- There's an actual episode of the series that explores this very possibility. An old colleague of Hester's comes to visit, and immediately displays many of the same mannerisms as Frasier and Niles. Martin begins to wonder if this man might really be Frasier and Niles' father, until he reveals to Martin that he is actually gay. The character was portrayed by David Ogden Stiers, who also played Winchester on M*A*S*H. Apparently the preceding troper was not the only person to notice the similarities between the characters—the writers did too. See below for remarks on Leland Barton.
- His being gay isn't mutually exclusive with him possibly being Frasier's and Nile's biological father. He may well have been perceptive enough to tell Martin (and the audience) exactly the portion of truth to hear right then, not the additional hypothetical stuff where he was struggling with his sexuality throughout their long association and even when he succumbed to Martin's wife out of loneliness or lust on multiple occasions. He might even have left for Paris partly to get away from her because she was the one confusing him.
- Slightly undermined by the fact that M*A*S*H is confirmed to exist as a TV show in-universe, as Martin apparently watches it.
- There's an actual episode of the series that explores this very possibility. An old colleague of Hester's comes to visit, and immediately displays many of the same mannerisms as Frasier and Niles. Martin begins to wonder if this man might really be Frasier and Niles' father, until he reveals to Martin that he is actually gay. The character was portrayed by David Ogden Stiers, who also played Winchester on M*A*S*H. Apparently the preceding troper was not the only person to notice the similarities between the characters—the writers did too. See below for remarks on Leland Barton.
- Must be a really important case for Daphne to keep up the façade for 10 years or so.
- Her fencing instructor did describe as a "not quite human woman".
- But Frasier does see Maris several times, for example in the 5th season episode "Voyage of the Damned". It's only the viewers who don't see her. So, if Maris being The Ghost is supposed to indicate mental illness, it's the viewers who are crazy.
- She's just visiting him and keeping up the illusion. People do visit people in asylums, you know.
- it's possible the reason why Frasier's friends don't visit often is because the airline tickets are too expensive, or they visit offscreen, Frasier visits Boston to see Frederick quite a lot in the series as well, it's possible he sees his friends as well while in Boston.
- Er, shouldn't the names be the other way round?
- Maybe that's a version of the show from an Alternate Universe. Which would make this a WMG about a WMG, and now my brain hurts.
- But he's clearly on the radio, and Sam heard his radio show when he was in Seattle. Explain that, sir!
- The events Frasier described are different from the ones Sam actually experienced. Feeling sorry for the guy, Sam decides to keep quiet and goes along with it.
- Same thing for Woody.
- So what is his actual life According to your theory?
- In Lilith's final appearance in the show, in the season 11 episode "Guns 'n Neuroses", it certainly seems like she and Frasier have reconciled the differences they used to have in the past. And due to the show's open ending, we never know if Frasier ends up in a lasting relationship with Charlotte. So Frasier getting back together with Lilith would actually be kinda fitting: during the course of the show he has many relationships, some of them longer (Lana, Fay, Charlotte), some of them shorter (most others), but it's Lilith he always keeps returning to.
Of course, when Martin asks him what's up, he clearly understands what he's getting at quickly and tells Martin that he is gay. But, as earlier episodes went to great lengths to tell us, a cultured way of speaking and a passion for the finer things don't indicate that someone is gay.
Why did he lie to Martin? If your secret lover's husband asked you if you were the father of his children, then you might lie, too.
- Leland, knowing he would probably never see Martin again, only told him he was gay to give Martin some peace of mind. (Note: I consider this Poison Oak Epileptic Trees.]]
- After I watched that episode a time or two the same idea occurred to me. I thought I may have stumbled into a bit of Fridge Brilliance there (Fridge Horror??) and scrutinized his performance during his last scene much more carefully the next time I saw it. I did not note any sign that he was just playing dumb. Of course that could just mean the character is good at playing dumb....
- Culture and "a passion for the finer things" don't automatically make you gay, but they don't automatically rule out of the possibility, either.
- I'd just like to add, I always found that the way Leland said "I'm gay" sounded sort of out of the blue, like he came up with it on the spot.
- Watch it again. He does not just suddenly say, "I'm gay." What he says is, "Enough to reveal to her the fact that I was gay," and in response to Marty asking him how much he loved Hester. It's anything but out of the blue: he's answering a question, and both his performance and the wording of his line ("You know, forty years ago people weren't as understanding about those things as they are now...") suggests not that he's desperately improvising a lie but that he is matter-of-factly discussing something that he believes Marty already knew in the first place. Roz has many good points about how Frasier and Niles, despite being the opposite of Marty in their lifestyle choices, still seem to have inherited quite a lot from him.
