Walking The Earth - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Roam The Earth; Walk The Earth

Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.

—Steven Wright

"Basically I'm just gonna walk the earth...You know, like Caine in the Kung Fu - walk from place to place, meet people, get in adventures."

—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, no visible means of support, yet is always healthy, well-fed, clean, and welcome wherever he goes.

Most of us would agree with Vincent Vega's response to Jules: "You're gonna become a bum! If you don't have a job, a home, and legal tender, that's all you'll be is a bum. Someone who picks in garbage cans and eats the stuff I throw away." Characters in a pre-modern setting have slightly more justification; traditions of hospitality often meant that a traveler could reasonably expect shelter and food from strangers... but even so, it's not what you'd call a safe or healthy way to live.

There have been few Walking The Earth shows lately; the trope lay fallow until fall 2005, when a Walking The Earth show entitled Supernatural premiered.

This trope is a very American one, and it's also a very Nineties one - it's practically joined at the hip with the Nineties Adventure Show genre, in which it saw by far its fullest expression. As far as big TV producing nations go, The U.S. of A. has the geography best suited to this form of adventure, however, in reality, most of these shows which featured American leads were actually shot in either Canada or New Zealand and featured plenty of local supporting cast. (Notable exception: Doctor Who, largely because he isn't limited to walking the Earth.) Also a very common trope in older Westerns.

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.

Subtrope of In Harms Way. See also: Stern Chase, The Drifter, Flying Dutchman.

Examples

Anime and Manga

Blame! jumps several steps ahead and has a protagonist walk the Solar System!
The anime Golden Boy is about a young man who bikes the Earth.
- More accurately, the titular young man bikes Japan. But in Japan, the world IS Japan, so the trope stands.
The cast of RPG-trope specific Pokemon also engaged in Walking The Earth, as especially pointed out via the amazing Ghibli Hills landscapes in the ending credits of the first movie. If the game is any indication, it's a-okay to wander the world alone at the age of ten!
- While carrying around superpowered monsters capable of breathing fire, flying, generating enough electricity to power a small town, et cetera. When there's a free Trauma Inn in nearly every town. And remember that just about every region is analogous to a part of Japan.
Kino's Journey has a main character and a talking motorcycle travel across a fictional world.
- A pretty acceptable alternative to being forcefully altered into a Pollyanna-i.e. an adult.
The brothers in Night Head Genesis.
In Ranma One Half, the Saotomes had been doing this for about fifteen years at the opening of the series. It's left up in the air whether or not their time in the Tendo Dojo qualifies as the end of their Walking The Earth, or merely a temporary respite. Also, antagonist Ryoga Hibiki always Wanders The Earth, due to the fact that his sense of direction is so bad he gets lost trying to walk across a room. Ukyo Kuonji also spent about ten years doing this after Genma stole her father's cart and abandoned her, while minor single-arc antagonists are often implied to be doing this, like Natsume & Kurumi (anime) and Ryu 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.
The setting of The Slayers
The Saiyuki gang could be considered to be part of this trope; although they do have a destination, they get side-tracked so often that they might as well not have one. Luckily, Sanzo has a credit card. The kind that's accepted everywhere. Even in small, rural villages in the middle of nowhere.
This makes up most of the plot of Scrapped Princess...but they do a lot more running, so to speak.
Simon and Boota did this at the end of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Not all fans were pleased with the circumstances. It's justified by the fact that he's simply not the type of person to settle down - let Rossiu lead Kamina City while Simon has his freedom.
The characters from Blood Plus, literally circling the world by the time the series is over. Particularly Hagi, who not only accompanies Saya on her journey during the series, but also wanders the earth during her dormant periods as well.
Kenshiro is introduced doing this in Fist Of The North Star, and generally wanders when he isn't dealing with a specific foe.
Guts wanders Midland in Berserk when we first see him, until the "Conviction" arc gives him something to focus on.
Rurouni Kenshin subverts this trope, showing what happens when a swordsman who'd been wandering around Japan for 10 years actually settles down in one place for a while. Kenshin does leave Tokyo occasionally, but it's always for a specific place and a specific goal, and he always returns to the Kamiya dojo in the end.
- It's also played straight: Soujirou, Shishio's Dragon ends up Walking The Earth after the Kyoto arc.
C.C. ends up doing this in Code Geass.
- Lelouch may also count depending on how you interpret the ending.
Kusuriuri-san (The Medicine Seller) in Mononoke.
Van from Gun X Sword was Walking The Earth before the series began - more specifically, before he met Elena - and then ends up wandering about nearly aimlessly in search of The Clawed Man who killed her. After he gets his revenge, he leaves his comrades to continue his aimless wandering. The last shot of the series, however, indicates his wandering may be cut short.
Rain in Immortal Rain.
InuYasha
In Dragonball Master Roshi sends his students to walk the earth and get stronger. Goku does this for most of his childhood.
Kuro and her party in Shoulder A Coffin Kuro. The purpose of the journey is actually to find a cure for Kuro, though.
One Piece.
Claymores don't have a home. They are constantly given assignments that take them from town to town and never settle in one place.
- Although, Claymores aren't necessarily welcome wherever they go. It's more like: "Uh, great. Can you kill the shape-shifting demon really quick and go away? Oh, and don't become a demon yourself and eat us. Thanks..."
Ginko from Mushishi.
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".
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.

