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Clothes Make the Superman
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Mermaid Man: Once you put on these costumes, their amazing powers will become yours! Sandy: Wow. I didn't think superpowers worked that way. Mermaid Man: Sure! Power's all in the costume. Why else would we run around in colored undies? Squidward: I can think of three good reasons why.
is applied to a character's clothes instead of himself.
Having superpowers built into a magical or technological garment instead of inherent to a character is a common element of
stories and other speculative fiction. It allows an otherwise fragile
whose only outstanding skill may be smarts to play with the big dogs. It allows a mundane hero, closer to the common man than a mutant, alien, or cyborg. It provides a hero with a creamy center that bad guys can exploit, and provides a plausible reason for the Secret Identity to be vulnerable. Normally, technological super suits surround the character completely, covering 100% of his skin, and are hermetically sealed. In this way, the suit is doing all the work, and the operator is simply pushing its actions from within.
The most straightforward version of the super suit is , the logical extreme of . These use some form of mechanical system, like artificial muscles, electric motors, or hydraulics to drive their actions. They may be controlled by positive feedback, responding to the operator's body movements to keep the pressure in the suit balanced, or they may use a mind interface, either wireless or cybernetically implanted. These suits are hard, armored and inflexible, making them hard to wear under civvies or pack for trips. These are the most likely to be mass-produced in a Sci Fi setting, as a souped-up space suit, hostile environment gear, or infantry body armor.
Moving out from there, we find the "soft" super suit, based on some form of "smart materials", nanotechnology, magic, or even living tissue. These can often morph or reassemble themselves, and can be folded, stored and perhaps even machine washed.
Single articles of clothing that add powers are also common. Typically, they empower the part of the body on which they are worn, but they can also hav
usually also , for instance. These are almost always magic, and can often be mixed and matched.
When headwear has this effect, it's a . For jewelry, see . Can sometimes be a form of . No matter the type, if it's worn by a woman, expect . If metal is part of it, then expect . If jewels are a part of it, then expect . If the clothes cannot be removed, it's a . Contrast . For suits that work with powers but do not provide them, see . In general these are a case of an
for obvious reasons. A very mild video-game example would be . When the powers of these clothes matter more than what they look like, you can get
Not to be confused with .
is where this trope applies, but the costume also drives the wearer evil.
&&&&open/close all folders&
&&&&Anime & Manga&
While the Otome in
receive some residual abilities (like accelerated healing) from their
alone, they're utterly useless in combat without their ultra-powerful, if somewhat
prone, Robes. Even without them, they're shown to still be capable of jumps that would make
proud and agility that would make
applaud, meaning that any
or even large group of goons that wanted to screw with them would be utterly fucked, Robe or no.
's Elemental Suits, although it's a bit of a
as they're data modifications in a computer-based world.
The Hunter suits in
gives them the strength and endurance that they need to survive in their hunts. Of course, the suits can only take only much punishment before the little caps that power them burst, at which point they become nothing more than skin-tight rubber suits.
The inconsistent durability suggests that they're just another part of Gantz' game of yanking their chains. "Take these, they'll make you supermen! Until I decide you should stop having superpowers..."
Upon a Star , the beginning of the third installment had Roll showing up in , with the intent on fighting alongside Mega Man. However, she never did display any abilities, and by the time she (along with Mega Man) gets to Yuuta's world, she's somehow back in her usual outfit.
The outfit got her pretty far into Dr. Wily's fortress, and much faster then Mega Man, apparently. Weird that it just fell apart when they got sucked into Yuuta's world.
had Chao Lingshen being able to fight with Negi due to a futuristic battlesuit with a
mechanism built in, making her one of the strongest combatants present. And that's before she reveals that .
In , the title character — part human, part
— can wear a haori (a traditional Japanese coat) that allows him to access his shinigami powers, making him
and able to pass through walls.
In the late
manga, three magical suits show up. The first is an intelligent, perverted dogi that bestows incredible martial arts skills the wearer without requiring them going through normal
to get it. Of course, as mentioned, it's a pervert, so it will only allow itself to be worn by women that it thinks are sexy. In this unusual case, it's actually capable of moving and fighting on its own. The second is a swimsuit made from living jellyfish that makes the wearer an expert swimmer.
was the beneficiary in both cases. The third case is a nigh-invincible suit of mail-order
that anyone can wear, even the weakest of weaklings, in order to get back at bullies and the one person the owner hates most. What keeps it from becoming a threat is that a) it locks down and freezes when first assembled, an b) it comes apart when the owner lands one successful knockout
and c) if the owner can't land a hit within a time limit, it self-destructs.
Kurosaki Ichigo from
inverts this trope. How much of his bankai's
is still attached to his body is an indication of his remaining spiritual power.
Played straight with Jackie, whose clothes are her Fullbring power.
has hints of this: The characters' Barrier Jackets, Knight Armors, Knight Clothings and etc. can take surprising amounts of damage before breaking. Not to mention their weapons usually take the form of anything from gloves to necklaces to shoes when not in use.
The armors worn by various people who are chosen to become a ...gives you al strength, speed, endurance, etc. However, it also gives some nice special benefits namely, car/tank mode and jet fighter mode. Mind you, the dead/comatose bodies of the chosen ones, are still very human and very open to attack....as Otoha finds out.
is a manga about a high school student who gains powers when he wears a pair of women's underwear over his face.
manga spinoff
gave us Lelouch's alternate Geass: a supernatural
that let's him fight on par with , by basically channeling . And it. Was. Awesome.
is a biological suit of armor with a ton of abilities including complete regeneration from a scrap of flesh.
birdstyles?
Erza Scarlet from
has a variety of armors available in her , which grant her a wide variety of special abilities. Still, she's pretty
even without the armor.
: After training at the supermarket, Bo-bobo is given a jacket that increases his power. It cost him 582 yen ($27.50 in the dub, which he had Beauty pay for).
of Captain Bravo is an indestructible silver trenchcoat.
