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Hammerspace Hair

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Those aren't hairpins!

Amber: What were you doing in there?
Famine: What WAS I doing in there?
Matchu

This is an old gag. It's where someone seems to have a storage space set in their hair. Usually, that hairstyle is an afro if it's a man or a beehive if it's a woman, but not always. Why are they capable of doing this? Because they have Hammerspace Hair!

A minor variation is when a character keeps things stored in his beard. Can also be invoked if a character's entire body is covered with hair.

Subtrope of Hammerspace. Compare Combat Haircomb.

For times when it seems like someone's hair must have been hidden in hammerspace, see Compressed Hair. This is actually a real technique some people employ in street fights, so employing this tactic can make one a Combat Pragmatist.


Examples:

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    Advertising 
  • Apparently, this kid is a walking piggy bank.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Nabeshin from Excel♡Saga would occasionally keep things in his hair like big guns, as pictured above.
    Excel: That's some serious dandruff, man.
  • Nabeshin's cameo in Hayate the Combat Butler has him randomly fall over at one point, at which a handful of items fall out. Oh, and he himself was hiding in it before.
  • A line from Negima! Magister Negi Magi. Kotaro had just pulled a vial out of his hair, with only Chamo asking, "He hid it in his hair?"
  • Lambo from Reborn! (2004) keeps a bazooka bigger than he is in his hair.
  • YuYu Hakusho: Kurama and his Rose Whip. He pulls the rose right out of his hair the first time we see it, and apparently he keeps a lot of other seeds for his plant-weapons up there as well.
  • In the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann movie, Yoko pulls a pistol out of her hair while fighting Adiane.
  • Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo naturally includes this among its many hair-related sight gags.
  • Ga-Rei:
    • Even when downsized to a puppy, the inugami Byakuei from still manages to fit a huge double-bladed sword in his tail. His real size is a lot bigger, though.
    • Fujiko plays it mostly straight: she hides shuriken in her, well, wig.
  • In episode seven of Wandaba Style, Michael Hanagata is wearing a spacesuit and gets a call on his cellphone. He manages to take the call without taking off his helmet by shaking his head, dislodging his cellphone from his afro. It's later revealed that he keeps it in there all the time. Also in episode seven, his shoulder devil pops out his afro as well.
  • Dasonu Maso of Sgt. Frog can travel through space in his own afro, then land wherever he liked (usually the Hinata house) whereupon his limbs, then the rest of him would emerge from it.
  • In One Piece, Ivankov's head is so large he can hide people inside his hair.
  • Iris from Pokémon the Series: Black & White hides her Axew in her bushy hair.
  • Tails in Sonic X apparently is able to tuck away Chaos Emeralds in the fluff of his tails. In one episode he also gets a screwdriver from apparently nowhere, most likely his... Hammerspace Tail Fur? One can only hope.
  • Duo Maxwell from Mobile Suit Gundam Wing subverts this trope. He wears hairpins... ostensibly to control flyaways, but he actually uses them for picking locks.
  • In Nichijou, when Ms. Sakurai asks him to tone down his afro (actually a wig), Tanaka changes the subject by pulling out a red bean pancake and offering it to her.
  • In Toriko, Sunny's "Satan Hair" is combination of this and Stomach of Holding, since its hair that will "eat" anything it touches and store it for later use. He can even use it to swallow energy blasts and spit them back at the offender.
  • Garterbelt from Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt stores all sorts of things in his afro, including paper messages from Heaven and extra bullet belts for his machine guns.
  • Code Geass has V.V. pulling a machine gun out of his hair to murder his sister-in-law, Marianne. Somewhat subverted in that while the machine gun is bigger than V.V., it is smaller than his hair.

    Arts 
  • 18th-century caricatures poke fun at the huge, elaborate wigs in fashion at the time, sometimes showing them used for smuggling.

    Comic Books 
  • Léonard le Génie: Leonardo often pulls objects out of his beard, most notably a blunderbuss.
  • Monica's Gang has Fluffy/Floquinho, a Lhasa Apso-like dog. Sometimes whole groups of people get lost in it!

