One of the cool things about watching a show set in the past is that the audience knows what’s around the corner. On “Stranger Things,” we’ve seen cultural phenomenons like “Ghostbusters,” the rise of mall culture, and the dawn of “Dungeons and Dragons” all through the lens of characters we’ve come to know and love. And in just a few seasons, we’ll get to see grunge destroy their lives.
We’ve ranked every “Stranger Things” character by the likelihood that they’ll be swept up by the coming grunge scene and succumb to horrible addictions. Check it out!
54. Ted Wheeler
There’s no way this Reaganite square narc would ever go near an electric guitar unless it was to go yell at his son for playing one, in which case he would likely be blasted out the window by a single strum.
53. Phil Callahan
Phil is a cop and, that’s it, that’s all we know about him. As a cop he’s down to succumb to substance abuse of some kind at some point, but nothing about the way he’s consistently sort of there in the background occasionally offering an incredulous reaction indicates that grunge music will be a part of it.
52. Jason Carver
This prick will probably be one of the few people to exchange a gifted copy of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” for Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous.”
51. Claudia Henderson
Dustin’s mom is unlikely to form a grunge band or get into serious narcotics. She might get into Weezer, but like, way after the blue album.
50. Lt. Colonel Sullivan
The closest Lt. Sullivan will probably come to being involved in the grunge scene is reading a dossier about how it’s a gateway to communism.
49. Bob Newby
Come the ‘90s, Bob just won’t understand why musicians today need to grow their hair long and play their dang instruments so loud.
48. Susan Hargrove
Max’s mom won’t be getting into grunge music unless you count Meredith Brooks, which she does.
47. Angela
There’s no way a cruel socialite bully like Angela would ever start a cool grunge band and die of a heroin overdose. Angela will launch an unsuccessful pop career and die of a heroin overdose.
46. Calvin Powell
Calvin is unlikely to start a band, he’s far too busy giving everyone the side eye and shaking his head disapprovingly.
45. Connie Frazier
She’s not musically inclined but she will be pulling strings behind the scenes getting anti-corporate musicians strung out on drugs as part of a government PSYOP so you can say she’s in the scene.
44. Florence
It’s extremely difficult to imagine this aged secretary starting a grunge band and getting into hard drugs. Florence’s grunge band will have more sense than that.
43. Billy Hargrove
Billy will never mature beyond glam and hair metal. It doesn’t matter if it’s the ‘80s, ‘90s, or 2099 he’s still going to be rocking that hair and that earring in his bitchin Camaro scoring with milfs.
42. Terry Ives
If Eleven’s mom ever recovers from her coma she’s likely going to be ready for some peace and quiet. You don’t wind up in an MKUltra splinter cult without having a pretty wild life,
41. Grigori
As an unstoppable Russian killing machine a la The Terminator, grunge is too soft for Grigori. He’ll probably become a statesman of the Industrial scene and die of liver failure from too much Redbull.
40. Tom Holloway
In the grunge era a man could skirt by with hollow, fully performative respect for feminism and still be considered pretty cool, but this chauvinistic newsman can’t even muster that.
39. Carol Perkins
Opportunistic, two-faced, and Machiavellian, Carol does give off some Courtney Love vibes, but she’s just not competent enough to make things happen for herself. She might get all the way up to sleeping with Billy Corgan but ultimately fail to utilize his connections.
38. Troy Walsh
Bullies start bands, it’s just a fact of life. Thankfully they also fuel the delusion that their band will be the next Alice in Chains with cocaine and die off.
37. Dmitri “Enzo” Antonov
The grunge aesthetic will lure Dmitri in because it reminds him of where he came from—a filthy Russian prison harboring a monster.
36. Alexei
From his first sip of cherry Slurpee, Alexi fell in love with the American way of life. Once grunge permeates mainstream culture, he’ll be all in.
35. Sam Owens
He’s an oldster with an important stuffy job, but he definitely gives off the vibe of a guy who delights in telling people “You know, I play a little.”
34. Two
Ever notice the striking similarities between all the scenes of these psychic kids wreaking havoc in the lab and the Pear Jam “Jeremy” video?
33. Yuri Ismaylov
He probably won’t start a grunge band, but he’ll surely wind up supplying contraband to lots of them. It’s only a matter of time before that lifestyle catches up to him and he nods off in his smuggler’s plane mid-flight.
32. Barbara “Barb” Holland
Obviously, we’re taking some liberties with the living status of a lot of these characters, but Barb’s defining attribute is that she’s dead. As such, she won’t be starting any bands or overdosing on any drugs, but her story is a Hawkins legend. She’s sort of like their Francis Farmer. There will definitely be a Hawkins-based band called “What About Barb” at some point, and that band is bound to lose at least a drummer to drug use, so she gets an honorary spot.
