History ImaginaryFriend / LiveActionTV

* In the mini-series ''Series/SyndromeE'' (an adaptation of the novel by Franck Thilliez & Anbara Salam) [[DefectiveDetective Sharko]] is followed around by his deceased fifteen-year old daughter. While she's often aggravating, he refuses to receive treatment for what could be either a brain tumor or mental condition, as he's unable to give her up.

* In the mini-series ''Series/SyndromeE'' (an adaptation of the novel by Franck Thilliez & Anbara Salam) [[DefectiveDetective Sharko]] is followed around by his deceased fifteen-year old daughter. While she's often aggravating, he refuses to receive treatment for what could be either a head injury or mental condition, as he's unable to give her up either.

* ''Series/TheAndyGriffithShow'': The preeminent example came in "Mr. [=McBeevee=]." Yes, Mr. [=McBeevee=] is very much real, and it's an averted trope, but the way an overly excited Opie describes his new friend, a telephone lineman he had met in the woods, to his Pa, it seems that this man is fictional. (After all, anybody who -- as Opie describes him -- walks in the treetops, wears a silver hat, has 12 extra hands, blows smoke from his ears and jingles when he walks as though he has rings on his fingers and bells on his toes is surely fictional, right?) Andy laughs it off as a childhood phase and even encourages Opie ... but the fun and games end when Opie brings back a quarter [=McBeevee=] had given him, as Andy suspects that Opie may have stolen it.[[note]]Because, of course, imaginary friends are just step one on the slippery slope to juvenile delinquency and total depravity, Andy never guesses that Opie could have found or even worked for the quarter and then just said it was a present from [=McBeevee=].[[/note]] Opie stands his ground, but after going to [=McBeevee=]'s work site only to find him not there ([=McBeevee=] had been called away to assist another worker on his team), Andy threatens his son with a spanking; even then Opie tells him [=McBeevee=] is real ... and Andy relents. In the end, Andy's faith in Opie is rewarded: He walks past a tree in the woods and fumes, "Mr. [=McBeevee=]" ... and on cue, [=McBeevee=] greets his new friend and is confirmed as real.
** During the original airing, a commercial for Jello pudding played on the episode's theme of imaginary friends, with Barney complaining that Opie has gone too far with his imaginary friends [[note]](during the dramatic point of the show, Barney -- while Andy is talking with Opie about the situation -- rambles on to Aunt Bee about how he'd deal with Opie and this "[=McBeevee=]" character)[[/note]], including a black stallion named Blacky. As if on cue, a black horse with physical features just as Opie described sticks his head through the kitchen window, once again proving Barney wrong. The commercial is included as a bonus feature on the Season 3 [=DVD=] set.

