The Amazing World of Gumball/Characters
The characters of The Amazing World of Gumball include:
The Wattersons
Gumball Watterson
- Accidental Kiss: With Darwin in "The Pressure".
- With Granny Jojo in "The Kiss".
- With Carmen in "The Storm".
- Adorkable
- All Guys Want Cheerleaders: Gumball has a crush on Penny, a peanut with antlers who is one of the cheerleaders at Elmore Junior High. The feeling is mutual, but neither of them are capable of expressing it.
- Almost Kiss: With Penny, several times.
- Ambidextrous Sprite: He always has three whiskers on one side and two on the other, but the pattern tends to flip as a result of this.
- Annoying Older Sibling: To Anais most of the time.
- Attractive Bent Gender: When he's forced in a dress.
- Bad Liar:
- Butt Monkey/The Chew Toy: Amusing Injuries are quite common, but Gumball seems especially prone to them.
- Iron Butt Monkey: Gumball is, to put it bluntly, indestructible. He's survived falling off a cliff, being punched through a wall, and even being flushed down the toilet.
- It's taken Up to Eleven in "The Curse".
- Catchphrase: "*sigh* (aggravated) Fine..."
- "What the what!?"
- Classical Antihero
- Cute Kitten
- Cute Little Fangs: He is a cat
- Demonic Possession: In "The Ghost" by Carrie, and in "The Flower" by a jealousy ghost.
- Depending on the Writer: His level of intelligence varies from episode. Sometimes he's a complete idiot, sometimes he's just mischievous, sometimes he just acts like a dork, sometimes he's the Only Sane Man...
- In the latter half of Season 2 his Only Sane Man status is becoming the more distinct of them all.
- Detachment Combat: Without the combat though, but Gumball seems to be able to function perfectly whenever a body part gains autonomy.
- Determinator: In "The Third" he rides a tricycle for 140 kilometers, flies down a hill so fast he catches on fire, and gets covered in quick drying cement (which he promptly breaks through) just to prove that he and Darwin are still friends.
- He's determined to repay his debt to Mr. Robinson for "saving his life" (which he just stopped his car because Gumball thought he was gonna get "run over").
- Disproportionate Retribution: In "The Banana", when he decides to get back at Banana for chewing on Darwin's pen. Subverted, when he finds out what Banana accidentally did to Darwin's stuff. Then he starts to realize that this is is getting out of hand, but Darwin takes a far more step. In the end, a "huge" fight goes on between the three of them and it turns out the chewed pen was actually Gumball's and he actually chews on it all the time.
- Embarrassing Middle Name: "The Club" reveals that his middle name is Trisha, short for Tristopher--it was supposed to be Christopher, but Richard wrote it down wrong.
- Embarrassing Nickname: "The Meddler" has his mom calling him "Gummypuss".
- Fashionable Asymmetry: He has two whiskers pointing forward and three pointing backward, regardless of the direction he's facing.
- First Kiss: With Carmen of all people, though subverted as she says it's more of a headbutt than a kiss.
- Genius Ditz: He gets a little smarter later on in the second season, though.
- Hartman Hips: A rare male example. Clearly, he gets it from his mom.
- Heroic BSOD: He seems to be prone to these.
- Idiot Hero
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While he can be exasperated with others and often does some dumb or insensitive things, he's a good kid and will go out of his way to try and help.
- Keet
- No Sense of Direction: He think he can somehow memorize a map after eating it and when the wind is directly speaking to him in plainly decipherable language he does the exact opposite of what it tells him.
- Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Blue Boy to Anais's Pink Girl.
- The Protagonist
- Rubber Man: Gumball has been shown numerous times to be incredibly elastic.
- Sanity Slippage: In "The Bumpkin" and "The Helmet."
- Screams Like a Little Girl: Especially in the first season.
- Single-Target Sexuality: The only girl that has stolen Gumball's heart: Penny Fitzgerald.
