Janitor (Scrubs)

Janitor
File:Neilflynn4x15.jpg The Janitor stroking his fictional pet Leonard "Half Kitten half Monkey".
First appearance	"My First Day"
Created by	Bill Lawrence
Portrayed by	Neil Flynn
In-universe information
Alias	Dr. Ján Ïtor, Lurch, Josh, Ephraim, Klaus, Nigel
Gender	Male
Occupation	Janitor
Family	Janitor's father (played by actor R. Lee Ermey in "My Old Man", potentially not his real father) , Janitor's mother (real and seen in a flashback), Janitor's deaf sister (possibly not real, may be one of his lies), Janitor's adopted brother (possibly not real, may be one of his lies),Timmy (also possibly one of his lies used to annoy,or torture, J.D.)

Janitor is a fictional character, played by actor Neil Flynn in the American sitcom Scrubs.

Profile

In the series' pilot episode, protagonist J.D. sees Janitor fixing a sliding door that was stuck, and suggests someone might have stuck a penny in the door. Janitor immediately assumes that J.D. stuck a penny in the door, and forms a grudge, and has thus spent the rest of the series tormenting J.D. Some of his practical jokes have been on the severe side, such as destroying J.D.'s bike, trapping him in a water tower, and stranding him in the middle of nowhere.

Neil Flynn, who plays Janitor, has said:

"I think it's possible that he doesn't hate J.D... Maybe J.D. is as close to a friend as he has. For all we know, he just has poor social skills. I think that the Janitor constantly misreads J.D.'s motives and assumes he's a rich young punk."

Name

In several episodes, he calls himself "Janitor" (even in his own mind), and in at least two episodes he refers to himself as "Dr. Ján Ïtor." He also uses the online handle Rotinaj ("janitor" spelled backwards). Rotinaj is also the last name of one of the doctors on staff, a fact the Janitor was aware of while J.D. was not.

In "My Conventional Wisdom", an employee at Coffee Bucks is seen finishing a conversation with Janitor. Janitor says, "...and that is how I got my name." The employee responds, "You don't look Asian" (it is worth noting that the Janitor is a pathological liar, and that this story is most probably a lie as well, in keeping with the character). Janitor adopts three personas in the episode "My Friend the Doctor": Klaus, a dim-witted German; Ephraim, a "good-natured stutterer"; and Nigel, a British man. In "My Growing Pains" Janitor comments that his personnel file has his name listed as Capt. Billy Stinkwater, though he implies that it is not his actual name.

In the episode "My Identity Crisis", Janitor challenges J.D. to learn the real names of all 310 employees of the hospital. J.D. loses the bet because nobody knows Janitor's name. Consequently, J.D. has to take over janitorial duties for a day.

It has been speculated that his name was revealed in the episode "My Buddy's Booty", when one of his friends appears to say "Nice one, Tom." However, when listening closely, it is clear that the line is actually "Nice, you tell 'em", which is confirmed by the script. There is also speculation over whether his name is Neil Flynn, after J.D. spots Janitor in The Fugitive and Janitor later confirms that he did in fact play the police officer in the film.

In the season seven episode "My Manhood," the Janitor says that he has been called a number of bad names, including "backstabber," "zebra poacher," and "Josh," "all of them with a certain degree of truth."

According to the first season DVD commentary with Neil Flynn, when Janitor's real name is revealed, the show will be over. Flynn admits that he had not yet picked out a name for his character. Some examples he gave were Ben-Hur and Buffalo Bill. In interviews prior to the start of season 7, series creator Bill Lawrence confirmed that Janitor's name will be revealed during the series finale, although a name has not been decided on and Flynn has "veto power" regarding the name choice, having already exercised it. As of 8 May, 2008 however, the Janitor's name has not been revealed because the show was given an eighth season on ABC.

In Season 6 episode "My Perspective" the Janitor goes on vacation on a ship and sends Ted a video message. In the background of the screen of Ted's Mac, is one of his emails, which is signed with "See you soon, Janitor".

Personality

Janitor's personality, and even his personal history, are hard to piece together given his penchant for lying; In fact, lying may be the only consistent aspect of Janitor's life. At one point, J.D. lists some of the things Janitor has told the hospital staff about his life, and many members of the staff indicate that they agree Janitor made most of it up.

