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Yogi Bear
- Voiced by: Daws Butler (1958–1988), Greg Burson (1988–1999), Jeff Bergman (1990s commercials), Billy West (1990s commercials), Stephen Worth ("Boo Boo Runs Wild", "Boo Boo and the Man"), Dan Aykroyd (2010 live-action film)
Yogi Bear is a trouble making, "pic-a-nic"-loving bear, who lives in Jellystone Park.
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: A shirt collar, tie, and hat.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Spinoffs created after the original show (like Yogi's Gang and Yo Yogi!) tend to greatly clamp down on Yogi's vices, especially his proclivity for stealing food, and make him more traditionally heroic.
- Anthropomorphic Shift: Yogi is treated as a Civilized Animal on the original show, despite wearing some clothing and conversing with humans in English. Many later spinoffs pivot Yogi towards being a Funny Animal (particularly ones that have him alongside H-B Funny Animal characters like Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw).
- Beary Funny: Yogi acts silly.
- Beware the Nice Ones: He may be a friendly bear, but he's not afraid to get vicious if he's ticked off or the situation he's in requires him to.
- Big Eater: He loves them "pic-a-nic" baskets.
- Breakout Character: The 1st tv example. Originally appeared as a skit for The Huckleberry Hound Show before branching off and eclipsing Huck in popularity. Yogi has had several spinoffs and movies and was the 1st major mascot of Hanna Barbera.
- Character Catchphrase: "I'm smarter than the average bear!", "Hey, Hey, Hey!"
- Depending on the Writer: Yogi's feelings towards Cindy can vary between works. The shows typically have him as interested in her while movies usually show him as friendly but firmly in No Guy Wants to Be Chased territory though it's not impossible for him to warm up to her in those cases.
- Didn't Think This Through: Tends to let his stomach think instead of his head, and barring that, be rather impulsive about something that interests or upsets him. Ranger Smith is usually willing to let some lesser problems slide as Yogi being a literal bear and all, but Yogi's penchant for marching straight into trouble eventually grows into setting off Smith badly. Though there's also a strong chance that Yogi's sheer lack of even considering his situations or what he's doing works out to his advantage as well.
- Does Not Like Spam: Ranger Smith frequently encourages Yogi to stop stealing picnic baskets and instead eat nuts and berries like most bears. Yogi always responds with revulsion at the idea.
- The Dog Bites Back: Whenever Ranger Smith pulls off pranks or traps on Yogi as punishment for stealing picnic baskets, Yogi would often utilize the same tricks on Smith in the end of an episode.
- Everyone Has Standards: Parodied at the end of the "Iron Hand Jones" short, where after fouling up some war games practice Yogi is forced to eat the Army General's picnic basket. What seems like Unishment at first becomes this when Yogi proclaims he's been "sabotaged"; they're army survival rations. He'd rather face a firing squad than eat those, but it's the end of the short, so its his loss.
- Flanderization: By the third season of the Huckleberry Hound Show, Yogi's love of picnic baskets went from being just one of several quirks to his defining trait. Whole episodes, by this time, centered around Ranger Smith coming up with elaborate schemes to stop Yogi from stealing them.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Yogi has demonstrated some remarkable engineering (as well as chemistry) skills. Whether it's rigging a picnic table with a weight activated catapult to fling picnic baskets his way or building a high performance roadster out of scrap metal and wood as well as brewing fuel for it.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Though Yogi tends to be kind of wary and get turned off by Cindy's advances towards him, he will just as quickly get jealous if she ever ends up expressing an interest in someone else.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Boo Boo.
- Hyperaffixation: He calls picnic baskets "pic-a-nic baskets".
- Karma Houdini: Yeah, Yogi's a nice guy overall, but he still often gets off scot free for the mayhem he causes in the park. It's not always a guarantee however, and being a slapstick character, he's destined to be The Chew Toy every now and then. The most notable exception to this is in "A Bear Pair," which ends with Ranger Smith chasing after Yogi while repeatedly clobbering him over the head with a baseball bat. Not because Yogi was breaking any park rules or stealing any picnic baskets, but because he gave America a bad name amongst the French.
