Ned's introduction into the Barney Bunch would be somewhat of a mystery. One of the earliest known mentions of him was in a 2006 Newgrounds Flash by ItchyBarney, where Drew Pickles rants about minor inconveniences he encountered during his day.
After the Barney Bunch was exiled off Newgrounds, Ned would later be a staple character of the group during its early days on YouTube, where he made a few appearances in videos by BooNube and others. While he was added into the Barney Bunch and remained a relatively popular character to use, he never really did anything of note, appearing more as a background extra. He would still be used to this very day, having some spotlight in a few Blood-style videos.
His voice in the Speakonia Community fluctuates between Microsoft Mike and Adult Male 3, but on the Thirteeniverse/United Film & Media Group's The Drew Pickles Show series, he is voiced by the Uberduck AI model of Ned Flanders.
In The Simpsons, Ned is the good-nature, cheery next-door neighbor to the Simpsons and is generally disliked by Homer, though they are sometimes seen as friends. As a devout Christian, he is often seen as one of the most friendliest residents, and is seen as one of the pillars of Springfield. As the show progressed, his religious fanaticism has increased, and over the course prompted the trope "Flanderization" to be coined.
In the Barney Bunch universe, he is made a priest at the Church of Swellness. This is a reference to how he is notoriously evangelical in the actual Simpsons cartoon. That said, he also had a few odd-jobs here and there, one of them being a teacher in the classic video Drew Pickles Becomes a Substitute Teacher, many years before that would become his new occupation in The Simpsons.
