Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers
29,188
edits
m (Convert TVT links to internal links) |
mNo edit summary |
||
(11 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
[[File:
▲{{quote|''From head to toe I'm rather drab except my patent shoes<br />
▲I make 'em shine, well most the time<br />
▲'Cept today my feet are troddin' on by this friend of mine<br />
''I got to get him in the ground before he starts to smell''|'''[[Primus]]''', "My Name Is Mud"}}▼
▲Six foot two and rude as hell<br />
▲I got to get him in the ground before he starts to smell''|'''[[Primus]]''', "My Name Is Mud"}}
The [[Deep South|rural southern U.S.]], and indeed, the [[Oop North|rural north of England]], are apparently full of small towns run by evil hicks of some sort. His control over the town may be political, economic, religious, or purely criminal, but in most cases it gradually expands to "all of the above".
One of the most obvious hallmarks of a town run by a
He will almost certainly wear a [[Nice Hat|hat]], probably carry a gun, will probably chew tobacco, is almost always white, and is virtually [[Always Male]]. Good odds of being a [[Fat Sweaty Southerner in
The underlings of a
[[Walking the Earth]] shows, particularly those set in the modern day, run into a ''lot'' of these. And virtually every adventure series or cop show made in the 1970s
Here is the [[Wikipedia]] page for [[wikipedia:Hillbilly|hillbilly]]. Please see the following [[Wikipedia]] pages of [[wikipedia:Appalachia|Appalachia]], [[wikipedia:The Ozarks|The Ozarks]], and [[wikipedia:Southern United States|Southern United States]]. These are three areas where hillbillies are often located.
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* Parodied in ''[[Galaxy Angel (
== Comic Books ==
Line 32 ⟶ 30:
** Actually, as far as being a KKK member goes, he probably just goes over the top to show how "Real" he is as he needs the Mooks of the KKK to deal with the Preacher. It was cheaper than hiring professional hitmen. Should not have bothered. The Preacher kicked the KKK out without breaking a sweat and the KKK took their frustrations out on Odin Quincannon by [[Incredibly Lame Pun|beating the meat]] King.
** The L'Angelles are as nasty as they come.
* One of ''[[The Authority]]'''s worst foes was a
* The Hulk Gang from [[Old Man Logan]] counts as this very much, even though they are located in California. The Hulk himself is the corrupt hick leading them and in charge of a territory called Hulkland. They are violent and quite murderous, considering how they murdered Logan's family and left the bodies unburied while he was busy trying to pay off a debt he owed them. Why? Because they got bored. They are a family of cannibals. Oh, and they are also inbred, because Hulk raped his own cousin Jennifer more than once to form the Hulk Gang!
* One ''[[Daredevil]]'' issue had him [[Walking the Earth]] into a small town in [[Joisey|New Jersey]] that was like this. The cover picture showed the sheriff, with Daredevil reflected in his [[Sinister Shades|mirrored lenses]], saying something along the lines of "This here's a mean, corrupt little town -- and we aim to keep it that way!" [[Covers Always Lie|(Daredevil was in civvies throughout the story, and the sheriff was nowhere near that open about his evil, of course.)]] The [[Backstory]] had similarities to ''[[High Plains Drifter]]'', including the murder of an honest cop.
Line 40 ⟶ 39:
* Appears in ''[[Troll 2]]'', with the added kicker that the evil townsfolk are also goblins in disguise.
* ''[[Road House]]'', staring Patrick Swayze, features a no-gooder trying to take over the bar and businesses in a little backwater town with his hired redneck muscle.
* ''[[Footloose]]'': Nicely subverted with the preacher
* ''[[Nothing but Trouble]]'': Judge Alvin
* ''[[Smokey and
* Averted in ''[[My Cousin Vinny]]''. While the plot involves a pair of young New Yorkers being falsely arrested and tried for murder in a small Southern town, the false arrest is due to circumstantial evidence rather than a trumped-up charge, and it's clear the judge and lawmen are trying to do their jobs honestly.
