The Serial Drifter
Like a gust of wind, The Drifter quietly blows into a troubled town. He s low key, and usually The Quiet One that s not looking for trouble. He ll rarely.
Sep 17, 2009 Trailer do filme Drifter: Henry Lee Lucas This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.
Sells, a drug-addict and drifter, while in custody for the murder and attempted murder of two young girls, admitted to killing between 20 and 50 people in several.
Ottis Toole, serial killer and cannibal, confessed to killing more than a hundred people with his partner Henry Lee Lucas. Toole murdered John Walsh s son.
Feb 24, 2015 Serial Killers Michael Wayne Mcray The Homicidal Drifter.
TOMMY LEE SELLS
Classification: Serial killer
Arrested: January 2, 2000
No. Victims: 9-13
Active:1983-1999
Victim Profile: Young girls, families
Location: Texas, Illinois, Missouri, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Tennessee Kentucky
Tommy Lee Sells was arrested January 2, 2000, after he slashed to death 13-year-old Kaylene Harris on New Year s Day. During the same assault Sells, 35, slashed thethroat of 10-year-old Kristal Surles, but the girl survived. Kristal, who is from Kansas, was visiting her friend Kaylene in Guajia Bay, about 14 miles north of Del Rio on US Highway 90 in Texas, when Sells came upon them.
In custody Sells, a drug-addict and drifter, admitted to the Texas Rangers that he had killed between 20 and 50 people in several states over the last two decades. To date Sells has been charged with one homicide in Texas and one in Kentucky. He is considered a strong suspect in eleven more deaths in half-dozen states.
Not unlike serial confessor Henry Lee Lucas, Sells has traveled to Idaho, Nevada and Arkansas to try to confirm slayings that he has confessed he committed. One of the alleged victims in Central Arkansas was found alive and well. We went to Little Rock, Arkansas, and he was able to take us to a house where a burglary and shooting had occurred, said Texas Ranger John Allen said. For 18 years he was sure he had hit the guy, but it turns out the guy just fell to the ground and lay there like he was hit.
Sells was born in Oakland, California, and later moved to Utah and St. Louis. At age 13 or 14, he left home and spent the next two decades riding trains, hitchhiking and driving stolen cars across the country. He was in prison on assault and car theft convictions for nine of the past 20 years. Sells arrived in Del Rio with a carnival about two years ago, married a local woman and worked odd jobs.
He left town last year for about five months, during which authorities believe he killed a girl in Lexington, Kentucky, but returned last fall to sell used cars in Del Rio. Allen said there appeared to be little pattern to the killings that Sells has described committing. I can t think of a word that would fit him other than opportunist. If an opportunity presented itself, things could go bad, he said. And unlike other people who have been suspected of multiple murders, there s not set pattern of the victims being a particular gender, age or hair color. And there s no pattern to his method of murder. It goes from strangulation to slashing to shooting to beatings. Some were confrontations, some were robberies, some were pure anger, but the larger percentage were sexual assault. I an interview Sells said he killed so many people because, my daddy told me a long time ago that dead men tell no tales.
In March Tommy Lee Sells guided detectives around Pulaski County in Central Arkansas looking for evidence of two murders he said he commited there in early 1982. Sells eventually guided the detectives to a blue hole in southern Pulaski County and told a story of the rape and murder of a woman whose body was thrown into the deep water of a bauxite pit.
Sheriff s deputies have not yet sent divers into the pit to find the body, saying they won t until they can confirm other parts of Sells tale.
It s hard to justify spending money on divers until we can get some sort of corroborating evidence that there is a missing person, Pulaski County sheriff s office spokesman John Rehrauer said. We have not been able to establish a connection to what Sells thought happened and anything in our records. Until we do, we re not going to go to the expense of diving.
Several weeks after the Little Rock trip, Texas authorities took Sells to southern Idaho on a similar mission, because he had confessed to three area murders. Authorities believe that two of those murders occurred in the fall of 1988 at a bridge overlook just outside of Twin Falls. The third murder occurred the following year in neighboring Gooding County.
He said he was driving a stolen black Dodge van in Salt Lake City and brought the woman -- who he had been seeing for a couple of weeks -- and her son to spend the night on the Snake River, a Twin Falls County sheriff s spokesman said. He said he killed them and dumped them in the river. As of now police have no missing persons report to match the alleged killing. In the third murder, Sells confessed to abducting a woman who was hitchhiking from Canada to Salt Lake City.
