Right Through His Pants

A form of soft-core "figleaf" male censorship, where men are shown wearing pants or underwear, in situations when they normally would be nude.

Fan Service most often is aimed at the straight male Demographic. The assumption is that most heterosexual guys prefer seeing female flesh to seeing other naked guys. Therefore, because Most Writers Are Male, men in sex scenes will be far more covered than women, even during intercourse. The woman may be completely naked (or at least not wearing anything visible; a skintone patch or a cover between legs can be completely hidden from the camera in a way that a penis can't), but the guy will still have his shirt on — or sometimes only his fly is down. It doesn't matter that with his fly down and his belt off the guy's pants would fall down. It also ignores how painful sex with a metal zipper rubbing up against the genitals could be. All that matters is seeing that sweet, sweet fanservice with the least amount of Squick. Selective Squick anyone?

According to one porn director, Right Through His Pants in pornographic works is partially intended to ensure mainstream porn is uninteresting to women. The theory is that the average straight male porn viewer desperately, desperately prefers that his partner NOT enjoy porn. Her enjoyment implies his inadequacy. The director says this is why they hire extremely ugly guys like Ron Jeremy: so guys won't feel insecure. Female nudity is great (remember, Most Writers Are Male), and if you can slip it past the censors, imply it through tight clothing, or out and out show them nude — fantastic. But lord, don't show men naked; flashing a penis is likely to blind someone and drive the viewer to suicide. (Margaret Cho has an alternative theory: "[Straight men] don't want a fraction of an inkling of a chance that they might actually get turned on by the guy in the movie and accidentally have a homo moment.")

Admittedly it is exceedingly rare to get a clear view of actual female genitalia, except in outright pornographic material. So during sex scenes in movies or comics, we'll get to see almost all of the woman and nothing of the man but some pecs and a groaning face — if that. Also, nipples might show through a skintight suit on a woman, but the male will rarely have a bulge, even in tights (and usually won't look like he's smuggling a gun carriage), leading to the impression that all men in fiction are Ken dolls. Which leads to another Double Standard.

One theory states that this is why the Yuri Genre is popular among men and the Boys Love Genre popular among women; there aren't any characters of the wrong gender involved, so you can just sit back and be attracted to both of them (popularity of lesbian porn explained on Coupling: "It's sex with a greater density of women").

This is most obviously shown by the trope where, even after sex — or sometimes even during sex, when it's interrupted — men will be shown wearing boxer shorts; apparently the message is that women also don't want to see a man's naked "area" — even while having sex with them. It's also done for practical reasons. Genitalia in general are too hard-core for anything less than X-rated sex-scenes (but are fine for PG-13 otherwise), and it's simply impossible to avoid seeing men's genitals while showing their "area"; meanwhile women typically wear loose lingerie to avoid showing even pubic hair.

Can be a case of Truth in Television. Couples engaged in public sex may wear as much clothing as possible for varying reasons. Compare Wall-Bang Her, which usually carries the implication that He and She were both just too horny to bother taking their clothes off.

Examples of Right Through His Pants include:

