Baldness is usually implemented by television and film writers as a sign of premature aging, poor morality or just general weakness. But occasionally, baldness instead indicates just how awesome a character is. Bald Black Leader Guy is a popular subtrope since, for some reason, black men in leadership positions are almost always bald in fiction. Contrast with Bald of Evil. In the spirit of not spinning off into ridiculous over-troping, this includes men and women who voluntarily shave their heads.
Patrick Stewart may be the king of this trope, as he has portrayed (for a time, contemporaneously) both Professor X and Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise.
Not to be confused with Bold of Awesome. Contrast Badass Longhair and also Bald of Evil. See also Perma Shave.
Nizer, one of the Chronos Numbers assassins in Black Cat, is bald. He once defeated a monster that could heal and regenerate even its own head and heart almost instantaneously by reducing the thing to a pile of dust too quickly for it to regenerate itself. With an oversized pair of bladed tonfa.
Dragon Ball — Tenshinhan, Roshi, and Krillin (though he's bald by choice). Also Abridged Nappa. Arguably, all non-humans/non-mammalians in Dragon Ball Z. This includes Frieza, Piccolo, etc.
"Hey Vegeta, look! More bald people."
Lordgenome's lack of hair in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann gave him enough power to pummel Lagann into the ground - unarmed and outside of his mech.
His lack of hair is mainly due to the fact that his head catches fire when he gets serious. That's right, he's bald because he's awesome.
When he was young, he had very long hair and heavily resembled his daughter.
Lex Luthor from Superman is most often made bald. Some stories link his hatred of Superman to him losing his hair, but mostly it just makes him that much more awesome when he goes into a Slouch of Villainy.
Professor Xavier from X-Men. The animated shows and Live Action movies also give him such a deep, penetrating voice that this wheel-chair bound man commands the respect of everyone. For major bonus, he's played by Patrick Stewart himself in the movies.
Luke Cage: Hero for Hire - Luke Cage and Ultimate Nick Fury definitely qualify. Recently, the Marvel universe has started to really like this trope. Heck, I'm pretty sure the Young Avengers picked their leader based on it. (Not that Patriot's not a good leader, it's just there was no evidence for it before he was chosen, other than his baldness.)
Tank Girl - The title character's haircuts tend to change often but one of her most common was a mostly shaven head with a few random colored locks.
Tintin: Professor Tournesol (Calculus), who is occasionally silly, occasionally cool, and has an oddly shaped bald head.
Suske en Wiske (Spike and Suzy): Lambik, while the character changed over the years, his baldness remained one of the key parts of his appearance, and has been used as an element to drive the plot forward in a couple of issues. Lambik played the role of heroic father figure in a number of albums. "Het geheim van de gladiatoren" (The secret of the gladiators), "De schat van Beersel" (The treasure of Beersel), and in "De tartaarse helm" (The Tartar Helmet) he's depicted as an expert swordsman. These are known as the Blue Cover Series, as opposed to the Red Cover Series.
'Harry Potter'' - The Shoebox Project incarnation of Kingsley Shacklebolt is described as having a "shiny bald head full of brains." He is also described as the most awesome person possibly to have ever existed...in one of the Halloween chapters, there is a brief foray into his point of view, and it is revealed that he has always seen himself as more of a force of nature than an actual person.
Often, Samuel L. Jackson. Notably, as Mace Windu in Star Wars — although the awesomeness of this is debatable, as many regard the prequel trilogy as less than awesome. The less-than-awesomeness of the prequels is still not enough to quell Mace Windu's Bald of Awesome. It's that good.
Vin Diesel seems to be a reverse Samson - he loses most of his badass factor when he doesn't have a shaven head. He re-shaves it in character during Pitch Black just to keep this up.
Jason Statham. Sometimes he has a bit of hair, but it's always very short.
Inverted in Every Which Way You Can where the Black Widow motorcycle gang appear totally ridiculous after losing their hair in an asphalt spray. But that might have something to do with the fact that they're wearing silly wigs to compensate — two highway patrolmen break down laughing rather than arrest them, much to their leader's fury.
Takashi Shimura takes this to extremes in Seven Samurai as ronin Kambei Shimada, who is first seen shaving his head as part of a ploy to rescue a child. In his era, it would have been considered dishonorable for someone of the samurai class to shave his head, even to save a peasant. His baldness shows that he places morality above his social standing. Even so, he's clearly a little uncomfortable being bald, and spends the rest of the film absently rubbing his stubbled scalp.
Gru from Despicable Me. He would later dodge five missiles like it was nothing and Offhand Backhanda shark to get to his adopted children after Vector had kidnapped them.
The Expendables, Jason Statham, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Terry Crews and of course, Bruce Willis. Terry Crews even shows off his badass razor.
