Bart had originally been envisioned as "a much milder, troubled youth given to existential angst who talks to himself", but the character was changed based on Cartwright's voice acting. Groening has credited several different figures with providing inspiration for Bart: Matt Groening's older brother Mark provided much of the motivation for Bart's attitude. Bart was conceived as an extreme version of the typical misbehaving child character, merging all of the extreme traits of characters such as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn into one person. Groening describes Bart as "what would happen if the son of Eddie Haskell "Leave It to Beaver" got his own show". Groening has also said that he found the premise of "Dennis the Menace" disappointing and was inspired to create a character who was actually a menace.