Want to Know What the Deal Is With the Names in ‘The Killer’?

You might be like me the first time you watched The Killer, and not realize what the Killer in question is doing with his names. It did, unfortunately, take me until he was in the north east and using the name Sam Malone to catch on. In my defense, I would have figured it out with Archibald Bunker, but I don’t really think of the character as an “Archibald” that often. I am of course talking about the fake names that Michael Fassbender’s assassin uses in the David Fincher film The Killer, as he’s trying to enact his revenge plot.

As a Fincher fanatic, it is often my burden in life to point out that one of my favorite directors does have a sense of humor in his work. With a screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker, the movie puts you into the mind of the Killer. Literally, most of Fassbender’s lines are an internal monologue starting at a botched job that kicks off his quest for answers. As he is fleeing for Paris, we start to see a pattern in the identities he uses to get around: They’re all the names of men from sitcoms.

A mix of good husbands, classic men we know and love, and characters that are so iconic it is weird that the person he’s dealing with doesn’t bat an eye at it, the names do make you question the Killer’s entire philosophy about himself. He does say at the start of the movie that he has to be forgettable, but he’s Michael Fassbender and he wears Hawaiian shirts so I don’t know what is exactly forgettable about that. Still, the name choices are quite hilarious. Let’s look at all of them and refresh ourselves on all the television references made in The Killer.

Felix Unger

Remember The Odd Couple? You know, the thing that existed as a play and a TV show and a movie? Well, Felix Unger is the name of the character played by Jack Lemmon and then by Thomas Lennon (that’s not confusing). He’s a divorcee who moves in with his friend, and the two are cope together while living with one another. The fact that this is the first name that the Killer chooses and it has been adapted multiple times throughout the years is actually hilarious, though, because it shows that the Killer either doesn’t care if anyone notices, or just thinks that no one will think anything of it.

Archibald Bunker

Actually, come on. All In the Family used to run on Nick at Nite when I was a kid, so every millennial knows what it is. If a man came up to me at my customer service job and said his name was Archie Bunker, that might give me pause. The character was the father of the Bunker family and wasn’t exactly the most accepting man, learning how to deal with people who were not white coming into his neighborhood. He was just a man who wasn’t exactly pleasant.

Oscar Madison

Well, you can’t have one half of the Odd Couple with out the other, right? Oscar Madison is the Walter Matthau portion of the Odd Couple to Jack Lemmon’s Felix Unger. He’s the Matthew Perry to Thomas Lennon. In the Killer’s world, he’s his own Odd Couple.

Howard Cunningham

Richie Cunningham’s dad really had to get up to some stuff. This was one that took me a second to figure out because I don’t think that I’ve ever thought about the dad from Happy Days for very long, let alone thought about his full name like this. If I heard someone say “Howard Cunningham,” I wouldn’t really pause, so you can get away with this one. I don’t think you could say the same for Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, though.

Reuben Kincaid

The further we get into The Killer, the more it is clear that his personas rely on the sheer hope and luck that the Killer does not run into anyone who watched Nick at Nite or had older parents. Reuben Kincaid was the band’s manager on The Partridge Family, which is a show that is arguably still referenced enough that people will pause when hearing the name. The other saving grace is that you hear enough wild names working in customer service that the people dealing with the Killer probably just rolled their eyes and moved on.

Lou Grant

Now this one is wild, because Lou Grant is a character and the name of the show itself. The Ed Asner character is the lead character of the show Lou Grant, which is about a man who relocates to Los Angeles after losing his job. And who doesn’t love an Ed Asner character? To be fair though, Lou Grant also just sounds like a random name.

Sam Malone

Out of all the names in all the world, this is the one where I would have been like, “You’re actually not for real right now.” That’s mainly because he is supposed to be in upstate New York and is using the name Sam Malone from Cheers, a show that is still wildly popular. In the movie’s defense, I think at this point he’s getting slightly sloppy and desperate, but he still gets away with two of the most obvious names from pop culture back to back. Or maybe I’m just too clued into television because if I heard anyone say Sam Malone was their name, I’d start crying and look for them to throw a bar towel over their shoulder.

George Jefferson

This one was actually wild. He got away with Archie Bunker because it was just Mr. Bunker, and I haven’t thought about his name being ARCHIBALD before. George Jefferson, the Bunkers’ neighbor who moved on up to the east side to a deluxe apartment in the sky, is a little less easy to hide. And this lady at the bank didn’t bat an eye. To be clear, though, she did let him take all his money out, so maybe she knew it was fake and let it go. Still though, I would have made a joke.

Robert Hartley

Finally, the last one is one of those things from shows in the ’70s that I never quite understood. From The Bob Newhart Show came the character Robert Hartley. Why his name was not also Bob Newhart, I don’t know, but that’s just the way we did things in the ’70s. It’s the last name that the Killer uses, and it’s a nice note to end on.

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Did you catch these while watching The Killer?

(featured image: Netflix)