- Supreme Chef: Shown to be at least decent in cooking in the episode "The Secret". Miss Simian has also called his cooking 'divine' and has gotten a B in home economics because of said cooking.
- Though he did make a hilariously bad meal for Anais in "The Responsible", though it may have been Rule of Funny at work.
- Strong Family Resemblance: He looks almost exactly like a shorter version of his mother. In "The Plan", he even tries to impersonate her and since he obscures the huge height difference by standing in a bush, it was amazingly effective.
- Too Dumb to Live: In "The Bumpkin", when he gets stung by a wasp on his left index finger and then tries to suck out the poison. Guess what happens next...
- Vocal Evolution: Along with Darwin, his voice has gotten deeper as of season 2, as his VA got older in the interim.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: His odd name is sometimes commented on, most notably by Mr. Small in "The Banana".
- Verbal Tic: He tends to squeak, usually when he's yelling.
- Why Did It Have To Be Spiders?: "AHHH, spider! Knock his block off!"
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: He displays this in "The helmet".
Darwin Watterson
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal/The One Who Wears Shoes: Lampshaded in "The Meddler", where a scene in the shower pixellates Gumball's genitals and Darwin's feet.
- Actual Pacifish
- Adorkable
- Bad Liar: Neither he nor Gumball could resist darting their eyes to the side when lying to Anais.
- Beware the Nice Ones/Beware the Silly Ones: He becomes a lot more aggressive in the second season; a prime example would be "The Banana".
- Big Eater: At least, he tends to think with his stomach from time to time as most fish seem to do.
- In "The Party", he reveals he's part sucker fish and cleans the house by eating everything.
- Cephalothorax: As Masami put it:
"Yeah, he's great because... he's got legs, and, you know... a head..." |
- That's if you want to consider the entirety a fish's body, a head.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Probably because he's a goldfish.
- Deadpan Snarker: Well, usually his snarking is a lot more cheerful, but he gets more and more of it after the first season.
- Depending on the Writer: Like above, his level of intelligence also varies depending on the episode, as does how peaceful and innocent he is.
- Deuteragonist
- The Ditz / Genius Ditz
- Fish Out of Water: A literal example.
- Genre Savvy: Like Gumball in "The Sweaters"
- Happily Adopted: Darwin's treated like as much of a member of the family as Gumball is.
- Although legally he's still registered as a pet.
- Incorruptible Pure Pureness: When taken over by Jealousy in "The Flower" he's the only one with no spite or envy of anyone else, instead just stating he's "actually quite happy with my life".
- Insistent Terminology: He prefers the term "Animal Companion."
- Keet
- Meaningful Name: He was once the family pet fish but then he sprouted legs and doesn't need water to breathe anymore. Think about that for a second.
- His middle names all have nautical connections.
- Morality Pet: He has a higher moral sense than Gumball does.
- Named After Somebody Famous: Several somebodies.
- Only Sane Man: Though not necessarily the smartest person in any episode he's in, he's traded off on the role of "the only person being objective while everything's going nuts" with Anais on occasion, and has started playing the Straight Man to Gumball's antics more. Gumball basically says in "The Sidekick" that his role in their dynamic is to stop him from doing really crazy things.
- Overly Long Name: In "The Party", he reveals that his full name is Darwin Radlin Caspian Ahab Poseidon Nicodemus Watterson III.
- Post-Kiss Catatonia: In "The Party", he helps Rachel clean up her home at her party before her parents come home. She rewards him with a kiss on the cheek, resulting in him crashing head first to the floor with a goofy smile on his face.
- Sarcasm Blind: In season 1. In season 2, he snarks with the best of them.
- Speech Impediment: In 'The Sock', Gumball points out that Darwin has a lisp where gills whistle. Darwin retorts with "You're so stinky, sailors sing sea shanties about how stinky you are!" making a whistling sound with every 'S'. This only happens for that one and only time, though. In fact, the very next sentence he says contains 'S'es without the lisp.
