|
|
|
|
|
Hammerspace Hair
aka: Hairy Hammerspace
|
Those aren't hairpins!
This is an old gag. It's where someone seems to have a storage space set in his hair. Usually, that hairstyle is an afro, but not always. Why is he capable of doing this? Because he has 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.
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 is often a subtrope of Trying to Catch Me Fighting Dirty.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- Léonard le Génie 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!
- Modesty Blaise likes to use her signature weapon as a hair pin.
- 18th-century caricatures poked fun at the huge, elaborate wigs in fashion at the time, sometimes showing them used for smuggling.
Fan Fic
Film
- 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 Film/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Angry Housewives Eating Bon-Bons: the abusive husband of one of the women forces her to wear her hair in the same outdated, complicated updo that his mother favors.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 Eion 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 in Discworld it's a common skill among dwarfs to be able to hide battle axes in one's beard.
- Beka in the Provost's Dog series braids a spike into her braid in order to give whoever tries to grab it in a fight a nasty surprise, since as a proto-cop in a bad part of town she's well acquainted with dirty fighting tricks.
- 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.
Live Action TV
New Media
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.
Webcomics
Weboriginal
Western Animation
- 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.
- Sideshow Bob likewise hid evidence of his electoral fraud in his giant 'fro.
- Gizmo Man of The Super Globetrotters had plenty of space in his hair.
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
poem 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 Once Upon a Time, the Maestro has 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 being completely covered in hair would often pull out things from his chest.
- Val Hallen in 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 started doing this with its third cartoon series.
- The fattest sheep in Shaun the Sheep is sometimes shown to have all kinds of things hidden in its wool.
- Grandpa Smurf in The Smurfs stores a lot of stuff in his beard.
- The Harlem Globetrotters cartoon had 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.
Real Life
|
|
