Strong Sad

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This article is about a character
in the Homestar Runner series.

Principal characters

Others

Strong Sad is a character in the Homestar Runner series of animated cartoons. He is the Eeyore of the cast, a big round grey lump of depression, with a large bellybutton apparently given to him by Strong Bad who used a drill to make it. Strong Sad is the youngest of the brothers Strong (Strong Mad, Strong Bad, and himself), and often finds himself on the receiving end of a humiliating prank by Strong Bad, not to mention the regular pummels both brothers afford him "every hour, on the hour."

He listens to gothic, emo, and ambient music, (e.g., Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Brian Eno, The Cure, etc.) and speaks in a thoroughly gloomy tone, sounding like a rather deflated Radar O'Reilly (though he was originally meant to sound like Michael Stipe [1].) He is represented as both intellectual and creative (his drawing of a dragon in a Strong Bad email is very artistic, and his calligraphy is exemplary), but his genius is usually overwhelmed by his depression and the violent attitude of his brothers. He also likes board games (more than most people), and plays them with various other board games on a regular basis.

He has never really overcome his youth as the picked-on little brother, and accepts his torment at the hands of his brothers with little complaint. Most of the other characters seem thoroughly uninterested in his presence, except for the annual Strong Sad Lookalike contest. He does manage a friendship with Marzipan, and is the only character who seems able to tolerate the presence of the enigmatic Homsar. The shape of his head is somewhat similar to the Manicouagan Reservoir, as shown in an easter egg in Strong Bad Email #146, pop-up. It has also been noted that Strong Sad's head looks similar to that of the Zoloft Dot, a spokestoon that appeared in television commercials for Zoloft in the late 1990s, which is an interesting bit of irony, because while Zoloft is supposed to help cure depression, Strong Sad is often referred to by every other character as "depressing." His large, elephant-like feet are known as "soolnds" and are apparently worth "sevral thousand" to poachers.

1 Alternate versions
2 External links

[edit] Alternate versions

[edit] Old-Timey - Sickly Sam

Strong Sad appears in the old fashioned The Homestar Runner cartoons as Sickly Sam. Sam is a skeletal figure who is even less popular than the modern Strong Sad. He also wears a potato (misspelled as "potate") sack. Whenever his needs aren't met, he disappears in a cloud of dust, to the sound of a drawn-out asthmatic wheeze.

[edit] Saddy Dumpington

Strong Sad appears in "The Folky Tale of Saddy Dumpington" as someone who tries to give happiness to everybody, but instead gives sadness. He has a tendency to tell people about depressing things (such as famine and death), but he thinks that he's telling people happy things. He often punctuates these sad sayings with the line, "Isn't that great?"

Upon being banished from town, he is almost immediately called back, on account of the town falling over in heaps of laughter, because they are unaccustomed to this lack of sadness. Delighted, though rather bewildered at the implication that he spreads sadness, he comes back dressed as a "weird snake." Instead of this being the sad distraction that was needed, all of the townsfolk fall over dead with laughter. This whole cartoon/story is used as an excuse to get out of Coach Z's gym class.

[edit] Hyperactive Strong Sad

Occasionally, viewers will see a version of Strong Sad that is a direct contrast to his normal, depressed state. This was originally seen in the Strong Bad Email "Caffeine", where Strong Bad put two "heaping spoonfuls of sanka" into Sad's orange juice. This caused Strong Sad to become "Erratic, Violent, and REALLY funny to watch". This is also seen as comedic relief in the SBemails "Boring (really)", and in "Secret Identity" as an easter egg.