Characters / Sonic the Hedgehog - Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik

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Main Characters (Sonic the Hedgehog) | Recurring Characters (Team Dark) | Eggman Empire (Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik) | One-Shot Characters | Classic Era Antagonists | Modern Era Antagonists 1 | Modern Era Antagonists 2 | Other Groups and Species

Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik

Debut: Sonic the Hedgehog
Voiced by: Casey Rankin (Sonic the Hedgehog CD JP/PAL, laughs), Mark "Sterling" Crew (Sonic CD US, laughs), Masaharu Sato (SegaSonic the Hedgehog), Chikao Ohtsuka (Japanese, 1998-2015), Kotaro Nakamura (Japanese, 2016-Present), Deem Bristow (English, 1999-2004), Mike Pollock (English, 2005-present)^{additional VAs}Marc Bretonnière (French, 2011-present), Aldo Stella (Italian, 2011-present)

^{Click here to see Eggman's Classic Era design.}

^{Click here for his Sonic '06 redesign.}

"Citizens of Earth, lend me your ears, and listen to me very carefully! My name is Dr. Eggman, the world's greatest scientist, and soon to be the world's greatest ruler! Now, witness the beginning of the greatest empire of all time! Hahahaha!"

Big Bad of the series, eternal Arch-Enemy of Sonic the Hedgehog, patron saint of stuffing woodland creatures into robot soldiers, self-professed gentleman genius, neck-and-neck with Dr. Wily as gaming's most premiere Mad Scientist Robot Master, and amusement park enthusiast. He's the Eggman, that's what he is.

Dr. Ivo^*(actually pronounced "Ee-voh" rather than "Eye-voh") Robotnik, better known to the world as Dr. Eggman, is a portly, mustachioed roboticist whose main desires are to impose his own view of a glorious utopia upon everyone and everything using his technology... which he would be able to do if he could just destroy the little blue rodent that keeps spin-dashing a hole into his plans.

While Dr. Eggman doesn't have a significant background, it's known that he looked up to his grandfather, Gerald Robotnik, and aspired to be a great scientist like him. Eventually, he decided his genius was enough to put him at the top of the food chain, and he's been trying to Take Over the World to establish an Eggman Empire ever since.

On the surface, the good doctor is very temperamental and childishly eccentric despite his stated IQ of 300 — he's quick to throw a fit of anger whenever things don't go his way, many of his robots have goofy appearances, and his ideal paradise appears to fall somewhere between a casino and a carnival. Don't be fooled, though, he's every bit as clever as he claims to be, able to create or exploit almost anything to further his goals, possesses quite a bit of cunning and planning to carry them out, and frequently sends Sonic running through zone after zone littered with his traps and mean machines.

Eggman's master plans of global (and potentially universal) conquest almost never change, and with his intellect, determination, and legions of robots, he's always willing to pull out all of the stops to accomplish his goals and destroy Sonic and his friends, matching the hedgehog's unstoppable physical prowess with his immovable evil genius, and surpassing him in ego a million times over.

If you would like to know how he would (grandiosely) describe himself, go here.

