Who has been portrayed in the movies the most? Scrooge? Dracula? Sherlock Holmes?
I am guessing one of the three, but maybe Satan, if we can count him.
That Chinese Wong Fei Hung guy?
According to a quick googling, it’s Holmes 211, Dracula 162.
(I’ll leave it as an exercise to find the cites. :D)
From iMDB:
Dracula - 160
Satan - 151 (Excludes characters called “Mr Satan”, “Dr Satan”, etc)
Sherlock Holmes - 87
Scrooge - 85
Note that a large number of that 211 are duplicates of Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett, and Eille Norwood.
Oh, is the question is “which character appears in the largest number of films” rather than “which character has been portrayed by the most actors”? If so, Bugs Bunny (221) beats Holmes, and someone else may be at the top of the list…
I would have guessed Tarzan. Guess I’m just not “with it”. (Isn’t that what the kids say? “With it”? Can’t keep up with this stuff.)
Where do you draw the line between “character” and “archetype”? Does any Dracula-like vampire count as Dracula, or just one called “Dracula”?
Hitler scores quite highly: http://us.imdb.com/Find?select=Characters&for=hitler
Abraham Lincoln, with 172 (a total of 185 characters with Abraham Lincoln in their names, minus 13 who were not the 15th President, like “Abraham Lincoln Jones”). Sorry, I don’t know how to link to the IMDB search results.
How about Shakespearean characters?
Hamlet brings up 176 male characters.
Romeo has 320 (200 on the first page, and then another batch of 120).
Macbeth only has 97.
Romeo - good one. I hadn’t even thought Shakespear.
The official Guinness records are:
Fictional character: Sherlock Holmes, 75
Fictional monster character: Dracula, 162
Actual person: Napoleon, 189
Jesus shows up 672 times, but many of them are not the famous one. Limiting it to Jesus Christ brings many fewer, but that’s eliminating those movies who didn’t use the Christ title in the character listing.
Hamlet?
Oops, Waenara beat me to it.
Many of which have nothing to do with the character who loved Juliet.