- When Leland says that line, there's a notable pause between the "enough to" and "reveal to her I was gay" bits. This pause is what makes it seem like he's coming up with an explanation that would satisfy Marty on the spot. On the other hand, you could also interpret the pause as Leland having difficulties admitting such a sensitive thing about himself. It's perfectly possible that the writer, or the actor, wanted that scene to be a bit ambiguous. And like Roz says in the episode, it doesn't matter if Leland really is the biological father of Frasier and Niles: Marty is the one who raised them, he is their real father.
- A good point: Who cares if they're biologically related? If you love someone, it doesn't matter. Love is way stronger than genes.
- Watch it again. He does not just suddenly say, "I'm gay." What he says is, "Enough to reveal to her the fact that I was gay," and in response to Marty asking him how much he loved Hester. It's anything but out of the blue: he's answering a question, and both his performance and the wording of his line ("You know, forty years ago people weren't as understanding about those things as they are now...") suggests not that he's desperately improvising a lie but that he is matter-of-factly discussing something that he believes Marty already knew in the first place. Roz has many good points about how Frasier and Niles, despite being the opposite of Marty in their lifestyle choices, still seem to have inherited quite a lot from him.
- One of the easiest ways out of awkward questions is a partial truth if you're socially adept enough. Maybe he really was gay the entire time he was with Hester, but that doesn't preclude confusion, alcoholic libido, or the often fluid nature of sexuality. In any case, he wouldn't be the first (almost) exclusively gay man to father children the old-fashioned way.
- Did he also father Niles years later? Because Niles and Frasier are very clearly related.
Their attempts to break up Donny and Daphne so they could have them for themselves backfired horribly, resulting in the two of them becoming closer. They both needed comfort and, well, we know how Roz likes to be comforted, and they were in that rustic cabin...
- there is a bit of tension between them in the series with one example being Roz saying something along the lines of "buy me a Mercedes and your neck will look like a relief map of the andes" to Niles
- Perhaps he was their goduncle who died. ("Dad, there's no such thing as a goduncle!") He seemed, from what we've heard, to have taken a great pleasure from scaring people—doing things such as dropping his glass eye into his mashed potatoes and declaring, "I'm watching what I eat!" Puns and sadistic fearmongering? You may have a point. Which brings up the question of how Scarecrow died in this universe and whether Frasier knew his secret identity. But then again, The Scarecrow doesn't have a secret identity outside of the Nolanverse...and a goduncle wouldn't share their last name...You know what? Never mind.
- Not sure if this is what you mean to say, but the Scarecrow does in fact have a secret identity outside the Nolanverse; he's been Jonathan Crane in all of the media in which he's appeared.
- How about Ichabod Crane?
- Adding to the theory: perhaps Martin also had two sisters named Marion and Lila, and he decided to become a cop after Marion was brutally murdered in a motel shower. Also, perhaps Frasier and Niles developed interests in psychology after paying visits to Norman Bates in the asylum.
- what about Denny crane, he was in the show Boston legal, maybe he's Frasier and Niles uncle
- I actually just assumed this was a given.
- There was one episode (can't remember the name for it, but it was the Christmas episode where they were all getting massages) where they kept showing the same scenes from different people's POVs. The first time we see Daphne enter the room she pauses under the mistletoe and Niles makes a typical ambiguously phrased statement. But when we see it again from Daphne's POV, Niles says something completely different which could not be taken at all as any kind of innuendo. So either she is oblivious, and was giving a mangled version of what she thought he said, or your theory is correct and she altered what she said to hide what she thought was Accidental Innuendo.
- Though it's worth noting that this is presented as Daphne telling the story to a masseur Frasier hired to help everyone calm down after a terrible Christmas, and everyone else also ends up telling him about their recent travails. So perhaps she's deliberately hiding the fact that she's interested in Niles, or at least not letting on that she catches the double meanings in what he says.
- Also, the fact that she doesn't catch onto the suggestive statements doesn't necessarily mean she isn't into Niles herself, it just means she doesn't think it's possible for Niles to be into her. It's also possible, as OP mentioned, that she does catch onto some or most of them but later re-interprets them in her head, telling herself she's reading his actions incorrectly and engaging in wishful thinking.
