Here’s The Origin Of The Janitor’s Real Name On ‘Scrubs’

Zach Braff and Donald Faison’s Scrubs rewatch podcast, Fake Doctors, Real Friends, recently wrapped up its first season (before immediately embarking on the second season). Over the course of that first season, we’ve learned a lot about the series and its stars. For instance, until this week, Braff had never seen one of his best friend’s best movies, Donald Faison’s Remember the Titans (Braff has finally corrected that). Over the course of the season, we also learned the heartwarming reason behind John C. McGinley’s performace on the series, that Christa Miller once slept with Friends‘ star Matthew Perry, and that a drunk Donald Faison gave a noogie to NBC President Jeff Zucker during their upfronts.

One person we have not learned much about is Neil Flynn, who played the Janitor on Scrubs for eight seasons, followed by another nine seasons of the ABC sitcom The Middle. The actor, like his Scrubs‘ character, is strangely enigmatic for someone who spent 17 consecutive years as a lead on prime-time television. Actually, the real Neil Flynn may be even more mysterious, because at least we know that the Scrubs‘ character has a wife (Lady), but there’s no such information available on Flynn. In fact, he appeared on the Scrubs‘ rewatch podcast a few weeks ago, and after spending an hour and a half with him, beyond learning that he was on an improv team called Beer Shark Mice with David Koechner that no one from the Scrubs cast ever bothered to see (though it continued to run up until 2015), I frankly don’t know anymore about him.

However, we did learn in the season finale of the podcast the origin of The Janitor’s real name. Some may have heard that a reboot of Clone High is being developed by MTV. The original Clone High came from producer Bill Lawrence — the creator of Scrubs — and showrunners Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the team behind 21 Jump Street, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The LEGO Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse. Before Miller and Lloyd were two of the hottest creatives in Hollywood, they produced Clone High from the basement of the hospital that Scrubs was shot in.

In fact, that is partially why there are so many Scrubs cast members in Clone High, because they could just walk down into the basement to do their voiceover work. Christa Miller plays Cleopatra; Donald Faison is Toots; Zach Braff is Paul Revere; and Sarah Chalke is Marie Antoinette; and John C. McGinley plays Creepy Trucker.

This brings us to the origin of The Janitor’s name. Fans of the series know that The Janitor’s real name is Glenn Matthews and, despite some confusion over whether he was lying about that fact, too, Bill Lawrence has long since confirmed that Glenn Matthews is, in fact, his real name and not a fake name he gave to J.D.. Where did that come from? According to Bill Lawrence himself in the season finale of the Scrubs rewatch podcast, he is named Glenn because it’s the same name of his character in Clone High, where Flynn plays … Glenn the Janitor.

And that’s the story behind The Janitor’s real name. Also, despite Bill Lawrence’s protestations to the contrary, The Janitor decidedly is not a figment of J.D.’s imagination in the first season, as the character interacts with several other characters over the course of the season.

Fake Doctors, Real Friends continues to air twice weekly. No word yet on when the Clone High reboot will air on MTV.

Source: Fake Doctors, Real Friends