Zipperiffic



"Jon: Garfield, the more zippers a man has, the more macho he is. Take a gander at this outfit. It has six gajillion zippers! ...Now where did I put my keys?

Garfield: This could take months!"

- Garfield

""I wish I had more zippers... so I could tell you to ZIP IT.""

- Neku, The World Ends With You

Some costume designers are of the belief that Everything's Better With Zippers; if you add zippers to a character's outfit, then it makes them somehow intrinsically cooler. Even if the placement of said zippers makes no practical sense whatsoever.

This has become rather prevalent in Japanese popular media especially in the past decade or so, and may or may not have taken cues from the Goth fashion subculture. Certain other Western subcultures have crossover into this as well (e.g. bondage pants).

The cousin trope to this is Too Many Belts. Not to be confused with Zip Me Up which, while involving zippers, is about something else entirely. See also Chained by Fashion. A subtrope of Useless Accessory.

Anime & Manga

 * Bruno Bucciarati from Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind not only has zippers on his outfit, but his Stand allows him to attach zippers anywhere.
 * Franken Fran takes this to a horrifying extreme -- Adorea has zippers all over her SKIN.
 * Chuck from Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt is basically GIR with Zippers for ears and his tail.
 * While most of the exorcist uniforms in D.Gray-man have zippers (and relatively large ones at that) Allen's second uniform probably takes the cake. The longest zipper winds around his whole left arm right down to the back of his hand.

Comic Books

 * The character Drywall in Scud the Disposable Assassin is a blue plush being who is covered with yellow zippers. They do have a function - he contains an infinite space full of junk that is neatly sorted into labeled cubicles made of drywall (hence his name), and he can pull objects into or out of himself with gloves on cords that come out of his zippers.

Literature

 * In Alan Dean Fosters Glory Lane the character Seeth is described as wearing a jacket 'dripping with zippers'.

Live Action TV
"So that's the way it is, is it? Let's just put a zip here, a swastika there. Who knows what these things once stood for? Who even cares?"
 * In Project Runway Season 3's finale, Jeffrey's best outfit - a green and white dress - had a lot of decorative zippers..
 * Cameron likes her zippers and her belts - not to mention leather.
 * Lampshaded on Peep Show when Mark goes clothes shopping and starts ranting about pocketless zips and gratuitous symbolism.


 * Also poked fun of much earlier in a Not the Nine O'Clock News sketch set in a gents' lavatory with a punk desperately zipping and unzipping his many zips, frantically trying to gain access to relieve himself.

Music

 * Michael Jackson in the "Bad" music video, also combined with Too Many Belts, proving the trend is Older Than They Think. And considering the popularity of Jackson's work in Japan, possibly one of the main influences on it.
 * The red jacket he wears in the "Beat It" video also counts.
 * The current look of Daft Punk has the classic robot helmets lose their LED light and gain formulaic jumpsuits of sorts, covered with zippers and patches.

Newspaper Comics
"This could take months!"
 * Deconstructed in Garfield, of all places. Jon, in an attempt to be "cool", wears a jumpsuit with dozens of zippers on it. Upon the realization that he doesn't remember which pocket contains his keys, the eponymous feline exclaims:

Video Games

 * Square Enix in general, and Tetsuya Nomura in particular, are overly fond of this trope to levels that would have made Freud proud.
 * Kingdom Hearts' Sora is the reigning king of this trope and probably the first person to come to most people's minds when this trope is mentioned. Even though his KH2 and KH3D outfits only features zippers on his jacket and zippers on his shoes, which really isn't all that weird when it comes to placement of zippers. Kairi features a pretty zipperific dress as well. In the same game, Donald Duck has a zipper on his hat.
 * Hell, EVERYTHING Nobody-related has a zipper. Zipper mouths, anyone?
 * It might even be said that the dynamic between the Nobodies and Heartless could parallel Nomura's use of zippers and belts.
 * A fan nickname for Pete in Kingdom Hearts 2 is Captain Ass Zipper. Guess why.
 * The World Ends With You features characters with highly gratuitous zippers as well and then hangs a gigantic lampshade on it when the main character grumbles the quote at the top of this page. The game itself ripped on Japanese fashion trends that love to revel in belts and zippers, trends that inspired Nomura's infamous art style.
 * It's a little known fact that Sora is almost identical to Sion from The Bouncer, from whence the zippers came.
 * It's almost a self-parody, as at the beginning of the first Kingdom Hearts, they said they got their belts-and-zippers outfits in order to blend in to the world full of KH original characters.
 * Kyle of Atelier Annie wears a Badass Longcoat with a truly righteous zipper in front.
 * Harvest Moon side-series Rune Factory Frontier has Candy and Cinnamon, both with zippers on the sides of their hats.
 * Ah, Blaz Blue:
 * The most prominent feature of Tager's outfit is his two Gigantic Zippers!
 * Carl wears a giant zipper-pull as a bow tie.
 * Taokaka's outfit has a large and visible zipper running down the front.
 * Noel has a pair of them running down the front of her shirt/skirt. They are oddly hypnotic...

Web Animation
"Dad: What's with all these zippers? No person should have this many zippers. I don't care what fantasy it is."
 * Referenced in this Ronin Dojo Community College DX short, when Barry's dad sees a picture of an unspecified Final Fantasy character.


 * Parodied in Boy and Robot's Epic jRPG Quest.

Real Life

 * Truth in Television; just walk into your local Hot Topic store (or similar "Goth" clothing shop), and behold.
 * Though not clothes, there are pencil cases and bags made entirely out of zippers.
 * There are clothes too
 * Not only goth stores anymore as of 2009 or so, it seems to be a fad that's catching on even in higher-end, more fashion-forward stores as well as places like Forever 21.
 * In a more universal way, zippers were originally invented as a shoe fastener, to replace 20+ tiny buttons as fasteners for non casual shoes (and thus ineligible by current fashion for laces). You'd better believe that zippers are better than tens of buttons when you need to get dressed in a hurry.
 * Then there are shoes like this.
 * These purses, which are basically each just one long zipper.
 * Many motorbike jackets and pants have a lot of zippers that, when open, provide ventilation. It's very useful on a hot day, but can look ridiculous.

"Waldorf: That Nomura guy puts way too many zippers on his characters.

Statler: I don't know, I think they could still use a few more.

Waldorf: You do?

Statler: Yeah. Over their mouths!

Both: Do-ho-ho-ho-hoh!"