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A-G

• Abusive Parents: In Sonic Frontiers, Eggman begrudgingly accepts that Orbot and Cubot are Sage's "brothers", and thus his sons. While he's surprisingly fatherly towards Sage, his treatment of Orbot and Cubot has included (but is not limited to) insulting them, smacking them in their heads on multiple occasions, and abandoning them in the depths of space. See Bad Boss below.
• Ace Pilot: Considering the number of Eggmobiles and Humongous Mechas he's piloted over the years, and the number of times he's shot down Tails' planes, Eggman certainly has some great piloting skills.
• Acrofatic: Eggman is very athletic and fast, despite his rotund appearance. In fact, one piece of Sonic Channel artwork shows that he jogs for exercise.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Some non-canon spin-offs have him be genuinely nicer for laughs, typically because Go-Karting with Bowser or something similar is at play:
  • At the Olympics, he and Bowser strike up a friendship and he seems to be genuinely fine with playing fair at the game events (though opening cutscenes also show that he's perfectly willing to team up with Wario to cheat as well).
  • For the Q&A sessions hosted by the Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter, Eggman offers to share chili dogs with Sonic, quickly decides not to pester Shadow about Maria, dissuades the audience from eating Mean Beans, finds the idea of Yacker murdering someone in cold blood "messed up even by [his] standards", and even names one of his Egg Pawns "Fred".
• Adaptation Dye-Job: While it's hard to tell thanks to his sunglasses, Eggman has blue eyes in the games and Japanese media. American and European adaptations tend to give him red eyes.
• Aesop Amnesia: From between Sonic Adventure to Sonic Unleashed, he never seemed to learn that Evil Is Not a Toy. He seems to have learned from Sonic Colors onwards:
  • In Sonic Generations, he finally manages to harness the power of a Cosmic Horror without losing control of it at any point. Though it did help that the Time Eater was out of commission when he came upon it.
  • And again in Sonic Lost World, he manages to take control of the Deadly Six, a group of six powerful Zeti, and keep them in line with the Cacophonic Conch, and he only loses control of them because Sonic impulsively kicks the conch out of his hand. It seems he's getting better with experience.
  • He finally seems to have learned his lesson come Sonic Forces: he had the foresight to have the means to instantly dispose of Infinite at a moment's notice, showing he actually considered the prospect that giving a psychotic lunatic like Infinite something as powerful as the Phantom Ruby could backfire. Ironically, Infinite doesn't turn on him, but it comes in handy for a You Have Failed Me after one screw-up too many from the Jackal.
• American Kirby Is Hardcore: In an effort to make him more threatening, his name was changed from Dr. Eggman to Dr. Robotnik for Western markets, and early Western art gave him demonic black eyes with red irises, more grotesque features, and a permanently angry face. Inverted when official Western art adopted his design from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog which, while still grotesque, is easily his goofiest look to this day.
• Amusement Park of Doom: He dreams of building an amusement park during his conquest. He manages to accomplish this in both Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Colors. Thanks to Sonic, however, it doesn't last.
• Animal Motif:
  • Back when Eggman was younger, his Classic Era design was meant to resemble a walrus, with his mustache representing whiskers and the two yellow triangles on his suit representing tusks. He is the Eggman, he is the walrus.
  • His skinny legs, big round body, and pointy nose makes him look somewhat bird-like. This makes sense as he is always in the air with his Eggmobile, and he has a preference for flying machines like the Egg Viper, the Egg Hawk, the Egg Wyvern, or the Egg Dragoon. Not to mention it ties in with his egg theme.
• Antagonist Title: The puzzle game Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine gives him top billing. Despite this, he is not playable in it (only filling the role of Final Boss and Game-Over Man) and he gets less screentime than in other Sonic titles.
• Anti-Villain: It varies from game to game, but he's firmly this in Sonic Frontiers. He's still trying to conquer the world as usual, but his more grounded characterization and newfound fatherly love for Sage, paints the doctor in probably his most sympathetic light outside of his Anime incarnation.
• Appropriated Appellation: This was the original given explanation of why Robotnik refers to himself as Eggman in the West post-Sonic Adventure, where the English dub treated it as a mocking nickname from Sonic and his friends, though it seems more like this aspect was retconned to match the Japanese depiction. One of his audio diaries in Frontiers confirms that it was originally an insulting nickname from Sonic that he chose to embrace and turn into a name people all over the world fear.
  Eggman: It was Sonic who named me "Eggman". Except the joke's on him! I embraced the name! I made it my own! His mockery is now a name feared across the ages! ...I'm not going to adopt "Baldy McNosehair" though. My dignity has limits.
• Arch-Enemy: To Sonic the Hedgehog. They've been going at it long before any other character showed up, and the conflict is most of the time theirs.
• Armed with Canon: Because Doctor Eggman's name, Ivo Robotnik, is a creation of Sega of America, Sega of Japan isn't too clingy in accepting it. Despite Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic X, TailsTube, and the Sonic film series widely accepting the Robotnik name, Sonic Channel in its character profile claims Eggman's name is unknown.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In Sonic Lost World. When the Deadly Six fail to beat Sonic, he angrily lists the things he's done for them.
  Eggman: I hone your abilities. I equip you with the most powerful mechs I can create. I even give you a giant sandwich, and you still disappoint me.
• Art Evolution: Eggman has been redesigned more than any other character in the entire series—even Sonic himself. Bonus points for his Classic Era design reappearing in Generations.
• The Artifact: Early on, Eggman went exclusively by Robotnik in western media, but his "egg" theme naming was still around, right up to the final Zone of Sonic 2 being called the Death Egg, shown ingame. This was subverted once his Japanese name was brought to the west in Adventure, putting a proper tie into his theming.
