Naked Vulnerability - TV Tropes

"Being naked means you lose all your defenses. All of your constructs are gone. You're left without a shred of who-you-like-to-think-you-are and have no choice but to stare at who you actually are. No one likes what they see. It took denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance before I lost all my layers. That's when I knew. And once you're exposed that deeply, no matter how many layers you throw on after, you'll never be warm again."

• Akame ga Kill!: Chelsea, before she became a member of the resistance and later Night Raid, used to work as a maid for a viceroy who had people stripped nude and hunted down like animals for sport.
• Castletown Dandelion: In one episode, Akane is suffering from a "breakout", an uncontrollable surge in her powers. She was having a chat at an outdoor cafe with her brother Shu's girlfriend, Hana, when a surge in her gravity powers shredded her blouse and bra, leaving her exposed. This was particularly jarring to her, as she does not like being the center of attention, and her misfortune was causing everyone to stare. Hana covers Akane with her own coat and tells her to run into the restaurant, while Hana draws attention to herself by declaring her intention to marry Prince Shu.
• Code Geass: An amnesiac Viletta finds herself naked in a bed, while Ougi who undressed her unconscious body is pointing a gun at her, explaining to her that he did that in order to treat her wounds, but putting clothes on her was too difficult for him to do so. Since he did nothing else to her while she was unconscious and naked, she quickly realizes that Ougi is actually a Nice Guy.
• Fairy Tail: Tartaros, one of the three Dark Guilds of the Balam Alliance, tends to strip their captured hostages naked and seal their Magic. Those tortured by the demons are under their complete mercy with no chance of fighting back. Erza in particular, who specializes in summoning Instant Armor and weaponry and finds emotional comfort from wearing armor, suffers from being tortured completely naked (in the manga) by Kyôka who also heightens Erza's sense of pain thanks to her Curse, which makes every whip lash way more painful than normal.
• Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu: Played for Laughs in "A Goddess Comes to Japan, pt. 1", when Commander Mardukas warns Sousuke about committing any "shameless acts against the Captain", wherein we are treated to an Imagine Spot that serves as a Shout-Out to Psycho, with Captain Teletha "Tessa" Testarosa in the shower of Sousuke's apartment, only for the curtain to be drawn back, and Sousuke, in his Bonta-kun outfit, attacking her with a banana.
• Gate:
  • In the manga adaptation, Noriko is introduced completely nude, save for chains, as she is dragged in front of the throne room by Prince Zorzal to explain that there will be aftershocks coming to the earthquake the Empire has just experienced. She is sobbing and afraid as Zorzal demands she tell the Emperor what she knows. This, of course, earns Zorzal a five-page beatdown. The anime adaptation at least covers her with rags.
  • In one episode of the anime, Piña is bathing when three men whose release from Japanese custody Piña had negotiated, force their way into her chambers and tell her that Zorzal is demanding an audience with her, even as her assistant, Hamilton, is trying to force them to leave. They're shown leering even as Piña crouches to cover herself from their view.
• Goblin Slayer: As part of Fan Disservice, the captured victims of goblins who are "fortunate" enough to still be alive are completely naked and have their bodies covered in wounds, which is just one way to show the horrors of goblins. If the victims aren't raped or tortured, they often find themselves as Human Shields for goblins or are literally tied onto shields by goblins. Many adventuresses who end up becoming such victims are reduced from strong females to traumatized and (almost) helpless playthings. If the hostages happen to be saved by Goblin Slayer, he would always have a big cloth ready to cover them, which gives them some comfort and dignity.
• Interspecies Reviewers: Denuding the "prisoners" is part of the fun at The Boss's Lair, a brothel specializing in bondage and humiliation fantasy. The pretty female adventurers are chained to a wall, where paying customers can undress them before taking them to a private "torture" chamber. The working girls wear chintzy garments meant to be torn off their bodies for exactly this purpose.
• Inuyasha: During the Togenkyo story, Kagome is captured by Tokajin and placed naked in a special bath to make her ready to serve as sustenance to the magic tree that produced the human-faced fruit.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency: Lisa Lisa gets attacked by Esidisi (while possessing her maid Suzi Q) while she's naked in the bathtub. JoJo The Peeping Tom barges in to save Lisa Lisa. Despite being a capable Hamon master, Lisa Lisa doesn't take any actions and watches while JoJo and Caesar are fighting Esidisi for her, as she's occupied covering her body with a towel.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders: There is a common imagery of Holly Kujou being completely nude, with her Stand, which has the form of roses and vines, wrapping around her body and strangle it. This is to show the audience that her Stand is slowly killing her.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable: Hayato is taking a bath, then Kira, who is posing as his father, enters it, with both of them naked. Hayato, who is not even a Stand user and is just a child, is rendered completely vulnerable, and the videotape that serves as evidence against Kira which he brought in the bathroom cannot be concealed under clothes, since he doesn't wear any. Kira meanwhile is displaying Sinister Nudity.