    Comic Strips 

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animated 
  • In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, Pinkie Pie has the same ability as her pony counterpart (see below), pulling a clipboard and pen out of her curly and fluffy hair. In the sequel Rainbow Rocks, she stashes cookies and her drumsticks in here. In Friendship Games, she even pulls out a fully-cooked cake and pie.
  • The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists: The Pirate Captain hides plenty of bizarre stuff in his beard, including his precious Pirate Parrot... er... Pirate Dodo.
  • In the Trolls franchise's TV series Trolls: The Beat Goes On! and Trolls: TrollsTopia, trolls are regularly shown to keep things in their hair, with more stuff that can logically fit. At one point, Biggie vanishes an object in his hands by wrapping it in his shorter than average hair. It's even established across the franchise that trolls use their hair as a playpen for children too young to walk around on their own.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Foxy Brown, the title character hides a pistol in her afro.
  • In Coffy, the protagonist (like the character above, also played by Pam Grier) hides small blades in her afro. See below under Real Life.
  • In Braveheart, William Wallace hides a mace behind his hair and down his back.
  • In Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Edie McClurg (School Secretary) pulls like three pencils from her fluffy curls and goes back for another! This wasn't a special effect — the actress and director, between takes, wondered how many pencils she could hide in her hair... apparently the answer was "more than 4".
  • In Leprechaun in the Hood, Ice T pulls a knife and then a baseball bat out of his 'fro.
  • This occurs in the film and novel Hannibal, in which Starling gives officers a pre-arrest warning that their HIV-positive arrest target likes to hide syringes in her hair, knowing that law-enforcement officers like to shove their suspect down by the head when putting them in the car.
  • In Casino, Nicky's wife hides a bunch of stolen diamonds in her hair to sneak it through the airport.
  • In John Waters' 1988 Hairspray, Velma hides a bomb in her beehive hairdo.

    Literature 
  • Done in a creepy way in Lorna Landvik's Angry Housewives Eating Bon-Bons: the abusive husband of one of the women forces her to wear her hair in the same outdated, complicated updo that his mother favors. She begins to hide things in her hair — like rolled up tissues, candy, etc. — to feel like she was subverting him.
  • In the science fiction novel Steel Beach, a member of an Animal Wrongs Group never bathes or cuts his hair or beard. A number of animals and insects live in his hair.
  • In the Smart Junior books by The Princeton Review, Barnaby's impressive hair is known to provide whatever the team needs at a given moment.
  • In Meredith Ann Pierce's Treasure at the Heart of the Tanglewood, there's Hannah and her fertile tresses.
  • In the Corellian Trilogy of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Chewbacca keeps a few things hidden under his fur, such as a comlink (walkie-talkie/cell phone).
  • In the stand-alone Novel Airman by Eoin Colfer, when an older friend and teacher is cornered by Marshal Bonvilain, the villain, Bonvilain says: "Now you probably have a dirk in your beard, or a derringer up your sleeve, or some other spy trick." (He was also a spy for the king, long story)
  • Everyone's favorite vampire executioner Anita Blake likes to hide a goddamn machete in a spine sheath underneath her waist-length black hair, in case of Oh, Crap! moments. Or when her many guns run out of ammo.
  • Apparently, on the Discworld it's a common skill among dwarfs to be able to hide battle axes in one's beard.
  • In Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series, one of the major plot twists in the first book comes about as the result of the hero's use of this trope.
  • In Dune, it's mentioned that the Emperor's Sardaukar soldiers carry a wire hidden in their hair to use as a garrote if captured and disarmed.
  • Stick Dog: One of the group, Mutt, likes to store things in his fur. When he shakes, lots of things fall out of it.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In Danger 5, Stalin can use his moustache to hide full grown women. Which he does. The gag is later repeated with the Dodgy Toupee of the President of the World.
  • Hannah Montana: Miley's Aunt Dolly always keeps her cell phone in her enormous blonde hairdo, because her pants are too tight.
  • The Mighty Boosh: Rudi something something (he goes by many names) has an actual door (of Cuckoondo) in his afro.
  • Stargate Atlantis: Ronon Dex hides a number of throwing knives in his dreadlocks.
    Shepard: How many of those do you have in there?
    Ronon: How many do you need?

