Jay and Silent Bob

Jay and Silent Bob are fictional characters portrayed by Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith, respectively, in Kevin Smith’s View Askewniverse (a fictional universe created and used in most films, comics and television by Kevin Smith). Born in Leonardo, New Jersey, in the early 1970s, and met when they were infants in front of Quick Stop Groceries while their mothers shopped inside the store. Jay curses a lot, apparently due to his over-bearing mother, who is shown using continuous profanity in front of him. His first word was fuck.

Of the duo, Jay usually takes the role of the leader, because Silent Bob, as his nickname suggests, seldom talks. Bob only speaks to deliver insightful monologues to the other characters, which he does very rarely, and only in appropriate situations. Otherwise, he relies on hand gestures and facial expressions to communicate, with the occasional exception of quiet, muffled laughter. In Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, he gets angry when Jay does not understand his gestures and yells at Jay, perhaps for the first time.

Silent Bob‘s distinguishing features are his heavy smoking, long coat often with a blank pin (an homage to Grant Morrison’s “The Invisibles”), and backwards baseball cap. Jay‘s distinguishing feature is his long blond hair. In several of the later View Askewniverse films Jay wears a black tuque, which has also become a well-known feature. Silent Bob was raised Catholic and is an electrical genius; he often appears to be the more clean-minded or intelligent of the two and when he does speak, he often has something profound or intelligent to say. Nevertheless, he remains almost as foul-minded and foul-mouthed as Jay. According to the (non-canon) Jay and Silent Bob animated series, Silent Bob’s full name is revealed to be Robert Blutarsky, which is a nod to the film Animal House, where one of the main characters is also revealed to later become a Senator of the same name.