Dick Dastardly

### Appears in

Wacky Races (TV Series)Dastardly and Muttley In Their Flying Machines (Spin-off series)

### Debut

See-Saw to Arkansas (WR 1968)

**Dick Dastardly** is a fictional character who appeared in various animated series by Hanna-Barbera Productions. Dastardly's most famous appearances are in the series *Wacky Races* and its spin-off *Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines*. He is essentially a caricature of the English actor Terry-Thomas, and of Professor Fate, a comic villain played by Jack Lemmon in the film *The Great Race*. Dastardly was aided in his schemes by his sidekick, a scruffy dog named Muttley who had a distinctive wheezy laugh, heard most often when Dastardly's schemes failed.

## Appearance

Dick Dastardly is one of the 11 racers in Wacky Races. He wears a purple jack and a purple and red striped racing cap with goggles. And he wears red gloves and black boots. And he has a long thin moustache on his face.

## Personality

Dick Dastardly, hence to his name, is a very tricky racer. He's known to deceitful, irascible, clever, kooky, determined, attentive, sneaky, treacherous, ambitious, respectful, diligent, loud-mouthed, bossy, demented, independent, cantankerous, kinky, devious, arrogant, self-absorbed, thoughtless, abusive, rough, defiant, loathsome and mischievous.

He always tries to stop the other racers, but his plans always backfire on him. Whenever he gets laughed at by Muttley, he gets back at him by assaulting him in various ways, but like most villains, he still cares for snickering dog.

Dick Dastardly can get frustrated if his plans backfire on him, and when he loses a race.

No mater what happens, Dastardly never sees victory.

## Trivia

* Excluding Dastardly and Muttley, all of the other racers won at least one Wacky Race. In one episode, they came extremely close to cross the finish line without cheating, but choose not to win that race and let the other racers finish before them. They want to win a race by cheating.
* On one occasion, in an episode which was voted the worst of the series, Dastardly actually won the race, but it was revealed he had cheated by extending the nose of his car (even though the actual finish shows no such cheating, implying that the judges possibly had the replay footage doctored due to prejudice against Dastardly. Although it should be noted that in the DVD release of this scene the photo finish was covered with smoke, thereby adding even more questions to this scene).
* Another time Dastardly has an opportunity to win legitimately, but stopped in front of the finish line to pose for his picture as it was a photo finish. Once he comes close to winning the race, but stopped to sign an autograph for Muttley, ending up in fourth place again
* In the Warrior Princess short, Dastardly is shown wearing his Wacky Races outfit while wearing his brown long cloak where he portrays as a sorcerer as the color scheme of his outfit is purple and red which is based from his military outfit in *Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines*.
* In the 2017 series episode "'Grandfather Knows Dast", it is revealed that the Dastardly from the original series is the grandfather of the 2017 version. It is also revealed that the original Dastardly went mad after his failed attempts to capture the pigeon.
* The main villain of *The Perils of Penelope Pitstop*, Hooded Claw somehow knows Dastardly, since in the episode "Jungle Jeopardy" he mentions Dick Dastardly's name. Due to this, is implied that somehow Hooded Claw and Dick Dastardly know each other.

## Trivia

* **Drat!**
* **Double drat!**
* **Triple drat!**
* **Curses, foiled again!**
* **Muttley, do something!**