• Kaze no Stigma: When Tsui Ling got offered up as a Human Sacrifice, her clothes were stripped off, leaving her naked as she screams in pain while Kazuma was forced to watch when he was left injured and powerless to stop it. One of the last things from her before her body and soul were vaporized by the demon she was sacrificed to, leaving her Deader than Dead, was shedding tears as she faced death with despair.
• Kingdoms of Ruin: When Chloe arrived to try and save her desciple Adonis, her magic gets negated followed by her getting stripped topless, shot repeatedly, and decapitated.
• The Misfit of Demon King Academy:
  • When Emilia Ludowell is reincarnated as a completely nude Human-Demon Hybrid by Anos Voldigoad, most of her powers were sealed away, leaving her with just the ability to check out her blood so she can realize that she was not a pure demon anymore, and the moment she tries to kill herself in an attempt to escape her hybrid curse, she finds out Anos also cursed her with Resurrective Immortality, which leaves the sobbing woman to not only a Fate Worse than Death, she also finds herself at the mercy of the Half-Breed Discrimination she once believed in. He leaves her in her naked state afterwards.
  • Eleonore Bianca gets stripped down nude and encased in a crystal ball as she was forcibly made to create countless Artificial Humans to be used for war against demonkind, this put so much stress on her, she asked for death from Anos. However, he had none of this and promptly frees Eleonore from her prison and unwanted role, then creates her a new set of clothes for the sake of her dignity.
• One Piece:
  • During the flashback in the Drum Island arc, the gun-wounded Chopper hit Dr. Hiruluk after seeing his gun. Dr. Hiruluk then responded to that attack by stripping himself completely naked in order to show that he was not there to harm him.
  • In the Thriller Bark arc, Nami is sexually assaulted while being naked in the bath by the invisible Absalom. He even says she's more his type because she appears weaker than Robin. Thanks to Chopper and Usopp barging in it to help her, Absalom gets distracted enough that Nami can kick him in his invisible balls to get away from his grip before he can get too far in what he was doing. He then escapes because dealing with three people at once is too bothersome.
• Paprika:
  • In the anime film adaptation, Paprika's brutal torture by Osanai concludes with the traitor ripping through her clothes and skin like a rubber bodysuit to reveal Dr. Chiba beneath it, completely naked. In keeping with Chiba's habit of refusing to express her true joy, imagination, and power except as Paprika, Chiba is basically helpless in this state, requiring Detective Konakawa to come to the rescue for once and carry her away while Osanai and the Chairman are distracted — Chiba remaining naked for the remainder of this scene.
  • Subverted in the final battle: Chiba and Paprika undergo a Split-Personality Merge, manifesting as a giant naked infant that begins to eat up the Chairman's reality-conquering nightmare, growing older in the process. The Chairman (who's currently in a state of Sinister Nudity) immediately strides over to her in a rage and tries to kill her with a Facepalm Of Doom, clearly thinking that a naked child should be helpless against his power. Instead, Chiba eats his hand, growing older and more powerful until she's an adult dream-goddess that consumes the nightmare entirely — all while still naked.
• Sailor Moon Sailor Stars: During the final battle, Sailor Moon/Princess Serenity is completely naked, showcasing her purity, vulnerability, and pacifism in her battle against Galaxia/Chaos who is equipped with a sword. Sailor Moon is completely defenseless against Galaxia, but her love and compassion for the enemy allow her to free Galaxia from Chaos that was sealed inside her.
• Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac — Battle for the Sanctuary: Downplayed. Cancer Deathmask takes Draco Shiryu to the entrance to the underworld (the Yomotsu Hirasaka). The Cancer Cloth — which is a sentient magic armor — detaches itself from Deathmask, leaving him without protection (and shirtless). Shiryu, the Noble Hero he is, removes his own Draco Cloth, also rendering himself shirtless, to fight Deathmask on equal terms.
• Samurai Girls: In the third episode, Sen is shown throwing her authority around as the Princess of Tokugawa to be near Muneakira, with Jubei unintentionally getting in her way. After having a nightmare, with Muneakira being demanded to get away from her by Sen, "Evil" Jubei is awakened, restricting Muneakira and sending both Sen and Hattori flying out of the dojo. Sen, despite witnessing Evil Jubei's power on display still tries to show her authority over Jubei, only to have her clothes stripped off completely by a wave of black aura, brought to her knees, and at the mercy of Evil Jubei's blade by the neck. This was meant to be a Break the Haughty moment for Sen, with Evil Jubei showcasing just how immature Sen really is at the moment.
• UQ Holder!: In chapter 182, Karin is sent careening naked into space. Her nudity demonstrates how her status as one of the world's most powerful immortals is irrelevant in the face of the cold vastness of the cosmos.
• Usagi-chan de Cue!!: The Public Welfare Board has been rounding up merged beings, and using them for Nazi-like experiments. One poor squirrel-girl has her clothes torn off before she's mercilessly shocked with an electrified baton. Other captured Little Bit Beastly girls are shown crawling nude on a bare floor or hanging by their wrists. Once the wicked director learns that merged beings can influence people with telepathy, he orders all the captives to be "disposed of."

