I mean the characters. In the world where Hanz and Franz live, are they really all muscle under the clothes? Or are they supposed to be wannabe poseurs, trying to fool people that they are body builders?
I mean, they’re comically, unrealistically huge. But maybe in their world, the laws of physics are different.
They’re large enough to be comedic, but not to be impossible, or even unreasonable.
There’s one bit where Arnold Schwarzenegger visits them…they’re a bit bigger than him (which is more striking on Carvey, since he’s about a head shorter than Arnie, whereas Nealon is a head taller), but not insanely so. (And looking at some pics from him when he was in his bodybuilding prime, I think he’d slimmed down slightly by that point, and they weren’t significantly larger than he was at his height.)
The sense I get it that they really are supposed to be completely muscle-bound under their sweatsuits. The joke is they’ve taken their body building to absurd lengths without realizing how far out on the fringe they are.
Oh, he was certainly still massive (still is), but looking at pics from his competitive body-building days…
Maybe it’s just the fact that since he wasn’t working to keep up the definition after ending his competitive career, the look of bulk was softened a bit, but he looked somewhat bigger back in the day.
In at least one episode, H&F’s muscles move back and forth (some sort of gadget under the actors’ sweats) when they flex, so I think we’re supposed to assume they really are muscle-bound.
Definitely, with the Austrian accent (and I think one of them had a gap tooth?), they were making fun of Schwarzenegger. But with the sweats, and the “pump… YOU up!”, they were making fun of the fitness industry as a whole. I’m not even sure they were supposed to be bodybuilders, since most bodybuilders show a lot more skin. Just really over the top and absurd personal trainers.
They may have done that themselves at some point, but Ah-nold also did it before the beginning of that clip I linked. His pecs magically flexed up & down!