Bob’s Burgers Has Quietly—and Perhaps Unintentionally—Honored Nebulous Neurodiversity for Years

Healthy portrayals of neurodiversity follow a handy, gut-generated “You’ll know it when you feel it” metric. Bob’s Burgers, the animated sitcom with 14 seasons and a (very good) movie to its name, satisfies this metric without ever explicitly confirming an intent to represent. So yes, it’s still a theory. But it’s one that’s comforting and affirming people who may have fallen through the cracks.

Traditionally, neurodiversity has functioned as an umbrella term for autism spectrum disorders, but recent definitions recognize ADHD, ADD, bipolar, dyslexia, and dyspraxia. For me, an autistic man from quasi-rural Oklahoma who never quite clicked with his peers, Bob’s Burgers is atomically validating. It presents a proudly madcap microcosm of all that’s messy and beautiful about the day-to-day business of being a person, filtered through lenses that catch what others might miss or discard.

This isn’t a new insight. Bob’s Burgers has long resonated with many in the neurodiverse community, and for good reason. A cursory Google search is more than enough. Quora threads committed to the “Is Tina Belcher autistic?” debate. Spin-off questions about Gene’s possible ADHD. Spiraling tangents about Teddy’s aversion to touch. Heated insistence that Tina and Gene are merely odd, awkward teenagers and any/all speculation about their neurodivergence is pointless and reductive. 

The Belcher family—composed of well-meaning parents Bob and Linda and wildly different siblings Tina, Gene, and Louise—makes no bones about being different. For that reason (and so many more), the Loren Bouchard-created sitcom has become a beacon for the disenfranchised.

I could make a case for around half of the main cast, but the neurodiversity connection is strongest when examining Tina and Gene, the older two Belcher kids. Gene’s ADHD is never “officially” a thing, but at this juncture there’s so much evidence supporting his neurodivergence that I’m convinced he’s not just on the sensory spectrum. He’s screwed into it like a lightbulb. As far as I’m concerned, Tina is, too. The oldest Belcher child also challenges autistic convention by being female, which wasn’t a significant part of the conversation until fairly recently.

The Season 3 episode “Tinasaurus Wrecks” spotlights Tina’s rigidity in ways I continue to find validating. She thoroughly bungles her first time behind the wheel, crashing Bob’s car, unwittingly facilitating insurance fraud, and completely melting down when asked to lie.

I see so much of myself and my struggles in Tina and Gene. Like both of them, I had friends but I wasn’t popular and I clashed with my peers constantly. A psychologist diagnosed me with autism and ADHD when I was seven, but my folks didn’t tell me until I was 13. They didn’t tell me because they didn’t want me to feel any more isolated, any more othered than I already did. But I came to them. I picked up on subtleties, noticed behaviors and thought patterns my classmates didn’t seem to possess.

In “Best Burger,” a simple trip back to the restaurant to fetch black garlic immediately snowballs into a ruthlessly relatable ADHD moment for Gene. His blink-and-he’ll-skip-you attention span initiates a very familiar cascade. Proprioception—awareness of your position in any given physical space—immediately goes to shit and a previously undisturbed something spills, breaks, shatters…ad-lib any verb that resonates. That’s precisely what happens to Gene, who must embark on a mission with an increasing number of stages to get his dad the garlic he needs to win the burger competition.

Fast-forward to the episode’s final minutes. Garlic in hand, Gene realizes he must navigate a minefield of distractions to reach the grill-off. He does so, sidestepping food vendors and other tantalizing obstacles so he can stay on task. ADHD/ADD frustrates in a way that’s sometimes extraordinarily difficult to express. Thus, Gene never expresses it. He seems to feign nonchalance while Bob screams at him, but his reaction strongly suggests that this bothers him.

I could go on. All of “The Equestranauts.” Tina’s navigation of virtual interactions in “Ex Machtina.” Tina’s chronic inability to detect sarcasm and pick up on social cues. Her neurodivergence is more evident in the show’s earlier seasons, but few moments across its 14-season run outright contradict her spectrum-y behavior.

Granted, the show doesn’t always get it right. Not 10 minutes into its runtime, the pilot episode cracks a “You’re the worst kind of autistic” joke, briefly invoking rhetoric that society needed to abolish decades ago. Overall, though? Bouchard has created a sitcom that has made the pop culture landscape more welcoming for people like me.

We’ve seen what harmful portrayals can look like. Sia’s maligned attempt at an autistic portrait, 2021’s Music, fails to endear itself because it conflates championing the label with honoring the autistic experience. Essentially, if you can boil down a potential ASD portrayal to a douchey pedant (Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory), a stereotype-laden savant (Dr. Shaun Murphy in The Good Doctor), or a one-note plot device (Rory McKenna from Shane Black’s The Predator), you’ve likely encountered harmful representation. In The Big Bang Theory‘s case, the producers have flatly stated that they did not write Sheldon as autistic, but the fact that Jim Parsons’ portrayal is a fixture in the discourse warrants exploration.

Add the layer that autism remains underdiagnosed in women, and the representation in Bob’s Burgers becomes even more vital. Countless people live with this condition, but because the system is only built to support those with a formal diagnosis, many slip through the cracks.

Bob’s Burgers, whether it means to or not, has become a source of safety, comfort, and validity for so many. That matters, and I hope people continue to include the show in neurodiverse discourse.

Hayden Mears is an autistic writer and advocate who enjoys movies, music, and writing bios in the third person. You can find him on Twitter @hayden_mears.