Gaston

Gaston, or Gaston LeGume as he was called in a alternate opening for the film, is the main antagonist from Beauty and the Beast. He is voiced by Richard White. His original last name is a pun on the fact that he is meatheaded.

Personality
Gaston is strong and handsome, and is all too aware of this. He is hailed as a local hero, desired by many of the young women of his village, despite his rather boorish exterior. Given his narcisstic nature, he revels to boast about this when the villagers begin singing a song about him. When it comes to women, he proves to be extremely vain and sexist, demonstrated by when he repeatedly attempts to spend time with Belle, only for them to end in disaster due to his sexist behavior. He also believes that women are only good for being wives and mothers (especially of sons in the latter), something that Belle is disgusted at becoming until she marries Prince Adam. On the matter of children, he seems to dislike the thought of having daughters with Belle despite claiming to like Belle for her good looks, as he tells her that they will have "six or seven strapping boys" like himself. He is commendable for having the knowledge of organizing parties or weddings, as he organized the "surprise" wedding outside of Belle's home. It is his misogynistic attitude that ultimately results in his death.

However, despite this, he is far from stupid or brainless as Belle claims. Underneath his exterior lies an intelligent and cunning mind. This is first shown when he formulates a plan to blackmail Belle into marrying him by bribing Monsieur D'Arque, the owner of the local madhouse, to threaten to lock Maurice up. When this fails, Gaston again uses his intelligence to instil fear into the villagers by fueling their paranoia about the Beast's "monstrous" nature, and easily gathers a lynch mob to attack Beast's castle and leave none alive.

Role in the film
Gaston starts off as the local hero of a small French village, pursuing Belle through the village as she borrows a book from the local bookstore. Their meeting starts off well, but Gaston's sexist remarks about women drive Belle away from him and she goes home, leaving him disappointed. The next day, Gaston organizes a wedding outside Belle's garden in an attempt to "surprise" her. He forces his way into Belle's house and attempts to strong-arm her into marrying him, again making sexist remarks about women (he even envisions their home they'd live in as a "rustic" hunting lodge, with his latest kill becoming dinner over the fire and Belle massaging his feet while their children play on the floor with their dogs). While he attempts to corner Belle, she manages to open the door that he has pinned her against. This causes him to lose his balance and fly headfirst into a mud pond that lies in front of Belle's house, leaving himself a mess. Furious and humiliated, Gaston storms off and away from Belle's home.

That night, the villagers in a local pub, along with LeFou, sing a song about Gaston's greatness to cheer him up after being rejected by Belle, when Maurice storms in and warns the villagers about a monstrous Beast who has locked Belle as a prisoner in the tower of his castle. Thinking he is talking nonsense, Gaston orders the villagers to throw him out of the bar. In a surprising display of animalistic cunning, he bribes the owner of the local asylum, Monsiur D'Aquire, to threaten to throw Maurice into the asylum in order to pressure Belle into marrying him. While D'Arque realises that even Maurice's nonsense about a beast and his odd inventions do not make him insane or dangerous, he is willing to accept the bribe. Considering the management of asylums of the 18th century, this is an extremely harsh threat.

However, just before they arrive, Maurice has left for the castle on his own. LeFou is ordered to stay there and wait for their return.

Belle, however, manages to prove her father's apparently insane claims about a Beast inhabiting the huge castle in the woods to be true by using a magic mirror the Beast had given her. Gaston grows even more frustrated after his plan fails and shocked that Maurice was indeed telling the truth, but becomes increasingly jealous when he refers to the Beast as a "monster" and Belle retorts with the same insult.

