Tomorrow a new village, and new victims.
The worst type of stranger imaginable, quite out of nowhere, this guy will quietly wander into town for the sole purpose of causing misery to its inhabitants. The Terrifying Transient has no fixed address, no intention of setting down roots. They will never stay in one place for particularly long, always ensuring to be on the move, but wherever they go, they will always bring problems with them.
Maybe they're an escaped convict on the run who has nothing to lose, or a deranged Serial Killer who is trying to make it all the harder for the authorities to connect their series of murders. Or perhaps they're simply so paranoid and messed up in the head that they see anyone who even glances in their direction as a potential enemy to be dealt with before they make the first move. Fundamentally, what matters is that they're only ever a visitor wherever they end up and will never stay too long.
This nomadic existence makes it a lot easier for them to constantly stay one step ahead of the authorities. In several regards, they are successor to the bandits and cutthroats of old, who would live outside of society to avoid the law and often terrorise entire regions.
Fitting with someone who lives their life on the move, the Transient will often be presented as poor and nomadic, potentially even living unassumingly on the streets amongst the homeless (this being another good cover). They are likewise often embodying a lot of the stereotypes, being presented as dirty, dishevelled, potentially addicted to drugs or alcohol, and poorly educated, but also very good at posing as harmless and possessing a hidden cunning beneath their unassuming exterior.
Alternatively, the transient might well give up on society all together, with them living out in the woods or the wilderness. In this case, they will likely be presented as particularly animalistic and savage (though often there still be good at putting up a harmless and friendly façade), with this version often invoking the legends of the wild people of the woods.
Likewise, even if their crimes are largely financial, don't expect them to show any interest in ceasing their lifestyle or settling down. Though sometimes the toll of life might get to them, don't expect them to be able to ever retire.
Staying on the move is, after all, quite advantageous to a criminal. Even in modern times, it's significantly harder for authorities to make connections between crimes that take place in different towns or different parts of the country. Likewise, murderers are all the harder to catch when they are long gone by the time the body is found.
Similarly, even if they are caught, expect it to be incredibly difficult to realistically discover all the details about their past.
Within Tabletop gaming, this is commonly recognised as the "murderhobo
" archetype: characters with no backstory, no fixed address, and no connection to anywhere in the world, whose only response to any problem (or the prospect of making money) is violence (although the term can also be used to describe characters who do not fall under this trope).
Compare Hostile Hitchhiker, who shares many of the same base fears of strangers, Crazy Homeless People, the more mundane and (usually) less dangerous example, Kill the Poor, with which it will usually co-exist if preying on their own "kind", and Wild Man. Contrast The Drifter, who is likewise nomadic and is this trope's Good Counterpart, Mountain Man who similarly lives outside of civilisation but generally presented more positively or at least neutrally; Southern Gothic Satan, who is also a stranger who rolls into town for the sake of causing misery, but generally more hands-off about it, acting through subtle manipulation and corruption rather than direct crimes, and Fugitive Arc, which is where the protagonist is on the run from law enforcement for crimes they didn't do (usually).
Can also overlap with Circus of Fear (particularly versions that focus on their nomadic nature). Often also involves a Stern Chase on the part of the authorities trying to hunt him down. The darkest Subtrope of the Mysterious Stranger and Really Moves Around. Also a subtrope of Walking the Earth.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Assassination Classroom: Downplayed. In Korosensei's backstory, it is mentioned that he, while working as the best Professional Killer of the world, was a stateless person to move around and hide from the authorities with more ease. Also a deconstruction: When he was finally captured, nobody insisted on defending his rights as a person, making him a great human test subject for Mad Scientist Yanagizawa.
- Xabungle: Taking place on a apunkalypse world, the planet Zola is full of Breakers, punks who roam around robbing and pillaging. Anyone attempting to do business has to rely on the protection of Transporters, wealthy entrepreneurs who hire other Breakers to defend their cargo.