Even though he has a low-level job, Janitor is very intelligent (he speaks Spanish, Korean, Italian, and knows American Sign Language) and is well respected among the hospital staff. When the hospital support staff wants dental coverage, he becomes their spokesman. He used to be the president of the Janitors' Union, but he lost the election to a dwarf named Randall, who was strong enough to bring Janitor to his knees with a handshake ("It's like a mechanical vice!"). Some of the regard that people have for him is a result of their fear of his retaliation for insults; When Dr. Cox pushes the Janitor on the day he lost the Janitors' Union election, the Janitor responds by having Cox tied up and left in a morgue drawer.

He has made several attempts to move up the career ladder. In "My Fifteen Seconds", when the lady who does the hospital's PA announcements was injured, Janitor takes over her job.In another episode, Janitor becomes a security guard. When he finds out that Dr. Kelso is causing a mild lapse in security by routinely using an emergency door, however, he tackles him to prevent it, and Dr. Kelso fires him.

Several episodes show Janitor pretending to be a doctor ("Dr. Ján Ïtor") and he also greatly enjoys one occasion when he is asked to assist during a medical emergency. He does, however, defend his sanitary responsibility in the hospital whenever J.D. insults him about it. In the episode "His Story III" the Janitor says he could have worked as a janitor anywhere, but he chose to work at a hospital because he wanted to make a difference.

Janitor shows a softer side on several occasions. In the episode "His Story III", Janitor spends the day talking to a patient unable to speak or move, just to keep him company. At the end of the day, when Dr. Cox brings the patient a new computer with which to communicate, the patient says "Thank you", then specifies that he was thanking Janitor, not Cox.

Flynn had a small role in The Fugitive. The show's writers took advantage of this, placing Janitor (in his fictional role) as the real actor in the film. J.D. notices this during an episode as he watches the movie. When J.D. confronts Janitor, he admits that it really was him but that "If you tell anyone, I'll kill you".

In one episode, Janitor's father is portrayed as someone who treated him the way a drill instructor would treat a new recruit. His father is played by actor R. Lee Ermey in a parody of Ermey's most famous role as a drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. However, Janitor later tells J.D. (who claims that he'd met Janitor's father) that "You met a man", implying it was not actually his father.

Janitor commonly refers to people by their physical characteristics, like "Nurse Mop-Head." He also referred to Elliot Reid as "Blonde Doctor" and, as of season 4, seems to have romantic feelings for her. At one point he says the reason he likes her is that she is the only doctor in the hospital who treats him like a real person.

Janitor is friends with one of the cafeteria attendants, Troy, who in one episode taunts J.D. when he insinuates that Janitor is stupid. Janitor is also friends with many other support employees, such as "Crazy Eyes" Margot from housekeeping who sold her children, and Brent from parking. Janitor has a custodial closet and, when J.D and Elliot walk in, they see many other janitors hanging out with a big poster of J.D. (labeled "Him") on the wall.

Janitor also appears to have a much greater rapport with animals than with humans. His animal friends can be either alive (like the birds he befriends in "My Big Move" or the raven Sanchez he finds in "My Cabbage") or dead (J.D.'s stuffed dogs Rowdy and Steven, and his squirrel army). In "My Fishbowl", Janitor comes to believe that J.D.'s new goldfish has the ghost of Chief of Medicine Bob Kelso's Vietnam squad leader, Roger Dorsey, residing in it.

Hobbies

Janitor fancies himself an inventor, though usually his inventions are simply combinations of two existing devices, such as his "pen-straw"(which makes soda taste like ink), "knife-wrench"(safe enough to market to children), "drill-fork"(which "drills and forks...mostly forks"), the "Hover-Hoover" ("where suction meets the sky"), a business card printer with built-in paintball gun and a device that mimics the sound of a patient's heart monitor flatlining as well as a truck backing up (the latter is used on people who "are sensitive about their weight", a feature he proceeds to use on Dr. Kelso). When he briefly works at at a coffee shop in one episode, he invents nicotine coffee called a Smokeachino, which gets him promoted to manager.

