These are those
useless characters found in movies, cartoons, and video games, which serve no purpose to the plot and just take up space. They are often put in to appeal to
2 year olds or to take up time when there isn't enough content to make a real show. Often they appear when a series is reaching the end of its life, a desperate attempt to pump
ratings into a dying series. It never really works. These characters range from
benign to potentially
fatal to a story. Here is a list of a few i could think of offhand:
Jar Jar Binks - this is by far the most annoying, useless, dumb character to grace a movie. He serves no purpose other than to make 2 year olds laugh and annoy everyone else. This character severely crippled Episode 1 and is adamantly hated by many.
The Ewoks - They were a bit less annoying than Jar Jar becuase they were somewhat 'cute' and weren't in the whole movie. But I'd still like to strangle them.
Slimer from The Real Ghostbusters cartoon (and to a lesser extent the movies) - Slimer wasn't too bad but he was pretty useless. Near the end of the life of the cartoon, he became a main character and the animation got crappy. This marked the death of the cartoon.
April O'Neil - This was the annoying girl who followed the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles around. Her only purpose was to get into trouble. I was always hoping Shredder would kill her off.
Toad from Super Mario Brothers - Does anyone have any idea what the hell this thing was? It sure as hell wasn't a toad, nor did it seem human either. It seemed to be a hermaphroditic, sentient form of fungus, which was used as the Princess's slave. S/He was somewhat active in SMB 2 as a weak character, but other than that he was useless. On the same note, Yoshi was pretty similar - annoying, useless, and made into a main character in mediocre sequels to the game
Moogles - whatever those pasty white satanic things from final fantasy were. They needed to die.
Bubba from DuckTales - an obnoxious little cave duck which became integral to the storyline as the cartoon passed its prime.
Zipper from Rescue Rangers - more useless than annoying, but served no purpose.
Poochi from Itchy and Scratchy. Okay, its not a 'real' show but this character was a parody of the whole idea and a good example of how the whole thing works.
I know there are many more that I can not think of offhand.