, as a parody of the
genre (see ), intentionally averts this trope. Sunred never dresses in anything but perfectly normal wear (preferring a Hawaiian shirt and shorts when it's not cold) and keeps all his sentai powers. It's furthermore subverted in that Sunred apparently has a suit that allows him access to his , but he never uses it (given the strength of Florsheim, he never apparently needs it) and keeps it stashed in a box in his closet.
started out on bordering this trope in the first season with the Gundams' GN Drives - at least until the other side acquired the technology as well, eventually reverse-engineering and reproducing it. The trope then fell into obscurity until the
abilities of self-teleportation and group telepathy made their debut and was refined even further into the successor Quantum System which has the same abilities pushed to their
Almost any smaller mecha shows qualify as this: , , , etc.
has a Liquid Metal armor covering her whole body (even though it looks very ), looking like a normal corset while not in use. However, as one of the villains learns , it doesn't work for everyone.
In , all the superheroes wear capes that allow them to fly. If the capes are torn, cut up, or messy, their flight capabilities are destroyed. The capes can also be borrowed by others to fly (one episode had a jailed up and powerless Anpanman give his cape to Pickles, Hamburger Kid's horse, so he could alert the others). However, for the superheroes, the capes seem to be custom for them (a theatrical short had Currypanman forced to borrow Anpanman's cape due to his being dirty. His flying was very clumsy when he used it).
In , Cendrillon uses
, which is . Most of her powers come from her dress and glass slippers.
is Clothes Make The Superman: The Anime. In the series, there are articles of clothing containing "Life Fibers" that empower the wearer. The protagonist and her rival both have special outfits made entirely out of Life Fibers.
Unusually, it turns out that the main character is
even without her outfit. Although the reason for that is that she is
in the first place!
Averted in . Kuniko thinks Maccha Green's powers come from a "high spec battle suit", but the suit is nothing more than a cheap spandex outfit you could probably buy at a costume shop.
&&&&Comic Books&
's original suit was simply intended to hold a deadly piece of iron shrapnel embedded in his heart lining with powerful magnets, thus allowing him to move without dying. By the end of the first issue, it became a
machine. In some incarnations the suit has been shown to be a highly effective combatant even when its wearer is unconscious. He doesn't simply stay home and send the suit out on its own to fight evil for a couple of reasons. First, he' Tony's . While none of them have become world-threatening menaces like Ultron, they do all tend to go a bit squirrelly after a while.) Second, but quite possibly more important, he's something of a crusader personality and adrenaline rush junky.
Also, Iron Man has in later years has shown the ability to mentally control his armor from a distance. Including at least one case when he attacked a supervillain with all of his old suits of armor (of which there are several dozen), at the same time.
The Extremis technology and the post-Extremis Bleeding Edge technology are allowing Tony to blur the lines. He can now keep at least his basic armor inside his body, a fact which has occasionally granted his 'normal human' self . He's becoming the poster child for Transhumanism or Posthumanism partly through his own efforts.
In at least some iterations, Iron Man is also a
thanks to a combination of hand-to-hand training from
and the amount of exercise he does every time he climbs into one of his heavy suits of
and goes out for a spin, nevermind battling super-villains. In others, of course, Stark's helpless without his suit, such as in .
His partners,
and (temporarily) Rescue, also rely on their suits.
The same goes for many of his villains such as Crimson Dynamo, Firepower, Titanium Man, and Iron Monger. Blizzard used to get his powers from his costume, but has since been
into being an .
's black costume was a , who got a little...
to him. Still, while it was attached to him, it considerably increased his strength and toughness, as well as granting him the ability to instantly shift into any costume he wanted and an infinite supply of webbing. After detaching from him, it retained enough of his genes to roughly mimic his power-set (, super-agility, , webbing/), as well as being able to block out his spider-sense, whenever another wore it.
Doubles as : In most adaptations, it tried to take over Spidey's mind and body, and ever since
came into the comics, the symbiote has been portrayed as doing this to its hosts.
There have since been an entire race of symbiotes in Marvel, which have resulted in
like Venom,
like Carnage, and the world's best biological weapon that temporarily took over several heroes.
series ends up revealing the truth about the symbiotes: they were created to essentially be super suit to help turn people into the perfect hero. Something went wrong, turning them into what they are now. Venom's current host, Flash Thompson, ended up returning it back to its homeworld, cured it of its problems and, in gratitude, permanently chose Flash as a host.
The short-lived team of Spider-Man fanboys known as the
derived all their powers from demon-enhanced outfits, with one exception. Interestingly, the outfits were originally designed for Spidey's use and they just used Spidey's powers to "pretend" they had other powers.
This trope at least half-applies to S the ,
are innate, part of his
status, but the suit provides him with his , which can
and shoot ,
Minor Spider-Man baddie The Sho a , he cobbled together his trademark
and costume singlehandedly. At its most basic, the costume prevents him from killing himself with the backlash from his own blasts of vibrations. In more recent itinerations, the suit is crammed full of "contact plates" that deflect incoming strikes and make his own strikes more powerful due to triphammer vibration.
At one point in his history, one of 's many redesigns had his powers coming from the union-jack-based suit of his.
This is how his
incarnation's powers have worked from the start. Along with Captain France, Captain Spain, and various other European , Captain Britain is the product of an EU super-soldier program headed by his father, who designed a series of powered "exo-suits".
His sister, , already has her own superpowers. But when she wears Captain Britain costume, it grants her superhuman physical attributes, ability to fly, and a personal force field.
The Richard Rider 's powers are innate, but his costume has a number of extra useful functions such as a life support system, radio transmission pickup and later a powerful artificial intelligence to help him.
His , Sam Alexander, relies completely on the suit. This leads to a few hilarious moments, .
In the original 70's comics, Star-Lord utilized an alien suit and helmet that allowed him to fly and breathe in space.
A big point in . A lot of the group are mutants who were depowered on M-Day and are now using tech to get new powers.
derives his powers from his Quantum Bands.
One of the characters, Turbo, was the successor to an obscure 70's hero named Torpedo, who also got his powers from a high-tech suit.
gains his powers from an android body in .
In the first few issues of , her powers came entirely from her Kree uniform. Soon enough, though, a villain's blast fuses her suit's powers directly into her body — except for the suit's original bulletproofness.
still has the power to communicate with birds and see what they see telepathically, his ability to fly comes from a winged flight suit that he wears.
The Spider-Man foe the Vulture relies on a similar winged exoskeleton. He also predates the Falcon by around six years.