Janitor is obsessed with taxidermy and at one time carried around a stuffed rabbit named Bingo that doubled as a salt shaker and pepper grinder. He rids the trees by the hospital of squirrels, and maintains a bizarre "Squirrel Army" consisting of stuffed squirrels (each of whom he had given a name) and even holds "meetings" with them where he imagines them talking and even interrupting him. Also in His Story III, he says that he has a "sixth sense" of "knowing when squirrels are afraid". Although he sells them at the end of the episode "My First Kill", in order to get a new stuffed dog, Steven, to replace J.D. and Turk's stuffed dog Rowdy, it is implied that he is still attached to them, even though he says "It is not a healthy habit." But, it was later revealed, he located Rowdy, and used him to blackmail Carla. It was also revealed in "My Number One Doctor" that he likes to stuff animals with other animals. In the third season of the TV series Supernatural, a subtle reference to Scrubs is made when the ghost in the episode "Ghostfacers" is revealed to be a hospital janitor with a fondness for taxidermy.

Janitor also seems fond of practical jokes, even if the outcomes are known only to him. In My Growing Pains he admits to altering his personnel file to change his name to Capt. Billy Stinkwater and his heritage as "half gopher".

Figment of J.D.'s imagination

As revealed in the DVD commentary on several episodes, the Janitor character was initially to be used as a figment of J.D.'s imagination if the show had been canceled during the first season or the first half of the second. This would have been revealed to the audience in the finale.

In the first season the Janitor seems to be acknowledged by other characters; however, these could have been explained as coincidences, or the interacting as being part of J.D.'s imagination. For example, in "My Two Dads", Dr. Kelso seems to acknowledge him, saying "Ammonia is a little strong today" when he walks past him. In "My Bad", Elliot seems to acknowledge him when she throws a coffee cup down next to him and sarcastically says "Sorry!" In "My Own Personal Jesus", a small girl hits him in the genitals after he asks her what she wants for Christmas. In "My Nickname" Janitor gives J.D. the nickname "Scooter", and later Dr. Cox refers to J.D. by that name. In "My Drug Buddy", Elliot comments "I am not saying anything about a girl that you're sleeping with" (referring to Alex Hanson, J.D.'s girlfriend at the time) and Janitor walks by and responds "he's not sleeping with her." In "My Bed Banter and Beyond", J.D. refers to "those two" as he and Elliot both watch Janitor annoy Laverne with a vacuum cleaner, and later in the episode, Janitor says "I like that guy" (Dr. Cox) to J.D. and Elliot and they both appear to look at him. In "My Way or the Highway", Janitor gives advice to several patients (recommending surgery) and one even indicates that Janitor is in the room.

The first time that Janitor interacts with another major character besides J.D. is in the season two episode "My Karma", in which he blackmails J.D. and Turk. From the beginning of Season 2, Flynn joins the rest of the main cast appearing in the show's extended opening credits, but the credits were changed back due to objections by fans to other new elements of the credits. Because of the extended time of the new episodes, the shorter credits were put back in place. Flynn has not been represented in the credits since. However, he was still acknowledged as a main cast member by the producers as of the second season.

Relationship with other characters

Since the start of season two, Janitor has had encounters with most of the other regular characters. He has even had an entire episode ("His Story III") devoted mostly to him.

J.D.

Janitor's initial "war" on J.D. seems to have begun when J.D. suggests in the pilot that somebody jammed a penny into a door that Janitor is trying to fix. Janitor later claims to actually find a penny in the door frame, swearing revenge on J.D (this thinking is also backed up in Janitor's performance in "My Musical"). Another possible reason is revealed in "My Common Enemy", where Janitor reveals to Dr. Cox and Dr. Kelso that he victimizes one person in a group for seemingly no reason, almost spotting J.D. behind him to prove his point. Also, in "My Last Day", after congratulating J.D. on making the transition from intern to resident, he picks one of the new group of interns on their first day.

Janitor sees himself as J.D.'s victim, not the other way around. In the episode "My Brother, My Keeper", J.D. innocently moves a ladder out of the way, causing Janitor to fall to the ground from over a story up. "I don't know why you keep doing these things to me," he says to J.D., prompting J.D. to nervously reply, "I don't know either." In "My Brother, Where Art Thou?", J.D.'s older brother (played by Tom Cavanagh) slams a counter shut, breaking Janitor's hand, and J.D. appears moments later to introduce each other, making Janitor blame J.D.: "Oh I get it, you send him to do your dirty work." In another episode, J.D., in an attempt to make small talk, asks Janitor where he's headed, and Janitor guiltily replies he is going to sneak out on break to see his son's school play. J.D. tries to avoid the situation, but inadvertently worsens it and causes Janitor to miss the play, and later complain to J.D. that he broke his son's heart. In another episode, however, he states that he does not have any children and he would not have any until medicine was advanced enough to make a child with gills.

