Imaginary Friends from elsewhere
 

Imaginary friends have been around forever. And this obviously includes during the writing of books or producing of movies and other shows. So I was wondering what IF's everyone else has noticed in other forms of entertainment. As for what I've noticed-

Joey on Friends had an IF named Maurice, and he was imagined to be a space cowboy. Sounds like a perfect friend for him. 8D He was mentioned only once during a game between the girls and the guys to see which gender knew the other better. And yes, Steve Miller Band fans, clearly he was a parody from the song "Joker". ;)

Miguel on Maya and Miguel had an IF named Pepe when he was younger, although he still insists Pepe was real. He brought Pepe back in an episode where he's trying to get a girl who has a crush on him to stop liking him so much (hoping it will make her think he's weird). My personal favorite episode, it's just toooo funny! 8D In a later episode where he dreams his sister Maya was never born, Pepe is brought up again when his family keep hearing him mention the name "Maya", and they think Miguel's replaced him with another imaginary friend.

D.W. in Arthur has an IF named Nadine. She's in a lot of episodes, but when she first shows up, "she" annoys the living daylights out of Arthur because their parents keep playing along with D.W. and her new "friend", seemingly ignoring Arthur and the rest of reality. D.W. regularly talks to Nadine and you can see that the other people around her are looking around as if thinking "Who is she talking to?", as is a very typical first reaction. In one of the newer episodes, their next door neighbor's IF (don't remember her name) noticed that Nadine isn't seen around much anymore, and some of D.W.'s friends are accused of kidnapping her. Nadine shows up at the end of the episode claiming she was on vacation because D.W. hasn't been playing with her much anymore, and someday soon, she may leave and never come home again. It was kind of sad since D.W. is suppose to only be 5 and she's already "getting too old to play with her imaginary friend". Boo! But the first time I saw the episode I couldn't help but yell at the TV "Nadine, I know where you can go!" :clap:

So does anyone else remember seeing or hearing of IFs in other TV shows, movies or books? :bloosmirk:

This is an easy one for me, because when I think of imaginary friends, my mind quickly goes to one thing.

Hobbes, from Calvin and Hobbes. I think I don't really have to say anymore on that matter.

Imaginary Gary! Timmy Turner's IF from The Fairly OddParents 8D

Niles Crane from Frasier once mentioned something about having an "imaginary protege" named Sheldon as a kid, to whom Frasier referred as "that troubled little fellow who kept wetting your bed." So, definitely a Bendy type. (Episode: Dad Loves Sherry, the Boys Just Whine)

There is apparently an entire movie dedicated to the subject of imaginary friends called Drop Dead Fred, or something along those lines, but I've never seen it myself so I can't vouch for whether it's actually worth watching or not.

That's all I can think of for now, though there are probably a lot more. I'll let you know if they come back to me.

EDIT: Oh yes, how could I forget? Harvey, the original 6ft imaginary bunny (with no disrespect to Mr. H, who is a fantastic successor). :herriman:

There's "Drop Dead Fred", from the movie of the same name, who was the Imaginary Friend of Phoebe Cate's character. There are two songs I'm aware of that are about Imaginary Friends, "Puff the Magic Dragon", made famous by Peter, Paul and Mary, and "Shiloh", by Neil Diamond. There's also "Imaginary Lover" by the Atlanta Rhythm Section, though it doesn't so much deal with Imaginary FRIENDS, per se!

Uhm, and isn't Barney actually supposed to be an Imaginary Friend? I sorta hate to bring him up, but my neices are obsessed with him, and my sister hired a dude in a Barney costume to entertain at my youngest neice's recent birthday party, and they played that Barney theme song, and I was pretty sure it said something about only the kids being able to see him and so on.

pitbulllady

Harvey the 6th foor rabbit was not an Imaginary friend.

He was a Pooka, wich is very different. for those shy on there mythology, Pooka is basically a spirit of mischife typically taking the form of a Bunny. similar in behavour to the nores god Loki

Monty :-/

Really? Well, thanks for correcting me, Monty. It's been a long time since I saw that film so my memories surrounding it are very vague. Still, I'd find it hard to believe that Mr. Herriman's character conception wasn't in some tiny way influenced by Harvey. I thought exactly the same about mysterious 6ft bunny Frank in Donnie Darko (though he most certainly wasn't an imaginary friend...nor a pooka for that matter).

I am surprised nobody mentioned Winney the Poo and some of the gang at the Hundred acher woods.

they are definitly Imaginary friends, it is particularly clear at the begining of the episodes.

Wouldnt one consider Mr Rogers "neighborhood of Make-believe" a whole neighborhood of imaginary friends. including trolly.

It is no longer popular but It was when I was little: Raggady Ann and ANdy. they also are Imaginary friends. but they are currently in that phase of Fadding away .... .... ... .. . . .

Monty :-/

Drop Dead Fred is definitely worth watching. :D There's Bogus, a film with Gerard Depardieu and Whoopi Goldberg...I wasn't wild about it. I also remember Lloyd (from the Disney show Lloyd in Space) going through a sort of puberty thing for his species where he turned into his childhood imaginary friend (or the friend actually materiallised), who was a cowboy.