Stingray (an ally of ) relies on an advanced diving suit that allows him to swim with superhuman speeds, as well as glide through the air once he's above water. The suit also enhances his strength and generates .
with the second , Kasper Cole, who initially used his predecessor's bulletproof suit to fight crime. He was somewhat effective at taking on thugs and gangsters, but was completely out of his element when it came to anything bigger. After
even without his wings) lectured him about relying too heavily on the costume, Kasper ingested the Heart-Shaped Herb and gained proper superpowers.
went from street thug to supervillain after finding a magical pair of shoes and a hood.
in the case of . He is incredibly powerful normally, but he has a belt which increases his strength by a factor of two.
, much the same as Iron Man, but with different motivation.
The newest , with the revelation that the "mystic beetle totem" that gave the original his powers was really an undercharged alien combat suit.
. He comments on several occasions that he's pretty helpless without his suit.
In some early- depictions of , she got all of her powers from her outfit — with nearly every single piece of clothing she wore having its own origin story and a separate power. Boots of super speed and tiara of invulnerability, for instance. Nowadays, most of her powers are in-born gifts of the Greek goddesses, and only her trademark enchanted invulnerable armbands and her lasso (not really part of the outfit, but a key accessory) remain superpowered. (Her original design by Marston had it as
derived from Amazonian training in "concentrating body energy").
The latest
has it that the "truth powers" are the lasso just focuses it.
During a period when her powers were stripped from her, she used the Sandals of Hermes and Bracers of Atlas to recreate her strength and speed. These were then "borrowed" by Cassie Sandsmark, to become the second . Cassie was later given innate powers by Zeus.
- his outfit doesn't give him powers per se, but it does give him a frightening appearance.
There are a few versions in which he wears at least some body armor, or some more extreme examples like his Iron Man-esque suit from the
series or at least some additional clothing pieces, like the Kryptonite gauntlets from . His utility belt and everything in it makes much of his mobility and other aspects of his work (aside from hand-to-hand combat) possible to the point that you have to consider it the main, and arguably the most important aspect of his outfit. Aside from his intellect and his hand-to-hand combat skills, basically all of what makes Batman who he is revolves in one way or another around the suit.
s Batman armor fits this trope, especially the final version before Bruce came back - gauntlets armed with razor sharp talons, a flamethrower, grappling hook and a shuriken launcher with three settings (normal, semi-automatic and rapid-fire [aka puree]) a metal chestplate set with a powerful flashlight and a cape that can surround and protect him from small-arms fire and a full-face cowl with a targeting system and a rebreather. Bruce realizes he relies too much on it and uses it against him.
long standing teenage hero Stargirl, depending on the writer, is depicted with a belt that converts energy into her body to give increased strength and agility. (Her staff is a separate device with no actual connection to the belt, though it works on the same basic principle and was designed by the same man. She had the belt and the increased strength and agility long before she had the staff.)
in a Silver Age
story. Superman loses his memory due to exposure to a mix of Kryptonites and a bump on the head (which was witnessed by others who believed Superman died in the incident.) Superman somehow makes his way back to civilization in a Clark Kent esque outfit. When he realizes he has powers and sees the Superman costume under his outfit, he believes at first that the costume gives him powers like Superman's (He thinks he's only Clark Kent because others have recognized him as Clark and he's seen news reports of Superman's death.)
wore a suit of body armor designed by Carlton Sun, which was intended to compensate for his body's physical degeneration due to being infected with A.I.D.S. Given his ability to break the spines of anyone he came into contact with it seems to have had a strength upgrade component.
The Engineer, from Wildstorm comics' , has nine pints of nanomachinery replacing her blood. She's a (somewhat oxymoronically) closet exhibitionist, and so just uses a skin coating of the nanites for superheroing, giving her body armor, strength, and flight.
, from the satire comic of the same name, has a super-suit that gives her dramatically enhanced strength and speed...but if the suit , the extra strength quickly fails (at a rate inverse to the amount of damage caused, so most of it is lost on the first scratch). And the suit is very fragile.
Three points: The suit only works for Emp, the suit has a mind and the ability to move on its own, and it's been implied that it's fragile only because Emp's self-esteem is fragile.
Nite Owl in
built a powered exoskeleton and abandoned it in his workshop, never having actually worn it on-panel. His only description of it was "The first time I used it, it broke my arm. Never again."
Silk Spectre: That sounds like the kind of costume that could really mess you up.
Nite Owl II: ...Is there any other kind?
The earliest version of
depicted in the mini-comics that came with the figures explained that his superhuman power came from his enchanted chest armor.
The Power of Greyskull came from his man-brassiere???
this in episode 12 "Evil Lyn's Plot". Much of He-Man's strength comes from his harness. His sword just acts as a bag of holding for it.
. Though technically it's not a suit but a little implant when it sleeps and it transforms the host's own body into a
along with itself, recreating "" anew.
(who appears occasionally in the
comics) has a semi-sentient alien power suit bequeathed to him by a dying alien. The suit folds into
and as he is human, and not Geldarian, his suit boosts his abilities to a far greater degree, giving him powers greater than the normal .
Without the , Julie Martin in
is just a normal photographer struggling with everyday life. She does not want these powers, but .
#20: Blossom is completely helpless and lacks her usual confidence without her hairbow, which Buttercup swiped as a prank and now Mojo Jojo has stolen because he thinks it contains some intangible powers. It's Bubbles (of all people) who puts her foot down about the whole mess and sets things right.
Bubbles: (angrily to Blossom) It's just a stupid bow!! You're still a Powerpuff Girl whether you have it or not!!
Captain Commander gave them bikinis which give them superpowers, but only if the bikinis are showing. By Bob Burden of Dark Horse comics, set in the same universe as the ineffable
and the mill-town superhero team known as the Mystery Men.
: in Los Alienígenas, Superlópez is powerless without his supersuit.
&&&&Fan Fiction&
is equipped with shields and a
function. His watch have some
that allow
and can project a tactical armor which can double as an emergency medical compress.
In fact, it's so super that it, in conjunction with Kyon's , allowed Nonoko to fight as a .
