Firstly, in an episode of The Simpsons, a woman tells Flanders that her name is “Zelda Fitzgerald”, and he instantly recognises this as a pseudonym. How? What makes it a pseudonym on sight?
Secondly, in Futurama, Bender Bending Rodriguez is given a pseudonym, Blotto, to which he mentions he can keep his monogram slippers. What does Blotto have to do with his name or a monogram of it?
These have been bugging me for years. What do they mean?
Zelda Fitzgerald was the name of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife - a famous person. Flanders correctly concluded that someone giving such a famous name as her own was using a pseudonym, rather than being someone who by chance had a famous person’s name.
“Blotto” starts with “B,” same as “Bender” - apparently Bender’s monogrammed slippers only have one initial on them, so the B can stand for “Blotto” (a word that indicates a heavy drinker, by the way, which Bender is) as well as it stands for “Bender”
Thanks!
Nitpick: IIRC, he recognized it as a “pseud-diddly-ood-onym.”
Which she adopted after getting herself in a dilly of a pickle?
The Futurama episode was Mars University and made many references to the film Animal House in which John Belushi’s character was nick-named ‘Bluto’, and Bender emulated many of his scenes.
Bolding mine.
I used to work for a man named “Ronald McDonald”. He was about 8 when the hamburger clown was invented. His life went downhill from there. 
A nitpick can’t be wrong. You are misspelling it, or leaving out your nitpick is to add how you heard it …
But what do I know, I’m only a Left-tennant nitpicker.
The Futurama episode was actually called “Bender Gets Made”, where he joins the Robot Mafia and they heist the Planet Express ship.
I’ll bet. Flanders though could tell from the way that the woman gave the name “Zelda Fitzgerald” that it was not her real name.
Yep. Just saw that one the other night.