* ''[[
* In ''[[Pumpkinhead]] 2'', Mayor Bubba wants to keep the deadly monster alive so its existence could attract tourists. The sheriff doesn't react well.
* ''[[National Lampoon's Vacation]]'' features a scene where Chevy Chase is taken advantage of by a couple of hicks at a gas station, who barely fix his car, then take all of his money. Chevy asks them what their local sheriff thinks of their shady "business" dealings, leading the men to laugh, and one of them to pull out and display a sheriff's badge.
Line 50 ⟶ 49:
** The film would seem to be both played straight and subverted. On the one hand, the rapists themselves play this deadly straight. On the other, {{spoiler|we never see the rapists again and}} while the rest of the hillbilly town is set up to be creepy and/or evil, they never really do anything, good or bad. Especially subverted in the case of the mentally challenged banjo player (probably the most famous character in the film), whose banjo playing provides a creepy soundtrack but who is otherwise benevolent.
** For particularly creepy hillbillies, expect to hear [[Deliverance|"Dueling Banjos"]]. (This is a conflation of the two [[All There Is to Know About "The Crying Game"|things people generally know about the film]]- that song and rapist hillbillies. In the actual film, they had nothing to do with one another.)
* ''[[
* Reno Smith from ''[[Bad Day
* Herod of ''[[The Quick and
* ''[[Foxy Brown]]'' has two grime-covered drug dealers who operate a front operation out on a farm.
* There's a racist sheriff in at least two ''[[James Bond]]'' movies.
* Leatherface and his family from ''[[
** Although it's probably less a matter of the locals wanting to cover up the depredations of the Hewitts because "they're one of us" or anything like that, and more a matter of grim survival. The locals turn a blind eye to the Hewitts slaughtering travelers and outsiders who won't be missed, and in return, they don't need to worry about their own loved ones (or themselves) being hacked up, brained, chainsawed or ground into chili.
* Margaret "Maggie" Fitzgerald's family from ''[[Million Dollar Baby]]''. They care little about Maggie's well-being, and will cheerfully cross the [[Moral Event Horizon]] just to get her money. Maggie herself is a [[Defector From Decadence]].
* In ''[[
* The Cajun hunters in the 1981 film ''[[Southern Comfort]]''.
* The film ''[[The Muppet Movie]]'' averts this. Kermit the Frog hails from southeastern U.S., more specifically from a swamp with alligators in it. He does play a banjo. However, he proves to be the [[Straight Man]] and the leader of the entire gang.
** Played straight with Tex Richman from [[The Muppets (
* [[Chuck Norris]] battles one of these in ''Breaker! Breaker!''
== Literature ==
Line 73 ⟶ 71:
* Several characters in the book ''[[Divine Evil]]'' by [[Nora Roberts]]. A sculptor named Clare Kimball goes back to her small hometown in Maryland, because she is suffering from depression and nightmares that stem from there and she hopes to deal with them. {{spoiler|It turns out that there is a coven/cult of Satanists in the town. The members of this coven/cult include Clare's father (who left out of guilt and the other members murdered him to ensure his silence), her love interest's Cameron Rafferty's hated stepfather (who ended up murdered), and Ernie (who is a teenaged city boy who the Satanists recruited and they attempted to corrupt him).}}
* Most of the characters identified as hillbillies avert this in ''[[Nerd In Shining Armor]]'' by [[Vicki Lewis Thompson]]. Three characters that can be called hillbillies are Genevive Terrence, Annabelle, and Lincoln (well, Lincoln apparently doesn't count, because he wasn't born or raised as one). They hail from a small community in Tennessee. Annabelle and Lincoln are apparently psychic. Genevive as a kid had sex with a boy named Clyde Loudermilk back in Tennessee. Why? Because he promised to take her out to a movie in exchange for sex. Too bad she found out after losing her virginity that he didn't even have enough money to go to the movies. Ouch.
* There is this one book whose title I forget. The plotline involves two female cousins and two men who have to go into a town that has a load of these people. They get on the bad side of a
* The locals in ''[[
* The trope is also used in the [[
* More generally, not just hillbillies in the strictest sense of the term but "southern rural". The novels ''[[Gods Little Acre]]'' and ''[[Tobacco Road]]'' established this trope by the early 1930s.
