http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourFingeredHands

"Five fingers... ooh, freak show!"

Casper, Casper "Yo, I'm Casper! 'Sup? Gimme four!... Oh, God, I'd kill for a pinky."

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Why do so many cartoon characters only have four fingers? Simple: a four-fingered hand is SO much easier to draw than a five-fingered hand. Plus, it simplifies the design of the hand in the same way the rest of the body is simplified.

Although this simplification has been on a recent decline in cartoons starring people, it has never completely gone away. This only appears in more "cartoony" styles; action or dramatic series won't usually use this, and it rarely shows up in Japanese works for several reasons:

Yakuza members traditionally chop off fingers if they are unable to pay back a debt, or as punishment for other offences that don't warrant death.

The four-fingered hand is taken as a derogatory and often offensive reference to the burakumin caste (four fingers = four legs = animals; also, it's easy to lose a finger through the sort of dangerous labour to which burakumin are often relegated).

Advertisement: The number four in Japanese also means death and is seen as highly unlucky.

(This only really applies to human characters: there are still plenty of animal, alien, or monster characters with eight fingers, most likely due to some form of What Measure Is a Non-Human?)

Quite often, Western four-fingered characters have to be edited to have a fifth finger. Interestingly, this does not include Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse, despite Disney's popularity in Japan—see Kingdom Hearts. Not a fan of their works being edited in any way, Disney is said to have paid USD 5 million a year to Japanese pressure groups to avoid being sued for Mickey's "insulting" four-fingered hands.note This was mentioned by the creators of the Oddworld video game franchise in their book , where they also say they had to edit a finger off the player's character to avoid similar extortion.

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This trope is not limited to depiction of humanlike characters: Animal characters (from any point along the Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism) can also be depicted with a reduced number of digits on each paw when compared to its real-life equivalent — typically three visible toes on a given foot rather than four (although some of the earliest cartoons simplified it even further, depicting only two digits on a given foot). Actually, sometimes, the fact that the characters are not humans provides an excuse.

Funny Animals in particular often combine four-fingered hands with three-toed feet. This is excusable when human characters in the same context also exhibit four-fingered hands, but it can be jarring if the humans have five-fingered hands, or if other animals in the same context are depicted with the correct number of digits.

Those with four-fingered hands are often seen wearing White Gloves.

Compare Fingerless Hands, when a character has completely no fingers. Contrast Extra Digits when a character has more than 5 fingers and/or toes.

Examples:

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Advertising

Spoofed in an Oreo commercial which shows the mascot (a giant Oreo cookie) struggling to get through a security system. At one point he comes upon a hand scanner and presses his left hand to it; when nothing happens, he adds one finger from his right hand, which is good enough to open the door.

The Kool Aid Man has four fingers on each hand.

Complementing their White Gloves, all the M&Ms characters have four fingers per hand.

The Disney Channel had a short commercial celebrating their 10 year anniversary which spoofed this. Mickey Mouse's hand would pop up, counting off the fingers, then the second hand would pop up and count off fingers. There was a slight pause for the viewer to realize that's only 8 fingers, then a third hand would pop up and count off two more fingers.

Out of the five Monster Cereals characters, four of them (Frankenberry, Boo Berry, Fruit Brute, and Fruity Yummy Mummy) have four-fingered hands. In contrast, Count Chocula has five-fingered hands, keeping him more detailed, though his fingers are much slimmer than the others in comparison as well. Frankenberry originally had five-fingered hands, primarily thanks to being rotoscoped over for a scene in early commercials to lift up a piece of live action cereal, but swapped to four fingers later.

The Eggo Waffle "Waf-Full" commercials featured a giant cartoon waffle that had four fingers per hand.

Cap'n Crunch: The Captain has these.

Trix Rabbit: The Rabbit has these. In many commercials, the kids also have these.

Snap, Crackle and Pop: All three characters have these.

Anime & Manga

Asian Animation

All of the characters in Happy Heroes have four-fingered hands.

All the Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf characters have four fingers on their hands.

All characters in Simple Samosa have four fingers on their hands.

Card Games

The magi in the Magi-Nation card game have four digits on each hand, though this stems from the original art style. They are also not human, but from a fantastic world. Of course, the animated series uses five-fingered hands.

Comic Books

Comic Strips

In Calvin and Hobbes, most of the characters have four fingers but in one panel of a strip, Calvin is drawn with five fingers on one hand and four fingers on the other by mistake.

The majority of comic strips such as FoxTrot follow this rule.

The Optimist occasionally loses a finger, seen here, here, and here.

here, and here. Everyone in Garfield, including the title character, who shouldn't even have fingers at all, being a cat.

Eastern Animation

The girl and the snowman in Me Cvimad Moval both have four fingers on their hands.

