Possessing a dry, sarcastic wit, Basil has become an iconic British comedy character who remains widely known in the United Kingdom.

The owner, former Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander Donald Sinclair,[6] was very rude to the guests and had an explosive temper, once throwing a bus timetable at a guest who asked when the next bus to town would arrive and placing Eric Idle's suitcase, which contained a ticking alarm clock, behind a wall in the garden in the fear it contained a bomb.

He also claims to have sustained a shrapnel injury to his leg, which has a tendency to flare up at convenient moments – usually when Sybil asks him an awkward question.

They very rarely show any signs of affection towards one another (in "The Wedding Party" they are shown to sleep in separate beds); in "A Touch of Class", Basil kisses Sybil but she tells him not to, and in "Gourmet Night" Sybil shows affection towards Basil while she is drunk, to which he responds telling her to "drink another vat of wine".

In "The Germans", Basil blames the failure of the hotel's fire extinguisher on "bloody Wilson", referring to the then Labour Prime Minister.

Cleese has also described Fawlty as "buried in the past",[9][10][11] as he utterly despises living in the England of the 1970s and instead pines for the "good old days" when the British Empire still existed.

[12] On occasions he also assaults others, such as choking a guest in "The Hotel Inspectors", kneeing Major Gowen in "Basil the Rat", "accidentally" elbowing a young boy in the head in "Gourmet Night" and, in the same episode, famously beating his "vicious bastard" of a car with a tree branch when it breaks down.

[7] Another eccentricity affecting Basil is that of occasionally swapping words around in a sentence while propounding a falsehood, for instance in "The Anniversary" when he announces to the party guests that it's "perfectly Sybil!

He also has difficulty disconnecting his thought process from unrelated events, as in "The Wedding Party", when he is looking through Polly's sketchbook of life-drawing pictures and answers the telephone with, "Hello, Fawlty Titties?"

His desire to elevate his class status is exemplified in the unusual care and respect he affords upper class guests, such as Lord Melbury (who turned out to be a con man and an impostor), Mrs Peignoir (a wealthy French antiques dealer) and Major Gowen, an elderly ex-soldier and recurring character – although Basil is sometimes scathing towards him, frequently alluding to his senility and his frequenting of the hotel bar ("drunken old sod").

Basil is constantly spiteful and abusive to guests, and liable to pick up a tail-end of a situation (often panicking when things go wrong) and turn it into a farcical misunderstanding.

[16] In February 2023, a revival of Fawlty Towers was announced with Cleese reprising the role as an older Basil still running the hotel whilst trying to fit into the modern world.

In the 2016 expansion Blood and Wine for the video game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, there is a character named Barnabas-Basil Foulty who acts as Geralt's majordomo.

In the comedy-drama anthology series The White Lotus, resort manager Armand (played by Murray Bartlett) bears a strong physical resemblance to Basil Fawlty.