Bob Newby, also known as “Bob the Brain” or “Bob Newby: Super Hero,” was born in
the early 1940s in Maine. He spent much of his early childhood there, until he was a pre-teen,
when he moved to Hawkins, Indiana. He attended Hawkins Middle School and later
Hawkins High School where he developed a crush on a classmate named Joyce Byers. Bob
was likely a social outcast with a keen ability for solving puzzles and understanding technology.
He had a passion for tech as early as his middle school years,
and started a petition and fundraiser to start the AV Club at his school,
an organization that would last well beyond his tenure there.
It’s because of these skills, that when Radioshack first opened in Hawkins,
Bob became an employee, climbing the ranks to store manager.
Being originally from Maine, being a social outcast and being able to see patterns and
solve puzzles that others cannot, gives Bob many common traits found in characters from
the Stephen King universe. Bob might even have a little bit of “the shine”, the psychic
and clairvoyant ability most prominently featured in Stephen King’s The Shining.
To find out how Bob could be a Stephen King character,
stick around until the end of this video. This video is sponsored by Audible.
(chaotic piano)
Bob wouldn’t be the first time Stranger Things would exude some inspiration from Stephen King.
There seem to be comparisons between Eleven and various King characters, most specifically Carrie.
– Says she’s special. Born with “abilities”.
– Abilities?
– You read any Stephen King?
– [Zac] The Stranger Things creators, The Duffer Brothers,
have made it very clear that Stephen King is a direct inspiration for much of what they
do. In an interview at the Emmy Awards in 2017, after the release of Stranger Things season one,
they share what an impact Stephen King has had on them and the show.
– Stephen King… just, I haven’t met him in person,
but he tweeted about our show and we’ve exchanged some emails with him and that
still blows my mind, because he… growing up, he was such an inspiration. I mean he’s
like a God to us and so… it’s been surreal communicating with him at all. It’s been amazing.
– But while Stephen King themes are apparent throughout Stranger Things,
Bob Newby may in fact, be the biggest Stephen King nod of them all. In this
video I’ll be analysing his entire story, so let’s take it back to his introduction.
(synth music)
In October 1984, just before Halloween, Bob appears in the general store,
as he asks Joyce Byers if they have jack o’lantern buckets in any other colors, besides orange. He
does this to get Joyce alone so they can make out in the stockroom, like teenagers. This,
objectively bad, pick up line and their familiarity with each other makes it clear
that they have been in a romantic relationship for a little while. As they “talk” in the storeroom,
Bob expresses that he feels like a teenager again, but that when he was an actual teenager,
Joyce had no idea that Bob even existed, despite them going to the same school.
This indicates that Joyce was more popular in high school,
and it’s hinted that Bob might have been bullied.
– [Hopper] How’s uh, Bob the Brain.
– [Joyce] Don’t call him that.
– Sorry. Old Habit
– The stereotypes carry over into their adulthood. Hopper is the sheriff and Bob is the store manager
for Radioshack, they’re effectively the jock and nerd of the real world. High school never ends.
This would make Bob very similar to the members of The Losers Club in IT,
as they are also outcasts who are targeted by Henry Bowers,
and similar to Carrie from the novel… Carrie, in that she’s a complete outcast who is tormented
by the other students. Or Arnie Cunningham from Christine, the list goes on and on.
Bob’s excitement about being with his dream girl from high school,
makes it seem like he would have been very awkward around girls as a teenager,
I’m reminded of how the boys are with Beverly Marsh from IT.
(hip hop music)
But being an outcast is only the first trait that makes Bob very Stephen King-esque.
He starts to suggest to Joyce that she should move her family out of Hawkins,
mentioning that his parents are thinking of selling their house in Maine. The fact that
Bob’s family has a house in Maine means Bob probably spent some of his childhood there.
Many of Stephen King’s stories take place in different parts of Maine,
from IT taking place in the fictional town of Derry, to The Deadzone,
set in another fictional town of Castle Rock, along with many other Stephen King stories.
So Bob probably grew up in an environment very similar to a lot of Stephen King’s characters.
Unfortunately Joyce rejects this idea, so his parent’s home in Maine is never mentioned again.
One morning, Bob gives Joyce’s son Will a ride to school. By this point,
Bob knows that Will has gone through something bad but he doesn’t know
exactly what. He suspects that Will is having nightmares, or something along those lines,
and offers guidance by telling a story. He describes meeting a clown at a fair when
he was a kid. The clown’s name is “Mr. Baldo.” “Baldo” happens to sound similar to “Bozo” who,
as I mentioned in my Horror History episode on Adrian Melon from IT, was one of the influences
that Stephen King attributes to creating one of his most iconic monsters: Pennywise.
