Gaston

Gaston, or Gaston LeGume as he was called in an 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 his "peabrained" intelligence.

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 (he is even described as "cute, dreamy and handsome" by the Bimbettes in the first opening number), but he is boorish, uncultured and egotistical (the townsfolk don't seem to notice or care, however). Given his narcissistic nature, he revels to boast about this when the villagers begin singing a song about him to cheer him up after being turned down by the woman he wants to marry. When it comes to women, he proves to be extremely vain and rude, demonstrated by when he repeatedly attempts to spend time with Belle, only for them to end in disaster due to his sexist and chauvinistic behavior. This chauvinism also makes him believe that women are only good for being unintelligent housewives 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 as soon as she marries him. In short, he has very demeaning and negative views on females. His vanity and desire for sons in his family makes him eerily similar to King Henry VIII of England, in spite of the movie taking place in France.

He is commendable for having the knowledge of organizing parties or weddings, as he organized the "surprise" wedding outside of Belle's home with expert care and precision. It is his male-chauvinistic attitude that ultimately results in his death, as he flat-out refuses to treat Belle as an equal when it comes to being a spouse; when he attempts to propose to Belle he refers to her as his "little wife", with "little" meaning inferior, unimportant or insignificant.

However, despite these negative qualities, 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 instill 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 is the local hero of a small French village. He owns a large tavern where him and the villagers drink and talk. Inside there is a large portrait of him along with "trophies" from his hunt of mostly animal antlers. He starts off in the film, pursuing Belle through the village as she borrows a book from the local bookstore. Their meeting starts off well, but Gaston's remarks about women drive Belle away from him and she goes home, leaving him disappointed. The next day, however, Gaston organizes a wedding outside Belle's cottage in an attempt to "surprise" her. He forces his way into the cottage and attempts to strong-arm her into marrying him, again making sexist remarks about women and housewifery (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 giant mud pond that lies in front of Belle's cottage, leaving himself a mess. Furious and humiliated, Gaston storms off and away from Belle's home, but not before vowing to make Belle his wife regardless of her refusals.

Later, during the winter, the villagers in Gaston's Tavern, 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 has the villagers throw him out of the tavern, but then realises that he can use what Maurice has said to his advantage. In a surprising display of animalistic cunning, he bribes the owner of the local asylum, Monsieur D'Arque, 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 (the time that the film takes place), this is an extremely harsh threat. However, just before their arrival, Maurice has left for the castle on his own. LeFou is ordered to stay there and wait for their return.

When Belle and Maurice eventually return to the cottage, LeFou immediately informs Gaston, and he sets his plan into motion. With the villagers gathered outside the house, D'Arque has his men drag Maurice towards their carriage, while Gaston makes Belle his offer - he will clear up the misunderstanding...if she marries him. Shocked and disgusted, Belle refuses, and Gaston allows Maurice to be dragged away. 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 that 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 Belle begins referring to the Beast as "kind and gentle", realising that she prefers a 'monster' over himself. He refers to the Beast as a "monster" and Belle angrily retorts with the same insult which makes him angrilly bare his teeth and to him is the final straw.

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. Locking Belle and Maurice in the basement to keep them from warning the Beast, Gaston leads a 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 (she had escaped from the basement), 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 jealousy arises again. Determined to kill the Beast once and for all, Gaston stabs Beast in the side with a knife while dangling precariously from the balcony. The Beast swings his arm backwards in pain, causing Gaston to lose his balance and plunge into the ravine three hundred feet below to his death.

Role in the comics
Gaston plays a key role in one of the comics produced by Marvel Comics in 1994, three years after the release of the film. In the story "Has Gaston Finally Won Belle's Hand at Last?", he is holding an auction for his perfect wife. Naturally, he is looking for Belle, and she seemingly comes to him having forgone reading and intelligence for being Gaston's "little wife". It is actually one of the Bimbettes in a clever disguise.

Role in the musical
Gaston's role in the musical based off of the film is pretty much the same. Instead of ignoring the Bimbettes like in the film, he pays more attention to them but still wants Belle as his wife. 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 (he even calls her 'pumpkin' as an endearing appellative), but he never says it outright to her. Like in the movie, he dies after falling off the roof of the Beast's castle. Notable actors who have played the role on Broadway include Burke Moses (who originated the role on Broadway), Marc Kudisch, Christopher Sieber, and Donny Osmond. Other actors include Steve Condie.

Sing Me a Story with Belle
Gaston made sporadic appearances in Sing Me a Story with Belle, mostly acting as a comedic foil to Belle.

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. A notable example is when Daisy compliments Ariel's singing voice. He walks by and says "No one sings like Gaston!" Gaston was one of the many villains to join the takeover in Mickey's House of Villains.

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.

Disney Parks
Gaston is also seen at the Disney Parks. At the American parks, he was only seen in parades and shows, but he was not a meetable character until 2011, where recent attempts are being made at introducing missing characters into the Disney parks. As part of the Fantasyland expansion at Walt Disney World, a large statue of Gaston will be placed outside the Beauty and the Beast themed Gaston's Tavern. He is not seen at Tokyo Disneyland, but in Parades. At Disneyland Paris he is a regular character available for meet and greets and seen in an ample amount of shows featuring Disney Villains.

Once Upon a Time
Gaston is featured in the ABC series played by Sage Brocklebank. Here, He was engaged to Belle through an arranged marriage, but like in the film she did not love him because she found him "shallow". He attempted to reclaim her from Rumpelstilskin, but was transformed into a rose and given as a gift to Belle.

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 to his unseen death, 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).
 * In one of the earliest scripts, Gaston's death would have been different, as the battle against Beast would have taken place in the forest. In this early version of the script, Gaston would wound Beast and prepared kill him with his blunderbuss, when Belle strikes him from behind with a rock. This would have prompted him to fall off a cliff and breaking one of his legs. Upon trying to stand up, he notices that the wolves who attacked Maurice and Belle earlier are looking at him, and attacked him. This idea was scraped because the writers thought that it was too gruesome and horrible (even for someone like Gaston), although this idea was later used in The Lion King, more specifically in the sequence of Scar's death at the hands of the hyenas.
 * 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" below Rambo villain Will Teasle.
 * 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, played by Jean Marais. 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. Unlike the Avenant character from the 1946 film, Gaston doesn't outright confess to Belle that he loves her, which leads to his demise.
 * 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 either speculated to be some sort of demonic subliminal message or that he had seen death himself, were intended to confirm his death.
 * The horse that Gaston rides to Beast's Castle is actually the horse from The Headless Horseman, the main antagonist from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the second half of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.
 * In the movie's continuity, Gaston is the first Disney character of the Disney Renaissance era to have negative attitudes and opinions towards females, the second is Chi-Fu from Mulan.
 * Interestingly enough, as mentioned in one of the above Trivias, Disney made absolutely certain to remove to skull and cross bones from Gaston's pupils as he fell to his death in the theatrical and VHS version, yet made no attempt in the later DVD release.
 * On the 2011 Cartoon Voices Comic Con, Bill Farmer said that he had done Gaston, during Gaston's song in the bar. Bill did the sound of Gaston eating the eggs.
 * Gaston is the only villian who had a crush on the female lead ( Princess) although in Aladdin, Jafar was a bit affectionate with Jasmine in the scene where she kissed him