# Favorite recurring TV character who was never seen
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [January 27, 2006, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829 "2006-01-27T08:15:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/1 "2006-01-27T08:15:44Z")
What’s your favorite TV character from a TV show who was frequently refered to but never actually portrayed on screen? Here’s a sampling of ones that come to mind:
Cousin Jeffrey (Uncle Leo’s son from _Seinfeld_)
Bob Sackamano (Kramer’s friend from _Seinfeld_)
Fat Naked Guy (creepy neighbor from _Friends_)
Vera (Norm’s wife on _Cheers_)
Maris (Nile’s wife/ex-wife on _Frasier_)
Charlie (Charles Townsend from _Charlie’s Angels_)
I’m sure there’s dozens of others I can’t think of so if you have any more toss them in. I do want to avoid computer voices and whatnot that were never intended to have human forms like Kitt and Ziggy, I’m looking for characters who as a plot device never got past being an offscreen voice or third person reference.
My personal fave was Vera from _Cheers_. She was like the Sword of Damocles for Norm every night at his stool at the end of the bar.
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### Author:  [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/2 "2006-01-27T08:27:01Z")
You’re forgetting the Father of the Unseen, Carlton the Doorman from _Rhoda_.
I liked Stan on _Will & Grace_. I don’t watch the show religiously so they may have shown him, but on the episodes I’ve seen he’s shown in shadow or maybe an arm or whatever, though always referred to as grossly obese.
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### Author:  [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/3 "2006-01-27T08:28:23Z")
And speaking of grossly obese, there’s Peg’s mom on _Married With Children_. In one episode she’s sitting unseen on the end of a sofa while her husband (Tim Conway) is on the other end which is elevated from her weight.
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### Author:  [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/4 "2006-01-27T08:36:00Z")
> [@Sampiro](#):
>
> You’re forgetting the Father of the Unseen, Carlton the Doorman from _Rhoda_.
Ah, but Carlton had his own one-shot special, so he, technically, was not unseen.
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### Author:  [@cactus\_waltz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cactus_waltz)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/5 "2006-01-27T09:12:21Z")
I believe Fat Naked Guy was shown, if only from behind. Does that count?
My favorite is still **Maris** from Frasier, especially in combination with the jokes on her body type. Like how she’s so thin that she doesn’t even activate a whoopie cushion.
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### Author:  [@Regardie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Regardie)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/6 "2006-01-27T09:13:03Z")
Except if one had missed that show. I was going to say Carlton too.
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### Author:  [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/7 "2006-01-27T09:41:24Z")
Mrs. Columbo, unless you believe the heresy that Captain Janeway played her in some subsequent series.
Was the chef on **Enterprise** ever seen?
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### Author:  [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 9:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/8 "2006-01-27T09:52:17Z")
> [@Krokodil](#):
>
> Was the chef on **Enterprise** ever seen?
Not really, but in the abysmal finale, they had Riker squeeze into a costume to pretend to be the chef in a holodeck program.
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### Author:  [@Malodorous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malodorous)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/9 "2006-01-27T09:56:11Z")
Maris. Each season they’d add more running jokes about yet another bizarre character trait of hers, till by the end of the series your picture of her was of some inhuman twisted abomination.
Supposedly she was never ment to be an “unseen” character (the creators wanted to avoid copying Vera from Cheers) but they reached a point where they couldn’t possibly get a human who could match the image they’d created of her in the audiences mind.
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### Author:  [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/10 "2006-01-27T13:16:00Z")
Another vote for Maris. She was just so much fun.
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### Author:  [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/11 "2006-01-27T14:14:10Z")
> [@Krokodil](#):
>
> Mrs. Columbo, unless you believe the heresy that Captain Janeway played her in some subsequent series.
>
> Was the chef on **Enterprise** ever seen?
He looked like Isaac Hayes, children.
Actually, in the episode where the crew rode out a storm in the warp nacelles, we saw a hand and arm serving up food, tho it was never verified that it was Chef. It could’ve been anyone’s arm. And hand.
Not really a series, but a recurring set of specials, Peanuts, we never see any of the g’rumps we hear saying “mwap mwap mwah… mwap mwah…”
We see Stan’s hand grabbing Megan’s breasts in the W&G where Will and the happy couple are in the Carribean.
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### Author:  [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/12 "2006-01-27T14:14:52Z")
This goes far enough back (unless you’ve seen reruns – which I doubt) that only the geezers will remember. The old series _Richard Diamond, Private Eye_ (and that may not be the accurate title, but it starred David Janssen, had a character whose legs were seen and whose voice was heard but that was the extent of her visibility. I’ll have to look in IMDB to remember the character’s name (something like Selma or Velma – although Velma was Mike Hammer’s gal) but a young Mary Tyler Moore was her voice.
Any geezers remember more than this without looking it/her up online?
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### Author:  [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/13 "2006-01-27T14:45:53Z")
> [@Malodorous](#):
>
> Maris. Each season they’d add more running jokes about yet another bizarre character trait of hers, till by the end of the series your picture of her was of some inhuman twisted abomination.
