open/close all folders
Franny K. Stein
The main character of the books. A seven-year-old girl who happens to be a mad scientist. Franny is typically cooped up in her lab doing all sorts of odd experiments.
- Adoring the Pests: She loves rats, spiders and other animals that most people don't want infesting their homes.
- Anti-Hero: She's sarcastic, grumpy, and single-minded, but she's still ultimately a good-natured little girl. After all, she's a mad scientist, not an evil scientist!
- Be Yourself: The first book has her try to fit in by drinking a potion that transforms her into a normal girl. She's forced to take the antidote so she can save the school from the Pumpkin-Crab Monster, but the children fortunately accept her for who she is and are grateful for being saved by her quick thinking.
- Brainy Baby: It is established in The Fran That Time Forgot that she's been a mad scientist since infancy.
- Child Prodigy: At the tender age of 7, she's already demonstrated great knowledge in robotics, chemistry and bioengineering.
- Creepy Child: Being a child who is creepy is unavoidable, since she is a mad scientist who is delighted by all that is gross and creepy.
- Dr. Fakenstein: Fittingly enough for a little girl mad scientist, her name is a blatant play on Frankenstein.
- Embarrassing Middle Name: The fourth book reveals that her middle name is Kissypie, which was apparently an Affectionate Nickname her dad gave to her mom back when they were dating. When everyone else laughs at it, she tries to use time travel to change her middle name to Kaboom, but quickly to discover that people still laughed at her for it anyway.
- Enraged by Idiocy: Her biggest pet peeve is dealing with idiocy. Attack of the 50-Ft. Cupid has her angrily hang up on a friend from school named Percy when the latter doesn't pay attention to her talk about her latest invention and only babbles about his liking toward corn chips, while The Invisible Fran has her sharply rebuke her classmates Erin, Lawrence and Phil for making short-sighted modifications to her two-headed robot that resulted in the robot going around vandalizing the school, in addition to being the most upset about the two-headed robot intending to destroy the school's library books.
- Everyone Has Standards: While Franny is a mad scientist, she refuses to use mad science in methods for evil or hurting other people. It's also established in The Frandidate that she hasn't attempted to take over the world like most mad scientists because she doesn't think it is right to force people to do what she says. (This made her perceive Teen Franny to be an enemy.)
- Friend to Bugs: Being a big fan of all that is icky and scary, it's no surprise that she's also fond of insects and arachnids.
- Future Me Scares Me: In The Fran That Time Forgot, she's quite horrified when she time-travels to the future and finds that her teenage self is terrorizing the world with an army of elephant monsters all because she hasn't gotten over the humiliation of her Embarrassing Middle Name. Justified as even present-day Franny has standards.
- Girlish Pigtails: She's a little girl with pigtails.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Her motivation in the first book, where she conducts an experiment to become "normal," despite finding most ordinary things to be boring. She hopes that if she blends in with the more conventional classmates, they'll like her and want to be her friend. Fortunately, she goes back to being her usual Creepy Child self by the end, and her classmates all consider her their friend anyway.
- Literal-Minded: Being a child with limited knowledge of the normal world, Franny sometimes misinterprets idioms and figures of speech. It notably comes up in The Fran That Time Forgot, where Franny is told by her mother that she can't have her cake and eat it too, which motivates Franny to disprove the saying by inventing a Time Warp Dessert Plate to make it possible to physically have a piece of cake after she had already eaten it. Mood Science also reveals that she thinks mood swings are swing sets for emotions to play on.
- Long Pants: It's hard to tell where her pants end and her shoes begin.
- Mad Scientist: She is a little girl who conducts bizarre experiments constantly.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: A fair number of the conflicts she has to resolve are at least partially her own fault, such as the Bad Future in The Fran That Time Forgot, where her teenage future self is terrorizing the world with an army of elephant monsters all because her efforts in changing her Embarrassing Middle Name still resulted in people laughing at her name and because she exacerbated how much the laughter affected her when she told her infant self that there is nothing worse than being laughed at.
- Nightmare Fetishist: This is a girl who likes scary stuff after all.
- Supreme Chef: One of her talents is being a young gourmet chef. (Although in The Fran With Four Brains, Franny didn't like it that much. (Though this was because she felt overwhelmed by the numerous activities she had to do each week)).
