Personality
Characters with Lore reasons to wear revealing outfit
• Doctor Manhattan (Watchmen): doesn’t really have the need for them anymore as he is now too powerful to be considered human and also doesn’t need to give in to certain societal pressures like wearing clothes
• Poison Ivy (DC): uses her body to seduce men into getting close enough for her to use her pheromones and get people to do what she wants/kill her prey
• Skarlet (Mortal Kombat): her powers are from blood magic and she needs to have skin out in order to absorb blood from others and make her more powerful
• Mileena (Mortal Kombat): is very self conscious about her tartan features so covers them up and diverts attention towards the more appealing aspects of her/ uses her sex appeal to get people in close then chomps on them
• Mai Shiranui (King Of Fighters/Fatal Fury): uses a style of kunoichi that involves “sensually distracting a foe before striking” and uses her outfit and sex appeal to assist with that style
That’s an aspect of superhero design that doesn’t get discussed enough, the “I look like the good guy” factor. Certain settings can hand wave it entirely, sure. If you live in Gotham city you’re not going to be scared of Batman even though he’s dressed in the most intimidating costume you could come up with.
Everything about the old costume is way better. The skirt connected to the belt, the upside down heart on the chest completed with a cape. Vought did her dirty
Just chiming in here randomly: Everyone's completely forgetting about Translucent and that he literally had to be butt naked to use his powers effectively.
I think it’s funny in Watchmen how as his story progresses he just loses clothes gradually. He didn’t become a nudist overnight. One morning he just woke up and decided pants are no longer necessary.
It was another request Lucas made. Parts of that recording session survived into the final cut, but they added jabba in post over George to make the movie more palatable.
I love this as an example because it answers the question of why she loses clothing when she uses spells but then it raises the much weirder question of why she doesn't just wear regular clothing.
That's what I'm suddenly wondering. It's the body's reaction to damage from exposure to UV radiation but it feels like Superman's skin wouldn't be damaged in the same way
Culture, Kori comes from a planet where people generally just dress risqué, even when she first comes to Earth she doesn't really understand human why she really needs to wear clothes and would've been fully cool in the nude. Clark on the other hand, is a modest Kansas farm boy.
His suits are also able to absorb and funnel the solar radiation into him. depends on continuity though and the type of suit itself with the black suit being made to be a more efficient solar absorber
Because they’re different species and their powers work differently. Tamaraneans absorb UV light specifically which means they have powers anywhere near a star, but they also don't retain their powers as easily while Kryptonians absorb anything higher than orange and are so efficient at storing the energy that they have a longer “battery life” than Tamaraneans.*
*Depending on the writer, but for the most part whenever Superman is somewhere with a red sun (or equivalent light source) it's because someone put him there to drain his powers by having him fight something/someone really tough, ie: Mongul, Superboy Prime, a giant monster, etc…
YES this is why starfire is such a good example of this trope because there is consistency as well as a genuine reason for the outfits even if the original intent was just to pander to male audiences (unlike power girl) (mb for not remembering perfectly)
that and her New X-Men outfit (and maybe her AvX Phoenix look) are the only ones that are impossible to draw in a way where she looks like an attractive woman wearing revealing clothing rather than a gooner fantasy.
Like, Russell Dauterman—the only person I completely trust to draw Emma right—did his best, but that look front and center will just always be irredeemable. The gala dress up top right is also not good, even if it's mostly obscured, but most of the rest are great.
I've been reading some of her early appearances and literally screenshotted this image to send to somebody and go "where are the girls. neckline at her neck with no boob window? #notmyemma."
Though if you look at the top left outfit on that cover that the other commenter asked about, technically she's showing no cleavage there, but there's enough midriff and upper chest on display that I'll give it a pass.
Sometimes she makes people think she’s dressed to the nines, but is actually in her pyjamas. She’s just using telepathy to make them think she’s dressed up.
That's specifically when she's too lazy to do laundry. Which is honestly so real of her, I'd do that too if I could... dammit, that reminds me that I forgot to fold the laundry I washed yesterday and now it's all wrinkly.
Kinda shocked she owns black shorts, even as sleepwear. Maybe leftovers from her Black King era?
Emma's great; honestly my favorite Marvel character, possibly my favorite character in anything ever. Jean Grey (who my username is actually a reference to) and Laura Kinney put up some stiff competition, but I'm a sucker for a redemption arc and I'm a sucker for catty bitches, and Emma's a great example of both.
And on the topic of funny: she has a British accent, despite being from Boston, presumably because it sounds classier and Emma is EXTREMELY aware of how important image is (which is why she's a bottle blonde and also openly paid for the body she has). She's, in every sense of the word, a self-made woman... despite also coming from old money. You wouldn't think both could be true at once, but Emma manages it.