• Sistine Chapel: In a controversial move, "The Last Judgement" depicts nearly every character in the nude in order to show their equality and demonstrate how Christ's return has exposed them. Notable exceptions include Christ himself and his mother the Virgin Mary, even before retouching. It also shows that no one will have anything to hide before Jesus in his Second Coming.

• Onslaught: Exploited. In the Fantastic Four (1961) #415 tie-in, Onslaught invades the Four Freedoms Plaza to capture Franklin Richards, a Reality Warping mutant. Bishop and Invisible Woman (Franklin's mother) attack the creature and apparently revert him to a naked Professor Xavier. Xavier begs to be taken to Phoenix; Bishop approaches him and extends a hand to help, which Onslaught mocks by calling Bishop "a trusting fool!".
• Pumpkin (Jason Conley): Only Queen Sindella and her direct descendants are allowed to have clothes in Hell, and thus when Ciara is teleported there, she ends up completely naked and helpless to fight back as Sindella chains her up and whips her.
• Secret Wars (1984): Doctor Doom goes one-on-one against the Beyonder, but is unable to get close enough for his primary weapon to be effective. Defeated, Doom is blasted back to earth, his armor shattered and he's missing some limbs. The Beyonder, fascinated by Doom's boldness and tenacity, approaches to study him. Doom is stripped naked and even has his skin peeled away so the Beyonder can examine Doom's innards. Moments before, Doom wielded the power of Galactus; now, he's a naked specimen being studied.
• X-Statix: One memorable issue sees Mr. Sensitive and Iron Man competing to recover a piece of Mr. Sensitive's teammate Doop. Unfortunately for both of them, the piece landed in the middle of a religiously-fanatical nudist colony, and the locals will not let them on the premises unless they both disrobe, leaving Iron Man without the armor that regulates his dodgy heart, and Mr. Sensitive without the suit that allows him to move without crippling agony. Consequently, their efforts to fight each other over the piece of Doop go about as well as you'd expect.

• The Love of Three Oranges: The hero finds the titular oranges and releases three fruit maidens, the first two either die or vanish, and only the third remains alive. In some variants, the fruit maiden is naked, so the hero guides her atop a tree to hide her nakedness, while he goes back home to bring some clothes. While he is away, a dark-skinned slave or maidservant spots the fruit maiden atop the tree and approaches her in feigned friendship. This leads to the fruit maiden's death or enchantment into a dove, according to the variant.

• Dungeon Keeper Ami: Ami's stripped naked at one point because her captor wanted to analyze her clothes, and also possibly as preparation for some surgeries that Ami wouldn't want. Ami only hears of the one that wouldn't really need her clothes to be removed, brain surgery.
• Vow of Nudity: The author has mentioned that this is one of the major themes for Spectra in Curse of Nudity, whose perpetual (and non-consensual) nakedness highlights her vulnerability and the predatory nature of the uncaring, exploitative world she’s trapped in.

• The Last Unicorn: When Unicorn is transformed into the human form later named Lady Amalthea, she is naked in her new form, and when she awakes is crouching on the ground, crying at the shock of finding herself in a mortal body, "I can feel this body dying all around me!" Molly also tries to keep her from moving too much, saying "Don't, you'll hurt yourself!"

