E = mcᴺᴱᴹᴼ
A delightful fact about the world's favorite clownfish.
Hi, I’m Joey! Welcome to Fun Fact Friyay, the newsletter for curious people. Get out your snorkels and scuba gear because we’re headed back underwater.
Marlin, Nemo’s Dad in Finding Nemo, is voiced by Albert Einstein.
Some of my favorite types of fun facts are what I call “misleading truths.” They’re still technically accurate, but they’re real head-scratchers because they seem to make no sense at all.
If you were to tell this fact to someone, they’d look at you like you were sillier than the classic Albert Einstein photo, seen here on a wall in Istanbul, Turkey:
It’s even more impressive when you consider that Albert Einstein died in 1955, and Finding Nemo was released in 2003.
But there’s another Albert Einstein, who was born on July 22, 1947. He wasn’t even eight years old when the scholarly Einstein passed away.
Professionally, we know the younger Albert Einstein as Albert Brooks. The actor’s father, Harry Einstein, was a comedian and, thus, a bit of a jokester. He and his wife, actress Thelma Leeds, thought it would be funny to name their youngest son Albert.
Albert disagreed, however, and by the time he was 19, he was known professionally to Albert Brooks. He joked that the real Albert Einstein had changed his name to sound more intelligent.
If you’re not a Finding Nemo fan, you can shape this fun fact more to your liking. You could say that, for example, Hank Scorpio from The Simpsons is voiced by Albert Einstein. Or Aaron Altman from Broadcast News was played by Albert Einstein. Or you could go all the way back to the first acting credit Brooks ever received, as Mickey Barnes / Kip Chogi on the fairly short-lived Hot Wheels cartoon.
Additionally, if you hang around a lot of Curb Your Enthusiasm obsessive types, you can point them to the first episode of Season 11 (“The Five-Foot Fence”) and say, “Hey, that guy they’re doing the living funeral for, that’s Marty Funkhouser’s brother in real life!”
Beyond his run on Curb, Bob Einstein is probably most well-known for his Super Dave Osborne character. And he was the older brother of Albert.
Harry and Thelma had another son named Clifford, who’s the middle brother between Bob and Albert. Alas, Clifford has no ties to big red dogs, as far as I can tell.
P.S. Did you know I have a book? And that it’s currently free for Kindle Unlimited readers? Heck yeah, it is! You can check it out here.