Thing is one of the main characters from The Addams Family. The Addams' disembodied hand who performs various useful functions for the family, a "handservant" if you will. Originally, Thing was intended to be an extradimensional creature who only entered our world through the box which housed the Thing, making Thing's appearances include not only a hand, but a forearm as well - but most modern interpretations have made Thing a free-roaming hand skittering about on his fingers.
Background[]
Thing was the creation of Charles Addams, who drew the Addams Family cartoons in The New Yorker magazine, beginning in the 1930s. He first appeared in Addams's 1954 book Homebodies. One of Addams cartoons introduced a mysterious entity known only as The Thing, who was said to be too horrifying to seen by human eyes. In the 1960s television series, Thing—strictly speaking, a disembodied forearm, since it occasionally emerged from its box at near-elbow length—was usually played by Ted Cassidy, who also played the lugubrious butler Lurch. The two characters occasionally appeared in the same scene (in which case Thing would be played by a crew member, notably assistant director Jack Voglin). Thing customarily emerged from a series of boxes, one in each room in the Addams' mansion, and the mailbox outside. It occasionally emerged from behind a curtain, within a plant pot, the family wall safe, or elsewhere. Thing is credited as "Itself" at the end of each episode. In the later films, thanks to advances in special effects, Thing (played by Christopher Hart's hand) is able to emerge and run on its fingertips, much like a spider. Though usually seen as a right hand, the recent animations made him a left hand as a reference to his TV actor (who also portrayed Lurch) sometimes portraying Thing as a left hand to "see if anyone notices."