31. Heather Holloway
Under the influence of the mind flayer, she and her boyfriend killed her parents and took off into the night. Kind of reminds us of the art from Sonic Youth’s “Goo.”
30. Tommy Hagan
Guys like Tommy spend their whole lives trying to feel as cool as they felt in High School. He’ll start a grunge band but probably won’t even book a gig before the drugs turn him into the man in the box.
Mike Myers likes heavy radio rock, but likes to “pit” so will go with you to a show and push people around and then request they push him back. We all need this guy for “nights off.”
BP is a pompous ass who always’ welcomes new women to the scene. Everyone knows he’s a dirtbag and that his main goal is to use his position to manipulate women into sleeping with him. Every scene is chock full of this asshole.
While being a savage beast, and kicking it old school definitely makes him prime for your local hXc scene, this swamp redneck is basically nothing more than a horror movie supergroup.
The only thing I know about these guys is that they’re posers. Listen, it’s a fine movie. But these aren’t zombies. They starve to death and dead things don’t starve. These guys have the ‘rage’ virus. I had that virus once. It wasn’t that bad.
Now anyone who has seen “Shocker” knows that HP is a glam metal guy, but he still has the heart of a NYHC guy. I mean he is a criminal.
With his fascination with kids, you would think Ole’ Ratty Sweater would be into Pop Punk. Nope. He’s a hardcore kid. Whenever he isn’t wearing a fedora he reaches for one of those mosh caps and owns multiple pairs of camo shorts.
At heart Ghostface is a midwestern emo kid. Everyone who has donned the mask is pretty whiney about basic life shit. But rather than get therapy they use violence. Boom..NYHC.
You only have one chance to make your first album, and you certainly only have one to create a debut via a huge conglomerate, especially in the current musical climate. Motionless in White released their first three LPs on Fearless Records between 2010-2014. After the success of said trifecta, and particularly “Reincarnate,” their last for Fearless, Motionless in White looked for whiter pastures and signed with Roadrunner Records, which is the current home to truly huge rock acts Coheed and Cambria, Turnstile, Gojira, and Seal, and the band has released three records there as of now as well. Sadly, their first for Roadrunner is “Graveyard Shift,” which is good, but as we know, good is the enemy of great. Still, they climbed the ladder with their two follow-ups.
It seems like every album in the early to mid-2010s with a healthy yet caloric combination of growling and saccharine was produced by Florida man, but not “Florida Man,” Andrew Wade, and if you want proof, go to his Wikipedia page, and quickly count his production credits from 2010-2014, which include his boyz in A Day To Remember, the girlz in Eyes Set to Kill, the nu-metal dancers in Issues, and hardcore act Bachman-Turner Overdrive; spoiler alert, you can’t count that high and we have proof because you’re reading this. Anyway, “Creatures” is a hell of a debut, but an immaculate misconception is that it is MIW’s finest. It’s not, and we hope that that hypothesis perishes; it dies today. Debuting at #6 on the Billboard Heatseeker Chart is no small feat, especially given that it was the band’s first LP, so let’s give the band Winona Ryder’s designer clothes.
Broadcasting from Earth’s core: “Disguise” is Motionless in White’s sophomore and second-best Roadrunner Records release. It’s a great listen front to back and contains their biggest publicly streamed song on Spotify with “Another Life,” which at present day contains 143,538,421 listens, supplanting the band’s legacy in heavy rock and roll forever, and unintentionally means a better existence thanks to a mega improvement from its predecessor, “Graveyard Shift.” We know that you MIW haters are grasping for straws, holding onto smoke, and are soaked in a headache with a brand new numb after hearing this stat, but we implore you to suck it and/or bow down to the blank colored lack of movement. Fun fact, the 2021 Special Edition version of “Disguise,” which came out two years after the original version was released, contains a sick, sick, sick cover of The Killers’ new-wave manifesto “Somebody Told Me”.
Opening “Reincarnate” with one of the band’s better songs known as “Death March” showcased that Motionless in White was not a makeup wearing, silly, solely image-based unsubstantive act sans quality. Not. By. A. Longshot. Furthermore, the album’s producer Dan Korneff really brought out the best in the group in every which way. In addition, this particular MIW record had features from Dani Filth of Cradle of Filth, Maria Brink of In This Moment, Dessa Poljak of Silencio, and black metal king The Big Bopper. In closing, this record debuted at #1, yes #1, on Billboard’s Rock album charts.
