George Costanza - Pseudonyms

Pseudonyms

"Art Vandelay" redirects here. For unreleased Short Stack album, see Art Vandelay (album).

• Art Vandelay first appears in the episode "The Stake Out", in which George and Jerry need an excuse to give to a woman as to why they are waiting in the lobby of the office building where she worked. Their excuse is that they were meeting Art Vandelay, an importer-exporter who works in the same building, for lunch. In one instance ("The Boyfriend"), George tells the unemployment office he is close to getting a job at "Vandelay Industries," a latex manufacturer. The name is also used as a fake boyfriend of Elaine. Here, Art is an importer/exporter and used as a cover story for when George is going on a date with Marisa Tomei, claiming that George and Elaine are meeting to discuss a problem with her boyfriend so that Susan does not think that George is having an affair ("The Cadillac"). George also uses the pseudonym when interviewing for a job with Elaine's boss in "The Red Dot". When asked which authors he reads, the answer is "Art Vandelay" from New York. In "The Serenity Now", George calls up fake customers, one of whom is "Mr. Vandelay", pretending to get computer orders. In "The Bizarro Jerry", George goes to an office and asks for Mr. Vandelay as part of a setup to approach an attractive secretary. Finally, in "The Puerto Rican Day", George pretends to be Vandelay (along with Jerry as Kel Varnsen and Kramer as Pennypacker) to try to sneak into an open house to watch a Mets game that they had left because the team was getting blown out. In the episode "The Finale", the name of the presiding judge is actually Arthur Vandelay, much to George's amazement. George says he thinks it is "good luck" that that is the judge's name.
• During the seventh season ("The Pool Guy"), George reveals he has two distinct personas, Relationship George and Independent George. Relationship George, he explains, is the conscientious personality he feels forced to adopt in the presence of his fiancée, Susan. Independent George, on the other hand, is the "real" George. Independent George is composed of a subset of personalities, such as Movie George, Coffee Shop George, Liar George, and Bawdy George. Independent George is the George that Jerry knows and grew up with. George worries that if Susan starts socializing with the group, his two worlds will irrevocably collide, resulting in Relationship George "killing" Independent George. Paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln, he declares, "A George divided against itself cannot stand!"
• At one point ("The Maid"), George wants to be known as T-Bone, but his co-workers at Kruger Industrial Smoothing nickname him Koko because of the way he had flailed his arms when demanding the nickname "T-Bone" back from a coworker. George deliberately hires a woman named Coco to work there, only to be nicknamed Gammy instead.
• Biff Loman a character from Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" appears for a reference to George in the episode "The Subway". George is on the way to a job interview and Jerry tells him not to whistle in the elevator like Biff did in the book. After a series of events throughout the episode George arrives at the coffee shop wearing only a bed sheet in a toga like fashion, to which Jerry says, "What happened, Biff? Did you whistle on the elevator?" George is also referred to as Biff in "The Boyfriend" by the daughter of his unemployment agent and both "The Pez Dispenser" and "The Visa" by Jerry.