitters Future Perfect. In the second level (1928 Scotland), Captain Ash says, "In the best tradition of the British, I suggest a full-frontal... dahhh, assault, that is." The game is full of double and triple entendres.
  • In Unreal, mainline Skaarj warriors fight naked. Even when you attack them with rocket launchers.
  • In Void Stranger when you finally meet Lev, they emerge onto the scene completely nude and give a Death Glare to the player before engaging with them. Their lack of clothes is to show their brutal and monstrous nature, having No Empathy and showing off their core with visible veins attached to it. Not that there's much to see, especially with Barbie Doll Anatomy in play.
  • Watch_Dogs: When Aiden is infiltrating the Black Viceroys' Chicago tenement stronghold, several heavily-armed and armored gang members in the parking lot can be overheard discussing an altercation with a rival gang in which the Viceroys' leader, Iraq, charged screaming at his rivals wearing nothing but the automatic rifle in his hands. Both sides were equally freaked out. Just one of several indications that Iraq might be just a bit unstable.
  • The character of Lucy in Whacked! spends about 95% of her screen time clad in nothing but a pair of knee-high boots, a pair of elbow-length gloves, and three Censor Boxes (two in the front, one in the back). The other 5% has her in a skin-tight rubber dress... that invariably explodes. She's currently taking part in a life-or-death arena combat game show, we might add. At least she doesn't seem to mind it much.
  • In the non-censored version of The Witcher, you fight several types of naked female foes, from hot, floating vampires to fat, sagging, old witches.
  • Just after the Final Boss of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Anya rips off her jacket to leave herself topless, picks up two machine guns, and unloads both clips into a horde of Nazis. All while heavily pregnant with twins. Justified as her jacket had been set on fire, and she ripped it off so she wouldn't get burned.
  • Goldmane the Skinner, a Garrison Follower in World of Warcraft who can be recruited after you rescue him from the Iron Horde. A tiger-like beast-man, he wears no clothing even if you upgrade his armor. Possibly befitting of his class, Assassin-Rogue. (Ironically, he has the Tanning profession, meaning he can gain materials for making clothing.)