• American Beauty: Jane catches Ricky filming her in her room as their relationship blossoms. She decides to strip for him and slowly removes her clothes. She's clearly uncomfortable (especially since part of her story arc was that she hated her body and was saving up for a boob job), but she's only topless before Ricky's father bursts into his room in anger.
• The Annunciation: At the start, Adam and Eve frolic nude in the Garden of Evil, completely unafraid of their surroundings, save for the Tree of Knowledge, which God warns them not to touch. When the clothed Lucifer arrives, banished from Heaven, they see no danger in approaching him until he suddenly caresses and kisses Eve's cheek. Eve jumps back, startled that a being who is not her husband took such a liberty. After Eve eats from the Tree of Knowledge and convinces Adam to do the same, they start to notice that they're being tailed by Azrael, dressed in a black robe with a black breastplate, with the implicit threat that they have no way of deterring him if he comes for them.
• The Devil's Rejects: When the Fireflies take the band Banjo & Sullivan hostage, the naked Wendy is dragged out of the shower while having a gun pointed at her head and she has to witness and endure all the horrible things the Fireflies do to the them.
• Friday the 13th: Commonly combined with Night Swim Equals Death and Skinny Dipping. Anyone skinny dipping in Crystal Lake is going to be killed by Jason Vorhees almost immediately.
• Forgetting Sarah Marshall: Peter is Ready for Lovemaking in nothing but a towel when his girlfriend Sarah visits, only for her to break up with him instead. He drops the towel in shock and then spirals into a sobbing mess.
• Halloween II: In the strip club scene, Michael Myers chases and kills a woman who wears nothing but high heels.
• Horse Girl: Sarah is in the middle of a Shower of Angst when all of a sudden she finds herself standing in the middle of the craft store where she works, completely naked. Rather than covering herself, she just stands there catatonically trying to figure out what's going on. This is the latest in a series of incidents of her having missing memories and showing up in places without knowing how she got there, but this one triggers others' notice, and she is sent to a psychiatric hospital after this incident.
• The Matrix: When Neo wakes up in a womb-like pod hooked up to a power plant in the real world, he's completely naked. Along with emphasising Neo’s Symbolic Hero Rebirth, his nudity drives home just how defenseless he is in the real world, especially when one of the power plant robots violently disconnects him from the pod and flushes him into the ocean: not only is Neo too weak to fight back against the machine, but he almost drowns before Morpheus arrives to rescue him.
• Midsommar: After extensive manipulation and the coercion of drugs, Christian is pushed into a mating ceremony to impregnate a young woman in the cult of the commune where the film is set. After the ritual and his discovery by his girlfriend Dani (the lead), Christian runs out of the building naked in a panic, which leads to him discovering the murders the cult has committed and getting captured in preparation for sacrifice, putting his most vulnerable moment where his doom is sealed at the point where he is unclothed.
• New York Minute: The opening dream sequence has Jane suddenly becomes naked during her speech in front of an audience that laughs at her, which showcases her fear and anxious personality. She has two other nude scenes throughout the film, but those are played for comedy instead.
• Oppenheimer: When Oppie is questioned about his extramarital affairs he’s suddenly depicted as naked.
• The Predator: As the Fugitive Predator goes on a rampage through the Project Stargazer HQ, Casey escapes by going through the decontamination chamber, which requires her to strip naked. Played with in that, when the Predator inevitably comes after the still-naked Casey, it walks right past without harming her — Yautja won't hunt humans who don't pose a challenge, but Casey didn't know that and was utterly petrified.
  • Predator 2: The Jamaican gang breaks into rival dealer Ramon Vega's penthouse while he and his mistress are having sex; both of them are kept naked to emphasize their helplessness as Vega is strung up by his feet and ritualistically murdered (while the mistress remains naked and shivering until the police find her later). The trope gets turned on its head moments later when the fully-clothed Jamaicans encounter the City Hunter, clad in little more than a few armor pieces and a loincloth, and he slaughters all of them.
• Psycho: In the film's Signature Scene, the Decoy Protagonist Marion Crane is killed at her most vulnerable when she's taking a shower, being repeatedly stabbed with a knife.
• Robot: Chitti rescues a girl from a burning building while she was in the middle of a bath, and since he's an Artificial Human who has No Social Skills and thus has no regard for her modesty, he simply dumps her outside the building, right in front of a crowd of reporters with nothing to cover, obviously leaving the girl humiliated. The scene takes a turn for Black Humor when the humiliated girl then runs away screaming into the street and is run over by the traffic. The incident illustrates how Chitti will remain an inadequate hero unless he can understand human emotions.
• Speak No Evil plays this for horror at the end, to drive home how completely screwed and utterly hopeless the situation is for Bjørn and Louise, the protagonist couple that is subjected to days of psychological torment by their "hosts", Patrick and Karin, who are eventually revealed to be a pair of serial killers specializing in exterminating entire families before stealing the children. At the end, Bjørn and Louise are physically, mentally, and emotionally destroyed from being beaten up, were Forced to Watch as their daughter Agnes was mutilated by having her tongue cut off before getting abducted right under their noses, and are about to face their fates, as Patrick drives the couple to an abandoned quay. Patrick then orders them to "take off [their] clothes", for no reason other than to humiliate the couple even further, to which Bjørn and Louise blindly comply due to being dead inside; the couple are promptly tortured to death via stoning while in the nude.
• The Witch:
  • After an offscreen encounter with the Witch, Caleb turns up back at the family farm, delirious, incoherent, and stark naked. It's not specified what the Witch did to Caleb, though the implications aren't nice; given that he seemed to be one of the most level-headed and dependable members of the family, the sight of him naked and talking gibberish clearly draws attention to how dire his situation has become.
  • In the finale, Thomasin is the only surviving member of her family, and with nothing left to do, resorts to making a literal Deal with the Devil out of sheer desperation. Said Devil's first command is "remove thy shift," leaving a visibly fearful Thomasin naked as he stalks around her.

