Gobber in the How to Train Your Dragon Films: Who He Is and Who Plays Him

Gobber is the blacksmith of Berk, the Viking island at the center of the series, and he is the adult Hiccup spends his working days with. In How to Train Your Dragon (2010), directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, Hiccup is the small and awkward son of the chief, Stoick, and he works for Gobber while longing to fight dragons like everyone else.

Gobber is credited under that name in all four features and in the holiday special How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming. In the short Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury he is credited as Gobber the Belch, and Craig Ferguson voices him there as well. Ferguson is billed third in How to Train Your Dragon (2010) and keeps the role in How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.

Nick Frost takes over the part on screen in How to Train Your Dragon (2025), directed by Dean DeBlois, billed fourth. Anyone who knows Gobber only from the animated trilogy will hear one change of performer.

Gobber is Berk's blacksmith and Hiccup's mentor across the films, and his defining act is building Hiccup's prosthetic foot at the end of How to Train Your Dragon (2010). Once Hiccup and Toothless defeat the Red Death and Hiccup loses part of his left leg, he wakes at home to find that Gobber has made him the new foot.

The placement of that beat matters. The film spends its first act showing Hiccup as the village misfit who works the forge, then spends its last scene showing the forge's owner repairing the damage the dragon battle caused. It is the one moment in the 98 minute film where Gobber's trade solves a problem the plot created, and it closes the loop between the workshop where Hiccup began and the home where he wakes.

Gobber returns in How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014), which follows Hiccup being pressed by Stoick to become chief, and in How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, where Hiccup is chief and Berk is crowded with rescued dragons. Gobber is part of the Berk community around Hiccup in both films, but neither gives him a standalone storyline. In both, the spotlight sits on Valka and Drago in the second film and on Grimmel and the Light Fury in the third, and Gobber stays in the supporting ring.

In How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming, a 22 minute special that aired on NBC on December 3, 2019, Gobber joins Hiccup and Astrid in organizing a holiday pageant to celebrate dragons for the new generation of Vikings in New Berk. The studio places it ten years after The Hidden World and just before that film's epilogue. Compared with the features, it is the only title in the series that puts Gobber in the planning group at the center of the story.

Gobber's central relationship is with Hiccup, because the first film opens with Hiccup working for him at the forge. That working bond puts Gobber in a position to see Hiccup's struggles with the village before the dragon training class begins, and it is why the prosthetic scene lands as a gesture between a craftsman and his apprentice.

He serves Berk beside Stoick, the chief and Hiccup's father, voiced by Gerard Butler in the animated films and played by Butler again in 2025. The pairing is a constant across the series: Butler's Stoick and Ferguson's Gobber are both billed in the top four of How to Train Your Dragon (2010), and Butler carries over to the live action version alongside Frost.

Astrid, voiced by America Ferrera and played by Nico Parker in 2025, joins Gobber and Hiccup in planning the pageant in How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming. Of the Gobber relationships on screen, this is the clearest example of him working with the teens as an equal partner rather than as the adult in the workshop.

Eret, voiced by Kit Harington, shares the Berk cast with Gobber in How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, but the films show no particular bond between them.

Gobber does not die in any How to Train Your Dragon film or special. He is alive in every appearance, and his last appearance is in How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming.

That special is set ten years after The Hidden World, just before the epilogue of the final film. The Hidden World ends with Hiccup saying goodbye to Toothless and the Berkians releasing their dragons, and Homecoming returns to New Berk to show a generation that has forgotten the link between dragons and humans. Gobber is on the side that remembers, helping to organize the pageant that reminds the community that dragons and humans are forever bonded.

How to Train Your Dragon (2025) retells the first film with Nick Frost as Gobber, and it ends with Hiccup waking up with a prosthetic foot while Toothless gets a matching prosthetic fin. The live action How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2027) is dated for June 11, 2027 in the US, with Dean DeBlois writing and directing and Cate Blanchett joining as Valka. Gobber's casting for it has not been announced.

Gobber's best moment is the end of How to Train Your Dragon (2010), when Hiccup wakes to find Gobber has made him a new prosthetic foot. It arrives after the Red Death battle, with Toothless at Hiccup's side, and it shows the village accepting Hiccup through a practical act rather than a speech.

His second-best stretch is the opening of that film. Hiccup is introduced working for Gobber, so the audience meets the forge before it meets the dragon training class, and the adult closest to Hiccup in daily life is the blacksmith rather than the chief. The comparison with Stoick is useful: Stoick is the father whose approval Hiccup wants, and Gobber is the mentor who gives him a place to work.

The third is Gobber's role in How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming, where he helps plan the pageant. Seen alongside the features, where he is a supporting presence, the special lets him share the main plot with Hiccup and Astrid.

Gobber appears in all four features, including How to Train Your Dragon (2025), and in two shorter titles: Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury and How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming. In Gift of the Night Fury, a 22 minute short released on home video on November 15, 2011, he is credited as Gobber the Belch while Hiccup handles Snoggletog and the teens' schemes after the dragons leave Berk.