Malevolent Agency of Destruction

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Another thing I decided to do in honor of the 30th anniversary of Inspector Gadget, one of the most well-known and popular cartoons ever made.

This picture focuses on what may have been a major part of the show's appeal: The main antagonist Dr. Claw and his endless amount of agents that make up the international crime organization known as M.A.D.

Since this is in honor of an anniversary, I will give a summary of every incarnation of Dr. Claw and M.A.D.

The original 1983 animated series- Dr. Claw was voiced in the original show by Frank Welker, who used a deep and menacing voice similar to the one he used for Soundwave in the Generation-1 Transformers cartoon, only without the audio effects. Dr. Claw was never actually shown. All we ever saw of him were his arms and hands (though Gadget clearly saw his face in the 1992 Christmas special when Claw impersonated Santa Claus). He also had a pet cat known as M.A.D. Cat, who would always meow whenever Claw laughed and repeatedly bore the brunt of his master when he was enraged by the incompetence of his agents. It was never directly stated whether M.A.D. Cat was male or female, but I would say the cat is more likely male. It's just too hard for me to think of M.A.D. Cat as a girl.

Even though we never saw what Claw actually looked like in the cartoon, the much-reviled second season did shed some light on his past. He mentions in the episode "Gadget's Clean Sweep" that he desired the Crown Jewels since he was a child, to which the M.A.D. agent Thelma Botkin humorously replies by asking "You were a child?" In addition, the last three episodes of the original cartoon introduced us to Dr. Claw's mentor, a thin old man known as Les Renowned, who owns a retirement home for criminals and used it to help his former disciple get Gadget by recruiting a wheelchair-bound pastiche of Marlon Brando's character in The Godfather, a pair of old ladies named Sadie and Viola (one of them is apparently senile and hard of hearing, since she repeatedly mishears her partner and Gadget and at one point addresses Gadget as Gizmo), and lastly, a gangster named Spuds Malone, who had a machine gun called the Red Rose that used potatoes to fire a pungent gas.

The M.A.D. Agents themselves were rather diverse. Most of the time, we saw a few generic M.A.D. Agents that all wore black suits with the word "M.A.D." on them. Well, generic might not be the right word since they all had distinguishable appearances. Character designer Brian LeMay even gave the recurring generic agents names, which were even used in the scripts, but never on the actual show. These very agents are in this picture. In the order of their appearance in this picture, their names are Fred, Dick, Pops, Squirt, Jarvis, Lenny, Slick, and Bruce.

Because they always turned up after being arrested, there are a few possibilities on how they keep coming back: A, Claw keeps on busting them out of jail offscreen, B, Claw likes to clone his agents, or C, many of M.A.D.'s agents are lookalikes, which would explain why they don't always have the same voice.

In addition to these agents, the majority of the show's episodes had a villain-of-the-week M.A.D. Agent who was distinguishable from the others not only in appearance, but also because he or she usually had a name and a specific modus operandi. The villain-of-the-week M.A.D. Agents were one of the many things I liked about Inspector Gadget. My favorite non-generic M.A.D. Agents include master of disguise Presto Change-O from "The Infiltration", speedy thief The Rat from "M.A.D. Trap", the seductive Lana Lamour from "Movie Set", and the Quiz Master from the episode of the same name.

There were occasional variations in how the more distinguishable agents were treated. Some episodes had more than one villain of the week, such as Dr. Elmo Focus and the M.A.D. Trapper in "Gone Went the Wind". The second season even had three-episode story arcs for most of the season that had the same M.A.D. Agent in each episode, the agent in question avoiding arrest every time. The agents were stage magicians The Great Wambini and The Lesser Wambini, time-traveler Thelma Botkin, sinister scientist Dr. Spectrum, the loony Professor Duumkopft, and twin astronauts Dr. Null and Dr. Void. The only M.A.D. Agents in the second season other than the generic ones that got arrested were The Ninja in "The Capeman Cometh" and Dr. Noodleman in "Gadget's Gadgets".

The elderly villains in the last three episodes did get arrested, but they technically weren't M.A.D. Agents.

It was never revealed in the series what M.A.D. stood for, or even if it was an acronym, but some merchandise says it stands for Mean And Dirty. Other merchandise claims that it stands for Malevolent Agency of Destruction, which I think would be a more likely candidate since it sounds way cooler.

Gadget Boy and Heather-

Gadget Boy and Heather was a short-lived and widely-panned spinoff of the original cartoon that aired in the mid-90's. It was about a young kid detective who was very much what Gadget would have been like if he was a kid, he even had his own gadgets. There have even been a few fans, me included, who speculated Gadget Boy to be Inspector Gadget in his youth, despite the amount of inconsistencies in continuity this belief would cause, the fact that advertisements claimed him to be Gadget's nephew, and Gadget Boy's creator claiming that he is programmed with the personality of an adult detective suggesting that he is a juvenile copy of the Inspector rather than being the Inspector as a child.