The story goes, according to , that while he was doing script treatments for the in-limbo fifth
movie (that eventually became ,
the third Superman movie), the then-producer had a lot of strange requests. He wanted Superman to fight , a polar bear at his Fortress of Solitude (which, recall, in the comics is in Antarctica), and to have his powers come from his suit. Smith's script attempted to justify the use of this trope. In the proposed film, Superman would have lost his powers after
managed to build a device that blocked out the sun. In order to go toe-to-toe with the villains, he would have performed a
with the Eradicator, who would morph into a suit of
that replicated all of Superman's old abilities.
movie . Not played at all seriously, of course.
In , Syndrome's suit gives him flight and zero-point energy projectors (which effectively perform telekinesis)..
Good job he wasn't skilled with it...
In , the eponymous artifact is this. Whoever puts it on becomes invincible and gains phenomenal
powers at the expense of their psychological restraints. The same held true in , though the results within were far more violent and gory.
The Filipino movie Blusang Itim features a magical blouse that makes ugly women beautiful.
, for the same reasons as in the comic. In , this extended to Whiplash (see the page pic) and .
shows that Iron Man's armor can even go toe-to-toe with
and his hammer. In fact, Mjolnir's lightning actually powers up the armor. However, the upshot of this was that Thor barely had a hair knocked out of place, and was more puzzled than actually hurt. Indeed, when he gets , he nuts back harder and actually dents Tony's helmet.
This power discrepancy was also shown in the Battle of New York in which Iron Man runs out of power, but Thor is still in practically the same shape he was when the fight begun, give or take the occasional stabbing.
In , 's flight abilities come from the Exo-7 Falcon, a prototype aerial military suit he wears.
In , Star-Lord relies on a Ravager uniform with built-in jet boots and a helmet that allows him to survive in the void of space.
She avoids this in , , and , but in ,
wears a new suit that enhances each of her physical attacks with . This is a bit of a subversion, as in the prior films, she still kicks a metric ton of ass .
In , the title character and his , Yellowjacket, both get their powers from armored suits that dispense
Pym Particles.
The Rhino in
pilots a suit that straddles the line between
Green Goblin gets his powers from a , but also sports a suit of armor that enhances his strength and automatically repairs any injury to his body.
In , an angel played by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar gives Ernest magic shoes allowing him to give him supernatural basketball abilities.
The eponymous shirt in the 1978 British kids film Sammy's Super T-Shirt.
In the : The Button of Doom short, the titular villain-turned-hero decides that, in order to protect "Metrocity" he's going to make a suit that copies the powers of the former hero Metro Man (who has powers identical to Superman's). These include , gloves for , and glasses that can alternate between
and . Apparently, each device is voice-activated.
During the movie itself, he uses that same suit to trick Titan into thinking that Metro Man has returned. Titan believes the ruse until he realized that Megamind called the city .
In , aliens created a set of
intending to be given to one designated human. However, a group of idiots end up shooting down the transport and take the pieces of the armor. So, now there's four with one power instead of one with four.
&&&&Literature&
contains some of the earliest "realistic"
in fiction.
by , whose
looks a lot like Heinlein's, but whose owners treat it very differently.
In the novel
by , human soldiers wear Skin - suits of artificial muscle which enhance their strength and make them almost . The Skin muscles are actually alive - they need to be fed bags of artificial blood to keep them going (this blood is circulated by the wearer's own heart). One character's Skin is nearly destroyed when he is bitten by a poisonous eel.
Played with in the
novel "Under a Velvet Cloak." where Karena, who can use powerful magic, thinks her velvet cloak provides her the magic. When she is done with her training, her mentor informs her she, Karena, was the source of the magic, and the cloak was just a cloak.
In Kim Stanley Robinson's , there exist recreational flight suits which act as a strength-amplifying exoskeleton, giving wearers a sufficient power-to-weight ratio to fly like a bird, at least in Martian gravity (though more diving and swooping, because flapping would be dull). Similar devices allow low-gravity adapted humans (i.e. the Martians) to function in higher gravity environments (i.e. Earth).
for the Imperial Cadre, which was a combination of augmented exoskeleton and armor with lots of mounting points for heavy weapons (all of which they could take off), and the embedded pharmacope, processors and additional neural pathways (that they were stuck with all the time).
features "Tin Man" suits, a lightweight form of
made from material similar to Batman's cape in /, in his later novels. It starts out as simply bulletproof, but later additions (namely a detachable exoskeleton) bring , jet boots,
anti-personnel weapons, and the ability to wield and feed power to BFG-grade weapons like
or . It's remarked that a single ten-man Tin Man team against a military base is overkill, and nothing short of anti-tank or anti-materiel weapons even bothers them.
string of novels, the CID suits straddle the line between
due to the operator riding in it rather than wearing it, wielding a , being able to , keep up with vehicles, and
push a stalled bus out of a semi-irradiated area. The original operator is deemed a "lab nerd," and manages to engage in close combat with a helicopter gunship at one point.
Witch cloaks in
are the main source of a Witch novice's Magykal abilities, including protection from the Darke, as experienced by Jenna in Darke.
&&&&Live Action TV&
had an alien super suit given to a mild-mannered schoolteacher by advanced aliens, to use for the good of mankind. . Twice.
The super-suit used in the short-lived series
was a prototype space suit, retrofitted for urban assault. In fact, in the first episode, the hero wears an unmodified (though futuristic) space suit as a vigilante.
. However, later seasons have given Rangers non-suit-related powers as well (one
each, quickly becoming ) or made Ranger powers simply enhance the
they're already learning.
In fact, all shows classified in or based on Japanese
tend to go with this, including , ,
(sort of), and ' source material, .
Taking a note from Spider Man, two episodes of
featured an abnormal entity that shaped itself like a superhero suit so it could bond to a host. It would grant them superhuman abilities, but feed on their live energy in return.
: Averted: During the famous "Panic in the Sky" episode, amnesiac Clark, having discovered Superman's suit under his own, wonders if this might be the case. Unfortunately, Jimmy says no, the man makes the clothes super.
The Captain X chest insignia on .
A number of artifacts from
work like this. Most notably Angelo Siciliano's Workout Trunks (Angelo Siciliano is most commonly known as ), allowing the wearer to alter one's density. The person who wears them takes on the persona of a comic book hero called Iron Shadow. Naturally, there are nasty side effects, such as the fact that the wearer will eventually be unable to control his own density and will implode into a black hole. In order to stop this, Myka put on the DARPA GAK Suit, which absorbs all kinetic energy directed at it (but drains the wearer of vital fluids), and gauntlets developed by
to redirect said kinetic energy.
