Prehensile Hair: Difference between revisions

[[File:Medusa slam 4440.jpg|link=The Inhumans|frame|... is how you get it to stay so silky smooth.]]

 

 

Sometimes people have a hairdo so big it seems like it has a mind of its own, and moves on its own accord. And then there are the people who have the ability to ''make'' it move. Characters with superpowers that allow their mullets to become murderous. To allow their ponytails to pummel. To allow their pigtails to pick fights. To allow their braids to barrage. [[Overly Long Gag|To allow their... OK, I'll stop now.]]

 

See also [[Feather Fingers]], [[Helicopter Hair]].

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== Advertising ==

* A Skittles advertisement features a man in a job interview who possesses a long prehensile beard. He uses it to pick Skittles off a table and place them in his mouth and the mouth of his interviewer. Neither character refers to the beard.

 

* ''[[Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo]]'': Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo—although that's ''nose hair'' in his case. {{spoiler|Also chest, leg, armpit and head hair in the case of Bobobo's relatives (one type of hair for each).}} This comes from his ability to communicate with hair, which is only shown in a flashback in the first episode with his afro telling him that he's some kind of freak for being able to talk to hair.

* A minor villain from the beginning of ''[[Inuyasha|Inu Yasha]]'', Yura, has the ability to animate [[People Puppets|people like puppets]] and [[Razor Floss|cut things]] using Prehensile Hair. Unlike most examples of this trope, Yura could actually add the hair of her victims to her Prehensile Hair, which she kept as a giant hairball rather than it being connected directly to her head. This was because Yura herself was not a person, but [[Soul Jar|actually a demonic comb]].

** Ring-Ring from the same cartoon is very prone to attacking people with her magically stretching [[You Gotta Have Blue Hair|blue hair]].

* In ''[[Petit Roid 3]]'', Kirara is a [[Robot Girl]] whose hair is not just prehensile but can take many shapes, including a pair of radar dishes, [[Helicopter Hair]], or a [[This Is a Drill|drill]] covering her whole head. Oh, and [[Naughty Tentacles]] too... it's a [[Hentai]] manga.

* Kejourou from ''[[Nurarihyon no Mago]]'' uses her hair to attack and bind enemy Youkai, usually to allow Kubinashi to finish them off.

* ''[[Fairy Tail]]''

** Flare Corona can not only extend her hair to ridiculous lengths and block most forms of magic, but also transform it into a wolf.

** Vivaldus Taka from Trinity Raven can also use his long hair to attack, as well as absorb water attacks with it.

 

== Comic Books ==

* Tinsels power from ''[[Dreamkeepers]]'' is this.

* Cebolinha/Jimmy Five from ''[[Monica's Gang]]'' has only five spiky strands of hair, which apparently are sharp as wire (injures people, pops balloons and balls, and once, when the hair was overtly big, his [[The Pig Pen|dirty/aquaphobic]] best friend used some plastic to turn it into an umbrella).

 

== Fan Works ==

* In ''[[The Mad Scientist Wars]]'', Jane Narbon recently invented a "hair symbiote" that gives her this ability. How it gets the necessary leverage and tensile strength to lift people and swing objects is [[A Wizard Did It|unexplained]].

* In ''[[Keepers of the Elements]]'', [[Alpha Bitch|Heather]] is given this as a secondary ability.

 

== Films -- Animation ==

* In the first trailer for ''[[Tangled]]'', the character of Rapunzel beats up a thief trespassing in her tower with her hair. However, this scene (nor actual prehensile hair) [[Missing Trailer Scene|does not appear in the movie.]] Though Rapunzel is absurdly adept at flinging locks of hair around to pull levers, etc., so it sort of borders on this in the film.

* In the 2007 movie version of ''[[Beowulf (film)|Beowulf]]'', Grendel's mother (interpreted here as a [[Horny Devils|sexy siren]] rather than the original's poorly described ogre-like thing) has a long braid that can move on its own. It's implied to be the tail of her true, rather more monstrous form.

 

== Films -- Live-Action ==

* In the J-Horror movie ''Apartment 1303'', the main ghost, Yukiyo, can do this with her hair.

* ''Hair'', from the horror anthology ''Body Bags'', features Stacy Keach receiving a hair transplant operation, which turns out to be {{spoiler|an alien parasite that bites him after he plucks a hair from his ''tooth!''}}

 

== Literature ==

* The main character of children's book ''The Hair of Zoe Fleefenbacher Goes to School'' has hair that not only is twice her size, but acts of its own accord.

* In Yasmin Galenorn's The Otherworld Series, Smoky the Dragon has long, silvery hair that he sometimes uses as [[Naughty Tentacles]] during funtimes with Camille.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* There was an episode of an anthology show (probably the revived ''Outer Limits'') in which a balding man grew a crop of long, luxurious hair after trying a new rub-on tonic. The hair turned out to be mobile, because each hair was actually a thread-like larval alien, and they were eating his brain.

 

* The ''futakuchi'' of Japanese myth is a seemingly anorexic women with an extra mouth on the back of her head that eats twice as much. Her hair supposedly acts in the manner described to put food in the extra mouth.

 

* In ''[[Feng Shui]]'', prehensile hair is a good excuse for a Ghost to have the [[Combat Tentacles|Tentacles]] power, as mentioned above in "Film."

* The Wu-Keng of ''[[Mage: The Ascension]]'' can acquire a demonic gift which makes their hair prehensile. Given the Wu-Keng were inspired by the same Wuxia material as ''Pathfinder'''s White-Haired Witch, this isn't surprising.

 

== Video Games ==

* Dr. Tenent, a physician and teacher in the Magical Arts Department of Whateley Academy in the ''[[Whateley Universe]]''. She often does the medusa bit to handle multiple medical instruments at once.

* Slipknot and Dreadlocks, from the ''[[Global Guardians PBEM Universe]]'', both have this superpower. Slipknot can only manipulate his hair in this fashion. Dreadlocks is a [[Rubber Man]] who can stretch his entire body in addition to his hair.

 

== Western Animation ==

* The fish head and hair monsters made by Dr Barber in ''[[The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack]]'' episode "Fish Heads".

* [[Ben 10]] minor villain Frightwig (of the Circus Freaks) has prehensile hair with metal weights at the end of each "tentacle" which she uses to bludgeon opponents.

 

== Real Life ==