Dr. Nick Riviera

“	Hi Everybody!	„
	~ -Dr. Nick Riviera's catchphrase

“	Hi Dr. Nick!	„
	~ Everyone's response.

Dr. Nick Riviera is a quack medical doctor and one of the minor characters on The Simpsons.

Biography

Riviera is of Hispanic descent, and in the European Spanish dub he is specifically given an Argentinian accent. He has a medical degree from Hollywood Upstairs Medical College (where he apparently spent much of his time using his ability to acquire prescription drugs to impress a succession of attractive women back in the 1970s), and a great deal of luck. Thus far, none of the patients he has swindled, maimed, or given useless or dangerous medical advice seems to have sued him (although a few have come after him in person. For example, a large angry man once grabbed him, and Nick says "Well if it isn't my old friend Mr. McGregg — with a leg for an arm and an arm for a leg"; the man literally has an arm where a leg should be and a leg where an arm should be.

Dr. Nick is a stereotypical shady, immoral doctor who performs medical procedures for money with little or no regard for medical ethics, or their patients' well-being. He was once seen digging up corpses in the graveyard for body parts, presumably to use in operations on patients . Although his competence and ethics are frequently called into question, he does have some decent reasoning skills, as he ended up discovering that Mr. Burns' claims of "Homer Simpson" after awakening were just a variation of his vegetative state and not actually him identifying his killer. He is seen taking a citizenship test, implying he is not a citizen of the United States. Some of his exclamations hint that he may be Argentinian, though there is no direct evidence of this. In Homer's Triple Bypass, he watches a video on how to perform open-heart surgery and is disgusted by all the blood, implying that he may be haemophobic.

His degrees read "Mayo Clinic Correspondence School", "Club Med School", "Female Body Inspector" and "I went to medical school for four years and all I got was this lousy diploma". He frequently appears on infomercials, pitching all sorts of bizarre medical offers, and has often turned his operations into TV spectacles. He is also shown as an inventor/huckster (in the style of Ron Popeil) on the television show I Can't Believe They Invented It! His "Walk-In Clinic" is based at; 44 Bow Street. Its phone number is 555-NICK. He can also be called at 1-600-DOCTORB ("The B is for 'Bargain'").

He has operated on the Simpson family a couple of times (when they cannot afford Doctor Hibbert) notably when Homer needed a heart bypass. Lisa Simpson attended the live audience for the operation and saved the day by guiding the obviously clueless Dr. Riviera through the operation. He also worked with Doctor Hibbert as anesthesiologist during Bart's appendectomy but was of little help as he first failed to anesthetize Bart and subsequently passed out from the leaking gas.

During Trappuccino in the Simpsons Movie Dr. Riviera was impaled by a large shard of glass and says "Bye everybody!" and then "faints," making him one of the few casualties of the Trappuccino incident.