Hanna-Barbera's most persistent villain: a driver who cheats his way toward victory, a Flying Machines pilot and a cartoon antagonist who rarely wins.
Dick Dastardly is a fictional villain created by Hanna-Barbera, known for cheating in the Wacky Races cartoon. He drives the Mean Machine, has a dog sidekick named Muttley, and has appeared in spin-offs, films and video games since 1968.
Dick Dastardly is the fictional villain of Hanna-Barbera's cartoons, best known as the cheating racer in Wacky Races. He has appeared since 1968 in series, spin-offs, films and games, and he is usually the figure whose schemes backfire. The English actor Terry-Thomas partly inspired the character.
Who is Dick Dastardly?
He is a fictional character who serves as the chief villain in a long run of animated series from Hanna-Barbera Productions. The shows that made him famous are Wacky Races and the spin-off that followed it, under the title Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines. His constant companion in mischief is Muttley, a scruffy dog whose wheezy laugh follows his master's failed plans.
His outfit is taken from old-fashioned motoring: a long blue duster coat, long red gloves, and a large striped hat with driving goggles attached. He also has a handlebar moustache.
A cartoon villain who was built to lose, and who keeps reappearing in every new version of the race.
Where did the character come from?
Dick Dastardly was first voiced by Paul Winchell, who used a characterisation that he later reused for Gargamel, the nemesis in The Smurfs. The character design also caricatured Winchell's facial structures.
Later voice actors included Rob Paulsen and Jim Cummings. Cummings was notable for voicing other characters that Winchell had originated, including Tigger and Zummi Gummi.
His recurring lines include an exasperated order for Muttley to act, several rounds of drat, and the resigned Curses, foiled again! line.
Wacky Races: the original rivalry
In Wacky Races, each episode is a long, hazard-filled cross-country road rally. Dastardly enters every time, driving a car numbered double-zero and named The Mean Machine. The machine is fitted with devious traps that he uses against rivals whenever a chance appears.
The series took its cue from the film The Great Race, and Dastardly was derived from that film's chief villain, Professor Fate, who was played by Jack Lemmon. The original show's narration describes the pair as double-dealing do-badders, a phrase that sums up the tone of the series.
Muttley is always at his side. The dog's laugh is the sound that usually follows a plot going wrong, and the duo's relationship is built around that contrast between Dastardly's confidence and his repeated defeats.
Why did Dastardly never win a race?
Dastardly never won a race in the original series, even though the Mean Machine was often the fastest car on the grid. He usually lost either through his own cheating or through bad luck, and in several episodes he chose to stop and set traps instead of driving on to the line.
He came close on several occasions. He was once caught posing for a picture during a photo finish, and at another point he stopped to sign an autograph for Muttley. Another time Muttley sabotaged the Mean Machine after Dastardly told him to stop the winning car.
On one occasion he did cross the line first, but officials disqualified him after deciding that he had lengthened his car's nose at the final moment. Later footage showed the nose had not been extended, which made the ruling look harsh. Other racers had pulled similar stunts without penalty.
In another episode the Mean Machine crossed the line first by accident, yet he was disqualified anyway. A string of vehicle mix-ups had left Dastardly and Muttley in the wrong car, which gave the officials grounds to rule against him.
The show's logic was that he could have won fairly, since his driving was often better than his rivals'. In one episode he came close to finishing first without cheating, but he chose to let the other racers finish ahead of him because he did not want to win that way.
Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines
The spin-off kept the character in the air. It drew on a 1965 aviation comedy titled Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, and Dastardly's look came from its villain, Sir Percival Ware-Armitage, a role played by Terry-Thomas.
Dastardly flew alongside two other pilots. Zilly was a coward who hid inside his own clothing whenever he was ordered to deploy, while Klunk was the mechanic and inventor whose language made sense only to Zilly. Together the three formed the Vulture Squadron.
The squadron's mission was to stop a messenger pigeon called Yankee Doodle Pigeon from delivering its messages to an opposing army. In a typical scene the pilots converged on the bird from different directions and crashed into one another, while the pigeon was left unharmed.
Dastardly came close to success on only one occasion in the series. Muttley, meanwhile, earned several medals that his master kept threatening to revoke, and he appeared to take real pleasure in his master's failures.
What were his later Hanna-Barbera appearances?
