Magic Skirt

Apparently, modesty is one of Hippolyta's powers, too.

"Another picture people thought was sexy... I wanted to draw a pose that showed off her shoes, so it turned out like this. Her skirt is kept in place by magic."

— Ume Aoki, on a picture of Yuno◊ from Hidamari Sketch

The odd local laws of physics which apply to a (super)heroine's short skirt which cause it to always cover everything regardless of what ridiculous things she may be doing, like falling legs first or hanging upside down. Note that the skirt always conceals the girl's modesty from the audience's point of view (onscreen characters may be clearly in position to get an eyeful) and thus acts as a form of censorship. In Japan it is known as an "iron skirt" due to its uncompromising and impenetrable defense.

This trope is (somewhat) justified when the skirt is quite close-fitting and probably wouldn't fly up over the heroine's hips. On the other hand, when our Action Girl is wearing a pleated skirt which can flap as it pleases, only divine intervention is keeping it in place – Supergirl, we're looking at you.

In some cases when an up-skirt angle can't be avoided, an additional tactic is to make the area under the skirt shadowed and impossibly dark, as if there were a miniature black hole within.

Can coincide with Panty Shot if another character is watching from a different position, albeit without the usual Fanservice.

This trope is averted by simply giving the character something extra to wear under said impossibly short flappy skirt — usually something akin to cycling shorts, as worn by Skuld, Setsuna, Cure Black, Hinagiku, the post-Matt-Idelson Supergirl, and pretty much every cheerleader at all levels in real life (even squads that do opt out of cycle shorts use underwear no more revealing than swimwear would be).

And one last way to at least try to explain this is if said heroine is actually falling headfirst at the time; then it can be believed that wind resistance plus inertia keeps the skirt pointing back where the character came from.

It's the thing you must wear for convenience sake if you are an Action Girl, otherwise you're going to have to tear the hem off every dress you wear if you want to be able to move.

For clothing that mysteriously maintains dignity in the face of Transformation Sequence-based Clothing Damage rather than Waif-Fu, see Magic Pants. For a skirt that grants Not Quite Flight, see Parachute Petticoat. This frequently occurs when Power Floats, though that trope provides its own easy justification.

