This action makes it clear to the audience and the intended victim (assuming they are present in the scene) that the character putting on the gloves intends to commit murder and get away with it. If Menacing Hand Shot and Hand of Death are in play, then the gloved hands could be viewed as characters themselves while obscuring the identity of the wearer. This can be useful for the killer in order to cover his or her tracks.
See also Conspicuous Gloves (for characters who wear gloves in inappropriate situations that would arouse suspicion) and Better Manhandle the Murder Weapon (for when characters are not as bright as the culprits when it comes to leaving fingerprints.) Contrast Battle Strip, The Coats Are Off, The Glasses Come Off, and Hold My Glasses, which involve removing items of clothing and accessories before a fight.
Not to be confused with gloves literally made to be used as weapons.
Since this trope has a high chance of involving death or murder, beware of unmarked spoilers.
No Real Life Examples, Please!
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Cowboy Bebop: In "Jupiter Jazz (Part 1)", Faye finds herself surrounded by ruffians in a city where women are almost entirely non-existent. They intend on assaulting her, but she leads them on first by putting on a pair of work gloves so she doesn't risk chipping a nail. Just as the fight starts, Gren barges in with a distraction and leads her to safety.
- A variation in Gunslinger Girl where the Agency handlers are shown wearing gloves which give them a sinister air even when they're making an Affectionate Gesture to the Head of one of their cyborgs. While the handlers do take part in combat it's their cyborgs who do most of the killing (and they don't have to worry about fingerprints) so it's probably Rule of Symbolism, as the handlers use the cyborgs to avoid getting their hands dirty.
Comic Books
- The Long Halloween: This trope occurs whenever the Holiday Killer strikes as they murder their victims while wearing gloves of the dark leather variety with Menacing Hand Shot in Deliberately Monochrome colors.
- Murder Me Dead: In the ninth and final issue of the series, Tara is revealed to be Eve's killer in a Flashback. After drugging her and escorting her home, Tara puts on latex gloves before she writes a fake suicide note. She then discovers that Eve has already written a few and decides they would be even better than what she wrote. She then hangs the drugged Eve on a ceiling fan.
Fan Works
- A Supe of a Man: Lois wears a pair of leather gloves when meeting with Mesmer to keep him from reading her mind and finding out that she's going to kill him for trying to sell The Boys out as well as keeping her fingerprints off the gun she used to shoot him.
Film — Animated
- Chicken Run: Mrs. Tweedy wears red rubber gloves to decapitate a chicken named Edwina with a hatchet. Mrs. Tweedy even goes out of her way to sadistically taunt the chickens by pulling on the glove she's not wearing and snapping it in front of them before she selects Edwina for slaughter.
Film — Live-Action
- 10 to Midnight: Warren Stacy wears white latex gloves and nothing else during most of the murders.
- Played With in 11:14 when Fille Fatale Cheri rushes to her home to grab a pair of yellow rubber gloves from the kitchen after Aaron's head was crushed by the head of an angel statue while they were having sex. Cheri intends to cover up the accidental death by framing her boyfriend Duffy while using gloves to cover her prints. Her father does not question why she's getting them.
- American Psycho
- Patrick is wearing gloves as he tries to strangle associate Luis, who, per the movie's running theme, thinks Patrick is coming onto him.
- In the much more widely panned sequel, Rachel often wears leather gloves during her murders barring the latex gloves she wore when moving the body of the real Rachel to her car in order to fake her death.
- A Bay of Blood: Countessa Federica Donati is killed by an unseen black-leather-gloved assailant via strangulation. Soon after, the killer is revealed to be her husband, Count Filliipo Donati. He's then killed himself by another unseen assailant moments later after he removes the gloves.
- The Bird with the Crystal Plumage: The killer/Monica Ranieri wears black leather gloves during the murders as well as a long black trenchcoat and fedora hat.
- Blade Runner 2049: Coco catches Luv in the morgue stealing Rachael's remains while wearing black leather gloves contrasting her white coat making it clear she's doing something she does not want to be traced back to her. She distracts him by lying about her presence having gone through the proper channels and presenting him with paperwork before killing him by cracking his neck from behind and leaving him to choke on his blood. She then tortures and murders Joshi in her office in a later scene wearing the same gloves and coat. Luv ditches the coat for a black jacket as part of her battle outfit in the movie's third act.
