Ugo Fantozzi (pronounced [ˈuːɡo fanˈtɔttsi]) is a fictional character, appearing in Italian literature and film, created by Paolo Villaggio.

Although Villaggio's movies tend to bridge comedy with a more elevated social satire, this character had a great impact on Italian society, to such a degree that the adjective fantozziano entered the lexicon.

[2] Ugo Fantozzi represents the archetype of the average Italian of the 1970s, middle-class with a simple lifestyle with the anxieties common to an entire class of workers,[3] being re-evaluated by critics.

He takes time off with them, celebrates the New Year with them by participating in a party set up in a squalid basement in which a cheating orchestra conductor keeps the clocks moving forward and anticipates the celebration to be able to go and play at two parties, goes with them on itinerant trips in improvised campers, in improbable bicycle races, in football matches on muddy fields in the suburbs or in pathetic tennis matches, such as the one at six in the morning on a Sunday with a late-autumn character with the accountant Filini, who is in fact his best friend,[21] and with whom he also has an adventure by clumsy campers on the lake.

In front of Buddha, who comically decides using a wheel of fortune (which leads Fantozzi to refer to him as "Mike"), he is sentenced to living his whole previous life once again.

[25] His colleagues and managers continue to create more humiliating nicknames for Fantozzi: Pupazzi, Fantocci, Bambocci, Bagherozzi, Beccacci, Cagnacci, Mortacci, Fantozzo and Tozzi-Fan.

", as well as the adjective fantozziano, recorded in all Italian dictionaries[31] and to the expression alla Fantozzi, locutions that arose to indicate experiences, attitudes or situations permeated by the character's own tragicomic air.

[33] In July 2021, the municipality of Rome approved the installation of a commemorative plaque on the building of the ring road where the famous scene took place in which Ugo Fantozzi catches the bus to go to work.