Compare Impossibly-Low Neckline. Contrast Panty Shot and Skirts and Ladders.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku uses this in the TV series (obviously caused by the time slot), but not in the OVA series.
• The two high-kick-to-the-face happy female leads of Angel Densetsu manage not to flash the reader every other panel without any kind of Magic Skirt. It's all done by skillful camera angles. It's lampshaded a couple of times when someone flashes some other character.
• In Arachnid, Dinoponera is consistently portrayed like this as the Magical Girl Warrior pastiche she is, but then her brief appearance in Caterpillar which is a redraw of her debut chapters drops the rule. By Blattodea Dinopo is outright Naked on Arrival and following her rape from the ant-themed zombies she loses her panties and starts getting upskirt shots in scenes where she's overcoming the infection and trying to be heroic for once.
• In Aria the Scarlet Ammo, even as Aria is dangling upside down from a parachute while pulling guns out of garters that are well below the hem of her skirt, it stays up no matter what.
• Krista on Attack on Titan, when she's been held upside-down from her ankle by Reiner to prevent her from falling from the tower of Castle Utgard.
• The DVD box art for B Gata H Kei has Yamada in a pose just like the Trope Namer's. Her skirt is much shorter than Yuno's, yet it still manages to defy gravity just enough to cover everything.
• Parodied in Bakemonogatari, specifically Nisemonogatari. The series is usually not shy with the Fanservice, but one scene has Karen doing a handstand in a short skirt. The skirt stays up in apparent defiance of gravity, then slowly begins falling, stopping just short of revealing anything, then Karen switches to a one-handed handstand so she can hold it up.
• Ben-To's Ice Witch and the other female combatants. Lots of thigh focus though.
• Averted in Berserk as when most skirt wearing female characters are hoisted into the air or fall over, their bloomers are on full display.
  • Played straighter with Casca in the Conviction Arc as she’s only wearing a short nightie but somehow manages to avoid flashing her crotch even when jumping down a cliff.
• Hinoki of Betterman, despite sporting a pleated skirt that's an inch away from being reclassified as a belt.
• Bleach: This is almost always played straight for any male or female characters that either wear short skirts or short kosodes. The one exception occurs during Renji's flashback to how he first met Rukia, where we clearly see the high-kicking Rukia is Going Commando and the adult she's tripped up is blatantly wearing fundoshi.
• Saya, at the end of the third opening of Blood+. And again in Blood-C, during the various Monster of the Week fights.
• Cardcaptor Sakura: Sakura; despite short pleated skirts of both the schoolgirl and cheerleader variety and dozens of fanciful battle costumes, Sakura remains covered.
• Kyou and Tomoyo in CLANNAD as well, which is quite surprising, considering all the high kicks they do. (Though they aren't shown to the viewer, Kyou's flying high-kick does end up giving Sunohara a fleeting glimpse at one point.)
• A variation in Cowboy Bebop with Ed's magic shirt. At one point, Ed is hanging upside-down with her arms over her head, and her shirt (which, it should be added, is quite baggy to begin with) doesn't go down much further past her navel.
• In most versions of Cutey Honey, Honey's miniskirt allows for panty shots aplenty, but the shoujo Cutie Honey Flash put on a spell on her skirt.
• With all the jumping, flying, etc., that Lenalee in D.Gray-Man does, and with how goddamn short the skirt is, it's amazing how little — if any — panty shots there are of her. There's no wonder as to why Komui's so protective. It seems like there are little to no panty shots of her in-universe as well. Lavi, Allen and Kanda are only shown finding out that she's usually wearing shorts underneath her skirt when they get new uniforms and she lets them see, despite fighting alongside her numerous times. And even though they were with her in Japan after her second uniform, including the skirt, was destroyed and she was wearing shorts....
• Chiko from The Daughter of Twenty Faces. Admittedly, her skirt is oftentimes more like a dress in length, but still, considering all the insane acrobatic stunts she does...
• The lead girls from Den-noh Coil never get any panty shots, despite all all the jumping, crouching and climbing they do while wearing short skirts. Kyoko gets one briefly, but even that one is only to show that she's just a little kid.
• Rahzel from Dazzle frequently wears miniskirts, and fights in them, but we never get so much as a glimpse of anything underneath. Lampshaded in one Fourth-Wall Mail Slot segment.
• Digimon Tamers: Juri's skirt flaps around freely when standing but is magnetically attracted to her knees when she sits or kneels (and she spends a long time crouching on the ground towards the end of the series). The album art for the Drama CD "Message in the Packet" uses the darkness variant on Shaochung's reflection in a puddle.
• The most impressive display of magic in Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker is the enchantment Cassandra uses to keep from flashing the audience while she jumps around killing ogres and dragons in a battle skirt.
• Merry Nightmare of Dream Eater Merry has a skirt like this. The manga actually manages to reveal what kind of panties Merry wears without ever giving away a panty shot — in one scene, a villain slides across the floor and winds up between her feet, and there are stripes reflected in his eyes when he looks straight up.
• Eureka Seven:
  • Eureka's dress, as well as Talho's skirt. Though Talho later gets an Important Haircut and corresponding clothing change that does away with her old Stripperiffic outfit.
  • Although some pieces of art show that Eureka wears a pair of short shorts underneath her skirt. Additionally, the dress appears to be some sort of pleather.
  • Interestingly enough, this trope is mostly averted by Anemone from the same series, although she does wear shorts underneath.
• Fairy Tail:
  • Lucy Heartfilia has this same problem despite the fact that almost all her outfits include a short skirt. Then, as of the second half of the Edolas arc, this is averted.
  • This happens with Erza Scarlet in the anime, which is more understandable.
  • Ironically, Fairy Tail generally keeps playing this trope straight despite having lots of panty shots in later arcs. Instead, the girls are just drawn from an angle that reveals their panties, but when they fight, jump or it's blowing, the skirt stays down.
• At the end of Fractale's credits sequence, Nessa falls off a rock, landing upside-down. Her dress hovers inexplicably around her knees until the scene ends.
• In Fruits Basket, Tohru wears a very short skirt as her part of her school uniform (apparently one can decide on the length, due to the fact that Uo and Hana's skirts are longer). Even though it would barely cover her underwear in Real Life, nothing is ever seen, even if she falls down. The artist once mentioned that Tohru wears shorts under her skirt.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Winry Rockbell often wears a relatively short skirt. Many opportunities would exist in which a character gets a clear view up her skirt, however, nothing suggestive is ever seen by either the characters or the audience.
• Futakoi Alternative: during the whole first episode, which uses a ridiculous amount of Stuff Blowing Up and other activities involving Action Girl, there is even no panty shot during the Super Window Jump.
• Shinosuka from Gad Guard. Especially evident since the camera is frequently behind her while she's flying through the sky on the back of her Humongous Mecha and it's still stuck to her legs.
• Yomi and Kagura in Ga-Rei -Zero-.
• Utilized in spades in Girls und Panzer, as the creator explicitly told the animators "no pantyshots!"
• There were some comments about Yuki Nagato's fight against Ryoko Asakura in Haruhi Suzumiya about how her acrobatics never actually led to any panty-flashes. Likewise, Haruhi's dropkick of the Computer Club President also fits this trope. Averted in that both characters have powers that cover this.
• As opposed to several of the girls of Hayate the Combat Butler, stating that they wear bicycle shorts to avert this (and once in the background Izumi was facing away from the audience during a kick and the guys who ended up seeing lampshading that they saw), Nagi is given a literal Magic Skirt that's somehow attached to her kicking leg to avert the panty shot while she's facing the audience in a promotional picture.
• Seras Victoria from Hellsing wore a tiny miniskirt, and yet only had one panty shot in the entire series (the final chapter) despite numerous occasions of her kicking and crouching.
• Despite what you might think from the gratuitous fanservice of the official artwork, the girls of Higurashi: When They Cry wear magic skirts and are definitely not fanservicey. (Unless you're into that kind of thing.)
• The Idolmaster: Despite all the dance routines, there's not a single panty shot during the whole show. Maybe justified since the stage outfits are, well, stage outfits and therefore made to be this way. The only time this is almost averted is with Azusa in episode 15 when she's wearing the same clothes as the workers from the daycare center they're filming at. The video game isn't nearly as modest though, especially since you can adjust the camera angle. Still, despite how short some of the skirts are, panty shots in the iDOLM@STER games are very rare unless you purposely adjust settings to see them.
• Inuyasha: Intentionally invoked by the author herself, who point-blank told the animators to never reveal Kagome's underwear no matter how rough the action became. This author-originated taboo extended to other characters as well (both male and female). As a result, Kohaku's very short kosode never reveals anything and neither does Koga's very short fur skirt. An [adult swim] bump played with this at one point where a viewer asked how this was so. They responded with "TV-14, behold its awesome power!"
• Agiri from Kill Me Baby has this when she uses ninpo to stand from the ceiling. It's even lampshaded.
• Aqua from KonoSuba pushes this trope to its absolute limits. Her skirt is so short that there's a serious debate among the fans about whether she's wearing any underwear, yet it still always manages to cover just enough to avoid giving viewers a conclusive answer.
• Miwa in Kotetsu Jeeg has always a very short skirt (especially her pilot uniform), but never give a panty shot.
• Little Witch Academia heavily enforces this trope, with none of the characters' (including Akko and Amanda, despite wearing the shortest dresses amongst the main cast) dresses being affected at all by the flying and the like. Their panties are also never shown at all and in shots where we do see what's beneath their dresses, it's shown to be a blank void.
• The entire cast of Lucky Star — especially during the OP animation. Except for the high kick done in the cheerleading routine which gives us a split second shot of everyone's panties.
• With all the powerful magic spells used in Magic Knight Rayearth one has to wonder how Hikaru, Umi and Fuu don't get any panty shots at all.
• Chen Agi of Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack wears a mini skirt as part of her military uniform. Not so bad, until you see the scenes where she's bouncing around IN SPACE and she doesn't flash any of the males in the process!
• While Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun has its share of underwear related jokes (for both the boys and girls), the audience is never exposed to any panty shots of the girls. The most blatant example of this is when Seo walks down the hallway in a handstand and her skirt rigidly defies gravity. The magic skirt still even applies to Kashima despite the fact her character profile shows she wears Modesty Shorts (and Hori casually lifts her skirt up to confirm this in Chapter 65).
• Shiranui's introductory episode in My Bride is a Mermaid features a magic skirt as Shiranui meets Saru. He bows down to kiss her feet and swear fealty to her, but she takes it the wrong way and starts kicking his face. The camera drops to beside Saru's face and the front of Shiranui's skirt magically jumps in between her legs.
• The opening sequence for the My Mental Choices Are Completely Interfering with My School Romantic Comedy anime has multiple female characters in short skirts doing handstands, angled so the camera would receive an upskirt look. Not only do their skirts not flip up once upside down, they perfectly mask their panties mid-flip.
• In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Fate's girls get Magic Skirts after losing their panties to Jack Rakan. It's worth noting that besides this one incident, the manga typically averts this as much as it possibly can. Regardless of whether the girl in question has panties on or not.
• Lampshaded in one episode of Nerima Daikon Brothers: with Mako planted headfirst in the dirt by Yukika, Hideki wonders if her skirt will succumb to gravity, giving him a peek at her panties. Ichiro tells him not to get his hopes up about what the animators will show.
• Haruka from Noein often wears a very short skirt, but the viewer never even catches a glimpse of what is underneath, even though she is often presented in positions when it would be near-impossible not to show anything, like running, crouching, climbing, sleeping or being carried.
• The characters on Noir are always covered by their skirts, even when upside down. Apparently, the animators learned the lesson and gave Madlax and Nadie hotpants. And Ellis, who wears a loose tunic, is a telekinesis-capable witch, to boot. Evidence indicates that she doesn't wear anything under it, so the Magic Skirt is an absolute necessity.
• The Noozles has an aversion yet nothing is seen. "The Mysterious Message" has Sandy getting caught in a rope trap by one foot, but the scene of her upside down was of head and shoulders only, indicating her skirt did flip over. Since it was a children's show, they couldn't show her panties.
• One Piece:
  • This happens with Nami in the manga and anime. Averted in One Piece: Pirate Warriors however as the mini-skirt Nami wears pre-Time Skip will do nothing to hide her panties during the attacks and cartwheels she does.
  • A shirt-based variant occurs when a "Freaky Friday" Flip puts Smoker in Tashigi's body. He proceeds to wear her shirt completely unbuttoned with no bra, but even while charging into combat with Tashigi's coat flapping in the wind the shirt never shifts.
  • There’s several times Vinsmoke Reiju is either kicking high or bending over◊, but Reiju’s skirt always somehow covers her crotch and butt.
• In PandoraHearts, Alice's skirt is very short, and with the amount she likes kicking people you'd think that something would show. But, surprisingly, nothing does. This is seemingly averted with Echo, until a DVD cover revealed that she actually wears incredibly short shorts underneath her dress.
• Most of the girls in Petite Princess Yucie wear magic skirts — which is even more amazing if you consider their shape.
• Phantom Thief Jeanne wears one of these. Despite being a Kaitou who does a lot of impressive acrobatics, we never catch a glimpse of her panties. Maron, too, in the Transformation Sequence that involves her jumping from a high place and transforming in mid-air. Apparently the skirt is turned off when Chiaki is around, though, as their very first meeting involves her falling on the floor and him commenting on the "great view". The skirt is mostly active only when she is moving. If she's sitting holding her knees, then the magic magically disappears.
  • Subverted in her second transformation, where she now wears Modesty Shorts, so the magic of her skirt disappeared again.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Hikari/Dawn has a short skirt, but she remains covered throughout the Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl, except for one occasion - "Steamboat Willies!"
  • It happens with Team Rocket's Jessie as well. Despite all the jumping, posing, and being blown into the sky, her skirt manages to stay in place. Slightly justified, though, as it is a short pencil skirt, designed to stay in place.
• Pretty Cure
  • In Futari wa Pretty Cure, there's not only the Cure Black shorts-under-skirt example above, but her partner Cure White has a skirt that only ever flies up either to the side or in the direction you're not looking. This is even seen in her civilian form in the second opening, where her skirt actually seems to lengthen for this purpose.
  • Cure Lemonade introduced the idea of the Cures' skirts having thick, frilly petticoats underneath, which conveniently avoids the issue and allows the animators more freedom. Her teammates and immediate predecessors follow the Cure Black technique.
  • HeartCatch Pretty Cure! and Doki Doki Pretty Cure are very odd in this trope as they go to great lengths to invoke this trope despite supplementary materials making it clear that, yes, they wear shorts-under-skirt. All the other seasons either go with modest petticoats or shorts depending on the character, and don't generally make an effort to hide upskirts as a result.
• All the characters in the Pretty Sammy series. It looks sort of silly at times, such as when Sammy gets slam dunked into a basketball hoop rear first and her skirt just happens to maintain itself.
• Reiri in the Princess Resurrection anime sure seems like a panty shot waiting to happen, but in practice, her skirt does an excellent job of being in the right place at the right time. Hime's skirt has an easier job since she doesn't fly around — and let's face it, no one would dare to peek anyway.
• Princess Tutu has a magic... something-to-cover-the-boobs... thing. Seriously, the only possible way for it to stay up is by magic. Princess Kraehe wears a backless tutu with no sleeves and a Navel-Deep Neckline. Since when does two strips of cloth attached to a ring of feathers constitute an outfit?
  • This sort of thing is quite common on ballet / dance outfits in reality, by having the "skin" parts be actually skin-coloured fabric (the outfit is actually a completely-covering suit). As for outfits in magical fairy-tale land... eh, aDrosselmeyer did it.
• Problem Children are Coming from Another World, aren't they? has an in-universe example courtesy of Shiroyasha the demond-lord. She literally made Black Rabbit's dress impossible to see up, but possible to get tantilizingly close. She explains to Izayoi that if he actually saw it would be vulgar satisfaction but by striving to see he experiences "art".
• The three title ten-year-olds in Psychic Squad have this. Sixteen-year-old Naomi doesn't.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • It would seem that part of Mami's magic is keeping her skirt up when hung upside down.
  • Madoka herself is shown from below more than once. Since she is wearing ten thousand petticoats, all we see are legs poking out of a sea of ruffles.
  • Homura's pleated mini-skirt also possesses magical properties, as it covers her up completely... even when falling feet-first from a skyscraper in the final episode.
• Miki and Megumi from Ramen Fighter Miki never once flash their panties, despite all the high-level martial arts moves they pull off. Megumi has the excuse that she's usually wearing long dresses, but Miki's skirt is fairly short.
• Shampoo's Chinese minidress in Ranma ½. Nevermind that it's scandalously skin-tight, it's also unbelievably short. This is even spoofed in her introductory arc, when she hangs upside-down from a tree and she has to tuck the hem of her dress between her thighs. Otherwise, the manga and anime aren't really shy about this. Kodachi's first appearance involves a backflip and an obvious panty shot, despite her wearing a long skirt.
• Chrome Dokuro of Reborn! (2004) must have some of these as she never has a panty shot no matter what the skirt's length is, and the one time we DO get to see her bottom she's not even wearing any panties, much less a skirt.
• In Record of Lodoss War, Deedlit would sometimes fly around with a lot of dramatic wind. The wind would blow her hair and cape around, but not her skirt.
• Ogata Rin of RideBack has this. She has a long dress, but the stunts she pulls should've flashed many people already. However, in the first episode of the anime, as she rides Fuego for the first time, a man she passes yells, "I can see your panties!" Presumably she flashes lots of people, just not the viewers. There's actually some flashing in the last episode.
• Happens to Moka (only Moka) of Rosario + Vampire in the manga version only. Presumably because Inner Moka is a much more "serious" character than the other girls, and thus has to maintain her dignity no matter how high she kicks while wearing a skirt. Inverted in the anime, when Moka has many panty shots just walking in her regular school uniform.
• Sailor Moon:
  • The manga version, to the point it's just ridiculous. Subverted in Code Name Sailor V, when the resident Game Otaku pulls Minako's skirt just to see her panties (or if she's a girl). Of course, taking in consideration that Sailor Moon and Sailor V were serialized in Nakayoshi (a really strict shoujo manga magazine), Naoko had to take such precautions to avoid panty shots. What's even more fun is that the souls of the senshi also wear skirts. Just skirts.
  • The first anime threw out the magic skirts in favor of normal ones, probably because the fight scenes would be nigh-impossible to animate otherwise. Of course, the girls are wearing Leotards of Power when transformed, so it makes sense that they wouldn't mind as much.
  • Sailor Moon Crystal goes back to the manga version, since it is Truer to the Text.
• Saki: Even though the characters wear these short skirts and the series uses angles that should normally give a panty shot, no panty shots have ever been shown.
• In the anime of Sands of Destruction, both Morte and Rhi'a wear short skirts and spend plenty of time jumping and fighting, but their underwear is never seen. In the first episode, Morte even crouches facing towards the camera, but under her skirt is just pitch black. However, when sitting on the ground, she's occasionally shown holding it down between her legs, and a DVD Omake notes that a particular fight scene wasn't used in the show because she accidentally flashed her panties at the camera. Episode seven even deals with her skirt accidentally ripping unbeknownst to her, and yet nothing is ever shown. The Hotter and Sexier manga is fond of averting the trope, however, using convenient camera angles to show the edge of her butt.
• Parodied in the "toxin purging" episode of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei — the theme of the episode was the girls losing the "toxic" parts of their personality that made them THEM after a detoxifying soak in a hot springs... so when chronic panty shot character Kaere trips and her bath-towel comes off, she is shown wearing a full-body wetsuit that would, of course, been impossible to hide under that towel. Fujiyoshi even outright states "we were expecting fanservice for the viewers, but they didn't even use a swimsuit!"
• In Sgt. Frog, despite getting attacked and spun around at least once an episode, Natsumi's skirt manages to conceal the goodies. That vacuum cleaner in the first episode tried its best, though. She also holds her skirt up after getting trapped Keroro's snare, causing her to hang upside down by one foot. Not in the manga however. Panty shots (and occasional nudity) abound. The reason for the anime playing this straight while the manga subverts this is because the anime is more kid-friendly.
• Kuniko Hojo from Shangri-La. Her short skirt never flashes anything (at least on camera), despite her Action Girl acrobatic moves. It's widely confirmed she wears polka-dots, though. Subverted for a single animation frame in the final episode.
• Shelter: Rin's outfits mainly consist of dresses and skirts, and despite all of her flips and tumbles, her modesty is never compromised.
• Hinamori Amu's "Amulet Heart" form from Shugo Chara! features a cheerleading skirt, which is usually a magic skirt... except for the third opening, where Heart gets panty-shotted several times in 10 seconds (you should never wear a skirt while using flying roller-skates). Her other two usual transformations don't fall under this. Some of the Shugo Charas themselves seem to wear Magic Skirts as well, especially Ran, who is the source of Amu's "Amulet Heart" transformation. Averted in the manga.
• Sonic X: Cosmo's skirt always covers her nethers no matter what position she happens to be in. Cream and Amy don't get the same treatment. In some episodes, they even don't wear any panties.
• Soul Eater: In the anime version, Maka's skirt might as well be glued on. No amount of tumbling or backflipping will budge it. In an early episode however, Maka ended up dangling by one foot, and she had to hold her skirt with her hands. In the 3rd ending, nearly all the angles and camera views are prime territory for a panty shot of Maka's; however, you never see anything.
• Cute Ghost Girl Dee Ensy Stratmitos from Sunday Without God wears a magic skirt; after all, no flying ghost should leave home without one.
• Ran and Midori from Telepathy Shoujo Ran have these, and they tend to wear rather short skirts throughout the series.
• Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen: Despite the short length of Elisabeth's Little Black Dress, she only manages a single panty shot in the entire manga adaptation, when she kicks open a door at the the top of a staircase. This despite frequent instances of Dramatic Wind when she casts spells.
• Umineko: When They Cry Jessica's skirt is very short, but good luck finding pantyshots. And let's not talk about Ange, whose skirt is even shorter and who is often pulling off various stunts, most apparent in the manga. Beatrice also wears one in human form, and she takes less than elegant poses with it.
• Animators for The Vision of Escaflowne were specifically instructed not to let Hitomi's constant leaping or running show her unmentionables. This is quite a feat, as the girl is a top track runner and long jumper and enjoys displaying these skills often. The fact that she wears shorts under her skirt never gets demonstrated.
• The girls from Windy Tales manage to never flash their panties even once, despite the shortness of their school uniform's skirts and all the wind that blows around them, often caused by themselves. Sure, their fairly unique character designs might have something to do with it, but still...
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Asuka (Alexis) in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX (as well as all the other female students) wears a ridiculously short blue skirt for a uniform. It's more tight-fitting than most anime skirts, but this trope certainly applies, as it never seems to move in the slightest, no matter what she does.
  • Just about every girl in Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL has one. Heartland Academia's school uniform's skirts are the shortest skirts of the entire franchise. Their length is even discussed in one episode. But no panty shots whatsoever.