My three favorite moments:
1- Niles’s comment that Maris’s dream as a child was to be a ballerina but “she could never gain enough weight for it”
2- Roz (who had never seen Maris) hiding in a bathroom in Maris’s suite (I forget why) and looking out to see if the coast was clear, then reporting “It’s weird, there’s nobody there but she moved a coat rack into the middle of the room”. Frasier/Martin: Is the coat rack breathing. Roz: “OH MY GOD!”
3- Niles’s projection when he bought the world’s most high maintenance unaffectionate skinniest dog while separated from Maris but refuses to see what he’s doing until Frasier took a small rice bowl and said “Do you remember the time Maris wore that Jackie Kennedy outfit with the pillbox hat?”, put the bowl on the dog’s head and Niles almost fainted.
Also, Wilson the Neighbor from _Home Improvement_. All of his face was probably seen at some point or another but never all at once.
And Charlie from _Charlie’s Angels_. When I was a kid I had no idea who John Forsythe was so it really kept the mystery going.
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### Author:  [@Trion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trion)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/14 "2006-01-27T14:48:31Z")
Another vote for Maris. My favorite joke was Niles telling a story about how he and Maris had a fight at a ski lodge (or some such) and she stormed out. Niles went out to follow her footprints in the snow “but, alas, she left none.”
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### Author:  [@Papermache\_Prince](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Papermache_Prince)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/15 "2006-01-27T14:50:07Z")
> [@Zeldar](#):
>
> This goes far enough back (unless you’ve seen reruns – which I doubt) that only the geezers will remember. The old series _Richard Diamond, Private Eye_ (and that may not be the accurate title, but it starred David Janssen, had a character whose legs were seen and whose voice was heard but that was the extent of her visibility. I’ll have to look in IMDB to remember the character’s name (something like Selma or Velma – although Velma was Mike Hammer’s gal) but a young Mary Tyler Moore was her voice.
>
> Any geezers remember more than this without looking it/her up online?
I believe her name was “Sam,” but I did not look it up on line to confirm it.
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### Author:  [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/16 "2006-01-27T14:52:17Z")
> [@Zeldar](#):
>
> This goes far enough back (unless you’ve seen reruns – which I doubt) that only the geezers will remember. The old series _Richard Diamond, Private Eye_ (and that may not be the accurate title, but it starred David Janssen, had a character whose legs were seen and whose voice was heard but that was the extent of her visibility. I’ll have to look in IMDB to remember the character’s name (something like Selma or Velma – although Velma was Mike Hammer’s gal) but a young Mary Tyler Moore was her voice.
>
> Any geezers remember more than this without looking it/her up online?
Mary Tyler Moore was the legs, too. They probably had the rest of her on set as well, but it ended up on the cutting room floor.
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### Author:  [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/17 "2006-01-27T14:59:43Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#):
>
> Mary Tyler Moore was the legs, too. They probably had the rest of her on set as well, but it ended up on the cutting room floor.
From the looks of her these days, that was a good thing!
It was _Sam_ and MTM wasn’t the only one to play her. (I already forget who the other one was.) Man, that’s an old show!
Any **true** geezer remember who played Richard Diamond on the radio? None of those characters were ever seen! 😃
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### Author:  [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/18 "2006-01-27T15:41:18Z")
Here’s two: Tino, from **My So-Called Life** and The Gooch from **Diff’rent Strokes**.
Tino was _the man_. There’s a party at Tino’s. Tino will get you a fake ID. Let’s catch a ride from Tino! C’mon, we’re gonna watch Tino’s band practice! But Tino was never seen…and from the same show, the Chase family cat. They were always buying cat food and kitty litter and mentioning it off-handedly, but you never actually saw a cat.
Remember The Gooch, the bully who terrorized Arnold at school? The Gooch got to be kinda like Maris, I think: with the descriptions of arms so long his knuckles dragged the ground and such, I think they reached the point where no living person could really play what the description required.
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### Author:  [@anyrose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anyrose)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/19 "2006-01-27T16:12:29Z")
> [@cactus waltz](#):
>
> I believe Fat Naked Guy was shown, if only from behind. Does that count?
>
> My favorite is still **Maris** from Frasier, especially in combination with the jokes on her body type. Like how she’s so thin that she doesn’t even activate a whoopie cushion.
We saw \*\*\*Ugly \* \*\* Naked Guy in a hammock, and also from the back, when he opened the door when Ross was angling for the sublet - but he never spoke
> [@Sampiro](#):
>
> Also, Wilson the Neighbor from Home Improvement. All of his face was probably seen at some point or another but never all at once.
We saw all of Wilson EXCEPT the lower half of his face. This was done on purpose. Infact, when the actor would come out for the studio audience at the beginning of the show, he carried a little picket fence to keep his nose and mouth hidden.
But I have to jump on the \*\*Maris \*\* bandwagon, with \*\*Stan \*\* as my second fave.
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### Author:  [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2006, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-recurring-tv-character-who-was-never-seen/341829/20 "2006-01-27T16:41:38Z")
> [@anyrose](#):
>
> We saw all of Wilson EXCEPT the lower half of his face. This was done on purpose. Infact, when the actor would come out for the studio audience at the beginning of the show, he carried a little picket fence to keep his nose and mouth hidden.
Nitpick by an ALW fanatic: When Wilson was dressed as the Phantom for Halloween, he was wearing a mask that covered the top half of his face, with the lower half showing.
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