Anime and Manga

• Taken to silly heights in certain Japanese Hentai, where males sometimes don't bother taking off their pants, or even unbuttoning them! Remember those pajama flaps you had as a child, for "easy access" to the toilet? This is a much smaller target. While this is likely to be a choice to reduce the mosaic area Censor Steam, it makes for a very awkward scene when released in other countries.
  • The sex scenes in Tsukihime are much like this, as Shiki is only completely naked in one such scene (more often shirtless, or simply "unzipped"). Strangely, it's also very briefly inverted; somehow, Kohaku manages sex while wearing a full-length kimono...the first time, at least, though this might be because she has far more experience than she wants or needs. This trope is in full effect afterwards.
  • Averted, on the other hand, in Fate/stay night, complete with lampshading ("What kind of man expects just the woman to take off her clothes?!")
  • This is parodied in the Web Comic ~Ghastly's Ghastly Comic~ with the character Hentai Guy, a porn star from Japan whose claim to fame is having an invisible penis.
  • Incidentally, at least one show has found a way around this--it stars an Invisible Streaker!
• In Dead Leaves, the "heroes" manage to have sex through full body straight-jackets that only have one opening... for defecation. While it's clearly hinted in dialog where the point of insertion must be, neither suit appears to have an opening in the front.
• Immoral Sisters.
• Even followed with Yaoi Guys where the Uke often ends up completely naked whilst the Seme usually keeps his clothes on.
  • Occasionally this does occur with filmed pornography, especially if the male in question is a twink.
• Sebastian Michaelis of Black Butler seems to only take his clothes off in Fan Fiction. When the manga has him screwing information out of Beast, who barely wears anything anyway, he simply takes off his coat. In the anime, he doesn't even bother with that much with a completely nude nun. Even in the infamous corset scene he is fully clothed.
• Klaus of Hyakujitsu no Bara never takes off his pants. Being a Boys Love series it's obviously it's not a Squick issue, and probably is intended to be kinky in a power-dynamics kind of way, as Taki is always completely naked.
• Ayace of Corsair only seems to lose the pants on special occasions.
• Yuuichi manages to keep his pants mostly on while having sex on a chair in The Secret Agreement. Couldn't have been comfortable.
• In Berserk, when Griffith/Femto brutally rapes Casca he appears to do this through his armour. However, since he is a demon it is possible that the "armour" is actually his skin, and he is completely naked, but then that raises the question of why no genitals are visible on him even when he is clearly facing the reader.
  • Considering the level of shape-shifting power apostles seem to have, a retractable penis isn't that much of a stretch of the imagination.
    • Possibly a Fridge Brilliance Call Back to the time Griffith is seen fully nude earlier in the series: no genitals are visible even when they should be, even though the manga as a whole is not shy with Male Frontal Nudity.
  • This example notwithstanding, the series as a whole averts this trope. Penises are frequently shown during sex or rape scenes (which there are an awful lot of), whether they belong to humans, trolls or demon possessed horses (seriously).

Comic Books

• League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier partially inverts this. During the obligatory sex scene, Mina Murray pulls her bra and skirt up and pulls her knickers round her knees, exposing her bosom and buttocks. Allan Quatermain in contrast keeps his trousers on, and only opens his shirt slightly. The subversion comes from the fact that we see Allan's penis prominently hanging out of his fly post coitus. This also inverts the trope as it is usually applied to females, who are usually largely exposed apart from their proverbial "naughty bits", whereas in this case Allan is mostly covered up apart from his naughty bits.
• Inverted in this scene from Stormwatch — Hellstrike's Goofy Print Underwear is around his ankles, while Fahrenheit's panties are clearly still on.

Fan Fiction

• While the poor writing quality makes it somewhat confusing, in Lisa Is Pregnant, Bart may have kept his clothes on while having sex with Lisa if you assume that the author put Lisa's name instead of Bart's. Partly justified in that it's cold, but having sex is a poor way of keeping warm.

He took off her cloths and slid it in her (he didn't have pants just panty so Lisa kept clothes on was easy, and roughed her up