* Harry Morgan on ''Series/{{Dexter}}'' is a pretty good reminder of how disturbed Dexter actually is.
* Prior to playing the title role on ''Series/{{Dexter}}'', Michael C. Hall played David on ''Series/SixFeetUnder'', an undertaker who was similarly prone to having imaginary conversations with his dead father and the other corpses he was working on. David was also [[SexIsEvilAndIAmHorny a devout Christian who struggled to reconcile his homosexuality with his faith]] and one of the most memorable of his imaginary "friends" was a young gay man followed him around taunting him about how he would go to hell. There was also a young gang member who had been killed in a turf war, who convinced the normally meek David to take an aggressive stand in a business meeting with a rival company. David also becomes badly traumatized at one point and - when he realises he has healed enough to resume his life again. The imaginary friends make David seem a little bit schizoidal, but they were a useful storytelling device because otherwise David , who was very introverted, anal and poor at communicating his feelings, would have come across as very one-dimensional and incomprehensible. His imaginary friends also seem to make him more functional, both because they act as a support network for him and because they make him more sensitive to the needs of his clients.
* ''Series/{{MASH}}'' - the "Tuttle" episode.
* Played very darkly on ''Series/{{Lost}}''. Hurley's best friend while he was in a mental institution was Dave, a bad influence who encouraged Hurley to overeat, try to escape the hospital, and other bad ideas. Hurley only started improving after he accepted that Dave wasn't real, rather a manifestation of his darker impulses. We learn all this in flashback during an episode where Dave shows up on the Island. [[spoiler:He tries to convince Hurley that the island, not him, is the hallucination, and tries to prove it by [[LampshadeHanging pointing out all the unlikely things that have happened to Hurley since he left the institution]].]]
** However it gets more complicated when it turns out that [[spoiler: Hurley can see and interact with the spirits of the dead, meaning that Institution!Dave could very well have been real. Also, the BigBad of the series turned out to be capable of taking on the form of those who had died, creating another possibility for the identity of Island!Dave.]]
* An ''[[Series/SaturdayNightLive SNL]]'' sketch featured an "imaginary friend-off" competition, which had guest star Fred Savage talk about his imaginary friend [[LineOfSightName Mike Podium]].
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': in the episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E22ImaginaryFriend Imaginary Friend]]", the title character turns out to be quite real. And she manifests herself as [[Series/ThirdRockFromTheSun August Leffler]].
** ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise''. In the MirrorUniverse episode, Mirror Archer is furious to discover his alternate universe self is a famous explorer who becomes President of TheFederation, as Mirror Archer has yet to be assigned his first command. As Mirror Archer sinks into resentment and paranoia, his alternate self keeps appearing, taunting Mirror Archer into greater acts of ambition and recklessness.
* A long-running gag on ''Series/SesameStreet'' was that everyone thought Mr. Snuffleupagus was Big Bird's imaginary friend. This idea was dropped in 1986 by revealing Snuffleupagus to the adults once the producers decided it might lead kids to think AdultsAreUseless and therefore might not believe a kid's "unbelievable" story about, say, molestation.[[http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Snuffleupagus]]. Of course, since Snuffy was real you could technically categorize this as an ItWasHereISwear.
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}''
** "Playthings": Two little girls, Tyler and Maggie, are shown playing, and it's implied that they're sisters. It's only revealed later that Maggie is Tyler's imaginary friend and the other characters can't see her. She turns out to be the ghost of Tyler's great-aunt, who died decades ago in the same house.
** The episode [[Recap/SupernaturalS11E08JustMyImagination Just My Imagination]] shows that Sam had a NotSoImaginaryFriend named Sully when he was a kid, part of a race of imaginary friends named Zanna. And now, Sully needs ''his'' help to find and deal with who or whatever is killing Zanna...
* The producers of ''Series/TeenWolf'' have set forth that Greenberg, the student Coach Finstock yells at often, may or may not exist. He's never been shown onscreen, at any rate.
* In ''Series/SpaceCases'', Suzee is NOT Catalina's "imaginary" friend, she's her "invisible" friend. At first, it's thought to be a case of InsistentTerminology. She even insists that she's the only one who can see her, and gives various scientific explanations for why Suzee is "invisible", and not "imaginary", but then a NegativeSpaceWedgie brings Suzee out from another dimension and places Catalina in that dimension, revealing that Suzee literally was Catalina's "invisible" friend.[[note]]The reason for all of this is because Jewel Staite, who had played Catalina, had left the show, with this being the closest the show came to "killing off" her character.[[/note]]
* ''Series/TalesFromTheCrypt''-- in "Operation Friendship", it's an adult nerdy video game designer with an imaginary friend. Their relationship sours when the man starts dating a psychologist and the imaginary friend, in fear for his existence, tries to turn the man against her. In the end, [[spoiler: the imaginary friend takes over his body. ]]
* ''Series/{{Medium}}''-- in "Night of the Wolf", this is how Allison realizes that her daughter Bridget has inherited her psychic powers-- she starts playing with an invisible friend who turns out to be a child's ghost.
* ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'' used the evil version of an imaginary friend; in this case, it was a demon trying to turn Wyatt evil. Like many Charmed episode titles, this one consisted of a pun; it was called "Imaginary Fiends."
* Merton spends most of an episode of ''Series/BigWolfOnCampus'' [[CassandraTruth trying to convince his friends]] that his imaginary friend Vince really is real, really does have superpowers, and really is trying to ''kill them all''.
* In ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'' Dinsdale Pirahna was perfectly normal . . . except that he was convinced that he was being watched by a gigantic hedgehog named Spiny Norman. Normally, Norman was wont to be about eight to ten feet from snout to tail, but when Dinsdale was really depressed, Norman could anywhere up to eight hundred yards long.
* In the Sci-Fi show ''Series/TheInvisibleMan'', one episode features a little girl who's witnessed a murder and only wants to talk about it to her imaginary friend. Cue the protagonist pretending to be him.
* On ''Series/TheFortyFourHundred'', a {{Muggle}} who took Promicin to get powers ended up with an imaginary friend who gave him seemingly prescient instructions.
* In a heartbreaking example, Fitz in ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'' hallucinates his best friend [[RelationshipUpgrade Simmons]] after suffering a traumatic brain injury. The hallucination helps him to organize his thoughts in her absense, though it has the unfortunate side-effect of inhibiting his recovery and isolating him from the rest of the team.
** Fitz again hallucinates his sociopathic Framework self, [[EvilMeScaresMe "The Doctor"]], during a psychotic split in order to deal with the stress of saving the world. [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone It doesn't end well.]]
* On ''Huff'' the title character imagined and developed a good friendship with a Hungarian composer.
* On ''Series/SeventhHeaven'', Ruthie had an imaginary friend named Hoowie for a good part of the first season; he even had part of an episode's ''plot'' focused on him when she claimed Simon "sat on him and squished him".
* ''Series/{{House}}'' went a somewhat dark route with this trope near the end of Season 5, as House starts hallucinating that [[spoiler: Amber, a.k.a. "Cutthroat Bitch"]] is following him around at all times. House knows it's got to be a hallucination and ends up taking advantage of the relationship, seeing as [[spoiler: Amber]] represents "an all-access pass to [his] own subconscious." That is, until [[spoiler: Amber]]'s arrangements for Chase's bachelor party result in him going into anaphylactic shock due to an allergy House would've known about... which leads to him wondering ''why'' he would possibly want Chase dead. [[spoiler: It gets worse, ''much'' worse, as he starts to lose his grip on reality and ends up getting committed to a mental hospital at the end of the season]].
* In ''Series/GhostWhisperer'' the title character is aware some children can see ghosts. The child of a storekeeper on the same square as her antique store, Dylan, appears to have the full-fledged medium gift, and his mother reacts poorly to her son talking to people who aren't there.
* An episode of ''Series/TheWeirdAlShow'' has Weird Al talking about his imaginary friend Creator/GilbertGottfried. Who is standing there the whole time, trying to prove he's a real guy.

