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Straight examples
- Mocked in Ace Attorney Investigations by Edgeworth, where he objects to its use on the Pink Badger, the Blue Badger's Distaff Counterpart.Edgeworth: I suppose this is the Pink Badger? But since it has the same design, doesn't it seem forced to call this one a female?
Kay: You think so? I mean, just look at how long her eyelashes are!
Edgeworth: That's the only difference.
Kay: And the fact that she's pink.
Edgeworth: Yes, and?
Kay: And her lips are red! See, lipstick!
Edgeworth: (thinking to himself) What? She has nothing to say about the giant pink ribbon, or is that too obvious? - Adiboo: Magical Playland: The female bird has eyelashes.
- In Angry Birds some later bird additions and merchandise have stylized "feminine" eyelashes and bows on their heads.
- One example, showing up in Seasons and only known as Female White Bird
, was created to provide a girlfriend for the then-unnamed Matilda. As the name may have tipped you off, Matilda was later decided to be female as well, meaning this was an unintentional retroactive same-sex romance.
- One example, showing up in Seasons and only known as Female White Bird
- Animal Crossing:
- Your player character will wear a t-shirt and shorts if they're a boy, and a dress if they're a girl. They'll also each have a different set of hairstyles (though at one point in the game, girls can get boy haircuts and vice versa.)
- In the Nintendo 64 original title, and its updated versions on the Nintendo Gamecube, the female protagonists wore cone shaped hats while the boys wore viking helmets, that they were unable to remove. Custom hats in future games still use these designs.
- On the NPC end, animals will have either blue or pink name boxes during conversations depending on their gender.
- Averted for players starting with New Leaf, where it's possible to cross-dress and even make your character look exactly like the opposite gender. NPCs wont react to it, but other players might. Also getting your hair done a certain amount of times at Shampoodle (New Leaf only) will unlock opposite gender hair options.
- Of the four Snowfolk family members, Snowman has a mustache and a top hat while Snowmam has eyelashes and an extra snowball on her head made to evoke a hair bun.
- Pablo Sanchez of Backyard Sports has a baseball cap, is bald, and wears shorts. In every game except Skateboarding where he wears a helmet.
- In Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, Rare apparently got tired of the years of people going "Kazooie's a girl?!", so they re-made her appearance. She now has long eyelashes, "curly" hair, and a more curvy look, to make her more obviously female. And then, once you beat the game, she starts wearing a bowtie (yes, it's a bow, but it's a masculine bow). Kazooie even keeps her eyelashes in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate to show that she is undoubtedly a girl.
- In Benji's Bananas, Benji's girlfriend differs from his by the flower in her hair, her eyelashes, and her clothes. Benji himself is just a normal monkey.
- In BoxBoy!, the only difference between Qucy and the other two boxes is that she's got a big grey head bow. That being said, Qbby (and later Qudy and Qucy herself) can avert this due to the gendered clothing options not being restricted to any one character.
- Bubble Bobble:
- The protagonists of Bubble Symphony, a sequel to Bubble Bobble: Coro and Kulu, who have bows on their heads, are the female duo Beta Couple to Bub and Bob.
- Pab and Peb wear the same bows. This new Beta Couple in Bubble Bobble Plus (WiiWare) is named in the Title Operations Guide in the Wii Shop Channel. Became a Subtitle Name Change for Coro and Kulu since a "Bub's Broadcast" YouTube video in 2021 (at 3:05).
- Rainbow Islands: Eleven random people in The Alcatraz were forcibly transformed into green bubble dragons. Three of them are female and thus have a pink bow on their heads as bubble dragons.
- In Chack'n Pop, Miss Chack'n can be told apart from Mr. Chack'n by the ribbon in her hair.
- Chrono Trigger: Atropos, Robo's Distaff Counterpart, Duel Boss, and girlfriend is pink and wear a bow. In fact, after you beat her in her Duel Boss fight versus Robo, she gives you her ribbon as a special Robo-only equippable item.
- All Creatures games exhibit a mix of this (many official breeds differ by hairstyle, two have makeup on the females, and one C1 breed had pinkish females and bluish males) and more typical sexual dimorphism (different coat colors, horns on male Fallow Norns.)
- Cuphead has quite a few:
- It cleverly uses the same accessory as one for male and female at the same time. One of the bosses fought is a large domino with a masculine top half named Pip, and a feminine bottom half named Dot. There is a bow in the middle of the domino that would serve as a bow tie for Pip, as well as a hair bow for Dot.
