This is a list of fictional characters featured in the Cartoon Network animated television series Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, created by Craig McCracken and aired on Cartoon Network from 2004 to 2009.
The central concept of the series revolves around the idea that imaginary friends created by children become real. When children grow up, the imaginary creations they abandon are sent to a dedicated care home.
The main character of the series is Bloo, an imaginary friend created by a boy named Mac. Bloo ends up in the titular home for creations of human imagination, run by the eccentric Madame Foster and her pedantic creation, Mr. Herriman. Other main characters in the series include the imaginary friends Wilt, Eduardo, and Coco, as well as Madame Foster's granddaughter, Frankie, who is responsible for maintaining order in the home. In some episodes, other recurring characters appear, such as the imaginary friends Cheese and Jackie Khones, the girl Goo, and Mac's brother, Terrence. Various other characters of lesser importance to the plot appear throughout the episodes. The characters of the series were generally well-received by critics.
Mac (voiced by Sean Marquette) is Bloo's creator (having imagined him at the age of three) and Terrence's younger brother, a short boy with brown hair. He is a bright, shy, and creative eight-year-old who visits Foster's every day.[1] He wears a red shirt with white, spotted sleeves, olive pants, black shoes, and carries a backpack. Mac is often the voice of reason among his friends when they are making decisions.[2] He has the patience to endure Bloo's quirks as well as the eccentricities of other characters.[3] [4] [5] However, his extremely good nature tends to make him somewhat naive. He is very attached to Bloo, and it is shown that his biggest fear is never seeing him again. Mac lives with his mother and his older brother, Terrence, who regularly bullies him.[6] [7]
Mac is also resourceful and intelligent, often using these traits in crisis situations.[8] From the episode Frankie My Dear onward, he develops a fascination with Frankie, falling in love with her.[9] [10] [11] Despite his even temperament, Mac has one major flaw: he becomes hyperactive to the point of a rabid mania when he eats even a drop of sugar. Once in this state, he becomes impossible to control and will often become obsessed with seeking any other source of sugar.[12] [13]
He, alongside Bloo, made a cameo appearance in The Powerpuff Girls series finale, The Powerpuff Girls Rule!.
Bloo (self-identified as Blooregard Q. Kazoo; voiced by Keith Ferguson) is a blue imaginary friend and the main character of the series. He is an anthropomorphic blue domed cylinder and was created by Mac when he was three years old and was placed in Madame Foster's care home after an incident depicted in House of Bloo's. While Bloo initially tries to be kind and friendly in his new environment, starting from the episode The Trouble with Scribbles, he reveals his characteristic traits: he is often very immature, happy-go-lucky, self-centered, impulsive, and egotistical, with a knack for getting into trouble.[14]
Bloo's selfishness is fully displayed in the episode Emancipation Complication, where he accidentally frees his friends but only does so to retrieve a battery for his Game Boy.[15] Bloo is a failure who blames the world for his shortcomings; in episodes like Sweet Stench of Success and Beat with a Schtick, he alienates all the home's residents.[16] [17]
He dislikes both Mr. Herriman[18] and Frankie, occasionally making her life difficult.[19] Bloo is obsessed with attracting the world's attention and dreams of working in show business, which he briefly achieves with limited success.[20] Despite all this, he still has a good heart and apologizes for his wrongdoings. Bloo loves toys, especially paddle balls – even though he cannot make the ball hit the paddle, yet he excels at bowling.[21]
Wilt (voiced by Phil LaMarr) is a very tall, red, friendly, incredibly nice imaginary friend with only a right arm and a crooked left eye-stalk. However, in Good Wilt Hunting, it is discovered that he was not always this way; he was injured during a basketball game, leaving his left eye crushed and his left arm injured.[22] He sleeps on the floor beneath a bunk bed shared by Eduardo and Bloo, who took his previous spot. Wilt has a particular passion for basketball, in which he demonstrates remarkable skill. This stems from being imagined by a basketball player named Jordan Michaels (a play on Michael Jordan's name).
Wilt exhibits good sportsmanship, which he applies to every part of his life. He is considered the nicest person at Foster's and is known for being excessively polite and apologetic, a nature often taken advantage of by the other imaginary friends and even some of the Foster's staff.[23] He takes pride in being the "friend of the month", often taking in abandoned imaginary friends and bringing them to Madame Foster's home.[24]
Wilt has a big heart, is calm and collected by nature, and rarely shows anger. According to the episode Room with a Feud, among himself and his roommates Coco and Eduardo, he has been in the house for the longest time.[25]
He is named after basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain.
