"While expositing the villain's backstory via flashback, I mention that one time I went through my childhood friend's underwear drawer."
"If you're a little sick, you'll find panties and lipstick!"
One of the key elements of the Kleptomaniac Hero is that he will search though people's drawers. Some games will lampshade what you are doing by rewarding you with... well, people's drawers.
Usually this is not fully intentional: you examinine a chest or cabinet and don't realize you're picking up undergarments until they are already in your hands. If they belong to an attractive character you might like to see in (or out of) their undies, the game has turned you into an Accidental Pervert for a bit of comedy or Fanservice. But beware this can be Subverted and go badly: you could find yourself holding an unattractive character's Uncool Undies. Or worse: a disgusting slob's unclean undies. That's what you get for rummaging through others' stuff, you creep!
Related to Comedic Underwear Exposure, as here the garments are exposed while not worn. Contrast Panty Thief, who is deliberately looking for underwear.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Kazuma from KonoSuba, at least the first time he does it. His Steal skill is supposed to steal a random item from the target based on his Luck stat. However, when he tries it out for the first time on the girl who taught him the skill (with her consent), he ends up unintentionally stealing the panties she was wearing. As it turns out, his extremely high Luck stat means that when he targets women, he steals their panties almost every time. He (and everyone who knows him) soon comes to expect this result, and he starts doing it intentionally.
Fan Works
- You Awaken in Razor Hill: Tednugent loots around one of the houses and finds "Exciting Undergarments". He proceeds to wear them on his head for most of the story.
Literature
Video Games
- In Cave Story, you can search though Curly's room and find her panties. They're hidden at the end of a totally darkened passageway which you'll most likely be unable to find without checking the map or knowing where it is in advance, so this is for only the most dedicated of kleptomaniacs. In the original, they're just an Easter Egg, but in Cave Story+, they unlock Curly Story.
- In The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, as part of the trading subquest, you have to give a mermaid her bikini top back, which she has lost (prior to returning her top, she doesn't jump up onto the rock that she's supposed to sit on and diving near her causes her to scream and swim away. Think about that). In the North American Game Boy versions, both the North American and European DX versions of the game, and all versions of the Nintendo Switch remake, this bikini top becomes a Necklace; she still flees when you dive near her, though. In most European versions of the original Game Boy release, it remains a bikini top in the Game Boy version.
- In Mogeko Castle, Yonaka can take an infinite amount of Moge-ko's panties by searching through her drawers.
- Solatorobo: Red the Hunter has the titular hero do this twice during two different side-quests when trying to find missing items to fulfil a job condition. Both time does Red's sister Chocolat call him out on this.
- Bahamut Lagoon has the protagonist, Byuu, finding quite a number of "drawer things" - things from a drawer in the wink and nudge sense.
- You can also find "Princess' ???", usually in the suspicious location of Yoyo's bed. However, you can also find Gunso's ??? by talking to him at pretty much any time...
- In Baten Kaitos, you can search a locker in the School of Magic and find girl's clothes. The game scolds you for messing with it.
- Happens briefly in Blue Dragon looking through Kluke's house.
- In Breath of Fire II, just before the Inevitable Tournament, you can search the room of your (soon to be party member, after a boss fight with her at least) opponent Katt. If you try and open the treasure chest in there she'll burst in and chew you out for wanting to "rummage through a girl's things".
- In Cobra Mission, you can collect articles of lingerie and trade it to someone for sexy pictures.
- The Dragon Quest series:
- In Dragon Quest III it's fairly common to find underwear, trousers, kilts, and other sorts of clothing when searching dressers.
- In Dragon Quest IV and Dragon Quest V, a pair of boxer shorts is equippable underwear. Taloon gets a bit flustered when asked to appraise them.
- In Dragon Quest VIII, Jessica can equip the underwear you find in some drawers. Including the garter in Princess Medea's room.
- In Dragon Quest IX, the hero/heroine can find the "Dangerous Top" a girl lost in a bathhouse (she lets him keep it if he/she brings it back anyway) and buy the "Dangerous Midriff" in a secret shop. Any female character can wear them, though they only give 1 Defense each.
- In Cloud's flashback in Final Fantasy VII you find "orthopedic underwear"
◊ in Tifa's bedroom, which he puts in his pocket. Since Cloud is actually telling the story to everyone, Tifa is not amused by this tidbit.
- The item's name seems to hint it's a bra, yet its graphic in Final Fantasy VII International depicts it as knickers. The reason for this is that said item was known as "slightly stretched panties" in the original Japanese version. The name change seems to be an attempt at humor by the translators.
