A: Poor old Steve Blum. He's in over 480 titles, he's the first result for Steve Blum on Google, he's first on the IMDB autocomplete list for Steve Bl--, and he's the only Steve Blum who even has a picture on his IMDB page.
Is this a head shot for voice auditions? Oh, right, publicity photos are a thing.
Yet he gets put behind, say, this miscellaneous crew member from one movie in 1996.
IMDB explains the numerals like so: they try to put somebody further up if they're more famous, started working earlier, worked a more important job, or were added earlier to the database. So what gives? Steve Blum the prolific actor is more famous and has a longer career than those other Steves (although one of them started working earlier than him, playing guitar in The Wiz in 1978, which is pretty cool, too). Is being a starring voice actor less important than playing a bit part, playing an instrument, or doing ADR loop work?
I'm going to make a pretty easy guess here and say no. What appears to have happened is that once upon a time, Steve Blum was Steven Blum, first of his name (though not, say, King of the Andals). Then he was listed as Steven Jay Blum, which was a unique listing. But sometime around 2008, he got added to the big pile of Steve Blum listings on IMDB. Since he was added to that list so late, he was ranked behind a bunch of Steves that had always been Steves, or that had at least switched over sooner to being known as Steve.
Why the change? Well, maybe that's just what he goes by - it's the name on his official site (copyright 2009) and his Twitter feed. Or maybe fans started to recognize him more by that name. He's still been credited as Steven Jay Blum as recently as 2011 and Steven Blum as recently as 2009. But the Steven Jay Blum credits had really started to fall off by around 2007, and the Steve Blum credits had been going strong for a long time by then (lots of them around 2004). Whatever the particular reason, the timing of the IMDB change seems to make sense. So like the saying "You snooze, you lose," IMDB can say "You wait, you're VIII. I mean IX. If 'Steve' you decline, you-- forget it."
