Post on 13-Mar-2016
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LEONARD HOFSTADTERLeonard Hofstadter and Shel-
don Cooper are both brilliant
physicists working at Cal Tech
in Pasadena, California. They
are colleagues, best friends
and roommates, although in
all capacities their relation-
ship is always tested primar-
ily by Sheldon’s regimented
and non-conventional ways.
They are also friends with
their Cal Tech colleagues, me-
chanical engineer Howard
Wolowitz and astrophysi-
cist Rajesh Koothrappali. The
foursome spend their time
working on their individual
work projects, playing video
games, watching science fi c-
tion movies or reading comic
books. As they are self-pro-
fessed nerds, all have little or
no luck with “popular” women.
When Penny, a pretty woman and
an aspiring actress original-
ly from Omaha, moves into the
apartment next to Leonard and
Sheldon’s, Leonard has another
aspiration in life, namely to
get Penny to be his girlfriend.
Leonard’s last name, Hofstad-
ter, refers to two well-known
scientists: Robert Hofstad-
ter, the 1961 Nobel Laureate in
Physics, and his son Douglas
Hofstadter, who researches
consciousness and cognition
and whose best-selling book
about philosophy, mathematics,
puzzles, art, and music, “Gödel,
Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden
Braid,” was published in 1979
and won him the 1980 Pulitzer
Prize for general nonfi ction.
Most of the time Leonard
has no glass in his glasses.
smart is the
new sexy
SHELDON COOPERDespite the fact that some
viewers take Sheldon’s behav-
ior, mannerisms, and social
skills as a sign that Sheldon
has Asperger’s Syndrome or
otherwise falls on the “Autism
spectrum,” the show-runners
have persistently denied in
many interviews that Shel-
don has Asperger’s or Autism.
Sheldon occasionally wears
t-shirts featuring a specif-
ic color with a correspond-
ing symbol. These shirts are
from the “Green Lantern”
comic book series, with each
color representing a differ-
ent corps of heroes or vil-
lains (e.g. Red Lanterns, Or-
ange Lanterns, etc). In the
comics, each color also rep-
resents a specifi c emotion:
Red=Anger, Orange=Greed,
Yellow=Fear, Green= Will-
power/Courage,Blue=Hope,
In d i g o = C o m pa s s i o n , a n d
Violet=Love. Not surpris-
ingly, the color of shirt
Sheldon wears in each scene
is often a clue to his mood.
Sheldon is from Tex-
as, as is Jim Parsons.
Sheldon verbally reveals his
and Leonard’s Pasadena apart-
ment 4A’s location as be-
ing 2311 Los Robles in “The
Desperation Emanation.”
Sheldon frequently wears T-
shirts with the characters
or symbols of Green Lan-
tern, the Flash, or Superman.
The two main characters
(Sheldon Cooper and Leon-
ard Hofstadter) are named
after Sheldon Leonard.
I’m not insane, my mother had
me tested.
HOWARD WOLOWITZThe character Howard Wolow-
itz is named after some-
one the creator worked
with at a computer company.
Howard sports a bowl-style
haircut and tends to wear loud,
vintage, 1960-era outfi ts, a V-
neck or tee shirt over a turtle-
neck or dickey which sport a
variety of pins, and always has
skinny pants. He is also fond
of unusual belt buckles, which
have included a Nintendo con-
troller, a silver Batman logo, a
45 RPM record insert, a Klin-
gon communicator and a buck-
le containing the superhero the
Flash. Like his friends, Howard
is a big fan of comic books and
superheroes. It is also quite
clear that his current and pre-
ferred personal transportation
is via his Vespa motor scooter.
Besides English, Howard is fl u-
ent in French, Mandarin, Rus-
sian, Arabic, and Persian and
the constructed language Klin-
gon from the Star Trek franchise.
Howard fancies himself a “la-
dies’ man” and he provides out-
rageous pick-up lines whenever
there is a female present. Howard
describes himself as a romantic,
although he usually comes across
as overtly sexual and, in the
words of Penny, disgusting. How-
ever, Penny’s animosity toward
Howard has mellowed somewhat
since Howard began dating Pen-
ny’s work colleague Bernadette.
Howard is allergic to peanuts,
and they pose a life-threatening
risk to him. He also mentioned
having transient idiopathic ar-
rhythmia. Howard is proud of
the fact that he has only 3% body
fat, which Raj notes makes him
look like a human chicken wing.
Love is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.
RAJesh KOOTHRAPPALIRaj is a friend of Sheldon and
Leonard’s. He likes girls but is
too shy to talk to them, except, as
it turns out, when he is drink-
ing. If he is sober, he is unable
to speak when a girl is in the
room. He sometimes talks to his
parents back home in India over
the Internet using a webcam.
Rajesh, who is normally called
Raj or by his last name Koo-
thrappali, is from New Delhi,
India, yet despises Indian food,
and his knowledge regarding
Indian culture and Hinduism is
disputed by Sheldon Cooper. He is
normally seen wearing a layered
combination of a shirt and a vest,
khakis, and a jacket. He wore a
red cap only in the pilot episode.
All of the guys enjoy play-
ing Halo every Wednesday at
Sheldon and Leonard’s apart-
ment and occasionally at Koo-
thrappali’s apartment. They also
play Age of Conan excessive-
ly, with Raj stating he has ex-
perienced gaming addiction.
Raj has a “nervous bladder”,
meaning he gets an urge to re-
lieve himself when under stress.
Raj likes Sex and the City, Archie
Comics, Grey’s Anatomy, The Good
Wife and Bridget Jones’ Diary.
Raj’s inability to talk to wom-
en except when drunk is based
on an old coworker of execu-
tive producer Bill Prady when he
worked at a computer company.
In general terms, Raj is more pa-
tient with Sheldon than Leonard,
Howard, or Penny; however Sheldon
is oblivious to this as he once cut him
off as a friend. Raj even stated that
the reason he puts up with Sheldon
was so that he could be reborn as a
“well-hung billionaire with wings”,
Namaste, white
people!