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Revision as of 16:53, 12 November 2006
Professor John I. Q. Frink, Jr. is a fictional character, a scientist and professor on The Simpsons. He is named after John Frink, a writer and producer for the show.
Character information
Professor John Frink is Springfield's local mad scientist voiced by Hank Azaria. His character is a mild parody of Jerry Lewis' character, The Nutty Professor. He has a trademark mannerism of using gibberish when excited, and he's often excited. For example, when a meteor is approaching in a Paul Bunyon parody, he exclaims, "That meteor is headed straight for us! With the fire, and the impact, and the hundred percent chance of PAIN! PAIN IN THE GLAVIN!"
His laboratory phone number is 555-5782.
He is said to have an IQ of 197, but it was 199 before he sustained a concussion during the collapse of Springfield's brief intellectual junta (see "They Saved Lisa's Brain"). This theoretically makes him one of the 6 smartest people on the planet, the odds of having an IQ of that value being roughly 1 in 1,000,000,000, or in the 99.9999999th percentile of intelligence. He is a member of the Springfield chapter of Mensa International.
He holds an advanced degree in hyperbolic topology. This was found out in "Treehouse of Horror VI" when Homer gets trapped in the 3rd dimension. (This information could be considered non-canonical, as it appears in a TOH episode.)
He is fond of flubber, a fictional material with enhanced bounce properties originating in the movie The Absent-Minded Professor. Professor Frink has basketball shoes made of flubber.
He is also the inventor of, among other things, hamburger earmuffs. Using his famous method of combining two already existing inventions, he soon had a hot, marketable product on his hands. However, Homer Simpson also thought up this "brilliant" idea while attempting (in vain) to come up with an invention of his own. Frink was sure that Homer wouldn't finish the creation before Frink did and quoted, "Hey, WAIT! - oh, easy there, Frinky. *puts on hamburger earmuffs* These babies will be in stores while he's still grappling with the pickle matrix. Goyvinglaving!"
Frink had a strained relationship with his father (whose character was voiced by Jerry Lewis). Frink said they got along like "positrons and anti-neutrinos." 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. In Treehouse of Horror XIV (EABF21), Frink brought his father back to life, but he went on a rampage and younger Frink was forced to kill the elder.
Frink has a wife (though in later episodes they may be separated or divorced) and a young son who looks similar to him.
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 had committed suicide in the interim, and his passing had gone unnoticed by his family and friends. However, another episode set farther 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.
At one moment in The Simpsons, Frink is commanded by a hypnotist to become a ladies' man, whereupon Frink loses the glasses and scrumpy appearance, and quickly becomes engaged with a nubile young waitress at the bar they are at. However the hypnotist shortly reverts Frink back to his usual nerdy self, with a quick snap of the fingers. This is a painful but humorous transition for Frink. A similar event happened when Frink drank Abraham Simpson's aphrodeciac tonic. Both events are references to Jerry Lewis' character from The Nutty Professor transforming into Buddy Love.
Future-Drama is also the first time in the entire run of The Simpsons that Frink was referred to as "Dr. Frink" rather than "Professor Frink".
A programming language/calculating tool called Frink has been named in honor of Frink .
The Vision Lab at Skidmore College has created objects used in shape perception experiments called 'Glavens', in tribute to Frink.
Inventions
Main article: Fictional Inventions and Machines on The Simpsons