• Badass Biker: Exclusively uses Bike and Wheel type gears in Sonic Riders. He even has a snappy looking biker outfit◊ for when he rides complete with a Scarf of Asskicking.
• Badass Boast: "As long as I can still strangle a Zeti, my hands are fine."
• Badass Bookworm: He is the mastermind behind the robotic Eggman Empire, and is well read. He found the information about Chaos on stone tablets, dug up information on the Solaris Project (which was ambitious and confidential) to learn about the Flames of Disaster, and learned about Dark Gaia through some ancient manuscripts. To elaborate more on the "Badass" side of things, he's considered a Power type in some of his playable appearances, and can control highly complex machines quite fine and dandy.
• Bad Boss: Let it never be forgotten that Eggman will only praise a minion of his in a way that allows him to take credit — to use Sonic Adventure as an example, his praises of E-102 Gamma were that the robot was "of use" to him. Otherwise:
  • His treatment of all the other named E-series robots were to banish them for failure (Delta and Epsilon), forcibly upgrade them (Zeta and Beta), or lock them in a room and reduce them to guard work (Omega).
  • The very first cutscene of Sonic Battle has him treating Emerl as a piece of junk and throwing him out to rot, only reconsidering when he learns the robot can harness Chaos energy for power.
  • From Sonic Colors onward, Cubot and especially Orbot very frequently aim not to incur their boss' wrath, since he's the one who could dismantle them at any moment. In Sonic Lost World, one backchat too many from Orbot gets Eggman to forcibly attach Cubot's head to his own, and "Act 17" of the Sonic Channel gag webcomic also shows Orbot and Cubot researching the history of their predecessors, with the two being so horrified when learning about Zeta's fate that they start pampering Eggman even more than usual.
  • Speaking of Lost World, he frequently uses the Cacaphonic Conch to force the Zeti into submission until Sonic punts it away, and makes it clear that he'd rather care about how "very rare" the conch is as opposed to how "very painful" it might be to the Zeti, being perfectly fine with the idea of using another conch to get the six demon creatures back under his thumb.
  • Sonic Forces has him dispose of Infinite without hesitation after the jackal screws up his plans one time too many. However, this is justified as Infinite was never truly loyal to Eggman and was plotting to betray and usurp him as ruler after the resistance was finished.
  • Even his prized creation Metal Sonic isn't safe from his negligence— following his defeat in Sonic the Hedgehog CD (one that Eggman himself technically contributed to), both interpretations of his return showed that Eggman left him to rot on Little Planet and only rescued or repaired him when it was convenient. The bonus episode of Sonic Mania Adventures also has Eggman kick Metal Sonic in the head and literally leave him to fend for himself in the wilderness — for months, it seems — after his failure to defeat Sonic and friends.
  • It's averted, however, in the case of Sage in Sonic Frontiers, whom he treats less like a minion and more like a daughter. This is, however, largely downplayed in the Japanese translation, where he talks to Sage more formally and only privately acknowledges his paternal feelings in the Egg Memo voice logs, though his Papa Wolf instinct for her is still present given the ending. That being said, game writer Ian Flynn has discussed on his podcast that Eggman's affection for Sage is still an extension of his own ego.
• Bad Liar: Claiming that his amusement park was created to make up for his past transgressions and is in no way secretly covering up an evil scheme.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: In many games, his machines are powered by Ridiculously Cute Critters that he uses as Living Batteries, which just showcases his Lack of Empathy when pursuing his goals.
• Bald of Evil: He is bald, and he is evil, so...
• Batman Gambit: He's pulled off quite a few over the years.
  • In Sonic Unleashed. He built the Egg Fleet in outer space to lure Sonic there so he could drain the energy of the Chaos Emeralds to power his cannon and shatter the earth, freeing Dark Gaia.
  • In Sonic Lost World, after the Deadly Six turn his Badniks against him, he immediately devises a plan to turn things back in his favor by using Sonic to defeat the Zeti and allow him to use a giant robot to finish off his nemesis.
• Betrayal Insurance: Showing he'd learned from his mistakes, in Sonic Forces, he had a failsafe for Infinite and could instantly recall and dispose of him at any time, just in case. Ironically, Infinite never betrays him, but it comes in handy when the jackal screwed up one time too many.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Eggman may be childish, egotistical, and goofy, but his brilliance and capacity for destruction are very real. Sonic and others usually tend to view him as nothing more than just a petty, harmless goofball, but they're underestimating him, and sometimes discover that the hard way.
• Big Bad: The most prominent and consistent villain of the series. Even if he loses his status depending on the game, Eggman always manages to bounce back into this role eventually.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: With Eggman Nega in the Sonic Rush series, with his past self in Sonic Generations, and with the Phantom Ruby itself in Sonic Mania.
• Big Bad Ensemble: In later games, Eggman is part of a villainous team, paired up with some sort of Eldritch Abomination, or part of a Big Bad Duumvirate with either his descendant or a younger verison of himself.
• Big Bad Wannabe: In a similar vein to Bowser in his RPG appearances, Eggman is reduced to this trope whenever he's not the main threat. Subverted in Sonic Generations and Sonic Forces, and defied in Sonic Lost World and Sonic Mania where he fights back effectively to stay top dog.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Zigzagged throughout Forces. On the one hand, he chooses to imprison Sonic on the Death Egg for six months rather than finish him off, which allows Sonic to eventually break out and stop him. Zavok mentions that Eggman wanted to show Sonic his completed empire before jettisoning him out into space. (In other words, they wanted to rub Sonic's failure in his face, then kill him.) On the other hand, he chews Infinite out for deeming Sonic Not Worth Killing and allowing him to live, knowing that Sonic will remain a threat to their operations as long as he's still alive
• Broken Pedestal: The reason he became a scientist is because he admired his grandfather and wanted to be a great scientist like him. Yeah...
