All Bikers are Hells Angels

When I'm on the road, I'm indestructible. No one can stop me...

"When we do right, nobody remembers. When we do wrong, nobody forgets."

— Official motto of the Hells Angels

Whenever motorcyclists are depicted in movies or on TV, with few exceptions they are portrayed as brutish thugs and criminals. This stems from the mystique of the classic "outlaw biker" of American culture. After World War II, motorcycle clubs became increasingly popular, especially with returning soldiers and airmen. In 1947, unruly bikers attending a rally in Hollister, CA, caused the so-called Hollister riot. Sensationalized stories of the event created the perception that packs of bikers were looting and pillaging small towns across the country. These stories inspired the classic 1953 film The Wild One, which launched Marlon Brando's career and permanently ingrained the outlaw biker into pop culture.

The classic outlaw biker is a big, burly, grizzled man wearing a leather jacket and riding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Outlaw bikers almost always belong to a biker gang. Members of biker gangs wear the colors of their gang: a vest (called a "kutte," pronounced "cut") over their jacket that displays their gang name, insignia, and area of operation. Most gangs also have a system of patches that indicate members' various accomplishments and duties. White supremacist beliefs and symbols are fairly popular (though not ubiquitous). Bikers live for wild parties and extremely hard drinking. They support their nomadic lifestyle with the drug trade. Classic weapons of an outlaw biker include clubs, chains, and knives. Many real-world bikers carry large flashlights because legally they are not considered weapons. The best way to piss off a biker is to wear your own "colors" displaying another gang's turf as your home city. The ultimate crime, however, is knocking over their motorcycles.

Contrary to public perception, most bikers are normal, law-abiding citizens. The American Motorcycle Association allegedly insisted that only one percent of motorcycle riders are troublemakers. Outlaw bikers quickly adopted the phrase "one percenter" as a badge of honor, choosing to see themselves as members of an exclusive elite. And even amongst one-percenter motorcycle clubs, only four have been designated by the FBI (and Canada's CIS) as actual organized criminal gangs: the Bandidos, Hells Angels, Outlaws, and Pagans.

It didn't take long for the outlaw biker trope to be exported to other countries. Currently the Hells Angels boast membership across 27 countries, though additional regional variants on the outlaw biker do exist. In The '60s, British "Rocker" gangs made headlines for their violent clashes with the scooter-riding Mods, but quickly faded away. Modern European bikers tend to fit closer to the "sportbike punks" style and are usually dangerous only to themselves. Bōsōzoku gangs are a subset of Japanese Delinquents and have their own unique traditions.

One stock subversion, almost to the point of being clichéd, is the grizzled old biker who's really a softy; likely with a tattoo declaring his love for his mom. Despite the suggested humor of this "wacky" juxtaposition, it's really closer to Truth in Television than it is any sort of subversion.

See also Badass Biker and Biker Media. See also Greaser Delinquents for the initial roots of the phenomenon, although greasers are associated with four-wheeled vehicles as much as two-wheeled ones.

Note: the name of the Hells Angels gang has no apostrophe.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ah! My Goddess: While Keiichi Morisato is a motorcycle enthusiast, this is Keiichi Morisato we're talking about. Of course, some argue he's a scary character for other reasons.
• AKIRA features two violent outlaw biker gangs: Kaneda's gang of delinquents and the Clowns. The general suckiness of the world justifies the trope somewhat. Due to being set in Japan, they are based on Bosozoku gangs more than the actual Hells Angels.
• An early story arc of City Hunter has the Blue Oysters, who both invoke and parody the trope. They invoke it in being a delinquent gang on bikes, but parody it by being a bunch of idiots, put together by the son of a Yakuza boss in the attempt to impress the girl he's supposed to marry. The girl Face Palmed upon finding out who led the Blue Oysters, and threatened to put him in the hospital again while calling him a moron.
• Played with in Manga/Crows. There are several biker gangs in the setting, but the most important biker gang narratively is The Front of Armament. While other bikers are typical bosozuko who wear militaristic uniforms emblazoned with Kanji, ride tricked out Japanese bikes, and are rigorously organized and disciplined, TFOA wear black leather or blue denim with skulls and crosses, ride choppers, and celebrate freedom and independence over all else.
• Encountered in Cromartie High School on several occasions: Masked Takenouchi defeats a whole bike gang at Cromartie using the art of pillow-jutsu, and the real Takenouchi, on overcoming his own motion sickness, manages to devastate one of them, to the point where its leader quits and tries to get revenge on Takenouchi on his own.
• Beelzebumon from Digimon Tamers (irony included in his name). Leather jacket? Check. Monster motorcycle? Check. Badass? Check. Topping it off, he's got a pair of shotguns.
• Averted... oddly, in Eye Shield 21. When the Devil Bats are on their Death March across America, Sena gets separated and meets up with a thuggish trio of bikers. Turns out the trio are actually middle-aged adults who love Asian dramas and take a liking to Sena because he reminds them of a certain Korean film, and are more than glad to take them to where (they think) he needs to be.
• Fist of the North Star: 80% of the enemies Kenshiro faces fall into this trope. With the added bonus of being, on average, at least ten feet tall. The series was partially based on Mad Max.
• An unlikely series for one is Robotech: in the "The Masters" (aka Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross) part of the series, the 15th Alpha Tactical Armored Corps often acts as one when on leave, riding around in hoverbikes and getting into trouble with fighter pilots and the Global Military Police.
• Even in Anime, bikers are often seen as much more bark than bite. Yousuke Eguchi, hero of the old-school anime Shonan Bakusozoku has two loves, bikes and knitting.
• The Speed Racer episode "Motorcycle Apaches" sees a gang of Apaches on motorcycles attacking a convey moving through the desert.
• Tokyo Revengers revolves around the Tokyo Manji gang, a Bōsōzoku gang of Japanese Delinquents that started out relatively innocuous aside from street fights, but evolved into a major crime syndicate in the present day.
• Ken Nakajima's dad from You're Under Arrest! is a biker to the bone and tends to hang out with large groups of other bikers (much closer to the American version than the Japanese one). But he rides a Ducati.

