Difference between revisions of "Jonathan Frink"

Revision as of 12:39, February 22, 2012

"Frink" redirects here. For other uses of "Frink", see Frink (disambiguation).

"Glaven!"

―Frink's catchphrase

Professor Jonathan "John" I.Q. Neidelbaum Frink, better known as simply Professor Frink and once referred to as Doctor Frink,^[1] is Springfield's 40-year-old local scientist and college professor, and is extremely brilliant, though somewhat socially inept. Frink often tries to use his bizarre inventions to aid the town in its crises, but they usually only make things worse.

Biography

Frink is Springfield's local mad scientist. He has a trademark mannerism of using tourettes-like gibberish when excited, such as "GLAVIN!" and shouting other words that have no relevance to the situation at hand. He also occasionally refers to the importance of remembering to "carry the one" in various mathematical calculations. He is almost never seen without his glasses and has only taken them off once.^[2]

Frink has an IQ of 197; 199 before he sustained a concussion during the collapse of Springfield's brief intellectual junta. He is a member of the Springfield Mensa ^[3] and a college professor at Springfield Heights Institute of Technology.

Frink is fond of flubber, a material with enhanced bounce properties which his basketball shoes are made out of.

Professor Frink is the inventor of, among other things, hamburger earmuffs, the flying motorcycle and the 8-month after pill. Some of Frink's inventions, such as the automatic phone dialer, work better than others, such as his radio-controlled plane, which carries babies as passengers under their parents' control, or a secure house that sprouts legs and runs away from potential danger (the legs of which often collapsed causing the house to crash to the ground and catch fire). Frink has also discovered and cured "Frink's Disease" and discovered "Frinkonium."

In the 1960s, Professor Frink made napalm to drop on Da Nang.^[4] He once predicted that computers would be so large and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe would own them, a paraphrase of Thomas J. Watson's misquote.

Professor Frink has frequent contact with Lisa Simpson better than the rest of the Simpsons family because she is more interested in science and makes more frequent visits to places such as the Natural History Museum and the Observatory.

Family

Frink has a wife, though they may be separated or divorced, and a young son who looks similar to him. When his son crashed through a window during a demonstration of a remote controlled airplane, he says "my wife is going to kill me",^[5] but his son is seen alive later,^[6] (this is either a different son or his son survived the accident).

Non-canon

The contents of this article or section are considered to be non-canon and therefore may not have actually happened or existed.

Future

In "Future-Drama", an episode set eight years into a possible future of Bart and Lisa's, a bespectacled skeleton dressed in a lab coat is observed hanging on a rope from a rafter in Frink's basement laboratory—indicating the professor has committed suicide in the interim - although this could be a clone or his aforementioned son -, his death gone unnoticed by family and friends. However, another episode set further in the future, "Lisa's Wedding", shows him alive and well as he leads a team trying to discover the cure for seventeen stab wounds in Mr. Burns' back, stating "Well, we're up to fifteen!".

Treehouse of Horror

In "Treehouse of Horror XIV", it is revealed that Frink had a strained relationship with his father (guest voiced by Jerry Lewis). Frink said they got along like "positrons and antineutrinos." The senior Professor Frink was a "he-man" scientist who, according to his son, worked on the atom bomb by day, slept with Marilyn Monroe by night, and sold secrets to the Russians at lunch. Frink brought his father back to life after he died from a Shark Attack, but he went on a rampage and younger Frink was forced to kick the elder in the testicles, killing him. It is indicated in this episode that their shared middle name is "Neidelbaum". The two rebuild their relationship when the elder Frink is proud of his son for stopping him like a man.

The Simpsons Game

In "The Simpsons Game", he lives inside the Game Engine and marries a Koopa Troopa from Super Mario Bros.

Behind the Laughter

Professor Frink is voiced by Hank Azaria. The character was originally written as a mad scientist. However, when cast member Hank Azaria ad-libbed a voice for Frink, he did an impression of Jerry Lewis's The Nutty Professor character, and the writing staff started making Frink more of a parody of Lewis.

Frink was named after writer John Frink; however, that was before he became a writer for the show. Frink was originally animated without his buckteeth. The nonsensical utterances that Frink makes are written in the scripts as "Frink noise".

Foreign dubs

In "Die Simpsons", the German dub, Frink has had twelve voice actors, with Kai Taschner being the current and Ivar Combrinck voicing him most often, with nine seasons and four episodes, as well as "Hit & Run":

1. Tobias Lelle (7F17, 8F11, 9F20)
2. Hans-Jürgen Diedrich (8F04)
3. Thomas Darchinger (8F08)
4. Michael Wuschnik (8F12)
5. Joachim R. Iffland (8F23)
6. Thomas Albus (1F01)
7. Klaus Kessler (1F09)
8. Ivar Combrinck (Season 6 - Season 7, 5F02, 5F14, Season 10 - Season 16, HABF01, HABF03, The Simpsons: Hit & Run)
9. Ulf-Jürgen Wagner (4F02)
10. Peter Musäus (3F23, 5F13)
11. Willi Röbke (4F01)
12. Kai Taschner (HABF14, Season 18 - Season 21, The Simpsons Movie)

Trivia

• The character's popularity has led to him giving name to a computer programming language.
• He thinks nerd stands for "Not Even Remotely Dorky". ("Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind")

Appearances

Reference

External links

Wikisimpsons has a collection of images related to Jonathan Frink.

• Frink Rules Website: Audio Clips
• The Definitive Frink

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