Tina Belcher is one of modern animation’s best characters. Behind her deadpan, monotone delivery lies a teenager with a larger-than-life personality in a perpetual state of angst. A trip into the mind of the eldest Belcher child is always a treat. If you love horses, ghosts, butts, and split personalities, then Tina is your kind of lady.
Out of everyone in the Belcher clan, Tina has the best moments. Bob and Linda get their fair share of antics. Gene has dabbled in a love triangle or two. Louise’s no-nonsense attitude certainly makes an impact on everyone she meets. But Tina is the only one living in her own incredible, imaginary world, and she plans to drag every other living person in there with her.
Mathy Cathy
One thing that Tina can do better than everyone else is turn a flaw into an opportunity to be amazing. For instance, take her lack of math skills. Tina is, by Bob’s admission, terrible at math. So when the family learns Tina is Louise’s mathematical study buddy, everyone is rightfully concerned.
But Tina immediately quells any questions about her ability to handle the math problems before her. Instead of cowering in fear, she becomes another person. Enter her math persona, Mathy Cathy, from the mean streets of Fraction Town. With Mathy on the job, there isn’t a safe fraction in sight. Well, that is if someone would just read the problems out loud to Mathy. (Apparently, there aren’t any optometrists in Fraction Town.) Sure, math is tough, but so is she.
I’m Dina
Bob’s Burgers is chock full of self-reflective Tina moments. The girl, nay, the woman is continuously reinventing herself — all in the service of being her best self. When a customer at her family’s brand new food truck calls her Dina by mistake, Tina embraces the moment and becomes Dina.
To drive business to her family’s burger joint on wheels, Dina tells all the hippies at the Lolla-Pa-Foods-A Festival precisely what they want to hear to get a burger into their hands. Grass-fed beef? Sure. Organic? Of course. Does it pair well with an IPA? It goes well with all letters. Only the daring Dina would tell such lies. In the end, it’s Tina who pays the price, while Dina escapes into the confines of her mind, scot-free.
Tina the Hall Monitor
At Wagstaff Elementary, a hall monitor is a revered position for people like asthma-ridden Rudy and our beloved Tina. But only Tina can turn the head hall monitor position into a sendup to gritty cop dramas. Tasked with escorting Zeke to the principal’s office, Tina is asked to put her hall-monitoring code to the test.
Will by-the-books Tina choose to believe Zeke, who seeks to “borrow” the school’s mascot uniform to entertain his grandmother before her surgery? To do so, she has to break all of her hard and fast hall monitor rules and lie to those she trusts. That includes Mr. Frond and Tina’s rule-abiding protege Rudy, who will stop at nothing to prevent her from letting Zeke go. Oh, the drama.
School-Wide Erotic Friend Fiction
In the pantheon of amazing Tina skills, her gift for the written word stands above the rest. As a teenager, Tina is still trying to figure out all the weird, complicated emotions and feelings that she experiences daily. So, of course, her outlet for these new, strange sexual feelings is her erotic friend fiction.
Using her classmates as the main characters of her stories, Tina crafts sordid tales of consensual butt-touching escapades. The butt touches usually fend off zombies, bring light to the world, or exploit her crush Jimmy Jr.
When confronted with the prospect of having her erotic tales revealed to the whole school by Tammy Larsen, Tina takes the initiative and creates an erotic friend fiction, on the fly, involving the entire school. She not only owns up to her creative writing, she also shares it with the world. It’s an empowering moment and a positive step for anyone writing erotic friend fiction.
Tina Dates a Ghost
Only Tina, and maybe Demi Moore, can date a ghost and make it fashionable. While Demi did silly things like making pottery with her specter, Tina full on dated her spirit, also known as Jeff. Ferris wheel rides, carnival portraits, and trips to the butterfly sanctuary make for great ghost dates.
Tina did admit to making Jeff up after Tammy stole his ghostly heart. To get back at that scheming, little fart-laugher for stealing her ghost man, Tina concocts a late night, graveyard prank to teach her friends a lesson about messing with her made up ghost man. Only Tina.
