The 10 Most Deranged Sidekicks of All Time
Some sidekicks are known for their blind loyalty (Tonto), their bizarre choice of clothing (Robin) or their ability to harmonize (Garfunkel). Other sidekicks are known primarily for lurking in the background and weirding everyone the hell out.
A look at the 10 lackeys, hype men and right hands that make us more than a little uncomfortable, as well as a diagnosis of what' probably wrong with these tortured souls.
#10.
Tattoo from Fantasy Island
On TV' Fantasy Island, Herve Villechaize played Tattoo, the boot-licking human poodle to Ricardo Montalban' Mr. Roarke.
Tattoo' duties included:
- Ring bell / "De plane!"
- Listening to his boss explain the plot of this week' episode
- Getting his boss drinks
- Boot licking
Tattoo lived to serve his boss, even sleeping on the floor at the foot of the bed (in case any snakes got in the room). He can also be credited with starting a national obsession with midgets that has resulted in midget-tossing parties, the character Mini-Me and Ryan Seacrest' career.
EVIDENCE:
In this very special intro to Fantasy Island, Tatoo shows a little moxy, asking his boss why he never gets his. Roarke responds with some lame metaphor about candy shops that he made up, totally ignoring this cry for help from his tortured slave.
DIAGNOSIS: Dysfunctionally intense focus on needs of his boss, bacterial infection on tongue from shoe shine.
#9.
Jerome from The Time
What series of events has to happen in your life for you to become The Guy That Holds Morris Day' mirror? Meet Jerome, Morris Day' preening sidekick/valet/underling. In addition to taking up valuable space in the luggage compartment of The Time tour bus, Jerome' duties apparently include:
- Holding up a huge mirror so Morris Day can check himself out while he sings.
- Brushing the lint off of Morris Day' jacket while he sings.
- Dancing around a little bit while Morris Day sings.
- Holding up the huge mirror again.
EVIDENCE:
In this video of Morris Day and The Time doing their thing, notice how quick Jerome is with Day' mirror. Also, we can't help but point out that Jerome, by dedicating all of his time to perfecting his Morris Day-related responsibilities, has rendered himself completely unemployable.
Honestly, if things don't work out and Jerome gets fired, what other job could he possibly be qualified to perform? Brushing lint off the Queen? Holding up a huge mirror for a chief justice of the Supreme Court? He'd be perfect for those jobs, if they existed.
DIAGNOSIS: Symbiotism, HPD (Habitual Preening Disorder).
#8.(tie)
Twiki from Buck Rogers
In the 25th century, mankind will improve the human condition by creating sophisticated robots that will follow people around like puppies, but instead of being cute and making adorable yelping noises, they will look terrifying and make horrible stuttering bleeps.
But, why wait for such startlingly practical advances when you can travel to the future with Buck Rogers in the 25th century, which features Twiki, a short be-mulleted robot sidekick.
Twiki' robo-do could be considered cute in a sort of robo Maddox Jolie Pitt way, but Mel Blanc (also the voice of Bugs Bunny) gives Twiki a voice like a Texas oil baron with throat cancer. Also, Twiki has only one volume setting: just a little louder than seems appropriate.
EVIDENCE:
In this clip from the TV show, Twiki crudely propositions a female, short robot with an even worse vocal tic than his. They go off to have short-robot sex. Buck laughs and has another drink to help blot the image of child-like robots having sex from his mind. The audience of teens and children have no such recourse.
DIAGNOSIS: Tourettes Syndrome, autophilia.
#8.(tie)
Farnsworth Bentley
After Flavor Flav and his giant clock necklace struck out on their own to pursue the riches of ironic fame, hip-hop was in need of a borderline-pathetic clown, prince sidekick specializing in prop comedy. Enter Farnsworth Bentley and his umbrella.
To get an idea of just how troublingly and depressed Bentley must be, it' important to remember that the man over whose head he holds an umbrella got his start as a sidekick. Sure Diddy is now a mega-mogul, but when he first came on the scene, he was just the skinny guy who said "Take that, take that, ha!" in the background of Biggie' songs.