Franny's Friends and Loved Ones
Franny's Family
Franny's parents and her younger brother Freddy, who do their best to show acceptance for Franny's mad scientist lifestyle.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Freddy Stein constantly bothers his older sister Franny.
- Open-Minded Parent: Franny's parents do their best to accept their daughter's passion for mad science.
- Out of Focus: Franny's father and brother don't get nearly as much attention as her mother does and have gradually been phased out as the series goes on, to the point that they are barely acknowledged in The Fran With Four Brains and neither of them are even mentioned in The Frandidate and Bad Hair Day. Recipe for Disaster goes even further by not featuring any mention of Franny's brother, father or mother aside from the mandatory "The Stein family lived in a pretty pink house with lovely purple shutters down at the end of Daffodil Street" opening line. Franny's mother resurfaces in Mood Science, but her father and brother are again ignored.
- Unnamed Parent: As is typical in children's books, Franny's mother and father lack established given names.
Igor
Franny's lab assistant introduced in the second book, though he's not a pure lab. He's also part poodle, part Chihuahua, part beagle, part spaniel, part shepherd and part some weasely thing that isn't even a dog (according to what his descriptions in the book call him).
- Amplified Animal Aptitude: He has intelligence comparable to a monkey or an ape.
- Canine Companion: He is Franny's dog as well as her closest friend. However, she does get enraged by his faulty plans to help, determining him to be a dog and trying to get him to keep his paws off her stuff in Attack of the 50-Ft. Cupid, and getting hit hard by her own inventions due to his faulty aid in the beginning of Frantastic Voyage.
- Disney Death: Undergoes this in Bad Hair Day, where he ends up swallowed alive by one of the giant pigtail monsters, only to later come out unharmed by snipping his way out after cutting off his own fur to prevent getting swallowed again.
- Epic Fail: Helping is good and all, but make sure to read the plans correctly when you work on dangerous things, like creating a stripy flower.
- The Grotesque: Not exactly a presentable dog, but he's still very nice and loyal to Franny.
- Heinz Hybrid: As stated in the main description, Igor is part Lab, part poodle, part Chihuahua, part beagle, part spaniel, part shepherd and part some weasely thing that isn't even a dog.
- The Igor: Appropriately enough, Igor provides assistance to Franny when she conducts her experiments, regardless of whether or not she wants his help.
- Second Episode Introduction: His debut is in Attack of the 50-Ft. Cupid, the second book in the series.
Ms. Shelly
Franny's teacher, who is the most open-minded in regards to Franny's quirks. Franny thinks that Shelly would look better if her hair was messier and she had a creepier outfit.
- Cool Teacher: Franny likes her because of how understanding she is of her passion for mad science.
- Named After Somebody Famous: Her surname is likely a reference to Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.
Granny
Franny's grandmother introduced in the tenth book Mood Science.
- Miniature Senior Citizen: She's an elderly woman who is short in stature, to the extent that her granddaughter jokes that at the rate she continues shrinking between their visits, she'll one day be small enough to bathe in a spoon.
- Strong Family Resemblance: She very much looks like Franny as an old lady.
Monsters and Villains
Pumpkin-Crab Monster
The very first threat Franny fought in the series' first book Lunch Walks Among Us, created when Franny discarded her lunch of crab ravioli with pumpkin sauce into the trash and other kids subsequently disposed of old gym shoes, gum and unstable industrial waste in the same trash can.- Pumpkin Person: He has a pumpkin for a head.
- Giant Enemy Crab: From the neck down, he's a giant crab monster.
- Toxic Waste Can Do Anything: He came into being because a child dumped unstable industrial waste into the same trash can Franny disposed of her lunch and other kids got rid of other garbage, with the toxic waste merging the trash and mutating it into a monster.
Lunch Meat Creature
A monster sewn together from the lunch meat in the other kids' sandwiches who Franny created to combat the Pumpkin-Crab Monster after returning herself to normal.- Frankenstein's Monster: He is essentially a Frankenstein monster made of cold cuts.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The first book ends with him getting a job at the school, but he hasn't been heard from since.
50-Ft. Cupid
A gigantic cherub introduced in the second book Attack of the 50-Ft. Cupid, who came to life when Igor accidentally activated two of Franny's inventions and transformed a Valentine's Day card into a colossal infant wanting to skewer people with his arrows to spread love.- Bowdlerise: He was depicted as naked in his first appearance, while illustrations of him in subsequent books depict him wearing a diaper or a sarong.
