Bob the Barbarian

First appearance: S5E7 — Ducks of Death — Robbie Clark & the Hunger v Bob the Barbarian · watch it on YouTube

Bob the Barbarian is a shirtless, mulleted, always-smiling barbarian from Florida. He wears at least three pairs of jean shorts at once, wrestles gators and summons them in battle, and fights with a cheerfully unhinged arsenal that runs from nipple tornadoes to crystal-fisted punches. Behind the denim and the bath salts sits an unexpectedly big heart. In his first fight he freed a child from an eldritch horror and promised to raise him in Florida. He has never lost a Deathmatch, and he won the Team C final, which gave him the right to name the team.

Story

Ducks of Death (Season of Fate)

Bob first entered The Void during the Season of Fate, the stretch of Deathmatches run by the Lord of Fate, as The Arbiter styled himself in that reality. Thea summoned him in S5E7 — Ducks of Death to face Robbie Clark and the Hunger, a small boy with a tentacled eldritch thing living in his backpack. Bob introduced himself as a Florida man who loved jorts, gator wrestling and Coors Light. He admitted he felt weird about fighting a child. The Lord of Fate, unnerved by how friendly he was, concluded: “It’s always the nice ones that are crazy.”

The fight in The Duck Village was gleefully filthy. Bob shattered Robbie’s sternum with a titanium fist. The aliens beamed both fighters up, and Bob alone was probed, leaving him unable to hold in his farts ever after. He dipped his hand deep into his jorts to throw his own shit at the boy as poison. It missed, and the Hunger simply ate the poop off his hand. When The Box of Chaos arrived, Bob tore off a small piece of his jorts as a sacrifice and received the Blade of Shadow, which holds a piece of The Shadow King’s soul. He promptly missed with it. Robbie, meanwhile, gave up his birthday memories for the Shield of the Golden King. Bob summoned his gators and named the third one Jeremy. Thea spoke with the gator and learned she was actually Hannah Montana, so Bob apologised and set her free to swim laps in the village fountain.

As the fight wore on, Bob grew attached to the boy. He told Robbie the small ducks had reminded him “of my own,” that he could be his dad “in a different world,” and that one day they would ride a fan boat through the Everglades together. When the Hunger took full control of Robbie, Bob sniffed a pouch of bath salts to become “pure Florida man” and swore to liberate him. In the end it was his words that worked. Robbie surfaced long enough to ask, “Could you teach me to be a Florida man?” He took Bob’s hand and was pulled free, and the Hunger melted into bubbling ichor. Thea opened a portal to a rusty fan boat with “Bob and Robbie” on the back, and the two sailed off to Florida. Bob was counted the winner. At the table, his player revealed that all the Florida Man material had been improvised just before the show.

Patriotic Punch Up (Season of Fate)

Bob returned in S5E9 — Patriotic Punch Up against presidential hopeful Richard Knottley, better known as Dick Twist, on the lava field before The Dread Fortress. Bob now called himself Robbie’s “new dad” and said the boy was back in the Everglades, feeding Publix chicken tenders to the gators from their pink fan boat. Bob’s fighting was as unorthodox as ever. He raced Thea and Richard on tricycles and won the third heat “by a nose.” He belly-flopped Richard with meth-laced sweat, ate the exploding frog Richard pulled out of his own ass, and summoned his Harley-Davidson, Cletus. He punched so hard that Richard’s mustache fell off. He even squirted belly sweat into Thea’s mouth from a secret blowhole in his navel. She vomited onto the front row.

The fight turned dark when Richard revealed a hostage video. His people had caught a remnant of the Hunger, and it would eat Robbie again if Richard died. Bob sacrificed the “Jort Daddy” friendship bracelet Robbie had made him to the Box of Chaos and got nothing but a stare from Dolly, the haunted porcelain doll, which drained his strength. Then he unveiled his signature move, the Denim Gator. His jorts swallowed everything but his arms, two gators locked onto his hands, and he spun like a Beyblade. In the final round he ripped off the tuxedo pants Dick Twist’s dance-off had turned his jorts into, revealing a third layer of jorts, and stacked everything he had into a second Denim Gator. He rolled a natural 20 and killed Richard outright. As Richard died, the live feed on his phone showed Robbie being eaten by the Hunger. In Dried Blood, Bob swore to the boy: “I won’t let the hunger take you again, son. Bet on it.”