- Lovable Rogue: Yogi's a thief and a troublemaker, but easy going and rarely means actual harm. The occasions he isn't in his routine of stealing pic-a-nic baskets he is an outright protagonist helping friends or solving mysteries.
- Papa Wolf: He's very protective of Boo-Boo.
- Rhymes on a Dime: Often speaks in rhythmic, rhyming phrases.
- Running Gag: Whenever Yogi feels he's being mistreated, he'll sometimes blurt out that he's "government property," unaware (or possibly just outright ignoring) that he lives in a national park and not a zoo, and therefore is technically a wild animal.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: With his collar and dress tie, you might say he dresses more stylishly than the average bear.
- Species Surname: His last name is "Bear."
- The Extremist Was Right: The start of the movie Yogi's Great Escape put Yogi through a scenario where him seeking out a picnic basket was actually justified; he found three hungry orphaned bear cubs that needed his help, what food he already had stored ran out, it was too early in spring for any nuts or berries to grow in Jellystone making that option impossible even if he was willing to go there, and the only fish he could find were "attack fish" he couldn't catch.
- Villain Protagonist: Downplayed. It all varied on the episode, but there were some where he was unarguably the good guy, and others where he not only stole picnic baskets, but stumbled into causing much, much bigger problems by accident. While he usually means well and doesn't mean to harass people beyond the thefts, the amount of problems he gives Ranger Smith escalate him to a genuinely problematic Anti-Villain every so often. Later iterations tone this down immensely in favor of being The Hero that tends to have trouble follow in his wake while Smith becomes too restrictive in enforcing the Jellystone Park rules.
Boo-Boo Bear
- Voiced by: Don Messick (1958–1994), Jeff Bergman (1990s commercials), Billy West (1990s commercials), John Kricfalusi ("Boo Boo Runs Wild", "A Day in the Life of Ranger Smith", "Boo Boo and the Man"), Tom Kenny ("Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law"), Justin Timberlake (2010 live-action film)
Boo Boo Bear is the sidekick and best friend of Yogi Bear.
- Alliterative Name: His first and last name begin with B.
- Character Catchphrase: "Mister Ranger isn't gonna like this, Yogi!"
- Deadpan Snarker: Due to being a Straight Man to Yogi.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Yogi.
- Not So Above It All: "Boo Boo Runs Wild" takes his usual role as the Only Sane Man and
deconstructs it to abnormal levels. - Only Sane Man: Has more common sense than Yogi, especially when telling him not to do things that he knows Ranger Smith won't like.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: With his collar and bow tie, you might say he dresses more stylishly than the average bear.
- Shorter Means Smarter: He's usually the Straight Man to Yogi's hare-brained Zany Schemes, and is a lot smaller than Yogi, looking more like a cub than an adult bear.
- Sidekick: To Yogi.
- Species Surname: Like Yogi, his surname is "Bear".
- Straight Man: To Yogi, usually.
- Vague Age: It's never explained how old Boo-Boo is—some people see him as just a very short adult bear while others (such as John Kricfalusi) see him as a kid. There was at least one promotional Cartoon Network bumper that seemed to imply he was a cub. Some of the interactions he has with Yogi implies that he's younger than the latter, at least.
Ranger John Francis Smith
- Voiced by: Don Messick (1958–1994), Greg Burson ("Yo Yogi!"), Corey Burton (Spümcø shorts), Tom Cavanagh (2010 live-action film)
Ranger Smith is the head park ranger of Jellystone Park. Most of his problems come from having to prevent Yogi Bear routinely stealing visitors' picnic baskets.