Eduardo (voiced by Tom Kenny) is a big, hairy, purple, Spanish-speaking imaginary friend who resembles a mixture of a minotaur and one of the beasts from Maurice Sendak's storybook Where the Wild Things Are, with horns, a snout, a pointy demon-like tail, and large teeth. He wears gray pants. Despite his large and imposing size, overwhelming strength, and menacing appearance, Eduardo is usually docile, timid, somewhat overly sensitive, crying at minor negative occurrences, and scared of almost everything, most of all spiders.[26] However, he can be ferocious if angered or when danger befalls one or more of his friends, as demonstrated in the episode Eddie Monster, where he overcomes the scariest imaginary creations of teenagers.[27]
Eduardo has a fondness for potatoes, dogs, and his cuddly toys. He once had a puppy named Chuy ("Chewie"), who turned out to be an imaginary dog with the ability to speak and bite with ferocious playfulness. He also enjoys the preschool show Lauren Is Explorin, a parody of Dora the Explorer.[28] His creator, Nina Valerosa, now a police officer for the city, created him to protect her in a rough neighborhood. Eduardo shares a room with Wilt, Coco, and Bloo, and sleeps in a bunk bed (on the top). In his room, he keeps a toy box, a dollhouse, and his own piggy bank.[29]
Coco (voiced by Candi Milo) is a bird-like imaginary friend with a palm tree-shaped head with hair mimicking its fronds, a crooked red beak, and an aeroplane-shaped body despite which she can neither fly long distances nor hover for very long. Coco can only say her name at various speeds and different emphases. A unique talent is her ability to lay colorful plastic eggs containing a plethora of objects of her choosing.[30] Mac, Bloo, Eduardo, Frankie, Wilt, and others usually understand her when she speaks and often translate for her.
Despite her appearance and quirky behavior, she can demonstrate great intelligence, principles, ethics, discipline (in getting various jobs), and kindness. Coco exhibits eccentric behavior; for instance, in the episode Partying Is Such Sweet Soiree, she falls in love with a lamp. However, she generally adapts quickly to her surroundings, taking on various activities outside the home.[31] In the episode Mondo Coco, she even achieves a meteoric career.[32]
No one knows who her creator is as she was found on a South Pacific island by two scientists named Adam and Douglas, who brought her to Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Coco shares a room with Wilt, Eduardo, and Bloo, sleeping in a nest.
Frances "Frankie" Foster (voiced by Grey DeLisle) is Madame Foster's 22-year-old[33] granddaughter, addressed as "Miss Frances" by Mr. Herriman. Frankie has red hair tied in a high ponytail and typically wears a white T-shirt, a green zip-up hoodie with a hood, a denim skirt, orange socks, and sneakers. Her parents are never seen in the series. Frankie is the primary caregiver at Foster's, keeping up the house's cooking and cleaning and helping keep everything in order.[34] [35] Despite Mr. Herriman's fussiness and fixation with rules and cleanliness, she is usually very friendly, outgoing, and laid-back. Raised by Madame Foster, she respects her deeply.[36]
Frankie is friends with most of the imaginary friends at Foster's (particularly Wilt, Eduardo, Coco, and Bloo) and can be described as a protective big sister to them; but sometimes, she is unsuccessful in her attempts to remain professional and gets loudly annoyed at Bloo, Mac, Cheese, Madame Foster, Mr. Herriman, and the other house residents regularly due to her heavy workload, the strict rules imposed by Mr. Herriman, and the antics of Bloo. She is sometimes humiliated by the residents of the house but strives to treat them with compassion and care.
Although of average appearance, Frankie attracts romantic attention from various men. In her free time, she enjoys watching the soap opera Loved and Unloved and listening to punk rock. She also has an obsession with her grandmother's cookies.
According to her driver's license in Bus the Two of Us, she was born on July 25, 1984.[37]
Mr. H. Herriman (voiced by Tom Kane) is a gray and white, large, elderly, anthropomorphic, lop-eared and rabbit-like imaginary friend with an English accent imagined by Madame Foster. He wears a tailcoat, white gloves, a top hat, and a monocle, being an embodiment of the Edwardian era. He is in charge of the house and is extremely strict about house rules, observably putting the rules before common sense and everyday ethics, as seen in when he sticks to the rule written on the chained up toy box of never letting the imaginary friend who is trapped in there out despite what would happen to him if he did not. As president, he receives a modest salary.[38]
He is often found punishing house residents (invariably, usually Bloo) for various rule violations. It was revealed in "Busted" that Mr. Herriman is so hard on Bloo because he feels that, given that he is allowed to stay at Foster's even though he still has an owner, he has already broken one of the main house rules. He is especially authoritarian toward Frankie, burdening her with numerous rules and the responsibility of keeping the entire house spotless. He is extremely fond of his creator, Madame Foster, harboring great respect and loyalty to her, even at her most prominent levels of unabashed pep and energy. In Madame Foster's youth, Herriman created a lullaby named Funny Bunny, which causes him great embarrassment today.
