10 Unexpected Origins Of Wrestling Characters
1. The Inspiration Behind Uncle Howdy
Who - who, who, who who who, who - is Uncle Howdy?
Why, he's just the ghost of the man who sold the world, of course.
Does that mean David Bowie is back? Because that might actually be good.
Snark aside, the new Bray Wyatt - whose name, in case you've missed it somehow, is Bray Wyatt - has connected with WWE fans in the arena and in front of the television set. On some objective level, it is nonsensical. That isn't default criticism of inherently silly supernatural wrestling: where was Uncle Howdy all this time? If a creepy, influential presence named Uncle Howdy all along was the source of Wyatt's evil, why was he blathering on about Sister Abigail for about a decade?
A: because everybody involved in the creative process knows that the old Bray Wyatt character was stigmatised as joke and they wish to disassociate you from it.
But from who - who, who, who who who, who - is Uncle Howdy drawn?
The character is heavily drawn from, yes, a horror movie, or at least a comedy horror: the 1983 picture 'Hysterical', a proto-Scary Movie spoof, in which Richard Biel plays Captain Howdy: the murderous ghost of a lighthouse keeper.
Captain Howdy's skin is grey, he carries a lantern, his face is stained with scar that looks like an elongated tear drop, and he can only really go in six-man tags.