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Funny Animals have differing levels of clothing, sometimes even between different characters in the same work. You've got your Accessory Wearing Cartoon Animals, who are basically naked except for one or two token items. There are also Half Dressed Cartoon Animals, who wear a shirt or pants, but not both. There are even Fully Dressed Cartoon Animals who have complete outfits. And then there's the subject of this article—cartoon animals who go barefoot (or bare-pawed, if you want to get technical), but are otherwise fully clothed by human standards.

As the number of examples demonstrates, this is a common trope in works featuring Funny Animals. Here are some possible reasons:

  • The trope may be Justified by the characters having hooves, large claws, or oddly-shaped hind paws which it would be difficult for shoes to accommodate.
  • The trope may also be Justified by the characters being from a culture where shoes aren't seen as a social requirement, such as with JRR Tolkien's Hobbits, or are from a civilization that Does Not Like Shoes.
  • There's another possible explanation for this, more or less based in Rule of Perception: Generally, anthropomorphic animals (especially of the Petting Zoo People variety) have essentially human anatomy except for their heads, tails, and (in most cases) feet, so keeping all three of those elements exposed emphasizes their animal qualities and prevents them from appearing too human. (It's not unreasonable to think, for example, that long pants made for animal-people would have long sleeves to accommodate their tails as well, but strangely, almost nobody ever depicts such a thing.)

Spats without shoes or socks count as this trope because they do not cover the soles of the feet.

The One Who Wears Shoes is about aversions of this trope, especially Civilized Animals and Funny Animals who use footwear when going barefoot is normal for the setting.

A lot of Accessory Wearing Cartoon Animals and Half Dressed Cartoon Animals also happen to be barefoot, so to keep things cleaner, this page only covers those who are otherwise properly-dressed.

Most of these characters have Humanlike Foot Anatomy.

Subtrope of Appropriate Animal Attire.

Examples of Barefoot Cartoon Animal include:


Advertising and Consumer Products[]

  • Elsie the Borden Cow.
  • The Boubin Bear for Boubin Automotive Service. His wardrobe includes a hat, vest, and jeans, but no shoes (or shirt). He holds his jeans up and tips his hat while saying "It's the bear facts, folks!"
  • The live-action chimp office workers from the mid 2000s CareerBuilder.com commercial package were dressed in business wear with the absence of shoes.
  • Peter Panda from the classic Child World toy store.
  • Coco the Monkey from Cocoa Krispies cereal.
  • Chip the Wolf from Cookie Crisp cereal initially had a red jacket and blue slacks.
  • Dannon's Danimals yogurt featured a snowboarding polar bear and a surfer alligator. Although, the Danimals XL wildcat was the one who wore shoes, at least one commercial featured him barefoot in board shorts.
  • During a short time in the mid-to-late '80s, Purina Fit & Trim dog food featured a cartoon basset hound in exercise clothes, jogging in place.
  • Fruit Brute the werewolf from the self-titled cereal line had a t-shirt to go with his striped overalls at one time.
  • Birdie the Early Bird, one of the McDonald's characters, wears only overalls and goggles.
  • Mo the Bovine from MooTown Snacks.
  • Unilever's Heartbrand line of assorted ice cream bars features as one of its mascots a barefoot toon lion named Max (aka The Paddle Pop Lion), who initially wore a safari shirt and khaki shorts. Max has made appearances on the Miko Motta Max brand ice cream in France as well as the Streets Paddle Pop brand in Australia and New Zealand.
  • The original Racin' Rat from the self-titled Tyco RC toy car line.
  • Although he usually didn't have a costume, Sambo's Restaurant mascot The Tiger was featured in a sports coat and light color trousers on some of their Tiger Club spots.
  • Classic 7Up talking bird mascot Fresh Up Freddie had several costumes that applied to this trope.
  • Sometimes, the Trix Rabbit's disguise will include a full set of clothes, but no shoes.
  • Local Cleveland radio station WMMS-FM had a vulture mascot that wore a t-shirt and blue jeans. He was known only as The Buzzard.


Anime and Manga[]

  • Most of the cat characters from Fairy Tail, notably Carla (until the Edolas Arc) and Queen Chagot.
  • Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics normally employed Talking Animals, but The Marriage of Mrs. Fox featured a whole town of anthropomorphic foxes (and one cat) that were fully clothed, except for a lack of shoes.
  • Common for Sanrio's Hello Kitty and Friends, though their feet tend to look more like little booties.
  • Some characters from Kaiketsu Zorori.
  • Blinky and Pinky from The Noozles, as well as the other koala characters.
  • Some characters from One Piece, most notably Tony Tony Chopper.
  • Several animal characters from Spank Good Morning Spank! when in costume.
  • King Kazma's second form in Summer Wars.