Johnny Domino became
after stealing and putting on a prototype "future cop" suit, loaded with
abilities, such as flying, holo-projection, , , etc. Johnny himself can hear evil thoughts thanks to being hit by
(actually, a beam from an alien spaceship), but has permanent insomnia. He manages to
by using the holo-projector to play back a recording of him playing Jazz to a live audience (although someone noted that he repeated a few songs), while he fights crime. Alternatively, he can give the suit to his friend to fly around.
This was used in
due to the fact that certain key pieces of her costume allow her to keep her powers off of Paradise Island.
The titular hero in
does most of his crime-fighting with a unique cape received from his carnie mentor, who also taught him the usual magician's tricks such as "smoke vanish". The cape can stretch to ridiculous lengths and has an amazing tensile strength. The Cape often uses it to grab things some distance away and pull. One episode involves the cape's former owner (a student of the same mentor who went bad) stealing the cape and using its "powers" for evil.
felt the compulsive need to turn virtually every object he laid eyes on into some kind of . Examples include his Coronet (amplifies psychic powers), Sash (allows the wearer to survive inside a black hole) and Gauntlet (can speed up or reverse time). It is a running gag in fandom to speculate as to what things like his underwear might be capable of.
&&&&Mythology&
Brynhildr's enchanted belt in
gave her "the strength of 10 men".
The belt of Thor (the one from , not the ), was the basis for Brynhildr's belt. It further enhanced his already superhuman strength, and he could literally 'take it up a notch' by tightening the belt.
Hell, his belt was necessary for him to use Mjolnir
Also from Norse Mythology is Freya's cloak of falcon feathers, which gives the wearer the ability to transform into a falcon.
The ancient gods of
had lots of nifty mystic toys, including Hades' cap of invisibility, Hermes' winged shoes, and the impenetrable Nemean Lion's skin worn by Heracles. The only real "giving a normal person powers" example, though, was Perseus, who was given several gifts for his quest to slay the Medusa, including the aforementioned cap and shoes.
&&&&Tabletop Games&
are , but their
makes them even more resilient. Elite members get to use the "Tactical Dreadnought" or "Terminator" armour, which makes them tougher still (and by that there was an example in a book where a wearer of it was stepped on it by a
and crawled out of the big footprint unharmed), but slower (the armour was developed from protective suits designed to allow maintenance work to be done on the interior of Plasma Reactors whilst the reactor was active). Some of the other factions also use this trope, such as the physically unenhanced , the Tau with their battlesuits and the Eldar with their teleport-equipped Warp Spiders and assassin Striking Scorpions.
This even applies to the spin-off games. In , one gang type are the Spyrers, youths from the uppermost noble houses given extremely strange (possible )
and sent downHive to kill other gangers in a rite of passage. The heavily armoured, force-field equipped Orrus has a pair of
with built-in bolt launchers (racks of mini-missile launchers). The Jakara carries a monomolecular sword and an energy-beam-reflecting shield. The Yeld has a set of mechanical, razor-edged chameleonic wings and two wrist-mounted lasers. The Malcadon has two wrist-mounted combi- a set of
and a 'web spinner', a gun that entangles enemies in artificial webbing, while the suit itself lets the wearer leap great distances and climb almost any surface. The Matriarch's suit blends into the background, while she herself carries two weapons- a monomolecular sword and a chainscythe. The Patriarch wears heavy
with four , two tipped with pulse lasers and two with power claws.
Magic armor, , gloves, boots, and other articles of clothing are ubiquitous in , and there are even sets of magic armor that give more powers when they are worn together. The most obvious example of this trope, though, is the epic-level golem suit armor, which is essentially a
powered by magic.
The old Deities and Demigods sourcebook explicitly mentioned Meginjarder (Thor's magic belt), which would boost your strength enough to let you pick up Mjolnir. In this incarnation, it was specifically stated that, without Meginjarder, only Thor himself and his son Magni (who was literally the god of strength and explicitly noted as being able to lift anything, even things otherwise considered "unliftable") could budge the hammer. Not even other gods with the maximum possible strength rating (25) could do so.
The Handy Haversack. Being
is a lot easier when whatever you need at the moment is literally right at your fingertips.
has a rather literal example. Without armor in the Rifts setting, you are typically dead pretty quick due to the abundance of high-power weapons. However such armor is also usually blatantly obvious and will not fit under your clothes. Enter the "Plain Clothes" armor, which mimics normal clothing...and can be very annoying as usually it takes shooting someone and wondering why they did not become pinkish mist to detect. There is also standard infantry full-body armor, Full Environmental Battle Armor (infantry armor with a self-contained environment option like a space suit), and . Any and all of these could survive a single hit by a tank shell usually, though non-powered is also usually near-ruined.
any power can be defined as this by giving it the Gadget Limitation. Besides that supplemental books on magic and ultratech provide more standard examples that can simply be purchased.
In , the Mirrodin expansion introduced the Equipment subtype of artifacts, which generally only function when used by a creature and grant that creature new stats or abilities. Some equipment are concepted as weapons, but others are armor or simple clothing, fitting this trope.
It goes without saying that this can be found in .
&&&&Video Games&
In some early localized manuals for
games, they make the apocryphal claim that Sonic's speed comes from his sneakers, but this info has never been taken as canon—not even early continuities such as the , the cartoons and Archie and Fleetway comics support this theory. In-game he does have
which can temporarily triple his existing speed, though with the introduction of the , Sonic can run at the same speed naturally anyway.
The Nanosuit in . Nomad and Psycho (the protagonists) are normal soldiers, but the Nanosuit gives them enough strength to mash cars off the road with their , turn nearly , allows them to
in short bursts and
in armored mode.
The sequel explained that the nanosuit doesn't really protect the wearer from some potentially mortal wounds, but it keeps him alive despite them - so it's providing life support, too.
That said, the intro FMV of the
that the bullet of at least small arms do not pierce the suit (in maximum armor mode)
In a , the items you use may be as or even more integral to your tactics as what you've got from your .
