67 Best Fictional Characters That Start With E, Ranked

You’re here for a list of fictional characters that start with E, so that’s exactly what this is.

We’ve ranked 67 of them, from the heavy hitters like Elsa and Eleven to deeper cuts across film, TV, anime, and games. The top 10 are ordered. The rest are grouped so you can find what you need fast.

E is a quietly loaded letter. It hands you a Disney queen, an alien who just wants to phone home, and two of the most revered heroes in anime, then keeps going through Arendelle, Hawkins, and the Renaissance rooftops of Assassin’s Creed. The older version of this page had no anime at all, which is a strange thing to admit about a letter this strong, so we’ve fixed it below. If you’re playing Scattergories, trying to remember a character name, or just seeing how deep the E-list goes, this should cover it.

Start at the top, or jump to what you need using the table of contents. This is one letter of our full A to Z set, so use the navigation below to jump to any other letter.

Our Top 10 Characters That Start With E, Ranked

Elsa is the most globally recognisable character starting with E, and one of the biggest Disney has created this century. The Snow Queen of Arendelle, born with the power to conjure ice and snow, spends the first Frozen learning to stop fearing her own gift, and the film turned her into a phenomenon on a scale Disney had not seen since its 1990s renaissance. “Let It Go” won the Academy Award, dominated the charts, and became inescapable for the better part of a decade.

What made Elsa land was the pivot away from the usual template. Frozen is not about her finding a prince; it is about her sister’s love breaking a curse, and about Elsa accepting herself rather than hiding, a message that resonated far beyond its target audience. Idina Menzel’s voice gave the character an anthem that is now a permanent piece of the culture.

Two billion-dollar films, a merchandising empire that has clothed a generation of children, and a permanent place in the Disney parks: Elsa’s reach is simply enormous.

She takes the top spot because no other E name comes close on sheer global recognition. Half the planet can hum her song.

Eleven is the face of Netflix’s biggest original series, and one of the defining characters of the streaming era. Introduced in 2016 as a shaven-headed girl in a hospital gown with a nosebleed and a stare that flips vans, she became the emotional centre of Stranger Things and made a star of Millie Bobby Brown. Raised as a lab experiment and named for the tattoo on her wrist, Eleven is a child weapon slowly learning to be a person, and the show’s whole heart is in that thaw.

The character launched a thousand memes and a genuine cultural moment: the Eggo waffles, the “friends don’t lie” earnestness, the telekinetic nosebleeds. She anchored a show that became one of the most-watched things on television across nearly a decade, and grew up on screen alongside her audience.

Eleven works because the powers are the least interesting thing about her. The story is about a traumatised kid finding a family, and the science-fiction is just the frame around it.

Second, and the most powerful pre-teen on this list by several orders of magnitude.

E.T. is one of the most beloved characters in the history of cinema, and proof that a single film can create an icon that outlives it. Steven Spielberg’s 1982 masterpiece gave the world a stranded, wrinkled little alien with a glowing heart and finger, befriended by a lonely boy named Elliott, and the film became the highest-grossing of its era and a permanent piece of childhood for generations. “E.T. phone home” is one of the most quoted lines in movie history.

The genius of the character is how much feeling was wrung from a puppet. E.T. barely speaks, yet the friendship at the film’s centre, and the heartbreak of the goodbye, land as hard as anything in Spielberg’s catalogue. The silhouette of a boy and an alien flying across the moon on a bicycle became the logo of Amblin Entertainment and one of cinema’s most reproduced images.

More than forty years on, E.T. remains shorthand for movie magic itself, the friendly alien every family film since has tried and failed to replicate.

Third, and the only character here who can heal a wound with a fingertip.

Eren Yeager is one of the most fiercely debated protagonists in modern anime, and the anchor the old version of this list badly needed. The lead of Attack on Titan, Hajime Isayama’s era-defining series, Eren begins as a furious boy who watches a Titan eat his mother and swears to wipe the creatures from the earth. What follows is one of the great character transformations in the medium: the hero curdles slowly, and terribly, into something far more frightening, as the story reframes everything you thought you understood about its world.

