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alt title(s): Roam The Earth; Walk The Earth "Basically I'm just gonna walk the earth. You know, like Caine in the Kung Fu - walk from place to place, meet people, get in adventures."
Footloose and fancy-free, we set off among the Adventure Towns, seeking the next place, rather than our fortunes.
This trope is bottomless, it seems. The audience wants to believe life without roots is romantic and full of adventure. The character has no home, no job, no money, no identification, no friends, no visible means of support, yet is always healthy, well-fed, clean, and welcome wherever he goes.
Most of us would agree with Vincent Vega's response to Jules: "You're gonna become a bum! If you don't have a job, a home, and legal tender, that's all you'll be is a bum. Someone who picks in garbage cans and eats the stuff I throw away."
There have been few Walking The Earth shows lately; the trope lay fallow until fall 2005, when a Walking The Earth show entitled Supernatural premiered.
This trope is a very American one, and it's also a very Nineties one - it's practically joined at the hip with the Nineties Adventure Show genre, in which it saw by far its fullest expression. As far as big TV producing nations go, The U.S. of A. has the geography and wanderlust culture best suited to this form of adventure, however, in reality, most of these shows which featured American leads were actually shot in either Canada or New Zealand and featured plenty of local supporting cast. (Notable exception: Doctor Who, largely because he isn't limited to walking the Earth)
When one is forced to walk the earth against one's will, this trope becomes the much darker Flying Dutchman.
Subtrope of In Harms Way. See also: Stern Chase, The Drifter, Flying Dutchman.
Examples
Anime
- The anime Golden Boy is about a young man who bikes the Earth.
- More accurately, the titular young man bikes Japan. But in Japan, the world IS Japan, so the trope stands.
- The cast of RPG-trope specific Pokemon also engaged in Walking The Earth, as especially pointed out via the amazing Ghibli Hills landscapes in the ending credits of the first movie. If the game is any indication, it's a-okay to wander the world alone at the age of ten!
- Kino's Journey has a main character and a talking motorcycle travel across a fictional world.
- A pretty acceptable alternative to being forcefully altered into a Pollyanna-i.e. an adult.
- The brothers in Night Head Genesis.
- In Ranma One Half, the Saotomes had been doing this for about fifteen years at the opening of the series. It's left up in the air whether or not their time in the Tendo Dojo qualifies as the end of their Walking The Earth, or merely a temporary respite. Also, antagonist Ryoga Hibiki always Wanders The Earth, due to the fact that his sense of direction is so bad he gets lost trying to walk across a room.
- Vash the Stampede and Nicholas D. Wolfwood from Trigun are examples, except that the planet isn't Earth.
- The setting of The Slayers
- The Saiyuki gang could be considered to be part of this trope; although they do have a destination, they get side-tracked so often that they might as well not have one. Luckily, Sanzo has a credit card. The kind that's accepted everywhere. Even in small, rural villages in the middle of nowhere.
- This makes up most of the plot of Scrapped Princess...but they do a lot more running, so to speak.
- Simon and Boota did this at the end of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Not all fans were pleased with the circumstances. It's justified by the fact that his simply not the type of person to settle down, let Rossiu, lead Kamina City while Simon has his freedom.
- The characters from Blood Plus, literally circling the world by the time the series is over. Particularly Hagi, who not only accompanies Saya on her journey during the series, but also wanders the earth during her dormant periods as well.
- Kenshiro is introduced doing this in Fist Of The North Star, and generally wanders when he isn't dealing with a specific foe.
- Guts wanders Midland in Berserk when we first see him, until the "Conviction" arc gives him something to focus on.
- Rurouni Kenshin subverts this trope, showing what happens when a swordsman who'd been wandering around Japan for 10 years actually settles down in one place for a while. Kenshin does leave Tokyo occasionally, but it's always for a specific place and a specific goal, and he always returns to the Kamiya dojo in the end.
- It's also played straight: Soujirou, Shishio's Dragon ends up Walking The Earth after the Kyoto arc.
- C.C. ends up doing this in Code Geass.
- It's also implied that Lelouch survived, and is traveling with her (very controversial, evidence points both ways - damn writers did it on purpose).
- Sunrise has stated that he is dead, Okouchi has stated he is dead, and the guide states his dead five times!
