"Through the dark of futures past, the magician longs to see. One chants out between two worlds, fire walk with me! I'll catch you with my death bag. You may think I've gone insane, but I promise I will kill again!"―BOB, spoken through Leland Palmer[src]
BOB[2][5] was an inhabiting spirit seemingly created by the experiment who resided in the mythical Black Lodge. He spent most of his time on Earth possessing human beings, committing horrific acts to "harvest" pain and sorrow (known as "garmonbozia") from those around him. While inhabiting a human, BOB's true form, that of a long-haired vagrant, could only be seen by the gifted and the damned.
After spending years as Mike's familiar, the two parted ways after Mike had a change of heart about all the pain and fear they caused together. BOB possessed Leland Palmer and went on to torment his daughter Laura for years, and intended to make her his next host in 1989, before he was stymied by Mike and forced to murder her instead.
When his possession of Leland was discovered by FBI agent Dale Cooper, BOB killed Leland and later trapped Cooper in the Black Lodge, while he inhabited the body of his doppelganger and escaped to wreak havoc across the world with him for twenty-five years. In 2016, Cooper escaped the Lodge himself, and set out to defeat the pair before they could locate the powerful negative force Judy.
Biography[]
Early years[]
The birth of BOB[3]
Following the 1945 nuclear bomb test in White Sands, New Mexico, a creature identified as "the experiment" regurgitated a stream of matter from its mouth, which included the inhabiting spirit BOB in the form of an orb.[3] BOB took up residence in the Black Lodge[6] and teamed up with the spirit Mike to cause chaos across Earth,[7] feeding off the fear and pain they caused through their horrific acts in the form of garmonbozia.[8] Albert Rosenfield once described BOB as the manifestation of "the evil that men do".[9]
The arm and BOB above the convenience store[8]
At some point, he became acquainted with the spirit known as the arm, possibly birthed from Mike's severed arm, and the two developed an unclear relationship. The arm would accept garmonbozia from BOB's vessels and victims, and invited him to meetings above the convenience store, but it would also chastise him and attempt to stop his evil deeds.[8][10]
Eventually, Mike had a religious epiphany and severed his own arm, cutting all ties with BOB,[11] leaving him to lurk about the Great Northern Hotel in Twin Peaks, Washington for four decades.[1]
Inhabiting Leland Palmer[]
BOB and his vessel, Leland[8]
Eventually, BOB took up the identity of "Robertson" and acquired a house at Pearl Lakes. He eventually lured over Leland Palmer, a young boy who lived across from his house, and sexually abused him before possessing him.[1][9] BOB remained lurking in the back of Leland's mind for years to come, even as he married a woman named Sarah, who occasionally had visions of BOB and other entities.[12]
In 1971, Sarah and Leland had a daughter named Laura, who BOB immediately saw as a candidate for his next host. From when she turned twelve years old, BOB began regularly molesting and abusing Laura.[2][8] Laura saw him in his true form and came to know him as a friend of her father's, unaware of his possession of him.[13] Her creation seemed to be tied to the supernatural Fireman, seemingly in response to BOB's own birth, so it is possible this drew him to her.[3]
Killing spree through Leland[]
Years later, in 1988, Leland killed prostitute Teresa Banks after she tried to blackmail him, possibly under BOB's influence. He wrapped her body in plastic and sent her floating in a river, with the letter "T" cut out from an issue of Flesh World and shoved under her left ring fingernail.[8][10]
In Laura's bedroom[12]
By 1989, BOB was prepared to leave Leland and inhabit Laura, while Laura was learning more about him and Leland was beginning to question his sanity. BOB stole some pages from Laura's secret diary and even revealed his possession of her father to her, in an effort to torment her further. Meanwhile, Mike and the arm were attempting to save Laura with the ring, a powerful artifact that could protect her from BOB's possession if she put it on, but she hadn't understood its significance at that point.[8]
Laura and BOB's final confrontation[8]
On the night of February 23, BOB and Leland followed Laura to a cabin in the woods, where she met up with her friend Ronette Pulaski to have sex with Jacques Renault and Leo Johnson. After they tied up Laura and Ronette, BOB knocked Jacques unconscious and chased Leo off, before capturing the two girls himself and took them to a train car. He was finally prepared to possess Laura, but Mike tossed the ring into the train car, which Laura took and hurriedly put on. Enraged, BOB beat Laura to death, fighting against Leland who was pleading with him not to do it, while Ronette narrowly escaped.[8]
After putting the cut-out letter "R" under her left ring fingernail, BOB wrapped Laura's body in plastic and sent it along a river. He left a note with Leland's blood that read "fire walk with me",[6] and abandoned a towel covered in his blood and Laura's diary pages.[14] After he returned to the red room in the Black Lodge, the arm and Mike reluctantly accepted the garmonbozia from Leland, while Laura's spirit took up residence in the Lodge herself, safe from BOB at last.[8]
