Master Billy Quizboy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Venture Bros. character | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Master Billy Quizboy | ||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Master Billy Quizboy is a supporting character appearing on the Adult Swim show The Venture Bros. He is a friend and ally of Dr. Venture and a very close friend of Pete White. He is voiced by Doc Hammer.
[edit] Character history
Billy was absent from the college flashbacks told by Venture, White, Brock Samson, and Baron Ünderbheit. The four of them, along with The Monarch, attended college at the same time, and all hung around together. Prior episodes have shown that Billy must have gone to the same college, due to his mentioning he took the same class from Prof. Impossible that Venture and White did. While Billy claims to be a boy genius, he is neither a boy (he is roughly the same age as Venture and White, both of whom are middle-aged), nor has he shown much proof towards the genius claim. He continues calling himself a "boy" genius due to "adult genius" sounding much more pathetic, and he took the "quizboy" moniker due to his winning as champion on a Card Sharks at a young age. Billy was inspired to become a scientist and child prodigy by his future friend Dr. Venture's time as Rusty of the original Team Venture.
He and White are the co-founders, and probably sole employees, of Conjectural Technologies, which they run out of an old trailer which also seems to serve as their home. As seen in "Are You There God? It's Me, Dean", it is unknown what the company actually does, but it appears as if White bosses Billy around, forcing Billy to do housework and company-related tasks while he plays video games (Billy retaliates by passive-aggressively leaving post-it notes reminding Pete of what he should do). However, in that episode, White states that Billy is (more like) a "neurogeneticist," so he may not be as incompetent as most of his colleagues. He operated on Dean to help his testicular tortion and fitted Jonas Venture Junior with a bionic arm similar to his own in the season two premiere, Powerless in the Face of Death. He also reattached Dr. Venture's arm at the end of Victor. Echo. November.; at the very least, Billy is a skilled surgeon.
Billy first appeared in "The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay", where he mocked Dr. Venture for his Ooo-Ray but did not do much else — his appearance here was even more exaggerated than it usually was. He then appeared in as an invitee to Prof. Impossible's government think-tank in the episode Ice Station – Impossible!, awed at the fact that Impossible invited him (due to his flunking Impossible's college classes years ago). He helped Dr. Venture, Sally Impossible, and White develop an antidote for the Goliath serum that Hank had consumed (although Prof. Impossible later claimed the serum was useless on anything larger than a dog). He also featured prominently at Dr. Venture's tag-sale — he and White gossiped about some of the other people attending, whom they later attempted to woo into becoming their nemeses. Billy and Dr. Venture also fought over a shrink ray, and Billy criticised Venture for a redundant decal on the ray. In Escape to the House of Mummies Part II, the shrink ray caused some problems for Billy when he, White, and Dr. Venture attempted to repair it. White and Venture forced Billy to be their human guinea pig, and instead of fully shrinking him, it seemed to do one body part at a time (at first his lungs, then his head). He eventually forced them to reverse the ray to make him normal again, but it merely made a giant out of him without making his clothers bigger. Billy has shown a fondness for the high five.
While taking a personality test with Venture and White, it was revealed that he has some very strange and disturbing "guilty pleasures". While he claims that he misunderstood the question, Venture and White ridicule him endlessly about the new discovery.
[edit] Appearance
Billy has claimed that his large head was due to hydrocephalus, and that his mother referred to him as her "little water baby." He has a growth hormone deficiency that explains his small stature. He has a speech impediment that gives him an odd lisp, which also reinforces the perception that he is a child.
Billy's eyepatch and bionic arm have not been definitively explained — he once claimed the arm was a weapon, which no one believed. In the episode "Victor. Echo. November." three characters tell differing stories about the origin of Phantom Limb and his powers; despite the variations in the tales, two of the three mention Billy as the Phantom Limb's assistant at the time. (The Monarch's version of the story also mentions that Billy was 12 years old when he attended college, suggesting that he may have actually been a boy genius in the past.) Each story that portrays Billy as Limb's colleague suggests that the same accident which caused his "invisible limbs" also annihilated Billy's right hand (though it is his left arm which is bionic), supposedly explaining his present-day robotic arm. (Hank maintains that Phantom Limb went insane and cut off Billy's arm in order to eat it, but Dean immediately says that those events did not occur.) However, at the end of the same episode, when Dr. Venture asks about how Billy got his robotic arm, he responds: "Excellent question. I have no idea," perhaps leading to the theory he may have had the arm for longer than he can remember. Alternatively, he may just not want to talk about it.
| The Venture Bros. | |
|---|---|
| PRESENTED IN GLORIOUS EXTRA COLOR | |
| Characters Main | Secondary |
Hank Venture | Dean Venture | Dr. Thaddeus Venture | Brock Samson | H.E.L.P.eR. | Jonas Venture Junior Dr. Orpheus | Triana Orpheus | Pete White | Master Billy Quizboy | Molotov Cocktease | Myra Brandish The Monarch | Doctor Girlfriend | #21 | #24 | Baron Werner Ünderbheit | Phantom Limb |
| Organizations Prominent | Minor |
Team Venture/Venture Industries | Order of the Triad | Monarch Henchmen | Guild of Calamitous Intent |
| Cast and crew | Lisa Hammer | James Urbaniak | Patrick Warburton | Michael Sinterniklaas | Steven Rattazzi | Paul Boocock Jackson Publick | Doc Hammer | J. G. Thirlwell | World Leaders Entertainment |
| Episodes | Pilot | Season 1 | Season 2 | Specials | Phone Calls |