Attack on Titan became a global phenomenon on the strength of that turn, and its final seasons were among the most-watched and most-argued-over anime of all time. Eren is the reason: a protagonist whose journey forces the audience to keep asking whether they should still be following him.

He is placed this high deliberately. A list of the best E characters that ignores one of the most influential anime leads of the decade is not a serious list.

Fourth, and the most morally complicated character in the top 10.

Edward Elric is a perennial fixture on lists of the greatest anime protagonists ever, and the second anime anchor this page needed. The hero of Fullmetal Alchemist, Hiromu Arakawa’s beloved series, Ed is a teenage alchemical prodigy who lost an arm and a leg, and his brother his entire body, in a forbidden attempt to bring their dead mother back to life. The two spend the story hunting the Philosopher’s Stone to restore what they lost, learning the hard way that some prices cannot be unpaid.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood remains one of the most acclaimed anime ever made, routinely topping fan rankings of the best series of all time, and Ed is its beating heart: hot-tempered, brilliant, fiercely loyal, and touchy about his height in a way that became a running joke. The automail arm and the red coat are instantly recognisable to anyone who has spent time in the medium.

He earns his place on craft. Few anime heroes are written with this much wit and moral weight at once.

Fifth, and the shortest legend in the top 10, as he would furiously remind you.

Ezio Auditore da Firenze is the most beloved protagonist Assassin’s Creed has produced, and the character who turned the series into a phenomenon. Introduced in 2009’s Assassin’s Creed II, Ezio is a Renaissance Italian nobleman whose family is betrayed and executed, sending him on a decades-long path of vengeance and initiation into the Assassin Brotherhood. Across three games, players watched him grow from a hot-headed young man into a wise old master, an unusually complete life story for a video game hero.

The Ezio trilogy is widely regarded as the peak of the franchise, mixing parkour across gorgeous recreations of Florence, Venice, Rome, and Constantinople with a genuinely affecting personal saga. His hidden blades, his eagle-eyed leaps of faith, and his farewell speeches gave the series its identity.

He is the gaming anchor this list required, a real, richly written character where the old page offered two Minecraft mobs. Ubisoft has returned to him again and again because no other Assassin has matched him.

Sixth, and the most graceful killer in the top 10.

Doctor Eggman is one of gaming’s most recognisable villains, the egg-shaped genius who has been chasing a blue hedgehog since 1991. Born Doctor Ivo Robotnik, the mustachioed mad scientist wants to cover the world in machines and theme parks bearing his own face, and his endless, cartoonish failures to catch Sonic have made him one of the medium’s most enduring antagonists. The rotund silhouette, the goggles, and the towering moustache are instantly readable to anyone who grew up with a Sega console.

The recent Sonic films handed the role to Jim Carrey, whose gleefully unhinged performance introduced Eggman to a whole new audience and became the highlight of a hugely successful movie series. It is a rare case of a video-game villain being perfectly cast in live action.

Eggman endures because he is fun. He is a villain with no real menace and total commitment, forever building another absurd machine for the hedgehog to smash.

Seventh, and the only entry here whose evil plan involves branding.

Edward Cullen is one of the defining pop-culture figures of the late 2000s, and the vampire who launched a thousand arguments. The brooding, century-old immortal at the centre of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, Edward famously does not burn in sunlight but sparkles, a detail that became the most mocked and most defended in modern vampire fiction. Robert Pattinson played him across five films that grossed billions and split audiences into fiercely loyal and fiercely dismissive camps.

Whatever your view of Twilight, its cultural footprint is undeniable. The saga defined a generation of young-adult fiction, dominated the box office, and turned Pattinson, now an acclaimed actor and the current Batman, into a global star. Edward is the character the whole phenomenon orbited.

He makes the list on sheer reach. Few characters this century have generated more conversation, merchandise, and internet debate than the sparkling vampire of Forks.

Eighth, and the most divisive entry in the top 10 by a distance.

