Ned Flanders

Nedward "Ned" Flanders is a character from The Simpsons series.

Ned is the Simpson family's extremely religious next "diddly-door" neighbor. He is a genuinely well-meaning good-natured person, and is one of the few in Springfieldto whom that description applies. Though firmly religious, he can be timid and something of an easy pushover. He thoroughly worships God and strictly follows the Bible as literally as possible and is easily shocked when challenged on any point of dogma. He also owns the Leftorium and a home business, Flancrest Enterprises, which makes religious hook rugs. He also works as a member of the Springfield Volunteer Fire Department.

Appearance
Despite a meek outward appearance, Ned hides an exceptionally well-built physique under his pink shirt and green sweater combination. When he is revealed to be in his early 60s, Ned claims his deceptively youthful appearance is due to his conformity to the "three Cs" - "clean living, chewing thoroughly, and a daily dose of vitamin Church".

Both Ned and his family rarely refer to his mustache as such, preferring nicknames such as "Nose Neighbor," "Mr. Tickles," "The Soup Strainer," "The Cookie Duster," "The Pushbroom," and "Dr. Fuzzenstein." He once shaved it off, after Homer implied that people were mocking Ned's facial hair behind his back. He also once had it pulled off with a vacuum cleaner by Maude after Homer, who was thought to have leprosy, kissed Ned in gratitude for sending them to be treated. Ned's mustache would also affect his decision to move to the Humbleton, PA. After being hired at the town's Humble figurine manufacturing factory, Ned was ordered to shave his mustache, due to an unofficial ban on facial hair. Ned defiantly refused to shave his mustache for which he was labeled as a troublemaker. Interestingly, in one of the earliest references to Ned's facial hair, he shaved off his mustache without concern after Homer commented he should, and to strike a deal with Homer to please control his use of vulgarity as that was a bad influence on Todd. Homer is once again annoyed when he later sees a clean-shaven Flanders commenting that everyone likes his new appearance and he got the chance to star in a TV commercial.

Personality
Ned is very honest and sincere in carrying out the Christian doctrines of charity, kindness and compassion to an extent unseen within the rest of the Springfield community. He is frequently shown doing volunteer work, and is rigorously honest and upright, even going so far as to spend an entire day tracking down a Leftorium customer in order to give him the extra change that he had forgotten to hand over. He once donated a kidney and a lung out of the goodness of his heart to whoever needs them first. He is also a good neighbor to the Simpsons, regularly offering his assistance. Ned’s dogged friendship inspires the loyalty of others; when his Leftorium appeared on the verge of bankruptcy shortly after it opened, Homer arranged a George Bailey-esque bailout with the help of many people in Springfield. Upon discovering that Bart and Lisa Simpson were not baptized he immediately took it upon himself to (unsuccessfully) conduct the ceremony without their parents' consent. He also was one of the organizers of a mob to remove the La Maison Derrière due to the amoral exploitation of the sexual desires in males (although he notably had to ask for permission to commence a mob to Belle, the owner of the place they were attempting to tear down in a mob frenzy, indicating that he either wasn't completely aware of how a mob was supposed to work or was unwilling to go to the extreme of inciting a mob riot to get rid of the house). In more recent episodes he seems to have gained more tolerance to other religions and homosexuality, as long as the people in question are good-natured. However, his bias and perspective still makes him think that they will have a harder time getting to heaven.

Ned was married to the equally religious Maude Flanders (after whose death he married Edna Krabappel). Ned and Maude had two children together; the sheltered and naive Rod and Todd. While still married to Maude, Ned married Ginger, a waitress, while on a drunken bender in Las Vegas. Ginger came to live with Ned and his sons for a brief period following Maude's death, but she quickly grew tired of the Ned's sickly-sweet personalities and fled. Flanders has also been connected romantically with a beautiful Christian-rock singer, Rachel Jordan, and Tiffany Sloane, a movie star. He also makes absolute certain every year to pay and file his tax returns at the start of the new year, especially when considering how the vast majority of Springfield usually waited until April 15 to file their tax returns.

Homer generally loathes Ned, because his family, job, health and self-discipline are of higher quality than he could ever hope to attain himself. Homer has since come to have a love-hate relationship with Ned, sometimes being his best friend, partly due to Ned's selfless tolerance of him, and other times treating Ned with complete disregard. Homer seems to genuinely care for Ned, despite still expressing and often acting on feelings of loathing. Nowadays Homer seems to regard Ned as more of a nuisance. Sometimes, Marge considers Ned to be a perfect neighbor and usually sides with him instead of her husband, which always enrages Homer. When Marge lends her voice on these matters they usually end with Homer angrily calling her "The President of The I Love Ned Flanders Fan Club" or with Homer furiously and sarcastically admitting that Ned is "perfect in every way" and that he himself is not perfect like Ned Flanders.

