Cartoon Characters You Didn't Know Were Inspired By Real People

Cartoon characters obviously aren't real, but they can feel just as fully developed as any flesh-and-blood human being—and in some cases, there are some very good reasons for this. As it turns out, some of animation's most memorable characters seem like real people partly because their personality traits and antics really were actually inspired by the stories of real-life people. From classic animated movies to your favorite TV 'toons, there's a rich tradition of animators basing characters on flesh and blood individuals—and in some cases, those characters ended up resonating so strongly with the audience that they became fixtures on the shows. While their animated adventures may have been more (ahem) colorful than the truth, these film and television icons never would have been drawn in the first place without the people who inspired their creation—sometimes unwittingly. Here are a few memorable examples of beloved cartoon characters and their real-life counterparts.

Hello, he's Troy McClure. You might remember him from The Simpsons as an actor and heartthrob well past his prime who can only get work in B-movies, educational films, and infomercials. His name combines two hunky actors who've been largely forgotten: Troy Donahue and Doug McClure. Simpsons writer Mike Reiss revealed on a Simpsons DVD commentary track that he met McClure's daughter, who told him her dad figured out they were making fun of him...and that his kids called him "Troy" when he wasn't in the room.

While he still might be best known as the frontman of forward-thinking rock band Devo, Mark Mothersbaugh is now one of the most sought after film composers working in movies and TV—his credits include The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, Regular Show, and Rugrats. Not only did he create the show's memorably weird synth and vocal-based underscores, but his unique personal style inspired the design of Chuckie, one of the show's lead characters. "We both had thick glasses. We're both near-sighted. And I had pretty wild hair back then," Mothersbaugh explained. "I didn't have kids yet, so it still had color in it."

The tough-as-nails tattooed sailor man with a soft spot for Olive Oyl and a nearly incoherent speaking voice—and who obtained superpowers upon eating spinach—debuted in the comics section of newspapers in 1929. Cartoonist E.C. Segar had a strip called Thimble Theatre. Various characters came and went in Thimble Theatre since Segar had created it in 1919—so it took him 10 years to come up with Popeye. The inspiration had been right in front of him: in his hometown of Chester, Illinois, there was a townie named Frank Fiegel who everybody called Rocky. He was a part-time bartender who always had a pipe in his mouth and who was "tall, strong, always ready for a fight."

There weren't any singing vultures with Liverpool accents in the original Jungle Book published by Rudyard Kipling in 1899. For the classic 1967 Disney animated adaptation, the idea was suggested by Richard and Robert Sherman, longtime Disney staff songwriters who convinced the producers to hire the Beatles to voice the characters. Richard Sherman later said John Lennon wasn't interested, so the plan fell through. "John was running the show at the time," explained Sherman, "and he said, 'I don't wanna do an animated film.' Three years later they did Yellow Submarine, so you can see how things change." Nevertheless, the vultures were still animated with mop-top haircuts reminiscent of the ones sported by the Fab Four in the early '60s. (When Jon Favreau put together his live-action version of The Jungle Book in 2016, he asked surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to cameo, but they both said no.)

In the early days of television, hundreds of local TV stations had their own kids' shows. From their studio, an actor or station employee would dress up like a pirate, cowboy, or clown, for example, and then maybe lead a studio audience of kids in a game or two and then throw to an old cartoon. In Portland, the local kiddie TV show host was a guy named James Allen, better known as Rusty Nails, who had a show on Saturday mornings from 1957 to 1973. Simpsons creator Matt Groening grew up in Portland and watched the show as a kid, and created Krusty the Clown in honor of Rusty, although he says Rusty wasn't nearly as surly and disenchanted.