Talk:Zapp Brannigan

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Untitled[edit]

'Zapp also resembles Lord Flashheart from the BBC series, Blackadder.' - I'm not sure about this. Can someone explain? thanks Andrewferrier 21:47, 2004 Nov 14 (UTC)


I think the are some similarities between Zapp Brannigan and Zaphod_Beeblebrox...

Having just reread the Hitchhiker's guide series, I noticed *some* similarities as well, but whether or not they are significant enough to include in the article is a matter of debate. Zaphod's character is fundamentally different from Zapp's; the name is perhaps the most glaring similarity. 76.191.147.185 (talk) 06:32, 31 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]


—Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.100.0.245 (talk) 08:00, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that an insult to Fry for describing Zapp as follows:

He is consistently attracted to Leela, like Philip J. Fry,...?

Patrickov 08:48, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)


Isn't his full name/title "General Major Weebelo Zapp Brannigan", this is the name that the announcer in the newsreel from "Three Hundred Big Boys" calls him...

- Gabe 04:10, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • They gave him a few different titles over the course of the series. F'rinstance, he's introduced as a 25-star general in "When Aliens Attack." It was something of a running joke, along with his constant conquests of not-very-warriorlike races. But the title you mention is the last one given, so I suppose it could be considered his "current" rank. Squidd 19:58, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Don't you think that name "Brannigan" is somehow similar to name Brannon Braga? Sir Dagon 06:10, 7 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It is a bit, but that doesn't mean there's actually a connection. -- Cyrius| 06:54, 7 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm no expert. I thought that might be a connection, because Braga has joined Star Trek: Voyager staff in 1998 and Futurama was aired for the first time in 1999... and he is quite controversial figure... It just a thought, maybe someone could find out is this a coincident or not. Sir Dagon 18:47, 7 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Brannigan's Law[edit]

Anyone think of adding that? I can't remember what it was, but I think it was a spoof on the Prime Directive...Steve-O 23:55, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, the Prime Directive seems to be its source; there probably should be a reference to it in the article.--141.225.79.39 08:02, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

All I know is that Brannigan's Law is like Brannigan's love - hard and fast. :) BronzeWarrior 06:37, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup[edit]

I think my edit boils it down to the essentials. It's not necessary to list every single episode and joke that involves Zapp; just keep it succinct and hit the highlights.BryanEkers 18:27, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I took out the cleanup tag and I think this page even deserves a nomination or a chance to make it with a hot alien babe. Alert the men. BryanEkers 21:54, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Zapp based on Hartman[edit]

I'm pretty sure on the DVD commentary, they discuss Zapp intending to be being played by Phil, and West replies that the subsequently based the voice on Phil. It says that "Zapp's character and mannerisms were established in Billy West's original audition for the character", but the article doesn't mention West auditioning for the role either. Was that before or after Hartman's audition? TheHYPO 15:23, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment[edit]

I have assessed this article on Sunday 7th of January and I judge it to of been of B quality and Mid importance.
Suggestions:Clean up and polish, could use a few more subheadings.Kingpomba 14:48, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Zapp Based on Bash[edit]

Re the Bash Branigan addition, just watch How To Murder Your Wife once and you'll agree, it's obvious. It may not be the sort of thing the makers will admit, however; some creative types like to be coy about such tributes, leaving them out there as a challenge for audiences to find. Not only is the last name identical or nearly so, but "ZAP!" and "BASH!" are common "cartoon noises". - RMG

Mel Keefer, who drew Bash Brannigan for the movie, even gets a tribute in Futurama in the form of the related character name Kif Kroker.Robert Goodman (talk) 05:56, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Foreign Word Pronounciation[edit]