Comic Books

Doctor Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk.
- And David Banner in the TV series.
Miyamoto Usagi of Usagi Yojimbo, much like the historical figure he's loosely based on, Miyamoto Musashi. And many others.
Groo The Wanderer
Y The Last Man has Yorick and 355 going from Washington D.C. to Paris the long way by the time the story ends (Dr. Mann got dropped off in China to continue her father's work). It started out an escort mission to get the titular last man to the nearest cloning expert in Boston and things kinda snowballed when her lab was burned down.
Green Lantern and Green Arrow spent some time Walking The Earth — or America, at least — together in the early '70s.
In the unresolved Elf Quest: Rogue's Curse storyline Rayek walks the World of Two Moons accompanied by Ekuar and tormented by Winnowill's vengeful spirit.
Lucky Luke 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 in order to get his soul back.
Travis Morgan spent most the The Warlord doing this; sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. (Actually it was 'walking the hollow Earth world of Skartaris', but close enough.)
It's 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."

Film

In First Blood, Rambo is wandering around the United States, unable to mesh with society. The later films usually give him a home, which is portrayed as being somewhere in Thailand.
Forrest Gump trekked (sometimes ran) quite a bit about the US countryside (not to mention a tour in the Viet Nam war) despite his homestead in Greenbow, Alabama, which seemed to maintain itself during his adventures.
As written above, Kung Pow has The Chosen One walk the earth for the first part of the movie after being raised by what seem to be rats.
The end of Teeth implies that our heroine will spend the rest of her days as The Drifter, Walking The Earth and, um, chomping off the penises of sexual predators.
The Man With No Name in spaghetti Westerns, who rides into town, kills the bad guys... and leaves again, presumably on his way to some other town to do the same thing over again.
- 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.

