The Stoner

It's not the photographer's fault that the guy on the left has red eyes...

The male version of the Granola Girl. The Stoner is generally a comical character who smokes, gets beat up, makes bad jokes, and suffers other sorts of Butt Monkey type things, only with more drugs. The most likely character to get a Mushroom Samba bit. He is basically a cross between Butt Monkey and the Wacky Guy. Usually somewhere between a technical and a Badass Pacifist, and almost always entirely non-threatening, in physical appearance. May very occasionally be prone to getting dangerous, but only rarely and under truly exceptional circumstances.

The Stoner is very similar to the 19th Century "funny drunk." However, that became a Discredited Trope as groups like AA and MADD gained influence. The modern stereotype is that drunks are likely to beat you up, while stoners aren't, so stoners make better comedy.

May evolve into an Erudite Stoner. If he should try to reform^[1] he'll find Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere, both real and hallucinatory.

See also: The Slacker

Examples of The Stoner include:

Anime & Manga

• Leigharch from Black Lagoon, AND HOLY SHIT HOW.
• A popular Fanon for The Netherlands and Canada in Axis Powers Hetalia, coming from their relativel liberal drug policies from Real Life.
  • In fairness Finland did say that the Netherlands was into some "shady drugs".
  • As of the 2010 Christmas event, partially confirmed in Canada's case (We know he smokes pot, but not how often).

Comic Books

• The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, who between the three of them have at one time or another ate, drank, snorted, smoked or injected just about everything conceivable that wouldn't be instantly poisonous.
• The entire cast of Horndog.
• Pike from Elf Quest. A positive example: his love for the mellow world of a dreamberry haze makes him excellent at telling colorful stories, and he became the tribe's historian ("Keeper of the Howl") because of it.
  • Dreamberries are really more of an alcohol metaphor, anyway. The trolls even make wine from them.

Film

• Jay of The View Askewniverse. Who, along with Silent Bob, is also explicitly a dealer.
• Bill and Ted, except they don't take drugs. Not explicitly, at least.
• Jesse and Chester from Dude, Where's My Car?
• Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High
• Cheech and Chong are likely the originators of this trope.
• The Dude fits this trope quite well (and spectacularly), though the movie makes it clear that he is actually not as crazy and silly as basically everyone else.
• There is a song in the first High School Musical film that introduces the school's various cliques - nerds, jocks, etc - including one that appears to be a Disneyfied version of a group of stoners, complete with proclamations of "duuuude..."
• Friend from the indie movie The Auteur. So named because he is one to all living things. Purveyor of multiple kinds of weed that mess with your head. Lives in a nudist commune. Records bird sounds.
• Bobby in A Goofy Movie was a (very) thinly veiled stoner, who even went on to contemplate his gloves in the DTV sequel.
• Floyd from True Romance.
  • It was Brad Pitt's idea to make the character a stoner. He based this character insight on the fact that the guy is always sitting around at home in the living room. Although we tropers generally aren't in the business of citations, you can hear Brad Pitt explain it in this time-stamped youtube link.
• Josh Peck's character in The Wackness.
• Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. /nuffsaid.
  • This is the first notable instance of mainstream stoners, who are explicitly not slackers, but rather, productive members of society. (Harold is an investment banker (before the current crisis) and Kumar has untapped potential to be a doctor.)
• Harold from The Boys in the Band. However, he's a witty Deadpan Snarker and least Butt Monkey-ish character in the cast.
• Gavin and UV in Disturbing Behavior.
• Dale Denton (Seth Rogen), Red (Danny McBride) and Saul Silver (James Franco) in Pineapple Express. Saul and Red also are drug dealers.
  • McBride and Franco do it again in Your Highness.
• The Frisbee team in PCU.
• Slater from Dazed and Confused.
• Anna Faris' character in Smiley Face.
• Fanon and Memetic Mutation often depict Sean (Banshee) from X Men First Class this way.
• The Cabin in the Woods has an initially straight example in Marty - with the variation that his drug use actually helped immunize him against some of the chemicals released in the cabin, and his paranoia was thoroughly accurate. He actually proves to be fairly smart.
• Subverted in Dark Shadows:

Carolyn Stoddard: Are you stoned or something?
Barnabas Collins: They tried stoning me, my dear. It did not work.

• Played with in Scary Movie 3:

Sayaman: I'm sorry, dude.
Tom: Don't call me "dude". I'm not a stoner anymore. Not since...

Literature

• Discworld's parody of the Hashishin in Sourcery, renowned for being deadly and, at the same time, inclined to giggle, groove to interesting patterns of light on their daggers, and fall over.
• Chris Lang in Tomorrow When the War Began.
  • To clarify, in the book Chris is shown to be a weird genius with more of a drink problem than anything else, in the film he wears a dressing gown, is prone to weird, like, weird, stoner-talk and smokes on screen.
• Going Bovine contains many stoners, from the main character to the three stoners who hang out in the high school bathroom.
• A female version exists and is played around with in Metal Star Prophecies: The Green Owl. Matsuda Tsuroba likes getting high, but sometimes it's because she's with her boyfriend, and sometimes she does it as a means to alleviate her stress and worries about graduation from high school. She's also more approachable when stoned; sober Matsuda's a little more apprehensive and realistic.
• Inherent Vice has Doc lighting up on a regular basis, as do his friends and neighbours. Even his parents.
• The Malazan Book of the Fallen has Emancipor Reese. He once brought down a theocracy with the stimulant seeds on his handkerchief.

