10 More Minor Star Wars Characters With Completely Unnecessary Backstories

?As a writer, there is no greater joy than finding a topic that nerds can agree on. Nerds are divisive, fickle and hard to please, after all. But pointing out how writers, fans, and Lucas employees have vomited endless details about minor Star Wars characters in this TR Daily List gave me that joy.
If there’s one thing nerds can apparently agree on, it’s that not every human, creature and droid featured in the original trilogy needs to have had an intimate relationship with Han Solo off-screen.

But why stop with only 10 of the awkward stories of the folks who got two seconds of screen time? The Star Wars movies have  hundreds of them, and Wookieepedia has massive, hilariously action-packed stories for almost all of them! Here’s 10 more minor Star Wars characters who have way more life history than necessary!

10) The Tonikka Sisters

?There was little-to-no sex in the first Star Wars film. Maybe a little flirting with the princess, but that was about it. There were, however, minute clips of some cute girls in the Mos Eisley Cantina, the Tonikka sisters. They were con artists, like pretty much everyone in the damn Mos Eisley Cantina. I don’t know why the Empire didn’t just run in and bust that place once a month, since according to the extended universe everyone in it had a record. But those sisters you saw for half a second in A New Hope? Not really the Tonikka sisters! They were Mistryl Shadow Guard disguised as them! Someone felt the need to assure you that the two characters you didn’t care about (they were just known as “space girls” on the film set) were actually two other characters you didn’t care about.

9) Momaw Nadon, a.k.a. Hammerhead

?Hammerhead, remember? You had the figure! He had a big ol’ head! You saw him a few times in the Cantina scene where he kind of shook for a second and grunted! Well shows what you know, kid, he’s actually a priest from a floating space city who reluctantly gave the Imperials secrets regarding his homeworld and was then exiled to Tatooine where he grew a “secret grove” of trees and made a clone of the lieutenant who tried to kill his precious trees for not finding R2-D2. That all happened in the past, but all we know about him is that he likes to drink in the early afternoon at a seedy bar.

8) Dengar

?I really didn’t want to write about Dengar because his backstory (and post-Empire story) is so damn huge that it would take forever just to read it. Seriously, his Wookieepedia entry is twice as long as the Wikipedia entry for Love in the Time of Cholera. Since his barely-there cameo in The Empire Strikes Back, a great cult has risen around him. Turns out his fucked-up face is a result of none other than the center of the Star Wars universe, Han Solo, who bested him in a swoop race on a planet of crystals. His whole life from that point on was about hunting down Solo and that took him (just off-camera) for big events like the evacuation of Hoth, the Millennium Falcon race through the asteroids, and the carbonite delivery to Jabba’s palace. He ended up settling down with one of Jabba’s former dancers and Boba Fett was the best man at their wedding. Trust me, there’s a whole bunch more shit I left out.

7) Ephant Mon

?Things you didn’t need to know about Ephant Mon, one of many misshapen guests at Jabba’s palace in episode 6:
? skilled fighter
? works as a slaver
? head of security and frequent housesitter at Jabba’s palace
? gun/drug smuggler
? tried to get Luke and the others freed before they were fed to the sarlacc
? founded a Force-based religion
? speaks three languages
? has a walking stick made of bone with Jabba’s clan crest on it
? really just an unnamed puppeteer in a bulky costume

6) Bren Derlin, a.k.a. Cliff Clavin

?Bren Derlin already had a small level of fame because he was a rebel trooper of Hoth played by John Ratzenberger of Cheers
fame. It certainly wasn’t because of his time in the movie, where all
he does is tell Princess Leia that they have to shut the shield doors on
Hoth and let Han and Luke freeze to death outside. But beyond the
movie, it turns out Bren Derlin is a genius who somehow came up with
some kind of brilliant plan to defend Echo Base, despite the fact the
Rebels appeared to get their asses kicked. More importantly, he somehow
rode a tauntaun to Luke’s crashed snowspeeder and rescued him after he
destroyed that AT-AT, thus saving the entire galaxy.