The Hunt for #2, Part 1 (Season of the Trials)

The Bob of this reality turned up in Season 6. Like the other champions that season, he was this world’s version of the man the Lord of Fate had met. In S6 Ep6 — The Hunt for #2 - Part 1, Thea recruited him alongside Frigidum, a fridge exposed to radioactive waste, and The Duke, a rat-man magician. Together they made up Team C. Their job was to replace the Fortress’s drained booze supply, and the Grandmaster dangled full employment as the prize: immortality, a home, a sauna and a pet chinchilla. This Bob abstained from drink to protect his physique. His jorts were so short that the Arbiter could see a testicle poking out, and Bob confirmed he had four (“It just feels right”).

At Emmery’s Tavern, Emmery agreed to supply his patented “number two ale” (its grain dried with sheep dung) if they found out who had been mauling his customers. Bob swore on the Florida man code to help. He aced the first round of a drinking contest against a one-eyed fox with a natural 20, calling alcohol his “secret weapon.” He also smoothed things over with a gang of dragonborn miners by apologising for his Zippos and handing over a pack of Black and Milds. Tabitha and the others pointed the team toward Billy, a bald regular who came in every two weeks and was sitting in the back room. Under the full moon Billy turned into a werewolf. Bob landed a crystal-fisted punch, but when he spun at Billy as a jort missile, the werewolf caught him and spanked him. Then he summoned his 20-foot gator Denise and hurled a poisonous caiman into Billy’s eye.

The team’s best idea came from a huddle. Bob refused to have Thea destroy the moon, warning that “Florida is a peninsula. Many will die.” Instead he opened Frigidum’s door and blasted Billy with the fridge light. Bob then healed himself in a summoned Gator Pool of tiny gator fairies and finished Billy with an “Ultimate Denim Gator.” Thea then ruled that the team’s shared leadership was stupid and that they would fight each other to decide it. When the Duke happily betrayed them, Bob declared: “You will rue the day, you goddamn rat bastard.”

The Hunt for #2, Part 2 (Season 6 finale)

After a week’s vacation in Duval, the three fought for leadership back at the wrecked tavern in S6E7, The Hunt for #2 - Part 2. Whoever won would name the team and decide where it lived. Bob opened by swallowing three Viagra and releasing his “trouser snake” into Frigid Doom’s pipes. He summoned the Ass Jaguar of the Florida swamps, which broke its nose on the Duke’s metal-lined diaper. Over the rounds he unleashed “Florida swinging,” which sent a horde of elderly swingers through the fridge’s hinges and gave him venereal disease, along with a Floridian sinkhole, crystal meth punches, and a four-hour Viagra erection that exploded his jorts in blood. He also explained that he is the god of his gators. Their religion asks that he eat them after they die, so they can live on inside him.

Bob shrugged off many of the Duke’s tricks, including a rat trap baited with Coors Light, an exploding plushie gator, a New York pizza and a shit-covered punch aimed at his asshole, because “Nobody gets through my jorts into my asshole except for me.” Chaos events went less well for him. He fell for a grandma’s plate of gator, got thrown by a mechanical gator, and failed to escape the stink after Doug peed on the tallest thing in the arena and pranced off farting. A child punch also came to him “as if out of a dream,” and of the child kick he said, “It was from a boy.” He threw a Denim Gator mid-fight, and since he couldn’t remember his second gator’s name, the Arbiter dubbed it Fritney. He fed Frigid Doom Publix tenders that had been rubbed inside his jorts and came out covered in his shit and crystal meth, and when reminded of the Box of Chaos, he cheerfully answered, “Fuck the chaos.”

