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'Cause I'm a wanderer, yeah, a wanderer...

"I'm just going to walk the earth. ...You know, like Caine in Kung Fu. Walk from place to place, meet people, get in adventures."
Jules Winnfield, Pulp Fiction

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, and no visible means of support.

Most of us would agree with Vincent Vega's response to Jules's quote above: "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." Most people who go walking the earth by themselves are male (or disguised as male). Females generally belong to a nomadic group, mostly for defense purposes.

Some Walkers have some skills that they utilize to make a trade/earn a living while traveling, like hobos. (Roma are also traditionally known for this.) Some occupations, such as cobbler and tinker are traditionally nomadic because you would use up your customer base in a location and have to move on to the next only to circle back when your first customers had worn out their shoes or pots. The music business also sees a lot of these; touring musicians get at least a taste of this life, and those who want more work can always find it outside of their bands as fill-in musicians, tour managers, techs, and other "road jobs".

This trope is a very American one and is quite common in older Westerns. As far as big TV producing nations go, The U.S. of A. has the geography best suited to this form of adventure. Australia also has the tradition of the Walkabout, where young men would wander the land for months as a spiritual journey. However, this occurs in other countries as well, such as the Rōnin stories of Japan and the Chivalric Cycles of Europe and the U.K.

When one is forced to walk the earth against one's will, this trope becomes the much darker Flying Dutchman.

If a character walking the earth has a strict code of honor and spreads justice in his wake, he's a Knight Errant. Same code of honor (and wanderlust) usually results in passing the "Leave Your Quest" Test.

Most Wuxia heroes fall under either Knight Errant or (if they do not have a code of honour but merely wanders the land for enjoyment) this, they will master their arts and search for worthy opponents, either before a remarkable quest calls for them or after they already finished their quest in life and decides to drift off to other places.

Subtrope of In Harm's Way. Having Random Transportation is often used to provide the science fiction or fantasy versions of this trope. See also: Stern Chase, The Drifter, Flying Dutchman. Common MO for The Atoner. Not to be confused with the music group.

Compare Wandering Culture for when a whole society practices this trope.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Wolf's Rain: The series basically forces this on the majority of the cast. The wolves are natural wanderers to begin with, as they're searching for Paradise. Quint is hunting after the Wolves, and Hubb is searching for Cher. It's revealed early on that the Earth itself is dying, and as the series progresses, Quint and Hubb end up traveling together, and everyone just keeps moving, just to continue living and surviving.
    Lady Jagara's Knight: So where're you from, old man?
    Quint Yaiden: ...from the ends of the Earth.
  • Mushishi is a good example of this because its main character, Ginko, goes from place to place studying the mushi and helping others with mushi. While it's true he has friends and tends to revisit places, he has no real home.
  • Blame! jumps several steps ahead and has a protagonist walk the Solar System. Not that the journey is particularly romantic, carefree, or easy.
  • The anime Golden Boy is about a young man who bikes the Earth.
  • Pokémon: The Series:
    • Lots of Pokémon trainers, some as young as ten and others older, walk through regions and between regions to find new Pokémon for their teams, challenge other trainers, and collect badges to compete in the region's tournament. There are lots of Pokémon Centers that act as both an inn and a hospital to make this more practical. Ash's group is generally portrayed as better off than the Team Rocket trio because they spend their money on food and tents instead on evil schemes and robots.
    • Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon does things a bit differently as Ash and his friends aren't traveling around as in other series. This mostly due to the fact that the Alola region is made up of only four islands and could easily be traversed in a few days.
    • In Pokémon: To Be a Pokémon Master, Ash finally decided that to become a Pokémon Master meant continuing to meet and learn about each of the different types of Pokémon. As such, Ash and Pikachu decide to continue to travel the world at their own pace officially marking the end of the two as the main protagonists.
  • Kino's Journey has a main character and a talking motorcycle travel across a fictional world. She has a pretty good reason.
  • Ranma ½:
    • 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 Tendō Dojo qualifies as the end of their walking the earth, or merely a temporary respite.
    • Played for Laughs with an antagonist, Ryōga Hibiki, who Walks the Earth constantly and involuntarily whenever left to his own devices because his No Sense of Direction is so bad he gets lost trying to walk across a room.
    • Ukyō Kuonji also spent about ten years doing this after Genma stole her father's cart and abandoned her.
    • Minor single-arc antagonists are often implied to be doing this, like Natsume & Kurumi (anime) and Ryū Kumon (manga), who are travelling all over Japan in search of their father and the counterpart to their school of martial arts respectively.
  • Vash the Stampede and Nicholas D. Wolfwood from Trigun are examples, except that the planet isn't Earth.
  • A lot of the immortals in Baccano! do this. The most notable are the years between 1970-2002 in the novels where Maiza, Sylvie, and Czes spend a long time with the broad needle in a haystack reason of finding the other immortals who have scattered across the planet over a few hundred years.
  • 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.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Simon and Boota venture into a travel for self-discovery at the end of the story, following up Nia's death (it being the second time Simon lost someone close to him, the first being Kamina's death several years ago).
  • The characters from Blood+, 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, seeking out and brutally killing demons and trying to track down Griffith, his former commander and best friend who betrayed him during the Eclipse. He spends two years doing this before the Conviction arc, where he goes through hell and high water to save Casca, the woman he loves, after realizing he'd made a huge mistake in leaving her behind to go on his vendetta. He eventually not only rescues Casca but gains a circle of True Companions with which he has set out on a quest to restore Casca's sanity, which takes them far and wide.
  • 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 by Soujirou, Shishio's Dragon, who ends up Walking The Earth after the Kyoto arc. Kenshin's mentor Hiko was a wandering master swordsman before he took Kenshin in.
  • The Medicine Peddler in Mononoke travels around exorcising spirits.
  • Van from GUN×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. The last shot of the series, however, indicates his wandering may be cut short.
  • Inuyasha:
    • Inuyasha and his group constantly wander the countryside in their effort to collect the shards of the Dismantled MacGuffin and defeat the Big Bad all of whom have personal reasons to kill him with the exception of Kagome who is responsible for the Dismantled MacGuffin being in that state in the first place. They all settle down after both the Big Bad and the Dismantled MacGuffin (which turned out to be evil) are defeated.
    • Kouga and his two sidekicks takes to wandering the countryside in their effort to defeat the Big Bad who was responsible for the destruction of their tribe. At least until Kouga is given a wake-up call by his people that he needs to return home to the last survivors and be a proper leader to them.
    • Sesshoumaru (accompanied by his servant Jaken) wanders the land on a quest to become as strong as possible. Unlike both Inuyasha and Kouga's groups, he and Jaken continue on as nomads at the end of the story, although his ward Rin settles down with Inuyasha's group.
  • In Dragon Ball, the story begins with Goku starting this after departing with Bulma on his first Dragon Ball hunt, and it would happen again with the Red Ribbon arc, true to the story's wuxia inspirations. Both would have Goku travelling the world and meeting new friends and experiences along the way (Goku finds this easier than most thanks to spending his childhood in the wilds of Mount Paozu). Master Roshi also sends his students to walk the earth and get stronger such as at the conclusion of the Baba Arc (which is depicted somewhat in the anime), although how much of this is wanting to get them out of his beard so he can spend time with Launch is up for debate.
    • Tien and Chiaotzu take this trope even further. They walk the Earth for their entire lives going on training journeys.
  • Kuro and her party in Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro. The purpose of the journey is actually to find a cure for Kuro, though.
  • Claymores don't have a home. They are constantly given assignments that take them from town to town and never settle in one place.
  • Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- has this revealed during the ending. The real "Syaoran," or the male Tsubasa, curses himself to forever do this as payment for not disappearing when his parental paradox starts resolving itself. Rather than wandering one world, he's wandering the multiverse. It isn't that bad, though, as he's got two travelling companions and can stop by his girlfriend's place anytime he wants to as long as he doesn't stay too long.
  • The titular character of Vampire Hunter D. As a dhampyr, he doesn't necessarily get along with many humans once they find out he's more than "just" a skilled fighter, and he has a thing about not letting evil vampires get away with exploiting the populations they lord over. Since there's usually only one vampire or vampire family to a location, it's ever onward.
  • It's fairly implied that is what Juudai of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX will spend his life doing after graduation, using his abilities to communicate with Duel Spirits (and other nifty powers) to help people.
  • The Christian series The Flying House has the main characters "walking through time" in the titular house as they try to get back to the present day.
  • A series from the 1970s called The Adventures Of Hutch The Honeybee (from Tatsunoko of Speed Racer and Gatchaman fame) has the title character doing this while searching for his mother.
  • Likewise, Hana no Ko Lunlun is a shoujo series from Toei that has the title Magical Girl "walking Europe" with a talking dog and cat in search of a magical flower.
  • Remi from the Ienakiko Remi anime series. Both one from the early 80's and the Gender Flipped one from the nineties. In both of them, the traveling musician Remi travels through France either on his/her own or with their master, their best friend, and/or their animals. And both are based in a French novel where the (male) lead character does the same.
  • Early in Fullmetal Alchemist, Ed and Al travel across the country searching for clues on the Philosopher Stone. At the end of the series, the Elric brothers part ways and start their own journeys with Al traveling east and Ed west to each learn more about alchemy to later combine their knowledge to help others.
  • In all but the last few chapters of +Anima, Cooro and his gang wander around the kingdom. it seems like Cooro was collecting Anima for Fly, but he really just wanted to get away from him and find friends.
  • Allelujah and SoMarie after the events of Mobile Suit Gundam 00, wandering the Earth to find the true meaning of their existence. The sudden appearance of the ELS ultimately cuts that short.
  • Renton & Eureka literally end up like this by the end of Eureka Seven for over 1 year until they find their way home. The Gekkostate lifestyle is also full of this, considering they are mercenaries. The couple Ray & Charles as well.
  • Parodied in Silver Spoon with Yugo's older brother, who is an awful cook. He believes that the ramen chef he was apprenticed to sent him out on a quest to find the best ramen ingredients in the world when in actuality he was fired.
  • The titular character from King of Bandit Jing is always travelling to search for new adventures and stuffs to steal, never staying in one town for long, and would disappear forever after he gets what he wants.
  • Poppo from Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day travels around the world to spend money in his part-time job and he has mappings of his travels. He actually does this to make him forget about the bitter memories of seeing Menma drown and not being able to save her years before.
  • In Arata: The Legend, this is what Hinohara and his group need to do to make the 12 Shinshou submit, as they all live within their assigned fiefdoms in Amawakuni.
  • Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns: After Ash and friends help him stop Giovanni from capturing the cloned Pokémon, Mewtwo decides to let the other clones live natural lives in the wild, while he wanders the planet to find the meaning of life.
  • Bartender has an interesting variation. The main character was sent into the world by his mentor and has travelled and worked in the best bars in the world to hone his skills. The manga begins when he has become one of the world's best bartenders and returned home with skills no-one can match.
  • Ergo Proxy: Vincent Law's journey as an emergent from the Mosk dome to the Romdeau in an After the End world along with many others while seeing it as a dead wasteland. His journey back to Mosk on a Steampunk windship with Pino and Re-L Mayer however he sees much more life and the Earth is regenerating from its great disaster. Mind Screw is a dominating trait in the series and during Vincent's second journey from Mosk to Romdeau he and Pino have their dreams invaded which tells them more about the world.
  • The Legend of Mother Sarah is a rare solo female example. Sarah goes from one location to another, looking for her children. Her short-statured sidekick may help, but being an unusually tall and physically trained Action Mom, she's often able to come out on top by herself when she's being attacked.
  • Naruto:
    • In the end, Sasuke does this to atone for his sins.
    • Jiraiya did this for many years, but then he met Naruto. They both wandered the earth and trained during the Time Skip.
    • Sora, an Anime-Only character, decided to do this, after having been saved and befriended by Naruto, in order to meet new friends around the world.
  • Hunter × Hunter: Gon does this after passing the Hunter Exam, going from place to place and looking for clues to his father's whereabouts. Killua tags along.
  • Sunday Without God: After losing her village, Ai sets out on a journey to save the world, meeting new companions along the way.
  • Jewelpet Twinkle☆: In the last episode, Ruby leaves on a journey through Jewel Land, accompanied by a few other Jewelpets, to find the Flower of Happiness, wherever it may be. The OVA shows that they are still at it.
  • The flame hazes from Shakugan no Shana travel all over the world to hunt evil demons. However, it is not unusual for them to settle temporarily in larger cities.
  • Code Geass: Lelouch of the Re;surrection: After Zilkhstan's defeat, C.C. decides to wander off after the resulting celebration. However, she's joined by Lelouch, who chastises her for trying to leave without saying her farewells, and offers to join her. He even offers to rename himself L.L., owing to the fact that he is now immortal like her. C.C.'s response to Lelouch's choice is a Tearful Smile, and they both leave together.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds: Aporia, as an old man in the Bad Future, spent his life tirelessly wandering around the ravaged world as the only human left on Earth until he meets other three remnants — Z-One, Paradox, and Antinomy. This ordeal served as the basis for the creation of one of the three Emperors of Yliaster, Jose.
  • The Super Robot anime Saikyo Robo Daioja uses the space version of the trope. Prince Mito and his companions travel through the Ipron galaxy planet by planet fighting corrupt nobles and businessmen with the titular Humongous Mecha.
  • Henkyou no Roukishi Bard Loen: Bard Loen has grown to be 58 years old, so he retires and sets off on a journey to meet new people and find his final resting place. As he feared, the Coendera Family are trying to get him involved with the region's politics.