In his jealousy and pride, Gaston takes the mirror and successfully convinces the villagers that the Beast is a man-eating monster that has to be brought down immediately. Gaston leads the lynch mob to attack the Beast's castle and leave no one alive. In the ensuing battle between the rioters and castle servants, Gaston confronts the Beast alone. He fires an arrow into him, tosses him onto a lower section of the roof and taunts him. When Beast doesn't respond, having lost his will to live since Belle's departure (to rescue her lost father, who was searching for her), Gaston uses a makeshift club to try and kill the Beast. The Beast, however, regains his strength when he sees Belle return, and viciously fights back. Though roughly even with his adversary, Gaston soon learns that he cannot rely on brute strength to kill the Beast, and instead begins taunting him in order to infuriate him enough to let his guard down, pushing the final button by claiming that Belle can never love a monster. The plan works, but immediately backfires: the Beast lunges forth and smashes Gaston against the castle roof, and then holds Gaston at his mercy by holding him above a chasm by the throat. With his life at stake, Gaston abandons his pride and begs for his life, and the Beast accepts, ordering Gaston to leave immediately and never return. In spite of this, when Gaston sees Beast embracing Belle, his great hatred and jealously arises again. Determined to kill the beast once and for all, Gaston literally stabs Beast in the back with a dagger while dangling precariously from the balcony. The Beast rears backwards in pain, causing Gaston to lose his balance and fall screaming from the roof to his death.

Role in the musical
Gaston's role in the musical based off of the film is pretty much the same. In addition to the song Gaston, the song Me is performed by him (in which he conceitedly proposes to Belle). The song is of interest because one verse implies that his feelings for Belle are more than for her looks, but he never says it outright to her.

House of Mouse
Despite his death in the movie, Gaston gained a recurring role on House of Mouse as a guest character. His most notable appearance, in the episode "Daisy's Debut", had a running gag in which he frequently injected himself into other people's conversations to say that "no one [verbs] like Gaston!" This gag would later go through the entire series and memorable catchphrase of Gaston. Gaston was one of the many villains to join the takeover in Mickey's House of Villains.

Disney Parks
Gaston is also seen at the Disney Parks. At the American parks, he is only seen in parade and shows. He is not seen at Tokyo Disneyland, but in Parades. At Disneyland Paris he is a regular character available for meet and greets.

Kingdom Hearts
Notably, Gaston is the only main antagonist who did not appear in the Kingdom Hearts series despite his homeworld, Beast's Castle, appearing in Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. As Beast is shown to have transformed back into Prince Adam during the credits of Kingdom Hearts II, it is possible that Gaston's fight against the Beast and subsequent death occurred while Sora, Donald and Goofy were absent from the world.

As series director Tetsuya Nomura has stated that the upcoming Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance will "tear down past elements" of the series, it is slightly possible that Gaston may appear in the game.

Trivia

 * On an interesting note, most of Gaston's actions were edited out of the final cut of the film: during his battle with the Beast, Gaston was originally intended to shout "Time to die!", but it was changed to "Belle is MINE!" in order to edit violence and get the main point of his rage straight.
 * Moments prior to his plunge from the castle, Gaston was supposed to stab the Beast in the back, and later in the leg, but the second injury was cut from the final script to edit violence; it was also originally intended for Gaston to commit suicide after stabbing the Beast in the back and laugh madly as he fell from the tower, believing that if he could not win Belle, nobody else would (which might explain why Gaston chose such a dangerous position to stab the Beast from behind, despite knowing that he would never win Belle's heart).
 * Despite his death, Gaston has recently been enjoying a considerable degree of fan popularity on the internet, with the character himself becoming a minor internet meme.
 * In addition, he was ranked 11th in a poll by UltimateDisney.com on the top 30 Disney villains of all time
 * Spike.com ranked him the #9 spot in their "The Top 10 Hollywood "Villains" Who Got Totally Screwed".
 * Gaston is the youngest Disney villain to date, apparently being in his mid-20s at the oldest.
 * The Nostalgia Critic listed Gaston as Number 5 on his "Top 11 Disney Villians" list.
 * Gaston is based on the Avenant character from the 1946 Beauty and the Beast film. A character named Avenant was originally intended to serve as the villain of a proposed sequel to the Disney film, as Gaston's younger brother, but the idea was scrapped.
 * Gaston is similar to Vlad Master from Danny Phantom. He wants Belle to marry him despite her love for the Beast while Vlad wants Maddie to marry him despite her love for Jack and is determined to kill him to make her do so. However, unlike Belle, Maddie is already married to Jack and has 2 kids, Danny (Daniel) who's 14 and Jazz (Jasmine) who's 16.
 * Richard White stated in an interview that while he himself doesn't know whether Gaston survived, he does mention that the viewers never saw the body, implying that he might have survived. However, the 2002 DVD commentary confirmed his death, and mentioned that the skull and crossbones seen in his pupils as he falls, which were speculated to be some sort of demonic subliminal message, were intended to confirm his death.