Of course, any explanation on how Gadget Boy and Inspector Gadget are related can either be plausible or flat-out nonsensical considering that continuity was not one of Gadget Boy and Heather's strong points. It varied in every episode whether Gadget Boy was a cyborg and his mechanical dog G-9 was a robot, Gadget Boy was the robot and G-9 was the cyborg, or if both were robots or cyborgs.

The main characters of the show were Gadget Boy, Agent Heather, G-9, Chief Strombolli, and Myron Dabble. Aside from Gadget Boy's obvious connection with Inspector Gadget, Agent Heather was basically Penny as a red-haired adult, G-9 was a shape-changing robotic version of Brain, and Chief Strombolli was similar to Chief Quimby except he was Italian and way more accident-prone. Even when Gadget Boy wasn't bugging him, Strombolli just couldn't go a minute without getting injured.

Myron Dabble was not based on any specific Inspector Gadget character, but the Swiss-accent inventor being the one who created Gadget Boy does make him similar to Professor Von Slickstein, a minor character from the original cartoon who was said to be responsible for giving Inspector Gadget his gadgets.

Neither Dr. Claw nor M.A.D. ever appeared in Gadget Boy and Heather, but the show did have some moderately similar substitutes.

The main villain of the show was Spydra, a six-armed woman in a pink, web-lined suit who was ultra-vain, loved insulting her minions with alliterations, and hid her face behind a mask. Much like Dr. Claw, we never really saw what Spydra's face looked like, but the reason why she hides her face is different. For Dr. Claw, he most likely hid his face because he didn't want anyone to identify him. In Spydra's case, her face was hidden because it was hideous enough to turn whoever saw it into stone. On the bright side, the effects never seem to be permanent. While we never saw her face, we did get a hint at what it looked like in the episode "Gadget Boy and the Great Race". In a scene where she is turned around while turning civilians to stone, we can see that she has pale skin and is bald.

Spydra did not run an international crime syndicate, but she did have three minions: Boris, Mulch, and Hummus. Boris was Spydra's pet vulture, who was very different from M.A.D. Cat in that he was able to speak and Spydra rarely treated him nicely. Boris also spoke in a Russian accent, was extremely gluttonous, tended to be very sarcastic, and was also a bit of a manchild. Mulch and Hummus were a pair of nearly identical twins (Hummus has a larger bottom lip and a slightly bigger nose, plus the two have very different voices) who were similar in design to some of the M.A.D. Agents from the original show. Their competence varied between being dangerously competent to being so stupid that defeating them is laughably easy.

Many people hated this Gadget cartoon. In my opinion, it is very underappreciated. I have seen every episode two or three times, and it always makes me laugh. I do understand some of the hate. For instance, the art style does look a little bit unappealing, though I'm the kind of person who doesn't give a damn about the art style. Even though it definitely wasn't Inspector Gadget, it did try its best to capture the mood and tone of the old show. Special mention also goes to the second season, Gadget Boy's Adventures in History (where Gadget Boy, Agent Heather, and G-9 foiled Spydra's attempts at using time travel to alter history), for being historically accurate (safe for a joking reference to the Marie Antoinette "let them eat cake" misconception) and having a few episodes that had surprisingly improved animation as well as more complex plots. The Christmas episode was also rather done well.

The Live-action Disney movies-

Depending on who you ask, the Disney films are either the worst incarnation of Inspector Gadget ever or a very creative reimagining of everyone's favorite bumbling bionic cop. I have seen both. While I do geniunely like them, I, too, am among the fans who are P.O.ed about the contradictions with what is established in the cartoon.

The most notable differences with the cartoon are that Gadget's real name is given as John Brown (the original cartoon strongly implied that Gadget was in fact the Inspector's real last name), Brain is portrayed as a normal dog in contrast to being a bipedal master of disguise who can sort of talk, Gadget's hometown is Riverton, Ohio instead of Metro City, Dr. Claw is notably different, the Gadgetmobile can talk and never turns into the Gadget Van, Chief Quimby never uses exploding messages, and M.A.D does not exist. The contradictions prove that the live-action films are not canon to the cartoon and that they are a completely different continuity entirely.

