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All Bikers Are Hells Angels
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"Adult delinquents. They steal things, they smell, they use foul language!"
— Devil's Angels
Whenever motorcyclists are depicted in movies or on TV, with few exceptions they are portrayed as brutish thugs and criminals, essentially Mongols on hogs. This stems from the mystique of the classic "outlaw biker" of American culture. After World War II, motorcycle clubs became increasingly popular, especially with returning soldiers. In 1947, unruly bikers attending a rally in Hollister, CA caused the so-called Hollister riot . Sensationalized stories of the event resulted in the public perception that packs of bikers were looting and pillaging small towns across the country. The stories inspired the classic 1953 film The Wild One, which launched Marlon Brando's career and permanently ingrained the outlaw biker into pop culture.
The classic outlaw biker is a big, burly, grizzled man wearing a leather jacket and riding a Harley. Outlaw bikers almost always belong to a biker gang. Members of biker gangs wear the colors of their gang: a vest over their jacket that displays their gang name, insignia, and area of operation. Most gangs also have a system of patches that indicate members' various accomplishments and duties. White supremacist beliefs and symbols are not uncommon. Female outlaw bikers are called "mamas" and tend to occupy a second class position. Bikers live for wild parties and extremely hard drinking. They support their nomadic lifestyle with the drug trade. Classic weapons of an outlaw biker include clubs, chains, and knives. Many real-world bikers carry large maglights because legally they are not considered weapons. The best way to piss off a biker is to wear your own "colors" displaying another gang's turf as your home city. The ultimate crime, however, is knocking over their motorcycles.
Contrary to public perception, most bikers are normal, law-abiding citizens. The American Motorcycle Association famously insisted that only one percent of motorcycle riders are troublemakers. Outlaw bikers quickly adopted the phrase "one percenter" as a badge of honor, choosing to see themselves as members of an exclusive elite.
Many people who ride traditional "cruiser" motorcycles are actually older professionals with a fair amount of money. Younger riders usually stick to cheaper basic models or sport bike "crotch rockets." Buying and upkeeping a quality motorcycle is beyond the price range of most true outlaw bikers, who generally lack a steady income. Most European bikers tend to fit closer to the "sportbike punks" style and are usually dangerous only to themselves. Japanese "Bosozoku" gangs are even more harmless, but much louder. Their stock in trade is driving slowly up the main street in packs with their mufflers removed: extremely obnoxious, but not dangerous.
One staple subversion is the grizzled old biker who’s really a softy. This is really closer to Truth In Television than any sort of subversion.
Note: The name of the Hells Angels gang has no apostrophe. Also, the real Hells Angels clubs exclusively ride Harley Davidson motorcycles. If you see them in media and they're not, someone Did Not Do The Research.
See also Badass Biker.
Examples
Anime
- Even in Anime, bikers are often seen as much more bark than bite. Eguchi Yousuke, hero of the old-school anime Shonan Bakusozoku has two loves, bikes and knitting.
- Ken Nakajima’s dad from Youre Under Arrest is a biker to the bone and tends to hang out with large groups of other bikers (much closer to the American version than the Japanese one). But he rides a Ducati.
- 80% of the enemies Kenshiro faces fall into this trope. With the added bonus of being, on average, at least ten feet tall.
- Akira features two violent outlaw biker gangs: Kaneda's gang of delinquints and the Clowns. The general suckiness of the world justifies the trope somewhat.
- Encountered in Cromartie High School on several occasions: Masked Takenouchi defeats a whole bike gang at Cromartie using the art of pillow-jutsu, and the real Takenouchi, on overcoming his own motion sickness, manages to devastate one of them, to the point where its leader quits and tries to get revenge on Takenouchi on his own.
- While Morisato Keiichi is a motorcycle enthusiast, this is Morisato Keiichi we're talking about. Of course, some argue he's a scary character for other reasons.
- Beelzebumon from Digimon Tamers (irony included in his name). Leather jacket? Check. Monster motorcycle? Check. Badass? Check.
