Up For Grabs.

We used to have a page called Everythings Better With Bob. It listed every character named Bob that readers could think of. That is not a trope.

A TRS discussion voted to cut it and YKTTW Bob Is A Funny Name for cases where the name Bob is being specifically used for humorous effect. So, here it is.

Bob is a common name that seems to show up any time somebody needs a funny name. Apparently, it's just an Inherently Funny Name. This is at least partially because it's so aggressively mundane to Western ears that using it in a fantastic or unusual context comes off as humorous. Using such a mismatch for humor is related to the concept of Bathos.

Seems like Bob is almost always an accountant (the most aggressively mundane job) and/or somebody's uncle (due to a UK idiom).

It helps that the name is very short (one recognized characteristic of Inherently Funny Words) and a palindrome.

Compare Alice And Bob, Aerith And Bob. Subtrope of Inherently Funny Words.

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Examples:

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[[folder:Advertising]]

• There was a series of faux outtake-style commercials for the Digimon Adventure dub that aired during the Myotismon arc. One had 'Izzy' stumbling over Kabuterimon's name until he finally Facepalms and asks "Can we just call him Bob?"
• In Belgium and the Netherlands the designated driver is commonly called BOB.
• Bob From Accounting vs. the Orgg.
• Bob, or Smilin' Bob, is the guy in the Enzyte male enhancement product commercials.

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[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

• In Full Metal Panic, during the "Toybox" arc of the first season, there is a part where Gauron is shown massacring a bunch of Mithril soldiers. One of the soldiers is heard to be screaming, "Bob! BOB!! Damn him! How dare he hurt Bob?!" Originally meant to be dramatic and scary, most of the feedback and comments on this part were of people laughing at how Narmtacular it was, since they apparently couldn't take it seriously when the guy was named "Bob". Let's face it -- Bob is just a funny name to a lot of people. It probably doesn't help that it sounded like "Bobo" in Japanese, either.
• In Pokemon 2000, Ash Ketchum must save the world because a prophecy says that if The Chosen One named Ash doesn't, then the world will be destroyed. At that time, he wishes that his mother named him "Bob" instead.

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[[folder:Film]]

• Bob the Goon from Batman. Talk about an Ensemble Dark Horse....
  Joker: You...are my number one...guy!
• Silent Bob from The View Askewniverse.
• The Bicarbonate Ostylezene Benzoate (B.O.B.) of Monsters Vs Aliens.
• Planet Bob from Titan AE.
  Akima: You can't call a planet "Bob."
  Cale: So now you're the boss. You're the King of Bob.
  Akima: Can't we just call it "Earth"?
  Cale: No one said you have to live on Bob.
  Akima: I'm never calling it that.
  • Caption: EARTH 2.0 (aka Planet Bob)
• In the beginning of The Mummy Trilogy, "Abdul? Mohammed? ...Bob?"
• One half of the Twins from Men In Black, the other's name being an unintelligible squawk.

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[[folder:Literature]]

• In the Bruce Coville story "My Little Brother Is A Monster", part of the Bruce Coville's Book Of Monsters anthology, it's mentioned that in the secret language of monsters, Bob means 'the sound of a large dog puking.'
• Harry Dresden "inherits" a powerful knowledge spirit bound inside an ancient skull from his adopted father. Out of dozens of masters over hundreds of years, Harry is the first person to give the spirit a name. His name? Bob the Skull.

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[[folder:Live-Action TV]]

• The Fan Nickname for Benton Fraser's father in Due South is dead!Bob.
• Buffy The Vampire Slayer - graveyard scene in "The Zeppo":
  Giles: There's something... different about this... menace, something in the air... The stench of death.
  Xander: Yeah, I think it's Bob.
• Bob Bishop from Heroes. He always introduced himself (or was introduced) as the head of the Company, followed by "I'm Bob."
• In Friends Phoebe decides to name the rat that keeps coming to her apartment Bob. When she finds out he's a girl, she says she likes Bob as a girl's name.
• Nick At Nite's 1993 Marathon of The Bob Newhart Show -- Better Living Through Bob

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[[folder:Music]]

• Arrogant Worms: "I once had a dog named Bob/Now Bob's a funny name for a dog/If you ever have a dog don't name him Bob"
  • Don't forget Jesus' Brother Bob:
  Jesus' brother Bob, Jesus' brother Bob
  A nobody relative of the son of God
  If only I'd been born just a little sooner
  I'd be more than the brother of God Junior
• The Jimmy Buffett song "Bob Roberts Society Band"
• Sparks have a song called "Here Comes Bob" about a man who crashes his car to meet new people.

