Top 100 Fictional Male Role Models

100. Bugs Bunny (Looney Tunes)

Sure, he's a cute bunny, and sure, he's prone to extended bouts of cross-dressing, but does that really make Bugs Bunny any less of a man? His effortlessly nonchalant attitude at danger and his constant sense of humor toward the dumber creatures he meets make him, bar-none, one of the coolest Looney Tunes characters around. We all may relate to Daffy Duck when he loses the "duck season/wabbit season" argument, but we all admire Bugs.

99. Alan Partridge (I'm Alan Partridge)

If you've gotta be an overweight, impotent, washed-up TV personality, do it with some style. That's what Alan Partridge does. After accidentally killing a guest on his prime-time chat show "Knowing Me, Knowing You," Alan is sacked from the BBC and spends time writing an autobiography, insulting his production assistant, and trying to get laid. But for all of his pathetic, assholish qualities, Alan is one determined bastard: he never quits, never admits defeat, and never says die. You may call it childish denial. We call it admirable.

98. John Constantine (Hellblazer)

We're referring here to the comic version of Constantine, not Keanu's portrayal of him. The comic book John Constantine is by no means a hero: he rarely -- if ever -- fights monsters or demons, instead choosing to talk his way out of trouble. Even if his talk gets one of his friends into deep shit, it's enough for Constantine to just be alive for another day. He involves himself in the world of the occult not for cool or heroic reasons: he just digs the thrill of it. And really, can you blame him?

97. Samson (The Bible)

No matter how much you may think you care about your personal hygiene, you've got nothing on Samson. After he gets his magical, strength-giving hair cut off, he is blinded and forced to work as a slave in the temple of the Phillistines. But instead of bowing to them, Samson cowboys the fuck up and tears the temple down, killing everyone inside including himself. THAT, my friends, is what we call a bad hair day. (Rim shot)

96. Popeye Doyle (The French Connection)

Popeye's a badass, take-no-prisoners kind of cop like the ones who are placed higher on the list. He's relegated to the 90's, however, because he's kind of a moron. While he doesn't take shit from anyone, knows how to yank the bad guys' chains ("You ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?"), and is involved in one of the greatest car chases in cinema history, he also gets frequently outsmarted by a French senior citizen and eventually gets demoted for accidentally killing a fellow cop. Whoops.

95. Dante (Devil May Cry)

If there was ever a character in a video game that you’d want to be, it would have to be Dante from Devil May Cry. He is a shit talking, devil slaying, double pistol wheeling near immortal who has so much coolness about him Clint Eastwood would buckle. For Christ’s sake, he carried around two pistols named Ebony and Ivory as well as several swords. Can you name any other game character that women actually drool over? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

94.  Wayne Campbell (Wayne's World)

If this was 1992, Wayne would damn well be close to #1. If you were a know-it-all, slang spewing brat in the mid 90s, you learned what to say from Wayne. When a hot chick walked by, "Shwinggg!" When someone made a lame suggestion, "As if!" When you're being sarcastic, "When monkey's fly out of my butt!" And when in the presence of someone greater than yourself, "We're not worthy!" And I know you and your idiot friends still sing a coordinated Bohemian Rhapsody every once in a while. And we'll pretend the mullet you had in middle school...was an homage.

93.  Forrest Gump

Kindness goes a long way. Forrest Gump was born with grossly substandard IQ and a screwed up spinal column, but a determined mother and a universal friendliness to everyone who deserved it made Forrest Gump go pretty damn far in life. He makes the All-American team, survives Vietnam, meets two presidents, talks to John Lennon, and fucks Robin Wright Penn without getting herpes. Forrest Gump proves that if you can't be smart, just be charming. The ability to run insanely fast in full military or football gear probably doesn't hurt, though.

92. Borat

Racism, in general, is something intelligent culture frowns upon. Still, though, one must admit that if you absolutely had to be racist, you'd be Borat's variety of racist. He's almost friendly in his virulent anti-Semitism, and perfectly amiable when describing that women should be locked up in cages until needed for "sexy-time." We at DV don't condone racism OR sexism, but if you've gotta subscribe to an evil and inaccurate belief something, it wouldn't kill you to be nice about it.