- No biker gang, though, since part of his character is being a lone wolf.
- Topping it off, he's got a pair of shotguns.
Comic Books
- In Me and Joe Priest, the bikers roving around infertile and slowly dying America are mostly former U.S. soldiers looking for "experiences". One of them is the narrator and co-protagonist (i.e., "Me").
- Lobo embraces this trope wholeheartedly.
- Wolverine of X-men rides a couple. In X-men Evolution he has two that change with his costume.
Film
- The 1953 film The Wild One, based on the events of the 1947 Hollister riot, is the movie credited with shaping the image of biker gangs for decades. Ironically, Marlon Brando’s character rode a Triumph, not a Harley.
- Subverted and played straight in the movie Wild Hogs, where the titular group are all middle-aged urbanites who're riding to get away from their boring lives. They get into trouble with the Del Fuegos, who consider themselves "actual bikers" and are a stand-in for the Hells Angels. The makers of the movie originally planned to use the actual Hells Angels as the bad guys, but decided not to after the club protested.
- In the original Mad Max, the villains were a gang of outlaw bikers. In The Road Warrior, anyone who is tough enough to maintain a vehicle is a Bad Ass by default, as there are no laws.
- In Muppet Wizard of Oz the Flying Monkeys are a biker gang. Subverted because, as in the book, they are working for the Wicked Witch against their will, and were previously a peaceful group of motorcycle enthusiasts.
- Note that the movie version of The Wiz (1978) predated this film and also used the monkeys-as-bikers idea and subversion.
- In Back To The Future Part II, Hill Valley's alternate timeline of "Hell Valley" is partly characterized as a Crapsack World by its infestation with outlaw bikers.
- In Dawn Of The Dead it is not the zombies who eventually dislodge the ragtag band of survivors from the shopping mall in which they are holed up, but a marauding biker gang (implied to be one of several roving the countryside), that breaks down the doors, raids the supplies and let the zombies in. Justified in that any group roaming around after the zombie apocalypse would have to be a band of hardened badasses (though not necessarily jackasses).
- There's not a Harley in sight, but otherwise the Australian cult classic Stone totally embodies the trope. A fair amount of the extras were genuine Hells Angels and one of the films brawls was very, very real.
- The Black Widows biker gang in Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can.
- In Blazing Saddles, outlaw bikers are seen in the line signing up to be Hedley Lamarr's Mooks.
- In Made, Puffy Daddy's character is a drug kingpin in New York who has a gang of black bikers under his command.
- The 1976 Japanese documentary Godspeed You Black Emperor follows a young member of the Black Emperors Bōsōzoku gang after he gets in trouble with the police. The film provided the name of the Canadian post-rock band.
- The Satan's Helpers in Peewees Big Adventure. Pee-wee accidentally knocks over the entire gang's motorcycles like dominoes. They plan to "stomp him, tattoo him, hang him, and then kill him," until he wins them over with his Big Shoe Dance and makes friends.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000 featured several movies exploiting this trope: Hellcats, The Sidehackers, and Wild Rebels (featuring the "Satan's Angels").
- Subverted with the boyfriend in Erin Brokovich, who looks like a Hells Angel but is a nice guy with a steady, middle-class income.
- In the Oscar-winning short film "My Mother Dreams the Satan's Disciples in New York", a woman from the midwestern U.S. visits her college-age daughter in New York's Lower East Side (where the real Hells Angels have their NY chapter).
- Kinda subverted in the 1968 cult film "Hells Angels on Wheels" as it provides a pretty realistic portrayal of the Hells Angels: hard-partying, nihilistic and provocative outcasts who mean no harm but whose provocative behavior leads them into trouble, to which they immediately retaliate with fists and chains. Hells Angels president Sonny Barger even worked on the filming as an advisor.
- The Satan's Messangers gang from A Bronx Tale is obviously based on this image and have a reputation for hellraising and breaking up bars. Unfortunately for them, they only appear in the movie long enough to try to wreck a Mafia bar. It doesn't go well for them.
