Even more than two decades after it ended, Seinfeld still boasts a number of perplexing mysteries that persist to this day, like whatever happened to George’s unnamed brother? Where does Kramer get all his money? And why does Jerry’s apartment make less spatial sense than the Overlook Hotel? Most mystifying of all is Kramer’s group of friends who are never actually seen by anyone else, including the Pachinko-playing Corky Ramirez and noted horse meat connoisseur Jay Riemenschneider.
But Kramer’s best, most conspicuously-absent friend is, of course, Bob Sacamano, the New Jerseyan paddle ball heir/condom factory worker/bootleg hat merchant who suffers from brain damage caused by a botched hernia operation (which is apparently a thing that can happen within the world of Seinfeld).
For decades, Seinfeld fans have been forced to endure the nagging torment of not knowing what Bob Sacamano actually looks like. Thankfully, modern technology is here to save us from this cruel fate. Not unlike the doomed residents of the Terminator-verse, a number of people have turned to artificial intelligence for help, and have been creating A.I. art renderings of the “real” Bob Sacamano. Apparently, he looks like this guy:
Reddit/DALL-E
Then again, he might look totally different. Another attempt to use this tech to recreate Bob’s face gave us this image, which looks like the oddly-proportioned love child of George Costanza and the Soup Nazi:
Reddit/Dream AI
Or there’s the possibility that Bob Sacamano looks like George, but with disfigured hands and a healthy dose of Colin Farrell DNA.
And the less said about the “Bob Sacamano” who looks like he was created with the prompt “What if a sleep paralysis demon tried stand-up comedy in the mid-’70s,” the better.
It’s probably not a great sign for A.I. generative art in general that each of these Bob Sacamanos is so dissimilar, not to mention the fact that some of them are just insultingly derivative pastiches of other Seinfeld characters. Also, if people really want to know what Bob Sacamano looks like, apparently there is a real Bob Sacamano. The character was reportedly named after one of Seinfeld writer Larry Charles’ actual friends. But so far, the real Sacamano has yet to go full Kramer by launching a reality bus tour or running a failed mayoral campaign.
Perhaps the true joy of these unseen sitcom characters is that they exist purely in our imaginations. Using janky computer technology to bring them to life nullifies what made them amusing in the first place. Bob Sacamano isn’t a man; he’s a legend, a myth, an idea. Not unlike Niles Crane’s wife Maris from Frasier, he’s way funnier when you can’t visualize him.
And if you thought that A.I. Bob Sacamano was scary, feast your eyes on A.I. Maris Crane:
Reddit/Wonder AI
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