Doctor Eggman - in Other Media

In Other Media

There have been four animated television series featuring Dr. Robotnik. The first was Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog where he was voiced by Long John Baldry. Dr. Ivo Robotnik's appearance in this series was designed by cartoonist Milton Knight. Robotnik was the series' main antagonist, being portrayed as a villain who sought to rule the planet Mobius for no reason other than the fact that he appeared to be motivated by the act of being evil. While the threat he posed to Sonic the Hedgehog and Mobius varied from episode to episode, he was generally portrayed as incompetent and immature, with a tendency to mistreat his dim-witted Badnik sidekicks Scratch and Grounder, and utter the catchphrase "I hate that hedgehog!"

In the animated series Sonic the Hedgehog, Jim Cummings voiced Dr. Robotnik (whose real name was Julian, which was original to this series). The cartoon depicted Robotnik as a heartless sadist, fiercely temperamental, and an incredibly competent dictator, maintaining totalitarian control over most of the planet Mobius.

Sonic Underground featured Robotnik in a style similar to the previous Sonic the Hedgehog animated series, but much more lightheartedly; he maintains less control and he is far more bumbling. He was voiced by Gary Chalk.

In the two-episode OVA film Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, Eggman tells Sonic that he has been banished from Robotropolis (Eggmanland in the Japanese release) by a metallic doppelgänger of himself called Metal Robotnik (Black Eggman in the Japanese release). It is later revealed that the mecha was piloted by Eggman himself, in a scheme to lure Sonic into his base and copy his DNA for his new Hyper Metal Sonic robot. Eggman was voiced by Junpei Takiguchi in the Japanese version, and by Edwin Neal in the English dub.

In Sonic X Doctor Eggman (which he is usually referred to in this series, though his real last name in-universe is Robotnik as in the games), along with other Sonic characters, including Sonic himself, are accidentally transported from their own world, to Earth. In the final season, Eggman returns to his universe and reluctantly joins forces with Sonic and his friends to fight the new menace called the Metarex. This incarnation is voiced by Chikao Ōtsuka in the Japanese version, and by Mike Pollock in the English dub.

When the first Sonic the Hedgehog title was released in 1991, Sega of America developed an origin for Sonic the Hedgehog and Dr. Robotnik which diverged from the back-stories created in Japan by Sonic Team. In this back-story, set on the planet Mobius, Dr. Ivo Robotnik was originally a benevolent scientist named Dr. Ovi Kintobor ("Ivo Robotnik" with the names spelt backwards; also, "ovi" is the Latin prefix meaning "egg"), a friend to Sonic who helped to develop the hedgehog's super-speed. Kintobor was transformed into Dr. Robotnik after his experiment to eliminate all the evil in the world by absorbing it into the Chaos Emeralds went awry. In the United States, this storyline was featured in a 14-page promotional comic book written by Francis Mao and designed to promote the game. The origin story was also adopted by Sega Europe, featuring in British publications such as the book Stay Sonic and later the comic Sonic the Comic, which was published from 1993 until 2002. In Sonic the Comic, Dr. Robotnik was dictator of planet Mobius for most of the comic's first 100 issues, while Sonic also had access to an AI computer program based on the personality of Dr. Kintobor. Initially, Robotnik's appearance in Sonic the Comic matched that of the video games, but from issue 22 onwards the comic adopted his design from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon series.

Also in 1993, Archie Comics began publishing its Sonic the Hedgehog comic book. The series is in a sense, a very loose continuation of ABC's Sonic the Hedgehog animated cartoon; as well as a mad scientist, Robotnik is a portrayed as a dictator who took control of Sonic's hometown during a coup d'etat. In recent years, the plot of the comic has changed to incorporate elements from the video games, with Robotnik being replaced by his more traditional video game counterpart.

Eggman also makes a cameo appearance in the 2012 Disney movie, Wreck-It Ralph, as part of a villains support group Bad-Anon. His design is unchanged from the current games.