• The 120 Days of Sodom: The Libertines’ female victims and wives are required to serve their captors naked during breakfast and dinner.
• Deep Secret: when Nick and Rob are taking Maree to the Babylon secret, the way lies through a gauntlet of magical and metaphysical tests. At one point, all their clothes disappear — just before they must pass through a place of scratchy bushes. Nick and Maree discover that the bushes hold clothes that they had previously donated to charity, but teenage centaur Rob, who has been made to wear his shirts till they fall apart and so never gave any away, has nothing he can wear to protect his bare upper body. Luckily they are able to improvise.
• Gor: One of several reasons given for imposing nudity on slaves (an on captives soon to become slaves) is to render them vulnerable. Another reason is to make them feel vulnerable.
• The Magicians:
  • Just prior to the fourth year at Brakebills, Quentin and the other fourth-year students are awoken in the middle of the night by the faculty, led up to the roof, and told to strip naked. The atmosphere is distinctly off-putting, with all the students deeply confused and only playing along because all of them are still half-asleep. It eventually turns out that they're being transformed into geese so they can make the journey to Brakebills' southern campus, and the whole thing becomes a fun adventure as their new geese brains take over... but at the end of the journey, they're reverted to human form, leaving them naked and barely conscious in the snow, at the mercy of a complete stranger — in this case, Professor Mayakovsky.
  • At the end of the Training from Hell at Brakebills South, the students are given an Ultimate Final Exam in which they have to walk all five hundred miles from the campus to the South Pole — no flying, no shapeshifting, no pre-prepared enchantments... and it all has to be done naked, with only their magic to protect them. Consequently, the first few seconds of this leave Quentin consumed with anxiety, especially when he finds that he's not allowed to cast the protective spells until he's outside and in real danger of freezing to death if he can't work the magic in time.
• The Red Vixen Adventures:
  • At the climax of Shadow of Her Sins, Ali is forced to strip naked and confess to Salli that she murdered children as Bloody Margo's Child Soldier.
  • Noble Caste foxen often strip naked while conducting public ceremonies, to demonstrate their honesty and piety to the lower castes.
• The Secret Life of Bees: When Lily and Rosaleen have an argument one night while on the run, the former feels guilty about it and looks for the latter the next morning to apologize. She finds her in the pond, completely naked. Lily decides to apologize after stripping off herself and both are nude.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • A Storm of Swords: While in a bath at Harrenhal, Jaime reveals to Brienne the true backstory behind his infamous Bodyguard Betrayal nickname. He is physically naked and this symbolically mirrors how he's "emotionally naked" — not covered with snark and confidence like he usually is. He is both physically and emotionally unveiled and vulnerable.
  • Fire & Blood: When Queen Alysanne Targaryen was pregnant with her brother-husband King Jaehaerys' first child, she visited Jonquil's pool in Maidenpool, which was said to have holy healing waters. But the septas who ran it formed a plot to assassinate her, believing the holy water would be polluted by her unborn child born of incest. They attacked her with hidden knives while she was naked in the pool, but her ladies protected her with their own bodies, one taking a fatal wound to the stomach. While Alysanne was physically unharmed, her baby was born premature and died three days after birth.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Shatterpoint: Invoked, and then Defied. A pair of corrupt cops at the Haruun Kal spaceport wait for travelers to enter the mandatory showers before shaking them down, specifically because they know species accustomed to wearing clothing will feel more uncertain and vulnerable when naked and so won't stand up to them. Humans are usually no exception. However, the human in question is Mace Windu, who has no such hang-ups and lays both of them out, still naked.
  • X-Wing Series: Corran Horn wakes up in an Imperial prison wearing nothing but a pair of full-arm cuffs, and recognizes it from his law enforcement background as a technique used by kidnappers to make their captives feel off balance and defensive. His response is to snark about it once an interrogator arrives.
• The Wheel of Time: The infamous Torture Technician Semirhage likes to strip her victims naked in a bright, sterile interrogation room to build a sense of helplessness before the Agony Beams come out.
• Inverted in naturist fantasy novel Witch Kids; in the fantasy world in which the titular kids end up, magic is real, but can only be successfully performed while "skyclad" (read: completely naked). When the kids arrive, a tyrant has managed to frighten the locals into wearing more clothes, cutting off their connection to magic and making them more easily subjugated. The witch kids, on the other hand, are completely starkers as a result of their efforts to access the magical world, and because of this, their tactile exposure to the various magical plants, rocks, and sands of the other world grants each of them a different power.