• Card-Carrying Villain: Eggman makes absolutely no pretense about the evil he does and he even revels in it, especially in Generations, Adventure, and Forces.
• Cartoon Juggling: Miss any Chaos Emeralds and you'll be treated to a shot of him juggling the remaining ones at the end of the game.
• Character Catchphrase: Eggman is well known for having a certain phrase that he repeats over and over again in his boss fights.
  • Sonic Adventure: "All systems, FULL POWER!", "Get a load of THIS!", and "No Way! I Can't Believe This!"
  • Shadow the Hedgehog: "Lights out!" and "You know what they say! The MORE the MERRIER!"^note He only spams the latter phrase in one of his boss fights, but it's so cheesy as to become Memetic Mutation.
  • Sonic Rush: "Get ready to be schooled!"
  • Sonic Unleashed: "You little... you little-!!"
  • Sonic Generations: "Time for a change of pace!"
• Characterization Marches On: The early games and adaptations portrayed Eggman as an Ecocidal Antagonist who spread pollution and ecological devastation across the land with his factories and robotic armies, and used captured animals as power sources for his robots. Later games deemphasized these aspects and rarely focus on the environmental impact of his schemes.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: His emblem and himself have this.
• The Chessmaster: Despite Eggman's ego and childish personality, he has shown on occasion that he has the capacity to plan ahead.
  • He obtains almost all the Chaos Emeralds in Sonic Adventure by showing up where the various characters are and often surprising them by just taking the emeralds from them. Also see Batman Gambit above for more instances where he is this trope.
  • In Sonic Adventure 2, he discovers that the heroes have two Chaos Emeralds, but correctly deduces that one of them must be fake due to Eggman having the other six and puts forth a plan to get the last emerald out of their hands. The result is that he nearly kills Sonic after launching him from the Space Colony ARK. And even after he's defeated by a grieving Tails, he still manages to make off with the real emerald anyway.
  • In Sonic Unleashed. Prior to the game, he kidnapped Professor Pickle for his research on Dark Gaia and concocted a scheme to awaken the beast. He set up the Egg Fleet in outer space to lure Sonic, knowing full well that Sonic would plow through his defenses as Super Sonic. He then begged for mercy once it looked like Sonic foiled his plans again... only to trap him in a device that drained him of all of his power, forcefully taking him out of Super Sonic form and using the Chaos Emeralds' energy to power his cannon and shatter the earth, awakening Dark Gaia. When his plan doesn't go the way he liked due to awakening Dark Gaia too early, he immediately comes up with a plan B: draw all the Dark Gaia monsters to his base and put Dark Gaia back together to harness its energy to create Eggmanland.
  • In Sonic Colors. Despite foolishly leaving the key in the elevator and allowing Sonic and Tails to infiltrate his Interstellar Amusement Park, Eggman tries his best to distract Sonic and keeps him in the dark about his plan to build a Mind Control Cannon. Though he fails to stop Sonic from destroying all his generators, Eggman still had enough energy to power his machine. In fact, the only reason his plan didn't work was because Sonic's fight with the first boss caused its arm to get stuck in the cannon, causing it to backfire when he activated it.
  • In Sonic Lost World. Prior to the game, he traveled to the Lost Hex, encountered the Deadly Six, and used the Cacophonic Conch to keep them under his thumb and use their abilities for his plans. His plans inevitably fall apart when Sonic kicks the conch away, but even then he's still showing remarkable competence. His backup plan was to team up with Sonic and Tails, knowing that they would eventually defeat the Six, and later faked his death so he could shut down the Extractor and power up his mech using the world's energy. To put this into perspective, despite his plans unraveling completely, he managed to claw his way back to the title of Big Bad and Final Boss with nothing but determination and cunning. Nice to see you back, Eggman.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: There's no one he won't use, betray, or turn against others to get what he wants. Even when he is forced into an Enemy Mine, it's almost a guarantee he will pull off a double-cross when things are back to normal.
• Classic Villain: Representing Ambition, Pride, and occasionally Wrath.
  • Ambition: Eggman's goal in life is to conquer the world and to create a glorious robotic empire atop of it. He will find every kind of energy source to achieve this goal, and stay determined to achieve it.
  • Pride: Eggman's hubris is so huge that he gained a weakness in trusting himself too much. Not only has he gained an obsession with defeating Sonic himself, he has enough confidence to try to control eldritch sources of power and expect that not to backfire on him — confidence that was… unwarranted the first three times he tried it^note though, to be fair, Chaos and Dark Gaia didn't turn on Eggman until the climax, with it being implied (particularly in the case of the former) that they lost patience with him picking fights with the heroes and losing; Mephiles, on the other hand, cut ties with Eggman the moment he was out of the Scepter of Darkness, though he eventually managed to get the hang of it.
  • Wrath: While Eggman has shown to be incredibly smart, his temper sometimes takes the better of him, causing him to make reckless decisions.
• Comic Trio: Forms one with Orbot and Cubot. He's the Schemer, Cubot is The Fool, and Orbot is the Only Sane Man.
• Composite Character: He's a canon example, actually. Initially, the Japanese canon always had him as Eggman, and the American canon always had him as Robotnik. As of Sonic Adventure, however, he has both names worldwide (Dr. Ivo Robotnik being his real name, and Dr. Eggman his nickname).
• Cool Shades: Wears a pair of round-frame sunglasses all the time. According to 2006, they have a radar that can find Chaos Emeralds nearby.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: It's not a very well-known trait of his, but he owns his own company seldom seen in the games.
• Crazy-Prepared: Despite how inept he may look, Eggman is always prepared for something.
  • He had a second Egg Carrier prepared in case the first one was destroyed and Chaos turned on him. Too bad Perfect Chaos turned out to be too much for him to handle.
  • He has a Chaos Emerald radar in his glasses.
  • He has a jetpack hidden on himself just in case he needs to save himself from a fall.
