Gumball Watterson

Gumball (formerly Zach) Tristopher Watterson is the main character of The Amazing World of Gumball. He is a twelve-year-old, light blue male cat that goes to Elmore Junior High with his ten-year-old adopted brother/best friend Darwin and his four-year-old sister Anais. Gumball is in Miss Simian's class. As of "The Shell", Gumball is dating Penny.

Early Concept
Originally, Gumball was to be a blue dog. Not much thought was put into this choice - it was more of a placeholder than a final design. As the creators developed the character further, they decided to make him a black cat as it fit the personality they had in mind for him: unlucky, but optimistic (black cats symbolize bad luck). The creators found this trait to be too restricting in terms of possible plots and stories. In addition, a silhouette cat would be "hard to read" on the backgrounds planned for the show. Finally, the decision was to make him blue, a decision that Bocquelet liked because blue isn't a color usually found on cats, and it had a "70's-80's Japanese mascot" sort of feel.

Final Design
In the actual show, Gumball is a light blue cat. On his oversized head, he has six whiskers, but only five are visible most of the time because his head is mostly shown at an angle. He usually wears grey trousers coupled with a tan sweater which has brown cuffs and a brown collar. Like his mother and father, Gumball doesn't wear shoes, and is the only member of the Wattersons without visible eyelashes, although in some episodes he is seen with visible eyelashes, like in "The Refund" and "The Boss". His inside of his mouth is pink and his tongue is light pink, and his nose is orange.

In Season 2, his design changes slightly. His head and his whiskers are bigger, while his eyes and tooth are rounder.

In Season 3 Gumball's eyes are permanently round along with the rest of The Wattersons.

Personality
Gumball is portrayed as a fun-loving, imaginative, rather optimistic, and a very mischievous cat. When his mishaps get himself into a mess, he usually attempts to fix things with somewhat dimwitted ideas, which usually get him into even more trouble than before. No matter how his schemes resolve themselves, Gumball's naïveté stops him from learning his lesson. He usually plans his mishaps with Darwin. Like Darwin, Gumball does not appear to notice deception, which may mean that he is too optimistic to notice most negative things around him.

Gumball has a big ego and it is where he is most sensitive. Otherwise he is usually positive on all matters concerning him. Gumball is smart, but that doesn't mean he's wise. At times he acts really stupid and goes to great illogical lengths to find something, but he has shown some degree of cleverness in other circumstances. He happens to have a superior vocabulary than that of most of his classmates, using more mature words. Gumball has also displayed extents of observance and operational ingenuity, such as being able to identify small things like the burn markings on Rocky's palms, intellectually arrange escape routes based on his surroundings, and even counter his own mother Nicole's hand-based offences for a great deal of time, shown in both episodes "The Date" and "The Remote"; in which case even secretly confiscating her car keys from her pocket in the process. His antics have gotten him in dangerous and often life-threatening situations, usually saved by luck by someone more sensible at the time. He has shown skill in building, when he made a system of chain reactions to launch a bowling ball onto the moon, as seen in "The Car", though he failed miserably in the last element.

He is a decent cook, making a very good sandwich for Darwin as mentioned in "The Secret", and is shown making a good (albeit spicy) meal for him in the same episode. He also got a B in home eds for his cooking and Miss Simian called his cooking divine. However, in "The Responsible", Gumball makes disgusting food for Anais, consisting of a rotten fish between bread slices and an old shoe. In the "The Knights", Gumball made a cake for Mr. Fitzgerald.

Voice Actors
Logan Grove (US/UK) (Season 1-2 & 3 "The Kids")
 * Jacob Hopkins (US/UK) (Season 3-present)
 * Nicky Jones (the Early reel only)
 * Junko Takeuchi (Japan)
 * Arthur Dubois (France)
 * Federico Bebi (voice) and Leonardo Caneva (sing) (Italy)
 * Isabel Martiñon (early episodes)/Paolo Filio (present) (Latin America)
 * Mario García (Season 1)/Pilar Martín (Season 2) (Spain)
 * Rebekka Weissfeld (Danish)
 * Omar Hakeem (Arab World)
 * Eduardo Drummond (Brazil)
 * Christian Nieuwenhuizen (Netherlands)

Trivia

 * He can play the ukulele and sing well, as seen in "The Knights". Despite this he is shown to be failing music class in "The Apology".
 * He apparently had his appendix removed and he also kissed Sussie, as said by Darwin in "The Skull".
 * Gumball was voiced by Nicky Jones (best known for voicing the title character of Chowder) in the Early reel episode, but Logan Grove started voicing Gumball for the rest of the episodes on Seasons 1/2. He voiced Gumball for the final time in "The Kids". Later Jacob Hopkins takes his place for the rest of the show.
 * In Project Exonaut, Gumball is available as an exosuit for 1,000 coins.
 * In Cartoon Network: FusionFall, Gumball is available as a Nano.
 * Gumball's sweater was revealed to have been found by his dad in a sewage outlet in "The Date".
 * In "The Promise", it's revealed that the name "Gumball" is just a nickname.
 * Gumball is shown to have some health issues. In "The Club", it is shown that Gumball has a weak bladder.
 * Gumball is terrible at catching things, as shown in "The Quest".
 * Gumball hates watching the shopping channel, as shown in "The Laziest".
 * Gumball has been shown to be a horrible liar on numerous occasions.
 * Although Gumball has six whiskers, only five of them are visible because of the angle of his head. In "The Poltergeist", when Gumball impersonates a pea on a fork, you can see that he has six whiskers.
 * He has very wide hips, which is unusual because this feature is more commonly seen on female characters in animation.
 * Both Gumball and Anais placed 4th in the Dumb Race, since they both forfeited at the same time.
 * In "The Club", Nicole reveals that she and Richard agreed to give Gumball the middle name "Christopher", but Richard confused it for "Tristopher" on Gumball's birth certificate. His middle name was also confirmed as "Tristopher" on James Lamont's Formspring.
 * Gumball has arachnophobia, which is a strong fear of spiders, as shown in "The Date" and the character Ocho.
 * Gumball may have a fear of drowning, or perhaps claustrophobia as reflected in a dream where he hyperventilates and panics in a sinking car in "The Dream".
 * Gumball's face is shown to be extremely stretchy, as in "The Photo" Darwin was able to mould it into various poses, and it has been shown to go very flopy on occasions.
 * In "The Fight", it's revealed that Tina actually thought of herself as Gumball's friend.
 * Gumball is the only member of the Watterson family that does not have any visible eyelashes.
 * In "The Treasure", it is revealed that Gumball was a really ugly baby, though this may have been contradicted in "The Hero".
 * Gumball is shown to be good at whistling, demonstrating his skill in "The Colossus" and "The Fridge".
 * In Season 2, Gumball's voice has started getting deeper due to Logan Grove hitting puberty.
 * The first time we heard Jacob Hopkins voicing Gumball was on the "Welcome to Elmore" promo.
 * In "The Name", his real name is revealed to be Zach. At the end of the episode, he legally changes his name to Gumball, which is previously his nickname.
 * Gumball can throw away his head and grow a new one in a second, as shown in "The Man"