Great Gazoo

Making it rain in a whole new way.


246: David, who is the most evil cartoon character ever created? It was before 2000, a long time before.
David: Well, I’m guessing it would have to be someone who is doing or did something really bad.
246: Yes.
David: One of those people who destroyed the earth? Or tried to, like Marvin the Martian.
246: We’re not on earth, so that wouldn’t affect us.
David: Someone who destroyed, or would have destroyed something.
246: You’re getting warmer.
David: Everything. Someone who destroyed, or could have destroyed the universe.
246: Uh huh, and who might that be?
David: Damn, this seems so familiar. Oh shit. It just hit me. I wouldn’t have thought of it otherwise. You think backward, as you say, so it wouldn’t be someone really vicious, it would be someone cute. And I can only think of one character that fits those qualifications.
246: And whom do you get?
David: The Great Gazoo from The Flintstones.
246: Why?
David: He got sent to earth as punishment for creating a machine that could annihilate the entire universe.
246: You got it.
David: Sure. But I don’t understand why you consider him the most evil cartoon character.

246: You pointed it out exactly. Because the character of The Great Gazoo is cute. He looks harmless. Hidden evil is much worse and more dangerous than obvious evil. Now, I might have given him a pass on being ‘evil’ except that he knew what his device would do and he knew what the consequences of his actions were.
—Instrument of God

Typically based on the The Trickster (i.e. one of many "gods of mischief" from mythology, from Loki to Coyote to Puck), this is a Wacky Guy but with (effectively) magical powers—often in the form of a Sufficiently Advanced Alien. The Great Gazoo allows for nearly any number of other plots, thereby guaranteeing high drama or ensuing hilarity (hopefully).

Often is a Screwy Squirrel or Amusing Alien whom the heroes often regard (Usually with an irritated Face Palm at his return) as more like a pest than a serious menace, but they can still be dangerously destructive if confronted improperly. When the Great Gazoo is portrayed as nearly omnipotent they usually have to be outsmarted or outwitted in order to be defeated. A direct assault never works.

Takes its name from the Great Gazoo from The Flintstones, a little green alien that only Fred, Barney and small children can see. Not to be confused with The Grand Wazoo.

See Also: The Fair Folk and Reality Warper.

Examples of Great Gazoo include:

Anime and Manga

  • Ryuk from Death Note is most definitely a Great Gazoo. His only real manipulation is letting humans think they are in control of the situation as part of his Screwy Squirrel routine. He is very potent, impossible to harm conventionally, and the only way to defeat him would be manipulate him into a certain set of actions. Which his carefree attitude makes impossible.
  • Dung Beetle/Koyemshi from Bokurano counts as well. Proves himself generally invulnerable to the actions of the main cast.


Comics

  • Mr. Mxyzptlk, an imp from the fifth dimension. In Superman: The Animated Series, Mxy claims to be the inspiration for the stories of genies and leprechauns - after a while he got bored of messing with ordinary people, but then Superman showed up. It's unclear just how far up the ladder he is on his home turf, but in the third dimension he's a Reality Warper who Supes can only get rid of by tricking him into saying his name backwards. A weakness that, in Post-Crisis continuity, Mxy made up himself because a game has to have rules; Pre Crisis, it was a naturally ingrained weakness.
    • In the Golden Age, Mxyztplk (note the spelling) was in his own dimension a mere court jester to his world's king. Also during this era, saying his name backwards wasn't just his own weakness; anyone who said Mxyztplk's name backwards would be sent to the fifth dimension.
  • Bat-Mite is to Batman as Mxy is to Superman...except he's a gigantic fanboy who honestly wants to help instead of cause trouble. Naturally, Batman finds this even more annoying than if Bat-Mite were just out to get him.
  • Johnny Thunder's thunderbolt (actually a being from the same dimension as Mxyzptlk).
  • A minor recurring nemesis of the Fantastic Four was a shape-shifting alien troublemaker known as Impossible Man.
    • In the past DC had Mxyzptlk imply that he was visiting the Marvel universe in the form of Impossible Man, but the Marvel Handbook says that this isn't the case and Mxy is merely imitating Impossible Man. This was further disproven in the Superman and Silver Surfer crossover. Mxy and the Impossible Man teamed up, and later started fighting. And Mxy was quite offended at the thought of being equated with the Impossible Man.
  • Horizont-Al and Verti-Cal in Sonic the Hedgehog, at least before the Cerebus Syndrome.
  • With the popularity of Mxy and Bat-mite, it was planned to give The Flash a helpful imp by the name of Mopee. However the Retcon involved was so hated that the very next issue ignored the entire thing. He was effectively out of continuity for decades, though recently appeared in two issues of the DC Super Friends series. During which he claimed to not only have given powers to the Flash, but also Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman. No one buys any of it. He also gets his first taste of the troublesome side of the trope, giving everyone at a convention super powers to prove he really can do it. Naturally Myx planned the whole thing.
  • Even Aquaman has an imp related to Mxy, the Thunderbolt and all the rest, by the name of Quisp. He is best known for turning up during the Grant Morrison Justice League of America run, having made himself absurdly Darker and Edgier to better mirror Aquaman at that time. It's fairly clear that Morrison intended this as a parody.

