According to a biography written and illustrated by Crumb, "Fred Natural" had been a jazz musician and then faith healer in the 1920s, which would mean that he was "born" in the early years of the 20th century, and by the time of his first encounters (set in the San Francisco area) in the 1960s, was a 60-year-old man. However, in Crumb's illustration of the 1920s faith healer, Fred Natural looks approximately fifty, which would make him one hundred years old in the earliest Flakey Foont encounters. Mr. Natural's own father is featured in a 1973 "Zap" story, where he is represented as a rugged frontier type living in a rundown tenement-style apartment building.