Arts

• The Apotheosis of Washington:
  • Mercury is almost entirely nude and entirely unconcerned. Thankfully for any children who visit the capital, some flowing robes cover his groin, but those godly gonads are somehow the only thing left to the imagination.
  • Venus is wholly nude except for a robe that isn't so much on her as blowing past her. Conveniently, the robe in the wind covers her genitalia while censoring nothing else.

Comic Books

• The Golden Age and Silver Age Catwoman expressed this trope when she used to run around Gotham City in a slit-sided skirt.
• In the original ElfQuest series, there's a brief appearance by the human girl Selah, who wears only a loincloth, and a shell necklace that manages to cover her nipples at all times. Oddly enough, Selah had previously appeared in a related strip "Homespun", where her necklace always conveniently avoided covering anything. This might be explained by the fact that "Homespun" was originally published in Epic Illustrated, where nudity was virtually compulsory whether called-for or not.
• Similarly, in a Fantastic Four story where Annihilus breaks out of the negative zone and attacks FF headquarters (around issue 250). He attacks frequent love interest Alicia Masters and hangs her by her heels from the ceiling. When discovered, she is suffering from what one reader called "the world's worst case of static cling" as her knee-length skirt sticks to her legs.
• In the 1940s back-up comic Ginger Maguire, Sky Girl, the title character was prone to showing her panties and being seen in them frequently. In a splash page of a story, her male pal is holding her upside down by one foot over the side of a plane engine so she can do some sky-writing (with a can of spray paint against a cloud), and Ginger's skirt remains properly placed.
• An issue of Trina Robbins' Go Girl has the title character holding her skirt in as she is held upside down by her feet.
• Black Widow and Valkyrie demonstrate this in the first issue of Secret Avengers, doing an impressive amount of She-Fu against a troop of armed guards in short cocktail dresses without flashing their underwear.
• From Shazam!, Mary Marvel was just as bad.
• Supergirl is an interesting case: for most of her career, she had a Magic Skirt when she wasn't wearing short-shorts in The '70s or a blue leotard in The '80s. Then the 2000s Kara Zor-El lost that ability due to artists going for "realism", until the editor decided to give her Modesty Shorts instead. The New 52 version had a costume redesign and wears a Leotard of Power with no skirt, but DC Rebirth's costume has a red skirt again.
• Watchmen. Two examples: the second Silk Spectre (but not the first one; her skirt is too short to even qualify) and The Comedian with his dressing gown, which appears to have these abilities even when he's being tossed out a window. Given Dr. Manhattan's lack of clothing throughout most of the book as well as various other explicit scenes, you can probably chalk this one up to artistic flair rather than censorship.
• The Why? Korean History books. One of the protagonists, Miso Jang(장미소), is commonly drawn with brown hair in a braid, a one-piece striped blue and white dress falling to her knees.^note Sometimes drawn with a hat, some of the books drewn by a different artist draw her with short red-brown hair and a yellow tank top with white shorts Her dress acts like this trope basically, which is covering her underwear, but she is wearing bloomers-like shorts under her dress.
• Wonder Woman appeared to start out with a Magic Skirt, but was really wearing culottes, shorts which often resemble a magic skirt. Also Hippolyte's skirt in Wonder Woman (1942) #145, as pictured, defies gravity to maintain her modesty.
• In the comics version of W.I.T.C.H., Hay Lin's skirting in her original Guardian form was a lot more risque than her animated variation (double high-cut slit skirts, stockings and a pair of Mary Janes vs. a single high-cut slit skirt, leggings and boots) and a lot of poses she does in the comic conveniently cover her unmentionables.
• In Superman for All Seasons, Lana's dress is shadowed underneath when she flies with Clark.
• On the cover of Superman #392 (April, 1983), Lana Lang is hung upside down by her feet, and her dress does not fall over. In the body of the story, however, she is wearing a loose-fitting gown that does fall over, showing every stitch of her panties.
• In George O'Connor's adaptation of Greek mythology, The Olympians, Artemis has one of these. It's especially noticeable when she races through the forests on her wild hunt.

