In the more than 100 years that Walt Disney Company has been making films and television. They have created some of the most iconic heroes. in the history of cinema and every good hero needs a good sidekick. Unfortunately, not every great hero gets a great sidekick.
Some Disney sidekicks are incredible. They add something much needed that the hero lacks, making the team even better in the process. Sometimes, however, sidekicks are just annoying hangers-on that we could all do without. Here are some of the most annoying Disney sidekicks.
Phil – Hercules
Following the success of Robin Williams as the Genie, hiring comedians to play wise-cracking sidekicks became the norm at Disney for a bit. Phil is a perfect character to be played by Danny DeVito, but he’s not a great character for any Disney movie. He’s rude and inappropriate and it seems like every time he has something to say it’s not something you’re going to want to hear.
Koda – Brother Bear
Koda is a young bear in Brother Bear who is accidentally adopted by the movie’s protagonist. Koda is actually a tragic character and the entire movie is about setting up the little guy for heartbreak. Unfortunately, it doesn’t land, in part because Koda never stops making a nuisance of himself.
Sergeant Demetrio Lopez Garcia – Zorro
The overweight bumbling cop has become a trope that we’ve seen countless times, and it’s never not annoying. Sergeant Garcia in Disney’s old Zorro TV and films was just a guy doing what the powers that be told him, as he tried, and repeatedly failed, to capture Zorro. It’s honestly a shock his superiors kept him around so long.
Tito – Oliver and Company
Cheech Marin is a great comedian but his performance as Tito in Oliver & Company is not one of his career highlights. Tito’s continual attempts to flirt with Georgette the poodle, voiced by Bette Midler, just get frustrating and it’s just not as funny as it might have looked on paper.
Gurgi – The Black Cauldron
The Black Cauldron was a massive Disney failure that is now a largely forgotten Disney movie. And that’s a good thing because Gurgi, the small fuzzy creature with the world’s most annoying voice, deserves to be forgotten. His voice and grammar are just two annoying things on top of each other. Even a heroic sacrifice doesn’t save Gurgi, it would have been better if he’d stayed dead.
The Gargoyles – The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Gargoyles of The Hunchback of Notre Dame are mostly annoying because if the three comic relief characters were simply removed from the film, it would be a much better movie. Their humor is in direct contrast to the serious tone of the rest of the story that should have been embraced rather than trying to make it more “kid-friendly” with wise-cracking sidekicks.
HeiHei – Moana
HeiHei the rooster is barely a character. He nearly gets eaten by Dwayne Johnson‘s Maui, and that might have been a better fate. He’s a largely unnecessary character and it’s not clear why it was decided that the chicken got to go on the adventure while Pua the pig, who probably would have helped out more, had to stay home.
Tinkerbell – Peter Pan
Tinkerbell is an iconic Disney character, so including her on a list of annoying sidekicks might seem strange, but she’s actually sorta terrible. Tink is perpetually jealous of Wendy, and as a result, she’s actually the cause of most of the terrible circumstances the rest of the characters have to endure.
B.O.B. – The Black Hole
The Black Hole was Disney’s answer to Star Wars and it has, fittingly, been relegated to a largely forgotten corner of history. B.O.B. was the movie’s attempt to give us a C-3PO or R2-D2-like character, and while B.O.B. was well designed, the decision to have him voiced by Slim Pickens gives us a robot with a Southern twang which just never sounds right.
Abu – Aladdin
Abu isn’t the worst sidekick in the world, but the little monkey can’t even follow basic instructions. He was told not to touch any other treasure in the Cave of Wonders, but he didn’t listen, and as a result, he almost killed himself and Aladdin. Bad movie monkey.
Launchpad Mc Quack – Ducktales And Darkwing Duck
Launchpad McQuack found himself a sidekick to both Scrooge McDuck on Ducktales and Darkwing Duck. How he got both gigs considering the one talent he purports to have, as a pilot, always results in a crash, is beyond me. He’s just annoying for getting two shows when it would have been nice to do something different in one of them.
Major David Q. Dawson – The Great Mouse Detective
Dawson is basically the Watson to Basil of Baker Street’s Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately, Dawson comes from the Nigel Bruce school of “Watson is a big dumb idiot” which is the most annoying version of Watson there has ever been. Why would somebody as smart as Basil hang out with this guy?
Terk – Tarzan
To a certain extent, Terk in Disney’s Tarzan is supposed to be annoying. She’s like Tarzan’s sister, and sisters can certainly be annoying. Unfortunately, maybe Rosie O’Donnell does her job too well because, in the end, she is so annoying you just want her to stop.
Timon and Pumbaa – The Lion King
Before you break out the pitchforks and torches. This is not about Timon and Pumbaa from the original animated The Lion King, but specifically live-action remake, which is far from the best of Disney’s live-action remakes. While the movie is technically impressive for the way it digitally recreates the animals, the characters largely add nothing new to the story, so they’re annoying because you want to see something new happen here, and it never does.
Le Fou – Beauty And The Beast
Beauty and the Beast is one of the best Disney animated movies, but that doesn’t save it from having annoying sidekicks. Clearly, Le Fou hangs around Gaston because Gaston likes to have somebody this dumb around so he looks smarter. You want the little guy to wise up and realize that he’s being mistreated, but he never does, which makes him all the more annoying.
