The Belcher family of Bob’s Burgers is widely celebrated, both as a unit and as individuals. Bob is a sensitive bisexual with a passion for food, Westerns, and singing about his problems. Enthusiastic matriarch Linda is a semi-alcoholic — in a fun way! — mama bear, who just wants everyone to know how special she and her family are. Oldest daughter Tina is 13, shamelessly horny, and a talented writer of erotic friend fiction. Middle child Gene is his mother’s “favorite fruity boy,” who loves fish sticks and his keyboard of sound effects. Precocious Louise is the youngest, but she’s got a lot of delinquent energy in her tiny, always-bunny-ear-clad body.
Many of the recurring characters are just as beloved at the Belchers, such Tina’s gassy rich girl frenemy Tammy, iconic queer performer Marshmallow, bank robber and overall delinquent Mickey. Indeed, there are dozens of minor side characters and recurring characters in every season, so it’s no easy task to keep track and give each of them the recognition they deserve. Here are the most underrated Bob’s Burgers characters, ranked.
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11 Gretchen
FOX
Larry Murphy provides the voices for several recurring characters on Bob’s Burgers, including Linda’s close friend and hairstylist, the boisterous Gretchen. Tall, loud, and charmingly abrasive, Gretchen is the definition of a girlboss, without the gaslighting or the gatekeeping. She might not always make the most sense, or control her sizable libido around men she’s never met, but Gretchen is an extremely confident hairdresser with a heart of gold and the voice of an aggressive angel.
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10 Teddy
Murphy also voices Teddy, the handyman who frequents Bob’s Burgers more than anyone else. He provides the distractible, excitable Teddy a hilarious delivery, screaming passionately with outbursts and then immediately calming down and apologizing to everyone in the vicinity. Loud, overly passionate about making sure everyone knows that he and Bob are the best of friends, and extremely grating at times, Teddy is reminiscent of everyone’s incredibly irritating but lovable dear friend.
9 Trev
Bob’s across-the-street restaurateur rival Jimmy Pesto has made it his life’s mission to make Bob’s life miserable with his weird insults and boasts about his booming business. Trev acts as Jimmy’s backup goon, always shout-laughing at Jimmy’s comments and high-fiving him after his best zingers. From his first appearance, it’s clear that Trev is supporting Jimmy in the name of peer pressure rather than any lack of respect for Bob, even chastising Jimmy when he feels he’s gone too far. In Season 9, Trev confesses to the Belchers that he feels guilty about how he’s treated Bob, working with him and Linda to resist the urge to high five after a zinger, struggling to stand up to Jimmy. Trev serves as a sort of small antidote to Jimmy Pesto’s obnoxious callousness, chasing it with a nice, earnest guy we can all relate to.
8 Skip Marooch
Kumail Nanjiani (HBO’s Silicone Valley, Marvel’s Eternals) brings celebrity chef Skip Marooch to life with an easy-breezy charm and positivity that soothes Bob and his family even in the most stressful situations. Nanjiani delivers every line with a smile and a laugh, up to and including, “Bob, I have to call you back. Apparently water doesn’t count as a terrain, " when his all terrain vehicle stalls out in water. When he and the Belcher family compete to make the best burger, Skip is an excellent juxtaposition to Bob’s overwhelmingly high stress levels with a genuine excitement for cooking — he’s just happy to be there doing what he loves.
7 Ms. Merkin
The three-foot-six music teacher at Wagstaff is the shortest adult character on Bob’s Burgers, but she’s an integral part of the many musicals the show puts on. Ms. Merkin, voiced by Brian Huskey, is introduced as the spurned music director of Wagstaff’s Working Girl musical. She offers to join Gene’s competitive and revolutionary Die Hard musical, showing off a fancy piano riff complete with a fart sound button. In a school of teachers who don’t always love the Belcher kids’ antics, Matilda “Queen of the Keys” Merkin is always game to play along and make the music on the show all that it can be.
6 Jocelyn
John Roberts, voice of the delightfully enthusiastic Linda Belcher, lends his talents to many characters in the Bob’s Burgers multiverse. One of his best is Jocelyn, best friends with Tammy (Jenny Slate) and excessively critical in the way only eighth grade girls with Valley accents and vocal fry can be. While she’s often the last to arrive at any given idea, Jocelyn acts as comic relief in any tense Bob’s Burgers scene she appears in. Even in the most intricate scenes, her simple logic and off-kilter conclusions are often the funniest part of the dialogue. When Tina’s classmates are trying to find creative ways to tell her how boring she is, Jocelyn merely informs her that “You’re like if school and the news had a baby.”
