Do you remember Gary the Gray Power Ranger, the one who drove Titanus? Or what about Dustin the Animorph-Controller, who was both one of the good guys and one of the bad guys? Or Jedi Padawan Tasher Jaken? No? You don’t? Well don’t worry, you shouldn’t remember them. They never existed, not in the real shows, books or movies anyway. They are all my own fan fiction creations. All 100% my own ideas.

Creating my own original characters to fit into existing franchises has always been one of my favorite writing hobbies. I was even naive enough once upon a time to think I had a chance of making them a reality, if only I could speak with the writers or creators.

Now I know better. I was fooling myself.

But seriously, who’s driving this thing?

Yet even though it never worked out for me, the dream isn’t so far-fetched. Sometimes the creators and professionals really do listen to their fans. Sometimes that silly bit of fan fiction can take on a life of its own. Or maybe the fans will embrace a seemingly unimportant background character and adopt him or her like a mascot. It can happen. It has happened. I found six characters from TV, video games and movies that were – for the most part – created and embellished by the fans, only for the real creators to take notice and embrace these fan creations, bringing them into the real canon.

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6. Me-Mow – Adventure Time

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Full of adorable deadliness

Adventure Time is a show that defies description. It’s wacky insanity turned into a children’s cartoon, featuring bubblegum princesses, vampire rockstars and a talking, shape-shifting dog. And that barely scratches the surface of the amazing whimsicality of Adventure Time. Take Me-Mow, the cat assassin. The tiny cat assassin. For you see, Me-Mow is barely an inch tall. And she kills you – or tries to kill Wildberry Princess – by climbing down inside of you and killing you from within! Me-Mow even had her own episode in Season 3, “Jake vs. Me-Mow”.

Pretty good for a character created by a little boy and his doodling. According to show creator Pendleton Ward, Me-Mow came from a drawing by a little kid. He decided to bring Me-Mow into the show because, “It’s so cute and it was drawn by a tiny kid.” Let this be a lesson to all you tiny kids out there: draw your hearts out, and your doodles may get chosen to appear in your favorite cartoons!

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5. Bob the Snail – MapleStory

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As with most bad guys in video games, just fill Bob with enough lead until it dies

You know how in role-playing games, you always start off fighting Level 1 bad guys who can barely put up a fight, but you hack and slash anyway just so you can level up? Well what would you do if one of those tiny baddies inexplicably shows up in the middle of one of the most difficult portions of the game, but is still just a tiny, Level 1 snail? You fall in love with it, adopt it as your own and name it ‘Bob’. And that’s exactly what the fans of the online RPG MapleStory did when little old Level 1 Bob suddenly started spawning in the Level 50+ Drake’s Meal Table.

The fandom took off, creating all manner of background lore for Bob the Snail. The fans said he was the oldest character in the game, and has long been a heroic warrior fighting evil. Bob the Snail became so popular among fans of the game that the developers decided to make him a real character. His appearance in that high level was some kind of glitch, but soon Bob the Snail was an actual boss monster that you had to fight. His shell is an item you must collect for a quest, and notorious for being a fast, jumping snail. Pretty good for a glitch.

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4. Ravage – Transformers: Shattered Glass

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“I’m in yer Transformers, fightin’ yer Megatrons.”

Of all the myriad Transformers stories out there, Transformers: Shattered Glass is one of them. Though not quite on par with the multi-million dollar movie franchise, Shattered Glass is a series of comics and prose stories written during and after BotCon2008. They tell a classic mirror universe version of the Transformers, where the good guys are now bad guys and the bad guys are now good guys. Villainous goatees are optional. Shattered Glass hasn’t exactly been a mainstream property, but it was real and it does exist. Trust me.

At the very least, it captured the attention of Dave Willis, webcomic genius behind the series Shortpacked! Willis made a cartoon about the Shattered Glass version of Ravage. Whereas the original Ravage in the original cartoon was a panther robot who was a quiet, stealthy spy, Willis’ Shattered Glass version of Ravage was a LOLcat. Because Willis works for the Internet, after all.

After a few more strips, Willis’ Ravage got his own Facebook and Twitter pages, all meant to be a joke. But sometimes even professional creators can take a joke. The creative minds behind the real Shattered Glass comics decided to add Ravage as a real character, appearing in the Transformer’s Collectors Club magazine. You can even buy Shattered Glass Ravage action figures at the Transformers conventions. Not too shabby for that robotic tabby.

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3. Figwit – Lord of the Rings

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He’s just so dreamy, right ladies?

Who is the most beloved character in the Lord of the Rings movie franchise? If you said an elf extra who appeared for only a few seconds in Fellowship of the Ring, then you guessed right! Meet Figwit, an elf whose sole claim to fame was standing around in the background of the Council of Elrond scene, the one where Frodo volunteers to take the ring to Mordor. While most of us were reveling in the awesomeness of that scene, Israeli college student Iris Hadad was checking out the gorgeous extra standing behind Gandalf. Hadad and her friends named him ‘Figwit’, which is an acronym for ‘Frodo is grea–Who is that!?’

There he is…one of those guys…back there

Hadad and her friends created the fansite Figwit Lives, and started writing songs and original fan fiction about the character. The elf didn’t even have a name in the movie, he was just an extra. But Hadad, and soon the thousands of Figwit fans, started giving him a back story and a real history in Middle Earth. It helped that the actor who played Figwit, Brett McKenzie, went on to achieve stardom as a cast member on Flight of the Conchords. McKenzie had no idea that his LOTR character was taking off. The British media even started covering the tale of Figwit’s immense online popularity.

