Raymanian Limbs



Raymanian Limbs describes a somewhat rare Lazy Artist trick for arms and legs (or lack thereof). Mainly, a character lacks anything visibly connecting their hands or their feet to the rest of their body. Named after Rayman, who was an early case due to his ability being too difficult to animate with arms and legs. Only rarely is this not lampshaded in the actual works, however.

A subtrope of Invisible Anatomy, although the former can be excused due to conservation of detail, while in this trope the seemingly missing pieces are clearly missing.

Advertising

 * Grimace in this Pakistan Happy Meal commercial has no legs, and his feet are not attached to his body. They're just floating in front of him.

Anime and Manga

 * The last and largest transformation stage of the Gurren Lagann in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has body parts like this, as well as the Anti-Spiral's counterpart.

Comic Books

 * The Love Glove from Doom Patrol had invisible arms and the power to use magic gloves. He was part of the second Brotherhood of Dada.

Video Games

 * Rayman is the Trope Namer for this. Word of God is that this was actually a space-saving shortcut; eliminating Rayman's arms freed up precious kilobytes that could be used elsewhere, making this a latter-day throwback to Mario's character design, which was also influenced by the hardware's capabilities. Also, it would be hard to throw his fists around like that if they were attached to his body...
 * Finally given an in-universe explanation in Rayman Origins: When he was created by a bunch of fairies, they happened to lose a few parts in making him. Namely, his limbs.
 * Dynamite Headdy has a detatched head. His Distaff Counterpart, Heather, (Fingy in the Japanese version) has detached fingers/hands/whatever.
 * The Thing Thing series follows this, but it's never pointed out within the story.
 * Norstein Bekkler, the host of the Millennial Fair fun house in Chrono Trigger.
 * All the robots in Joy Mech Fight.
 * The characters of Vectorman.
 * The titular character of Plok.
 * Yoshi in Super Mario World 2: Yoshis Island has Raymanian legs.
 * Also, Bowser in the original Super Mario Bros game for some reason had invisible wrists. They're supposed to be wristbands, but since his sprite, like all other 8-bit era game sprites, can only have up to three colors, what appeared to be Bowser's wristbands is actually empty space.
 * There a quite a few examples in the game Super Paper Mario, many npcs lack legs and arms. Two notable ones are Dimentio and Count Bleck.
 * Pokémon: Haunter. It is a ghost. Also Porygon-Z, who's apparently glitched.
 * The Guard Armor boss from Kingdom Hearts has five separate parts: Two legs, two floating arms, and a floating torso. All five parts are attackable, and in some tournament matches you'll actually fight against its disembodied extremities/torso.
 * The prequel game gives it an Unversed counterpart, the Trinity Armor.
 * The "Miis" on the Nintendo Wii menu have no limbs in Wii Sports, but, oddly, clearly do have arms in other games.
 * The character designer of Um Jammer Lammy gave Cathy Pillar, an anthropomorphic caterpillar, raymanian segments.
 * Psychonauts' Straw Critic, Jasper, seems to have no neck, and his head actually appears to be detached from his body. It's a bit hard to tell, though, considering how his body is so fat and he's usually seen from the front, leaning down.
 * Right when you first meet him, you see him from below and he does indeed lack a neck. In a far more complimentary fashion than real people who lack necks.
 * In Jasper's case it seems to be a utility thing, like Rayman's limbs; since he never actually leaves his seat, (and may indeed be too fat to move -- should we mention that his surname is Rolls?) his hands and head are responsible for all his body language, so for a guy as fat as he is, not having a neck allowed the animators to make him much more expressive.
 * The dancer's in Milla's mindscape have limbs and necks that taper off to a point just short of actually connecting.
 * The titular worms in the Worms series have Raymanian Arms since Worms 2, except in the intros of Worms 2 and World Party.
 * I Wanna Be the Guy: The Kid's feet lack legs or ankles.
 * Bongo Bongo, the boss of the Shadow Temple in The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time.
 * Dizzy has simple circles for hands and hemispheres for legs.
 * Joka (renamed Joker in the Wii remake) in Klonoa: Door to Phantomile had no arms or legs. His appearance was modified in the remake, in which he is given thin arms and legs, but they disappear when he becomes a boss, with no reason given whatsoever.
 * Certain Ys bosses, such as the Shrine boss, Dorman, and Jabir's final form in Ys V, and Galbalan in The Oath in Felghana, have Raymanian Giant Hands of Doom.
 * In Wario Land 3, Rudy the Clown also has Raymanian Giant Hands of Doom, and you hurt him by stunning them and throwing them at his nose.
 * Tonic Trouble, based on the same game engine as Rayman 2, had this.

Web Animation

 * Acroboxle's hands don't have any distinguishing features, fingers thumbs, so they switch places constantly. The creators are fully aware.
 * Floating Hand Studios uses this for all of their X-Men flash cartoons.
 * The characters of Madness Combat.
 * This is true for many Homestar Runner characters. See Invisible Anatomy.
 * Specifically, Homestar Runner's titular character and the slightly more bizarre character, Homsar, for starters.

Webcomics / Web Originals

 * The webcomic Tee Dubbleyu Eff See.
 * Ito of A Moment of Peace is clearly the lovechild of the lizgreaper and Rayman.
 * Male Kayoss in Ls Empire.
 * Brawl in the Family has a strip involving Miis playing Ping Pong, and they don't have arms in this case. Lampshaded when one Mii dismembers his arm with the ping pong ball.
 * Zero Punctuation characters have spherical floating hands, which has caused problems with body language, and disconnected feet. Except for the imps, who have triangular pointy limbs, which don't seem to be very solidly connected themselves. This trope is "harshly" criticized in ZP's Rayman Origins review.
 * The characters in Extra Credits have Raymanian Limbs with developed hands. When the main character talks from his podium though, he has full limbs.
 * The characters in FTL have no visible limbs, but their hand-nubs never leave their bodies.

Western Animation

 * The characters in the animated version of Mr. Bean do not have ankles, their legs and feet being totally separated from each other.
 * GIR's legs are like this.
 * Little Twelvetoes's whole body seems to be put together this way. His hat, arms, and torso are made up of white stripe-looking segments separated by empty space. His legs are connected to his pelvis, but he can move them out of contact with his feet. Also, he can stick his hands, head, and feet on any limb he pleases.
 * The Russian cartoon character Vinni Pukh has feet but no legs.
 * Veggie Tales, on the rare occasions that they're shown with any extremities at all. Justified in that they're produce.
 * Mala Mala Jong from Xiaolin Showdown, who is an evil demon warrior made entirely from Shen Gon Wu, specifically the Helmet of Jong, the Two-Ton Tunic, the Fist of Tebigon, the Third-Arm Sash, the Jetbootsu, and the Heart of Jong.
 * EVE from WALL-E.
 * The baby oysters from Alice in Wonderland.
 * Every character in The Hive.

Other

 * Street signs indicating crosswalks and similar traffic features often show stick figures with no necks, just disembodied heads floating above their shoulders. This is particularly funny when the stick figure is riding a horse with a meticulously rendered mane.
 * Fuzman and Acman Pictograms also have no necks, likely reminiscent of street signs and Olympic pictogram
 * Fella, the mascot of deviantART.
 * The Hungarian Folktales animated series (at least the earlier episodes), had this as a running gag in the depiction of elderly kings as a bell shaped body and two floating hands. The only exception to this was King Mathias, who would make occasional appearances in a few episodes.
 * LEGO microfigures -- the tiny non-articulated game peices used in the Lego Games series -- are depicted as having (featureless ball) hands, but no arms, in comics about them.