Fictional
| Character | Played by: | Role on the show |
|---|---|---|
| "W" (Vicki Wong) | Vickie Eng | A parody of James Bond's Q, "W" is a kitchen gear specialist. "W" is antisocial, sardonic, and finds Brown very annoying. Brown realizes this, and intentionally fools with gadgets and acts silly to get a rise out of her. He also likes to sabotage her attempts to make sales. Even so, she is the most reliable source of equipment for Brown, as she knows everything about kitchen tools and appliances. Her appearances are accompanied by a theme that sounds similar to those heard in the James Bond movies. "W"'s full name is revealed in the episode "Salad Daze II: The Long Arm Of the Slaw". In later episodes, "W" began working in the "Good Eats Testing Lab". In season 11, her role was interchanged with that of the "The Dungeon Master", especially for food gadgets that imply food disintegration such as blenders and meat cubers. She reappeared in season 12. "Behind the Eats" revealed that in real life, Vickie Eng is Brown's chiropractor. In "Behind the Bird" "W" is revealed to be a cyborg. |
| Marsha Brown-Brady | Merrilyn Crouch | Brown's older sister. Marsha is a constant source of annoyance to Brown (and, as revealed in some episodes, to members of the Good Eats production staff). She often tricks or cajoles Brown into cooking for her, which usually initiates the topic of that episode. For instance, in "Circle of Life", Marsha manages to talk Brown into making dozens of doughnuts for her Bunny Scout troop's bake sale, and then tricks him into buying them all back. She has been divorced more than once, as Brown referred to her ink not having dried on her LAST divorce "yet" in "Behind the Bird". |
| Elton Brady | John Herina | Marsha's son, therefore Brown's nephew. Elton is often featured as Brown's assistant, learning the ways of cooking in the process. Brown treats Elton almost like his own son, despite his and Marsha's constant bickering. Herina, who looks strikingly similar to Brown, also plays a young Brown when necessary, as in the introduction to the roulade-centered episode "Fit to be Tied", and also appeared in the 1996 movie Nightjohn as the character Homer Waller. According to Brown, Herina is currently taller than Brown is, and Herina is currently enrolled in West Point. |
| B.A. Brown AKA "Anti-Alton" |
Alton Brown | Brown's usually nonverbal evil twin of sorts, who is sometimes seen wearing black or in a goatee. Brown uses camera tricks to appear as himself on one side of the screen and as his "brother" on the other. B.A. is often used in a manner similar to Goofus and Gallant to compare and contrast Brown's and B.A's cooking techniques and their results. In "American Pickle", for example, B.A. compares Brown's sweet pickled fruit to a recipe for extremely hot 'Firecracker' carrots. As shown in the episode "Sub Standards", he is Brown's identical twin in the Good Eats universe and can imitate Brown perfectly when he wants to. |
| Colonel Bob Boatwright | Alton Brown | A white-clad Southern gentleman based on Colonel Sanders, Colonel Boatwright demonstrates traditional Southern recipes such as mint julep, upside-down cake, and fried catfish. |
| Cousin Ray | Steve Rooney | Brown's cousin, who seems to be a bit of a redneck. Ray also appears to be either a con man or simply uneducated when it comes to food. In "Crustacean Nation", Ray claims that the shrimp he is selling are turning pink because they are happy to see Brown when actually, as Brown explains, they are cooking in their shells due to the heat. Steve Rooney also plays Brown's "Aunt Verna" who is seen at Brown's Thanksgiving dinner. |
| The Mad French Chef | Steve Rooney | Brown's arch-nemesis, who is stereotypically snobbish toward all non-French forms of cooking, and berates Brown for not using French techniques. Over the course of the series, the Chef seems to become more angry, as his title in different episodes changes to "Really Mad French Chef" and beyond. The Chef is currently voiced by Brown, as he is no longer seen on-screen except for one "appearance" as an oven mitt/puppet in the episode "Crepe Expectations". |
| Thing | usually Paul Merchant or Todd Bailey | Named after Thing from The Addams Family, Thing is a hand that appears in random locations to hand Brown ingredients and tools, to which Brown replies, "Thank you, Thing." or "That's a good idea, Thing." In "Behind the Eats", it was "revealed" that Brown's Thing is the son of the Addams Family Thing. Thing is rather mischievous, sneaking in a mouse trap in Alton Brown's tin storage in "Great Balls of Meat", or tossing Brown a mandolin when he is actually referring to the mandoline. |
| Paul | Paul Merchant | Paul is Brown's apprentice and intern. Paul is generally incompetent and quite often seems to stress out regarding food-related issues. Brown often uses Paul as a human guinea pig for demonstrations, as in "Chile's Angels". |
| Lactose Man | Paul Merchant | While appearing to be a superhero, he is in fact a nemesis to Brown, keeping him from sharing his dairy creations with those afflicted with lactose intolerance. Lactose Man usually appears in dairy product-based episodes. A variation of the Lactose Man character, Lever Man (albeit in the same costume) appeared in "Mussel Bound", which is dedicated to mussels. Brown may or may not know the true identity of Lactose Man, as he identified Lever Man as being his apprentice, Paul. The Lever Man costume was revamped for use as Lactose Man. Brown himself is not lactose intolerant, which he revealed in "Breakfast Eats II". |
