Wally (Dilbert character)
| Wally | |
|---|---|
| Dilbert character | |
 |
|
| First appearance | May 5, 1990 |
| Created by | Scott Adams |
| Portrayed by |
Ricky Dean Logan (Dilbert's Desktop Games) Gordon Hunt (TV series) |
| Information | |
| Species | Human |
| Gender | Male |
| Nationality | American |
Wally is a fictional character from the Dilbert comic strip. He is characterized as an employee so deeply jaded that instead of doing any real work, he spends all his time and effort successfully gaming the system.
Wally was inspired by a coworker of creator Scott Adams at Pacific Bell. In Seven Years of Highly Defective People and What Would Wally Do, Adams explained that his co-worker at Pacific Bell had made a bad judgment call, so management froze him at his position and pay scale rather than fire him. Then Pacific Bell started offering a generous severance package for the lowest ten-percent of workers, so the coworker, knowing management had hinted that he should leave the company and knowing it was better to leave with money than without, had an incentive to become a low performing worker. Adams was inspired by this co-worker's serious dedication toward this goal, and the concept of a completely shameless employee with no sense of loyalty became Wally.
Another co-worker of Adams provided the inspiration for the "Wally Report" (see below).
In early strips, there were characters who resembled Wally in appearance and had bit parts, not unlike Ted the Generic Guy. Some of the more memorable ones include Bud, a cynical engineer who broke the spirit of a newcomer; Les, a short-tempered, short-statured man who clashed with Dilbert and other co-workers; Johnson, who failed a drug test by testing positive for Diet Pepsi and Cheetos; and Norman, who was "snorted" by a woman with a huge nose. This was referenced in a comic where the company's biggest customer is killed, and the Pointy Haired Boss announces a plan to have one of the employees impersonate him. When the Boss held up a picture of the customer, he was revealed to be identical to Wally, who recognized and identified him as "Willy from the club of people who look exactly like me." The true Wally did not appear until October 21, 1991, when Adams wrote in the co-worker's story of attempting to get fired. At the time, the character was called "Bruce".
Wally is described in the animated series as the "shell of a long gone great programmer". As described by a female employee in a flashback sequence, "He just programmed an entire database from scratch!". He is used later in the same episode to solve the Y2K bug while hypnotized. When the hypnosis wears off, Wally claims he is more "soiled" than usual and asks if he had been working.
...
Wikipedia