Fan Works

Calvin and Hobbes Get XTREME! lampshades this in a Crossover with Garfield, where Odie and him share a "four-three" instead of a "high-five" (since Garfield has four fingers and Odie has three).

Films — Animation

Films — Live-Action

Literature

Live-Action TV

Music

The members of the animated band Savlonic have four-fingered hands, which is especially noticeable in shots of the keyboardist playing music she couldn't actually do without another finger.

Puppet Shows

Tabletop Games

In the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, Minotaurs and Dragonborn are shown with having three fingers and a thumb on each hand. They're the only non-human races with this array of digits. Minotaurs also have cloven hooves for feet, while Dragonborn have four-toed paws.

The Aslan in Traveller have four digits per hand, and count in base 8. (Their leadership is called the "Tlaukhu", translated as "Twenty-Nine"; it's more literally 3 eights and five.) "Toons" has been mentioned as a derogatory nickname for them, because of the four-fingered hands association.

Warhammer 40,000 The Tau and Kroot only have four digits a hand. The fluff has the Tau logically using a base 8 system. The Orks, on the other hand (or possibly paw), have five fingers but use base six numbering. Which actually makes a certain amount of sense if you use the other hand for the second digit. Of course, this being Warhammer 40000 it all started as a joke on the theme of Orks being too stupid to count higher, to the point where they had specialist mutations (like Mekboyz and Doks) called "sumboyz" who were effectively Orky accountants because they knew the numbers that came after "lotz".



Theme Parks

At the Disney Theme Parks, Meet and Greet versions of any characters with four fingers will have the proper amount of digits by way of four fingered gloves.

Toys

BIONICLE could never make up its mind: The original figures had either no real hands, or only two fingers or three claws. Only much later figures received articulate, fingered hands, usually the larger ones, and these had four. In '09, this phenomenon reached the smaller and medium-sized toys, as they got four-fingered graspers. All of the prominent characters from the first two Direct-to-Video movies had five fingers, save for those that had claws (Nidhiki, Pewku), no hands at all (Vahki robots), or had just plain weird-looking hands (Krekka). Then, by the third movie, all of the new or newly transformed characters were outfitted with only four. In the fourth movie, which wasn't part of the original trilogy, they also had four, but this time it was because the toys also had that many. The video game Bionicle: Heroes also decided to give the Piraka and Toa Inika four fingers, which is an understandable example of Artistic License, since their figures had no fingers at all, save for Toa Nuparu's huge claws.

Minimates generally have formless hands with no fingers, but on occasions when fingers are required, the toys have three fingers and a thumb. In keeping with this reduction, when they made a Minimate of the Fantastic Four's Thing, he was dropped down to two big fingers instead of his usual three.

Disney's Mickey Mitts Plush Mickey Mouse Gloves play with this. They stay true to the original, making them impractical to actually wear.

play with this. They stay true to the original, making them impractical to actually wear. Marvel' Super Hero Squad toyline, as well as the products derived from it.

In The Grossery Gang, any humans in supplemental materials, along with any adaptations where the Grosseries have limbs, give them four fingers. Despite this, Sewer Glove, a Grossery based on a cleaning glove, has five fingers.

Video Games

Visual Novels

The rather simplistic sprites used in the original Higurashi: When They Cry novels all have very large, four-fingered hands. The anime changes to the more typical five.

Web Animation

Lampshaded at the end of the "Metric vs. Imperial" movie in Brain POP. Tim explains that we use the decimal system because we have ten fingers and raises both hands up to show ten... only to realize that he's missing two.

DSBT InsaniT: The cast actually started out with three-fingered hands! They eventually get that fourth digit in the Art Evolution from episode 4 that Dreamscape brought.

Most of the characters in Happy Tree Friends have mittenlike hands (except for Lumpy, who always has fingers, and Handy, who has nubs), but when they need fingers they have four on each hand (including a thumb).

All the characters in Hazbin Hotel have three fingers and a thumb in each hand.

The human cast of Mystery Skulls Animated have only got four fingers on each hand. It's not limited to just humans as the fiery skeleton ghost Lewis and the blue plant person Shiromori also have a total of eight fingers each.

Webcomics

Web Original

In The Cartoon Man, Roy's hands have only four fingers when in he is in his cartoon form.

A majority of characters in Don't Hug Me I'm Scared have only four fingers, likely due to the series being a parody of children's puppet shows. The characters who don't have hands like these, the costume characters, have mitten hands instead.

SuperMarioLogan: A majority of the puppets have only four fingers. Justified because puppets usually have these to prevent an accidental middle finger. This has actually been lampshaded numerous times, mostly by Jeffy. Apparently they are missing the middle finger.

Real Life

Hippopotami have four toes on each foot.

Amphibians have four clawless digits on each hand, but have five digits on their back feet.

