Baldness doesn’t just happen to people in real life, there are hundreds of bald cartoon characters out there, too.
Here are some of the most well-known bald-headed cartoon characters to have graced our screens.
P.S. If your favorite isn’t on the list, try not to get too animated.
Popeye
Popeye the Sailor Man wasn’t dealt the best hand when it came to looks.
With a bulging chin and one eye, he proved that with a good personality you can still get the girl.
Popeye was a valiant nice guy who stood up to bullies. Despite the advances of Bluto, Olive Oil only had eyes for our nautical hero.
Quincy Magoo
Mr. Magoo first appeared on screens in the late 1940s but we never got to see him with hair.
Magoo is better known for his poor eyesight than his lack of hair. The distinguished gentleman’s trademark brown trilby is a great example of how hats can look great with a bald head.
Cyborg
The Teen Titans Go! cartoon is rarely off the TV in my house. My 7-year-old daughter reliably informs me that Cyborg’s original name was Victor Stone.
“When he lost a lot of his body parts, they had to be replaced with robotics”, she says.
In the original DC Comics, Cyborg has short, brown hair, but he’s bald in the admittedly hilarious Teen Titans cartoon.
Felonius Gru
Gru has been bald since hitting our screens in 2010’s Despicable Me.
It’s not explained, but if I had to guess I’d say the stress of working with the chaotic Minions would be enough to cause Gru’s Male Pattern Baldness.
Glenn Quagmire
For 10 seasons, Family Guy fans had no idea Quagmire was hiding a secret.
Then in season 11 episode 3, it happened. The man who gave us the catchphrase ‘giggity’ lost his toupee at a baseball game.
Quagmire is ridiculed online and temporarily turns into a grumpy old man. However, he suddenly opts for a hair transplant and is soon back to his old self.
Bill Dauterive
Sergeant William Fontaine de la Tour Dauterive is one of Hank Hill’s best friends in Fox’s cartoon comedy, King of The Hill.
Bill pines for his ex-wife and seems to have let his appearance slip following their divorce. Not only has he gained weight, but he’s also lost his hair.
Casper the Friendly Ghost
Casper was unlucky enough not to have hair in the afterlife despite dying when he was just 12 years old.
The first deceased character on this list, Casper never let his bad luck get him down. Despite dying from pneumonia and experiencing posthumous baldness, the show’s title suggests he maintained a positive attitude.
Elmer Fudd
On the rare occasion Fudd was seen without his famous trapper hat, Looney Tunes fans were treated to a glorious bald head.
We never found out why Elmer lost his hair, but it’s not impossible that his baldness was stress-related. That Wascally Wabbit Bugs inflicted enough trauma on the poor guy to make anyone’s hair fall out.
Stewie Griffin
It might be cheating to include a baby on this list. However, we’ve seen enough of future Stewie to know his hair situation doesn’t improve much.
Several Family Guy episodes include flash-forwards showing the grown-up Griffin with advanced Male Pattern Baldness.
We’ve also seen teenage Stewie with a full head of hair. But as he moved through adulthood Stewie was destined to lose his locks.
Stan Smith
The titular character from American Dad is another cartoon character whose baldness was revealed quite far into the show’s run.
Like Family Guy’s Quagmire, Smith wears a wig to hide his baldness. According to fandom.com, Stan’s MPB was caused by some experimental zit cream.
This was revealed in season 4, episode 8, when Steve arrives home early to find his father without his toupee.
Homer Simpson
Probably the most famous of all bald head cartoon characters, Homer’s hair has had plenty of focus down the years.
Baldness is a key element to the iconic character’s look. Screenrant even devoted an entire article to the history of Homer’s hairline, which is explained in multiple episodes of the legendary show.
Homer had a full head of hair well into adulthood. However, the stress of having kids and pressure at work took a toll on his once luscious mane.
Herbert Garrison
South Park Elementary’s fourth-grade teacher showed an admirable commitment to baldness.
Rather than shaving his balding head, Mr. Garrison chose to keep the remaining gray hair around the back and sides.
He even resisted the temptation to opt for a wig when he underwent a sex change and became Janet Garrison.
Roger Smith
Although we have no evidence that any of his alien race have hair, I’m still counting American Dad’s Roger as a baldie.
