Balki Bartokomous

Balki Bartokomous
Perfect Strangers character
Balki in the series' intro credits.
First appearance	"Knock Knock...Who's There?"
Last appearance	"Up, Up and Away, Part 2"
Created by	Dale McRaven
Portrayed by	Bronson Pinchot

Balki Bartokomous is a fictional character played by Bronson Pinchot in the television sitcom Perfect Strangers. He is from the fictional Greek-like island of Mypos, a fictional Hellenic country in the Mediterranean Sea.

Pinchot was first approached by producers Tom Miller and Robert Boyett to play the role of an immigrant to the United States, in a show tentatively titled "The Greenhorn"; he refused, not wanting to play another character similar to "Serge"—his role in Beverly Hills Cop, who also has an unusual accent. He reconsidered after returning from a trip to Greece, and decided to base the character and the fictional island of Mypos on the people he encountered in the villages of Greece. Pinchot came up with the name Balki, after his sister's dog that she named "Balcony" and ended up calling him "Balcy" for short.

Balki was born and raised on the fictional Greek-like island of Mypos, where he eked out a living as a shepherd and dreamed of a better life in the United States. Balki is a naive, optimistic, well-meaning person; as Pinchot once said of his character, "...he looks at the world like a four-year-old" and "sees the world as benevolent". The traits, along with his ignorance of American culture, sometimes get Balki into difficult or dangerous situations, with Larry Appleton invariably coming to his rescue. However, Larry soon realizes that for all of Balki's naivety and cultural malapropisms, he otherwise is a very intelligent and courageous man of many talents who often saves the day himself.

Mypos, as described by Balki, was a somewhat strange land, with many bizarre customs and traditions. One episode had Larry going duck hunting and the normally gentle Balki surprisingly asks to come along, out of an intense hatred for ducks, which are regarded as vicious predators on Mypos. The description he gives of the ducks on Mypos later in the episode, however, implies that in fact Pterodactyls still exist on the island. It is also described as being something of a primitive, backwards place, with Larry once mentioning that the whole country had just one telephone (with call-waiting) and only the royal family had indoor plumbing.