34 Facts About the Creation of Your Favorite TV Characters

So that’s how Nelson Muntz got his name!
34 Facts About the Creation of Your Favorite TV Characters
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Behind every iconic sitcom slacker, moody antihero or disturbingly charismatic meth cook, there’s a writer in sweatpants banging out some crazy backstory between slurps of cupped noodles. Then, as if their words are completely frivolous, the actors cast in said roles have some wild ideas of their own. 

Today, we’re sifting through all that messy character development in the hopes of finding out how our favorite TV characters become the fictional folks we know and love today.

Tina Belcher

CRACKED COM Tina Belcher's distinctive low voice is because she was originally going to be Bob's oldest son, Daniel. L BOB'S BURGERS ium While in development, producers felt like Daniel wasn't different enough from the youngest son, Gene, so they created the character of Tina. Since they had already hired Dan Mintz as the voice actor, they kept him on as Tina.

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34 Facts About the Creation of Your Favorite TV Characters

Marge Simpson

Marge Simpson has huge hair because she was originally going to be secretly a rabbit. Matt Groening had planned to reveal that Marge was hiding rabbit ears - like the ones characters in his comic book Life In Hell had-at the conclusion of the series. GRAGKED.COM

The Fonz

CRACKED.COM HAPPY DAYS Fonzie's famous ayyyy came about due to Henry Winkler's dyslexia. Не struggled to learn lines so he'd say ayyyy in lieu of dialogue.

Michael Scott

CRACKED.COM THE OFFICE was heavily influenced by THE SOPRANOS. The Sopranos was actually the biggest influence on The Office, actor and producer В. J. Novak has said. The way Michael Scott will say something very serious but mispronounce a word I feel is a direct descendant of the Tony Soprano sense of humor.

Jack Bauer

24's Jack Bauer keeps shouting Damn it! because that was the only option. The creators needed to have him yell something when he's angry, but anything other than a curse word felt forced. Damn it! was the only one they could run on network TV, so they used that every time. CRACKED.COM

Kramer

AUG RHD Larry David put a real-life neighbor into his TV show. Kenny Kramer is a fan of golf, cigars, and ridiculous money-making schemes, just like Cosmo Kramer. Fittingly, Kenny came up with a reality tour for Seinfeld fans as a way to monetize his role in the show. CRACKED.COM

Birdperson

Birdperson in Rick and Morty is inspired by Buck Rogers's sidekick. The sidekick, Hawk, looked basically just like Bird Person but didn't talk much. CRACKED.COM

Gromit

Wallace & Gromic Nick Park originally intended for Gromit to be a cat, but thought it was easier to make a dog with clay. As he put it, you can roll it into larger sausages. CRACKED COM

Steve

Stranger Things' Steve was supposed to be a really, really shady guy. In one early scene he had forced himself on Nancy at a party. Joe Keery said that, at that point, the character was a total, total dick. CRACKED.COM

The Belchers

The Belchers from Bob's Burgers were originally going to be cannibals. It FUN BOB'S BURGERS Hame A C Creator Loren Bouchard's first idea was a show about a family that runs a restaurant who are cannibals, but Fox asked him if the cannibalism angle was really needed. CRACKED.COM

Luke

Gilmore Girls' Luke was originally a woman. At one point, the network said the show needed a male character, so writer Amy Sherman-Palladino just changed Daisy's name to Luke and called it a day. CRACKED.COM

Eric Cartman

In the earliest South Park cartoon, Cartman was called Kenny. It was a college short called The Spirit of Christmas: Jesus vs. Frosty, and it features a kid who looks like Cartman getting killed by a snowman while the other kids go Oh my God! Frosty killed Kenny! CRACKED.COM

Supernatural

CRACKED.COM SUPERNATURAL was partly inspired by Jack Kerouac. Kerouac's novel On the Road is about friends Dean and Sal as they travel across America. Supernatural is about brothers Dean and Sam (showrunner Eric Kripke didn't like the name Sal) as they hunt monsters and demons across America.

Foghorn Leghorn

Foghorn Leghorn is a caricature of a Southern politician. He's based on a character that comedian Kenny Delmar created for a radio show, Senator Beauregard Claghorn, who's a send-up of Southern politicians at the time. He talked like a super-exaggerated Southerner and cracked jokes about the North, like When I got the chicken pox, they were southern fried! CRACKED.COM

Baby Yoda

The Sistine Chapel's ceiling inspired the creation of Baby Yoda. The character was partly based on David Filoni (director of The Mandalorian Episode 1)'s sketch of Baby Yoda's first scene - it looked like a mashup of E.T. and Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. CRACKED.COM

Sam Tarly

CRACKED.COM A Song of Ice and Fire Sam Tarly is a pacific nerd like George R. R. Martin. Martin has said that he resembles Sam way more than any other character in his saga. Tyrion might be who | want to be, but Sam is probably closer to who | actually am. The fat kid who likes to read books and doesn't like to go up a lot of stairs.