** Young Amy Pond's first meeting with the Doctor has such a profound effect on her, that as she grows up, he becomes a part of her play, [[PlayingWithATrope almost as if an imaginary friend]]. To the point of four psychiatrists trying to tell her he's not real. However, as it turns out, he's real -- very real. And recognized by everyone Amy knows, from the days of childhood play.
--->Hello, everyone! I'm Amy's imaginary friend... but I came anyway.
** Something similar happens in "The Girl in the Fireplace", when the Doctor appears in a little girl's bedroom to save her from the MonsterOfTheWeek. When he next pops in to check on her, he's accidentally jumped forward in time and discovers that SheIsAllGrownUp.
--->'''Reinette:''' It is customary, I think, to have an imaginary friend only during one's childhood. You are to be congratulated on your persistence.
** In "The Lie of the Land", Bill creates an imaginary version of her deceased mother as a confident on a brainwashed VichyEarth.
--->'''Bill:''' I er, made up a version of her. Yeah, I talk to her all the time.\\
'''Nardole:''' Oh well, that's not that weird. I used to have an imaginary friend, 'til he left me for someone else.
* There was an episode of ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'' where a dad scoffs at his son's imaginary friend, then is shocked to realize that ''he'' can see and hear the friend as well.
* ''Series/{{Bones}}''
** The non-supernatural Interpretation of the episode where Booth is trapped on a soon-to-be-sunken navy ship is that "Parker" is his Hallucinatory Friend rather than a ghost. This presumes that the obstacles Parker helps Booth get past were also hallucinations [[spoiler: brought on by his brain tumor]], and he was really just stumbling around at random below deck.
** “The Psychic in the Soup” has a is it or isn’t it version with Christine and “Buddy”. Booth and Brennan discuss whether imaginary friends are ok and Christine says things that leave questions as to whether Buddy was really imaginary...or actually Sweets’ ghost.
* A ''Series/TheSketchShow'' sketch took this to an over-the-top degree. The sketch concerned a psychiatrist running a group therapy session to persuade people that their imaginary friends weren't real; her patients were a guy who used his imaginary friend as a cover for alcoholism, a lonely and lovesick woman, and a guy who thought he himself was the imaginary one. At the very end of the sketch, it turns out the psychiatrist was actually addressing an empty room.
* ''Series/TheATeam'' has Murdock's invisible dog, Billy. At the end of one episode, it appears that Billy actually knocks Murdock over and drags him along the ground.
* In one episode of ''Series/BoyMeetsWorld'', ManChild Eric makes an imaginary friend version of his former mentor Mr. Feeny to help him with his college work. At the end of the episode the imaginary Feeny convinces him that he has the skills to do well without him so Eric lets him go.

