That's got to be at least several dress code violations.
In recent years a fair number of lab jobs have opened for Goths, Punks, and other assorted non-conformists. Science isn't just for nerds anymore.
In Real Life, this may be partly due to the aforementioned modernistic sensibilities of certain subcultures, or possibly childhood fondness of pyrotechnics and the "chemistry lessons" of The Anarchist's Cookbook. Also, Punks in general tend not to be particularly religious and have far fewer objections to things like evolutionary theory, stem cell research, and cloning; a lot of them are used to needles (piercing needles, not neglecting the Straight Edge crowd here).
Another more mundane reason might be the general less stringent dress codes in these fields, other than mandatory safety gear. Wearing typical punk or goth garb under a lab coat is perfectly fine, unlike in jobs with defined uniforms or more exposure to the general public.
While Goth subculture is not known for being modernistic, for the most dedicated of Goths, the benefits of having a job in forensic analysis (especially at crime scenes) would be considerable.
The character could end up being a literal variation of Mad Scientist (or Tech Bro) if done too far. Heroic versions often overlap with Science Hero trope and will show up in scenarios where Shabby Heroes, Well-Dressed Villains trope applies.
May also be related to the prevalence of punk-related imagery in many science fiction settings: Cyberpunk, Desert Punk, etc.
See also Bunny-Ears Lawyer. Compare Rich Kid Turned Social Activist.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Spider-Man: Gwen Stacy. Back in the '60s, she was originally written as a Defrosting Ice Queen Academic Alpha Bitch, but some modern takes (like Ultimate Spider-Man and Spider-Gwen) make her more of a punk outcast. That said, her skills in science tend to be very inconsistent.
Fan Works
- Guys Being Dudes: Arlo is imagined as an overgrown Emo Teen here and retains his position as Team GO Rocket's main scientist.
Films — Live-Action
- SLC Punk!: Heroin Bob is a bonafide punk complete with a mohawk and anarchist/non-conformist beliefs. He studied chemistry, which according to his best friend Steve-o was "the wrong ***ing major for a guy like him," who notoriously avoided any chemicals that didn't already come in beer or cigarettes.
Literature
- Cheery Littlebottom in the Discworld series is the Watch's forensic alchemist. She's not a punk, although she wears leather skirts and steel-toed boots; she's an openly female dwarf, possibly the Disc's first. Very nonconformist, although she'd never go so far as to shave her beard.
- Star Wars Legends: has Zakarisz Ghent, an expert computer slicer, or hacker, who was introduced in The Thrawn Trilogy. One of the foremost computer experts in the galaxy, he came into the employ of smuggler Talon Karrde by five years after the battle of Endor. Eventually after Thrawn's death he became Chief of Cryptography for the New Republic.
Live-Action TV
- CSI: Not really brought up these days, but back when he was The Lab Rat, Greg was a bit hardcore. There was actually a funny bit in one episode where he asked Grissom, who raises roaches as a hobby, if he could play some Black Flag. "Are you kidding?" In one episode he mentions being fake-goth in high school, as a way to meet girls.
Nick: How'd that work out for you?
Greg: If you act depressed to pick up chicks... you get depressed chicks. - In Doctor Who, The Twelfth Doctor loves punk rock music and is as big a science geek as any of his predecessors — maybe more so, given his love for wearable technology and Breaking the Fourth Wall to deliver Bill Nye-style lectures. This was big-time Author Appeal for actor Peter Capaldi, a former punk rocker who was fascinated with new science developments and the Apollo landings as a child.
- NCIS:
- Abby Sciutto, the cute Perky Goth girl and Forensic Scientist embodies the essence of this trope (despite being Perky Goth and not Punk). Her love for her job appears to be less out of morbid fixation on the crime scene/murder element and more on the delightful puzzles it provides, as well as a grizzled, Marine sniper boss who protects her like the gothyboots-wearing daughter he never had. Or like the daughter he did have, who was murdered while he was on deployment.