* This trope is averted in ''[[Some Girls Do]]'' by [[Leanne Banks]]. Katie/Priscilla hails from a small town in Texas, and the town is given no name and is reported to have been blown off the map by a tornado. People assumed that she would end up as this trope, because she was the daughter of a woman who [[Really Gets Around]]. She did manage to form her own life and tried to distance herself from her roots. She also has conversations with her mother, who died years ago. Her employer Ivan wants to see his daughter Wilhemina married and states early on that he can't have a redneck for a son-in-law. This leads to problems when Wilhemina forms a relationship and gets pregnant with Douglas, a hog farmer in Texas and Ivan finds out. Douglas averts this trope, but it took Ivan some time before he could accept Douglas as a son-in-law. Even though Texas is not really part of Appalachia or The Ozarks, some of the characters are clearly categorized as hillbillies.
* A Russian version is shown in Valentin Pikul's novel ''Wealth''. The corrupt frontier hicks from Kamchatka trade furs illegally, sell vodka to aborigines and try to boot the idealistic new governor. On the other hand, the local lawman, a Cossack sergeant, is decent and [[The Lancer|becomes the governor's right hand]].
* Mayor Jim Bob Buchanon of the Maggody mysteries is a low-grade version, as he's a piggish petty tyrant of sorts, at least to the meager extent possible in a skint-broke town with less than 800 people. He falls short where genuine evil is concerned, due to incompetence and a tendency to fall prey when ''real'' villains [[Kick the Son of
== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[
* TV shows composed of traveling 'Heros For Hire', such as ''[[
** The ''[[Master Ninja]]'' movies. Two of which were shown on ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]''.
* ''[[Airwolf]]'' features one in "Sweet Britches". Using prisoners as [[Hunting the Most Dangerous Game|fodder for hunters]], he insults Caitlin, a female Texas Highway Patrol cop at this point in time (who wants a prisoner he's in fact killed), by calling her a "meter maid" and "sweet britches". Then he essentially encourages a group of men to gang-rape her, although where they got in that is not discussed, as a certain [[Black Helicopter]] arrives.
* ''[[American Gothic]]'s'' premise was based on a
* In one episode of ''[[The Andy Griffith Show]]'', a reporter thinks that Andy is one of these. Andy is talking about fishing, and she thinks that he's talking about lynching a black person.
* In ''Back to the 50s'', [[S Club 7]] encounters one of these in [[The Fifties|Fifties]] California.
* ''[[BJ And The Bear]]'': Sheriff Lobo who later reformed and got his own series.
* The ''[[Boston Legal]]'' episode "Happy Trails". There is a trial, but that's to be expected considering the main characters are lawyers. And it was just a big excuse for Alan to make an [[Author Filibuster]].
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[The Dukes of Hazzard]]'' had a double set of classic Corrupt Hicks, with Boss Hogg and Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane.
* Possibly played with in ''[[
* ''[[The X
* ''[[The League of Gentlemen]]'': Tubbs and Edward Tattsyrup, an implicitly [[Villainous Incest|incestuous]] couple of [[Serial Killer|serial killers]] who ran the Local Shop.
* ''[[
* ''[[Justified (TV series)|Justified]]'': Pretty much everyone who crosses Raylan Givens most notably those named Crowder or Bennet.
* Superintendent Fuller from ''[[
* The citizens of the village in ''[[
* In ''[[Once Upon a Time (TV series)|Once Upon a Time]]'', Storybrooke, Maine is controlled by two: Regina Mills, its [[Ultimate Authority Mayor]], and Mr. Gold, who [[I Own This Town|owns the town (literally)]].
** It's not accurate to refer to either of these character as "hicks", however, as they do not fit the part of the trope that requires the character be uneducated or a bumpkins; both Regina and Gold are depicted as extremely intelligent, cultured characters (although Gold's original Rumpelstiltskin personality is depicted as a "country hick" to a degree in the recent origin episode).