Film

• The absolute pinnacle of this trope can be seen in the 1981 movie Excalibur, where Uther Pendragon has a sex scene in full plate armor. At least he removes the codpiece...
  • With the director's daughter to boot!
  • Some men pack a pistol; Uther's is loaded with armor penetrating rounds.
  • At least he was using protection. Unfortunately, it was the wrong kind.
  • He's right next to a roaring fire with metal pressing up against Igreyn's bare skin all over. OUCH.
    • He also just walked in from the cold.
• Poked fun at in the first American Pie movie, where the main character was watching porn and was trying to avoid looking at the male porn star while focusing on the woman.
• Completely inverted in the James Bond film Casino Royale, in which the true 'Bond Girl' seems to be Daniel Craig himself. Not that anyone would dare to question Craig's macho manliness, mind you, but in that it's actually Bond himself who seems to be stripping for the audience, a LOT more than the females in the film.
  • Indeed, the scene in which Bond/Craig appears swimming out of the sea in his extremely small pair of trunks seems to be an intentional opposite to Honey Rider from Dr. No and (her Expy) Jinx from Die Another Day.
  • And the scene at the hotel, where Daniel Craig is half-naked and the girl is still fully dressed. Made even worse because Bond is simply flashing his bod at the chick to pump her for information; as soon as he's learned what he needs to he makes a quick exit before the two of them actually have sex.
  • Eva Green was supposed to be in her underwear in the scene where she sits in the shower after witnessing Bond kill a few guys, but Daniel Craig argued that she wouldn't have stopped to get undressed, and so she is still in her dress under the water.
• In a segment in The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, Fritz is shown in a rocket ship having sex with a female reporter... and both are wearing space suits. This is just plain puzzling as there were already two other sex scenes with explicit cartoon nudity... to say nothing of the first film. Given Fritz's character, it was really more of a fetish or a "Hey, this situation doesn't happen very often, let's try this!"
• The movie Sea Of Love is a good example — Ellen Barkin is completely naked, Al Pacino never seems to remove an item of clothing more substantial than his tie.
• Enemy at the Gates has an extremely awkward sex scene where the only flesh shown is a brief shot of the woman's butt as she pulls her pants down. All other clothing stays on.
  • This one is Justified Trope, since they were in the midst of an army camp in Russia and were trying not to attract any attention.
    • And because it was cold.
• Inverted in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, where there is more male nudity than female, and the full-frontal male nudity starts in the first 10 minutes of the movie.
  • Judd Apatow has taken a tongue-in-cheek oath to put a penis into every movie he makes, and is batting nearly 1,000.
  • See also Waking Ned Devine, which features elderly full-frontal male nudity in the first 10 minutes of the movie.
• Inverted in Twenty Eight Days Later, in which we are treated to plenty of naked Cillian Murphy but the lead female keeps her bra on the whole time, and, in fact, requests that the soldiers leave the room so she can change her clothes in private (of course, there was an ulterior motive for this).
• Used to imply a drug-fueled threesome complete with a 69 position in the 2009 Land of the Lost.
• In Taking Lives, there's a sex scene between Angelina Jolie and Ethan Hawke. Jolie wears only an open robe; Hawke keeps his suit on.
• Not a sex scene, but in Rankin-Bass's The Return of the King and the Peter Jackson version, Sam finds Frodo in the tower with his pants still on, while the book specifies he's naked.
• Two of the very few images not taken frame-for-frame in the movie adaptation of Frank Miller's Sin City: Bruce Willis as Hartigan is not stripped entirely naked as he's hung at the mercy of That Yellow Bastard, and That Yellow Bastard himself also keeps his Y-Fronts on in the scene where he's working on Nancy. Having said this, Nancy the stripper's breasts are kept conspicuously covered in the film as opposed to the original source material.
  • The comic of The Big Fat Kill briefly features Dwight nude in the opening scene in Shelley's apartment. This is absent in the movie.
• Seen in a deleted scene from Repo! The Genetic Opera, in which Amber Sweet convinces Graverobber to sleep with her to get out of paying for her Zydrate. Both remain fully clothed for the entire scene-- the only item of clothing removed is Graverobber's big coat.
• Black Scorpion (The Roger Corman "superhero" movie) features a scene were the heroine knocks a man in a business suit onto the bed. She takes off her costume (except for her mask and gloves) and the two have sex, while the man is still fully dressed. In the morning she is gone, and he wakes up in tighty whiteys.
• Bollywood rapists have a tendency to rape women by jumping on top of them, wrestling for a bit and then getting up and running off...while both the rapist and victim are fully clothed. Which for some reason often includes a cowboy hat.
• The Other Boleyn Girl inverts this a bit in that the only person to show any skin is Eric Bana. But it plays it somewhat straight during a rape. They're wearing way too many clothes for it to happen as quickly as it did.
• In the Realm of the Senses inverts this, with the female protagonist fully clothed while her male partner is totally naked.
• A couple at the beginning of Anthropophagous 2000 have sex with their shorts on.
• There's a completely clothed sex scene in Thankskilling.
• The very softcore porn film Getting Into Heaven features men having sex with Uschi Digard while wearing underwear.
• Averted in I Am Curious(Yellow), where the objective is to show people as realistic and non-glamorous. Borje is completely naked when the situation requires it.

Literature

• A monstrous bandit in the fourth volume of A Song of Ice and Fire rapes a woman right through his armor on a raid, and the results are indicated to be not pretty at all.