-->'''[[ServileSnarker Niles]]''': [[JustForPun The Lord & Taylor giveth, the Lord & Taylor taketh away.]]
* In an episode of ''Series/WouldILieToYou'', Creator/{{David Mitchell|Actor}} claimed to have had a painted bucket he played board games with called "Stephen Tatlock":
-->'''Holly Walsh:''' I don't think many people give their imaginary friends surnames.\\
'''Lee Mack:''' He's one of the few...
** Robert Webb claimed in series 5 that he had so many imaginary friends he formed an imaginary gang.
* During a ''[[Series/TheDailyShow Daily Show]]'' report on "Imaginary Black on White Crime," Wyatt Cenac says at one point that all of the imaginary friends he grew up with are now "either dead or in jail" thanks to a terrible "imaginary public school system that has failed a whole generation of imaginary youth."
* In an episode of ''Series/ThirtyRock'', [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Tracy]] randomly refers to Dot Com, one of the show's regular characters, as his "imaginary friend". Dot Com tries to point out that he's not imaginary, but Tracy keeps interrupting and telling him to stop talking since no one can hear him anyway.
* In ''Series/{{Jessie}}'' Zuri has at least one imaginary friend, Millie the Mermaid. Used as a plot point in one episode when Jessie assumes her new friend, Nana Banana ([[Series/RowanAndMartinsLaughIn Joanne Worley]]) is imaginary.

* ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' establishes [[InsufferableGenius Sheldon]] as having these, though he refers to them as [[InsistentTerminology imaginary COLLEAGUES.]]
** Interestingly, Niles Crane in ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' is revealed to have had an "imaginary protegé" during early childhood, who he blamed for wetting his bed and running away. The name of this imaginary protegé... '''Sheldon'''.
* Anthony from ''Series/DocMartin'', an invisible 6-foot squirrel.
* Martin from ''Series/MooneBoy'' has Sean Murphy. All the other children have them as well and the imaginary friends are capable of interacting with each other and even have a bar they all hang around in.
* ''Series/TheHauntingHour'': In "My Imaginary Friend", Shawn has an imaginary friend named Travis who quickly becomes all too real and dangerous. Shawn's older brother David convinces Shawn that he has outgrown the need for imaginary friends, which dispels Travis. [[spoiler:Sadly, David was also Shawn's imaginary friend all along. And Shawn has to let him go as well.]]
* ''Series/KamenRiderExAid'': [[TheHeart Emu]] [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom Hojo]] was a lonely child who wished for a friend. This happens to be a problem for someone who is PatientZero of a [[AWizardDidIt video game]] [[EverythingFades disease]] as the idea materialized into Parado, PsychopathicManchild MonsterOfTheWeek.
* In one episode of ''Series/LizzieMcGuire'', Lizzie's little brother Matt seems to have made up an imaginary friend much to the concern of their parents as Matt is far to old for such things. The parents react by showering Matt in attention and gifts but it doesn't seem to be working...until Mrs. [=McGuire=] hears Matt talking to a real friend on the phone. It turns out that there was no Jasper, Matt was faking in attempt to trick his parents into giving him all their attention(and gifts). He is punished for this prank by being forced to wash an invisible donkey.
* A rather dark version appears in one episode of ''Series/CriminalMinds'' where a man's imaginary friends (actually hallucinations caused by schizophrenia or another similar disorder) continue to push him into killing people.
* This is the premise of ''Series/BarneyAndFriends''. Barney is actually a stuffed doll the children on the show have, and the whole series is them pretending to go on adventures with an imagined version of the doll that's adult-sized.
* In ''Series/TheGoldenGirls'' episode "The Truth Will Out", Rose's granddaughter Charley has an imaginary friend whose visage, according to the little girl, is modeled after Music/BruceSpringsteen, lives in a castle and has a personality based off of what she has been told about her late grandfather (being an upstanding man who works very hard). Rose is thrilled about the character and explains that she once had an imaginary friend herself, but "[[CloudCuckoolander he never would tell me his name.]]"
* In Korean drama ''Series/ItsOkayThatsLove'', protagonist Jang Jae-yeol has an imaginary friend [[spoiler:high schooler Han Kang-woo, born of childhood trauma and guilt]].
* One set of sketches on ''Series/SorryIveGotNoHead'' featured a character with one of these. The imaginary friend could be seen by anyone, apparently because of how well he was imagined, and could interact with real objects, but still preferred to use imaginary versions.
* ''Series/{{Friends}}'': Chandler and Joey both had imaginary friends as children. Joey's was [[Music/SteveMillerBand a Space Cowboy called Maurice]]. Chandler semi-jokingly claims his parents liked his imaginary friend more than they liked him.
* A RunningGag on ''Series/ImpracticalJokers'' is Joe Gatto calling for his imaginary friend Larry. This is even featured in the intro to the show.

