Talk:List of The Big Bang Theory franchise characters

Asperger's Syndrome Diagnosis

I would like to remove the reference to Sheldon displaying symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome as I believe it is original research rather than something actually referred to within the show. Similar 'research' occasionally appears on the TBBT main page and is removed for the same reason. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable. Agree or Oppose? Does anyone care? —Preceding unsigned comment added by EttaLove (talk • contribs) 22:47, 24 April 2008

Since AS is often undiagnosed, and a story in which it was talked about probably wouldn't fit in very well with a comedy, it's quite unlikely that it would be mentioned in the show. The most important rule in accordance with WP:VERIFY and WP:FICTION is whether it has come to attention in reliable sources. This could be either something along the lines of this:

[1] as long as it was serious and well-informed, or possibly a review of the show; the TBBT hasn't been around long enough for there to be books written about it to use as sources. Talk on the internet, or even a blog, wouldn't count.Billwilson5060 (talk) 16:14, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

As a person with Asperger's, I'd like to see the comment remain. I don't recall ever hearing anyone speak the name "Asperger" in the show, but there are quite a few "inside jokes" that most neurotypicals would not "get." For example, when Sheldon is talking with Leonard and get's asked "Did Penny look upset when you spoke with her?" he replies "No, did you ask her if she was upset?" When Leonard says "Yes, and she said she's not," Sheldon says "Oh, I got that one right!" When he confirms with Leonard that, indeed, Leonard is upset, he says "I've got it two for two" (or something like that). He then excuses himself because the next question about emotional perception is a "bonus question for extra points, and I'm quitting while I'm ahead."

As an Aspergian, I find that exchange very funny because being able to emphatically sense emotion in others is one of our issues, and the fact that Sheldon clearly knows he has a problem in that area, and jokes about it, is wonderful.

This is just one example, and while the actual name of the disorder isn't mentioned, I think it's very clear that the writers have created Sheldon as someone with Asperger's Syndrome. There's just two many comments made that are absolutely spot-on for an Aspergian that this cannot be accidental, and it's certainly not just "generalized geekiness." If you want to see someone's commentary on this topic, check out http://www.tvsquad.com/2009/02/09/does-big-bangs-sheldon-have-aspergers-syndrome/ The statement that it's like "attending an Asperger's meeting" is absolutely correct. 66.210.10.253 (talk) 22:18, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Religion

How do we know that Rajesh's character is Hindu? He could very well be Atheist, as he's a scientist. Unless there's more information, please leave the religion blank 59.92.49.149 (talk) 12:57, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

He constantly refers to the hindu gods, and Sheldon once get's him to let him stay by saying hospitality is part of the Hindu religion. Million_Moments (talk) 16:36, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

That isn't evidence. His cultural background may be Hindu, which is why he mentions the religion. I can argue that because he's a scientist, he's and talks about evidence and rationality, he's an atheist. Unless it is explicitly stated that he's a Hindu, we should leave the religion blank. 59.92.39.45 (talk) 14:15, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I continue to disagree, as the same thing could be said about Wollawitz and Judaism but his infobox still contains that fact. He was certainly raised Hindu. Million_Moments (talk) 17:07, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I disagree as well. I think his character is an atheist, and not Hindu. Unless you have a verifiable citation, I don't think you should add it59.92.83.152 (talk) 12:58, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Well the key there is that you 'think' he's an atheist. And as most stories, the characters in the The Big Bang Theory are held somewhat loosely in their characteristics so that more than one type of person can relate to each character. But the Show includes enough evidence to say he was raised Hindu, whether or not the fictional character believes in one or the other. At any rate, there are plenty of religious scientists (Einstein for example), and a good deal of them would tell you religion and science are really two sides of the same coin; One of which relies on faith and the other on knowledge, neither of which rely on being right. My point is the scientific background of the characters doesn't preclude the possibility of an associated religion with said characters, nor any real person. I vote Koothrappali is Hindu. —Preceding unsigned comment added by RianC (talk • contribs) 22:51, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, Koothrapali is definitely of the Hindu religion. — ^{`</sup>CRAZY`(lN)`SANE<sup>`} 03:02, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Penny states in The Panty Pinata Polarization that Raj is "Suddenly back on the Hindu bandwagon". He was definitely raised Hindu, and definitely practices Hinduism, but just not all the time. All evidence from the show points toward him being Hindu. RianC (talk) 00:17, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