Even the voice that Bob imitates when describing Mr. Baldo sounds
very similar to Pennywise from IT and IT: Chapter Two.
– [Bob] Hey Kiddo, would you like a balloon?
– I bet I could cheer him up! I’ll give him a balloon!
But Bob’s clown imitation is not the only detail that would make
it seem like Bob may have encountered a creature very similar to Pennywise.
As a Stranger Things fan, you may have assumed after watching the series, reading the comics and
watching my videos on the show, you had experienced it all. But you haven't. Not
until you've completed the Stranger Things officially licensed novels. These stories,
available on Audible, detail the truth behind Eleven's mother, secrets about Hopper's old
life in New York City, Robin's sophomore year of high school and Max's life in California.
As I've discussed many times on this channel, Stranger Things, with it's psychokinetic heroes
and otherworldly monsters is heavily inspired by the works of Stephen King,
so it's fitting that these paranormal stories should find their way to a medium like Audible.
Audible offers an incredible selection of audiobooks across every genre — including
lots of horror. If you STILL can't get enough Stranger Things there are
also tons of free podcasts and other viewing companion pieces.
Audible Premium Plus gives you a free title every month, or two if you already have Amazon Prime,
and those titles are yours to keep. But there's also the plus catalogue,
which gives you access to thousands of titles that you can just listen to without spending a credit.
Audible is giving CZsWorld viewers 30-days for free, cancel anytime. Just go to audible.com/czsworld
or text 'czsworld' to 500-500.
Link in description, audible.com/czsworld
(upbeat music)
Bob goes on to explain to Will that he couldn’t seem to get the clown Baldo “out of his head”
and that “every night Mr. Baldo would come to him in his dreams.” This is very similar
to how Pennywise would work his way into the dreams and hallucinations of the seven
members of The Loser’s Club. One that comes to mind is Ben Hanscom’s baseball dream:
“He had finally fallen asleep and dreamed he was playing baseball with the other boys in the vacant
lot behind Tracker Brothers’ Truck Depot. He had just hit a bases-clearing home run, … In the dream
he was almost bursting with pride and happiness . . . and then he had looked out toward center
field, where a chainlink fence marked the boundary between the cindery lot and the weedy ground
beyond that sloped into the Barrens. A figure was standing in those tangled weeds and low bushes,
almost out of sight... It was a clown... When Ben awoke the next morning he had
forgotten the dream but his pillow was damp to the touch . . . as if he had wept in the night."
Bob shares a lot of similarities with Ben Hanscom, specifically.
Ben struggles with weight and Bob appears to as well. Perhaps because of this, both choose
to see themselves as having heroic qualities when squaring up against enemies. Ben chooses
to see himself as an athlete and Bob repeatedly refers to himself as “Bob Newby: Superhero.”
Bob goes on to describe that Baldo kept coming to him for months, until one day,
the nightmares suddenly stopped. Pennywise only comes out for a few months at a time,
every twenty seven years, so it would make sense that this
COULD be Pennywise or at the very least, a heavy Stranger Things homage to Pennywise.
There are also some specific details from the Stranger Things Comic Book series that
may also pay tribute to Stephen King’s popular painted antagonist.
Will tells a story that occurred in the 1950s about a tentacled monster,
referred to as “The Child Eater of Hawkins” that shows up roughly every twenty years
and makes kids disappear in sets of exactly eight,
before disappearing again. The monster’s pattern is nearly identical to that of Pennywise.
Also, the movies on the Hawkins movie theater marquee are showing The Blob and The Mummy.
The Mummy was one of the forms that Pennywise took to scare the members of The Losers Club,
and The Blob would certainly fit in with that too
The child eater of Hawkins is revealed to have been made up, however, that
doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be based on urban legends passed down front the older generation.
But back to the conversation with Bob and Will in the car. Bob goes
on to explain that he truly defeated Baldo by refusing to run away anymore.
– [Bob] Well I'd fall asleep...
...and just like always, Mr. Baldo came to me. Only, I didn’t run. I stood my ground.
I looked at Baldo, in his stupid face, and I said, “Go away. GO AWAY!” and just like that,
he was gone, never saw him again.
I know It: Chapter 2 isn’t Stephen King canon, but I can’t help but think
about how the Losers Club takes their stand against Pennywise by refusing to be afraid.
Danny Torance in The Shining, uses this same tactic to protect himself
from some of the horrors of the Overlook Hotel throughout the book.
