The 15 Most Ridiculous WWE Gimmicks Fans Will Never Forget

The beauty of professional wrestling is how it has always been able to feature outlandish characters who would never exist in real life.

WWE has featured clowns, kung-fu masters and mystical beings alongside people who appear to hold regular jobs on the side like accountants, garbage men and barbers.

At one point, WWE even had a member of the Guerrero family dress up in a turkey costume and hatch from an egg on live television. But more on that in a bit.

As fans, we choose to embrace this silliness because it makes the experience of watching pro wrestling more fun, even if some of the gimmicks are ridiculous beyond belief.

Let's take a stroll down memory lane and look at some of the most memorable and goofy characters in WWE history.

The Hurricane

For more than a decade, superheroes have dominated the entertainment industry, but Shane Helms was running around with a mask and a cape before it was cool.

The Hurricane is one of those gimmicks that sounds like a horrible idea at first. Why would WWE take one of its smaller wrestlers and have him pretend to be a caped crusader?

It wouldn't have worked had it not been for the incredible amount of effort Helms put into portraying the character and making it entertaining.

Everything about his character was meant to make you laugh, and that is exactly what happened every time he stepped through the curtain.

Whether he was beating guys you would never expect him to beat or being hit with a frying pan by Molly Holly, you couldn't help but be happy whenever he was on your screen.

Helms recently reprised the role for an appearance at San Diego Comic-Con.

Mantaur

Mantaur. All you have to do is say his name once and any wrestling fan from the '90s is going to have an opinion about the character.

Mike Halac was a journeyman wrestler who worked for several promotions. He never won gold in WWE, but he did defeat Jerry Lawler for the USWA Unified Heavyweight Championship in 1997.

Mantaur is one of those infamous gimmicks everyone brings up when they talk about the most ridiculous things WWE has ever done, but some people might not realize he appeared in WWE as a different character.

When Goldust fought The Ultimate Warrior at In Your House 7 in 1996, Halac appeared in Goldie's corner as his bodyguard.

If you have never seen Mantaur in action, watch the included video. It's amazing.

Isaac Yankem, DDS

Glenn Jacobs has had a few different gimmicks in WWE. His most famous is obviously Kane, but he also appeared several times as a demented dentist named Isaac Yankem.

This all happened in 1995, when Lawler was feuding with Bret Hart. Yankem was brought in as The King's muscle and had several matches with The Hitman, including one inside a steel cage on an episode of Raw.

This is one of those situations wherein you know people were just throwing out random occupations until someone said dentist and Vince McMahon went along with it.

The gimmick didn't last long, but his disgusting habit of trying to pull out his opponents' teeth is something you can't unsee.

Repo Man

Continuing with the trend of people who had a civilian job as a gimmick, Barry Darsow is better known to many WWE fans as Repo Man.

Darsow is probably more well-known for portraying Smash in Demolition, but the Repo Man character holds a special place in wrestling history as one of the goofiest.

For some reason, his attire included a Zorro-like mask to hide his identity, but at least the tire tracks on his tights kind of made sense.

Unfortunately for Darsow, he never reached the same level of success with the Repo Man character as he did with Demolition. He lost most of his matches and only had a couple of notable feuds with the likes of The British Bulldog and Randy Savage.

Papa Shango

The Undertaker and Kane might be WWE's most recognizable mystical characters, but anyone who watched wrestling in the '90s probably has fond memories of Papa Shango.

Charles Wright has worked for WWE as Kama and The Godfather, but his first major gimmick was a voodoo practitioner who attempted to curse his opponents.

His most famous feud was against The Ultimate Warrior, but it fizzled out before they could have a blowoff match.

Shango also received a shot at the world title against Bret Hart on an episode of Saturday Night's Main Event but came up short.

Wright brought back the character for a 2018 Halloween special on WWE Network, reminding fans of the wild gimmicks so many of us loved as children.

The Boogeyman

By 2005, WWE had moved away from the colorful characters we knew from the '90s, which is why it was so surprising to see the company introduce The Boogeyman on SmackDown.

His strange attire and face paint were enough to let you know this wasn't supposed to be taken seriously, but his penchant for eating worms made him stand out more than most.

Unfortunately, Boogeyman never won any titles during his time with the company. However, he will forever be remembered for taking part in one of the grossest segments in WWE history.

During an episode of Piper's Pit, Boogeyman proceeded to bite a huge growth off of Jillian Hall's face and eat it, forever scarring generations of wrestling fans in the process. Do not watch the clip if you are squeamish.

Fake Diesel and Fake Razor Ramon

When Kevin Nash and Razor Ramon left WWE in 1996 for WCW, they were unable to take with them the Diesel and Razor Ramon characters they had portrayed for years.

WWE still owned the rights to these gimmicks, and it was determined to use them. Glenn Jacobs was tasked with playing Diesel, while Rick Bognar was turned into Ramon.

It was a bad idea from the beginning, but WWE kept with it for almost a year. The new Diesel and Ramon appeared at a few PPVs and picked up some wins before the idea was quietly dropped.

This is one of those things fans remember for how bad it was with no sense of irony. Some gimmicks can make you laugh years later. This is not one of those.

WWE has wiped all clips of this debacle from YouTube, so enjoy a match featuring the real Diesel and Razor Ramon in the video above.

