Random Character Generator

What this list is

These are famous fictional characters, drawn from books, films, comics and folklore, and what unites them is something strange and worth thinking about: many of them are more famous, more durable, and in a sense more real than the people who created them. The character outlived the author, escaped the author, and became a permanent inhabitant of the culture, known to millions who could not name the person who invented them.

Press Generate and it hands you one. A few from the list:

• Sherlock Holmes
• Superman
• James Bond
• Frodo Baggins
• Dracula
• Hermione Granger
• Indiana Jones
• Mickey Mouse

Nearly everyone alive knows several of those characters intimately. Far fewer could tell you who wrote them. The character has become bigger than the creator, a free-floating cultural fact that no longer needs its author at all, and that is one of the most remarkable things a piece of fiction can do. This page is about how, and why, some characters achieve it.

Drawing a character

1. Press Generate for one character.
2. Ask for a few to build a cast or a comparison.
3. Type into Contains to search by name or source.
4. Copy to keep them.

Where these come from

Famous fictional characters gathered and checked by hand from across books, films, comics and folklore. The tool picks from that pool in your browser.

The characters who escaped their authors

The oddest thing about the most famous fictional characters is that they seem to detach from their origins entirely. A character is created by one person, in one work, for one purpose. But the greatest characters do not stay put. They leak out of their original story and into the general culture, becoming known to vast numbers of people who have never read or seen the thing they came from.

Consider how many people know exactly who a famous vampire count is, what he wants, how he can be killed, without ever having read the novel he first appeared in. Or how many can describe a great consulting detective, his pipe, his deductions, his companion, without having read a single one of the original stories. The character has become common knowledge, transmitted through countless adaptations, references, parodies and cultural osmosis, until knowing them requires no contact with the source at all. They have escaped into the culture and become everyone's shared property, known the way a historical figure or a natural fact is known.

This is a genuinely strange achievement, and only a tiny fraction of fictional characters ever manage it. Most stay bound to their story: to know them, you have to read the book or watch the film. The characters on this list are the exceptions, the ones who broke free, who became larger than any single telling of their tale, who exist now as free-standing cultural entities that the culture maintains and passes along whether or not anyone returns to the original. The author made them, but the culture adopted them, and once adopted they no longer needed the author.

The detective his creator could not kill

There is one story that captures this phenomenon perfectly, because in it a character's independence from his author becomes almost literal. A writer created a detective who became wildly popular, so popular that the writer grew to resent him, feeling the character was overshadowing what he considered his more serious work. So he did what an author, in theory, is entirely free to do: he killed the character off, sending him to his death, meaning to be rid of him for good.

The public would not accept it. The outcry was immense, genuine, sustained public grief and anger at the loss of the character, as though a real person had died. People wore mourning. They wrote furious letters. The pressure was so great, and went on so long, that the author was eventually forced to bring the character back to life, to undo the death he had written, because the public simply would not permit their detective to stay dead. The creator, who by every conventional understanding owned the character absolutely, found that he did not really own him at all. The character belonged to the public now, and the public overruled his death.

This is the escape made visible. A character had become so real to so many people that his own creator lost the authority to end him. The author could put words on a page, but he could not make the culture accept the death of a character it had taken into itself. Ownership had quietly passed from the one who invented the character to the millions who loved him, and they exercised it, forcing the resurrection of a man who had never lived. It is the clearest proof that a sufficiently beloved character stops being the property of the person who made them and becomes something the whole culture holds, and defends.

Why they feel more real than most real people

Here is the part that unsettles on reflection: many of these characters feel more real, and are known more intimately, than the vast majority of people who have actually lived.

Think about how well you know a favourite fictional character. You know their personality, their history, their fears and desires, how they would react to almost any situation, their voice, their habits, their soul. You know them, in many ways, better than you know most of the real people you encounter, whose inner lives are hidden from you and who you see only in glimpses. The great fictional character is fully revealed to you, their interior laid open in a way no real person's ever is, so that you possess a complete and vivid knowledge of someone who never existed.

And they are shared. A real historical figure of middling fame might be known to a few. A great fictional character is known, in detail, by millions across the globe and across generations, held in common, discussed, referenced, loved by people who have never met. In the sheer number of minds that hold a rich, detailed image of them, these invented people outdo almost everyone who ever actually lived. Most real humans are forgotten within a generation or two, known in detail only to those who met them. A great character is known in detail by the whole world, indefinitely.

There is something profound in this about what fiction does. It creates people who, though they never breathed, come to occupy more space in human consciousness than the overwhelming majority of those who did. The invented detective, the invented wizard, the invented hero are more present in the world, more known, more alive in the collective mind, than nearly all the real dead. Fiction manufactures a kind of immortality and a kind of reality that actual existence rarely achieves, and the characters on this list are the ones who achieved it most completely.

When a character becomes everyone's

The final stage of a character's escape is when they pass, formally or effectively, into common ownership, becoming raw material that anyone can use, retell, and reimagine.

Some of the oldest characters on this list have reached this stage completely: they belong to no one and to everyone, free for any storyteller to pick up and use. The ancient monsters, the folk figures, the characters old enough that any legal claim on them has long lapsed, are now shared cultural property, endlessly retold and reinvented by whoever wishes to, appearing in new stories forever because no one owns the right to stop them. They have become something like modern myths, held in common the way ancient myths always were, the property of the whole culture rather than any individual. Many of the newer characters here, though, are nothing of the sort: they remain firmly owned, protected by copyright and trademark, so treat this list as a randomiser and a talking point rather than a licence to reuse any given character commercially.

This is arguably the truest measure of a character's success, and the ultimate escape from the author. To become a figure that the culture uses freely, that turns up in new forms generation after generation, that is retold and argued over and reimagined without reference to any owner, is to become part of the shared furniture of the human imagination, like the old gods and heroes. The character has completed the journey from one author's invention to humanity's common inheritance, and at that point they are as permanent as any story can be, because they no longer depend on anyone in particular to keep telling them; the whole culture does.

So a list of famous characters is really a list of successful escapes, of invented people who broke free of their creators, their original stories, and eventually even the question of ownership, to become permanent citizens of the collective imagination. The best of them will outlast everyone now alive, known and loved by people not yet born, more durable than almost anything real. That is the strange and enormous thing a fictional character can do: become more lasting than their maker, more known than the living, and finally the shared property of everyone, forever.

Questions people ask

What does it mean for a character to escape their author?

It means the character becomes known to vast numbers of people who have never encountered the original work, transmitted through adaptations, references and cultural osmosis until knowing them requires no contact with the source. The character detaches from its origin and becomes a free-standing cultural fact, larger than any single telling.

Did an author really fail to kill off his own character?

Famously, yes. A writer killed off a hugely popular detective he had grown to resent, and public grief and outrage were so great and so sustained that he was eventually forced to bring the character back. It is the clearest proof that a sufficiently beloved character belongs to the public more than to its creator.

How can a fictional character feel more real than real people?

Because you know a great character's inner life completely, their personality, history and soul laid open in a way no real person's ever is, and because millions hold that same detailed knowledge across generations. Most real people are known in detail by only a few and forgotten within a generation or two, while a great character is known intimately by the whole world, indefinitely.

Why can anyone use some of these characters?

Because the oldest ones have passed into common cultural ownership, free for any storyteller to retell and reimagine, much like ancient myths. Reaching that stage, where a character is used freely and reinvented generation after generation without any owner, is arguably the truest measure of a character's success and permanence.

References

1. Sherlock Holmes, on the detective whose creator was pressured by public outcry into reversing his death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes
2. Public domain, on how characters eventually pass into common ownership and become free for anyone to retell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain