Yeah, it's fundamental to him. He can't distinguish between fiction and reality on a basic level, he doesn't understand that the internal rules of movies and TV shows are just as made up as the characters.
My theory is that he's basically a sociopath in that he is incapable of even imagining other people's viewpoints and thoughts. He can't walk a mile in someone else's shoes, not even an inch (and it's not just because the beetus is about to claim his feet), and the same stunted part of his brain led him to believe, as a kid parked in front of a TV without friends, that movies are fundamentally real. He can't understand motivations that are more complex than the basic black/white moralities of the movies, and so that's all he ever applies. It all relates back to his childhood and what he saw on the telly. He wasn't a bullied nerd per se, but the bullied nerds on TV were the closest he could relate to, and since the bullied nerds always won in the end and got the hot girl and whatnot, that's what he thought, no, KNEW would happen. This whole "I deserve good things happening to me" mentality manifested in him being a basic Ayn Rand fanboy pre-GG, but the creation of the online-SJW-in-crowd caused him to abandon that mindset. Well, he didn't abandon that mindset actually, but put up a front of "Can someone PLEASE think of the BIPOCs and troons", underneath it's the same "I deserve to win in the end because I was the bullied nerd" thing as before.
Trump winning really broke his mind because it was IMPOSSIBLE from his point of view. It's like a Lovecraft character looking at a Shoggoth to him, it goes completely against his reality and drives him insane. And it's only going to get worse in November.
Using movie scenes, he's like Hitler in "Downfall" after learning that Steiner's attack didn't come through, except Bob doesn't give up because he still believes Steiner's attack is coming.