Basically, imagine if Robin had killed Bruce Wayne, taken all his money and then hired you to hold an umbrella over his head. Such is the lot of Farnsworth Bentley.
EVIDENCE:
To see just how mean-spirited their relationship is, skip directly to the end of Diddy' music video for the song "DIDDY." He and his back-up dancers pull the old stop-dancing-and-look-at-the-one-guy-who'-still-dancing-like-he'-an-asshole on poor old Bentley.
Even sadder is that Bentley appears to be embracing the shackles of his vicious enslavement, trying to sell his own line of umbrellas.
DIAGNOSIS: Stockholm Syndrome.
#7.
Chaka from Land of the Lost
So you're trapped in another dimension, surrounded by dinosaurs and other monsters. What' your first move?
That' right, you take a hairy, easily-excitable, hideous-looking ape boy named Chaka under your wing so you have someone to slow you down, eat all of your food and contribute nothing. Good. Now that that' out of the way, you have plenty of time to get eaten by dinosaurs. And don't think that Chaka won't help you in that department. He' as useful at attracting dinosaurs, as he is useless at everything else, which is to say, extremely.
EVIDENCE:
At the 6:16 mark of this entire Land of the Lost episode, Chaka shows what an annoying brat he can be to travel with, screaming way louder than is necessary that he' hungry, even though a two-headed monster is within ear shot and is presumably hungry himself.
DIAGNOSIS: Poor self-image, hirsute, fecalphelia.
BONUS FUN FACT: Chaka could have been played by a young Clint Howard (Ron Howard' brother), without requiring any makeup for the role.
#6.
Rene from Aqua
"I am the Candyman - coming from Bountyland!"
Rene Dif is the Yul Brynner-looking dude in Aqua who shot to superstardom with the words "Come on Barbie, let' go party" in Aqua' hit "Barbie Girl." He' actually huge in Denmark; a bald-headed Flavor Flav for the Northern European bubblegum dance scene. For anyone out there who was stuck for a reason not to ever travel to Denmark, you're welcome.
And, while we're sure it' great to have someone in your band who can rap like a muppet, we'd imagine that the rest of Aqua has to get pretty tired of having to keep Rene away from kids all the time.
EVIDENCE:
The Aqua video for "Lollipop (Candyman)," in which Rene is oddly menacing and otherworldly as The Candyman, singing:
Come with me, honey,
I'm your sweet sugar Candyman
Run like the wind - fly with me to Bountyland
Remember kids, even if he says he' the candyman, you shouldn't let him take you to bountyland. Just ask him to drive you straight home after he makes good on that trip to the candy store he promised.
DIAGNOSIS: Danish.
Apart from Smithers and C-3PO I haven't heard any of these characters. I'm young D:!
ReplySorry to hear that. You missed out on a lot of fun. have fun living long enough to see the mass droughts and pandemics that will come after I'm already long dead.
C3PO was useful also when he saved all the others from the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi, ops sorry the Ewoks never happened.
ReplySo we get sugarcubes and dracula for videos... really, this article just came out today and the videos are all down.... reallly??? Craked just got SOPA'd!
ReplyUm, it didn't just come out today. It was LINKED today. It came out in September of 2007. That was over FOUR years ago.
and, btw, lil jon isn't a rapper.he's an mc and until he started appearing on songs he was an atlanta dj. so his entire job would, in fact, be to hype up other peoples songs. that's... that's pretty much it. granted after more than one track, you may have the uncontrollable urge to drink incredible hulks out of bedazzled wine glasses and bust your dates head open with a skull-tipped walking cane until the white meat shows, but i kinda like the little fella.
