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"...one must wander around the world, on probation, as it were, in search of adventures, so that by bringing some of them to a happy conclusion, one gains such fame and renown that when one does go to some great monarch's court, one is known as a knight by one's deeds..."
"And so he walked...and sometimes, drove...and occasionally, partied with the desert creatures."
Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction described it perfectly: "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.
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 (although this show actually explains how they get money: they conduct illegal operations like credit card fraud).
This trope is a very American one, and with good reason. 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. (Notable exception: Doctor Who)
When one is forced to walk the earth against one's will, this trope becomes the much darker Flying Dutchman.
See also: Stern Chase, The Drifter, Flying Dutchman.
Examples:
Live Action TV
- Dr. Richard Kimble, going from town to town, searching for the One Armed Man in The Fugitive.
- Caine in Kung Fu.
- Paladin in Have Gun Will Travel.
- 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.
- The Littlest Hobo was this kind of series, only the central character was a dog.
- The Touched By An Angel spin-off Promised Land featured a family that traveled the US while living in a trailer home.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- The A Team travels the USA in their van.
- The TV version of Starman.
- 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.
- Hercules and his sidekick Iolaus of Hercules The Legendary Journeys also wandered the ancient world battling monsters, gods, and warlords.
- 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".
- Quantum Leap: Like the show article says, replace "Earth" with "Timeline".
- Every week Jarod was in a new place with a new job in The Pretender while running from "the Centre".
- In the TV show Renegade, Reno was a bounty hunter on the run from the law.
Anime
- The anime Golden Boy is about a young man who bikes the Earth.
- 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 at the age of 10 alone!
- Kino's Journey has a main character and a talking motorcycle travel across a fictional world.
- The brothers in Night Head Genesis.
- 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.
- The characters from Blood Plus, literally circling the world by the time the series is over.
- 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.
Comic Books
- Doctor Banner in The Incredible Hulk.
- Miyamoto Usagi of Usagi Yojimbo fame, although I suppose Usagi being based on the historical Miyamoto Musashi halfway justifies this.
- 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.
Film
Literature
- Randall Flagg, Big Bad of 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.
- 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.
Western Animation
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 indestructable by the player. Still, the player can eventually destroy any ship in known space. Or 10).
- This is the plot of the RPG Romancing SaGa - 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
Tabletop Games
Real Life
- Che Guevara actually did this, although he rode a bike.
- 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.
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