By the same token, we should not assume the Sheldon character is a Christian unless he has said that he is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.114.32.90 (talk) 01:09, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

It has been. He has mentioned his mother whacking him with a Bible, and I believe in the episode when she visited the apartment she alluded several times to religion. Xenon54 (talk) 02:21, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Being whacked by a bible does not make him a Christian. It makes his mother a Christian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.114.32.90 (talk) 11:46, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

In the Bath Item episode, he expresses discontent that a commercialized Christmas is just a "pagan ritual", and his expressions seem to indicate he is Christian. — ^{`</sup>CRAZY`(lN)`SANE<sup>`} 12:30, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

When Penny asks if he and Leonard are putting up a Christmas tree, he replies, "No, because we don't celebrate the ancient pagan festival of Saturnalia." He goes on to explain the customs of Saturnalia. Acknowledging that Saturnalia was appropriated and recast as Christmas would go against the beliefs of Christians. MultiPoly (talk) 13:55, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

You're talking about Leonard... it's Sheldon that's in question here. — ^{`</sup>CRAZY`(lN)`SANE<sup>`} 16:16, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

No, the 'he' in the exchange above is Sheldon. Penny is talking to Sheldon. Sheldon explains Saturnalia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MultiPoly (talk • contribs) 14:13, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Sheldon also says in episode 14 of Season 2 that his secret money stash in the peanut brittle container is protected by saints, adding evidence 67.194.167.97 (talk) 00:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC)Rachel

I find it very difficult to believe that a character such as Sheldon's would find anything in ANY religion, especially considering his distain for both his sister and mother's beliefs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.23.177.208 (talk) 18:54, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

He says it is protected by snakes, the ones that jump out of the can. MultiPoly (talk) 16:19, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I just realized this today and was about to update it. haha. I laughed pretty hard when I saw that today and realized that he said "snakes." Thanks MultiPoly 67.194.167.97 (talk) 06:02, 20 February 2009 (UTC)Rachel

Article Name

I assume this current page started off as a WP:LIST to list the characters in The Big Bang Theory. However, given the current state of the page, it is quite obvious that is page is no longer a List. I suggest we move the article from List of characters from The Big Bang Theory to The Big Bang Theory Characters or something similar. And if in the future, biography of the characters grows to a point where the page is too big as per WP:SIZE, someone should take the opportunity then to split the biography of Sheldon and Leonard into their own separate articles, and then keep the rest of the characters on this page. Personally, I think it will still be a little too premature to split Leonard and Sheldon's biography right now. Aly89 (talk) 18:05, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I think someone should go ahead and make this change RianC (talk) 03:02, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking of splitting the character articles, in particular Sheldon's in order to add information about the idea that he has an autistic spectrum disorder, as discussed here: [2] among other places. Billwilson5060 (talk) 11:32, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Splitting the characters into their own articles is a great idea. I will be bold and begin doing this now. You can help out. — ^{`</sup>CRAZY`(lN)`SANE<sup>`} 11:37, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

EDIT: Actually, I don't have time to do it at the moment, and we'll need to create a new "TBBT character" Infobox template (similar to Template:Infobox CSI character) to use in the new articles. You can start this up if you'd like, if not I'll resume later when I have more time. — ^{`</sup>CRAZY`(lN)`SANE<sup>`} 11:49, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

References

For those watching this page, you will find a huge change being applied to this article. This was done by me to reference almost all the facts highlighted in the entire article. However, there were quite a few facts which I remember being addressed in the episodes, but couldn't remember which episodes. Hence, I have flagged them with the Fact template. Anyone who remembers these, please go ahead and feel free to add them. The referencing I did is in a particular manner where the references are properly named to be used throughout the article. Following is the entire dump of all the references which might have been used/might not. If you are referencing and you realize that the episode reference is not present, copy it off here. This list was generated from the List of The Big Bang Theory Episodes by running a custom macro on it.

