"Riley was supposed to be Mr. Joe Guy. We were gonna do dumb things like hold hands through the daisies going tra-la-la!"
— Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Goodbye Iowa"
A type of walk where the character swings their arms back and forth while hopping lightly from foot to foot. This is a visual cue indicating that the character is innocent, carefree, and young. If the person skipping is older than a child, this may indicate that they're immature or behaving unusually (perhaps they are a Cloudcuckoolander).
Characters that walk like this are most likely a Cheerful Child or a Genki Girl. If it is not the character’s default walk then it is sign of joyousness. It is almost always done exclusively by females because Females Are More Innocent (and it is kind of effeminate to begin with). Bonus points for whistling while doing this.
Related to Girly Run.
Examples:
- Sealand of Hetalia: Axis Powers does this during one of the series' Christmas Episodes, while fantasizing about the presents he wants from Santa Claus.
- The Smurfs: The Smurfette often does this when she joyfully has a walk in the forest, in various albums of the series.
- Misery Loves Company: After being mentally rewritten into Hecate's new daughter, Gaz happily skips down the sidewalk to go to the store and buy some groceries for her mom.
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:
- Luna does this. It's never mentioned in the books, but it fits her Cloud Cuckoolander character nonetheless.
- Bellatrix also does this briefly, right after murdering a named character. In this case, it's an ironic inversion, tying into her characterization as a Psychopathic Womanchild.
- The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons. Tatiana on several occasions, to the delight of her Love Interest who's rather turned on by her innocence.
- Parodied in Hogfather, where Susan's charges Gawain and Twyla are Deliberately Cute Children who do things like skip around to try and be ingratiating towards grown-ups. Susan isn't fooled, and tells Gawain (who claims he was skipping when he was really trying to provoke the imaginary bears his previous nanny told him eat kids who step on pavement cracks) "Real children don't go hoppity-skippity unless they're on drugs."
- Doctor Who: The little girl in "Remembrance of the Daleks" skips around town when she's not plugged into the Dalek battle computer. She's not exactly "innocent", though, but she appears to be, which is the point
- In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Rascals" Guinan's reaction to being turned into a little girl due to a transporter malfunction is to skip merrily down the corridor.
- Lindsey Stirling's dances often include skips and jumps as she plays her violin, grinning.
- Alba: A Wildlife Adventure: Alba often skips when running for prolonged periods, showing her cheerfulness and earnestness.
- Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure: Princess Kururu from the Marl Kingdom series does this when she about to sing a song with her best friend.
- In Lightning Legend: Daigo no Daibouken, Yuki Shirogane, the Cheerful Child of this Fighting Game, walks this way during the storyline sequences.
- Jump Super Stars: One of Misa Amane's supports in Jump Ultimate Stars has her doing this. If an opponent attacks her, the innocent gesture summons Rem who inflicts the death timer effect on them.
- Darkstalkers B.B. Hood does this for her forward movement, however she is anything but innocent.
- Annie from League of Legends moves like this. She certainly seems innocent enough- and to be fair, she probably doesn't really see the harm in introducing you to her bear Tibbers if you get in her way.
- Gwen has this as her running animation, as she's an animated doll who represents her creator's youthful idealism before it was taken from her.
- In The Sims, children can do this. Some Sims can do it in adulthood if they have enough playful points. Oddly enough, they do it with a very stoic face.
- Proof that you can make this terrifying: the Pyro does this in the "Meet The Pyro" video for Team Fortress 2 as it cavorts through the candy-colored wonderland it sees the battlefield being. The sheer contrast of this with its murderous activities is nightmarish.
- Dragunov from Tekken of all people has this as his 7 winpose and he hums a little ditty to go along with it.
- YourMovieSucks.org: Adam lampshades this trope in his review of Cool Cat Saves the Kids.
- Adam: ♫ I'm a child and I like to skip, I don't walk normally because I'm a child! ♫
- Subverted by Neo from RWBY, who often skips around because she's a Psychopathic Womanchild who has never really grown up. The most notable is her skipping around in the aftermath of the Monstra's destruction, utterly uncaring as to its consequences because she got what she wanted.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Pinkie Pie's usual gait is the quadrupedal version of this trope: pronking (hopping up and down with all four legs) around with small *sproing* sound effects.
Real Life
- In his book Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck commented on this trope when he saw Ruby Bridges, a young black girl going to integrate a formerly all-white public school all by herself in 1960 while surrounded by jeering white crowds.
The big marshals stood her on the curb and a jangle of jeering shrieks went up from behind the barricades. The little girl did not look at the howling crowd but from the side the whites of her eyes showed like those of a frightened fawn. The men turned her around like a doll, and then the strange procession moved up the broad walk toward the school, and the child was even more a mite because the men were so big. Then the girl made a curious hop, and I think I know what it was. I think in her whole life she had not gone ten steps without skipping, but now in the middle of her first skip the weight bore her down and her little round feet took measured, reluctant steps between the tall guards. Slowly they climbed the steps and entered the school.