Archimedes – The Sword In The Stone
Archimedes is Merlin’s pet owl in The Sword in the Stone. It’s basically his job to spend the whole movie telling everybody else why they suck. He’s a real stick in the mud, which is fine, but that’s really all his character does for the entire film, and it gets old fast.
Ben -Treasure Planet
Ben’s saving grace in Treasure Planet, one of IDsney’s biggest failures, is that he only appears near the end of the movie. If a character this loud and annoying, unlike any other character in the film, had been in more of the movie, Treasure Planet would have been worse for it.
Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather – Sleeping Beauty
The three fairies of Sleeping Beauty spend more of the film’s runtime bickering with each other than they do taking care of Aurora, which is supposed to be their job. It really makes one wonder if their plan to take Briar Rose away and hide her was even a good idea. Maybe they should have given the job to somebody else.
Pintel and Ragetti – Pirates Of The Carribbean Franchise
You probably don’t even remember the names of Pintel and Regetti, the pirate duo who work for Barbosa in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. They’re fun and interesting in the first film, but their success brought them back again and again, and with each succeeding film it becomes clear nobody knows what to do with them.
Anastasia And Drusella – Cinderella
Cinderella’s Wicked Stepmother is a truly evil woman who does terrible things to the heroine of the film. Her daughters, however, seemingly learned nothing from her, as they are just spoiled brats. How even a mother could love their annoying behavior is a real question.
Zini – Dinosaur
Zini is the comic relief sidekick of Disney’s Dinosaur. Why does a movie about dinosaurs trying to outrun their extinction have a comic relief character? The world will never know. The fact that the lemur best friend of protagonist Aladar is mostly concerned with getting a date, just makes the whole thing even more bizarre.
Mushu – Mulan
Eddie Murphy does a fine job as the voice of Mushu. He’s pretty funny a lot of the time, but he’s also the cause of most of Mulan‘s problems, something that he eventually apologizes for, but never really learns from, making the fact that he ultimately gets what he wants really annoying.
The Mad Hatter – Alice In Wonderland
Casting Johnny Depp in a live-action Alice in Wonderland is fine, deciding that, because you cast Johnny Depp, you must make the Mad Hatter a much bigger part of a movie where there’s no reason for it, is less fine. Depp is so important to this movie and its sequel that he barely qualifies as a sidekick, which makes him an even more annoying sidekick.
Mater – Cars Franchise
Honestly, Mater isn’t that annoying in Cars. He grows on you and you find him lovable by the end, even if you don’t at the beginning. What makes him ultimately annoying in Cars 2 is that he worked so well as a sidekick in the first movie, he got promoted to main character in the sequel, and that’s where the wheels come off this tow truck. He should have remained a sidekick.
Gusgus – Cinderella
The mice in Cinderella are sort of all annoying because a great deal of the film’s runtime is focused on them and not the title character. But Gusgus is the most annoying in the lot because his particular comedic focus is “being fat” which is far more annoying than funny.
Meeko And Flit – Pocahontas
Pocahontas has more than a few problems, but its animal sidekicks are certainly among them. Maybe if these were talking animals they’d be more interesting, but they largely exist to inject silly in what was supposed to be a much more serious movie.
Thumper – Bambi
Bambi was a revolutionary Disney movie when the studio produced it back in 1942. It’s beautifully animated, with the scenes of nature as breathtaking as the real thing while the animation of animal characters was done with a level of perfection not previously seen by Disney or anybody else. And then Thumper has to get in there and be so loud all the time and just ruin the beauty of it.
Cogsworth – Beauty and the Beast
Cogsworth is certainly supposed to be a bit annoying, as he plays against the easy-going Lumiere. He’s basically your micromanaging boss if your boss was a bipedal clock. He does ultimately redeem himself by the end of the movie, but it takes a long time for him to get there as he’s really annoying up until that point.
Tonto – The Lone Ranger
Disney’s The Lone Ranger movie actually cast Johnny Depp as Tonto in a movie that came out in 2013. That’s a thing that happened. Just because Johnny Depp wearing a funny hat in a Disney movie worked once, did not mean this was something we needed twice. It’s an annoying performance that just never ends.
Bagheera – The Jungle Book
Bagheera means well. He’s just trying to do right by Mowgli, but his “my way or the highway” style of parenting is going to be really annoying to anybody who has seen that not work, and it very much doesn’t work in the movie either.
Woola – John Carter
John Carter is one of the most expensive movies Disney has ever made. It’s also one of its biggest live-action flops. None of that is Woola’s fault. The movie has several problems that resulted in its failure, but the overly eager puppy dog that is actually a massive Martian monster certainly doesn’t help matters.
Flounder – The Little Mermaid
Flounder seems like a really nice guy. He’s friendly, and Ariel clearly likes him. The problem is that he doesn’t do anything that’s particularly useful for the entirety of The Little Mermaid, which makes him really annoying as his screen time could have been given to anything else and been better used.
Some of the sidekicks are useless, others are actually detriments to the hero and everything they’re trying to accomplish, and still others are just people we don’t want to listen to anymore. For every amazing Disney sidekick, there’s an annoying one. And honestly, the heroes can do better.
