Toph Bei Fong

Nationality	Earth Kingdom
Bending Element	Earth/Metal/Meteor
Notable Aliases	The Blind Bandit, The Runaway.
Gender	Female
Hair color	Black
Eye color	Pale green/Gray (blind)
Position	Main Character in Seasons 2 and 3
First appearance	"The Swamp" (Aang's vision), "The Blind Bandit" (actual appearance)
Voiced by	Jessie Flower

Toph is the only child of the wealthy Bei Fong family, who reside in the Earth Kingdom town ofGaoling and whose symbol is a winged boar. Toph's parents are highly overprotective of her, viewing her disability as weakness. They assume that she is weak and vulnerable to everything around her. To avoid risk and danger, they kept her lessons at the beginner level of earthbending for over six years and had guards keep close watch on her at all times.

Despite her handicap, Toph has developed special skills that make her a very formidable Earthbender. Once, when she was very young, Toph ran away from home, seeking refuge in nearby caves. It was there she found companionship with the blind, earthbending Badgermoles that inhabited the caves. By imitating their movements, Toph came to harness her own earthbending abilities, becoming a master in her own right. However, she kept her talent secret from her family and Master Yu, her earthbending teacher. Toph fought frequently in Earth Rumble, an underground earthbending Lei tai tournament, under the alias "The Blind Bandit". By the time Aang and his friends discover Toph at the tournament, she had won her way to become the current champion, holding a 42-0 win-loss record prior to her encounter with Aang.^[1]

In order to escape entirely from her parents' control, Toph fled secretly with Aang and his friends and volunteered herself as Aang's Earthbending instructor. Early on, Toph's defiance of authority and lack of cooperation annoyed Katara. The two eventually put aside their differences and became close friends. It is also shown in some episodes (like "The Serpent's Pass") that Toph may have had a slight crush on Sokka during the time, but it never came to be.

The Bei Fong family appears to be well-known and influential in the Earth Kingdom. In the episode "The Serpent's Pass", Toph's mere display of her family's seal was sufficient enough to gain passage on a Ba Sing Se-bound ferry, despite lacking proper documentation to obtain a ticket normally, though doing so in "City of Walls and Secrets" was not enough to allow them into a party in Ba Sing Se.