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There s a voice, that keeps on calling me.
Down the road, it s where I ll always be.
Every stop I make, I make a new friend.
Can t stay for long, just turn around and I m gone again.
The Littlest Hobo theme song
Like a gust of wind, The Drifter quietly blows into a troubled town. He s low key, and usually The Quiet One that s not looking for trouble. He ll rarely raise the interest or curiosity of the townspeople or the Big Bad that s been slowly draining the town of all life and money. Usually, he just wants an odd job to make ends meet before leaving again, the implication being that he s either running from someone or Walking the Earth for the fun of it. Occasionally The Sheriff and his deputies, or a Quirky Miniboss Squad of the Big Bad sometimes one and the same will visit the Determined Homesteader employing the Drifter or him directly, to try and lay down the law and extort some money.
Then the gloves come off.
By this point, he s either got a personal stake in helping the meek townsmen chase off the Big Bad, like saving a hostage or other love interest, or will do it just because it s the right thing to do. An interesting twist on the above is that The Drifter is not just pretending he is Not Left Handed in terms of martial skill, but is also concealing his true purpose - to depose the Big Bad and his goons - hiding in plain sight as a mere Muggle to get information to bring him down.
In some variants, he ll be approached by the meek townsmen and appointed The Sheriff the previous one having been run off or killed. He usually requires some convincing, in which the Big Bad helps out by kicking a few nearby dogs in The Drifter s presence. Once the Big Bad is defeated, expect him to lay down his badge, perhaps passing it on to one of the townspeople who showed some backbone in the fight. This is a hero who often faces the Leave Your Quest Test, and agonizes over it each time.
He s a strange combination of traits: A Guardian Angel come to help a town that can t help itself, rarely grim but usually has a bit of The Stoic in him, or at least values few words. Sometimes a Technical Pacifist and former Gunslinger Walking the Earth. Though he s not a Knight in Shining Armor, he s usually several clicks above an Anti-Hero or Ineffectual Loner, being motivated by more compassionate standards than the Well-Intentioned Extremist. Once he s done, he ll probably have to go.
Also known as the Stranger archetype, from Joseph Campbell s The Hero with a Thousand Faces.note well, quotes from The Hero with a Thousand Faces in the Star Wars exhibition catalogue, anyway.
See also Western Characters. Fairly common in After the End settings, where he ll get a scavenger sidekick. Occasionally joins up or becomes the leader of a band of Hitchhiker Heroes. Closely related to the Knight Errant, who wanders the land actively seeking wrongs to right. The Flying Dutchman is often pressed into this role though not always as a protagonist by means of a curse.
Subtrope of Mysterious Stranger.
No relations with Multi-Track Drifting at all, even if he is a Badass Driver.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Van from GUN SWORD is this, both pre-series and during.
Kenshiro of Fist of the North Star fits this trope to a tee, especially at the beginning of the series. He wanders the post-apocalyptic landscape from town to town looking for his kidnapped lover, has his sidekick in Bat, is theoretically not looking for trouble, and yet somehow always leaves behind body counts that range from dozens to hundreds.
The protagonist, Ginko, from Mushishi a sort of mononoke-ologist
Dr. Tenma from Monster Subverted as any troubles are almost always connected with the monster Johan.
Raven Tengu Kabuto, from the anime of the same name. The above description is almost a plot synopsis.
Vash The Stampede of Trigun has this as his whole thing, except he s also a wanted outlaw and an immortal superhuman.
Since his setting is Western-inspired and he has mad gun skills, Chronic Hero Syndrome and multiple issues with settling down, he does a lot of this, especially in the anime which put off the Cerebus Syndrome a lot longer, although most of the story is consumed by the plot happening.
He only stops the drifting thing during his 10-Minute Retirement after he inadvertently shot the moon, when he grows a Beard of Sorrow, changes his name, and doesn t kick the asses of the creeps who come to his new hometown and start killing everybody who annoys them. Which is kind of extreme restraint, given the town couldn t build enough coffins to house all their dead.
Interestingly, that situation gets resolved by Wolfwood drifting into town looking for him the same day Vash s adopted family member is kidnapped, and then both of them kick ass and walk off into the sunset. Vash s But Now I Must Go costs him a lot more than usual this time.