• The Acolyte: Invoked by Qimir in "Teach/Corrupt", who has his first serious conversation with Osha while he's bathing in a lagoon. It's to evoke a sense of vulnerability, which he continues throughout the episode by not wearing armor and switching to a lighter shirt compared to his dark robes.
• Bakuage Sentai Boonboomger: The armor of the Kurumaju corresponds with the object they were revived from. During giant battles, Boonboomger Robo usually use his screwdriver sword to unscrew the bolts on the monsters' bodies, exposing their naked bodies.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In "New Moon Rising", Oz is kept naked in a cell after being captured by the Initiative, both to highlight his weakness after spending so long without turning into his werewolf form and to show the Initiative don't consider him a human with basic rights.
• Farscape: After a long string of misfortunes throughout "Premiere", John Crichton wakes up in a cell to find himself completely naked. Turns out that his new shipmates aboard Moya didn't recognize his species and wanted to examine him. Crichton's nudity and frantic redressing emphasize just how out of his depth he is in this setting — further emphasized by Aeryn beating the crap out of him a few minutes later.
• House of the Dragon: In "Rhaenyra the Cruel", there's a scene where Aemond — the confident prince who rides the most powerful dragon in the world — is seen naked in the fetal position with an older prostitute, wanting to be held like a child in the arms of a mother. In this scene he is emotionally vulnerable in a way the audience has never seen him: talking about the way his family views him, and his private regret for causing the death of his nephew.
• In From the Cold: Jenny's camo mode requires her to be completely naked for it to work, and given that it only works when she's holding perfectly still, her nudity is usually played for tension and vulnerability when she uses it:
  • In the first instance, she's outnumbered by the Jackals, has been beaten to a pulp, and has suffered a bullet wound, forcing her to retreat while the Jackals capture Lidia. When Chauncey and Chris finally find her, Jenny's nudity only draws attention to how pale and battered she looks.
  • In the second case, Jenny is sneaking around the Caleros' inner sanctum, only to end up cornered in the same room where Lidia is being held. With the guards on the way back, Jenny has no choice but to strip nude, enter camo mode, and stand against the wall while Los Jientes torture Lidia. Jenny's ability to maintain camo mode begins to falter as Lidia's suffering goes on, causing her naked body to subtly glitch in and out of view, and she's left almost whimpering in fear as she struggles to regain control, as losing her disguise now will leave her exposed — both figuratively and literally. Thankfully, she manages to recover in time, by then, Lidia and Ramon have both been murdered.
  • Subverted in the final episode: Jenny uses camo mode to get the drop on Felipe Calero, allowing her to completely dominate him in combat; this encounter ends with him being sent tumbling to his death.
• Mission: Impossible: One episode has the covert team feed misinformation to a Banana Republic dictatorship. They send it with a low-level agent, who gets detained on the incoming flight. There, she's cornered, undressed, and thoroughly searched until the Secret Police discover a microdot hidden inside a contact lens. The fate of the naked and trembling agent is undisclosed; she may have been summarily executed, or held for ransom from the United States.
• The Penguin (2024). Lampshaded by Sofia Falcone when she has Oz Cobb stripped naked and tortured.

  Sofia: It’s a terrible feeling. Isn’t it? Nothing left to hide behind. The guards at Arkham stripped us bare every morning. It was humiliating…being turned into a thing.

• Smash: In the episode "The Dress Rehearsal", the Bombshell producers debate including a nude scene for Marilyn Monroe after Ivy suffers a Wardrobe Malfunction during rehearsal. Ivy debates it before previews, and ultimately decides to improvise it in a way to hit this trope: when JFK rebuffs Marilyn after they sleep together, she drops her Modesty Bedsheet and asking him to "take all of me". After the preview showing, the early reviews are thrilled by the choice.
• You: In episode 3.06, Angsty Surviving Twin Love hallucinates or imagines her late brother Forty coming to her while she's drunk and taking a bath. Since she's in the bath, she's naked and so is he. The nudity can be read as Incest Subtext, but it can also be read as a symbol of vulnerability — she's at her most vulnerable, drunk and sad, and spilling her heart to her late brother, the only person who ever really, fully understood her.

• Miley Cyrus: Her video for "Wrecking Ball" features Miley standing naked on a literal wrecking ball, demolishing the scenario, instersped with shots of her being naked from the shoulder up. Miley looks very emotional during the song, and the lyrics deal with a break-up as its subject matter.

• Christianity:
  • In Christian icons depicting the Last Judgment, damned souls and souls in the process of being judged are usually depicted as naked to underline the fact they can no longer help themselves. Meanwhile, saved souls are usually clothed.
  • The Garden of Eden in Genesis inverts this, as the nudity comes before the vulnerability. After being created, Adam and Eve are stated to be naked and unashamed. It's only after they partake of the Forbidden Fruit that they realize that they're exposed and hide themselves from God in shame.

• Dungeons & Dragons: The adventurers encounter this as they draw near the end of the Tomb of the Nine Gods in the Tomb of Annihilation module, where a naked copy of one of the characters is being interrogated in a cage by three Night Hags and is weak when the adventurers arrive.
• In the Old World of Darkness crossover game Midnight Circus, it's mentioned that the previous Ringmaster was left inexplicably naked and barking like a dog after his apprentice had learned everything he had to teach. Because losing both his mind and his gear left him without any protection — magical or psychological — his apprentice used this as the perfect opportunity to stage a coup that ended in the ex-Ringmaster being fed to his own hounds, presumably while still naked.

