Role in The Simpsons
John Frink is generally depicted as Springfield's stereotypical nerdy, mad, and socially inept scientist, inventor, and mathematician. He wears thick glasses, a white lab coat, pink pants, and has buckteeth. Frink is a college professor at Springfield Heights Institute of Technology and runs his own astronomical observatory. He has an IQ of 197 — 199 before he sustained a concussion during the collapse of Springfield's brief intellectual junta — and is a member of the Springfield chapter of Mensa. Frink is generally very polite and friendly. He has a trademark mannerism of using Jerry Lewis-style gibberish when excited, such as "HOYVIN-GLAVIN!" and "FLAVIN" and impulsively shouting other words that have no relevance to the situation at hand. He also occasionally refers to the importance of remembering to "carry the one" in various mathematical calculations. When he rambles he often speaks incoherently in run-on sentences without pauses. Frink also has a tendency to over-complicate simple matters and/or invent scientific terminology while expressing various concepts, e.g. "Father and I got along like positrons and antineutrinos!" or, "microcalifragilistics".
Frink often tries to use his mad and bizarre inventions to aid the town in its crises, but they usually do not work or only make things worse. Most of his inventions never function properly or are of no real use. He is the inventor of, among other things, a frog exaggerator (which greatly misrepresents the size of amphibians), automatic tapping shoes for tap dancing, the sarcasm detector, hamburger earmuffs, the 8-month-after pill, and a drilling machine that can cut through anything. Some of Frink's unsuccessful inventions include his small remote-controlled plane that carries babies as passengers (it crashed), and a burglar-proof house that sprouts legs and runs away from potential danger (the legs of which collapsed causing the house to crash to the ground and catch fire). As a scientist, Frink has discovered and cured "Frink's Disease" and discovered the element "Frinkonium". He has also mastered astrology to the point where he can use it to accurately predict the future, and has been shown to be capable of time travel.
The professor has a son who is seen in "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?" during a convention for infant and toddler products as a pilot of a remote-controlled plane (he flies out the window of the building while in the plane and crashes), and in "I, (Annoyed Grunt)-Bot" at a robot battle (operating the robot). On the show, Frink has made mentions of a wife, but there have also been jokes about him having had little contact with women in his life.
Frink often appears in the Treehouse of Horror Halloween episodes of The Simpsons, which are not accepted as canon and always take place outside the normal continuity of the show. Frink's bizarre inventions and understanding of advanced physics usually fit well into these supernatural plotlines. In "Treehouse of Horror VIII", Bart enters Frink's matter teleporter and it results in an accidental mix between Bart's genes and the genes of a housefly that was also present in the transporter at the same time. In "Treehouse of Horror XIV", it is revealed that Frink had a father who was killed by a shark, whom he brings back to life in the episode by piecing together his body parts. Unfortunately, the man decides to steal body parts to improve himself after he is revived. In the latter episode, Frink is awarded with a Nobel Prize.
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