Comic Strips

• The Indian Lotsa Luck in Tumbleweeds has a Magic Loincloth that stays in place even when he is standing on his head.
• A circa-1938 Dick Tracy comic strip presented Tracy clinging to a collapsed window-washer platform. A lady acrobat hears Tracy and runs off from the police office (where she's being held for questioning) on the same high level. She jumps out, grabs the platform rope, wraps it around her foot and swings upside down to affect a rescue of Tracy. The lady acrobat's skirt falls only as far as her thighs in long shots, but in a medium close-up it falls far enough to show her panties.

Fan Works

• Averted throughout The Judgement of the World (5Ds). Aki sprinting in her dress causes the skirt to ride up quite a bit. Later, after riding on Crow's D-Wheel while unconscious, her skirt's all the way up to her waist by the time they arrive at their destination.
• Oversaturated World: As said in the sixth chapter of Crossworlds Guardian, Sailor Orbital!, the Blue-Oyster-Altered Crossworlds Guardian Emergency Worker Uniforms have their skirts held down by magnets.
• The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: Averted — at one point, Vix-Lei thinks to herself about how she has to be careful to avoid exposing herself when she sits down and vows to invest in some actual pants the next chance she gets. She's thrilled when she gets some as a human, but they don't stay when the six return to Equestria.

Films — Animation

• Disney's Alice in Wonderland has Alice hanging by her feet from a tree branch but her skirt stays where it is (yet earlier we see her tumbling down the rabbit hole and we see her pantalettes).
• In Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero, Barbara Gordon (a.k.a. Batgirl) is wearing the same early '60s loose dress through the episode. In a chase scene through Mr. Freeze's lair, we see a ground shot of her leaping up to grab an overhead pipe and swing over. The drawing where we should have and could have seen something was deliberately left out. Later, Barbara rides a pully down a wire and her skirt goes only as far as her thighs. Though in the scene where she kicks some ice inside the air vent, her panties could briefly be seen.
• Crysta in FernGully: The Last Rainforest. Same problem as Tinker Bell, only even curvier, with a shorter skirt, and dancing with jazz spins.
• Disney's Hercules gives a rare male version of this trope. The title hero's armored skirt doesn't even reach his knees, and despite all that he gets into, there's never any shots of what's underneath.
• The blue cocktail dress Roxanne is wearing when Titan is tossing her through the sky in Megamind.
• In Monster House Jenny's skirt manages to barely budge despite all the acrobatics.
• The My Little Pony: Equestria Girls series have all of the main characters (Twilight Sparkle, Sunset Shimmer, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rarity, and Applejack) wearing skirts of some sort. These skirts cover everything, even when the characters are frantically dancing, flying through the air, or in Twilight's case, raising her leg to do a horse-like kick on all fours. Rainbow Dash is an exception, though she wears Modesty Shorts underneath.
• For Peter Pan's Tinker Bell, this trope is played straight in the sequel Return to Never Land, and the current (2008-) CGI Tinker Bell films. It is averted in both the original film and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. Averted for her live action Disney counterpart in Once Upon a Time which featured a scene of Tinker Bell losing her wings, falling from the sky, and her skirt revealing a bright green pair of shiny underwear beneath it. An odd moment for such a dramatic scene.
• Disney's Pocahontas. Even when she jumps down a waterfall, her little dress still stays down.
• In Resident Evil: Damnation in a fight between Ada Wong and President Svetlana you never see anything despite the crazy flips Ada makes.
• In the opening few minutes of Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, Supergirl wears nothing but a loose trench coat. While flying for the first time, she turns upside down moving upwards and the coat continues to cover her Kryptonian privates.
• Another male example is Tarzan who wears a loincloth that never flies up even when he's leaping from branch to branch or hanging upside down from one.
• The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, despite leaping and falling a lot.
• In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Jessica Rabbit wore a dress with a long slit up the side that, in one scene where she's thrown from a crashing car, briefly flashes her naughty bits. Once Disney had caught on to what the animators had done, the scene was changed, and it thus came in line with this trope.
• In Wreck-It Ralph, the title character meets a little girl, Vanellope Von Schweetz, who is hanging upside down by her knees from a tree branch. Vanellope's skirt remains in place. Which makes sense since it's made from a pair of giant, upside-down (well, right-side-up at the moment) peanut butter cup wrappers.
• Joy in Inside Out flies up the Recall Tube on (presumably) a current of air, and then falls back down again, all with her light, floppy skirt staying down around her legs.
• The titular heroine's skirt in Moana isn't too extreme apart from a few situations like when she's bouncing down the rocks in Tamatoa's lair. However, her sidekick Maui has a fairly short skirt made up of individual leaves stuck into a rope around his waist. This always covers him perfectly, even when he's climbing up rocks or masts or flipping like during "You're Welcome". Justified in that he is actually a demigod.

Films — Live-Action

• In Clash of the Titans (2010), Action Girl Io's dress follows the trope during the scorpion battle.
• In Ghostbusters II, the lawyer representing the district Attorney's office is captured by a ghost, and is held upside-down by one foot (with the other kicking around) and carried out of the courtroom by it. Her skirt stays completely on her legs the entire time. (The novelisation of the movie says that she was struggling to keep her skirt from rolling over.)
• Averted in Little Sweetheart. By a nine year old running for her life.
• Aversion: Some print ads for the 1976 movie Nickelodeon had a picture of Jane Hitchcock's character in a hot air balloon's tow rope dangling by one foot, and her skirt is completely draped over her face, showing knee-length pantaloons over black stockings.
• Zig-zag: In the print ad for the 1989 movie Parenthood, the little girl being held upside down by one foot (Alison Porter) avoids a panty shot by wearing pink tights and having the front of her skirt tucked between her legs.
• In Scooby-Doo (2002), Velma falls off a scaffold and gets her foot caught in the scaffold's chain, making her hang upside down◊ when it goes taut. Her skirt does not fall over as the studio wanted to maintain the "family film" sense. Word is that Linda Cardellini (who played Velma) had her skirt taped to her legs so it wouldn't flip over as she hung upside down. In the 2004 sequel, Velma jumps into a boat vent funnel and for a couple of frames, this trope is averted.
• In Troy, Achilles' (Brad Pitt) leather skirt somehow manages to completely obscure all private parts, despite Achilles leaping into the air with his legs spread apart.

Literature

• In Lauren Henderson's Freeze My Margarita, sculptor turned reluctant sleuth Sam Jones is inspecting the workings above a stage where her sculptures will be fitted, when a friend calls from below that he can see up her skirt. She calmly shouts back that it's much too tight and he's lying.
• In Mary Poppins Comes Back, some of the characters experience a reverse of gravity and move around via Catherine wheels. The children notice that Mary Poppins' skirt stays perfectly in place and that she continues to move with complete dignity.
• Kurousagi's short skirt in Problem Children are Coming from Another World, aren't they? is literally magical. Its specific gift is to almost let people see what it covers. Key word being almost. It is later revealed to be this trope explicitly by its designer Shiroyasha as a work of art in a Take Our Word for It kind of way; art is equal parts what is seen and what is left to imagination, hence the Magic Skirt. Once this is explained, Izayoi admires her thought process.
• Saintess Summons Skeletons has an in-universe example. When Sofia travels to the Exidion empire, she meets a level 300+ dwarven clothier who sells her a miniskirt with an obscuring enchantment that magically censors any attempts at peeking up her skirt.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who:
  • Rare male example in the classic serial "The Invasion". Jamie was required to climb into a helicopter. The crew followed the example of Elizabeth II (see below) and gave him a Magic Kilt by sewing weights into the hem.
  • In "The Witch's Familiar," Missy hangs Clara upside down by her feet. Clara's skirt is kept in place by the extra length of rope twined around her.
• Echo on Dollhouse wore a skirt while dancing during the first episode which, to the naked eye, would suggest it's so short it shouldn't cover so much as half of her butt. Magic is really the only logical explanation. However, in some bar-heavy neighborhoods that sort of skirt is nothing unusual on a Friday or Saturday night.
• In the Drake & Josh episode "Grammy", Drake gets pulled upside down by one of Megan's pranks. His yellow jacket falls to gravity, but his blue undershirt stays up.
• Power Rangers:
  • Despite being a huge fan of skirt over slacks, choreographed fight scenes play this trope straight. They are in a very small minority, though.
  • Possibly due to two subversions, both with Yellow Rangers. The first happened with Aisha when a strong wind blew up her skirt despite trying to hold it down, and again with Ashley when a camera angle showed a little too much while she was sitting at the juice bar. In both cases, their Ranger colored ensemble extended to their undergarments.
• Spoofed in The Benny Hill Show, where a "murder victim" can be seen rearranging her skirt in the background.
• The Big Bang Theory: When the girls play Twister, Bernadette is squatting while wearing tights and a short skirt. Word of God from Melissa Rauch says she was only managing not to flash the studio audience by virtue of the wardrobe crew's magic.
• Renee O'Connor, the actress of Gabrielle from Xena: Warrior Princess, had her skirt taped down by staff before she'd do fight scenes.

Theater

• In Ride the Cyclone, the choreography for Jane Doe's song has her be lifted into the air and rotated upside down several times. To accommodate this sequence, her costume has features that hold the skirt in place around her legs, preventing it from flipping over her head or hanging awkwardly.
• The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus has an act (most recently in their Zing Zang Zoom circus - 2010) they sometimes do where two people walk upside-down (with harnesses, one supposes) above the audience in an upside-down room setting suspended from the rigging. The female of the two's hair hangs down following gravity, but her skirt hangs "down" relative to her body, thus being a Magic Skirt.

