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The creators of the series acknowledge that Rimmer's surname comes from a snobby prefect with whom they went to school. They claim, however, that only the boy's name was used, and not his personality.
Rimmer is something of a disgreeable person: his character traits include anal-retentiveness, adherence to protocol and rank, cowardice, misogyny, and a severely inflated ego. This, combined with his utter lack of social skills, has made him fairly unpopular with everybody he has ever come into contact with. The only sexual relationship he had while alive lasted twelve minutes, including the time to eat the pizzaFor the computer language, see Pizza programming language . For the Australian television show, see Pizza (Australian television . pepperoni, peppers, olives, and mushrooms. In its basic form, a pizza (occasionally, albeit redundantly, pizza pie is an ove. He did have one true friend in his youth, Porky Roebuck, who betrayed Rimmer in a Space Scouts survival course and spearheaded a plan to eat him. While Rimmer was turning on the spit, Porky "bagsied" his right buttockThe buttocks are the two masses of muscle gluteus maximus sometimes abbreviated to "glute") and fat covering the posterior aspect of the human ( primate) pelvis. They allow humans (primates) to sit upright comfortably without resting weight on their feet,; this experience, naturally, somewhat soured Rimmer on the concept of friendship.
He is fond of warFor other uses of War, see War (disambiguation). War is conflict, between relatively large groups of people, which involves physical force inflicted by the use of weapons. Other terms for war include armed conflict hostilities and police action''. See Lim, at least in principle, and dreams of being a generalGeneral is a military rank, in most nations the highest rank, although some nations have the higher rank of Field Marshal. The title is used by land and sometimes air forces. In the navies of the world, the equivalent rank is Admiral. Its equivalent rank. He admires power and strength, regardless of what the power is used for, and his role models include Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler ( April 20, 1889 April 30, 1945) was the Fuhrer (leader) of the National Socialist German Workers' Party and of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. In that capacity he was Chancellor of Germany, head of government, and head of state, ruling as a, and George Patton. However, he is unlikely ever to pursue his martial dreams beyond the Risk board, because he is an utter coward.
He was born on Io, where he grew up in the shadow of his three older brothers, Frank, Howard, and John. His family life left much to be desired. His father had been rejected from the Space Corps in his youth for being an inch below regulation height, and was fixated on his sons succeeding where he had failed. The boys didn't eat unless they could answer complicated astronavigation questions - Arnold nearly starved - and, to ensure that they would not be held back by insufficient height, stretched them on a rack to make them taller. Religion was little consolation to young Arnold; the family belonged to an obscure fundamentalist sect, the "Seventh Day Advent Hoppists" (a play on Seventh-day Adventists), who followed literally a misprinted edition of the Bible. This led them to spend each Sunday hopping, thanks to a passage reading, "Faith, hop, and charity, and the greatest of these is hop." At the age of 14 Rimmer divorced his parents and left home.
Despite his loathing of his father, he still felt a perverse desire to vicariously live out his dream. He still left school early to join the Space Corps, and devoted his life to his career. Outside of work, his activities were few. He once volunteered for the Good Samaritans , a suicide-prevention helpline. Sadly, five people committed suicide after talking to him - one of whom had dialed the wrong number and only wanted the cricket results - and he quit the same day, which the newspapers dubbed " Lemming Sunday".
His years of ambition finally paid off when he was assigned to the mining ship Red Dwarf as Second Technician, which was not, to his immense pride, the lowest rank on the ship. That honor belonged to Third Technician Dave Lister, his bunkmate, for whom he instantly developed a warm and reciprocated loathing. His deepest ambition has always been to be become an officer, and so he has attempted the exam no less than 13 times without success. Though he tries extremely hard to study and/or cheat, he usually loses his nerve once the exam begins. In one case, he wrote "I am a fish" on the answer sheet four hundred times, did a little dance, and fainted. Still he perseveres. He led a campaign to replace the standard Space Corps salute with an extremely elaborate one of his own design, which failed when absolutely no officers displayed any interest at all. He was invited to the captain's table exactly once in his entire career, and was served cold gazpacho, which he demanded be taken away and brought back hot. He blamed this faux pas for the stagnation of his career (rather than the more obvious culprits, namely his personality and incompetence) and never forgave himself - his last words before he died were "gazpacho soup".
Rimmer died in the first episode of the show. He did a shoddy job repairing the engine drive plate, and he, along with almost the entire Red Dwarf crew, died in the resulting explosion.