- Stepford Smiler: He is this in The Meddler.
- They Killed Kenny: In "The Meddler", when his head explodes.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Fish flakes, apparently.
- Uplifted Animal
Anais Watterson
- Adorably Precocious Child
- Annoying Younger Sibling: She has her moments, especially in season two.
- Beware the Nice Ones/Berserk Button: Do not insult Daisy the Donkey in front of her.
- Definitely made true in "The Remote," when she wants to watch a new episode of Daisy the Donkey on TV, but everyone else wants to watch something different at that same time, so she sets up a plot to be sure she is the only one home alone to watch TV.
- The Chessmaster: In "The Remote".
- Child Prodigy: Despite being four years old, she is described as the smartest character on the show and even attends Junior High with her much older brother.
- Closer to Earth
- The Comically Serious: Usually involved in her brother's wacky antics.
- Everythings Better With Bunnies
- Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Though she seems to just be wearing socks instead of shoes.
- However, in "The Goons", she was seen briefly not wearing (at least one of her) socks. Also, in "The Castle", she's wearing magenta footless pajamas for most of the episode, making her a Barefoot Cartoon Animal.
- Grade Skipper: She's 4, and attends the same middle school as her brothers.
- It Is Pronounced "Tro-PAY": Subverted. Her name is pronounced both as An-ai-ees and An-ai-ahs and she never favors one over the other.
- Little Girls Are Wiser: The most consistently levelheaded member of the family.
- Little Miss Snarker
- Not So Harmless: Has clearly proven herself to be this in The Secret and arguably The Kiss.
- Only Sane Girl: Can be her or can be her mother, depending on the episode.
- Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Pink Girl to Gumball's Blue Boy.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: She is depicted as being able to life way more than her body weight at a very young age at that. Such as when she carried a ton of luggage Upstairs and the time she carried Darwin with a bunch of stuff on him all the way to the top of a mountain.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Girly Girl to Nicole's Tomboy.
- Took a Level in Dumbass: In "The Authority", thanks to Granny Jojo. She gets better at the end though, thanks to Nicole.
- Tuckerization: Named after Ben Bocquelet's younger sister.
- The Ugly Guy's Cute Daughter: Especially noticeable in that when we see Nicole and Richard as children, you see Nicole and Gumball looks very similar but Anais doesn't really look like either of her parents.
- Wacky Parent, Serious Child: The serious child to Richard's wacky parent.
- Wise Beyond Their Years
- Not So Above It All: She's considerably more child-like when it comes to anything involving Daisy the Donkey.
Nicole Watterson
- Action Mom
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parent: In "The Meddler" she decides to follow Gumball around at school everywhere, even in the public shower, doing things such as feeding him like a baby and calling him "Gummypuss".
- Badass
- Berserk Button: Being called a loser (at least by Miss Simian).
- Blue Boy Pink Girl: Inverted with both her and Richard.
- Closer to Earth
- Cute Bruiser: Don't make her mad. She is a lot stronger than she looks.
- Cute Little Fangs: Though they're visible far less often then Gumball's.
- Determinator: She gets scary when she gets mad and probably can and will chase you down. The DVD is based entirely on this.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Nicole cares for her family, but easily becomes upset when she discovers they did something wrong. She's even taking anger management classes, in which her behavior is far worse than she acts elsewhere.
- Hot Mom
- Killer Cat She has proven herself to be made of this trope in countless episodes, most notably in The Fight, where she mercilessly tears through Tina Rex's father just at the mere inkling of assuming that Gumball was being bullied.
- Le Parkour: She's very good at this.
- Magic Skirt: Including one scene where she's hung upside down without it moving.
- Mama Bear
- Only Sane Woman: Depends on the episode, which sometimes gives the role to Anais instead. If she loses her temper, though, this goes out the window.
