History Characters / RedDwarf

* ViolentGlaswegian: Usually inverted. Despite being from the Gorbals [[note]]An area of Glasgow notorious for being ''very'' rough in the past, but apparently ''extremely'' gentrified by the 22nd century[[/note]], Kochanski's usually the more restrained and sophisticated of the crew. Though she does once punch Lister in the face for unwanted advances, and bashes Kryten over the head with a wrench after an incredibly stressful night.

* {{Expy}}: In the ''Dave Hollins: Space Cadet'' sketches from ''Radio/SonOfCliche'' Dave Lister/Hollins was written as a parody of Dave Bowman from ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey''.

* AffablyEvil: While he is the main antagonist of the episode he appears in, it can't be said that he's not a great host. He gives Rimmer a HardLight drive, removes Lister's appendix to cure his peritonitis and gives each of the crew [[GildedCage quarters suited to their personalities]] as well as feeding them top-notch food. Lister notes that when he writes his "Good Psycho Guide" that he is going to give Legion raves with a rating of four-and-a-half chainsaws.

* HesBack: "Well, I said I'd be back for breakfast! How're those kippers doin', fellas?"

-->'''Lister''': Stop calling everything "[[YouKeepUsingThatWord Crypto-fascist]]". You make me sound like I was a complete git!

--> '''Lister''': ''3 million years?!'' But I've still got that library book!

--->'''American!Lister''': ''3 million years?!'' My baseball cards must be worth a '''fortune!'''

* VitriolicBestBuds: With Rimmer. They constantly bicker and prank each other, but, for better or worse, they are friends - albeit very, ''very'' deep down. A major theme of the show is that while they share an exceptionally close bond and always look out for each other, their personalities are simply too different to coexist for an extended period of time before they start to clash and grate on each other's nerves.

-->'''Lister''': Your explanation for anything slightly peculiar is aliens, isn't it? You lose your keys, it's aliens. A picture falls off the wall, it's aliens. That time we used up a whole bog roll in a day, you thought that was aliens as well.\\
'''Rimmer''': Well, we didn't use it all, Lister. Who did?\\
'''Lister''': ''({{beat}})'' Rimmer, ''aliens'' used our bog roll?

* CameBackWrong: The version of Rimmer [[spoiler: recreated by nanites]] in Series VIII is the unlikable, self-centered version from before the events of Series I. This has apparently been rectified as of "Back to Earth".

** "Stoke Me A Clipper" takes this further, with the revelation that there are [[spoiler: numerous Rimmers out there taking up the mantle of Ace and going out to do good, just as "our" Rimmer eventually does. This implies that even the smeggiest versions of Rimmer might have some heroism in there, somewhere]].

** In ''The Red Dwarf Survival Manual'', he recalls a time in the ship's cafeteria when the guy next to him started choking. Rimmer tried to administer the heimlich maneuver - which he believed involved putting the victim's head between their legs and making them drink copious amounts of water. As a result, the poor fellow ''drowned''.

-->'''Lister''': Rimmer, you can't blame me for your lousy life.\\
'''Rimmer''': Oh, yes, I can.\\
'''Lister''': See! It's always the same. You never had the right pens for your G.E. drawing. Your dividers don't stretch far enough.\\
'''Rimmer''': [[ComicallyMissingThePoint Well]], [[DiggingYourselfDeeper they don't]]!\\
'''Lister''': See! In the end you can't turn around and say, "I'm sorry I buggered up my life. It's all Lister's fault!"

** The novels note that Rimmer genuinely has some artistic talent, especially in the use of colours and in cartography.

** In "Kryten", he mocks Lister for being "toffed up to the nines" in preparation with their encounter with the ''Nova 5's'' presumed-to-be-alive crew - while wearing his best dress uniform.

-->'''Rimmer''': ''Up, up, up'', that's where I'm going!\\
'''Lister''': Not until you pass an engineer's exam. And you won't do that because you'll just go in there and ''flunk'' again.\\
'''Rimmer''': Lister, last time I only failed by the narrowest of narrow margins.\\
'''Lister''': You what? You walked in there, wrote "I am a fish" four hundred times, did a funny little dance, and fainted.

** "Confidence and Paranoia" reveals that he writes up "daily goal" lists for himself - and hardly ever completes those goals.

--->'''Cat''': Hey, monkey, you're sick. Sick, helpless, and unconscious. If you weren't my friend, I'd steal your shoes!

-->'''Kryten''': Sir, [the crew of the ''Enlightenment''] have taken Mr. Rimmer!\\
'''Cat''': Quick; let's get out of here before they bring him back!