Live-Action TV

• Hyde from That '70s Show. Actually, half the cast fit this description, but Hyde is the best example.
  • Except he tends to beat other people up.
    • Leo is a far better example.
      • That's probably because Tommy Chong is this trope.
• Jesse from Breaking Bad, whose stoner nature makes him completely useless, except for his ability to befriend other drug users who help to deal his product, but they are often even worse than him.
• Jon Stewart occasionally plays this on The Daily Show, usually with a reference to Half Baked (where he played the Enhancement Smoker). After a comment by Bill O'Reilly, his fans have taken to calling themselves the Stoned Slackers.
• Andy Botwin in Weeds
• Samantha on Sex and the City smokes pot and has a dealer. The other girls happily smoke it too.
• On How I Met Your Mother, Ted, Marshall, and Lily were this when they were in college. They grew out of it, but occasionally slip back into it for old times sake (although by the year 2020, they complain that they can't handle more than one joint anymore). However, since Future!Ted is telling the story to his kids, he replaces all mentions of smoking pot with "eating a sandwich", with a corresponding Visual Euphemism.

Music

• Cypress Hill
• Hed PE
• Beck's early music, gradually faded out around the time of Mutations.
• Dr. Dre
• Both Jack Black and Kyle of Tenacious D—as demonstrated in their music and their HBO shorts, as well as Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny.
• Reggae in general, because Marijuana (or as they call it, Ganja or Kaya) use is part of the rastafari religion and thus its merits are often praised in song. The primary difference is that rastas are not doing it to get high but to become at one with their god, as their religion states. Technically, they are only supposed to smoke it during "sessions" but there are a number of musicians who would often smoke on stage. Peter Tosh (a member of The Wailers) is the most notorious of these as he would often light a spliff even when police officers were in full view, which would often lead to brutality. He has many solo songs which deal with it, such as "Legalize It" and "Bush Doctor" and "Nah Goa Jail", to name a few. Bob Marley And The Wailers have "Kaya", "African Herbsman" and "Rebel Music - 3 O Clock Road Block" and "Easy Skanking". There is even a version of Kaya that has Peter Tosh talking at the beginning of the song, he is knocking on Bob's door and is very high indeed (which is helped by gratuitous echo).
  • Dub music is often designed to replicate the feeling of being stoned with slowed tempos and lots of echo, Lee Scratch Perry And The Upsetters became well known for this.
• Wiz Khalifa and Curren$y qualify
• Domo Genesis
• Chris Webby
• Willie Nelson
• Kottonmouth Kings, obviously.
• Snoop Dogg
• Gregg Alexander's work, both solo and with New Radicals.
• Method Man
• Stoner Metal, unsurprisingly.

Professional Wrestling

• Professional Wrestling example: Rob Van Dam. This came back to haunt him in 2006, when he, along with Sabu, were arrested for marijuana possession. The worst part of this was that he was both the WWE and ECW Champion at the time of his arrest.
• How about The Brian Kendrick? He walked to the ring like a stoner before anyone even knew he really was one. In fact, most of the reason why his push was dropped so quick and he was fired was because he repeatedly failed the marijuana portion of the wellness test. Hence, why TNA took him in and did pretty much nothing with him.

Web Comics

• Tim from Loserz. As seen here. Occasionally, the other protagonists too.
• Misfile. Rumisiel.
• Kingston of SSDD, pretty much all there is to his character.
• Everyone in Moon-Pals, especially Yawning Squirtle.
• From Unwinder's Tall Comics, the minor character Lion-man is a pothead and the best argument against using drugs.
• Gamzee from Homestuck, though since he's an alien from another dimension he gets high exclusively on sopor slime pies.
  • Later subverted when it turns out that when he isn't stoned, Gamzee is rather intelligent and frighteningly powerful. It's mentioned he did more damage to the Final Boss in one hit than the god-tier member of the team could. Oh, and he also happens to be murderously psychotic.
• In Coach Random, a stoner is seen a few times. He's never given a name.
• Harold and Clancy from Plus EV, apparently.

Web Original

• Jim Anchower of The Onion.
• Tom and Mac from Less Than Three Comics' Brat Pack are a pair of stoners, mostly played for comic relief.
• The stoner clique at Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe is called the Dylans. As in 'everybody must get stoned'.
• Mr. Ian Woon again; a flying surfboard riding hippy.
• Koenma in Yu Yu Hakusho Abridged.
• Burner Man in AWD's Wily Shorts.

Burner Man: Guys, I have like totally no idea what is going on!

• Treize, of all people, from Gundam Wing Abridged.
• Brody from Warrior Cats RPG.
• Matsuda Mitsubishi from Yukari Is Free.

Western Animation

• Otto from The Simpsons
  • Homer became one for an episode.
• Jeff Fischer from American Dad
• Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law played with the common Fanon that Shag and Scoob from Scooby Doo were stoners when the two are arrested and put on trial for possession. In the end, it turns out they weren't high at all—they're just stupid.
• Shaggy from Scooby Doo. Okay, so it was never canonized, but in every conceivable way he is your typical stoner hippy. He's stick thin, scruffy, always hungry, will eat dog snacks, and he's always freaking out.
• Manic from Sonic Underground, talks and generally acts stoned most of the time, and he's a thieving pickpocket from the lowest classes - a background prone to stumbling into drug habits. It wasn't canonized but it's opinion shared by many fans and critics of the show alike.
  • He's also green, and his hair isn't exactly subtle, even if not intended.
• Don't forget to bring a towel.

Real Life

• The cannabis drug subculture. It even has its own number - 420.
• You. Admit it, you have a problem.
  • Don't worry, you can stop whenever you want!
• Newsanchor Wendy Rieger is a well known megastoner. Some of her neighbors report that Wendy breaks out the bong late at every party she holds at her house in Deale, Maryland.
• You don't have to smoke pot in order to be a stoner. Cindy Crawford was high on cocaine when she performed this lapdance ^{[dead link]} .

1. ↑ (or be Nailed to the Wagon against his will)