It seems the Happy Days universe was inflicted by the gauntlet of Thanos. How does a character like Chuck Cunningham played by three different actors just vanish into thin air by season two? Both Gavin O’Herlihy and Randolph Roberts played the character in the TV series.
Happy Days was indirectly spawned from the anthology show Love, American Style on ABC. In the “Love and the Happy Days” pilot, Chuck was played by Ric Carrott. Based on that single episode it led to George Lucas casting Ron Howard as the lead in his 1973 film American Graffiti, causing ABC to take a renewed interest in that episode.
From the beginning, Chuck Cunningham was a resident of the Cunningham household. And just like that, he was whipped out of the memories of every single citizen in Milwaukee in the 50s on the same day that Marty McFly travels to the past. The universe giveth and taketh in the same stroke.
The Cunningham family went about their business for the next nine seasons without a care knowing there were only two siblings that came from the Cunningham family. I hope Chuck paid his Arnold’s Diner tab before he vanished.
Jumping the Shark was not the only idiom that came out of the 70s greatest show, you can also add Chuck Cunningham Syndrome to that list. It refers to a character who disappears from a show without any explanation.
Makes me wonder, did Thanos have a hand on the two different Darrins on Bewitched, or was it a spell cast by the Scarlet Witch? That is a story for another day.
Dribbling Chuck Cunningham just vanishes
Chuck was a rarely seen “Happy Days” character who disappeared without explanation after Season 2, his disappearance giving rise to the pejorative term “Chuck Cunningham Syndrome” to describe TV characters who were dropped from shows without any In-Universe explanation or sendoff, with later episodes of the show scripted as if the character had never existed. The most popular explanation for his absence is that he went off to college on a sports scholarship. Fonzie became a regular character as a big brother to Richie and his friends, effectively replacing Chuck in the little role he had in the series. In the final episode of Season 11, Howard comments that he’s proud of his “two kids,” indicating that Chuck never existed.