Video Games

• As newer games in Japan are stricter with upskirt shots than usual, the CG usually has some means to cover up any potential panty shots and Panty Fighter Ikki Tousen only has upskirt shots on the sprites, not the CGs. Agarest Senki, a game known for fanservice, has all upskirt shots covered. Total undergarment exposure is fine, though.
• The skirts in some Professional Wrestling games would follow this style, too. Makes picking your panty design almost redundant. Starting with The Seventh Generation of Console Video Games, this began to be averted, but newer games can be somewhat arbitrary with it; the current-gen WWE Video Games frequently have the solid, underwear-concealing patch under short skirts and dresses ostensibly meant to conceal Panty Shots (mostly on the more form-fitted options) but several others don't have this and freely show off the unmentionables anyway. There's no apparent pattern or logic as to which do and which don't.
• Lampshaded with Shii from AdventureQuest. The PC even refers to it as her "impossibly short skirt."
• Animal Crossing uses the darkness variant.
• In Arcana Heart and Arcana Heart Full, none of the all female cast will have a panty shot, no matter what the circumstances are. Except with Petra in Arcana Heart 2, where one of her supers causes one.
• Played with in Atelier Totori. In an interview about a scene where Totori is subject to being harassed by an octopus, people thought it was her panties, but the producers said they were bloomers.
• Any BioWare game in which anyone wears a skirt of any sort. The skirt appears glued to the character's legs, and in the case of longer skirts stretches to accommodate a normal walking motion.
  • Prime offenders are Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age: Origins, and Dragon Age II.
  • Especially blatant during the animated Sacred Ashes trailer for Dragon Age, where Leliana's skirt stays on regardless of how many acrobatics she does. The strange miniskirts that form the bottom half of leather armor on male and female characters in Dragon Age always remain in place, though at one point Alistair does get a nice view.
  • However the trope is hilariously affirmed in Mass Effect 2 when playing the female Shepard after completing the DLC loyalty mission for Kasumi, after which a Little Black Dress becomes optional wear on board the Normandy. Engage a crewmember such as Miranda in any conversation that involves Shepard sitting down and you're treated to a view of a gaping black void (due to the animation being the same as that for a male Shepard, meaning sitting down on a chair with legs wide apart).
  • This, however, is an artifact of how the models are rigged and animated. There's no physics modeling for clothing in many 3D games, so if you want something to move, it has to have a bone attached to it and given an animation.
• In BlazBlue, it's zig-zagged. Most of the girls do remain fairly modest, but as of BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, Weiss is the only girl with a short skirt and bare legs to stay completely decent.
  • Noel Vermillion has long been suspected of Going Commando from suggestive in-game images and official art, with only one frame of an intro cinematic that shows some white undies for her. However, in-game, no panties are actually shown when her skirt flutters, but her butt◊ cheeks◊ are◊ visible◊ in◊ many◊ sprites.◊
  • Celica Ayatsuki Mercury ends up subverting this trope completely. Her◊ white◊ panties◊ are◊ frequently◊ shown◊ in◊ her◊ sprites.◊
  • Izayoi flashes some of the most underwear◊ and◊ butt◊ in◊ the◊ series◊, without even a hint of modesty. Even the official art for her has no trouble showing her pink undies.
  • Orie in Cross Tag Battle, staying true to the design philosophy of her home series, has no underwear visible, but two of her sprites have visible butt◊ cheek.◊
  • Platinum the Trinity was another character originally thought to be going completely bare under her skirt, but unlike Noel's modesty staying mostly preserved, Platinum has◊ no◊ such◊ decency.◊
• BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle: The show RWBY has very strong rules on making sure no skirts reveal anything untoward, no matter what the wear is doing or what the camera angle is. Despite Arc System Works' well-documented propensity for Fanservice, the trope is in full force for Team RWBY when they show up. Weiss' skirt never flips despite all the acrobatic leaping she does, while Ruby's petticoat is just a solid red mass covering everything from mid-thigh up to waist.
• In Castlevania: Bloodlines, Eric Lecarde's short tunic stays in place even when completely upside-down AND flying feet-first.
• All skirts in City of Heroes function this way, at least in the "never fall over" department. With all the flips and such that certain characters do, panty shots are frequent, but very hard to catch.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: Yuriko Omega's Obligatory Schoolgirl Skirt goes back and forth. On the one hand, she can hover, do random spins, and flip tanks around without showing the camera anything. (But then, it's a 3/4ths overhead camera, so it's not hard. No word on what the guys on the ground see...) On the other hand, it's pretty easy to get a panty shot — when she dies. (For the record, it's pink.) Yes, this means Yuriko panty shots cost two thousand credits each — Worth It?
• Dead or Alive games usually avert this, treating viewers with a ridiculous number of panty shots, but one of Kokoro's costumes in Dimensions has a skirt that never flies up. It's short enough that you may catch a few glimpses up it, but you can't see anything, likely because the area is shaded in or possibly because she's wearing Modesty Shorts the length of the skirt.
• In Detroit: Become Human, the android Alice is seen without her pants on when she is about to go to sleep or having just gotten out of bed. Her long shirt covers where her panties would be no matter what position she sits in or how much she walks around. Justified in that she is designed to resemble a 9-year-old girl.
• In Doctor Who: The Adventure Games, bored or lascivious camera-angle manipulation reveals that Amy Pond's famously short skirts cast a solid strategic shadow.
• In Double Dragon Neon, the scantily-dressed Shun has this, due to her lack of underwear.
• In the Ash the Archknight sidegame of DragonFable, the first story has a bit where a princess in a long dress, with a slit up the side no less, is being held upside down by a monster. Her dress is, presumably, held up by magic.
• Pretty much every single character in Eternal Fighter Zero.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy VII: Tifa's skirt is just one black texture with no details underneath as seen in all her Kick Chick moves, Dissidia Final Fantasy on the other hand averts this during some of Tifa's special moves where a panty shot can be achieved. Remake fixes this as Tifa is now wearing some Modesty Shorts underneath her skirt.
    • Speaking of Remake this is actually averted for Aerith as while fighting it is possible for her long skirt to billow up when she recoils from damage (which is especially noticeable during the slow down when using the command menu). Her underwear is black and similar to the princesses in Smash 4 purposely non-detailed.
  • Final Fantasy VIII allows the player to cast Scan on their own party members and rotate their models up and down, and around. However, Selphie can only rotate around, not up or down, and thus, her panties remain safe. At least as far as Scan is concerned.
  • Final Fantasy XIII:
    • Lightning has what appears to be a short skirt but she remains covered throughout. Somewhat justified. The box art for the game revealed that she's wearing what appear to be very short biker shorts underneath the skirt.
    • Serah's miniskirt also appears to be magical, as it manages to cling to the back of her legs as she jumps onto a platform in a flashback cutscene.
    • Averted for a split-second when Vanille's l'Cie brand explodes before her Eidolon Battle, and you can see she' sporting orange panties. It's also possible to play around with the camera and high ground to see up her skirt (it's easier said than done, though.)
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2, Serah wears a dress of some sort in the second game. You can actually see up it in the ending, but there is nothing to see, because she wears modesty shorts. Strangely enough, her dress has holes on the hips, showing pure skin so... how can she be wearing Modesty Shorts if she supposedly is going commando underneath that sheet of cloth called a dress?
• Ilyana, a playable mage in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (and later, the sequel, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn), has a ridiculously short skirt. While she has plenty of panty shots in the first game (almost every attack!), the only thing that results in one in the 2nd game is attacking through a barrier (barriers you can attack through are only in a handful of levels).
• Lynne from Ghost Trick has a short skirt, but never provides a panty shot. Not even when she gets inside the small service elevator in the junkyard.
• Golden Sun's first installment avoided this trope. Mia wore ankle-length skirts, and Menardi wore leggings beneath hers. In the second installment, heroic girls wore knee-length skirts (Jenna) and/or trousers beneath (Sheba), but on the villainous side we had Karst in a black leather miniskirt which somehow never rode up in the heat of battle.
  • Golden Sun: Dark Dawn gives some player characters the "mysterious blackness underneath" version, even though they're also wearing leggings/tights... and then there's Chalis, whose "skirt" amounts to two short panels hanging freely in front and in back (and the high cut of the sides indicates there's a good chance she's Going Commando). Chalis is a Dark Action Girl. "Psynergy" is the only possible explanation.
• Baiken in the Guilty Gear series is one of (if not the) only character not wearing pants that doesn't show her panties at any point despite raising her leg well above her head when doing her tatami mat special. Possibly justified in that it's entirely possible she might not be wearing panties at all, if her lack of a sarashi is any indication. Baiken's outfit doesn't flip up when she kicks or uses the tatami mat because it hangs open at the front, almost all the way to her hip — one of her legs is completely uncovered even when she's standing still◊. Still, her opponent must be getting an eyeful...
  • After moving to 3D, she wears bandages formed into underwear beneath.
• In a commercial for Guitar Hero: World Tour, supermodel Heidi Klum recreates the iconic "Old Time Rock And Roll" scene from Risky Business, but the shirt she wears stays firmly at waist-level, not even revealing whether or not she's wearing the requisite boxers. The trope is immediately subverted in a sequel commercial where Klum ditches the shirt altogether and cavorts in her underwear.
• Hades II: The poster unveiled at the Game Awards 2022 shows that Melinoë wears an orange minidress that barely extends past her pelvis. It manages to keep her covered even through it flaps in the wind during the reveal trailer.
• In the Harry Potter video games, all the female students at Hogwarts wear skirts which are around mid-length. Starting with Order of the Phoenix, you learn the spell Levicorpus, which hangs your opponents in dueling upside-down by the ankles. When you duel a girl, her skirt still covers her underpants even when this spell in cast! However, in Half-Blood Prince, Expelliarmus will knock opponents over and occasionally their legs will be apart. If this happens with a girl, everything starting from a certain point under her skirt will be strategically shaded.
• Though they DO happen, considering how crazy the dance moves and short the skirts are, panty shots in The iDOLM@STER are surprisingly rare unless you purposely set the camera settings to a low angle. In the second vision games such as The iDOLM@STER 2 and iDOLM@STER One For All (which has more detailed graphics and physics) it's justified. Some skirts are really close fitting, some appear to be held in place by hoops, some have Modesty Shorts and some skirts aren't magic at all.
  • THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls Starlight Stage does the miniature black hole version of this trope.
• The King of Fighters. If indeed he has a wang (of black stone pulsating with golden light, no doubt), Mukai's... cloth... thing thankfully keeps it in check every time he raises his leg above his head to deliver a special attack (which is often). He kicks high.
• Link in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess spends a fair portion of the game walking on the ceiling (magnetic walls + iron boots), yet the skirty portion of his tunic stays firmly in place, gravity be damned. His hat, however... Ironic since this is the first time that Link wears actual pants so it wouldn't be indecent.
• Averted to the nth degree in Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals in which Ms. Fanservice Passionate Patti has to remove her skirt (and literally everything else) in order to complete a series of adventures.
• Overwatch:
  • D.Va has a shadow variant in her Black Cat skin. Her leggings just gradually end in a black void, but the skirt is long enough that it isn't a jarring design choice.
  • Completely averted with the Winged Victory skin for Mercy. Her skirt just barely covers her butt and it has very loose physics, and even with the extra layer of cloth, players can catch glimpses of her panties in some of her victory poses.
• Any skirt-wearing character in the Panel de Pon series has their upper thigh exposed at the most. The CGs from the Nintendo Puzzle Collection sequel ditch this in favor of Modesty Shorts.
• Persona:
  • Subverted in Persona 4. Yukiko's summer outfit seems to use the "lots of shadow" variant, but she's actually wearing black short shorts.
  • Played straight in Persona 3 for Yukari and Mitsuru. Zig-Zagged with the PSP versions female MC, who only has the "lots of shadow" variety when the camera peeks up while preparing for a Combination Attack with another party member and provides a panty shot when falling down from missing an attack or during her critical hit animation when she spins around in the air before making a third strike with her weapon.
  • Also played straight in Persona 4: Arena Ultimax, except for one sprite frame of Rise, where you can see a huge amount of her butt◊ without her panties visible.
• The skirts in MMO Pirates of the Caribbean Online are all knee-length, but when a female pirate in a skirt jumps or is knocked prone, her legs seem to just stop at her knees at a solid block of color matching her skirt.
• In Saints Row games, even when the Boss wears tiny miniskirts, it's very difficult to get a pantyshot.
• In Second Life and Open Simulator, there have been various techniques of building skirts over time. The only ones that could actually flip over are flexi-prim and flexi-sculpt skirts. Skirts made of single sculpties are entirely rigid and always hang "down" from the waist (or up if the avatar is upside-down). Early days' layer skirts and modern days' rigged mesh skirts follow the movements of the legs, come what may. While certain movements do allow for upskirt glimpses, they will stay in place even if the avatar happens to be upside-down.
• And once again in Senran Kagura where the female cast wears swimsuits which are impervious to Clothing Damage, aside of few games, where you are able to strip them down in special conditions.
• Heather from Silent Hill 3. She's going to Silent Hill and she's wearing a denim miniskirt, for goodness sake.
• In Skies of Arcadia, characters' clothes flutter whenever they use magic. Fina's skirt only goes up to her knees. (Aika's skirt goes up all the way, but she's wearing shorts, and it's questionable if that's really a "skirt" anyway.)
• Zig-zagged with Amy Rose in the Sonic the Hedgehog series post-Sonic Adventure. The 3D games surprisingly avert this trope, regularly having the character's panties on display from the constant jumping and fighting she does, with early betas for Adventure even having her skirt lift up when falling. The 2D games play this trope more straight however, with Amy holding down her dress whenever possible while falling or doing activities that would result in an upskirt shot. Note that we said whenever possible: you can't hold down your dress when you're using both hands to, say, hang onto a rocket for dear life during a bonus stage, after all.
• Despite the number of panty shots in Space Channel 5, there's one particularly weird instance of this trope when Ulala squats with her knees together and then opens her legs up and her skirt flaps down like an apron before we can see anything.
• Krystal, from Starfox Adventures completely averts this trope: it's incredibly easy to see up her loincloth. Doing so reveals what could either be white fur or panties.
• Star Trek Online allows you to have your Captains and Bridge Officers (yes, that includes males wearing skants and kilts) in short skirts. Panty shots are typically only viewable under very certain camera angles and in the character menu.
• Played straight with Blaze Fielding in the original Streets of Rage... for the Genesis/Mega Drive. For some reason, even though her sprite is scaled down (very much so in the Game Gear version) the artists for the 8 bit versions decided to add a flash of white to just about every Blaze sprite that wasn't standing or punching. The international versions of Streets Of Rage 2/Bare Knuckle II redrew a panty shot jumpkick for Blaze, changing the placement of her legs to hide her crotch.
• In the Style Savvy series, ridiculously short skirts would inevitably lead to this, so the games make is so that there is literally nothing underneath the skirt, just hollow empty space the same color as the skirt.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • Peach and Zelda both have dresses that stay up in any situation. However, you can actually see the very detailed panties underneath their dresses◊ in Melee and Brawl by rotating the camera. Their dresses also react to wind effects: in Super Smash Bros. Melee, if you do Peach's taunt while in the Rumble Falls stage when the wind is blowing... surprise!
  • Thanks to new censorship standards, Smash 4 onwards darkens the underside of Peach's dress, with Palutena and Rosalina getting the same treatment as well. Rosalina even gets the thematically appropriate view of deep space, stars and all. Zelda doesn't get this treatment, however: she wears leggings instead.
  • In contrast to the above, Krystal's tiny loincloth averts this trope, just like it does in her own game. Unlike her original game, though, whether she is wearing any underwear or not is not at all ambiguous: she◊ isn't.
• Cheria from Tales of Graces and her short skirt exhibits this trope most of the time, but on occasion the camera picks an angle that shows she wears small black shorts underneath.
• Occasionally crops up in fighting games. Disregarding the question of why you're in a fighting tournament wearing a long slit skirt and high heels, Anna Williams in the Tekken games doesn't have any wardrobe failures if, say, turned upside down for a friendly Tombstone piledriver. Then again, in the same game, Ling Xiaoyu's skirt (if in a pleated schoolgirl one) may or may not follow this, depending on the mood of the game engine. It also seems to vary per character. In Tekken 6 for example, Lili's and Anna's skirts seem to be magically glued, but Xiaoyu's and Asuka's school uniforms easily avert this trope. Tekken 7 also adds in a male example with Bob, whose default outfit has him in an open button shirt; in his intro, he's doing a handstand and only the bottom of the shirt flaps down, rather than everything past the sleeves.
• Toontown Online: Any time a toon wearing a skirt is in a position where up the skirt would be visible, a solid color matching the skirt is shown instead.
• Freya of the Valkyrie Profile series has a skirt that's about as short as can be without showing anything in a normal pose. Everything somehow remains hidden as she flies around the battlefield, while the camera draws attention to her hips. Depending on the game, she's actually wearing a combination of a leotard and a skirt.
• In World of Warcraft, many characters, both male and female, wear robe, dress or skirt-like clothing. Any action the character might undergo that would move the character upside down though does not lift up the hem of the garment above the basic position, however, due to limitations in the game's models. Looking up the garment while a character might be floating will just reveal hints of the ankle and blackness. As result of how their feet look, Draenei, Worgen, Tauren and Troll players don't even see footgear on below the hem of the garments.
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon: Saeko's default outfit has a very short skirt, but camera angles ensure that she never shows anything when jumping and kicking in combat. It is also notable that, unlike male characters, she won't step over low fences when the player is watching. Keep the camera on her and back away, and she will just stand behind the fence. Turn away, and she teleports to your location.

