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A

Television Animation

Avatar: The Last Airbender is an American series built with genuine respect for the East Asian and Inuit…

Ahsoka was introduced in 2008 to widespread hostility.

Aquaman spent roughly thirty years as the punchline of superhero comics and then stopped being one.

Disney Animation

The Little Mermaid ended a twenty-year decline and is generally treated as the start of the Disney Renaissance.

Ash Ketchum spent twenty-five years being ten years old and losing.

The Chronicles of Narnia

Aslan is the most openly allegorical major character in children's fantasy.

Osamu Tezuka is called the god of manga for reasons this character demonstrates.

B

Bane is routinely reduced to the drug-enhanced strongman who breaks Batman's back, which misreads him entirely.

Television Animation

Bart was the show's initial breakout and, for roughly the first three seasons, its centre of gravity.

Batman is the rare superhero defined by absence.

Beetlejuice inverts its genre completely.

Television Animation

Bender is an industrial robot built to bend girders, who develops a personality consisting almost entirely of vices.

Big Bird is written as a six-year-old, which is the key to everything about him.

Black Panther was the first Black superhero in mainstream American comics, arriving in 1966.

Black Widow entered Marvel in 1964 as a Cold War antagonist.

Preschool Characters

Bluey is a six-year-old Blue Heeler and the centre of the most critically respected preschool programme in decades.

Bob the Builder

Preschool Characters

Bob the Builder established the format Keith Chapman would later reuse for PAW Patrol.

Boba Fett is the clearest demonstration in popular culture that screen time and popularity are unrelated.

Bowser was designed as an ox.

Television Drama

Buffy Summers is the blonde girl who walks into a dark alley in the first reel of a horror film and dies.

Bugs Bunny is the American trickster archetype in its most refined commercial form.

Buzz Lightyear is a toy who does not know he is a toy, and the first film's best sequence is the one where he finds out.

C

C-3PO's design is a direct lift from Maria, the false robot in Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927).

Captain America

Captain America was a political act before he was a franchise.

Catwoman has spent eighty years being the character DC cannot decide about.

Charlie Brown is a study in persistent failure that never becomes cruelty.

Chase is a German Shepherd police pup and, by most measures.

Chewbacca is a character with no intelligible dialogue who nonetheless reads as fully articulate.

Don Mancini wrote Child's Play as satire before it was horror.

Cookie Monster began life in a series of unaired commercials Jim Henson made in the 1960s for a snack company.

Universal Monsters

Bram Stoker's 1897 novel did not invent the vampire but it fixed almost everything modern audiences assume about them.

Picture Book Classics

The manuscript survived the fall of France on a bicycle.

D

Daenerys Targaryen

Game of Thrones

Daenerys begins the first novel as a thirteen-year-old sold into marriage by her brother to buy an army.

Daffy is the most substantially rewritten character in the Warner roster.

Television Drama

Scully was written as the sceptic, and the structural inversion is the show's best idea.

Darth Vader is arguably the most efficient villain design in film history.

Deadpool began as a fairly straight 1991 mercenary.

Back to the Future

Doc Brown is the mad scientist archetype rehabilitated into something warm.

Doctor Strange is Steve Ditko's book far more than Stan Lee's.

Disney Animation

Donald exists because Mickey became too popular to be funny.

Donkey Kong was a rescue operation.

Dora the Explorer

Preschool Characters

Dora the Explorer did two things that were genuinely new for American preschool television.

E

Fullmetal Alchemist opens with two children attempting to resurrect their dead mother and being maimed for it.

Television Drama

Eleven is a character built almost entirely out of restraint.

Ripley exists as a woman by accident, and the accident is instructive.

Elmo existed as an anonymous background monster for several years before Kevin Clash picked up the puppet…

Disney Animation

Elsa was written as the villain, and the song changed the film.

Eren begins as the most conventional shōnen protagonist imaginable.

Television Animation

Cartman is the rare comic lead written with no redeeming qualities at all, and the show is disciplined about it.

F

Frankenstein's Monster

Universal Monsters

Mary Shelley was eighteen when she began Frankenstein.

Freddy Krueger is the slasher villain who talks.

The Lord of the Rings

Frodo is a protagonist who fails at the last moment.

G

The Lord of the Rings

Gandalf is the template every fantasy mentor since has been measured against.

Geralt of Rivia

Geralt is a monster hunter who keeps discovering the monster is not the problem.

Ghostface is not a person, and that is the design.

The 1954 Gojira is a considerably more serious film than its reputation in the West suggests.

Green Arrow spent his first thirty years as an unembarrassed Batman imitation.

Green Lantern is DC's science-fiction franchise wearing a superhero costume.

Grogu is the most commercially explosive character introduction of the streaming era.

