We all know the story of Robin Hood. Medieval hero of the age of pre-Magna Carta King John. Steals from the rich to give to the poor. Rescues fair maidens in distress. The whole shebang. But what if he wasn't such a nice guy? What if he was actually a Jerkass? Or an incompetent idiot? Or even, a villain? Well, that's what you call a Robin Hoodlum.
A Robin Hoodlum is an Expy or Corrupted Character Copy of Robin Hood, or a character inspired by Robin Hood, with none of his heroic qualities. Instead of stealing from the rich to give to the poor, most Robin Hoodlums either steal indiscriminately, steal from the poor rather than the rich, or just hoard their ill-gotten gains for themselves. They also often suck at rescuing damsels in distress, or being a hero in general, and do more harm than good when doing so.
It should be noted that the purely idealistic Robin Hood that we know today dates from the 19th century when the story was bowdlerised for children. In the original myths, he was a much grayer anti-hero who stole from the rich (after all, they had the money) and kept it for himself.
Compare and contrast Just Like Robin Hood. See also Karmic Thief.
Not to be confused with the cartoon by Columbia Cartoons.
Examples
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Comic Books
- Lucky Luke: The comic's version of Jesse James wants to be Just Like Robin Hood, but it occurs to him that being poor himself, he could keep the stolen money, but then he wouldn't be poor any longer. His brother Frank sees this and persuades Jesse to give the money to him, then he'll give the money to Jesse, thus ensuring that they're both poor but keep the money.
Comic Strips
- The Wizard of Id has Robbing Hood, who steals from the poor and gives to the rich.
Films — Animated
- Downplayed in Shrek, where Shrek is accosted by Robin Hood and his Merry Men (the former of whom is French for some reason), who assume he's kidnapping Fiona. Fiona makes short work of them, and we later see Robin Hood at their wedding in the swamp, indicating he made peace with them.
Films — Live-Action
- In the film The General (not to be confused with the Buster Keaton film The General), Based on a True Story, Brendan Gleeson plays the title character, Martin Cahill, a thief who fancied himself a Robin Hood type, but was really robbing to make himself rich, and nobody else.
Gamebooks
- Return to Terror Tower has you traveling to Medieval times and meeting Robin Hood (albeit a Gender Flipped version), where she could help you in your quest. But making a few bad decisions can have Robin turning on you — for instance, your Walkman getting mistaken as Black Magic resulting in Robin ordering her Merry Men to burn you at the stake. In another bad ending, the Merry Men turn out to be cannibals.
Literature
- A Song of Ice and Fire: The Brotherhood Without Banners have been described as an unromanticized version of Robin Hood's Merry Men. Beric is a noble who becomes an outlaw, but his followers include a drunkard priest and men who are little better than brigands. After Beric's final death, they become even less heroic.
Live-Action TV
- Played for laughs in ALF. The titular alien says there was a person like Robin Hood on his home planet of Melmac. Only instead of robbing the rich to feed the poor, he robbed the hoods off people's cars.
- Batman (1966): The Archer was a minor villain who styled himself after Robin Hood. He stole from the rich to give to the poor then stole from the poor.
- Blackadder Back And Forth: Robin Hood is portrayed in the same vein as Lord Flashheart (and with the same actor), a arrogant jackass who's not afraid to let everyone know how awesome he is.
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer Fantasy: Zigzagged with the Herrimaults, Bretonnian outlaws who live in the forests and fight against Chaos and injustice. Sure, some of them are victims of the ridiculously-oppressive feudal system (and some even have sympathizers among the nobility), but others might well be mundane criminals who actually deserved their punishment. However, one of the tenets of the Herrimaults is that you judge your fellows by their current actions, not their pasts.
Video Games
- Dragon Quest: After the Square Enix merger and an accompanying change in localization and translation standards in the mid-2000s, a recurring thief miniboss became known as "Robbin' 'Ood". (In Japan, he's named "Kandata" after a thief from a local children's tale, and English versions prior to this shift transliterated it as "Kandar".) Other than wearing a green face-covering hood and cape, there's little to connect him to the Robin myth and he's just a thug. He sometimes leads henchmen, variously known as "Merry Men", "Robbin' Huddles", or yes, "Robbin' 'Oodlums".
- Hood: Outlaws and Legends: The game, being a Darker and Edgier take on the Robin Hood folklore, presents Hood, aka: the Ranger, as less like a folk hero, more like a vengeful spirit, who has operated against the authoritarian State for nearly fifty years by the time the game is set. He wears a creepy face-hiding hood that makes him look faintly like a Nazgul, and it's later confirmed that Hood is a Legacy Character, a title passed down from outlaw to outlaw, and one past Hood is now the Sheriff of Nottingham himself.
- In Persona 5, Robin Hood is the initial Persona of Goro Akechi, a detective who blackmails his way into the Phantom Thieves and has been antagonistic towards them for most of the story. Then Akechi turns out to be even worse than he seemed, he's working for The Conspiracy and joined the Thieves to trap and kill their leader. While he switches to Loki after revealing his true colors, he still uses Robin Hood in the first phase of his boss fight.
Western Animation
- The Penguins of Madagascar has the character of The Archer, who dresses in Robin Hood-inspired attire, steals property from zoo animals, and obviously uses a bow. He claims to steal from the zoo animals to give their stuff to animals outside of the zoo who are worse off than they are, but it's soon revealed that he hoards their stuff for himself.
- The Time Squad episode "Robin and Stealin' with Mr. Hood" had the actual Robin Hood (who's a real historical figure in the series' universe) portrayed the exact opposite way to how he was in the legend (i.e. stealing from the poor to give to the rich) because of a timeline error. The plot involves the Time Squad bringing him back to his original version to correct the timeline.
- Batfink: Among the many fairy tale and folk-inspired supervillains of the show is Robber Hood. An archery-theme criminal dressed in a brown outfit inspired by the folk hero, with an R on the front of his shirt, who steals from the rich and gives to himself.
- The Codename: Kids Next Door episode "Operation L.U.N.C.H." sees the debut of the villain Robin Food and his band of Hungry Men. They dress the part of Robin and his merry men, but they steal cafeteria food from children to give to the elderly. It turns out that they're just lazy cafeteria workers at the old folks' home who would rather steal food from kids than actually make food the senior citizens want to eat.
- The Looney Tunes short Robin Hood Daffy sees Daffy Duck as Robin Hood being a worthless buffoon of a hero, repeatedly failing to perform even the simplest of heroic feats.
- Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero: In "Number One, Number Two", when Rippen and Larry are zapped into Old English World, Rippen is zapped into the body of Crossbow, a villainous version of Robin Hood who has a crossbow for a hand. His mission was to keep Penn and his friends from finding the money Crossbow stole from the village, and returning it before the end of the day.
- Transformers: Animated: The Angry Archer is a supervillain with a Sinister Schnoz and a Domino Mask who prowls the streets of Detroit wearing a Robin Hood-based outfit and speaking in Flowery Elizabethan English, using various trick arrows to break into vaults, beat up guards, and steal money, all of which he plans to keep for himself so he can be rich and famous. His first episode sees him dodging the police by stowing away on top of a fire truck, knowing that "yon police would never stop a fire truck heading to an emergency!" Too bad for the Archer that the truck he's just landed on is Optimus Prime himself, and he's the emergency the Autobot leader's after.