- Anti-Villain: Combined with Reasonable Authority Figure—even if Ranger Smith does come off as kind of a jerk (mostly from Yogi's point-of-view), he really isn't a bad guy. As a park ranger, it's Ranger Smith's job to keep himself and others at Jellystone National Park safe, and while it may seem oppressive to Yogi, the job includes enforcing the rules of the park, one of the biggest rules being "Do not feed the bears”. When Yogi's actually behaving, he and Ranger Smith can actually get along pretty well—on some occasions, Ranger Smith will actually encourage Yogi to steal a picnic basket or two.
- Berserk Button:
- Yogi irritating him and breaking the rules is enough to set him off, but touch his Papa Wolf instincts by harming Yogi (or any other animal in the park), and he really goes off the deep end (especially noted in "Iron Hand Jones," though it was actually a trick by Yogi).
- In the TV special Yogi the Easter Bear, Yogi blows Ranger Smith's casket by eating all of the Easter candy and destroying Smith's Easter bunny suit for the park's Easter celebration. This is enough to have Smith threaten to ship Yogi off to Siberia.
- Butt-Monkey: Mainly due to Yogi's antics.
- Character Catchphrase: "YOGIIII!"
- The Comically Serious:
- His role in his debut season of the Huckleberry Hound Show (see below).
- Characterization Marches On: Downplayed. In Season Two of the Huckleberry Hound Show (the season where he made his official debut), Ranger Smith had a very jaded and deadpan personality, usually portrayed as being annoyed not only by Yogi but also by careless tourists and the general stresses of running a park. In season three (once Flanderization set in with Yogi), he was given a more plucky and energetic personality, and Yogi (rather than the tourists) became the main source of his frustrations. This has remained his personality ever since.
- In "Wound-Up Bear", he mentions in a throwaway comment that he's married to a woman named Mabel and believes that her constant spending is keeping him from finally retiring! He is never again portrayed as married nor interested in retirement.
- Control Freak: John Kricfalusi depicts Ranger Smith as a somewhat neurotic fanatic, obsessed with placing rules and restrictions in almost everything in the forest.John Kricfalusi: I think the story works well for these HB characters, because that's what the whole Yogi Bear series was about. Ranger Smith was always Man butting his nose into the wilderness and making its legitimate occupants obey unnatural laws. This basic conflict made the whole concept of the Yogi Bear show funny to me and your average Joes because we can all identify with the situation.
- A Day in the Limelight: John Kricfalusi created two cartoons starring Smith (even though one of them was more about Boo-Boo), and the Live-Action Adaptation is a Human-Focused Adaptation.
- Depending on the Artist: Ranger Smith's design was inconsistent throughout most of the original show until Hey There, It's Yogi Bear finalized it. Parodied in the Spumco shorts, where he inexplicably switches through his various forms from shot to shot, and in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law where said different designs are explained as being defective clones.
- Depending on the Writer: He's a Reasonable Authority Figure in most episodes, primarily the later episodes of The Yogi Bear Show, but he can be a cynical ranger who just wants Yogi gone in earlier ones. In later adaptations, he's in-between the two personalities.
- Expy: He sometimes is replaced by this or a Suspiciously Similar Substitute in earlier shorts, primarily those from the Huckleberry Hound era. In these cases, Daws Butler voices the ranger(s) instead of Don Messick. Bizarrely, when the short "Rah-Rah Bear" was released to a Huckleberry Hound soundtrack from 1961, the narrator (Huckleberry) identifies the ranger who catches Yogi at the football game on TV as Smith, even though Butler voices the ranger here and isn't identified by name in the aforementioned short.
- Friendly Enemy: He has been shown to get along with Yogi when the bear isn't causing trouble. In spin-offs such as Yogi's Treasure Hunt they are consistent allies.
- Hero Antagonist: He has to be the one to stop Yogi from stealing people's food.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite his clear distaste toward Yogi's antics, he still deeply cares for Yogi and is willing to go to great lengths to protect him whenever he gets into harm. He even admits that Yogi is his favorite bear no matter what he does.
