Barney Gumble

Barney was born on April 20. His father, Arnie Gumble, was killed in a parade float accident along with Sheldon Skinner, Iggy Wiggum, Etch Westgrin, and Griff McDonald, all of whom had served in Abe Simpson's WWII squad, the Flying Hellfish. Barney once had a near-death experience in which he expects to be reunited with "my loved ones, my dad, and that plant I never watered," perhaps implying that he did not get along with his father. As a teenager, Barney had great potential. He was Harvard-bound until Homer introduced him to beer on the night before they had to take the SATs. It has also been implied that he took to drinking after his high-school sweetheart, Chloe Talbot, left Springfield to become a successful TV reporter. In spite of the years of alcoholism, he still appears to maintain some of his great early potential. For example, when forced to quit drinking while training to be an astronaut, he almost immediately regained his diction and balance and proved to be an exceptional astronaut candidate. (Unfortunately, to celebrate the completion of his training and selection as an astronaut, he was given non-alcoholic champagne, which immediately resulted in a relapse.) Later on, with Homer, he was a member of The Be Sharps barbershop quartet, in which his stellar Irish singing voice was discovered. Barney showed his artistic side again when he won top prize at the Springfield Film Festival for his moving documentary about his life as an alcoholic, unfortunately titled "Pukahontas".

Before Barney started drinking, he was a very intelligent young man, but while studying for the S.A.T.s Homer offered him one of Abe's beers. After giving in to Homer, Barney took his first sip and quickly downed the entire can. His clothes and hair quickly became a mess and he ran out of Homer's house. Barney is almost always seen in Moe's Tavern, where he is a regular. His desperation for alcohol has been the source of many jokes. He has a quavering, slightly broken voice and a distinctive loud belch (although he sings completely differently, having a beautiful "Irish tenor" type voice), as well as a characteristic wandering eye. He remains friendly and good-natured despite his unfortunate condition. Heavyset, slovenly, and unmarried (though occasionally seen with women), he lives in a very untidy and sparsely-furnished apartment. It has also been implied that he has "lived" in Moe's Tavern. Barney drinks so compulsively that Moe had to send his beer tab to NASA for it to be calculated: it ultimately came out as fourteen billion dollars worth of beer (although Moe mistakenly stated it was seventy billion dollars until he realized that that was actually the cost of the Voyager Spacecraft), and has contributed to at least one of his fellow barflies' beer tab (such as when Homer went to Japan).

He is occasionally seen doing some sort of manual labor, such as working for his Uncle Al at Barney's Bowlarama, but has also been the owner of a successful snowplowing business and been employed by NASA as an astronaut. Barney is 40 years old and his first name was revealed to be Bernard, although he also appears to be in the same high school class as Homer in flashbacks. When streaking at his high school prom earned him "about a decade's worth of detention", it was hinted that he was either to be held back a year, or had already repeated. He had also ended up having to do court-issued community service with picking up roadside litter where he attacked Principal Skinner (who was trying to cross the interstate with a tank of gasoline for his car at the time) after hallucinating that Skinner was a giant beer can. Barney has survived experiences such as exploding zeppelins, malfunctioning Jet packs, and being crushed by a falling table. Barney also apparently takes pictures of Legs's sister, as stated in "Homie the Clown" when Homer states he is "Barney Gumble" after the mob picks him up thinking he is Krusty.

When alcohol is not readily available, Barney is seen drinking just about anything, such as turpentine, varnish, rubbing alcohol, and brake fluid. In addition, when someone forces him to be sober from alcohol, he sometimes becomes murderous and deranged, which happened on at least two occasions. The first time was when Mr. Burns diverted all the beer from Springfield and then issued a manhunt on TV to force Homer to give back Bobo, to which Barney was at the door with a gun warning Homer to do as Mr. Burns said, although he ended up accidentally shooting and presumably killing a woman who was crossing Evergreen Terrace after Homer slammed the door in his face, and it is implied that he was arrested for this action shortly thereafter. The second time was when, due to Mr. Burns' slant drilling operation forcing Moe's Tavern to close due to the toxic fumes, he brought out a gun with the intention of wanting to murder Mr. Burns for this, although he never actually got a chance to use it before Mr. Burns was shot by Maggie. He also utilized his gun once while acting as the Plow King, to shoot out Homer's Mr. Plow truck's tires. According to Homer in what ultimately inspired Barney to become sober, Barney's exact stance at being inebriated depended on how he acted: When slightly inebriated during his birthday party (by comparison, as Barney did not remember the birthday party), or as Homer called him "Professor Barney", he was talkative, coherent (at least by comparison) and even insightful, albeit somewhat offensive, as he was telling Lisa that upon death, there will be a planet each for the French, the Chinese,

