Imaginary Friends from elsewhere

[jekylljuice]

Originally Posted by Zeitgheist

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

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.

[Bloonan]

Originally Posted by Zeitgheist

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

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

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

[jekylljuice]

Originally Posted by Bloonan

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.

[antgirl1]

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.

Spoiler Below

Frances: You ARE turning into a boogieman, aren't you?
Larry: *trying to hide the changes by attempting to get under Frances' bed* What makes you say that?

"If a person stops believing an imaginary friend too soon, he/she might turn into a boogieman."

LOL

[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

[Mayor Adam West]

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...

[Lynnie]

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.

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. 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.

[Sparky]

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.

[Mac-a-lacka]

Originally Posted by pitbulllady

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

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

[pitbulllady]

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

[Mr_Bloo_Veins]

Need I say more?