Films

  • Disney's Aladdin has the zany Genie. Virtually any good magical character in Disney is typically pretty whacky; the Three Good Fairies, the Fairy Godmother, Peter Pan etc.
  • God, in the Oh, God! films.
  • Fred from Drop Dead Fred.
  • The Ghost With the Most himself, Beetlejuice.
  • The Djinn from the Wishmaster films is a far more malevolent version.


Gamebooks

  • Lone Wolf: Really the only way to describe Alyss.


Literature

  • The puck (or Robin Goodfellow) in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
  • Isaac Asimov's Azazel stories. Azazel is either a demon or a Sufficiently Advanced Alien, depending on the venue in which any given story was published.
  • Kyprioth the trickster god of Tamora Pierce's Tortall Universe.
  • Tom Bombadil, in The Lord of the Rings. Tom is so powerful that he is able to wear the One Ring and give it up freely without a thought, but spends most of his time wandering in the Old Forest and whimsically singing about himself, and is said by Gandalf to be capable of withstanding an assault by any force of the world, unless they were all allied against him. He provides a convenient plot device to allow the hobbits to escape the Barrow Wights and take their swords (which later prove essential to the story, since the swords are the only thing deadly to Nazgul).
    • Tom is immune to the ring because he predates its creation by quite a margin. He and his power are directly linked to his forest, which he will never willingly leave.
  • Simkin from The Darksword Trilogy is a rare example of a human-looking Great Gazoo. He spends most of the books simply inventing his own plotlines if he doesn't like the situation he's in.
  • Pennywise the Clown from IT is a malevolent form of this trope. Wacky, powerful, and completey evil and murderous, and invisible to most people.
  • Karlsson in the children's book Karlsson on the Roof by Astrid Lindgren.
  • Paladine in the Dragonlance novels is a good version of this trope. Consider how every single time Tasslehoff prays to him in the Legends trilogy, Paladine immediately gives Tass exactly what Tass asked for, but never quite what Tass had in mind. Nevertheless, it always turns out to be exactly what Tass needed.


Live Action TV

Music

  • Devin Townsend's Ziltoid the Omniscient is an album about Ziltoid (the Omniscient). He is very much this, only as an antagonist.


Mythology


Tabletop Games


Theme Parks


Video Games


Web Animation


Web Comics


Web Original

  • Bjork, as depicted in "The Bjork Show" at That Guy With The Glasses.
  • Sun Wu Kong appears him/herself in Whateley Universe.
  • Thanks to the great powers and incomprehensible natures, certain Transapients and Archailects have been considered to be these in Orion's Arm, in the eyes of ordinary modosophonts.


Western Animation

  • Let's start with the Trope Namer himself, from The Flintstones.
  • The Gargoyles incarnation of Shakespeare's Puck.
  • The Great Gazoo is given a Shout-Out in The Simpsons' "Spin-Off Showcase" episode, showing "Ozmodiar" as a little green alien that only Homer can see. The joke many fans missed was that in an interview, Matt Groening said that the introduction of a Great Gazoo would officially mark the death of the series.
    • In one episode, the Simpsons are at an animation convention, and Bart and Lisa watch a clip from an Anime:

Lisa: "Wait, I'm confused, why was a wolf shooting a web?"
Bart: "Cartoons don't have to make sense."
Ozmodiar: *appears out of nowhere* "He's right, you know!"

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