The Simpsons’ Bumblebee Man Is Based On A Real-Life Mexican TV Star

In “The Simpsons,” Bumblebee Man is also known as Pedro Chespirito, the star of a sitcom on Channel 8. Both the channel and the name are references to the late Mexican TV actor and icon Roberto Gómez Bolaños, whose pseudonym was Chespirito or “Little Shakespeare.”

The actor was best known for two characters. There was El Chavo del Ocho (“The Kid from Number 8”), a sitcom about an orphan kid in a low-income neighborhood full of colorful characters — the Channel 8 where Bumblebee Man works is a reference to this. Then there is El Chapulin Colorado or “The Red Grasshopper,” a superhero sitcom that parodied the genre by having its titular hero be clumsy and weak, fighting not with powers but with a golden heart.

El Chapulin Colorado was hugely popular across Latin America and was even featured as a major plot point in the “Blue Beetle” live-action movie’s post-credits tag, which paid homage to the first Latino superhero.

As for Bumblebee Man, the Spanish dub of “The Simpsons” was unable to translate the Spanish jokes, of course. Instead, Bumblebee Man spoke only Spanish, his jokes mostly focusing on his over-the-top Mexican accent and the fact that he wore a giant bee costume.