- They made a triumphant return in Dissidia 012 Duodecim, where their name was retranslated as 'Stretch Boxers'. Hilariously, they're one of the crafting items for Tifa's ultimate weapon.
- An unused pair of panties (and a few conversations relating to it) can still be found on the game's data- apparently belonging to adult Tifa, they're described as bearing "a childlike pattern."
- Looking through things in Fortune Summoners can net you underwear, both Male and Female. You CAN wear the female version undergarments, but why would you want to when you've probably got much better armor on already?
- In Golden Sun, checking the closet in the room of Lord McCoy's wife will result in "Isaac peeked into the wardrobe... There's a silk negligee... Isaac! Put that back!"
- Followed in The Lost Age by: "Felix peeked into the wardrobe... What in-!!! What's with all the wardrobes? Where are the baths?"
- In Grandia, Justin and Sue come upon Feena's cabin and go inside. While there Sue admires her clothes hanging up and Justin scolds her and takes them away from her only to discover just what it is he's holding and then Feena comes in seeing him holding it.
- Live A Live:
- The near-future chapter of features a Chain of Deals that, if kept at for a ridiculously long time, will result in obtaining Taeko's Panties. After Taeko finds out that you've been paying someone to steal her clothing, you'll also receive Taeko's Punch. You can also receive Watanabe's Boxers and the Director's Boxers. It's worth mentioning that have to to do this order to progress the story.
- In Sundown's chapter, you can swipe Annie's Nightie if you send her off to set a trap (otherwise she busts into the room and freaks out).
- The Lunar series can hardly pass on the opportunity to discuss the contents of people's underwear drawers. Additionally, a few NPCs possess pictures of the heroines in states of undress, which they are horrified/enraged to find out about and snatch away...before handing them to the main character for safekeeping.
- You can dig a bromide of Jessica out of Kyle's bed in Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (the window to do this is very tight). Jessica is not thrilled.
- In Mega Man Battle Network, examining Mayl's closet in every game (except 6, where you can't go into her house) will have Lan note he shouldn't, and that even close personal friends have limits.
- In the first Battle Network, you can walk right up to her as she's changing, right before one of the boss fights, sometime between IceMan.EXE and MagicMan.EXE. It fits into the trope because you can't tell until you actually talk to her.
- Inverted in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Jolene has a trouble board issue that she needs handled with discretion. She's hired someone in Rogueport who's been known to make things... disappear, and it's your job to pick up everything in a supply closet that needs to... disappear, and haul it to him, without telling anyone else about it. Turns out what she needs eliminated are about 20 pairs of dirty wrestling battle trunks.
- In Phantasy Star IV, Chaz will actually refuse to check the drawers in other houses. The only exceptions are Alys's, which he is too scared to do, and his own, which of course only contains underwear.
- In Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, Mario can case Princess Toadstool's room to find her "???" - and her nanny will immediately run up and swap it for an item. If you wait until she's a party member, you'll be treated to a freak-out on her part. The Japanese release calls it her "XXX", but the XXX here stands for a blank, giving the same meaning. (See also: ×××HOLiC.)
- Tales of Phantasia: Inverted, you can find a magazine (equipment of Klath, who equips books) in one of the old men's drawers, and the magazine's description basically tells you it's a dirty magazine.
- Possibly lampshaded and subverted in Tales of Vesperia. Upon first meeting Rita, Yuri (still convinced she's the blastia thief) can search her drawers. Estelle will interrupt and say it's not proper for a man to search a woman's belongings before doing it herself, at which point she emits Visible Silence, on top of the music stopping and everything going dark to indicate that what she found was shocking. You never do actually find out what it was, but considering how flustered Rita gets, she's not proud of it.
- You can find female underwear in Tales of the Drunken Paladin: Big Trouble in Little China, Maine. It can be equipped as a piece of armour, and it protects its user from "sleep" special condition by "making wearer strangely aware". Granted, this game is a parody.
- Brave Fencer Musashi has unappraised items found in chests in various parts of the world. When appraised at the pawn shop, they range from pieces of legendary armor, to highly valuable Shop Fodder, to this trope.
Platform Games
- In Solatorobo, if you search Vanille's bed, Red will find some underwear and his sister will scold him for staring.
Sports Games
- In Mario Golf: Advance Tour, if you are male and look in your female partner's closet, it will note that her (default:Ella) clothes are inside and she will get mad at you.