Literature

Cain in Bereshis, wandering with God's mark on his forehead protecting him—-from whom? is a good question, given that at that point there are almost no other people on Earth....
- Adam and Eve? Abel's surviving wife and kids (never mentioned but not ruled out either)? His brothers and sisters and their children? Cain, Abel, and Seth are the only children of Adam and Eve mentioned by name, but the Bible explicitly says there were others besides.
- Seeing as he just killed his brother, he might very well need protection from the rest of his family. Quite a logical fear for him to have, especially considering that people will usually suspect others of being willing to stoop to the same depths that they do.
- The 'mark' Cain received was not necessarily a physical mark on his face. God may have provided Cain with a dog, which would have followed Cain and protected him (and also provided an origin myth for the first canine-human partnership).
Jack Reacher from Lee Child's books. After spending his life traveling the world with the army and living overseas most of his life, he chooses to become a drifter to see America. 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.
'Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them. And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.'—from Job in The Bible, making this one of The Oldest Ones in the Book.
In Lois Mc Master 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.
Ulysses as portrayed by Dante in Inferno
- This 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
  Life to the lees:
- Note that Dante, at least formally believing the Æniad's conceit that the Troyans founded Rome and became the notional ancestors of the Italians, has it in for Odysseos, hence his position among the False Counselors in the eighth[?] circle of Hell.
Robert A Heinlein's blind singer Rhysling, composer of the song "The Green Hills of Earth" in the short story of the same name. Until the accident that blinded him, he had been a spaceship engineer; after the accident, he took advantage of the informal custom that a spacer could have one free trip home, using it to wander at will all over the solar system.
Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian and all Conan-derived characters. Conan himself, at least, has some explanation for how he makes a living while wandering (thief and occasional mercenary soldier).
Randall Flagg, Big Bad of Stephen King's The Stand and The Dragon of The Dark Tower, is the rare villainous version of Walking the Earth. And Walking Alternate Universes.
- In The Dark Tower V: Wolves Of The Calla, Father Callahan reveals that he had spent the time between the events of 'Salem's Lot and his arrival at Calla bryn Sturgis wandering the Earth.
In John Steinbeck's East of Eden, Adam walks the earth for several years after leaving the Army-he doesn't have much want or need to return home.
Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ... possibly inspired by Twain's real life experiences.
The Old English poem The Wanderer.
Underneath the Lintel, a play by Glen Bergen, is about the narrator following the clues left behind by The Wandering Jew (see Mythology, below) across the world. Note that the treatment of the Jew is not based in racism, as the original myth is.
In The Lord Of The Rings, Gandalf the Grey spent two millenia Walking The (Middle) Earth while searching for ways to resist the rearising of Sauron.
- 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.
'On The Road' by Jack Kerouac
In Casca 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.

Live Action TV

The A Team travels the USA in their van.
Doctor Who is a classic example of this, though it's helped by the fact that the Doctor, with a TARDIS and time travel, really doesn't need to worry about food, shelter, or expenses.
- Although we never see him actually acquiring any of these things. Presumably the TARDIS is equipped with bedrooms, toiletries, and an infinite cupboard somewhere.
  - Although he does have to make runs to Earth when he runs out of milk.
