Random Crazy Bob's Burgers Fan Theories (16 items)

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  (#1) Jimmy Pesto Hates Bob Because He's Jealous

  Theoretically, an Italian restaurant and burger joint wouldn't really compete, so why does Jimmy Pesto hate Bob Belcher so much? One fan theory by Redditor Sveenee alleges it's because he's jealous.

  Jimmy Pesto's food is largely terrible despite his success. It's also suggested Jimmy is divorced from his wife, and he despises his kids' eccentricities.

  This is the opposite of Bob, who's an excellent chef and never compromises his integrity. His wife and family love him and they all accept one another as they are. This causes a lot of resentment in Jimmy Pesto, since all he really has to rely on is his restaurant. He defines his self-worth solely through financial success. 
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  (#2) Bob's Burgers Is Based In New Bedford, Massachusetts

  A local Massachusetts radio station presented the wild idea that Bob's Burgers is actually based in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The New England setting, however, does make a certain kind of sense. The show's creator, Loren Bouchard, said the show takes place in the Northeast. 

  Though he said he imagines it somewhere in New Jersey, or the outer boroughs of New York City (think Coney Island), there's plenty of evidence to show it's actually further north. For example, the community in the show has a Lobsterfest, which would be common for a small New England town and less common in New Jersey.

  Additionally, the Wagstaff Middle School sports team is called the Whalers, the same name as New Bedford High's team. Whales, whale-watching, and sailing are much more common the deeper you get into New England.
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  (#3) Louise Uses Her Bunny Hat To Hide The Fact She's Turning Into Her Mother

  Turning into your mother is a pretty common fear for a tween girl. Nine-year-old Louise never removes her bunny hat, and fans believe she's using this to distract herself from the fact that she's just like her mom. You can see the video explanation by ChannelFrederator. 

  Louise and Linda look almost exactly the same. If you look beneath Louise's hat, you'll find that they even have the same haircut. However, the pair has a rocky relationship (albeit one built on unconditional love). In the episode "Mother Daughter Laser Razor," Linda admits that Louise has always liked Bob better. She's certainly a daddy's girl, and even casual fans of the show can see how much she looks up to Bob.

  According to the theory, the hat differentiates Louise from her mother, which is pretty successful considering they'd look almost identical without it.
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  (#4) Bob Is Bisexual But Never Got A Chance To Explore His Sexuality

  Bob may be in a happy marriage with Linda, but that hasn’t stopped fans from speculating he may be bisexual. There's a whole lot of evidence to back this one up, conveniently gathered together by Redditor wastalkingaboutmyrug, but the biggest giveaway was when Bob actually admitted he was "mostly straight" (implying not all-the-way straight) in a Thanksgiving episode.

  In the episode, Bob keeps ruining the Thanksgiving turkey when he's sleepwalking. He has to therefore regularly go back to the grocery store to buy more turkeys. While he's there, a deli worker starts flirting with him and insisting that Bob doesn't need to buy the turkeys and is using it as an excuse to chat.

  Towards the end of the episode, the deli worker says he left his boyfriend, and begs Bob to run away with him. Bob says he'd consider it if he wasn't married, and admits he's "mostly straight." He ends up leaving the counter, maintaining the deli worker is so out of his league that it would never work.
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  (#5) Jimmy Jr.'s Best Friend Zeke Is Secretly Gay

  Zeke, Jimmy Pesto Jr.'s close friend and wrestling buddy, may actually be a closeted homosexual, according to this Tumblr fan theory. The theory alleges that this is the reason Zeke is always hanging around Jimmy Jr., and why he pulled down his underwear in the locker room. 

  Zeke also doesn't show any interest in Tammy when Tammy develops a crush on him (but maybe she's just not his type).
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  (#6) Gene Belcher Is Transgender

  Gene Belcher is known as a jokester, but he may not actually be joking when he refers to himself as a woman. One fan theory suggests Gene is either transgender or gender fluid. Here's the proposed evidence: he has often referred to himself in female form, saying things like "We're working girls now," and "I was born to be a mother."

  In one episode, Louise even refers to Gene as the "good daughter." Others argue that Gene does sometimes project distinctly male behavior, so it is possible he's gender fluid rather than transgender. 
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  (#7) Bob Opened His Burger Joint To Cope With Linda's Death

  This is perhaps the most common Bob's Burgers fan theory, laid out here by Redditor geargirl. Linda's death drove Bob to open a restaurant, where he hallucinates his family in an attempt to cope with his loss. This is why his burger joint is next to a funeral home, and why Mort constantly visits. They became close friends after he helped deal with Linda's funeral. Mort becomes worried about Bob, and wants to make sure he's okay.

  Fans also note that Bob's insanity is on display in the second episode, where he spends several days inside the false walls of the restaurant and has vivid paranoid hallucinations. Teddy comes in to start helping out, because no one else is around to run the actual restaurant while Bob is stuck in the walls. Teddy looks so tired all the time because he's exhausted from caring for Bob and running his restaurant. He indulges his fantasy and pretends to be a customer. In the episode, Teddy eventually calls Linda's parents to help coax Bob out of the wall, because he's clearly suffered a clear mental break related to her death.

