The Lonely Island Stumbled Upon A Connection Between Doogie Howser And Arnold Schwarzenegger's Total Recall Character, And My Mind Is Blown

I recently began listening to The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast, which has been very entertaining and fulfilling to me as a Saturday Night Live fan. However, the program has also surprised me with some bizarre in-depth pop culture discussions, particularly one that strangely involves both Doogie Howser and Arnold Schwarzenegger's character from Total Recall.

The central focus of the podcast is hearing the comedy trio and late night talk show host reminisce about their days at Studio 8H, particularly their hilarious SNL Digital Shorts as well as other classic sketches. One episode in which they discuss a sketch referencing Total Recall led to fans of the podcast being dubbed the “Quaid Army,” in reference to the hero of the 1990 sci-fi action movie classic. In turn, this would lead to a truly mindblowing cross-reference involving a coming-of-age medical dramedy released in the same era. Let’s get into how this discovery came to be.

Doogie Howser And Arnold Schwarzenegger's Total Recall Character Technically Have The Same Name

In one recent episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast, Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer discuss with the Late Night host an SNL Digital Short from 2009 called “Doogie Howser Theme,” in which host Neil Patrick Harris (who should really return to host SNL again some day) is joined by the cast of the sketch comedy series for a multi-instrumental rendition of the theme song for the show that made him a star in his youth. The bit would be brought up in the following episode when an audio message from the then-absent Meyers points out the following:

WHAT?!!, was my reaction when I heard that out-of-this-world bit of information. Ignoring the fact that “Hauser” is really the last name of Douglas Quaid’s true secret agent identity, Carl (and how it is spelled differently from the last name of the teen TV doctor), the hero from Total Recall and lead character from Doogie Howser, M.D., essentially, have the same name! How bonkers and unusual is something like that? Well, as it turns out, it is not so unusual.

There Are Plenty More Examples Of This

The lead hero in, arguably, Schwarzenegger's best movie, Total Recall, and the title role from Doogie Howser, M.D. (which was later rebooted for Disney+ as Doogie Kealoha, M.D.) could not be more different, which makes their synonymous nature such a surprise. However, this is far from the only time two characters from two entirely different properties shared a name.

For instance, before Sesame Street introduced Bert and Ernie, there was a police officer named Bert (Ward Bond) and a cab driver named Ernie (Frank Faylen) in 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life. There was also a detective named “Shaft” in Robert Altman’s Brewster McCloud from 1970, just a year before the late Richard Roundtree starred in the Blaxploitation classic, Shaft. Finally, my personal favorite example of this is Donald Sutherland’s character in the 1975 drama, The Day of the Locust, who is named Homer Simpson of all things.

So, while movie and TV characters sharing names is not as much of a rarity as you might think, this revelation still has me in a tailspin. Plus, should we take it a sign that Neil Patrick Harris should have played the lead of 2012’s Total Recall? Considering that it's widely regarded as a remake that should have never been made, perhaps that would not have been the best thing for his career.