- Averted in one of the most famous motorcycle films, Easy Rider. The two main characters are chopper-riding hippies who travel into the Deep South and run tragically afoul of violent Good Ol Boys.
Literature
- Subverted in one of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels (I don't remember which one, they all run together), in which Dirk and Loren run into a biker gang in Mexico, who turn out to be members of an American law firm who are on retreat.
- As This Troper recalls, the only Pitt novel ever to feature both Dirk and Loren in Mexico was Inca Gold. However, This Troper has the edited-for-kids version of that novel, so he can't confirm such a thing.
- This Troper would like to derail the conversation by pointing out that out of any book, a Clive Cussler one seems to be the worst to edit for kids. Kind of takes out a LOT, doesn't it?
- In Coyote Blue, Calliope's ex-boyfriend is a member of a Hells Angel's-type biker group.
- In Charles de Lint's Jack of Kinrowan, the Wild Hunt incarnate in modern-day Ottawa as black-clad, mirror-visored bikers on Harley Davidsons. Subverted when Jackie frees the Hunt and discovers that they are decent beings, righteously angry at the Big Bad about being used for cruelty.
- Outlaw biker gangs (along with Dirty Communists) are the standard villains in The Survivalist (an After The End series of adventure novels by Jerry Ahern). However, when Paul Rubenstein makes a derogatory comment about bikers, the hero John Rouke points out that they're also on motorcycles.
- Good Omens has its literal "Hell's Angels," the four Bikers of the Apocalypse: War, Famine, Death, and Pollution (Pestilence having retired due to penicillin). The Four Horsemen end up with four actual Hells Angels tagging along for, as it was, the ride.
- Although it's noted that not all bikers are Hells Angels. "If there's one thing real Hell's Angels can't abide, it's weekend bikers *
There are a number of other things real Hell's Angels can't abide. These include the police, soap, Ford Cortinas and, in Big Ted's case, anchovies and olives ".
- The second Able Team novel had an outlaw biker gang seizing control of Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles. A later Mack Bolan informational book published a letter from two biker fans complaining about how all bikers were portrayed as outlaws.
- Hunter S Thompson wrote Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, for which the gonzo journalist spent a year in close association with the Hells Angels. Thompson even invited members of the gang into his home. Ultimately he was beaten up by several members of the gang, though he still maintained friendly relations with some of his closer contacts. Ironically, Thompson misspells the Hells Angels gang name throughout the book.
- In A Phule and his Money, Chocolate Harry has some trouble with a biker gang call the Renegades for messing with their hovercycles, back when he himself was still a biker. They fit the trope to a 't'.
Live Action TV
- The PC Hers from Veronica Mars.
- Subverted in an episode of Northern Exposure, where the elderly Ruth-Anne falls in with what appears to be a gang of Hells Angels, who are later revealed to be a bunch of middle-aged professionals.
- In The Fugitive episode "The Devil's Disciples", the title characters were a Fictional Counterpart of the Hells Angels.
- So were the characters in most of the "biker gang" exploitation films from The Sixties.
- Subverted by "Sid's Cycle/Psycho Show", which follows the titular Sid around North America. While he is quite large and has a custom bike, he's a nice guy who often enters bike competitions for charity.
- As the season 6 opener to Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Sunnydale was ravaged by a demon biker gang.
- An episode of The Greatest American Hero features the heroes running afoul of a biker gang. Something of a subversion in that the gang-leader proves himself to be quite shrewd and cunning.
- The live action TV series Sons Of Anarchy is sort of a subversion. While the California-based motorcycle gang (conveniently named the Sons of Anarchy) still has a ridiculous amount of money, this is partly justified in their illegal firearms smuggling. Also the bikers are shown to be fairly nice people, and not crazy ruffians, with the occasional violent encounter. It is also hinted in the show that the Sons of Anarchy is the only thing keeping other, more violent gangs from invading the town.
- Two desperate biker gangs, both of the Hells Angels variety, invade a town in Knight Rider.