- Blood and Black Lace: The killers/Contessa Cristiana Cuomo and Massimo Morlachi wear black leather gloves during their kills as well as a fedora hat, a trench coat, and a nude stocking mask to conceal their identities.
- The Case of the Bloody Iris begins with someone following a woman onto an elevator with a ton of people. As the elevator is ascending, they put on a pair of translucent yellowish-brown gloves. When the rest of the occupants get off, they gag the woman with a rag and stab her three times with a an oddly-shaped knife.
- Clap, You're Dead has a killer wearing translucent yellowish-brown gloves, but they aren't ever shown putting them on. However, there is one scene where the killer dons a different pair of gloves in order to cut an electric cable and use it as a ligature.
- Clue: Endings one and three feature a flashback of the killer (or killers as far as the third ending is concerned) wearing black leather gloves as they murder the victims.
- Cobra: When the Night Slasher goes after Ingrid in the hospital, he puts on a pair of latex gloves while walking to her room.
- Crime Punishment In Suburbia: Roseanne and Jimmy put on white latex gloves along with a change of dark clothes before they murder Fred, Roseanne's stepfather, by stabbing him to death after he rapes her.
- Curtains: A subverted example when a man puts on black leather gloves followed by a stocking over his head after climbing a fence to get to Amanda's home while she's bathing and getting ready to read in bed indicating he's up to no good. He then breaks in and, seemingly, rapes her until it's revealed that he's her boyfriend and they were engaging in role-playing. Then it's played straight when Amanda is murdered for real by the leather glove and hag mask-wearing killer after a Nightmare Sequence.
- Deep Red: The killer/Marta Manganiello wears a pair of black leather gloves during the murders. The viewer even sees the killer zip them up during their first appearance in preparation for the first kill of the film.
- The Departed: Colin Sullivan seems to get away with everything, when he steps into his apartment to find Sean Dignam wearing rubber gloves and booties over his shoes. Sullivan resigns himself to his fate and is shot dead.
- Don't Torture a Duckling: The killer/Don Alberto Avallone wears dark wool gloves during at least one murder.
- Do You Like Hitchcock?: The killer/Federica Lalli wears white latex gloves as she bludgeons Renata to death with a brass pestle. Later subverted, when she wears black leather gloves, but only to break into Sasha's to search for a key she left there. Upon realizing she was being followed, she grabs a knife. Ready to kill again.
- Dream Home: Cheng Lai-sheung wears dark wool gloves as she massacres the tenants to bring down the retail price of a high-rise apartment she wants to buy.
- Subverted in Drive when the Driver appears to be getting ready to kill Blanche after putting on a pair of brown leather driving gloves. Blanche's fearful expression and shivering show she assumes the worst, but the Driver only wanted to intimidate her into telling him everything she knew about the robbery plan. Blanche is then killed by a shotgun blast to the head moments later.
- Eraser: The opening title sequence is a Lock-and-Load Montage in which, among other things, John "Eraser" Krueger puts on a pair of surgical gloves. The sequence right afterwards is a Batman Cold Open in which he slaughters five Mafia gangsters through various stealth methods (piano wire, Neck Snap, silenced pistol) to prevent them from killing a compromised witness, then sets the building on fire to help him fake his death and send him off to a secure location.
- Exception to the Rule: Carla Rainer has a fondness for wearing black leather gloves as well as a leather jacket whenever she's going to murder someone.
- In Exposé Linda puts on a pair of latex gloves in front of Paul Martin while declaring that she's going to kill him.
- Downplayed in Fargo after Gaear Grimsrud murders the state trooper by shooting him in the head. He instructs Carl to drag him off the road. Gaear does not wear gloves during this, but Carl puts some on before moving the body.
- In From Russia with Love, SPECTRE hitman Red Grant is always seen putting on gloves before he kills someone, even in situations where fingerprints or other trace evidence would be difficult-to-impossible to find using early-1960s forensic methods. He even does it in the confrontation with James Bond on the Orient Express, when his fingerprints are already all over the compartment. Justified to some extent, as his signature kill method is a wire garrotte, which would also hurt his own hands if he didn't somehow protect himself.
- Good Neighbors: Louise puts on the yellow and rubber house cleaning variety after knocking out Valérie with a fridge door. She then proceeds to murder and rape Valérie with a dildo post-mortem to frame the crime as the work of an active serial killer.