  • In the Game Gear games, he has a tendency pull a last-second escape after the final boss battle thanks to an escape route he had prepared. Unfortunately for him, his attempt is foiled by the player character in the fourth installment, who manages to destroy his escape platform at the last second.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Subverted. Several games suggest that he does actually make a ton of money using his inventions in legitimate enterprises; however, he uses that money exclusively to fund his goal of world domination.
• Dastardly Whiplash: He has many characteristics of this classic archetype, most notably the prominent mustache and the never-ending supply of evil plans and tricks.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • In Tails and the Music Maker, he only gets a brief cameo appearance as a background setpiece on page 3 and doesn't directly interact with Tails.
  • In Sonic and the Secret Rings, he only appears as a minor role in the form of King Shahryar, who isn't even evil — the driving villain of the game is Erazor Djinn in his stead.
• Detonation Moon: invoked He blows up half the moon in Sonic Adventure 2. According to Word of God, it's still like that; we're just seeing the good side.
• Depending on the Artist: Modern Eggman's design is consistent in all of his appearances, besides his nose. Games either draw it pinkish or the same color as the rest of his skin.
• Depending on the Writer: He's one of the more consistent characters in the franchise, owing to his simple core persona as an ego-driven Mad Scientist who wants to Take Over the World no matter how much or how little destruction he causes, but the main things that change about him from game to game are how much his humorous or serious traits are emphasized (which typically change along with the tone and story the game is aiming for), as well as his exact level of competence— some games portray him as a master schemer and others portray him as more bumbling and short-sighted. This is mostly notable on the modern iteration of Eggman, as his classic self is fairly consistent with the latter.
• Despotism Justifies the Means: On multiple occasions, he doesn't seem to care what condition the world is in as long as he's the one ruling it. For example, in Sonic the Hedgehog CD, the Bad Future portions of the levels are post-apocalyptic ruins, and in Sonic Lost World, when he makes his move after Sonic defeats the Deadly Six, he states outright that while it's a shame that the Six have largely destroyed the world below, at least there's still enough left of it for him to conquer. And, of course, the opening of Sonic Unleashed has him use a Wave-Motion Gun to crack the planet open so he can get at Dark Gaia. In Sonic Forces, he's plotting to completely annihilate Sonic, all his friends, and possibly everyone else who isn't on his side by dropping an artificial star on them in order to retain control of the world.
• The Determinator: You do have to give him credit; no matter the setbacks, he'll always try to defeat Sonic and take over the world. It's no small wonder he's the hedgehog's arch-nemesis.
• Didn't Think This Through: He has a very bad habit of overlooking a key detail or two.
  • His Batman Gambit in Sonic Adventure runs afoul of this. He built and hid a duplicate Egg Carrier just in case his plans to control Chaos went off the rails after perfecting him. This is after he himself boasted to Sonic and Tails earlier that the Egg Carrier would be nothing compared to Chaos' full power. He and his flying fortress go down like chumps almost immediately.
  • In Sonic Adventure 2, Eggman's plan to hold the world hostage runs into this kind of snag. After blowing up half of the moon with the Eclipse Cannon to intimidate the world into surrendering to his demands, he's thrown completely on the backfoot when the world at large doesn't bite and he, without all seven Chaos Emeralds, can't recharge the Eclipse Cannon fast enough to make good on his threats. He does manage to pull it back together by getting his hands on the seventh emerald before Sonic can manage to stop him, but by that time, bigger fish have taken over the plot from him.
  • In Sonic Unleashed, the proto-Orbot robot even calls him out on his habit of acting hastily, like reawakening Dark Gaia before it was mature, resulting in it being unable to sustain itself due to its own weight and collapsing, and discarding the Chaos Emeralds along with Sonic, which Sonic is currently using to piece the world back together to seal Dark Gaia back up again.
• Dirty Coward: In the classic games, Eggman would often flee in terror whenever Sonic knocked him out of his robots, with his fear being so great that he could outrun Sonic himself and generally only fighting the heroes when he feel like he has an upper hand. This largely dissipated over time and been replaced with a Villainous Valour, to the point that he will willingly put himself in danger to achieve his goals or stop a greater threat.
• Ditzy Genius: He has an IQ of 300 and can be a genuinely good schemer when he puts his mind to it, but is simultaneously very childish, astronomically self-indulgent, and keeps leaving obvious weak spots on his machines.
• The Dragon: Unwittingly plays this role to Shadow in Sonic Adventure 2.
• Dub Name Change: From "Dr. Eggman" to "Dr. Ivo Robotnik"^note technically vice versa since the first game was released in Japan over a month after the US, but "Eggman" can be seen in some English-language previews, showing that the Japanese name indeed predates "Robotnik" in development. Eventually, due to a consolidation of continuity after Sonic Adventure, it was decided to universally name him "Robotnik" as his given name, with "Eggman" as the nickname that everyone actually uses.^note The names did cross regions occasionally before then, such as the American Sonic Drift 2 manual claiming that Dr. Robotnik is known to his fellow racers as the "Eggman" and the Sonic The Hedgehog 1 & 2 SEGA's Official Player's Guide showing what may be the origin of Sonic calling Robotnik "Egg Man".
• Dub Personality Change:
  • In an attempt at American Kirby Is Hardcore, America and Europe tried to play up Sonic's main antagonist as more intimidating than he actually was for much of the 1990s. This included a Dub Name Change from the goofy "Dr. Eggman" to the more serious "Dr. Robotnik". Several adaptations took this even farther and made Eggman an evil dictator who actually took over much of the world, changing Sonic's objective from stopping world domination plots to deposing a successful tyrant. Sonic Adventure is when the wackier Japanese characterization began to appear more prominently. Canon has since gone with a middle ground: Eggman's given name is "Ivo Robotnik" (except in Japan where his full name is considered unknown) and "Eggman" is a moniker he took to heart.