Janitor has made it his mission to terrorize J.D. on a daily basis, frequently stalking him from a distance. People who are not familiar with Janitor will ask J.D. if he knows the man that follows him almost everywhere he goes. In "My Occurrence", when Dr. Cox's brother-in-law Ben (played by Brendan Fraser) shows J.D. the dozens of candid photographs he's taken of J.D. and the hospital staff over his stay, Janitor can be seen hiding in the background of all of the pictures with J.D. present.

Janitor once outright tells J.D. "I don't jump out and scare you. I follow you around all day. I only got about an hour and a half of work around here, and the rest of the time I track you, like an animal." The degree of malice with which Janitor interacts with J.D. varies in episodes. Other times, he merely engages J.D. in banter intended (and often succeeding) to prove that Janitor is actually smarter or simply "better" than J.D. is. Most times, Janitor outright bullies J.D., wrecking his bike in one episode and, in another, attacking him with a "knifewrench" (one of his inventions, basically a switchblade knife duct taped onto the handle of an adjustable wrench) for no apparent reason.

In "My Case Study", Janitor puts J.D. in line to get a new mop from Kelso because his old one is leaving the floors wet. J.D. goes out of the line and Janitor doesn't receive a new mop. However, J.D. personally buys Janitor a new mop; Janitor then seems to soften up, nearly beginning to cry. Unfortunately, at the end of the episode, J.D. slips on a wet floor, and while he is lying there Janitor stands over him and says "I liked my old one".

In the first episode of Season 6, Janitor is confronted by a patient (played by Flynn in heavy makeup) who says that although he once dreamed of becoming a lawyer, he has wasted his life obsessing over chasing his JD. The Janitor initially considers how his life might have been different if he didn't spend every waking moment trying to get his own J.D., but eventually returns to his old ways by the end of the episode; not only not learning the lesson, but actually turning J.D. into a makeshift American flag with paint (with the assistance of Turk, whom J.D. had played a trick on earlier in the episode).

In rare instances, Janitor supports J.D. In "My Way or the Highway", he spends time convincing patients J.D.'s medical decisions are correct. In "My Words of Wisdom", Janitor helps J.D. and Turk communicate with a deaf patient. In "My Cake", he doesn't harass J.D. for a day out of sympathy for his father's death. In "My Road to Nowhere", though temporarily amnesiac, he stands up for J.D.

In "My Sacrificial Clam", Janitor purchases tickets for the two of them to go to a basketball game. J.D. rejects this gesture as 'sarcasm', so Janitor says "That's the last time I reach out". Neil Flynn has theorized that J.D. is as close a friend as Janitor has.

J.D. has had some success in retaliation against Janitor. In "My Own Personal Hell", J.D. successfully traps the Janitor in a walk-in freezer, with the aid of a wrist-worn walkie-talkie that Turk had thrown away. In "My Lucky Night" and "My Deja Vu, My Deja Vu", J.D. uses the riddle "Two coins add up to 30 cents, and one of them is not a nickel." Janitor fails to uncover the answer, which is 'The other one is a nickel'. The Janitor, however, retaliates later in both episodes by destroying J.D.s bike, as part of a new riddle: "Two men destroyed your bike with a crowbar and a bat. One of them wasn't me".

Turk

Janitor's relationship with Turk, J.D.'s best friend, has included some rivalry and conflict, such as in "My Karma" and "My Malpractical Decision". In those episodes, Turk pulls pranks on Janitor both for fun and in revenge for Janitor's harassment of J.D. In "My Dirty Secret", Janitor begins preying on Turk when J.D. orders him to "pick someone else to annoy"; Janitor responds "I don't pick them, they pick me!" In "My Best Moment", Turk annoys Janitor by (unintentionally) spitting his gum on the floor. Janitor gets back by using gum to write "Gum goes in the trash!" on Turk's windshield. Turk plays a practical joke on Janitor, on behalf of J.D., by putting blue hand prints all over the wall, and then blue paint on the Janitor's hands as Dr. Kelso walks past. Janitor retaliates by giving Turk's new cell phone number to a hypochondriac patient. In "My Half-Acre", Turk and Janitor work together in an air band, The Cool Cats. In "My Best Friend's Baby's Baby and My Baby's Baby", Janitor helps Turk push the ice machine in which his hand is stuck, to a delivery room, but not before slapping him twice in the face, on Carla's orders. Janitor also helps Turk and Dr. Cox get a lightbulb out of a patient's anus. In "My Mirror Image", Janitor and Turk also work together to hang J.D. up like an American flag.