Live Action TV

• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: In the episode "Annihilated", Elliot removes his jacket and shirt before climbing into bed with Kathy, but not his pants.
  • Averted in a later episode where Elliot is seen stripping to a pair of form-fitting bikini briefs before climbing into bed with pajama-clad Kathy.
• One of the male characters in Coupling bemoans the risk of the "potentially dangerous eye slippage" that can happen whilst watching porn and (shall we say) throw one off one's stride.
  • Argh! Lower whiplash!
• A pretty ridiculous example of this can be found in the CSI episode "Fur and Loathing"; a fursuiter's semen is found on the costume of a fellow fursuiter, which he deposited on there during a "furpile" at a convention. While this isn't that unusual (fur suit fetishists are out there, so this scenario is a bit more likely than one might think), what does make it unusual is that the fursuiter in question had his costume lined with latex (and with no opening to do the nasty with, as most fur suit fetishists have in their suit), so this is a literal case of Right Through His Pants.
• In the Showtime series Weeds, Nancy's panties and bra stay put when having sex with the Hispanic drug dealer in season one and later when Nancy has sex with Conrad.
  • This may be considered Unfortunate Implications, because later we see just about everything (naked breasts, butt, and pelvis, but no vulva) when she has sex with a random white guy later on.
• This popped up a few times in Sex and the City when the actress in the scene refused to get undressed for the camera.
  • Thank goodness Kim Cattrall doesn't have that problem. She drops trou at the mere mention of sex.
• Grace on Saving Grace leaves her panties on even when they guy pulls down his underpants (if the guy was even wearing any).
  • Except the Season 1 finale where she's handcuffed to the bed naked all night, with full rear view.
• Inverted in season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with Buffy nearly or fully clothed (or invisible) while Spike is given, in his words, "a sock".
  • Done to especially weird effect in their exhibitionist scene on the top level of the Bronze, where both are not only nearly fully clothed, but standing on their own two feet, in a way that (given the height difference between them) would make sex pretty difficult. As TV Without Pity put it, "And then they got it on in some kind of anatomically impossible way. Is Spike is walking around the Bronze with his pants around his ankles, or what?"
    • Many viewers assumed he was doing stuff with his hands, though this is apparently not the intention.
• Occurs twice in an episode of Angel. Spike has been recorporealized and immediately runs off for a nooner with Harmony. Right through his pants. Later, a flashback shows that Angel and Spike had a complicated relationship as vampires. The real deal breaker was when Angelus screwed Drusilla. Right through his pants. With lots of vigorous thrusting that got complaints from the Moral Guardians.
• This isn't always reserved for the guys. In the old Soul Food series, the women always kept on their undergarments while the men were nude, apparently thrusting right through the panties. Were they made of latex?
• Used on guys AND girls in the The Secret Life of the American Teenager. The Modesty Bedsheet is frequently discarded to reveal that the characters who just had sex are mostly clothed (which makes one wonder why they bother with the sheet in the first place). The guys will be shirtless and in pants or boxers (and on a few occasions, JEANS) and the girls will be in their bras and panties or short shorts.
• The Torchwood episode "Day One". Right through his pants and her skirt, then he turns into a pile of dust.
• Inverted in the Lifetime Miniseries Maneater when Clarissa doesn't want to take off her wedding dress, so her new husband decides that they'll just work around it.
• In Rescue Me Every single sex scene so far plays this trope straight. This is entirely unsurprising as the main writer/producer is Denis Leary, who would much rather have the female stars show off their assets.
• A glaring example appears in Gossip Girl, which is otherwise quite sex filled for its genre. Chuck Bass, of all people, is shown waking up after a one night stand wearing pajamas. As in he brought the girl home, got undressed, skipped into his jammies and then slept with her. The reason for this is probably that the actor is way too tattoo-happy while the character isn't the type to get tattooed (Chuck is the only male main character who hasn't appeared topless).
• In the ~Blake's Seven~ episode "The City at the Edge of the World", Vila and a female mercenary named Kerril get trapped on a spaceship that (they think) is running out of air. As the two come to terms with their fate they embrace. When we see them next they are fully clothed and lying a foot apart despite the dialogue making it very clear that they just had sex.
• The Veronica Mars episode "Kanes and Abel's" has an Imagine Spot like this — Veronica is imagining Jake Kane murdering Lilly after catching her in flagrante with Weevil, and when he pulls the two of them apart they're both wearing pants. Of course, this is Justified Trope by the fact that it is an Imagine Spot, and Veronica probably doesn't naturally imagine her friends naked...
• At first it seemed like Game of Thrones was going to play this straight in the first episode, but the second episode actually gives us an inversion: Daenerys doesn't remove her dress the first time she makes love to Khal Drogo while facing him, while he is completely nude. Theon Greyjoy and even Hodor also get to show off their, uh, manliness.
  • Particularly Egregious during the Dothraki wedding in the first episode, however: the two men who get into a fight over a woman both appear to be having sex with her by getting behind her, flipping up her loincloth, and then thrusting with their pants completely on. It's apparent that they are meant to be penetrating her, but it's kind of ridiculous given that you can plainly tell they haven't even pretended to take their dicks out. A very literal Right Through His Pants. The showrunners also mention that they weren't sure if the wedding scene was violating any public decency laws in Morocco, where it was filmed.
  • Given a tongue-in-cheek reference on the DVD commentary by the showrunners. The sex between Jaime and Cersei was nude in the books, but the two wear clothes in the series. This was probably done out of necessity for the child actor who plays Bran.