Ran from Kazemakase Tsukikage Ran. Kazemakaze translates into something like Carried by the wind, a colorful way of describing a carefree wanderer.
Rurouni Kenshin: The titular character purposefully became this after the war and settled down starting on the first episode. We see him comment that with the friends he makes, he may stop wandering. Also, Rurouni can be translated as wanderer. So Yeah.
After being defeated by Kenshin, Seta Soujirou decides to follow Kenshin s example and go wandering, giving himself time and freedom to resolve the moral conflict he s now facing.
In the Jinchuu arc, Sanosuke decides to leave the main cast temporarily and relieve some stress, which he does by becoming one of these. He then takes this time to save a town, beat the shit out of two hundred men, and terrorize the local yakuza. His stress being relieved, he then leaves town and returns to Tokyo. And nobody even knew his name.
Except his dad. That was his hometown, though he hadn t been there in over a decade.
Amusingly, the fallout from this adventure later causes him to need to flee Japan, so given his temperament he probably goes around being this in countries where no one can understand a word he says. Everyone understands when you punch a wall and the house shatters, though.
While he s mostly a Wise Prince, Ashitaka from Princess Mononoke has shades of the Drifter, as he becomes entwined with and takes a stake in the outcome of the conflict between the various factions he encounters during his travels.
As Eboshi says when asked if she saw him come around: Came, and went.
Kanbe in Samurai 7 shows signs of being this, although the town actively recruits him and he puts up a lot of resistance.
The titular Kino of Kinos Journey, travelling the world on her talking motorcycle, with a strict rule to never stay in one country for longer than three days.
In Sekirei, Mutsu had shades of this in his backstory. After leaving the Discipline Squad, he took to Walking the Earth and only came to the capital after beginning to react to his Ashikabi. Though he complained about not wanting to cause trouble, he intervened in a violent mugging and rescued Mikogami. Any efforts to avoid taking part in the Sekirei Plan were dashed, since his master was Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life.
Berserk: Guts was this in the beginning of the series, wandering around looking for Apostles to kill. After the Golden Age prologue, we learn that he did so thinking Casca was safe, not considering that she needed someone to be with her.
The sisters and their maid in Popotan. They travel through time, befriending someone they meet in each period, before having to move to the next.
Goku from Dragon Ball became this after he was told to Walk the Earth by Master Roshi. In the filler in-between the end of the Red Ribbon Army Saga and the next tournament, Goku is shown going to town to town, helping people along the way and then leaving as soon as his task is completed. He was also like this during the previous saga when he was looking for his grandfather s Dragon Ball.
Comic Books
Naturally, it happens in Preacher. Jesse Custer indulges in this trope when he drifts into the town of Salvation.
The comic books spun off of the original The Legend of Zelda give this sort of backstory to Link, who happens to wander into Hyrule from his native Calatia just as Ganon is starting to wreak havoc.
Miyamoto Usagi. Also Inazuma and Chizu.
Groo the Wanderer. Played with in that he s always looking for a fray.
Douwe Dabbert always ends up helping and protecting people wherever he goes and never stays anywhere for long.
In Nomad, Darca Nyl ends up giving this impression. He s actually trying to track down the man who killed his son, but along the way people keep thinking that he s a Jedi, and needing his help. And he gives it, and it s the only good thing he s felt in a long time. In the end, once he kills the man, he decides to take up this trope/become a Knight Errant.
The heroes in Sin City have the demeanor of the drifter quiet loners with troubled pasts, even if they tend to stick to the city limits of Basin. Wallace might be an aversion since his story seems to indicate that he is relatively new in town. He doesn t seem to grasp how corrupt the city is and despite his deadliness, he is a relative unknown.
Fan Works
In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction Jericho, the titular main character and narrator, Jericho, is a form of this. Save for the fact that he is, of course, not quiet or stoic at all. He is openly sarcastic, a smartass, occasionally a bit of a Cloud Cuckoolander, and his reasons are rather shady. He wanders around the world and, according to him, is just doing what s right. However, when he gave Cards a speech about doing what s right to help yourself deal with a great guilt, his Inner Monologue questioned how much what he said was true, to which Jericho refuses to say to the reader, but a good deal of it appeared to be a lie in hindsight. It s doubly strange when considering that Jericho seems to be a sociopath.