Dr. Kelso

Though the hospital's Chief of Medicine is technically his boss, Janitor is one of the few characters willing to stand up to Dr. Kelso. While Kelso's fear tactics work on the majority of the staff, they are less effective on Janitor. In "My Half-Acre", Turk asks Janitor how he knew that Kelso only wants respect, to which Janitor replies, "Because I know him." In the episode "My Quarantine", he has a "double or nothing" wager with Dr. Kelso about whether he can catapult a cotton ball across the room and into a beaker (racking up a $700 debt in the process, however towards the end he manages to do it again). In the episode "My Choosiest Choice of All", Janitor and Kelso collide when it is discovered that Kelso is disconnecting an alarmed door in order to get to his car quicker. The newly assigned "security guard" Janitor is torn between doing his job by stopping Kelso and the fear that he might lose his new job. Kelso also seems to trust Janitor more than anyone else in the hospital, as evidenced in "My Urologist", when he gives Janitor the keys to his house and asks him to bring him back $400 from his personal savings so Kelso can bail his son out of jail. Janitor spends some of the money on a leather jacket and tells Kelso to prove if he did it. Kelso later trashes Janitor's van in retaliation and tells him to prove it, which Janitor does by showing Kelso a video of Kelso's doing it. As a result, Janitor forces Kelso to tell the entire staff that he fears him and he has awesome 'fearitude'. Also, when Kelso forces Elliot Reid to look "frumpy" like the other female doctors, Janitor deliberately leaves the floor wet to so that Kelso slips and knocks himself unconscious in retaliation, as he "liked how Blonde Doctor looked." While Kelso is at a conference in Arizona in "My Conventional Wisdom", Janitor "pretends" to take over his position as Chief of Medicine. Even though it was supposed to be a farce, Janitor made several key decisions, such as creating a new day care program for children of hospital employees, purchasing new hospital equipment, and cutting Ted Buckland's vacation pay. Kelso sometimes refers to the Janitor as "Jumpsuit." In the second episode of the 7th season, while Turk was asking who would like to help him in his video game, Dr. Kelso and Janitor high five and say "We're friends at night".

Dr. Cox

Early on, Janitor and Cox also lock horns. At one point, the maintenance crew locks Dr. Cox in a morgue drawer on the Janitor's orders; on another, Cox blows up Janitor's van after winning a bet with him over Elliot ("My Best Laid Plans").

The Janitor helps Cox with an odd case in "My Office", his knowledge of lightbulbs allows the doctor to remove one from a patient's rectum. When Dr. Kelso steals the credit, Janitor installs the removed bulb in Kelso's office.

In the episode "My Buddy's Booty", the two become drinking buddies, although Janitor treats him badly in the hospital in order to maintain his 'cool'. In "My Friend With Money", the two even become roommates; personality conflicts drive them apart.

Like most of the other characters, Cox refers to Janitor by several nicknames, most commonly Shrek, Lurch, Sasquatch and Mongo because of his tall height.

Elliot

Janitor's romantic feelings for Elliot, or as he calls her, "Blonde Doctor", causes several embarassing moments over the series. He reveals that he is deeply grateful she treats him nicely.

At one point Janitor even attempted to propose to Elliot, yet as he knelt down on one knee with the ring in hand she walked straight by him.

In the season 6 finale, "My Point of No Return", after Elliot invites Janitor to her wedding, he sets himself and his "Brain Trust" on a mission to make sure that her fiancé, Keith Dudemeister, will be a good husband.

Carla

Janitor refers to Carla as "scary nurse-wife" in "His Story III". Nonetheless, Janitor is not above subjecting Carla to his special brand of torture on certain occasions, such as when he makes her self-conscious by giving a younger nurse the nickname “Young Carla”. When Carla organizes a staff photo in "My Missed Perception" that leaves Janitor out, he ruins it. When things are patched up, he reconvenes the hospital staff using 'fear'. He also gives Carla a passionate hug, but he insists that he had to resist the urge to kill her.

In "My First Kill", Janitor trades his treasured stuffed squirrel army for a stuffed dog in order to help Carla. However, in the later episode "My Scrubs", he confronts her with this information with the intent to blackmail her.

