Super Dave Osborne is a character created and played by comedian Bob Einstein. Einstein's comedic depiction was of a naïve but optimistic stuntman who was frequently comically injured when his stunts went spectacularly wrong.
| Super Dave Osborne | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | The John Byner Comedy Hour |
| Created by | Bob Einstein |
| Portrayed by | Bob Einstein |
| In-universe information | |
| Nickname | Super Dave |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Stunt performer |
| Nationality | American |
Super Dave is billed as an "accomplished" stuntman, though he rarely succeeds when performing his elaborate stunts. Typically the character will perform outrageous daredevil stunts which often go disastrously awry and result in the appearance of grievous bodily injury. These include such mishaps as being knocked off the top of the CN Tower, in Toronto, after determining it was too windy to do a cabled jump or being run over by a steamroller after failing to escape from a locked trunk. After such a mishap, Super Dave would usually appear torn apart, stretched, or otherwise injured. Although Super Dave initially exhibited and was injured during wild stunts, in later appearances, he would often be injured in mishaps during much more mundane events during which danger was not anticipated.
His signature logo, a drawing of his head in a crash helmet directly atop a pair of crushed silver boots with no visible body, was from an iconic early sketch, "Balloon Ball". The "stunt" consisted of his standing in a hole in the ground reciting "balloon ball" as a mantra which was supposed to imbue him with the ability to not be harmed by anything, as a mobile pile driver rammed the top of his head. When pulled out of the hole, he was as his eventual logo depicted: his helmeted head sitting directly atop his smashed silver boots, the whole of his body supposedly compressed between boots and neck.
Super Dave is often accompanied on his various exploits by loyal friend, sidekick and assistant stunt coordinator Fuji Hakayito (comedian Art Irizawa), and his segments introduced and commentated on by former sportscaster/actor Mike Walden.[1] Fuji typically initiates whatever stunt Dave is performing.
Super Dave runs the fictional "Super Dave Compound", a combination resort, theme park, learning center, and anything else needed for the plot-line of a particular episode. Many of his misadventures have been based on demonstrating various aspects of the compound. Another characteristic was the utterance of the phrase "Holy Chim" (a bowdlerized version of "holy shit"), usually when the stunt was ongoing and he realized he was in over his head, notably his barefoot fire-walker stunt. When reflecting on the failed stunt, Super Dave would, in annoyance, call Walden a putz.
Trademark components of the Super Dave character include his frequent thumbs-ups and his many jump suit uniforms — most of which include red, white and blue, yellow stars, and stripes — which are reminiscent of those worn by daredevil Evel Knievel. It was often specified that Osborne's safety harnesses or seatbelts were made of "genuine Saskatchewan sealskin bindings". Seals are not indigenous to the landlocked province of Saskatchewan, and are therefore part of the comedic juxtaposition predicated on the eventual failure of the stunt by being both "genuine sealskin" and from Saskatchewan.
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