Comic Books

• In Brother Power the Geek, the peace-loving hippies who raised Brother Power were constantly being hassled and attacked by a biker gang called The Mongrels.
• Dinocorps has a moment where Jarek's crew run into a motorcycle gang called the Angels. Said gang members just so happen to be carrying weapons, and they waste no time shooting at the dinosaurs.
• Ghost Rider is a hellish incarnation of your basic motorbike thug.
• The Humans follows the exploits of the namesake club, who all happen to be great apes. Its set in an alternate Earth where apes are the dominant species and humans are used as livestock. The settings' history follows our own pretty closely, so much so that the Vietnam War happened and the main character is a recently returned veteran. Essentially The Humans is Sons of Anarchy meets Planet of the Apes.
• The main cast of Joe Bar Team are bikers, but definitely not Hells Angels. The opposite, in fact. Actual Hells Angels appear, but rarely do anything other than appear out of the woodwork whenever the main cast badmouths Harleys to comedic effect.
• The bikers who hang out at Hawg Waller's in Knights of the Dinner Table seem to fit this stereotype. They're mostly confused by the gamers who have adopted the place as their local watering hole.
• Lobo embraces this trope wholeheartedly, but in space!
• Man-Thing has to fight a few of these when they threaten Steve Gerber's unlucky Author Avatar.
• In Me and Joe Priest, the bikers roving around infertile and slowly dying America are mostly former U.S. soldiers looking for "experiences". One of them is the narrator and co-protagonist (i.e., "Me").
• One of the many factions present in The Punisher MAX. They make a brief appearance at the beginning of Up is Down and Black is White, where Frank uses them as bait to wipe out the second half of their coke dealing operation.
• Ronin (1983) features two racist motorcycle gang rivals. The comic takes place After the End where this trope is often played out heavily.
• Sherwood, Texas is a Setting Update of Robin Hood in which two bikers gangs wage war: the heroic (but still outlaw) Jesters taking on the Nobles, who are engaged in human traficking, drug smuggling and all kinds of criminal activity.
• The sixth issue of US 1 has the hero Ulysses Solomon Archer face a biker gang dubbed... the Heaven's Devils.

Comic Strips

• The bikers who work as 'kidnappers for hire' in the Modesty Blaise arc "Samantha and the Cherub".

Fan Works

• In Kitsune no Ken: Fist of the Fox, Mizuki is the leader of a vicious motorcycle gang, of which Dosu, Zaku and Kin (who in the canon series are members of Orochimaru's Sound infiltration team in the Chunin exam arc) are members. There's also the Blood Mist gang, led by Yagura and based out of Mist City, and the Tiger Dragon gang, led by Chi and hailing from Sound City.
• In Manchester Lost, the 4 Archangels form an impromptu biker gang to prevent the hordes of hell taking the world via Manchester.
• In the Kiawe Interlude sidestory of Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, the title character faces himself a gang of outlaw bikers causing trouble around the city.

Films — Animation

• A Bug's Life: The grasshoppers come across as an insect version of this, with many of their actions and mannerisms evocative of an outlaw biker gang, such as travelling en masse with the beating of their wings sounding similar to motorcycle engines, their carapaces resembling sleeveless biker jackets, and hanging out at a bar when not on the move. At one point when Hopper incites the others to get ready to fly, the other members of the gang open their wings in preparation for flight in a manner very reminiscent of a group of cyclists mounting and starting their choppers.

Films — Live-Action

• In Back to the Future Part II, Hill Valley's alternate timeline of "Hell Valley" is partly characterized as a Crapsack World by its infestation with outlaw bikers and trigger-happy gangs.
• Beach Party and its sequels memorably send up outlaw bikers with the Malibu Rat Pack, led by the bumbling Eric Von Zipper. They serve as the main antagonists to the heroic surfer kids, although they're more of a nuisance than a legitimate threat.
• In Blazing Saddles, outlaw bikers are seen in the line signing up to be Hedley Lamarr's Mooks.
• The Satan's Messangers gang from A Bronx Tale is obviously based on this image and have a reputation for hellraising and breaking up bars. Unfortunately for them, they only appear in the movie long enough to try to wreck a Mafia bar. It doesn't go well for them.
• In The Cannonball Run, a gang of bikers starts a brawl with the racers simply because they don't like the idea of a guy in a suit riding a motorcycle.
• In Dawn of the Dead (1978) it is not the zombies who eventually dislodge the ragtag band of survivors from the shopping mall in which they are holed up, but a marauding biker gang (implied to be one of several roving the countryside), that breaks down the doors, raids the supplies and let the zombies in. Any group roaming around after the Zombie Apocalypse would have to be a band of hardened badasses.
• The victim pool of Dear God No! are a bunch of bikers on a cross-country rape and murder spree who stumble on the wrong family.
• In Disturbing the Peace, a police officer must fight back against a violent outlaw motorcycle club that takes over his small town.
• In Dracula vs. Frankenstein, Rico, the drug kingpin in Venice, runs a biker gang that tries to abduct and rape Samantha.
• Averted in one of the most famous motorcycle films, Easy Rider. The two main characters are chopper-riding hippies who travel into the Deep South and run tragically afoul of violent Good Ol Boys.
• Subverted with the boyfriend in Erin Brockovich, who looks like a Hells Angel but is a nice guy with a steady, middle-class income.
• The Black Widows biker gang in Every Which Way but Loose and Any Which Way You Can, who attempt to be terrifying outlaw bikers, but wind acting as the films' Butt Monkeys.
• Ringo, the dirt bike riding survivalist punk in Fair Game (1986) could have stepped off the set of Mad Max.
• Future World (2018): The Warlord leads a gang of murderous bikers who regularly raid other people.
• Could not be played straighter in Gimme Shelter (1970), a Rockumentary of the 1969 Altamont concert by The Rolling Stones, in which the actual Hells Angels were hired as "security" for musicians on the stage. They are shown as leather jacket-wearing thugs clubbing people over the head, screaming at Jefferson Airplane on the stage, blaming the violence on people messing with their bikes (this in a radio interview with Hells Angels founder Sonny Barger), and stabbing a man to death. Alan Passaro, the biker who is shown quite clearly as he raises a knife and stabs Meredith Hunter in the back, was acquitted of murder after the film footage showed Hunter carrying a gun (the gun is visible against his girlfriend's dress).
• The 1976 Japanese documentary Godspeed You Black Emperor follows a young member of the Black Emperors Bōsōzoku gang after he gets in trouble with the police. The film provided the name of the Canadian post-rock band.
• In Goldstone, the Furnace Creek Mining Group employs an outlaw motorcycle gang called the Howlers as enforcers; using them to deal with troublemakers while maintaining plausible deniability.
• Hell Ride, Quentin Tarantino produced, and very Tarantino-esque movie about a Gang War between Victors MC and the 666ers MC.
• Kinda subverted in the 1968 cult film Hells Angels on Wheels as it provides a pretty realistic portrayal of the Hells Angels: hard-partying, nihilistic and provocative outcasts who mean no harm but whose provocative behavior leads them into trouble, to which they immediately retaliate with fists and chains. Hells Angels president Sonny Barger even worked on the filming as an advisor.
• I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle has the Hollywood Satanist biker gang at the beginning, and Roach's vicious crew who cause the problem by attacking them during a ritual, but the hero and most of the other good guys are non-outlaw bikers.
• Killers on Wheels, an Exploitation Film, revolves around a vacationing family being terrorized by a ruthless, sex-crazed motorcycle gang after the protagonist's fiancée accidentally gets spotted by the bike gang's leader, leading to their vacation house being trashed. One thing leads to another when the fiancée gets gang-raped, and her friend was killed in an Accidental Murder moment, causing the protagonist to take the law in his own hands.
• In Lone Hero, the Iron Bandits are an outlaw biker gang with a reputation as Cop Killers. When their leader Bart is arrested, the Bandits take over the town, kill the local police, and hold the town's inhabitants hostage until John delivers Bart to them.
• The Lost Boys is about two brothers encountering a biker gang who happen to be vampires.
• In Made, Puffy Daddy's character is a drug kingpin in New York who has a gang of black bikers under his command.
• In the original Mad Max, the villains were a gang of outlaw bikers. In The Road Warrior, anyone who is tough enough to maintain a vehicle is a badass by default, as there are no laws.
• The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas: Marilyn's boyfriend Tom is a biker who hangs out at a biker bar called Hog Heaven. He and his friends are all nice guys who help Santa deliver his toys.
• In The Muppets' Wizard of Oz the Flying Monkeys are a biker gang. Subverted because, as in the book, they are working for the Wicked Witch against their will, and were previously a peaceful group of motorcycle enthusiasts.
• In the Oscar-winning short film My Mother Dreams the Satan's Disciples in New York, a woman from the Midwestern U.S. visits her college-age daughter in New York's Lower East Side (where the real Hells Angels have their NY chapter).
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 featured several movies exploiting this trope: The Hellcats, The Sidehackers, and Wild Rebels (featuring the "Satan's Angels").
• The Satan's Helpers in Peewees Big Adventure. Pee-wee accidentally knocks over the entire gang's motorcycles like dominoes. They plan to "stomp him, tattoo him, hang him, and then kill him," until he wins them over with his Big Shoe Dance and makes friends.
• In Raising Arizona, the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse, portrayed by Randall "Tex" Cobb, is not apparently a member of any organized gang, but is certainly from Hell.
• Scavenger Hunt (1979): The Piece Corps are a gang of outlaw bikers Selsome runs afoul of when he attempts to steal a fox tail off one of their bikes. Their leader Scum orders him beaten to death.
• In Stiletto, Nazis for Jesus are a Neo-Nazi biker gang who cook crystal meth, use it to hook teenage girls and the force them into prostitution.
• There's not a Harley in sight, but otherwise the Australian cult classic Stone totally embodies the trope. A fair amount of the extras were genuine Hells Angels and one of the film's brawls was very, very real.
• The cheese-ball 1991 classic Stone Cold involves the hero infiltrating an especially nasty Hells Angels knockoff called The Brotherhood, a savagely violent Neo-Nazi biker gang that fights with the Mafia over control of the crank trade and plots to assassinate a hard-nosed D.A. who pledged to crack down on their activities. Said crackdown, by the way, is the direct result of the gang bringing tons of heat on themselves by murdering judges, clergymen and National Guardsmen, often just for shits and giggles.
• One of the nastier moments in Sweden: Heaven and Hell involves a biker gang chasing down and sexually assaulting a young woman.
• Amusingly subverted in Twilight when Edward demonstrates his ability to read minds.
  Edward: [looking around the restaurant] Money. Sex. Money. Sex. Money. Sex. [looks at heavily tattooed biker] Cat.
• Subverted and played straight in the movie Wild Hogs, where the titular group are all middle-aged urbanites who're riding to get away from their boring lives. They get into trouble with the Del Fuegos, who consider themselves "actual bikers" and are a stand-in for the Hells Angels. The makers of the movie originally planned to use the actual Hells Angels as the bad guys, but decided not to after the club protested.
• The 1953 film The Wild One, based on the events of the 1947 Hollister riot, is the movie credited with shaping the image of biker gangs for decades. Ironically, Marlon Brando's character rode a Triumph, not a Harley.
• The Wiz portrayed the Witch's flying monkeys as bikers, and also subverted the characterization in the end.
• Wolves: The two bikers Cayden kills during the Fugitive Arc. They're beating up a girl Cayden spoke to earlier and won't stop when he tells them to. He transforms, just hoping to scare them off, but they end up dead.
• In Zombie Cult Massacre, a gang of bikers turns out to be as destructive and dangerous as the zombies.