He has a fear of dogs (due to the fact that dogs are the natural predators of rabbits) and is easily scared out of his wits whenever he comes across one.[39] He also has a rabbit's stereotypical obsession with carrots and will do anything to have them, as demonstrated in Crime After Crime.
Madame F. Foster (voiced by Candi Milo) is the founder of Foster's and Frankie's grandmother. She is short, with gray hair styled in a bun and glasses perched on her nose. Her attire consists of a green sweater, a purple skirt, and small black shoes. Despite her age, she has childlike, boundless energy and enjoys herself to the fullest.[40] [41] She loves wild house parties. Her imaginary friend is Mr. Herriman, whom she imagined when she was a child and never gave up, and is the only one who can control him; like Mac, she never intended to give her imaginary friend up, and like Bloo, Madame Foster occasionally becomes hyperactive and mischievous with a disdain for the rules. However, there are times she is shown to be the wisdom of the house. She is widely respected by the imaginary friends.
Craig McCracken, the creator of the show, designed the main characters of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends himself.[46] His goal was to create numerous and quirky characters while also portraying the creators of each imaginary friend. According to McCracken, the imaginary friends are created in a child's mind to protect them, provide companionship, and fill the void of loneliness.
The first character McCracken created was Bloo. He claimed that Bloo reminded him of his own childhood, in which he always sought to be the center of attention. McCracken stated that the team never intended for Bloo to be malicious; while Bloo never deliberately harms others, he sometimes comes close to mischief.[47] Mac, in contrast, is the opposite of his imaginary friend and embodies McCracken's contemporary self – sensitive, quiet, and cautious. McCracken explained that the differences in their personalities were due to his deep emotional experience of losing his father when he was seven.[48] The two characters complement each other, as without Mac, Bloo might engage in much worse actions.
The character of Frankie was inspired by McCracken's wife, Lauren Faust. According to McCracken, Frankie represents a strong, independent woman with a vision for the Foster's home. She believes in the center's purpose so deeply that, despite the overwhelming tasks and ungrateful work, she continues to carry out her duties, and the residents treat her like an older sister.
Some characters were designed with influences from other eras: Wilt is modeled after a 1970s basketball player, while Mr. Herriman is deliberately portrayed as old-fashioned. Another character, Jackie Khones, originates from an unrealized idea by George Lucas for a sidekick to Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back. The gallery of supporting characters was created by the series' creative team, including Mike Moon, Ed Baker, Shannon Tindle, David Dunnet, and Benjamin Balistreri, who won multiple Emmy Awards for their individual achievements on the show.[49]
The reception of the characters from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends was generally positive. David Cornelius, a journalist from DVD Talk, described the range of imaginary friends as diverse: from clumsy whims of childlike imagination to highly intricate creatures varying in shape and size.[50] Cornelius noted that each imaginary creation reflected the personality of its creator; hence, the simplest creatures are the products of infants’ fantasies, while the more intimidating creatures are the result of teenagers' imaginations.
Bloo was described by Cornelius as resembling a ghost from the video game Pac-Man; a deeper analysis of the character was presented by Mike Pinsky from DVD Verdict. According to him, Bloo represents a kind of "limitless id".[51] The character of Cheese also sparked curiosity among reviewers: while Pinsky described him as the funniest character on the show and the "quintessence of the surreal charm" of the series,[52] the IGN portal called him "the most annoying character in history" – in a positive sense.[53] Cornelius saw Wilt as a character "polite to the point of being excessive", while Eduardo was described as a "big monster with a heart of gold". Coco, on the other hand, was called by Pinsky the most intelligent person in the cast. As for Mac, according to Anita Gates from The New York Times, he was simply "sweet".[54]
A more skeptical view of the characters came from Joly Herman of Common Sense Media. She stated that the imaginary friends formed an “"nteresting and diverse" group of characters, but ultimately did not contribute much to the plot. In terms of behavior, Herman believed the characters did not serve as role models for children.[55]