Yahoo News 11 of TV's weirdest characters
Let's hear it for the weirdos! They don't fit in, they don't make sense, but they're frequently the best part of whatever show they're on.
Whether they're putting together crackpot schemes, offending their friends, or simply expressing an... um.. unique take on the universe, the oddballs are our favourite. Here's a list of the very strangest.
1. Kramer – Seinfeld
The 'wacky neighbour' is a fairly common sitcom trope, but Jerry Seinfeld's across-the-hall pal is the king of them all.
Whether he's pitching preposterous business ideas, or simply wearing tighter-than-tight jeans, Michael Richards' physical performance adds a silent-movie-style charm to what could have been a generic character.
His weirdest moment? Potentially when he sets up a chat show in his apartment, so he can interview his friends, for no apparent reason. Yeah, we've all been there.
2. Charlie Day – It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia
Oh, Charlie. Whether he's desperately trying to connect with the Waitress via the medium of stalking, cramming cheese into his mouth to calm his nerves, or huffing paint to the point of hallucination, he's not exactly what most people would call 'normal'.
Thankfully, It's Always Sunny's resident oddball doesn't let it get him down – despite the fact his existence frequently involves hitting rats with a stick, then going home to share a bed with a psychotic pervert.
3. Phoebe Buffay – Friends
One consistent element of weird telly characters is they either don't care, or aren't aware of, what people think of them – and anyone who decides to change their name to Princess Consuela Banana-Hammock probably fits into that category. As do people who believe their mother's spirit is trapped in a cat.
Phoebe's strange, but relatively harmless – and she's frequently the most surprising character on the show.
4. River Tam – Firefly
Despite being super-intelligent and occasionally very sweet, River (Summer Glau) has approximately zero social skills, which often leads to difficulties, mainly because she's a trained assassin with a propensity for temper tantrums.
Add in an ability to read people's minds, and major expertise at hand-to-hand combat, she's probably the one person on this list we wouldn't call a weirdo to their face (or so much as think it while they're around).
5. Sheldon Cooper – The Big Bang Theory
Sheldon's so odd he can make something as simple knocking on someone's door feel super awkward. He approaches every situation with the cold logic of a Vulcan, and worse at smiling than a Terminator.
And, like so many other weirdoes, he attempts to stave off the inevitable loneliness of his personality by surrounding himself with cats. Still, people like him (for some reason), so that's nice.
6. Abed Nadir – Community
Abed doesn't understand emotions and can't process sarcasm, which can be tricky on a show like Community, as almost every scene involves at least one of those things. Like us, he's grown up watching movies and TV, and (also like us) he can only communicate via references to those things. So, basically, we're as weird as he is – but not as cool. Cool, cool, cool.
7. Gonzo The Great – The Muppets
Gonzo's so unusual, we don't even know what he even is (he's not a human, he's not an animal, and describes himself as a "whatever"). He's worked as a performance artist, a stunt double and daredevil, and is in love with a chicken.
He's so defined by his weirdness, he once performed an entire song about it (in The Muppet Babies, above) after his Muppet pals embraced their own strange sides. We may not know his species, but we do know that we love him.
8. Jadis – The Walking Dead
Meet Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh), who's made her home in a garbage dump and speaks in odd, broken English. We're not entirely sure why – The Walking Dead might be set in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, but no-one else outside of Jadis and her pals speaks in the dialect the Heapsters use.
Also, if we were listing places we'd set up shop in the aftermath of a zombie invasion, a dump probably wouldn't be top of the list. Still, Jadis has clearly got something going on – she managed to fool / betray Rick, so there's evidence of a cunning mind.
9. Latka – Taxi
Played by real-life oddball Andy Kaufman, Latka is a good-natured foreigner (from a made-up country) whose inability to fully grasp the English language frequently led to hilarious moments.
But 'being foreign' isn't what makes him weird. Andy Kaufman – or, to be more specific, the producers' attitude to Andy Kaufman – is what made Latka super strange.
Determined to keep Andy interested in a character he openly didn't care about, the producers / writers randomly gave Latka a multiple personality disorder, which included the incredibly obnoxious Vic Ferrari, allowing the actor to create a character with several layers unlike anything ever seen on mainstream TV before.
10. Harry – Third Rock From The Sun
Like so many other characters on this list, Harry has no social skills. Unlike the other characters on this list (except possibly Gonzo, who was outed as an alien in Muppets From Space, but not on the TV show) he's from another planet.
According to the actor who plays him, French Stewart: "The way the character was originally described to me was he would be an idiot on any planet. So he's got to be the biggest idiot in the universe!"
It's this combination of inability to understand basic human customs with actual idiocy that makes Harry so strange. And so funny.
11. Toxie – Toxic Crusaders
Now, Toxie isn't just weird because of his personality quirks (though, that said, he is a tutu-wearing mutant who uses a sentient mop as his main weapon to fight pollution / criminals) but because he exists on TV at all.
Toxie's the main star of a movie franchise that contains extreme violence, nudity and more offensive elements than a Donald Trump rally and – for some reason – someone decided it would be a good idea to turn him into the lead of a kids' cartoon. That's about as weird as it gets.
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