- Gone Girl: Subverted. The mystery of Amy's kidnapping/possible murder is revealed in Flashback and it shows Amy herself is the culprit behind her fake abduction, and she wears latex gloves as she stages the scene of the crime to frame Nick after discovering his affair.
- Hanna: After Hanna's grandmother returns home, she is greeted by a Lightswitch Surprise from Marissa who is wearing a pair of latex gloves. Her intent is made even more clear as she attaches a suppressor to her pistol. Hanna's grandmother makes no attempt to fight back before she is shot in the head by Marissa from behind.
- A Haunting at Silver Falls: Discussed. As Anne prepares to torture and murder Jordan, she sends Kevin off with a shopping list, requesting plastic gloves in particular — with it being very heavily implied that they're for the murder.
- Hospital Massacre: The villain dresses like a doctor, complete with translucent surgical gloves. When preparing for his massacre, there's a scene of him putting them on.
- The Initiation: All the viewer sees of the killer for most of the movie is her hands encased in transparent vinyl gloves as she orchestrates an asylum break out and commits murders.
- In the second sequel to the I Spit on Your Grave 2010 remake, Jennifer puts on latex gloves while approaching a bound to a chair Ron with the intent to kill him by forcing a large pipe into his rear. It Makes Sense in Context.
- Inverted in Jawbreaker when the gloves are put on after the crime. Courtney and Marcie put on yellow rubber gloves to pose Liz's corpse to stage her rape and murder after her accidental death from the Deadly Prank.
- Killer Nun: A nun wearing pink rubber gloves commits a series of murders at a Catholic hospital for the elderly. Sister Gertrude believes, at first, that she could be the culprit. It's eventually revealed to be Sister Mathieu though Sister Gertrude also wears them to drug and abduct Johnathan so she can question him about the killings.
- Mom (2017): A downplayed example when Devki puts on latex gloves after getting inside Charles' home by hiring a locksmith. She then tampers with his protein supplements by spiking them with crushed apple seeds. After consuming them and getting cyanide poisoning, he ends up surviving anyway but paralysed so much that he's unable to speak. Devki then wears them again in Mohit's apartment while framing him for the poisoning. Charles then dies later from exertion after Devki visits him and reveals she's the one who poisoned him for raping her stepdaughter.
- Murder Rock: The killer/Candice Norman wears black wool gloves during the murders. Subverted and with irony when Candice herself almost became a victim of a copycat murder at the hands of Margie, her resentful choreograph assistant. Margie wears the same kind of gloves to further the Red Herring trope, but can't go through with killing Candice who she doesn't know is the actual killer she's copying the MO of.
- The New York Ripper: The killer/Peter Bunch wears latex gloves during his murders.
- In The Nurse, Laura pulls on a pair of latex gloves before murdering Carol by pushing her down the stairs.
- Opera: The killer/Santini wears black leather gloves during the murders that get quite a bit of Menacing Hand Shot attention.
- Played With in The Psychic. Virginia is pursued by Raspini as he wears black leather gloves. Leading her to suspect that he's the killer and is set on making her the next victim. He actually did not intend to kill her and only wanted to retrieve an incriminating letter from her. The real killer is Francesco.
- Rahasya: Aarti is revealed to have murdered Remy via flashback. She is shown putting on latex gloves and a surgical apron before sneaking into Remy's room and killing her via a scalpel to the throat. Soon after, she kills Chetan after he sees her dressed in the kill garb. She later kills her husband, Sachin, after putting on another pair of latex gloves.
- Rocknrolla: When Uri discovers Stella has his stolen painting, he calls his bodyguard Victor to join them. Knowing what his boss really intends, Victor calmly (and coldly) asks a colleague to pass him his leather gloves. Stella never reappears afterward.
- The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Dr. Frank N Furter kills Eddie with an ice pick while wearing pink rubber gloves.
- Le Samouraï: Hitman, Jef Costello always puts on a pair of latex gloves before killing.
- Savage Weekend: As the main characters are outside; an intruder walks in the front door of their mansion, finds and puts on a Halloween mask, a sweater, and a tan pair of worker's gloves.
- Played with in The Sting: throughout the film, after Lonnegan orders his best hitman, Salino, to kill conman Johnny Hooker, we constantly see a Mysterious Mercenary Pursuer keeping watch of Hooker while wearing thick leather gloves. In the third act, he walks right up to Hooker with a gun in his hand and kills Loretta, Hooker's Love Interest, who was walking up to him with her hands in her purse — that happened to be grabbing a silenced pistol. The man turns out to be a gunman hired by Henry Gondorff to protect Hooker and "Loretta" is revealed to be Loretta Salino. We as the audience were not expecting this because among other Red Herring details, it was pretty common for women to be wearing gloves in that era, so why would we suspect her wearing them to avoid fingerprints?
