Frankie Watterson
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Character Information
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Frankie Watterson is a minor character in The Amazing World of Gumball, and is the biological father of Richard as well as the grandfather of Gumball and Anais. He was first mentioned in "The Watch," whom Richard said he gave him the watch, and again in "The Man," where it was revealed that he left his wife and son for an unknown reason 33 years ago (42 in "The Man") (Granny Jojo told Richard that he went out to buy milk). He makes his first physical appearance in "The Signature."
In "The Outside," it is revealed that Frankie left his wife and son to avoid getting arrested and thrown in jail for selling parcels of the moon to senior citizens. In "The Father," Frankie confesses he also did not take Richard into his custody to prevent him from following in his footsteps.
Appearance[]
Frankie greatly resembles his son, except that he is a gray rat. He is overweight and has large round ears. He wears a red Hawaiian shirt, a wrinkled black tie, a pair of baggy light purple trousers, a beige trench coat, and an olive-brown hat. He also has a black right eye, and wrinkles underneath both his eyes. He also has a long, pink, rat tail.
As of "The Outside," he seems to have a beard on his chin along with his whiskers being white.
In "The Father," he is seen at a young age with slicked back hair on his head, a pink and purple vertical striped shirt with a white collar and cuffs, a red and pink striped tie, and brown trousers. He also does not yet have his black eye.
Personality[]
Frankie is a sleazy con man and a figurative rat. He scams his own son and his family into giving him the possession of their house. He has no remorse for his actions, until he recalls the day he left Richard and regrets having hurt his family. Even so, his selfishness does not deter Richard from asking him to reunite with his family. Frankie also shares some traits with Richard, such as being lazy, sneaky, and being incompetent at parenting, but is much worse. Like most of the Wattersons, Frankie deals with stress by being snarky and cynical ("The Outside"), though he is generally slick, talkative, friendly and outgoing.
In the episodes following "The Signature," Frankie seems to soften up; he becomes more relaxed and genial and tries to be a part of his son's life as well as the rest of the Watterson family, but is not very good at it. Being a life-long career criminal whose idea of fun is seeing how many laws he can break in one day, Frankie fails to grasp social norms, turning out that there is very little he and his son can actually connect with. He is also very pessimistic about his three decades of no contact with Richard— arguably one of the few things Frankie feels genuine guilt and remorse for— convinced that he is an irredeemably terrible father and that the bond between him and Richard is severed for good until Richard convinces him otherwise at the end of "The Father"; showing that in spite of everything else he did, he genuinely does still care about his son.