The only real clue of his motives come from a strange letter he gets in the first chapter from his unseen guardian angel, wherein Jericho is told to travel to a certain town and, in very uncertain terms, kill some people. That s it.
The Rock Farmer s Daughters: Set in an AU where neither Pinkie Pie nor Cheese Sandwich are party ponies, the fic has Cheese as a variant of this, except with a good dose of Adorkability, and he s more shy than stoic.
Film
The main character from Hobo with a Shotgun.
John J. Macreedy in the classic film Bad Day at Black Rock, although he arrives in the titular town with a specific purpose in mind which is not to clean the place up.
The first paragraph describes fairly accurately John Rambo in First Blood, right down to being harassed by the law. Only his subsequent actions are not to help the town at all
Max from the Mad Max films. Shane in black leather.
Many Clint Eastwood characters, most notably The Man With No Name.
Note also that one of the films he directed is called High Plains Drifter.
High Plains Drifter plays with the conventions of this trope a bit, mainly in that The Stranger as he is credited is hinted at being the ghost of a man murdered by the townsfolk indirectly years prior and thus brings on a little vengeance by turning the town s folk against each other, manipulating and scaring them into giving him absolute power and pretty much ruining the town s economy by blowing up the hotel, tearing down the barn and not paying for any of the many goods and services he takes advantage of, such as buying everyone in town a drink from the bar at the bartender s expense. In fact, he s barely in the town for ten minutes before he kills three men, drags a woman to the barn and rapes her.
Indiana Jones acts somewhat this way in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Sanjuro, in Kurosawa s Yojimbo the prototype for For a Fistful of Dollars and Sanjuro.
Also Zatoichi, hero of a long-running series of Japanese films. In each film, he wanders into a new Adventure Town, where he at first pretends to be a simple itinerant masseur and gambler. But when some local yakuza boss or corrupt official threatens him or the group of innocent commoners he s befriended, he reveals himself to be a master swordsman and all-out badass. Oh, and he s blind, too.
The animated film Kung Fu Panda starts off with a dream sequence where Po fits this trope PERFECTLY. Of course, this is just his dream self, but it does seem to show how Genre Savvy he is. Two tropes for the price of one.
Shane, of course.
The aptly named The Drifter from Bunraku.
Sartana is a subversion; while he does go from town to town for adventure, he is definitely not the silent, brooding type.
Comrade Sukhov from White Sun of the Desert. A retired soldier who just wants to go home, he walks the sands of Turkestan and gets into trouble.
In The Man from Earth, John Oldman is moving away, which he says he does every decade. He reveals that he has been doing this for 14,000 years, because people start to realize that he doesn t age.
The hero of 3-Iron gets along by breaking into homes which are empty and temporarily unoccupied. He does not steal from the homes like any typical run-of-the mill burglar. In a bizarre, parasitic manner, he lives off the food resources and physical amenities provided by the homes, yet leaves them in a better state than when he first broke in, repairing damaged appliances and washing dirtied clothing thrown around by its owners.
Tetsu Hondo in Tokyo Drifter.
Literature
Jack Reacher, in the novels by Lee Childs. Each book starts with him drifting onto an area and ends with him on his way to somewhere else.
Joe Christmas in Light in August.
Harvey from Kieli who has spent the last 70 to 80 years Wandering the Earth and makes a living beating people in poker because he thinks getting a job is a waste of time.
Bill Door, aka Death, in the Discworld novel Reaper Man.
The Rangers of the North are very much this trope. They have few if any permanent settlements, and most of the men s time is spent wandering the wilds of Eriador patrolling for servants of the Enemy and safeguarding the villages and roads, even though the people they are protecting regard them with suspicion and fear.
Stephen King:
In The Stand, Randall The Walkin Dude Flagg was the embodiment of this trope s Evil Counterpart for a long while, until he decides to settle down and rebuild America in his own image using newfound magical powers. He takes on shades of this trope again when he goes traveling through time and the multiverse, and keeps becoming, amongst other things, a marine, a member of the KKK, a headsman, a Viet Cong, a supporter of a radical blacks rights group, a court magician several times, and other roles that helps his subversive schemes. Really, the only thing that makes him into Nyarlathotep, and separates him from being an evil Time Lord is magic and a lack of a Tardis.
Roland, the Gunslinger from The Dark Tower series, especially in The Wolves Of The Calla.
Made famous in literature, and later in film, by Shane.