== Real Life ==
* Governor Orval Faubus: 36th Governor of [[Deep South|Arkansas]]. He attempted to block out the Little Rock 9 from going to school, and turned the Civil Rights movement into an '
** Ironically enough, Faubus in his early career was endorsed by the NAACP, and it's suspected that he only did what he did to distract the voters from his heretofore lackadaisical leadership.
* Debatably, [[wikipedia:Joe Arpaio|Joe Arpaio.]]
* The Mexican version of this trope is the "Northern Guy" (or ''Norteño'' in Spanish) since it shares more of less the same characteristics of the American one.
Line 123 ⟶ 121:
* The Hicks [[The Clan|clan]] in ''[[Jagged Alliance]] 2'' routinely harasses the town of Cambria, will steal any weapon that's not nailed down, and will proposition any female you send to talk to them. To make things worse, the hillbillies all have shotguns and Mini-14s, meaning that early fights with them tend not to end well. (Later on, with body armor, assault rifles, and/or exploitation of [[Artificial Stupidity]] involving chokepoints, they become rather easier to take down.) Even if you don't, there's a field of cows that they keep, and conversations with random Hicks involving cow tipping tend to be...[[Squick|revealing]].
* Ward, a security guard from ''[[
* ''[[Redneck Rampage]]'' loves to have fun with this trope. The player plays as a hillbilly named Leonard, who has to whack his buddy Bubba in the face with a crowbar from time to time. They fight against aliens, who have made clones of their neighbours. The neighbours consist of a skinny old man and a fat bearded man with a shotgun. There is also the town sheriff, who will not hesitate to shoot you on sight.
* ''[[Harvester]]'' has Sherriff Dwayne: Big on pie eating, light on crime fighting. [[Can't Get Away
Line 131 ⟶ 129:
* ''[[Stroker and Hoop]]'': Parodied when they investigate a murder in the [[Deep South]]. At the very beginning of the investigation, Stroker predicts, "It was either the corrupt mayor, the corrupt sheriff, or some crazy hick." It turned out to be the sheriff. ("So, Stroker was right! You cliché, evil bastard!")
* Seen on ''[[Fillmore!]]'' when Fillmore visits his former Safety Patrol partner down South.
* One episode of ''[[Batman:
* ''[[The Simpsons]]'': "Even I'm offended by this, and I'm a fat Southern sheriff!"
** The Rich Texan has frequently been shown as a doing anything for money, yet does have a good side (he does love his gay son.)
* On ''[[Captain Planet and
* ''[[Fairly Oddparents]]'': Doug Dimmadome (owner of the Dimmsdale Dimmadome).
* ''[[Toy Story (franchise)|Toy Story]] 3'': {{spoiler|Lotso}} runs [[Crap Saccharine World|Sunnyside]] with an iron fist.
* ''[[Robin Hood (Disney film)|Robin Hood]]'': The Sheriff of Nottingham, for some reason has a Southern accent despite the film taking place in England.
* Scooby-Dum from ''[[Scooby Doo]]'' averts this trope. He is a buck-toothed hillbilly hailing from southern Georgia, and is [[Scooby Doo]]'s cousin. He is on good terms with his cousin and other people. Unfortunately, as his [[Meaningful Name]] suggests, he is also very dumb. He is considered [[The Scrappy]] (yes, they had more than just the [[Trope Namer]]) and has been given the [[Brother Chuck]] treatment, possibly because the stereotype of a hillbilly being dumb (not to mention the stereotype of a hillbilly having buck teeth) is being played through him for comedy.
* Averted in ''[[The Rescuers]]''. The film has a location named Devil's Bayou, which could be located in Louisiana or Texas. Either way, it is a swamp with alligators in it. The swamp folks living there seem to have some hillbilly qualities, like Luke who drinks strong liquor that turns out to be gasoline. However, they turn out to be rather friendly, and actually aided in the rescue of Penny from Medusa, Snoops, Brutus and Nero.
Line 145 ⟶ 143:
[[Category:Always Male]]
[[Category:Villains]]
[[Category:
|