Replyat the point when puffy was dancing in the background of biggie videos, he was biggie's boss, not his sidekick. HE OWNED BAD BOY RECORDS. in other words, puffy was the batman in that scenario, and biggie was terry, the kid who batman trained to be the new batman in batman beyond. that being said, puffy really did start his career as an asistant to andre harrell. he did humiliating things- washed and waxed andre's cars, got his coffee, etc- until he broke into his own by finding jodeci, getting paid, and starting bad boy records. so farnsworth is basically doing the same thing with puffy as puffy did with andre harrell. only he looks really, really stupid while doing it.
Replyhe also raps. really. it's rather humorous.
Not quite sure... re: C3PO.... since when does "useless" equate to "deranged?"
Replyis the complete lack of 's bothering anyone else? I may just be being picky, but seeing "it'" and "there'" just makes me cringe a little.. I know the writer's s key works, so it makes no sense.
Reply Hide All See All 4 Replieslol. i didn't even notice that until i read your comment. that was freaky.
I've noticed most articles from '06/'07 are missing all the 's. I continue to wonder how that happened.
Annoys the s**t outta me too. I've noticed it in a few other articles. Can't figure out why.
It's b/c everyone from today stole the 's from the past to make their grammatically incorrect plurals (dog's, robot's, etc). Bastards...
No mention of the Oompa-Loompas? Going into a song and dance number whenever their boss horrifically maimed kids?
Reply"Oh won't someone PLEASE think of the children!!"
Oh hang on - the kids were brats. Sorry, I recant.
I think remora is the animal analogy you are looking for in regard to Wayland Smithers.
ReplyI think Waylon is the spelling you were looking for.
Actually no, Wayland was correct.
Oh... Twiki had a robo-mullet... For the longest time, I thought he was inadvertently designed to look like a penis due to the designe's undiscovered or unacknowledged obsessions / complexes / disorders.
ReplyHow can you be a rapper's sidekick when you're the one who signs his checks.?Diddy is like the hip hop George Pullman. Gets rich off his staff's talent and puts his face on everything. He's always in his artists videos goin "take dat take dat" because he's straight up raping them.
ReplyI hate the way everytime you go to watch a video link it states the account has been terminated... I love watching the clips they link to these stories.
ReplyEdit... I am a bone head for not checking the date of the article. Nevermind the comment I made.
I was about to say the same thing... and granted I troll the archives, but even the most recent articles tend to have broken links. Ah well. I still laugh.
I don't care what anyone says I adore Lil John.
ReplyI hate when they put the number one in the banner/ pics for each Top X article...
ReplyMy biggest problem with C-3PO was that he was a "protocol droid, fluent in over 6 million forms of communication," yet when called upon to actually translate something, he always speaks in a halting, broken form of the language. The scene on Tattoine in Return of the Jedi when he was attempting to gain access to Jabba's palace was particularly bad. I mean, I always thought fluent meant you spoke the language a little better than that.
ReplyC-3P0 has actually been useful. Only once I think. Fair enough, it WAS an accident, but he did save Luke, Han, Leia and Chewie from getting crushed by those walls when they went down the garbage chute. R2D2 doesn't do much either, but he did sort of start off all the adventures by going to the sand dunes, which caused Luke to meet Obi Wan.
ReplyI love the way Roarke says "you?" in the Fantasy Island one, like he can't imagine that a midget could have dreams. That's like a chair wanting to be a bed when it grows up, isn't it?
ReplyI like how none of the videos work anymore.
ReplySomeone ought to go through and find working videos to put in all the old articles. I might contribute.
That's a wee bit harsh on Tattoo. It can't be much fun being a Mexican midget who can't wrestle. Being a lickspittle to a weird billionaire philanthropist on a sun kissed tropical isle is a fantastic career opportunity. Hell, I'd do it & i'm 5'11. It beats the living shite out of working in a factory making plastic toilets for RVs & boats.
ReplyI actually liked the song Lollipop (Candyman). In a twisted way, Rene and Lene (the female vocalist) seem similar to Will.i.Am and Fergie. Those two do the main voice work and are the real faces of the group, while the leftover two are just are there and do minor work.
ReplyI didn't know that writing all of the lyrics and composing the rest of the song is considered "minor work" in the music industry.