Robert Francis "Bobcat" Goldthwait is an American comedian, actor, director and screenwriter. He is known for his black comedy stand-up act, delivered through an energetic stage persona with an unusual raspy and high-pitched voice. He came to prominence with his stand-up specials An Evening with Bobcat Goldthwait—Share the Warmth and Bob Goldthwait—Is He Like That All the Time? and his acting roles, including Zed in the Police Academy franchise and Eliot Loudermilk in Scrooged. Since 2012, he has been a regular panelist on the radio-quiz show, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!.

Police Academy is a series of American comedy films, the first six of which were made in the 1980s and the seventh in 1994. The series opened with Police Academy (1984), which started with the premise that a new mayor had announced a policy requiring the police department to accept all willing recruits. The film followed a group of misfit recruits in their attempts to prove themselves capable of being police officers, and succeeding both in spite of and because of their eccentricities. The main character in the first four films, Carey Mahoney, is a repeat offender forced to join the police academy as punishment. The seventh and to date last installment, Mission to Moscow, was released in 1994. In September 2018, Guttenberg announced that a new Police Academy film was in development.