    Webcomics 
  • Nesuko from The Adventures Of Boschen And Nesuko likes to fight (and generally live life) naked.
  • In the C Karrus universe, characters usually wear very little into battle and even that usually gets shredded over time leaving them nude. Haurgon however doesn't even bother with that much.
  • Ashemma in Deprived: A Dark Souls Story fights almost completely naked as a result of starting her journey completely deprived of any possession. However, since she lacks any kind of armor for protection, she is frequently getting wounded and killed because of it.
  • Seems to be a recurring element in Electric Retard, probably because the ax crazies in question have a tendency to rape and/or defecate on their victims. Plus it would be difficult to find clothes that would fit Giant Naked Hitler.
  • In El Goonish Shive, Grace seems to be in favour of fighting in the nude if she's in a furry form since she justifies training like that by saying the skin tight Uryuom suit doesn't leave anything to the imagination anyway.
  • In Evon, Evon's clone goes on a nude Roaring Rampage of Revenge through Legune's lair.
  • Fate/type Redline: Oda Nobunaga/Archer is for some reason naked when she is summoned. Her summoner rudely attempts to boss her around, causing her to call her sword to her hand and decapitate him. She then intimidates everyone else in the room into kneeling before finding a jacket to cover herself with.
  • Heroic example in Fite!: Guz normally wears armor, but when he and Lucco were attacked while bathing in the river, he didn't bother to put it (or anything else) on, he just grabbed his sword and shield and started fighting. (Lucco elected to pull his trunks on.)
  • Drip, from Jack. Not especially surprising, as he's the Anthropomorphic Personification of the sin of Lust, and a serial rapist and murderer in life.
  • In the world of Kaza's Mate Gwenna, various characters (including Kaza and Gwen) prefer to kick bad guy butt while in the nude.
  • Kill Six Billion Demons: Jagganoth's clothes don't share his Complete Immortality, so his superpowered battle against the other Demiurges soon has him fighting in the buff.
  • Angora, the protagonist of The Meek, fulfills this perfectly. Comes with being a Nature Hero.
  • Seraphim of MegaTokyo used this on Asmodeus here. Although in this case, the nudity and the attacks are one and the same.
  • Ménage à 3: In an appropriately NSFW sequence published in October 2009, DiDi shows up in Gary’s room naked with intent to seduce him (she’s not subtle), discovers Yuki there instead, deduces that Yuki must be a burglar — and promptly and competently judo-throws Yuki and ties her up. Yuki quite enjoys this...
  • One-Punch Man
    • Puripuri Prisoner rips off all his clothes before he fights (which he calls "Angel Mode").
    • Beefcake rips out of his clothes when he grows to giant size and goes on a rampage.
      Saitama: Put on some pants, will ya?
    • Saitama himself ends up fighting Mosquito Girl naked after Genos accidentally incinerates his clothes.
  • Schlock Mercenary: Old general Karl Tagon, in a heroic version of the trope, rushed out to try to stop the kidnapping of Timeclone!Kevyn with nothing but his gun.
  • In Spying with Lana, Lana has no qualms about fighting in the nude.
  • Ebony and Ivory from Super Bikini Girls continue the fight naked after their bikinis were destroyed by a "Pressure Beam".
  • A bidirectional example can be found as part of a fraternity initiation ritual in Tales Of Gnosis College.
  • In Issue #3 of the Team Fortress 2 comic, Soldier strips naked and covers himself in honey to fight bears. He, along with Zhanna, does this again against the robot army in Issue #6.
    Soldier: Look for the naked man covered in blood. It will probably be me.
  • Transformers Legends, a Japanese webcomic viewable on the official Takara Tomy website to promote the Transformers toyline of the same name, had this happen in Bonus Edition Vol. 55, a pack-in comic included with the figure of Slugslinger. In the comic, Slugslinger attempts to use plasma energy to destroy Shaoshao Li, Sue Faireborne and White Lune. He only succeeds in destroying their armor, resulting in three pissed-off girls kicking his ass in the nude.
  • Unsounded:
    • Water women do not wear clothes, so when they attacks Bell's men on the riverside and help assault the hidden lab under Litriya Shrine they do so naked.
    • Bastion cannot bring anything with him while offsetting, though he usually conjures up an illusion of pants. During his fight with Elka he quickly gave up on maintaining his illusory pants and continued the fight in the nude.
  • Leo in VG Cats regarding his underequipped D & D alter ego; "I shall astound them with my NAKEDNESS!" His Prince of Persia impersonation also quickly veered towards this. His response to a scratch on his shirt? Rip the whole shirt sleeve off. Oh, now it's asymmetrical. Better take the other one too. What's that? The shirt is ruined? You're right. Better take it all off. "Sexy, no?" Aeris left the moment he began contemplating a scratch on his pants.
  • Kind of obligatory in Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic considering the amount of nudity in the strip.

    Web Original 
  • Darwin's Soldiers:
    • Spc. Crota ended up fighting a Black Mamba completely naked.
    • The final battle between Trinity and Aimee is done completely in the nude.
  • Dragon Ball Z Abridged does the same thing as the main series when it comes to Freeza and Cell, with the exception that references are made as far back as Raditz. This is even brought up with King Yemma in HFIL.
    Yemma: So... do you just not wear clothes or...?
    Cell: Pfft, and cover up all this?
    Yemma: Fair enough. Makes my job quicker.
    • Parodied in the Raditz fight, where he initally believes Goku and Piccolo were doing this but were only removing their weighted clothes.
      Goku: Piccolo? You use weighted training clothes too?
      Piccolo: No Goku, I just *love* to get naked when I'm around you.
      Raditz: (internally) Their power level is rising. (out loud) So, nudity makes you stronger on this planet? (unzips pants)
      Goku: Uhh no? We're wearing weighted clothing.
      Raditz: OH! (quickly zips up) Because that would be ridiculous! Ahahaha!
  • In Farce of the Three Kingdoms, Xu Chu attacks Ma Chao naked in order to use his Gag Penis as a weapon.
  • Gold Tongues features a scene in chapter 4 where Stix fights two bikers without wearing any clothes.
  • This is Nudist Man of the Legion of Net.Heroes's modus operandi (and one of the main reasons why it's not an actual comic).
  • Some Protectors of the Plot Continuum, when in the form of a Mermaid, Centaur, or Nymph, will forgo clothing due to the species being Innocent Fanservice People. They still have to kill the self-insert or exorcise the fan-author's influence.
  • Survival of the Fittest:
    • One of Sam Sorenson's first actions, when he got on the island was to strip down to his nothings and proceeded to go on a naked rampage...
    • Viktor Kurchatov from v3, his entire body covered in scars and missing genitalia, was caught by Will Sigurbjornsson and Julie Mikan nude and eating the corpse of Karl Van Buren. Viktor responded by screaming "I am the master butcher!" and moving toward Julie to try and kill her, only to be shot AND stabbed in the head.
  • Tails of the Bounty Hunter has Cale Tomlik fighting off two hitmen in his hotel room in chapter 5 while he's completely naked.
  • In Episode 26 of Tales From My D&D Campaign, the party goes up against Morduval, an extremely old and decrepit man who turns into a massive tentacle-y Eldritch Abomination every time something attacks him or he attacks somebody. Unfortunately, each time he does this it tears his clothes to bits, so he's totally naked when he shifts back to his decrepit-old-man form. On the plus side, his clothes regenerate, on the down side it takes about 20 seconds and he transforms far more often than that in battle.
  • Denied in a few entries in Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG:
    554. Even though armor gives him no benefit, my monk still has to wear something.
    1278. An elf wardancer chick in nothing but body paint is totally hot. A Vesten berserker in nothing but body paint not so much.
    1768. My monk can't convince the bad guys to go streaking with him just so they're easy to beat up later.
  • Naked rampage is one of Nash and Tara's "wheelhouses" on What the Fuck Is Wrong with You?.

