ALF (Gordon Shumway)

"Ha! I killed me!"

- ALF's catchpharse



Gordon Shumway, nicknamed ALF (acronym for Alien Life Form), is the main protagonist of the titular series of the same name. He is an alien from the planet Melmac.

Biography
ALF was born on October 28, 1756 and has a younger brother and sister. He once mentions that he was conceived in a DeSoto. ALF's body is covered with rust-colored fur (he once described his color ar burnt sienna), but has implied that it is not his natural color. He has a rippled snout, facial mols, eight stomachs and he likes to eat cats. He is about three feet tall.

He attended Melmac High School for 112 years, where he majored in software and pedestrian crossing, and was captain of a Bouillabaisseball team. In college, ALF majored in physical education.

ALF was later employed as an Orbit Guard and was called to duty shortly before his planet was destroyed in a nuclear war. His girlfriend Rhonda escaped the destruction of Melmac in a spaceship piloted by his best friend Skip. However, At the end of Galactic War III, ALF was arrested by the angry Prince of the Melmacian Trade Federation, he escaped & fled, he ended up hitting Torkwrish & encountered Torks & Blood Torks, While attempting to refuel his spaceship, in his search for fuel, he got attacked by a Blood Tork & nearly suffered the fate of a Kiss of Blood.

In addition to his native Melmacian tongue, ALF can speak both English and Spanish proficiently, although his English spelling and penmanship is very poor. Although there is no explanation given as to how he learned these languages, it is evident that elements of Earth culture have infused themselves into Melmacian culture (perhaps through observation or monitoring of television and radio broadcasts), in that ALF was once in a dinner theatre production of Man of La Mancha on Melmac.

ALF is an avid musician who sings and plays saxophone, guitar, bass guitar, drums, and piano.

Personality
ALF is troublesome, sarcastic and cynical, and sometimes he puts himself at the risk of being discovered while doing some of his often unintentional pranks. ALF is known to have set 246 fires with the Tanner family, but most were barbeque related. Before he met Rhonda, his girlfriend, he was engaged to Ruby.

Season 1

 * Strangers in the Night: Scared off a burglar who was stealing Willie and Kate's watch and jewelry box, resulting in the burglar getting arrested at the end of the episode.
 * La Cucaracha: He defeated a giant cockroach, by using perfume.

Season 2

 * ALF's Special Christmas: He became a doctor and helped a pregnant woman bring a baby to the world.
 * I'm Your Puppet: He defeated Paul the Dummy by throwing him to the ground.

Season 3

 * TBA

Season 4

 * TBA

In Other Media

 * Cartoons: All-Stars to the Rescue: Along with the other cartoon characters, they teached kids how drugs are bad.

Life with the Tanner Family
One day, ALF followed an amateur radio signal to Earth and crash-landed his ship into the garage of the Tanner family. The Tanners are a suburban middle class family consisting of the social worker Willie, his wife Kate, their children Lynn and Brian, and their cat Lucky. Since the crash-landing, the Tanners have helped take care of ALF and hide him from the Alien Task Force, a secret U.S. military organization that tracks down alien creatures.

Budget Problems
ALF increased the Tanners' expenses. The budget for extra food and repairs for damages in the house were what forced the Tanners to increase their spending budget. In Varsity Drag, Lynn was upset because she couldn't go to college, due to the Tanners not being able to afford it.. In Keepin' the Faith, he bought $4,000 of cosmetics with Willie's credit card, and in The Gambler, he put the Tanners into a gambling debt of $6,000 to Nick "The Fish" Mints. In Project ALF, it is said that ALF has made over 300 fires, though most were barbeque-related.

In Stairway to Heaven, ALF dreamed that he had crashed somewhere on Earth other than the Tanners' home, and the Tanners had become very wealthy. However, the Tanners became so wealthy that they were miserably bored and are unable to find interest in talking to each other. Even ALF had become very wealthy as he created a business for selling cosmetics made out of fluids from his space ship.

Melmacian Physical Troubles

 * In Wild Thing, like every Melmacian, each 75 years, ALF goes into a frenzy in which he will do literally anything to eat cats. He lied and mimicked the Tanner's voices perfectly to try to trick them into letting him from the cage. When he did get free of the cage, he locked Brian in. He then went on a rampage trying to find Lucky (who was spending the night at the Ochmonek's house) and stole Raquel's lawnmower, which he used to go to the zoo and steal a tiger.
 * In Something's Wrong With Me, he develops the dreaded Melmacian hiccups. Two cures are drinking cat juice or eating raw spinach. When ALF is given fake cat juice, it cured his hiccups until he learned it wasn't real, indicating it had a placebo effect.
 * In Fever, ALF catches an Earth virus, and can only be cured by Carl Shrub, but was cured by ragweed, a plant similar to Carl Shrub.

Trivia

 * ALF was seen appearing on Fox Network with Bill O'Reilly in November 2007.
 * He appeared in the 2011 Super Bowl commercials showing he is a fan of the Carolina Panthers (even though the team did not exist during the run of the series.).
 * ALF appeared in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue as well as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Baby Kermit, Michelangelo, Garfield, the Smurfs, Winnie the Pooh, etc.
 * In one episode, ALF revealed he is allergic to human infants.
 * ALF is played by Paul Fusco.
 * As revealed in Something's Wrong WIth Me, ALF's least favorite food is Raw Spinach, not to mention him and other Melmacians picked on Popeye.
 * ALF is also an antagonist in several episodes.
 * Before starring on a television series of his own, ALF appeared on other television series, such as, but not limited to, Blossom, Matlock, and Hollywood Squares.