WARNING: This page contains spoilers for the first ten episodes of Blue Goo Studios. Proceed with caution!
Mandel is the newest member of the Blue Goo crew, and he has a mysterious past...
NAME ORIGIN: A mandelbug, according to the Hacker's Dictionary, is bug whose underlying causes are so complex and obscure as to make its behavior appear chaotic or even non-deterministic. (source: http://www.elsewhere.org/jargon/jargon.html)
Hanlon is one of two lead actors in They Made the World, the more self-indulgent and loud-mouthed one. He could easily become the true prototypical unbearable egotist actor, except he's kept humble by the teasing of other members of the cast and crew, and by his own foolishness.
NAME ORIGIN: Hanlon's Razor goes, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." (source: http://www.elsewhere.org/jargon/jargon.html)
Madame Plokta is Hanlon's "spiritual advisor." She is psychic: she can read the thought bubbles that appear over other character's heads.
NAME ORIGIN: From the Slavic-sounding hacker acronym PLOKTA, Press Lots Of Keys To Abort. (source: http://www.elsewhere.org/jargon/jargon.html)
Caitlin is a 14-year-old actress. She is an orphan who is owned by the studio, and she grew up acting in webcomics. The other, grown-up actors are very protective of her, because they don't want her to end up like Sarah Beckman, the notorious young drug-addicted ingénue.
NAME ORIGIN: Spoof of child actors with the most sickeningly adorable three-name combo possible.
Sure, you can date Caitlin....if you can get past these guys.
Z.R. is the second lead male; quieter and more sensitive. He's not bitter about being the Token Black Guy on the Blue Goo set, except when it comes time to cast for the latest series...
NAME ORIGIN: ZR/RIFLE was the CIA cryptonym for various plots to assassinate world leaders.
Linda Lemuria is looking forward to the upcoming
series about the antebellum South.
Z.R. is not.
Linda is a spoiled actress who is desperately trying to retain her youthfulness lest her salary (and magazine cover count) dip in the slightest. Linda (whose real name is Lily Mae Lynn) is from the Deep South.
NAME ORIGIN: Lemuria is a hypothetical "lost continent."
Tan is the harried director and production manager of They Made the World. He is driven by the awareness that there are deadlines, budgets, and anxious studio VPs, and he's the one who is called on to deal with them all. His daily struggle is to nurture neurotic actors and writers while wringing stellar performances out of them, by any means necessary.
NAME ORIGIN: TANSTAAFL is an acronym popularized by Robert Heinlein. It stands for "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch." (source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein.)
Oswald is Tan Staafl's young, enthusiastic assistant.
NAME ORIGIN: Oswald, from the famous patsy/alleged assassin. Frobnitz, from the Hacker's Dictionary - An unspecified physical object, a widget. (source: http://www.elsewhere.org/jargon/jargon.html)
DEV NULL
Dev is the studio's resident conspiracy nut. ("Conspiracy nuts? I
think it would be more apprpriate to call all of you 'coincidence nuts'.")
Dev has a theory about everything from Mad Cow to the Moon landing, his
theories are often shown to be true…
NAME ORIGIN: From the UNIX operating system - A notional "black hole"
in any information space being discussed, used, or referred to. (source:
http://www.elsewhere.org/jargon/jargon.html)
Reading the Warren Commission Report for the
347th time, Dev comes to a stunning conclusion:
Kennedy shot first.
Nigel is a flamboyant actor and cross-dresser, a Shakespearean actor who feels that webcomic work is beneath him.
NAME ORIGIN: Spoof of hyphenated British names with the word
"bottom" in them (tee hee).
Nigel isn't so much a female impersonator. More like
a female impersonator impersonator.
Berkeley is the frantic, heavily-pressured writer for the webcomic. He is threatened by Mandel's involvement in the production, viewing him as a rival rather than a collaborator. (Mandel, on the other hand, feels no animosity towards Berkeley, and isn't aware of this "rivalry.")
NAME ORIGIN: Berzerkeley, from the humorous hacker distortion of Berkeley. Blinkenlichten, from the Front-panel diagnostic lights on dinosaur computers. (source: http://www.elsewhere.org/jargon/jargon.html)
If you ask Berkeley "So, where do you get your ideas?" he will make a rude comment about your mother.