When Laura's body was found the next day, the entire community of Twin Peaks was swept with mourning and panic, particularly the Palmer family. Leland, who was now unaware he had taken his daughter's life, became increasingly mentally unstable over the course of the coming weeks,[12] and his hair turned white, presumably due to BOB's growing influence.[14] Sarah began to fall into a deep depression, even seeing visions of BOB and other occurrences in town.[12] Laura's older cousin Maddy Ferguson, who came into town for the funeral, also saw a vision of him at one point.[15]
Composite sketch made during the Laura Palmer investigation[16]
The Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department immediately launched an investigation, and even made a call out to the FBI for assistance. They sent in Special Agent Dale Cooper, who quickly identified the similarities between the murders of Laura Palmer and Teresa Banks.[12] He began receiving cryptic visions and dreams from the arm and Laura in the Black Lodge, who gave him clues about how to find BOB and even told him about the spirits of the Lodge,[7] and even met Mike, who tried to help him locate and stop BOB.[16]
BOB kills Maddy Ferguson[13]
Leland tried to help Cooper and the sheriff's department catch the killer, still unaware it was him,[17] but a few weeks into the investigation of Laura's murder, BOB completely overtook Leland again and killed Maddy in the Palmer home, wrapping her in plastic and putting the letter "O" under her left ring fingernail.[13][18]
Soon after Maddy's body was found, Cooper put together that Leland was the killer, as well as BOB's host, and he was taken into custody. After BOB confessed to the murders, he forced Leland to commit suicide by slamming his head repeatedly into his cell door, and then left Leland with the knowledge that he had raped and killed his own daughter. Cooper and Sheriff Harry S. Truman comforted Leland in his dying breaths before he passed away.[9]
Inhabiting Dale Cooper's doppelganger[]
Following Leland's death, BOB's presence was not noticed again until immediately after Josie Packard's sudden death several days later, when Cooper saw a vision of a cackling BOB crawl out from under her bed and mock him.[19] Cooper later speculated that BOB had been drawn to Josie's fear. Soon after this, Cooper's former partner, the deranged Windom Earle, kidnapped his girlfriend Annie Blackburn[20] and brought her to the Black Lodge in an effort to achieve great power and enact vengeance on Cooper.[6]
BOB and Cooper's doppelganger, free from the Black Lodge[6]
Cooper followed them into the Black Lodge, which Cooper quickly got lost in, running into the arm, Laura, and several doppelgangers of his friends and loved ones, and even one of himself. Eventually, Windom found Cooper and tried to take his soul, but BOB took Windom's instead while Cooper ran. As he did, his doppelganger entered the room and met BOB, and the two left the Lodge, with BOB as the willing inhabitant of the doppelganger's body, and working in tandem with him.[6][21] The real Cooper was left trapped in the Lodge and would remain there for many years.[22]
Cooper's doppelganger assumed Cooper's identity and traveled across Earth with BOB, spreading death, chaos, and mayhem in the following two decades through a wide ring of organized crime Cooper's doppelganger formed.[22][23] To prevent the real Cooper from replacing them when he would have to return to Earth, they manufactured a tulpa of Cooper named Dougie Jones in 1997.[24][25] The doppelganger also raped Cooper's friend Audrey Horne while she was in a coma,[26] and raped and captured Cooper's secretary Diane Evans and replaced her with a tulpa under his command as a plant in the FBI.[27]
BOB is removed from Cooper's doppelganger as the woodsmen heal him[3]
They also gained allies in the woodsmen, ghostly figures who originated in the same place BOB did, were able to heal the pair if they were harmed,[3] and performed other activities that may or may not have been for them, including the murder of William Hastings.[28]
Hunt for Judy[]
Around 2016, the doppelganger began preparing to uncover a set of coordinates he believed would bring him and BOB to a powerful negative force called Judy. After nearly being returned to the Black Lodge[24] and receiving the coordinates from former FBI agent Phillip Jeffries,[29] the two made their way to the identified location in Twin Peaks, and were transported by the Fireman to the sheriff's department.[4]
Attacking the sheriff's department[4]
When the doppelganger infiltrated the department, he was discovered to not be the original Cooper and was shot by receptionist Lucy Brennan just as the real Cooper arrived. As the woodsmen once again came to heal the doppelganger, BOB emerged from the body in his original orb form, and began attacking Cooper and the sheriffs. Freddie Sykes, who was being held in custody there and wore a special gardening glove granted to him by the Fireman several months previously for this express purpose, punched him with his gloved hand and shattered him into pieces, destroying him once and for all.[4]
Another 1989[]
After BOB was destroyed, Cooper traveled back in time to 1989 with the aid of Phillip Jeffries and attempted to save Laura Palmer. In the new timeline, she disappeared without a trace,[4] and Leland fatally shot himself out of grief a year later, leaving BOB's fate unknown.[30]
Non-canon appearance[]
International Pilot[]
BOB is seen by Sarah Palmer, crouching behind Laura's bed.