- Bizarrely, if you play as the female character, looking in your own closet produces the exact same "Hey, these are (name)'s clothes!" response (sans angry reaction), making her sound like a Third-Person Person.
- In Jet Force Gemini, an NPC on Tawfret asks you to retrieve his stolen underwear (which Mizar's troops threw up a tree). Once returned, he'll give you the necessary item needed to continue the game.
- In Shining Force II, Bowie can search the princess's closet and find "A small piece of silk" that results in the text "Bowie is flustered".
- In Divinity: Original Sin II you can look through people's closets and find (and take) pairs of panties that haven't been washed in quite some time.
Visual Novels
- In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney - you will find two pairs of panties, and they're vital evidence! Though only one of them has ever been worn. The other is a prop for a magic act. Naturally, everyone will be either poking fun at Apollo or questioning why he is carrying panties belonging to a teenage girl and a middle-aged woman.
- Danganronpa lampshades the trope by having the characters reward the main character of each instalment with their underwear once their relationship reaches a certain point.
- In Umineko: When They Cry fangame "Witches and Woodlands" Jessica's thief character ends up pickpocketing Satan's panties. The panties worn by Satan have the highest stats in the game
- Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, and the Throne of Bhaal expansion each have a different unique set of underwear that can be found or stolen. If you collected all three and kept them with you across all three games, there was an Easter Egg where an NPC in the last town you visit could turn them into a suit of Power Armor.
- Divinity: Original Sin II: When looking through things like closets and trunks in people's homes, panties are among the random low-value loot that can pop up. Curiously enough, they work as an ingredient in Item Crafting to create a Scroll of Favourable Wind.
Flavor Text: It smells like this particular pair missed more than one laundry day...
- The "Leliana's Song" DLC for Dragon Age: Origins includes an NPC whose kinky, fetishy underwear you can loot from his unconscious body. You can either plant the naughty undies on another unconscious NPC (which is part of completing a quest) or nail them to a bulletin board outside a church (which doesn't get you any game benefit, but is funnier). Inquisition has a line of dialogue that reveals she intends to do the same with Josephine's underwear. From the mouth of the bird herself:
It's not a real party unless someone's undergarments are pinned to a chantry board.
- The Elder Scrolls:
- Througout the series, there is nothing stopping you from rifling through the containers in people's bedrooms, often containing clothing items to steal. Another common "bedroom" item stashed about frequently are Potions of Restore Endurance for, uh, recovery after certain bedroom activities.
- In Morrowind, a Thieves' Guild quest tasks you with breaking into the daughter of a Redoran noble and rifling through her drawers to find the pornographic "Boethiah's Pillow Book" to use as blackmail. You can also find a few vials of the illegal drug Skooma.
- In Skyrim, horker tusks (a roughly foot-long, phallic shaped item) can be found in the bedrooms of a few female NPCs, sometimes with the crafting item "leather strips" (do the math). The Bunkhouse in Riften (whose owner is strongly implied to be a prostitute) is one such location.
- A side quest in Fable III involves finding a pair of Reaver's underwear for his biggest fan. The other nightstands in the mansion contain condoms and... Summon Creature Potions.
- Fallout 3 does this frequently. Search any given wardrobe in the Capital Wasteland and you're apt to find lots of pre-war clothing, including the aptly named Sexy Sleepwear and its quest-related counterpart, Naughty Nightwear.
- You can catch Kasumi Goto snooping through your drawer (and gleefully commenting on the underwear inside) during the Citadel DLC for Mass Effect 3.
- Pretty much par for the course in South Park: The Stick of Truth...especially with Cartman's Mom's room. There's even a sidequest where you collect underpants for the Underpants Gnomes.
- You can search Toriel's clothes drawers at the start of Undertale, prompting the message "Scandalous! It's Toriel's sock drawer," parodying this trope. Sans's dirty sock pile in his room gets a similar reaction.
Webcomics
- It's been mentioned a few times in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! that it's impossible to find anything hidden in Bob's seemingly bottomless sock drawer. He once hid a world-destroying bomb in there for safekeeping.
Web Video
- A scene in Code MENT shows Lelouch and CC going through Shirley's room. CC pulls out a pair of Shirley's underwear and asks, "Think these would fit me?" Lelouch finds a vaibrator, much to his horror.
"Call my therapist and tell him he's a rich man."
- In the Play-by-Post game A Shock to the System, Robert finds a flash drive in an ammo cache. It turns out to be someone's Porn Stash.
Hey! What are you doing? Put those back!