Gamebooks

• Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse? allows you to meet and join up with the Hells Angels themselves.

Literature

• The second Able Team novel had an outlaw biker gang seizing control of Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles. A later Mack Bolan informational book published a letter from two biker fans complaining about how all bikers were portrayed as outlaws.
• The A-plot villains from Brigand's MC and from the start of Shadow Wave were this trope; violent bikers who controlled a seaside town through fear, got into large battles with other clubs at rallies and were involved in gun running. Also the gun runner/technology thief from earlier book Maximum Security built her criminal empire up from one of these.
• In Coyote Blue, Calliope's ex-boyfriend is a member of a Hells Angel's-type biker group.
• The protagonist of Damnation Alley is the last survivor of a post-apocalyptic Hells Angels stand-in.
• The second Demon Road book features the Hounds of Hell, who are bikie demons sent by Astaroth, to collect Amber and Milo; Astaroth was able to borrow them from Demoriel because, as Astaroth has a score to settle with Amber, Demoriel also has one with Milo. There is only one Harley, though; we're not told of the other brands as Amber doesn't recognise any others. They turn out to have trouble living without their heads, though.
• Subverted in one of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt Adventures novels, possibly Inca Gold, in which Dirk and Loren run into a biker gang in Mexico, who turn out to be members of an American law firm who are on retreat.
• The Headhunters in Ghoul with a twist : they're also all gay.
• Good Omens has its literal "Hells Angels", the four Bikers of the Apocalypse: War, Famine, Death, and Pollution (Pestilence having retired due to penicillin). The Four Horsemen end up with four actual Hells Angels tagging along for, as it was, the ride. However, it's noted that not all bikers are Hells Angels. "If there's one thing real Hells Angels can't abide, it's weekend bikers."^note There are a number of other things real Hells Angels can't abide. These include the police, soap, Ford Cortinas and, in Big Ted's case, anchovies and olives.
• Hunter S. Thompson wrote Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, for which the gonzo journalist spent a year in close association with the Hells Angels. Thompson even invited members of the gang into his home. Ultimately, he was beaten up by several members of the gang. He still maintained friendly relations with some of his closer contacts. Ironically, Thompson misspells the Hells Angels gang name throughout the book.
• In Charles de Lint's Jack of Kinrowan, the Wild Hunt incarnate in modern-day Ottawa as black-clad, mirror-visored bikers on Harley-Davidsons. Subverted when Jackie frees the Hunt and discovers that they are decent beings, righteously angry at the Big Bad about being used for cruelty.
• In The Lincoln Lawyer the members of a drug-running biker gang form some of Mickey Haller's repeat clientele. He also calls them up to guard his ex-wife and daughter's house after Louis Roulet threatens them. They trash Roulet's Porsche and beat the crap out of him.
• In the Millennium Series, Lisbeth Salander runs afoul of a Swedish biker gang that is acting tough in an effort to be "patched over" as an Angels charter.
• Phule's Company: In A Phule and his Money, Chocolate Harry has some trouble with a biker gang call the Renegades for messing with their hovercycles, back when he himself was still a biker. They fit the trope to a 't'.
• Outlaw biker gangs (along with Dirty Communists) are the standard villains in The Survivalist (an After the End series of adventure novels by Jerry Ahern). However, when Paul Rubenstein makes a derogatory comment about bikers, the hero John Rouke points out that they're also on motorcycles.
• All of the bikers in They Thirst are of the murdering, drug-addled, rioting sort.
• Played straight with the Pack from the Ukiah Oregon series and their human hangers-on. Many characters mention that most bikers are simple motorcycle enthusiasts, but as soon as the Pack are mentioned, this trope comes on full force. Justified by the fact that the Pack are Well Intentioned Extremists fighting a hidden alien invasion who commit all sorts of violence and property damage on a constant basis.

