Simon Bar Sinister

Dr. Simon Bar Sinister is the main antagonist in the Underdog cartoon show. Simon was the wickedest man in the world, and it was his ambition to rule the world, but each time, Underdog defeated him.

Voiced by Allen Swift, and based on the voice and looks of Lionel Barrymore, Simon appeared to be only two feet tall.

Simon's most famous saying was, "Simon says!" His henchman was Cad Lackey, who, though generally dull-witted, was occasionally capable of pointing out flaws in his boss's plans. Contrary to the mad scientist stereotype, Simon actually paid attention to Cad's suggestions.

In the 2007 live-action film adaptation, he is portrayed by Peter Dinklage. In the movie, Bar Sinister was originally a geneticist for a company in Capital City, using dogs as test subjects for the betterment of mankind. But after being laughed at by the mayor after attempting to have his research expanded to law enforcement, Bar Sinister began his work to create a super-power formula to get revenge and he took away Underdog's superpowers and put them in little blue pills and fed them to German shepherds and was sent to jail for his crimes. However, the incident resulted in the destruction of his lab that not only caused scarring of his forehead, the loss of some of his hair, and a limp in his right leg, but created Underdog.

"Bar Sinister" is a macaronic reference to a heraldic mark, called barre sinister in French and bend sinister in English. The bend sinister is a line from the top right to the bottom left, and its diminutive form, correctly called a baton sinister, denotes illegitimacy. Despite its heraldic inaccuracy, the term bar sinister has been used in literary contexts to denote bastardy since the early 19th century. The name "Simon" is of Hebrew origin, and the word "bar" in Hebrew typically denoted a patronymic surname (see, for example, Simon bar Jonah, the birth name of Saint Peter). Thus, Simon bar Sinister's name is a doubly macaronic play on words.

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