91. Homer Simpson (The Simpsons)

Ah, Homer. The penultimate fatass drunkard. Has there ever been a cartoon character so ubiquitous in his portrayal of the dysfunctional father, so intelligent in his sheer idiocy? Even though the quality of The Simpsons has been on a slow burn since about the 9th season, the character of Homer will remain ingrained in America's subconscious long after the show ends.

90. Hamlet

Yeah, he spends about ninety percent of the play trying to convince himself to do what we all know he should have done right after his father's ghost visited him (namely, kill his usurping uncle Claudius), but he's only twelve years old. Plus, he succeeds in the end, and you've gotta give him some credit for that. As far as tragic heroes go, Hamlet is one of the cooler ones: he's intelligent enough to feign insanity, and when his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to betray him, he sees it coming a mile away. And even if he does die in the end, he does so having completed his revenge.

89. Kevin McAllister (Home Alone)

I know dudes who still rock the blonde bowl cut (Ben, I'm looking at you). And obviously, we all tried filling our houses with booby traps at some point after seeing this flick. But hairdos and childish pranks aside, Kevin taught us how to grow up into the men we are today. He watched violent gangster movies, he loved pizza, drank soda like beer and he couldn't wait to start shaving.  Too bad McCauley came out like such a freak. Blame that on Jacko (who's NOT on our list...despite being fictional).

88. Jack Ryan (Pretty much all of Tom Clancy's novels)

None of the film versions of Jack Ryan really do the character justice – Harrison Ford is playing Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck is playing Ben Affleck, and Alec Baldwin is playing Sigourney Weaver. Only in Tom Clancy's eight thousand novels (70% of which include Jack) does the seemingly meek CIA analyst really come through. This is a guy who starts off as a pencil pusher and, in the span of two decades, accomplishes the following: (1) saves the royal family from an IRA assassin, (2) leads the war on drugs, (3) is knighted by the queen, and (4) becomes goddamn president. Slice it any way you like, that's a hell of a lot for a man to accomplish in one lifetime, even for a Tom Clancy protagonist.

87. Michael Corleone (The Godfather)

I know what you’re thinking, “No way! Vito was the better role model!” Perhaps, but think about this. If you had to be a Mafioso who would you rather be? Michael or Vito? At first glance it isn’t an easy choice, since Vito was obviously the man. He came to America and started the reign of the Corleone family from scratch. Michael just inherited it. And while that may be true, Michael did what was necessary to keep the family at the top. He hunted down his enemies even at the cost of losing his own family members. He adapted to the changing times, while still keeping the Corleone name at the top. Vito never experienced the kind of pressure and attacks Michael did, and for that we salute him. So if you’re looking for a role model type to look up to, Michael Corleone is definitely your man.

86. Dr. Perry Cox (Scrubs)

Imagine the physique of a pro wrestler, the intelligence of a Harvard grad, and the anger of Lewis Black on a bad day, and you've got Perry Cox. He's irascible, cantankerous, and doesn't take shit from anyone at Sacred Heart Hospital. But he does, admittedly, have a soft spot—he works as a doctor so he can cure patients, and he essentially acts as the surrogate father of every newbie moron who approaches him with a question. Granted, he'll insult you and call you a girl's name when he gives you advice, but he will give you advice.

85. Sawyer (Lost)

Try to remember season one of Lost. The mystery. The intrigue. The lack of infuriating red herrings and stupid, tacked-on plot "twists" which ultimately go nowhere. Remember when we first met Sawyer? How much of an asshole he seemed to be, and how sure everyone was that he was going to turn on the others and go off on his own?

Remember when he turned against the others and went off on his own?

Sawyer is an asshole, no doubt, but you'd be too if your mom and dad were killed as a result of a con artist's scheme. He's on a constant search for the man who destroyed his childhood, and subconsciously wants everyone to hate him. As a result, he adopts a grizzled, arrogant persona which repels everyone. Except, of course, for the ladies. To date, Sawyer is – correct me if I'm wrong – the only person on the Lost island to get any trim since Oceanic Flight 815 crashed. Sawyer has banged both Kate and Michelle Rodriguez. Then again, sleeping with Michelle Rodriguez is like negatively getting laid, which would cancel out Kate. But don't think about that.