- Never Bareheaded: Smith is rarely without his Ranger hat, whether he is sunbathing or in a different wardrobe. Yogi the Easter Bear reveals he's worn the hat in his childhood.
- On One Condition: He once inherited a fortune but had to live in the mansion he inherited. When he got word about Yogi's health condition, he returned to the park.
- Only Sane Man: While often a somewhat pompous authority figure, his contempt towards Yogi is usually provoked.
- Papa Wolf: Whatever you do, don't harm or hurt Yogi.
- Phrase Catcher: To Yogi's "Hello, Mr. Ranger, sir!"
- Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: On occasion, he has overzealous moments, especially under John Kricfalusi's pen, usually he just tries, and fails, to make Yogi to behave.
- Villainy-Free Villain: Although Ranger Smith is, at worst, seen as a stick in the mud by Yogi and Boo Boo? He just wants the bears to behave and not harass the park goers.
Cindy Bear
- Voiced by: Julie Bennett (1961–1988), Janet Waldo ("Yogi's First Christmas"), Kath Soucie ("Yo Yogi!"), Mary Ellen Thomas ("Boo Boo Runs Wild")
Another bear who takes up residence in Jellystone National Park, Cindy's the primary love interest for Yogi Bear and is also close friends with Boo-Boo. She speaks with a pronounced Southern accent and carries a parasol.
- Ascended Extra: Cindy only appeared in a handful of episodes from the original show. She is a regular in most revivals and makes frequent appearances in spin-offs (she is among the few supporting characters to compete in the Laff-A-Lympics and has a leading role in Yo Yogi!).
- Beware the Nice Ones: While certainly very sweet-natured and loving, you really DO NOT want to get Cindy mad...
- Depending on the Artist: Cindy's original design was basically Yogi with a dress and blue-colored fur. Hey There, It's Yogi Bear! gave her a more feminine design with light brown fur that became definitive (though her blue color scheme reappears in odd instances such as the Spumco shorts).
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Similar to Yogi and Boo-Boo, Cindy's shown wearing a skirt around her lower half and will sometimes put accessories on her head, much like a how a human-woman would put accessories in her hair.
- Little Miss Snarker: Her Yo Yogi! incarnation is much more temperamental and sarcastic.
- Love Interest: To Yogi.
- Parasol of Prettiness: She's almost always carrying around a cute blue parasol.
- The Smurfette Principle: The fact she is one of very few female characters representing the early Hanna Barbera works may have played part into her prominence in spin offs. She is the only female in The Yogi Yahooeys team in Laff-A-Lympics for example.
- Species Surname: Just like with Yogi and Boo-Boo, Cindy's last name is "Bear."
- Southern Belle: She's definitely got the accent for it, though it's unknown if she's actually from the South.
Yowp
"Yowp, Yowp!"
- Voiced By: Don Messick
A hunting dog who is constantly foiled by Yogi in his attempts to chase down innocent animals and/or bandits.
- Butt-Monkey: Though actually a pretty competent hunting dog, he always winds up getting the short end of the stick, thanks to both the stupidity of the hunters using him and Yogi's protectiveness of the animals he's chasing.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: An unfortunate victim of this. He appeared in only three cartoons before being retired once the standard Yogi Bear Formula was in place.
- No Name Given: He's never actually given a name.
- Pokémon Speak: "Yowp" is the only word he's capable of saying.
- Reused Character Design: Visually, he looks exactly like Droopy, except with a gray colored muzzle and more aggressive looking face.
- Smarter Than You Look: Despite his one-word vocabulary and constantly being foiled by Yogi at the end of his respective cartoons, he’s actually a pretty cunning hound dog. He often sees right through Yogi’s tricks (though the hunters/sheriffs employing him don’t) and even temporarily catches his prey a few times. He’s usually screwed over by the less than savy hunters using him.