- Jiron's Arch-Enemy Timp Sharon is a particularly noteworthy example, drifting from place to place, robbing and murdering For the Evulz and starting conflicts between Transporters. It turns out he's employed by the Innocent as an agent provocateur to keep the Transporters fighting among themselves so they don't band together to fight the Innocent.
Comic Books
- 30 Days of Night: The original group of vampires had the most basic MO possible: find a remote enough place nobody is going to check in for a day or three and feed on its inhabitants, killing everyone, stage some freak accident to cover tracks, then simply move on to a new place. Then they've started targeting places with polar night, which extended their feeding time. When they reach Barrow, Alaska, it's but a routine for them. Notably, the film adaptation added to this another layer - they directly ship themselves in cargo containers to their destination.
- Batman:
- The Joker is a terrifying gangster and serial killer with the aesthetic of a Monster Clown and an infamous case of Multiple-Choice Past. Most appearances show him dwelling in some abandoned amusement park, warehouse, or chemical factory, with no fixed base or permanent residence. Whenever he escapes Arkham Asylum or fakes his death, his whereabouts are completely unknown, and his origins and his real name elude even the greatest minds in The DCU. Likewise, whilst generally staying in Gotham City, he's been known to tour the world just on a whim, bringing mayhem wherever he goes.
- Killer Croc is typically depicted as homeless, often living in the city sewers. He's, of course, a man who looks like an alligator to various degrees Depending on the Artist, and as the name suggests, he's a prolific, yet tragic murderer and criminal. This is often used to reflect his animalistic nature and give him further pathos in society's rejection of him due to his condition.
- Dick Tracy:
- Steve "the Tramp" Brogan was a vagabond who made his living off of various crimes. His introduction has him as the abusive guardian of Junior, forcing the kid to steal for him and beating him whenever he didn't obey, which made Tracy adopt him as his own.
- Many villains fall into this once they've been exposed and are on the run from the law. No longer having their criminal lifestyles to fall back on and with the authorities looking for them, they're reduced to desperate and sometimes humiliating measures to stay ahead as they flee. One particular example is the Brush, who runs away after his scam organization falls apart with a bag filled with 1 million dollars, only to be reduced to bumming on the streets as he can't spend it as a wanted man.
Fan Works
- If Wishes Were Ponies...: At the end of the sequel, Voldemort, having had his cover blown as possessing one of the Hogwarts students (specifically Goyle), manages to escape by having Goyle, Crabbe, and Draco commit an act of terrorism that destroys the Great Hall and causes mass panic. In the chaos, he has Goyle escape. Using magic and his (albeit outdated) knowledge of the non-magical world, Voldemort/Tom is able to make his way to an airport, where he uses a "Confundus" to buy a plane ticket. After sucking the life out of Goyle's body and becoming fully alive again, he plans to start travelling Europe until he can find some way to try and return to power.
Film — Live-Action
- Apex (2026): Ben presents himself as a man who belongs in the wilderness, not society, camping out in the wilds of Wandarra National Park in Australia, living off selling his homemade jerky "Jenno's". He's also secretly a cannibalistic Serial Killer, who steals other campers' possessions and then hunts them through the forest with his crossbow. He likewise uses a nearby cave as his cold room to store and salt brine his victims' bodies.
- Dennis the Menace (1993): Switchblade Sam is a vicious, filthy and vindictive notorious burglar and criminal, who turns up in the town to commit a series of thefts whilst making his base under a bridge by the railroad.
- Fender Bender: The Driver is a Serial Killer responsible for the deaths of dozens of women, whose MO is that he uses his car to rear-end potential victims and thus get their personal information. Then, afterwards, he waits until night to break into their home and kill them, then takes a new name using his victims, stealing their licence plate for his car and their money to refill his tank, and drives off into the night until he's running low to find a new victim. He also proves happy to slaughter whole groups of women if the opportunity presents itself.
- Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer: The titular Henry is a dirty, vicious, dim-witted, illiterate, and socially awkward sociopath who murdered his own mother, and explains his success at staying off law enforcement's radar due to being constantly on the move throughout the country and his habit of mixing up his method of murder with each kill. Arriving in Chicago, Henry brutally slaughters multiple people before ending the film, leaving for California having murdered his lover Becky.
