Dodgy Toupee
The ridiculously bad and often obvious toupee that is adorned by comedic character and men in mid life crises to show off their folly and reveal the character's desire to maintain a facade of authority or manliness (it might not even have to be an incredibly bad toupee but one revealed comically to such an end). Can be Played for Drama if the character is wearing a cheap wig/toupee due to chemotherapy.
Examples of Dodgy Toupee include:
Anime and Manga
- Hikaru no Go: There was an older male player (who was extremely sensitive about his lack thereof) in a go club that Shindou Hikaru constantly taunted for a while early on. He once put an empty stone container onto the man's head to grind around, and got the hairpiece caught a bit. This caused it to slip off, and the man to dash out of the building with tear-jets flying, but also his mother to scold him. The man shows up on another night in a different-styled wig but is only shamed again by Hikaru. Amusing indubitably, but the point was to further illustrate what a Jerkass the boy was at that point.
- The first time, though, was meant to teach the man a lesson on bullying other Go players and the second time was somewhat by accident due to a Spit Take from Hikaru.
- Falling under the "desire to maintain a facade of authority" category is the principal of Nichijou's high school. He's bald from the start, with only that little bit of hair going from ear to ear behind his head. However, the third and final episodes of the series show that even this little bit of hair is in fact a toupee, to the utter shock of witnesses.
Comic Books
- The Dandy's (the comic, not the trope) Beryl The Peryl had her father's wig coming off as a running gag.
- One issue of The X-Files comic features a character with an obvious toupee to draw attention away from the fact that he has a trepanning hole in his forehead, covered by a latex plug.
- Francine's amazingly embarrassing Uncle Maury, in Strangers in Paradise.
- In All-Star Superman, Clark finally delivers comeuppance to Steve Lombard by surreptitiously setting Lombard's toupee on fire. Clark often quietly used his powers to make Lombard's pranks backfire in the Bronze Age but he was never quite this cruel.
Film
- A movie with Robert Downey Jr, Marisa Tomei and Billy Zane called Only You where Zane's character enters a restaurant with flowing auburn locks and sharp manner of dress and makes his move on the movie's Love Interest (Tomei). Then the protagonist (Downey Jr) turns up and gets into a scrap with him and then his long flowing locks go flying off.
- Often when someone wants to make a sketch or joke about Donald Trump they may take the easy angle and mock the obvious toupee. Meet the Spartans did this where he fires Spiderman and cuts his web but he sticks it back onto his head and pulls the wig off.
- Lisa Lampanelli did this funnier than anyone: "What do you say to a barber to get him to cut your hair like that? I fucked your daughter?"
- In one Sluggy Freelance strip, his toupee was revealed to be a live squirrel.
- On the DC Comics front, In Superman, we see Lex Luthor's array of wigs before we see his face to give us a sense of his vanity and we never see him without one on. Then when he is finally brought low by defeat by Superman and delivered straight to prison the wigs comes off at his moment of humiliation.
- Since the bad toupee or sudden reveal both lend themselves well to visual humor, it was a popular trope in silent movies. Laurel and Hardy would often make use of it, particularly when worn by their frequent supporting actor Jimmy Finlayson who would also wear a fake moustache for similar purposes.
- There's also the film Harold's Toupee starring Louis Simon
- Also Harold Lloyd used it in the cliffhanger classic Safety Last where a mouse gets onto Lloyd's characters leg which he shakes off, drops down the side of the building and knocks off the toupee of someone looking out of a lower window.
- Francis's hairpiece in The Goonies. It's especially bad after the various times it gets knocked off his head and he puts it back on.
- In The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Victor Quartermaine's impressive head of hair is sucked up by the Bun-Vac 6000. It is later replaced by a rabbit.
Literature
- Mr Groat's hair in the Discworld novel Going Postal.
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There may actually be a man somewhere on whom a toupee works, but whoever that man may be, Mr Groat was not he. |
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- It may or may not be alive. It definitely moves. Some doctors once tried to put it in a cupboard, but it got out.
- The beginning of young adult novel No More Dead Dogs features main character Wallace Wallace's inability to lie. This included an incident of young Wallace letting his uncle know that his toupee looked like an animal had crawled on top of his head and died there.
Live-Action TV
- Elliot Carlin, on The Bob Newhart Show, a patient of Bob's, wears a piece. Just before Bob was about to conduct a group therapy session on live TV, the director gets on the PA and tells the stage manager to "get some more makeup on the guy with the toupee".
- Grantly Budgen in Waterloo Road. The toupee is eventually destroyed in a hair salon accident.
- Part of the plot of the "Michael Ellis" episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Eric Idle is trying to return the ant he purchased from Harrod's and at one point is directed to the toupee department. All the salespeople in the department wear them, they all don't match, and the salespeople are blind to the fact.
- Special mention must go to the Amazing Stories episode "Hell Toupee", where the toupee is possessed and gives its wearer a compulsion to kill lawyers. This idea and the pun have been used elsewhere:
- An episode of Night Court has a grade school principal wearing such a toupee as a plaintiff. The defendant is a disgruntled prodigy student who programmed the school gym's scoreboard to publicly announce that the principal wore a toupee. Upon hearing this, nobody in the courtroom could keep a straight face.
- Showed up in How I Met Your Mother when Marshall, having shaved some of his hair off in a brief fit of insanity, needed something to cover his head before going down the aisle on his wedding day. One of the guests at the wedding has one of these toupees that just might work, but, come hell or high water, the guy refuses to admit he's wearing a toupee at all. Eventually Barney just snatches it off his head.