- Strange Days
- Lenny unwittingly watches a Snuff Film in the form of a recorded memory of an intruder putting on latex gloves. After the intruder starts to lockpick a door, he assumes he's just watching a typical breaking and entering crime until the intruder breaks into Iris' hotel room and brutally rapes and murders her.
- Later in the film, Lenny finds Philo Gant comatose from an amplified SQUID recording. He is then confronted by Max who is now wearing a pair of the same kind of gloves the intruder that raped and murdered Iris was wearing. Confirming that he and the intruder in the Snuff Film are the same person.
- Student Bodies: Miss Mumsley puts on a pair of green rubber gloves to kill Toby and Hardy puts on the same kind to kill Toby as well. Miss Mumsley fails, but Toby succeeds. It's also sort of played with, in that most of the characters are shown to own the same pair of gloves as the killer.
- Tenebre: Both of the killers wear black leather gloves during their murders. Though, interestingly, Cristiano Berti wears them consistently. While Peter Neal seemingly abandons them after killing Gianni.
- Trauma: The killer/Adriana Petrescu wears the black leather variety during the Head Hunter murders. Impressively, she convinces her daughter that she is a victim of the Head Hunter by holding her head and her father's severed head while wearing the gloves to make it appear they were both murdered.
- Played With in The Velvet Touch when Valerie Stanton impulsively kills her producer and former lover, Gordon Dunning, during an argument. Fortunately for her, her prints are not on the statuette she struck him with since she almost always wears velvet gloves to go with her outfits.
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Judge Doom, who is already wearing leather gloves, puts on a rubber glove in order to test his "Dip" on a poor toon shoe, complete with Glove Snap. It's also a subtle hint that he's really a Toon; he's taking extra precautions because he's susceptible to the Dip himself.
Live-Action TV
- Aspe: In the two-parter episode "De barbiemoorden" (Translation: The Barbie Murders), the titular Barbie Killer puts on a pair of black leather gloves before killing his victims.
- Awake (2012): Tricia puts on a pair of latex gloves along with a plastic coat and a face shield before shooting and killing Carl.
- Breaking Bad: The first episode of Season 4 has Jesse and Walt being forced to sit in the meth lab with Mike and Victor, waiting for Gus to arrive to receive their punishment. When Gus does arrive, he doesn't say a single word, instead changing out of his clothes, putting on a hazmat suit, rubber gloves, waterproof boots, and then examining the tools in the lab. Walt knows exactly what this implies and goes on a long rant justifying his actions to Gus, but it turns out that neither him or Jesse were the ones Gus was preparing to murder.
- CSI: NY: The killer in "Prey" attends a forensic lecture taught by Det. Bonasera in order to learn how to throw suspicion off of herself. Later, she wears gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints while manipulating the room's temperature and tampering with evidence.
- Dexter:
- Being a forensics specialist, Dexter knows the value of gloves to reduce the likelihood of his capture by law enforcement. Many episodes will feature him wearing either the leather or latex kind during his murders (Apart from that one instance he wore yellow rubber household gloves along with a "Natural Born Griller" apron when he doesn't have his usual kit and is forced to improvise.). If not for killing, then for doing recon on his victims to ensure they fit the code Harry taught him.
- Most of the accomplices to Dexter have followed his lead in this trope. Namely Miguel Pardo, Lumen Pierce, Debra Morgan, and Harrison Morgan.
- This trope is lampshaded in "Dex Takes A Holiday" when Dexter investigates Zoey Kruger's involvement in the home invasion and murder of her husband and daughter. He realizes she was wearing gloves from the crime scene photos before discovering a shred of a blue nitrile glove left in the garbage disposal. This evidence confirms to him that she is the culprit behind her husband's, daughter's, and the criminal she framed's deaths. Zoey later breaks into Dexter's house wearing blue nitrile gloves like the kind she wore during her murders to kill him.
- Moon Knight (2022): In The Stinger to episode 6, an unknown man is seen wearing black gloves as he kidnaps Arthur Harrow from a mental hospital. The man is revealed to be Jake Lockley, Marc and Steven's third alter, and he shoots Harrow to death in the back of a limo.