After the racing and flying series, Dastardly returned in later productions. In the 1980s Yogi's Treasure Hunt made him a rival who kept failing to find hidden treasure before Yogi Bear and his friends. In the early 1990s he raced in Fender Bender 500 shorts within the series Wake, Rattle, and Roll.
In Yogi's Treasure Hunt the island he led was named Dicaragua, and his full name was revealed as Richard Milhous Dastardly, a play on the former United States president Richard Nixon. One episode suggests that he and Muttley are the greediest creatures alive.
In the Fender Bender segments the duo drove a monster truck nicknamed the Dirty Truckster, which plays on the words dirty trickster. They won at least two races in those shorts, and one of the wins came with a prize that proved to be a piece of red paper rather than the Red Square itself.
Yo Yogi! featured a childhood version of him, known as Dickie, voiced by Rob Paulsen. He rode a bicycle that resembled the Mean Machine, and his plans often backfired on him.
Modern revivals and the 2017 reboot
Wacky Races Forever, a 2006 series, brought back a roster of new and returning racers. Dastardly, voiced by Jim Cummings, tried to remove them from the race, but the plan backfired on him. The pilot was not picked up by the network, so the series did not continue.
The 2017 reboot revealed that a Dick Dastardly who flew in the First World War, voiced by Tom Kenny, was the father of the original racer. In a later episode a descendant, Dick Dastardly III, wins a trophy after a bet that requires him to behave well and not cheat, which horrifies him.
In Scoob! (2020), Jason Isaacs voiced a darker version who has no hat or goggles and wears a dark purple coat. This version is more of a supervillain than a racer, commanding a giant airship loosely based on the Mean Machine. In comics he also appears in a futuristic race against Philip J. Fry in Futurama Comics #82.
In the third season of Jellystone! he was voiced by Dwight Schultz and served as mayor of New Bedrock, wearing his Flying Machines outfit. He also turned up in Space Jam: A New Legacy in 2021, where his car is seen during a basketball game.
Appearances at a glance
| Appearance | Format | Role or note |
|---|---|---|
| Wacky Races | Animated series | Main villain who never wins a race |
| Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines | Spin-off series | Leads the Vulture Squadron |
| Yogi's Treasure Hunt | 1980s series | Rival of Yogi Bear; full name revealed |
| Fender Bender 500 | Shorts in Wake, Rattle, and Roll | Drives the Dirty Truckster |
| Yo Yogi! | Short-lived series | Childhood version, Dickie |
| Wacky Races Forever | 2006 series pilot | Not picked up |
| Wacky Races | 2017 reboot | Ancestor and descendant characters |
| Scoob! | 2020 film | Supervillain voiced by Jason Isaacs |
| Jellystone! | Third season | Mayor of New Bedrock |
| Space Jam: A New Legacy | 2021 film | Cameo at a basketball game |
Why does the character still matter?
Dastardly remains one of Hanna-Barbera's best-known villains because he kept the same comic formula across decades: a cheat who rarely wins. Each new version tests that formula in a different medium, from video games to airships.
The 2000 Wacky Races video game made him a boss car, voiced by Jim Cummings and Billy West. A remastered version, Wacky Races: Starring Dastardly and Muttley, let players make him win a race, which drew a shocked or disgusted reaction from the narrator while Dastardly was delighted.
He has also made cameo appearances in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, in the episode Death by Chocolate, and in the South Park episode Handicar. A song by Madvillain, Accordion, from the 2004 album Madvillainy, names him as well. In 2013 a live-action campaign for Peugeot cast Porter Flynn as him, with Mark Jeffris performing Muttley.
In comics, a different version appears in Dastardly & Muttley, published by DC Comics under the Hanna-Barbera Beyond initiative. That version is Lt. Col. Richard Atcherly, a United States Air Force pilot who is mutated by unstabilium and becomes increasingly insane. A 2016 release, Wacky Raceland, gives the character a different past as a world-famous pianist who joins a race to a last paradise called Utopia, hoping to see his wife and son reborn.
Other cameos followed. Universal Studios Florida once ran a motion simulator ride, The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera, in which he and Muttley kidnapped Elroy Jetson, and the ride ended with his arrest. He also made a Cartoon Network announcement, and he appeared in Uncle Grandpa as one of the attendees at the Big Race.
A planned spin-off, The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, would have cast him as bodyguard to Penelope's younger brother. He was dropped from the first sketches before the final work. Even so, the Hooded Claw asked Penelope who she had expected, Dick Dastardly, a line that nods at that unused idea.
