Dennis: [dressed as Luigi] Dude, what are you doing? Where's your Mario costume?!
Mac: [dressed as Aragorn] I went with a sexier look.
Dennis: Without my Mario, what am I? I'm just like some weird Italian plumber, I look like an asshole!
Mac: [dressed as Aragorn] I went with a sexier look.
Dennis: Without my Mario, what am I? I'm just like some weird Italian plumber, I look like an asshole!
Halloween (or any other type of themed party or event) is coming up and two or more characters decide to coordinate their costumes and go as a group costume. Unfortunately, the big event arrives and their attempt fails because one of the group members either dressed inappropriately, failed to dress at all, or couldn't show up.
The result is this trope and often leads to embarrassment and frustration for the focus characters.
This is often related to Themed Party, where the failure sticks out amongst all the other partygoers wearing appropriate costumes. It also overlaps with Coordinated Clothes, as the characters attempt to invoke this trope with their costume set.
This often occurs in a show's Halloween Episode.
Examples:
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Advertising
- In one Allstate Insurance commercial, a group of male college football fans paint letters on their chests but don't keep track of who has which letter as they enter the stadium with their shirts on. A nearby female fan points out that the fans have accidentally spelled "Stew Virginia," and the embarrassed fans change seats.
Comic Books
- Amelia Rules!: In the Halloween chapter of The Whole World's Crazy, Rhonda dresses up as a bride in hopes that Reggie would dress as a groom to match. However, Reggie dresses up as Frankenstein's monster instead while Amelia jokes that Rhonda's costume could still work as "The Bride of Frankenstein". Rhonda is not amused.
- Birds of Prey: Played for laughs in Birds of Prey (2023), where everyone on the team shows up for their stealth mission in diving-suit versions of their regular costume, except for Big Barda, who shows up in the swimsuit-like costume that she occasionally wears.
- El Deafo: When Laura asks Cece to dress like twins for a week, she gets mad at Cece when, a few days in, Cece wears a pale blue shirt that doesn't match the dark blue shirt Laura is wearing, even though Laura never specified the shade of blue. Also discussed since Cece points out in her narration that, due to her Phonic Ear setting her apart from everyone else, she and Laura can never really look alike.
Comic Strips
- Pearls Before Swine: An early strip has Pig and five of his friends attend a sports game, all wearing shirts that, together, spell out "GO TEAM". Unfortunately, they end up getting the order they're supposed to stand in mixed up, and so end up displaying "GO MATE" all together instead.
Films — Live-Action
- Angus Thongs And Perfect Snogging: Georgia goes to a costume party dressed as a giant papier-mâché olive, under the impression that all her friends will dress similarly in funny food costumes. When she arrives, she finds that they're wearing "sexy" costumes more appealing to teenage girls, and runs home embarrassed.
- Subverted in A Cinderella Story. Austin was originally supposed to be part of a Three Musketeers group with two of his friends, but he couldn't get his Musketeer costume and instead dresses up as Prince Charming. And then Sam shows up a Cinderella, though she wears a mask and Austin doesn't know it's her, and the two share a dance in matching couples costumes.
- Dora and the Lost City of Gold: When Dora's high school holds a costume party, the students are told to dress as a "star", i.e. a celebrity. Both Dora and Randy pun on this by wearing clothes that allude to real stars — Dora dresses as the sun, while Randy wears a shirt with the chemical symbol of hydrogen on it.
Literature
- INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!?: Kotarou is not at all impressed that the Sun Rangers, whom he mistakes as part of a Hero Stage Show, are all in red uniforms, and yells them off the stage in indignation at their laziness in wardrobe.
- Roys Bedoys: Played for drama in "It's Spirit Week, Roys Bedoys!", when Wen doesn't dress up for the eponymous celebration alongside her classmates, because she can't afford costumes.
Live-Action TV
- Inverted in the costume party episode "Unleash the Kraken" of The Almighty Johnsons. The Johnson brothers intend to have independent costumes and choose to dress as a cop, an Indian chief, and a cowboy, which combine with their oldest brother's work clothes as a real construction worker to make them The Village People.
- Austin & Ally: During one of Disney Channel's Halloween Crossover events, the sitcom's main cast tried to do a group costume as a BLT sandwich, with Austin as bacon, Ally as a tomato, Trish as the bread, and Dez was supposed to be the lettuce... but for some reason he thought the "L" in BLT was for lemon. In a later Halloween Episode, they subvert this trope by doing a successful group costume as an Expy of the Scooby-Doo gang.