Comic Books[]


Film[]


Literature[]


Live Action TV[]


Newspaper Comics[]

  • Sgt. Snorkel's identically dressed pet dog Otto from Beetle Bailey.
  • Doc Rat and most of the supporting anthro characters in this self-titled Australian comic series.
  • Fritz the Dog from Ink Pen. Fritz is so uptight that he wears a dress shirt and tie with black pants every single day. This was a problem when he worked as a stunt double for other cartoon dogs like Marmaduke or Scooby Doo were he would wear a furry dog suit because he refused to do "nude scenes".
  • Most characters from Slylock Fox.


Theater[]


Video Games[]

  • Pestor the frog and some additional characters from Adrenalin Misfits, though most of them do not wear t-shirts. A few other characters such as Sabre (a timber wolf) and Blaizer (a salamander) wear open-toed boots.
  • Garr from Breath of Fire III. This is both because the Guardian's (species of which Garr is a member) anatomy includes massive feet and because they wanted to show off said anatomy.
  • A couple of mutant animals from the Crash Bandicoot series also has this such as Koala Kong and the Komodo Brothers. The rest tend to be fully clothed or naked.
  • The beast races in The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind, the Khajiit and the Argonians, are unable to wear shoes because their feet are bigger and differently shaped. This also extends to helmets; they can't wear anything that covers their whole face. It then got subverted in The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, where they are able to do just that.
  • The cast of Fur Fighters.
  • Sveta from Golden Sun Dark Dawn is this, even though she can still equip boots like any other character.
  • Lori Jackrabbit from Jazz Jackrabbit, plus Jazz himself when his outfit includes pants.
  • C.J. Frog from the JumpStart series of CD-ROMs. His usual outfit is a safari vest, khaki shorts and a fedora.
  • Rocket Raccoon's outfit in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 covers everything on his body except his head, his tail, and his hind paws.
  • Ratchet from Ratchet and Clank is this in his first game, as well as a Walking Shirtless Scene. All of his armor in the next few games featured boots, but in Size Matters he appeared in his original outfit again. When he next appeared in casual clothes (in Tools of Destruction), he was wearing boots again (as well as overalls).
  • Several versions of Reader Rabbit.
  • The cast of Rework the Dead Evil.
  • Inverted with the Sonic the Hedgehog games, since most of the characters wear nothing but shoes and gloves. (Some of the characters, such as Ix, Charmy, and most females do wear actual clothes, but also have shoes and gloves.)
    • Played straight with every single player character in Sonics Schoolhouse, although due to the first-person viewpoint, you have to play two-player to realize this.
  • In ToonTown Online, absolutely every player starts off as this, but can buy shoes.


Webcomics[]

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 Conrad: I was on tour with a production of Barefoot in the Park.

Leona: What's so significant about being barefoot in the park?

Conrad: I have no idea, really. It's a pretty whacked-out play.

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 Swamp Fox: ". . . why do I even own socks?"

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  • The cast of Work Sucks, except for Socks, who's named after the socks he always wears.
  • Several furry characters in The World Of Vicki Fox, including Vicki herself and Meredith Skunk.
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 Aussie: "You'll drag me in every shoe shop in the mall... to buy shoes you don't even wear!"

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Web Original[]

  • A great deal of anthro/furry artists on the web always draw their characters barefoot, even if they're otherwise dressed perfectly normally, and even in situations where going barefoot is inadvisable (like, say, in snow). Listing specific artists would likely quadruple the length of the list, however.
    • The trope is very rarely lampshaded, and often times not even noted; that is, it's not uncommon for a character's reference sheet to depict the character barefoot, even in multiple different costumes, but even if it goes into great detail about the character's wardrobe preferences, their preferred footwear (or preference to go barefoot) is never brought up.
  • '90s cult icon Elmo Aardvark usually appeared fully dressed with a red vest and necktie. He ditched the shoes for his appearance on the self-titled web series Elmo Aardvark: Outer Space Detective! in 2004.
  • Bethany and Bob from Game Dogs. This gets outright surreal in episode 8 when Jennifer mentions Bethany's shoes—after we just saw Bethany walk through the door barefoot. And the punchline is that they're out of style. Judging from Bethany's reaction to the remark ("Oh... I see what you did there"), Jennifer may have intended it as some sort of Stealth Insult.
  • Very common in fanworks based on Ruby Quest, which was a borderline Stick Figure Comic. A one-off reference to Ruby's "UNATTRACTIVELY LONG FOOT" would imply this may be canon.
  • Majority of the rabbit repertory company from Starz's 30-Second Bunnies parodies of movies.
  • Some characters from The Wuffers.


Western Animation[]

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