Zapp does not pronounce chutzpah correctly; the "c" is supposed to be entirely silent, while Zapp pronounces the "c". This should be changed. Totema1 01:18, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I went to the tape and he hits the guttural ch perhaps a bit on the hard side, but it sounds otherwise okay to me, boychik. BryanEkers 05:17, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Every word he has ever mispronounced doesn't need to be listed anyway, let's just leave one or two really obvious ones (like champagne). Stardust8212 13:48, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. The statement is accurate and funny as it is, with four mispronounced words and one unlikely correct one, especially since chutzpah is a quality Brannigan has lots of. Cutting it down to two words is a trivial saving of space and makes the article less entertaining. Since it is about an animated character, why not give the reader a informative chuckle? BryanEkers 02:21, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Cos' wikipedia's not about being funny (though wikiquotes has that potential), and reducing it down to only the non-ambiguous ones means no conflict. WP:NOT applies, indiscriminate collection and battleground too - if people are arguing about it, if the point is demonstrated by 3 already, why leave it in? WLU 02:45, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not really concerned with the space savings, I'm more concerned with it turning into a list like Bender's had of every catch phrase he had ever used and every word for human he had used (see this version:[1]). There was also a time when every thing he had ever had in his compartment was listed though I can't find that version at the moment. I think it's more important to state "Zapp can't pronounce words" than say "Here are all the words Zapp has ever said wrong" One is encyclopedic and one is a pile of non-notable fancruft. Just my opinion as always though. Stardust8212 03:08, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The sentence "His pretensions of being suave are belied by his ignorance of how to properly pronounce words such as champagne, bravo, encore, and guacamole, though, strangely, he has no problem with chutzpah" has been untouched since last May (nine months) so I disagree that there was a conflict, nor any effort to turn it into a list of irrelevant items (actually, the four mispronunciations pretty much are the complete list). It's a single tidy sentence that is a little bit funny (and I don't see why Wikipedia has to strive to be uptight and humour-free, especially considering the subject of this particular article). If you absolutely positively MUST shorten it, drop everything after "guacamole" (which I admit is still a little funny, albeit not as much as "chutzpah"), though I maintain this is a valueless change that makes the article less interesting. BryanEkers 22:16, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I honestly don't care, but if it comes down to the an argument of whether chutzpah is pronounced correctly or not I'd rather just leave it out because I've seen how this useless crap seems to grow and because honestly it doesn't add anything useful or informative to the article (IMHO). Stardust8212 00:04, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Zapp's World War 1 military strategy[edit]

I've always thought that Zapp's favorite military strategy of sending his men to die in wave after wave is one of the Team's anti-war messages. The practice of wasting young men's lives became one of the most shameful memories of WW1, and is depicted in famous war films like All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory, "Oh What a Lovely War" and Galipoli. The supreme example was sending your men out of trenches to charge into lines of machine guns in order to get to an impassable barrier of barbed wire. I think that Zapp's tactics are references to these WW1 episodes, which were, for soldiers, worse than anything in WW2. Myles325a 02:54, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So... you would like this on the page? That'd require a reference. WLU 01:29, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

POV text[edit]

Removed ", but he is clearly an idiot." it is Negitive POV. Whether he is an idiot is a judgement the reader must decide and saying it's "clear" is wrong in so many ways seeing as it may not be clear to everyone. There are many more POV issue that need to be corrected. ALex March 30,2007

Just moving the new discussion to the bottom of the page, I also removed "He isn't mentally disabled" because really we don't know that and even if we did, not being mentally disabled isn't really character defining. Stardust8212 21:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Does this article really need a link to the S&M article?[edit]

When it talks about Brannigan's desire to be "choked and spanked" it links to an S&M article. That's not necessary and completely unrelated.

Additionally, this entire article sounds like some lame blog. We don't need a reference to something he said in the show every sentence.