    Asian Animation 

    Comic Books 
  • Dr. Banner of The Incredible Hulk tends to alternate between periods of this and periods where he has more control over the Hulk and settles down. (E.g., his time with the Pantheon in the '90s, and his tenure with SHIELD in the teens.)
  • Miyamoto Usagi of Usagi Yojimbo, much like the historical figure he's loosely based on, Miyamoto Musashi.
  • 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. It was a coming-of-age time for the comic book, as much of what they saw was commentary on current politics and social situations.
  • In the unresolved ElfQuest: Rogue's Curse storyline Rayek walks the World of Two Moons accompanied by Ekuar and tormented by Winnowill's vengeful spirit.
  • Lucky Luke rides around everywhere, often to wherever one of his missions take him. And he doesn't mind sleeping on the prairie ground with his saddle for a pillow.
  • This is a major plot point of the graphic novel Midnight Nation, where a man has to walk from Los Angeles to New York City in order to get his soul back.
  • The Warlord (DC): Travis Morgan spends most of the story walking the hollow Earth world of Skartaris, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not.
  • The Spider-Man storyline The Clone Saga reveals that Ben Reilly, the clone of Spider-Man, spent the better part of five years wandering America after his creation. Available information about this period of Ben’s life includes that he spent some time as a vigilante in Salt Lake City (The Lost Years), and confronted a crime lord in New Orleans (said crime lord later came to New York and was fought by Ben and Gambit). These wandering came to an end when news of Aunt May’s hospitalisation prompted him to return to New York, where Peter Parker learned about his continued survival and the two eventually began to bond.
  • This is The Phantom Stranger's hat (well, his other hat, he also wears a tasteful fedora). He sums it up thusly - "I have walked hundreds of billions of miles across this Earth... across time and space... through the blinding light of the Elysian Fields... and the darkest depths of Pandemonium... where the stench and despair of the chaoplasm is always a potent reminder of how far man can fall. I am the Phantom Stranger. And the stranger comes... when the stranger is needed." An issue of Secret Origins offers as one possible origin of the Phantom Stranger that he is the Wandering Jew of Christian myth.
  • In the final issue of Avengers: The Initiative, this is what Trauma is revealed to do after the Initiative is discontinued. Literally, the exact words are that he "was last seen walking the earth, like Caine in Kung Fu (1972)". His actions since this have become Shrouded in Myth; he's either studying under Dr. Strange or looking for a man named Karl in Minnesota.
  • Douwe Dabbert does this. Throughout the series, he repeatedly refuses to settle down.
  • European comic Aria (1979) features a rare solo female example and an Anvilicious one at that who chose this lifestyle because she wanted to remain childfree and, most of all, man-free.
  • Red Sonja can typically be found doing this when she's not looking after her own homeland or helping someone out.
  • 2000 AD:
    • In Judge Dredd, when a Judge retires from active duty in Mega-City-One, he/she must embark on The Long Walk. The Judge is, essentially, exiled to the Cursed Earth or the Undercity where they must wander and travel for the rest of their lives and "bring law to the lawless".
    • Aquila: Aquila and his "brothers and sisters" are cursed to walk the earth, hunting down the wicked to send their souls to their godly mistress The Devourer.
  • In Supergirl story arc Many Happy Returns, Linda Danvers -a human girl who was Supergirl for a while in the Post-Crisis universe and is unrelated to the original Kryptonian Linda Danvers- and an alternate Silver Age Superman had a daughter called Ariella Kent. After her home universe was erased by the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Ariella was left to wander space and time on her own. Several alien civilizations fear her because she is massively powerful and completely innocent, ergo she is unintentionally and immensely destructive.
  • Superman did this in the story arc Superman: Grounded, just before the New 52. After feeling he was out of touch with the American people, he decides to remedy the situation by handing in his US citizenship and literally walking all over America looking for people to help.note  Amazingly, no-one seemed to notice that Clark Kent was doing the exact same thing at the exact same time in the exact same places, but if anybody did, then Clark could simply claim that he was following Superman, as many other reporters were surely doing.
    • In some versions of Superman's backstory, such as The Man of Steel or Superman: Birthright, Clark Kent spent several years before joining the Daily Planet and becoming a superhero wandering around the world, secretly helping people with his powers. This also shows in spin-off media such as Man of Steel or Lois & Clark.
  • In Kick-Ass, at the end of the comic trilogy, Hit-Girl cuts all contact with Dave, though he heard rumors that she went crime-hunting in Italy and Britain.
  • A few storylines in Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) had the Blue Blur and his Freedom Fighter friends travelling the globe to save the day:
    • The first instance was Sonic and Tails hunting down Ixis Naugus after his attempt to take over Mobotropolis failed.
    • The second instance when after Sally was robotized, leading Sonic, Tails, and Amy to hunt her and Eggman down to save her.
    • The entire Shattered World Saga was this, with the Freedom Fighters travelling across the shattered planet to help people and to find the Chaos Emeralds so they can fix the world.
  • The Heap: After its first clash with the hero SkyWolf and turning against its former countrymen who were now fanatical Nazis, the Heap took to wandering the globe, helping in its semi-mindless and often misunderstood way those in need and battling those monsters more malevolent than itself.
  • Daisy in Eight Billion Genies does this after the deaths of her fellow band members. She does this for 700 years due to her unexpected immortality.
  • Astro City:
    • Looney Leo once spent six years wandering around the United States. Being a living cartoon character, he did not need to eat or sleep or be sheltered from the elements, which made it easier.
    • In the early seventeenth century, there was Silverstring, a mysterious musician who wandered from town to town and realm to realm. His magical silver-stringed guitar was said to mesmerize crowds and repel monsters, but he would always move on to find new music to learn. He is rumored to have died somewhere near Romeyn Falls.

    Comic Strips 
  • Krazy Kat: "Bum-Bill-Bee", "a pilgrim on the road to nowhere".
  • Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin tries to start walking the Earth on a few occasions, most notably when he accidentally pushes his mom's car into a ditch and later when he decides to walk to the Yukon after "seceding" from his family. Naturally, it doesn't last.

    Fairy Tales 
  • Franz Xaver von Schönwerth's "The Turnip Princess": The story begins when the prince leaves his home to explore the world. After losing a magic nail which he needs to break an enchantment, he spends days or even weeks wandering around woods, fields and bad lands.
    So he set off to find what he had lost. Over field and over fen, past rocky cliffs and barren lands he wandered, searching every turnip field he came across, but nowhere did he find what he was looking for. Days passed, nights passed, many of them, and he was a long time a-wandering.