In "My Long Goodbye", the Janitor buys Carla a round of drinks to console her for the loss of Nurse Roberts.

Ted

Janitor seems to like Ted Buckland, Sacred Heart's milquetoast lawyer. At lunch Janitor often sits with Ted, Doug Murphy and The Todd, forming an outcast group (see "Brain Trust", below). In season three he appears to have a rivalry-friendship with Ted based around singles' nights at the Korean church. Later in season three it is revealed that Janitor once had a relationship with Ted's wife. In the Season five episode "My Half-Acre", Ted and Janitor are the founding members of an air band (playing guitar and bass, respectively) known as the "Cool Cats", which later includes Turk on vocals and Lloyd the delivery man on air drums. In another episode, after Dr. Kelso hits Ted with his car, Janitor tries to give Ted legal advice.

Brain Trust

Janitor has on occasion controlled a group of people he calls his brain trust, a group which seems to exist solely to help the Janitor in certain situations. Janitor originally referred to Troy the Cafeteria Worker, Randall, and Crazy-Eyes Margot as his "Brain Trust." When he abandons them in the effort to get Elliot's attention, he replaced them with the new Brain Trust of Ted, Doug and The Todd. Most recently, Lloyd the delivery man has been auditioned as a potential replacement for Doug, but in "My Manhood", it appears Doug has returned.

Dubious claims

Much of Janitor's life isn't known for certain. A well-known (and admitted) liar, he is notorious for telling tall tales about himself; since nobody believes him, it is difficult to determine which stories are true. His dubious claims refer to different aspects of his life:

• In many episodes, starting with "My Mentor" (episode 1.02), he has claimed or suggested that he is married and/or has children. In "My Blind Date" (1.12), he makes a hint that he was thinking about divorce, and he sarcastically asks J.D. for his advice on the subject. In "My First Step" (2.07), he tells J.D. that he has a son who is "trying to overcome his crippling shyness by appearing in his fourth grade class's production of 'Town Without A Turkey'". Later, he says that, because J.D. made him skipping the play, his son Timmy has stopped playing Yahtzee with him and won't eat any more. In "My New Old Friend" (2.12), he explains that he is about to speak at his son's career day (to which he wants to bring a duffel bag with cleaning supplies). In "My Drama Queen" (2.21), he claims to have a wife who only has a "pointer" finger on her right hand and "thumb/pinky" on her left. In "His Story III" (5.19), he implies to be the reason a nurse named Jill is pregnant, although details are withheld. Other statements and developments seem to contradict all of these claims. In "Her Story II" (5.10), for instance, he states that he wants to wait with having kids until they have the technology to allow his son to have gills, and in "My Coffee" (6.03), speaking on behalf of members of the supply staff, he says that "none of us here even have kids" (except for "Crazy-Eyes Margot" who sold hers). Finally, in "My Own Worst Enemy" (7.01), we learn that he has a new girlfriend named Lady.

• He has made lots of dubious claims about his parents, siblings, ancestors and other close relatives. In "My Own American Girl" (3.01), he tells Elliot that he grew up believing his mother was his sister and his father was his brother; he calls them "sister-mom" and "brother-dad". When Dr. Kevin Casey mentions that he has obsessive-compulsive disorder in "My Porcelain God" (3.13), Janitor says his grandfather had the disorder too. He then elaborates by saying that his grandfather used to beat him with a gym sock full of nickels, which of course doesn't have anything to do with OCD. In "My Moment of Un-Truth" (3.17), he tries to make J.D. and Turk believe that he has a twin brother called Roscoe. In "My Rite of Passage" (5.02), he tells J.D. that he has a brother who is a stripper. In "My New Suit" (5.18), he tells J.D. that he has an adopted brother named Clete, whom his parents adopted at the age of 46. Apparently, he and Janitor's father used to beat each other because his mother slept with Clete. In "My Therapeutic Month" (6.10), he says his great-great-great grandfather was Ambrose Burnside, prompting him to grow mutton-chop sideburns. Any genuine biological connection is unknown, as Janitor merely "grew" the mutton chops (they were stuck onto his face with spirit gum) to illustrate a point. In "My Scrubs" (6.13), he claims to be ¼ Inuit, although it is his stepmother who is Inuit. He later claims to be "Haired, half-White, half Inuit Janitor" (as opposed to bald, black doctor). In "My Words of Wisdom" (6.16), he claims to have been taught sign language by his father so he could communicate with his deaf sister. When J.D. later asks if any of that was true, Janitor responds by saying "Most of it", elaborating that his father died before he was born. When J.D. says he had met Janitor's father (in "My Old Man", 1.19), Janitor responds, "You met a man." In "My Princess" (episode 7.11), he claims that his uncle's whole family was hacked to pieces by a madman on a Christmas morning.

