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Ah, the 80s, when Aqua Net, Jhirmack, and Vidal Sassoon thumbed their noses at gravity. note If you're curious, that's Alexis and Krystle from Dynasty, members of Poison, and New Kids On The Block"Feathered hair and a mullet... this hair came to play!"
"We see a variety of hair styles in rock groups these days, huh? One must never underestimate the power of a good hairdo. I'd like to write a song about hairdos - not about the people under them; then the 'dos have the power by themselves."
You are flipping through channels. Suddenly a woman comes into view that has huge bangs note British English: a huge fringe. You can not help it. You shout " '80s Hair!" Be it the Jheri curl, wanton crimping, the feathered and volumized big hair, or the mullet, hair from The Eighties sticks out.
Also a reaction to Michael Knight, Angus MacGyver, etc.
This trope even exists in anime, which normally has its own kind of crazy hair.
When this occurs in material that is supposed to be set in the future (relative to the time it was created) you have an example of No New Fashions In The Future.
A Sub Trope of Fashion Dissonance and Bigger Is Better.
Compare Giant Poofy Sleeves, Mega Twintails, and '70s Hair.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Bubblegum Crisis is a rather glaring example... especially since it's supposed to be set Twenty Minutes into the Future.
- Handwaved as it's noted that the Eighties has come back in fashion - Priss's band plays "oldies", aka Hair Metal/Glam Metal.
- Dominion Tank Police, Appleseed, and Ghost in the Shell are all full of 80's hair, since they were all drawn in the 80s. The anime adaptations from the 2000s generally avert this with giving most characters altered haircuts.
- In Wedding Peach Abridged, Limone mocks Pluie's "hideous devil mullet."
- Bleach is notorious for this. Grimmjow's release is a rather glaring example. Kubo never did get over the eighties, did he?
- During the fight with Ulquiorra, Ichigo begins sporting a mullet as well. Thankfully, it doesn't last very long.
- And guess what? Aizen has a mullet now too.
- After using Final Getsuga Tensho, Ichigo gets one again.
- Many fans think that the mullet is a symbol of power now.
- After the timeskip, Renji manages to get a mullet that comes out of his pony tail.
- To some extent, Keiichi from Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni, in certain scenes. The show is set in the early eighties, so it makes some sense.
- Rika, definitely. In certain scenes, it becomes quite apparent how much hair that little nine year old has. This is even apparent in the sound novels, where most other characters' bodies and hair are more realistic.
- What about those motorcycle guys?
- Every Yuu Watase bishounen ever is all mullet.
- Bastard!! is a crowning achievement in 80s cheese, complete with giant feathered hair on most characters.
- Every Gundam show set in the UC era, due to the fact that the most notable of UC shows were made in the eighties. Gundam Unicorn, set during UC 0096, keeps this for the sake of continuity, even though it started in 2010.
- It does get considerably better in the 0100s, with Gundam F91 and V Gundam having much less 80s hair, having been made in the 90s.
- G Gundam though featured some main characters like Kyoji who sport arguably mullets.
- Kio Asuno in Gundam AGE and Season 1 Saji Crossroad from Gundam 00 both sported what could be arguably mullets.
- The Plot To Assassinate Gihren's artwork can look rather odd because of this. All of the new characters are drawn in the style of modern manga and anime, with bishie looks, and modern haircuts. All of the characters from Mobile Suit Gundam are drawn with their eighties looks and hairstyles intact.
- Saint Seiya first aired in 1986. It shows! Sideburns abound, seriously. Also a glaring example (in the anime) of You Gotta Have Blue Hair, which, when combined with this trope, is a little weird.
- It gets more than a little weird during the Sanctuary/Golden Cloth arcs, where Phoenix Ikki has a decently sized mullet hanging down, but when he donned the Phoenix Cloth's helm, his mane was suddenly drawn as flowing halfway down his back.
- Folken from Vision of Escaflowne has a mullet.
- So does Giovanni Gallo from Heat Guy J (which was made by the same people behind Escaflowne.)
- Dancougar is another fantastic example. Especially notable is Ryo, who looks like part of a Hair Metal band. Then again, before becoming a Super Robot pilot, he kinda was.
- Slayers stars a main character with a headband and some impressively huge bangs, even for an anime. Not much of a coincidence since the original novels began in the 80's.
- The original Dirty Pair is an extremely notorious perpetrator of the Poofy Hair syndrome, especially Kei. And especially Yuri.
- Due to the eras when they were in vogue, anime with character designs by Akemi Takada and Atsuko Nakajima were all over this trope. Their early-to-mid '90s designs were no exception.
- Fist of the North Star. "You're already mulleted."
- Quite a few of the Yu-Gi-Oh! guys have mullets, as mocked in Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series
- In the Karaoke Christmas Special of Detective Conan, Tatsuya and his bandmates exhibit this.
- Oh Saiyuki, you and your love of mullets
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- In Revolutionary Girl Utena, where most of the male eye candy has standard ninties Bishōnen hair, Akio's lavender mullet not only stands out sharply, but wonderfully compliments his car phone as well.