    Fan Works 
  • Adventures of a Screwed Up Clone: What Dani did both before and after Danny stabilized her, prior to joining up with the Wayne clan in Gotham.
  • In The Changeling of the Guard, Idol Hooves becomes resigned to this after realizing that his true identity as a changeling will inevitably be revealed eventually. He leaves his companions in the Saddle Arabian caravan soon after.
  • Checkmate (Anla'Shok): After killing her boyfriend during a PTSD attack, District 5 victor Victoria spends most of the year aimlessly walking through the woods surrounding her district, not caring if she lives or dies but always coming back in time to mentor for the games.
  • Children of an Elder God: After the War, Shinji and Asuka don't belong among normal human beings anymore, and after graduating high school, they decide to leave their guardian and friends and go sailing "around the world". They never returned to human civilization.
  • The Great and Powerful Trixie's chosen path, as described from her own POV in An Extended Performance
    So she lived on the road, by her wits, from hoof to mouth, from town to town? It meant that she was her own mistress, that no ignorant clod could tell her what to do, that she did what she wanted to when she wanted to do it, and for her own purposes.
  • What "Smurfed Behind: The Departure" would have led Empath and Polaris Psyche into doing while the other Smurfs were traveling through time (as they did in The Smurfs (1981) Season 9 episodes) in Empath: The Luckiest Smurf.
  • The Good Hunter: Prior to his arrival at Lescatie, Cyril has been wandering around for months. This is not as cool as it sounds like, however — Cyril would really appreciate it if there is a place to settle down or simply rest his head. If there is a nice, quiet farm, even better. A lifestyle akin to a boat adrift amidst the vast ocean is the last thing he wants in his life.
  • In Incarnation of Legends, Bell's grandpa's stories and Kojiro's presence inspires Bell to explore the world and gain some experience and skills before heading to Orario.
  • Kyoshi Rising; the title character starts this on her journey to become the Avatar. Unlike her successor Aang, Kyoshi's only means of transportation is walking from place to place, although she does get help from fishermen and White Lotus members.
  • Played With in The Legend of Fodlan, as being this led Link to become an aimless and depressed man, always searching for novelty after he defeated Ganon, stripping him of his purpose.
  • The Night Unfurls: The Good Hunter has been travelling the world before being granted an audience with Celestine, with mercenary work being his source of income.
  • The Wanderer of the North: Nikóleva during her self-imposed exile, using her alias 'the Wintermail', roamed the known world, helping villages and slaying dragons and Diamond Dogs.
  • Concerning Us: John, Janine, and James plan to do this together after they defeated the elemental, Janine travels all around the globe for her research and John generally never stays in one place for too long. Of course things are considerably easier with a teleporter.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In The Book of Eli, the main character wanders around the United States in a post-apocalyptic world.
  • 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 Vietnam) despite his homestead in Greenbow, Alabama, which seemed to maintain itself during his adventures.
  • Implied to be Tom's fate in the end of The Way (2010).
  • Into the Wild is a biopic about a real person doing this: dropping out of society to live in the wilderness of Alaska, without any special knowledge or supplies. Surprisingly Realistic Outcome when he ends up dying in an extremely preventable way, even though he could have walked out of his predicament if he just had a map and a compass. That hasn't stopped some people from deciding that this sounds like a totally awesome idea.
  • Kung Pow! Enter the Fist 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. This derives from the Akira Kurosawa movie Yojimbo, where the yojimbo of the title is pictured wandering aimlessly around rural Japan before he comes into the village where the events of the film take place. In fact, he finds his way there by following the direction pointed out by a stick he tossed in the air.
  • North travels around the world trying to find parents that are better than his.
  • Easy Rider
  • A Discussed Trope in Pulp Fiction: Jules Winnfield decides to do this after surviving a point-blank shooting, considering it a miracle of God, claiming God will guide him to wherever he needs to be. Vince immediately points out how impossible that would be and Jules counters by not giving a shit what Vincent thinks.
    Vincent: What if he don't do that?
    Jules: If it takes forever, I'll walk forever.
    Vincent: So you decided to be a bum?
    Jules: I'll just be Jules, Vincent — no more, no less.
    Vincent: No Jules, you decided to be a bum. Just like all those pieces of shit out there who beg for change, who sleep in garbage bins and eat what I throw away. They got a name for that Jules, it's called a bum. And without a job, residence, or legal tender, that's what you're gonna be, man — you're gonna be a fuckin' bum!
    Jules: Look, my friend, this is just where you and I differ.
  • Mad Max is this in The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, wandering the wasteland in search of gas. Mad Max: Fury Road seems to go the same way — except we don't see much of Max wandering before he gets captured.
  • In Man of Steel, Clark does this before becoming Superman, trying to blend in but performing "guardian angel" acts as needed. Intrepid Reporter Lois Lane is on his trail.
  • Gary King's eventual fate in The World's End.
  • Red Dog's journey across a quarter of Australia in the search for John, not knowing he is dead and buried in his home town.
  • Woody Guthrie is compelled to do this from time to time in Bound for Glory. His wife gets pretty justifiably angry about him leaving her and the children high and dry while he's out singing folk songs to migrant workers.
  • Encounters at the End of the World features a global nomad in Antarctica. Growing up in Communist Eastern Europe caused him to cherish the freedom of travel. He kept a backpack packed at all times so he could up and leave at a moment's notice.
  • Wonder Woman (2017): Napi began traveling the world after surviving the tragedies that befell his people at the hands of the Americans.

    Literature 
  • A Conspiracy of Truths: The main job of Chants. They go from place to place, finding stories and secrets, then pass them on to apprentices so that the knowledge isn't lost.
  • Beast Tamer:
    • The Tribe of Cat People live quietly deep in the mountains, but Kanade found this life tedious and uninteresting, prompting her to leave home and go on a journey, which is how she met Rain.
    • The rule of the Dragon race is that when one turns fifteen, they go on a journey to train and become stronger. Tania is currently on that journey, though not particularly interested in the training aspect. This is why she opts to join Rein, as she's interested in him and assumes she'll get just as much training done by being with him and Kanade.
  • Older Than Feudalism examples in The Bible:
    • Cain in the Book of Genesis is sentenced by God to walk the earth for the rest of his life, because he killed his brother, Abel. God says to him: "Now you are cursed from the ground that opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood you have shed. If you work the land, it will never again give you its yield. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth."
    • From the Book of Job: "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."
  • The Belgariad: The titular character of Belgarath the Sorcerer does this a lot, mainly because his master tasked him with keeping an eye on the Western Kingdoms. Of course, he rarely literally walks from one place to another since he has quicker methods of transportation.
  • Orson Gregory in The Dreamside Road has been traveling consistently for five years, before the story begins, and he's drawn into the Archaeological Arms Race for the eponymous treasure trove.
  • Jack Reacher from Lee Child's books. After spending his life traveling the world with the army and living overseas for most of his life, he chooses to become a drifter to see America. 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.
  • In Lois McMaster Bujold's The Sharing Knife series of books, after the interracial couple realizes that they don't fit in with either his or her families anymore, they go on an extended honeymoon that lasts 1 3/4 novels, visiting various landmarks and enjoying each other's company while they tried to figure out where they were going to live for the rest of their lives.
  • The Daevabad Trilogy: At the end, to atone for his past crimes, Dara dedicates his life to finding every Genie in a Bottle so they can be freed — a nigh-impossible task that could take centuries or millennia. A powerful djinn himself, he has millennia to spend, as well as the magic to look after himself on the road.
  • Ulysses as portrayed by Dante in The Divine Comedy. Dante, at least formally believing the Aeniad's conceit that the Trojans founded Rome and became the national ancestors of the Italians, has it in for Odysseus, hence his position among the False Counselors in the Eighth Circle of Hell.
  • Dante's characterization was picked up by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his poem about Ulysses. He gave the same story a more sympathetic treatment, but without removing the desire for adventure.
    I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
  • Sir Galahad, in Tennyson's eponymous poem, wanders the Earth 'whate'er betide, Till I find the Holy Grail".
  • Robert A. Heinlein:
    • The blind singer Rhysling, in the short story "The Green Hills of Earth". 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.
    • His most famous character, Lazarus Long, spends centuries wandering the galaxy. His wanderings are fueled both by boredom and by needing to move on from a community before the locals start to suspect his immortality.
  • 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 "The Walking Dude" 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, like The Bible, Older Than Feudalism.
  • Tolkien's Legendarium:
    • In The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf the Grey spent two millennia walking the (Middle) Earth while searching for ways to resist the return of Sauron.
    • Aragorn and the other Rangers have a bit of this as well — in fact, it's implied that this is a good part of the reason why Aragorn and Gandalf are such good friends.
    • Bilbo develops a taste for this after his adventures in The Hobbit and leaves to do just that near the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring.
    • In The Silmarillion, Maglor took up a life of wandering beside the sea and singing a lament over his own violent stupidity at the end of the First Age. The same is true for Daeron, who vanished after Lúthien's disappearance. Fanon commonly has them as Ships That Pass in the Night.
  • On the Road by Jack Kerouac
  • In the Casca: The Eternal Mercenary series by Barry Sadler, Casca is the Roman soldier who stabbed Jesus in the side with a spear. Christ dooms Casca to walk the Earth until his second coming. Casca busies himself during this time be being involved in numerous wars and adventures throughout history.
  • This ebook wears the trope on its cover, as the anthology is called Wandering Djinn and stars... well, look at the title.
  • Played straight with Vianne and Anouk in the novel Chocolat. Played with to chilling effect in the sequel The Lollipop Shoes in which Zozie manages to live this way using a combination of fraud, identity theft, murder, magic and spiking people's food and drink.
  • Turms in Mika Waltari's 1956 novel The Etruscan wanders across the 5th century BCE Mediterranean, joining pirates, fighting in wars, and participating in politics in various places. Most of Waltari's historical novels have the same theme. (e.g. The Egyptian, 1945; The Adventurer, 1948; The Dark Angel, 1952)
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is this, but Recycled In Space. Also something of a Travelogue Show.
  • In L. Jagi Lamplighter's Prospero Lost, the reason offered by Astreus is not at the Christmas feast.
  • In the Earth's Children series, Jondolar & Thonolan spend the first half of The Valley of Horses walking from (modern-day) France to the Ukraine, where Thonolan dies and Jondolar meets Ayla. In The Plains of Passage Jondolar & Ayla walk back to France, albeit this time with the assistance of two horses. Other characters in the series have walked from the Ukraine to Africa & back, and from France (or Germany) to China. Also Ayla herself at age 5 wandered the earth not knowing what to do or even what to eat until she was picked up half-dead by the Clan.
  • Walking the South America is part of Rivarez's backstory in Gadfly. Unlike many examples, it's portrayed very darkly and is the source of much psychological trauma for Rivarez.
  • The Moomins has Snufkin, a born wanderer who doesn't ask anything else of life than the freedom to walk alone and play his harmonica. He's psychologically unable to stay in one place or with other people too long, so after moving in with the Moomins, he still periodically leaves them to go Walking the Earth alone for an extended time.
  • Michael and Fisk in the Knight and Rogue Series. Especially by the third book, where they've had a good two years to wander around while the audience wasn't looking and have accumulated a load of interesting stories that are vaguely alluded to.
  • In Death: After the death of his sister in Portrait In Death, Crack went on this sort of journey. He comes back in Visions In Death.
  • Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker book finishes with two characters departing for this kind of life, with one warning the other that it won't be easy. They resurface in The Stormlight Archive on an entirely different planet in the Cosmere, having crossed the Spirit World of the Cognitive Realm to get there.
  • The soulscapers in Storm Constantine's Burying the Shadow. Justified in that there are so many of them in their home city that they have to wander far from home in order to find work.
  • In The Mortal Instruments, Simon's scared he's going to end up doing this, with the Mark of Cain and everything. Good for him the angel Raziel removes it.
  • Orrec and Gry decide to do this in Gifts since they no longer fit into Upland society. They spend the rest of the Annals of the Western Shore book traveling, for about twenty years, until they settle down at Urdile's university.
  • Elsabeth Soesten and Brother Hieronymus have no permanent residence and constantly move from place to place seeing what work can be had. Justified for Hieronymus; as a friar, he is tasked to travel and tend to the souls of people wherever he goes, though Elsabeth's reasons for wandering have not been revealed.
  • At the end of The Heroes of Olympus, this is Leo and Calypso's plan for the unforeseeable future.
  • The title character of The Traveller in Black by John Brunner travels about the magical world where the stories are set, with the two aims of seeing how the world is getting along and bringing poetic justice where it's called for.
  • This is basically the job description of the Witchers. They wander the earth, fighting monsters, and only stop the day they meet the creature that does them in.
  • Barnaby Gold, the protagonist of The Undertaker series of novels. After killing the man who murdered his wife, Gold has his business burnt down and is driven out of town by the meek townsfolk who do not want the heat that the killing will bring down on the town. Gold becomes a drifter, roaming the West and staying one jump ahead of the bounty hunters who come after him.
  • Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's is a downplayed example. She really wants to settle down, but she just can't until she feels that the place is right, that she can belong there. New York is probably her closest equivalent of that place though, and she leaves it involuntarily.
  • In the German SF series Maddrax the adventurers also move around the whole, post-apocalyptic world, to experience different adventures there, or to fight evil forces.
  • In the Eighth Doctor Adventures, the Eighth Doctor basically does this from The Ancestor Cell to Escape Velocity; having lost his memory and with the TARDIS reduced to a small box, he spends the entire twentieth century wandering Earth until his ship repairs itself (the novels set during this time take place in Britain, but the Doctor's dialogue suggests that he travelled to other parts of the world).
  • Merkabah Rider: Literally walking. The Rider's religious vows forbid him from riding his companion donkey. The "Rider" refers to the Merkabah throne-chariot of God.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • Arya Stark has to do this after her father, Ned, is accused of treason and executed, because otherwise she would have ended up as a political hostage like her sister, Sansa. Her initial goal is to find her older brother Robb and mother, Catelyn, who are leading a rebellion in the North. However, after Robb and Catelyn are murdered during the Red Wedding, she is left completely astray, as she has no family or home to return to. She decides to exact revenge, traveling to a different continent to achieve this.
    • Arya's younger brother Bran ends up doing this as well, after the sack of Winterfell and its occupation by the Boltons. He travels north beyond the Wall alongside three companions to learn more about his greensight.