- Parenting the Husband
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife
Richard Watterson
- Badass Mustache: Which he can grow and retract back into his face at will.
- Big Eater
- Brilliant but Lazy: Most often Brilliant At Lazy.
- Bumbling Dad
- Cloudcuckoolander: He has his odd moments.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He can be very crafty when he wants to, such as tricking Gumball and Darwin into doing his chores in 'The Laziest'.
- Everythings Better With Bunnies
- Fat Idiot and Fat Slob
- House Husband: Though he doesn't do much house work either
- Man Child: He literally acts the exact same way as he did when he was a kid.
- Moral Myopia: He's repeatedly expressed that bad things are only funny when they happen to someone else.
- The Slacker: A rare version of one that has children.
- Sleepyhead
- Trademark Favourite Food: Sausages, apparently.
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Honestly speaking, he's kinda cute actually (he's a bunny, after all).
- Walking Techbane: Judging from how automatic doors, elevators, and self-checkout scanners treat him.
Gumball's classmates
Alan the balloon
- Fatal Attraction: Alan and Carmen are passionately in love with one another, but because Alan is a balloon and Carmen is a cactus, their relationship is impossible.
- Flying Face: Alan is just a balloon with a face drawn on it. His lack of limbs is a frequent frustration of his.
- Helium Speech: Invoked as he has a high squeaky voice similar to the effects of helium.
- Justified since he's a balloon.
- Running Gag: He has no hands!
Anton the Toast
A simple-minded piece of toast who was forcibly drafted into Tina's gang despite his unwillingness to do so, and only appeases them to avoid their anger. |
- Butt Monkey
- Cephalothorax
- The Chew Toy
- They Killed Kenny: He's been eaten (not even whole, actually torn to piece and eaten) several times now.
Banana Joe
A hyperactive banana, he is the class clown of Elmore Junior High and has the tendency to crack a joke whenever possible. His jokes often serve as a source of irritation to others. |
Bobert the Robot
- Cute Machines
- Does Not Know His Own Strength
- I Just Want to Be You: Tries to become Gumball in "The Robot"
- Kill and Replace: Which inevitably resulted in trying to get rid of the real one.
- No Waterproofing in the Future: He lost to a sprinkler.
- Nuke'Em: Is capable of this in his fighting robot form. Hiding behind a nearby chair is enough protection though.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Even at normal size he can easily punch someone across a room.
- Robot Kid
- Teacher's Pet: Considers himself to be this
- Transforming Mecha: Capable of increasing his size into a fighting robot the size of a very large car.
Carmen the Cactus
- Fatal Attraction: With Alan, as previously stated
Carrie the Ghost
An emo ghost who lives in a malevolent mansion and "enjoys being depressed". She has the abilities to teleport and possess living bodies. |
- Big Eater: Justified, considering she hasn't eaten since she became a ghost, but she'll eat until the body she possesses passes out.
- Cute Ghost Girl
- Demonic Possession: She can possess someone's body by flying into their mouth and down their throat.
- Emo Tween
- Hair Decorations: Has a bow on the side of her head.
- The Hedonist: It's been so long since she's been able to do things like eating, that when she has a body, she'll immediately starting binge-eating absolutely anything (except, apparently, pickles).
- Our Ghosts Are Different
- Peek-a-Bangs: Much like Gumball's whiskers, subject to Fashionable Asymmetry and Ambidextrous Sprite.
- Perpetual Frowner
- Troll: As seen here.
Clayton the Clay
A red ball of clay who is a compulsive liar, with a tendency of making up absurd stories about himself. |
- Claymation: He's literally a blob of clay.
- Meaningful Name
Hector the Giant
A massive but Gentle Giant who is the largest student in Elmore Junior High, to the point that only his legs and feet are seen. |
- Gentle Giant: Literally
- Meaningful Name: His surname, Jotunheim, is a reference to Jötunheimr, the homeland of giants in Norse mythology.