Charlie Bronson, England's most expensive inmate, in Bronson, based on the real life criminal. The film presents him as the antihero in his story, though some would probably consider the real man Bald of Evil.
Literature
Syrio Forel of A Song of Ice and Fire. Lord Tywin Lannister's baldness of awesome was actually an indicative character trait. When his hair started thinning, he commanded his barber to completely shave his scalp, as he would not brook half measures.
With the things he did during the shows run, Vic might just fit in better on the Bald of Evil page.
Colin Mochrie of Whose Line Is It Anyway? fame. Despite being mocked endlessly, he still brought the show some of its greatest moments. "Captain Hair", anyone? Herr Hair!
Patrick Stewart, as stated above. During Star Trek: The Next Generation he had a certain sex symbol status almost because of it. He actually lost hair by the time he was 21, so most people haven't even seen him with a full head of hair. He actually used it to his advantage by audition twice, once while wearing a wig and impressing people with his versatility.
Character Development: He was at first ashamed of it and tried to hide it with an absurd comb over (exacerbated by how long his hair was) until his friends grabbed him, sheared him, and told him to grow up. Then he Took A Level In Bald.
He shaved his head because, at the time, he did a couple of Spencer For Hire reunion TV movies. He couldn't regrow it in time before taping Deep Space Nine's next season, so he just introduced the look to Sisko. Which caused problems in the beginning, as the producers required Avery Brooks to have some hair for the first season, until the character was established. They specifically did this so he wouldn't look like his earlier character.
And The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager, Robert Picardo. Even he noticed the coincidence between Stewart's character and his last name, but hey "if Picard can baldly go where no one has gone before, so can a Picardo."
Sebastian from Pit Boss, despite being a little person, can hit well above his weight class when needed; he wrestled in high school and works out constantly to stay in shape, and has proven himself more than capable of holding his own when things get rough.
Walter White from Breaking Bad, a chemistry teacher who turns to cooking meth when he's diagnosed with cancer. When the chemotherapy starts making his hair fall out, he shaves it off. Never did I think that the dad from Malcolm in the Middle could look hardcore, but damn - the first words his son says in the face of the new look are "Badass, Dad." Now he's got an evil goatee to go with it, too. Also Hank and Mike the fixer, both bald, and both awesome.
Walter (and Mike) could qualify under Bald of Evil, considering what they've done and continue to do.
Also, the show is swarming with bald people for some reason, each with varying degrees of awesome.
Saul Tigh from Battlestar Galactica (RDM) is an on-again, off-again example. While he regularly visits all segments of the personality spectrum save outright, unmitigated evil, when he does get into bad-assery mode, he does it spectacularly.
Flashpoint - SRU officers Ed Lane and Gregory Parker from the Canadian crime drama.
Nearly every man in Prison Break qualifies for this trope, or comes very, very close
Brad Bellick can slide across the full spectrum of bald tropes almost instantly, effortlessly moving from this to looking like a weak buffoon, to full-on Bald of Evil.
Mahone is awesome, though he only counts as Balding Of Awesome.
Michael Alfredo Garibaldi, gruff security chief of Babylon 5. Started out as an on/off alcoholic with half a head full of hair, then in later seasons shaved it and became bald and badass. But still a latent alcoholic. - Named for Giuseppe Garibaldi, the famous 19th century Italian guerrilla fighter, and not as a pun on "bald". A returning character hung a lampshade on it by asking; 'So, what happened to your hair?'
G'Kar counts, too. G'Kar is just awesome all by himself.
Lennier doesn't count, because Minbari do not have hair on their heads (although the men may grow beards).
Galen, Elric, and many other technomages. Galen, especially, as he is the only one capable of creating a powerful Sphere of Destruction, which he once used (in an Expanded Universe novel) to level an entire city and destroy five enemy ships, one of which was a Shadow battlecrab.
Jamie Hyneman (and occasionally Adam Savage) of Mythbusters
He once lit a match on his head. One might think it was fake, but knowing Jamie...
Tom Colicchio of Top Chef. One gay contestant commented on the show that he is an icon in the gay bear community.
Captain Steubing of The Love Boat, as played by Gavin McLeod. In one episode he's upset because the ship is going to have a costume ball and he can't think of any bald character he'd like to dress up as. In the triumphal conclusion of that plot he enters as Yul Brynner in "The King and I".
Japanese comedian and TV personality Hitoshi Matsumoto (best known for Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende) first shaved his head in 1998. He decided that he preferred the buzzcut look and has kept his hair very tightly trimmed ever since.