Visual Novels

• One CG in Little Busters! features a shot from below image of Kud jumping up to grab a frisbee. Her skirt mysteriously falls in precisely the right way to not reveal anything, and the game seems to assume Riki can't see anything, even though the skirt would presumably be flapping all over the place. It's a little odd given that in other CGs the game have no hesitations whatsoever about showing panty shots.
• Averted in the To Heart opening, with panty shots. However for the game's kid-friendly sequel To Heart 2, the heroines' skirts cover the panties. For example one of them is riding a bike and a scene of a gust of wind in a wheat field.

Web Animation

• Lady Lumps VS Boy Bumps generally does not shy away from upskirt shots, but in "Sonik Kombat", Amy's dress seems to become magic after she loses her underwear. Until the penultimate scene, anyway, where it goes back to not blocking anything. Amy is a Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal, though, so ironically, that scene is less perverse than it would have been if she still had her underwear!
• RWBY: The creator was adamant that the show would be clean and responsible, and the show makes an active effort to ensure every outfit design either averts the trope or enforces it, no matter what camera angles occur.
  • Played straight with academy skirts from the three academies that use uniforms. No matter what happens, a girl's skirt will always protect her modesty regardless of what combat moves or gravity pull is involved.
  • Averted for Ruby, Weiss and Nora. All three girls start out wearing heavily layered skirts that reveal nothing even during upskirt shots. Later outfits include hotpant shorts under the skirts instead. It fails in-universe on one occasion for parody, when Ren accidentally sees up Nora's skirt and gets chastised for it. In the Volume 5 opening credits, Nora's skirt — which normally averts the trope — barely falls even though she's hanging upside down from the ceiling.
  • During Volumes 1-3, Penny and Pyrrha's skirts never move in any manner that allows anything untoward to be seen. Even in battle, their skirts manages to protect their modesty from all angles. In Volumes 7-8, Penny's rebuilt form averts the trope by wearing a layered skirt and white hotpant shorts.
    Monty Oum: RWBY will be tasteful, clean and responsible. I implemented very effective ANTI-UPSKIRT TECHNOLOGY! for this show.

