The show follows the life and tribulations of the title character, a poor orphan child (played by Gómez Bolaños) that lives on a Mexican housing complex, typically called a vecindad.
He is not particularly bright (which Roberto Gómez Bolaños insinuated on the launch of the animated series may be a consequence of poor nutrition) and is remarkably clumsy, often hitting Quico, Don Ramón and Señor Barriga with balls, brooms, shoes, hammers, bricks, chairs and other objects.
Chavo's typical attire consists of a green plaid baseball cap with ear flaps, a striped t-shirt, khaki shorts held up by a pair of orange suspenders he wears with both straps over one shoulder, and brown shoes without socks.
Despite being a hungry 8-year-old child, he seems to have an incredible physical strength, since his punches are able to stun or even topple a full-grown man, mostly Don Ramón.
She has freckles, horn-rimmed eyeglasses, a missing front tooth, and two pigtails that are always uneven, one significantly higher than the other one, just like her socks.
"Chilindrina" is the name of a typical Mexican bun, with brown sugar sparkles on top, reminiscent of the character's freckles.
For old episode remakes, Chilindrina's role in the animated version was primarily taken over by either La Popis (Phoebe) or Ñoño (Junior), the latter of whom came to have her same mischievous personality.
He still finds time to play with—as he and his mother call them – chusma ("rabble" or "riffraff"), namely Chavo, Chilindrina, and Don Ramón.
Quico wears a rainbow-colored beanie cap, a dark blue naval officer's shirt with a red ascot, bright yellow socks he pulls all the way up to his knees, and white low-top shoes.
He is also widely identified by his enormous cheeks, which he can puff out quite largely, and his minuscule intelligence, often responding to the Spanish words for idiot, stupid, dummy, etc.
Despite his stupidity, Quico displays more deceptive abilities and common sense than Chavo, and is the most likely to break the fourth wall (especially regarding that four of his quotes do this so).
in the late 1980s, which attempted to revive the series using a "hip-hop" twist and gave Villagran's character a slight wardrobe make-over.
His daughter (Chilindrina) is a perennial headache and his neighbor Doña Florinda's response to any imposition on her lifestyle is a loud slap on his face, which causes him to spin in a circle.
Although rather high-strung and quick-tempered, Don Ramón manages to keep a fairly upbeat attitude and to (just barely) make a living doing odd jobs.
His personality of being a good-hearted and (not always) noble man, as well as acting as a surrogate father to El Chavo made Don Ramón one of the most cherished characters in the history of the show.
An example is during the 2000s that was considered the peak of success of the character in the country, Don Ramón was often used heavily as an internet meme to the point of having several Orkut communities related to him[3] and even fangames with him being the protagonist.
[4] In 2010 a book entitled "Seu Madruga: Vila e Obra" was published exclusively in Brazil in honor of the character and his actor showing curiosities, interviews and unpublished photos about Ramón Valdés.
Doña Florinda sees herself as being socially, morally and economically superior to her neighbors (and, according to the book El Diario del Chavo del Ocho, she was indeed rich until the death of her husband, leaving her without a way to obtain money and eventually waste it, forcing her to move to the vecindad), and while not misanthropic, snobbish, or bully-like, she tends to give orders to the others, such as putting signs that ban animals and infants from the vecindad (much to Barriga's chagrin, because she does it without his authorization).
This is due to Don Ramón laughing loudly whenever a rude comment is directed towards her (mostly coming from El Chavo).
He is highly educated but naïve, although he carries on a ludicrously innocent relationship with Doña Florinda and patiently teaches way above the heads of his students.
His last name is a reference to the very tall Aguirre, who stands at a height of 1.98 m or 6 ft 6 in ("jirafa" is Spanish for giraffe; the closest English equivalent would be Giraffald).
Although he appears throughout all the series (almost 20 years) having a romance with Doña Florinda, by the time it finished, neither one suggested the possibility of going beyond that idyllic relation – there's an in-joke among the series production that statizes his full name to be "Inocencio Jirafales", being "Inocencio" both a real-life name in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries and a play on "innocence", thus adding to the "innocent" way he treats his relationship towards Doña Florinda.
In fact, all the times that Don Ramón is "interested" in her is when she faints in the middle of the yard and was going to bring him something from the store or just when being polite with her is his only choice.
In the English dub of the animated version, and the official English subtitles for the Netflix print of the original, she was renamed Miss Pinster (a pun on the word spinster) or nicknamed The Witch of 71 by the children and is voiced in the animated series by Mona Marshall, like El Chavo.
He rarely succeeds in collecting rent from Don Ramón and is greeted upon his every arrival by being (accidentally) kicked, tripped, beaten, or hit by a flying object thrown by El Chavo.
He is also well known because of his patience with Don Ramón and his unpunctual rent payments and all the kids' (mostly Chavo's) misbehavior like punching him or nicknaming him (always making fun of his obesity).
Even though he is the victim of Chavo's various pranks, he cares very deeply about him, even offering to take him to Acapulco instead of his son Ňoño, who is off on a camping trip with the Boy Scouts.
Cutesy and dumb, Popis was usually only present in schoolroom scenes until after Quico left the series, when she filled in for his character in remakes of old episodes.
He is voiced by Kate Higgins in the animated series Like his Spanish counterparts, Gordon is funny and makes ridiculous remarks.
A sociable but forgetful and negligent postal worker who appears in a few of the last episodes and takes over for Don Ramón and Quico in the Chavo segments on the hour-long "Chespirito".