Talk:Rob

647: Scary has the distinction of being the first comic to call Rob by his name in the transcript instead of saying "Man:".

This is despite the fact that the earlier comic 632: Suspicion also calls Rob by his name in the transcript (and of course 276: Fixed Width uses it as well, albeit in an unconventional format). Is this some reference to explainxkcd history that I'm not aware of? - jerodast (talk) 14:31, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Nope. That's a mistake that you may fix. Thanks for finding that! Davidy²²[talk] 14:33, 3 December 2012 (UTC) has

Robert and Little Bobby Tables

Aren't Robert and Little Bobby Tables a.k.a. Robert'); DROP TABLE students;-- in Comic 327: Exploits of a Mom the same person? --92.203.102.185 10:31, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

No, Robert'); DROP TABLE students;-- is a child: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/5/5f/Little_Bobby_Tables.PNG

And Rob is an adult: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/838:_Incident --FaviFake (talk) 09:33, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Last Initial?

In comic 838, we see Rob's *nix username as robm. I assume that would be a last initial... but in any case, should we include it in the wiki as additional information about him?

At first I thought "Rob" might be a nickname for Randall, and the M would be for Munroe, but multiple comics mention a "Robert" (for which "Rob" is an obvious nickname,) and 2584: Headline Words reveals that Randall and Rob are different people. PDesbeginner (talk) 22:01, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

There are particularly odd 'nicknames', like "Peggy" derived from "Margaret", or somebody with the surname "Warren" liable to have been called "Bunny" in some eras/locales. But "Randall" wouldn't really go to "Rob", normally (to "Randy", "Ran", maybe "Dall(y)", normally), nor is there an obvious link to "Patrick" ("Pat", or maybe "Rick" the latter an interesting merger from the usually nicknaming from the "Richard" direction - which makes me wonder about his brothers, "Ricky and Doug", according to the first and so far only place I've readily found that actually mentions their names... Richard and Douglas, presumably..? But what of middle-names?).

Of course, there's no accounting for more obscure family-derived sobriquets that may end up having very little bearing upon how they end up, and of course a totally unconnected moniker can arise. I could give you three or four nicknames given to me, totally unrelated to any part of my actual name. One from youngest days was derived from a childish insult, readily accepted through innocence until the point that I (unconsciously!) 'reclaimed' it. Another from my late teens was based on a computer username I was given (alphanumeric, depicting what department I was initially studying in, etc, somehoe morphed into something that became 'my name' IRL). A third, a workplace one, was from a characterisation on a TV programme that apparently I resembled. The fourth... very hard to try to actually describe, and so I won't.)

Self-chosen usernames... well, apart from the fact that I've never chosen one for here, I've had loads of them, mostly left by the wayside, all of which I'd still be happy to be called IRL - if ever there's an IRL meetup, in leiu of any name that resembles what's on my birth certificate. Something like "robm" could even be one of those things. Maybe an initialism ("Randall's Online Baseline Moniker"? "Registered-name Of Broad Meaning"?).

But perhaps simpler to just take it as a third-person character persona invented for the purpose of a 'fall guy' in the xkcd universe, distinct from all those times when Randall's deliberately doing a comic that says something like "I always find that..." and instead goes with "This guy always finds that...". Maybe even based upon someone he knows, but I suspect he's too genre-savvy to make it a straight and simple reference to anyone real. Or at least plausible deniability by knowing a number of Roberts, either several with 'M'-surnames (including a paternal cousins/etc, or two?) or very precisely none at all. At least at the time of first usage.

Does it even need to be analysed quite so much? Probably not. Characters may take on a life far beyond the random 'throwawayness' that originally created them. If there ever was a "Rob M." in his life (or, indeed, in his own self), "Rob 'Cueball' Madeupname" has probably grown beyond that and neither author nor muse would necessarily consider there to be an active link between the stick figure and IRL one, after so many years. 92.17.62.87 23:58, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

Rob vs. Cueball

I get a vague sense that Rob is the name Randall gives to Cueball when it is appropriate for Cueball to have a name in that context. Am I the only one? QuarterNotes (talk) 22:40, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

No, I thought the same thing. After all, he doesn't give Cueball any other name (except Robert'); DROP TABLE students;--) FaviFake (talk) 09:33, 5 July 2023 (UTC)