The Jon Shannow/Jerusalem Man series by David Gemmell, often three or four times a novel.
Malik ibn Ibrahim, the protagonist of the ebook anthology Wandering Djinn, never actually looks for trouble during his wanderings, but will do what he knows is right if necessary.
Frank Chambers of The Postman Always Rings Twice starts out as a drifter who gets work at a small California diner/gas station. He is far from heroic, however.
Jimmy Hedgecock from Gunfighter s Ride helps people while he delivers the mail.
Etienne Lantier is the catalyst for the events of Émile Zola s Germinal.
In the Ben Snow series, Ben is a wandering cowhand looking for work who keeps stumbling into mysteries. It doesn t help that he is sometimes mistaken for Billy the Kid.
In Devon Monk s Dead Iron, Cedar. He s been around this particular town long enough that he thinks it may be safer to move on.
Live Action TV
The Doctor in Doctor Who does this throughout time and space.
The Fugitive. Dr Kimble is on the run from the law, and trying to find the one-armed man who killed his wife
The TV version of The Incredible Hulk.
Caine from Kung Fu.
The unnamed hero of The Littlest Hobo is essentially a drifter version of Lassie whose lack of visible problems that would realistically be associated with Walking the Earth may be justified, as well, since it s a dog. It can find a river to dunk in, and scraps lying around, and only the pure evil would hurt him.
The title character of Here s Boomer is another drifter dog.
Sam Beckett from Quantum Leap. His drifting is to different time periods as well as different locations.
The Sliders.
This is an absolutely perfect description of Cheyenne Bodie from Cheyenne.
Bronco Layne from Bronco, a Spin-Off from Cheyenne.
The Westerner
The A-Team
Then Came Bronson: Michael Parks and a Cool Bike.
Eiji Hino is only said to be a drifter before Kamen Rider OOO starts, since he stays in the same general area for most of the series, but he goes back to that lifestyle in the end - only now he has a group of friends to stay in touch with.
If Eiji counts, the passing-through Kamen Rider Tsukasa Kadoya does too, though he quickly acquires companions and could probably not be called low-key.
Before either of them, we had Yuusuke Godai, who like his partial Expy Eiji only stays in the same general area over the course of the series because of the circumstances regarding the Gurongi and his own sense of responsibility as the one bearing the power of Kuuga.
Jared from The Pretender is on the run from an evil organization that held him prisoner from childhood, but finds time to research and uncover injustice and save people s lives wherever he goes.
Nick does the same thing as OOO in Power Rangers Mystic Force; blow into town as the Naïve Newcomer in the beginning, leave again at season s end with a new set of True Companions to show for it.
Steve McQueen in Wanted: Dead or Alive
In Supernatural; The Winchesters and most other hunters as well. The Winchesters have less of a home base than the majority of hunters, and are unusually kind and personableeven if they are violent maniacs with no respect for the law who lie like they breathe.
It might take a bit longer than other examples, but Immortals in Highlander: The Series have to move around every decade or so when people begin to notice that they don t age.
The Lone Ranger
Music
For songs where this is a Discussed Trope, see Wanderlust Song.
The Whitesnake song Here I Go Again fits this trope. It even has the line Like a drifter, I was born to walk alone.
Metallica s Wherever I May Roam.
Ralph McTell s The Ferryman is an exploration of this trope.
Elvenking s The Wanderer. It s rather obvious.
Led Zeppelin s Ramble On from Led Zeppelin II.
Modest Mouse s The World At Large even goes so far as to mention that the narrator relates to songs and books written about drifters.
Tabletop Games
This is a typical trait for Prometheans. If they settle in any one place for too long, Disquiet starts to take hold in the townspeople and Wastelands bloom up under their feet. Hence, they re constantly on the move, only staying long enough in any one town to enjoy contact or refresh supplies without polluting the land or warping people s minds.
One of the playable archetypes in Feng Shui is The Drifter. He even has the ability to show up exactly where and when he is needed. In game terms, he announces he wants to show up, and everyone picks a reason how he got there. He picks the one he likes the best.
In Dungeons Dragons, such characters are too often played to the point they have become cliche, earning the pejorative murderhobo. Treating them as what they are i.e., vagrant serial killers is a DM s delight.
A villainous version is Typhus the Traveller of Warhammer 40K: he goes around the galaxy to spread disease and contagion wherever he goes.