Idaho the Potato
A free-spirited potato from the rural countryside with old-fashioned beliefs, he is one of the less popular students of Elmore Junior High. |
- Cephalothorax
- Good Ol' Boy
- Meaningful Name: He's a potato
Jamie
Juke the Boombox
- Big Ol' Unibrow
- Squiggle Vision
- The Unintelligible: A foreign exchange student who speaks in beat box
Leslie the Flower
An effeminate, friendly daisy who plays flute in the school band and can often be found hanging around the girls. |
- Ambiguously Gay: Mostly blatantly shown in "The Mustache", when Gumball's butt suddenly becomes incredibly muscular and Leslie just stares.
- Gender Blender Name: Male, despite the name and appearance
- It's not made entirley clear what gender Leslie is in the FIRST place. While originally introduced as a boy, Leslie hangs out with the girls, and didn't object when referred to collectively as 'the girls.'
- He's definitely a guy, a very flamboyant and girly guy, but a guy nonetheless.
- Leslie is a flower. Technically speaking, (s)he's both.
Masami the Cloud
- Spoiled Brat: Daughter of the rainbow factory owner and has a smug sense of superiority.
Molly the Sauropod
- Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: A sauropod, although she looks more like a Cartoon Creature.
Ocho the 8-Bit Spider
An 8-bit spider and a generally friendly person, but often overreacts to what people say about him in a negative manner. |
- Meaningful Name
- The Unintelligible: Speaks in Arcade Sounds.
Penny Fitzgerald
A living peanut with antlers growing out of her head who is Gumball's primary love interest. She returns Gumball's affections, but both are incapable of expressing their feelings for one another. |
- Beauty Equals Goodness
- The Cheerleader: Averted.
- Expy: Her face resembles that of Togemon.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Penny is a peanut with antlers.
- In other words, a doe nut
- Smitten Tweenage Girl
Sussie the Chinnikin
An upside-down chin with googly eyes and puppet-like characteristics. She is talkative, odd, and obnoxious, and as a result is generally avoided by the rest of her classmates. |
Teri the Paper Bear
- Everything's Worse with Bears: Not the case even if she wanted it to be, as she has about the strength you'd expect out of a crumpled piece of paper
- Ill Girl: Or at least that what she's worried about being
- Paper People: A crumpled-up one.
Tina Rex
- The Bully
- Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: Not the case, especially not when her dad gets involved...
- Fluffy the Terrible
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She shows shades of this from time to time.
- Jerkass Facade: It is revealed in 'The Fight' that she isn't really a bully, she just acts that way because of her scary father and the fact that it is what people expect when they see a T-rex that Does Not Know Her Own Strength.
- Larynx Dissonance: Has a very deep male voice
- Dissonant for a Middle School girl, maybe, but not for a Tyrannosaurus.
- Meaningful/PunnyName: T.(na) Rex the T. Rex
- Tyrannosaurus Rex
Tobias the Jock
- Cephalothorax
- Jerk Jock: Although he is nicer after "The Third".
- Small Name, Big Ego: Claims to be well-built when he's clearly very scrawny.
William the Eyeball
A flying eyeball who is Miss Simian's personal spy and only talks when reporting information to her. |
- Faceless Eye
- The Informant: For Ms. Simian
- Oculothorax: An eyeball with wings, though he can still blink with fleshy eyelids that sudden appear when he needs them
- Teacher's Pet
Other adults
Principal Brown
- Cartoon Creature: "furry slug" is the most accurate description of what exactly he's supposed to be.
- Humiliation Conga: Happens to him in "The Mystery" where he was slammed with a door by Mrs. Simian, leaving him dizzy and causing him to fall down the stairs, covering himself in toilet paper, then smashed into Penny's painting and falling into some burning chemicals, causing him to fall down MORE stairs and wrapping himself in more toilet paper, then finally landing inside Gumball's locker.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue Oni to Miss Simian's Red Oni.
