Slight spoilers follow for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
There are three certainties within George Miller’s Mad Max universe. The cars are going to be tricked out beyond Xzibit’s and Vin Diesel’s wildest dreams. The stunts that smash those vehicles to bits are going to challenge your understanding of time, space, and physics. And the names of the characters wreaking that destruction are going to be so goofy and so dumb, reflecting the boundless kooky possibilities of the English language, using alliteration and rhyme and wordplay to make you go, “Wait, that guy is named what?”
Since 1979’s franchise-starting Mad Max, Miller has packed these films with names that are simultaneously florid and regal and menacing and weird. Some of the earliest ones seem even quaint now, like Goose; there should be no reality in which the Mad Max and Top Gun franchises share nomenclature. The names in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, co-written by Miller and Nico Lathouris, run the gamut from somewhat normal (with recognizable first names, like Praetorian Jack and Immortan Joe) to let-your-freak-flag-fly bizarre.
We’re not interested in the former grouping, or in names that actually reflect their characters’ motivations; “Furiosa” and “Dementus” handily express how these two hurt people hurt people. Instead, we’re ranking here the names you had to convince yourself you actually heard, or the ones thrown around with such seriousness in the film that you had to laugh. Thank you to Miller for his mind! Here, a ranking of the most mythical, maniacal, and giggle-inducing names in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
These two belong together. Sure, their names are literal. But I totally buy that even in the postapocalyptic Wasteland, you have dudes who simply won’t shut up about how great their motorcycles are. Plus, it’s cute to imagine them as the Statler and Waldorf or the Frank and Karl of this universe, two grumps united against everyone else.
Listen, I know I said that Praetorian Jack and Immortan Joe don’t count for this list because of the averageness of half of their names. But I am making an exception for Mortiflyer Matt because “Mortiflyer” is an amazing descriptor. He’s a flier who brings death, cut and dry. It’s nice to know that the history caretakers in the Wasteland are still teaching these marauders enough Proto-Indo-European and Latin that they can adapt morto, you know?
Two more that work as a pair, given their animalistic origins. I am partial to Vulture for obvious reasons, but the brusqueness of Fang is fun, too. And aren’t these very convincing names for marauder warriors raiding and ravaging at the end of the world? None of these guys should be named, like, Greg. I almost wish there was a Talon or Claw in the mix, but alas.
Photo: Jasin Boland/Warner Bros.
Angus Sampson returns as this character from Mad Max: Fury Road, who in that film was Immortan Joe’s and the War Boys’ personal doctor — doing blood transfusions, birthing Immortan Joe’s deformed children with his abused and controlled wives — but here is introduced as Dementus’s … chef? He does a lot of mixing dog meat with human blood for sausage, and I’d love to know how that prepared him for a future in surgery.
Miller loves a size-based descriptor; consider Lord Humungus, Big Rebecca, and Corpus Colossus (although that one’s ironic) from previous films. But there’s something about Big Jilly that just works, isn’t there? It sounds like it could have been an alien’s name in the original Men in Black.
There are two living archival figures in this movie, one of whom rides with Dementus, is called the History Man (functional but not creative), and narrates the film, and the other who serves Immortan Joe and is named High Master Black Thumb, a wonderfully baroque name that hints at a sliver of menace. For a film that puts so much emphasis on Furiosa’s and the Vuvalini’s green thumbs, a character named Black Thumb reminds us of how rare their ability to foster life is.
Our last two to group together. Proclaiming someone as “the” emphasizes their specialness in this world where nearly everyone is treated as chattel, a potential servant or a body to be harvested, and yet these adjectives are so much more interesting than “the Strong” or “the Deadly” or whatever. Valiant, like a King Arthur story! Brackish, like the oceans that have long since dried up! (How can a person be brackish? Are they, like, the salty and sarcastic John Early of the Wasteland? I have questions.)
Photo: Warner Bros.
We’re getting into the good stuff now. Big fan of the guy who kidnaps Furiosa being named for the gunk that grows between your toes when your hygiene sucks; a real “I’m telling you exactly who I am” situation.
I won’t spoil this character’s arc in the Mad Max video game for anyone who starts playing after seeing Furiosa. But I will say that chum, like the words jam and smeg (ugh), has the immediate effect of conjuring an image in your mind, one that tilts toward the stinky, sticky, and goopy. That’s what the best names in this universe do — make you chuckle and visualize something gross at the same time. If we learned that George Miller was secretly involved in developing the Garbage Pail Kids, that would make so much sense.
Photo: Warner Bros.
I adore a dramatic theatrical bitch who creates mess, and that’s the Octoboss for you. His followers fly a gigantic octopus-shaped balloon wherever they’re camped out; he wears this ludicrous helmet and face mask with curled horns à la that one Vincent D’Onofrio look in The Cell; and his friction with Dementus ends up breaking the horde apart. Love a man who prioritizes cephalopod fashion in the end times.
Smeg … as in “smegma”? George Miller, you grotesque.
Photo: Warner Bros.
Dementus’s one-eyed general Rizzdale Pell is like if Jack Sparrow were actually a hard-as-a-motherfucker pirate instead of a wine-drunk who bought all of his accessories during one of Anthropologie’s please, we have too much crap, buy something from us at an additional 40 percent off sales. I am hoping that his name includes “Rizz” because someone told Miller what the youths are saying these days. (Also, Lachy Hulme pulls double duty here as both Rizzdale Pell and Immortan Joe; with the latter, he takes over for Fury Road actor Hugh Keays-Byrne, who died in 2020. Hulme is good!)
Yes, another repeat; our big boy was in Mad Max: Fury Road. But the name feels just perfect this time around for its crisp staccato rhythm, for how sharp and prickly it sounds, and how well it aligns with Immortan Joe’s lumbering, Lennie Small–like son. His rigid posture is as unassailable as the sexual threat he poses to every woman and girl he comes across. He sucks!
Is one named Pissboy upon birth because they will become the War Boy who pours urine into the War Rig radiator to keep it cool? Or does one become drawn to that career path when they are named Pissboy? Are we dealing with nature or nurture? Free will or fate? Thank you for the existential dilemma, George.
Kudos to Josh Helman, who appeared in Mad Max: Fury Road as Slit and returns in Furiosa as one of Immortan Joe’s other sons, the Butt-Head to Rictus Erectus’s Beavis, the bizarro version of Mikey Day, the guy whose name I smiled at every time I heard it. Naming a failson warlord after the most mocked part of the male body is Miller revealing to us how detestable he finds all these men, how facetious their sense of superiority and how vulnerable their power. We don’t learn why Scrotus disappeared before the events of Mad Max: Fury Road, but I like to imagine him at some point being on the receiving end of a swift, debilitating kick in the you-know-where from Furiosa. And, personally, I’m hoping for a sixth Mad Max movie starring a dude named Taint.