84. He-Man

Proclaimed as “The Most Powerful Man in the Universe” who the hell didn’t want to be this dude? Yeah, it sucked when you had to walk around as that pansy Prince Adam and your even bigger wuss of a cat, Cringer, but boy oh boy…the minute you yelled those words, “By the power of Grayskull…I have the power!” it was on motherfuckers. The man was just an ass kicker and unlike Conan, he got plenty of pus…Okay, maybe he didn’t but I can guarantee you he helped start the trend of doing a few sets of push ups before hitting the beach on the weekend. 

83. Buford Pusser (Walking Tall)

We shouldn't even have to explain what makes Buford Pusser so great. Just look at his name, for Christ's sake. Buford Pusser, a former wrestler, returned home to Tennessee after several decades only to find that the town he grew up in has been transformed into a den of vice and crime. With the cops on the take, Buford does the only thing he can: he runs for sheriff. And he wins. 2x4 in hand, Buford tears up gambling rings and whorehouses by the handful, pissing off the town's criminals so much that they kill his wife and seriously injure him. While Buford is technically a real person, his placement on the list is due to the sheer number of liberties the film took with his life: at no point, for example, did Buford ever walk into a gambling den and begin smashing slot machines with a two by four.

He should have, though.

It's not easy being green. It's also not easy to host a nightly sketch comedy show consisting of mentally deranged muppets, which is what Kermit had to do for a good few decades. Between dealing with Gonzo's bullshit, keeping Fozzie in line, and resisting the urge to punch Miss Piggy like the primadonna bitch she was, Kermit the Frog was always about a hair's breadth from a mental breakdown. He survived, though, and always kept a cool temper throughout his career: it takes a lot of balls to go through life dealing with other people's shit, and it's even harder when you're green. Kermit accomplishes both with serious pizzazz.

81. Cooper (Eurotrip)

If you haven't seen Eurotrip, you probably think it sucks. And it would, too, were it not for one character: Cooper. He's goofy, he's horny, and he's kind of retarded, but he's exactly the kind of guy you would hang out with in real life. He's confident, funny, sarcastic, and doesn't take shit from French robots. What more could you ask for in a friend?

80. The Mooninites (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)

The Mooninites are from the inner core of the moon. Their race is hundred of years beyond ours. Some would say that the Earth is their moon. But that would belittle the name of their moon, which is, The Moon. And they smoke while they flip the bird. Not to mention that their mere presence on a streetcorner can inspire paranoid, terrorism-fueled fear in an entire nation: how many space aliens can say that?

79. Frank TJ Mackey (Magnolia)

While Tom Cruise may be one of the creepiest men on the planet, he occasionally manages to channel that creepy into a truly memorable character. Enter Frank TJ Mackey, a self-help guru and author of "Seduce and Destroy," a guidebook that teaches you how to, in Frank's words, "Respect the Cock and Tame the Cunt." Frank is more or less insane, but he's obviously gotten a lot of trim. Plus, he includes a calendar in every goody bag at each of his seminars. How convenient is that?

78. Silver Surfer

It takes a lot of balls to give up an old belief system in favor of a completely new one, and that's exactly what the Silver Surfer does. After offering himself to Galactus in order to prevent the ingestion of his home planet, the Silver Surfer obediently helped the enormous villain devour countless planets before finally coming to Earth. After meeting the Fantastic Four and regaining the humanity he had lost after centuries of serving Galactus, the Silver Surfer finally rebelled against his master and helped the Fantastic Four defeat him. It took a shitload of courage to do what the Silver Surfer did.

77. Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street)

Yeah, the series went downhill after Nightmare 3. Yeah, he got cornier as time went on. Yeah, Freddy got his ass handed to him by Jason Voorhees. But one thing Jason never had, and never will have, is style. Freddy values quality over quantity: he doesn't really care how many people he kills, he just wants them to die in extended, painful, extremely imaginative ways. There's no harm in taking pride in your job, and Freddy most certainly does: whether he's devouring a young Johnny Depp or killing a heroin addict with poison needles, Freddy has the kind of imagination and tenacity that you just don't see much of anymore.