| Chuck | Daniel Pettrow | Chuck is Brown's 'Butcher Neighbor'. He has appeared in several episodes, such as "Bean Stalker", "Squid Pro Quo", and "A Chuck For Chuck". Chuck also appears in "Romancing the Bird: A Good Eats Thanksgiving", where he drives a 'Turkey Truck' and explains the difference between fresh, frozen, and refrigerated turkeys. In "Chops Ahoy", Chuck abducts Brown's charcoal grill 'Fireball' in order to convince Brown to buy a new propane grill. |
| Frances Andersen | Widdi Turner | Frances (a parody of Annie Wilkes from Misery) is Brown's self-proclaimed biggest fan. She has a collection of many of the show's props that she purchased from the internet. Brown first encounters Frances in "This Spud's For You Too" after his truck breaks down, and she holds Brown hostage in "Ill Gotten Grains" after he loses his memory in a fender-bender. |
| Farmer McGregor | Bill Greeley | An elderly man who has a farm near Brown's home, he prides himself on his home-grown produce and enters them regularly in county fair food contests. Brown used to pilfer from McGregor's prized tomato patch, but soon stopped when McGregor realized the tomato dishes Brown gave him were made with his own tomatoes. McGregor also has the skills to produce larger-than-average produce, making a potato that weighed 29 lb (13 kg), although it lost in the "Big Food" contest to Brown's modest olive. McGregor also appears in the eggplant episode and brings Brown too many eggplants to use, often using wheelbarrows and cardboard boxes as delivery methods. The name of this character is most likely a nod to Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit children's books. |
| Coco Carl | Bart Hansard | Carl is the symbol of conglomerate chocolate manufacturers like Hershey. In "Art of Darkness II: Cocoa", he is seen peddling his products to people on the streets and does his best to force them down people's throats. After encountering Carl, Brown becomes fed up with Carl's inferior products and sets out to produce his own homemade versions, but not before declaring that Carl's cocoa has toxic ingredients. Carl is on the run from the law because of this. In "Puddin' Head Blues", Carl disguises himself as "Auntie Puddin'" and is arrested at the end of the episode for his "crimes." In "Power Trip" Brown visits Coco Carl in a solitary confinement cell in a parody of The Silence of the Lambs. |
| Sid Maxburg | Bart Hansard | Sid is a bombastic entertainment agent who is usually seen trying to revamp the images of allegedly forgotten foods like vanilla ("My Pod"), sweet potatoes ("Potato, My Sweet"), and okra ("Okraphobia"). |
| The Dungeon Master | Lucky Yates | Brown's personal dungeon master (a parody of Igor and Sméagol), who appears in "Tort(illa) Reform", "Cubing A Round", "Fruit Ten from Outer Space", and "There will be Oil". Brown usually disapproves of his loose grip on reality; for example, in "Cubing A Round" he spends $1,500 on a Swiss mechanical steak cuber using "the little plastic thing with the numbers on it" (AB's credit card). |
| "Government Agents", "Food Police" |
Brown, Marshall Millard, others | These characters occasionally appear to deliver legal information pertaining to the food(s) featured in an episode. The 'government agents' appear as 'Men in Black', mostly from the FDA or USDA, who give information about government quality standards for certain foods, speaking in a stereotypical loud, fast-paced, overly-serious tone. At times, they also claim that Brown's food does not meet government regulations, and as a consequence confiscate what he's cooked. Sometimes, Brown's aforementioned evil twin acts as a single "agent"; at other times, Brown and two other "agents" (generally played by members of the production crew) appear. In "Churn Baby Churn 2", Nic Sims of Ann Arbor, Michigan, a fan whose kitchen was remodeled by Brown in All Star Kitchen Makeover, played one of the 'Agents', who were dressed as soda jerks. |
| Itchy & Twitchy | Brett Soll and Jim Pace | Alton Brown's two lawyers, always dressed in business suits and carrying briefcases. They appear when AB is about to break some culinary law, saying, "Well, if it isn't my lawyers, Itchy and Twitchy." In the episode "Pretzel Logic", they direct Brown not to use lye in order to give color to his pretzels. Neither of the two lawyers talks, instead they open their briefcases and hand Brown papers which he reads and complains about, giving brief descriptions of the law. The joke goes on when the two are constantly handing Alton many papers. Sometimes, Alton is beaten by the system and must find an alternative way to cook food, and in other cases Alton uses his own method as a loophole. In "Orange Aid", it is revealed that Itchy can talk, as heard when he had a brain freeze from AB's orange ice cream. |
| Refrigerator Gnome | unknown VA | A garden gnome with a stereotype accent that lives in Alton's refrigerator and teaches the safety of refrigerator management, usually poking fun at AB for bad sanitation. |
Read more about this topic: Good Eats, Cast and Crew, Recurring Characters
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