- The Big Bang Theory:
- Inverted in "The Middle Earth Paradigm" — the guys accidentally all dress as The Flash for Halloween, but since they don't want to all wear the same costume, they decide to pick new, unrelated costumes.
- In "The Justice League Recombination", the gang recruit Penny and her ex-boyfriend Zack to compete in the comic book store's New Year's Eve group costume contest with them so they can go as the Justice League of America. Penny rebels first because she doesn't want to wear the brunette wig for Wonder Woman and later because of feeling awkward around Zack and Leonard, but eventually does join, in the wig, helping them clinch victory (especially because the other groups dressed as the Justice League looked terrible in comparison).
- In "The Holographic Excitation", Sheldon and Amy struggle to agree on a couples costume. They end up compromising as Raggedy Ann and... Raggedy C-3PO. Downplayed, since Amy is just glad the costumes are somewhat related so she can say she's officially in a couple.
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine: In "Halloween Part III", Scully and Hitchcock both dress up as bottles of mustard rather than the traditional ketchup and mustard costume pair.
- Community:
- In the episode "Epidemiology", Troy and Abed go as Ripley in the power loader and the alien queen from Aliens, respectively, after spending days creating their costumes. When Troy realizes that girls are turned off by the "nerdy" costume, he switches to a shirtless "sexy Dracula" instead, upsetting Abed.
- In the episode "Paranormal Parentage", Jeff and Annie dress up as a boxer and Ring Girl, which Annie misinterprets as being Samara from The Ring (2002) as opposed to a boxing ring girl like Jeff intended. Unfortunately for Jeff (and the rest of us), Dean Pelton knew exactly what Jeff meant...
- The Goldbergs: In "Oates and Oates", Adam and Barry are supposed to be disguised as Daryl Hall & John Oates, but because Barry couldn't tell which was which, they both end up dressed as Oates.
- Home Improvement:
- In "The Haunting of Taylor House", Brad and his girlfriend Jennifer plan to dress up as Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy for his Halloween party. But after he unknowingly hurts her feelings, she shows up dressed as a biker girl with another guy in his class, leaving him in the lurch.
- In "Crazy for You", the Taylor boys decide to dress up as The Three Stooges. However, all three of them want to be Moe Howard and won't back down, so their group costume winds up being three Moes.
- How I Met Your Mother:
- "The Slutty Pumpkin" has Robin joke with her new boyfriend over email that they should dress up as Hansel and Gretel for Halloween. He thought she was serious, resulting in him being embarrassed when he shows up at the bar in costume and sees Robin wearing regular clothes.
- A flashback in "The Magician’s Code Part 1" reveals that one Halloween the Gang tried to dress up as The Breakfast Club. However, they failed to specify which characters they should dress as and all of them ended up dressing as John Bender.
- "The Slutty Pumpkin Returns" has Robin force Barney to dress as a Canadian couple after the latter finds out he's one quarter Canadian. They were supposed to be a Vancouver Canucks player and a Mountie, only for Barney to show up as Apollo Creed, complete with "Living in America" playing when he arrives.
- How to Rock: In "How to Rock Halloween", Gravity 5 planned to go trick-or-treating as a complete hand, each being a separate finger. However, Kacey chose to dress up as an old-fashioned queen with the intention of going to a party. This not only led to the band being disappointed in her breaking theme; they also questioned her loyalty to the group, and whether or not she was trying to get back with the popular crowd.
- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia provides the page quote. During the Gang's Halloween party, Mac ruined his and Dennis' plan to attend as Mario and Luigi by changing his costume at the last minute to "that character from Lord of the Rings, Viggio Morgenstein" without telling Dennis.
- Modern Family: Happens in some of the Halloween Episodes:
- In "Halloween", Claire keeps making Haley change costumes because she keeps wearing Sexy Whatever Outfits for their family's haunted house display, including a Sexy Black Cat, a Sexy Nurse, and even a Sexy Mother Theresa. Claire ultimately just wraps a cloth around Haley to cover her up.
- "Halloween 3: Awesomeland" features Phil and Claire debating on what to decorate the house for Halloween. Claire wants to have a scary house to one-up their neighbors, while Phil wants the more whimsical "Awesomeland" theming. This leads to a mismatch of decorations and different costumes from each of them.
- From the same episode, Jay invokes this after having grown tired of being the Beast to Gloria's Beauty every year. Instead of dressing up as Shrek to match Gloria's Princess Fiona costume, he dresses as a generic Prince Charming, rather than the one from the movies.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000: Pearl Forrester by attempts to invoke this trope in the episode "The Screaming Skull". She, along with Observer and Bobo, dress up in penguin costumes, then call Mike and the 'bots to desperately ask why they don't also have penguin costumes on—gaslighting them into thinking they'd forgotten a prior agreement to dress up as penguins together for some reason. Mike and the 'bots fall for it and scramble to put on the only animal costumes they have on hand (a dog, a sheep, and a deer). Pearl laughs at them all for being so gullible, then makes herself look even lamer than them when she boasts about how "easy" it was to set up this prank.
