Doctor Zoidberg - Fictional Character Biography

Fictional Character Biography

Zoidberg is the company doctor at Planet Express. Although he claims expertise in human medicine, particularly internal medicine, his knowledge of human anatomy and physiology is atrocious. For example, he cannot tell the difference between robots and humans (or human males and females), believes food is digested in the heart, and that humans have multiple mouths and a dorsal fin. His only knowledge of humans seems to come from television advertisements, although his skills as a physician generally vary: in "Put Your Head on My Shoulders" he manages to successfully transplant Fry's head onto Amy's body after Fry's body incurs massive trauma in a vehicular accident that requires extensive repair, but in Into the Wild Green Yonder he incorrectly declares Fry dead only for him to wake up a few seconds later. In Bender's Big Score, he performs several limb reattachments to moderate success. In "Parasites Lost", due to his incompetence as a physician, he comes to the conclusion that Fry, who is frequently injured, is a hypochondriac, an accusation he makes when Fry sits before Zoidberg with a pipe through his chest. He claims to be an M.D., but states in "A Clone of My Own" that he lost his medical degree in a volcano. However, he later states in "The Duh-Vinci Code" that his doctorate is in art history (as opposed to medicine). Other intimations to his dubious medical training include the episode "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles," in which he comments, "I'm no doctor, but this machine guy could really use a lozenge."

Despite his career as a physician, Zoidberg is repeatedly identified as living in poverty, lonely and desperate for friendship and attention. The crew are often disgusted by his foul habits, such as squirting ink or eating from trash cans, though he is mostly oblivious to their true feelings about him, having referred to Hermes Conrad and Bender as friends. Hermes seems to have a more intense dislike of Zoidberg, seeing him as even more expendable than the rest of the crew. However, when Fry reads Hermes' mind in "Into the Wild Green Yonder", it is revealed that Hermes sees him as "pathetic but lovable". Zoidberg became a hero to all of Earth when he saved Earth from enslavement to his own kind in "A Taste of Freedom". Fry and the Professor are usually the only ones to refer to Zoidberg as a friend, as in Bender's Big Score, in which Zoidberg says, "He was the only one of you who never struck me!" while attending Fry's memorial. Zoidberg has ambitions to be a stand-up comedian, but he is entirely unsuccessful at this endeavor. In one episode, his uncle, the silent hologram star Harold Zoid (a parody of Harold Lloyd), advises him to give up on comedy and finance a film whose script Zoid is writing.

When frightened or fleeing from danger, Zoidberg makes a high-pitched whooping sound, similar to Curly in The Three Stooges, or squirts ink at his attacker. It is revealed in "The Cryonic Woman" that Zoidberg's fantasy is to become a grandmother. "A Taste of Freedom" and Bender's Game indicate that Zoidberg harbored a childhood dream of working in show business as a comedian or song-and-dance man, but that his parents pushed him to become a doctor.

The reason that the Professor continues to employ Zoidberg as the staff physician despite his apparent incompetence is revealed in the sixth-season episode, "The Tip of the Zoidberg". Under the impression that he had been infected with the fatal disease hyper-malaria during a covert quasi-military mission for Mom, the Professor asked Zoidberg, whom he had previously saved from a yeti, to promise that when the latent disease would manifest itself in later years that Zoidberg would euthanize him, to which he agreed. It is also explained that Zoidberg is, in fact, a very competent physician for all other races except humans. Mom (whom Zoidberg informally knows as "Carol") referred to Zoidberg as "the best in the business" when it comes to alien anatomy and, unlike with other characters, addresses him with great respect and admiration. When asking him why he stayed with Farnsworth through the years Mom explained that Zoidberg could have been a millionaire with his own research lab. Zoidberg replies to Mom that it was because Farnsworth is his friend, indicating that Zoidberg is in fact poor because he values people more than money.

Zoidberg is depicted as being ignorant of human customs, and socially inept, to the point of inspiring great aggravation in others. In "Where the Buggalo Roam" during his stay at the ranch of Amy Wong's parents, he bathes in their champagne, breaks their television, fertilizes the caviar before Amy's father eats it, draws mustaches on several portraits around the house, tear up their couch, fill their pool with brine shrimp and refers to the ranch as "Rancho Zoidberg," enraging the Wongs.

Zoidberg's race, the Decapodians — from the sandy, beach-like planet Decapod 10 — are crustaceans, generally lobster-like in appearance — though they have been called squids, crabs or crawdads — with lobster-like claws, mouth tentacles, a hard exoskeleton, a fleshy, boneless interior, a fin that appears atop their heads during mating season or extreme anger, an ink pouch, two stomachs (one saltwater and one freshwater), three hearts, (originally four), gonopores, a gland that stinks when Decapodians are bored and a complex system of internal organs, "most of which are either redundant or unnecessary." He is not fazed when one of his hearts is removed by an alien autopsy team of human doctors, saying "Take it, take it, I have four of them!" in "Roswell That Ends Well", and loses various other useless organs in that episode during the autopsy. Zoidberg has been depicted as able to consume things not considered food by humans, such as fish bones, wood, and chess pieces. In the episode "Bendin' in the Wind", Zoidberg produces tie-dye blue pearls after consuming large amounts of dirt. Zoidberg also habitually eats clothing and once, an Earth flag. Given that he refers to clothes as food and considers them a kind of delicacy, it may be that Decapodians themselves consume clothes. In "Möbius Dick," it is revealed that Zoidberg spontaneously grows hair in moments of extreme fright. Like Zoidberg, most of other Decapodians are depicted as having Yiddish accents and mannerisms. At one point in all Decapodians' lives, they enter a mating phase, or "The Frenzy" as they call it, which causes them to behave in a neurotic and manic way. During this chaotic time, their behavior is dictated by the tiny brain located in their rumps. They also develop incredible super strength, their head fin comes out for mating displays, their stink glands increase production and the males become saturated with male jelly as the females become engorged with eggs. In the episode "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?", it is indicated that once Decapodians mate, they die but this could only be from the frenzy as Zoidberg's parents where still alive after his conception.

The episode "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles" indicates that young Decapodians progress through various crustacean, invertebrate, and fish-like larval forms before reaching their adult form such as coral, a starfish, a sea sponge, and clam . However, in the episode "A Taste of Freedom", a young Zoidberg is seen with his typical humanoid form.

Dr. Zoidberg is also a skilled theremin player, and is the only person ever seen in the series to be 'good' enough to receive a present from Robot Santa and is also an honorary member of the Harlem Globetrotters