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Stranger ThingsBilly Hargroveheadcanons
#1 Full Name Billy's middle name is Kenneth, making his full name William Kenneth Hargrove. Yes, he hates it. No, you should absolutely not make fun of him about it.
#2 More Than Co-Workers Billy and Heather Holloway had a friends-with-benefits-situation going on before both of them got possessed by the Mind Flayer. He thinks of her often, wondering if perhaps she could've been saved if they hadn't been friends.
#3 Possession Scars Due to the wounds inflicted on him by the possession itself (aka his body rejecting the possession and attacking itself), Billy's tattoo is slightly faded and scarred. He also has a scar on his cheek from where Lucas flung a stone at his face with his slingshot during the sauna test.
#4 The Tattoo Billy got his tattoo on his eighteenth birthday. He'd always imagined that moment — the needle, the ink, the transformation into an adult. The coolest, boldest guys he'd ever seen all had tattoos, and he'd wanted a piece of that image for himself. But there was another reason, sharper and more personal: to spite his god-awful father. The smoking skull wasn't just decoration. It was defiance. Rebellion. A declaration that he could finally do whatever the hell he wanted, without some bitter, old-fashioned man looming over him, trying to control his every move.
And then it was taken from him. The injuries inflicted by the Mind Flayer's possession left it faded and scarred. A symbol of lost control rather than reclaimed freedom.
What Billy didn't realize, not at first, was that this tattoo had never just been about rebellion. It was the version of himself he wanted the world to see: tough, unshakable, untouchable. Someone who didn't care what anyone thought, so no one would get close enough to challenge him, or worse, to hurt him. The ink was only surface-deep, a layer of paint over a carefully maintained facade. The feathers of a mask. The helmet completing his armor.
Maybe losing the tattoo wasn't just another violation, another reminder of how he'd been overpowered.
Maybe it was the beginning of the mask slipping. Of Billy, finally, beginning to find out who he really is without his armor.
#5 The Mullet Billy is known for his mullet. What's not so known is that he had grown out his hair to hide his ears, because he always hated how they are slightly protruding. Just his luck that mullets/long hair on men are totally popular in the 80s.
Maybe he'll change his mind in the 90s?
#6 Crying Behind his bravado and tough-guy behavior, Billy is actually a total crier — at least when he is stressed, scared as hell, and really overwhelmed. But since he struggles with showing his soft side, he either distances himself in these moments and lashes out to mask it, or he swallows his emotions to a point of a nervous breakdown.
If he trusts you, he will cry in front of you. But it takes a lot to get there.
And you're also dead if you tell anyone.
#7 Billy's Handwriting
#8 PTSD (tw: panic attacks) Flickering lights drive Billy absolutely insane. Not because they're annoying, but because somewhere deep inside him, they have become a warning signal for terror. The moment a light starts stuttering and flashing, his body reacts before his mind can catch up. In his memories, flickering lights don't mean a faulty bulb — they announce danger. Demogorgons. The Upside Down. Vecna. They mean something is coming. Something terrible. And if he can't leave quickly enough, the fear can spiral into a full-blown panic attack.
Some days are easier than others. In brightly lit places, where other light sources drown out the flickering, he can sometimes force himself to endure it. But the moment the flashing becomes too noticeable, too impossible to ignore, the dread returns immediately.
Fireworks are just as bad. Every explosion makes his body brace for catastrophe. What most people experience as celebration, Billy experiences as a relentless reminder that disaster can arrive without warning — and that sometimes the lights start flickering just before everything goes wrong.
#9 Nyctophobia and Insomnia Billy has been afraid of the dark ever since the possession, and he can't sleep without a night light. On top of that, sleep itself triggers anxiety — an echo of the nine months he spent in a coma, where consciousness simply stopped and time became something he couldn't track or control. Both darkness and sleep blur the edges of awareness for him, and that loss of control pulls him straight back into last summer's ordeal.
Still, he finds it easier to fall asleep when he is not alone. The presence of someone he trusts steadies him in a way silence and empty space don't. He may tolerate the dark a little better then — but the night light stays. Always.
#10 Everyday HabitsBilly ... - always checks his reflection in any shiny surface without realizing it (he stopped for a while after waking up from his coma because he hated how sick he looked, but it's slowly getting better)
- prefers cold/cool showers, even in winter
- can never remember where he left his sunglasses
- rarely sits normally in a chair — he'll lean it back or drape himself all over it
- steals fries off of other people's plates
- can parallel park almost perfectly on the first try
- is weirdly good at throwing things into trash cans from across the room (basketball perks)
- can whistle incredibly loudly using two fingers
- finds babies awkward... until one smiles at him
#11 The Lie About his MomFor a while during his early teenage years, whenever his peers asked why his mother was never around, he told them she was dead. He hated himself for saying it every single time, but somehow, that lie felt easier than the truth. 'She left me behind after my parents divorced' was too complicated, too humiliating, too painfully personal to explain — especially to kids who wouldn't understand why a mother could simply walk away from her own child.
Saying she was dead meant he didn't have to answer the questions. He could simply shrug and let them assume he had lost her and the topic was over. Sometimes, he almost wished that had been the truth. Still, every time the lie left his mouth, a small part of him felt like he was betraying her — and, perhaps more painfully, betraying the little boy who had once waited for her to come back home.
