New Age Retro Hippie - Television Tropes & Idioms

Whoah, it's The New Age Retro Hippie, in all his glory, man.

Hippies are often depicted in television and video games as pot-loving, tie-dyed shirt-wearing, stuck-in-the-'60s types who believe in sexual freedom and railing against "the man, man." While this was (and whoah, still is, you know, dude) true to some extent, it has been exaggerated (naturally) in fiction, dude. The earliest instances of this trope come only a few years after the first hippies, man. It's like The New Rock And Roll, dude, except the hippie "messed-up" phase never ended. Whoah.

A subset of this character type is the Hippie Teacher, man. And whoah, dude: compare Granola Girl. See also Naked People Are Funny for the New Age Pants-free Retro Hippie, man.

Whoah, there's Examples, man:

Video Games

The Trope Namer here is the New Age Retro Hippie from EarthBound, who show up early in the game as a low-level enemy.
- Interestingly enough, the Hippie's fight music is a pastiche of '50s rock songs like "Johnny B. Good". It also counts as a Recurring Riff, having been in every Mother game that features the Hippie.
  - Oddly enough, in EarthBound (i.e. the second game), the first time that song plays is during the battle with a gang leader named Frank, who isn't a hippie. The New Age Retro Hippies (who share Frank's battle music) don't appear until Ness gets to the next town after Frank's defeat.
- Hippies appear in Earthbound Zero as well, using a "bull horn" to try to distract you somehow.
Shinta Iwata, the owner of the Cosmic Corner shop in The World Ends With You. In modern day Shibuya, Japan; no less.
Grand Theft Auto had The Truth, a tie-dye wearing, weed-growing, long-haired Conspiracy Theorist and hippie.
CJ: Can you shoot?
The Truth: Shoot? I'm a hippie. The only thing I've shot is acid. I heard of a dude snorted it once. Thought his nose was a kangaroo and the moon was a dog!
Kingdom Of Loathing features hippies rather prominently in a late-game quest involving a large-scale war between a hippie enclave and a dorm of frat-orcs.
Persona 4: Kunino-sagiri may not be a New Age Retro Hippie in terms of beliefs, but he definitely fits in terms of dress.
The Elves of Overlord II are an entire race of this and are the closest thing to a Hero Antagonist this series has.
Annie Frazier of Backyard Sports is a total New Age Retro Hippie, even though she's from the '90s.
The Karmaramas of Startopia are an entire species of these. Their job is to sow seeds on the biodeck. Apparently, the drugged-out attitude is genetic at this point, due to past generations overindulging and messing up natural selection. Checking their details, you find they come from places like "Bong, a mellow planet in the Far Out System".
Dr. Roméo in Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc, who wears dark glasses and a flower print beanie, has long hair, and talks like a stereotypical stoner, complete with Totally Radical slang. When he leaves, he makes reference to needing to water his plants.

Western Animation

Mona Simpson, Homer's estranged mother from The Simpsons. In one episode, Homer himself dabbled in the hippie lifestyle.
- The thing is that Homer kept insisting on living The Themepark Version of being a hippie, while the real hippies in the episode lived fairly normal, unassuming hippie lives.
Cartman from South Park hates hippies with a passion, to the extent that he runs a hippie extermination business. While Cartman has issues, the hippie swarm is definitely the villain of this episode.
- These hippies seem to vary between traditional dirty party-hippies and upper-class Boulderite socialist-elitist hippies. To a modern Coloradoan, of course, the difference between the two is quite superficial.
  - This student in a very liberal, hippy-infested area of Massachusetts with lots of college kids can assure readers that the two species have, over time, blended together. They are now capable of toking up and shouting "No Justice, No Peace, INSERT SLOGAN OF THE ACTUAL CAUSE HERE" through a bullhorn at the same time.
The Goode Family, Mike Judge's follow-up to King Of The Hill, will apparently make hippie/activist folks the main thrust of its comedy.
The best friend/owner of Scooby Doo, Shaggy, is the fully G-rated comic relief version of this trope, and has remained this way in every incarnation.
The nomads of Avatar The Last Airbender are New Age Ancient Chinese hippies.

Professional Wrestling

Mick Foley (Cactus Jack, Mankind) once used the "lovable hippie" gimmick when he wrestled under the name "Dude Love".
- Dude Love is probably the perfect example of this trope. He wears mirrored sunglasses, tye-dye shirts, does the Charleston, says "Woooo! Have Mercy!" and enters to disco music!
  - He sounds like a time-traveller who based his 'hippie' disguise on a spotty review of the 20th century.

Live Action TV

Leo on That Seventies Show, albeit the role was played by Tommy Chong, so this may be an odd instance of Truth In Television.
There was an early episode of All In The Family where a pair of hippie friends of Meathead's come to visit. For once, Gloria and Meathead come around to Archie's point of view about them...
Half the cast of Dharma And Greg, this being the premise of the show. Larry, Dharma's father, was the most egregious example, compared to his unmarried partner in a very Over And Under The Top way.

Film

The Dude.
Flirting With Disaster has Ben Stiller looking for his birth parents - they turn out to be old hippies (Alan Alda and Lily Tomlin) who passionately argue that LSD shouldn't be a felony (as well they would, as they're manufacturing it).

Truth In Television

The Rainbow People

Music

One of the characters in Ayreon's Into the Electric Castle seems to fit this - he's referred to only as "the Hippie" and for the first half of the album thinks that it's all an incredible drug trip. Not that this troper blames him ...

Web Original