    Live-Action TV 
  • B.J. and the Bear centered on a trucker and his chimpanzee as they enjoyed the freedom of the road. The theme song plays this up, celebrating all the new places and ladies they discover, even noting “And best of all, I don’t pay property tax!”
  • In the short-lived Fox series Danger Theatre one of the two rotating series was "The Searcher", a parody of Renegade and Knight Rider.
    Someone needs help, so they called me. That’s what I do. I help people in trouble...They call me: The Searcher.
  • 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.
    • In "Last of the Time Lords", 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.
    • Subverted by Donna during her off-screen time between "The Runaway Bride" and "Partners in Crime". She started walking the earth after having met the Doctor, but got bored after a few weeks after she realised that "it's all bus trips and guidebooks and don't drink the water and two weeks later you're back home."
    • In "The Big Bang", Rory, who has been granted a new life as an Auton, chooses to protect the Pandorica — which holds Amy's body, waiting until she can be restored — for the next two thousand years. The Pandorica's said to have gone everywhere, even the Vatican, and "the lone Centurion was always with it".
    • In "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship", the Doctor accidentally drags Rory's father, Brian Williams, on one of his adventures when he collects Amy and Rory. Early on, Rory tells the Doctor that his dad hates to travel. Thanks to his adventure with the Doctor, Brian ends up with a desire to see the world. The end of the episode has Amy and Rory collecting postcards that Brian sends from his travels.
    • In Torchwood, Captain Jack Harkness walks the Earth after he makes the heart-breaking decision to kill his own grandson in order to save millions. After six months, he realises that the Earth is too small to make him forget, and he beams up into space to start exploring the universe again.
  • Feasting On Asphalt is a travelogue show about road food starring Alton Brown.
  • Played very straight in Firefly, with the crew of smugglers on the Serenity being constantly on the move. Though they do live in a comfortably-sized cargo spacecraft, the crew has to constantly deal with Perpetual Poverty and is always on the run from the law, and they sometimes complain about not being able to stay in once place for longer than a few days at a time.
  • Forever: Apparently a good chunk of Henry's life between escaping the asylum and when he met Abigail. He talks of learning countless languages, seeing the world, and dying in various dramatic ways in exotic locations (Abe mentions dying in a powder keg explosion in 1843 on a Hudson Bay Company ship and in an avalanche (his second) in 1857 in the Klondike).
  • Dr. Richard Kimble, going from town to town, searching for the One-Armed Man in The Fugitive.
  • Paladin in Have Gun – Will Travel is a classic example.
  • Hercules and his sidekick Iolaus of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys also wandered the ancient world battling monsters, gods, and warlords.
  • Here's Boomer chronicled another Earth-walking drifter dog, and had an Expository Theme Tune noting that "He's never gonna settle down".
  • 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.
  • Between iCarly and Sam & Cat, Sam was wandering around the country on her motorcycle given to her by Spencer in the finale of iCarly. At the beginning of Sam and Cat, she decided to settle down with Cat.
  • The Immortal (1969) 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 below).
  • The Incredible Hulk (1977) has David Banner walking the United States in search of a cure for his rather unique condition.
  • The end of the second season of Iron Fist concludes with Danny and his surrogate brother Ward deciding to do this together in Asia, both for Danny to learn more about the Iron Fist and for both of them to do some soul-searching and self-discovery. The last scene of the season shows that, after some months, they're still doing so, currently located in Japan.
  • Mac references this in an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia saying that it would be cool to adopt the lifestyle of a hobo "travelling from town to town solving mysteries" but that it would be impractical.
  • Kaiketsu Zubat uses a lot of tropes from Westerns, this one being one of them. The title hero is looking for the killer of his friend; with few clues to go on, he ends up traveling from town to town fighting every prominent criminal he comes across, then questioning them about the murder when they're at his mercy.
  • 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 its mid-season retool.
  • Caine in Kung Fu (1972) is, of course, the Trope Namer, and did a lot to show people how easy it was to apply the model of Adventure Towns to an ongoing series.
  • Some versions of Lassie also depict her travelling alone, a la Littlest Hobo.
  • The Littlest Hobo was this kind of series, only the central character was a dog with a nose for sniffing out wrongdoing and a desire to help out .
  • As noted above under Comic Books, the Lois & Clark version of Clark Kent spends some unknown amount of time doing this before settling down in Metropolis. He steps off the bus with a battered suitcase, and later his father nudges him about putting it away for a change.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Somewhere between the death of Finrod and the start of the show, Galadriel spent centuries wandering Middle-earth in the search of Sauron's whereabouts.
  • May I Please Enter?: The Cowboy spends his time wandering around, admiring and entering other people's homes. At the end, he laments that he has no home of his own, and must keep looking for one.
  • Merlin (2008) ends with Merlin appearing to be doing this as an immortal old man in the present day.
    • Gwaine, before he comes to stay in Camelot for good as a Knight, voluntarily wandered the five kingdoms alone.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Nowhere Man has Thomas Veil (Bruce Greenwood) walking the earth due to his Loss of Identity. He spends the entire series as the only main character.
  • From Australia, The Outsiders (about a man and his grandson travelling from place to place). This article goes into more detail.
  • The short-lived Judson Scott TV series The Phoenix also followed this model, except the man doing the walking was a space alien.
  • Every week Jarod was in a new place with a new job in The Pretender while running from "the Centre".
  • Quantum Leap: Like the show article says, replace "Earth" with "Timeline".
  • In Renegade, Reno Raines was a Bounty Hunter on the run from the law while trying to clear his name of a false murder accusation.
  • inverted in The Riches in which the premise is that of a family of travellers that stops walking the earth.
  • 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 Samurai Gourmet, the nameless Rōnin is Walking the Earth. This is completely justified, since the protagonist who imagined him is Genre Savvy about Sengoku samurai.
  • In the Saturday-morning live-action adaptation of Shazam! (1974), Billy and his Mentor "travelled the highways and byways of the land on a never-ending mission."
  • On Sliders, the main characters are walking multiple Earths, as they travel to alternate versions of San Francisco and later Los Angeles while looking for their own home dimension. As such, they're often staying in motels or hotels, as well as working odd jobs in order to pay for that and food (though they sometimes resort to skipping out on hotel bills). Though their experiences make them a tight-knit group, they otherwise feel very alone. They occasionally express regret over not being able to settle down or stay with people they become attached to, as well as pained by essentially being strangers to alternate versions of people they knew back home.
    Quinn: I spend a lot of time in hotels. It isn't easy having people just pass through your life. No point in getting attached, though, when checkout time is at 12:00, right?
  • Supernatural. The Winchester boys, of course.
    • Most other hunters do this too, though some have a base of operations.
    • Supernatural deconstructs this trope rather than playing it straight, though: Sam and Dean are perpetually broke conmen who live out of their suitcases in rat-trap motels when they aren't outright squatting; they have the law on their tails, they have no friends outside the hunting community (and very few in it), and when they get on one another's nerves (which happens a lot), there's no escape. This is frequently Played for Laughs, but it's definitely not portrayed as romantic.
      Dean: You know, then there’s the crappy diner food and the—and the skeevy motel rooms and that truck stop waitress with the bizarre rash. I mean, who wants this life, Sam? Huh? Seriously! I mean, do you actually like being stuck in a car with me eight hours a day every single day? I don’t think so! I mean, I drive too fast and I listen to the same five albums over and over and over again and I sing along, I’m annoying, I know that. And you…you’re gassy! You eat half a burrito and you get toxic!
    • In season five, Castiel goes Walking the Earth searching for his Father, in the hopes that He will help them stop the Apocalypse. He disappears for days at a time in this quest, apparently checking anywhere he thinks God might be note . Since he's an angel who can fly and is Nigh-Invulnerable, he may have been searching space, too.
  • Then Came Bronson has Michael Parks, as Jim Bronson, traveling around the country on a motorcycle. The opening credits have Bronson briefly talking to a commuter next to him at a traffic light:
    Driver: Taking a trip?
    Bronson: Yeah.
    Driver: Where to?
    Bronson: Oh, I don't know. Wherever I end up, I guess.
    Driver: Man, I wish I was you.
  • The Touched by an Angel Spin-Off Promised Land featured a family that traveled the US while living in a trailer home.
  • A rare British example with Travelling Man, about an inspector wrongly accused of being on the take - on release from prison he set out to find a) his son and b) the man who set him up.
  • The Western series Wagon Train featured a group of people "walking the earth". According to Gene Roddenberry, the show's format of wandering from place to place and encountering different characters and adventures was the template for his own Star Trek.
  • Following his apparent death at the end of Ultraman Dyna, Shin Asuka has been walking The Multiverse, reappearing in Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legends, Ultraman Saga, Ultraman Ginga S The Movie: Showdown! The 10 Ultra Warriors!, and Ultraman Orb: The Origin Saga, continuing the fight against evil. Even in an alternate timeline in Ultraman Decker, Dyna's battle still continues to this day.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Shintaro Katsu's Zatoichi series lives and breathes this trope.