76. Shaun (Shaun of the Dead)

Shaun's got a shitty job, a deadbeat friend, and his girlfriend has left him. In regular life, he's a deadbeat who frequently fails to live up to his potential. He's basically a British version of you, or someone you intimately know. But when the dead start coming back to life, Shaun shows a whole new side of himself: he becomes a (reasonably) courageous and intelligent leader as he tries to simultaneously save his best friends and win back the woman he loves. Even though he doesn't exactly succeed with the first bit, it's the thought that counts.

75. Beowulf

A truly old-school badass – perhaps the most old-school of all. Just for the fuck of it, Beowulf defends the mead hall of Heorot from the evil creature Grendel. He rips his arm off and quite literally sends him back to his mother, whom he later guts with an enchanted sword. Hell, even when he's old and grey he still finds the time to kill a fucking dragon before dying.

74. Gaston (Beauty and the Beast)

Are you kidding? When he was a lad he ate four dozen eggs, ev'ry morning to help him get large. And now that he's grown, he eats five dozen eggs, so he's roughly the size of a barge! No one shoots like Gaston, makes those beauts like Gaston, then goes tromping around in those boots like Gaston. For the purposes of the screenplay, Belle was more than able to resist his totally masculine charms. In real life, however, there's not a woman alive who would give up the opportunity to treat Gaston's dick like a vagina trampoline. And even if Belle still didn't want him, he'd probably just have to get a guitar and girl pants to immediately win her over. Belle seems like one of those book-reading emo types.

73. Dignam (The Departed)

Marky Mark, you've certainly come a long way. Who would have thought that the man behind "Good Vibrations" would get nominated for a goddamn Oscar? And to get nominated for playing a needlessly assholish cop who treats everyone like something he just scraped off his shoe, no less! Bravo, Mark Wahlberg. Bravo. Dignam's the kind of guy who would call his own mother a whore just because she slept with his dad. Dignam's the kind of guy who would bunch a Nobel Peace Prize winner in the balls for being a pussy. Dignam eats dreams and shits rage. He's also one of like, two characters to survive The Departed.

72. Nada (They Live)

Everybody throws around the line, "I am here to kick ass and chew bubble gum, but I'm all out of bubble gum" pretty often without realizing one of its first and best uses. When Roddy Piper's sunglasses-wearing hero, Nada, sees that the world as he knows it is actually being controlled by evil, Reaganite aliens, he goes apeshit and starts blasting every disguised ET he can see, right after uttering the previous line. Later on, he also tries to persuade Keith David to try on his sunglasses in one of the single longest fight scenes ever recorded.

71. Gunnery Sgt. Hartman (Full Metal Jacket)

Gunnery Sgt Hartman is simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. Hilarious because he can spew obscenities at you for about ten minutes straight without once repeating himself, and terrifying because he can probably make good on all of those threats to cram you back into your mother's womb or feed you glass until you vomit out your eyeballs. If there's a better opening scene in a war movie than Hartman screaming at the new meat, we don't know what it is.

70. Max Fischer (Rushmore)

The hero of Rushmore is actually a negative influence. He's all style without substance, all talk with no action...basically, a bullshitter. But when he puts his mind to something important, he actually gets stuff done. Doesn't that describe you to the T?

69. Gordon Gekko (Wall Street)

People remember the "villain" of Wall Street for his "greed is good" statement (which was actually "Greed, for the lack of a better word, is good"). But what we all learned from Gordon is twofold--play the game, and you'll be fine, and...don't hire the dickhead poser, because he's probably an idiot. And the first lesson is something most of us still live by. When your teacher forgets to assign homework, you listen to ol' Gordon and keep your trap shut. If you pay for your gum and get a ten instead of a single, think of What Gordon Would Do: wink, take a piece of gum and pocket the ten. And if in your late night web searches you find a pr0n site looking for amateur footage, of COURSE you sell them that tape of your ex girlfriend.  Ahh, money.