  • In Sonic Frontiers specifically, he develops a parental bond with Sage over the course of the game in the English; While he does refer to Sage as his "child" once in the Japanese Egg Memos, he never calls her daughter to her face, and only shows some semblance of greater affection towards her at the very end through his Papa Wolf actions.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The early backstory given to western audiences in the Sonic the Hedgehog Promo Comic said that he was originally a friend of Sonic the Hedgehog named Dr. Ovi Kintobor, who was turned into the evil Dr. Ivo Robotnik by accident due to his R.O.C.C. machine (which would have harnessed the Chaos Emeralds' power to rid the world of all evil) malfunctioning and bathing him in pure evil energy. This information was derived from an internal Sonic Bible in the U.S. and was reused for Stay Sonic and Sonic the Comic in the U.K. This aspect of him never showed up in the games proper, and made entirely irrelevant once Sonic Adventure established a unified canon going forward where Eggman was a clear-cut villain out of the starting gate.
• Ecocidal Antagonist: As a contrast to the nature-affiliated Sonic, Eggman presents himself as a tyrannical industrialist, a representation of all the ways humanity harms the environment. He's well known for his pollution-spewing factories to manufacture his armies of robots and other weapons, and for kidnapping wild animals to imprison them inside his robots as power sources (or in some continuities, he transforms them into robots outright).
• Egopolis: In Sonic Adventure, Eggman wants to create Robotnikland, a city bearing his likeness. In Sonic Unleashed, he succeeds at this with Eggmanland.
• Emperor Scientist: The self-proclaimed emperor of his robotic empire, The Eggman Empire. He is self-proclaimed because he never gets it to last for very long, with Sonic Forces being the longest time it lasted (6 months). He has been more successful in some of the adaptations, though.
• Enemy Mine: Will often team up with Sonic and company to defeat a greater threat, if only because if the other threat takes over and/or destroys the world, there'll be nothing for him to take over later.
• Enraged by Idiocy: Given how Orbot and Cubot are pretty useless in combat and exist only serve as his bumbling sidekicks, they're second only to Sonic on the list of people who make the Doctor's blood boil.
• Et Tu, Brute?: He seems genuinely shocked and even a bit hurt by Metal Sonic's betrayal in Heroes.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • In Sonic Frontiers, he creates an AI called Sage who he grows to sincerely love as his own daughter and becomes devastated when in the base game, she sacrifices herself to destroy THE END and manages to restore her back to life afterwards. In the Another Story scenario from the Final Horizon update, he is glad to witness Sage saving his life and happy to see her survive the whole ordeal, giving her his hand and telling him they're going home.
  • To a lesser extent, there is also Metal Sonic, who he seems to view as a son. Aside from the comedic Mania Adventures and the unfinished Sonic 4, Eggman goes out of his way to constantly repair him after his defeats and was genuinely hurt by his betrayal in Sonic Heroes.
  • To an even lesser extent, Orbot and Cubot. He generally treats them pretty badly due to how incompetent they are, yet he keeps them around for company regardless and goes out of his way to save them from falling to their deaths in Lost World.
• Even Evil Has Standards: While his motivations for battling against threats that want to end the world are more in the vein of Pragmatic Villainy, there is an example or two:
  • In Sonic Unleashed, when Chip states that Eggman might be starving Professor Pickle when he had him imprisoned, Tails remarks to Chip that Eggman's most likely going to be feeding him while imprisoned, as "even he isn't that cruel." Of course, that's not saying that the food is actually edible, but still. When they arrive and meet him in person, he has cucumber sandwiches which were implied to have been delivered on request and are apparently perfectly-edible, he won't eat them due to the cucumber slices being the wrong size.
  • By the end of Sonic Forces, even he's gotten fed up with Infinite's unnecessary sadism and overall pettiness and finds him utterly pathetic; once he loses to Sonic and the Avatar for a third time, Eggman doesn't hesitate to pull a You Have Failed Me on him.
  • In Sonic Frontiers, he's shown to have a Hidden Heart of Gold as he grows more compassionate and honorable after accepting Sage as his daughter. This is demonstrated on full display in the game's "Final Horizon" update, in which, upon stating that the "Phantom Lights" that come out at night were the spirits of the Ancients that only felt comfortable coming out at night for fear of THE END's wrath, he can't help but feel bad for them, showing that for all the havoc the doc's willing to wreak upon the living, even he sees that tormenting someone indefinitely beyond the grave is just wrong.
• Everyone Has Standards: He was willing to appropriate the "Eggman" insult as a real title, but he notes that he has no intent of doing the same with Sonic's other favored insult, "Baldy McNosehair". A man has to have some dignity.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Discussed in Sonic Forces, where he's absolutely shocked when Sonic and the Avatar successfully escape from the supposedly inescapable Null Space:
  Eggman: What!? It can't be! It's impossible to get out of the Phantom Ruby's null space!
  Sonic: Maybe by myself, but I had a little help from my friend. Something you wouldn't understand, since you don't have any friends!
• Evil Counterpart: To Tails in several ways, especially in Sonic Adventure 2. While Tails is a humble kid genius, Eggman is a childish mad scientist with a monstrous ego.
• Evil Genius: What did you expect? While his work with robotics and machines is brilliant (he built multiple space stations after all), he has also managed to outsmart even Sonic on occasion.
• Evil Is Bigger:
  • He stands at an impressive 6'1", which is far taller than Sonic and most of his friends. Only Vector comes close at 5'10", and Big the Cat surpasses him at 6'6". Inverted in Sonic the Fighters; in the final fight against him, he is inexplicably smaller than Sonic.
  • This also comes in play with his creations. While it wasn't so present in the classic games, Eggman mostly uses giant machines to crush his enemies.