Video Games
- In the Lucas Arts adventure game Full Throttle, the bikers shown are not hardened criminals, but they do show a great deal of disregard for traffic laws and personal property and solve their own problems rather than going to the police.
- Yeah well, going to the police would've been actively counterproductive, seeing as Ben was a wanted man...
- Hitman (by Eidos Interactive)... lots of rather amusing biker stuff in Hitman:Contracts.
- Francis from Left 4 Dead is a visual homage to this trope, though he's generally a softie in his voice files.
- Indeed, he seems to be the most genuinely upset when another protagonist is killed (especially Zoey).
- "The Lost and Damned" Expansion Pack for Grand Theft Auto IV follows a One Percenter outlaw gang that Niko interacts with during the main storyline. Mostly played straight, but the game does show some of the wannabes. Also true to the trope, Johnny meets and befriends a black biker who prefers crotch rockets, and the two trade insults about their choice of ride.
- Kanji from Persona4 single handedly beats up an entire biker gang because they kept his mother up at night.
- You specifically find this out when a big-city news network tries to do a spot on the gang. ...Only to get yelled at and threatened by Kanji. The network naturally assumes that he's one of the gang.
- In ''Pokémon Fire Red and Leaf Green, a gang of bikers takes over one of the islands and the player has to get rid of them.
- The final pet of the Thugs powerset in City Of Villains has a summon animation of riding a motorbike. Get's really weird when he rides it in places he shouldn't like office buildings, night clubs, sewers, and ancient cities.
- The Fire Barons of Brutal Legend are molotov-chucking Bikers that are actually on the side of the heroes. In multiplayer, however, they were initially a Game Breaker for Zerg Rushing, so they were Nerfed.
Web Comic
- Subverted in Wapsi Square, the young Monica encounters some bikers who turn out to be decent folks.
Western Animation
Real Life
- Averted in real life by the overwhelming majority of motorcyclists who obey the law, as well as by a number of motorcycle organizations that do charity work. A notable example would be the "Patriot Guard", a group of riders who go to military funerals picketed by the odious Fred Phelps and proceed to merrily picket him, drowning out his group's rants with the sound of their engines.
- Truth In Television to the degree that outlaw motorcyle gangs do in fact exist and have spread across the world. Outlaw gangs are often highly active in the drug trade, well-armed, and very violent. Some of the more infamous incidents involving biker gangs include the Altamont Free Concert, where Hells Angels provided security and have been blamed for agitating the crowd, which ultimately resulted in a young man drawing a gun and getting stabbed to death by an Angel. Various wars between rival gangs have also left dozens dead.
- Incidents in the scandinavian gang-war between Hells Angels and their rivals Bandidos have included RPG's being fired at rival houses.
Tabletop Games
- The Car Wars setting is After The Apocalypse (sort of), and one of the hazards of wandering around on the interstates are bike packs. As mentioned above, the main reason for bikes is their budget status: low-cost enough that you can just get one and join in (rather than pool together for a fleet of sedans).
- The White Scars chapter of Space Marines in War Hammer 40000 is essentially a giant army of bikers. More like barbarians than full out Hells Angels. Played straight with Ork and Chaos Bikers.
- In the original WH40K incarnation pretty much ALL Space Marines had biker/Hells Angels traits...from the habit of naming their legions "chapters" to the handbook notes implying their love for "bullock" cycles and "Vincent Black Shadow" jet-cycles as means of transport and assault...this troper thinks that the trait was a implicit nod at Norman Spinrad's SF metanovel The Iron Dream (which dealt with cycle-riding nazi stormtroopers in a SF setting, puryifing the world from genetic aberrations).
- In the Shadowrun game's version of the future, Combat Biker is a professional team sport with a continent-wide following. It resembles capture-the-flag, but played on motorcycles, in an arena chock full of obstacles and half-pipes ... and with weapons. Many top-scoring players are recruited from violent biker gangs, and bring their brutal street-tactics to the field.
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