Looking through a link supplied by Rick about top characters. Cool stuff. Most are protags or antags.

I was thinking we should list some cool chars that are not a protag or an antag.

I'm going to list one that most will barely remember, but I thought he was cool in his little part:   Benicio Del Toro as Gaspare in the Funeral

Hah!  Cool idea...

Some supporting characters that really stand out to me:

Lance Henriksen as Bishop in Aliens
James Caan as The Big Man in Dogville
Tony Shalhoub as Fred Kwan in Galaxy Quest
Jean Reno as Victor in La Femme Nikita

And also, Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther.  A bold-faced cheat, I know.

Isn't Sellers the protag? I love him in that movie though.

Bishop: inspired choice!

Peter Sellers as Dr Strangelove.

Captain Spaulding (House of 1000 Corpses)
Jules Winnfield (Samuel Jackson Pulp Fiction)
The kids from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Mr Pink (Reservoir Dogs)...probably any minor role Buscemi has ever played actually....

The characters from Wizard of OZ..(Scarecrow, Lion etc)
Jesus from Big Lebowski...as well as pretty much everyone else in that film.
Randal Graves (Clerks).
The characters from Princess Bride
Hicks and Hudson from Aliens..two of my favourite charcaters in movies ever...whole squad was good actually.

Haven't seen 1000 corpses. Seen the others, great choices. Jules is close to a protag, but maybe one of the coolest chars in film history.

I'm wondering whether the films with several memorable characters tend to be "squad" based films. They may have a central protag, but that protag may be teamed up with or meet several others on their journey.

This is a way of keeping the story compact (they are all involved in the same story-line) but allows for a broader range of solutions to problems and a wider variety of reactions/POV.

There's a danger of having too much going on when you try to have lots and lots of memorable characters, because they might not really affect the action, or if they do, they might overshadow other characters (eg the antag) making that character less memorable and unbalancing the story.

Quoted from Scar Tissue Films The characters from Princess Bride

Inconceivable!

I think you're right about "squad"/"team"/whatever films, Rick.  It's probably easier to have memorable characters without overshadowing the main ones if you have a big group of people all facing one common problem.

Bill Murray, Caddyshack.

Hudson (Bill Paxton) from Aliens
Lacombe  from Close Encounters
Milton from Office Space

Man, this list could go on forever...

Grace (Edie McClurg) the secretary in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Edie McClurg again as the rosy cheeked car rental agent in Planes, Trains & Automobiles.
Brad Pitt's stoner dude in True Romance.
Pervy trucker dude in Thelma & Louise.
Cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid) in Lampoon's Vacation & Christmas Vacation.



E.D.

A great supporting cast can really take a film to a whole different level, for sure.

Some that come to mind for me; you probably know all of these:

Joe Pesci in Goodfellas
Pat Morita in Karate Kid
Dennis Hopper or Marlon Brando (tie) in Apocalypse Now
Burgess Meridith in Rocky
Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future FTW

Interesting topic, but could also be a near-endless list.

Captain Spaulding in House of 1,000 Corpses is actually a major Antag, as he's actually Baby and Otis' Dad, isn't he?

Although it's really not revealed until the very end of the movie (that he's in on the Firefly clan's devious, killing ways), it's apparent in the The Devil's Rejects.

Any way you look at his character, though, Zombie sure did a great job with him.  So memorable, and totally rejuvenated Sig Haig's career.

I'd like to add pretty much every character in True Romance, as all are incredibly well drawn, well acted, and very memorable.

He turns out to be, but he doesn't actually take part in the "meat and bones" of the story, so I don't think you can really call him an antagonist as such.

I knew there was something I was missing...

Philip Kwok as Mad Dog in Hard Boiled -- probably my favourite "bad-ass" character of all time.

Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) - The Big Lebowski
Iceman (Val Kilmer) - Top Gun
Michael Cheritto (Tom Sizemore) - Heat