- She does get irrationally angry at her friend who shows interest in Niles. It seems like she's just being sympathetic to Niles, especially knowing how her friend tends to behave. Later on, it sounds more like Suspiciously Specific Denial given that she dates an exact close of Niles.
- In "Daphne Hates Sherry," when she shows up at Niles' apartment asking to spend the night, they both look like they're on the verge of tearing each other's clothes off. It could be argued that she was just feeling lonely (plus she had been drinking champagne), but she did come to him, not the other way around.
- Jane Leeves said that she always thought that Daphne was in love with Niles but couldn't admit it. Not that her opinion is any more valid than anyone else's.
- This would tie in well with the above WMG about Frasier being in the DCU, especially since Scarecrow has appeared in The Sandman.
- She may have just been flattered.
- Wrong. They'll both just hug and turn into tang.
- She gives Frasier a huge rant about his spending money while he's out of work in "Roz, a Loan" and again in the sequence in "Crock Tales" that's supposed to take place at that same time. Her shouting matches with Martin and with her mother also count as does her reaction to the events in "Dark Side of the Moon". So she doesn't entirely repress her feelings.
- Jossed: Noel mentions Star Trek as a fictional franchise.
- Or so he thinks. It could be like Galaxy Quest. Stop for a second, Noel. it's all real. Noel: Oh my God, I knew it! I knew it!! I knew it!!!
- They're half-human on their father's side - Martin was Hester's companion and she died after running out of regenerations. As for Time Lord names, Niles and Frasier will fight over who gets to be the Psychiatrist, with Frasier letting Niles take that while he becomes The Listener in honor of his catchphrase.
- Or she was taken for the Time War and never told them of their heritage to keep them safe.
- Or alternatively, Donny himself came to this realization once he'd calmed down and straightened his mind out a bit, but in order to preserve some dignity from the whole affair he decided to leave this part out when "dropping" the suits.
The "Beware of Greeks" episode is usually treated as an anomaly within the series, but the estrangements from Walt and Nikos are actually just two examples of a whole web of estrangements among the Crane men. Frasier, of course, stopped seeing his father as soon as his mother died, told the people at Cheers that his father was dead, and never mentioned his brother. When Martin tried to introduce Niles to a waitress at Mc Ginty's, she assumed that he was the "Eddie" Martin had talked about. Frasier, of course, sees his son just now and then, and where Freddy lives seems to carry little weight in Frasier's moves around the country. The estrangements from Walt and Nikos are actually very consistent with the Crane men's denial of each others' existence.
The other side of this is the women they marry: Zora the Nazi Strangler, Hester who threatens homicide, the controlling Lillith, the wealthy and manipulative Maris. Even Nikos is on the road to marrying a wealthy woman who obviously doesn't love him. It seems unlikely that these are all just random bad life decisions.
You put all of this together, and it seems like the Crane men are in some sort of psychological hiding, separating from each other while each is under the "protection" of a powerful woman. What they are being protected from, we don't know. It seems, though, that sometime after Noah Crane married the Russian girl with the bear clock, something terrible happened in the Crane family, and as the show ends the Crane men, now including Freddy, are still recovering from that.
- Frasier advising an insomniac to "just sleep on it."
- Breathing heavily down the phone to a woman worried about a stalker.
- Telling a sailor to come out of the closet and a gay guy to spend more time at the docks.
- Pressing the echo button every time he wanted to mute himself.
- Pleading with Rudy the crier to just stop crying.
- Declaring proudly that he was "not a man." (He got cut off mid-sentence, but still)
- Devoting a whole show to smutty sex chat.
- Getting caught having sex with his boss on air.
- Opening his show with "me and my stupid advice!"
- Telling everyone that a congressmen believes he was abducted by aliens.
- Convincing a gas station clerk that his radio was talking to him.
- Desperately pleading with his listener's to stop setting their neighbour's lawns on fire and mailing live scorpions to each other.
- Plus the drama with Mary, Dr. Nora, Carlos & the Chicken and Bulldog, and the complete farces of "Nightmare Inn" and "Button & Bows."
Outside of these moments, Frasier's advice is trite and little better than an agony aunt. It's clear that the people of Seattle only listen to Frasier's show because it's So Bad, It's Good, and they tune in to see what could possibly go wrong next. Frasier's ego is just too big to realise it.
- This is ow 100% canon in my head