Steve Brodie (December 25, 1861 – January 31, 1901) was an American from Manhattan, New York City, who claimed to have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge on July 23, 1886, and survived.

The supposed jump, of which the veracity was disputed, gave Brodie publicity, a thriving saloon and a career as a performer.

[1] During the 1890s, Brodie was compared to one of the best British champion divers and bridge jumpers of the era, Tommy Burns.

With the consent of his wife,[2] the jump supposedly made by Brodie on July 23, 1886, was from a height of 135 feet (41 m), the same as a 14-story building.

The Times described Brodie as a "newsboy and long-distance pedestrian" who jumped from the bridge to win a $200 bet, equal to $6,800 today.

[6] Another account holds that Moritz Herzber, a liquor dealer, offered to back a saloon for Brodie if he made the jump and lived.

McCullough said that it was commonly believed by skeptics that a dummy was dropped from the bridge, and that Brodie merely swam out from shore and surfaced beside a passing barge.

On November 9, 1888, Brodie jumped from the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge at a height of 222 feet into the Hudson River.

[12] He became an actor capitalizing on his reputation, appearing in the vaudeville musicals Mad Money and On the Bowery, and opened a saloon in Buffalo, New York.

[5] After the jump, Brodie opened a saloon at 114 Bowery near Grand Street, which also became a museum for his bridge-jumping stunt.

[3] Brodie became a popular symbol of the Bowery and appeared personally in musical shows, and his character was used many times in film depictions of old New York.

[18] In the 1946 noir film The Dark Corner (starring Lucille Ball and Mark Stevens), a taxi driver, when asked about William Bendix's gangster character falling to his death, said he "[n]ever saw anyone ever pull a Brodie and bounce."

It's never mentioned in the cartoon whether or not Bugs was trying to sell the old man the Brooklyn Bridge or simply the story of "Brody's" jump.

"[20] It also appears in David Foster Wallace's 1996 novel Infinite Jest: "McDade bitched at the meeting that if he had to watch Nightmare on Elm Street XXII: The Senescence one more time he was going to take a brody off the House's roof.