Abed Nadir is one of the most lovable and relatable characters on Community, he’s arguably even the main character next to core cast’s de facto leader, Jeff Winger. His knowledge and passion for popular culture, particularly in the field of film and television, made him a unique and memorable character. But his social awkwardness and loosely-defined mental health problems made him a character that many viewers could see themselves reflected in, perhaps even for the first time on screen.
Abed was by no means a saint, however, and his problems could very often lead to unpredictable outbursts and bizarre, even creepy, actions. Here are ten times that Abed went too far.
When he married a video game character
During the events of Pierce Hawthorne’s peculiar inheritance challenge, where he and his friends must beat a tailor-made video game in order to gain his late father’s estate, Abed becomes disinterested with the main quest and stays behind in the game while the rest of the group progresses.
When the group is forced to start from the beginning of the game again, they find that Abed has not only discovered a scripting language in the game’s interface but he’s used it to marry, and have children with, one of the game’s characters. Creating a utopian palace and a mine worked by his numerous offspring to build whatever he wants.
When he kept trying to flashback
During a group road trip to return a giant sculpture of a hand, that the Dean had frivolously bought, Abed becomes unshakeably possessed by the idea that flashbacks are a thing that happen in the real world and that they also constitute some form of time travel.
Throughout the episode, he can be seen straining his muscles in an attempt to force one to happen so he can warn the past versions of the group about the mishaps and perils on their journey. If you thought the alternate timelines in the show were confusing then hoo boy are you in for a brain-melter with this one.
The Nicolas Cage Freakout
While taking a class in the art of Nicolas Cage, Abed dives a little too deep into the mystery of the famous actor’s technique. He becomes unable to reconcile Cage’s unique career with anything logical that he knows about acting and, after ignoring the professor’s warnings about viewing too many Nicolas Cage performances in one sitting, subjects his classmates to the mother of all freakouts. One wild enough to be worthy of Cage’s illustrious history with losing it.
The rant was one of the best opportunities that the show ever gave actor Danny Pudi to demonstrate his impressive range and involves all facets of Cage’s legendary acting style, including a moment where he climbs onto a desk and pretends to be “a sexy cat.”
When he told people he was Jesus
When Shirley asks Abed to help her film a pro-Christian movie that will appeal to young people, things quickly get out of hand with Abed seizing control of the movie entirely and naming it after himself. The project quickly balloons into a hype-machine of meta cinematic self-indulgence and convoluted storytelling.
Things reach a head when, instead of backing down, Abed refuses to explicitly say that he doesn’t genuinely believe that he’s the actual Jesus. The movie turns out to be predictably awful and Shirley is forced to take the bullet for Abed, destroying the hard drives and backups in an act of mercy which she stages to look like an act of vandalism.
When he got stuck in his own fantasy
Abed’s limitless imagination is better contained within a creation of his called ‘The Dreamatorium’, which is essentially the Holodeck from Star Trek only made out of tape and a spare bedroom. When his main imagination partner, Troy, goes on a date with Britta, Abed senses an unwanted change in his life and runs afoul of his temporary imagination partner, Annie, with his poor attitude.
After Annie alters an aspect of The Dreamatorium, Abed has a complete and instantaneous mental breakdown, forcing Annie to indulge Abed completely in his fantasy version of reality; where he pretends to be various members of his social circle, even Annie herself.
The game of Hot Lava
In their final episode, Abed decides to send off his best friend, Troy Barnes, with a school-wide game of Hot Lava (wherein the rules dictate that the floor cannot be touched at any time or the player will be out of the game). But he instantly escalates things into a recreation of the school’s disastrous paintball assassin game several years prior by introducing an extremely valuable prize at the last minute.
As the game progressively gets more and more out of hand, the players are whittled down to just Troy and Abed. But Troy quickly discovers that Abed’s anxiety over him leaving has manifested itself into the floor actually appearing to be made out of lava to Abed. Things get real very abruptly, leading to an emotional final farewell for one of the show’s best characters.
When he became the kingpin of chicken fingers
After the study group devises a way to take control of the school’s most valuable asset – the limited supply of chicken fingers on the lunch menu – Abed is placed in charge of the day-to-day operation. The newfound power quickly goes to Abed’s head, however, and he forces the original ringleader, Jeff, out to become a mafioso-type crime kingpin.
When the strains of leadership start to become too much for Abed to handle with his lack of people skills, he starts viciously lashing out at his friends to keep them in line. He shreds a backpack that he gifted to Annie previously, lets Troy’s monkey loose on the school, and even gets gum stuck into Britta’s hair.
When he thought he was RoboCop
When trying to connect more with the girls in the study group, Abed finds that his overly-analytical approach to people results in him being able to dish out devastatingly catty insults on people’s appearances. After the girls encourage him to pursue his new mean side, Abed likens the experience to being RoboCop – dispensing harsh judgment on harsh people – but the situation becomes all too literal for him.
When the girls become drunk on Abed’s ability to strike fear into the heart of anyone who crosses them, he turns the power on them and, after that, the entire school. The only way for him to backtrack what he does is to give another bully an explicit set of instructions on how to publicly humiliate him.
When he tracked the girls’ menstrual cycles
When Britta discovers a series of numbers placed next to the names of all the girls in the study group, they investigate further. Soon deducing that Abed has in fact been tracking their menstrual cycles for some time.
Abed explains that the project began entirely by accident as he was trying to find a mathematical reasoning as to why the girls were unhappy with him on a regular basis. However, once he figured what he was actually measuring, he not only continued to do it but began plying any of the girls who were on their period at the time with small amounts of chocolate to curry favor.
When he tried to cut Jeff’s arm off
Having finally succumbed to the evil version of himself from an alternate timeline, simply referred to as ‘Evil Abed’, Abed goes on a one-man mission to make the world around him a worse place, one misdeed at a time. He starts small, like popping a child’s balloon or putting out a cigarette in someone’s coffee, but his master plan is to literally saw Jeff’s arm off.
The plan is to put things in line with an alternate timeline of events that Abed has imagined exists as the result of Jeff throwing a die in order to make a decision. It’s all quite complicated but the important part is that Abed doesn’t succeed in his plan, though not for a lack of trying.