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[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]

• Used constantly in Pearls Before Swine.
  • In commentary Stephen Pastis wrote, "Bob is a funny word. It has two b's (b is a funny-sounding letter), it's a palindrome, and it's a verb".
  • Not to mention "Bob" is short and easily fits into the ever shrinking panels of Newspaper Comics.
• At one time, Garfield befriended three mice who were squatting in his house. Two of them were named after their forebears, but the third, Bob, was named for "the sound his head makes when he runs into the wall".

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[[folder:Stand Up Comedy]]

• In a stand-up routine back in the 60's, Bill Cosby insisted that all gas station attendants have their name, "Bob", on their uniform name-tag.

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[[folder:Theater]]

• The Reduced Shakespeare Company's performance of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) involves one of the actors calling the lighting manager 'Bob' because '2/3rds of lighting managers are named Bob' and calling every one of the audience members called up to participate 'Bob'.

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[[folder:Video Games]]

• Bob the Killer Goldfish
• Bob the Jagex cat and Evil Bob.
• Bob The Lazy Cat.
• Billy Bob The Cactus Blob
• Billy Bob of Space Colony.
• The beggar Blind Bob in Dreamfall The Longest Journey.
• Billy Bob Johns. Better known as Maximillion Galactica.
• The infamous Born-on-Boards of Marathon. Comes in panicky Red Shirt and explosive Simulacrum varieties. FROG BLAST THE VENT CORE!
• Inversion: A lot of EVE Online players think the game would be is better without BoB.
• B.O.B., a robot who crashes his dad's space-car en route to a date.
• The B.O.B. (Big-O-Blaster) in Banjo-Tooie.
  • Also, there are monstrous hillbillies in Glitter Gulch Mine called Billy Bob.
• Bob's Pizzeria in Shenmue.
• Toys for Bob, notable for developing Star Control 1 and 2. An Umgah captain in the second game is called Bob, too.
• Um...HELLO?
• Bob-ombs
• Bob, the fat fighter from Tekken 6. Also BOB, the Fan Nickname for series mainstay Hwoarang.
• Bob the Ghost.
  • But you can't call me Bob, I'm Murray!
  • Also, in Tales Of Monkey Island Chapter 1, if the player has Guybrush place a Porcelain Power Pirate Action Figurine on the altar of Flotsam Jungle:
    Guybrush: [in his pretend voice] Foolish Power Pirate! Your porcelain parts will be sacrificed to, um, Bob, the Lord of the Seas! [switches to a pretend high voice] Arrrr! Me kidneys! [takes the action figure back from the altar]
• Suikoden II has Bob, a werewolf with dreadlocks.
• Bub and Bob.
• Uncle Bob, the jovial cop from the Pangya games.
• The briefing for the StarCraft minigame "Zergling Roundup" features a character named "Billy Bob". Considering the setting involves the Deep South IN SPACE, it's entirely understandable.
• Bob Wilson from Fatal Fury 3.
• Bob, one of the Sunset Riders.
• Bob Newbie, from The Sims.
• Super Punch-Out!! (the SNES version) has a very obvious Bob Marley-alike named Bob Charlie.
• In Fallout 2 the character of Harold mentions that the tree growing out of his head is called Herbert. This however turns out to be a joke as it's really called Bob.
• The voice of the announcer in Guilty Gear X2 is credited as simply "Bob".
• Bob the Hamster
• Bob the Killer Snail
• Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader had an Artificial Stupidity phenomenon where a TIE fighter would collide with you out of the blue. Players eventually nicknamed the pilot of said TIE "Darth Bob".

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[[folder:Web Comics]]

• Bob was there, too.
• The late, lamented Waiting for Bob.
• Robert'); DROP TABLE Students; --, a.k.a. Little Bobby Tables.
• Pretty much every male character in Edible Dirt is named Bob, unless it's someone famous or someone whose name is important to the pun.