    Western Animation 
  • The Flesh from Action League NOW! is "super-strong, yet super-naked". However, unlike most other characters who fall under this trope, he's not insane or villainous so much as heroic and goofy. Plus, you know, an action figure.
  • Discussed in the Adventure Time episode "Flute Spell": Huntress Wizard meets Finn bathing in the river, and asks for his help. Mistaking this for a threat, Finn casually warns her that he's "especially agile when I'm nude".
  • Archer:
    • Pam is seen about to give a beating to Malory at the end of "El Secuestro" after taking her own top off. Bonus points go to Pam, as this shows off the terrifying third stanza of The Destruction of Sennacherib tattooed on her back under thirteen tally marks.
    • In season 7, Archer gets an Offscreen Moment of Awesome where he takes out nine heavily armed bikers singlehanded while completely naked.
  • In Ben 10: Alien Force, Ben gets a new alien form, Rath, who doesn't wear any clothes, but since he's bascially just an anthropomorphic tiger and Ben has several other alien forms who don't wear clothes, this is assumed to be normal for him and it's never even commented on. Fast forward several years to Ben 10: Omniverse, where Ben meets some other aliens of Rath's species for the first time, and finds out that they actually have "a highly evolved sense of shame", and do normally wear clothes, which means Rath has been going around naked by his own species' standards this whole time. Ben isn't happy, but everyone else thinks it's hilarious. It turns out that a bug in the Omnitrix was preventing it from materializing Rath's clothes. When it's fixed, Rath gains a Masked Luchador outfit (and for some reason can now only speak Spanish).
  • Futurama: "Children of a Lesser Bog" has Kif Kroker at one point strip naked to rescue Zapp Brannigan from some giant tardigrades, doing so to ensure the effectiveness of his camouflage ability.
  • In King of the Hill, Khan gets fed up with a giant flag Bill got from the military and tries to take it down. Since Bill deeply respected that flag from fond memories, he comes to its defense wearing nothing but a towel. Which drops as he chases Khan away.
  • In the Matt's Monsters episode "Clothes Make the Monster", the protagonists had to fight a monster that stole clothes, forcing them to fight him in the nude.
  • Samurai Jack:
    • The Daughters of Aku from the 2017 revival; at first they appeared to be wearing black form-fitting bodysuits, but in the sixth episode it is revealed that their bodies have actually been covered with ash-like substance from being exposed to hot coals of the Pit of Hate when they were children. This would have implied that the seven women were stark naked the entire time they tried to kill Jack, but Jack's voice actor noted that the group were wearing very clingy bodysuits able to store their weapons.
    • In "XCIX", Lazarus-92 dissolves Ashi's Garden Garment, forcing her to fight it nude until Jack gives her his gi.
  • Played for laughs in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "The Algae's Always Greener", in which Plankton switches places with Mr. Krabs thanks to a reality-altering device. Plankton wears the pants at the Krusty Krab, and Krabs takes his place trying to steal the formula — butt-naked.
    Plankton: GOOD GRIEF, HE'S NAKED!
  • Steven Universe: Played for Laughs in the episode "Frybo"; Steven brings his friend's mascot costume to life with magic, and when it goes berserk, uses the same magic to bring his own clothes to life to help fight it. He manages to yank the offending gem shard out of the costume while totally naked, and stays that way for the rest of the episode (which ends with Pearl exasperatedly telling him to Please Put Some Clothes On).
  • The Venture Bros.:
    • Brock Samson once goes on a naked rampage while fighting off Phantom Limb's goons in the Venture Compound, showing that shit has really gotten bad. The Monarch comments on his nice ass.
    • When a battalion from the Guild of Calamitous Intent is in the front of the Venture compound and Watch and Ward discuss doing this, they note that while the eunuch division would probably creep people out, the woman's auxiliary would be great.