5) Lumpy

?I hate Lumpy. About 98% of Star Wars fans hate Lumpy. He’s Chewbacca’s kid from the Holiday Special (and don’t try to tell me that the Holiday Special was good, you hipsters, just because you enjoy it in an ironic way) and his only two responsibilities in it are to shriek at things and stare at things. If he were relegated to the abysmal TV show and forgotten about that would be fine, that would prove that God is forgiving, but he’s appeared in more novels than Captain Nemo, Jason Bourne, and Jack Ryan combined. He’s even had four names, Lumpawarrump (birth name), Lumpy (nickname), Lumpawaroo (adult name), and Waroo (nickname based off his adult name). Like nearly every in the Star Wars universe, he’s had to rescue Han Solo in the past.

4) Admiral Ozzel

?Here’s a fun fact for you: in the Star Wars movies, the Imperial officers are more or less generic guys in uniforms. That’s the whole point of uniforms, to promote uniformity and anonymity. Kendal Ozzel, to most of the movie-watching public, is a mustached guy in a grey uniform who Darth Vader Force chokes when he fucks up invading Hoth in ESB. But to the Star Wars extended universe writers, that’s just fertile territory for backstory! Wookieepedia drones on and on about his fictional military victories and failures, even mentioning that he was the presiding officer at Han Solo’s court martial and going on in endless detail about why he didn’t think the rebels were on Hoth. Ozzel was a clone trooper commander in the 44th Special Operations Division and partnered with Jedi masters Plo Koon, Tauht, and Kit Fisto to destroy a weather control station. Also, the Wookieepedia entry for him has the same picture of him in three different places.

3) Barada

?If you were paying attention in the background when Luke and company (especially Han Solo, because he’s everywhere) were being fed to the sarlacc, you’d notice a green guy with a nifty flesh Fu Manchu mustache. He’s Barada, a name lifted directly off the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still (no lie). He’s the chief mechanic of Jabba’s sail barge and runs the motor pool. Like at a police station or a university. Here’s an absolutely batshit direct quote from Wookieepedia about his life: “In his youth on Klatooine, Barada was disrespectful of his parents and was sold into servitude to a garage owner. [wtf?] The owner of the garage lost it to Jabba in a game of Sabacc and now Jabba not only owned the garage, he owned Barada as well. This was unfortunate for Barada as he was only 2000 credits short of paying for his freedom from the garage before Jabba took over.”

2) Derek Klivian, a.k.a. Hobbie

?How do G.I. Joe and Star Wars intersect? With Derek, better known to casual Star Wars viewers as “Rogue Four,” the snowspeeder pilot that crashes into an AT-AT. The connection? Like everyone in G.I. Joe does, he bailed out before impact. That’s great news, since he was a hero of the Rebellion after capturing the ship Rand Ecliptic, defending Luke and Leia against TIE fighters on Jabiim, waging attacks on Moff Kohl Seerdon on the planet Thyferra, participating in the Battle of Endor, routed gangsters on Tatooine, escorting Princess Isplourrdacartha Estillo to Eiattu 6, and OH GOD IT IS TOO MUCH. If you really want to read it all, there are FIFTEEN more segments to Derek’s life on Wookieepedia, including a part where he gets shot in the genitals.

1) R5-D4, a.k.a. Skippy

?Skippy is that one red and white droid that broke down in front of Luke Skywalker in A New Hope, prompting him to buy R2-D2 instead. In a sane world, this is just a fun little coincidence; hey, robots break sometimes. In the Star Wars extended universe, however, this R5-D4 is a robot that uses the Force to free himself from Jabba’s palace and meet up with the Jawas, who then try to sell him to the Skywalkers but he fakes a breakdown so they buy R2-D2 instead because R2 has the rebel plans. Then Stormtroopers shoot him. Luckily, Kenner made a toy of this heroic, yet ludicrous droid.