-->'''Kryten''': For is it not written, "the Iron shall lay down with the Lamp?" Are you not a pantheist sir?\\
'''Lister''': Well yeah, I just don't believe it applies to kitchen utensils. I'm not a ''[[IncrediblyLamePun frying]]'' pantheist!

-->'''Hollister''': If the crew find out I'm really [[spoiler:just "Dennis the Doughnut Boy"]], I'm finished.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: He is true to his word, at least at first. His victims ''do'' get a trial based on their own standards, with a simulated version of themselves as their judge, so from his perspective, he's only eliminating those who deep down know they're unworthy. As an example, he spares [[spoiler: Rimmer]] because he genuinely believed he tried his best given [[FreudianExcuse his terrible childhood.]] Ultimately, though, the Inquisitor is still a megalomaniac who believes he has the right to erase people from existence, and he's willing to kill whoever he wants if those he is judging piss him off enough.

-->'''Nirvanah''': We are holograms. There is no risk of disease or pregnancy. That is why in our society we only believe in sex -- constant, guilt-free…''sex''.

* ShortHairWithTail: He usually wears his hair short on the scalp, occasionally with shaved sides as seen in the above image, with a long ponytail of dreadlocks at the back.

* UnexpectedVirgin: The crew was a bit surprised to learn that Cat hasn't had sex yet and thought he would have, at least, a history of partners but Cat's reasons were very easy to understand. Cat grew up on the ship and the only women he knew were related to him and they were trying to prevent incest.

->'''Played By''':Creator/MacMcDonald (1988, 1999, 2017)

* AlwaysSomeoneBetter:
** It's shown several times throughout the series that Rimmer seems almost to ''need'' to believe that he is this to others, especially Lister. Even despite Lister's indifference to rank, when the official chain of command is disrupted, it drives Rimmer nuts:

* AdaptationNameChange: [[GenderFlip Her]] last name is Kirk in the novels and Tau in the American pilot.

** Is also a woman in the U.S. pilot.

'''Rimmer:''' Ah, but they don't do they? You say, ''"Keep an eye on that lamb,"'' and they do. They sit there for three hours and watch it burn.

->'''Played By''': Alexandra Pigg (pilot episode); Clare Grogan (1988, 1993); Creator/ChloeAnnett (1997-?)

* CharacterizationMarchesOn: In her earliest appearances when played by Clare Grogan, she was quite friendly, flirty with Lister and had a Scottish accent. By the time she had joined the main cast (and Ms Grogan had been replaced by Chloë Annett) she was rather neurotic, very upper class and had an English accent ([[NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent although still canonically from Scotland]]).

* FakeShemp: The Kochanski seen at the end of ''Stasis Leak'' was played by assistant floor manager, Dona [=DiStefano=] because Clare Grogan was told she was done filming for the day and went home.

* TheLadette: In the ''Last Human'' novel, thanks to filling in the missing Lister's role in several of the scenes based on the TV series, she's this. As ''Last Human'' was written before series VII, it's based on Grogan's portrayal.

A very minor, but very well-remembered, character, Talkie Toaster belongs to Lister, is equipped with artificial intelligence and, to the annoyance of everyone, completely obsessed with making toast. Was destroyed off-screen by Lister sometime during the first two series and rebuilt (with a completely different voice and appearance) by Kryten in Series IV. It's not clear if Talkie Toaster is defective, or if it's just because the product is so cheap ($₤19.99, plus tax). Way too cheap. And way too nasty.

* MoralityChip: His guilt chip maintains his behavious protocols. It tends to be overactive, which the Polymorph takes advantage of to drain his guilt. He becomes a [[{{Jerkass}} complete asshole]] without it. Spare Head Two has this happen as well when he gets Lister to disable his guilt chip, leading him to cook a dead man for Lister and The Cat's dinner. The novel ''Backwards'' reveals that Kryten's excessive guilt is the result of a wire feeding into his guilt chip somehow having been crossed with one of his CPU's internal accellerators.

* {{Chickification}}: In the ''Can't Smeg, Won't Smeg''special, she complains that she doesn't want to taste the dishes being prepared because she had already eaten a stick of celery the previous week and spends most of the episode in the corner as a NervousWreck before being practically in tears when forced to eat the food, before puking it up into the waste disposal unit.

