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December 15th, 2010 | EarthBound, Polls, Uncommon Knowledge
This month, some official Runaway Five figures are being released, and that’s brought up some questions about the members’ names. This was always a bit of a fuzzy area for me, since I’ve heard conflicting info but never looked into it much. Here’s a quick rundown of their names though, for the especially die-hard fans!
First, we didn’t even know the Runaway Five/Tonzura Bros. had names until sometime in late 1999. We found out by looking at some tiny, obscure Japanese homepage – as I recall, one .gif image was called lucky.gif and one was called gojasu.gif. So the tiny community at EarthBound.Net/Starmen.Net knew the fat Runaway Five member as Gojasu for a while. Eventually, we realized Gojasu is just the Japanese way of the English word “Gorgeous”, though to this day some of the old folks still instinctively call him Gojasu 😛
Over time, we would occasionally find old magazine articles and such that called him “Gorgeous” as well, like this old Famitsu from 1994:
As the community got bigger and we started reaching out to Japanese sites a little bit, we started to notice that some (but not all) Japanese fans were calling the fat Runaway Five guy something else: “Nice”. Then, as it became easier to import old Japanese stuff, fans started noticing that the fat guy was also called Nice in other magazines and guide, like this official MOTHER 2 guide:
So there’s always been a lot of confusion about what to call this guy. The majority of English-speaking fans know him as “Gorgeous”, simply because that was what we ran into first. But it could very well be that his official name might be “Nice”. It’s also interesting to note that a company (or group) named Lucky Nice is in the game’s credits:
In any case, the supposed names of the Runaway Five are (according to Japanese sites): Lucky, Nice, Gorgeous, Okay, and Groovy. Which one the fat one is is still unclear, but maybe the upcoming Runaway Five figures will have their names on their boxes to help clear up (or deepen) this mystery!
Thanks to KingDarian for the scan and photo!
UPDATE: The figures have since come out, and the results have made things even more confusing! According to the figures the fat one is called “Lucky” and the skinny one is called “Nice”. I think this is one mystery that’s never gonna get solved 🙁
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26 Comments to The Runaway Five’s Names
 | DayvanMollusk said on Dec. 15, 2010 |
I could of sworn his name was Jake Blues =D
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| Tina said on Dec. 15, 2010 |
Hm…. if I recall, the first song they play is called “Lucky Nice Blues”, so that’d make sense. I always wondered why it was called that, although after reading this it makes more sense.
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| Anonymous said on Dec. 15, 2010 |
@DayvanMollusk Damn, you beat to to the PUNch.
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| Fooboo said on Dec. 15, 2010 |
John Belushi
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| Halloween said on Dec. 15, 2010 |
That is a tough poll question… just based on your evidence presented above, I voted Nice, but it could go either way. Gorgeous sounds like a better name in English though.
 | GhostSonic said on Dec. 15, 2010 |
I’m only saying Gorgeous because it sounds funnier.
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| Anonymous said on Dec. 15, 2010 |
Gorgeous is such a Magyspy-esque term. I love it! :3
 | Onion said on Dec. 16, 2010 |
Gorgeous.
Sounds like he’s a retired prize fighter that took up music. I love it.
 | SmaMan said on Dec. 16, 2010 |
It would sound like Itoi to name all the members of a jazz band after “good-feeling” adjectives. I kinda like Gorgeous myself, since it seems to be a bit better than just “Nice.”
On the other hand, he could’ve just been paying homage to this “Lucky Nice” guy in the credits by putting him in this game… the plot thickens!
 | Dlakii said on Dec. 16, 2010 |
Heh, I had no idea – I’ve always considered their names to be Lucky and Gorgeous. I was under the impression they were referenced as thus within the game itself, but in retrospect it’s likely a mere distortion of memory and I probably actually found the names on STARMEN.net or something. 😛
 | Poe said on Dec. 16, 2010 |
I’ve always gone by what was written on sm.net, but the new evidence is pointing to Nice, so I’ve switched to that. Can’t wait to see which name is written on the figure box!
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| Matt said on Dec. 16, 2010 |
I don’t get it. Lucky’s name is mentioned three times in Earthbound, so how is this news?
 | LakituAl said on Dec. 16, 2010 |
I figured his name was Gorgeus, as to make it a sarcastic name, ala Tiny Tiger. Oh well, I guess he’s Nice from now on!
Who’d name their kid OK? I can imagine this conversation going:
Stranger: OK desu ka?
OK: Hai, OK desu. Yoroshiku onegai!
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| NessLucas-zero said on Dec. 17, 2010 |
In Mother 3, if you named Duster as Lucky, then in chapter 4, his DCMC name would be Gorgeous. Evidence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3utyvsuRiao
I still think that he’s called Gorgeous.
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| kenisu said on Dec. 17, 2010 |
Benimaru Itoh’s official MOTHER 2 manga, “Ness’ Adventure Journal” (bottom of page 50), refers to the fat lead as “Gorgeous”, the skinny one as “Lucky”, and the backups as “Groovy”, “Nice”, and “Okay”, although it’s not clear as to which three the backups are supposed to represent, since the artist designed them quite differently than their game counterparts.
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| linkdude20002001 said on Dec. 17, 2010 |
From the Nintendo Official Guidebook:
THE BAND LEADER (sax player) IS GORGEOUS,
the skinny singer is Lucky,
the fat singer is Nice,
and the other two are Okay and Groovy.
Also, the support musician (keyboardist) is Keyboar.
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| Soulier said on Dec. 23, 2010 |
Well the December figures are out. And on the boxes:
Fat one: Lucky
Skinny one: Nice
 | Mato said on Dec. 23, 2010 |
Oh man, that just messes stuff up more :O
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| anonymous said on Dec. 24, 2010 |
This is all just speculation and I probably have some facts wrong or something, but…
The Runaway Fiver were originally the Tonzura Brothers, right? And Earthbound was inspired by the movie “The Blues Brothers”? Well, in the movie at least, the two main ones are brothers. So what if Lucky and Gorgeous are brothers, and their last name is Nice? That company/group/person/whatever is called Lucky Nice, after all.
I’ll be the first to admit that that doesn’t really make much sense, but who knows? Maybe it’s not too far off.
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| Bigjake52 said on Jan. 9, 2011 |
I think they look to much like the blues brothers, but on my first run of the game. with out guides and such I swore to god it was a mario and luigi cameo,
 | michaelO2000 said on Nov. 25, 2011 |
I say Nice.
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| Krennthief said on Sep. 26, 2012 |
If it’s along the lines of “Nice,” I’d have to change it to “Nicely,” because I love Guys and Dolls, and that’s the closest thing to the Japanese name… XD Not too similar to the Blues Brothers theme, but I think it’d fit!
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| Cory B. said on Feb. 28, 2013 |
Banpresto just screwed up the names they didn’t help! The Fat guy is called Lucky and the skinny one is called Nice. But you can probably guess they just switched the name on accident so I think the fat guys official name is Nice.
I say Nice, as we at least have an official source on that name through the guide, whilst Gorgeous’ origins are less clear.