Similar in nature to Doomy Dooms of Doom, Everything's Better With Bob is the way the name Bob seems to come up a lot in comedy, either as a punchline or as a common replacement name. Bonus points if someone happens to be named Billy Bob, in which case they are probably from the Deep South.
Bob is evidently an automatically humorous name. This is at least partially because it's so aggressively mundane to Western ears that it's funny in any context that's the least bit out of the ordinary. The effect is only enhanced if he works in accounting, or if he happens to be your uncle. It also helps that it's very short (one recognized characteristic of Inherently Funny Words) and that when you spell it backwards you still get "Bob."
Compare Alice and Bob (or Aerith).
Bob, or Smilin' Bob, is the guy in the Enzyte male enhancement product commercials.
Anime and Manga
In Full Metal Panic!, during the "Toybox" arc of the first season, there was a part where Gauron was 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 Pokémon 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.
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.
In The Hole there's Frankie's clearly made up friend Bob (and his girlfriend Sally) who owns a ferrari and apparently one night heard about an escaped killer on the loose on the radio...
In Terminator 2, John Connor comes up with "Uncle Bob" as an alias for the T-800 Terminator.
Literature
In the "Prancing Pony Inn" sequence of The Lord of the Rings, there's a throwaway mention of a bumpkin stable boy named Bob, who was probably the most inconsequential and plainest-named character in the entire Tolkien mythos. How's that for non-notability?
The fact that he directly aids and interacts with the pre-Fellowship makes him pretty damn notable in the grand scheme of things (in Middle Earth), though.
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.'
The Lamuellans from Mostly Harmless worship the Almighty Bob, mostly because Old Thrashbarg, who is their shaman or whatever, says they have to, and it seems easiest to humour him.
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.
Giles: There's something... different about this... menace, something in the air... The stench of death.
Xander: Yeah, I think it's Bob.
There's also Principal Flutie stating that he prefers it when students call him Bob, which Buffy does, and then he sees her previous school report and insists she call him Principal Flutie.
Bob Bishop from Heroes. He always introduced himself (or was introduced) as the head of the Company, followed by "I'm Bob."
In Stargate Atlantis, Sheppard dubs the toughest Wraith he had yet faced, "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.
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".
Stand Up Comedy
Bob Newhart - The very embodyment of the everyman trying to deal with all the non-Bobs out there in the world.
There's an old joke- What do you call a guy with no arms or legs in the water? Bob. It's a bit tasteless but still a valid example.
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.
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'.
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]
The briefing for the StarCraft minigame "Zergling Roundup" features a character named "Billy Bob". Considering the setting involves the Deep SouthIN SPACE, it's entirely understandable.
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 Guardian in ReBoot. 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'.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Austria, you can even get internet and mobile phone from Bob. Who'd have expected that in Austria.
If you fancy visiting the top of Mt. Jungfrau in Switzerland, you will need to use the trains of BOB - the Berner Oberland Bahn.
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)
On August 18, Hurricane Bob brushed the coastline of North Carolina, bringing strong winds and heavy rains to the region. Areas along the Atlantic coast in the state recorded up to 5 in (130 mm), with a maximum of 5.3 in (130 mm) falling in Cape Hatteras. One person was killed in the state in relation to Bob and damage from the storm was estimated at $8 million (1991 USD).
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.