• Evil Is Hammy: Especially in Japanese and with Mike Pollock.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: In Sonic Adventure and Sonic Unleashed (as well as Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)), he's displaced by the evil he's unsealed as the Final Boss. By Sonic Generations, Evil is a Toy, but it takes help from his past self.
  • And back again in Sonic Lost World, though ironically it was Sonic's fault in that case. Regardless of this trope, he still manages to be the game's final boss.
  • In Sonic Forces, the "good" Doctor completely averts this, with Infinite and the Phantom Ruby being under his control the entire time.
  • Discussed in Sonic Frontiers, where one of his Egg Memos has him muse about hijacking THE END for his own purposes once he's out of Cyber Space, though he thankfully never gets around to that part, as utterly useless an endeavor that may be to begin with.
• Evil Is Petty: While he's typically more focused on scheming to rule the world, Eggman does get on this from time to time.
  • In Sonic Adventure, one of the DLC features him as a petty thief who goes around stealing shoes of all things.
  • In Sonic Shuffle, Eggman has no real reason to be in Maginaryworld, but he messes with Sonic and friends anyway. One of his evil schemes? "Sonicola", in which he shakes a can of soda and jams it into a vending machine. As pokecapn and crew find out, it is possible for this to fail. He also appears in several Mini-Events (if he does, it usually means he will rob your Ring count).
• Evil Only Has to Win Once: Eggman's master plan almost always involves World Domination, the destruction of Sonic and pals, or both. Sonic really can't afford to let Eggman slip by if the doctor's up to no good, especially if Sonic Forces is any indication.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: He wants to conquer the world, not destroy it. If, or when, a Doomsday Device or world-ending abomination fall out of his control, he will team up with the heroes to save their planet from being destroyed.
• Evil Virtues: Hard worker, extremely determined, relentless, and has a lifelong admiration of his grandfather, Professor Gerald Robotnik. And is respectful towards his "daughter".
• Expy: Bears a strong resemblance to Motro from Castle in the Sky, who is also a pudgy engineer with a walrus-like mustache and Opaque Lenses. It's likely unintentionally, but Eggman also tends to play the "lesser evil" in many instances, much like was the case of the band of sky pirates which Motro is a part of. Granted, compared to Motro, Eggman is about a thousand times more a Jerkass.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Apart from Sonic Riders, Eggman never succeeds at any of his plans, either due to Sonic getting in the way or because whatever force he's using spirals out of his control. Eggman Nega in Sonic Rivals reveals that he will never succeed, and that his failures ruin the Robotnik name.
• Fatal Flaw: His Pride. Although he's a technological genius and sometimes a master planner, he always suffers defeat by Sonic due to his inability to acknowledge that he can never defeat him through brute force.
• Fat Bastard: Is grossly obese and endorses animal cruelty.
• Fatherly Scientist: Not usually, but he treats Sage more like a daughter than a program, and Sage in turn refers to him as "Father". The fact that he goes out of his way to revive her in Sonic Frontiers' Golden Ending in the base game shows just how much he values her. The "Final Horizon" update's scenario also sees him state he's proud of Sage, and tells her that they're going home after they both survived against THE END.
• Fat Idiot: Inverted. Eggman, though bumbling and slightly unstable, is a technological genius.
• Faux Affably Evil: A defining trait of his typical characterization. On the surface, Eggman seems to have a rather cordial, charming, and whimsical demeanor even towards his enemies, and multiple character profiles have stated he even "admires" Sonic in a way. Of course, given how Eggman only ever works to serve himself with global destruction being the only consistent line he won't cross (because he'd have nothing to conquer otherwise, not because of any morals whatsoever), his alleged "niceness" is merely an extension of his narcissistic "gentleman genius" persona, and his view of Sonic as a Worthy Opponent doesn't change the fact that he otherwise hates that hedgehog:
  • In Sonic Adventure, he lets E-101 Beta join him on the Egg Carrier despite losing to Gamma since Beta could be useful to him as a "set of spare parts".
  • In Sonic Adventure 2, he lowers his head in melancholy after seemingly killing Sonic... only to immediately turn around and go back to threatening the rest of the heroes. In the Dark Story recap of these events, he gleefully expresses joy towards turning Sonic into "floating chunks in space", confirming his brief act of grieving as either fleeting or done mockingly.
  • In the 2006 game, he treats Princess Elise rather cordially despite kidnapping her... but after all, she still has the potentially exploitable Flames of Disaster within her, and assuming he already knows the full story behind it, breaking her would probably make a mess he wouldn't want to have to clean up.
  • Just before the final boss of Sonic Colors, he (begrudgingly) takes Sonic's advice regarding threatening him directly rather than going through a bunch of amusement-park-related puns that even Sonic finds bad on the way, and then gives a condescending "is that better?" before showing off his new ultimate weapon and telling Sonic in no uncertain terms that it hasn't been nice knowing him.
  • In The Stinger of Sonic Generations, his younger self sarcastically suggests going back to get his teaching degree, with his current day self showing genuine interest in the idea, as he's "always enjoyed telling people what to do".
  • Sonic Lost World:
    • He expresses to the Deadly Six that "he's a compassionate man" when he berates them for their incompetence. While the rest of what he says is hard-to-hear due to Sonic and Tails talking over him, listening closely will reveal that he considers himself "compassionate" because he hasn't thrown the Zeti into a bottomless pit yet.
    • When he pulls an Enemy Mine with the good guys to ensure the Zeti don't destroy the world, he saves Tails' life from the rogue Cubot and seemingly sacrifices himself to save Sonic's life in place of his own... only for the pre-Final Boss cutscene to reveal he was only intending for Sonic and Tails to get rid of the Zeti for him, and doesn't care about the damage the Zeti did to the world since "there's still enough left for [him] to conquer".