    Pro Wrestling 
  • When he debuted on Monday Night Raw an image of Carlito with a pair of brass knuckles in his hair began circulating around the web(along with other weapons, including a grenade). WWE Day Of Reckoning even had him pulling an apple out of his afro.
  • Abe "Action" Jackson has been said to have "foreign hair", as in his Afro is big enough to hide a weapon in.

    Video Games 
  • In SNK vs. Capcom, huge Street Fighter wrestler Hugo has tiny Bao from The King of Fighters cameo in his intro. Where does Bao happen to pop up (and hide in when the fights start)? Hugo's sizable hair.
  • In the Neo Geo fighting game Savage Reign, gymnast Carol fights with an Olympic pink ball; if thrown as a projectile, she produces another from underneath her hair. Her hair isn't much past her shoulder, and the ball is about as large as her whole head...
  • In Final Fantasy XIII, Sazh keeps a baby chocobo in his afro.
  • Pokémon:
    • According to flavor text, Zoroark parents carry their young in their hair.
    • Munchlax stores food in its long fur. However, because it is so hungry, it forgets that it's even there until it rots.
    • In the Pokémon Masters mobile game, Iris mentions that she sometimes stores things in her hair. Her Haxorus stored berries in her hair once... and when taken out later they looked exactly the same as they did before they went in her hair.

    Webcomics 
  • Addictive Science: While transformed into a dog-taur Celia manages to hide her rayguns and a lamp taller than herself in her fur.
  • In Ozy and Millie, Ozy goes out in a cold snap before his winter coat comes in. The result is that it comes in all at once, leaving him extremely fluffy. Millie takes advantage of this to hide things in him, up to and including a toy piano.
  • In the webcomic Everyday Heroes, Carrie uses this trope literally once or twice.
  • Eddie from Emergency Exit can pull random things (including hammers) from his hair. This is eventually revealed to be because he forced a portal into his skull to keep the villains from getting it. It's also apparently when he became such a Cloudcuckoolander.
  • Rufus from Terinu, being a foxlike alien, has on at least one occasion hidden a locator unit for his ship in his tail.
  • A Loonatic's Tale: The Zinc family hair eats things. But since it's normal hair by all other standards, it doesn't actually do anything with this stuff once it's got it. So if it gets a hold of something really important and you need to pull it out, you'll probably bring some debris, and perhaps the odd bird carcass, along with it.
  • APT Comic: Ammika does this occasionally.
    Inferno: Where are you keeping that map, anyway?
  • Amber from Matchu has picking stuff out of her insanely long hair as her morning routine. Such things include quarters, pizza boxes, potted plants, a-bombs, her cat and her best friend.
    Amber: What were you doing in there?
    Famine: What WAS I doing in there?

    Web Original 
  • This Flareon manages to contain an Eevee in its tail. An Eevee is only about half the height and 1/4 the weight of a Flareon, but still, that's quite a hiding spot.
  • Fluffle Puff has all sorts of weird stuff contained in her seeming-endless fluff; she can house the Mane 6, the Diarchs, Discord, Chryssi and Fausticorn, and Spike once took days to navigate her fur to scratch her back.
  • In the Rooster Teeth Shorts, Beard Meeting, Burnie and Blaine's search for a room to have a meeting in Adam's beard, much to his displeasure.
  • In Rhett & Link's Hair Song, Link mentions this as a benefit of hair that goes down.

