William "Buddy" Wells Hobbs is the main protagonist of Elf and Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas. Buddy was adopted by elves and Santa Claus as a baby, so he never got to discover how exactly to be human. He developed certain skills like quickly decorating a large space, creating toys in short amounts of time and generally being a good person. Despite his well-meaning intentions, he often causes trouble when trying to understand the human world after growing up with Santa and his elves. He is portrayed by Will Ferrell in the original film and voiced by Jim Parsons in the special.