Statler and Waldorf the Saturday morning animated television series "Muppet Babies". Both characters were voiced by Dave Coulier. In "The Muppet Christmas Carol", they played the ghosts of Jacob and Robert Marley. Whereas the novel "A Christmas Carol" features only a Jacob Marley, creating a Robert allowed for including the two Muppets, and possibly also references Bob Marley. When Ebenezer Scrooge, played by Michael Caine, accuses them of always criticizing him, they reply "We were always "heckling" you." In "Muppet Treasure Island", they were the figureheads of the "Hispaniola". Statler complains about being stuck on the front of the ship, to which Waldorf
Ebenezer Scrooge and the elder Martin Chuzzlewit character, although the miser is "a more fantastic image" than the Chuzzlewit patriarch; Ackroyd observes that Chuzzlewit's transformation to a charitable figure is a parallel to that of the miser. Douglas-Fairhurst sees that the minor character Gabriel Grub from "The Pickwick Papers" was also an influence when creating Scrooge. The story of "A Christmas Carol" starts on Christmas Eve 1843 with Scrooge at his money-lending business. He hates Christmas as a "humbug" and subjects his clerk, Bob Cratchit, to grueling hours and low pay of only 15 shillings on a normal week (giving him Christmas