Ned is not without facing life's challenges, but has been shown to frequently call Reverend Lovejoy for advice often, even over minuscule and petty things ("I... I think I'm coveting my own wife!"), to the point that Lovejoy has stopped caring and has even suggested that Flanders try a different religion. Reverend Lovejoy used to care for Ned's problems, but over the years Lovejoy became increasingly uninterested and annoyed when he would always turn to him for help, and even to frustration, as many of their talks have lead his enjoyment of life's simple pleasures go spoiled awry, and even to acts of passive-aggressive vengeance, in one instance of himself encouraging his Old English Sheepdog to defecate on Ned's lawn in return for many instances of the former. Ned is shown to have a room in his house filled with memorabilia of the Beatles. He claims that this is because they were "bigger than Jesus". He also even owns a small home business called Flancrest Enterprises. In addition, his modesty was such that he even goes as far as to bathe in swimming trunks specifically to avoid having to avoid anyone, even himself, see his privates, as he admits when Marge and Homer have him babysit Maggie once when they talk to him as he's bathing.

Ned is also against drugs. When Ned, Homer and Apu go on road trip to Canada for cheap prescription drugs, they meet a man who looks and acts just like Ned, the man then offers Ned marijuana ("Hey, would you like to puff on a reeferino? It's legal here.") but he promptly turns down ("They warned me Satan would be attractive. Let's go"). He did, however, briefly smoke a cigarette when playing the role of Mad Dog during his fire safety skit with some disgust. He also once suffered hallucinogenic experiences of the Dancing Bears and Skeletons of the Grateful Dead crossing the road, as well as witnessing an entity resembling a fusion between the hammers from Pink Floyd's The Wall and the Rolling Stones' lips & tongue attempting to kiss him after drinking groovy grove juice that unknown to him, was spiked with Peyote thanks to Homer Simpson.

His sons Rod and Todd are very sheltered and raised in an extremely strict climate of Christian morality, causing them to be unable to behave like all the other children in Springfield ("They're going to be eaten alive, in Middle School" Lisa once observed). For instance, the family has at least five different Trivial Pursuit sets relating to different versions of the Bible. "He is a real Christian. He stinks!" said Homer. Also, all of the family's board games contain no dice, as Ned believes that dice are "wicked". Rod says that they just move one space at a time, as it is "less fun that way". His pet peeve was Maude underlining passages in his Bible.

Because of his childhood and the therapy he was given, he learned to repress his anger by a significant amount, which also resulted in the creation of his odd choice of words. However, his anger eventually was unable to be suppressed anymore after his house, which was demolished by a hurricane despite several protective efforts such as placing a tarp over the house, and the house being rebuilt in a very shoddy fashion and eventually collapsing, at which point he lashed out at his friends and neighbors, even shocking and appalling Bart when he, in his anger, lashed out at Bart attempting to defend Marge from his anger and hinted that Bart will end up a street beggar when he grows up.

However, in some early episodes Ned is occasionally shown when he's angry. The first episode to ever show Ned's rage was the episode "Dead Putting Society". The episode starts-off with Ned inviting Homer in for a beer after an unsuccessful attempt at mowing the lawn. While visiting with Ned, Homer sees that Ned has a much better life-style than he does and gets into a fight with Ned. Homer leaves Ned's house in a very mad manner. Eventually the episode boils up to the point of Homer and Ned both losing their tempers and making a bet and entering their sons in a mini golf tournament. The bet said that "The father of the boy who didn't win had to mow his neighbor's lawn in his wife's best Sunday dress". The episode ends with both fathers having to wear the dresses as both Bart and Todd decide that they are equally good. The next episode to showcase Ned's wrath was "Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment" where at the start of the episode Ned is seen and loudly heard throwing a man out of his home for trying to sell him stolen cable. Ned even threatens to box the guys ears in which results in the man becoming terrified of Ned. The third early instance of Ned's rage was the episode "Homer Loves Flanders" where it begins with Ned and Homer going to a football game and enjoying each other's company. Homer and Ned then become really good friends, but it soon becomes apparent that Homer is obsessed with Ned and his family. Both Homer's obsession and extreme stupidity drive Ned into hating Homer and finally becoming so annoyed with him that Ned's rage causes him to snap very loudly at Homer. The fourth and last early reference came in "Bart The Lover" where Todd picks-up on Homer's potty-mouthed language and Todd says, "I don't want any of your damn vegetables," at the dinner table. Todd's newly discovered bad word sets-off Ned's temper and Todd gets punished by Ned right away for saying the nasty word. While trying to discover where Todd learned the nasty word he hears Homer swearing angrily and asks him to try and cut back on his "foul lingo" which ends with Homer having a talk with Marge and him actually trying to be a good neighbor by reducing his swearing.

