David Cooper
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0333 Rasputin the Friendly Russian
🕑 Added 2024-05-13 08:00:01 +0000 UTC"Bart the Daredevil" starts with the kids and the barflies watching a wrestling match between this fella and his opponent (spoiler alert: we'll see him on Thursday). He qualifies for this project because of the friendly homer-esque "roar" he gives on his entrance.
Surprisingly, there isn't a particularly good colour shot of him in this sequence to show him off properly, but here is is as he appears on Moe's TV:
Apart from being a premium character in Tapped Out, this is his only appearance. Lisa notes how his alliance has changed due to the political climate - this episode aired in 1990, right before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and shortly after Gorbachev and Bush (the first Bush) declared the Cold War was over. This is somewhat a reflection of real life wrestling, in which Russian "heels" were common throughout the 1980s, and seem to have basically disappeared after 1991. Russian wrestlers still appeared in the WWE, but as far as I can tell they were not as stereotypically villainous as they once were - that is, until fairly recently, when US/Russia relations have fallen somewhat.
This is Rusev, a more recent "Russian" wrestler, entering Wrestlemania in 2015 in a Soviet tank with a Russian flag. Wrestling is not known for its subtlety.
This post is part of my "Every Simpsons Character Ever" series. For a list of my rules in this project, click here.
