Trashcan Man is one of the villains of the Stephen King book The Stand and its 1994 miniseries adaptation of the same name.
He was portrayed by Matt Frewer, who also played Panic in Disney's Hercules.
History
Donald Mervin Elbert aka Trashcan Man is a deadly schizophrenic, who has a love for fire and using fire to destroy things. His name comes from his past when, as a youngster he would start fires in trashcans. He got shock treatments from an Indiana institution until he went to prison for arson.
When the superflu kills all the inmates and guards, Trashcan Man is able to escape prison and goes to his hometown, Powtanville, Indiana. He then lays waste to cities and oil tanks with fire and while he's running he experiences an agonizing accident by jumping over a railing and breaking his right wrist, the net result of the accident is his hand points away from his body at a 90 degree angle. While burning down Gary, he gets rough burns in his left arm and then gives up his plan to burn the United States and joins Randall Flagg, who appears to him in his dreams and says that he has great work for Trashcan Man in the desert. He then travels to Las Vegas, the kingdom of Randall Flagg and his followers, and encounters The Kid, a drunk, who only agrees to side with Randall Flagg if he gets to take over, but The Kid is killed by Randall Flagg.
Trashcan Man like all of Flagg's followers gets a black gem and becomes one his top henchmen. Trashcan Man also has a gift with discovering weapons and very dangerous devices and searches for them in the desert and arms the fight jets at Indian Springs Air Force Base as well. He proves to be really useful until he gets harassed by a few of the workers, which causes him to relive memories from his past and abandons his loyalty to Randall Flagg.
He blows up many trucks and aircrafts, wipes out Flagg's pilots, and then disappears in the desert. He reappears close to the end of the book and movie, when he brings Randall Flagg and the rest of the followers a nuclear warhead from a detached missile now attached to Trashcan Man's ATV, all-terrain vehicle, he gets a terrible radiation sickness from the nuclear warhead. Furiously Randall Flagg orders Lloyd Henreid, his right-hand man and second in command of Las Vegas, to take Trashcan Man away, Henreid sympathizes with Trashcan Man and very courteously tells him that he's gotta get the nuclear warhead away from here and it's dangerous, Flagg on the otherhand then orders Lloyd to shoot and kill him. But before Henreid and Flagg make a move to do anything with Trashcan Man, the hand of God appears from the sky and activates the warhead killing all of Flagg's followers and annihilation of Las Vegas.