In the eighth season of the show, the issue of why Ned very seldom ever shows his anger was greatly explored in the episode "Hurricane Neddy". In the episode, a very powerful hurricane hits Springfield and among the buildings that are destroyed is Ned's house. Ned's neighbors and friends all try to rebuild his home (led by Homer), but fail miserably. The sudden destruction of his home and the horribly failed attempt to rebuild it are what finally drive Ned to really lose it. He snaps at almost everyone in Springfield and goes on a long, mean, spiteful, and extremely loud rant about how horrible and annoying he thinks that everyone in Springfield is and why he thinks so. Homer is the last person that Ned comes to and when he does, instead of shouting at Homer like how he did to everyone else, Ned just in a calm voice tells Homer that he's the worst person that he has ever met. Homer, however due to his low IQ is not offended or even hurt by the remark. After the long, tiresome rant, Ned sees that he really needs help and drives himself to The Calmwood Mental Hospital. The episode ends with Ned's former childhood doctor, Doctor Foster, coming to see him and explain that as a child Ned was an uncontrollable hellion due to his parents being beatniks who never punished him when he was bad. Seeking help for their son's destructive behavior, they had Doctor Foster distribute a treatment known as the University of Minnesota Spankalogical Protocol. The treatment was a non-stop eight month spanking technique that was supposed to stop a child's bad behavior permanently. However, according to Doctor Foster, the treatment later proved to have worked too well and in many cases it caused severe repressed anger management issues in mid to late adulthood. To administer an outlet for this repressed rage, Doctor Foster has Ned think of somebody who really annoys him. At first Ned can't come up with anybody, so the doctor tries a list of names of the town residents. Most of which Ned happily responds to. That is, until they come to Homer. Homer is then brought in as a way to get Ned to admit that he does not always like everyone he meets. At first, the treatment doesn't seem to work until Homer tells Ned that he's too happy a person and always likes everyone. Ned gets really angry and says that it isn't true because he hates the people who work at the post office due to them being so slow and having to wait in long lines, he loathes beatniks and hates his parents who are beatniks. Ned is then cured and he learns that when he's seething with rage then he should let the others know.

In recent seasons following after Maude's death, Ned's demeanor has grown somewhat stern and hostile as opposed to his original jolly neighbor demeanor shown in earlier seasons. Some occasions to support this include mainly revolve around his "Flanderization" where he has become so Christianity-obsessed, that he would belittle other religious. One example would be in "The Monkey Suit", where Ned's fundamentalist intentions in enforcing creationism became so overzealous that it got Lisa thrown in jail when she went against it by teaching the theory of evolution in secrecy, after it was outlawed. In a lampshade to that episode in "Judge Me Tender", Ned deliberately stopped a fish from walking on land when it grew feet. Homer even goes to the point of saying, "You used to be nicer".

Despite his attempts at being a good Christian, as well as a good neighbor, most of his good deeds nevertheless end up exploited by the various Springfielders, and are often mocked by the townspeople behind his back for his naivety, zealousness, strict beliefs, and intolerance. This ultimately reached its breaking point when, after allowing two female college students to rent one of the rooms of his house for studying, they took advantage of his trusting nature and filmed a soft-core webcam site called "sexyslumberparty.com" without his knowledge. As soon as he learned of this from Homer, he angrily evicted them from his house, although the damage was already done when, thanks to Homer leaking the videos to the entire town, the townspeople arrive at his house around the time he evicted them to cheer on the girls, causing him to realize that the entire town actually mocked him behind his back, and he was even more shocked when he learned that Homer was the one who leaked the videos. He then entered a very deep depression due to this, and decided to have his family move temporarily to Humbleton, Pennsylvania where the Humbleton figurines that he collected were being made, and also posting a note stating that he left town.

Trivia

 * A self-referenced joke in the episode "Homer to the Max" he was voiced by Karl Wiedergott, at the time where the voice actors for the Simpsons got low salaries from FOX, and FOX threatened to replace them with new voice actors.
 * Montreal Canadiens goalie Peter Budaj has a picture of Ned Flanders on his mask.
 * Ned's ATM number is 5316.
 * Ned is often compared to Job (of the Bible) as he is a devoted Christian, and has his faith tested, multiple times, like his house getting destroyed, and his wife's untimely death, but he still ultimately believes in God.
 * Ned is usually portrayed as the Devil in Halloween episodes because one of the Devil's names is 'Old Ned'.
 * A running gag in the series is Homer telling Flanders to shut up.
 * His favorite popsicle flavor is plain.
 * He resembles the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band version of Beatle John Lennon.
 * Ned and Edna's relationship was determined by the viewers of The Simpsons.
 * He is the only resident in Springfield who has not seen Meet the Parents.
 * He believes people should face the worst punishment in Hell for thinking women are beautiful.
 * In treehouse of horror XIV (frinkenstein) he states "I'm running to find a cure for homosexuality" stating that he believes homosexuality is a mental disorder rather then choice.