Elphaba is one of musical theatre’s most iconic creations, and a character enjoying a huge cultural resurgence. The green-skinned heroine of Wicked, she reimagines the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz as a misunderstood outsider, a brilliant, principled young woman demonised for her difference and her defiance. “Defying Gravity”, her first-act showstopper, is one of the most famous songs in modern theatre, originated on stage by Idina Menzel.

The 2024 film adaptation, with Cynthia Erivo in the role, turned a beloved stage musical into a global box-office event and introduced Elphaba to millions who had never seen the show, with a second part due to complete the story. The timing has made her one of the most talked-about characters of the moment.

Elphaba resonates because her villainy is a lie the world tells about her. Wicked is really the story of how a good person gets branded a monster, and she carries it.

Ninth, and the only entry here who exits the top 10 flying.

Eddard “Ned” Stark closes the top 10 as the character who taught a generation of viewers that no one is safe. The honourable Lord of Winterfell, played by Sean Bean, is the moral centre of the first season of Game of Thrones, the decent man trying to do right in a world that punishes exactly that. His shocking execution at the end of season one rewrote the rules of prestige television, announcing that this was a story where the hero could lose his head three-quarters of the way through the book.

That single moment is one of the most influential in modern TV, the death that made Game of Thrones appointment viewing and taught an industry that audiences would follow a story willing to be that ruthless. “Winter is coming”, the Stark words, entered the language.

Ned earns his place as much for his influence as his screen time. Few characters have reshaped how television tells stories by dying as effectively as he did.

Tenth, and the shortest tenure of anyone in the top 10, by design.

More Iconic Fictional Characters Starting With E

Ethan Hunt is one of the defining action heroes of the last thirty years, the impossible-mission specialist Tom Cruise has played across a franchise spanning nearly three decades. The IMF’s most reliable and most reckless agent, Hunt is defined less by personality than by spectacle: hanging off the Burj Khalifa, clinging to a plane at take-off, riding a motorbike off a cliff, all performed by Cruise himself in a run of increasingly death-defying stunts. The Mission: Impossible films became one of the most respected action franchises going precisely because Hunt, and Cruise, keep raising the stakes. He is loyalty and adrenaline in a suit, forever choosing to save everyone the hard way.

Edward Scissorhands is one of Tim Burton’s most tender creations, a gothic fairy tale about the loneliness of being different. Johnny Depp plays the artificial man left unfinished when his inventor died, his hands replaced by blades that make ordinary human contact impossible even as he longs for it. The 1990 film pairs Burton’s suburban-gothic imagery with a genuinely moving story of an innocent both adored and feared by the pastel-coloured town that adopts him. Edward barely speaks, and Depp builds the whole performance from posture and wounded eyes. He remains the definitive Burton outsider, and one of cinema’s most poignant images of gentleness trapped in a frightening shape.

Ellie is one of the most acclaimed characters in modern video games, and the reason this list drops the far more minor Ellie from Up. The teenage survivor at the centre of The Last of Us, she is immune to the fungal infection that has ended civilisation, which makes her humanity’s best hope and the emotional core of one of the most celebrated games ever made. Her bond with the hardened smuggler Joel gave the medium one of its great relationships, and the HBO adaptation brought her to an even wider audience. Ellie is fierce, funny, and scarred, a fully realised character who helped prove games could tell stories as rich as any prestige drama.

Erza Scarlet is one of the most popular characters in Fairy Tail, and a fan-favourite across all of shonen anime. The armour-clad, sword-wielding mage of the Fairy Tail guild, nicknamed Titania for her strength, Erza can swap between dozens of magical armours mid-battle and is feared and adored in equal measure by her guildmates. Beneath the fearsome exterior is a character shaped by a brutal childhood, which gives her warrior’s discipline real weight. She has topped popularity polls for the series and become one of the definitive examples of the powerful anime heroine, which makes her a natural pick for a letter that was previously missing anime entirely.

