The weirdest characters I ever played as a player is the Ze Giant Robot and the Coca Cola Kid.
Ze Giant Robot is a 3' Gundam suit wherein a 6'6" man contortion-ed himself into. The idea was, the French became enamored with the idea of giant robots and took scale model designs from the TV to make the suit but the error in scaling made the suit 3' tall. Not to let good equipment go to waste, they got a contortionist to enter the suit and pilot it. Those crazy frenchies.
The Coca Cola Kid is a walking advertisement for Coca Cola. He's essentially a martial artist with Coke Can nunchuks. When he was feeling tired, he'd pop open a can of Coke and get refreshed (END and STUN aid). He lost his job at Coca Cola when New Coke came out.
A friend of mine played the Mime, super powered mime. Basically, anything he could pantomime became real (though invisible). If he pantomimed a wall, then an invisible 12def wall appeared.
PS: we made much weirder villains, but I don't have enough space.
Trope might be older than you think too - see HP Lovecraft's story Medusa's Coils. Or rather, don't see it - it's one of his worst works, and the racism is egregious even for Lovecraft.
