This is a list of characters from the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. This list contains limited information on the characters; for more, visit their respective articles.
There have been several characters which have not been shown in the comic strip, such as The Little Red-Haired Girl and The Great Pumpkin.
The Little Red-Haired Girl is a female character who has red hair and is Charlie Brown's unrequited love interest through most of the strip, first mentioned by him on November 19, 1961. She is not shown for most of the strips and is known simply as "the little red-haired girl". She appears in the animated television specials It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown (1977) and Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! (1986), and her name is given as Heather. Schulz first publicly suggested that name for her in an article in the February 1968 issue of Woman's Day magazine, but did not utilize it in the strip. She also makes a brief appearance in the 1988 TV special Snoopy!!! The Musical. She is a main character in The Peanuts Movie (she moves in and Charlie Brown becomes infatuated with her, and over the course of the film she gains a liking to him, and becomes his pen-pal).
In 1958 Charlie Brown had a pen pal, but after several frustrating attempts at writing with a fountain pen results in only messy smudges, Charlie instead addresses and writes to her as a "pencil-pal". When asked by Lucy about what they write about, he says, "She tells me about her country, and I tell her about ours...", so it is presumed she does not live in the U.S. In one strip, Charlie Brown writes to her, telling her that she is his only friend, with the postscript "Everyone hates me". She has been known to write back to Charlie Brown at least once, when Charlie Brown reads his letter to Lucy, reading that she and her class at school all agree that Charlie Brown must be a very pleasant person. In a strip series in 1994, the Pen Pal was revealed to be a girl in Glasgow, Scotland named Morag.
A never-seen cat lives next door to Charlie Brown and Snoopy. The main focus on this cat occurred during the 1970s, although Charlie Brown referred to "the cat next door" as early as November 23, 1958. Snoopy often taunts this cat (usually starting with, "Hey, stupid cat!"), who generally responds by violently carving up his doghouse in a single swipe. They often have fights, with Snoopy generally coming worse off. The neighbors who own the cat have complained to Charlie Brown about Snoopy harassing their "kitten". The cat's name was revealed to be "World War II" in the October 20, 1976 strip.
The Great Pumpkin is a fictional entity that Linus van Pelt believes in wholeheartedly, despite the widespread disbelief and mockery of his friends.
According to Linus, the Great Pumpkin rises every Hallowe'en night and distributes gifts to those who believe in his existence. Linus' belief in the Great Pumpkin is rarely deterred, despite never having seen it, although he and Sally Brown (who often accompanies Linus to the pumpkin fields out of loyalty) often mistake other things to be the Great Pumpkin, although these sightings are often the result of Snoopy playing a prank on them.
Although the Great Pumpkin is often believed to be a fictional character, a series of strips running in October and November 1961 have radio reports of the Great Pumpkin being sighted; however, this is disregarded in future years.
Adults in the strip are typically unseen. Some examples are the characters' parents and family members (like Linus' blanket-hating grandmother), the characters' schoolteachers, Charlie Brown's baseball hero Joe Shlabotnik, and Helen Sweetstory, author of the Bunny Wunny books.
Adults in most of the Peanuts animated cartoons are only heard by the unintelligible sounds of a muted trombone ("mwah-mwah-mwah").
In the 1966 animated TV special Charlie Brown's All-Stars and its accompanying book, Mr. Hennessy, proprietor of Hennessy's Hardware store, talks to Charlie Brown on the phone unseen to confirm his sponsorship of Charlie Brown's baseball team in a real league with real baseball uniforms, but changes his mind when Charlie Brown tells him that girls and a dog are on his team.[2]
The Red Baron is an adversary of Snoopy, under the guise of his "World War I Flying Ace" persona.
Although never seen in the strips, Snoopy and the Red Baron often battle against each other; despite Snoopy's best attempts, the Red Baron often wins their dogfights, causing Snoopy to fall from the roof of his kennel (which doubled as the Flying Ace's "Sopwith Camel") and curse his opponent. Snoopy's battles with the Red Baron were a popular feature of the comic strip, and featured frequently.
Schulz took the Red Baron directly from history, based on the real-life wartime career of Manfred von Richthofen.
Joe Shlabotnik is a minor-league baseball player who, inexplicably, is greatly admired by Charlie Brown. He never appears in the strip, but is occasionally mentioned by Charlie Brown as his hero and is part of several plots involving Charlie Brown:
Aside from Linus van Pelt's teacher Miss Othmar and her replacement, Miss Halverson, few other teachers were mentioned by name in Peanuts (and none were ever drawn), with the children most often addressing their teacher as "Ma'am" (only once was a male teacher mentioned, in the "GEORGE WASHINGTON!!!" storyline from 1967 featuring Sally and Charlie Brown).
In the 1966 strip storyline about Charlie Brown's competing in the class spelling bee (later adapted into the movie A Boy Named Charlie Brown), Charlie Brown mentions that his teacher's name is Mrs. Donovan, but he was later shown in Miss Othmar's class with Linus. Peppermint Patty and Marcie's teacher was named Miss Swanson in the early 1970s, but had changed to Miss Tenure by 1978, in a storyline in which Patty disguised herself as a janitor to investigate the theft of Miss Tenure's box of gold star stickers and to clear her name of said theft. On August 24, 1993, in conversation with Marcie, Peppermint Patty refers to her book report as being written for Miss Davis. Marcie reveals to her that Miss Davis quit two years previous to have a baby.
Miss Othmar served as Linus' teacher starting in 1959. There was a series of comics where Linus had to bring egg shells to class so she could teach the class about igloos but Linus kept forgetting to bring the shells. Typically, neither the comic strip nor the cartoons depict adults. In the strip, we only see the children's side of the conversations with Miss Othmar. In the cartoons, a muffled horn was used for her voice. This became her—and all other voices of adult characters—trademark in the cartoons and is sometimes parodied in other programs.
Linus developed a long-lasting crush on her. As a result, Linus held her in unreasonable esteem, which made his discovery that she earned a salary for her profession a crushing disillusionment that he tried to rationalize away. When Lucy tells Linus that it is wrong to worship a teacher, Linus denies worshipping Miss Othmar, but he does admit to being "very fond of the ground on which she walks."
Eventually, Miss Othmar married, assuming her married name of Mrs. Hagemeyer; Linus, however, continued to call her Miss Othmar, and other characters in the strip began referring to her as Miss Othmar again as well. (As Linus said, "In real life she's Miss Othmar!")
Although Miss Othmar quit teaching after she got engaged, she returned to teaching a few years later, much to Linus' delight. However, in 1969, Miss Othmar was fired following a teacher's strike, and Linus was devastated. Miss Othmar's replacement was Miss Halverson ("Halverson" being the maiden name of Charles M. Schulz's first wife, Joyce), whom Linus initially refused to accept as his new teacher, although he eventually seemed to learn to live with it.
Miss Othmar talks briefly to Sally in the TV special You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown.
Marcie mentions that she is taking organ lessons from a "Mrs. Hagemeyer" in a 1979 strip, but it is unclear whether this Mrs. Hagemeyer and Miss Othmar are one and the same.
In The Peanuts Movie, her "talking" is provided by New Orleans–based trombonist Trombone Shorty.