Groot spent forty-six years as a forgotten monster before becoming one of Marvel's most merchandised characters.

Grover is the Sesame Street character who does the actual teaching.

H

Han Solo exists to puncture the film he is in.

Harley Quinn is the most successful character in modern comics to have been created for television rather…

Harry Potter is a deliberately ordinary protagonist surrounded by extraordinary people.

Hawkeye is the Avenger with a bow, standing next to a god.

Masters of the Universe

He-Man exists because Mattel turned down the Star Wars toy licence and needed something to compete with…

Hello Kitty is one of the highest-grossing licensed characters ever created and she has almost no story.

Hermione Granger

Hermione is the character who actually solves the books.

Television Animation

Homer began as a fairly conventional exasperated sitcom father in the 1987 Tracey Ullman shorts and drifted.

I

Ichigo Kurosaki

Bleach is the most style-driven of the big shōnen series.

Indiana Jones is a deliberate revival of the 1930s cliffhanger serial.

Iron Man was designed as a provocation.

J

Jack Skellington

Disney Animation

The Nightmare Before Christmas came from a poem Tim Burton wrote while working as an animator at Disney…

Kirk's popular reputation — the brawling, womanising cowboy captain — is substantially a later invention…

Two things about Jason Voorhees are routinely misremembered, and both are worth stating.

Jean Grey is the centre of the most influential storyline in superhero comics.

Saw was made for around a million dollars by two Australians in their twenties.

Game of Thrones

Jon Snow is the series' most conventional fantasy protagonist.

K

Kermit the Frog

Kermit was built in 1955 from Jim Henson's mother's discarded coat and two halves of a ping-pong ball.

Kirby was drawn as a placeholder.

Kratos is one of the few video game characters to be substantially rewritten and improved by his own sequel.

L

Death Note is a thriller in which almost nothing physical happens.

Lara Croft was the first female protagonist to headline a blockbuster action game.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre predates Halloween by four years and effectively wrote the rulebook the…

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Leonardo is the responsible one, which in this franchise means he is the character the others resent.

Levi is the most popular character in Attack on Titan by a wide margin.

Luthor's modern form dates from a 1986 revision that turned him from a mad scientist in a jumpsuit into a…

Link is deliberately empty, and the design is explicit about why.

Loki is the most successful redemption-adjacent villain Marvel has.

Luigi began as a palette swap.

Luke Skywalker is the most-cited modern example of the hero's journey, and not by accident.

M

Almost every distinctive feature of Mario's design was a solution to a hardware limitation.

Marshall is the Dalmatian firefighter and the show's comic relief.

Back to the Future

Marty McFly is one of the most efficiently constructed protagonists in mainstream cinema.

Master Chief is a helmet the player wears, and Bungie was deliberate about keeping it that way.

Matilda Wormwood

Matilda is a five-year-old genius in a family that resents her for it.

The mask that defines the entire slasher genre cost about two dollars.

Television Drama

Michael Scott is an adaptation of a considerably crueller original.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Michelangelo is the youngest brother and the one the 1987 cartoon leaned on hardest.

Disney Animation

Mickey Mouse was created out of a contractual disaster.

Picture Book Classics

Dick Bruna invented Miffy in 1955 to entertain his one-year-old son during a rainy holiday.

Miles Morales is the most successful legacy replacement in modern superhero comics.

Disney Animation

Minnie appeared in the same 1928 short as Mickey and has been beside him ever since.

Miss Piggy started as a background chorus pig with no lines and became the show's most forceful presence.

Monkey D. Luffy

One Piece is the best-selling comic series in history by a wide margin.

N

Naruto is built on a specific and unusually well-executed premise.

Neo is a chosen-one narrative wrapped around a genuinely unusual idea for 1999.

Nezuko is the reason her brother's story exists.

No-Face is a spirit with no identity of his own who takes on the characteristics of whatever he consumes.

O

Obi-Wan is the mentor who dies in the first act, which was a structural requirement rather than a character decision.

Optimus Prime is a toy that was given a soul by a work-for-hire comics writer.

Oscar the Grouch

Oscar exists because the programme's educational advisers argued that children needed to see a character…

P

Toru Iwatani set out to design an arcade game that women would want to play.

Paddington Bear

Picture Book Classics

Michael Bond bought a single unsold bear from a shop near Paddington station on Christmas Eve 1956 as a…

Pennywise is a shape the creature wears rather than the creature itself.

Preschool Characters

Peppa Pig is drawn with a deliberate flatness that has become one of the most recognisable design…

Television Animation

Family Guy exists because of a student film.

Picture Book Classics

Peter Rabbit began in 1893 as a picture letter Beatrix Potter wrote to entertain the sick five-year-old…

Pikachu was not designed to be the face of anything.

