Top 10 Fictional Grahams, Ranked

You didn't want this but you needed it.

Cultural eunuchs demand representation yet my people are often ignored in print and cinema. Why? WHY? Why?

Do you know how hard I had to dig to find ten fictional Grahams? This is bulls***.

Anyway. Here’s what we’ve got.

10—Will Graham (Ed Norton, The Hannibal Lecter movies)

Ed Norton is a good actor, nay, even great. I haven’t seen any of the Hannibal movies and I have no desire. Ed makes the list purely based on having a character with Graham in his name, but he’s dead last because it’s only a surname. Sorry, Ed.

9—Joshua Graham (Fallout: New Vegas)

Brother Joshua falls victim to the same loophole as Eddie Boy up top, but he’s definitely the superior of the surnamed Grahams. My own first name is a family surname, and given that Fallout lore puts Josh in the Old Mormon Fort for his base of operations, he’s officially the second-coolest Latter-day Saint named Graham from Vegas.

8—Graham Stroop (Robbie Amell, EXmas)

As the inverse of the surname rule, Graham Stroop is only ahead of Joshua because it’s his first name, and that matters around here. However, he’s last among firsts, because this movie was a whole tray of dog turd enchiladas. Want to watch an off-brand Hallmark flick about two idiot whores who use each other and suck at communicating? Warms the cockles of my heart, I tell you.

7—Graham “You Idiot” (Rohan Mead, Reacher season 1)

The Graham in question is some low-grade drunk muscle for hire, and his boss doesn’t get his money’s worth, because he’s a one-off character on Reacher. However, Roscoe Conklin became my Shoulder Angel for this line alone.

6—Graham (Dean Cain, Lady Dynamite)

Never seen a single episode of Lady Dynamite. Zero clue what it’s about. But in my search, I found out that Dean Cain played a Graham, and that gets him ON THE LIST. Bro is an upper-tier Superman, no question.

5—Graham Garrett (Alexander Scarliss, Smallville)

We’re staying in Superman lore for this one, and unlike Graham Number 7, this guy actually has some notches on his belt. In season 5 he’s a hitman for hire, made all the more dangerous because he can turn invisible. Also, Lois Lane is hot for him, as all Lois Lanes are for all Grahams.

4—Graham Aker (Gundam 00)

I haven’t watched every Gundam series, but of the ones I have, 00 was the most compelling (although season 2 got a little weird.) Graham Aker is a mobile suit pilot charged with figuring out how to stop the Gundams as they wage an endless war against war itself.

In season 2 he becomes so obsessed with defeating them that he gets his own hyper-powerful mobile suit and rebrands himself as “Mister Bushido,” counter-signaling the Gundams’ angelic themes with a devilish aesthetic. A cool character in a roster chock full of them.

3—Graham Wando (Jeremy Foley, Dante’s Peak)

Back in the 90s you didn’t get convincing superhero movies. It was mostly Batman flicks that got weirder and weirder, some alien invasion stuff, and some disaster flicks. Of the disaster genre we got two volcano movies in 1997, the superior of which was Dante’s Peak, although for some reason it doesn’t get as much attention as films like Twister.

Pierce Brosnan is the male lead, fresh off his first outing as Bond, while Linda Hamilton takes the female lead as a divorced mother of two. Her oldest is a boy named Graham who’s more of a self-starter than his mom wants him to be.

When the volcano starts to erupt in their idyllic mountain town, Graham (ten years old) and his sister steal their mom’s truck to head up the road and rescue their reclusive grandmother, who doesn’t want to leave. Badass. Grahams do be driving.

2—Graham Hess (Mel Gibson, Signs)

The Absolute Unit himself plays a priest who has lost his faith in the wake of his wife’s death, but finds it during an alien invasion to Earth…or is it? Dave Cullen did a video recently where he outlines a theory that the aliens were actually demons, and the conflict was spiritual more than it was physical. I think it makes sense, personally.

Bonus points because Hess is a family name in my tree.

1—Graham (Matthew Marsden, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen)

“But Graham, how could you do this? How could a BRITISH Graham be above any American ones?!”

Trust me, fellow Graham Lovers, this was not an easy choice. And yet…my logic is undeniable.

“Cover Optimus!”

For starters, I’m an absolute sweeper for Transformers. I understand that this makes me part of the problem—it’s why the studios keep making bad Transformers content. Guys like me are so attached to the IP that we’ll keep falling for it, like a battered woman crawling back to the trailer park. It’s totally gonna work this time, you guys. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have burnt the Energon.

Thus is was that in 2009, when I paid good hard American cash to see Revenge of the Fallen in theaters (one of at least three times), I combed through the details of what was on screen to find things I could use to defend it. Naturally, a random NEST operator with the name GRAHAM on his uniform stood out to me.

Now, for the most part, soldiers in the Bay movies are pretty exchangeable, except for Duhamel and Gibson. But if you pay attention to Dark of the Moon, you’ll see a quick shot of a photo with Matthew Marsden (Graham) and Rosie Huntington-Whitely (Carly). It’s implied that 1) Graham died while on a mission with the Transformers, and 2) he set Sam up with Carly.

This is incredibly significant because Huntington-Whitely’s Carly character was a canon-correction from Megan Fox’s Mikaela. Yes, we all acknowledge that 2007 Megan Fox was a force of nature, but in the years since then she has gotten into drinking blood and transing kids. Parents, don’t send your kids to Hollywood, it will eat them alive and spit out a husk of a human being.

There was never a “Mikaela” in Generation 1 of Transformers. Spike (Sam) had a female friend named Carly, but I’m guessing that Michael Bay had a favorite stripper named Mikaela so that ended up being Fox’s name in the movies instead. After 2009’s Revenge, Megan Fox apparently compared Bay to Hitler, and that was enough for Spielberg to tell Bay to fire Fox, leaving the franchise in dire need of a new female character.

Summoning up every ounce of creativity in the dregs of his hollowed-out soul, Michael Bay hired (I kid you not) an underwear model. This is a real thing. Before she became an actress, Rosie Huntington-Whitely was a Victoria’s Secret Angel. Bro leaned in hard to the honesty of what he was doing. Megan Fox? That was pretend. Angel Rosie? This is for real.

But here’s the thing, her acting was no worse than Megan Fox’s, and in plenty of places it was actually a little bit better. While Mikaela got to do cool things like dragging Bumblebee through “Not Las Vegas” on a tow truck, Carly got to mess with Megatron’s head and convince him to turn on Sentinel Prime at a critical moment.

While the Shia LeBeouf era of Transformers ended here, it at least ended better than the second movie, but more importantly it replaced Fox with Huntington-Whitely, who has been in a committed relationship with none other than The Stathe himself for many many years, and they have a kid (or two, I dunno, I don’t pry that far into celebrity lives).

So in summary, the dirty biker-stripper blood-drinking kid-chopping era of Transformers shifted over to the elegant tradwife baby momma era…

…all because of NEST Operator Graham.

This is a lode-bearing Graham.

We salute this Graham, and overlook his Britishness in the rankings.

That is all. Now go buy one of my books.