    Real Life 
  • In a famous (though possibly an invention of the foreign press) duel in 1892, Pauline von Metternich and Countess Kielmannsegg, fighting over floral arrangements, went topless at the insistence of Baroness Lubinska so that neither might become infected by clothing getting into a wound. Female pugilists of the 18th and 19th centuries commonly boxed while stripped to the waist, ostensibly for the same reason. Other reasons given are that during the Of Corset Hurts times, said corsets either made it outright impossible for a woman to move freely enough, or had enough hard parts in them to serve as body armor.
  • Greek and Roman writers alleged that certain Gauls went into battle naked. There is some disagreement about whether and where this might mean simply unarmored, but Polybius' description of the Gaesatae (either a mercenary band or a whole tribe) states that they did so to avoid becoming entangled in brambles, indicating that, yes, at least in this instance they really were in the altogether. These stories (and accompanying Roman sculpture, which may take a cue from the Greek artistic convention of heroic nudity) may be the origin of the popular notion that fighting naked was a common practice among Celtic peoples in general.
  • About 400 years later, Herodian wrote that the Picts, a (probably) Celtic people who inhabited what would later become Scotland, were habitual nudists who wore only tattoos and iron jewelry (but not armor), even in battle. Unfortunately, decisive evidence is lacking; art from shortly after the Roman period instead shows Pictish warriors well-dressed in tunics and coats, but fashions may have changed by then.
  • Viking berserkr (from which we get the word "berserker") would charge into battle either covered in bear or other animal skins, or completely naked. Some research indicates they may have used stimulant drugs.
  • Various Greek heroes were often depicted naked in art, to display their heroic proportions. And that's not a double-entendre. Greeks thought large genitals were unattractive. They wanted to show off a muscular body. Some military historians claim that the Greeks also fought naked except for their armor because clothes would give their enemies something to grab. Actually though, this is improbable. Armor without clothing underneath, especially in the hot Mediterranean sun, would result in skin burns (one possible reason that linen and leather armors were used). What is more likely is that the clothing simply wasn't visible beneath the armor. In any case, they loved making their armor look like a naked chest to invoke this trope. It was a similar thing with sports; they competed against each other naked and women weren't allowed to watch the competitions.
  • In Sparta, women were allowed to compete in athletic competitions, and they did so just as buck-naked as the men did. Spartan men were allowed to watch as part of the process of choosing a wife, leading to some to complain the young men weren't choosing wives based on their character.
  • An early episode of COPS had officers having to deal with a large, bald, sweaty naked man. They remarked how it is a bit hard to get a grip.
  • During the brutal Liberian civil wars, many fighting bands took to wearing strange outfits to instill fear in the enemy. "General Butt Naked" (Joshua Blahyi) went into combat naked, and led a band of soldiers called "The Butt Naked Brigade". Their whimsical name belies the horrifying atrocities they committed, and many of the soldiers were children.
  • Marco Polo claimed that the warriors of medieval India went into battle carrying spears and shields. And nothing else. This is probably an exaggeration. He isn't known for being the most reliable of narrators. It is however true that warriors in India generally eschewed armor, preferring a hit-and-run style of warfare, and their clothes looked like European underwear at the time.
  • The original natives of the Canary Islands (the Guanche) would walk into battle with just a spear and a handful of sharp stones... and they still managed to slaughter an army of conquistadors once.
  • According to Vietnamese legend, during the Trung Sisters' rebellion (A.D. 43), male Chinese soldiers fought naked in order to shame the female rebels. Official Chinese history denies the claim, but then they barely recognize the rebellion at all. In any case, it didn't work.
  • This was never proven, but as stated above, it has been suggested that Lizzie Borden removed her clothing before using an axe to kill her father and stepmother, so as to avoid getting blood on her clothes and making her guilt obvious. (Indeed, if she was the killer, the common way she is portrayed in the media — as a lunatic — is likely inaccurate. There was almost no evidence linking her to the crime, making it seem like it was well-planned.)