The Smith family’s resident extra-terrestrial is even listed on his fandom page as hair color: bald, so it totally counts.
Most of The Smurfs
It’s a little-known fact that all Smurfs are bald for the first 180 years of their life, with the exception of Smurfette and Sassette.
Female Smurfs are created by magic and are therefore blessed with flowing hair. Meanwhile, the boys have to wait almost two centuries for a few tufts of white hair to appear.
Squidward Tentacles
OK, so this is cheating a little because pretty much every male character in Spongebob Squarepants is bald.
But Squidward makes the list because, unlike his friends, we know he once had a full head of beautiful blonde hair.
In a season 5 episode entitled ‘The Original Fry Cook’, we see young Squidward, seemingly before Male Pattern Baldness took over.
Superintendent Chalmers
Having already mentioned Homer, we won’t go through the entire list of bald Simpsons characters (you can find that here if you’re interested).
But Principal Skinner’s aggressive boss gets a special mention just because it’s hilarious to remember the time Ralph Wiggum referred to him as ‘Super Nintendo Chalmers’.
John Herbert
Not every cartoon could get away with having an elderly character lust after a teenage boy.
However, not only does Family Guy make it funny but it actually has you sympathizing with poor Herbert, who is destined to be the victim of unrequited love.
His hair has long since left him, but the bald pervert mostly has other things on his mind.
Tommy Pickles
The adventurous lead character from 90s cartoon Rugrats had a vivid imagination, despite not being old enough to have grown hair yet.
Tommy also appeared in All Grown Up, where he’d grown out of his infant baldness and sported a full head of dark brown hair.
Caillou
In the Canadian cartoon of the same name, Caillou was four years old. This makes it quite unusual that he was hairless.
Unlike many other bald animated characters who are either babies or old enough to be suffering from Male Pattern Baldness, Caillou is old enough to have hair but mysteriously has none.
He may not be one of the most famous bald cartoon characters in the rest of the world, but Canadians will know and love this little dude.
The Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles
When four baby turtles were exposed to a mutagen that gave them human qualities, they didn’t acquire human-like hair on their heads.
This meant that they had to disguise themselves in public using hats, which is apparently enough to stop people from noticing you have green skin!
Skeletor
Not only did He-Man’s nemesis from Masters Of The Universe not have any hair, but he didn’t even have a scalp. Or any skin at all, for that matter.
Skeletor did sport a literal skullet in the 1990 reboot, The New Adventures of He-Man, when his helmet was destroyed in the episode titled “The Tornadoes of Zil”.
However, the 2002 MOTU reboot includes an interesting backstory for Skeletor. In this version, the villain was previously known as Keldor and had long, black/blue hair.
Professor Farnsworth
Futurama’s brilliant scientist is 160 years old, so no wonder his hair has long since left him.
There is evidence that Farnsworth had hair as a younger man, albeit as an 8-year-old boy.
C. Montgomery Burns
While there are plenty of bald Simpsons characters, Mr. Burns deserves a mention as one of the show’s main supporting characters.
There have been plenty of flashback episodes in the legendary cartoon’s history, some of which show a young Mr. Burns with curly brown hair.
However, the uneven skin tone on his bald head shows that no matter how wealthy you are, it’s important to take good care of your scalp.
Numbuh One
The leader of Sector V in Codename: Kids Next Door is bald as a result of the actions of The Delightful Children From Down The Lane, and ‘something to do with Numbuh 5 before she recruited him’ according to Fandom.
Numbuh 1 is seen in one episode transforming into a baby, and as he returns to his normal age he can be seen as a young child with brown hair.
Honorable Mention: Charlie Brown
The lead character of Peanuts appears to be bald on top, with a single tuft of hair at the front.
However, creator Charles Schulz explained back in 1990 that Charlie isn’t actually bald, but has hair so blonde that it’s barely visible.
However, we’ll include him here just because the 8-year-old certainly looks like he’s suffering some major diffuse thinning, and because he’s just an all-around great guy.
Bonus: Bald Dragon Ball Z Characters
There are just too many baldies to choose from in DBZ, so here’s a whole article dedicated to bald Dragon Ball Z characters!