- The Invisible Man (1933): After his two attempts to make a base and work on finding a way to become visible again (at a country inn and Dr Kemp's home respectively), Jack Griffin engages his "reign of terror", travelling across the country performing acts ranging from minor pranks to acts of mass murder, with him finding rest wherever. At the climax, he's taken to sleeping in a farmer's barn.
- The Night of the Hunter: Big Bad Harry Powell sells himself as a "travelling preacher" up and down the Ohio River, while actually robbing and murdering dozens of innocents (especially women). In fact, it's his need to constantly steal fresh cars that instigates the movie's plot.
- Suspense: This 1913 short film, sometimes considered the first suspense film, is about a woman at home alone with her baby and a scary-looking tramp trying to break into the house armed with a butcher knife. (Also a possible Ur-Example of Axe Before Entering although, he's using a large knife rather than an axe.)
- Taking Lives: Martin Asher is an enigmatic serial killer with no fixed residence, no education or income to trace and no way of knowing where he's heading and who is going to be his next victim - all lead on him ends by the time he was a teenage runaway. He manages to achieve this level of anonymity by the combination of never, ever stopping anywhere for long and being an identity thief, being usually two or more identities "ahead" of the body any authorities could find, already elsewhere by then.
Literature
- Harry Potter: Played with; in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Sirius Black breaks out of Azkaban prison and is considered so dangerous that even the Muggle authorities are alerted to keep an eye out. The Daily Prophet reports on suspected sightings of him throughout the British countryside. While it later comes out that Sirius was innocent of his accused crimes and the real culprit had been hiding under everyone's nose as Ron's pet rat, Scabbers, Sirius is still seen as this trope by the rest of the Wizarding World until his death in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Because Sirius must stay on the move to avoid going back to Azkaban, he only contacts Harry through coded messages and by floo.
- Needful Things: Ever since the Black Plague, Leland Gaunt travels around the world as a travelling trader, using the shops he opens in the places where he goes to spread chaos and dissension, playing upon the residents flaws and manipulating people into doing seemingly harmless or minor events that descend into suicide, murder and even mass causality events. In the novel, he arrives in Castle Rock, but the last sentences of the novel involve him arriving in another city.
- Nightmares & Dreamscapes: In the story "The Night Flier", it focuses on cynical, jaded reporter Richard Dee who is on the trail of the titular Night Flier, a Serial Killer who travels between small airports across the country and brutally kills people each time he lands. As Richard discovers too late, the Night Flier is actually a vampire.
- The Stand: Randall Flagg is nicknamed the Walkin Dude and the Midnight Rambler for good reason. He walks from place to place across America, sowing chaos and murder wherever he decides to plant his boots, and then walking on when he's done. Even after establishing himself as the ruler of Las Vegas in the wake of the Captain Trips superflu and taking up residence at the MGM Grand, Flagg is still capable of travelling to even the furthest reaches of his dominion by foot on a moment's notice, which keeps his henchmen in a permanent state of paranoia. At the climax of the novel, its revealed despite the destruction of Vegas Flagg is still alive, with him waking up on a tropical island and happily resuming his style of spreading atrocities.
- The Stormlight Archive: Szeth, the Assassin in White, is dreaded throughout Roshar because he wanders the continent and brings death seemingly everywhere he goes, and there seems to be no way of deterring him because he has powers that most people thought disappeared when the Knights Radiant fell.
- The Witcher: Leo Bonhart is, at least officially, a Bounty Hunter. In reality, he's a very literal case of Psycho for Hire, who relishes (even sexually) in the fact he is paid for killing people and doing so with legal immunity, travelling all around the world after whichever bounty looks interesting. When he's hired to trace and capture Ciri (knowing her first only as Falka criminal alias), he just charges a little extra for the travelling expenses and moves on with the job. All he ever cares about is the thrill of murder, getting new, better gear and finding new challenges to fight, always moving after yet another bounty. The character is widely considered to be a parody of a "murderhobo" archetype from tabletop RPG as seen from the POV of the inhabitants of the world, given author's involvement in the hobby and the type of winks he makes for his own readers.