    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."
  • Walk This Earth Alone by Lauren Christy is nothing short of an apology of this trope.
  • One line in Suddenly I See by KT Tunstall.
    I feel like walking the world, like walking the world
  • Danish Metal band Wuthering Heights has several songs that cover this theme; "The Wanderer's Farewell", "Lost Realms", "Through Within To Beyond", "The Road Goes Ever On", "Highland Winds", and "Land of Olden Glory"
  • Gogol Bordello has a song Wanderlust King, based on the real-life of the group's frontman, Eugene Hutz.
  • A very popular subject of Celtic folksongs, the best-known being the traditional Tramps and Hawkers.
  • Al Stewart: "Apple Cider Re-Constitution," "Timeless Skies," and "Year of the Cat," among others
  • "Walking Man" by James Taylor. The titular character wanders across the land by himself and never stops to speak with anyone. The reason for his restless and solitary existence is not explained.
  • "King of the Road" by Roger Miller, and famously covered by The Proclaimers, among others.
  • Terry Callier's "Lazarus Man" connects the wandering Jew legend with the biblical Lazarus.
  • Metallica's "Wherever I May Roam".
  • The Plastic E-Gulls have one called "Aimless Wandering".
  • The Allman Brothers Band have "Ramblin' Man" and "Midnight Rider"
  • "The Wanderer" by Dion DiMucci
  • Battlefield Band's "The Roving Dies Hard" is about how former wanderers who have settled down (whether out of love or necessity) never really lose their wanderlust.
  • Zucchero: The video of the song "Fiore di Maggio" (Flower of May) follows an Indian woman who leaves a lively town to travel around the natural world, going through a rocky mountain, a vast grassland, and finally a beautiful coast.

    Myths & Religion 
  • Norse Mythology: Odin did a bit of this, wandering the roads in the guise of an old man, enough to earn him the nickname Wanderer.
  • Medieval Christian folklore held that there was a Jew who taunted Jesus on his way to being crucified, and was thereafter cursed to keep living and wander the earth until the second coming. The details vary wildly between stories.
    • This legend has also been conflated with Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus to the Roman authorities, so the "wandering Jew" may be "wandering Judas".
    • The legend got its start due to Matthew 16:28, in which Jesus says “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” Since the Second Coming still hasn't happened yet, some have speculated that one of Jesus's listeners must still be alive wandering the Earth anonymously.
      • Another interpretation notes it as a case of exact words, as one of the listeners was the apostle John, who would later write the Book of Revelation, in which he describes "seeing" the End of the World as We Know It and the coming of the Kingdom of God.
  • In the Book of Job, Satan appears to be less of a fallen angel, and more of a wanderer. As he enters the court of God each time, God asks him where he has been, and Satan says he's been "roaming throughout the Earth and going back and forth on it."
  • Many religions have tales of wandering saints who occasionally stop by to give help where needed (usually in disguise).
  • There are also legends of Jesus himself helping carpenters or masons who were building churches or cathedrals. Of course, the story usually goes that they didn't know it was him until he had already left.
  • The Mexican folktale of La Llorona has a woman named Maria being barred from Heaven after drowning her two sons in a fit of rage (and subsequently killing herself out of guilt). Forbidden from entering the afterlife, she's condemned to wander the earth forever, searching for her lost boys.

    Podcasts 
  • After her kids grew up and moved away, Maggie from the Cool Kids Table game Small Magic realized there was nothing to do where she was, so she began wandering the countryside to help, cook for, and care for others she comes across. As Shannon describes she's essentially a grandma for hire.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Haystacks Calhoun might be the Trope Maker for pro wrestling, being what would later be known as a "traveling face enforcer", being a gigantic agile attraction, a Big Fun guy who would show up in a territory often to make a fool out of a trouble maker, and then be on his way. Successors include André the Giant, and, oddly, The Boogeyman on the independent circuit. The latter originally being a case of The Thing That Would Not Leave in Ohio Valley Wrestling.
  • Bruiser Brody's career in the United States was largely defined this way. The only promotion he had any interest in being tied to was All Japan Pro Wrestling but even then, he didn't stay there for too long, he just reliably came back, often to team with Stan Hansen.
  • This was Sabu's attitude towards pro wrestling, being misled by his father to believe there was more money in drifting between territories than staying tied to one company. This often is true of professional wrestling, just not in the 1990s, when the territorial system was all but dead and the independent circuits fairly weak. Still, when Paul Heyman publicly trashed Sabu for walking out of ECW, that was just Sabu chasing after a bigger payday, and Sabu did come back, despite getting it from FMW and IWA Japan, two of the strongest independent feds of the time.
  • Texas valet Venus left the state after deciding she wanted to be a wrestler, with the goal of wrestling in every part of the country. As such, she doesn't stay put for long.
  • When Nikki St John took up pro wrestling she rarely stomped into any promotion with much fanfare and even more rarely did she stay long, as she wasn't particularly patient regarding her goal to wrestle in every state of the union. Much to the chagrin of those in Memphis, she did find a prolonged role in the state with Taylor Made as one of Melanie Cruise's "Chicago Girls".