  • The 1806 duel between the Earl of Barrymore and Humphrey Howarth was averted because the earl could not bring himself to duel with Howarth, who had prepared for the duel by undressing. The earl thought Howarth was making a farce of the duel, but in fact it was justified, as Howarth had been an army surgeon who knew that the worst thing about gunshot wounds was the risk of infection caused by bits of clothing in the wound, rather than the loss of vital organs.
  • During some Hawaiian luaus, male volunteers are given a very skimpy grass skirt to put on during one part of the show. While the volunteers naturally put them on over what they themselves have on, the emcee informs the audience that ancient warriors wore only the skirts. This is however, not strictly accurate. The skirts in olden days were much longer and fuller, as can be seen in old photographs and artistic renderings. In addition, men had the option of wearing cloth wrapped around their privates if they so desired. Of course, just like today, some chose to go commando presumably.
  • Lance Corporal Wayne O'Mahoney of the Queen's artillery had his apartment broken into by a trio of robbers while he was at home and asleep with his girlfriend. Instead of hiding out or summoning police, he sprung from bed and proceeded to tackle and start punching one of the robbers. A second robber disregarded his compatriot's calls for help and fled, while O'Mahoney pursued the third knife-wielding robber to his girlfriend's new car, which he had purchased just the day before. In order to prevent it from being stolen, he bashed in the driver's side window in with a crowbar, then began punching the still-armed robber in the face, all of which encouraged the crook to escape through the passenger side door. Then the neighbors came out to see what the ruckus was about, at which point L.Cpl O'Mahoney realized that he was also naked. O'Mahoney mentioned on the news that he slept naked, and hadn't thought to even throw on shorts during the whole ordeal, so chances are that none of the robbers wanted to deal with the terrifying notion of a screaming, angry, butt-naked soldier armed with a crowbar who'd already punched them in the face.
  • Junkies are infamous for assaulting people and inanimate objects while drugged and stark naked, and some drugs are known for causing people to both strip and go berserk. Chances are, whenever a Full Frontal Assault incident comes up on the news, the person involved was most likely under some really dangerous narcotics.
    • In Florida, late in 2015, a man high on marijuana (or a synthetic variant) stripped himself naked before jumping on a man sleeping at a bus stop and proceeded to literally eat the other man's face. He had to be shot to death to make him stop.
    • There is a video of a man on PCP, totally butt-naked leaping onto a cop car. In full view of the camera. It's on TruTV.
    • In 1974, the actor David Carradine got high on peyote. He proceeded to run around his Laurel Canyon neighborhood naked, broke into someone's house by punching through a window, which made his arm bleed everywhere, then accosted two women. He was arrested and the women sued him.
  • On October 25, 1944, a small task force of American destroyers, destroyer escorts, and escort carriers officially designated "Taffy-3" encountered a fleet of Japanese battleships and cruisers near the Leyte invasion beachhead in the Philippines. Commander Ernest E. Evans of the destroyer USS Johnston (DD-557) took his small ship straight at the enemy, guns blazing, without waiting for orders. A Japanese shell soon wrecked Johnston's bridge, blowing off all of Evans's clothes, including skivvies. Unfazed by the blast or the shrapnel wounds it gave him, and clad in nothing but his dog tags and mustache, Evans continued to drive and fight his ship bare-ass naked throughout the engagement, and stayed topside, in the open, in full view of everyone due to the bridge being knocked out. Johnston inflicted so much damage on the enemy that when she finally sank, a Japanese destroyer was ordered to shell her at point-blank range just to make sure. Captain Evans was last seen accounting for each of his surviving crew as they abandoned ship, and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
  • Blackbeard and his men are said to have done this—a rowboat full of naked pirates went up to a ship and boarded.
  • Roald Dahl, while working for Shell Oil in Africa, once ended up running outside stark naked and armed with a golf club when he saw a snake on the drive about to attack a gardener. Luckily the gardener had things handled but thanked Roald for warning him.


 
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Put Some Clothes On

Both Chuck and Sarah ask Sofia to cover herself when the villainess confronts them in the nude.

How well does it match the trope?

4.98 (56 votes)

Example of:

Main / PleasePutSomeClothesOn

Media sources:

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