- The Moonshine Mob flies all have five o'clock shadow.
- In the epilogue of the game, an ant squad member reads feminine: Her thorax is much more round in comparison to the flatter thoraxes of the ants met during the game proper.
- In The Delicious Last Course, Ms. Chalice had to take over Cuphead or Mugman's body in order to walk among the living. She keeps their black shirt in this form, but switches out their shorts and shoes for a frilly skirt and flats. Her previous incarnation, The Legendary Chalice, used to have prominent lipstick.
- "Big Sis Prinny" from Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is pinkish-purple rather then blue like the generic Prinnies.
- Isaac's female alter-egos from The Binding of Isaac:
- Maggy has a blonde wig with a bow in it.
- Eve has a scraggly black wig, Excessive Evil Eyeshadow, and a dead bird in her hair that could be mistake for a bow at a glance.
- Lilith has a long, red wig.
- Three of the four female Kongs in the Donkey Kong Country series have long, blonde hair. The only one to not have it is Wrinkly Kong, as she is an old lady.
- In Ever Oasis, male and female Seedlings are sexually dimorphic. Male Seedlings have woodier, more branchlike horns, female Seedlings have split-down-the-middle horns that resemble seed pods.
- In the Gremlins: Gizmo video game, you can choose to care for a couple of female mogwai, distinguishable by their long eyelashes.
- Becoming a Super Mutant in Fallout causes one to lose secondary sexual characteristics and become sterile, muscle-bound, and masculine-looking. Two female Nightkin in Fallout: New Vegas accessorize to look feminine: Lily wears a gardening hat and shawl, while Tabitha sports a pair of heart-shaped red eyeglasses and a blonde wig with a bow.
- Final Fantasy:
- In Final Fantasy IX, female Moogles are distinguished from the males by wearing pink vests.
- In one quest from Final Fantasy Tactics A2 you rescue a kidnapped Seeq beauty queen. Her sprite is indistinguishable from a male Seeq viking, but in her portrait she's... a male Seeq viking with lipstick.
- Final Fantasy XIV's male hrothgar have a slightly hunched over posture compared to the women (added years later).
- Whenever you perform a task in your schedule in Growing Up, a simplified version of your avatar is shown doing it. Female avatars will wear a ponytail regardless of their hairstyle.
- Halo:
- Halo: Reach: Female Spartans are skinnier, curvier and have Jiggle Physics in contrast to previous games and lore which asserted that Spartan's gender were indistinguishable when wearing Powered Armour.
- Halo Legends: Female Sangheili are more humanoid, with far less pounced mandibles and even have hair.
- The Henry Stickmin series has Ellie Rose. Before she speaks, she has a feminine-style haircut and a red mouth for lipstick to showcase that she is female.
- The protagonist of I Wanna Be the Guy, The Kid, gets a bow in his hair on Normal Mode, to suggest the less than masculine choice of playing on the easiest setting As if the extra save points with "WUSS" written on them weren't enough of a clue. Ayane gives Ryu one in the Xbox Ninja Gaiden if he selects Ninja Dog mode.
- In Ice Climber, Nana (the P2 character) is just the Popo sprite with a pink parka instead of blue.
- Inazuma Eleven: The inhabitants of Faram Obius, a planet from the Galaxy game, are humanoid aliens who have similar sexual dimorphism as real humans. However, another thing that distinguishes the sexes is that only males have horns on their head.
- In Kingdom Hearts, the Bouncywild, the Distaff Counterpart of the monkey-like Powerwild, has blonde pigtails and a bow.
- Kingdom of Loathing: Female avatars have ponytails. Many of the alternate avatar images, as well. The male version of Vestments of the Treeslayer is a tree. The female version is the same tree, with a little bow tied to one branch.
- Kirby:
- All over the place in the Kirby series, where characters are given bows to show that they're female. It's most obvious with Chuchu the octopus and Ribbon the fairy. The only two exceptions seem to be Keke and Adeleine. This caries over into the fandom, where fanmade female characters are usually given a bow, or at least big ol' eyelashes.
- The blue Lololo's distaff counterpart Lalala is pink and wears a bow.
- Taken to the extremes with Kaboola/Kabula, an airship boss in Kirby's Dream Land and Kirby Super Star Ultra. Her most recent redesign has eyelashes painted on her hull.
- Many male characters in this series tend to have big bushy eyebrows.
- Inverted in Kirby's Epic Yarn with an angler fish couple Kirby is responsible for reuniting, as the male is smaller, pink and wears a bow around its body.