- One of Us is Lying:
- Subverted by Maeve when the ending of "One of Us Is Famous" shows her putting Simon's hard drive into an envelope while wearing dark wool gloves to cover her prints presenting her as a particularly suspicious suspect. The subversion is that it's later revealed she's not the culprit and had nothing to do with Simon's death.
- She subverts this again in the finale of Season 2 when she holds Addy at gunpoint without wearing gloves in a ploy to trick Fiona into thinking she's on her side. This ends up being a double subversion when Addy points out that Maeve's prints are on the gun only for Maeve to reveal that her prints are actually covered by a layer of thick wax applied to her fingertips.
- Power:
- Tommy stops his car while driving with Vibora Ruiz. He feigns it having technical problems as he puts on gloves before he leaves. Ruiz is a little suspicious, but not enough to get the gun from the glove compartment to defend himself in case Tommy tried anything. Turns out, Tommy really did plan on killing him and he does it by stabbing him to death.
- Played With when Mike Sandoval visits Greg Knox at his apartment. He's wearing black leather gloves but takes them off after entering and has no intention to kill Greg. Until Greg finds out Mike is the leak for Lobos while Mike is still in the room with him. Greg reveals his knowledge to Mike who then shoots him dead before putting the gloves back on to frame Greg as the leak and cover his tracks.
- Scream Queens (2015):
- Hester wears a black leather glove as she pushes the activation button for the deep fat fryer to avoid leaving her fingerprint. Somewhat subverted in that she didn't kill Ms Bean by dunking her head in the fryer. She just tricked Chanel into doing it.
- Dean Munsch wears black nitrile gloves as she murders her husband and frames the student he was having an affair with.
- Inconsistently portrayed in The Sopranos. Most of the murders will be committed by gloveless mobsters, yet, they will typically face no repercussions for them. However, there are exceptions. Particularly when Tony kills Blundetto while wearing latex gloves and most of the NY hits when the hitmen wear leather or latex gloves. The worst offender has to be Paulie. Who seems to have never heard of fingerprints as he messily murders Minn Matrone and some Colombian drug dealers.
- Lampshaded in Top Boy when Jamie lures Kit into believing he was going to help him get out of London. Jamie puts on gloves before getting into Kit's car. Kit notices he's wearing them and is confused enough to ask Jamie why he's wearing them. Followed by Jamie executing Kit via headshot on Dushane's orders.
- Twin Peaks: Leland Palmer provides the page image as he puts on a pair of latex gloves after drugging Sarah and looking at himself in the mirror and seeing a reflection of BOB. This reveals to the audience that he is possessed by BOB and intends to murder Madeline Ferguson.
Video Games
- In Chrono Trigger, Disc-One Final Boss Magus's Idle Animation in battle is to readjust his gloves.
- In Persona 5, Player Character Joker's All-Out Attack portrait involves him adjusting his red gloves after disposing of the enemy.
Visual Novels
- In the bonus case in the DS version of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, one of the pieces of evidence against Lana Skye is the fact that she was wearing gloves (specifically the sort used in forensic investigations). This certainly seems damning and indeed, she moved the body and tampered with the crime scene, even if she wasn't guilty of the actual murder.
Web Video
- Super Power Beat Down: Before Domino and Deadpool show up to fight The Joker and Harley Quinn, the Clown Prince of Crime is pulling on surgical gloves whilst standing over his current victim, cheerfully telling them that they're in "safe hands" with "Dr. Joker". Following a Glove Snap, Joker then starts sawing off the unlucky person's head. Luckily, we don't get to see it happen in detail.
Western Animation
- Fillmore!: In one of, if not, the most serious of the cases on Fillmore occurred in the finale ("Field Trip of the Just") when Eric Orben is caught in the compromising position of holding Guildenstern, a rare albino tarantula, in one hand while holding a bottle of poison in the other. He's also wearing dark yellow rubber gloves. This trope is then subverted when it's revealed he didn't actually poison Guildenstern and was inspecting the scene of the crime.
- Sally Bollywood: Parodied in "Serial Thief" where a serial "clean freak" vandalizes several objects belonging to other kids by obsessively cleaning them in an analogue to serial killing. The perp wears latex gloves with a flower logo on them and leaves them behind at one crime scene. The culprit is revealed to be Christelle. Who already wears white gloves as part of her standard outfit.
