The Top 10 Weird Little Guys in Movie History

What makes a weird little guy? Besides being small, strange, and full of schemes? Honestly, that’s pretty much it. While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to diagnosing a case of Weird Little Guyism, there tend to be some common signs and symptoms. Does the character in question babble in a nonsense language? Do they look like they crawled out of a bog? Are they oddly obsessed with a person, place, or thing? Are they inexplicably capable of attracting beautiful people? If said character checks at least some of these boxes, then odds are you’ve got a weird little guy on your hands. When it comes to the greatest weird little guys in cinema, these particularly strange fellas pass the test with flying colors.

No-Face

Studio Ghibli films are chock-full of weird little guys. The forest critter kodama from Princess Mononoke? The fire demon Calcifer in Howl’s Moving Castle? The pig pilot Porco Rosso in his self-titled film? All WLGs. But one Hayao Miyazaki movie has more weird little guys per square inch than all of his other films combined: Spirited Away. Once the sun goes down in a certain abandoned town in rural Japan, you can’t spit without hitting a weird little guy. Radish spirits, trios of disembodied heads, those adorable little coal-carrying dust motes, each weirder and littler than the last. But the critter that takes the cake is No-Face, who is weird even by spirit bathhouse patron standards. He spends most of the film standing off in the distance with a goofy smile on his face (classic WLG behavior), but once he starts offering gold to everyone, his even weirder colors begin to show — as does the giant, carnivorous mouth that he was hiding in his shadowy body. Eating people is one of the most weird little guy coded things someone can do.

Gollum

When J.R.R. Tolkien was crafting The Lord of the Rings, I wonder if he knew he was laying the foundation for weird little guys as well as modern fantasy? Even when Gollum was still a hobbit, there was never a time when he wasn’t a weird little guy. His mother named him Sméagol, obviously knowing full well that his only path in life would be a WLG with a moniker like that. After all, it only took one shiny object for him to murder his best friend and fall victim to the obsessive behavior that is such a common symptom of Weird Little Guyism. Other signifiers? He lives in a cave. He eats nothing but raw meat. He talks to himself constantly. He’s in love with a piece of jewelry. He makes weird sounds. He looks like he crawled out of a swamp. He’s the blueprint, the North Star, the yardstick against which all other weird little guys shall be measured and find themselves wanting.

Gomez Addams

While Sméagol is the perfect example of weird little guys at their worst, Gomez Addams proves that in the right hands, Weird Little Guyism is a blessing and not a curse. The patriach of the cinema’s strangest family, Gomez Addams is a pinstripe-suited, pencil-mustached portrait of positivity and joy. He spends his days capering around a Gothic mansion, coming up with harebrained schemes and planting kisses on his adoring wife. A doting father and devoted husband, Gomez Addams lives a charmed life overflowing with love. He’s living proof that you can partake in WLG activities like crashing model trains, knife-throwing, and raising crocodiles while maintaining a supportive, positive relationship with your partner and children. In fact, it’s precisely because Gomez is such a weird little guy that he’s earned the devotion of so many wonderful people. Being whimsical, dapper, fun, and delightfully odd will get you far as a weird little guy.

Betelgeuse

On the surface, Betelgeuse and Gomez Addams have some shared traits. They’re both spooky dudes sporting iconic suits, but the similarities end there. While Gomez Addams is a weird little guy on the side of good, Betelgeuse puts all of his WLG energy towards evil. While Beetlejuice‘s antagonist styles himself a “bio-exoricist,” he’s just a ghostly con-artist scheming his way back into the world of the living. If there’s anything a weird little guy can’t resist, it’s a good scheme. His WLG behavior isn’t just limited to manic machinations. Crotch-honking. Bug-eating. Giant snake transformations. Betelgeuse is one of cinema’s most quintessential chaos goblins, a weird little guy without peer.