Eric Cartman is one of television’s great comic monsters, the scheming, foul-mouthed heart of South Park for well over two decades. A bigoted, manipulative fourth-grader with a bottomless capacity for cruelty and self-delusion, Cartman is both the show’s funniest character and its sharpest weapon, the vehicle through which Trey Parker and Matt Stone satirise whatever they please. His schemes escalate from playground cons to genuinely deranged heights, and his catchphrases have been quoted for a generation. He is loathsome by design and hilarious in spite of it, one of the most recognisable animated characters of the modern era, and impossible to look away from.

Elmo is one of the most beloved children’s characters in the world, the giggling red monster who became the breakout star of Sesame Street. Speaking in the third person with boundless warmth, Elmo was designed to represent a three-and-a-half-year-old, and his innocent, affectionate charm made him a global phenomenon, most famously through the Tickle Me Elmo craze that emptied toy shelves in the 1990s. For millions of children he is a first friend on television, and his segment “Elmo’s World” has introduced generations to the show. Few characters are this pure an embodiment of gentleness aimed squarely, and successfully, at the very young.

Edna Mode is one of Pixar’s most quotable creations, the diminutive, formidable superhero costume designer of The Incredibles. Voiced by director Brad Bird himself, Edna is a pint-sized force of nature, part Edith Head, part Anna Wintour, who designs for supers and delivers the film’s most famous line, a machine-gun rant against capes, with total conviction. She appears only briefly but steals every scene she is in, a testament to how much personality Pixar can pack into a supporting character. “No capes!” has long outlived the film, and Edna remains a fan favourite across both Incredibles movies.

Elrond is one of the most important figures in Tolkien’s Middle-earth, the ancient, wise half-elven lord of Rivendell who convenes the council that sets the whole quest in motion. Hugo Weaving played him in Peter Jackson’s trilogy as a figure of weary gravity, a leader who has watched the failures of men across thousands of years and has little patience left for them. Elrond is the keeper of history and refuge in The Lord of the Rings, and his role expanded in the recent Rings of Power series, which explored his younger years. He embodies the elves’ fading, melancholy grandeur, and the sense that the world is passing out of their hands.

Enola Holmes is a modern heroine built on a classic foundation, the younger sister Arthur Conan Doyle never wrote. Introduced in Nancy Springer’s novels and popularised by the Netflix films starring Millie Bobby Brown, Enola is a spirited, self-taught detective who repeatedly outwits her famous brothers Sherlock and Mycroft while forging her own path in a world that wants to confine her. The films lean on Brown’s charm and a fourth-wall-breaking wit to give the Holmes mythology a fresh, youthful spin. Enola has become a genuine franchise in her own right, proof there is life in the Baker Street universe beyond its most famous resident.

Ebenezer Scrooge is one of the most enduring characters in all of literature, the miser whose name became a byword for stinginess. Charles Dickens created him in 1843 for A Christmas Carol, and the story of the cold-hearted old man redeemed in a single night by three ghosts has been retold more times than almost any other in fiction, by everyone from the Muppets to Bill Murray to countless stage productions. “Bah, humbug” entered the language, and the arc, a hard heart cracked open by memory and mortality, remains the definitive Christmas redemption story. Scrooge endures because the transformation is genuinely hopeful: even the meanest soul can change.

The Evil Queen is Disney’s original villain, the wicked stepmother whose vanity drives the studio’s first feature. Introduced in 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, she is the jealous queen who demands to be the fairest of them all and turns to poison and a magic mirror when her stepdaughter surpasses her. Her transformation into the cackling old hag with the poisoned apple is one of animation’s most iconic and genuinely frightening images, and she set the template for every glamorous, envious Disney villain who followed. Nearly ninety years on, she remains a fixture of the Disney parks and merchandise, the queen who started the whole rogues’ gallery.

Eeyore is one of the most beloved characters in the Hundred Acre Wood, the perpetually melancholy grey donkey of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh. Speaking in a slow, resigned drawl and forever losing his tail, Eeyore is gloom personified, yet the gentle affection his friends show him, and the loyalty he quietly returns, is a large part of what makes the Pooh stories so warm. He is the friend who expects the worst and is loved anyway, a surprisingly tender portrait of low spirits that generations of children have taken to heart. Few characters do so much with so little enthusiasm, and none are so easy to adore for it.