The Roy Family

The Sulzbergers were part of the inspiration for Succession's Roy family. The Sulzbergers control The New York Times, but they weren't the only inspiration -- the biggest one was probably media mogul Rupert Murdoch. CRACKED.COM

Walter

There was a Muppet that was inspired directly by Michael Cera. It's Walter, and his puppeteer said They told me to think about Michael Cera-that if he was a puppeteer he would already have the job. CRACKED.COM

Elizabeth Johnson

Lady Gaga based her role in American Horror Story: Hotel on one murderer. It was Robert Durst, and she said she watched him in The Jinx every day to sort of study the practical nature in which he was devious and evil. CRACKED.COM

Peter Griffin

CRACKED.COM FAMiLY GUY Peter Griffin's accent, look, and mannerisms came from a security guard named Paul Timmins who worked at the Rhode Island School of Design. The show's creator, Seth MacFarlane, had been a student there and would smoke cigarettes and chat with Timmins a couple times a day.

Nelson Muntz

HA-HAW! YOU DIDN'T know THAT nelson IS JOHN BenDeR! Not only is the Simpsons tough guy based on the Breakfast Club tough guy, but he shares a name with the actor who played him, Judd Nelson. CRACKED.COM

April Ludgate

They created April Ludgate after a casting director met Aubrey Plaza. The director called Parks & Rec writer Michael Schur and told him I just met the weirdest girl I've ever met in my life. You have to meet her and put her on your show. So Schur met with her, and wrote her into the show. CRACKED.COM

Georgia Costanza

Seinfeld George Costanza is Larry David. Jason Alexander based his performance on Woody Allen, until he realized George was a self-insert for the show's co-creator. When Alexander questioned a scene, David retorted: This happened to me, this is exactly what I did. CRACKED.COM

The Boulder

Dwayne Johnson directly inspired a character in Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's The Boulder (well, of course), and they even tried to get The Rock to voice the character-but that didn't work out, unfortunately. CRACKED.COM

Quagmire

SETH MACFARLANE QUAGMIRE CRACKED.COM My father used to buy me old radio dramas, and commercials from the '40s and '50s had this high-pitched voice. So Quagmire's a 50's radio jockey on coke combined with a sex-crazed pervert. Giggity.

BoJack Horseman

Raphael Bob-Waksberg based BoJack Horseman on how he felt after moving to Hollywood. Не felt isolated and alienated because he didn't go out too much, and that dichotomy of being simultaneously on top of the world, and also never more alone, was really the beginning of thinking about this character of BoJack. CRACKED.COM

Main Characters in The Good Place

The Good Place is heavily based on a 1944 existentialist play by Sartre. His No Exit is about three people who can't stand each other trapped in the afterlife together, with nothing to do but to talk to each other forever. CRACKED.COM

Kenny McCormick

South Park's Kenny was based on a Kenny from Trey Parker's childhood, who also wore an orange coat and always mumbled. Не went missing all the time, and other kids would be like, What happened to Kenny? Is he dead? CRACKED.COM

Judge Gen

Judge Gen in The Good Place was modelled on none other than The Notorious RBG. Her robe was based on that on Ruth Bader Ginsberg - her actress, Maya Rudolph, said it was an homage to an iconic human being. CRACKED.COM

Scooby Gang

The Scooby Gang was based on the characters in a 1960s TV show. It was called The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and it was a teen sitcom that the creators of Scooby-Doo basically just lifted the main characters from. CRACKED.COM

Geordi LaForge

Geordi LaForge was based on a disabled Star Trek superfan. His name was George LaForge, he'd suffered from muscular dystrophy, and he showed up all the time at fan conventions. Не made friends with Gene Roddenberry, and Roddenberry remembered him when he was creating characters for The Next Generation. CRACKED.COM

Franklin from Peanuts

Charles Schulz created Franklin because of a fan letter. In 1968, former teacher Harriet Glickman, wrote to Schulz and suggested he add a Black character to Peanuts as a small of way of helping change those conditions in our society which led to the assassination of MLK and which contribute to the vast sea of misunderstanding, fear, hate, and violence. After more correspondence, Schulz agreed, and came up with Franklin. CRACKED.COM

Cookie Monster

Cookie Monster was created for an ad for Munchos potato chips. ncho In the ad, he ate up a whole bag of the chips, to the slogan of There's more to a Muncho! Later, he made his way to Sesame Street and found a love of cookies rather than chips. CRACKED.COM

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