The 15 Best Inanimate Objects of 2015

There was no footwear that demanded more column inches in 2015 than the heels worn by Bryce Dallas Howard’s character in Jurassic World. Watching Claire skitter around that island theme park trying to evade the Indominus Rex without taking off those wildly impractical shoes was by turns the last straw in a movie that made a lot of dumb decisions and emblematic of the way the movie dealt with action heroes and heroines in a depressingly Mars-and-Venus retrograde way.

[Where to stream Jursssic World.]

No piece of clothing defined its lead character better than that damned Mr. Robot hoodie. Mysterious, unassuming, frustratingly opaque, obstructive to a point though you can easily tell who’s underneath that hood if you really look. Mostly, that hoodie was indicative of a character trying to operate while hidden in plain sight.

[Where to stream Mr. Robot.]

This is the closest we’ll come to bending the rules on this list. Inanimate means inanimate, and we disqualified BB-8 from contention because it’s able to move under its own power. Bing-Bong’s wagon is able to come when called, yes, but it’s mostly animated by the magic of Bing-Bong (and Riley’s) imagination. Anyway, that magic little wagon is part of one of the film’s best sequences (escape from oblivion!) and a lovely little creation of childlike imagination.

[Where to stream Inside Out.]

Lest you think that Chanel #3’s affinity for earmuffs was just one of those bits of Ryan Murphy random weirdness or a way to differentiate her character from all the other Chanels on Scream Queens, remember that Billie Lourd is Carrie Fisher’s daughter, and thus those earmuffs are a nice little winking nod to Mom’s signature Star Wars hairstyle.

[Where to stream Scream Queens.]

In the seventh episode of UnREAL‘s first season, something tragic happens, and it threatens the production of “Everlasting” and perhaps the future careers (and freedom?) of its producers. And yet, at the very least, the truth will surely come out and Rachel will be unburdened by her conscience for once. Except, no, that’s not how things happen on UnREAL, and by episode’s end, Rachel had discovered a hidden talent for forgery that she really wishes she didn’t know she had.

[Where to stream UnREAL.]

Robert Durst did a lot of terrible things, and he may or may not have confessed to a lot of them on The Jinx. But the one thing he did that you can’t really blame him for is when he was arrested in 2001 — while on the lam and under suspicion for killing his neighbor — after shoplifting a $6 sandwich from a Wegmans in Pennsylvania. Because … have you ever been to a Wegmans? Their submarine sandwiches are 100% worth risking your freedom for.

[Stream The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst on HBOGO]

The war boys in George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road would be his most indelible creation, if it weren’t for the dozen other indelible creations he came up with in that wonderful, bonkers movie. But the war boys were pretty great, and their cries of “WITNESS ME!” as they threw themselves head-first into Valhalla wouldn’t have been complete without a nice shot in the mouth from those handy silver spray-paint cans. George Miller and production designer Colin Gibson: we witness you.

[Where to stream Mad Max: Fury Road.]

The whole of Creed is all about Adonis working his way up to his father’s legacy. He doesn’t take it on willingly at first, and there’s a push-pull effect of Donnie pursuing his father’s career while hiding from it at the same time. Once it all comes together, Donnie is finally able to accept the gift of his father’s past. If we could add a supplemental inanimate object to this entry, it would be the note that Phylicia Rashad’s character includes with the Apollo Creed-style red, white, and blue trunks. That exclamation point she puts after “Ma” is everything.

[Where to stream Creed.]

You can have your cliffside meditations and hand-holding Coca-Cola jingles, and all the poignantly crying Don Draper scenes you can handle. For me, the one and only reason Mad Men‘s final season rose to the level of the best thing on TV was when Peggy Olson, after roller-skating around her vacated old office, swaggered her way into her uncertain new job with the IDGAF style we’ll be GIF-ing for the rest of our lives.

[Where to stream Mad Men.]

Inside Amy Schumer‘s “Football Town Nights” was ranked our #1 comedy sketch of 2015, and rightly so. It’s a clever blend of comedy and razor-sharp social commentary, half angry with the entitlement of athletic culture and half in love with Friday Night Lights. And its best recurring gag is an ode to Connie Britton and that cool, sexy way she has with a wine glass. An ever-more-gigantic wine glass.

[Where to stream Inside Amy Schumer.]

As if Ms. Poole weren’t frightening enough with her coven and her blood-letting and her showing up to remote cottages in the moors to intimidate fellow witches, she had to go and take the cake by building frighteningly accurate little fetishes (voodoo dolls, for all intents and purposes) of our beloved main characters Malcolm and Vanessa, and then filling those dolls with REAL HUMAN PARTS. Not to mention the time she used a doll of Malcolm’s wife to drive her to suicide. That’s some dark-ass magic, and it never failed to creep us the heck out.

[Where to stream Penny Dreadful.]

Yes, the hammer’s name is Mjolnir, but just because it has a name doesn’t make it any less inanimate. In fact, it might be the most inanimate object on this list, given that it doesn’t budge; not for Tony Stark or Captain America or (heh) Hawkeye. Come on, Hawkeye, you never had a chance. But what really earns Thor’s hammer its spot on this list is what happens when it does get moved. That’s how you know Vision is the real deal, when he’s able to pick up that hammer like it ain’t no thing.

You gotta love an inanimate object that reflects the main character’s psyche. As Jessica Jones begins, the door to Jessica’s apartment/office is a busted, neglected mess. It’s barely functional, with a thin layer of cardboard separating Jessica from the outside world. The door got fixed as a favor, and every day it stood, it was a reminder that Jessica had gotten, was getting stronger. The door gets broken again by season’s end, but it’s still standing.

[Where to stream Marvel’s Jessica Jones.]

An uncomfortable truth: Stars Wars lightsaber nerdery is one of the worst brands of Star Wars nerdery. Kyber crystals and synthetic-versus-refracted beams and red-versus-blue and all that — the worst of expanded-universe noodling. All that said … Kylo Ren’s raggedy three-beamed saber might just send me to my local Wookieepedia because I’m suddenly fascinated by his homemade blade. We’re repeatedly reminded that Kylo’s weapon is a sparking, inelegant creation, and the implications of Kylo forging the weapon himself, with his dark but unfinished powers, is actually interesting. Just so long as lightsaber technology doesn’t become overly-wonky tedium that wand-creation became in the latter Harry Potter novels/films.

[Where to stream Star Wars: The Force Awakens.]

Here at Decider, we honor Cersei Lannister for her strength amid cruel and unusual punishment, we honor Lena Headey for her stoicism, and we honor that mean old nun and her trusty handbell for gifting us with our new favorite way to let friends know that they did something/said something/liked something terrible: “SHAME. SHAME. SHAME. [bell clangs]”

[Where to stream Game of Thrones.]