5 Mr. Ambrose the Librarian
It’s no surprise that Billy Eichner, star of LGBTQ rom-com Bros and boisterous host of Billy on the Street, excels at playing the dramatic librarian at Wagstaff, who most certainly did not get into his line of work for love of working with students. There’s never any need to guess what Mr. Ambrose is thinking thanks to his signature speech pattern of saying one thing in a normal tone, then screech whispering what he actually means (“No, don’t do it. DO IT!!! DOOOOO ITT!!!!!”).
In one of his best episodes, Mr. Ambrose is begrudgingly assigned to be coach of the makeshift cheerleading squad and entertains himself by creating drama within the squad — pitting Gene and his teammates against each other, even leaking his team’s routine to their rivals, so they must invent a new routine on the fly. With a witty repartee that could only be delivered by the man who broke the internet with “Miss, for a dollar, name a woman!”, Eichner ensures that Mr. Ambrose will be everyone’s favorite librarian for years to come.
4 Mike the Mailman
While he doesn’t make an appearance at Bob’s restaurant every day, it’s a guarantee that any scene of Bob’s Burgers with Mike the Mailman will be chock-full of quick quips and blink-and-you’ll-miss-them zingers. Comedy icon Tim Meadows lends his voice to this semi-monotonous, easily unimpressed mailman with incredible calves (from walking up to nine miles a day). Mike’s dry wit is complimented by subtle confessions of mail-related felonies, from not delivering mail to the Belchers until he feels like it to shoving mail down the storm drain when the mood strikes. While his lines aren’t chock-full of jokes, Meadows delivers Mike’s lines with a sardonic tone that makes even something as mundane as “You should pay your bills” as memorable and hilarious as any joke-filled line.
3 Jericho
Like many pubescent teens, one of 13-year-old Tina Belcher’s passions is a deep and abiding relationship with horses. Since living in an apartment makes horse-ownership a real impossibility, Tina’s rich imagination created Jericho, a gorgeous black stallion with a great attitude and a love for Tina that somehow matches her love for him. This would be a delightful character to play for any voice actor, but the Molyneux sisters were able to write the ideal role for none other than Paul Rudd. It’s a mystery how no one had realized that Rudd would be perfectly personified by a sexy, daisy-duke clad horse dreamed up by a tween girl. For anyone looking for an ideal representation of their inner beast, look no further than Jericho.
2 Zeke
Best friends with Tina’s ultimate crush Jimmy Junior, Zeke is an enthusiastic eighth grader at Wagstaff School with a penchant for wrestling and calling everyone he meets “girl.” At first glance at his mullet, sleeveless tank top, and cutoff shorts, he’s easily mistaken the troublemaker of the group. Upon closer inspection, his misbehavior is almost always a result of passion (much to guidance counselor Mr. Frond’s chagrin). In one episode, Zeke confesses to a heinous crime he didn’t commit so his friend “Jay-Ju” can go on a canceled school-wide field trip to a water park, simply because he thinks Jimmy deserves to go. In another, he attempts to bully girls into joining his currently all-male women’s issues group. His passion for protecting other people combined with Bobby Tisdale’s goofy yet earnest delivery combine to make Zeke a character for the ages.
1 Edith Cranwinkle
Edith Cranwinkle and her husband Harold run (and gatekeep) the wharf’s only craft store, Reflections. They use their monopoly to their advantage, and they’re not shy about it — sometimes even informing customers like Bob and Linda that they’re doing so, loudly laughing in their face and insulting them. They’re aggressive scammers with no filter on a show dedicated to the purity of humanity, so it makes sense that they’re not as lauded as some of their fellow Bob’s Burgers characters, but Edith’s way of shout-saying mundane things to sound like personal attacks (most notably barking “FILTH!” as Bob puts a failed health inspection sign in his window) deserves its own Emmy.
The cast of Bob’s Burgers is one of the most talented and multifaceted on television, from recurring cast members like H. John Benjamin, John Roberts, and Larry Murphy to guest stars like Paul Rudd, Molly Shannon, and Kathryn Hahn (to name a few, of dozens). As a result, it’s nearly impossible to give each character the recognition they deserve, but they deserve the recognition all the same.