  Also, Bob is actually the most "normal" person in the series, at least when compared to his family. This is because they're all wacky hallucinations.
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  (#8) Louise's Bunny Ears Are A Nod To Marge Simpson

  One fan theory by Redditor Fatdude6 suggests Louise's bunny ears were written into the show as a nod to Marge Simpson. Originally, The Simpsons planned to air an episode where it was revealed Marge was hiding mutant rabbit ears under her hair. While the episode was scrapped, it was referenced in the arcade game, in which you can clearly see bunny ears when Marge gets electrocuted.
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  (#9) Tina Belcher Is Transgender

  There are theories that suggest Gene is transgender, but others think that is Tina's identity. In the Bob's Burgers unaired test pilot episode, the oldest Belcher child is male (pictured above). In a later episode, Tina alludes to the fact that you wake up one day with your assigned gender, and you don't get to choose.

  In another episode, Louise proudly says, "Lucky for you there's three of us: a boy, girl and Tina."

  Could Tina have experienced a male-to-female transition after the pilot?
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  (#10) Bob Is The Only Sober Person In The Whole Show

  This theory from Redditor Djinnkj actually makes a lot of sense, which posits that Bob is the only sober person on the show. The theory is based on the fact that Bob only really seems to enjoy himself when he's drinking. Most other times, he's just sort of cranky and annoyed.
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  (#11) Tina Belcher And Enid Coleslaw From Ghostworld Are The Same Person

  If you've ever seen Ghostworld, you know that Enid Coleslaw, the film's main character, looks a whole lot like Tina Belcher. Some say this is because Tina is a younger version of Enid.

  According to the theory by Redditor Slink_Wray, Louise started a terrible fire at Bob's Burgers. The fire killed Linda, Gene, and Louise. Eventually, Tina and Bob move away to start their lives anew and without grief. They change their names, with Bob picking a food-related surname because he used to be a chef. Burgers totally come with coleslaw, right? In dealing with her continued grief, Tina (now Enid) ends up losing some of her optimism, but retains her fascination with underdogs. Plus, the glasses and bob haircut are too similar to be a coincidence.
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  (#12) Bob Belcher Died And Linda Remarried Archer

  Archer and Bob's Burgers had a crossover episode that sparked some crazy fan theories. One of these theories is that Bob died (possibly from a heart attack because he ate too many burgers, according to Redditor mrspuff202), and Linda molded Archer to be his replacement.

  This comes from Archer's season 4 premiere, where Archer thinks he's Bob from Bob's Burgers. He calls himself the "step-dad" to the Belcher children, and admits he's only been around for two months. Some fans think that Bob is a figment of Archer's imagination, but in Season 6, Episode 9 he's shown holding Tina as a baby.

  Since he was there when the children were babies, there has to be a reason he isn't around now. Since Linda always acts like Bob is the love of her life, it's unlikely the couple divorced. This only leads to one possible explanation: Bob is dead and Linda tried to move on with someone exactly like him.
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  (#13) Louise Actually Died In A Fire

  According to fans, like Redditor geargirl, Louise died shortly after Linda (oh, in this theory you have to accept that Linda is secretly dead, just roll with it). Any Bob's Burgers fan knows the youngest Belcher has a sociopathic personality, and loves lighting fires. She was eventually killed when she lit a fire she couldn't control.

  The proof is in the way Bob sees Louise. Since Bob is hallucinating his family, he makes every effort to keep Louise away from fire, failing to admit her death could have been prevented if he just did that in the first place. He even tells Tina she's the grill cook, because he can't trust "Louise" around fire.
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  (#14) Tina Died When A Telephone Pole Crashed Through The Restaurant's Storefront

  According to a fan theory by Redditor geargirl, Tina was the last sibling to pass away, and she did so in the most horrific way. Tina is a lot less lighthearted and silly than her siblings, because she lived through their deaths and never dealt with it properly. She had to watch her father grieve.

  According to the theory, Tina died when a telephone pole came crashing through the restaurant's window and electrocuted her. The electrocution made her twitch long after her death, until emergency crews arrived. Bob watched the entire thing happen from his post at the grill, which is why Tina has such an obsession with zombies. He remembers her twitching body and projects this onto his hallucination of her.
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  (#15) Bob's Burgers Is A Figment Of Homer Simpson's Imagination

  To understand this theory, it's important to remember that both Bob's Burgers and Family Guy had a crossover episode with The Simpsons. They all exist in the same world, a world spawned after Homer Simpson fell into a coma.

  This Simpsons fan theory alleges that Homer never woke up from his coma in the episode "So It's Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show." In the episode just before this, Homer has a talk with God about the meaning of life, and the episode ends before we hear an explanation. Fans point out that The Simpsons started getting pretty wacky in 1993 after this episode aired.

  That's probably because this style of writing just worked better for the show, but the in-universe explanation might be that it was all a figment of Homer's imagination. The theory explains everything from the myriad celebrity appearances to Homer's family talking about celebrity gossip and pop culture while they're visiting him in the hospital.

  Since the Bob's Burgers and Family Guy crossover episode happened after "So It's Come To This," that would mean the characters in those shows are merely cameos in Homer's coma dream.
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  (#16) Gene Died From An Infection Caused By A Rat Bite

  After Louise died, Gene was next. Fans believe he caused the rat infestation in the restaurant as a joke (it's exactly his sense of humor). While he was collecting and releasing the rats, he ended up getting a bite that became infected. He died from this infection, according to Redditor geargirl.

  Because Gene died playing a practical joke, Bob imagined him as a jokester for the rest of the series. They way he died became the way he's defined in his father's memory.

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