* ''Series/DesperateHousewives'': The strain in the Scavo household brought on by Lynette returning to the workplace and Tom becoming a stay-at-home dad at the start of season 2 is such that in the episode "My Heart Belongs to Daddy", their son Parker copes by creating an imaginary British nanny named "Mrs. Mulberry", represented by an umbrella.

** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': in the episode "Imaginary Friend", the title character turns out to be quite real. And she manifests herself as [[Series/ThirdRockFromTheSun August Leffler]].

** ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise''. In the MirrorUniverse episode, Mirror Archer is furious to discover his alternate universe self is a famous explorer, as Mirror Archer has yet to be assigned his first command. As Mirror Archer sinks into resentment and paranoia, his alternate self keeps appearing, taunting Mirror Archer into greater acts of ambition and recklessness.

* In Korean drama ''It's Okay, That's Love'', protagonist Jang Jae-yeol has an imaginary friend [[spoiler:high schooler Han Kang-woo, born of childhood trauma and guilt]].

* A long-running gag on ''Series/SesameStreet'' was that everyone thought Mr. Snuffleupagus was Big Bird's imaginary friend. This idea was dropped in 1986 by revealing Snuffleupagus to the adults once the producers decided it might lead kids to think AdultsAreUseless and therefore might not believe a kid's "unbelievable" story about, say, molestation.[[http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Snuffleupagus]].
** Of course, since Snuffy was real I think you could technically categorize this as an ItWasHereISwear.

* Prior to playing the title role on ''Series/{{Dexter}}'', Michael C. Hall played David on ''Series/{{SixFeetUnder}}'', an undertaker who was similarly prone to having imaginary conversations with his dead father and the other corpses he was working on. David was also [[SexIsEvilAndIAmHorny a devout Christian who struggled to reconcile his homosexuality with his faith]] and one of the most memorable of his imaginary "friends" was a young gay man followed him around taunting him about how he would go to hell. There was also a friendly young gang member who had been killed in a turf war, who convinced the normally meek David to take a firm/threatening stand in a business meeting with a rival real estate company. David also becomes badly traumatized at one point and - when he realises he has healed enough to resume his life again. The imaginary friends make David seem a little bit schizoidal, but they were a useful storytelling device because otherwise David , who was very introverted, anal and poor at communicating his feelings, would have come across as very one-dimensional and incomprehensible. His imaginary friends also seem to make him more functional, both because they act as a support network for him and because they make him more sensitive to the needs of his clients.

* In ''The Strange Case of Creator/ArthurConanDoyle'', Doyle, between writing "The Final Problem" and ''Literature/TheHoundOfTheBaskervilles'', meets a man called Seldon, who wants to write his biography, and in doing so forces him to confront the shadows of his past. It eventually transpires that Seldon is a manifestation of his guilt over his father, and is also SherlockHolmes himself.

* One set of sketches on Series/SorryIveGotNoHead featured a character with one of these. The imaginary friend could be seen by anyone, apparently because of how well he was imagined, and could interact with real objects, but still preferred to use imaginary versions.

* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'', "Playthings": Two little girls, Tyler and Maggie, are shown playing, and it's implied that they're sisters. It's only revealed later that Maggie is Tyler's imaginary friend and the other characters can't see her. She turns out to be the ghost of Tyler's great-aunt, who died decades ago in the same house.