Silly Walk - Television Tropes & Idioms

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Silly Walk

The Ministry of Silly Walks

When a character demonstrates a rather odd way of walking, often involving deliberate contortions.

Watch out for this after someone says Walk This Way. Also recall that one does not Silly Walk into Mordor.

Examples:

Syndrome's walk in The Incredibles was based on a person's deliberate attempt to cure a strange walk.
Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates Of The Caribbean has a rather odd gait based on that of Keith Richards.
Robin Williams in The Birdcage and other times he's playing a homosexual character does a rather exaggerated mincing walk.
Torgo in Manos The Hands Of Fate has an odd gait meant to imply that he's a satyr with goat-like legs whose knees bend the wrong way.
Pretty much anyone playing Igor in a work based on Frankenstein does this, notably the guy in Young Frankenstein.
Groucho Marx had a distinctive walk, slightly too low to the ground.
At the end of the third Austin Powers movie Scott Evil had one of these.
Dr. Evil: I would like to assure you that no one else from my gene pool has a run that effeminate.
Probably one of the oldest and most iconic examples is the waddling gait of Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, often accompanied by a twirl of his cane.
Guido, the hero of Life Is Beautiful, often performs a comically exaggerated and slowed-down goose-step as a mockery of Mussolini's Fascists and the Nazis. Used to poignant effect when Guido says good-bye to his son as the death camp guards lead him off to be shot.
Randal's "wrangle" into the Quick Stop in Clerks. Thereafter referred to by many fans as "the Randal strut".

The "Black Hats"/Wogs in Robert A Heinlein's The Number of the Beast have an extra joint in each limb, and without sophisticated prosthetics, they have a very odd shambling gait. Even with the prosthetics, they have a slightly detectable strange way of walking.

The Trope Namer is the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch from Monty Pythons Flying Circus.
Frank Zappa has a memorable role as a hunchback in "The Boy Who Left Home to Learn About the Shivers," an episode of Faerie Tale Theatre. His bizarre walk has to be seen to be believed.

Wario in Super Smash Bros Brawl.

Western Animation

Marvin the Martian's distinctive shuffling walk.
Goofy had a distinctive walk in the 1930s, with his knees bending backward and his feet swiveling nearly all the way around.

Shorter Means Smarter

Characterization Tropes

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