Characters featured in the Garbage Pail Kids Cartoon and their associated tropes.
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Main Characters
Split Kit
Voiced by: Noam Zylberman
The leader of the Garbage Pail Kids. He's a normal kid on one half of his body and a vicious punk on the other.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: His good half had blond hair on the original trading card. It was changed to brown for the cartoon.
- Fashionable Asymmetry: His clothes are different on the good and bad sides of his body. His good side wears a blue and white striped shirt, a yellow jacket, blue jeans, and a sneaker, while his bad side wears a black shirt with red spots, a leather jacket with a red skull emblem on the shoulder, black pants with a hole in the knee, and a black boot with cleats.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He can be an arrogant and rude little guy, but time and time again it is shown that he does care about his friends.
- Parental Abandonment: He's one of the only two main characters where neither his mother nor his father appears in the series, the only other main character being Terri Cloth.
- Token Evil Teammate: While not completely bad, he's the one most likely to act selfish and irresponsible.
- Two-Faced: His right half looks normal, while his left half has messy hair dyed red and green, a red eye, a fang, garish markings on his face, and wears leather.
Patty Putty
Voiced by: Tara Strong
A kindhearted girl who can stretch into any shape.
- Age Lift: She is a young girl in this series, while her trading card depicts her as a baby.
- Disappeared Dad: Her mother appears in "Elliot Messed Up", but no mention is made of her father.
- Genki Girl: When she's happy, she really wants to let everyone know that is the case.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She has blonde hair and is generally the nicest of the group.
- Rubber Man: She can stretch her body into any shape and form.
Terri Cloth
Voiced by: Alyson Court
A girl whose face is on her hand, enabling her faceless head to be drawn on.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: She's a redhead when she was blonde on the original trading card.
- The Blank: A variation in that she does have a face, it's just not where it's normally supposed to be.
- Body Horror: Instead of being on her head, her face is on her hand, which is formed as if she were making her hand talk.
- Composite Character: She is actually a combination of two different trading card characters (having her face be on her hand rather than on a washcloth is taken from the card character Ugly Hans/Jan Hand).
- Deadpan Snarker: She occasionally makes dry remarks about the difficulties she and her friends get into.
- Parental Abandonment: The only main character other than Split Kit whose parents are never seen.
Elliot Mess
Voiced by: Michael Fantini
A boy with his body parts scrambled (i.e., his right foot and right hand have swapped positions, his left leg is where his head should be, he has a peg leg where his left leg should be, and his head is carried around by his correctly-placed left hand).
- Body Horror: His body parts are not in the correct place.
- The Cameo: He makes a brief appearance in the movie parody segment "Oops: The Disaster Movie", which also makes him the only one of the five main Garbage Pail Kids to appear in a movie parody segment.
- Losing Your Head: His head is not attached to his body, so he either carries his noggin under his arm or balances it on his left foot (which is attached to his neck instead).
Clogged Duane
Voiced by: Cree Summer
A boy with a drippy complexion who can turn into liquid.
- Making a Splash: He is technically able to become water.
- Token Minority: He's black while the other four Kids are Caucasian.
Command Center
Trash Can Ken
The one who informs the Garbage Pail Kids of their missions and enables them to change between their normal forms and their Garbage Pail forms.
- Big Good: He is the one who informs the Garbage Pail Kids of their missions and also is the one who enables them to change into their Garbage Pail forms and back into normal children.
- By the Power of Grayskull!: He causes the Garbage Pail Kids to transform by bathing them in light and exclaiming "Trash out".
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: He only appears in the first two episodes.
- Mister Exposition: He often explains the schemes of the episode's villains to the Kids.
Michelle Muck
One of Trash Can Ken's subordinates.
- All There in the Script: She isn't named on-screen, but she is identified as "Michelle Muck" on her design sheet.
- Muck Monster: She's a walking pile of green guck.
- Out of Focus: After the first two episodes, she didn't make any appearances aside from some of the openings to the movie parody segments.
Trashed Tracy
Voiced by: Cree Summer
Another subordinate of Trash Can Ken's.
- Out of Focus: As with Michelle Muck, she was phased out from the show after the first two episodes and only made occasional cameos. She had it worse given that the first episode was her only speaking role.
Antagonists
The Funbusters
A group of villains the Garbage Pail Kids fought in the first episode "Batteries Not Included", who attempted to destroy all toys by selling defective batteries.
- All There in the Script: With the exception of "Mr. Killjoy", none of the Funbusters are named on-screen, but are given names on their design sheets.
- Alliterative Name: Most of their names are alliterations (e.g. Simon Scour, Preston Purgation, and Sylvia Censor).
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: They manufactured and distributed batteries that were deliberately designed to ruin the toys they were used in.
- Evil Plan: They wanted to destroy all toys by selling batteries that would ruin any toy that used them.
- Latex Perfection: "Mr. Killjoy" used a life-like mask to impersonate a kindly toy store owner.
- Moral Guardians: They all have shades of this in their opposition to the Garbage Pail Kids, but Sylvia Censor takes the cake by warning the audience not the watch the cartoon and demanding they change the channel in the teaser to the first episode.
- We Will Meet Again: "Mr. Killjoy" promised that the Kids hadn't seen the last of them, but the Funbusters never appeared in any more episodes.
Boss Man
The main villain of "Honest Abe Has a Close Shave". He stole Wrinklin' Lincoln from Mt. Rushmore in hopes of using him as the head for a headless sphinx.
- Fat Bastard: He's quite chubby and not a nice person at all.
- Large Ham: His girth is matched well by the dramatic level and volume of his voice.
Chris Mess
A bratty kid who tried to impersonate Santa Claus in order to ruin Christmas for everyone.
- Bad Santa: He impersonates Santa and lies to the children that they now have to be naughty in order to have presents.
- Blatant Burglar: With his black domino mask, he blatantly looks like a crook.
- Co-Dragons: His two henchmen are Yul Tied (a green-skinned boy wearing Christmas tree decorations) and Meltin' Elton (a living snowman).
- Freudian Excuse: It is mentioned by a former lackey of his that he wants to ruin Christmas because he was always on the naughty list and never got any presents.
- Jerkass: He's an outright unpleasant individual and openly mocks Kit for believing his falsehoods about naughty children being rewarded with presents from now on. It's no wonder he never got on Santa's nice list.
- Obviously Evil: Aside from how scummy he looks, he also wears a burglar's eyemask.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Somehow, no one noticed that Chris Mess was a child and that he wasn't even bothering wearing his fake Santa beard properly.
Heartless Hal
Voiced by: Cree Summer
A mischievous Cupid introduced in "Heartless Hal" who tried to make everyone fall in love on Valentine's Day.
- Antagonist Title: He shares his name with the episode he is featured in.
- Fallen Cupid: While not deliberately malevolent, the fact remains that he is a Cupid who causes trouble and delights in taunting Clogged Duane.
- My God, What Have I Done?: He is quite shocked when Duane shows to him that his efforts have caused more harm than good.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He only wanted everyone to get along better.
