Did Fonzie Single-White-Female Chuck Cunningham With Time Travel? It’s More Likely Than You Think

It’s an event as significant to Happy Days lore as the hurdling of marine life: the disappearance of Chuck Cunningham. The central family’s eldest son was played by a total of three different actors over the course of production, only to vanish without explanation in the second season. In fact, by the end of the series, Howard Cunningham speaks of “both” of his children, as if a third had never existed. Now, whenever a character is swept under a rug and stomped on, they’re said to be a victim of “Chuck Cunningham Syndrome.”

Of course, there’s a perfectly normal explanation for Chuck’s erasure. Actor Gavan O’Herlihy realized too late that he’d never get the screen time he wanted, not with Grown-Up Opie (who we can’t stop you from calling Gropie) around, so he peaced out, and “it soon became obvious” to creator Garry Marshall “that Fonzie was like the older brother and that was the relationship that was working,” so they phased out their recast Chuck anyway. But there’s a more sinister explanation for Chuck’s disappearance and replacement by the Fonz in the Happy Days universe, and against all odds, it involves time travel.

Among the many spin-offs Happy Days produced that ranged on the bizarre scale from Laverne & Shirley to, well, this, was The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang. It was an animated Saturday morning offering from Hanna-Barbera that featured Fonzie, Richie and Ralph Malph roaming all around history following an accident with a time machine on a wacky journey to return to 1957 Wisconsin. It sounds like an obvious rip-off of Back to the Future, but it debuted in 1980, proving that rip-offs can be way better than the off-ripped.

According to Spencer Bollettieri for Comic Book Resources, this otherwise forgettable installment of the Happy Days canon is important because it adds to the information we already know — Chuck Cunnigham disappeared, replaced in all social respects by Fonzie — the fact that Fonzie had access to a time machine. He was also not shy about messing with the timeline, according to Bollettieri, as he “changed the course of empires, encountered major historical figures and may have permanently damaged prehistoric ecosystems.”

It’s not at all a stretch from there to assume he became obsessed with the Cunningham family and decided to turn their firstborn into a temporal skin suit. He may have even botched the job a few times, resulting in a slightly different Chuck Cunningham every season. The older brother is only an important role while the younger siblings are still in the house, though. It’s gonna start getting weird when, as Howard Cunningham says in the show’s final scene, “both of our children are married now and they’re starting out to build lives of their own,” but Fonzie is still living in the garage. 

All we’re saying is that Mr. C. better watch his back.