Live-Action TV

• The "Dogs of Hell" show up on both Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Daredevil, although, presumably different chapters.
• Subverted in an episode of Big Wolf on Campus. Tommy and Merton spend an episode trying to protect a nerd from a scary-looking biker guy. Turns out, the nerd is a demon who wants to open the Gates Of Hell and the scary biker guy? He's a professional demon hunter.
• The Space Rats in the Blake's 7 episode "Stardrive" are stereotypical outlaw bikers Recycled In Space, although they have huge mohicans and Roy Wood-style facepaint.
• The Book of Boba Fett:
  • Boba tangles a couple of times with a swoop bike gang called the Kintan Striders who are clearly modeled after outlaw bikers, with leather jackets and speeder bikes modeled after Harleys and choppers. They're framed by the Pyke Syndicate for killing the Tusken Raider tribe, and Boba wipes them out with Slave I.
  • The Mods, a cyborg swoop gang, have this attitude and aesthetic. Having expensive, colorful clothes and equipment, first they operate as water thieves then are hired as enforcers for Boba Fett.
• As the season 6 opener to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sunnydale was ravaged by a demon biker gang.
• In Burn Notice, this is subverted in the final analysis. The show does feature outlaw bikers (Fiona gets some information out of them in the season 3 finale), but our heroes deal mainly with Miami's seamy underside. Carla, Michael's handler in season 2, rides a cruiser bike, and Mike "borrows" motorcycles a couple of times (the second time from a good-size parking row containing bikes of all shapes and sizes).
  • Played with in an episode where a biker gang targets a naive lawyer who had one of their bikes seized due to the owner refusing to pay child support. The bikers seem hell bound on killing the lawyer for pissing them off until Michael and Fiona create a fake paper trial that makes it look like the lawyer worked for the gang for years. If he is killed, the police will start looking into the gang's business dealings. The gang's leader is not willing to lose all his business holdings and agrees to a truce. When the second-in-command objects and tries to stage a coup, the leader reasserts his leadership by making the lawyer an honorary member of the club and daring anyone else to object.
• Cold Case: In "Jackals", the cold case team investigates the 30-year-old murder of an honor student who fell in with a notorious biker gang called the Jackals after her father's arrest.
• CSI: In "Hog Heaven", the team must find out who tipped a biker gang off after an undercover cop in their midst is murdered.
• Subverted on the short-lived show Drive (2007). The badass-looking people riding the black Harley turn out to be an old couple once they take off their face-concealing helmets.
• FBI: Most Wanted: In "Dopesick", Dr. Jason Brock runs a 'pill mill' for a gang of outlaw bikers called 'The Forsaken Sons'.
• In The Fugitive episode "The Devil's Disciples", the title characters were a Fictional Counterpart of the Hells Angels.
• In an episode of the Disney Channel original series Good Luck Charlie, P.J. and Bob meet a gruff biker couple who threaten to gut them like fish when they try to steal their motorcycles. Subverted when the man starts bawling like a baby when Bob explains that they need the bikes to get to the hospital for the delivery of his newest child.
• The episode "Hog Wild" from The Greatest American Hero features Bill and Ralph running afoul of a biker gang. Something of a subversion in that the gang-leader proves himself to be quite shrewd and cunning.
• Subverted with BBC 2's The Hairy Bikers. Dave and Si look the part - but they're presenting a cooking show.
• On Intelligence (2006), a Vancouver biker gang called the Disciples are the main competitition of the criminal protagonist. They are portrayed as being in all ways worse than he is: meaner, greedier, more violent, and involved in worse forms of criminal conduct (for example, dealing cocaine).
• Two desperate biker gangs, both of the Hells Angels variety, invade a town in Knight Rider. Among their badness is that they trash a local bully's van and terrorize the community. Of course, when they try pushing around Michael Knight, they should have gotten the hint when they try trashing the indestructible KITT that they are taking more than they can handle. Averted in another episode involving motocross (there's one villainous biker in the whole bunch, and he's not a Hells Angel), and any episode featuring RC3's elderly motorcycle.
• The Last Chapter was a miniseries loosely based on the Québec Biker Wars. Bob and Ross are good friends and members of a small local biker gang who make their money as small time drug dealers. However, the Triple Sixers, a Hells Angels-esque group, are expanding into the area and offer them a chance to join as full members. Bob jumps at the chance and quickly rises through the ranks of the organization. Ross decides to stay independent. Once the new Triple Sixers chapter establishes itself, it starts to push the smaller gangs and independents out. Soon violence erupts and battle lines are drawn. Ross tries to stay neutral but is drawn into the conflict when his girlfriend is murdered. The conflict keeps escalating and in the end most of the biker characters are either dead or in prison.
• The Magician: In "The Illusion of Black Gold", the kidnappers are using a biker gang call the Road Knights as their muscle.
• Major Crimes: In "Fifth Dynasty", the squad goes after a neo-Nazi biker gang (the eponymous Fifth Dynasty) after they are implicated in the murder of the son of a prominent judge.
• Mayans M.C. is a Sons of Anarchy spinoff and features the eponymous Mayans gang. The Mayans are stereotypical outlaw bikers but only recruit from the Latino community, mostly Americans of Mexican descent. They make their money by smuggling heroin and acting as muscle for a drug cartel.
  • Subverted with the Swole Boys. They ride modern motorcycles and wear modern riding gear but style themselves as an outlaw gang. The Mayans have no respect for them and Angel refers to them as a bunch of posers who were sitting in their mother's basement and decided to form a motorcycle gang with their gym buddies. The Sons of Anarchy refer to the Swole Boys as "motorcycle enthusiasts" and are annoyed that they try to call themselves an outlaw gang.
• In one episode of Modern Family, Cam and Mitchell are stranded in the middle of where in Australia when a group of bikers show up. At first Cam and Mitchell are sure that they're about to get mugged, but when the bikers learn that they're trying to reach their family, they give them rides to where their family is.
• Parodied by Monty Python's Flying Circus with the sketch "Hell's Grannies", which depicts a motorcycle gang made up of old ladies.
• New Tricks has an episode about one of these, Only The Brave. Drug dealing is a big part of the plot, and encounters with gang members are accompanied by appropriate rough sounding music.
• Subverted in an episode of Northern Exposure, where the elderly Ruth-Anne falls in with what appears to be a gang of Hells Angels, who are later revealed to be a bunch of middle-aged professionals.
• Double Subverted in a weird way in the season 2 premiere of Person of Interest. The people hunting John and the POI on motorcycles aren't Hells Angels. They're Aryan Brotherhood instead.
• Subverted by Sid's Cycle/Psycho Show, which follows the titular Sid around North America. While he is quite large and has a custom bike, he's a nice guy who often enters bike competitions for charity.
• Very nicely averted on an episode of Six Feet Under. A biker dies after accidentally ramming into oncoming traffic. What follows is a hilarious but deeply moving "Biker Funeral" with his wife (who's also a biker) and all their hard-partying biker friends. At the end of the funeral, his wife (after learning about Nate's AVM diagnosis) voluntarily gives Nate a motorcycle to help him cope with it.
• The Sons of Anarchy features the eponymous California-based motorcycle gang, which finances itself in the blackmarket arms trade and was founded by veterans, albeit of Vietnam rather than World War II. The members of the Charming chapter are completely capable of violence and murder, but are also more moral than other outlaw bikers, having formed a truce with the local police and community. Other chapters of the gang, as well as other gangs in the area, are little more than thugs. The show occasionally shows the contrast between outlaw bikers and regular bikers. Real Hells Angels members, including Sonny Barger and Chuck Zito, have appeared in the series. They also refuse to deal drugs (which the creator said was because he thought making dealers would be too obvious), though eventually they compromise on that.
• The Sopranos episode "The Ride" had Tony and Christopher coming across two bikers stealing fine wine. When they decide to steal the wine from them, the bikers arrogantly proclaim, "We're with The Vipers!" Tony and Christopher are naturally unimpressed.
• In The Straits, the Montebello's main suppliers for drugs are a biker gang.
• In the Supernatural episode "I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here" (S09, Ep01), Castiel tells a biker with a bandana, beard, and vest with embroidered patches, to hang up so Castiel can use the phone. When Castiel's angelic smiting powers fail him, the biker says he will stab Castiel as soon as he is done with his call.
• Tales from the Crypt: In "The Man who Was Death", the first victim of Villain Protagonist Niles Talbot after he turns Vigilante Man is Jimmy Flood, a murderous biker let Off on a Technicality. Before doing this, Niles first delivers a lecture to camera about how much he admires biker culture and how it represents what was great about the country before it became all 'civilized'. Flood, however, "crossed a line" by murdering a gay man just because of his sexuality, so Niles kills him for it.
• The PCHers from Veronica Mars. Although considering the dominant ethnicity of the PCHers, this is really more a case of All Bikers Are The Mongols.
• Walker, Texas Ranger dealt with an outlaw biker gang known as The Raptors in Season 9's "Unsafe Speed", who were distributing a powerful crystal meth to truckers across Texas, and plotted to do so worldwide, with Gage and Sydney pretending to be bikers themselves to bust up the meth lab. At the same time, an illegally-licensed trucker (disqualified due to numerous traffic infractions and minor drug convictions) was killed after getting high on the bikers' meth, killing a family by colliding with their minivan, upon which Trivette sought to arrest a corrupt DPS Driver License Division employee illegally issuing commercial licenses.
• The Walking Dead depicts this early on with the Dixon brothers, both of whom even wear vests, albeit without any identifying patches. Season one's depiction of Merle has him owning a matte black, customized chopper with SS bolts on the gas tank. In season two, Daryl is seen telling Dale to "keep your oily rags off my brothers motorcycle", before pulling out medication for T-Dog from the saddlebags, which even includes Blue Meth. (This was actually a shout out by the producers of AMC for Breaking Bad, which was still airing at the time of season two.)
• Subverted in What We Do in the Shadows (2019). When Lazlo takes over a country bar outside Pittsburgh, he runs off a gang of bikers who frequented the bar. The bikers were raising money for charity.
• Played with on Barry: When a bunch of bikers come after, Barry they are motorcross enthusiasts and ride off-road motorcycles rather than chopped Harleys. However, they quickly show themselves to be just as violent and trigger-happy as a sterotypical outlaw biker gang.