In this continuity, Dr. Claw's true identity is Sanford Scolex, a flamboyant corporate executive who's face is almost never hidden. The only time it is hidden is in his first scene, where only his hands are visible as an homage to the original cartoon. Rupert Everett even makes an effort to emulate the voice Frank Welker used! After that, Scolex arranges a break-in at a lab where Brenda Bradford and her father Artemus are working on the Gadget Project, a project to create an unstoppable cyborg policeman.

Scolex steals a robotic foot and also kills Artemus Bradford by disintegrating him. John Brown, who at this point was a clumsy security guard who dreamed of one day becoming a police officer, follows Scolex, but the cruel CEO of Scolex Industries crashes Brown's car and leaves him for dead with an explosive cigar. The explosion horribly injures John Brown, but also causes a bowling ball to get into Scolex's car and crush his hand.

Bradford saves Brown's life by rebuilding him as the cyborg Inspector Gadget, whereas Scolex has a robotic claw made to replace his hand. Gadget and Claw fight one another and Claw even makes an evil copy called Robo-Gadget, but Gadget prevails and even arrests Claw, in contrast to the animated Dr. Claw always getting away and promising that he will get Gadget "next time".

One of the major complaints about the first film was that it was darker than the original cartoon, as shown when Artemus Bradford got killed and Claw even left Gadget for dead at one point. While M.A.D. clearly did not exist, Claw did have two henchmen: Sykes and Kramer. Sykes was a fat thug who ended up changing his ways when Penny talked to him. Kramer, on the other hand, was an eccentric scientist who gave Scolex his claw and even was the one who built Robo-Gadget using the info he could get from the stolen robotic foot. Unlike Sykes, Kramer pretty much disappears at the end of the film and we have no idea what happens to him, though we could assume that he was arrested like Claw.

The sequel, despite being more faithful to the original cartoon (Gadget is more bumbling, his gadgets constantly malfunction, Claw's face at least being partially hidden, and Claw escaping in the end and promising to get Gadget next time), tends to have even more negative reception. The main plot was that ever since Claw was sent to jail, crime in Riverton had become very scarce, leading to Gadget at one point mistakenly arresting Quimby's mother, who proceeds to kick the asses of her cellmates.

Claw eventually gets out of jail and gets two new minions: Spitz and McKibble. Gadget tries to get on the case, but is facing replacement when he learns that a robotic, female, and more competent version of him named G2 is created. G2 believes Gadget to be inferior to her, but starts to accept him as an ally and lover when she also starts to become inefficient in crime-fighting. Claw also gets three more henchmen, the latter two of which were also M.A.D. Agents from the original animated series: Squint, Jungle Bob, and The Ninja.

Gadget and G2 foil Dr. Claw's plan of freezing time in Riverton, but he escapes and vows revenge.

I didn't mind the sequel much, except for Quimby missing his mustache and acting like a big jerk. Sequels are bound to flop when hardly any of the actors from the previous film return.

Inspector Gadget's Field Trip-

An amusing yet forgettable edutainment show in the late 90's that had an animated Inspector Gadget travel to live-action footage of different countries and give lectures about them, as well as a few jokes, such as mentioning an ancestor who worked as a prison guard AND the prison alarm system and turning into Gadget Boy after drinking water from the Fountain of Youth. It is superfluous to mention this, as Dr. Claw and M.A.D. never appeared in Inspector Gadget's Field Trip, but I felt compelled to include it because this pic is made in honor of the 30th anniversary of Inspector Gadget, and I feel it necessary to have every incarnation of Gadget to be accounted for.

Animated DTV films-

In the late 90's and the mid-2000's, there were three animated DTV films made of the original cartoon. The first one came out in 1999 to celebrate the first Disney movie and was called Gadget's Greatest Gadgets. I do not have it, and I have never seen it before, but I am probably not missing too much because I have read that it is a clip show. I don't really mind clip shows that much, but I am likely to pass on them if there is very little new footage. I defend clip shows because their existences do have justifications. For instance, there are some shows where you can't just watch one episode and instantly know everything that's going on, so a clip show would be good for if you haven't seen a lot of the episodes and wonder why some things are the way they are.

The second DTV was Inspector Gadget's Last Case, which was released in 2003 in honor of the show's 20th anniversary and used character models from Gadget and the Gadgetinis, which we will discuss later. It was another ill-received film, but I also think it is underappreciated. It has its moments as well as a few adult jokes that flew over my head back when I was young. As an adult, I wonder how those jokes were left in. Dr. Claw and M.A.D.'s main role in the film is that M.A.D. agent Dr. Ganglion creates a transformation formula. In the film, it gives two generic M.A.D. Agents stretching powers, turns the very short Fernando Linguini into a towering giant, and an unexplained effect on the Abominable Snowbot.

