Lee-Sensei said:

^That still seems like a huge stretch though? Are we counting every character that's appeared in a movie or just the characters that started in movies?

Characters that should be on the list that started in movies...

Darth Vader

Yoda

Indiana Jones

ET

Buzz Lightyear (possibly)

Don Vito Corleone

Scarface

Frankenstein (I know it was from a book first, but it's very different)

Wolfman

Jason Vorhees

Freddy Kreuger

There are more...

And if we're counting characters that didn't start in movies, Yoda would probably be pushed off the list.

@Bingowings Funny. Heh.

Most people wouldn't know Vito's name but would recognise him as being in The Godfather, hardly anyone would recognise either version of Scarface, Jason would probably be "that horror film guy" and the majority of people wouldn't know which film he was in or that he didn't look like that at all in the first two.

And where was Yoda before he was in a film???

It may be that people would more likely recognise the Alien from Alien than The Wolfman (they might just think he was a werewolf)