In the follow up, Doctor Sleep, the ghost of Dick Hallorann explains exactly why this specific
technique of standing your ground and refusing to be afraid can work for those who have “The Shine”.
– World’s a hungry place, and the darkest things are the hungriest and they’ll eat what shines, swarm it
like mosquitos or leaches. Can’t do nothin’ about that.
What you can do is turn what they’ve come for against them.
– This explains why Bob standing his ground and yelling “go away”
repeatedly to Mr. Baldo would have worked, if he had some shine to him.
Unfortunately this stand your ground tactic, does not work out for Will.
Bob once again exhibits a potential shine later when he drops by Joyce’s house, under
the impression that Will is “sick” and offers Will some mind teasers. It’s here that Joyce suddenly
realizes that Bob has a unique skill for solving puzzles and being able to see what others can’t,
when it comes to finding solutions. She asks him to help her figure out
what Will’s drawings mean… of course not sharing with him that Will is partially possessed by the
Mind Flayer and that these drawings are coming from that part of Will’s brain, but Bob is a
nice guy who goes along with it anyway. Sure enough, Bob is able to see what others can’t.
– [Joyce] What? What is it?
– [Bob] I know that shape. It’s Lover’s Lake.
– [Zac] Even though Joyce still doesn’t fill Bob in on what’s going on,
he goes with them to the underground tunnels where Jim Hopper is trapped and Bob participates
in saving him… despite the implication that they never really got along in high school.
– Hi, Bob. – Hey Jim.
– [Zac] Bob is rushed into the Hawkins Lab with Joyce, Will, Mike Wheeler and Hopper, where Joyce
FINALLY fills Bob in on what’s going on, leading Bob to coin his own new nickname.
– I always thought stuff like this only happened in movies and comic books,
certainly not in Hawkins and certainly not to someone like you.
– Or you. – Yeah. Bob Newby: Superhero.
– [Zac] And that nickname is quickly put to the test, as shortly after this, as the creatures known
as the demodogs escape from the Upside Down and take over Hawkins lab. They’re
able to knock out the power, stranding Bob with Hopper; Mike; Joyce; Will’s doctor, Sam Owens;
and an unconscious Will, locked away in a safe room on an upper level of the lab.
As Hopper risks his life to get to the basement to turn the breakers back on,
Bob intervenes with his expert “nerd” knowledge of computer systems. He explains to Hopper that
turning on the breakers may restore the power, but it would take an entire reboot of the system
to open the gates, so that they can escape. It becomes immediately clear that the computer
programming language “basic” is required to do this and Bob is the only one who knows it.
To further the contrast of Bob’s “nerdiness” against Hopper being Sheriff,
Bob has no idea how to use a gun, requiring Hopper to teach him.
Bob does make it down safely and is able to re-start the breakers and employ his
knowledge of Basic to get everything up and running and open the gates. But just when
it seems like he’s in the clear, the demodogs appear on a stairwell on the computer screen,
putting both him and everyone else in danger, but once again, Bob puts his understanding
of Basic to use by putting in the code to start the fire sprinklers in the stairwell.
Joyce, Hopper and the kids make a break for the exit while Dr.
Owens stays behind to guide Bob over the intercom to safety. This whole
ordeal is very tense. Bob brushes shoulders with death several times.
Sadly for Bob, just as it seems like he’s in the clear with the demodogs trapped locked
out on the other side of the door like The Bumpus’s dogs on Christmas morning,
one of them breaks through, like the Bumpus’s dogs on Christmas morning,
and Bob ends up on the wrong end of one of the most tragic deaths that Hawkins has had to endure.
BUT Bob’s memory perseveres. It is, surprisingly,
Mike Wheeler, who mourns Bob after he’s gone and points out that it was actually Bob who
originally started the A.V. Club that the kids have been so active in, for the past two years.
– He petitioned the school to start it and everything. Then he had a
fundraiser for equipment. Mr. Clarke learned everything from him. Pretty awesome, right?
– [Dustin] Yeah. – [Lucas] Yeah...
– We can’t let him die in vain.
– Bob would become an unlikely hero for the newest generation of Hawkins Middle School
nerds and truly lived up to his reputation as a classic Stephen King-esque outcast.
If you want to see the histories of more Stranger Bois, click that playlist on the left.
I’ve got more episodes on the way, so remember to subscribe to CZsWorld for new horrors every week,
ring the deathbell for notifications and I’ll see you in the next one. Assuming we both survive.
(industrial dance music)