Has Bellisario or anyone else connected with the creation of QL ever explained how he came to choose the names of Sam Beckett and his brother Tom? They both have real-life counterparts. Samuel Beckett was a playwright whose plays are famous for their sense of the absurd and despair in the absence of God. Thomas Becket--sometimes called Thomas a Becket--was a martyr of the Catholic and the Anglican church. Is there some sort of inside joke whereby the pessimistic playwright is turned into a creator of happy endings and the martyr doesn't have to die after all?