- In Later Alligator, it's easy to tell that Pat's baby sister Angelface is female because she wears a pink bow.
- Queen Sectonia's original form, as shown by the Sectonia Clone in Kirby: Planet Robobot, heavily resembles her former Number Two, Taranza, though with the notable additions of pink clothing, longer hair, and pink mascara.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: Why can you tell Zelda apart from the other Animated Armors? Because she's freakin' pink!!
Random Phantom: (to Zelda) YOU SEEM CUTER THAN USUAL. WHY.- In Oracle of Ages, the Maku Tree in Labrynna has long eyelashes, ganguro-style makeup, and a large flower low in her branches.
- In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess the Female monkey is distinguished from the others by a rose on her head.
- Determining a Sackboy from a Sackgirl in LittleBigPlanet is based solely on what clothing and design options the player places on them.
- Mass Effect:
- The only female krogan seen wears a full body-covering robe, while males are almost always wearing combat armor, and the few who don't wear simple shirts and trousers. However, they still were able to split off from the males and form their own exclusively female clans that are doing just fine on their native Death World Tuchanka without any males protecting them from wild beasts and raiders, so it's more likely that the one example of female clothing were special priestess robes rather than common clothing for women. And even then she still had no problem at all with taking a shotgun from the person next to her to shoot a cyborg assassin coming up behind him.
- Quarian females generally wear a hood or veil over their helmet, while males have little hook things hanging from their rebreathers. These are on top of form-fitting full-body environment suits that clearly show very prominent humanoid sexual dimorphism note , moving away from the trope somewhat.
- Bandage Girl in the Meat Boy series wears a distinctive flower. Her and Meat Boy's daughter, Nugget, wears a pink bunny onesie.
- Now that it's no longer a secret that Samus Is a Girl, Samus's Powered Armor in the Metroid series has undergone a slight-but-noticeable makeover to make the gender of its wearer more obvious. It possess a rather slender waist and a large Breast Plate, and its visor is now more obviously transparent, usually showing off Samus' eyes... and her rather long eyelashes.
- Nintendo's Miis have all the same facial and hair combinations, however males wear a shirt and pants and females wear a dress that flares out.
- In The Movies, the full-body animal costumes are the few unisex outfits, because they replace the character model for the actor rather than fitting over it. Except, the gorilla suit has a male and a female variant. The lady gorilla has a bow and lighter fur (but, curiously, no cleavage!) And no, you can't cross dress it; it always matches the gender of the actor.
- In Nuts & Milk, Yogurt looks exactly like Milk with the addition of two pink bows on her head.
- Pac-Man:
- Unlike her husband, Ms. Pac-Man has a bow on her head. She also has eyelashes and a mole, and if you look real closely, you can also see lipstick on her sprite. Different designs for her over the years have variously also given her eyeshadow, hair, or heels instead of boots. 2D art of her also shows that she has a smaller nose than Pac-Man. Her royalty-free counterparts, Pac-Marie and Pac-Mom, respectively have a ponytail and a feminine hat.
- Discussed in an exchange in Wayne's World, which provided this trope's alternate title:
"Well, she's got a bow on her head!"- One of the ads for a home video game system version of Ms. Pac-Man had the titular yellow gobbling-disk try to convince us otherwise, by singing "Honey, don'tcha know / I'm more than Pac Man with a bow!"
- The Pac-Land version of Pac-Man at least got an article of clothing like his wife, thanks to the 80's cartoon: he's almost never seen without his trusty red hat.
- This also extends to the Pac-Children: Baby Pac-Man has her hair done up in a bow, while her brother Jr. Pac-Man used to wear a propeller beanie before switching to a baseball cap.
- While the members of the Ghost Gang have identical bodies, only Pinky and Sue have eyelashes.
- Gokujou Parodius and Otomedius G have the giant female Moai head Yoshiko, who wears lipstick and earrings. The latter game reveals that it's not her real face.
- The female Player Character in The Pedestrian (2020) has the lower half of her body be composed mainly of a triangle with legs coming out the bottom. This triangle is meant to be a dress.
- Pokémon: Gender-specific physical differences were created for some Pokémon in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl and carried over to future games. Most of them, as well as earlier attempts at portraying sexual dimorphism in the franchise, fall under Secondary Sexual Characteristics, being random changes or based on real life animals, but a few, such as female Wobuffet's lipstick-like markings, are closer to this, via Rule of Funny.
- Oniko from Puyo Puyo looks much like her crush Onion Pixie, but with a red ribbon on her head, a dress, and visible eyelashes.