During one of the endless Real World / Road Rules challenges, contestant Diem Brown had recently went through a battle with ovarian cancer and was nearly bald after chemotherapy. She had been wearing wigs nonstop to hide this, until a challenge in mud. She couldn't get the wig wet, so she had to either forfeit or take off her wig on national TV. She did. It was incredibly traumatic for her, but everybody else thought she looked absolutely incredible (one contestant said she looked like a Russian secret agent.)
John Locke on Lost was both Bald and arguably the most Badass character on the Island. Locke is an interesting case as flashbacks in which He has hair (Albeit noticeably receeding) are brutally cruel and his character becomes far more confident as he loses more hair, eventually becoming the hairless determinator We all know and love.
The Munchkin Player's Guide gives you a + 1 bonus to strength if you're bald, since your body isn't wasting energy on hair. To be fair, it gives bonuses on every other hair choice as well, with about the same level of justification. (Long hair gives a bonus to strength too, since "it worked for Samson."
A great deal of Space Marines from any chapter that isn't Space Wolves (who are practically hairballs by comparison) are bald or have rather little hair by standard. However, it should be noted that it isn't a rule that every codex space marine should be bald. A good example of this can be found in Dawn of War 2, where Cyrus actually has pretty much hair by comparison to most other space marines. An argument can be made however that many space marines have little to no hair out of convenience.
The Heavy from Team Fortress 2 has male pattern baldness. And shaves his head. The Engineer can also sport this if you unlock the right hats.
Sonic the Hedgehog - Though Dr. Eggman's baldness also qualifies as Bald of Evil, he has proven himself heroic and awesome at times. In the Archie comic based on the games, he even expresses his fondness for and personal choice in the look by proclaiming that "bald is beautiful!"
Clementas: Ass-kicking cleric. Shoots a villain in the middle of a Hannibal Lecture about how evil will ultimately triumph because good is held back by its morals and they have to accept his surrender although they know he will manage to escape... with the words "You must be thinking of a different church."
Safiya in Neverwinter Nights II: Mask of the Betrayer is a Rare Female Example. Going with Thayan wizard traditions, she shaves her head and tattoos it with arcane markings, supposedly enhancing her power. She is also a rare nonevil Thayan wizard, who has a more scholarly or scientific outlook instead of a tyrant. She's still not to be underestimated though; her Disintegrate spell is deadly and rarely fails.
One of the new characters of Diablo III is the Monk. The male is bald with two circle tattoos on his forehead. Case in point: the trailer shows him walking into a town overrun by cultists with the door closing behind him, only for him to be seen fresh as daisies a few seconds later. You figure how well that worked out.
Averted haaaaard in Guild Wars: Factions, in which Mhenlo (and Master Togo, to an extent) seems to be trying his utmost to invent the Bald of Suck (as any player who's herded him through the entirety of the campaign can tell you). Played straight in the rest of the series with Mhenlo (who's actually a fairly decent henchman when he's not forced into obnoxious-allydom) and PC Monks, Dervishes, and male Necromancers.
Pokemon Red And Blue: Blaine is a good example. He even takes off his hat in his HGSS battle animation, and a glint of light shines off of his head.
Web Animation
Oran of Broken Saints is a serious badass and 100% bald.
Web Comics
The bald men from The Order of the Stick, Redcloak, Roy, Durkon, and O-Chul, among others, seem to be the most kick-ass characters in the comic. Heck, even Xykon does his ass-kicking with no hair! (Or scalp...)
Need a guy with a shaven head to blow up a starship with an epaulet? Call Kevyn Andreyasn from Schlock Mercenary.
Severus and Krin from Servants Of The Imperium, Severus is an Imperial Inquisitor and Krin is a bountyhunter, and both are awesome.
Qin Xu from Last Res0rt keeps most of his head bald — although the long, winding Queue makes up for it. We get to see a nice flashback of his early days as a vampire with a short, spiky haircut, though.
Egyptian superhero The Shield from The Global Guardians PBEM Universe is bald because his impenetrable force field continually cuts off all his body hair (except for his eyebrows and lashes) at the skin level.
Numbuh One of Codename: Kids Next Door. Unusual in that he's a child. Not so unusual in that him losing his hair is somehow tied into Numbuh Five's greatest failure
Teen Titans - Cyborg. He lost and had half of his scalp replaced with metal plating in a tragic back story that was never told, and likely shaves the remains because half a head of hair would look rather silly. He grows his hair in the comics, and half an afro looks just as silly as you'd think.
Basically half of all Russian leaders. Special mention goes to Mikhail Gorbachev, who even gets to show off the birth mark on his bald head. Russian leaders alternate between bald and haired, and this pattern even transcends regimes and dynasties, as it could be traced uninterrupted to at least Alexander II. At this point it's something of a tradition-come-superstition in Russia, and looks to be kept up for the foreseeable future.