Webcomics

• Katara, in How I Became Yours, displays this when executing a sort of somersault to dodge Mai's knife attacks.
• Anne of The Wotch, whose skirt might very well be magic — except for one time, where the readers find out that the throwaway gag about Wonder Woman undies made several years before was accurate. A male friend who's present at the scene can't seem to keep his eyes on the mortal danger that's dangling them both upside down.
• The girls (and women) in Kevin & Kell are more often than not wearing skirts and dresses, so they end up featuring this when the scenery gets physical. One example is Lindesfarne upside down and stopped by getting stuck to a tree; her skirt stays rigidly in place.
  • Of course, Lindesfarne is a hedgehog, and therefore basically a walking pincushion. With all that pointy stuff sticking into it, it may be a wonder that her skirt can move at all.
• Several characters in MegaTokyo have demonstrated this effect, including Yuki, Ping, Miho, Kimiko and Junko. However, whenever the characters are "in game," when clothing, including skirts, reacts as it should, providing much pantsu (or stockings, in Miho's case) for the audience.
• In El Goonish Shive, Elliot's super hero form has a skirt as part of the costume (the form has certain downsides). This skirt stays in place even when Elliot is falling out of the sky. It is worth noting that the whole costume is part of the spell, so it is also a literal magic skirt.
• Lampshaded in The Order of the Stick. Being a stick figure style comic that features quite a few characters who have mastered the Overland Flight spell, this is naturally (and in some cases, thankfully) present. And yet we have Belkar thank a recurring villainess for her choice of wardrobe.
  Belkar: Oh, and hey, Tsukiko. On behalf of all the men in this city: Thanks for wearing a short skirt while flying. You've given me a lot to think about. Heh.
• Girl Genius:
  • The giant hologram of Agatha in Mechanisburg.
    Kalikoff: Heh. You can look up her dress. It's really out of focus... but if you squint up one eye... it gets even more out of focus.
  • Lampshaded when Agatha leaps in the air from excitement on the walls of Mechanicsburg. The assembled crowd can clearly see a lot more than they would wish...
• Melissa Thayer in Outworld has a skirt that stays up when she's hanging from a tree.
• In The Bird Feeder, a variant occurs in #218, "Trapped." As Josh hangs upside down, his cap, which it has been shown is removable, amazingly remains attached to his head.