Mr. Krabs is one of the most memorable characters in SpongeBob SquarePants, the money-obsessed crustacean who owns the Krusty Krab and employs the world’s most enthusiastic fry cook. Eugene H. Krabs is defined by his bottomless greed, forever scheming to save or make a dime while protecting the secret Krabby Patty formula from his rival Plankton, and the character has been a comic mainstay of one of the longest-running and most quotable cartoons on television. Beneath the penny-pinching is a genuine, if buried, affection for his employees and his daughter Pearl. Few animated characters have wrung this much comedy out of a single, all-consuming love of cash.

Elle Woods is one of the most beloved comedy heroines of the 2000s, the sorority president who talks her way into Harvard Law and refuses to be underestimated. Reese Witherspoon’s performance in Legally Blonde turned what could have been a dumb-blonde joke into an icon of self-belief: Elle is dismissed for her pink wardrobe and her cheerful girliness, and proceeds to be smarter, kinder, and more capable than everyone who wrote her off. The film became a genuine cultural touchstone, and “what, like it’s hard?” a rallying cry. Elle endures because she never has to become less herself to win. She succeeds precisely by staying exactly who she is.

Esmeralda is one of Disney’s most striking heroines, the compassionate Romani dancer at the heart of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Kind to the outcast Quasimodo when the rest of Paris jeers, and defiant in the face of the villainous Frollo, Esmeralda anchors one of Disney’s darkest and most ambitious animated films, singing “God Help the Outcasts” in a genuine plea for the marginalised. Rooted in Victor Hugo’s classic novel, she is braver and more overtly political than most of the studio’s heroines, standing up for the persecuted at real cost to herself. She remains a fan favourite and one of the most memorable figures Disney’s renaissance produced.

Eddie Brock is one of Marvel’s most popular antiheroes, the journalist who bonds with an alien symbiote to become Venom. Originally a Spider-Man villain, Eddie and the creature that shares his body grew into a beloved lead in their own right, an odd-couple pairing of a down-on-his-luck reporter and a hungry, wisecracking alien with a taste for heads. Tom Hardy played him across a trilogy of films that leaned into the buddy-comedy chemistry between man and symbiote, and the character has become one of Sony’s most bankable. “We are Venom” is the rare comic-book catchphrase to cross fully into the mainstream, and Eddie remains the fan-favourite host of one of Marvel’s strangest and most enduring creations.

Eevee is one of the most beloved Pokemon ever designed, the small, fox-like creature whose whole gimmick is possibility. Unlike almost any other Pokemon, Eevee can evolve into a growing family of distinct forms, from fiery Flareon to psychic Espeon, which made it a fan favourite from the original games onward and a symbol of the series’ collect-and-choose appeal. The Pokemon Company clearly agrees: Eevee was chosen as the co-mascot for Let’s Go, Eevee, standing alongside Pikachu as one of the franchise’s two friendly faces. Adorable, adaptable, and endlessly merchandised, Eevee is proof that a Pokemon does not need to be the strongest to be one of the most loved.

Characters Beginning With E, By Franchise

Disney & Pixar

Marvel

DC

Star Wars

Anime & Manga

Sitcoms & TV

Video Games

Books & Literature

Other notable mentions

Best Characters Beginning With E for Scattergories Players

If you’ve landed here mid-game, here’s the cheat sheet. Scattergories scoring varies by edition, but the standard rule applies: your answer needs to be a character whose name starts with the rolled letter, and other players can challenge if they don’t recognise the answer. Some editions award double points if multiple words in your answer start with the same letter, and E has a couple of those.

• Elsa (Frozen)
• Eleven (Stranger Things)
• E.T. (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial)
• Eggman (Sonic the Hedgehog)
• Edward Cullen (Twilight)
• Elphaba (Wicked)
• Ethan Hunt (Mission: Impossible)
• Eddard Stark (Game of Thrones)

For double-letter bonus points (two words both starting with E)

• Edward Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist)
• Ed, Edd n Eddy (Cartoon Network)

Scattergories is a trademark of Hasbro. This guide is unofficial fan content.

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