- They did that mid-season before, and that character showed up again later, alive. I bet not even they know if they're screwing with us or not.
- Kusuriuri-san (The Medicine Seller) in Mononoke.
- Van from Gun X Sword was Walking The Earth before the series began - more specifically, before he met Elena - and then ends up wandering about nearly aimlessly in search of The Clawed Man who killed her. After he gets his revenge, he leaves his comrades to continue his aimless wandering.
- Rain in Immortal Rain.
Comic Books
- Doctor Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk.
- Miyamoto Usagi of Usagi Yojimbo, much like the historical figure he's loosely based on, Miyamoto Musashi. And many others.
- Groo The Wanderer
- Y The Last Man has Yorick and 355 going from Washington D.C. to Paris the long way by the time the story ends (Dr. Mann got dropped off in China to continue her father's work). It started out an escort mission to get the titular last man to the nearest cloning expert in Boston and things kinda snowballed when her lab was burned down.
- Green Lantern and Green Arrow spent some time Walking The Earth — or America, at least — together in the early '70s.
- In the unresolved Elf Quest: Rogue's Curse storyline Rayek walks the World of Two Moons accompanied by Ekuar and tormented by Winnowill's vengeful spirit.
- Lucky Luke - created in Belgium, but set in the Wild West.
- This is a major plot point of the graphic novel Midnight Nation, where a man has to walk from Los Angeles to New York in order to get his soul back.
- Travis Morgan spent most the The Warlord doing this; sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. (Actually it was 'walking the hollow Earth world of Skartaris', but close enough.)
Film
- In First Blood, Rambo is wandering around the United States, unable to mesh with society. The later films usually give him a home, which is portrayed as being somewhere in Thailand.
- Forrest Gump trekked (sometimes ran) quite a bit about the US countryside (not to mention a tour in the Viet Nam war) despite his homestead in Greenbow, Alabama, which seemed to maintain itself during his adventures.
- As written above, Kung Pow has The Chosen One walk the earth for the first part of the movie after being raised by what seem to be rats.
- The end of Teeth implies that our heroine will spend the rest of her days as The Drifter, Walking The Earth and, um, chomping off the penises of sexual predators.
- The Man With No Name in spaghetti Westerns, who rides into town, kills the bad guys ... and leaves again, presumably on his way to some other town to do the same thing over again.
Literature
- Cain in Bereshis, wandering with God's mark on his forehead protecting him—-from whom? is a good question, given that at that point there are almost no other people on Earth....
- Adam and Eve? Abel's surviving wife and kids (never mentioned but not ruled out either)? His brothers and sisters and their children? Cain, Abel, and Seth are the only children of Adam and Eve mentioned by name, but the Bible explicitly says there were others besides.
- The 'mark' Cain received was not necessarily a physical mark on his face. God may have provided Cain with a dog, which would have followed Cain and protected him (and also provided an origin myth for the first canine-human partnership).
- Jack Reacher from Lee Child's books. After spending his life traveling the world with the army and living overseas most of his life, he chooses to become a drifter to see America.
- 'Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them. And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.'—from Job in The Bible, making this one of The Oldest Ones in the Book.
- Lois Mc Master Bujold's Sharing Knife series of books.
- Reacher in the Lee Child novels is Walking the Earth since retiring from the Army; he never intends to make connections or put down roots, each of his adventures takes place in a different location, and he never buys anything he can't throw away.
- Ulysses as portrayed by Dante in Inferno
- Robert A Heinlein's blind singer Rhysling, composer of the song "The Green Hills of Earth" in the short story of the same name. Until the accident that blinded him, he had been a spaceship engineer; after the accident, he took advantage of the informal custom that a spacer could have one free trip home, using it to wander at will all over the solar system.
- Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian and all Conan-derived characters. Conan himself, at least, has some explanation for how he makes a living while wandering (thief and occasional mercenary soldier).
- Randall Flagg, Big Bad of Stephen King's The Stand and The Dragon of The Dark Tower, is the rare villainous version of Walking the Earth. And Walking Alternate Universes.
- In The Dark Tower V: Wolves Of The Calla, Father Callahan reveals that he had spent the time between the events of 'Salem's Lot and his arrival at Calla bryn Sturgis wandering the Earth.
- In John Steinbeck's East of Eden, Adam walks the earth for several years after leaving the Army-he doesn't have much want or need to return home.
- Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ... possibly inspired by Twain's real life experiences.
- The Old English poem The Wanderer.
Live Action TV
- The A Team travels the USA in their van.
- Doctor Who is a classic example of this, though it's helped by the fact that the Doctor, with a TARDIS and time travel, really doesn't need to worry about food, shelter, or expenses.
- Although we never see him actually acquiring any of these things. Presumably the TARDIS is equipped with bedrooms, toiletries, and an infinite cupboard somewhere.
- Although he does have to make runs to Earth when he runs out of milk.
- In the 3rd series finale, Martha Jones has walked the earth for one year in order to tell everyone left on earth the story of the Doctor who has saved them countless times so that at the right moment they can all think of the Doctor and save the world.
- Dr. Richard Kimble, going from town to town, searching for the One Armed Man in The Fugitive.
- Hercules and his sidekick Iolaus of Hercules The Legendary Journeys also wandered the ancient world battling monsters, gods, and warlords.
- The protagonists of Highway To Heaven — though again, having an Angel of the Lord riding shotgun probably makes the little things easier to deal with.
- In The Immortal, has Christopher George as Ben Richards, who runs from the employees of a terminally ill, wealthy man who want to capture him for transfusions of his blood because he has every immunity there is, and is likely to live forever, and would do something similar for anyone who got transfusions from him. The exact opposite of Run For Your Life (see).
- Caine in Kung Fu.
- The Littlest Hobo was this kind of series, only the central character was a dog.
- Quantum Leap: Like the show article says, replace "Earth" with "Timeline".
- In Renegade, Reno was a bounty hunter on the run from the law.
- The lucky guys in Route 66 got to do it in a Corvette.
- In the mid-1960s series Run For Your Life, Ben Gazzara played a terminally ill man who roamed the world, trying to live as full a life as possible in the time left to him. See The Immortal for the inverse.
- In the Saturday-morning live-action adaptation of Shazam!, Billy and his Mentor "travelled the highways and byways of the land on a neverending mission".
- The TV version of Starman.
- Supernatural. Partly justified in that the Winchester boys have been shown to be competent enough forgers and con men to make a living.
- Then Came Bronson has Michael Parks traveling around the country on a motorcycle.
- The Touched By An Angel spin-off Promised Land featured a family that traveled the US while living in a trailer home.
- Parodied in Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, where Bob points out to Terry that his dream of doing 'whatever I like' can't happen except in America. Terry flees anyway, and gets as far as Berwick-upon-Tweed.
- Xena and her sidekick Gabrielle from Xena Warrior Princess wandered ancient Greece (and Rome, Egypt, China, India, Scandinavia) fighting warlords to atone for her past as the worst warlord of them all.
- Every week Jarod was in a new place with a new job in The Pretender while running from "the Centre".
- Feasting on Asphalt arguably has this as a premise. Yes, that's right, a cooking show on Food Network. 'nuff said.
- Since we've made cooking shows fair game, this is also the premise for celeb chef Anthony Bourdain's travelogue show No Reservations. In fact, the original premise of the show was that he would be dropped off at a location without his knowledge ala Man Vs Wild or Survivorman and forced to experience the local culture on his own, but that premise was quickly dropped in favored of well-researched and carefully-planned itineraries.
- Travelogue Show as a genre in general is arguably a nonfiction version of this trope.
- Movin' On with Claude Akins, who plays a long-haul truck driver, and his co-driver who quit law school one credit short of his degree.
- Adam 'the Knight' of the Yorkshire Television series The Wanderer. His mentor and his love interest also seem to spend a lot of time on the road.
- Knight Rider has Michael Knight driving
the Earth the United States and fighting crime with his cool AI car/buddy, KITT.
- The 2008 revival series has Michael Knight (Jr.) also driving
the USA California and fighting crime with the new incarnation of KITT, after it's mid-season retool.
- Played very straight in Firefly, with the crew of Serenity being constantly on the move. Though they do live in a comfortably-sized spacecraft, the crew has to constantly deal with Perpetual Poverty and is always on the run from the law, and sometimes complain about not being able to stay in once place for longer than a few days at a time.
Music
- The song by the group Lobo, Me and You and a Dog named Boo tells a story of a guy and someone else who is apparently his Love Interest, as he, his girlfriend and their dog are "travelin' and livin' off the land."