- Lady X Subsistance from Rumble Roses to emphasize she is supposed to be a female despite being a robot has wide hips, high heeled shaped feet, and feminine eyes. The "Substance" model appears a bit more human-like but is still obviously a robot and has long hair alongside clothes that shows her belly and covers the vital spots females have to cover.
- Rebecca, the female hedgehog from Shadow of the Wool Ball and its sequel, can be recognized as female because she has visible eyelashes and long hair.
- The Sims:
- In The Sims 2, you can build male and female Servos (robot butlers). The male looks like a generic robot, but the female looks like the male with a pink bow and lipstick.
- MySims:
- Sims are technically neither, though the specific characteristics they're given tell the tale. The player-controlled Sim can be given any available characteristics you want. (Feminine voice, eyelashes, and attire with a masculine hairstyle and a five-o'-clock shadow? Go for it!)
- In MySims Kingdom, on the other hand, you choose a gender for your Sim, and that puts a limiter on what your Sim can wear, what kind of hair is available, etc.. Sometimes, it changes what outfits you get as a reward. For example, there's a reward that lets males choose from a selection of outfits that are shorts-only; females get two-pieces, some with shirts over them (split near the bottom).
- When Amy Rose first appeared in Sonic the Hedgehog CD, her defining sexual characteristics are being pink (a contrast to Sonic's blue), eyelashes, and a skirt. When she was redesigned for Sonic Adventure, her femininity was more emphasized by changing her hairstyle (up until then, it was exactly the same as Sonic's), giving her an actual bust size (she was changed from eight years old to twelve), and giving her large golden bracelets to wear on her wrists. Archie gave her secondary characteristics. Played straight with most characters in the games, where the only differences are eyelashes and clothing styles.
- The main characters of Snipperclips seem to be male and female based solely on their tertiary traits. One of them wears a bowtie and sneakers, while the other has long eyelashes, and wears a scarf and flared heel boots.
- Spyro the Dragon:
- In Spyro: A Hero's Tail, girl dragon (and expy of Amy Rose) Ember is pink, has a necklace, and has a heart-shaped tail tip. Spyro and Flame on the other hand are purple and bright red.
- In Spyro: Year of the Dragon, some of the female dragons hatch out of their eggs already wearing a bow.
- Star Fox Zero features a pink colored vixen. She also has a Tuft of Head Fur, though not the Furry Female Mane Krystal has.
- Street Fighter has human females and thus through their figures and clothing it is easy to tell their genders. The girls do however have a trait the men don't in that they are not allowed to look unpresentable thus they don't appear goofy◊ or their jaws do not deform◊ when hit by certain attacks.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- Wendy O. Koopa has a pink hairbow, a pink shell, makeup, jewelry and high heels. Interestingly, despite being the only female Koopaling, Wendy is one of only two Koopalings with no hair.
- Pom Pom, a feminized version of Boom Boom. Even her boomerangs have bows on them.
- Only two Toads in the main series have additional traits to indicate their gender: Toadette's mushroom cap has additional growths on the bottom that resemble braids (in addition to wearing a dress under her vest), while Toadsworth sports a bowtie and a mustache.
- A recurring quest in Super Mario Odyssey requires the player to capture a Goomba and meet up with another, female Goomba somewhere in the kingdom. You can tell she's a girl because she has long eyelashes, blush stickers, wears a bow on her sun hat, and —oh yeah— is pink.
- Female Piantas, along with wearing bras, also have eyelashes, flowers on top of the small palms that grows on their heads, as well as orange grass skirts and palm leaves. The male ones have green skirts and palm leaves, and some individuals sports moustaches as well.
- Mario Party Advance:
- Played straight with Goombob and Goombetty, a pair of Galoomba school friends. Goombob looks like a regular Galoomba, but the female Goombetty wears a bow.
- Downplayed with Bob-omba. She's pink and she's a girl, but she's specifically a Bob-omb Buddy, who are always pink regardless of gender. However, she also has a male Bob-omb friend who's a regular black-colored Bob-omb.
- Mario & Luigi:
- Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time: The female Chain Chomp that sometimes appears when the Pocket Chomp item is used has a bow on its head.
- Kylie Koopa wears pink boots and has a pink ribbon hanging on the side of her hat.
- Starlow's eyelashes are the only indicator on her that's she's a girl.
- The Paper Mario games do this quite a bit:
- Generic Toad NPCs in the first game and The Thousand-Year Door are identified as female by having hair under their mushroom caps and eyelashes, contrasting their mostly neutral appearances in other games.
