Barry Kripke

Barry Kripke is a Caltech plasma physicist and an unlikable co-worker of Leonard and Sheldon. He has a case of rhotacism, where he pronounces "r" and "l" as "w" in very much the same way as Elmer Fudd from Looney Tunes. Barry is ostensibly named after philosopher and logician Saul Kripke.

In his first appearance, he pitted his "killer robot" (the Kripke Krippler), originally designed for the Southern California Robot Fighting League Round Robin Invitational, against the guys' robot (M.O.N.T.E.) in an unofficial robot battle at the kinetics lab ("The Killer Robot Instability"). In another occasion, Sheldon attempted to befriend Kripke ("The Friendship Algorithm") in order to gain access to an open science grid computer to carry out research. However, Sheldon's efforts were abandoned when he realized that Kripke had no say in who used the computer. Kripke comes onto Penny the same way Howard does, but deciding the name Penny wasn't hot enough he proceeded to call her 'Woxanne' (Roxanne), much to her annoyance ("The Friendship Algorithm").

He continued to appear in Season 3, where he mocked Sheldon consistently ("The Electric Can Opener Fluctuation"). He injected helium into Sheldon's office while he was doing a radio interview. With encouragement from Leonard and Raj he dumped foam all over Kripke and his office while the president of the university and the board of directors were in the room ("The Vengeance Formulation").

A year later, he was invited to Sheldon and Leonard's apartment by Sheldon during the latter's attempt to establish a new social group, along with Zack Johnson, Stuart, and (Sheldon hopes) LeVar Burton, after Sheldon becomes angry with his friends for eating at Raj's apartment. Zack impresses Barry and Stuart with his tale of a naked woman in a hot tub, and later the three end up singing karaoke, much to Sheldon's dismay ("The Toast Derivation").

Despite being a stereotypical geek, Barry is apparently fairly sporty, as shown in The Friendship Algorithm. In that episode, it was mentioned that he enjoys swimming, some unspecified activity involving horse-back riding, rock-climbing and ventriloquism.

Trivia

 * He likes raffles.