In , when Mario or Luigi picks up a leaf, a tanuki tail appears on him, enabling him to fly or to attack enemies
several other suits also existed, such as the Frog Suit and Hammer Bros. Suit. Most of these were dropped for , but it added a cape feather whose effects were similar to those of the raccoon leaf.
brings in the Penguin Suit in much the same way as the suits above, which allows Mario and company to shoot ice and slide really fast on their stomachs...And the Propeller Hat, which allows a really high flight/gliding-esque spin jump via head mounted propeller.
had Mario become slower, take more damage and have a decreased jumping ability if he lost his , implying that he derives his power from it. Not to mention the three
hats that gave him , , and a .
DS, wearing Mario, Luigi and Wario's hats gives any other playable character the same powers and physical abilities as their respective owners (certain enemies and Toad can wear them without being affected). Losing theirs will also affect Luigi and Wario the same way it does Mario. In
if Mario loses his hat he'll also gradually lose health due to the heat, something none of the other hatless characters seem to be affected by.
: Legend of the Seven Stars had an optional item literally called the "Super Suit" that was attained if you managed to get 100 consecutive Super Jumps on any one enemy (harder than it sounds). Only Mario can wear it, but when he does, he becomes almost the very definition of the word "Super". All of Mario's offensive and defensive stats are boosted by 50 and his speed is increased by 30. No other item boosts stats that high.
Samus Aran's suit in
holds all the power-ups she acquires. Typical game format involves her
at some point early in the game (barring the first two sequels, where her depowering is left unexplained) and spending the rest of the game getting them along with additional powers back. Although she does have superhuman strength and athletic abilities without the suit as well and she wouldn't be able to use the suit without her Chozo-enhanced biology, so she's not exactly . Interestingly this also averts the usual pattern of making female exa the suit's large and heavily armoured enough (seriously, combined with the level of firepower it's capable of it would make some
jealous) that it .
While the Spartan-IIs from
are already superhuman without their MJOLNIR armour, their suits add tremendously to their combat effectiveness by giving them even greater speed, strength, and durability, along with other features such as energy shields.
Without their armour, SPARTAN-IIs could dent titanium armour plating, pulverise bones, and send heavy exoskeleton-wearing marines flying through the air with a single punch. With MJOLNIR, they could flip all sorts of armored vehicles, survive falls from low orbit, dodge bullets, and deflect missiles.
All that said, they're still just about physically-on par with the
(Elites) and
(Brutes), who outnumber them by far. However, Spartans generally get the better of them w even expendable 12-year-old Spartan-IIIs without MJOLNIR are capable of single-handedly taking down Elite swordsmen in close quarters combat.
Spartan-IVs are supposed to be even better. Unlike IIs and IIIs, they aren't made up of children but of veteran soldiers who get upgraded to
levels. This was the original intent of Project ORION (unofficially known as SPARTAN-I), which mostly failed due to the infancy of the technology.
: Gordon Freeman is pretty
for a , but it is his Hazardous EnVironment (HEV) Suit that enables him to survive multiple gunshot wounds,
and other nastiness. Note however that when Gordon teleports to Xen, he encounters plenty of dead scientists wearing the exact same type of suit, so Gordon's feats are not entirely due to the suit.
BioMetals and their users in the
, with the enchanted armor.
the only thing "intrinsic" to characters is how many hit points and mana points they have, so you can start a new character and immediately make him Death, Destroyer of Worlds by giving him your old character's gear.
: A certain rebel Captain is an ,
. But if he didn't have his customary powered armor, which is an aesthetic cross between an , then quite aside from being able to shrug off bullets and provide juice for heavy energy weapons, why...he'd be naked.
Sora can only use Drive in
because of the clothes granted him by the three
Inverted in , where she uses her powers to make the suit, which is made out of her own hair and can be used to summon Demons!
Twinsen, the protagonist of , has his Ancestral Tunic — it doesn't provide any protection on its own, but instead stores
that power up his main weapon. In the sequel, it does provide protection through the use of "protection spell".
, who was an ordinary earthworm until he got his Super-Suit.
Slight variation in that Jim is still just an earth he doesn't have any arms or legs. The suit not only has powers but has appendages.
In , the description on the App Store implies that the titular character is just an average Dart Monkey in a Super Suit. The monkey kind. Not the earthworm kind.
Done many times in different
provides Link with a suit of armor that allows him to breathe underwater, and another that makes him
but drains
when worn.
The various costumes in
grant Terry different powers. Some allow him to cast magic spells, while others allow him to cook, fish, or steal.
The GM uniform in
consists of a , suit, and briefcase (though many GMs choose to customize their uniform using ). The Suit and Briefcase are about as effective as a suit and briefcase in real life would be against fighting monsters. However, the
gives a godly stat boost. Being able to wear the
is often a feature of private servers.
The players can do this too with the game's scrolling system, which lets you add stats to all your gear. Taken to the extreme, a Warrior could get enough accuracy from his gear alone that he can put every single stat point he gets into STR, when accuracy used to matter.
in a quest in Kerning Square titled "Clothes Make the Man", referring to the celebrity .
In , a prematurely-aged Snake must rely upon the augmented strength of the OctoCamo suit to compete with younger soldiers.
The Crystals' blessing is the source of job classes in . That blessing manifests itself as complete outfits, whether it's a set of plate armor or a mage's robes.
Yuna, Rikku and Paine used dress-spheres to determine their job class in .
are the source of all the job classes in . Also, the clothes—actual cloth clothes—often give better base defense than the actual armor.
An obscure RPG called
2 does away with traditional class-based proficiency (thief, mage, warrior, etc). Instead, everyone can be anything with a change of their armor. There are four types of armor, each emphasizing one aspect or the other, including (and most importantly) HP and MP, which is connected to the fact that levels have nothing to do with providing HP/MP whatsoever since the armors does it.
Almost correct, however there is a cap on the max HP/MP given by armor. This isn't so noticeable because the armor is usually the limiting factor. Basic stats are also character-dependent.
One of the armor types has wings, which give the wearer the ability to fly fast around the battlefield.
has the Demonica armor. Combines combat armor, terrain reconnaissance visor technology, enemy identifier, survival gear comparable to a suit of , field-altering technology (opens locked doors and makes doors whenever it finds a suitable place), serves as the home for all your demons, contains maps and an absolutely absurd amount of programs and powers. In addition, the equipment that goes with it (accessories) can inflate its power to unimaginable degrees. God Ring / Solomon Ring + Demonica Armor = .