• He repeatedly refers to close relations he has had with celebrities. In "My Bright Idea" (5.16), he claims to have slept with Amy Carter. When confronted about this, he clarifies his statement saying, "I didn't sleep with Amy Carter. We did everything but." In "My Words of Wisdom" (6.16), he suggests that he once turned down Marg Helgenberger. He elaborates: "We did not end well. Hell hath no fury like a Helgenberger scorned." In conversation with Ted in "My Five Stages" (5.13), he implies that his knowledge of legal terms derives from the fact that he used to be Ruth Bader Ginsburg's janitor.

• He claims to have gone to Harvard in "My Lucky Night" (3.04). In a similar situation in "My Déjà vu, My Déjà vu" (5.22), he claims to have attended Yale.

• In "My Bright Idea", he appears to be a world-class hurdler. He claims to have been accepted to Grambling. This appears to be another lie until later in the episode he runs 100 meters in 9.98 seconds (to attack J.D. by surprise). This makes him one of the fastest men in the world, and the fastest hurdler (in the 100m Hurdles) of all time (despite the fact that he was apparently a heavy smoker).

• In "My Choosiest Choice of All" (episode 3.19), he tells Carla and Turk that he doesn't "see colors well," making him believe that the uniforms of the security guards at Sacred Heart are blue and green rather than black and grey.

• He failed 8th grade gym because he hated the gym shorts, although this may be untrue because he once came to work in shorts in a planned "Short Day" along with J.D.

• In "My New Coat" (2.05), he claims that he was once in the military, but when asked by J.D. which branch, he quickly retracted the comment, saying "The Janitor Branch".

• In "My Long Goodbye", he claims to have converted to the Norse religion; ("it just made sense"), In "Their Story", however, he replaces a light bulb with a tanning bulb, saying that he was tired of being the only white guy at his mosque; any affiliation with Islam has yet to be confirmed, however, and as such may also be a lie. He is seen at a Korean Church's singles night, and speaks Korean to Ted.

• In "My Friend the Doctor", he acts variously as Nigel (the Brit), Klaus (the 'dimwitted' German), and Ephraim (a 'simple good-natured' stutterer). When JD questions this behaviour, Janitor points out that JD does not know which personalities are genuine and which are false.

• He knows sign language, and at first he said that he was inspired to learn it by a gorilla at the zoo who knew only two hand signs. When asked by J.D. if any of this was true, Janitor replies "someone would have to read that back to me."

• In "My Growing Pains", he claims to hear bells ringing while nobody else does.

• In many episodes, he claims he has special powers. Some of these powers include moving things with his mind, making people fall asleep with verbal commands and genius level knowledge.

Production notes

• Flynn is an improv comedian and, as such, ad-libs many of his lines. Although it is often stated that Flynn ad-libs all of his lines, on several parts of the Season One DVD commentaries and special features both Flynn and series creator Bill Lawrence say that it is generally a mix of ad-libbed lines and the original script, with Flynn usually building on the original lines. Lawrence has also said that the rest of the cast have followed Flynn's lead and that he will occasionally enter the rehearsal room with no idea what scene is taking place due to its lack of resemblance to the original script. Janitor's alter ego, Dr. Ján Ïtor, is a happy consequence of one such moment of inspiration. Flynn originally auditioned for the role of Dr. Cox (which ultimately went to John C. McGinley). However, Lawrence asked Flynn if he would consider another part - the mysterious custodian who makes tormenting J.D. his life's work. Sam Lloyd once commented on Flynn's improvising: "I opened my script up once and it said 'Janitor: Whatever Neil says,' and I just started laughing."
• The only episode that Janitor does not appear in is "My Lucky Day". There were originally scenes in this episode in which the Janitor appears, but they were cut for time and added to "My New Old Friend".
• The role of Janitor was originally devised as a one-time gag in the series' pilot episode, Lawrence admitted: "When we watched the pilot, we knew instantly we had to keep this guy around."
• In flashback scenes of Janitor's childhood, he is played by Brandon Waters.