Mr. Anderson (Beavis and Butt-Head)
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Mr. Thomas T. "Tom" Anderson (born 1926) is a fictional character from the animated television series Beavis and Butt-Head. His voice is provided by Mike Judge, who says Anderson is based on every middle-aged authority figure he knew growing up in New Mexico.
Anderson is an older man, presumably of post-retirement age, who lives near Beavis and Butt-Head in Highland. Mr. Anderson is very conservative and frequently makes reference to his days in the military, usually when making a futile attempt to teach Beavis and Butt-Head the ethics of hard work and discipline.
Mr. Anderson first appeared in the episode "Home Improvement" as he ordered Beavis and Butt-Head to only paint the trim but Beavis and Butt-Head after sniffing paint thinner paint his cat's butt and paint parts of Mr. Anderson's house much to Mr. Anderson's dismay. The episode ends with Beavis and Butt-Head driving Mr. Anderson's lawnmower on the street.
His primary role is that of the subject of pranks, although occasionally Beavis and Butt-Head attempt to do Mr. Anderson a favor. In one case in point, when they come up with a get-rich-quick scheme that involves being nice to an old person in order to get into his will in the episode Washing the Dog. After concluding that Mr. Anderson might die soon—by the rather direct method of knocking on his door and asking "Are you going to die soon?"—Beavis and Butt-Head offer to wash Mr. Anderson's dog as a favor. They take his poodle to the laundrette and stuff it into a washing machine. This scene caused many complaints from parents, especially when at least one child put a dog into a washing machine after apparently being influenced by the show. Ultimately, the episode was eventually banned from TV.
Beavis and Butt-Head's antics detrimental to Mr. Anderson also include:
- Using Mr. Anderson's Credit Card to buy pets
- Putting a dead mouse and flies into his Burger World meal.
- Beavis and Butt-Head are recruited to prune Mr. Anderson's tree. They end up cutting the entire tree down, which promptly collapses onto Mr. Anderson's house, demolishing it.
- Later recruited to buy items for him, Beavis and Butt-Head disregard the grocery list Mr. Anderson prepares for them and instead use the money he provides to purchase candy bars and magazines.
- When tasked with helping Mr. Anderson finish constructing a swimming pool, Beavis and Butt-Head eventually manage to bulldoze Anderson's tool shed from its foundation and fill the entire pre-dug hole to its capacity with concrete (which they end up getting stuck in).
- While supervising Mr. Anderson's yard sale (while he is away doing a favor for an old war buddy), Beavis and Butt-head allow people to enter Anderson's home. The duo eventually sell all his belongings at ridiculously low prices.
- Beavis and Butt-Head sneak onto a golf course and secretly begin stealing golf balls struck by Mr. Anderson. They then begin selling the balls cheaply at the clubhouse, even back to Mr. Anderson who is skeptical at first, and is then convinced by the duo that he did indeed just simply fail to track down any of his golf shots.
Mr. Anderson is also very near-sighted. When he meets Beavis and Butt-Head, he nearly always asks if they were responsible for some sort of ludicrous prank ("Are you the boys who painted my cat's butt?"), to which they reply with a firm "No", whilst snickering, making it obvious they are indeed the guilty party. Mr. Anderson's terrible vision and senility allow them to continually get away with anything they do to him, as he never recognizes the two. (In one memorable episode, the two disguise themselves by wearing horn rimmed glasses, which fool Anderson so completely that he doesn't even ask if they are responsible for some misdeed. In another, Anderson gives a completely inaccurate description of the two to the police: "One of them calls himself Butthole. And the other one's name is Joe, I think ... I believe they were Oriental.")
In the movie Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, the dimwitted duo cause mayhem and chaos involving Mr. Anderson right from the start. He mentions that kids have been "whackin' in my toolshed," which the pair giggle at, implying they have been doing it. Other antics by Beavis and Butt-Head include:
- Ruining the television in his trailer by spitting cola on it
- Nearly washing Anderson and his trailer away after opening the Hoover Dam
- Causing Anderson and his wife to be arrested by the FBI when they are led to believe he was carrying a biological agent found in his camper, where he found Beavis masturbating.
Later on in the series, he comes back to Highland, having been proven innocent.
[edit] Trivia
- In terms of conservative attitudes and voice, Mr. Anderson resembles Hank Hill in Mike Judge's "King Of The Hill". He also displays a respect for butane resembling Hank's respect for propane.
