Beret Guy

Beret Guy
First appearance	167: Nihilism
Appearances	112

For a list of comics, see Comics featuring Beret Guy.

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Beret Guy is a stick figure character in xkcd. He is distinguished by his white beret. Like Black Hat, he is one of the few xkcd characters who tends to represent the same character in each appearance.

Beret Guy appears very naïve, with the superpower of having the world around him act according to his strange and often overly simplistic viewpoint of the world. While he acts according to his own brand of naïve optimism, he is rarely a victim. He is a funny and cute character, usually appearing as the basis of a strip's joke. He enjoys philosophizing, often taking the role of the existentialist. He has a very surreal side to him, often thinking about or being involved in bizarre situations. He also is shown to take things too literally, making things surreal.

He has been fascinated with bakeries as in 434: xkcd Goes to the Airport and 442: xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel, in particular with scones (see 452: Mission as well as the title text of 677: Asshole and 1030: Keyed.)

Beret Guy had a steady job as a bartender in four comics: 279: Pickup Lines, 328: Eggs, 474: Turn-On, and 712: Single Ladies. However, in later comics, he quit his job to become a "business professional", according to 1032: Networking. There are many comics where he has unusual, impossible, or completely unnecessary jobs, like in 1117: My Sky. (See all comics about Beret Guy's Business.) He makes a load of money from his work but has no apparent job other than "a business grown-up who makes business profits". He appears again, with his own "real building he found" in 1293: Job Interview. In 1493: Meeting, his business returns again, this time with a name http://CompanyName.website/ yet no explanation of how it makes money from Sales, run by Ponytail ("Money keeps appearing, but we have no idea how or why"). At the same time, somehow, it is still massively successful. As of 1533: Antique Factory it seems Beret Guy has reorganized his business and branched out from his technology area of expertise and operates what he refers to as an antique factory. In reality, the "factory" is simply a room with furniture in it where Beret Guy waits for the items to age. In 502: Dark Flow, it appears as if his mother had passed away, or at least gone missing.

Beret Guy also seems to be able to, consciously or unconsciously, warp the fabric of reality - see a list of his strange powers. In 1099: Tuesdays, he grows "endless wings" and in the aforementioned 1293: Job Interview, he seems to be pouring soup from an electrical socket, as well as in 1486: Vacuum, where he misinterprets quantum physics and manages to get unlimited power from a vacuum cleaner. In 1490: Atoms, he appears to have a supernatural ability to see individual atoms (or at least the atomic make-up of items) and his mother seems to have an unexplained amount of plutonium in her body. In 1608: Hoverboard he is shown riding a torpedo launched from a Star Destroyer towards the rebel ship below. He shouts 'Horsey' and seems unaware of the destruction these torpedoes are causing. However, Beret Guy seems to have no doubt that these events are perfectly normal; in fact, he just seems to accept them as they are without question. Beret Guy's seeming ignorance to his supernatural nature suggests that his powers are unintentional; it could be that the universe itself simply "bends around" Beret Guy, in order to fulfill any nonsensical or whimsical thing that he believes to be true, or an idiom/physical law that he has misunderstood.

He also appears to shop at a "mysterious shop", which seems to be cursed. This shop is mentioned in 1772: Startup Opportunity, 2332: Cursed Chair, 2376: Curbside, and 2367: Masks.

In the what if? article Glass Half Empty, he seems to be quite oblivious to pain, especially about foreign objects sticking into his head. This may explain why we never see him without his beret as it may have been stapled to his head - see title text of 291: Dignified. The latter comic also suggests that he might have been born by Caesarean section. In the what if? article Niagara Straw, he appears in the final comic, going down a relativistic stream of water, oblivious to the fact that said stream of water was destroying the world, in a barrel.

Beret Guy also seems to have dogs who seem to share some of his powers, as shown in 1614: Kites and 1922: Interferometry.

He shares several traits with Beriah from Men in Hats, as Black Hat does with Aram from the same series, but in contrast to the latter, this doesn't appear to have been officially acknowledged.

He may also have a relative, Beret Girl, which only ever appeared in 1190: Time.

During an interview in 2023, Randall revealed that Beret Guy is one of the characters he is most fond of.

His business

For a list of comics, see Category:Beret Guy's business.

Strange powers

In the early comics, Beret Guy was mainly just a strange and naive character. His strange abilities begin to appear fairly early on, but that power could also be attributed to Cueball (at least as a shared power) in 248.

