Talk:Sideshow Bob

Hehee ... he's an Auditor for Snohomish County, WA[1] =) 142.177.123.204 22:07, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sideshow Bob's Middle Name

Does anyone besides myself think that Sideshow Bob's full name is really "Robert Onderdonk Terwilliger"?

I know it's an uphill battle here. Everyone, including the biggest fansite (snpp.com) and the series companion book (The Simpsons: A Complete Guide) list the name as "Underdunk". But consider the following:

1. "Onderdonk" is, like "Terwilliger", an uncommon but real surname in the United States.

2. The name, like "Terwilliger", has snooty upper-class associations.

3. The name is of Dutch origin, and there were (and probably still are) may wealthy Onderdonks in the Hudson Valley area of New York State. An area from which a well-heeled and well-connected family might send their children to nearby Yale or Princeton...

4. The first (and, to my knowledge, only) time his middle name was spoken aloud was by Mayor Quimby in the episode "Sideshow Bob Roberts". With Quimby's (Castellaneta's) thick "Boston Brahmin" accent, the vowels in "Onderdonk" could easily be mistaken for those in "Underdunk".

Does anyone agree? Am I crazy? Do I have far too much time on my hands?

I do agree and you are correct. I am going to tell you why. Sideshow Bob is named after Onderdonk, more specifically my father, Dr. Andrew Onderdonk. The story as we have heard it from Conan O'Brien's father (Conan worked on the Simpsons), who worked with my father at Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston, is that Conan was looking at a Harvard directory (he went there and my father is a professor at the medical school) and saw the name and thought it was really cool - said something to his Dad. So he put it in the show.