Mythology
- Odin did a bit of this, enough to earn him the nickname Wanderer.
Tabletop Games
Video Games
- Trent in Freelancer is a young pilot who flies the space. The game provides quite enough missions to give him cash not only to keep himself well-fed and groomed, but also to outfit his ship with enough firepower to destroy entire space stations (if only the game would actually let the player destroy space stations, which are indestructible by the player. Still, the player can eventually destroy any ship in known space. Or 10).
- This is the plot of the RPG Romancing Sa Ga - a main character wanders around the world, fighting monsters and righting wrongs with no greater goal in sight, until the lord of all evil rises from his prison and the player gets the job of sending him back again.
- Most, if not all of the Wild ARMs games. They're called "Drifters" for a reason, you know.
- Subverted in Orstead's Ending of the Final Chapter in Live A Live He does wander the earth but with nobody around
- Link from The Legend Of Zelda usually does this after defeating Ganon. In particular, Link's Awakening, Majora's Mask, and Phantom Hourglass all involve adventures that happen as he is adventuring with no particular goal in sight.
- Ike from Fire Emblem does this. He turns down a chance to be a noble in order to wander around with his posse of mercenaries, and all of his endings involve him leaving Tellius forever, presumably to do some more earth-walking.
- Guy in the ending of Final Fight, after clobbering fellow player character Cody. (They were rivals for the love of the Distressed Damsel.
- This trope is what you do in more or less every Console RPG. When you can get money simply by killing monsters (they somehow drop it or have it in their blood or something), freeing you from having to have any kind of steady employment, and there's an Item Store in every town that conveniently sells everything you might need to survive and an Inn in each of those same towns that can constantly keep you in perfect health, it seems like a lot more viable of an option than it does in real life.
- Street Fighter's Ryu embodies this trope. His ending in Street Fighter 2 even calls him simply a "wandering warrior".
- Zero at the end of the first Mega Man Zero game, separated from his allies for almost a year.
- It is only implied, but this supposedly happens to Veyne and Pamela in their ending in Mana Khemia Alchemists Of Al Revis. This is probably because Pamela is a ghost.
Webcomics
Web Original
- Common in Dimension Heroes, from Wyn traversing the Earth to the Dimensional Guardians traversing Creturia.
Western Animation
- Even Cartoon Network has done this kind of series, twice: Samurai Jack, and then Ben 10.
- Sonic and Tails in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog
- Scooby-Doo, in all its incarnations, is centered around this trope, as the teenage heroes roam the country solving mysteries for local townspeople, without getting paid, without having any recurring family or friends, and without ever worrying about school or jobs. Later spin-offs, adaptations and supplemental material refer to them as "Mystery, Inc.", though it's only in the more recent entries that they're generally recognized as investigators, and even then there never seems to be any payment involved. Their wanderings are subtly parodied in some spin-offs: at one point, the Mystery Machine drives through a snowfield to a scientific outpost, and a character cheerfully announces, "here we are gang, Antarctica!"
- Adult Swim's Xavier: Renegade Angel
Real Life
- Jack Kerouac
- Historical example: Miyamoto Musashi, the famed swordsman and author of The Book of Five Rings, spent much of his life as a ronin, wandering Japan as part of a Musha Shugyo (warrior pilgrimage).
- A generation later, Yagyu Jubei embarked on a similar pilgrimage and disappeared from all records for a dozen years.
- Chris McCandless, as documented in Jon Krakauer's book Into the Wild, and the subsequent movie adaptation.
- For some reason, I think I can really do this. I probably can't.
- If you made it back alive, it might make for a good book.
- It's a tradition of the old guilds, once one passes apprenticeship to become a journeyman and walk the Earth plying one's trade to accumulate knowledge enough to add to the craft.
- It's also a tradition amongst the devout, both amongst classical Christians and Muslims, to go on a pilgrimage (in the latter case, specifically to Mecca). One can book a flight, but one is supposed to walk, except, of course, when Oceans block the path.
- A man named Peter Jenkins did this in 1973, and wrote a book about it titled A Walk Across America. (He didn't walk coast to coast, but went from Alfred, NY toward the Gulf of Mexico.) He spent a summer building up his endurance by running, and then started off in October. Surprisngly, he didn't freeze to death, although he came close a few times.
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