Arthur Dent

In the film, Arthur, played by Martin Freeman, lies down in the mud in front of the bulldozers to save his house, which is making way for a bypass. Ford bribes the workers with beer, takes Arthur to the pub and tells him everything: he's an alien, a researcher for the Guide, and the Vogons are about to demolish Earth.

The two hitch a ride on the Vogon ship, are forced to listen to Vogon poetry and get thrown into space. Against all odds, the Heart of Gold rescues them. On board is Trillian, the woman Arthur met at a costume party and who left with Zaphod.

When the Vogons take Trillian, Arthur goes after her on their homeworld and braves the bureaucracy line. On the run to Magrathea, he's the one who fires up the Infinite Improbability Drive, turning the missiles into petunias and a whale.

On Magrathea, Slartibartfast shows Arthur a second Earth under construction. Back home, or close enough, he finds his friends having dinner with two mice who want to remove his brain to find the Question. Arthur finishes them off. In the end, he leaves the new Earth behind and chooses to travel with Trillian.

In the BBC series, Arthur is Simon Jones, the same actor from the radio show. The story starts the same way: the house, the Vogons, the hitchhike and the Heart of Gold. On Magrathea, Arthur meets Slartibartfast and learns that Earth was a computer commissioned by the mice.

This version goes further. An explosion throws the group into the future, to Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe. From there, they escape on a ship belonging to the band Disaster Area, which is set to dive into a sun.

Just before the dive, Arthur and Ford teleport off and land on prehistoric Earth, aboard a ship full of frozen Golgafrinchans. Ford realizes that they, not the cave dwellers, will become the human race.

Arthur pulls Scrabble tiles from a bag to find the Question, and the result shows Earth's program has gone off track. Zaphod, Trillian and Marvin stay on the ship, and Arthur ends the series stuck in the past with Ford.

In Douglas Adams's books, Arthur is the lead in all five volumes and returns in Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing.... Simon Jones played him on the radio from 1978 and in the 1981 series. Martin Freeman took over in the 2005 film, where Simon Jones has a cameo.