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[[folder:Web Original]]

• The Everyday Happenings of Weebl (and sometimes Weebl's friend Bob)
• McNannersBob, the video blogger
• Eskimo Bob
• This guy actually named his blog "Everything's Better With Bob".

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[[folder:Western Animation]]

• Bob The Builder
• Sideshow Bob.
• Spongebob Squarepants.
• Bob the Guardian in Re Boot. So named apparently because the producers liked the way Blackadder said the name "Bob". Unless he's a blitter object - a type of Amiga hardware sprite most commonly called a 'Bob'.
• God The Devil And Bob
• The Fairly Oddparents: in one ep, Timmy pretended to be 'Bob from the Central Nervous System' and there is a clown/businessman named Flappy Bob.
  • And Elmer's boil, Bob.
• The Ed Edd N Eddy episode Dear Ed was about Plank leaving Jonny after an argument, so the Eds make new friends for Jonny. One of them was a traffic cone named Bob. Things seemed to be going well until Jonny and Bob played ping-pong where Bob spiked the ball into Jonny's forehead, where it was lodged.
• Bob Oblong
• Bobby Hill from King Of The Hill, who even once tried his hand at stand-up comedy.
• If Bobby is allowed... Bobby Generic, from Bobbys World.
• And Bobby from the Dungeons And Dragons cartoon. It seems "Bobby" denotes that the character is very young and perhaps naive.
• Histeria has Lucky Bob. Hiyo!
• One of the segments on Ka Blam showed an extra-terrestrial trying to civilize and modernize a caveman (with little success) entitled Prometheus and Bob. Prometheus is the alien.
• There is a minor Irken character on Invader Zim named Table-Headed Service Drone Bob---a case of Aerith And Bob, given most Irken (and even human) names on the show.
• King Bob, who is even called "Your Bobness".
• Bob the piñata from The Penguins Of Madagascar.
• "No, that's B.O.B. It stands for "Boy On Bike"; I didn't catch his name!"
• Helga's dad, "Big Bob" Pataki (the Beeper King), of Hey Arnold fame.
• The Mask played around the dangers of putting satanic material in their saturday morning cartoon by having The Devil go solely by the name "Bob". Given the nature of the show, our hero won his soul back by turning into a dozen showgirls.
• After much prodding from the Muses, the narrator from Disney's Hercules admitted that his name was Bob. Justified in that the narrator was voiced by Robert Stack.
• One of the Rugrats' many Malapropers was the oft-repeated "Thank Bob!".
• In As Told By Ginger Macie's psychologist parents are Bobby and Bobbie Lightfoot.
• One of the Goodfeathers was named Bobby, after Robert Deniro.
• The hideously deformed Ugly Bob, from South Park.
• Bob Babble, the game commentator from Mutant League.
• Bob, one of the Snowrilla's heads on Jimmy Two Shoes
• Bob from Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters is among the most powerful monsters in the series. His name is actually Tatsurion the Unchained, but he would up with Bob as a nickname.

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[[folder:Other]]

• Microsoft Bob, the annoying house-themed alternate-user-interface program that became a byword for software flops. It prominently featured "agents," which were the predecessors of the Microsoft Office Assistants. In this case, everything would probably have been better without Bob.
  • It had every assistant but Clippy. Apparently the others weren't annoying enough.
• J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, pipe smoking icon of the Church of the Sub Genius.
• In a game show parody on one of Cheech and Chong's albums, a guy named Bob has to guess his own name.
• The name Bob is also used in the Bob campaign in the Netherlands and Belgium, to raise awareness against drunk driving. (people there would thereafter often call the designated driver The Bob)
• When the eastern half of Canada's Northwest Territories was separated off into a new territory called Nunavut, there were some unofficial polls as to what to call the remainder. "Northwest Territories" was by far the favourite, but the runner-up was Bob.
• Another Canadian example: The Edmonton Transit Service runs a series of ads about proper behavior on the bus called "It's All About Bob."
• Inverted by Mitch Hedberg, who argued that since Thirteen Is Unlucky, so is the letter B, because it looks like a compressed number 13.
  "What's your name?"
  "Bob."
  "Get the fuck away!"
• Deinterlacing videos can be a tricky process. There are several methods for performing it in software, one of the best being a combination of two methods called Bob and Weave according to this site.
• The Bob Club

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