Who is the bus driver on The Simpsons? Character details revealed in depth 

American actor and comedian Harry Shearer has voiced multiple characters on the famous American animated sitcom The Simpsons.

From the titular family's goody-goody Christian neighbor, Ned Flanders, to the school administrator, Principal Seymour Skinner, but the bus driver is surely one of the most eccentric Simpsons' characters to date.

Otto Sylvester Mann, the chaotic school bus driver of Springfield Elementary, is one of the most entertaining recurring characters on the sitcom, voiced to perfection by Shearer.

Developed as a caricature of the 80s junkie lifestyle, Otto Mann is a pot-smoking, rock music and comic books-loving bus driver, who is unfit for driving. Despite crashing the school bus fifteen times, he somehow managed to remain a bus driver in The Simpsons.

More on this in our story.

Who is the bus driver on The Simpsons?

In addition to its main ensemble cast, The Simpsons is also known for its recurring characters, and the bus driver Otto Mann is surely the craziest among the lot.

Otto Mann was modeled after Wallace Wolodarsky, one of the writers on the sitcom's first four seasons, along with Jay Kogen. The character was inspired by Wolodarsky's formative years, where he sported long black hair, along with athletic shorts and a baseball cap. As one of the writers on The Simpsons, Wolodarsky eventually became the inspiration for one of the show's most memorable characters.

Otto Mann is a highly chaotic character who, despite being a bus driver, is known for his frequent vehicular crashes and pathetic driving skills. The character does not seem to have any respect for the rules of the road and often drives a bus full of school children under the influence of marijuana.

Otto is also seen dreaming and hallucinating on various occasions, sometimes even while driving. In one of the episodes of The Simpsons, Otto confided to Bart to having seen a dream about winning an award for the district's safest bus driver. This quickly turned into a gag after it was revealed that Otto saw this dream while driving, causing another crash into an auto-wrecking yard.

His reckless driving shenanigans came to a head after Principal Skinner and the school authorities discovered that Otto had crashed the school bus a total of fifteen times in The Simpsons. While he maintained that there were no fatalities, he was dismissed from the job after Principal Skinner realised that Otto does not possess a driver's license.

The Simpsons: Otto Mann is a party animal and a Metallica fan

In addition to his chaotic identity as a bus driver, Otto Mann was conceived by Shearer himself and modeled after heavy metal music aficionados who mostly do drugs and party like an animal, while maintaining a low labor job. While Otto has caused many bus crashes in the sitcom, most of them are attributed to his daydreams of starting his own rock band, inspired by Metallica.

A fan of the '80s junkie lifestyle, Otto is also equipped with guitar-playing, which was the only activity he did in high school. In addition to Metallica, some of Otto's other favorite songs include Iron Man by Black Sabbath, Frankenstein by The Edgar Winter Group, Freebird by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Every Rose Has Its Thorn by Poison.

While Otto has had a few appearances in The Simpsons, he is one of the most eccentric characters, who can easily be molded in any episode and creates the funniest gags with his pot-smoking and bus-crashing personality.

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