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons: This is often standard fare for adventuring parties, who tend to wander seminomadically between dungeons and adventures. All those dungeons, however, mean that they have some means of support, at least.
    • The Horizon Walker prestige class exemplifies this, describing a character who slowly learns their way around every kind of terrain on earth and then some.
    • The darker side of the phenomenon is the "murderhobo" when the Fridge Logic hits of adventurers wandering from town to town taking on jobs that involve killing monsters and people, exacerbated by players who don't (want to) put in a lot of effort into characterization so they can get down to the part where they kill stuff. Supposedly a response to the Killer GM tendency to use player's backstories against them: it's hard for one's dear old mother or best friend to be held hostage or be killed as a Cynicism Catalyst if the character didn't have enough of a backstory for them to appear.
    • The Epic Destiny Dark Wanderer spends eternity walking everywhere imaginable, from the great cities of the Prime to the distant corners of the outer planes.
  • In Nomine: The Archangel Janus' servants are compelled to keep in motion — they gain dissonance if they stay in one place for more than three days — and spend their lives roaming the material realm, stopping in new towns only long enough to throw matches onto societal powderkegs before moving on.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • Eldar who feel too confined by their society's rigid structure are allowed to pursue the Path of the Exile and become Rangers, though they usually respond to requests from their Craftworld to return and offer their skills (and sniper rifles) in defense of their race.
    • Rather than joining permanent troupes like other Harlequins do, Solitaires spend their lives wandering the Galaxy alone, charting courses through the stars based on their own inscrutable whims and the designs of the Laughing God.
    • The Orks have their own inversion — Ork society is based on any boy doing whatever he wants, as long as it doesn't get him krump'd by da Boss. For some younger, "rebellious" Orks, the pressure is too much, and so they decide the best option is to enlist with the Stormboyz, whose training includes un-Orky training like marching and regimented training drills.
  • Warhammer:
    • Dwarf Slayers are banished from Dwarf society and doomed to seek out battles so they can meet an honourable death. Dwarves who have been disgraced must seek out their own death, and cannot commit suicide due to moral code (their gods would deny them a peaceful rest). They have 2 choices: Join the side of Chaos, or become a Troll Slayer. If they don't die as a troll Slayer, they try to become a Giant Slayer. If they still survive after that, they become Daemon Slayers. Its hinted at that there's a class beyond even Daemon Slayer (Dragon Slayer), but in-verse such a thing would be impossible as Daemon Princes would pose the bigger challenge. Dragon Slayers were apparently around for the War of Vengeance, which was centuries ago when there were a lot more Dragons and a lot less Chaos, so perhaps the most powerful ones were tougher than their contemporary Daemons.
    • Wulfrik the Wanderer (also known as the Worldwalker), as the name implies, is a Chaos warrior who goes around the world delivering unrefusable challenges to the greatest warriors and monsters and fighting them, taking their skulls as a trophy. Although he doesn't so much walk as sail the Earth on his flying teleporting daemon-possessed longship, the Seafang.
  • The World of Darkness:
    • Promethean: The Created encodes this in the very metaphysics of the titular characters. First, if you stay in any one place too long, the locals get restless and the land blights beneath your feet. Second, once you get old or powerful enough, Power Incontinence drives you to "go to the wastes" and spend a few years isolated from civilization. Third, the more you explore the world, the more of a chance you have of getting all that to stop by earning your humanity.
    • Deviant: The Renegades makes this a central conflict for the characters. By nature of their situation, sticking around in one place and getting a steady job is a great way to get snatched up by the Conspiracies who further want to exploit their unique natures.
    • Werewolf: The Apocalypse: The Silent Striders tribe is forced to do this by virtue of being forced out of Egypt millennia ago by the Followers of Set.
    • Vampire: The Masquerade: Most vampires tend to be stationary, carving out their own hunting grounds and sticking to them; Clan Ravnos, by contrast, are a nomadic bunch that love the open road. Come 5th Edition, this is now Enforced: after the Week Of Nightmares, the surviving Ravnos were cursed to burn up if they ever stay in one place. A Ravnos now has to sleep at least one mile away from anywhere they've slept in the last week, though some do get around it by having mobile homes or a series of small havens they cycle through.
  • Unknown Armies: A lot of hardcore members of the Occult Underground end up like this. Some of them are on the run, some are forced to wander around because of their archetype (The Pilgrim, the Masterless Man, possibly also the Flying Woman) and some just have nothing left back in their homes, so they set out seeking knowledge, power, and trouble.
  • Hollow Earth Expedition supplement Secrets of the Surface World. The Wandering Hero archetype is a monk from China who wanders the Earth fighting against injustice and helping people.
  • Rifts has dozens of characters who walk the Earth, but the most famous is Erin Tarn. An adventurer and historian, she has travelled across a large chunk of the Earth, and thanks to the eponymous Rifts, has been to at least one alien dimension. Almost every Rifts book has a section where she talks about either her own personal experiences there or the experiences of a traveller who's been there who she interviewed.
  • BattleTech: Non-aligned, non-landed mercenaries are the spaceborne version of this. If you don't have a homeworld or a favored House to work for, you just tend to set up shop wherever you can on one of the major hiring worlds and spend most of your time crisscrossing known space in between assignments. This was in fact Wolf's Dragoons' modus operandi before they were granted the world of Outreach.
  • Pathfinder:
    • Nivi Rhombodazzle, the gnome goddess of chance and gamblers, doesn't keep a stable realm — she's rumored to have had one once but to have lost it in a bet — and instead roams at will through the Material Plane and the Plane of Earth, settling for a while in gem-lined caverns before inevitably moving on.
    • The goddess Grandmother Spider doesn't keep any stable domain, as permanent homes and commitments aren't really to her liking, and instead roams the multiverse while carrying her home inside a hollow gourd.
  • Wanderhome revolves around the player characters going from place to place, without an end destination in mind. Unlike most other tabletop RPGs, the wanderers don't involve themselves in high-stake adventurers but more of a Slice of Life campaign.

    Theatre 
  • Hadestown changes Orpheus’s original death into this. Though you might argue that this only makes the Downer Ending even more tragic.
  • In They Knew What They Wanted, this is how Joe lives his life. Aside from prison, the five months he's spent working at Tony's vineyard are the longest he's ever spent in one place. Much like Vincent said to Jules in Pulp Fiction, Amy reacts to this news by calling Joe a bum.
  • Underneath The Lintel, a play by Glen Bergen, is about the narrator following the clues left behind by The Wandering Jew (see Mythology, above) across the world. Note that the treatment of the Jew is not based in racism, as the original myth is.

    Toys 
  • BIONICLE's Toa Lesovikk, the former leader of the first-ever Toa team, wandered aimlessly through the Matoran Universe, driven by the guilt he felt for letting the rest of his team get slaughtered many millennia ago.

    Video Games 
  • In the interactive romance novel Moonrise, the healer Ishara enjoys wandering the earth and intends to continue her travels indefinitely.
  • 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. Of course, Trent doesn't want to fly the space. The backstory sets up that he was just looking to make a quick buck and had it within his grasp before being sent back to well before square one, setting up the main game's plot.
  • Hidden Dragon: Legend, in classical wuxia fashion, ends with Lu Tian-yuan defeating Dark Raven, avenging his fallen comrades, and later overthrowing the Trigram by killing Zhou Zong, their last leader, saving the entire martial world from danger. The Imperial Court wants to seek the hero who saved China, but Lu had already went into a life of seclusion from the public where a decade later his deeds are part of legends.
  • 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. In Wild ARMs mythology, Drifters are less about walking the earth and more about living day to day, doing odd jobs (which tend to be monster hunting) to earn a living. They don't wander because they want to either: more than a few characters have become drifters by necessity rather than by choice, such that in the first four games, only two people have actively chosen to become Drifters (Cecilia in the first game, and Virginia in the third).
  • Subverted in Oersted's ending of the Final Chapter in Live A Live He does wander the earth but with nobody around.
  • In The Legend of Zelda, killing Ganon and saving Hyrule was framed as one of Link's many adventures; he was a wanderer already, and was going to wander off with the Triforce once he was done. He hung around to help the kingdom rebuild itself in The Adventure of Link. Link's Awakening, Majora's Mask, and Phantom Hourglass are similar wanderings (by different incarnations of Link), outside the Hyrule story. Majora's Mask occurred when Link was looking for Navi, his companion in Ocarina of Time.
  • Ike from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance 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.
  • Yuka Takeuchi is Advanced V.G's equivalent of Ryu. Meaning, she lives to test herself against worthy opponents, then goes on a journey afterwards. In her 2nd ending from the first game, she's last seen traversing the desert on foot. While in her normal mode ending from Advanced V.G. II, she has Reimi deliver a letter to her best friend, Satomi.
  • Tales of Xillia 2 reveals that this is what Gaius has decided to do, after the events of the previous game. Realizing that his original plan was wrong, he decides to wander the world of Rieze Maxia and Elympios, under the guise of 'Erston' and interacts with the civilians. All, so he can learn about both societies, cultures, and how to bring peace to both worlds.
  • 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. Especially if you can use magic. Conjuring your own food and water helps, as does being able to teleport in case of emergencies. Obviously, this means that this trope can be perfectly reasonable in fantasy settings.
  • Street Fighter's Ryu embodies this trope, wandering the world (if not multiverse) with only the minimum of possessions, seeking worthy opponents to test his skills against. His ending in Street Fighter 2 even calls him simply a "wandering warrior," and his title in the Boxing Ring stage in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is "Eternal Wanderer."
  • Zero at the end of the first Mega Man Zero game, separated from his allies for almost a year.
  • This happens to Vayne and Pamela in their ending in Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis. This is probably because Pamela is a ghost, and she hasn't grown out of her habit of scaring people.
  • If you don't find Ancardia in Maria's route of Knights in the Nightmare, she and the Wisp wind up doing this for the rest of their lives.
  • Bartz (and his chocobo) in Final Fantasy V. He starts the game as a wanderer, following his father's dying wish that he carry out this trope. It's so much a part of who he is that he's given the essence of wind, Journey, as a Light Warrior. He returns to this after saving the world.
    • In Dissidia Final Fantasy, when he's threatened by Exdeath by being told that he'll wander forever in the void after being defeated, he calmly replies that that doesn't sound half bad, but then goes on to win anyway. He personifies the wind, after all, and the principle attribute of the wind is that it travels.
    • Another Dissidia example: Golbez, being not only The Atoner but the only Warrior of Chaos not to bite the bullet, does this until he feels that he will be able to join younger brother Cecil in the light.
    • Another Final Fantasy example, though to a greater degree: Gilgamesh. To date, he has appeared in V, both remakes of the first, IV: The After Years, VI, VIII, IX, XI, XII and its sequel, Type-0, Dissidia 012, and XIII-2 and two expansions of XIV, where he is currently residing.
    • In Final Fantasy XIV, the Samurai Gosetsu starts doing this at the end of the events of Patch 4.3 as he wants to spend the rest of his remaining days giving reprise to those souls would couldn't get it.
  • It's implied that The Jedi Exile did this after the Jedi Council exiled her and she disappeared for ten years prior to the start of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.
  • Fear & Hunger: Termina: Should he end up as Ending B's Sole Survivor, the epilogue reveals that Levi ends up doing this: wandering from city to city across different countries and doing the odd job here and then until the trauma of the game's events forces him to move away.
  • In the Sonic the Hedgehog games, this is the modus operandi for Sonic - every time he trounces Eggman and saves the world, he's off looking for the next big adventure.
  • This is essentially what you do in Pokémon. You do generally have a goal in mind, beating the Gyms and the Elite Four, but beyond that you're just traveling around the region, occasionally helping out and saving the world. Pokémon X and Y gives a darker take on this with AZ, the former king of the Kalos region. As a result of using the Ultimate Weapon and sacrificing the lives of numerous Pokémon to revive his deceased Floette, AZ was granted immortality and began Walking the Earth in penance for his sins. He's been doing this for 3000 years.
  • A staple of the Fallout series where the protagonists travel the Post-Apocalyptic Wastelands while saving the world.
    • In the first game, the Vault Dweller is sent out to do this in order to find a much-needed replacement water chip to save Vault 13. Afterwards he is exiled from his Vault and returns to travelling the Wasteland. The sequel reveals he's eventually settled, founding a village and starting a family, then several years after his wife dies and at a great age, he mysteriously vanishes into the Wastelands once more.
    • The third game actually refers to the player character as The Lone Wanderer after his escape from Vault 101.
    • The Courier of Fallout: New Vegas has no real backstory, beyond delivering stuff across the Southwest. The setting itself lends well to the idea of rolling into town, solving their problem, and then walking out like you'd never stopped there at all. Ulysses implies in Lonesome Road that this lifestyle led to the Courier inadvertently dooming the Divide from becoming a prosperous trading settlement to a hellhole of lethal radiation storms and winds so fierce they strip the skin from those unfortunate enough to be trapped in the Divide.
    • Averted in Fallout 4, as the Sole Survivor can found new towns across the Commonwealth, as well as shack up at Diamond City, the Castle, the Institute, the Prydwen, etc., etc. Wandering, however, is always an option.
  • Radiata Stories' Human Path and its part of what makes that ending such a downer.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • Due to the Wide-Open Sandbox nature of the series, this is extremely common for the series' protagonists. Some of the games allow you to purchase or otherwise acquire a home (or several), but even then they tend to be used more as loot storage than as actual housing.
    • With the exception of his introductory game Morrowind, where he was stationary, recurring Easter Egg Legacy Character M'aiq the Liar generally runs randomly around the province the game in question takes place in. M'aiq is a known a Fourth-Wall Observer (and Leaner and Breaker) who voices the opinions of the series' creators and developers, largely in the form of Take Thats, to both the audience and Bethesda itself.
    • In the spin-off Action-Adventure game Redguard, the protagonist is a Redguard pirate named Cyrus. Rather than "walking" the earth, he prefers sailing it but otherwise fits the trope. Born into a noble Crown (a conservative Hammerfell political party), Cyrus dreamed of becoming a pirate since he was a boy. He got the chance when he needed to go into hiding after killing his brother-in-law (a Forebear leader, a more progressive party who was threatening Hammerfell with civil war) in a Duel to the Death after his brother-in-law struck Cyrus' sister (who was in an Arranged Marriage with him, hoping to bring peace). While duels to the death are a perfectly legitimate way to settle disputes in Redguard society, the son of a prominent Crown killing a Forebear leader could bring war. So Cyrus joined a pirate crew and only returned when his sister goes missing. He unintentionally becomes the leader of the Hammerfell Rebellion against the corrupt Imperial governor and leads it to great success. They would have named him King of the Redguards afterward, but he turned them down, in large part because he wanted to get back to sailing the earth.
    • In the series' lore, there is Sai, the Deity of Human Origin God of Luck celebrated in the Iliac Bay region. He was Born Lucky, with the uncanny ability to spread good luck to others but not to himself. After he died in battle (while all of his fellow soldiers survived), he was resurrected and granted immortality by Ebonarm, the Iliac Bay War God, so that he may continue to spread his good luck to help balance the world. For a time, Sai walked the earth, as he was supposed to, fulfilling his duty. However, he met and settled down with a Nord woman named Josea, with whom he had a daughter. By staying too long in one place, he brought it too much good luck, unbalancing the world. He was visited by a procession of other gods, including Ebonarm and the Aedric Divine Mara, who punished him by taking away his physical body and demanding that he make things right.
  • The Dalish Elves in Dragon Age. After losing both of their historical homelands to overly ambitious humans, the Dalish chose to scatter to the four winds and exist as tribes of wandering nomads, rather than submit to human authority.
  • Deconstructed in Lost Odyssey. The protagonist, Kaim, is an immortal wanderer who works as a mercenary to support himself throughout his endless travels. However, in the One Thousand Years of Dreams short stories it is revealed that this is far from a glorious or romantic existence for him. As an immortal, he has to watch those he meets, befriends, or falls in love with age and die while he remains the same. He desires a place to settle down and call home, yet this is the one thing he can never have, so he just wanders endlessly alone and has becomes bitter and apathetic to almost everything around him. It's little wonder that he comes off as such a Jerkass in the beginning. Fortunately, he gets better.
  • This is the eventual fate of any player who insists on being masterless in Mount & Blade, wandering from country to country selling their services, expanding their own personal army, and effectively acting as self-involved mercenaries. It's possible to reach a fairly high level as a warrior without a liege or a home territory and spend much of your time wandering from city to city and village to village, sorting out problems and doing missions as they appear.
  • In Majesty, the Rangers are big believers in this, as one might expect from a class whose raison d'etre is to illuminate your map. Once they're done with that, they have a tendency to leave your kingdom for extended periods of time, "traveling to distant lands". (Not that you find out what they do.)
  • Gunvolt in the True Ending of Azure Striker Gunvolt, though it doesn't last long. But Copen ends up doing the same in the second game's ending.
  • The interplanetary version is essentially what Kosmo ends up doing to rebuild his robot girlfriend in Love You to Bits.
  • In Magic Fairy Tales Barbie As Rapunzel, Prince Galen is cursed to never find his way back to any place he's been before. Since he's been everywhere but over the sea, it's a pretty debilitating curse. His confusion when Rapunzel frees him implies there was some degree of amnesia involved.
  • Dragon Quest:
    • Dragon Quest: At the end of the game, the Hero finally rejects the But Thou Must! trend when the King makes the offer to succeed him as ruler of Alefgard, saying that if there is a kingdom for him, he wants it to be one he builds himself. Canonically, Gwaelin/Lora leaves with him, and the two of them end up ultimately forming three branched kingdoms, upon a surrounding continent even larger than Alefgard.
    • Dragon Quest VIII:
      • After the boss fight on Neos Isle, Princess Medea confesses in a dream that all she wants to do is travel the world with the hero, even if she is never freed from her curse.
      • David is a seemingly unassuming wanderer who lives in Arcadia. It's a miracle he came from the barred off Tryan Gully and ended in Arcadia. Turns out that Dominico's ancestor was responsible for this as he made a spell that would ensure that the heir to the Sage seal would always find his descendants in order to be under their protection.
      • After getting his hubris and ambition thoroughly broken, Marcello sets off on a journey as a penance for his sins.
    • Dragon Quest IX:
      • After being turned into human, the main character must walk the Earth with a band of other travelers, helping those in need and trying any way for him to get back home.
      • It is said in his Bestiary entry that Shogum "he searches ceaselessly for his nine long-lost companions", but you only encounter him in Grottoes.
  • Over the course of The Walking Dead series, Clementine has visited at least 5 different states, having traveled from Macon, Georgia to Savannah in Season 1; then to North Carolina, Tennessee and Ohio in Season 2; and finally at Virginia for both Season 3 and 4, coincidentally where Rick's group currently are in the comics.