- Scrubs: A flashback to JD and Turk's college years has Turk introducing JD to his all-black fraternity, with JD in blackface and himself in whiteface. JD is worried about offending them, but Turk insists that as long as the two of them are together, his frat brothers will find it funny. The fail comes after they knock on the frat house door, when Turk suddenly spots a female classmate he has a thing for and leaves JD in the lurch to go flirt with her. What's worse is that he was mistaken, the girl was someone else entirely.
- Saturday Night Live:
- One Goth Talk sketch features Azrael's brother Glen and a friend (host Chris Farley) crashing the show's Halloween special dressed as the Budweiser Frogs. However, a third friend who was supposed to complete the trio got sick, so the two of them force Azrael to help them complete the "Bud", "Weis", "Er" croaking.
- In "Jingleheimer Junction"
, kids' show host Jingleheimer Joe introduces the "Junction Gang," made up of Katie Kindness, Carla Caring, and Umberto Unity, each of whom wears a sweatshirt decorated with a giant version of the first letter of their names. Unfortunately, Katie, Carla, and Umberto announce that they've made a new friend today—Fred Friendship. Jingleheimer Joe then spends the rest of the sketch desperately trying to prevent Fred from getting to the front of the group and spelling out a certain word.
- Stranger Things: Downplayed. The Party decides to dress up as the Ghostbusters for Halloween and all of them do get the costumes. The problem arises when it turns out both Mike and Lucas decided to put Peter Venkman's name tag on their jumpsuits when it was assumed Lucas would use Winston Zeddmore's.
Professional Wrestling
- WWE Payback: For a 2014 match between The Shield and Evolution, Triple H and Randy Orton wore black, but Batista unexpectedly wore blue. Fans found this so jarring, that they rechristened him, "Bluetista".
Video Games
- Being a ΔΙΚ: Leon and Jamie initially planned to dress up as Lily and Envy, respectively, for the Halloween party in Episode 9 (alcohol was involved), but Jamie switches his costume at the last minute to a magician instead so that he can visit the party with his girlfriend Dany and her pet rabbit Franz. Not only does this cause Leon to be made fun of throughout the party, but Jamie going back on his word because of Dany hurts him quite a bit. If the MC sides with both Leon and Jamie in their two arguments (one during the dorm party in Episode 8 and one here), Jamie dresses up in the Envy costume after Dany leaves and apologizes to and hangs out with him.
- Donkey Kong 64: At the start of the DK Rap, Chunky Kong is dressed in a disco leisure suit with a Funny Afro. When he notices the other Kongs aren't dressed up, he runs off-screen and returns in his usual attire.
Web Animation
- Minilife TV: In "A Dark Night", Chris and Ian prepare for the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises by dressing as Batman and Robin. Snowball comes also dressed as Batman when he was supposed to be dressed as the Joker since he already has white skin, and Archie comes also dressed as Robin, though Chris gives him a pass because he thinks it's cute. Michael, however, comes dressed as Waldo (minus the glasses) because he couldn't find any Batman costumes.
- RWBY Chibi: In "Boy Band", Jaune, Ren, Sun, and Neptune form a boy band to compete in Beacon's Battle of the Bands. But while three of the boys are wearing sparkly versions of their battle outfits, Jaune shows up in mime face paint.
Jaune: This is totally cool! Like that classic rock band, Smooch! Or, for the younger generation, the Lunatic Jester Brigade…if you like terrible music.
Webcomics
- One El Goonish Shive sketchbook image shows three unnamed women who were apparently trying to dress in identical nurse costumes. Unfortunately, due to a failure to communicate, they instead show up dressed up in completely different nurse costumes, with one as a classic "candy striper," one in an exaggerated Naughty Nurse Outfit, and one in scrubs like a modern nurse.
- Unwinder's Tall Comics: Invoked and subverted in the backstory for one Halloween comic. Unwinder and Mildred initially agreed to do a couples costume by dressing up as Jon and Kate Gosselin (with dolls to represent their eight children). But at the last minute, Undwinder dressed up as Charles Darwin instead—partly to set up Mildred to go as "Kate Plus Eight" by herself, and partly to troll the church that's hosting the Halloween party. But Mildred managed to change her costume to Emma Darwin (Charles' wife) in time for the party, making their costumes match after all, much to Unwinder's annoyance.