Here's the list: Alexander I—balding, before that it was hard to tell as Paul I and Peter III wore wigs; Nicholas I—bald(ing); Tsar Alexander II—not bald; Tsar Alexander III—bald; Tsar Nicholas II—not bald; Count Lvov—bald; Alexander Kerensky—not bald; Vladimir Lenin—bald; Josef Stalin—not bald; Lavrentiy Beria—bald; Georgy Malenkov—not bald; Nikita Khruschev—baldest leader ever; Leonid Brezhnev—not bald; Yuri Andropov—bald(ing); Konstantin Chernenko—not bald; Mikhail Gorbachev—bald; Boris Yeltsin—not bald; Vladimir Putin—pretty thin up top; and Dmitry Medvedev, who has a full head of hair. So you have Nicholas I through Nicholas II of the Russian Empire, Lvov and Kerensky of the provisional government, Lenin through Gorbachev of the Soviet Union (including two blips between Stalin and Khrushchev)), and the presidents of the Russian Federation.
Quite a few Special Forces men prefer to shave their heads bald due to convenience, making this Truth In Television.
Jeff Gorndt from We Game.com. His awesomeness is debatable, though. His baldness, however, is not.
John A. MacDonald, first Prime Minister of Canada.
That's Sir John A. to you, thank you very much.
Steve Karl-Heinz Bender from the Hungarian-German group Dschinghis Khan. Lots of comments in the Youtube clips featuring the band are about how awesome "the bald guy" is. RIP, Herr Bauer (he died in 2006)
However, instead of embracing his baldness he was very ashamed about it and tried to cover it as much as possible, being the vain man he was. Hence the laurel wreath he was always wearing.
Older Than Feudalism example: Aristophanes wrote lots of satirical comedies that were Da Bomb in Ancient Greece, and in The Knights he hung a lampshade on his own lack of hair by having the chorus chant at some point: "and the poet may withdraw proud of his success, with head erect and his forehead beaming with delight."
Chiklis says he lost his ability to grow hair after a make-up related incident.
Ed Harris. His practical approach to balding (no styling to speak of, just his remaining hair cut very short) was actually praised by Men's Health Magazine as the correct way to be bald with dignity.
Older Than Feudalism example, and perhaps the Trope Starter: Elisha. A few days after he witnessed Elijah, his predecessor, go to Heaven in a literal chariot of fire, a bunch of young punks all were telling him "Go on up, you baldhead!" He turned to look at them, called down a curse on them, and next thing they knew a couple of bears mauled 42 of them. This was his first week of many years of awesome.
While we're still in the biblical and religious category, Reverend Lee Stoneking. While non-religious types may laugh him to scorn, especially for his spiritual sense, we should remember where he's come from. He is quite active in message giving, especially considering his age. Yeah, he walks around, and raises his voice occasionally. What makes this so remarkable? He was once dead for thirty minutes. Yeah, you read it right. Yes, he still walks. That's enough to get you curious, right?
30 minutes? That's not death; that's catalepsy, and whoever looked not knowing the difference between the two (happens much more often than you might think).
Carlin actualy spared a few characteristically caustic words for white men trying to achieve this trope, saying they looked like a freshly circumsized dickhead and that they should do what he did: Wait a while.
Per Albin Hansson Swedish prime minister 1933-46; in reality far more badass than his Wikipedia article would suggest. A ladies' man, too.
Mark Messier, especially in his runs with the New York Rangers. His head was so awesome he defined power forward' back in his heyday in the NHL. Oh, and he won the Stanley Cup twice as captain with the Edmonton Oilers in 1990 and the Rangers in 1994.
Michael Rosenbaum aka Lex Luthor, as well as the voice of Flash and several other DCAU characters.
Elton John had a Balding Of Awesome, at least until his hair transplant in 1992.
Devin Townsend has recently shaved away his skullet. And the result is indeed awesome.
Peter Garrett had this in his Midnight Oil days. (He's still bald, but has become decidedly less awesome since going into politics)
Kevin Martin, skip for Canada's curling team in the 2002 and 2010 Winter Olympics.
Pim Fortuyn, Dutch politician and "greatest Dutchman of all time."
Dwayne Bigger, Crewmember on the 00 Toyota Camry better known to Nascar Fans as "Billy Bad Butt"
John Browning◊, the man who more or less singlehandedly invented modern firearms technology.
Who can forget Scott Stapp, the lead singer of the hard rock band Creed? He had a full head of hair◊ when he was younger, but he got it all shaved off around 2009, to (according to him) 'show the world he was changing'. And, boy does he look a lot better!◊ No wonder more people respected the band after that album; their frontman's new look owns!