68. Odysseus

Odysseus was perhaps the first "modern man" hero. That is to say, he had real flaws: he boasted too much, he made some bad decisions, and he sometimes got his men killed. Still, though, Odysseus always knew what to do in a given situation (we know this because Homer repeats the line "Odysseus immediately knew what to do" about a hundred fucking times), and killed every single guy in his hometown who was attempting to woo his wife. When Odysseus tells you to back off his woman, you best back the fuck off his woman.

67. Blake (Glengarry Glen Ross)

You know Blake. You've met him before. He's an asshole in every definition of the word. He's arrogant, condescending, mean, obnoxious, and, worst of all, a bully.

But he's right.

Everything he says is completely true, which is why you drove a Hyundai to work and he drove an $80,000 BMW. You wanna know what his name is? Fuck you, that's his name. Remember: A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing.

66. Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean)

Despite the fact that every teenybopper on the planet wants to jump his bones based solely on his looks, you've gotta admit that Jack Sparrow was pretty damn badass the first time you met him.The original Pirates of the Caribbean was tough to figure out, in many ways: who was the main character, Will or Jack? Was Jack even a good guy? Is Jack supposed to be comic relief, or an action hero? And as it turns out, Jack manages to walk that delicate tightrope between the funnyman and the badass: at one moment, he'll sail a sinking ship into port and walk around drunkenly, and the next he'll make out with Keira Knightley and kick Orlando Bloom's ass.

65. Jesse Katsopolis (Full House)

AKA Uncle Jesse, from Full House. We're of course referring to the Uncle Jesse of the first few seasons, before they gave him a motorcycle accident and a haircut. He was the "cool" uncle, the foil to the unbearable ham-handed Uncle Joey. And that's what we aspire to be. Not a cool dad, not a dork...but a cool uncle. For life.

64. Tequila (Hard Boiled)

Inspector Tequila was dual-wielding berettas and doing slow-mo dives through the air when Max Payne was still soiling his Pull-Ups. If you knew that a huge weapons deal between two Triad gangs was going to take place in an abandoned warehouse, but your boss told you he wouldn't send a tactical team, what would you do? If you would angrily curse at your boss and go home, furious that the criminal scum of Hong Kong will remain unpunished? Or do you grab a .44 magnum, a half dozen tear gas canisters, and a shotgun loaded with explosive shells so you can take both gangs out yourself?

63. Captain Kirk (Star Trek)

The beauty of James T. Kirk, as Captain of the USS Enterprise, is that he really did exist. He is not a fictional character and his influence on my life has been profound. How can you not look up to a man who’s primary duty is to uphold the “prime directive” of non-interference and yet, he interfered every time he had the chance. Why? Because he knew he could “make a difference” and change people’s lives for the better. The man threw conventional wisdom and political correctness into a Jeffries Tube and did what he thought was right while risking his life to do it. Captain James T. Kirk is a model of what a “great leader” should be, a man who’s charismatic, decisive, takes care of his crew and is not afraid to kick some ass when he has to.

62. Barry (High Fidelity)

He knows how to treat a lady.

61. Zaphod Beeblebrox (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Zaphod Beeblebrox has three arms, two heads, and enough attitude to sink the Starship Titanic. He's so cool, you could store a side of meat in him for a month; he's so hip, he has trouble seeing over his pelvis. Ignoring Sam Rockwell's ridiculous interpretation of the President of the Universe, and the equally horrendous paper-mache version of Zaphod in the original TV series, Beeblebrox is a stylish, over-the-top alien who isn't completely sure whether he's stupid, or just pretending to be.

60. Keyser Söze (The Usual Suspects)

He's a ghost. He's a legend. He's the most evil, most intelligent gangster in all of existence, and he tricked you into believing that he was nothing more than a helpless, stuttering cripple. We're talking about a guy who, when at war with another gang, shot his wife and child in front of a soldier just to show him how far he would go to protect his empire. Now, we're not suggesting you shoot your wife and child (unless they're really, really naggy), but we could all learn something from Soze's ability to do what his enemy won't.