- Fallen Cupid: Averted. While a clear danger to the world because of his arrows causing actual damage and destruction, the 50-Ft. Cupid isn't intentionally a menace and is as kindhearted and well-intentioned as the standard depiction of Cupid.
- Scenery Censor: His debut book depicts him as naked, but since this is a children's book series, his genitalia is covered up by the quiver for his arrows and a tree.
Two-Headed Robot
Introduced in The Invisible Fran. A two-headed robot Franny hoped to have her friends Erin, Phil and Lawrence help finish by turning invisible and whispering suggestions to them, only for the three to later make modifications to the robot while she wasn't around to guide them. As a result, the two-headed robot becomes a boorish vandal bringing destruction and defacement to the school.- Cyber Cyclops: For some reason, the robot's two heads each have just one eye.
- Insufferable Imbecile: After the unsupervised changes Lawrence, Erin and Phil made to the two-headed robot, the robot becomes stupid as heck and goes around vandalizing the school.
- Tin-Can Robot: Follows the generic robot design of looking as if made from tin cans.
Teen Franny
Franny's evil teenage future self encountered in The Fran That Time Forgot, who came into being when Franny altered history so her Embarrassing Middle Name was Kaboom rather than Kissypie and subsequently told her infant self that there was nothing worse than being laughed at.- Future Me Scares Me: Franny isn't happy to see herself become evil as an adolescent.
- Ret-Gone: As a result of Franny going back in time and changing her attitude at people laughing at her middle name, Teen Franny is presumably erased from the timeline.
- Teens Are Monsters: She's unleashing an army of elephant monsters on the world over the kids at school laughing at her middle name.
The Franbots
Making their debut in The Fran With Four Brains, these three robots were created to handle what Franny got weighed down by. They thus have her design. The Franbots become antagonists when she unwittingly obstructs progress for them.- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: They go crazy due to taking Franny's instruction of striving for excellence way too seriously.
- Everything's Louder with Bagpipes: The first Franbot was built to handle bagpipes.
- Irony: How does the first Franbot meet her demise? Blowing too hard. She is killed this way when Franny tricks her into attempting a high J-note, and the result is that said Franbot "blows her guts into the [bagpipe]".
- Off with His Head!: This is how the second Franbot kills herself: kicking her head off. Basically, she was tricked into thinking that one player could kick their face, making her attempt the stunt herself. The third Franbot also meets this fate following her defeat, although thanks to getting her neck unscrewed.
- Right Behind Me: This is how the third Franbot gets to Franny when the latter gloats about defeating the first two Franbots.
- Sole Survivor: The third Franbot is absolutely pissed to find herself as this with her sisters dead. She tries to attack Franny for killing the other two Franbots following a Stealth Hi/Bye, and the disguise no longer works on her.
- Wingding Eyes: The first two Franbots get a spiral in one of their eyes each upon defeat, and the third gets X-eyes.
- You Killed My Father: This is the third Franbot's justification for trying to kill Franny: killing (or, in the Franbot's words, "destroying") the first two Franbots.
The Frandidate
Debuting in the book of the same name, the Frandidate is a living suit Franny made to appeal to everyone at school and make it easier to win the election for class president. Unfortunately for Franny, the suit eventually gains a mind of its own.- Antagonist Title: Is the main threat of the same book it shares its name with.
- Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder: The Frandidate is able to change its physical appearance based on the interests of whoever is looking at it. Igor, for example, sees the Frandidate as resembling his favorite TV show host Miss Wizzywozzle.
Franny's Pigtails
First appearing in Bad Hair Day, Franny's pigtails came to life when Franny used a formula on them and they grow to becoming extremely greedy and literal pigs out to devour all the hair they can find.- Gluttonous Pig: Franny's pigtails become literal pigs and bent on eating all the hair in town.
- Prehensile Hair: It all started when Franny used a formula on her hair that made her pigtails able to move like tentacles.
Muffin Man
A robotic baker Franny made from her school's old furnace in Recipe for Disaster, whose purpose was to bake something to help with Vincent and Mona's bake sale. He ends up creating a delicious muffin, which unfortunately proves to be too delectable.- My God, What Have I Done?: When Franny uses her future goggles to make the Muffin Man realize the consequences of never ceasing to make muffins, he is truly devastated and aghast.