- And then there's Sebastian Lund, her counterpart on NCIS: New Orleans. Among other things, he's a Motor Mouth Conspiracy Theorist and a member of the Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbaccus.
- Cosima Niehaus from Orphan Black is the Erudite Stoner equivalent.
- In one episode of Supernatural, Dean visits a Back-Alley Doctor who specializes in Flatline Plotline Astral Projection (played by Robert Englund, no less). His assistant is a silent Goth girl who seems a bit too excited about the whole thing.
- Vyvyan, the punk in The Young Ones, who is studying medicine. And when the boys throw a party, all his "medical student friends" that attend are punks too.
Video Games
- In the Advance Wars, while all of the various Black Hole commanders seem to be weird misfit freaks united in evil, Lash is a Perky Goth Mad Scientist Manchild who is weird even by their standards.
- Gaige in Borderlands 2 seems to have a bit of a punk/anarchist streak, and prior to taking up Vault Hunting she spent a lot of time in her dad's garage building robots for science fairs. Admittedly, she's from a picturesque suburban upbringing with loving parents and seems to be a fan of My Little Pony, but the intention is there.
- Horizon Zero Dawn: Travis Tate, a former black-hat hacker turned one of the Alpha leads programming the GAIA AI terraforming system, was a huge fan of Heavy Metal and extreme horror movies, much to the chagrin of his more highbrow colleague Samina Ebadji. He considered it rather poetic that he was in charge of the HADES subsystem whose duty was to hit the reset button and purge all life on Earth in the event of a failed terraforming project so that GAIA could restart from scratch, something that he considered one of the most metal things he could possibly work on.
- Kira in New California, a surly, hair-dyed rebel teen who works in the Vault's computer lab.
- Persona 5 has an older, subdued example with Dr. Tae Takemi, who runs the local clinic in your neighborhood. The outfit she wears in her clinic is basically an '80s-era punk dress with a labcoat over it and platform gladiator sandals, and her casual outfit is no different: a blue dress with a white spiderweb pattern on it, a black jacket, torn black leggings, and heeled ankle boots. And that's not even mentioning the studded collar she always wears. She currently provides the page image.
- Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: Prokhor Zakharov, the leader of the University of Planet is this, but all grown up. Zakharov is the oldest of the faction leaders, and one of the seven most powerful people on Planet, but still wears his hair long and ill-groomed, has several facial piercings and wears asymmetric glasses that could be either lab gear or just an aesthetic choice and a stained lab coat.
Western Animation
- In an episode of Daria, the titular character once imagined herself working at a gene-splicing lab in a possible future in which she was married (by common law) to Trent, who was still a failed musician. Daria, while neither a goth nor a punk herself, hangs out with a punk and has a general "alternative" aesthetic to her.
- Gandra Dee in DuckTales gets reimagined from a Sexy Secretary to a research scientist with a bit of a Grunge aesthetic, as she wears fingerless gloves, a sweater tied around her waist, a black tank, jeans, and thick eyeliner.
- Stat in Q-Force is the titular team's hacker and goth.
Real Life
- Seems like an Evolving Trope, since the first punks in mainstream media were pretty much straw punks (similarly with Goths at first and "Emo Kids" today, though the Emo culture is not as strongly associated with science and medicine as Punk, it seems).
- In late 19th-century Russia, a number of "nihilists" and other young "radicals" associated with them (generally philosophical materialists) were very much interested in the scientific world view and many of them became doctors or other medical professionals, seeing that as a constructive end that fit their philosophical predilections. This phenomenon made it into the political literature of the area (Russian novels and literary critiques under Tsarist censorship were often thinly disguised political and philosophical Author Tracts). A good example is Fathers and Sons by Turgenev. Also, Chernyshevsky's "What is to be Done?" These Russian nihilists had quite a bit in common with 20th-century punk culture in other ways too.
- Also in the late 19th century, midwife training programs were brought into the university — the only program open to women; the sisters of these young men enrolled, not because they wanted to practice midwifery, but because they wanted to be in the university.