<ref name="S01E01">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=1|season=1|title=Pilot|airdate=September 24, 2007}}</ref>
<ref name="S01E02">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=2|season=1|title=The Big Bran Hypothesis|airdate=October 1, 2007}}</ref>
<ref name="S01E03">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=3|season=1|title=The Fuzzy Boots Corollary|airdate=October 8, 2007}}</ref>
<ref name="S01E04">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=4|season=1|title=The Luminous Fish Effect|airdate=October 15, 2007}}</ref>
<ref name="S01E05">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=5|season=1|title=The Hamburger Postulate|airdate=October 22, 2007}}</ref>
<ref name="S01E06">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=6|season=1|title=The Middle-Earth Paradigm|airdate=October 29, 2007}}</ref>
<ref name="S01E07">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=7|season=1|title=The Dumpling Paradox|airdate=November 5, 2007}}</ref>
<ref name="S01E08">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=8|season=1|title=The Grasshopper Experiment|airdate=November 12, 2007}}</ref>
<ref name="S01E09">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=9|season=1|title=The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization|airdate=March 17, 2008}}</ref>
<ref name="S01E10">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=10|season=1|title=The Loobenfeld Decay|airdate=March 24, 2008}}</ref>
<ref name="S01E11">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=11|season=1|title=The Pancake Batter Anomaly|airdate=March 31, 2008}}</ref>
<ref name="S01E12">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=12|season=1|title=The Jerusalem Duality|airdate=April 14, 2008}}</ref>
<ref name="S01E13">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=13|season=1|title=The Bat Jar Conjecture|airdate=April 21, 2008}}</ref>
<ref name="S01E14">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=14|season=1|title=The Nerdvana Annihilation|airdate=April 28, 2008}}</ref>
<ref name="S01E15">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=15|season=1|title=The Shiksa Indeterminacy|airdate=May 5, 2008}}</ref>
<ref name="S01E16">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=16|season=1|title=The Peanut Reaction|airdate=May 12, 2008}}</ref>
<ref name="S01E17">{{cite episode|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|number=17|season=1|title=The Tangerine Factor|airdate=May 19, 2008}}</ref>
<ref name="S02E01">{{cite episode|number=1|title=The Bad Fish Paradigm|airdate=September 22, 2008|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|season=2}}</ref>
<ref name="S02E02">{{cite episode|number=2|title=The Codpiece Topology|airdate=September 29, 2008|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|season=2}}</ref>
<ref name="S02E03">{{cite episode|number=3|title=The Barbarian Sublimation|airdate=October 6, 2008|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|season=2}}</ref>
<ref name="S02E04">{{cite episode|number=4|title=The Griffin Equivalency|airdate=October 13, 2008|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|season=2}}</ref>
<ref name="S02E05">{{cite episode|number=5|title=The Euclid Alternative|airdate=October 20, 2008|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|season=2}}</ref>
<ref name="S02E06">{{cite episode|number=6|title=The Cooper-Nowitzki Theorem|airdate=November 3, 2008|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|season=2}}</ref>
<ref name="S02E07">{{cite episode|number=7|title=The Panty Piñata Polarization|airdate=November 10, 2008|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|season=2}}</ref>
<ref name="S02E08">{{cite episode|number=8|title=The Lizard-Spock Expansion|airdate=November 17, 2008|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|season=2}}</ref>
<ref name="S02E09">{{cite episode|number=9|title=The White Asparagus Triangulation|airdate=November 24, 2008|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|season=2}}</ref>
<ref name="S02E10">{{cite episode|number=10|title=The Vartabedian Conundrum|airdate=December 8, 2008|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|season=2}}</ref>
<ref name="S02E11">{{cite episode|number=11|title=The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis|airdate=December 15, 2008|series=The Big Bang Theory|serieslink=The Big Bang Theory|season=2}}</ref>

