‘Q’ is not the most common starting letter for names in English, but there have certainly been many iconic characters using the letter.
Join me as we explore this list, with characters from James Bond to The Hunchback of Notre-Dame to The Punisher. See how many you know or how many of these films you’ve seen!
1. Q (James Bond)
A job title rather than a name, with the name unknown for national security reasons, Q plays the role of a quartermaster, responsible for supplying MI5 and MI6 with a variety of gadgets, vehicles and weapons.
Head of Q Branch, the fictional research and development division of the British Secret Service, he is often exasperated with Bond’s inability to listen to instructions and destruction of property.
2. Q*Bert (Wreck-It Ralph)
A small orange video game character, Q*bert is composed of an orange head, with two small orange legs and a long, thick orange nose that slightly resembles an elephant’s trunk.
Q*bert’s arcade machine has been unplugged, leaving them homeless and at risk of being lost forever. Ralph comes across them and hands over a cherry he obtained from the Pac-Man game.
They speak a language that few can understand, however Fix-It Felix seems to speak passable Q*bertese and can communicate with them, eventually taking them on to work on bonus levels in his own game Fix-It Felix Jr.
The Q*bert race seems to get along well with humans, being their pet and companions.
3. Qi’ra (Star Wars)
A friend of Han Solo and love interest, she grew up on Corellia during the reign of the Galactic Empire and is a human female.
Eventually getting split up from Solo and then getting sold into slavery, she was rescued by Dryden Vos and taught martial arts, killing her slaver.
After hooking up with Solo again, she suggested they smuggle some spice with the help of Lando Calrissian and the Millennium Falcon. After some further double crossing, Qi’ra ended up in the employ of Darth Maul, learning how to defeat the Sith from him.
However, her lack of access to the Force meant she could not stand up against people such as Darth Vader or other Jedi Knights, and she turned over Solo, now encased in carbonite.
4. Quasimodo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Quasimodo is forced to stay in the Notre-Dame Cathedral as a bell-ringer by the nasty Judge Claude Frollo. Clothed in a green tunic, he has a large and distinctive hunchback along with some other cosmetic deformities,
After Judge Claude Frollo kills Quasimodo’s mother’s death, the local Archdeacon forced Frollo to take care of the child due to the sacrilege of killing a person in the bounds of a holy place.
Frollo compounds his evil by scaring Quasimodo via lies about the horrific nature of the outside world. Frollo is particularly harsh on certain evil characters, as he defines them, such as gypsies.
However, Quasimodo gets to know certain people, and finds close relationships with the beautiful Esmeralda who is one of the first people to show him kindness.
Quasimodo’s longing to live just one day among the people of Paris is made all the harder by his lack of socialization and shyness. He is immature but learns through interactions with Esmeralda and others to eventually defy his cruel master, Frollo.
5. The Queen (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)
After being told by her Magic Mirror that she is no longer the fairest in the land, she starts to hunt down who is.
Being the main villain, the Queen soon realizes that Snow White is the most beautiful, and after seeing her and the Prince have an interaction from her window, she starts to hatch a plan to maintain herself as the top dog.
She first urges the Huntsman to try and kill Snow White however he lies and brings the heart from another animal to prove he killed Snow White. After realizing the deception, she instead brews up a potion to send Snow White to sleep forever.
Eventually transforming herself into an old hag in order to pass the poisoned apple to Snow White, she ensures that she will no longer be the fairest in the land by destroying her own beauty.
A ruthless and cruel ruler, her initial imprisonment of Snow White in the castle followed by her use of poison, contract killing and black magic reveals that she is not a good character in any sense of the word.
6. The Queen (A Bug’s Life)
The head of the ant colony, although an elderly figure, she is referred to as Mom or Mommy by her daughters.
A competent queen who is looking to pass her crown off to Princess Atta, she is almost never separated from her pet aphid.
The colony has been controlled by violent and power hungry grasshoppers, forcing the ants to hand over their food supplies every season, until Flik causes the current season’s offerings to be destroyed.
