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Stranger Things' David Harbour created a Dungeons & Dragons character to promote the show before it was a Netflix hit

In 2016, the newly-introduced Jim Hopper himself took to a Reddit AMA to promote the first season of Stranger Things. One of his answers had attendees wondering if David Harbour was a Dungeons & Dragons player

News by Grant DeArmitt, Staff Writer

Published on Tue Nov 19 2024

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When Netflix's Stranger Things drops its fifth and final season some time in 2025 (we expect), it will be greeted by a world where just about every pop culture consumer has a soft spot for Kate Bush and Metallica, plus Eggos on the side. But there was a time when the show's creatives had to reach out and promote the then new series - case in point; a 2016 Reddit AMA with Sheriff Jim Hopper himself, David Harbour. At one point in the conversation, Harbour was asked to create a Dungeons and Dragons character, and boy, did he deliver.

As you're likely well-aware, Stranger Things brought about a kind of renaissance in Dungeons & Dragons, introducing the game to both an excited new generation and those who had missed it from the previous one. It wa one of those newcomers to the game that Harbour's AMA challenge was set, someone going by the moniker "three_3s_threeing."

"My friends and I had just decided to try getting in to Dungeons and Dragons when Stranger Things dropped, " our triply-obsessed compatriot writes, "Your show really convinced us to get organized and actually follow through with an adventure of our own! [...] Would you come up with a name of a character or creature or maybe perhaps a location that an amateur dungeon master could add to his campaign?"

"The gnarled hop," Harbour writes back, naming his creation and forever working it into this Redditor's plans as a DM. He goes on to describe the Hop as "a seemingly innocuous drunken man in a corner who suddenly morphs into a nasty bugbear is any of the PCs try to engage him."

Fantastic, no notes. You can almost hear Sheriff Hopper's gruff voice come through in the creature's description. But Hopper wasn't done yet. It's a D&D NPC, after all, the Hop has got to have some stats.

"Plus 20 strength, plus 12 charisma, minus 14 dexterity."

And here we thought it couldn't get any better. If you're familiar with D&D at all, you know that those stats make all the difference as to a group's interaction (or possibly battle) with an NPC. In fact, the stats were specific enough that another Redditor later commented: "Wonder if Hopper is a closet D&D player."

Well, we haven't seen Hopper roll a 20-sided die on screen thus far. But hey, we've still got one more season to go, right?

Stranger Things seasons 1-4 are streaming on Netflix now. Season 5 is expected some time between summer and fall of 2025.

As we all collectively wait for Stranger Things season 5, here's the keys to getting ready:

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Grant DeArmitt: Grant DeArmitt (he/him) likes horror, comics, and the unholy union of the two. As Popverse's Staff Writer, he criss-crosses the pop culture landscape bringing you the news and opinions about the big things (and the next big things). In the past, and despite their better judgment, he has written for Nightmare on Film Street and Newsarama. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner, Kingsley, and corgi, Legs.