IRS

Mike Rotunda had a great career that lasted more than 30 years, and he won several championships with different companies, but his most famous gimmick will always be IRS.

Being an accountant is not something anyone does for the fun or glory, so it seemed odd when Rotunda debuted as a former tax collector.

He made puns about money and taxes and spent a long time as an associate of Ted DiBiase. Together, IRS and The Million Dollar Man won the WWE tag titles on three occasions.

Rotunda had several gimmicks throughout his time in the business, but he always goes back to the IRS character whenever WWE needs to showcase some legends.

His most recent appearance as the character happened on the Old School episode of Raw in 2014.

The Gobbledy Gooker

Credit: Rob Schamberger

The Gobbledy Gooker.

WWE has featured countless weird characters over the years, but it reached the height of lunacy when a giant turkey hatched from an egg on pay-per-view.

The Gobbledy Gooker is possibly WWE's most famous blunder, and the character has become something the company references when it wants to laugh at itself.

The original man under the mask was Hector Guerrero, but WWE has brought back the gimmick a couple of times over the years for comedy purposes.

Drew Gulak wore the costume on an episode of 205 Live and called himself The Gobbledy Gulaker, and Jey Uso used it as a disguise to fool The New Day on a 2015 episode of SmackDown.

Brutus 'The Barber' Beefcake

Think about the last guy who cut your hair. Did you get the impression he wanted to earn a nice tip, or did it feel like he wanted to beat you to a pulp?

Brutus Beefcake was a WWE and WCW mainstay during the '80s and '90s. He worked under several different names, such as The Butcher and Zodiac. But he is mostly associated with his Barber gimmick. 

After he would defeat an opponent, Beefcake would usually grab his oversized sheers and take a few locks from his opponent as a souvenir. And since this was the '80s, almost everyone had long-enough hair for him to take.

His talk-show segment, The Barber Shop, was popular during its day and featured one of the most famous moments in WWE history, when Shawn Michaels superkicked Marty Jannetty through the set's window.

Beefcake only won the WWE Tag Team Championships one time, alongside Greg Valentine, but he held several titles in other promotions throughout his storied career.

Val Venis

WWE has been testing the waters with more mature content in recent months, but nothing the company has done recently comes close to when it had a former adult film star as a wrestler.

Val Venis never worked in the pornography industry, but he played the part well and went on to have moderate success in WWE with the character.

He held the European, Intercontinental and Tag Team Championships during his time with WWE and had some memorable feuds with the likes of Ken Shamrock and Kai En Tai. 

Venis went on to appear in TNA under his real name, Sean Morley, for a brief time in 2010, using the same mannerisms.

Duke 'The Dumpster' Droese

Dusty Rhodes was proud of being a blue-collar kind of guy, but Superstars like Duke "The Dumpster" Droese took it to another level by playing characters with actual occupations.

His entrance music included the unmistakable sound of a garbage truck backing up, and he always made sure he had a trash can handy with which he dealt with his opponents.

Droese worked for WWE at a time when almost everybody had some kind of fake job outside the ring, so seeing a garbage man wasn't that weird when his co-workers included a clown and a king.

He made quite an impact considering he never held any gold and only worked for WWE for a couple of years, but he was memorable enough to bring back at WrestleMania X-Seven for a gimmick Battle Royal.

Yokozuna

Yokozuna is one of the most memorable Superstars from the '90s. Ask any wrestling fan who grew up during that period, and they will have at least one memory involving the Sumo wrestler.

As most people know, Yokozuna wasn't his name, he wasn't Japanese and he wasn't a sumo wrestler. His real name was Rodney Anoa'i. The Yokozuna name was a reference to the highest rank a sumo fighter can reach in Japan.

He rarely spoke on WWE television and had Mr. Fuji act as his manager for most of his time with the company.

Anoa'i died at the age of 34 in 2000, but he left countless wrestling fans with great memories. He achieved great success as a two-time WWE champion and two-time tag champ alongside the late, great Owen Hart.

The Brooklyn Brawler

When it comes to famous jobbers in the wrestling industry, few are as well-known and beloved as The Brooklyn Brawler.

Steve Lombardi had several different gimmicks during his time with WWE, even appearing as Doink the Clown for a little while, but nothing compares to his ragged jersey and ripped jeans.

The Brawler was a mainstay for several years as an enhancement talent before retiring from full-time competition in 1998.

He has appeared several times since then for cameos and gimmick matches to keep alive the legend of The Brooklyn Brawler in the minds of young fans around the world.

Honorable Mention: The Shockmaster

This article was about WWE characters, but we can't talk about the most ridiculous gimmicks of all time without mentioning The Shockmaster.

Unfortunately, he only made one appearance with his shiny silver helmet, but it is a moment no wrestling fan will ever forget.

Falling through a wall, losing his helmet and fumbling to get it back on while everyone on the stage was attempting to quell their laughter made it even funnier.

WWE has kept alive the memory of this character over the years by both mocking and paying tribute to it and the man who played him, Fred Ottman.

In addition to the painting of The Gobbledy Gooker you saw earlier, Rob Schamberger, WWE's resident artist, has immortalized this moment with the painting you saw at the top of the article.