Fictional Characters by Picture - D

Star Trek

He is the Pinocchio of the 24th century.

Data is a character from one of the main Star Trek tv shows. He's typically well known because he is a robot/android, and his name is easy to remember.

He also has fairly memorable makeup, and is AFAIK, a fairly common/main character.

These things combined make him one of the more memorable Star Trek characters in pop culture, along with someone like Spock. They probably stand out more easily to a layman than Warf, or Ryker, Geordi, or even Picard, who lack some combination of easily recognizable + easily remembered name (and are probably more know as their physical/costume descriptions)

He is also fairly easy to use as an archetype (he is an emotionless android).

It will be interesting to see what effects the death of tv/reruns/shared common pop culture has on society.

Shouldn't you be asking...WHEN is he?

I can think of 11 off the top of my head

How many well-known Mahatmas are there other than Mohandas Gandhi? It doesn't make "Mahatma" any less of a title.

And don't just say "Mahatma Sidious" because you probably just guessed that one.

Darth Vader, Darth Maul, Darth Sidious, and Darth Tyranus all come to mind as being pretty well-known and movie-prominent (if you're out of the loop, the latter two are aliases of Emperor Palpatine and Count Dooku, respectively). Additionally, Darth Plagueis is decently known in large part because of the often memed "tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise" monologue given by Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith. So by my count there's five decently well known Darths.