Scrat

Weird little guys don’t technically have to be guys at all to qualify; they can be animals, too! The WLG at the heart of Ice Age, Scrat spends the entire film stoking the fires of his obsession — as any self-respecting weird little guy should. Unlike the jewelry-crazed Gollum or the train-loving Gomez, Scrat’s object of desire is something far more mundane: a single tree nut. When you’re a struggling herbivore surviving off the scraps of an icy wasteland, the obsession makes sense. With the twitchness so characteristic of WLG’s everywhere, Scrat scrabbles, scrambles, scampers around in constant pursuit of his favorite (and only) source of food. He babbles unintelligibly, he swings wildly through the gamut of emotions, he has no chill whatsoever, he’s everything a weird little guy should be.

Stitch

While Gollum may arguably have the most iconic weird little guy voice, the little blue hero of Lilo and Stitch gives that ex-hobbit a run for his precious. The critter that turned millions of fans into amateur voice impressionists, Stitch’s contribution to weird little guyism in pop culture cannot be overstated. With his one-of-a-kind way of talking, skittering, and blowing things up with alien weaponry, Stitch wall-crawled his way into the hearts of a generation. Small enough to fit in a handbag and strong enough to toss a Volkswagen, Stitch is a chaos gremlin of the highest caliber. And despite being so rough-around-the-edges for one so small and fuzzy, his extraterrestrial antics were ultimately for the best. “Ohana” means “family,” and being a weird little guy helped Stitch find one of his own.

The Mogwai

Stitch is an example of a good little chaos gremlin, but the critters from Gremlins are the epitome of evil. While they start their lives as adorable little fellas, the mogwai turn into weird little guys with water and a snack after midnight. After protagonist Billy Peltzer’s mogwai gets splashed, the docile critter spawns five more weird little guys of a more aggressive nature. From then on, the film devolves into classic weird little guy mischief, revolving around scheming, screeching, and wanton destruction. Eating junk food, sabotaging machinery, and attacking people, the mogwais’ unhealthy behavior escalates quickly, but those are all just symptoms of a greater WLG disease.

R2-D2

Science fiction’s quintessential weird little guy, R2-D2 of Star Wars ticks all the boxes. He’s little. He makes weird noises. He’s capable of a surprising amount of destruction. And of course, he is beloved by all. While the Star Wars universe is full of weird little guys (Ewoks, droids, and those cavorting little Tusken Raiders), R2-D2 is by far the most iconic. And like the most enlightened of WLGs, R2-D2’s life is full of positive relationships. He’s the robot bestie of the Galaxy’s greatest hero, and he’s got an adorably queer-coded connection to his lifelong companion C3P0. And while all of these things contribute to his weird little guy status, the clincher really is the weird noises. He’s got some all-time great beeps, boops, whines, and screams. Other WLG’s could learn something from him.

The Babadook

Possessed dolls. Evil critters. Killer leprechauns. Weird little guys make for some of horror’s best antagonists. While Chuckie and the mogwai are classic examples, one of the best modern additions to the weird little guy pantheon is the titular antagonist of The Babadook. With his top hat and gloves, Mr. Babadook is just as dapper as other snazzy WLGs like Gomez Addams, and his spooky antics give chaotic credibility to his weird little guy claim. Dispensing haunted pop-up books, crawling around on the ceiling, all symptoms of the WLG disease. By the film’s end, he lives in the basement and eats worms. Name a more weird little guy behavior, I’ll wait.

Every Willem Dafoe Character Ever

While most WLGs are critters, ghosts, and aliens, Willem Dafoe managed to claim the title of Weird Little Guy King as a regular human being. I struggle to think of a film where he doesn’t play a weird little guy. The goblin-suited antagonist of Spider-Man? The lobster-cooking seadog in The Lighthouse? The brain-swapping mad scientist in Poor Things? Weird little guys, every one. What about the motel manager in The Florida Project? A kind-hearted weird little guy. The scarred tank-dwelling fish in Finding Nemo? Emotionally traumatized weird little guy. Vincent Van Gogh in At Eternity’s Gate? A real-life art genius who was also a real-life weird little guy. He’s played every single type of weird little guy there is, and has even shed light on a few previously undiscovered species. If there were an Academy Award for Best Weird Little Guy, you can bet he’d win every time.

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