- Worm: The Slaughterhouse Nine never stay long in one place, just enough to sow terror in large cities, or completely depopulate small towns. They're particularly good at slipping away whenever the city is gathering enough forces to actually put them down — because Jack Slash's power is feeding him hints to keep him alive.
Live-Action TV
- Bonanza: "Thunder Man" sees the Cartwrights employing William Poole, a charming journeyman demolition expert, the titular "Thunder Man" due to his specialty in using nitroglycerine. However, as Ben Cartwright figures out at the climax, Poole is really a Serial Rapist and murderer responsible not just for the death of his girlfriend, her uncle and another woman, but also the assault and murders of several other women in multiple towns around the area. With Poole happily boasting he can't even remember how many victims he has at this point, and declaring himself untouchable by the forces of heaven and earth before trying to kill Ben.
- Criminal Minds:
- Frank Breitkopf, the series first recurring antagonist, originally the son of a prostitute, Frank travels from state to state in his van, where he would abduct victims at random and vivisect them alive, amassing a body count of 173 people, managing to stay off law enforcement's radar for years. He ends up obsessed with engaging in a series of twisted mind games with the BUA once they discover his existence.
- Armando Salinas, a.k.a. The Highway 99 Killer from "Catching Out", is a serial killer who used to work as a seasonal migrant farm worker, before losing his job which led him to become a traditional "box car hobo" who travels around by train hopping. He'd target well-off couples, killing them and living in their houses as if they were his, and then send money from his murders to his family. Notably, it's made clear he had the potential to make something legitimate of himself, but disdained the work involved (unlike his brother), with it being implied he simply prefers the ease of his new lifestyle despite its hardships.
- The "Romani Family" from "Bloodlines" are a family of Romani who play into the stereotypes of Romani being vagrants and thieves. The family "tradition" is to kidnap young girls to raise and become "wives" for their sons, breaking into the home of a preselected family to kill their parents. By moving around the country and doing so only once each generation, they have managed to carry this on for at least 100 years. Worse still, the ending reveals that the family the BAU have been dealing with is merely one branch of a larger clan that also practices the tradition.
- Billy Flynn aka The Prince Of Darkness, the villain of "Our Darkest Hour" and "The Longest Night", is a dirty, meth-addicted, homeless killer who travels across the country, breaking into homes during city-wide blackouts, and robbing, raping and killing the families inside. Having been active since 1984 and present within 48 states, Billy has amassed somewhere over 400 victims by this point, making him the most prolific killer the BUA has encountered.
- Shane Wyland from "Into the Woods" is a man who following being paroled for child molestation, abandoned society to live on the Appalachian trail, in caves and abandoned 18th century mines, who kidnaps, molests and kills young boys. To fund his lifestyle, he also pimps his captives out to other paedophiles. He's also one of only 6 murderers to successfully escape the BAU (although it's implied his victory will be short-lived).
- House: In "Fall from Grace", House treats a homeless man, "Danny", who was badly abused as a child and claims he wants to be a doctor but refuses to give them his real name or any true information about him. Martha Masters becomes particularly attached to him and, resisting attempts by the others to tell her that he's just telling her what she wants to hear, helps him to see that God does have a "plan" for him. After he's cured (mostly) and leaves, the FBI arrives and tells House's team that the man they saved was a cannibalistic serial killer who's linked to thirteen murders in ten different states.
- The Incredible Hulk: Invoked; the government (especially the scientists/military men hunting him) believe that Doctor David Banner/the Hulk is a dangerous criminal due to the fact that he can turn into a giant, nigh-indestructible monster, and the fact that a woman wound up dead after one of his experiments. Thus, to avoid capture, Banner is forced to travel the country doing odd jobs under various pseudonyms. He often helps the people he meets in these places. But once the Hulk is seen, he's forced to run again.