Claw, however, uses the formula to turn into a handsome and suave superhero named Devon Debonair. Claw uses this alias to make Gadget look like a fool and also to get the Gadgetmobile, who was feeling unwanted at the time because he had repeatedly been breaking down on duty (Gadgetmobile is able to talk like in the Disney films, but he has a more serious personality). Claw even adds insult to injury by using his Debonair alias to trick Gadget into causing a jail break, which results in Gadget getting fired.

Eventually, Gadget reunites with the Gadgetmobile after Claw tried to destroy him, and Penny and Brain figure out that Claw and Debonair are one and the same. Gadget and the Gadgetmobile storm Dr. Claw's lair, arresting many of the M.A.D. Agents there. Though we do not see it, Claw is mentioned by Gadget to have fled the area as usual. As a funny nod to the common conspiracy theory that Chief Quimby and Dr. Claw are the same person, Gadget notices that Quimby, who congratulates Gadget and Gadgetmobile and offers to rehire them after their latest adventure, has a bottle of transformation formula in his pocket. This causes Gadget to assume that Quimby is really Claw in disguise. He proceeds to arrest Quimby and ignore him when he insists that he is the real Chief.

One of the main criticisms of Last Case was what "Last Case" was referring to. One review I read even questioned about why the movie didn't end with Dr. Claw finally getting arrested and Gadget retiring. One of my friends, noting that it has the same character models as Gadget and the Gadgetinis, and the fact that Gadget is a lieutenant in Gadgetinis, speculated that the film was called Last Case because it was about Gadget's last case as an Inspector. My interpretation was that the title referred to Gadget getting fired after Claw tricked him into causing that jail break.

The last animated DTV movie of Inspector Gadget was entitled Inspector Gadget's Biggest Caper Ever, which was notably different in that it was CGI as opposed to traditional 2D animation. The Gadgetmobile was once again able to speak and had a personality that is best described as a mixture of the personalities he had in the Disney movies and in Last Case. The main plot of the film is that Gadget had recently captured Dr. Claw, but the evil leader of M.A.D. manages to escape from jail with the help of Bomba Boy, a Scottish explosives expert.

Dr. Claw does have several minions in the film that look like M.A.D. Agents, except their suits are purple, their mouths are concealed, and they are never once called M.A.D. Agents. A matter of fact, the organization M.A.D. is never mentioned. Strangely enough, Dr. Claw's car is also called the Clawmobile instead of the M.A.D.mobile.

Despite this strange detail, Dr. Claw is no different from how we have remembered him. He even gets the last line in the film. "I'll get you, Gadget. NEXT TIME!"

Biggest Caper Ever was meant to be the first of a series of CGI Inspector Gadget films, but that never came to be. Much like Last Case, Biggest Caper Ever was another Gadget media many hated that I think is underappreciated. The CGI does look a little strange, but it is very much the same as the Inspector Gadget we grew up with. Gadget is still the incompetent, gullible, and clumsy detective we've known him to be, and Penny and Brain still help him out.

Gadget and the Gadgetinis-

Gadget and the Gadgetinis was the third Inspector Gadget cartoon ever made. To this day, it is also the last Inspector Gadget cartoon ever made. I have recently heard rumors of a new Inspector Gadget cartoon on its way this fall on Teletoon with a photograph of its mention in a magazine article, but I am beginning to doubt the credibility of this statement because I haven't seen any concept art or trailers. Wikipedia doesn't even seem to acknlowledge it, but I'm not sticking to the subject!

Gadget and the Gadgetinis only ever aired in Canada and Europe, but don't fret, American Gadget fans who are interested in seeing it! That's what YouTube is for!

Premiering in 2001, Gadget and the Gadgetinis was a sequel to the original cartoon where much has changed. Gadget is now a lieutenant instead of an Inspector. Brain and Chief Quimby are no longer part of the team, but they each make a comeback in one episode. Brain returns in the episode "No Brainer", where it is revealed that he had been hurt so many times helping Gadget that he is now traumatized to the point that he shudders at the mere mention of the word "gadget". Quimby turned up in the episode "Super Boss Gadget", where he was revealed to still be on Gadget's side. He was just reassigned to another position, so he's no longer Gadget's superior or informant.

Lieutenant Gadget is now a member of an elite crime-fighting organization known as W.O.M.P. (World Organization of Mega Powers). His superior is Colonel Nozzaire, a pompous French jerk who differs from Chief Quimby in that he hates Gadget and straight out tells him his missions instead of giving him exploding messages. Superior to both of them is General Sir, the African American leader of W.O.M.P. who favors Gadget.