Music

• A large demographic for the Blue Öyster Cult in its early days were bikers, especially the Hells Angels. The band played to this with stage costumes that explicitly drew on biker leather culture, and they obligingly wrote songs like Transmaniacon MC - a song about the infamous Altamont gig performed from the point of view of the biker gang who provided "security" on the night. Golden Age of Leather followed, an anthem about old Angels going out in one last night of sex, drugs and violence, and later songs such as Shadow of California and Feel The Thunder also referenced biker culture.
• The Austrian bikers in the music video of Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus" were the local chapter Hells Angels.
• The subject of the song "Leave the Biker" by Fountains of Wayne is described as a crass, unlettered thug . . . by the singer who envies him his attractive girlfriend.
• The bikers mentioned in the Jim Carroll Band's "People Who Died" kill a friend of Jim's who tattled on them to avoid a prison sentence, which lets you know what kind of bikers they are.
• The 1964 song The Leader Of The Pack by the Shangri-Las has a high-school girl being forced to break up with an outlaw biker because he "comes from the wrong side of town". It ends in tragedy.

Pro Wrestling

• The UK had a team of Hell's Angels in the 1960s which included the future "Exotic" Adrian Street, but though they were biker thugs they "misspelled" the name on purpose, as they were not affiliated with that group overseas. Hell's Angels was actually a play on words related to British S&M culture, who also happened to be into motorcycles, and Hell's Angels were heels...it was almost all incidental.
• There was an episode of WCW Monday Nitro in which members of the actual Hells Angels flanked Hollywood Hogan and the nWo as they arrived at the arena. It helps that Hogan actually has real-life friends among the Hells Angels leadership.
• Luna Vachon's Tag Team partner, the foul mouthed biker Amy Lee.
• Women Of Wrestling had Thug and her sidekicks, Harley's Angels.
• Mid-2012 to the end of 2013, a gang of bikers has been invading TNA going by the identity and calling card of the Aces And Eights, which is actually a different kind of biker gang than Hells Angels but whatever.
• Averted by "Bikertaker", who was just as collected as the "Deadman" version.

Tabletop Games

• The Car Wars setting is After the End (sort of), when the roads are so dangerous that giant packs of bikers will group together for mutual protection.
• 1%er lets you play as the Nomads of a Hells Angels-inspired outlaw motorcycle club that is deeply involved in the criminal underworld.
• Shadowrun
  • The 2050's and on, sports has evolved along with a world which includes cyberware and magic. In addition to the old sports of baseball, football, etc., one of the several new sports is Combat Biker, a professional team sport with a continent-wide following. It resembles capture-the-flag, but played on motorcycles, in an arena chock full of obstacles and half-pipes ... and with weapons. Many top-scoring players are recruited from violent biker gangs, and bring their brutal street-tactics to the field.
  • Biker gangs are now known as "Go-Gangs", and are one of the more common flavors of gangs that pop up in society. They changed the style of the predecessors into something more brutal and openly criminal, with many of their bikes modified to include spikes, welded-on armor plates, fins, and mounted guns bolted onto the bike. Most go-gangs are fairly small time, numbering somewhere between 50 and 100, often being limited to a single neighborhood, and are often subcontractors for the dirty work of the bigger syndicates rather than pursuing their own enterprises. There are a few notable exceptions, like the Ancients gang, who has a presence worldwide, though are mainly focused in the Pacific Northwest.