Warhammer has Wulfrik the Wanderer, a Chaos Champion who lives only to challenge and defeat other mortals in single combat. To help him, he has the gift of tongues and a flying ship.
Toys
Perhaps in name only, but in BIONICLE, all six Piraka seem to have nicknames, and Thok s is the drifter.
Video Games
The new Prince in Prince of Persia 2008 ends up in Elika s kingdom while caught in a sandstorm.
Sundown, from Live A Live. Also an example of a Gunslinger, both Type A and B.
While they be called Dream Chasers, Mercenaries, Wanderers, or yes, Drifters, these make up most of your PCs in the Wild ARMs series.
Build up foundation, indeed.
Adol from Ys series is this trope.
Bartz from Final Fantasy V starts off as one of these, with his pet Chocobo, Boco. This was actually his deceased father s last request.
Shadow from Final Fantasy VI actually has a chance to just take off and leave your party after every battle.
Nearly every Fallout game has you playing some variant on this character type unless you prefer evil karma, in which case you become a Doom Magnet.
Similarly to Fallout, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion allows you to wander the countryside, picking up whatever quests you want, joining any/all of the five main factions, or whatever else you can think of that has nothing to do with the main story.
In Skyrim, the Dragonborn wanders the countryside inbetween/on-the-way-to/during battles with Dragons.
Shiren the Wanderer fits this well. All of the Wanderers not just Shiren are always on the move. In fact, its a gameplay feature: if the player stays too long in a single floor they hear a gust of wind, telling them to move on or suffer a Nonstandard Game Over. Also, backtracking is rarely a good idea, because no items spawn in the level and you end up fighting more monsters. It s all there to ensure that you always keep on the move
Medoute in Blaze Union. She winds up settling down with the rest of the party for a while after realizing she needs to take responsibility for influencing some of their important decisions, but towards the end of the game she remembers that the whole point of her journeying was because she didn t want to have to deal with responsibility and starts chafing. In most of the endings of the game, she leaves and goes back to Walking the Earth.
You re pretty much this way in the Rune Factory games even with your monsters and friends and neighbors. But when you want to go beat the snot out of wild monsters, who helps you out. No one.
Subverted during the first part of Tides of Destiny because Sonja is in Aden s body, you can hear her adding comments when you re fighting and also the changes of the day.
In Dragon Age, most of the Grey Wardens spend their time Walking the Earth, searching for any sign of darkspawn.
Dillon and his partner Russ from Dillon s Rolling Western drift from village to village, only staying long enough to help defend them against the Grock before moving on.
The player is essentially this in virtually any Pokémon game: a stranger who wanders into town, helps people with their problems, then leaves.
Oblio of Dance Central is a drifter in all its splendor.
Webcomics
In Mag ISA, Claudita seems to be just drifting around trying to figure out Eman Cruz and drift wherever he goes.
In the Cattle Punk world of Cwynhild s Loom, Cwynhild drifts around Mars, performing odd jobs and helping people who seek her out.
Web Original
New York Magician: The Djinn, certainly.
The Reconstruction Series s Isaac Benjamin fits this to a T. He wants to stop drifting, and the story has to pull this to get him back in action.
The Walking Man, currently residing on Everything2, definitely qualifies.
Western Animation
The episode Zuko Alone of Avatar: The Last Airbender pegs Zuko squarely into this role, or at least when he s not busy interrupting the above mentioned plot with flashbacks about his tragic past. In a subversion, the inevitable I Am Not Left-Handed moment reveals to the rescued townsfolk that said drifter is Fire Nation and they promptly shun him, leaving him to thanklessly drift on.
In the sequel to The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra, the eponymous character has her own episode called Korra Alone where she drifts for about two years around the world, trying to psychologically recover from a near-death experience.
Samurai Jack.
In an episode of The Simpsons, Maggie briefly takes on this role when she and Santa s Little Helper decide to seek out a kidnapped Homer in a neighboring town.
Wirt and Greg play this role in Over the Garden Wall, drifting through various settings and sometimes inadvertently solving everyone s problems.
In Gravity Falls, Soos hilariously gets this role when the apocalypse hits, entering the realm of legend despite the fact that the apocalypse has only been going on for three days.
I ve been wandering the plains like a desperado, helping strangers. I guess there s some folk songs about me now.
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