68.49.1.207 16:23, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Be bold and fix it. Stardust8212 06:04, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see the harm. He makes references to spankings at least twice. It's S&M Lite, to be sure, but so what? As for drawing references from the show... where else would we draw them from? Incidentally, I moved that paragraph up to merge with an earlier one about Zapp's feelings toward women. It had previously been stuck between Zapp destroying the DOOP HQ and Zapp's feelings toward Kif (which I personally think is blatant OR and am considering removing). BryanEkers 10:16, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think there is nessecarily a problem with drawing reference from the show but I think in some ways this article has gotten overly detailed and relies too heavily on throwing in a quotation at least once a paragraph. It could all probably be done a lot better but I have a few other things I'm doing at the moment so that'll just have to wait. Stardust8212 12:38, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well I don't find it necessary. I think someone will get the reference if they're old enough. I'm going to just unlink it again. There's no harm in that :)

68.49.1.207 19:59, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bender reset the killbots?[edit]

According to the article, Brannigan's efforts against the killbots [sending wave after wave of his own men after them] were "rendered useless when Bender reset their kill limit back to zero".

The episode cited definitely says nothing about the efforts being useless, or Bender doing anything with them. Bender's relation with them is little more than a vague, unrelated comment, "We can always build more killbots!"

Should that be in the article? [unknown user]

---

I came on here to post that. I'm gonna change it. Bender did not reset them. [unknown user]

Bender hiting the "reset" button was on a deleted scene; as such the cannoity of it is highly questionable. Jon (talk) 01:34, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Page main image[edit]

A user keeps changing the main image for this article from a picture of Zapp to an image of a person in a Zapp Brannigan costume. I've reverted twice but clearly this requires further discussion. I believe the new image is unencyclopedic and thus inappropriate to be used in this article. Other opinions? Stardust8212 19:23, 26 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. It had to be reverted a third time this afternoon. User needs to be warned. 20:04, 26 October 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.254.107.134 (talk)
I've left them a note on their talk page and linked them to this discussion. I didn't want to just drop a warning template since I believe the edits were made in good faith. Stardust8212 21:14, 26 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dress[edit]

I recall it's made clear that Zapp is hanging free without underwear under his skirt-like outfit. Couldn't hurt to mention it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.114.77.6 (talk) 20:26, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bill's toop[edit]

William Shatner was very prematurely bald, and has worn a hairpiece for (apparently) all his career. Though it's of very high quality (at least as good as John Wayne's or Fred Astaire's), it's hardly undetectable. I've altered the text to reflect this. WilliamSommerwerck (talk) 13:18, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Revelation Space[edit]

This is possibly just a coincidence, but in the novel / space opera Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds there is also a Captain Brannigan, being the captain of the main space ship in the story. Anybody knows anything that this might not be a coincidence? 84.75.179.115 (talk) 22:46, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We may observe that the novel was published after Zapp's first appearance. Is there any similarity in character? —Tamfang (talk) 18:01, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Merging proposal[edit]

Okay, this page, again, does nothing to indicate why its subject is notable. Quick search did not show any results that do indicate notability. Besides, he is a recurring character, not the main protagonist in the series.

The article states (only) three sources (which is by far not enough for notability any way). Not only that, all of them are problematic.

  • Source number 1: Only states that James T. Kirk is voiced by William Shatner. Not relevant to the subject at hand, and does not indicate why the subject is notable in any way.
  • Source number 2: Not a third party source and thus does not help in establishing notability, (WP:SOURCES).
  • Source number 3: Again, an interview with the voice actor. A little bit better - but firstly, one source is not enough, and secondly, Zapp Brannigan isn't even the main subject at hand.

The other sections contain tons and tons of original research which should not be present on Wikipedia. Androids101 | Visit me! | talk | contribs 08:05, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You're mad. Only you have ridiculous arguments for delete this article. If you merge please keep the photo but I'm not agree with this dumb proposal of merging. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.26.210.162 (talk) 19:40, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Charlton Heston[edit]

I have just seen The Big Country and I am convinced that Brannigan's voice is based on Charlton Heston's. Am I alone? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.173.137.166 (talk) 06:07, 4 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nope. Just saw Ben-Hur and thought the exact same thing. Zaxius (talk) 17:26, 5 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]