In the hospital's basement, BOB stands over a circle of candles and welcomes Agent Cooper and Sheriff Truman to the "killer's lair." They approach him and he asks if Mike is with them. BOB then speaks with Mike, saying "Heads up, tails up, running to be with scallywag, night falls, morning calls, catch you with my death bag." Sheriff Truman asks him what the letters found under Laura Palmer and Teresa Banks' fingers were going to spell, and BOB answers that they were going to spell his proper name, "Robert." He promises he will kill again, then Mike appears, shooting him dead.
Behind the scenes[]
Frank Silva portrayed BOB in the original Twin Peaks series
The impetus for the series Twin Peaks was the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer. When production began on the pilot episode, series creators David Lynch and Mark Frost had decided that the murderer would be revealed as Leland Palmer, Laura's father. During the filming of a scene in the pilot taking place in Laura's room, Frank Silva, a set dresser during the shootings but also an actor, accidentally trapped himself in the room prior to filming by inadvertently moving a dresser in front of the door. Lynch had an image of Silva stuck in the room and thought that it could fit into the series somewhere, and told Silva that he would like for him to be in the series. Lynch had Silva crouch at the foot of Laura's bed and look through the bars of the footboard, as if he were "trapped" behind them, and filmed it, then had Silva leave the room and filmed the empty room; after reviewing the footage, Lynch liked the presence that Silva brought to the scene and decided that he would put him somewhere in the series.
Later that day, a scene was being filmed in which Palmer's mother experiences a vision which frightens her; at the time, the script did not indicate what Mrs. Palmer had seen to frighten her. Lynch was pleased with how the scene turned out, but a crew member informed him that it would have to be re-shot because a mirror in the scene had inadvertently picked up someone's reflection. When Lynch asked who it was, the crew member replied that it had been Silva. Lynch considered this a "happy accident," and decided at that point that the unnamed character to be played by Silva would be revealed as Palmer's true killer.
CGI is used to show BOB's reflection in the mirror in the 2017 revival.
In Episode 1, Sarah Palmer sees a vision of BOB while hugging Donna. The vision consists of BOB crouching at the foot of Laura's bed. In the script, the vision featured a long, empty hospital corridor, with BOB running down it towards the camera at full speed. The scene, as scripted, was indeed filmed, but deemed too "freaky" by Lynch and never used, except for a brief clip of it during Ronette's dream of BOB during Episode 8.
In the version of Episode 8 that aired in Japan, BOB's face is added to the scene where Maddy reacts to the stain in the carpet.[31]
The name "Bob" is a reference to Bob's Big Boy, a restaurant where David Lynch ordered the same lunch every day for several years.[32]
As Frank Silva passed away in 1995, he appeared posthumously in the 2017 revival through the use of archive footage and CGI, which was always the preferred solution instead of recasting.[33]
Trivia[]
- The credits and hard on-screen subtitles always use the name "Bob" or "Killer Bob". The name "BOB" is used in all caps in Laura's secret diary,[2][5][26] his name being an acronym and a warning in itself: "BEWARE OF BOB".[2]
Appearances[]
- Twin Peaks Collectible CardArt
- The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer
- Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
- Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces
- Twin Peaks – season 1
- Twin Peaks – season 2
- "Episode 8"
- "Episode 9"
- "Episode 10" (Mentioned only)
- "Episode 13" (Mentioned only)
- "Episode 14"
- "Episode 15"
- "Episode 16"
- "Episode 17" (Mentioned only)
- "Episode 23"
- "Episode 27"
- "Episode 29"
- Twin Peaks – 2017
- The Secret History of Twin Peaks (Mentioned only)
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Twin Peaks – "Episode 10"
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Twin Peaks – "Part 8"
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Twin Peaks – "Part 17"
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 The Secret History of Twin Peaks
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Twin Peaks – "Episode 29"
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Twin Peaks – "Episode 2"
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Twin Peaks – "Episode 16"
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces
- ↑ Twin Peaks – "Episode 13"
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 Twin Peaks – "Pilot"
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Twin Peaks – "Episode 14"
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 Twin Peaks – "Episode 8"
- ↑ Twin Peaks – "Episode 9"
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 Twin Peaks – "Episode 4"
- ↑ Twin Peaks – "Episode 7"
- ↑ Twin Peaks – "Episode 15"
- ↑ Twin Peaks – "Episode 23"
- ↑ Twin Peaks – "Episode 28"
- ↑ Twin Peaks – "Part 5"
- ↑ 22.0 22.1 Twin Peaks – "Part 1"
- ↑ Twin Peaks – "Part 2"
- ↑ 24.0 24.1 Twin Peaks – "Part 3"
- ↑ Twin Peaks – "Part 9"
- ↑ 26.0 26.1 Twin Peaks – "Part 7"
- ↑ Twin Peaks – "Part 16"
- ↑ Twin Peaks – "Part 11"
- ↑ Twin Peaks – "Part 15"
- ↑ Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier
- ↑ Twin Peaks Episode 8 Alternate BOB Japanese Animation
- ↑ Lynch interview for Film Threat magazine, October '92 issue
- ↑ Mark Frost's AMA