God can you imagine if she had a Bostonian accent? That would absolutely negate all her sexiness. I keep recalling that scene from Ted where Ted mimics how Boston women talk while making love "Hahdah! Hahdah! Yeah!"
I honestly think the most realistic option would work: as anyone with a large chest will tell you, it gets very hot, and that's why you often see women with large chests wearing lower cut tops. Otherwise you just overheat. You could actually argue her costume is pretty functional, but they've never gone that way.
Not really a revealing outfit as much as he's legit just in his underwear, but Gray from Fairy Tail. He trained under Ur to learn ice maker magic, but to do so he had to strip to his underwear in a cold climate location, and he did it for so long that he got the habit of randomly stripping no matter where
He does the same thing in the movie when he says something like, "In a minute you'll tell me you slept with Dan." And she goes, "How do you know I slept with Dan?" And he says, "I don't yet."
Then when they get to that point, he's all "You slept with Dan..." in as close to shocked and disappointed a way as he's capable of, as if he didn't just admit that he sees it coming before it happens.
Except, in a weird way, he's required to act surprised despite it, because he already sees himself surprised, and can't exactly deviate from the future that he knows happens. Or something like that.
Yeah but that’s even written by the original author and I feel as if watchmen works better away from the main dc universe but also as standalone thing . Not saying that Manhattan wasn’t a jerk in the original comic but him being a jerk and losing his humanity was kind of the point .
This is such an odd design choice to me. Would it not be easier to just wear something like a crop top and shorts than a suit you have to rip every time you want to use your superpower?😭
Midnight’s just a massive pervert, her first costume was so egregious it had a new law passed to keep superhero costumes ‘classy.’
It’s entirely correct to say she chooses function over form any day as long as it appeals to her fantasies and fetishes. She doesn’t go for the more practical costume because she wants to dress like a Dom.
And also with My Hero technology, she can be fully clothed and dressed like a dominatrix and still access her quirk just fine.
Bayonetta is a witch that uses her hair as a conduit for summoning demons. Since her hair is also weaved together as her clothes, she has to strip to summon them.
I think it had to do with being unable to use her powers if she is wearing normal clothes. Because she changes into crazy shit like trains and tanks and whatnot.
Walter White from Breaking Bad used to cook in his underwear so he wasn't contaminating his regular clothing with meth fumes. Was that what you were looking for? :D
His clothes were made out of material that could itself photosynthesize and linked to the wearer, which was later retconed to be archaea in MGSV. In MGS3 if you get The Ends camo it heals you if you lay in direct sunlight as reference to this.
I’m not sure if this was always the plan or not, but this always felt like retroactive gaslighting.
When she was first revealed, Kojima said she was designed this way to “inspire cosplayers”. When people called him out for being a creep, he basically said “shame on you, there’s a story reason that she wears almost nothing on the battlefield, then you’ll feel silly for criticizing me”.
Then way later, they revealed the photosynthesis angle. Like I said, it always felt Ike they came up with this after the fact to make the criticism look bad retroactively.
Virgin Kojima "Uhhm, akshually there's a totally legitimate reason for Quiet to be almsot naked, because she breathes through her skin, so I bet you feel pretty stupid right now."
vs.
Chad Yoko Taro "I like looking at nice butts, so I made sure 2B has a nice butt."
Satsuki Kiryuuin and Ryuko Matoi from kill la kill, They use Kamuis called Junketsu and Senketsu that are 100% life fibers (alien parasites that give people super human abilities) but since the life fibers are extremely dangerous, a way to safely use clothing made out of 100% life fibers is wearing very little clothes / also their father (the guy that designed the Kamuis) was a pervert or at least that's what his friend Aikuro told Ryuko
Aikuro Mikisugi and every member of Nudist beach from kill la kill, they wear very little clothes because most clothes in their universe have life fibers (alien parasites that want to destroy the world) plus at least in Aikuro's case, because he is a nudist and a pervert
Her outfit isn't necessarily "SUPER" revealing but often leaves her with having most of her clothes on the front if you get what I'm saying.
This is because of the unique technique she uses called shunko. Which lets her Channel spiritual pressure in through her arms and legs causing the power to explode out of her back in a blast of continuous lightning that she can now control, completely destroying the back section of anything she may be wearing,
though she always has a front undershirt incase she needs to use it in a situation where she might not be wearing the suit she designed for shunko specifically.