Western Animation

• The Alice in Hanna-Barbera's 1967 special Alice in Wonderland, or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This? simply averts a panty shot by holding her skirt and slip down as she slowly falls feet first down the rabbit hole.
• In "The Poltergeist" episode of The Amazing World of Gumball Nicole Watterson spends a good part of the episode hanging upside down in one of the traps Richard has set for "the ghost" (Which turns out to be a depressed Mr. Robinson as revealed early in the episode). Her gray pleated skirt doesn't move an inch.
• Haley Long in American Dragon: Jake Long. Despite spreading her legs out while sitting on a railing and turning into a monster two times bigger than her, she has no shot — and none of her clothes ripped. Also notice that in one episode, she jumps with her knees to her chest and it looks like they put her leg through her skirt so that they don't have to open it up.
• Amphibia: Heroine Anne Boonchuy wears a fairly short skirt as part of her primary outfit while partaking in all sorts of action-packed situations, yet she always manages to keep the insides hidden. Her skirt is either loose and saggy or clings tight to her legs, depending on the needs of the pose. Fellow humans Sasha and Marcy possess similarly Magic Skirts, even when the former wears leggings.
• Also, in an Angela Anaconda short, one of Angela's fantasies involve Nanette Manoir falling off a cliff and her skirt doesn't flap up. In the same short, Angela herself almost has a panty shot, but it wasn't on-screen.
• In a 1969 episode of The Archie Show, Big Ethel averts this. She shown in a sequence hanging upside down in a snare she intended for Jughead, showing knee-length granny bloomers.
• An episode of Atomic Betty has this Canadian cutie superheroine swinging by her knees on a trapeze (rhyme unintended). Her skirt flitters with the force of swinging but never flips over to her face.
• Katana in Batman: The Brave and the Bold. In "The Malicious Mr. Mind", Mary Marvel performs a straight-ahead attack with her foot, but her skirt never goes up. Likewise, when she lands or is flipped head over heels.
• Ben 10: Alien Force
  • Gwen is capable of executing karate kicks, flipping, getting caught in a tornado and whisked into the air, sliding down an ice slide to escape from said tornado, and sitting cross-legged in a miniskirt without trouble. Granted, she wears some sort of pantyhose under it, but...
  • Julie Yamamoto plays tennis in a short skirt, but when she plays it flutters so slightly (in direct contrast to the same skirts in real life).
• Often Subverted in Betty Boop cartoons, where the animators would repeat a motion over and over using the skirt, only to have it fail every so often. Also in the Cartoon Betty in Blunderland, the lack of a Magic Skirt means Betty has to hold it down while falling down the rabbit hole, until she passes a clothesline and grabs a pin to keep it in place.
• The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!: In "Whale Song", Nick and Sally do headstands; Sally's dress does not fall over.
• Aelita from Code Lyoko gains a Magic Skirt as a part of her standard outfit once she's materialized on Earth. This is somewhat strange considering the show's reputation. She then switches to a skirt over slacks in Season 4.
• In one episode of Codename: Kids Next Door, Numbuh Three is in a wedding dress, tied at the ankles, with her dress staying firmly in place. Because they couldn't have her dress tied as well, thus holding it up. No, they had to make it obvious and fake.
• In The Crumpets, Caprice's skirt stays up when she hangs on a Lie Detector machine in the first episode and when she tries upside down yoga in another episode. The clothing of her sister Triceps also stays up during upside down yoga.
• On the Complete Animated Series DVD set of Daria, the cast and crew interview segment on disk 8 starts off with some sketches that go by quickly. One of them, if you use the pause button on your DVD player, details to the animators exactly how Daria's skirt is supposed to sag when she is sitting, and that it is never to be drawn in a way that you can see the inside of it.
• The DC Animated Universe
  • Batman: The Animated Series:
    • Barbara Gordon in the New Batman Adventures revamp.
    • Harley Quinn gets one at the beginning of the episode "Mad Love".
    • In the Batman and Robin episode "Love Is a Croc", Killer Croc grabs Baby Doll's foot and holds her upside down long ways up from a HVAC fan. Baby Doll's skirt stays firmly in place, only giving a shot of her panties◊ from an aerial view as we see the giant fan below.
  • Superman: The Animated Series:
    • Lois Lane's short skirt has to be some kind of Kryptonian Imported Alien Phlebotinum or some such. Realistically, the entire cast would be familiar with Lois' unmentionables by the end of any episode, especially when you consider how often Lois is seen falling from high places. Doesn't matter if it's straight down legs-first, or end over end, or how she lands when it comes to falls that don't require superheroic intervention, Lois's Super-Skirt will remain glued tightly to her legs.
    • Mercy Graves, Lex Luthor's bodyguard. She is always running around doing high kicks, being beaten up and sent flying by people, all in an outfit that looks more like a tight top than a full chauffeur's uniform.
    • Lana Lang as well when she shows up.
    • Maggie Sawyer. It was anyone's guess what she was supposed to be wearing under her jacket (which was too short to really be considered a trench coat).
    • And finally Supergirl, which makes it pretty much every major female character on the show. (Somebody among the creators really had a thing for short skirts.)
  • Justice League
    • Averted with Giganta. Probably why she switched to catsuits in the comics. In the television show, Shade makes a remark on how the job just keeps getting better when Giganta grows. (Both Seanbaby and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law have also pointed out this exact problem with Apache Chief.)
• Averted in the first episode of Dungeons & Dragons (1983) with Sheila the Thief, but played straight from that point on.
• Rare male example in The Flintstones. Neither Fred nor anybody else accidentally exposes himself despite the fact that their skins all stop at about their hips.
• In Futurama, Zapp Brannigan wears a skirt so short that it should not be as all-covering as it is. One can only assume nebula!God intervenes to keep it in place. Worse, in one early episode, it's implied that he's going commando under there.
• The loincloths that the Gargoyles wear seem to do an unusually good job of keeping their naughty bits covered.
• Gravity Falls: In "Irrational Treasure", Mabel lies on a bench upside down, yet her skirt stays defiantly upright. Gravity must work differently in Gravity Falls.^note It does.
• In the episode of Harley Quinn (2019) where Poison Ivy has been taken prisoner by mooks proposing to extract her DNA and turn it into a lethal city-killing poison, she is seen strapped to an operating table in a modesty-preserving hospital gown. When Harley and the crew turn up to rescue her, that hospital gown has to do a lot of work to keep her covered as she performs acrobatic kicks and does a lot of leaping between vehicles on the insane Harley Quinn Freeway - this includes a prolonged fall from a very great height.
• An episode of Harriet the Spy had Harriet's best friend, Janie, walking on her hands while wearing her school uniform (the girls' school uniform has a skirt), but the skirt wasn't affected by gravity while she walked on her hands (which was probably done to avoid a Panty Shot of a pre-teen).
• Teela, in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002). She's even more of an Action Girl than her original incarnation, and fights in a very acrobatic style with flips, spins, and kicks, yet manages to maintain her modesty.
• The Incredible Hulk (1982) episode "Enter: She-Hulk" depicted Jennifer Walters' clothes being reduced to a tattered shirt whenever she became She-Hulk. Because this was a kids' show, the tattered shirt always covers up her lower body.
• Used somewhat ironically in the 1934 French animated short La Joie de Vivre, since moments later we see the magic-skirt-wearing characters naked anyway.
• In Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures, Jeremiah Surd's female Dragon Julia regularly wore an extreeeemely short skirt, and fought with a high-kicking kung-fu style. There was never an upskirt shot, ever.
• In the Josie and the Pussycats episode "All Wong in Hong Kong," Alexandra jumps on a trampoline and falls feet first towards a toy bucking horse. As she falls, the front of her skirt stays in place while the hem in the back flips up ever so slightly.
• In an episode of KaBlam!, June is seen wearing a dress, and then during her musical act, she's flipping on a bunch of hurdles, yet her skirt is always in place (this is probably due to Nickelodeon standards).
• Kim Possible:
  • Kim has the good sense to not go looking for a fight in a skirt, but trouble occasionally finds her while in an evening gown, or a cheerleading outfit. When she does get physical in one, this trope applies in all cases but two: a first-season incident that somehow got into the Title Montage for the first three seasons and a somewhat less subtle incident from the fourth season.
  • In the Grand Finale, Warhok grabs Kim Possible by the leg while she's wearing her graduation gown◊. She's hanging upside-down, yet her dress isn't down around her shoulders. Because Warhok's got a bit of the fabric in his hand.
  • There's an episode where Ron and Kim switched bodies. Whenever this trope wasn't in effect, Ron (in Kim's body) could openly be seen holding the skirt down.
    Ron (in Kim's body): Hey! I'm in a skirt here!"
• The Legend of Zelda (1989):
  • Spryte the fairy from the old cartoon, who should rightfully have flashed Link every other time she moved. Averted at one point in the first episode. When Spryte fell over due to the earth shaking, it was revealed (in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene that she wears nothing at all underneath her skirt.
  • Link too. In the series, there are several occasions where he is forced to fight wearing only a turquoise shirt and it hides his shame despite him doing flips, kicks and jumping around. This is most prevalent in the first episode. In a later episode this is slightly subverted when his tunic falls down and we see that he is wearing boxer shorts, but these would have been fully visible in several of the previous shots and yet they aren't until that point.
• In Legion of Super Heroes (2006), Triplicate Girl's underwear are never shown, despite the skirt's short length and all the high kicks she does. Shrinking Violet later swaps costume to a dress in season 2 and the same occurs, even when she is a giant compared to them in one episode.
• A rare male example: the 1960s era cartoon The Mighty Hercules has the title character in a short robe that barely covered his essentials. But, even when jumping off Mount Olympus and falling feet-first toward the plains, it did little more than flutter around his legs.
• In the 1951 Mighty Mouse cartoon Sunny Italy, Pearl Pureheart is seen dangling by one foot◊ and wearing a very short, loose blue dress. Her skirt flips over only partially, keeping her panties concealed. Similarly that same year, a human Pearl Pureheart-type girl in a cartoon called Better Late Than Never is wearing the same type of dress and plummets from a building feet first. Her skirt flies all the way up, showing her matching lacy panties.◊ So according to Paul Terry, hanging upside down constitutes a magic skirt but falling feet first doesn't.
• In the Peppa Pig episode "Soft Play", Mrs. Rabbit gets trapped in a hole in the Soft Play Center, with her body completely upside down, but her dress remains defying gravity.
• Phineas and Ferb is one show where all the girls have magic skirts in many notable episodes. Examples are:
  • In "Backyard Aquarium", despite being thrown multiple times by whales and squids, Candace was covered up.
  • In "S'Winter", Candace is falling down into the backyard but her skirt stays in place.
  • In "Isabella and the Temple of Sap", Isabella's skirt only flutters so lightly in the wind.
  • In "Let's Bounce", when Candace is made lighter than air, it apparently affects her clothes as well. Then it turns out she's wearing a skort.
  • In "De Plane! De Plane!", the music segment has the Fireside Girls standing on each other in a big, vertical human circle. Their skirts flutter in the wind, but they're otherwise going straight towards their feet.
• The Powerpuff Girls: The girls' dresses cling tightly to their bodies even while they fly around and fight monsters. It's more a stylistic choice than a censorship trope, because due to their young age and simple designs they're already shown in their underwear from time to time. (Bubbles and Buttercup have. Blossom hasn't.)
• Averted but maintained by proper position: In the Punky Brewster episode "Punky To The Rescue," Margaux is used as bait to catch a so-called swamp monster that presumedly captured Punky's foster father Henry. Margaux has one foot caught in a snare, but since she's wearing a dress she is shown standing upright against a tree with her trapped foot raised as opposed to hanging upside down.
• An early '60s syndicated animated special called Return to Oz has a scene where the Wicked Witch of the West holds Dorothy upside down by her feet outside a castle window. Dorothy's skirt falls just barely enough to show the lace legbands of her panties.
• In the Rugrats episode "Tricycle Thief," Angelica is accused of stealing Susie's tricycle. An impromptu trial is held as Susie ties a mylar balloon to Angelica's doll Cynthia, hanging it upside down by one foot. Cynthia's dress plunges over and reveals its panties, but when Susie releases the balloon which takes Cynthia with it, Cynthia's dress is suddenly in magic skirt mode.
• Kimberly on the "Space Ace" segments of Saturday Supercade. Which is ironic because in the original video game, practically every other shot of her is a panty shot.
• Scooby-Doo:
  • Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episode "Haunted House Hang-Up": Shaggy, Scooby, and Velma all fall into a well feet first, and Velma's pleated skirt never goes up.
  • An episode of What's New, Scooby-Doo? has Velma and Daphne get caught in a chain in midair with the others. Their skirts stay hanging upward.
  • Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword: Daphne's friend Miyumi, wearing a short, pleated school dress — check. Does backflips and jumps during battle with sensei Miss Mirimoto — yepper. Panty shot — bzzzzt! But thanks for playing.
  • Mai Le in episode 18 of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated. She gets hung upside down twice and her skirt remains in proper place.
  • The Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! episode "Where There's a Will, There's a Wraith" has a scene where Velma is held upside down by her legs. Her pleated skirt stays where it is.
• She-Ra: Princess of Power: Despite having a skirt shorter than most tennis players, and She-Ra's main offensive move being a roundhouse kick. Well, there is a panty shot that made it into the Christmas special.
• The Simpsons:
  • Lisa's trademark red sundress; especially egregious as it's a dress with no waist, which should logically fall all the way down to her shoulders whenever she's upside down.
  • Also Marge's dress; in "Milhouse of Sand and Fog" it stays perfectly in place despite her hanging completely upside down.
• In Steven Universe, Lapis Lazuli's long skirt usually is very free-flowing, but it fits more like a pencil skirt when she sits with her knees up.
  • An episode of Superjail! has the flying prison robot arresting a little girl in a hospital gown. It attaches a chain to the girl's foot and carries her off, dangling her upside down. Her hospital gown stays where it is through the flight.
• Ilana does this quite a bit in Sym-Bionic Titan, as well as the other cheerleaders in "Showdown at Sherman High", except for Kimmy at one point.
• Played straight and literally with Milli from Team Umizoomi. For the "literally" part, Milli's dress can change colors.
• Teen Titans (2003):
  • Starfire has a skimpy skirt. Not the best choice of costume for a Flying Brick... Her skirt even stays straight in an episode where she's pushing a spaceship downwards.
  • In the original Doom Patrol's appearance, Elastigirl's power, despite her name, is actually able to grow and shrink. (This is consistent with comics, though the comics version can expand or shrink individual limbs.) She also wears a very short skirt. How does a giantess with a short skirt never flash anyone down below, including the viewer? Gotta be magic.
• Total Drama:
  • Does this often with Lindsay and Gwen. May be justified by the blocky, simplistic drawing style — if the clothes moved like regular fabric, it'd look odd.
  • Dawn in "Revenge of the Island". She hangs upside-down in episode two, yet her skirt stays in place. In "Finders Creepers", she's caught by the giant spider (Izzy in a costume) and hanging sideways from the web, yet her skirt stays in place, as well as her hair.
  • Invoked with Ella (a Disney princess parody character) in "Pahkitew Island" by means of her little bird friends.
  • From the spinoff Ridonculous Race:
    • Kitty in the episode "My Way or Zimbabwe", when she and Emma go over Victoria Falls.
    • In "French is an Eiffel Language", despite her short skirt, Josee somehow doesn't flash panties while balancing on Jacques' hands upside down.
• An upper body variant. Sam in Totally Spies! when hung up to wall with shurikens attached to her upper shirt over her shoulders. Her shirt hardly lifts enough to bare her midriff just a tad more than it already previously did. Realistically, the shirt being hinged would have lifted a great deal and shown a larger amount of midriff.
• Sari of Transformers: Animated. She's been hung upside-down on two occasions, and that skirt stays down. At one point, she's sitting on the ground and one of her legs appears to be going through a hole in the top of her skirt◊.
• Amalia and Evangelyne from Wakfu, despite being both quite active, have magic skirts whether in their normal clothes, nightgowns or even cheerleaders outfits. With the latter, during the Gobbowl match, they perform a "body letters" routine with Yugo to spell "RUEL STROUD", and the skirts stay glued to their backsides even when doing the two "U" with their legs.
• The girls in Winx Club wear miniskirts (especially in their fairy forms) and, despite the action, their panties aren't usually visible (although there are quite a few aversions in the first few seasons).
• Despite having four characters with skirts of some sort, the main heroines of W.I.T.C.H. always have Magic Skirts, even to the point where one episode has a monster holding a transformed Hay Lin (who has the worst of the designed skirts) upside down, yet the skirt is still up right!
• Kimiko on Xiaolin Showdown. Lots of flips and tumbling in a short skirt and no show of skivvies.

Real Life

• Queen Elizabeth II had skirts with special weights sewn into the lining to prevent them from rising in the wind. Sadly, this tended to be mostly useful for getting in and out of helicopters, rather than superheroics. (At least, as far as we know.)
• Victorian-era women's bathing suits had a similar design.
• For the men, the Utilikilts come with a modesty system for this purpose. It's a button and loop system that tether the front and back halves of it together. It'll keep it in place in a strong wind, but if you're ever upside down, good luck.
• Similarly, part of the purpose of the sporran worn with the regular kilt is to provide weight to stop the front of the kilt from blowing up and displaying everything at the slightest provocation.
• Skorts tend to stay down better than a skirt, due to being sewn to a pair of shorts underneath.

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