Comic Books
- Teen Titans: Starfire and that...thing◊ she's got attached to her scalp.
- Her hairstyle has changed in later times. It's wavy◊ more-so then curly; it's incredibly long and thick, but it looks like normal hair nowadays. Her Tiny Titans and Teen Titans depictions show her with straight hair; though they've both temporarily been shown with the original style as a Mythology Gag.
- Tony Stark (Iron Man), especially during the second Michelenie/Layton run e.g. the Armor Wars, could be found with a Jheri curl during the 80s.
- Even though it was during the 90s, Superman had a mullet after his resurrection.
- The comic book sequel to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Good The Bad And The Uglier, presumably wasn't able to acquire permission to use a likeness of Clint Eastwood in the role of Blondie. As a result, he's hilariously replaced with a near-perfect likeness of Solid Snake, complete with a charmingly anachronistic mullet. Lampshaded in that the first scene in the comic shows Blondie walking into a barber's shop for a haircut, but it's a ruse - he leaves his boots under the barber's smock and escapes through the back door to surprise the sniper watching him through the window. When the barber offers him a complementary shave and haircut, he frustratingly declines.
- Deadpool once made fun of Daken's mohawk-mullet combo. He got his hand cut off for his trouble.
- When Todd McFarlane drew Spider Man in the late 80s he not only gave Spidey a new look but made his new bride Mary Jane over by changing her hairstyle from her old hairstyle, (long and straight with bangs)◊, to full on big, permed out Eighties hair◊. This is arguably justified. Since MJ is a fashion model and actress, it only makes sense for her to take to the latest styles (even if the look doesn't age well as real-world years go by).
- The female X-Men Storm and Rogue got big hair when Marc Silvestri became penciler in the late Eighties. Also extra-dimentional Longshot joined the group bringing his trademark mullet with him.
- She-Hulk, at least until her mini before Civil War.
- George Pérez seems to like this. Just look up his designs of Wonder Woman and Scarlet Witch, for example.
- Infamously, the Beyonder. Although the fact that he had no experience with the world and, therefore, no taste was certainly deliberate in his clothes, etc.
Film
- The Wedding Singer invokes this trope.
- Of all things, Watchmen. Yes, it was set in the 80s, but Ozymandias's... floppy... side-banged... thing is the only really egregious example, and it stands out all the more strongly because of it. He still manages to induce all kinds of Perverse Sexual Lust anyway, because it looks damn good on him.
- A View to a Kill was the only Bond film to truly suffer this, from Stacey's feathery bangs to Mayday's box cut. To say nothing of the ladies' makeup...
- Hobgoblins, taken to extremes.
- Evidently, viewers of Labyrinth were too distracted by...something... to notice that Jareth's hair is a damn good example of eighties hair. The protagonist, Sarah, wears another standard 80's style through most of the film, but gets glorious 80's Hair in the masquerade ball scene.
- Adventureland, being set in the 80s, has a few good examples.
- Eriq LaSalle's character in Coming to America and his entire family all have Jheri curls, leading to a hilarious moment when his family stands up... and they all leave behind "juice" stains on the couch.
- Who could forget Sarah Connor's massive femullet in The Terminator?
- Joan Cusack's hair in Working Girl defies the laws of physics.
- Played for laughs in Joe Dirt, where the eponymous Joe Dirt has an ass-ugly mullet. Its actually a wig his mother put on him as a baby, on account him being born without the top of his skull. The bones apparently grew and got infused with it, leaving poor Joe stuck with it.
- Some of boxer "Irish" Mickey Ward's sisters in The Fighter as evidenced in this clip.
- Heather Graham in the 1988 teen comedy starring the two Coreys, License To Drive.
- Almost everyone in The Lost Boys has Eighties Hair, especially the eponymous vampires◊.
- In the flashbacks to the 80s in The Wood, the common hairstyles for black men during the 80s are shown, such as the Jheri curl and the high top fade (basically Will's hair in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air).
- When Jules and Vincent enter Brett and Roger's apartment near the beginning of Pulp Fiction, Jules calls Roger "Flock of Seagulls" because of his 80s haircut. The character is even referred to as Flock of Seagulls in the stage directions of the movie script.
Live-Action TV
Magazines
- Fashion Magazines were, of course, all over this trope.
- A really funny one is the cover of the December 1985 issue of Playboy. Barbie Benton is wearing a sable coat, and her hair is still several times thicker than the fur. That's how you can tell you have proper eighties hair.
Music
- Hair Metal
- All over 80s music videos, of course, but perhaps most memorably in Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again", where singer David Coverdale's luxurious locks compete heroically with then-girlfriend Tawny Kitaen's.
- In "Stop to Love" by Luther Vandross, backup singer Lisa Fischer has the most epic mohawk you'll ever see outside anime.
- The Visual Shock and Kote Kei variants of Visual Kei, owing to similar roots with Hair Metal.
- The New Kids On The Block were guilty of this throughout their original run, but it was ''really' extreme in the later years.
- Before becoming a successful solo artist in the 90s, Sheryl Crow sang backup for Michael Jackson in the 80s and had ginourmous hair.