- Jessica Jones (2015): Kilgrave basically moves around at random with no fixed address. His powers make it easier for him to find a place to stay since he can just tell people he lives in their home, and they won't be able to argue otherwise. He casually ruins people's lives and moves on to the next place. During the first season, he is seen dwelling in at least four different homes.
- Killing Eve: Villanelle is an unusually high-end example, with elaborate designer clothes and nice apartments. Working for a mysterious organization called The Twelve, she's moved around all over the world under a variety of aliases (Villanelle isn't her real name) and elaborate disguises in order to kill people the Twelve assigns to her. She doesn't know why and says she doesn't care and at least at first, she takes pleasure in sadistically killing people.
- Midnight, Texas: Zachariah from "Lemuel, Unchained" is Lemuel Bridger sire. Meeting in the 1800s, where he turned Lem, the two toured the country together, with Zachariah building himself a nest of vampires, leaving trails of bodies in their wake. Whilst Lem grew to loathe their existence, Zachariah revealed he secretly loved killing, seeing humans as nothing but prey, leading to their falling out. In the present, Zachariah and his nest still keep their nomadic existence, however, due to the changing times meaning they can no longer get away with murder so easily, they've been forced to rely upon willing donors, and Zachariah is now looking to settle down in Midnight. However, despite pretending to have changed, Manfred discovers he's still the same bloodthirsty predator.
- NCIS: Probably the most famous case in the series is Jonas Cobb, better known as the "Port-to-Port Killer", being the main antagonist of the latter half of Season 8. Initially, Jonas was a test subject of Operation Frankenstein, a covert experiment to turn US sailors into sleeper assassins. Unfortunately, the toll of the operation and Jonas's first kill made him unstable, eventually going rogue. He became a threat to the US Navy by killing US Navy personnel and engaging with NCIS agents, managing to evade the agencies hunting him for years, jumping from port to port, hence his nickname. Ultimately, Jonas's end goal was targeting the main overseers of the Operation that made him into a killer.
- Quantum Leap: Leon Randolph Stiles from "Killin’ Time" is a depraved, illiterate redneck Serial Killer from 1958 who is mentioned to have murdered prostitutes throughout the south, leading Sheriff Hoyte (whose daughter he killed) to chase him across the country. Unfortunately, Sam ends up leaping into him right as he’s holding a woman and her daughter hostage, whilst the real Stiles breaks out in 1999, intending to carry on his killing spree.
- The Rookie:
- Marcus Lindsey the Arc Villain of season five, seemingly just a timid, unassuming suburnite used to be one. Upon being unmasked as a Serial Killer he admits to John Nolan that he spent the last ten years staying off law enforcement's radar by leaving town after each kill. However, the strain of constantly having to reinvent himself took its toll, so he decided that if he was careful, California was large enough that he could finally settle down. He later chides himself for his laziness, admitting he plans to skip town again once he murders Nolan.
- Ezra Kane from “The Red Place” initially appears to be a harmless and unassuming homeless man arrested on a minor breaking and entering charge. However, he’s truthfully a dangerous psychopath. Four years previously, Ezra brutally murdered a couple and abducted their daughter, Samantha. Keeping her prisoner and psychologically breaking her, Ezra constantly moved around the country, getting by through stealing credit cards, coming down to California due to his disdain for the cold weather.
- Twin Peaks: An alternate version of the pilot episode, edited into a self-contained, standalone TV movie was released in Europe, and ends with the reveal that Laura Palmer was murdered by a passing Serial Killer named Bob. Not the case in the main series, however, where Laura's murderer is not an outsider at all, and BOB's identity (all caps) is far more complicated and otherworldly.
- Werewolf (1987): Janos Skorzeny, the main antagonist for most of the series, is a centuries-old Werewolf believed to be the progenitor of the curse that infects Eric Cord, having sired multiple werewolves during his long life. A sailor by trade, Janos spends his life on the move, arriving in new ports, where he will go on brutal killing sprees (often targeting the homeless or prostitutes), then leave before suspicion can fall on him. Eric flat-out states that Janos is no longer truly human; he's simply a wolf who is sometimes a man rather than the other way around.