• Abadox: Implied in the Japanese release where Maria was naked when she was recovered from the innards of the parasite that swallowed her and it tried to digest her while she was naked. The English localization tones it down by giving her a set of clothes.
• The Adventure Pals: To defeat the Treefist boss, you must avoid his set of attacks, until his wooden pants drop down, revealing his boxers, that's where his weak spot is.
• Alice: Madness Returns: When the Dollmaker captures Alice and remakes her as a Doll, it's a sure sign that Alice has reached the absolute nadir of helplessness, for even while being forced to relive the misery of her days at the asylum, she was at least allowed the dignity of a straightjacket to cover herself with. As a Doll, she's left completely naked save for Barbie Doll Anatomy, a sure sign that the Dollmaker's Mind Rape has destroyed her free will just like all his other victims in the real world. As such, when she shakes off his influence, she immediately casts aside her doll-like nudity and manifests her Iconic Outfit.
• The Binding of Isaac: In the opening cutscene, Isaac's mother ends up stripping Isaac of all his belongings. This includes his clothes, for whatever reason, as if him being a five-year-old child wasn't enough. At least some items like the pajamas can give him some clothes to wear.
• Dante's Inferno: Beatrice's murdered spirit spends her first few scenes completely naked, the better to emphasize her vulnerability after she's Rerouted from Heaven and cast into Hell as a result of Dante's sins. For good measure, Lucifer takes the opportunity to leer over her before dragging her off to be corrupted into his bride.
• Dark Souls II: Downplayed with Alsanna in the Crown of the Ivory King DLC. Despite being merely Stripperiffic, her reason for being so still applies. When her husband, the Ivory King, sacrificed his life to seal away the Old Chaos, Alsanna became a Barrier Maiden to prevent him from escaping as a monster. She literally hasn't moved an inch during the centuries since, leaving her clothing to fall apart from age and exposure to the elements.
• Dragon Age: Origins: The last trial in the "Test of Faith" quest requires the party to completely disrobe and walk through a wall of fire, trusting that the flames will not harm you or your party (and that a random bug won't erase all of your weapons and equipment afterwards.)
• Fox Eye:
  • Holdover: If Marie Annette gets hit while just wearing her initial leotard, it tears off followed by her death. She can upgrade to a dark blue variant that basically gives her an extra hit point for the lower and upper halves of her body. Should she take damage to one half of her body, it will leave her either topless or bottomless, and excess damage to the exposed portion of her body will kill her. Should she end up stark naked, she can die in one hit. When army pilots come to save her when she sends an S.O.S., she has alternate artworks for whenever she is topless, bottomless, or butt naked when she meets them after reaching the exit prior to her Post-Victory Collapse.
  • Sacrifice Girl: The Curse of Demon Snake: Miyo gets offered up as a Human Sacrifice to demon snakes and has to swim away from the snakes stark naked while maintaining her oxygen. She also bleeds every time she takes damage and eventually finds herself having to wade through blood.
  • BLUE GUARDIAN: Margaret: Should Margaret herself get her clothes torn off, the amount of damage she will attain will increase. If Margaret gets caught during her infiltration of the Underground Laboratory, she gets stripped nude and her captors will trap her in a drowning pit before she gets locked up in a cell after losing consciousness. She recovers and if caught again her captors will truly kill her off by drowning her naked in the same pit.
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time mod, Master of Time: Link comes across the skeleton of a man who was freezing cold, starving, and injured when he failed to break some red ice. The man's last written words were how he lamented coming unprepared which included something that lets him see invisible objects and the worst thing that happened was that the dead man had no clothes on him which he believed had been the main contribution to his demise.
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty: Played for Black Comedy during the infamous No-Gear Level where, after being subjected to a torture sequence, Raiden has to escape and navigate his way through Arsenal Gear stark naked. The sequence is played to be a bit ridiculous, but in addition to being completely removed of all of his gear, his mission control inexplicably starts spewing off random nonsense and Raiden becomes increasingly close to learning the Awful Truth of the nature of his mission, hitting home that this is the most vulnerable and utterly alone Raiden has ever been.
• Rampage series: Whenever one of the mutants gets reverted back into a human, he or she may find it bad to revert back naked, but it’s worse when at least one of the other mutants is still a mutant. Thus, the mutants who reverted back into naked humans can be Eaten Alive by anyone still a mutant or, in the case of "Total Destruction'', be sent flying away from getting hit by them. Should a female monster be sent flying away with a hit after she gets reverted back naked, she would sometimes cry that she is too young to die.
• RimWorld: The "hardcore" starting scenario is known as "Naked Brutality". Unlike other scenarios where you start with a handful of colonists with some resources and equipment, in Naked Brutality you start with one colonist, all alone in the wilderness, with no weapons, no pre-gathered resources, no Animal Companion, and no clothes.
• Saints Row IV:
  • After breaking out of the simulation, the Boss wakes up to find themselves in a fluid-filled pod a la The Matrix, completely naked except for some strategically placed Pixellation. Upon being ejected from the pod, the Boss is not only unarmed and lacking all the powers they unlocked during their time in the simulation but so sickly that they can barely walk, let alone use their real-world fighting skills. As such, they're forced to escape from the Zin Flagship at a snail's pace, practically hanging onto the wall, weakly calling for Kinzi to rescue them, and occasionally pausing to throw up, their nudity drawing further attention to just how helpless they are. Even once they manage to regain full consciousness and steal a rifle, they're still left outnumbered by the Zin troops, eventually requiring Kinzi and Keith David to fly in and rescue the still-naked Boss.
  • After the Boss learns that Matt Miller has escaped from his own simulation pod, we cut to a nude, wet Matt, hiding around a corner from the Zin troops. In contrast to the Boss, Matt is a Non-Action Guy, so he is presented as even more vulnerable than they are, given his immediate decision to run and hide instead of grabbing a weapon.
• The Secret World: The 2015 Halloween Event "The Seven Silences" invokes this in the form of a "Not Wearing Pants" Dream. One of Gaia's Chosen has somehow done the impossible and successfully killed herself, namely by using the power of dreams to destroy her Bee one bit at a time. One of these dreams features you being stripped of your clothing and being forced to run after your animated gear while crowds of faceless people laugh at you from all sides. Already smacking of Surreal Horror, the whole thing is another expression of the unfortunate victim's helplessness in the face of what her Bee was doing to her and her desire to end it all. The victim is none other than Lorraine Maillard.
• Strider 2: When the nameless merrow was forcibly made to be a battery for the Balrog's reactor core, her topless state only serves to emphasize how vulnerable she had become as she gets power-drained and exhausted to the point that she asks to be cut down by Hiryu.
• Terraria: Invoked with the Nymph. She is a rare pre-Hardcore enemy that spawns in the Cavern, disguising herself as the "Lost Girl." If you get close to her, assuming her to be a rescuable NPC, she reveals herself and attacks you aggressively.
• This Is Not Your House: The main character is an old man who returns home and finds his house has been taken over by a strange, sinister smiling woman. Depending on the player's choices, this leads to the woman forcibly removing the man character's clothes and leaving him naked outdoors. This can lead into some of the bad endings, like staying outside your porch and dying of hypothermia, or going to the woods and dying by eating a poisoned mushroom.
• Point-and-click game The Wreck has the player controlling Marie, a grieving mother dealing with the possibility of losing her daughter after a car wreck; at one point Marie after her shower loiters around her house, doing laundry in her birthday suit before collapsing near the washing machine in a traumatic position, still nude as if to emphasize her fragile state of mind.
• Yoshi's Island series: It has a Running Gag with the recurring boss known as "Burt the Bashful". During his Boss fights, he pulls up his pants real high, and to defeat him, you must hit him with eggs. Each time he's hit with an egg, his pants will drop a bit, until eventually, they'll fall off. Then Burt will blush up, before zooming off like a deflated balloon and soon dying of embarrassment.

