0339 - Lance Murdock

Lance has a very big debut here, being Bart's inspiration for the episode and then later getting a full scene with our main characters.

This well rounded (certainly more prolific than most of the weirdos we cover here) appearance implies to me that Lance was intended to be a partially recurring character. The fact that he is voiced by Dan, and not a guest star, means he could have shown up often. Perhaps in another life he could have been as well known as Comic Book Guy or Sea Captain, but I think his narrow specificity limits his opportunity for continuous use. There aren't many chances to use a specific Evil Knievel parody, and he probably seemed like a less viable well for comedy once he contracted Hepatitis C in the 90s.

That said, it's possible a reference to Lance in season 7's "Homer the Smithers" is a reference to Evil Knievel's poor health - I cannot find many details about how widely known Knievel's condition was, but this 1996 episode aired three years before Knievel's liver transplant:

Still, Lance's major appearance in "Bart the Daredevil" ensured he was recognisable enough to show up a few more times as a local celebrity, in "Radio Bart":

in "Selma's Choice":

in "Viva Ned Flanders":

and in "Homerazzi":

He was even considered major enough to be given a trading card, which I am going to include here because I spent a bunch of money on these cards last year in a haze, and frankly I need to justify the cost of hunting them down:

You've patiently sat through a bunch of Lance Murdock information, so I've saved the weirdest part for last: in the manual for the Nintendo DS game "Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey", the name "Lance Murdock" is used for the protagonist character name, which is entered by the player, in screenshots:

This is the only scan of the manual I could find, so it's hard to see clearly, but "Lance ran away!" is at the top, and the surname "Murdock" is in the bottom left (it's more prominent throughout the manual but this is the only screenshot to feature both forename and surname.) By itself I might have put this as a coincidence, but other official publicity stills use the name "Langdon Alger", a later Simpsons reference, so clearly someone employed on the Shin Megami Tensei team was a fan at the time!

This post is part of my "Every Simpsons Character Ever" series. For a list of my rules in this project, click here.