- The Wire:
- The Fiend from season 4, is a huge, unnamed homeless addict who feeds his addiction by robbing and brutalizing other homeless people unable to fight back against him, with him in particularly singling out Bubbles, whom he delights in beating and stealing from to the point seemingly stalking him.
- Downplayed and Invoked. In the season finale, whilst still dealing with the repercussions of his Fake Red Ribbon Killer plot he cooked up, McNulty is horrified to discover a genuine murder victim that sloppily matches the killers MO has been found, followed shortly by another. It turns out the killer is an unassuming homeless man who liked collecting business cards that had appeared several times throughout season 5. Whilst dangerous (admitting he murdered his first victim simply cause his drinking annoyed him), its made clear he's mentally ill and barely has any understanding of his surroundings. As such whilst only charged with the murders he committed and sentenced to a psychiatric institution, the public and press are left believing that he was behind all the other supposed homeless murders so as the top brass don't have to come clean about the truth.
Music
- The Doors: The subject of "Riders on the Storm" is about one being on the run and warns not to give him a ride. The latter song, "The Hitchhiker", retells "Riders" from the murderer's perspective:
There's a killer on the road
His brain is squirming like a toad
Take a long holiday
Let your children play
If you give this man a ride
Sweet heaven, you will die
Killer on the road
Religion & Mythology
- The Bible: Played with; in Book of Genesis, God punishes Cain for killing his own brother, making him an exile and a wanderer — but preventing anyone from killing him. Due to there being little information about what happened afterwards, there is naturally no mention of any further crimes. Some folk legends interpret this as Cain being immortal and, having survived even the Flood, still wandering the world and in some even carrying on his wicked deeds.
Tabletop Games
- Exalted: Subverted by many Renegade Abyssals. While any Abyssal who shows up to your village will likely bring some misery, and many are terrifying figures of death loathed and hunted as Anathema, if an Abyssal moves on quickly, it is a mercy. Abyssals who linger on too long and form attachments to the living become Walking Wastelands, and renegade Abyssals are chased by both the Wyld Hunt and any Deathlords with an interest in returning the prodigal deathknight to their service. It can be played straight by more malevolent renegades, who linger on just enough to bring death and destruction, before moving to another place as the survivors slowly succumb to despair.
- "Muderhobo" is a well-established character concept within the tabletop RPG scene: a character with very little motivation or story, really good at killing (even in games that aren't dungeon crawlers) and simply looking for new jobs, unbothered by any morality of killing people by hundreds. This archetype dates back to at least Basic Dungeons & Dragons, where the whole concept of the game was about going from dungeon to dungeon, but since then it has grown into its own thing and hobby lingo, by the mid-90s already meaning a type of player who is only interest in big tally of dead bodies and having the deadliest character.
- Shadowrun: As part of their expenses, every player character is expected to pay a monthly lifestyle that represents their rent, food and other living expenses. The lowest one is "Street", which basically makes the character effectively transient (though the character has various penalties from living this way). As Player Shadowrunners are morally flexible mercenaries with skills that rival or surpass those of your average special forces, and who engage in any kind of jobs like murder, kidnapping, smuggling and thievery, a Shadowrunner with a Street lifestyle falls squarely into this.
- Warhammer Fantasy: Wulfrik the Wanderer (or World-Walker) is known as such because he is sent by the Chaos gods to find, challenge and kill foes they deem worthy, with no fixed place to live save his longship (the Seafang), which can fly and teleport to anywhere in the world through the Warp (it's never actually identified as such, but it's a horrible dimension filled with daemons). He no longer has a permanent place to live after arranging for the death of the king who'd betrayed him, his entire tribe being left to Uncertain Doom.
Theatre
- Wicked: Discussed and invoked; in Act 2, Elphaba is scapegoated by the Wizard and Madame Morrible, forced to travel around Oz on a broomstick to avoid detection and continue to help the rebel Animals being persecuted by Oz's laws. The Ozians are manipulated to see her as this trope so as not to trust her claims that the Wizard is the one truly to blame, as shown in "No One Mourns the Wicked (Reprise)":
''Save us from the Wicked!Shield us so we won't be hexed!Give us warningWhere will she strike next?Where will she strike next?Where will she strike next!?''