Theme Parks

• Busch Gardens' Howl-O-Scream has had several houses based around "The Messengers" — a murderous biker gang that have already claimed twelve lives and are seeking to claim a thirteenth.

Video Games

• Big Mutha Truckers has bikers who will attempt to leap onto the truck and try to detach the trailer so they can steal it for themselves.
• The Retropolis Trio of Brawl Stars. They wear leather jackets, are rough and tough and each one carries a weapon. (A shotgun, a steel baseball bat and a set of poison daggers)
• The Fire Barons of Brütal Legend are molotov-chucking Bikers that are actually on the side of the heroes. Inverted with the Kill Master and his men, who are bikers that heal friendly units and do not have any damage-dealing capability at all.
• The final pet of the Thugs powerset in City of Villains has a summon animation of riding a motorbike. Gets really weird when he rides it in places he shouldn't like office buildings, night clubs, sewers, and ancient cities.
• The protagonist of Days Gone is a former one-percenter biker of an outlaw MC who works as a bounty hunter and general gun-for-hire in a Zombie Apocalypse-devastated Oregon.
• In the Lucas Arts adventure game Full Throttle, the bikers mostly follow the Hells Angels variety, showing a great deal of disregard for traffic laws and personal property, and the main character is a wanted man. The Cavefish, however, are a bizarre subterranean biker cult riding crotch-rockets.
• They ride around in futuristic machines that float above the ground, but otherwise the Bloody Chain from F-Zero fit this trope.
• Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned follows a One Percenter outlaw gang that Niko interacts with during the main storyline. Mostly played straight, but the game does show some of the wannabes. Also true to the trope, Johnny meets and befriends a black biker who prefers crotch rockets, and the two trade insults about their choice of ride.
  • Indeed, the game even has of the Trope Naming Hells Angels equivalent, called "The Angels of Death" (which have a White Supremacist shtick to contrast to the Lost's Equal-Opportunity Evil), while the titular "Lost MC" themselves are based on one of the Hells Angels Arch Enemies, the Outlaws MC.
  • The Lost, including the protagonist of The Lost and Damned, appear in Trevor's story arc of Grand Theft Auto V, and Trevor basically hunts them into extinction for looking at him funny.
• In Grand Theft Auto Online, Lost MC area recurring antagonist in missions. The player can now also start their own MC, but there area selection of styles to be chosen, from the classic Outlaw Bikers to street racers and Scooter Riding Mods.
• In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Tommy can receive sidequests from a very Hells Angels-esque biker gang.
• Hitman (by Eidos Interactive)... lots of rather amusing biker stuff in Hitman: Contracts. The gang itself is Dutch, as many American biker gangs have spread their membership into Europe.
• Francis from Left 4 Dead is a riff on this trope, being a grizzled biker who's itching for a fight and treats the Zombie Apocalypse as the world's largest bar fight. He also has a professed hatred for cops (and doctors, and lawyers, and small towns, and Ayn Rand, etc.) Like any good Hells Angel, however, he sticks with his pack, and sounds particularly upset when his fellow survivors die.
• Kanji from Persona 4 single handedly beats up an entire biker gang because they kept his mother up at night. You specifically find this out when a big-city news network tries to do a spot on the gang. ...Only to get yelled at and threatened by Kanji. The network naturally assumes that he's one of the gang.
• In Pokémon Fire Red and Leaf Green, a gang of bikers takes over one of the islands and the player has to get rid of them. However, a few of the biker-trainers you encounter are actually pretty friendly. One of them in HeartGold and SoulSilver even prefers to battle using the cute Teddiursa rather than the standard Koffing or Muk.
• Police Quest 1: In Pursuit of the Death Angel has a group of rude bikers hanging at the bar that you, a cop, has to force them to move their motorcycles out of the neighboring business' parking space. Not using the nightstick on the leader gets you beaten to death.
• Rebuild features the Last Judgement gang, who throughout all their incarnations are not only vicious raiders and misogynists but also Bible-thumpers oddly enough, though they mellow out enough in Gangs of Deadsville that the player can perform diplomacy with them should the desire to arise.
• The Devil’s Hand from Ride to Hell: Retribution is a textbook example of this. If they aren’t trying to murder Jake or harassing other people they are busy running the largest drug cartel in the region.
• The biker gangs of Rogue Survivor, to a man. Their motorcycles are nowhere to be seen, but they have the requisite leather jackets, melee weapons, and psychopathic disregard for all other forms of life (or unlife).
• One Survival mission in Saints Row: The Third has you fighting off a biker gang.
• In the Shin Megami Tensei series, there is a skeletal demon named Hell Biker that is based on the Hells Angels. Even his name in Japanese is named after the biker gang.
• The Vulture in Starcraft features two variants on this; in Starcraft the Vulture pilots were young, obnoxious punks with delinquent trappings, while in Starcraft II they were replaced with older, more laid-back bikers; still trouble. They also give a nod with the "Hel's Angels", a group of Viking pilots who are pirates and mercenaries.
  • Also referenced with the picture of "Heaven's Devils" on the board of the Mar Sara bar. This was Raynor's old unit when he was in the Confederacy, as well as the title of the novel about Raynor's back story. It's also the name of the music that plays during Terran missions. Raynor's hero unit in StarCraft is usually portrayed as a vulture.
• Streets of Rage 4 has the Red Demons MC, the group occupying the Bad Guy Bar visited in Stage 5. Their membership (which consists, oddly enough, seemingly entirely of overweight women) is more than willing to throw down with the heroes. Their boss is Barbon, the first boss from 2, who fights you again at the end of the level.

Visual Novels

• Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc gives us Mondo Owada. He's a violent individual, and the leader of the biggest motorcycle gang in Japan. Subverted however, since despite his anger problems, he's a nice person at heart. Double Subverted in that his hair-trigger temper leads him to (accidentally) become the killer in Chapter 2; and while he doesn't exactly try to cover it up, he does stay quiet when Byakuya tampers with the crime scene, potentially giving him a way out. Although, in one final twist, he does eventually fess up and submit to execution rather than let his remaining classmates die in his stead.

Web Comics

• DICE: The Cube That Changes Everything: Sooyoung Choi leads a biker gang of hostile Dicers called Team Charlie.
• Subverted in Wapsi Square, the young Monica encounters some bikers who turn out to be decent folks.

Web Original

• This appears to be the opinion of the coffeeshop staff in this Not Always Right story, when they see fifteen bikers (actually from a church motorcycle group) arrive unexpectedly. The tension is only broken when the group leader deliberately makes them look a lot less threatening by asking if everyone wants whipped cream, and two people add they also want sprinkles.