This sets in motion a chain of events that results in Flik’s exile from the colony, despite how hard it is for the Queen to take such actions.
After a plot to kill the Queen is revealed, the bugs of PT Flea’s circus hatch a plan to save her by kidnapping her and saving her from the grasshoppers.
7. Quentin Beck (Spider-Man: Far From Home)
AKA Mysterio, he was a former employee of Stark Industries. Eventually fired over a disagreement and anger issues, he worked in the shadows, linking up with other former Stark employees and invented the Elementals.
The Elementals were a key part of Mysterio’s plans to take his revenge, as he would come in to ‘save’ the world wherever the Elementals appeared, claiming that the Elementals killed his family and that he was from an alternate reality.
After using other illusions to take the form of Nick Fury, Mysterio attempts to silence MJ and anyone else who has come across evidence of his deception, only for Mysterio himself to die due to a misfired shot from one of the drone projectors of the Elementals.
8. Quentin Glass (The Punisher)
The sad*stic right-hand man for Howard Saint, he uses blackmail to try and discern Frank Castle’s identity.
After Castle comes across the blackmail and realizes that Glass is behind it, he pays for his own blackmail from Mickey Duka, finding out that Glass is a closested hom*osexual, using this information to confuse Saint, resulting in Saint killing Glass.
Enjoying his role of torturing people for information or just for his own enjoyment, he plays a vital role in Saint’s criminal enterprise.
9. Quetzalcoatl (Q)
An Aztec god, he appears as a massive dragon creature with massive wings, a large beak and sharp claws.
Sitting on top of the Chrysler Building, he is biding his time for his offspring to hatch after having been brought to the United States of America by an ancient Aztec cult.
10. Quetzalcoatl (Godzilla: King of the Monsters)
Quetzalcoatl appears to be a bird-like creature that also features two large, grasping talons and has a long snake-like body featuring a thick tail with a fan-shaped plumage at its tip.
The head of Quetzalcoatl features swept back horns and a long beak. Similar to bats, it has separate ‘thumbs’ on its wings.
Monarch, a major scientific organization, had discovered Quetzalcoatl in Machu Picchu, Peru, apparently in a deep hibernation, building Outpost 57 nearby to enable further study.
After being awoken by Ghidorah, Quetzalcoatl breaks free and joins the rest of the Titans in Boston.
11. Quincy (Little Einsteins: Our Huge Adventure)
A talented musician, he is a kind and loyal young boy of about seven or eight years old.
Named after Quincy Jones, he is afraid of the dark and may have a mild case of arachnophobia, often appearing in his green and yellow long sleeved shirt with blue jeans and a baseball cap.
12. Quint (Jaws)
A shark hunter from the port of Menemsha, he also dabbled in bootleg liquor. Running a charter service while also selling whale oil from his catches, he was the captain of the Orca.
After a World War II close call, he vowed upon his return to pursue shark fishing due to nearly being eaten by them in the South Pacific following a torpedo attack on his ship by a Japanese submarine.
After a bounty was placed upon a shark that had killed three people, Quint set out with Martin Brody and Matt Hooper.
After several attempts with rods and harpoons, the shark attacks his ship, getting Quint’s legs and then eats him whole after surviving Quint’s last ditch effort to kill it with a machete, making him the fifth (hence Quint) victim of the great white killer.
13. Quint (Timon & Pumbaa)
The human archenemy of the duo of Timon and Pumbaa, he is always changing outfits but can also be recognized via his thick 5 o’clock shadow and a bright red nose.
Trying his hand at virtually every job under the sun, he has tried gold prospecting, cooking French cuisine, and a wildlife photographer among many others.
Seeming not to do much apart from annoying Timon and Pumbaa, he is an underhanded conman who is also sneaky and arrogant, and completely untrustworthy.
His name will get a prefix depending on his new job, such as Concierge Quint when a hotel manager, Cusco Quint when a con artist, and Captain Quint when running a ship.