Paleontology Tyrannosaurus rex has two fingers on each hand, but four toes on each foot. Yet also inverted with Mononykus, whose name even means "one claw". Hadrosaurs have only four fingers on each hand, with no thumbs. While the "standard" number of digits was really five at the beginning of their evolution, the carnivorous dinosaurs usually only had four (especially the more primitive ones), but three-fingered hands were the most prominent by far. However the tyrannosaurids and alvarezsaurids (to whom Mononykus belongs) weren't the only groups to have reduced their finger numbers: abelisaurids had virtually no fingers, just stubs, and, of course, there are the birds, the most obvious examples. Pterosaurs had four digits on their forelimbs, one of which was modified to support their wings. Inverted by some of the earliest basal tetrapods, which had seven toes on each proto-foot.

In dreams if you look at your hands they will often have the wrong number of fingers (whether too few or too many) or have something else wrong with them, which can clue you in that you're dreaming.

Reduced Number of Toes Variant:

Anime And Manga

Many Pokémon with feet will usually have less digits than their upper limbs (barring wings, fins, claws, scythes and tentacles). The best example is Pikachu, who has five tiny digits on each "hand" and three digits on each foot. Other examples include Clefairy, Cubone and Marowak, Rhyperior and Hitmonlee and Conkeldurr. Although, the reverse is also true, especially for Kyurem (in normal form), Bagon, Raichu, Anpharos, Growlithe and Chansey. Averted with Infernape, who actually have 5 toes on each foot.

Ditto with Digimon. Some digimon, including more animalistic types, have three-toed feet with four or five fingered hands such as Veemon. However, others may have the same exact number of toes and fingers such as Agumon (who has three digits) and Leomon (who has five digits). And then there are the digimon who have their feet covered, such as Beelzemon or Knightmon....

Kaiju Girl Caramelise: Whenever Kuroe Akaishi transforms into Harugon, her Notzilla form, she is shown to have just four clawed toes. Unlike its inspiration Godzilla, however, the Harugon form still has five fingers.

Comic Books

Ben Grimm has three toes per foot. Incredible Hulk did too in some very early apparances.

In Cerebus the Aardvark, Cerebus' otherwise human son had three toes per foot, just like his father.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles take this a step further — each of the turtles has only three fingers on each hand, and only TWO toes on each foot. Lampshaded in the 2003 series when Raph rates Leo's performance of a kick. Leonardo: Hey, Raph, only a six?

Raphael: Bro, it's all I got!

The Savage Dragon has two toes on each foot.

Comic Strips

Odie from Garfield has two-toed feet, while the titular character has three-toed feet.

Films — Animation

Mittens from Bolt plays this trope straight by having three-toed paws, but Bolt averts this trope by having the proper four-toed paws.

Scratette from Ice Age: Dawn of The Dinosaurs has three-fingered hands and two-toed feet, while Scrat from all four Ice Age movies has the standard four-fingered hands and three-toed feet.

Ducky, the animated hadrosaur from The Land Before Time, has the correct number of digits on all four limbs (four-toed front feet and three-toed hind feet), although her opposable thumbs are out of place.

The lions in The Lion King avert this trope by having the proper four-toed paws, but the hyenas and meerkats play this trope straight by having three-toed paws. The lions also show dew-claw-lumps (thumbs) on their front paws.

The humans in Ratatouille were animated without toes according to Word of God.

Most Kung Fu Panda characters have four fingers and four toes, but a few particular species have three toes instead.

Joy from Inside Out doesn't have any toes.

In Zootopia it's played straight with all mammal species that have claws or paws, like foxes, rabbits, mice, etc. But addition, all cloven-hoofed species, like buffalo, sheep, and gazelles, are consistently shown with three  two "fingers" and a "thumb". And bizarrely enough, odd-toed ungulates (horses and zebras) don't have any fingers at all! ◊ This makes for an amusing sight when, as Bogo is about to kick Judy off of her case, Nick proclaims that she still has ten hours to solve it — while holding up all eight fingers.



Literature

Happens even in literature! In Animorphs, when Rachel morphed into a cat and scratches someone, she notes that it left "three red lines" on the back of his hand. Also, ankles "reversed" when morphing anything four-footed. Applegate, a grown sci-fi author, apparently don't know about digitigrade and plantigrade feet, although the morphing process is stated to change the body at random.

and plantigrade feet, although the morphing process is stated to change the body at random. An inversion in Eragon. Dwarves and Urgals have seven toes on each foot.

Tolkien did that inversion first in The Lord of the Rings, with the seven-toed Treebeard.

Live-Action TV

The Diffys on Phil of the Future have five-fingered hands... but they have four-toed feet, which is a plot point when Phil has to go barefoot on a field trip.

Video Games

Web Animation

Happy Tree Friends usually gives characters boot-shaped feet, though they actually have three toes on each foot otherwise.

Webcomics

Western Animation

Real Life