Posted by Most likely, the characters that remain in people’s memories after watching the 2023 Netflix series Obliterated are others. Maybe Ava, the team leader, or Chad, the blond muscle man, or even Gomez, the tough sniper. Nevertheless, surprisingly, there was a minor character, a fictional one, that raised curiosity in viewers: the green gremlin, the hallucination Yung keeps having while on drugs. At some point, McKnight mentions a fragment of its true story, explaining the character’s meaning as something created during World War II. And yes, he’s right: in this article, we will discover how gremlins were born.
Most of us will definitely relate the gremlin to the famous 1984 movie directed by Joe Dante: the film became one of the blockbusters of that year and marked the little, scary creatures into our imagination. However, McKnight is right when he explains the story of the green gremlin in Obliterated: gremlins are part of the folklore developed in the British Royal Air Force in the first half of 1900.
According to the original story, gremlins are mischievous creatures that sabotage aircraft and radio communication, especially during war. They were often mentioned inside the Royal Air Force: pilots and soldiers blamed these imaginary monsters as responsible for all the inexplicable malfunctions that could occur during the action. In other words, when something happened and there was no clear explanation, the British army blamed the gremlins: it was a way to explain what could randomly occur by chance.
As explained in this interesting article on World Wide Words, gremlins were a popular concept during World War II, even mentioned in the American newspapers, described as “exasperating pixies, often clad in caps, ruffled collars, tight breeches and spats, who delight in raising hell in Allied planes.” Gremlins didn’t take sides during the war, though: they were evil creatures that were generally disturbing the action.
In 1943, gremlins became the protagonists of Roald Dahl’s first children’s book, The Gremlins. The British author claimed he invented the term, but there were sources proving gremlins were a story that already existed years earlier. The origin of the term “gremlin” is unclear, though: it is believed they were named after the Fremlin beer, the most popular British beer in those years. From this point of view, the word “gremlin” was born as a mix of “goblin” and “Fremlin,” indicating an evil creature you would see only through the effects of alcohol.
In conclusion, the true story of the gremlin explained in Obliterated is authentic: these creatures were invented in the military context in the first half of the 20th century, and they had a precise meaning, as mysterious responsible for the malfunctions that occurred during the war. On the other side, the role the green creature has in the Netflix series, playing Yung’s critical conscience, is an original idea of the writers. You didn’t expect so many curiosities behind a little monster, did you?
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