Penny still helps her uncle, but she stays at home and focuses more on the research side of the missions. In place of Brain, Lt. Gadget is assisted by the titular Gadgetinis, Digit and Fidget. Both of them are small robotic versions of Gadget who are more intelligent than him. Digit is colored blue and is the most stoic of the two. Fidget, however, is colored orange, is very clumsy, and often complains about body parts he technically doesn't have due to being a machine, to which Digit frequently explains he doesn't have in an exasperated tone of voice.

Dr. Claw and M.A.D. were still around, and were once more the main villains. M.A.D. Cat was also shown to have his own miniature version of Dr. Claw's chair. The main difference Dr. Claw had from his original depiction, aside from having gold gloves with the M.A.D. logo on them, was that we got to see more of him. His face was still hidden, but we did get to see his body and the shape of his head (he is incredibly muscular and his head is bucket-shaped). His real name is given as George Claw. He also becomes a little less mysterious and sinister because it is revealed that he sucks his thumb when he sleeps and some of his relatives appear.

Dr. Claw's family consists of his parents Gordon and Marylin, his twin brother Dr. Thaw (who wears snow gloves and talks in a normal voice), and his nephew William, who is actually a nice person unlike his father and uncle. Marylin Claw always scolds Claw for trying to get Gadget, Dr. Thaw was shown to be frozen in his first appearance and frozen again in the end, and Gordon was never seen aside from the episode "Erasing Gadget", suggesting he is either dead or in jail.

M.A.D. itself did not change much. They still wore black suits, except their suits had the M.A.D. logo on it instead of the word "MAD" and the M.A.D. logo was even redesigned. Just like the old show, many episodes of Gadget and the Gadgetinis featured a villain-of-the-week agent. They weren't as memorable as the villains of the week from the original show, but many of them were amusing at times. I'll never understand why so many of the scientist M.A.D. Agents are so ugly!

There were also some episodes where Gadget, Penny, and the Gadgetinis fought villains of the week that had nothing to do with Dr. Claw or M.A.D. Most notable were the Queen Bea from "Attack of the Killer Bees" and the dictator of the Stepford country in "World's Nicest Dictator".

Once again, many people did not like this incarnation of Inspector Gadget. As with Gadget Boy, I actually like Gadgetinis and thought it was funny. It's pretty hilarious, but nowhere near as good as the original show.

Inspector Gadget: Gadget on the Orient Express-

The most recent incarnation of Inspector Gadget. Gadget on the Orient Express was a one-shot comic book published in 2011 by Viper Comics. It isn't too different from the original cartoon, though it is modernized a bit in that Penny's computer book is replaced by a G-Pad, a parody of Apple's iPad, and Dr. Claw even keeps in touch with his M.A.D. Agents and observes Gadget through a computer similar to a Mac (presumably called a Mad computer). Whoever updated Penny and Claw's tech must have been crazy about Apple.

The plot was about a scientist named Professor Sagen-Heisenberg wanting to go home to Vienna, but Claw wants to capture him and force him to share his secrets. As usual, Penny and Brain do the work, Gadget clowns around and gets into all sorts of trouble, and Dr. Claw gets away and promises to get Gadget next time.

My only complaint is that Viper Comics has never published any new Gadget comics.

I will finish this by explaining more about Dr. Claw's face. While Dr. Claw's face never really appeared in the cartoon, there have been three different pieces of merchandise that showed it.

The first was an action figure that was released in the 1992 Inspector Gadget toyline by Rand. Aside from Dr. Claw's action figure, the other toys were of a M.A.D. Agent with a bazooka, Penny and Brain, and several different versions of Gadget that each had its own action feature gadget. The Dr. Claw action figure, however, did not have his face visible in the original packaging. His face was obscured by a sticker, so the only way you could see his face would be if you bought the toy.

Dr. Claw's true appearance was shown to be a white-haired fiend with an extremely angry face dressed as a European nobleman. This look was reused in the SNES video game, where Dr. Claw was fought as the final boss, and the 2009 iOS game Inspector Gadget's M.A.D. Dash, where completing achievements unlocked puzzle pieces that revealed Dr. Claw's face once they were all collected and unscrambled.

Many people hate the face, but I am one of the few people who doesn't mind much. I actually think the action figure Claw's face fits the Inspector Gadget universe well, but I do somewhat agree that Claw deserves to look more menacing.

Of course, there are some who think that we never should have seen Dr. Claw's face at all. It is hard to argue with that because one of the reasons why Dr. Claw was so cool was that we knew very little about his true nature. Because of his deep voice, he might not even be human. For all we know, he could be a robot, an alien, or a demon!

Inspector Gadget (c) DiC/Cookie Jar Entertainment/DHX Media