Frigid Doom ate the Duke, then tried to eat Bob, and the two ended near death together. A final chaos event sent a gang of children hurling insults (“I hate Florida!” “Duval sucks!”), and both men failed to resist. Frigid Doom collapsed first. Bob, fading, heard his gators calling him home, until the Grandmaster put a hand on his shoulder, restored him, slapped him awake and declared him the winner. She revived his teammates beside him, and Bob named them the Triforce Dong Danglers. In Dried Blood, he summed up his feelings about Season 7: “Oh, hell yeah. Can’t wait for next season.”

Personality and Abilities

Bob is rotund and bare-chested, with a beer belly, a mustache and a glorious mullet whose locks “flow so freely, like they have a mind of their own.” His uniform is light-wash jorts with ripped hems, worn to “ride up high and tight to almost expose your genitals and or ass, preferably both,” and always several pairs deep. Stripping one layer only reveals another, because “the jorts never end.” He is friendly to a fault, nicknamed “Smiling Bob,” and treats nearly everyone as a brother. He loves swamps, sun, Coors Light, Miller Lite and Publix chicken tenders, and he lives in Florida “permanently on vacation.” He says he was sent into the swamp as a boy to fend for himself, and that he learned his techniques from “the old people” of “the villages.” He follows the Florida man code and hates those who prey on the weak.

His fighting style is pure improvised Florida. He pulls crystals and crystal meth from his jorts and powers up on Viagra and bath salts. His other moves include a nipple tornado, a steel-spiked hairball, a toe-in-the-eye stench attack, his diamond “nipples of justice,” and a secret belly-button blowhole that squirts sweat. His menagerie includes Gator One, Gator Two and Hannah Montana in the Season of Fate, and Denise and Fritney (also called “Frickney”) in this reality, kept in Pokeballs in his jorts. He also keeps the Ass Jaguar, a Harley named Cletus and a pink fan boat. His signature move is the Denim Gator: he becomes jorts from head to toe and spins with a gator in each hand. He also has the reflexes “of… panthers.”

Relationships

• Robbie Clark: The boy Bob freed from The Hunger in the Season of Fate and took to Florida as his son. Bob swore to save him again after the Hunger reclaimed him.
• Thea: Licked his leg sweat in their first meeting (“Did we just become best friends, Thea?”), and later took a squirt of his belly-blowhole sweat in the mouth and vomited onto the front row.
• Richard Knottley: His Season of Fate rival, who held Robbie hostage. Bob killed him with a natural-20 Denim Gator.
• Frigidoom: Teammate and “brother” in Team C, then his final opponent. Bob told him “You are seen, brother,” and called him a worthy foe.
• The Duke: Teammate turned betrayer, whose ass Bob vowed to kick: “My boot’s still going up it.”
• Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Revived him at the brink of death and declared him the winner of the Season 6 finale.

Memorable Quotes

• “Mayhem’s what I do. I just like to smile while I do it.” (S5E7)
• “I could be your dad in a different world. I’m not your dad. Probably not, but I could be. Remember that, boy. I care about you.” (S5E7)

• “Behold, Acolytes and Richard, this is the Denim Gator!” (S5E9)

• “You can never have tight enough jorts. That’s what I’ve always said since I was a young boy.” (S6 Ep6)
• “It’s going to have a cataclysmic effect on the tides. Florida is a peninsula. Many will die.” (S6 Ep6)
• “Nobody gets through my jorts into my asshole except for me.” (S6E7)

Appearances

• S5E7 — Ducks of Death — Robbie Clark & the Hunger v Bob the Barbarian
• S5E9 — Patriotic Punch Up — Bob the Barbarian v Richard Knottley (Dick Twist)
• S6 Ep6 — The Hunt for #2 - Part 1 — Team C (Frigidum, Bob the Barbarian, the Duke) v Billy
• S6E7, The Hunt for #2 - Part 2 (season finale). Team C final - Frigid Doom v Bob the Barbarian v the Duke