From comic 1088, Beret Guy begins to appear frequently with these strange powers, typically unrelated to one another, except that he has some issues with electrical sockets and power cords as seen in 1293 and 1395. (See also 509: Induced Current and the title text of 614: Woodpecker, regarding power cords, but not these specific powers.) He is also capable of waiting for very long time as seen both in 1088, 1617 and 2987.

Many of these apparent powers manifest as objects behaving strangely around him. It is unclear whether these are in fact powers inherent to Beret Guy or whether the objects are simply cursed; as indicated in 1772, most of his possessions were acquired from shops specializing in cursed items.

Here is a list of the comics where Beret Guy displays strange powers that are beyond the realm of possibility.

List of abilities

For a list of comics, see Category:Beret Guy's strange powers.

1. 248: Creates hypothetical situations which trap him and others around him. These situations are spaces, formed with thin, flexible walls that can be torn open with a knife.
2. 1032: Is able to photocopy 3d objects to create clones of said object
3. 1088: Capable of waiting in the same place for highly extended periods of time, presumably without sustenance
4. 1099: He has the ability to grow wings at will, which can extend infinitely if he chooses to do so.
5. 1135: He can persuade spiders to spin their silk in such a way that it forms a wearable shirt.
6. 1158: He can use his imagination to manifest physical objects.
7. 1293: His office has an outlet which can dispense soup when needed. It is unclear if he modified the cord to function differently, or if the cord was simply found as-is.
8. 1388: He can subduct himself through the floor to form mountains in his room.
9. 1395: He is able to inflate a laptop into a notably buoyant object by blowing into a power cord, implying that 1) he can exhale helium, or other lighter-than-air gas, at will and 2) he can change the properties of any object at will.
10. 1422: His phone has the same properties as a dying star, expanding and exploding as it runs out of power.
11. 1486: He is able to harness the energy of a vacuum cleaner and fly using it.
12. 1490: He can see individual atoms and distinguish elements apart, but he cannot discern what these atoms make up (he cannot distinguish a human from a dog).
13. 1522: By standing on a stepladder and looking through a magnifying glass, he can examine life on exoplanets in detail.
14. 1614: Another example of changing the properties of objects at will.
15. 1617: He can survive without oxygen for many years. He is also able to gain all necessary nutrients via eating newspaper.
16. 1922: Yet another example of changing the properties of objects. He is also apparently able to make dogs follow his exact commands.
17. 2310: He has higher dimensional bones, leading to a much greater than normal attraction to the Great attractor. This allows him to sleep and rest on walls and ceilings.
18. 2325: Nearby flowing water flows towards him rather than towards the nearest drainage basin. It appears that he is not capable of controlling this.
19. 2376: He has the knowledge of a cursed amulet that attracts malicious ghosts. He claims that he can do battle with ghosts, although it is unknown whether this is an ability of his or just him being odd as normal.
20. 2446: He had the ability to create very large clumps of Spike proteins after receiving the COVID vaccine, although it is unknown as to whether he is still able to do this.
21. 2534: He can construct an object which can stretch and flex to at least 254 miles in length.
22. 2498: He kept D.B. Cooper stuck in a tree on his property for 50 years, likely with no food or water.
23. 2695: He created volcano seeds which, when planted, create a tiny volcano.
24. 2710: He created a hydroelectric dam that produces more water than passed into it.
25. 2805: He has infinite arm strength, as he is able to hold on to a balloon using one arm for at least 1500 years. He experiences no adverse affects during this time.
26. 2850: He is able to influence human thoughts at will by changing the status of his house on Google Maps.
27. 2987: He stands still for an entire 20 years, presumably without any food or water, to tectonic surf; although he only moved about a meter in that time.
28. 3046: He is able to utilize an anomalous ancestry site to figure out that he is related to long-extinct Stromatolites.
29. 3179: He is able to estimate the weight of any object that gets hooked onto a fishing rod he is holding.
30. 3240: He is able to sail in a life-sized ship in a bottle, making the bottle stay stable and also sail along as if using a sail. Plus he sailed inside the bottle as a kid, when he (and the boat) fit through the bottle neck. Also he survived inside a closed bottle.
31. 3261: He can manage stretching because of gravitational waves as a side effect of a medication and not feel any pain or discomfort.
32. 3303: He can survive multiple megaannum riding actively subducting tectonic plates, and ride mantle plumes back up to the surface, despite the zone being very hot and not hospitable, without any food, water, or air.