Similarly, Class Armor in Artix Entertainment's , , and
give characters class abilities. In the case of the original Adventure Quest, this was on top of the spells and magical weapons you most likely also had. Different costumes in
also give stat bonuses towards certain tasks, like detective work or delivering pizza.
series, the protagonist was originally Dr. Light's helper robot. However, he had a strong sense of justice, and when Dr. Wily threatened world domination, he requests Dr. Light to remodel him into a fighting robot, and he gets the iconic blue suit of armor. In , you can actually play as his original form, and he doesn't have the Mega Buster in this form — he only simply gets a kick attack in this form, and it's fairly short range. Apparently he can switch between both forms at will, as seen in the ending of 1 and the opening of the Game Boy V. Despite this, whenever he's seen at home or otherwise doing some activity that doesn't involve fighting, he's always wearing the blue armor, sometimes without his helmet.
This is a common explanation for where a character (particularly one of Technological origin) got his powers in .
game , for their battle as a , Asagi wears a Prinny suit that lets her do the same things as the Prinny hero, including , and shoot . Unfortunately, when she's beaten, .
And of course, the hero prinny's scarf allows him to not .
Wario's various costumes in
are like this, with various ones allowing fire breath, flight... abilities...as are the hats in the first
game, which are everything from a head mounted jetpack to a head mounted flamethrower.
is Fuyuhiko Date, the Doctor who got his awesome superpowers from wearing the Demon Crown.
has The Gentleman's Suit, a legendary set of clothes that give the wearer great power if he's deemed classy enough. Luckily the
Protagonist is just the man.
Crimson Viper in
has a "Battle Suit" given to her by
(who she is ), which includes studded gloves which can be
and jets hidden in the heels of her
boots. The latter of which can be used for a , but she mostly uses them to kick people in the face with. Ouch.
Several outfits in
serve this function. The El Vibrato Relics allowed the player with the right upgrades to effectively create their own superpowers. Also, each class has a set of Legendary Regalia that effectively boosts their class-based strengths to Legendary proportions.
The JRPG Dual Orb II features an armor that Lagnus obtains.
The Evolving Armor allows him to use magic and slowly transforms him into an
The beta suit from
allows the wearer to control time, heal quickly, hack computers and .
The hunters of
can get awesome abilities such as withstanding tremors, dodge-rolling long distances, increasing the sharpness of a weapon just by holding it or slicing clean through the toughest monster hides regardless of how sharp a weapon is. But only if they wear the right armor. Every hunter, no matter how experienced or how high their rank, is exactly the same under the armor.
: Its fair to say that Isaac Clarke wouldn't have survived without his seal sealing, armored RIG suit. It also comes with the ability to slow enemies and telekinesis.
series: Most Reyvateils literally cosplay as a
Their custom clothes are created from their mental images, therefore invokes different stats, biorhythms, and passive abilities. Interestingly in the first game, the
for Aurica is
&&&&Web Comics&
Steve's Super Suits, and the one Jane uses, from .
In , Maytag's absurd self-confidence and wild hedonism only work when she's wearing her jester outfit. Take it away and she becomes shy and meek. It's not clear whether the effect is actually caused by the outfit or if it's .
the iguana from
has created, among other things, a suit of armor that looks remarkably like Mega Man. Since Zig is a bit of a geek, it's probably intentional.
has fullerene-cloth powersuits that are literally indistinguishable from normal clothes, and are in fact the Toughs' normal outfits. With these, characters can , , and ...although most of the Toughs have "soldier boosts", genetic enhancements that push their physical abilities past whats normally possibly for their given species, so some of them .
in . Elliot has a magic spell which gives him a few , and includes a costume change. Of course, since the spell also , the costume invokes
Parodied in
with the superhero .
Similar to the Iron Man example above, the core of
power suit is a medical device, which allows her to move and breathe freely despite being crippled with ALS.
get their superpowers from their laser wristbands and other gear.
Cyrus is given a blue and yellow tunic made by Helene that allows his physical body to interact with the normally immaterial ghost world.
&&&&Web Original&
Without their Guardian armor, the heroes from the web fiction serial
are pretty much helpless.
Zoofights, an interactive forum based original on the
forums where modified animals beat the crap out of each other. In his last battle, Steamcrab was nothing but a pile of fused organs inside a giant crab-suit. In a more traditional fashion, the Iron Manatee uses a combination Space-suit and power armor equipped with a rail-gun, chainsaw, and the ability to fly using both gravity affecting Cavorite and traditional thrusters. Without it, he's nothing but an angry, steak-eating, cigar-smoking manatee with a death wish and an incredible disdain for Malaysians.
In the , Loophole is stronger than average, but she is far more powerful when she wears her power armor. Jericho has a power armor suit too, but he's designing it for medics and rescue workers. Phase has a superhero costume that provides protection against bullets, knife attacks, acid, and several other kinds of assaults, but she paid a huge amount for it.
uses Mario's suits to make the point that "there is no problem that a change of wardrobe won't solve."
has Hilda supply the titular duo with special super suits armed with various weapons. However, they prove to be quite the .
&&&&Western Animation&
The Battle Suit, used in , is a white soft suit with neon blue piping, as a
to , that had many useful energy-based abilities like renegating clothes and a power field. A nerd with less power than an average child could get the drop on Kim while wearing it. It was so
Kim hunted for a new mission outfit in "Clothes Minded", and tried three new options before settling on a new mundane suit. Her rocket-scientist father built her a bulky space suit that could fly, but couldn't maneuver on the ground. Her brothers made a suit that looked like a multicolored (R) samurai, straight out of
anime or ; it . She also tried an improvised suit made of a purple F she over-bounced the target.
It is also speculated by the characters in the same episode that Kim's heroic victories are proportional to how well she dresses on her missions.
A pair of super-shoes put Kim out of sync with normal time in "Queen BeBe".
In , Kim spends much of the episode wearing an experimental armor suit .
Shego's bolts of green energy were originally stated by Disney to be generated by her gloves. This was retconned in the second season, where her
turned out to be a superpower she gained after she and her brothers were struck by a .