Western Animation

• Subverted to hell and back in The Backyardigans, during the episode "Special Delivery". Tasha, Uniqua and Pablo were a gang of bikers... called the Do-Gooders, being described as being "rough, tough and good to the core". Not surprising, considering it's a show broadcast on Nick Jr.

• Subverted on the PBS Kids version of The Berenstain Bears. When the Bears get some new neighbors, Papa Bear is sure they're bad eggs and one reason is that the mother of the family rides a motorcycle. But they're actually all very nice.
• Biker Mice from Mars used a lot of imagery of thuggish bikers, with the mice riding motorcycles, performing crazy stunts, and wearing leather jackets, but they are the heroes of the show and are shown obeying the "Rules of the Road"... most of the time. Specifically, Throttle is the law-abiding gentleman, Vincent is the wild man, and Modo is a Gentle Giant.
• The One-Eyed Snakes in Bob's Burgers. They made arrangements for their dead leader's funeral at the parlor next door to Bob's restaurant, and ended up being The Thing That Would Not Leave at Bob's for a while. They're really nice to Bob's kids, though. The new leader tells Louise the patches on his jacket are for "Uh... tickling a cop!" and "...not being part of the white power movement!"
• An episode of Cow and Chicken features an all female biker gang called the Buffalo Gals which enjoy chewing carpets, this episode was taken out of circulation being accused of lesbian stereotyping.
• Parodied in the Duck Dodgers episode Boar to be Riled where Dodgers justifies buying a hover-bike with Protectorate money by saying he's going to infiltrate a biker gang. The gang he chooses turns out to be a group of middle-class professionals, which he transformed into a criminal gang, and was then unable to stop.
• The Dreadnoks from G.I. Joe. These guys aren't as violent as most (since they're from a show made for kids and a Comics Code-approved comic), but they love wanton destruction of property. They've even got a dedicated explosives expert.
• On Jimmy Two-Shoes , there's a recurring biker gang of Villainous Harlequins named The Rodeo Clowns. Strangely, they weren't established to be bikers until their second appearance "Clowns Gone Wild", but are only ever seen on their bikes in that episode.
• The Looney Tunes Show: In "Rebel Without a Glove", Bugs' trademark White Gloves get shrunk in the wash, and he ends up wearing a pair of fingerless leather gloves instead. The gloves somehow make Bugs start acting like an outlaw biker.
• In My Life as a Teenage Robot, a recurring Quirky Miniboss Squad on the show is an all-female gang of fish-like aliens called the Space Bikers, who regularly show up on Earth to cause chaos for their amusement.
• Averted in the Regular Show episode "Crazy Fake Plan"; Rigby's attempt to create an elaborate series of fake plans to throw off Eileen so that he can surprise her with a trip to a new art installation is seemingly derailed by an encounter with the Wasp Riders, a rough biker gang that kidnaps Mordecai, Rigby, Eileen and Margaret when Rigby refuses to reveal what the group is doing out in the desert (which would ruin his surprise). The Riders take the group to the top of a cliff, and a blindfolded Eileen is forced to listen as her friends are seemingly thrown off said cliff... before it's revealed by Rigby that this was all staged as part of his fake plan, and the Riders aren't actually bikers at all, but a local theatre troupe that Rigby had hired.
• Subverted in the Road Trip Plot episode of Rocko's Modern Life, "Road Rash", which includes a biker gang that has a serious image problem (and only one Hells Angel). They turn out to be helpful, and fix up Rocko and Heffer's car when it breaks down.
• In the Samurai Jack episode "Jack's Sandals", a rancorous robot biker gang nearly run over Jack and accidentally destroy his sandals. Interestingly, the robot bikers are literally the bikes too.
• Averted in Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur. While the bikers are rough and rowdy when they first appear at an All-You-Can-Eat restaurant, the waitress says they won't cause any trouble unless provoked. Cue Shaggy to accidentally splatter them with food. By the end, they save Mystery Inc. and other characters from a cave-in caused by the fake Phantosaur and danger-prone Daphne.
• The Simpsons episode "Take My Wife, Sleaze" is built around this trope as Homer tries to start an outlaw gang after winning a motorbike in a contest. Then another gang with the same name (The Hell's Satans) takes up residence in the Simpsons' house.
  Marge: Do you have to be so messy?
  Biker: (nonplussed) Well, yeah. It's part of being a lowlife.
  • This trope is further parodied in "The Road to Cincinnati", where Skinner and Chalmers run afoul of a gang of cyclists.
• In the Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) episode "Fed Up With Antoine", Antoine comes across a biker gang known as the "Nasty Hyenas" who promptly makes him their king. The other Freedom Fighters discover the Nasty Hyenas eat their own king and rush off to save Antoine.
• In an episode of South Park, bikers are depicted as attention-whores who make as much noise as possible to get people to notice them, going as far as to imitate engine noise with their mouths when they're not riding motorcycles. The episode encourages people to stop using the word "fag" as a derogatory term for gay people, and start using it as a derogatory term for bikers. To their faces.
• The SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Born to be Wild" centers around a gang called the "Wild Ones" who would seem to follow this trope. The "Mild Ones", on the other hand, are a group of senior citizens who seem to be in love with the stereotype but don't fit it personality-wise.
• The Super Mario World episode "Born to Ride" involves Yoshi joining the "Dino Riders", a biker gang only pretending to be his friends so they can lure Mario and Luigi into a trap and sell them to Bowser.