• Umineko: When They Cry: At the end of EP2, Battler surrenders to Beatrice and becomes her "furniture". We see him stripped completely naked except for the chain collar around his neck. After being displayed like an object to a crowd of goat demons, said crowd then rip his body apart and eat him.

• Daughter of the Lilies: When Professor Fike is saved from Demonic Possession, he comes to in Master Wu's grasp as a naked, sobbing, badly injured wreck. Justified since the demon had ruined his clothes when it consumed and transformed him.

• SCP Foundation:
  • SCP-7955 suffers from dementia that grows in proportion to his shapeshifting powers. Since he can't mimic clothing, it's a sure sign that his health is failing rapidly when he's found wandering the corridors, stark naked and too far gone even to defend himself, much less get dressed. Towards the end, he's naked full-time and essentially brain-dead.
  • Towards the end of the article on SCP-8078 a.k.a. the Perilous People Pleaser, Research Assistant Michael Pelion is finally caught and brought to justice for his crimes throughout the documentation, and this time he doesn't have time to turn 8078 against the intruders, having been literally caught napping. Also, since Pelion Sleeps in the Nude, he ends up being left both figuratively and literally exposed, frantically struggling to find his boxers as he tries and fails to talk his way out of trouble. Also, the other reason why he's naked is that he's been having sex with 8078 against its will...and it turns out he's contracted a shapeshifter STI as a result. The confrontation ends with Pelion being left to suffer through his dying agonies, still naked and still effectively helpless.

• Miraculous Ladybug: G-rated example: In "Protection", Marinette is running late for her date with Adrien and has forgotten to change out of her pajamas (again). Worried that going back to change will cause her to overthink things again, she decides to just go to Adrien's house in her pajamas and let the chips fall where they may. Upon seeing her, Adrien decides to change into his pajamas and they decide to have a low-key picnic in Adrien's backyard. This, however, leaves them vulnerable to Riposte Prime, a fully-armored, akumatized version of Adrien's jealous ex-girlfriend Kagami.

• Invoked by the World Naked Bike Ride, held in many cities annually to speak out about various environmental and public safety issues, including the risk of cyclists being hit by cars. Cyclists are equally vulnerable to collisions regardless of how much they are wearing, and the World Naked Bike Ride uses nudity to draw attention to that vulnerability.