Kryten is a 4000 series mechanoid. He was encountered by the crew on the wreck of the starship ''Nova 5'', where he had obediently served his three female owners, not realising they had died on landing. Although, in the novels Kryten is actually the cause of the crash as he scrubs the computer's motherboard and guidance system out with hot soapy water as a nice surprise, causing it to malfunction and randomly spout French poetry. Kryten was helped to break his programming by Lister and eventually chose to oppose Rimmer, before leaving on Lister's space bike. He crashed and was rebuilt by Lister, giving him a new accent and new programming.

* BrassBalls: "Justice" shows that he's perfectly willing to go toe to toe with a Simulant, armed with nothing more than a [[PipePain lead pipe]], as opposed to shooting him in the back. Bear in mind that earlier in the episode, Kryten informs the crew that the Simulant is perfectly capable of surviving bazookoid fire for long enough to make balloon animals out of someone's lower intestines. [[spoiler:The Simulant is carrying both a knife and a gun, but fortunately, the Justice Field turns his own attacks against him.]]

** Averted in the novels, where he very clearly thought it through in great detail (he researched the regulations to discover the offence that would carry stasis as the minimum mandatory punishment, which was breaking quarantine, and made sure he found an expensive purebreed show cat which he had given every inoculation possible to guarantee he didn't ''actually'' make the crew sick, and only took the photos when he realised Frankenstein hadn't actually been detected by the ship's scanners, all to ensure he could sleep through the three year trip back to Earth). There was no way he could have predicted the drive meltdown which forced Holly to take ''Red Dwarf'' out of the solar system for 3 million years. It's possible he actually had this plan in the show too, considering the cheery little wave he gave just before he was sealed into stasis.

* {{Hypocrite}}: Whilst Lister is genuinly more moral than the likes of Rimmer, he does have a habit of chewing him out for certain behavior, only for later episodes, or the same one, to show he sometimes thinks in the same way;

** He explains to Rimmer that Ace is still Rimmer, just from another dimension. However, in Series 7, he insists that ''he's'' Dave Lister whilst another from an alternate dimension is "The Anti-Lister" (though this ismostly due to that other Lister being Kochanski's partner).

* LaserGuidedKarma: In the novels, it's explained that 18 months was precisely how long it would take for the ''Red Dwarf'' to finish its run and reach Earth, and the punishment for smuggling a cat on board was precisely 18 months in stasis. Lister learned of this in advance, and deliberately got caught after they took off so he could spend the trip in stasis, and thereby make the trip without working. Though here the karma is nearer to DisproportionateRetribution.
** This doesn't really mesh with the notion that he was saving up all his pay to buy a hot dog stand on Fiji. Then again, in the AU of the novels his ambition was simply to get back to Earth because he'd ended up off-world after a particularly drunken birthday pub crawl and the hot dog stand is never mentioned.

->'''Played By''': Alexandra Pigg (pilot episode); Clare Grogan (1988, 1993); Chloë Annett (1997-?)

* HappilyAdopted: He was taken in by the Lister family.

* HeterosexualLifePartners: They might argue and hide their genuine fondness for each other under insults, but Lister and Rimmer have been sharing the same sleeping quarters for decades despite having an entire ship to themselves and never get tired of spending time together. Of course it might not be completely platonic on Lister's part, since he once dreamed about kissing Rimmer when he was gone during Series VII, and back in Series I claimed that you don't dream about someone unless you had some sort of feelings for them.

* VitriolicBestBuds: As much as he'd deny it, he's definitely got this relationship with Lister. For as much time as they love trading insults, the two spend pretty much all of their time together, sleep in the same room despite having multiple sleeping quarters to choose from, and are ''always'' there for each other.

** In the first few series Rimmer is obsessed with aliens, apparently never realising that the Cat is technically an alien since he isn't human and wans't born on Earth. The same is true for the GELFs the crew encounter.

* EverythingsBetterWithPenguins: Mr Flibble.

* BuxomIsBetter: We don't get to see, since she appears as a head and shoulders onscreen, but Rimmer orders Kryten to install large breasts on her.

* DrinkBasedCharacterization: Lister's drink of choice is lager, reflecting the working class nature of his character. When ''Starbug'''s curry supplies are wiped out, his breakdown is made worse when Kryten informs him that the only alcohol left is either Chinzano Bianco or adcovcaat. He's notably disdainful of wine, at one point ranting about how a man he sees in a wedding photo with Kochanski must be a pretentious snob who obsessed over house prices and puts wine on his Cornflakes, and one of the few things he's ashamed of in his past is having once gone into a wine bar. That said, he is willing to drink champagne if he can get it served in a pint glass.