    Western Animation 
  • The Simpsons:
    • Marge Simpson. She has carried money in it at various times and it's strong enough to hold a beach umbrella. And a ten-pin bowling ball (though not at the same time!).
    • Sideshow Bob likewise hid evidence of his electoral fraud in his giant 'fro.
  • The Super Globetrotters (the 2nd Harlem Globetrotters cartoon) has Gizmo Man, one of the team members; sporting a truly epic Funny Afro. He also just took a moment of rooting around and whatever he wanted could be found in that 'fro.
    Fluid Man: Man, that Lou's better than traveler's cheques!
  • In an episode of Family Guy, Peter grows a beard in which he keeps several birds.
  • Speaking of which, here's a limerick by Edward Lear, 1846, adapted as a cartoon short for Sesame Street:
    ''There was an old man with a beard
    Who said, "It is just as I feared!
    "Two owls and a wren,
    "Four larks and a hen
    "Have all built their nests in my beard!"
  • Uncle Ruckus from The Boondocks suspect Huey is hiding something in his afro, when he's doing a commentary on the season one DVD.
  • In the French cartoon franchise Il Était Une Fois..., most incarnations of the Maestro have a Hammerspace beard that reaches to his ankles, stores everything in the world, and possibly serves as a Godiva Beard.
  • Shag from Road Rovers. He once hid another team member in his fur.
  • Captain Caveman: The title character, being completely covered in hair, would often pull out things from his chest. Including dinosaurs.
  • Dexter's Laboratory: Val Hallen of the Justice Friends, in a one-off gag involving an X-ray.
  • An episode of Jimmy Two-Shoes has Heloise keeping one of her gadgets in her ponytail.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Pinkie Pie can use her curly and fluffy mane to produce/hide all manner of objects, including a flashlight and a scrapbook. Most egregious is when she's able to produce a full cake and have it still be edible or a full-sized, fully functional confetti cannon out of there. Has become Memetic Mutation in the fanbase that she has a Pocket Dimension in there somewhere.
  • Steven's pet lion in Steven Universe has an entire pocket dimension in his mane, and it is often used to store items like his sword for withdrawal at a moment's notice. When Steven brings Lars Back from the Dead, Lars' hair leads to the same dimension, connecting the two.
  • Shirley in Shaun the Sheep is sometimes shown to have all kinds of things hidden in her wool- a hammer and nails, large stacks of money, and even a car tire.
  • Grandpa Smurf in The Smurfs (1981) stores a lot of stuff in his beard.
  • In one episode of Kaeloo, Mr. Cat dresses up as Jules Winnfield for most of the episode and uses a wig which he uses to store stuff.
  • In Total Drama, particularly in the Total Drama Revenge of the Island episode "Truth or Laser Shark," Anne Maria has stated that she kept her hair spray (among other things) in her "poof." It's a mystery how she can carry a can of hairspray, let along a whole bunch of cans, in a hairdo that's as hard as a ship's hull.
  • Li'l Gideon in Gravity Falls hides pieces of Journal #2 inside his over-sized pompadour.
  • In Trolls: The Beat Goes On!, trolls are shown regularly storing things in their hair, even things that shouldn't logically fit. It's established for the franchise that before a certain age, trolls even use their hair as playpens and cribs for their babies.
  • An experimental gadget on Totally Spies! was the Quick Stash Mustache, a fake bushy mustache that could be used to covertly store things. The downside was that it actually enlarged with every object put into it, making it too conspicuous and cumbersome to use.
  • Eda Clawthorne in The Owl House has stored a large number of things in her hair, from photographs to lunchboxes. Her mother is the same way, despite having much shorter hair.
    Luz: Someday my hair's going to be big enough to do that, too.
    King: You actually want that?

    Real Life 
  • In 2008, Amy Winehouse was filmed taking cocaine on stage, after apparently taking the vial out of her hair.
  • This kid shakes his head to make a bunch of pens fly out.
  • As stated in the trope description, this is actually a rather nasty fighting technique: people put sharp things in their hair not for their own use, but place them there with the expectation that other people will attempt to grab their hair in a fight.
  • On the 2013 Teen Tournament of Jeopardy!, contestant Leonard Cooper remarked that a fellow student hid a highlighter pen in his afro, which went undiscovered for several days.
  • Some Sikh warriors would wear a trident, or Trehsool Mukh, in their turbans. Their hair itself was wound around the skull to protect it. Source.
  • In the great days of the French court at Versailles, society ladies and courtiers favoured really big hair. The pompadour style involved piling up both long natural hair and adding hair extensions into progressively more baroque styles which were practically welded into place, which often incorporated cages of birds, pet animals in cages, and in one instance a brief fad for entire clocks incorporated into the pellicure....
  • Oral tradition in Suriname has quite a few stories about slaves hiding rice or other grains in their hair as an emergency food source.


 
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Video Example(s):

Alternative Title(s): Hair Of Holding, Hairy Hammerspace

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Equestria Girls: Movie Magic

Where else is Pinkie Pie supposed to store her bucket of pudding?

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