- Bombette, a female Bob-Omb, is pink, has a blond, braided fuse, and a heart-shaped windup key.
- Goombella is also pink, and she has a blond ponytail.
- Goombario wears a blue cap similar to Mario's, while his sister Goombaria wears an orange-red bow and has a pink body. Their mother is also pinkish in color and wears a pink head kerchief, although their grandmother is brown and merely has a lacy cap. However, none of his three female relatives have hair, unlike Goombella.
- Ms. Mowz, a Mouser, has a heart-shaped tail and wears high heels.
- Petuni, the only known female Puni (other than the Elder), can me distinguished by the pink orb on her antenna.
- Koops's girlfriend Koopie Koo is a Koopa Troopa with eyelashes, hair, and Blush Stickers, and is also the only explicitly female Koopa Troopa in the game.
- Professor Frankly has balding, curly hair.
- Older male Koopas in the series, like Koopa Koot, Kroop, and Koopley, have goatees or beards, and may also have bushier eyebrows.
- Lady Bow is a Boo with a bow on each side of her head. Her butler, Bootler is obviously male with his thick moustache. Gusty Gulch is full of identical looking Boos, so Goombario suggests that they should wear bows like Bow to make them easier to identify.
- In Twinbee, one of the ships (not just the pilot of said ship, the ship itself) is female. How can you tell? Winbee is pink. Later installments have also shown that her cockpit is shaped like a heart, though this is somewhat excused - with two rounded bumps on top, it also shows she's the second 'bee ship. Twinbee, the original, has a round cockpit (one "bump"), while Gwinbee, the third, appears to have a rounded arrow pointing down (three bumps on the top part of the cockpit).
- The Flash game Vision by Proxy is about a round blue alien with one big eye, who looks like a blue Mike Wasowski. The sequel Ms Vision By Proxy is about a round pink alien with one big eye, a bow on her head and, for some reason, a belt. Taking it up a level, the alien from the first game appears in the opening cut scene and has grown a moustache.
- Throughout the Xenoblade Chronicles series, determining the gender of Nopon (who are all shaped like furry spheres) comes down to contextual clues. In 2, Zeke reveals that this applies In-Universe as well, stating most people can only tell Nopon boys from girls by their clothing. The boot is on both feet, however, as the same scene reveals party member Tora thought Mòrag was a man. She takes it quite personally (while she does speak with a gruff tone and is never seen out of her military uniform, a human would be unlikely to make that mistake). The setting even takes pronouns into account: in Japanese, Mòrag uses collective or masculine pronouns as befits her rank; in English, the Noponic dialect doesn't use them, so Tora never knew the difference between "he" and "she".
Exceptions
- Best Fiends has a tendency to use eyelashes, with the occasional lip tint, to signify the female Fiends. However, some girl Fiends avert this, with only their bios giving their proof of being female, such as Karma (a chameleon that goes by feminine pronouns despite having an unknown gender) and Dina (a hickory horned devil caterpillar who has been mistaken in-universe for Gene, a blatantly male Fiend).
- Final Fantasy:
- Ribbons in Final Fantasy Tactics A2 can normally only be equipped by the female-by-default races, Viera and Gria, and by female Humes... but the otherwise male-by-default Moogle and even Bangaa races have a job that can teach them "Ribbon-bearer" support ability. Guess what it allows them to do?
- Also played with in one mission, where there is a rule against harming characters of the opposite gender. The fight features Night Dancer, an apparently female bangaa with long eyelashes, lipstick, and a feminine way of speaking. This is not breaking precedent; unique characters are allowed to have a different gender than the species standard (such as Adelle, Frimelda, and Penelo, the only playable female humes in the whole game - though Penelo has access to the Viera class set). However, if you attack Night Dancer with a female, you're suddenly informed that you broke the law - which means "she" is a cross-dresser!
- In Final Fantasy Tactics set the precedent of Ribbons as female-only equipment but made a very special exception for guest star and one-time (forced) cross-dresser Cloud Strife.
- A similar thing happens in Dissidia Final Fantasy with the armor set "Allure of Honey" made up of items from Cloud's famous cross-dressing adventure. He and all of the female characters can wear the set... along with Kefka.
- In Zombies Ate My Neighbors there's a power-up potion that temporarily transforms the player character into a hulking unclothed purple beast. Julie's monster form is identical to Zeke's — one can't tell the gender of the underlying human via visual inspection. This trope is applied in that it is Julie, not Zeke, who retains a characteristic of her human appearance so that the two can be distinguished when both transformed at once. This trope is downplayed in that the retained characteristic is... her bright red baseball cap.