I know there's more that I'm just not remembering right now.

Cool, there's some great responses here, thanks guys! I can't believe I didn't think of Hobbs! I miss that comic! And oh yeah, I forgot to mention songs with IFs in them, or about IFs. I know and absolutely LOVE both "Puff" and "Shiloh", and have ever since I was a wee girl... Hm, no wonder I had IFs myself when I was little. :D I love Frasier but I must not have seen that episode. Cool, now I can say both Joey and Niles had IFs. 8D And wow, I never thought of Christopher Robin's "Hundred Acre Wood". Awesome! I love IFs!

Yay! :berry:

How can we forget Tony from The Shining? XD "REDRUM! REDRUM!"

And Johnny 2x4's best buddy Plank from Ed, Edd 'n Eddy!

http://www.jrj-socrates.com/Cartoon%.../Plank_300.gif

Ooh, I thought of another one! Billy, Murdock's invisible dog from the A Team. Though I desperately wanted to believe that he was real. :bloogrin:

Oh yes, and does this ring any bells? : "Where's Wilson? Where's Wilson? Wilson, where are you? Wilson! Wilson! Wilson! Wilson! I'm comin'! Wilson! I... Wilson! Wilson!"

Nope.

I got another one. Patches the evil Imaginary Friend from PPG and the imaginary lady bunny who beats him up.

There's also a song by The Divine Comedy called My Imaginary Friend. He's called Benjamin. This is the last verse:

One day we're gonna play hide and seek
And Ben will be up the creek
Never to be seen again
He'll disappear the day that childhood ends
And reality descends
I'll never forget you my imaginary friend.

Wasn't "Wilson" the Imaginary Friend/companion of Tom Hanks' character in Castaway? I think that was the name of the movie, where Hanks put faces on coconuts and talked to them so he wouldn't forget how to talk, and he eventually started believing that "Wilson" was real.

They did a hilarious parody of that on the "Lilo and Stitch" tv series on Disney Channel, where Pleakley drew a face on a coconut and started talking to it after like, five minutes on this island that's actually not deserted at all.

pitbulllady

Lol Wilson. I saw someone who had a Wilson antenna ball on their truck. 8D

Oh yeah, I remember Castaway. Interesting movie, I liked it. Don't remember his character's name, but Tom painted a face on a volleyball that had been in a package he opened, hoping it would be of some help to his survival. He named it "Wilson" because it was a Wilson ball. He got quite attached to that ball (and the viewers did as well), and shortly before he was finally rescued he actually got mad at "Wilson", yelled at "him", and threw "him" far away. And when he realized what he did, he started crying. I remember that scene really tugged on my emotions, too.

Yeah, good old Wilson. In reality he was a blood-stained volleyball, but the companionship-starved Tom Hanks was able to project so much personality and emotion upon him that it makes his final character arc quite heart-breaking. Dear Wilson. :'(

On the plus side, in real life things appear to have ended quite happily for Wilson. Having retired from show business, the volleyball in question was apparently purchased for $18,400 on an online auction (according to these Movie Trivia playing cards I have). Well, who wouldn't want to give that loveable little volleyball a home?

And I do remember seeing the Power Puff Girls episode with Patches several years ago. It scared the bejeezers out of me at the time. :o

OK, I'm probably the only person on the boards who'd know this one:

The entire episode of "Imaginary Friend," fromStar Trek: The Next Generation. (Sorry, I can't remember the season number-- usually I try to put info like that in.) In it, a little girl's imaginary friend is taken over my a bodiless alien thing and begins wreaking (sp?) havoc on the ship.

I doubt I'll ever forget Whoopi Goldberg's line best line in the ep (IMO): I don't think you should have to give up your imaginary friend. I automatically thought of Foster's and Mac and Bloo. ( 8-) & :) )

This is going to sound really nerdy. OK, when I was yuonger there was a nickelodeon show called Space Cases that I used to watch. On Space Cases there was a character named Catalina who was always made fun of because her best friend Suzee was imaginary. Catalina always claimed Suzee was actually only invisible, but nobody believed her. I think eventually Suzee did turn out to be real and everyone was really surprised when she appeared.

So that's basically what I think of when I think of other shows with imaginary friends... even though Suzee wasn't imaginary... but everyone thought she was.

Anyone remember MR. BOGUS, the cartoon and the movie?

http://www.gpdesenhos.com.br/imagens...os/mrbogus.jpg

I remember him. The cartoon at any rate (I always rooted for the rat). I never picked up that he was an imaginary friend, though, since he could be seen by and interact with just about any human or animal around him (the laws of Foster's notwithstanding). I always assumed that he was some kind of tiny yellow goblin or imp, and indeed he occasionally encountered other members of his kind, who apparently came from a place called "Bogus Land", accessed via some form of porthole.

I, for some reason, doubt that Plank's 100% imaginary...