Stand Up Comedy

• A bit from Ron White is that he gets by as an ugly person by wearing a suit ("You could make a pile of shit look good if you drape an expensive suit over it.") and goes on to joke that his wife makes him wear the suit when they have sex.

Music Videos

• Featured in the video for Studio Killers' Ode to the Bouncer. While lead singer Cherry points out that she's not wearing knickers, the bouncer clearly keeps his trousers on.

Newspapers

• British tabloid agony aunt columns with attendant "story" comic-things have a tendency to invoke this trope to a ridiculous extent; even those which elsewhere feature topless pin-ups will have men in boxers and women in full lingerie during what are allegedly sex scenes, even when these are supposed to be characters in the strip fantasising about sex. Precisely how anyone is supposed to take a storyline about an affair consisting of dry-humping seriously is not particularly clear.

Theater

• Theater is probably a popular offender of this trope, considering the generous time it takes for a man to take off pants, a shirt, suspenders, etc., whereas a single dress is easily disposable. To the point, in the musical of Spring Awakening, Wendla is disrobed down to her shift, while Melchior apparently only has to push down his pants to get it on, giving the audience a very nice view of his fine, masculine and time for intermission!
• The Light in the Piazza has an almost-identical scene to the one listed above.
• Equus notices this trope stranded on the highway, and gives it the finger as it blows right by it. In the final act, Alan Strang and his female love interest strip completely naked on stage, lie on top of each other, and (in the most recent production with Strang being played by Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe) even make a few half-thrusts before stopping for plot reasons. The majority of the rest of the scene is then performed in the nude.