Poison Ivy started as a femme fatale with a plant gimmick and has been steadily rewritten into something…

Leia's first scene establishes almost everything about her.

Peach's history tracks the games industry's slow renegotiation of what a princess character is for.

The series is named after her and for most of its history she was not playable in it.

R

R2-D2 has no face, no dialogue and no articulated limbs to speak of.

Rainbow Dash is the brash, competitive one, and she matters because of what Lauren Faust was trying to…

Television Animation

Rick and Morty began as a crude animated parody of Back to the Future and became the most influential…

Robin invented the sidekick, and the commercial logic behind him is unusually well documented.

Rocket is a genetically and cybernetically modified raccoon.

S

Sailor Moon fused two established Japanese genres.

One-Punch Man began as a crudely drawn webcomic that its author, working under the name ONE, posted for free.

Metroid's ending in 1986 removed the armour and revealed the bounty hunter inside was a woman.

Gojo is the most merchandised anime character of recent years, and the reason is largely design.

Television Drama

Saul Goodman was written as comic relief for three episodes and became the centre of a six-season prequel…

Wanda Maximoff began in 1964 as a reluctant villain with a vaguely defined hex power and became.

Scooby-Doo was built to survive censorship.

In the 1940s this character outsold Superman, and the resulting lawsuit is one of the most consequential…

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is the most portrayed literary character in film and television history.

Disney Animation

The Lion King was the studio's B-project.

Masters of the Universe

Skeletor is a blue-skinned sorcerer with a bare skull for a face who spends every episode failing.

Slimer appears for well under a minute in the 1984 film.

Snoopy began as an ordinary dog on four legs with no inner life and became.

Goku is the character who set the shape of modern action manga.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Sonic was engineered as a competitor.

Spider-Man changed what a superhero could be by making one who was not admired.

Cowboy Bebop is the series most often credited with bringing adult anime to a Western audience.

Spock is the most consequential character Star Trek produced, and NBC initially wanted him removed.

SpongeBob SquarePants

Television Animation

SpongeBob was created by a marine biologist.

Disney Animation

Stitch is a genetically engineered weapon designed to destroy everything he touches.

Storm arrived in 1975 as part of the international X-Men relaunch and quickly became something the roster…

The stormtrooper is one of the very few designs in this category that is not a character at all but is treated as one.

Supergirl is Superman's cousin and, more usefully, his counterexample.

Superman is the character that invented the category.

T

Tanjiro is a shōnen protagonist defined by empathy rather than ambition, and the series is rigorous about it.

Thanos in the comics is in love with the personification of Death, and everything he does is an attempt to impress her.

The Doctor is defined by a production accident that became the best idea in British television.

The Flash matters to comics history out of all proportion to his profile outside them.

Picture Book Classics

The Gruffalo is a monster invented by a mouse to frighten off predators, who then turns out to be real.

The Hulk is Marvel's monster, and the fact that he is on the hero side of the ledger has never quite…

The Joker works because he is the exact structural opposite of Batman and nothing else.

The Mandalorian

Din Djarin is a Western protagonist wearing science-fiction armour, and the series is unusually open about it.

James Cameron has said the character came from a fever dream in Rome of a chrome skeleton dragging itself out of fire.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Picture Book Classics

Eric Carle's book began as an entirely different animal.

Universal Monsters

Almost everything popularly believed about werewolves was invented for this film in 1941.

The Xenomorph is the most influential creature design in science-fiction cinema.

Television Drama

Peaky Blinders takes a real Birmingham street gang of the 1890s.

Thomas the Tank Engine

Picture Book Classics

The Reverend Wilbert Awdry invented these stories to entertain his son Christopher through measles in 1943.

Marvel's Thor is an adaptation of a genuine Norse deity.

Totoro is a forest spirit in a film with almost no plot, and that is the achievement.

Tweety is a much less innocent character than the merchandise suggests, and that gap is the joke.

V

Vegeta is the archetype every shōnen rival since has been built from.

Venom is a design that outgrew its story.

W

Television Drama

Vince Gilligan described the project as turning Mr Chippendale into Scarface.

Wednesday Addams

The Addams Family

Wednesday existed as an unnamed cartoon child for twenty-six years before the 1964 sitcom required names.

Winnie-the-Pooh

Disney Animation

Winnie-the-Pooh began as a set of stories A. A. Milne told about his son Christopher Robin's actual toys.

Wolverine was created to give the Hulk a Canadian opponent and was very nearly a throwaway.

Wonder Woman was created with an explicit political thesis, which makes her unusual among superheroes.

Woody is the more interesting half of the pair, because he is the one with something to lose.

Y

Yoda is a puppet that convinced an audience it was a person, which in 1980 was not a settled question.

Yoshi was an idea Miyamoto had been trying to implement since the first Super Mario Bros.