and presumably any other nationality/ethnicity with the implication that they'd all be happier that way, much to the latter's chagrin. When extremely drunk, however, he at one point managed to somehow cross-dress as Marge and yell to the kids in a fake falsetto voice that he's going shopping before drinking while overall being very woozy, enough to fall over the banister, and upon seeing beer soaked into the "shag" (referring into the rug), he proceeds to lap it up like a dog and even get territorial when Santa's Little Helper was nearby, with Homer, initially mistaking him for Marge, telling "her" that "she's" making a fool of herself before realizing "her" true identity. In very early episodes such as There's No Disgrace Like Home he was portrayed as a bully who regularly picked on Homer and would start fights with him.

When he was nominated alongside Homer to join NASA, Barney quit drinking to undergo the rigorous training. He succeeded and was even nominated to go into space. However, due to the severity of his alcoholism, a taste of non-alcoholic champagne was enough to get him intoxicated again, thus resulting in Homer going to space instead of Barney. Barney was once forced to remain sober for the drinking night at Moe's when he received the position of Designated Driver that night (coincidentally on the same night that he was to win a bottomless glass of Duff from Duffman). The mental strain of that single night of sobriety sent Barney on a two-month bender with Homer's car, after which Barney remembered nothing except for a guest lecture he gave at Villanova (or maybe it was on a street corner). The car was later found parked illegally in New York City, though Barney had no memory of how it got there.

Barney once attempted to kick his alcoholism habit. For his birthday, Moe gave him a gift certificate for helicopter flying lessons, not expecting Barney to actually use them. "Can you imagine this tanked-up loser at the wheel of a whirlybird?" Moe asked. This comment, coupled with a humiliating videotape of Barney's actions while inebriated, gave Barney the drive he needed. Barney attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, became sober, and took the helicopter lessons. He became fairly proficient at it, though he admitted he had not yet mastered right turns. This new skill helped Homer rescue Bart and Lisa from a forest fire, although he initially panicked and almost ended up reverting to alcoholism in a desperate attempt at tackling his panic until Homer selflessly downed a significant amount of beer specifically to avoid Barney reverting back to his alcoholism, resulting in Homer becoming extremely inebriated in the process. Unwilling to lose one of his most crucial customers to his tavern, Moe figured out a way to channel Barney's tendency for addiction into a dependency on the caffeine in espressos.[27] Aside from his alcoholism, he was also addicted to caffeinated products, as aside from Moe figuring out how to keep a then-sober Barney as his customer as noted above, the thing that set him off to try and eliminate the dome during the Trappuccino incident was the book club accidentally destroying what was presumably the last batch of coffee, and may have been addicted to tobacco products, as he was smoking a cigar during the 1990's (even quickly burning through a single cigar, only to feel ill presumably from inhaling so much tobacco, causing him to involuntarily belch out enough of a smokescreen that Moe attempted to steal a patron's watch before it dissipated), and when saved by Stampy from a tar pit he while walking away attempted to light a cigarette only to end up immolating himself.

Barney once made a movie about his struggle with alcoholism and submitted it to the Springfield Film Festival. When he won the grand prize, he vowed to remain clean and sober from that point forward, but quickly backed off his vow when it was announced that the grand prize was a lifetime supply of Duff Beer.

Homer encouraged Barney to drink a beer when he played Ulysses S. Grant in a reenactment of the Battle of Springfield. (Surprisingly, this did not cause him to become alcoholic again. Barney himself was both surprised and hesitant to drink the beer, even for his role, as he was a recovering alcoholic.) He briefly sobered up and got back behind the controls of his helicopter to rescue his old girlfriend Chloe from a volcanic lava flow. He was also relatively sober and piloting his helicopter again when helping Homer take celebrity photographs. When he suggested that an indicted Marge go to a particular rehab clinic to help her kick her drinking habit, he stated that the clinic had "cured him five times," implying that he has been switching between a current and recovering alcoholic. It's revealed that he's always sober in the morning until he enters Moe's Tavern. During Trappuccino, he was one of the barflies who ran into the church, and was in the massive angry mob set out to kill Homer with the rest of the townspeople. Even later, Barney was attending an AA meeting and went crazy when the coffee ran out.

brown hair, yellow skin, light pink shirt, blue Jane's, a little bit of chest hair, Chubby, blue and white shoes, tell