Video Games
- Dead by Daylight: Forms the backstory of the Clown, Kenneth Chase aka Jeffrey Hawke. As a young man already with sociopathic tendencies, he returned home one day to discover his father had discovered his hidden trophy collection (containing the paws of dead animals and one human finger), thus Kenneth ran away to avoid being caught, and managed to join a travelling circus as a strongman and labourer. Over the next decade, his nomadic existence led to him falling into vice, and when that was not enough, he stole several costumes from his fellow performers and became a Serial Killer, murdering all manner of men, women and children solely for the thrill or cause they reminded him of people he held a grudge against, keeping a finger as a trophy. Following one of his victims managing to escape whilst he was passed out due to drink, he set off into the night with his horse-drawn caravan, and afterwards continued to travel through America, hiding with other circuses and carnivals, then disappearing after committing his murder before he could be discovered, until the Entity took him.
- Deadlock (2024): Drifter is a vampiric Serial Killer who's been wandering and hunting throughout America for generations. He's an outcast from traditional vampire society as well as a consistently elusive target of monster-hunting groups like the Baxter Society and the Venators of St. Benedict, and joins the ritual solely to quench his thirst for blood. Fitting, he has a ratty, dishevelled appearance and his clothes have been through a fair bit of wear and tear.
- Fallout: New Vegas: Clanden is implied to be one. On surface he simply seems to be a harmless, friendly guy hired as an "independent contractor" by the Ometra's, however, multiple people are suspicious as no one has any idea where he came from or what his deal is. In fact, Clanden is an explosive expert mercenary hired by them as part of their plans for causing a mass causality event on the strip. Even worse, the Ometra's largely pay him in giving them their prostitutes for Clanden to rape, torture and murder, even producing his own Snuff Films. If blackmailed into leaving, Clanden is perfectly happy to disappear and simply set himself up again somewhere else.
- Hitman: The titular assassin is Agent 47, the world's greatest contract killer with a 100% success rate when it comes to taking out his marks. He never stays in one place for long, flying all over the world for his work and only buying a handful of luxuries like his signature suits and his incredibly rare WA2000 rifle. This is a conscious effort to remain elusive due to the sheer number of high-profile targets he's killed over the course of his career. Subverted in Hitman 3 Freelancer, where he owns a mansion next to a lake and surrounded by a forest.
- Trivia Murder Party: The Trivia Killer or [REDACTED] is always on the move and set up his games at whatever location suits his fancy. Once he's done with his games, he destroys his base and moves on. In the first, it was just a simple house in his, oddly large, basement. 2 has him running a hotel (that according to him was either in his family's name or he stolen from the previous owner). 3 has him take a job as a camp counselor at a abandoned camp grounds and trick some people into applying there.
Web Original
- Creep Cast: Played for Laughs. Hunter jokes in Penpal that Wendigoon met a creepy (but perfectly nice) old hobo who only ate beans when he was a kid.
- Creepypasta: Jeff the Killer is a teenager/young adult who wanders around the United States (and in one inexplicable story, Wales) and kills people largely for the thrill of it. Considering that 1) he's infamous in-universe and the subject of a nationwide manhunt, and 2) he's a lanky, ghostly pale guy with a bright red Glasgow Smile, no eyelids, and always wears the same white hoodie and black dress pants everywhere, many readers and commentators ask how the hell he hasn't been caught yet, since a homeless guy with that look would be really easy to spot.
- Creepypasta Cookoff: In "The Thing on Owl Creek Ridge", the transient David Lee Solomon appears so clean-cut and polite that the town thinks of him more as a man between jobs than a hobo or drifter. Only Mr Hannah, who dislikes outsiders in general, distrusts him — and is proven correct when the stranger abducts and murders his young daughter. Unfortunately for Solomon, Mr. Hannah has plenty of time and imagination to conduct a suitable revenge...