- In the 3rd series finale, Martha Jones has walked the earth for one year in order to tell everyone left on earth the story of the Doctor who has saved them countless times so that at the right moment they can all think of the Doctor and save the world.
  - Subverted by Donna during her off-screen time between Christmas 2006 and series four. She got bored after a few weeks after she realised "it's all bus trips and guidebooks and don't drink the water and two weeks later you're back home".
Dr. Richard Kimble, going from town to town, searching for the One Armed Man in The Fugitive.
Hercules and his sidekick Iolaus of Hercules The Legendary Journeys also wandered the ancient world battling monsters, gods, and warlords.
The protagonists of Highway To Heaven — though again, having an Angel of the Lord riding shotgun probably makes the little things easier to deal with.
In The Immortal, has Christopher George as Ben Richards, who runs from the employees of a terminally ill, wealthy man who want to capture him for transfusions of his blood because he has every immunity there is, and is likely to live forever, and would do something similar for anyone who got transfusions from him. The exact opposite of Run For Your Life (see).
Caine in Kung Fu 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.
The Littlest Hobo was this kind of series, only the central character was a dog.
Quantum Leap: Like the show article says, replace "Earth" with "Timeline".
In Renegade, Reno was a bounty hunter on the run from the law.
The lucky guys in Route 66 got to do it in a Corvette.
In the mid-1960s series Run For Your Life, Ben Gazzara played a terminally ill man who roamed the world, trying to live as full a life as possible in the time left to him. See The Immortal for the inverse.
In the Saturday-morning live-action adaptation of Shazam!, Billy and his Mentor "travelled the highways and byways of the land on a neverending mission".
The TV version of Starman.
Supernatural. Partly justified in that the Winchester boys have been shown to be competent enough forgers and con men to make a living.
Then Came Bronson has Michael Parks traveling around the country on a motorcycle.
The Touched By An Angel spin-off Promised Land featured a family that traveled the US while living in a trailer home.
Parodied in Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, where Bob points out to Terry that his dream of doing 'whatever I like' can't happen except in America. Terry flees anyway, and gets as far as Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Xena and her sidekick Gabrielle from Xena Warrior Princess wandered ancient Greece (and Rome, Egypt, China, India, Scandinavia) fighting warlords to atone for her past as the worst warlord of them all.
Every week Jarod was in a new place with a new job in The Pretender while running from "the Centre".
Travelogue Show as a genre in general is arguably a nonfiction version of this trope.
Feasting on Asphalt is a travelogue show about road food starring Alton Brown.
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.
Movin' On with Claude Akins, who plays a long-haul truck driver, and his co-driver who quit law school one credit short of his degree.
Adam 'the Knight' of the Yorkshire Television series The Wanderer. His mentor and his love interest also seem to spend a lot of time on the road.
Knight Rider has Michael Knight driving ~~the Earth~~ the United States and fighting crime with his cool AI car/buddy, KITT.
- The 2008 revival series has Michael Knight (Jr.) also driving ~~the USA~~ California and fighting crime with the new incarnation of KITT, after it's mid-season retool.
Played very straight in Firefly, with the crew of Serenity being constantly on the move. Though they do live in a comfortably-sized spacecraft, the crew has to constantly deal with Perpetual Poverty and is always on the run from the law, and sometimes complain about not being able to stay in once place for longer than a few days at a time.
Arguably inverted in The Riches in which the premise is that of a family of travellers that stops walking the earth.