The season one and season two don't quite match up because both were put through different macros, but hopefully all the information should be present in all the references. Feel free to critisize on anything I have done. Also, please consider my previous proposal of a page move (the section before this). Cheers! Aly89 (talk) 21:19, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

New TBBT character articles

I'm in the midst of creating the new articles for the main TBBT characters, as was discussed briefly on the "List of TBBT characters" talk page previously. I have a limited time to work with at the moment, and after my edits there are still a lot of cite errors on the new articles due to cites not being complete (as they were simply copied from the original article). I will continue to fix these issues later today into tomorrow, but in the meantime welcome all other users to assist in the transition.

The original article, List of characters in The Big Bang Theory, can either be merged into The Big Bang Theory, or better yet, changed to incorporate the new articles (i.e., the full descriptions are removed in favor of shorter descriptions, and the list of secondary/tertiary characters remains. I recommend the latter, which I will do upon return to editing tomorrow. Thanks. — ^{`</sup>CRAZY`(lN)`SANE<sup>`} 17:34, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah I'd cut down the articles here to be very short, maybe just one or two sentences. Million_Moments (talk) 21:43, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Wolowitz's Ability to Speak Mandarin

Hi Guys, Wolowitz is listed as knowing Mandarin. However, in the Episode "the Dumpling Paradox" (S01 E07) the waiter at the Chinese restaurant asks "Where is your friend that thinks he can speak Mandarin?" Therefore, I believe his status as officially "knowing Mandarin" is most likely not true as this situation implied that he may just be simply overconfident in his language skills. This needs to be changed. What do you think? 67.194.167.97 (talk) 21:32, 15 February 2009 (UTC)Rachel

I think there is no need to change this without stronger evidence. It is true that his language skills haven't been explored much; nevertheless it has been stated in various episodes somewhat as a "fact" that Howard speaks 5 languages, and 6 if you count the fictional Klingon. I vote for not changing that unless there is an actual episode which confirms Howard's lack of fluency in languages, or the show creators state that. 189.175.178.189 (talk) 19:51, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Sheldon's romantic interests

The article mentions that Sheldon has none, yet he seems to take a great liking towards Lenard's mother. Further, when Lenard coerces Sheldon into leaving him and his date on their own, saying that he would return the favour when Sheldon finds 'a mate of his species', he agrees with the reasoning. Also, on a minor note, Sheldon expresses what could be interpreted as sexual attraction when helping Penny getting dressed after she dislocated her arm. I don't remember in which episodes these things happened, so I'm reluctant to alter this beautifully cited article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jan-da-man (talk • contribs) 01:34, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

"Sheldon expresses what could be interpreted... " I strongly disagree with changing the wording of the article based on personal interpretations. The content should remain encyclopedic and verifiable. Unless the character Sheldon mentions or actively pursues a romantic relationship, we, as outsiders, cannot assume such thing; that's just plain gossip. However, I agree that more can be mentioned on Sheldon's fondness for Leonard's mother, and overall the way he was raised. 189.175.178.189 (talk) 03:49, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

In relation to this, in one episode, Sheldon says about romantic attraction "if one is so afflicted" Phil Nolte (talk) 20:45, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Reducing the list of characters

I think we should stablish which characters are due to be included in this article. Right now, some of them (Dannis Kim, Lalita Gupta,...) are just characters with a single appearance and little impact on the show. I would remove all characters that have appeared to just one episode, thus keeping only Kurt, Dr. Gablehauser, Mary Cooper, Mr and Mrs. Koothrapali, Stephanie, Kripke, Beverly Hofstander, Stuart and Bernadette. Thoughts on this? --RR (talk) 12:55, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I absolutely agree. I would recommend a list of main characters: the four guys, Penny and Leslie Winkle as it is now; a list of recurrent characters: those with more than one appearance; and a list of minor characters: those with just one appearance. The descriptions for the minor characters need to be cut down to one or two lines. I'm thinking about something similar to the list of characters in The New Adventures of Old Christine. 189.175.178.189 (talk) 04:06, 16 December 2009 (UTC)