Unwinder: I was setting her up for a just-Kate costume, but apparently having a couples costume is more important than being on top of pop culture.
Web Videos
- In the Minecraft Championship, teams will often wear themed group skins for festive events. Wilbur Soot has shown up to two of these events in a row without changing his skin, causing Noxcrew admins to forcibly put a "Sweater of Shame" on him.
Western Animation
- The second opening of Alvin and the Chipmunks had the trio going in and out of their dressing rooms when their costumes didn't match (switching between rocker clothes and white suits with matching top hats) with Alvin being the odd one out each time.
- BoJack Horseman: A flashback to Halloween 2004 in "Mr. Peanutbutter's Boos" shows Mr. Peanutbutter failing to coordinate costumes with his then-girlfriend Jessica Biel. She wanted to go as characters from The Notebook, but Mr. Peanutbutter dressed as an actual notebook.
- Garfield and Friends: Played for laughs in "Origin of Power Pig", where Orson's brothers get the idea to disguise themselves as giant knockwurst in yet another attempt to steal the harvest. Mort, however shows up in a different outfit and, when one of the others says "Hey, that don't look like a giant knockwurst", Mort replies "I couldn't find a giant knockwurst costume. I'm a Vienna sausage."
- Gravity Falls: In "Summerween", Dipper and Mabel planned to do a twin costume theme of Peanut Butter and Jelly, but Dipper tries to back out because a comment from Robbie and Wendy makes him think he's too old for trick-or-treating, pretending he's sick so he can go to a teen party. He's forced into wearing the costume when the Summerween Trickster gives them an ultimatum to collect 500 pieces of candy by the end of the night.
- Hey Arnold!: In "The Pig War", Arnold, his friends, and Grandpa Phil are all participating in a war reenactment as the American side. However, while the British team members are all wearing period-appropriate attire, their side is sporting a wide assortment of inappropriate costumes (ex. Stinky wears a Confederate soldier's uniform, Sid is dressed like Davy Crockett, and Harold looks like Rambo).
- Martha Speaks: In "Alice Covers Up", Alice accidentally dyes her skin with orange sunscreen, so her friends dye themselves orange at the pool party to keep her from being embarrassed. Ronald, Alice's brother, is embarrassed since he's the only one not dyed.
- Peppa Pig: In one episode, Peppa's preschool has a fancy dress day, where the students dress as pirates. Pedro comes to school dressed as a cowboy instead.
- Phineas and Ferb: When several kids are trying to scare Isabella so she'll stop hiccupping, Phineas tells them to dress as "something scary". However, Baljeet and Buford ruin the theming, with the former dressing as a failed Math test and the latter dressing as Suzy Johnson, whom Phineas and Isabella don't know is actually an Enfant Terrible while Buford does.
- Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja: In the first Halloween Episode, Randy and Howard were going to wear a two-person cow costume, but Howard chose to dress as Viceroy (one of Randy's enemies) instead, because he has "style", leaving Randy just wearing cow udders.
- The Simpsons: In "Pygmoelian", Homer, Lenny, and Carl show up to support Moe at a bartending contest, with the plan for each of them to have a letter painted on their chest to spell out "MOE." However, Lenny got confused and thought he was O instead of E, leading them to spell out "MOO" when they remove their shirts.
Homer: Moo? Lenny, you were supposed to "E"!
Carl: See what happens when you skip rehearsal? - Downplayed in Sofia the First. Royal Prep is having a costume contest, and James and his best friend Zandar decide to go as a two-person dragon so that they each only have to make half a costume. They don't wind up finding each other until after the judging has completed, but neither is too bothered by it and concede that they wouldn't have won anyway.
- South Park:
- "Pinkeye" has Stan dress up as Raggedy Andy for Halloween as part of a couple's costume with Wendy as Raggedy Ann. However, Wendy shows up at school dressed as Chewbacca instead because she decided their initial idea was stupid. She didn't tell Stan because she assumed he'd come to the same conclusion himself. The result is Stan becoming a laughingstock.
- Kevin Stoley, the school's resident sci-fi nerd, will always turn up to the cast's big LARPs as a sci-fi character regardless of the actual theme chosen (fantasy, pirates, etc).
- The Venture Bros.: In the episode "Love Bheits", the Venture family is returning from a Halloween party where three of them went as characters from Star Wars, while Hank ruined it by going as Batman. Dr. Venture mentions two previous instances as well, where the family tried to go as characters from The Wizard of Oz and the members of KISS, but Hank ruined them both by going as Batman.