59. D-FENS (Falling Down)

A character whose real name is unknown and therefore must be named after his custom license plate, D-FENS is the personification of the working man's rage. Tired of paying inflated prices for soda? Pointless road maintenance? Fed up with pretentious-ass country clubs or how burgers are never as good in reality as they are in the commercials? D-FENS knows where you're coming from. And where you have something to lose and therefore cannot go on a mass spree of property destruction and quasi-murder, D-FENS lost pretty much everything in a messy divorce.  

58. The Dirty Dozen

What do you get when you give a dozen evil, cutthroat, death-row murderers a chance to escape their death sentence by engaging in a highly difficult stealth mission? Well, you still get a dozen evil, cutthroat, death-row murderers, but at least they're killing Nazis instead of schoolchildren.

57. GOB (Arrested Development)

If you haven't watched Arrested Development yet, watch it. If you have, the first few lines of dialogue we ever hear from GOB are more than enough to explain his presence on this list:

"What's this, GOB? Another one of your magic tricks?"
"Illusion, Michael. A trick is something a whore does for money."

(Several passing children stop and look at GOB, horrified)

"…Or cocaine!"

56. The Dude (The Big Lebowski)

As Sam Elliott's mustachioed The Stranger says, sometimes there's a man who fits right into his times. And for the time that was the early 90's, The Dude was that man. He's a hippie who refused to grow up and have kids, he's a de facto detective who smokes a lot of pot, and he is—weirdly—kind of a Christ figure. Don't ask me to explain why, because it's something I heard from a film student and therefore may be bullshit.

55. Ash (Evil Dead)

Considering Duke Nukem gets to live out the rest of his existence by cribbing Ash's catchphrases, it's only fair that Ash get a place on this list. For goodness sake, the man killed all of his reanimated friends with an axe, chopped off his hand, and then grafted a chainsaw onto the stub. If that isn't the epitome of manly, what is?

54. The Blues Brothers

The original Blues Brothers (the travesty that was Blues Brothers 2000 shall not be considered a real movie) is a nearly perfect movie. It's got Carrie Fisher firing a rocket launcher, the theme from Rawhide, several spontaneous musical numbers, and one of the most insane car chases ever. And right at the heart of it are two of the coolest fictional musicians in existence: men who trek cross-country to prevent their childhood boarding school from being shut down. And, in the process, they manage to infuriate the police, the church, Aretha Franklin, the Illinois Neo-Nazis, and Twiggy.

53. Gambit (X-Men)

Criticize X-Men 3 all you want. It was poorly written, poorly directed, had zero character development, and was too short and anticlimactic. The film's real flaw, though, was the absence of Remy LeBeau, aka Gambit. Gambit seems to be one of the few X-Men who views his powers as a gift, and not a curse: while Wolverine and Rogue are busy bitching about how hard it is to go through life with superpowers, Gambit is throwing explosive playing cards and fucking everything that moves. While Gambit's ability to make ordinary objects explosive isn't necessarily the most useful mutant power in existence, (it's certainly not very subtle) his attitude toward having that power is what makes him so cool.

52. Count of Monte Cristo

If you're going to exact blood revenge on those who have wronged you, Edmond Dantes a.k.a. The Count of Monte Cristo is the man you should look up to. He is patient but vengeful. Granted, being given a butt load of buried treasure helps your cause tremendously, this should not deter you from the overall plan if you are not wealthy. The Count is everything any future vengeance inflictor should aspire to become. Just remember, if a buried treasure doesn't come your way, just balance transfer all your credit cards into that one new Visa and you're set.

51. Ellen Ripley (Alien)

While this is technically a list of male role models, Ripley has pretty much grown a cock by the time Alien 4 starts. She's literally the only character to survive all four films (two of them good, two of them shit), and she undoubtedly grows as an action hero throughout the series. She starts off as the crew member you're positive is gonna get killed first, and ends up waging a one-woman war against those shithead Xenomorphs we've all come to despise. Ask for another Alien vs Predator movie all you want: the only thing that can kill an Alien for sure is Ellen Ripley and her gigantic balls. 

Also, several astute viewers have pointed out that near the end of the first Alien flick, when Ripley is in her underwear, you can definitely see some kind of bulge.