The first time Ron really saves the day, on his own, with no screw ups, accidental victory, or villain/ moments and with Kim Possible knocked out and unable to help is whilst wearing the Fearless Ferret costume.
As mentioned by the quotation at top of the article,
mocks the average superhero's ridiculous attire, and claims this trope is the
for donning said ridiculous attire.
The high-tech Batsuit in , which used advanced technology, originally to support the original Batman's aging body and failing heart. It also lets the new Batman do a lot of things his predecessor had needed years of training to do, in addition to keeping him alive through his early days, when his total lack of experience lets villains get the drop on him every five minutes. In a later episode, however, when a hostile AI takes over the Batsuit, Terry has to prove to himself that Clothes don't make the Batman.
Similarly, the high-tech Phantom suit in .
In : The Adventures of Manny Rivera, the Rivera family derive their abilities from their clothes. Manny from his belt, White Pantera from his boots, Puma Loco from his hat.
And Plata Peligrosa, Manny's mother, from her glove.
In , three
derive powers from their costumes. The Vulture has
, Shocker has a vibrating suit with gauntlets that shoot concussive blasts and
and the Rhino has
armor that's . Then of course there's Spider-Man's
, that increases his strength, jumping distance, balance and webbing integrity. ! And later, Shocker's teammates Fancy Dan and Ox get their own powered suits, with Ox's simply making him even stronger and Fancy Dan's allowing him to bounce off walls
like a killer bouncy ball.
subverts this with the Iron Spider suit. It gives Peter extra powers he wouldn't normally have, but even without it he still has all of his spider abilities. Played straight in the third season when the armor is given to Amadeus Cho.
Parodied by
with the carpeted man — a man covered in wall-to-wall carpet. His incredible choice of dress grants him the power of static electricity to mildly inconvenience evildoers everywhere! Frequent fainting from overheating is an unfortunate and inevitable side-effect of such ...awesome powers.
Captain Mucilage: You know, Gary, if you'd only take off that stupid suit you wouldn't keep getting overheated.
The Carpeted Man: But...I'm the Carpeted Man! Without this suit...I am nothing.
: Elmer Fudd's "spear and magic helmet" allowed him to control the weather and finally kill the wabbit... kind of.
the superhero known as
obtained his powers from a cape given to him by an alien tailor.
Professor Farnsworth of
built a bowler hat that gave the monkey wearing it genius level intelligence and even allowed him to cry.
In an episode of , the
got his powers from his cape.
had Gizmo Duck, who was regular Fenton Crackshell until he wore a suit invented by Gyro.
An episode of
combined this with mind control when, during a Halloween party, the villains of the week caused people to think they actually were what they were dressed up as, giving some of them powers, such as Launchpad (who was wearing his regular pilot outfit) gaining the ability to , invisible-jet style. Darkwing himself was mainly unaffected, having .
One skit from
has a subversion of this:
is driving by and noticing "Clark Kent" acting really strange. At first he thinks it's the effect of red kryptonite, but then goes and asks , , and Superman where they dispose of their civilian clothes when they run off to fight crime. Superman doesn't really care for the question and answers that he's saving lives, so what does he care? We then see a bunch of homeless bums walking around in Clark Kent's outfits, all acting crazier than usual. Superman takes advantage of this by letting one of them take over his job at the Daily Planet while he relaxes on a beach.
: Hopelessly averted in "There's A Penfold In My Suit." It starts with Penfold thinking he can be as heroic as DM if he puts on one of his white jumpsuits. Doesn't quite cut it—he's still the hopeless hamster he's always been.
became the Beak after creating a super suit for skateboarding. It provides all the essentials for being a super hero, though, strength, speed, flight, looking awesome, and Bulgarian folk dancing.
In another episode Doofenshmirtz employs the "Socky-shocky-suit" in order to create a powerful static electrical charge.
"You know, it's the technical side of evil I don't think people appreciate."
: To learn Death Kwon Do, you have to have a mullet and disturbingly short cut-offs.
Two villains in , one used a glove that allowed him to practically stop time ("Now You See Him...", final season), and another allowed him to use Static's powers after stealing them ("Romeo in the Mix", season 3).
The ' Exo-Frames give them , even without the Assault Weapon Systems that attach to the suits.
The eponymous ., when he pulls his magic belt tight, becomes "strong as a hurricane." In the Hanna-Barbera shorts, has can also fly while under the belt's influence.
In the now-hard-to-find
cartoon "Uncle Tom's Caba?a", Uncle Tom tells increasingly tall tales to the listening kids, up to the point where bad guys open up on him with machine guns. When the kids point out that the bullets would've killed him, he replies, "Nope, 'cause I was wearin' my Superduperman suit!"
Very literally in the
short, "Superman of Tokyo" in which Superman gave his cape to a baby to use as a diaper who then transformed into Superman himself.
Parodied in a
short, wherein the Coyote buys a "" outfit assuming it would get him to fly across a chasm (even the box shows a guy in the costume flying). It doesn't.
But in another short, he gets a "Bat-Man" (sic, and possibly a
to the original comics, c.1939) suit from ACME (where else?), and it works — eventually. It takes him a little while to get the hang of using the wings, but then he's zooming all over the place. And having fun, too — right up until, not looking where he's going, he runs smack into a rock ledge and the wing fabric separates from the battens and stays stuck to the rock. Wile E. falls away, naturally, and is horrified to find that his wings are now nothing more than a few pieces of wire (or whatever). Oh, and the suit is green and doesn't have a mask.
also avert this in "Super Zeroes." They decide to turn into costumed crime fighters (Blossom as Liberty Belle, Bubbles as Harmony Bunny, and Buttercup as Mange), and they are way less effective at fighting an invading monster than they would be in their regular clothes. The monster itself even lampshades this.
In , Chicken makes Cow ditch her old blanket only to find out that it was her Super Cow cape and without it she can't save the day, which prompts The Red Guy to start abusing Flem and Earl to see if this true.
in that Chicken finds the cape and uses it to turn into "Wonder Wattle", but finds out he has no powers and the .
Then Cow points out that Chicken put the cape backwards.
when she fixes it.
Alternative Title(s):
Superpower Costume