THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY: BISHOP'S PERE

In "The Bishop's Revival", the latest episode of 'Fringe', we learned that Walter Bishop's father was Dr. Robert Bischoff, who worked secretly with the Allies to smuggle out the scientific breakthroughs created by the Nazis. Although official records showed Dr. Bischoff as having come to America in 1933, in fact he didn't come to America until 1943 - before the Nazis could figure out that he was a spy.

Near the end of the episode, we got to see a picture of Dr. Robert Bischoff with the other Nazi scientists; it looks to have been taken at some function: (That's Dr. Bischoff just above Peter Bishop's thumb.)

I never got around to writing it up, but I always had a candidate for the actor to play Dr. Bishop's father:

JOSEPH COTTEN & JOHN NOBLE

Of course, he's been dead for some years now. But that hasn't stopped TV producers in the past from claiming that a deceased actor could be the parent of another actor's character. This happened in the 2007 'Boston Legal' episode "Son Of The Defender", for example. Footage of Ralph Bellamy and William Shatner from the pilot episode of 'The Defenders' (shown on 'Studio One' as "The Defender") was used as flashbacks to be of Denny Crane and his father.
So even though the man in that blurry picture doesn't really look like Joseph Cotten, we could claim that by the time he had aged a few more decades in America, he became a viable candidate to become a recastaway.....

BCnU!