And sure enough, director Peter Jackson took notice.

Figwit made the newspaper and everything!

In the third film, Return of the King, Jackson brought McKenzie back and actually gave him a speaking line. He’s the elf who tells Arwen that they “cannot delay” their trip across the sea, only for Arwen to turn around and run back to her father. On the DVD commentary, Jackson credits the fans by saying he put McKenzie into the third film “just for fun for the fans,” because “so much fuss has been made about him over the last couple of years.”

Soon Figwit appeared on trading cards and in toys. Word has it he may also appear in The Hobbit trilogy.

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2. Boss Mida – World of Warcraft

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She’s got a real Sarah Palin thing going for her

Considering Blizzard has earned upteen billion dollars from its loyal World of Warcraft players, it’s about time they listened to their fans. If you visit the Goblin Slums of Orgrimmar, in the heart of the Horde, you’ll find Boss Mida holding court.  Nicknamed ‘Her Tallness’, Mida was created by a 2010 fan message board movement to convince Blizzard to create a female racial leader for when they made goblins a playable race in the upcoming Cataclysm expansion pack. The fans named her Mida Silvertongue and gave her the nickname “Her Tallness,” an homage to Invader Zim. The message board thread – known as the Trade Princess Movement – went on for 391 pages before the boards themselves were closed down.

In the World of Warcraft, each of the playable races (humans, orcs, elves, dwarves etc.) has a racial leader, a character you can visit in the game and get quests from. The humans have a king, the orcs have a warchief, and so on. Well goblins have a trade prince, and these fans really wanted Blizzard to finally create a strong, independent female racial leader as the goblin trade prince. Unfortunately, Blizzard didn’t exactly grant them there wish…yet. When Cataclysm arrived, the goblin leader was revealed as Trade Prince Gallywix. But here’s the thing about Gallywix: he’s a bad guy and everybody hates him. When you create a new goblin character, Gallywix is your enemy. He’s also reluctantly allowed to stay on as leader of the goblins only after you’ve defeated him in battle.

Not only that, but you can’t find Gallywix anywhere in the game. He’s the only racial leader you can’t go and visit in-game. Blizzard has said that they have future plans for him…one of these days.

At least he’s a snappy dresser

But you can visit Boss Mida. When goblins became a playable race, Blizzard gave them their own section or Orgrimmar, the Horde capital city. And they put Boss Mida in charge of that section. You can visit her, talk with her, and she’ll tell you that Gallywix is off picking out wallpaper for his pleasure palace while she is the one who actually runs things. This has many fans speculating that the future plans for Gallywix involve him being overthrown as trade prince…by Boss Mida!

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1. Derpy Hooves – My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

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Too adorable not to love

The little pony that could! Derpy Hooves, like a lot of these characters, was created by an entire army of fans, who seized upon a seemingly random background character and turned her into the mascot for the entire fandom. And when their fans speak so loudly and with such unity, the creators would be foolish to ignore them. Besides, My Little Pony is all about love and tolerance, right? I am not ashamed to admit I’m a brony, a nickname given to all the adult male fans of the cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. There are so many of us out there that an annual convention is held every year. Bronies have been embraced by the show’s creators (even though MLP was meant for little girls), and it was the bronies who gave birth to Derpy Hooves.

It all happened in the very first episode of the new cartoon. The My Little Pony stories take place in the fictional town of Ponyville, where the main characters live and play. And in order to fill out this town, the animators added a bunch of random other ponies hanging out in the background. Other townsponies, if you will. Well whether it was a computer glitch or an animator having some fun, a background pony in the first episode showed up for a few seconds with crossed eyes and a funny expression on her face.

A few seconds can make you a star

The Internet being what it is, the fans discovered the derpy-eyed pony almost immediately, and affectionately named her Derpy Hooves. And then because the animators just used the same background ponies in all the episodes, Derpy kept showing up in future episodes (albeit with her eyes fixed), and her fandom grew. The fans collectively decided, based on some of her scenes, that Derpy delivered the mail in Ponyville, and that she loved muffins. Supervising Director Jayson Thiessen eventually learned of the fans’ love for Derpy, and he quickly went through all the remaining episodes of Season 1 and made the animators cross her eyes. But the Derpy love didn’t stop there.

In Season 2, Derpy became a fixture on the show. She was no longer just a background character, but was instead getting a lot of her own jokes. And then in one later episode, the creators not only had Derpy called out by name, but they gave her a voice actor and everything!

Soon after the episode aired, there was a firestorm of controversy, as some people believed Derpy’s crossed eyes and clumsy behavior meant the show was making fun of the handicapped. While that clearly wasn’t the case, there was enough of an outcry that the network altered the future airings of that episode on Netflix. Derpy’s name was removed from the episode, her eyes were uncrossed and she was given a new voice actor. The fans were very unhappy. For once the creators had listened to them, but then society took it away.

In the end, the original Derpiness of the episode is still available on DVD. And many people are eagerly awaiting any Derpy sightings in the upcoming Season 3. Even Hasbro, the toy company that owns My Little Pony, decided to show Derpy fans their love. A limited edition, official Derpy Hooves MLP toy was made available to buy at the San Diego Comic Con this year.

And you can love her and hug her and comb her pretty blonde hair

So if you were one of the dozens bronies at Comic-Con, you could have owned your very own official Derpy Hooves playtoy. Otherwise, you’ll have to fork over a few hundred bucks on eBay. That’s one popular pony.