Seeing a Robot Sketch reminded me that I never really knew (and was it ever explained?) if Inspector Gadget is a full-fledged robot, or just a cyborg? I mean…he’s Penny’s uncle, so in theory he might be just a cyborg, but he seems too robotic to have any fleshy parts left.
I don’t think they ever explained his origins, except for the movie.
I always assumed cyborg. As in, he was once a person, but has been robotised. Like Robocop!
So long as there is some flesh remaining, sci fi seems to hold that it is a cyborg. And yes, so far as I am aware, Gadget was a human who had been upgraded, not a robot.
He has to be a cyborg- who would willingly build a robot that stupid?
It was the 80s. Maybe the processing power just wasn’t there.
IBM, using software farmed out to Microsoft.
One of the lesser offerings from Megadeth’s Countdown to Extinction album holds the key to this conundrum. I’m convinced that it was written with Gadget in mind.
Simple, no?
I remember when I was a kid, a friend of mine who liked spinning tales swore up and down that there was an episode of Inspector Gadget where they showed his “origin story”. But yeah, the original cartoon was silent on the matter.
Insepctor Gadget still had a human face. I don’t think there was any evidence that he was anything OTHER than a human who got upgraded, a la Robocop or Darth Vader.
I actually went to see that movie in theaters, simply cuz Cheri Oteri (my celebrity crush at the time, was in it). I vaguely recall it starting with Matthew Broderick as a regular human detective, who got into some kind of accident and then received the robotic upgrades. I also remember being offended at them constantly showing Dr Claw’s face.
Well, Gadget ate & drank.
And slept.
So, Cyborg.
Also, in an early episode, the scientist who rebuilt him, Dr Von Slickstein, appears for the first & only time, & is described as “the father of modern Bionics”.