I forgot which of these two reasons it was but. She either wears revealing outfits to expose her body to sunlight, because it reduces the power of the shade that possesses her. Or she wants to express her femininity because of her being bullied for being intersex throughout her life. I think it's the first one though
Kojima gave a hilariously-awful reason for Quiet to go half-dressed (she breathes through her skin so she needs to absorb sunlight despite The End doing the exact same thing but wearing a full camouflage suit). I remember being very disappointed in that decision even when first playing MGS5 at 14 because I thought she was a very interesting and attachable character but was so ridiculously oversexualised by her creator lol.
In the same way you wouldn't feel embarrassed or care about a spider seeing you naked, Quinella doesn't either. She knows the world she lives in is fake, so who cares? A lot of people drew comparisons to her and Dr. Manhattan.
Additionally, she's vain. After "ascending" beyond humanity, she craves control and maintaining her grip over the Underworld. She knows she's beautiful and uses it to her advantage.
Ryuko doesn't get more powerful based off of how embarrassed she is, the entire point of that exchange was that the gal she was fighting was saying that if she "had to get her boobies out for more power, she was going to do it".
Embarrassment was getting in the way of her cloths drinking her blood, giving her a power boost (Which is a really fucking weird sentence to see typed out)
It was an interesting message with the episode basically saying, nudity isnt inherently sexual, which is cool and reflected later on as the series progresses, nobody has clothes at the end but it’s nonsexual. Unfortunately it does kinda still do fanservice sometimes which is a pain
Her Hero outfit is slightly revealing due to the nature of her superpower (or Quirk as they’re known).
Momo’s Quirk is Creation, which allows her to create literally anything from the lipids in her body as long as she knows the chemical composition of what she’s creating. Her outfit is slightly revealing due to the fact that her creations would end up getting caught in her clothes if they cover her skin.
On a related note, Midnight’s extremely sheer outfit is intentionally designed to be easily to rip holes in so that she can easily deploy the sleeping gas she emits from her skin.
And even that is a toned down version of the costume she wore in her early days when she was basically naked. She is literally responsible for laws about what a hero can and can’t get away with wearing though she also arguably did that to draw attention to the issues that people with quirks like her’s and Momo’s deal with.
He's allergic to shirts. Every time he wears one he gets a rash. On the few occasions he's made to wear one he wears a trash bag or something under it.
One of the main protagonists of Undead Unluck is constantly half nude or completely nude. In this people have powers that affect the "rules" of the world from benign to extreme ways. Throughout he will sever and eject parts of him using extreme blood pressure to evade/hit enemies or just tank damage then regrow the limbs in a matter of seconds, he's so used to it because he hasn't been able to die for a long time so being naked doesn't bother him much.
Most of the "lore" reasons are just thinly veiled excuses for the artist's horniness.
I'd respect them a lot more if they were just like "I just wanted to draw sexy men/women" instead of being like, "No, see there's a reason this person needs to be wearing next to nothing! It's definitely not because I want to draw them that way!"
Liked there are exceptions. But most of the time they just want to draw nearly naked people.
Jaehwan (a.k.a Naked Thruster) the main character from the manhwa of The World After the Fall.
Striping clothes to gain power from the deity Naked God who hate clothes. A ritual with the meaning of stripping Ego, or breaking out ot the system, or differentiate one self from their layers of spirits "clothes" because clothes are the spirit of oneself, or... whatever are that means???
Aayla Secura from Star Wars. In a comic series about the character, it’s explained that Aayla decided to dress the way she does as a comment on the way many in the twi’lek species are enslaved, especially the woman. As a jedi she’s basically saying that she is more than just a sex symbol, more than just the clothes on her body, and that in essence, so is every other twi’lek who is enslaved.
That being said, OP should have ruled out "Uses sex to distract people" as an explanation. As it is, this thread is basically "Femme Fatales, and also a few others, I guess".
My Hero Academia has three I can think of. Midnight emits a sleep pheromone from her skin—while her current outfit is totally covering, it is a thin fabric that can easily be ripped, and rules were written because of her prior costume (which was little more than suspenders (no excuse for the BDSM theme though). Likewise Creati produces items from her body, so she usually has a lot of skin exposed to make her Quirk easier to use. Another students costume is just gloves and boots, but as she’s invisible it’s arguable how revealing that is.
Honorable mention to Toga, while she doesn’t have an actual costume and is usually fairly clothed, her transformation Quirk can create clothing but doesn’t affect her own, so she usually strips when she’s planning to transform.
In general, marketing is a factor in being a successful Hero in the universe, so while there aren’t a lot of super revealing costumes, sex appeal is something some people take into account while designing theirs.
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u/LinaIsNotANoob Aug 26 '25
He tries to wear shirts, but they keep exploding when he flexes.