Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky are the unwitting catalysts for the chronic misunderstandings that form the main action of the play. These incorrigible gossips are always dying to be the first to know some important nugget of information, which they then immediately impart to all and sundry. The information they have—or think they have—in this particular case is hugely important: the new young man in town, Khlestakov, is a government inspector who's come from St. Petersburg to assess the local administration of the town.

It says a lot about the townsfolk that they swallow Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky's gossip without question. Even more significantly, it tells us everything we need to know about the stupidity and gullibility of the town's governor, who proves to be no less suggestible in relation to the gossipy brothers' false information.

In Nikolai Gogol's play The Government Inspector, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky are two town squires, meaning attendants of the towns officials, who innocently bring disaster to their town by mistaking Ivan Aleksandrovich Khlestakov for the expected inspector from St. Petersburg.

It is Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky who first discover that Khlestakov has been staying in the inn for the past two weeks and decide the visitor's stay is important and out of the ordinary enough to inform the town officials. It is due to their announcement of Khlestakov being in town that the mayor and town officials become convinced that Khlestakov is the inspector. Feeling so guilty about their corruption, the mayor and town officials immediately set to work to change Khlestakov's perspective of their town that they don't even stop to think he may not really be the inspector.

Hence, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky unwittingly set in motion Khlestakov's con on the town, a con that took the town for hundreds of rubles. Even Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky felt obliged to pay Khlestakov what they have, which is a total of 65 rubles.