    Webcomics 
  • In Sluggy Freelance Oasis started doing this after the "Dangerous Days" arc (though so far we've only seen one of the Adventure Towns she's visited). But it turns out she did it until she found Podunkton, then stopped. So there wasn't much wandering after all.
  • Ohforf'Sake, the main character of The Noob is continuing to wander the world of a MMORPG.
  • Galatea in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!.
  • Subverted in Cwen's Quest where Cwen is cold, hungry and miserable during a walking the earth phase in her past. Even in the present, while she is on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, her life is often shown to be less than glamorous.
  • Para Ten seems to be going this way, though it's nominally only a month's journey.
  • Quentyn Quinn, Space Ranger: Quentyn traded home for the stars and doesn't regret it.
  • Monique encouraged Squigley to ride the rails as a wandering hobo in Sinfest.
  • The Exiles in Homestuck, who took Skaia's self-defense portals to Earth and have been wandering its ruins ever since.
  • Off-White revolves around a pack of wolves who are walking the earth to meet a mysterious sage.
  • In Darths & Droids, it was revealed that Ben (who had played Obi-Wan Kenobi through the first three Episodes) ended up doing this in the interim between Episode III and Episode IV. Turns out he forgot to write or call and everyone had thought the worse, especially his sister Sally.
  • Rip Haywire is primarily built on this.
  • Glorianna is always on the move, partly because of her mercenary work, partly because of her quest, and partly because of her desire to avoid emotional complications.
  • In Magician Edermask and his companions wander the continent in search of the secret to his immortality. It doesn't help that he's is hunted by Immortality Seekers and his Evil Twin Janus preventing him from settling down.
  • Poppy O'Possum establishes that Poppy and her daughter have had to move from town to town, always intending to settle down and live a peaceful life, only to be driven out by circumstances, usually related to the Fantastic Racism toward opossums the world has. They aren't shelter-less, at least; Poppy's Super-Strength allows her to carry her entire house as if it were a knapsack. That said, the comic takes place in the town of Eggton, and is about Poppy's attempts to not have to continue living out this trope.
  • Debugging Destiny gives us Strider, alongside most of the Blue characters. Through unspecified events, they ended up a long way from home, and are Walking the Earth as part of their attempts to return.

    Web Original 
  • Common in Dimension Heroes, from Wyn traversing the Earth to the Dimensional Guardians traversing Creturia.
  • New York Magician: Seems to be the Djinn's fate. Well, walking New York, anyways.
  • Land Games: At the end of Act 2, Brand is defeated by Serge. Defeated players are normally "captured" and basically made guests of the winner. Brand opts to go explore the planet instead.
  • The Journal of the Walk and The Journal of Aframos Longjourney from The Wanderer's Library (in fact, Longjourney is a title specifically given to someone who walks the earth).
  • The AlternateHistory.com timeline Malê Rising features several characters that do this, most notably the military commander Andras Weisz and his company. Captured by the Ottomans during the Great War and sent to the upper Nile, they escaped their captors and wandered across Africa for three years to return to Austria-Hungary only to find out that the empire had collapsed in the interim.
  • SCP Foundation has, among others, SCP-1440 "The Old Man from Nowhere", a man who beat Death (or Deaths, there are three of them) in a card game. While the Brothers Death are usually good losers, they got a bit pissed when he decided to humiliate them by beating them three more times, and they thus cursed him to ever be barred from the afterlife, with the additional curse that any manmade structures and civilizations will fall to ruin if he ever gets near them.