- Despite being pink, no one seems to mistake Kirby for being female.
- Smiley from the Riddle School games has a mouth as her characteristic...seriously. As a style choice, Jon Bro made all the children bald and gave all the adults hair. Since Smiley didn't have the usual TSC of hair, he tried giving her a mouth instead. It didn't work: The special features section in Riddle School 5 lists "Smiley is a guy" as the biggest misconception about the series.
- The Art Evolution in Riddle School 5 gave her slightly more feminine-looking eyes. Even with that, it's still slightly difficult to tell since Riddle School 5 regularly shifts art styles, and this change is most prominent during sequences when you're in the space ship.
- Averted in 3 in Three: the title character (a talking digit) is addressed as "Ms. 3" despite having no Tertiary Sexual Characteristics.
- Played with in Team Fortress 2: The Pyro, whose gender is up for debate, has a flower purse in his/her/its locker and a Southern Baptist-styled hat as one of its possible headwear.
- Parodied in the online game Lee-Lee's Quest. In the intro, the titular character Lee-Lee, a blue blob, assumes that Lulu, the pink blob standing next to him, is his girlfriend. Lulu is OF COURSE just another guy who happens to like pink and have long eyelashes. Though, the sequel opens by revealing that Lulu is pregnant and heavily suggests that she was just saying anything she could think of to get Lee-Lee to leave her be.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- Super Mario RPG: At one point Mario and company encounter a Chain Chomp visually identical to every other Chain Chomp in the game. Bowser however is easily able to determine that it is a girl and then "acquires" her as a weapon that he can hurl at enemies.
- Mario Party Advance: Akiki is a female Ukiki, but she has the same sprite as her uncle.
- Paper Mario:
- Paper Mario 64: Sushie, a female Cheep-Cheep, otherwise looks like an ordinary member of her species except for purple and orange coloring.
- The same game has Watt, a Sparky, who only has a pacifier (to signify that she's young). There's still some confusion among gamers regarding Watt's gender. The fact that the game refers to Watt as both male AND female at different points doesn't help either.
- In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Hooktail is actually a female, but has no typically feminine features to speak of.
- Five Nights at Freddy's:
- Watch a Let's Play video, and chances are the player will refer to Chica as a "he" or a "mister". No bow, no eyelashes, a dingy yellow color, and wearing just a bib that says, "LET'S EAT!!!" in gender-neutral purple and yellow letters. Played straight with her redesign in the sequel, though.
- Bonnie spawns similar confusion in the fandom, with having a feminine name and a purple color scheme, but wears a red bow tie that usually designates a male.
- There are two female Mighty Number robots in Mighty No. 9. Dynatron is feminine-looking and humanoid, but Cryosphere has nothing that signifies her as "female" besides her voice.
- Splatoon:
- Inklings and Octolings (well, teenage ones, anyway) have practically no physical differences between genders; the only tells they have are males having slightly larger eyebrows, girls being imperceptibly curvier, and female Octolings having an extra dash on their eye markings. Besides that and the different hairstyles, they look identical, act identical, and can even wear the same clothes (nothing is stopping a male Inkling from dressing up as Squid Girl, for example) — girls couldn't even wear skirts until the second game! Splatoon 3 goes even further by letting players of any style pick any combination of hairstyle, eyebrows, and pants/skirts, letting players freely invoke Dude Looks Like a Lady or Lady Looks Like a Dude.
- Callie, Marie, Marina, and Frye all have long eyelashes, though it could just be makeup, while Pearl has no visible ones like other female Inklings. The Squid Sisters and Off the Hook have beauty marks, while neither of the female members of Deep Cut do. Marie and Pearl wear dresses, Callie and Marina both have shorts, and Frye has poofy "harem" pants.
- Shiver is a standout aversion, having the fewest "feminine" characteristics of almost any female character in the series. She has very short eyelashes that blend in with her Tsurime Eyes, a flat chest, and ripped sweatpants instead of any sort of dress, which led to some Viewer Gender Confusion at first—not helped by the fact that early promos seemed to intentionally avoid gendered language around her. It wasn't until around the Splatfest World Premiere that Word of God (and some casual pronoun use) confirmed her as a girl.
- In Guild Wars 2, nearly every non playable race in the game has male and female members, but in most cases the only way you can tell them apart is from their voices. Particularly notable in the case of ogres, where the females look exactly as masculine and hulking as the males.