- The Magnus Archives:
- Played with. Trevor Herbert, debuting in “The Vampire Hunter”, is a lifelong hunter of vampires (and by extension other monsters), as well as an unknowing disciple of the Hunt. He spent most of his life from boyhood into his sixties, homeless and addicted to heroin, with him constantly travelling around the UK, before leaving for America. He deliberately played this up to ensure that he was unnoticed and thus free to carry out his monster hunting. Whilst managing to stay at worst amoral for most of his life due to his genuine desire to protect innocents, towards the end, his connection to the hunt corrupted him into effectively becoming a Spree Killer.
- Breekon and Hope are unconventional examples as they act as deliverers of whatever causes the misery rather than directly causing it; however, as Breekon confirms in his statement in "Heavy Goods" as creations of the Stranger, they specifically represent the fears people have of strangers who bring misery and harm to the community. It's confirmed they have been around for centuries (with it implied they were originally created during the black death out of the fear of plague bringers), constantly travelling from one location to another, acting as delivery men who transport all manner of supernatural artefacts.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons: Subverted and parodied in "Simpsons Tall Tales"; whilst travelling to Delaware by sneaking aboard a boxcar of a train, the family are terrified to discover a hobo in the car with them. However, the hobo assures them he's "not a stabbing hobo, I'm a singing hobo." He then starts singing a song about how much he loves stabbing people with his hobo knife, till Marge asks him to sing something less unnerving, with him assuring her he was just having a bit of fun with them.
- Wander Over Yonder: Invoked; despite Wander being a Nice Guy and All-Loving Hero, he and his best friend Sylvia are wanted all over the galaxy... ironically by Lord Hater, an actual bad guy. Wander so easily avoids capture because, as his name implies, he's a nomad who loves nothing more than to travel the galaxy, rarely staying anywhere long. Plus, most legitimate officials don't care what Hater wants, as he's an evil conquering dictator. The whole situation is Played for Laughs a few times, as the only "crime" Wander's committed in Hater's eyes is "making [him] look totally stupid".
Real Life
- There are a couple of theories that Jack the Ripper might have been a sailor, explaining why he was never caught:
- One possible Ripper suspects was Carl Feigenbaum, a German Merchant sailor, who was convicted and executed for murdering Juliana Hoffman, a woman he charmed into renting him a room for the night with the promise of payment once he started his new job in 1894. Feigenbaum’s lawyer at his trial, William Sandford Lawton, admitted years later he believed his former client was the Ripper. Feignebaum is suspected of being a serial killer due to the extensive investigation in the 21st century by retired Metropolitan Detective and leading Ripperologist Trevor Marriott, linking five unsolved and quite brutal murders of other women (mostly prostitutes) between 1889 and 1892 in towns in Germany and the US near Ports during times it's believed Feignebaum was present due to his occupation. Feigenbaum likewise arrived in London near Whitechapel in late 1888, shortly before the Ripper murders began. Said theory is subject to strong controversy, though, due to the lack of surviving police reports and the differences in the MO of the murders.
- Another theory links Jack The Ripper to the Managua Ripper, an uncaught Serial Killer who supposedly slaughtered six sex workers in Managua, Nicaragua over the course of ten days, in manners that resembled the Ripper killings. Marriott noted that a British merchant ship, the Sylph, arrived in the country shortly before the murders were alleged to have occurred, having set off from London a few months after the Murder of Mary Jane Kelly (generally agreed to be the Rippers last victim), and had originally arrived in London from Barbados shortly before the murder of Mary Ann Nichols (generally agreed to be the Rippers first victim). However, the theory is subject to intense scrutiny, due to the difficulties experts have found in finding confirmable details about the Managua Ripper Murders, to the point that several denounce the whole story as having been made up by the newspaper to drum up readership.
- Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker, was a serial killer active from 1984 to 1985 who was homeless. He would burglarize and do home invasions alongside his murder, stealing valuables and cars he would later abandon.