    Western Animation 
  • Samurai Jack has the titular character traveling the world seeking a way to return back to his era, where he can stop the Big Bad from succeeding at the evil plans which resulted in the Bad Future in which he's stuck. In season 5, it's revealed that he was stricken with immortality when Aku sent him to the future. Additionally, Aku has destroyed all the time portals and worst of all Jack's lost his sword which is the one weapon that can kill Aku, so at this point he's just wandering aimlessly. Stuck in a never-ending stalemate with his Arch-Enemy.
  • Both the original Ben 10 and its 2016 reboot have cousins Ben and Gwen, and their grandfather Max, traveling across the continental US during summer vacation, with them visiting various tourist towns or old family friends along the way.
    • Some of the episodes involving younger Ben in Ben 10: Omniverse have his plot take place during the following summer.
  • In most incarnations of the series, Felix the Cat is a nomad, frequently travelling all around the Earth, and he doesn't have a consistent place of residence or job in any of the series. This is especially prominent in the original silent cartoons.
  • 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!". As revealed in Mystery Inc, all the mysteries the gang solved in previous incarnations of the show actually happened in their hometown of Crystal Cove, which has made it famous as a supernatural hotspot, and most local business is based chiefly on tourism. So much so that Velma, with her tendency to bitterly point out that every last one was a hoax, poses a significant danger to the local economy all by herself.
  • [adult swim]'s Xavier: Renegade Angel is a parody; he thinks he's the noble, philosophical wandering hero, but while he's got the "travelling the Earth with no job or home" part down, what he does is the furthest thing from helping.
  • The Hanna-Barbera series Devlin is a subversion since the main characters are part of a travelling circus (well, technically the title character is; his brother Todd assists him bike maintenance, etc, while both are the legal guardians of their sister Sandy).
  • Any show (Hanna-Barbera or otherwise) that involves a travelling musical group (e.g., Josie and the Pussycats, Jabberjaw) can be considered a subversion since they're likely on some kind of indefinite "tour."
  • The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin starts out this way initially, but then they return to Newton Gimmick's house until the next adventure, making it another subversion.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • The Gaang must do this, initially to get from the South to the North Pole and making a lot of detours/helping people along the way. After the first season, they get more involved with the Earth and Water militaries, their destination keeps changing, and they are often on the run.
    • The Air Nomads lived their lives walking the earth, but they justify this trope in that they were 1. equipped with means to travel vast distances effortlessly (airbending and Sky Bison) and 2. very spiritual people who kept very few physical possessions, and could live in harmony with nature.
    • While the nature of the Avatar's duties call for a certain amount of walking the earth, they do generally have homes they return to, such as Kyoshi Island and Roku's island, and Aang probably would too if not for certain events.
    • Zuko spends three years sailing the earth and spends a couple of months wandering around in the Earth Kingdom. Said wandering did more for his character development than just about anything else.
  • The Legend of Korra:
    • Zuko explores the world again, this time as a peace ambassador after he retires and his daughter takes over as Fire Lord. He stops walking the earth to help out in dealing with Zaheer when the latter and his friends break out in Book 3.
    • It is mentioned that Toph also started wandering around the world in search of enlightenment, and hasn't been seen since... until Korra is led by spirits to her home in the swamp in Season 4.
  • In Transformers: Prime it's Wheeljack who does this with the galaxy. It's later revealed that a fellow Wrecker of his, Seaspray, did the same until Dreadwing killed him. Wheeljack then pursued him to Earth and has since given up the whole galaxy wandering- but now he wanders the Earth instead.
  • Uncle Grandpa and Belly Bag drive the Earth helping children in need, though as with Doctor Who above the fact that he's a major Reality Warper probably helps with the logistical issues.
  • Wander over Yonder is an interplanetary version of this.
  • Timon & Pumbaa has the eponymous duo traveling to different places on Earth.
  • Castlevania (2017) has the Big Bad, Dracula, falling in love with Lisa, a mortal woman, and marrying her. In exchange for him sharing his scientific knowledge with Lisa, he honors her request to live and travel as a mortal man. 20 years later, Lisa is accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake, and by the time Dracula finds out, he's too late to save her. So it's no surprise when he stops travelling as a man and goes on the warpath, summoning an army of demons from Hell and laying waste to Wallachia.
  • Storm Hawks has the titular Sky Knight team flying across the numerous terras of Atmos to do adventuring, helping the terra natives with their problems, and fighting the Cyclonian Empire and other evils wherever they might be. In fact, this is the life of anyone who decides not to just live on a single terra, be they Sky Knights without a proper terra to protect or just plain adventurers.
  • At the end of Steven Universe: Future, Steven himself decides to leave Beach City to go on a road trip, planning to visit all 39 States in his world's version of America to find himself.
  • The main characters of Primal (2019) are Spear and Fang, a neanderthal-like caveman and Tyrannosaurus who bond over losing their families and wander the prehistoric world, encountering different creatures and battling the Monster of the Week in each episode.
  • Doctor Snuggles: Uncle Bill, a friend of the Doctor, fits this trope; he is shown traveling around the world and bringing news to Doctor Snuggles, sometimes leading to the episode's plot.

    Real Life 
  • Teresa Carey is a blog written by a female solo sailor who gave up her home, her job, and most of her possessions to simply... sail around. She's been doing this for years by herself on a minuscule 27-foot-long sailboat, taking up odd jobs here and there (if you look carefully in her blog, it's quite a list.) She even has a scrappy but lovable animal sidekick, Dory her cat. Because she's technically not walking the Earth, she's the Lady of Adventure minus the tea.
  • Jack Kerouac.
    • Also Neal Cassady, Kerouac's best friend and personal hero, whom he immortalized in his books as Dean Moriarty/Cody Pomeray. A lot of Cassady's wanderlust came from the constant moves and travels of his childhood, especially on freight trains with his poor alcoholic father. That said, Cassady's a bit more of a case of Driving The Earth, especially when he helmed the bus Further while with the Merry Pranksters.
  • Paul Erdős. He went from mathematician to mathematician, staying over and helping them in their work. Mathematicians note direct or indirect collaborations with Erdős through a system of Erdős numbers.note 
  • Historical example: Miyamoto Musashi, the famed swordsman and author of The Book of Five Rings, spent much of his life as a Rōnin, 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/movie Into the Wild. This could be a deconstruction, though, as McCandless's swift death at the hand of mistress nature is a testament as to why doing this is usually a bad idea. Of course, most people doing this are traveling from town to town, not deliberately isolating themselves deep in the wilderness.
  • 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. There are Real Life trades that not only allow, but make people walk (or drive, or sail) the Earth with their job and change often their employer: sailor, diver, oil rig worker, truck driver, miner, geologist.
    • The Guild of Freemasons got its name from the fact that medieval stonemasons were free to wander around, plying their trade in different towns, in a time when the average person would never travel more than a few miles from home.
  • 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.
    • Jenkins went from coast to coast. His walk from Louisiana, where he ended the first book, to Oregon where he completed his journey, is chronicled in the second book, The Walk West. Not only did he make the cross-country walk, but he got married shortly before setting out on the second leg, and his wife went with him. He followed that up by walking through China.
  • Upper-class European youth often took a "Wanderjahr" or year abroad between finishing school and the rest of their lives. They were supposed to soak up culture, usually in Italy or Greece. The "Gap Year" is the closest modern equivalent.
  • Many nomadic societies throughout history (the Mongols are one prominent example). They live on land that isn't suitable for stable agriculture, so they make a living hunting, grazing livestock, and raiding towns or other tribes.
  • Zero Dean is doing this right now. And you can decide where he goes next.
  • A journalist named Mark Boyle decided to walk from Bristol, in England, to Gandhi's birthplace in Porbandar, India, without money or food, in sandals, relying entirely on the hospitality of strangers. He got as far as arriving in France, where it apparently came as a revelation to him that the people in France (a) speak French and (b) aren't that hospitable to non-French-speaking freeloaders who they think are asylum seekers. He quit in Calais and went home, where he is now living "without money"... and blogging about it.
  • China, around the Spring and Autumn Period until the end of the Han Dynasty, had the Youxia, or wandering blades. These were typically armed men who spent their lives wandering about China (or even beyond) for various reasons. Some were merely poets, travelers, and philosophers whose swords were merely for protection as they contemplated a "floating" existence while some were complete thugs who were willing to raise hell for money.
  • Rory Stewart walked from Iran to Nepal in 2001-2, then across Afghanistan in 2002, then went back to Scotland, put in his resume with the British civil service, and became a provincial governor in Iraq. And here we thought they didn't make Scots like they used to.
  • On May 1st, 2011, Laura Milkins set out from her home in Tucson, Arizona to walk to her mother's house in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 2000 miles away. She arrived there on October 3rd at noon.
  • Mildred Norman, known as Peace Pilgrim, took a vow to "remain a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace, walking until given shelter and fasting until given food." She wandered the United States for 28 years before dying in an auto accident.
  • This guy walked around America for several years as a faith pilgrimage, depending on God (through the means of whoever he ran into) to provide food and shelter without his asking for anything more than water or permission to sleep on church porches. It worked.
  • Sam Salwei, a modern-day Nomad, has been traveling for ten years adventure racing, rock climbing, teaching slacklining and partner acrobatics around the world. 400,000 miles later, the Peace Love Car is nearing the end of its life, to be memorialized in a film of its travels "Road to Wanderlust"
  • Bill Robinson has been voluntarily homeless for over twenty years, lives off the grid in a hut that he built himself, and financially sustains himself through a mix of farming and band income. Touring serves as a way of wandering.
  • Some journalists spend long periods of time traveling, moving from place to place to cover stories. It’s especially true of conflict journalists who are always on the move from one global hotspot to the next in pursuit of a good story.
  • Los Angeles based artist David Choe spent many years from his teen years to his early adulthood hitchhiking across the United States and then traveling the world on a shoestring budget. Sometimes to make ends meet he’d take small jobs, but only so that he could fund further travel. This was in part because he had a difficult upbringing and emotional trauma and traveling helped him make sense of things.
  • This is essentially how Ken Sorceron lives. The vast majority of his time is spent touring, be it as a musician (primarily Abigail Williams and The Faceless, as well as the various bands that he fills in for) or as a touring soundman, merch assistant, or tech, and his time at home is usually spent either writing and recording or doing mixing and mastering work for extra cash. This is part of the reason why so many people enter and exit his projects and why Abigail Williams is literally just him, Jeff Wilson, and anyone who can make that current tour, as not everyone can handle his road warrior lifestyle.
  • Anyone doing a "thru-hike" on a really long hiking trail is more or less doing this. Though a lot of it is in wilderness, hikers often diverge into local towns along the way for provisions. The Big Three of American Hiking are the Appalachian Trail (~2200 miles), the Continental Divide Trail (~3100 miles), and the Pacific Crest Trail (2653 miles). Any one of them takes roughly 6 months or more to complete.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Roam The Earth, Walk The Earth, Wandering The Earth, Walking The World

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Nothing in the World is Better

In the very first scene, the musicians sing about how happy they are to wander in freedom all the time and how they won't trade it even for a life in a palace.

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