Real Life

• Averted in real life by the overwhelming majority of motorcyclists who obey the law, as well as by a number of motorcycle organizations that do charity work. However, even many non-outlaw Biker gangs are pushed around and expected to pay homage to the one-percenters who control their territory, with gangs threatening to "shoot a man off his bike" if he's seen riding in the colors of a club that doesn't have their blessing. This can even include being coerced into performing minor crimes like drug smuggling to keep the one-percenters' favor.
  • A notable example would be the "Patriot Guard," a group of riders who go to military funerals picketed by the odious Westboro Baptist Church and proceed to merrily picket them, drowning out his group's rants with the sound of their engines.
  • Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman are easily Hollywood's most famous bikers and both used their lengthy trips to support UNICEF's work in Asia and Africa.
  • The group Bikers Against Child Abuse take full advantage of the mean, tough-as-nails image of the biker, by befriending children who have survived abuse and taking them under their leather-bound, spike-studded wing. That means staking out at schools or even all night at a house, always being on hand if the child needs to talk to someone, and attending trials and law proceedings. It's harder to feel scared when the scariest-looking people in the room are on your side.
  • And even amongst one-percenter motorcycle clubs, only four have been designated by the FBI (and Canada's CIS) as actual organized criminal gangs: the Bandidos, Hells Angels, Outlaws, and Pagans. While racial homogeny is common, only some have connections to white supremacist organizations; though Sonny Barger did mention that "we probably have enough racist members that no black guy is going to get in it," the Angels did maintain positive relations with predominantly black and mixed-race clubs like the all-black East Bay Dragons MC and the Chosen Few MC. It helps that Barger had a long-standing relationship with East Bay Dragons founder Tobie Levingston, and as such they do ride and hang out with each other. And although few women are patch-wearing members of the club, they are generally protected by their own men. In addition, the Hells Angels themselves occasionally partake in veterans' support activities and charities, but as mentioned in their motto at the top of the page, many prefer remembering the bad they do over the good.
  • Some one-percenter clubs also prefer to stay out of trouble themselves, like the Boozefighters for example, though reports state that they are no stranger to altercations either.
  • Also, a number of motorcycle ministries have sprung up over the years, like Bikers for Christ, Black Sheep HDFC, Christian Crusaders and many others, as The Moral Substitute adopting the biker mystique and image — patches, Harleys and whatnot, while at the same time spreading the Gospel instead of the usual outlaw biker stereotype. In fact, a number of former or reformed outlaw bikers patched themselves into said ministries, mostly out of disillusionment over their decadent lifestyle.
• Truth in Television to the degree that outlaw motorcycle gangs do in fact exist and have spread across the world. Outlaw gangs are often highly active in the drug trade, well-armed, and very violent. Some of the more infamous incidents involving biker gangs include:
  • The Altamont Free Concert, where Hells Angels provided security and have been blamed for agitating the crowd, which ultimately resulted in a young man drawing a gun and getting stabbed to death by an Angel.
  • The Milperra massacre in Sydney in 1984.
  • Incidents in the Scandinavian gang-war between Hells Angels and their rival Bandidos have included RPG's being fired at rival houses.
  • In 2006 six Canadian Bandidos and two associates were killed near Shedden, Ontario. Six other Bandidos were found guilty of the murders while a seventh testified against them. The six convicted bikers included a neo-Nazi, an ex-police officer and a black belt martial artist. The killings were an internal feud between the Toronto and Winnipeg chapters that escalated out of control, with the disarmed victims being executed one at a time.
  • In Québec, five members of the Hells Angels North Chapter, including the founder and chapter president, were murdered by the Sherbrooke Chapter in their Lennoxville clubhouse in 1985 for being wild and uncontrollable, using drugs they were supposed to sell and being suspected of skimming profits. A number of members were present, but only four were convicted of first degree murder and received life sentences, with eligibily of parole in 25 years. All were paroled on the faint hope clause and served between 17 and 22 years each.
  • Rival Hells Angels and Mongols crossing paths in a Laughlin casino sparked a gunfight that left three dead.
  • Satan's Choice are famous for trafficking cocaine and blowing up a police station in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, around December 15th, 1996. They have ties to the United Nations gang from Vancouver, British Columbia, and to a Gravelle Family that apparently was responsible for a lot of the country's crime.
  • In the mid '80s, the Hells Angels in Québec started to form a monopoly over street level drug trade. Competing drug dealers and crime families took exception to that and formed the rival biker gang Rock Machine. Between 1994 and 2002, later dubbed the Québec Biker War, there were numerous bombings of establishments and murders on both sides, claiming over 150 lives, including innocent bystanders, resulting in public outcry and the incarceration of over 100 bikers. In 2009, over 150 Hells Angels members around the world were arrested in connection to crimes related to the war, which also solved at least 22 murders.
    • An interesting side effect of the Hells Angels influence in Québec is that the French word for "biker" ("motard") now has strong negative connotations with organized crime in Québec, while it's absolutely benign in France where it simply describes motorcycle drivers, outlaw or not.
• Terry Pratchett once illustrated the wide variety in his readers by saying that he was once at a signing where a little old lady told him she'd been chatting to two Hells Angels and they turned out to be really nice people. "I think she meant the two guys behind her in perfectly respectable biker gear, but it cheered me up."
• The Australian biker groups Rebels and Outlaws, while likely maintaining the 1-percenter tag, have a history of violent criminal clashes and gang wars, though individual members and the God Squad more accurately fit the real life mold of bike: tough men and women who are motorcycle enthusiasts but decent folk.
  • It's worth noting that outlaw bikers are often referred to as "bikies" there. The "biker" term is typically reserved for law-abiding motorcyclists.
• Oddly averted in Mexico, despite the country's closeness with the States, for some reasons:
  • Unlike Americans, Mexican bikers prefers smaller bikes, like scooters or cheaper Chinese models, since those bikes are more practical and faster than Harleys for everyday work.
  • In Mexico, the Badass Biker stereotype is normally someone using a faster, Japanese-made bike like Honda, Suzuki and similar ones. The most famous ones sold in Mexico are the Kawasaki brand, especially the Kawasaki Ninja model.
  • On the other hand, while the Harley-Davidson brand is not unpopular there, the stereotype is different: Since Harleys are more expensive than their Chinese and Japanese peers, not to mention being heavier than those bikes, it's normally used by older people who only love to use those bikes just for the fun of it, rather for the thrill of using a faster one, like many younger people do with the Asian models. In fact, and just like the South African case below, most "gangs" are nothing more than glorified social clubs for rich people who loves bikes.
  • Another stereotype related with the Harley brand in Mexico is because those bikes are commonly used by Mexican patrolmen, rather than fanboys or criminals. And you can thank Pedro Infante for that.
  • While there's some biker gangs there, they are normally are engaged in minor crimes, like theft. Major criminal gangs prefer to use cars and SUVs instead, since using a bike is an easy way to get you killed in a gunfight, especially against drug cartels. Possibly due to this, there's no Hells Angels chapter in Mexico, as they possibly don't want unnecesary negative attention from the Mexican government.
• In Germany the different Biker Gangs have come to broader attention after several turf wars. Several Chapters have been outright banned, others dissolved themselves and reformed somewhere else. Also the newer generation has a different stance on loyalty, several chapters have swapped sides if the other gang made a better offer.
• William Queen's work infiltrating the Mongol biker gang.
• In South Africa, this was once Truth in Television, but after some unproductive conflicts, most of the 1% clubs decided to keep a lower profile. Should you encounter a one-percenter, you shouldn't have any sort of trouble as long as you behave courteously. Simply put, don't mess with them and they won't mess with you. Unnecessary/unprovoked violence - especially against non-bikers - is frowned upon by almost all of the 1% clubs. That being said, there are plenty of clubs known as "social clubs", which are simply groups of people who enjoy riding motorcycles together.
• Japan has it's own take on the trope with the Bōsōzoku. The biggest difference here is that they don't exclusively stick to motorcycles any more and will also drive around in cars as well.
  • Probably he most famous of these are the "Black Emperors", a member of which was the subject of a 1976 documentary God Speed You! Black Emperor.
• In Russia, the Night Wolves Motorcycle Club is heavily involved in nationalist politics, to the point that they are suspected of being an informal propaganda and paramilitary organization for the government. They have received multi-million-ruble donations from the Kremlin and even fought on the Russian side of the Crimean Crisis and Donbas War. Vladimir Putin himself rode with them once, resulting in the derisive nickname "Putin's Angels". Other motorcycle clubs in Russia see them as too politicized, and Canada, Germany, Poland, and the United States have declared sanctions against them.

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