- There was a Seinfeld episode where George got a toupee that looked really bad, though both he and Kramer thought it looked great.
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Elaine: I DON'T LIKE THIS THING! AND HERE'S WHAT I'M DOING WITH IT! [throws it out Jerry's window] |
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- In Red Dwarf, this is played with in the episode "Out of Time", which featured the time-traveling epicure versions of the crew. Kryten, the android, looks exactly like what he is—an android—in the main series (justified because "humans have always found exact duplicates rather disturbing.") As an epicure, however, the new Kryten has to "blend in", and he shows up in a pale blue suit and a ridiculous toupee, which incidentally does nothing to conceal the rather cubic nature of his head. Later in the episode—when they must decide whether to fight their future selves because they hate everything they stand for, or give them what they want in order to survive—Kryten uses it as a justification for fighting:
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Rimmer: Then I say fight... |
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- Also used in the episode "Kryten", where they pick up Kryten, but think that they are instead picking up three hot girls, when the ship's computer Holly is the one to "dress up" by donning a toupee, and again in the song "Tongue-Tied" which has the toupee on Holly's head again.
- Kevin wears one to Jim and Pam's wedding in The Office.
- Several appear in The Goodies episode "Scoutrageous" when Graeme and Bill are trying to earn their Wig Spotter's Badge.
- Principal Caplan in early seasons of Power Rangers had a toupee which would sometimes be knocked off as a running gag.
- In Charmed, Paige had to deal with a Jerkass coworker and she growled about her toupee and accidentally orbed it off of his head.
- Zacarias of Brazilian comedy group Os Trapalhões was bald, and used a toupee that was generally spoofed or stolen.
- The Golden Girls' Stanley Zbornak frequently wears one of these, at least in the early episodes. It is the source of great amusement for the women.
- In The Dick Van Dyke Show Alan Brady wore a bad toupee. At one point Laura gave this away on national TV, though it was really The Not-Secret.
- In the "Police Officer" episode of the British Mockumentary series People Like Us, the police captain is wearing such an obvious and horrible toupee that the documentarian has trouble keeping a straight face—especially when the captain uses several hair-related Double Entendres in the course of discussing the life of a police officer.
- On the "Advanced Gay" episode during the third season of Community, Pierce's father Cornelius wore an ivory toupee, due to regular toupees being made from the hair of "godless Orientals". The ivory hairpiece, quote, is the only way to be assured of true follicular purity while still identifying oneself as a man of means.
Newspaper Comics
- There was a weeklong story involving Roger of FoxTrot getting himself a bad toupee. His wife Andy is less than pleased:
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Roger: Andy, I can't believe you don't like my hair piece. |
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- Although Jon from Garfield has only a receding hairline, he's had a couple incidents... Like the time he went swimming and there was an uproar when somebody yelled "Rat in the pool!". In Garfield's words, there are some places you just can't wear a chest toupee.
Video Games
- Frank Sahwit in the first Phoenix Wright game. It gets thrown into Phoenix's face during his Villainous Breakdown.
- Also notable is his 'freak out' face, where the toupee jumps up for a moment of its own accord. But yeah about that... after the breakdown, you'll wish he kept that thing on... Ugh.
- Don Flamenco from the Punch-Out!! series wears a toupee. Knocking it off during a match against him will cause him to go berserk and become much more aggressive.
- Team Fortress 2: one of the unlockable hats for the Heavy is a Dodgy Toupee called the "Coupe D'isaster".
Web Comics
- There's an example in Dominic Deegan, with the punchline "Toupee" (As the speaker scored the winning touch in a duel, when one traditionally says "Touche", while simultaneously removing the wig).
- In El Goonish Shive, the principal of Moperville North has a toupee that isn't too bad in and of itself, but when combined with the rest of his look, it makes him look like Hitler. Ellen told him so and later he ditches it and goes with a comb over instead.
- In Schlock Mercenary, a newsman has the toupee sucked off his head by his interviewee with a reverse-thrust hairdryer. Someone from offstage yells "Fresh scalp-cat to stage 3!"
Western Animation
- The Simpsons Treehouse Of Horror IX has a segment called "Hell Toupee" where Homer acquires a toupee made from the scalp of the recently executed Snake. Not only does the scalp contain its originator's murderous intent, it shares his Surfer Dude accent.
- In the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode "A Friend In Deed", Cranky Doodle gets one from Pinkie Pie after she accidentally demolishes his original hairpiece.
Real Life
- Rand Paul[who?]
- The story goes that Patrick Stewart had one of these when he was auditioning for Star Trek: The Next Generation. One of the producers thought maybe he ought to give his audition sans toupee, and the rest is history.
- Donald Trump's hair(piece) is a frequent target for comedy. One would think a man that wealthy could afford something that doesn't look like he's wearing a dead tribble on his head.
- William Shatner, of course!
- Depends on the era. His current ones aren't too bad, but back in the days of Star Trek II and III...
- Former Ohio Congressman Jim Traficant was famous for his eccentricities (e.g. wearing an all-denim suit on the floor of the House) and his awful toupee (which looked like it was floating). He also turned out to be one of the most corrupt members of Congress in recent history, being one of the only 20 members of Congress and only four from the House ever to have been expelled from the body.
- During Battle of The Network Stars back in the Seventies, the first show was hosted by sports journalist Howard Cosell, who was rather notorious for his toupee. After her team won a tug-of-war contest, Lynda Carter, who somehow didn't know it was a rug, began celebrating and poured a bottle of champagne over his head, ruining his toupee, and royally pissing him off.