Obviously we need to take into account that there are different levels of imaginary friends. The purest kind, and those that the Foster's IFs are evidentally based upon, are those that are fabricated completely from thin air and exist entirely within the imaginations of their creators. However, some of the other examples we've given, like Wilson the volleyball and the aforementioned plank (eep, creepy) do have a degree of worldly existence as a tangible inanimate object upon which their human friend is able to project such qualities as life and a personality. I reckon that they still meet the criteria for an imaginary friend, more or less, since the most important aspect, the relationship itself, is manufactured entirely within the human's mind.

On that note, it's mentioned in Victor Hugo's novel the Hunchback of Notre Dame that Quasimodo, in his isolation, forms imaginary friendships with the Notre Dame gargoyles. Whether or not the trio of talking gargoyles within Disney's version of the story are intended to follow this suit is debatable.

Sorry for bumping, but I found something.

There's this movie called "Don't Look Under the Bed", that stars a girl who has help from an imaginary friend (appears as an african american teenage boy) to defeat this guy who is the Boogieman. The imaginary in question is named Larry, and he's pretty funny, and kid-like. No, even more. Toony, and unpredictable, as the girl (named Frances, and has red hair, LOL, like Frankie) seems to realize about him. But sadly, he's slowly turning into a boogie as the movie progresses, well, as much as I gather. :D

Spoiler Below

LOL 8D

[EDIT]I'm watching it now. SAVE DARWIN, GUYS!

There's the info:

"Movie. Erin Chambers, Eric "TY" Hodges II, Jake Sakson. (1999) A logical girl must accept help from an imaginary friend to defeat a boogieman that is framing her for community pranks."

[EDIT EDIT] Ah, finally, something Wikipedia is right about - the movie's full info, if you don't know about this movie:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Look_Under_the_Bed

I was wondering, has anyone mentioned the ghost that only Peter can see from Family Guy?

Well, he was only mentioned in the episode "Petarded" but I'm not sure if he'll count as an imaginary friend or not...

Poking an old thread out of rem sleep. *poke, poke*

I just saw this today and found it highly amusing, so I thought I'd share.
http://i198.photobucket.com/albums/a...Lyn/Zombie.jpg
This is from the Zombie application on Facebook. I tried feeding my "zombie" my sister because it was hungry, and apparently my sis isn't applicable supper because she's an imaginary friend. 8D I'm guessing it's because she already has the application on her page. I guess I have to feed it someone who doesn't have the application yet, but I don't really want to do that. :P

I refuse to get a Facebook, you can feed me to it if that would work. ;) I don'even know what you're taking about but I like zombies. 8D

On an episode of Rugrats, Chuckie had an imagiary friend named "Barney".:o

I just remembered this: a few years back, I read a blog by one of the Pixar writers that the original plotline for Monsters, Inc. was supposed to have been centered around the concept that the three main monsters-Sulley, Mike and Randall-were all Imaginary Friends of a now-adult guy who was working as an ad executive. His life as an adult was boring and uninteresting, and he was suffering from a bad case of writer's block that was threatening his career. To make things worse, his mother was in poor health and having to go live in a nursing facility, but before leaving what had been his childhood home, she cleaned out the attic, and sent him all the old things that had been his, including a box of toys. The toys included three toy monster action figures, which triggered the guy's memory. As a child, he'd imagine that the three monsters would come to life, and the four of them would have all sorts of adventures. As it turned out, this actually DID happen, and once again, the three start appearing to the guy, reminding him of their old adventures, which helps him regain his self-confidence and come up with new material, but causes some interesting moments because he's the only person who can see them, so everyone else thinks he's gone off the deep end. The folks at Pixar decided not to go with the "monster action figures become Imaginary Friends" scenario, and decided that having an adult as the main human character would lack appeal to children, so they changed the monsters to real monsters, in another dimension, and decided to change the human to a child-first a boy, then a nasty little girl(reminiscent of the little red-haired brat that wanted to adopt Bloo and name him "Tiffany" in the Foster's pilot), and finally, to a little girl toddler, and they thought it would be more interesting if the human came into the Monster World instead of the other way around.

pitbulllady

Need I say more?

http://beansie09.tripod.com/sitebuil...ures/plank.jpg

Uh, Mr. Bloo_Veins, all I see there is an 'Image Hosted By Tripod" sign. You might wanna try uploading the pic again; maybe you copied the URL down wrong.

pitbulllady

Tripod's annoying like that. Dunno why, but I've always had problems with them. Anyway, I think it's supposed to be a pic of that plank thingie from EE&E.

I just remembered - it's been ages (by which I mean years and years) since last I saw it, but, concerning the Malcolm in the Middle episode, "Water Park", I do have the vaguest memories of Dewey having a discussion with his babysitter upon the subject of imaginary friends, during which she introduced him to her own. I think the scene ended with Dewey attempting to offer her IF a cookie and her informing him that he was offering in the wrong direction. But maybe I'm wrong.

Also, there was a later episode in which Dewey became extremely miffed with his family, when he announced that he'd made a new friend that day and they automatically assumed he meant an imaginary friend, as if he was incapable of making any other kind.