“Infamous,” Motionless in White’s second full-length LP, is FAR from a sophomore slump, likely your favorite MIW album, famous, and is also Fearless Records’ most superior MIW release. If you thought that MIW was too metalcore, crabcore, hardcore, or coral with their debut “Creatures,” this one is an abandonment of said four genres and hearkens more to the “Family Values Tour” than “Warped Tour” in the best way; we still truly love Warped, families, Ozzfest, and Lilith Fair. Now let’s get to the end, which is literally the end of the world; wear a life jacket with garlic to protect you from the vampires that are literally everywhere.
We must admit that it is extremely rare for ANY band with a six album catalog or more to peak with their newest effort, as fans typically vouch for an act’s debut no matter how low quality it is and by any means necessary, but “Scoring The End Of The World” inarguably takes the gold medal spot here, and thus we list no “skip it” tracks below; non-hollow points. 2022 was a great and underrated year for rock, not you, red, werewolves, white, Motionless in White, and Vengaboys’ legacy which contains the sterling chorus that tells its fans, “Boom, boom, boom, boom, I want you in my room.” What’s craziest about this album is that Motionless in White is now officially a mainstream rock band, pissing off For Today yesterday, err, today, and tomorrow.
The one thing he would hate more than being an actual senator is being a senator’s unpaid intern. The best we could hope for here is that it inspires a new solo concept album about recent repeals to the CFR regulations.
Jello once snorted coke off of three buttholes at the same time, one of them being his own. So even though he has an acute familiarity with substances, he’s nowhere near the best choice to regulate them.
We’re pretty sure that, by the end of his life, Ronald Reagan didn’t have any living friends who were still able to lift their own fork, let alone a fascist’s casket. But regardless, we’re pretty confident that Jello never got a callback for the position.
Are you fucking kidding us? There’s a halfway decent chance he’d pull the trigger himself.
Look, we’d love to see Jello lay out Brett Kavanaugh on his own smug, beer-swollen face with “Terminal Preppie’ as the soundtrack. But admittedly, it doesn’t make for a great working relationship. At least it didn’t for us with our last boss at Panera.
A little-known government appointment, but one that is vital to the preservation of the republic. Someone’s gotta send all those goddamn lake birds back to where they came from – lakes!Also, Jello can’t swim, so he’s not gonna do great at this totally real job.
Bureaucracy. Automotive maintenance. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. These are just a few of the things that Jello is sorely unequipped to deal with on a daily basis. And unfortunately this job involves all three, so let’s just skip it.
Jello doesn’t do cold because cold makes jello freeze (*cue rimshot sound effect).
Even suspending Jello’s feelings towards members of the military (unknown or otherwise) we simply cannot imagine he would be capable of carrying out the various duties of a guard. He wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone and that might drive him insane. Besides, those guns are too heavy and you have to carry them the whole time!
Any position where Jello is forced to interact with cops is going to be a non-starter. Also, we’re going to guess that any data he gathers is gonna skew a little towards the “fuck this job and all of you fuckers” variety, which may not be the most helpful to law enforcement.
Jello would immediately dissolve the entire military-industrial complex on day one of this job, which would also include dissolving the position himself. Essentially, he would make himself obsolete, and we’ll let you all insert your own jokes after that last statement.
No fucking way. That’s some real PMRC bullshit right there.
If you need a punk rock singer to gleefully dry off politicians on vacation after a dip in a cool, refreshing natural spring, then you’d have better luck with Michale Graves. Jello isn’t interested.
Oddly enough, one encouraging encounter with Officer Biafra is enough to convince most kids to immediately return to school and never leave again simply out of the knowledge that he is still out there waiting for them somewhere.
Look, we don’t know what in the hell a comptroller does. And frankly we don’t feel like looking it up ‘cause government jobs are mostly boring as shit. Let’s just say Big J would suck at this and move on.
No one who works at the Pentagon would allow their children anywhere near Jello. We have to believe this is partly because he would actively be bilking the kids for any military secrets they may have overheard at home so he can write a new song.
This isn’t even one of the fun airplane jobs! We don’t even know that there are fun airplane jobs but we know this certainly isn’t one of them. Forget it, he would hate this.
Sure, Jello has the know-how (“Chemical Warfare,” “Kill the Poor,” “Kepone Factory”) but does he have the grit to actually gas the population? Don’t think about that second part – we’re giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Jello might champion some animal protection causes, but doesn’t he actually have to interact with nature for this position. Oof – it’s hard to tell just which part of the man would cause the mass stampede first.
If you’ve got a conspiracy to pin on someone, then for the love of fuck don’t try to pin it on Jello. He will never shut up about it and, despite our best efforts, is unkillable. This is just a conspiratorial mess waiting to happen.
Jello would be frustrated to shit at this job. All this country does with land is misappropriate it. He is never gonna be able to change that.
