TBBT’s Raj Got His Signature Trait From Sheldon (And By Complete Accident)

The Big Bang Theory may have spent years highlighting Sheldon Cooper’s quirkiness, but to say that he was the only one with quite bizarre habits and personal traits would be unfair. Though all of them seemed pretty normal compared to Sheldon, the latter’s best friends Leonard, Howard and Raj each had something to surprise the show’s viewers with.

Every one of them eventually received a proper character development and downgraded all that weirdness, yet one of the lead characters was initially supposed to have no zest at all since it was meant to belong to Sheldon.

Several years after The Big Bang Theory ended its run back in 2019, the sitcom’s creators Bill Prady and Chuck Lorre got back together to celebrate 15 years since the show was launched and unveiled some new details about the whole production process.

Talking about Sheldon Cooper, the creators suddenly brought his friend Raj Koothrappali up, mentioning the latter’s unique and quite unhealthy trait. The Big Bang Theory’s long-standing fans are well aware of Raj’s past inability to talk to women unless he drinks at least a bit of alcohol, the character’s biggest issue that was somehow resolved by Penny in later seasons.

According to Prady, he came up with such an idea for one of the characters when remembered that he’d worked with “a computer programmer, that was actually like that” back in the 1980s. Ironically, the machine’s peculiar behavior was initially supposed to be adapted by Sheldon.

Prady revealed that this was kinda decided since the very start of the production as “that attribute actually belonged to the fellow who had most of Sheldon’s attributes as well. Somehow, in our discussions, that moved out of the Sheldon character and into Raj”.

Continuing the story, Lorre added that back in the day they’d managed to create two completely different characters based on one guy from real life.

However surprising it may sound, Raj’s immediate silence mode when it comes to a woman being in the same room with him isn’t actually something that the creators just concocted drawing inspiration from a computer’s odd behavior.

According to Prady, the character’s problem is pretty common and can be considered “selective mutism” which causes an extreme anxiety for a person surrounded by women or any other social group, resulting in their inability to talk properly.