Or Hello Kitty. Or Pikachu.
Australia: Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Was Wilhelm Tell fictional? Or just his deed? (A good suggestion either way, but I stick with Heidi)
Denmark: The Little Mermaid
Is Mad Max too recent?
No, and it is a good one too. Or Tank Girl.
But as you wished for 200 countries I thought we ought to get started, we can sort out the weaker candidates later. The worst suggestion still may work as a brainstorming spark.
I would have said Anne of Green Gables for Canada.
From all I’ve heard, he is as fictional as Robin Hood, in the way that maybe there have been some rebel types in old England and Switzerland, maybe named similarly, who probably never did any of the deeds that were told and who never appeared in any written official documents.
Israel: Adam and Eve. (or maybe Irak, as there is where the Garden of Eden was supposed to be?)
King of the Royal Mounted was written by a Yank. Renfrew of the Royal Mounted was written by a Scot-turned-Yank. Have any famous mounties been created by actual Canadian writers?
France: D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers.
Russia: Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich and Alyosha Popovich : the Russian version of the Three Musketeers
Italy: Maciste.
Greece: Herakles.
Israel: Samson.
Iran: Rustam.
Iraq: Haroun-al-Rashid
Some of these were real people. But the legends probably bear little resemblance to the reality.
Russia: Raskolnikov
I thought about Israel, but didn’t want to tackle it because there are so much figures to choose from, and you have the problem that we’ll probably never know if all these figures really existed. But if I had to pick, I’d choose Moses.
All of the good ones I can think of for The Netherlands seem to be the product of American author Mary Mapes Dodge
Or maybe The Littlest Hobo?
Austria: Bambi.
For the biblical and legendary characters to qualify, I think they need to have been embraced by popular culture in some way. I’m not familiar enough with pop culture in places like Israel to know which ones have made that transition.
Colombia: Aureliano Buendía
Mexico:
Who’s more iconic, El Santo or Blue Demon?
Cantinflas.
China:
Sun Wukong, the Monkey King.
India:
Rama.
Rudyard Kipling was born in India, which opens up several possibilities. I’m not sure which if any of those characters have been embraced by Indians though.
In this case, Robin Hood, King Arthur and Willhelm Tell definitely qualify. For biblical figures, you can at least make the case that there were two huge Hollywood versions of the Ten Commandments with Moses as leading character, as well as Samson and Delilah movies.
I’m sure riots have been sparked by the debate over the greatest luchador. Was Cantinflas a character like Chaplin’s Little Tramp, or was that just an actor’s stage name?