Hans Moleman

"My name is Hans. Drinking has ruined my life. I'm 31 years old!"

- Hans Moleman

Hans Moleman (also known as Ralph Melish) is a 4ft 4 in, 140 lb mole-like man with extremely bad luck. He is also a former mayor of Springfield.

Description
He has cataracts and is almost entirely blind (which has severely impaired his reading ability) and has used medical marijuana. He carries a brown cane with him everywhere, which was once shown to contain a hidden sword.

Biography
Although apparently elderly, Hans Moleman once claimed that he was only 31 years old (his driver's license says he was born August 2, 1961), but due to his heavy drinking, he appears much older. However, this was wrong, most likely due to a combination of an error on his license and a mixture of old age and drinking.

Moleman is a former mayor of Springfield. Whilst he was the mayor, he bought a town anthem off a traveling salesman, which had also been sold to many other towns and cities. He also balanced the budget eight times during his time as mayor. When it was revealed that former Mayor Moleman had bought the town anthem and not written it himself as he had claimed, he was ejected from Springfield by being tied to a horse and sent out into the desert. After a long time, Moleman said "whoa" and the horse stopped and took him off its back.

Hans was once mistaken for Bart and accidentally "de-programmed" (Homer and Marge had hired a cult de-programmer, hoping to convince Bart to move out of Mr. Burns' mansion and back in with them), apparently leading him to believe he is the son of Homer and Marge. At one time, it was revealed that Hans Moleman slept with Lars Ulrich's grandmother, and is considered by Metallica to be a "real fan".

Homer once stumbled across Hans Moleman as the leader of a race of Mole People in an underground fortress complete with earthquake machines.

Moleman's home address is 920 Oak Grove, Springfield. He has also been seen living at the Springfield Retirement Castle and he is shown to live in a small house directly below the dam that was erected (and subsequently destroyed). Apparently, he had a father who lived at Springfield Retirement Castle with whom he does the wheelbarrow race with, indicating that he may actually be younger than he looks.

Love life
Moleman once went on a date with Selma Bouvier. However, when she imagined what life with Moleman might be like, she kicked him out of her car (outside the wrong house). Moleman also went on a date with Lunchlady Dora at Holding Hands Point, Moleman claimed they were putting their relationship back together. Moleman and Dora were later seen together at a screening of "All the Wrong Reasons". He was seen at "Grownup Halloween" with both Princess Kashmir and Stephanie Brockman.

Careers
He runs an early morning radio show, on Springfield's jazz station KJAZZ-FM, in which he introduces himself as "This is Moleman in the Morning, Good Moleman to you". One of his other jobs was driving a truck filled with sugar (which he subsequently flipped onto its side, spilling its contents, much to Homer's delight.) He is often seen driving other types of trucks as well. He was seen transporting the birthplace of Edgar Allan Poe in a truck. He also teaches an orange-eating class at the Adult Learning Centre in Springfield.

On another occasion, it is implied that he works at a bird sanctuary, as he has to order a bird seed bell ("No, that's too big"). He once worked as a postal worker. He once worked as a janitor at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant and received a severe head wound ("Oh no, my brains.") from Mr. Burns when Moleman asked Burns for seventeen dollars for a push-broom rebristling; Burns, high on ether, mistook him for the Lucky Charms leprechaun and went to his skull with a power drill. He has also been seen representing a Solar Power company. Homer stumbles across Hans Moleman as the leader of a race of Mole People in an underground fortress complete with earthquake machines. Before now he has also been working in a prison as someone giving out books.He has also made a short movie for the Springfield movie festival entitled "Man getting hit by football" in which his only three words were "Ow, my groin". Most recently, he has been sighted working as a teller at the First Bank of Springfield. He also worked as a Duff Delivery man in and a janitor at the Power plant.

Accidents
Hans has escaped death innumerable times, usually highly improbably. He survived when his car exploded, after Otto mistook the gremlin on the side of the schoolbus, for Moleman's AMC Gremlin (a car). He survived being thrown out of a 2 story building, he survived catching on fire due to the powerful magnifying effect of his glasses, Montgomery Burns drilling into his brain, capital punishment (in a local jail) after Homer eats his last meal, being crushed by a pizzeria rubble, being buried alive, getting stranded in the snow surrounded by wolves, getting run over by the school bus, mysteriously flying into the side of a restaurant, sinking completely into quicksand, being run over (while carrying a "U Suck" sign in the middle of countless "Keep Out" signs) by Homer Simpson when trying to dump the Pig Crap into Springfield Lake, and being engulfed by the "anti-escape orb" that was attempting to catch Marge from escaping a Movementarian compound (a parody of the Rover security device from the 60s show the Prisoner).

Many times people will totally disregard him, usually leading to something like death, or simply imprisonment, but since he appears, even after "dying", those later appearances could indicate he survived. He has also had several accidents where he was not severely injured. He further angered the crowd at Bart and Lisa's junior hockey final because he fell down the steps then shouted 'We paid for blood!!'. He also crashed his 1959 Cadillac into the side of Springfield's Planet Hype restaurant (which Marge mistook for a clever decoration). On one occasion, due to Homer's stupidity, he nearly drowned in his truck when it sank into the river after Homer blew up the bridge between Duff Brewery island and the rest of Springfield.

The Simpsons: Road Rage
In The Simpsons: Road Rage Moleman is one of the characters who can be picked up as a passenger. He lives in an apartment on a back street near the Springfield Grocery Store.

Behind the Laughter
Moleman first appeared as a character model for the season two episode "Principal Charming", but he looked so shriveled and unrealistic that some one proclaimed to look like a "mole man". Before this, Moleman was known as "Kindly Old Gent". However, he was used in several episodes and later became a recurring character.

According to the episode "Principal Charming", his name was Ralph Melish, which is a reference to the Monty Python sketch, The Adventures Of Ralph Melish: Hot Dog and Knickers, from The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief.

According to a DVD commentary for one episode, some number of viewers were offended by Moleman's appearance, and he was reused in order to annoy people of such a viewpoint. Matt Groening has claimed that Hans Moleman was inspired by Tex Avery's Droopy Dog, who shares many of Moleman's deadpan and unassuming mannerisms.