Doughnut Sheriff
- Cephalothorax
- Donut Mess with a Cop: A cop and a living donut. As his donut hole is his mouth, anything he tries to eat (like other donuts) goes immediately out the other end.
- Expy/Shout-Out: He has a lot in common with Chief Wiggum from The Simpsons, they even sound similar.
- Police Are Useless
Laurence Needlemeyer
- Butt Monkey: So, so much.
- Cartoon Creature: He's suppose to be a rock-man, but his design makes this slightly hard to tell.
- Humiliation Conga: Goes through one at the hands of Gumball and Darwin of all people, but he gets better.
- That Man Is Dead: Lazy Larry.
- Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?: Runs pretty much every shop in town.
Gaylord Robinson
- Cranky Neighbor
- Marionette Motion: Invoked, given what he's based off of.
- Unhappily Married: He and his wife Margaret are "happily" married because they argue, a lot.
- Unfortunate Name: his first name, the last name pretty normal.
Margaret Robinson
Gaylord's wife and Rocky's mother. She is just as grouchy as her husband and is always in a bad mood. Margaret never speaks; the only vocalizations she can make are hoarse whispers. |
- Cranky Neighbor
- Hartman Hips
- Unhappily Married: See Mr. Robinson's entry above.
- The Unintelligible: She speaks only in unintelligible grunts and grumbles.
Rocky Robinson
- Catch Phrase: "Word."
- Nice Guy: In 'The Ape' he tells Mrs. Simian that not even he likes her...and he likes everybody!
- Replacement Goldfish: LITERALLY with Rockwin in "The Genius".
- Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?: He fills pretty much every non-teaching, non-administrative job at school from the janitor to the bus driver
Mr. Steve Small
- Cloudcuckoolander
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: His short rant/speech in "The Meddler".
- Hippie Counselor: Though he's rather less patient than the typical example.
- Large Ham:
"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful!" |
- Mood Swinger: Can go from an easy-going hippie to an enraged maniac in a snap.
- New Age
- New Age Retro Hippie
- Piss-Take Rap: Has one about honesty; while dressed in a bear costume.
- Scare'Em Straight: Does this to Gumball and Darwin by showing them a grotesque diagram of the soul of a liar. This can also be applied to his sock puppet, the Silence Snake, whom he uses to scream at people and shock them into shutting up.
- Unmoving Plaid: His shirt.
Miss Simian
- Zero-Percent Approval Rating
- Everything's Better with Monkeys: Eh, close enough.
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: In the Ape, she was a complete Jerkass to Nicole when she was young and would even use Gumball and Darwin just to get the Teacher Award. When she was given a choice to either get the form with the signature on the car and fall out of the bridge or get off the car and redeem herself by staying friends with the Wattersons. She went "Nah!" to the latter and does the former which leads to her fall.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red Oni to Principal Brown's Blue Oni.
- Sadist Teacher: Miss Simian has been teaching seventh grade for 300,000 years and really doesn't like Gumball.
- Species Surname
- Time Abyss: At least 300,000 years old
Video Game Store Manager
- Bad Boss
- Honest John's Dealership: He absolutely refuses to give refunds for anything under any circumstances, and also once sold a paper shredder claiming it was a game console.
- Jerkass: He makes Laurence admit it was his fault that there was traffic which caused him to be late (and probably make him say it like he means it). Then he hangs up on him.
- Killer Rabbit: Subverted; despite what Needlemeyer insists, he's physically capable of nothing more than slight annoyance. The person he was attacking just happened to be a complete wuss.
- Money Fetish: He makes Mr. Krabs look generous.
- The Napoleon
Sal Left Thumb
Granny Jojo
- Deadpan Snarker
- Gross Up Close-Up
- The Nicknamer: Calls Gumball "the blue one" Darwin "walking fish" and "fish kid".