Music

The song by the group Lobo, Me and You and a Dog named Boo tells a story of a guy and someone else who is apparently his Love Interest, as he, his girlfriend and their dog are "travelin' and livin' off the land."

Mythology

Odin did a bit of this, enough to earn him the nickname Wanderer.
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, but the myth is now largely forgotten due to modern Values Dissonance and Unfortunate Implications, particularly after the Nazis made a viciously anti-semitic propaganda film named for the legend (Der Ewige Jude, the Eternal Jew).
- This legend has also been conflated with Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus to the Roman authorities, so the "wandering Jew" may be "wandering Judas."

Tabletop Games

Too many Dungeons And Dragons adventuring parties to count. (Although all those dungeons mean that they have some means of support, at least...)
Eldar in Warhammer 40000 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.
- 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.
Dwarf Slayers in Warhammer are banished from Dwarf society and doomed to seek out battles so they can meet an honourable death. Er, Or So I Heard...
- It's All There In The Manual - 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 the Beard, 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. Hell, maybe the Slayers are why they're all gone.
Promethean The Created sets this up in the very metaphysics of the titular characters — stay in any one place too long, the locals get restless and the land blights beneath your feet. That, and the more you explore the world, the more of a chance you have of getting all that to stop.

Video Games

Trent in Freelancer is a young pilot who flies the space. The game provides quite enough missions to give him cash not only to keep himself well-fed and groomed, but also to outfit his ship with enough firepower to destroy entire space stations (if only the game would actually let the player destroy space stations, which are indestructible by the player. Still, the player can eventually destroy any ship in known space. Or 10).
- 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.
This is the plot of the RPG Romancing Sa Ga - a main character wanders around the world, fighting monsters and righting wrongs with no greater goal in sight, until the lord of all evil rises from his prison and the player gets the job of sending him back again.
Most, if not all of the Wild ARMs games. They're called "Drifters" for a reason, you know.
- Of course, in Wild AR Ms 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.
Subverted in Orstead's Ending of the Final Chapter in Live A Live He does wander the earth but with nobody around
- Actually Sundown Kid is a wanderer, even his theme is named Wanderer.
Link from The Legend Of Zelda usually does this after defeating Ganon. In particular, Link's Awakening, Majora's Mask, and Phantom Hourglass all involve adventures that happen as he is adventuring with no particular goal in sight.
- If I recall correctly, Majora's Mask took place after he was lost, while he was looking for Navi. Although why he would look for Navi I haven't the foggiest.
Ike from Fire Emblem does this. He turns down a chance to be a noble in order to wander around with his posse of mercenaries, and all of his endings involve him leaving Tellius forever, presumably to do some more earth-walking.
Guy in the ending of Final Fight, after clobbering fellow player character Cody. (They were rivals for the love of the Distressed Damsel.
This trope is what you do in more or less every Console RPG. When you can get money simply by killing monsters (they somehow drop it or have it in their blood or something), freeing you from having to have any kind of steady employment, and there's an Item Store in every town that conveniently sells everything you might need to survive and an Inn in each of those same towns that can constantly keep you in perfect health, it seems like a lot more viable of an option than it does in real life.
- 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. His ending in Street Fighter 2 even calls him simply a "wandering warrior".
Zero at the end of the first Mega Man Zero game, separated from his allies for almost a year.
It is only implied, but this supposedly happens to Veyne and Pamela in their ending in Mana Khemia Alchemists Of Al Revis. This is probably because Pamela is a ghost.
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. 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.

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).
- 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 then glamorous.
The Order Of The Stick does this, being, presumably, a D'n'D party. When the party split up, though, it was a kind of settling down. With Elan, Durkon and V with the Azure City refugees, which were themselves Walking The Earth, but it seemed like settling due to their lack of any real progress. The other half of the party, Belkar, Haley, Roy's corpse, and eventually Celia, stayed in the hobgoblin occupied Azure City to become part of The Resistance.

Web Original

Common in Dimension Heroes, from Wyn traversing the Earth to the Dimensional Guardians traversing Creturia.

Western Animation

Even Cartoon Network has done this kind of series, twice: Samurai Jack, and then Ben 10.
- Samurai Jack does have a purpose to his wandering, however: he's looking for a way back into the past. A journey without a specific destination, but with a very specific goal.
Sonic and Tails in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog
Scooby-Doo, in all its incarnations, is centered around this trope, as the teenage heroes roam the country solving mysteries for local townspeople, without getting paid, without having any recurring family or friends, and without ever worrying about school or jobs. Later spin-offs, adaptations and supplemental material refer to them as "Mystery, Inc.", though it's only in the more recent entries that they're generally recognized as investigators, and even then there never seems to be any payment involved. Their wanderings are subtly parodied in some spin-offs: at one point, the Mystery Machine drives through a snowfield to a scientific outpost, and a character cheerfully announces, "here we are gang, Antarctica!"
Adult Swim's Xavier: Renegade Angel

Real Life

Jack Kerouac
- Also Neal Cassady, Kerouac's best friend and personal hero, who 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 Praksters.
Historical example: Miyamoto Musashi, the famed swordsman and author of The Book of Five Rings, spent much of his life as a ronin, wandering Japan as part of a Musha Shugyo (warrior pilgrimage).
- A generation later, Yagyu Jubei embarked on a similar pilgrimage and disappeared from all records for a dozen years.
Chris McCandless, as documented in Jon Krakauer's book Into the Wild, and the subsequent movie adaptation.
It's a tradition of the old guilds, once one passes apprenticeship to become a journeyman and walk the Earth plying one's trade to accumulate knowledge enough to add to the craft.
It's also a tradition amongst the devout, both amongst classical Christians and Muslims, to go on a pilgrimage (in the latter case, specifically to Mecca). One can book a flight, but one is supposed to walk, except, of course, when Oceans block the path.
A man named Peter Jenkins did this in 1973, and wrote a book about it titled A Walk Across America. (He didn't walk coast to coast, but went from Alfred, NY toward the Gulf of Mexico.) He spent a summer building up his endurance by running, and then started off in October. Surprisngly, he didn't freeze to death, although he came close a few times.
- Actually, Jenkins did go 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.
This troper remembers seeing a global nomad in the documentary Encounters at the End of the World. If memory serves, 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.