Video Games

• Taken to the extreme in The Sims — the Sims not only emerge from having sex still wearing underwear, but they also use the toilet through their pants.
  • In the first game, they were naked when they got out of the "love bed". Considering that the original was a lot more G-rated overall — Sim-sex was entirely optional (and only even possible in a specific bed, or changing booths,) and babies spawned out of nowhere after the couple did a lot of romantic interactions (in other words, babies came from kissing), whereas the sequel has pregnancy and Sims that actively desire "WooHoo", including a whole aspiration for that — the change is puzzling.
• While obviously not possible to do in-game, a book in The Elder Scrolls tells of a great warrior who did it through heavy armor. Now THAT's a master-skill perk!
• Played straight and inverted in Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes From Liberty City. Luis has sex several times onscreen, but he's always fully clothed. However, the only full frontal nudity in the game is male.
  • The infamous "hot coffee" mini-games in GTA: San Andreas has Carl keeping his pants on while the women he beds are usually nude.
• There is a glitch for the sex scene with Morrigan in Dragon Age that results in your character performing a version of the Oblivion example above.
  • Dragon Age is an example even without a glitch; the characters don't take their underwear off during those scenes. In Morrigan's case at least, they actually put underwear on.
  • In the City Elf origin story, Vaughn and his compatriots are all but outright said to have raped Shianni after abducting her, but when the player busts in to kick ass and save the girl, they're all fully clothed. It is, admittedly, possible that they'd gotten finished and Vaughn and his cronies had managed to get their clothes back on and Shianni found and pulled hers on too.
  • Also shows up in Dragon Age 2, though they cut away from the sex scenes before any clothing comes off, so it is slightly more justified. Still, the female elven underwear is quite strange (a black leather scale-armor corset? Really?).
• Neverwinter Nights wasn't actually programmed to include those scenes, though it has since been modded to have people without armor being nude instead of wearing silly undergarments. Most mod authors who want to include sex scenes create a Darkness effect over the couple and run some pornographic dialogue.
• Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater ends with EVA and Snake spending a passionate night together. When Snake wakes up the next morning, his shirt is gone but he's still wearing trousers.
  • "Boy, what a great night of passionate, pants-on hugging that was!"
• A scene in Xenogears shows Ramsus and Miang sharing a bed. Miang is apparently naked (or at the very least topless), but when Ramsus gets out of bed, he's wearing black briefs.
  • This is quite notable because most of the time the game has no issues with showing male characters nude.
• The FMV horror game Phantasmagoria has a rape scene, but both characters are clothed, so the scene looks more like violent dry humping, really.
• In Catherine, whenever Vincent wakes up next to a naked Catherine, his boxers are still on.
  • Though — who knows? — they might not've done anything at all.
• Katawa Shoujo: Played straight in Hanako's route, in which Hisao doesn't even take off his pants for the only sex scene while Hanako gets completely naked, but averted in all other scenes as he gets just as nude as the girl. As a possible explanation, that scene was supposed to be very awkward. Interestingly, said scene is also pretty much the only time in the game his genitalia is visible. (Apparently, the artists were squeamish of drawing it.)
  • In Shizune's route, the first sex scene involves this with both parties; Hisao's pants are unzipped while Shizune is still wearing her dress while they have sex. Justified in Hisao's case(to Hisao's relief, as he isn't quite ready for her to look at the scar on his chest) because Hisao is sitting in a chair with his hands tied behind his back, and Shizune would literally have to rip off his shirt.
• Mass Effect 3 has this. The end of the game has a love scene, and a post-love scene, and in them, the male characters are all wearing black boxers and the females are wearing a Black Bra and Panties. Only Liara is ever seen to be nude.

Web Comics

• Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic is both generous and even-handed with Fan Service, and sex scenes generally have both parties fully nude, averting this trope. However, exactly one comic gets the woman naked but gives the guy a Loin Cloth: see here.
• Scott R. Kurtz drops a passing lampshade on this trope in the final lines of the PvP episode "Another Nail in the Coffin".
• In the Ciem Webcomic Series, Don Mendoza tries to rape Candi, as she lies on the ground injured and her clothes badly burned. Yet, they still cover all her necessary-to-hide parts. Meanwhile, the most he gets around to removing are his hat and trenchcoat before he lunges at her. Ironically, after he dies in the fire he created, she abandons her charred clothes and escapes...covered from exposure by stealing his trenchcoat!
  • Averted in the book: Don Mendoza is much more brutal this time around and a capable fighter. He gets his pants down, and even manages to strip a defeated Candi completely naked. However, he never bothers removing his shirt.
• Averted in Questionable Content, when Angus and Faye have sex. He goes out of the room only wearing a hot pink condom.
  • It's really more of a puce.

Web Animation

• The "sleep scene" from William Country does this. The humping is shown but the pants stay on.

Western Animation

• Futurama: Fry still managed to impregnate his own grandmother despite wearing whitey-tighties.
  • Bit of an inversion really, because not only was Fry's grandmother covered up more so than Fry, she was wearing different lingerie than what she had when she jumped on him.
• There's an animated version of The Canterbury Tales which features a knight who not only manages to rape a woman while wearing full armor, from the way it's presented he apparently manages to dismount his horse, leap, and penetrate in one smooth move.

Truth In Television

• Most pants and boxers have frontal openings at the right height, and which open easily enough. They're made for peeing but come in handy if you're in a hurry... Male bikini briefs are also quite convenient in this regard.
  • As heavily implied in several examples on this page, this is best performed with button-fly pants. Nothing kills the mood like zipper abrasion.
• The chemise cagoule, a nightshirt with a fly worn in order to have sex without seeing the partner naked.