Professional Wrestling
- "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair had AWESOME 80s hair, and most wrestlers hung onto their mullets well past their sell-by-date. (Michael Cole had a mullet well into the "Attitude" Era.)
- Dolph Ziggler is currently sporting a frizzy blond mullet with no apparent irony. Combined with his exaggeratedly "healthy" tan, he looks a great deal like the late Curt Hennig, a.k.a. "Mr. Perfect" (and, coincidentally, has a theme song with the title of "Perfection").
- He has now trimmed back his 'do (and may be undergoing a Heel Face Turn to boot).
Tabletop Games
Video Games
- Solid Snake's (admittedly fairly tasteful) mullet from Metal Gear Solid 2.
- Prior to that Liquid had some wild Eighties hair that looked a lot like the Poison members in the example picture.
- Demyx of Kingdom Hearts fame has a strange mullet mohawk hairstyle. This among other characteristics leads to the point where he's usually compared to another '80s hair icon.
- The Emperor from Final Fantasy II has this in spades in both that game and Dissidia: Final Fantasy. Even more so, though, in the latter game, due to the voice acting sounding remarkably like David Bowie... and The Emperor's hairstyle looking much like Jareth's. In fairness to the Emperor, though, he was originally invented and designed in The Eighties, so he comes by it honestly.
- Paul Lee from Backyard Hockey.
- General Lionwhyte from Brutal Legend has extremely wild 80s hair; in fact, it gave him the power to fly.
- The player characters of Pokemon Black And White, surprisingly. One has a huge ponytail, the other a mullet. The trucker caps don't help.
- It's surprisingly rampant in Gen V. Both Professors Juniper sport this, N's hair looks like a particularly long mullet in official art, Grimsley is rocking the Flock of Seagulls look, and even Emmet and Ingo have Nagaideburns.
- Princess Peach from Super Mario Bros..
- Justified given that the series began in the Eighties.
- Sonia from Der Langrisser looks like Olivia Newton-John circa the "Physical" video... but with pointed ears.
Webcomics
Web Original
- 80's Chick that looked like a female version of Linkara sported huge wild hair.
- Aurora, Diamond, and Vindicator, all from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, loved this look.
- During The Nostalgia Chick's review of Jem, the Makeover Fairy gave herself, the Chick, and Nella an 80s makeover, complete with 80's hair.
- Convictor of Super Playify took one look at the first monster silhouette seen in Call Of Cthulhu Dark Corners Of The Earth and decided that it had this hairstyle. She declared it to be a "Heavy Metal Yithian", complete with screen-covering text stating such.
Western Animation
- In Beverly Hills Teens, the characters are so rich, they can afford to take this to extremes.
- Jem and the Holograms have truly, truly outrageous hair.
- Disney's The Little Mermaid. Doubly impressive in that her hair is like that when she's out of the water and sopping wet. Not even the power of the ocean can defeat THAT volume. Underwater... well, hair spreads out underwater. This is why female scuba divers keep theirs short.
- Another example from the 90s: Nightwing's mullet from The New Batman Adventures.
- Surprisingly, it wasn't that bad...
- The Thundercats. Oh lord, the Thundercats. All the heroes, with the exception of Panthro and Jaga, have truly enormous hair.
- Lion-o's dad has even more enormous hair, done in a impressive Elvis-like bouffant, with a beard to match.
- Well, they're cats. They have manes.
- Unlike the heroes who can justify it as Wild Hair, Luna, leader of the late-series villains Luna-taks, had purple and white hair that could only be described as the 80s gone way too far. She made up for four of the six Luna-taks (two are bald, one is balding with long hair, one has a mohawk, and the other chick has perfectly reasonable hair)
- Parodied in The Fairly OddParents. At one point, they go back to the 80's and see people with green, cube shaped hair and the like.
- Motor Ed. Seriously.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic showed a photo of the teacher, Cheerilee, in The Eighties. "Yes, I know, but honestly, that's how everypony was wearing their mane back then."
- Gadget Hackwrench of Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers sports quite a long and poofy Furry Female Mane.
- Heavy Metal FAKK. Also model Julie Strain, then-wife and muse of its maker Kevin Eastman.
Miscellaneous
- This.
- Old nerd joke: "Astronauts always have puffy hair in orbit... but in the 80s, they still had it when they came back to Earth!"
- If AnnaLynne McCord is any◊ indication◊, then... oh god, hide the hairspray and grab the clippers, it's making a comeback!!!
- It's often seen when some people get a faux hawk and it turns out bad, it winds up looking like a mullet.
- Affectionately parodied by the Real Hot Bitches dance troupe. In 2011, though, they announced they would 'cryogenically freeze themselves until the next '80s revival'.
- Alex Kingston does her best to tame it down, but her wildly unruly curls are rather her trademark.
- Shockingly common on Fantasy book covers, along with '70s Hair.
- Barry Melrose, whose mullet is its own piece of hockey lore.
- Young Jeremy Renner's mullet is something of an inside joke for the Avengers fandom.
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