Embraisch’Nj was the first of our “unpopular-minority comedians who pick on themselves” and Gravedust would be posing as the third, so we needed one more to fill out the rule of threes. So, uhhh, minorities in the modern comedy sceeeeene… hmmmm…

There’s no Jesus Christ in Gastonia, no Moses, no Bible, but it has just enough Christianity-like religion that it seems likely there’s something like Judaism: a faith that has a common origin with the mainstream and adheres to its older traditions, but arouses all the more prejudice for that.

My usual technique when writing any character who could come across as a stereotype like this Yiddish-named neurotic is to leap right into them and make them more like me than any others. So yeah, this kind of stage fright is something I experience at least monthly now, and it used to be daily. (Plotzo’s specific monologue, though, borrows a bit from Phil Foglio’s afterword in his Myth Adventures adaptation.)