  • In Sonic Forces, he calls Tails' and Classic Sonic's attempts at fighting back his empire "adorable" and doesn't tell them what his master plan is under the veneer that it's a "surprise". He also playfully refers to Sonic as his "frenemy" before making Infinite throw him into Null Space to rot for all eternity.
• Final Boss: Back in the Classic Era, he was almost always the final challenge for the player to face. In the more modern games, it tends to zigzag if he's this or not.
• Flaw Exploitation: Utilizes Knuckles' gullibility in his plans constantly. He has also gained the occasional advantage due to playing on Sonic's overconfidence.
• Flight: He can fly using certain devices such as a Jet Pack or vehicles such as the Eggmobile.
• Foil:
  • To Sonic. Both of them are extremely durable Determinators with self-centered tendencies, but whereas Sonic still cares for his friends and the world around him in spite of being cocky, Eggman's ego is so big that he needs the entire world to compensate for it. Adding to this, Sonic is a nature-loving Funny Animal and one of the most physically powerful beings on the planet, while Eggman is a super-intelligent human who desires to use technology to take over the world.
  • To Tails, particularly in Sonic Adventure 2. They're both geniuses at mechanics, but whereas Tails is a quiet, humble Kid Hero who is always assisting Sonic and used to be a bully victim, Eggman is an egotistical hammish self-centered manchild who seeks to take over the world, and his modus operandi often involves picking on innocent beings like small animals and Wisps.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Notably, outside of one instance in Sonic 06 and another in Sonic Mania Adventures^note and also in an exaggerated form whenever he takes a hit as a boss in the Sonic Advance Trilogy, his eyes are never seen. Averted in the 1996 OVA Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, where he shows his eyes several times.
• Freudian Excuse: In Sonic Frontiers, his personal diaries talk about how everyone doted on his cousin Maria both because she was kind and had a fatal disease. After her death, which happened when he was so young he barely remembered her, their family was still disheartened about it in the years following. From Eggman's perspective, at least, they failed to give him adequate attention and he felt like he spent his childhood constantly competing with the memory of someone Too Good for This Sinful Earth. That being said, it's ambiguous as to whether Eggman was an outright victim of Parental Neglect, or if his pure jealousy and neediness made him declare himself as such. Nevertheless, this in part is what gets Eggman to warm up to Sage, as Sage starts behaving in a way he wonders if is reminiscent of Maria.
• Future Me Scares Me: Upon seeing the Eggman from the Modern Era laugh so hard he started choking, his past self told his current day self; "Wow. Will I really get that crazy?".
• Gadgeteer Genius: He's capable of building entire robot armies and armadas of airships in what can't be more than a few weeks or months. His creations also appear to have well-nigh-unlimited power, fuel, and ammunition, as well as effectively healing technology on several examples.
• Galactic Conqueror: Desired to mind-control the entire universe using the Wisps' Hyper Go-on energy. It's also possible that once Eggman conquers his own planet, he'll move on to the next to continue to feed his ego.
• Game-Over Man: While not explicitly appearing on the Game Over screen, the Mega Drive game endings depict Eggman taunting you if you missed some Chaos Emeralds. In Knuckles' Sonic 3 & Knuckles quest, this role is filled by Mecha Sonic; while in Sonic Triple Trouble, Fang the Sniper does it. Played straight in SegaSonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Spinball, where you'll hear his digitized laugh whenever you lose a life or fail a chance to attain a bonus.
• Gasshole: According to Sonic in Sonic Colors due to a mistranslation by Tails after interpreting the Wisps stating that "Baldy Nosehair" uses burps as part of his plan.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: Most boss fights with Eggman involve him piloting a robot and running away from Sonic.
• Genius Bruiser: On several occasions, he's demonstrated impressive speed and strength. He still prefers to let his machines do the fighting, though.
• Goggles Do Nothing: In his Sonic Adventure tenure. He's only actually shown wearing them in a brief cutscene in Sonic Adventure 2, but it's just for dramatic effect.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: In '06, his shades are shown to house a heads-up display.
• The Good Guys Always Win: Eggman may occasionally get the upper hand, but he has never earned a real victory against Sonic and co. — at least not until Sonic Forces, and even that sorted itself out by the end.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Eggman prefers either sending his robots to do the fighting or using mech suits, but don't let that fool you into thinking he's a Non-Action Big Bad who can't take or throw a punch. He's got some serious Stout Strength and is a surprisingly brutal fighter hand-to-hand in the few instances where he gets to show it off.
• Gonk: He looks rather cartoonish compared to other humans in the series. Even in 06, where he's redesigned to fit with the other humans, he's still potbellied and unattractive.
• Good Parents: Played with. He's more openly patient and supportive of Sage compared to his other creations, but as stated in Bad Boss above, it can be inferred that Eggman's only being this nice to her due to her competency and loyalty towards him. At the very least, he values her enough in some way to want to bring her back from the dead. While his flaws would make one assume otherwise, Eggman is a surprisingly decent father to Sage. He always praises her, never takes his anger out on her even after her failures, and even goes out of his way to bring her back when she sacrifices herself.

H-W

• Hair-Trigger Temper: His earliest profiles give this as his Achilles' Heel. He's brilliant through and through, but he's prone to "childish fits of rage". Even when portrayed as calmer and more rational than his current self, his Classic Era self in Generations suffers this all the same and Superstars has Eggman throwing childish tantrum whenever he gets hit.
• The Heavy: Eggman in the insiginator of most games.
• Hidden Depths: In Sonic Frontiers, you can find Dr. Eggman's voiced diaries by fishing with Big. These diaries detail his thoughts while researching the Ancients and subsequently being held captive in Cyber Space. In them, he shows both jealousy and curiosity towards his cousin Maria, whom everyone spoke highly of despite having been long dead to the point of ignoring his greatness. He admits a begrudging respect for Sonic and believes that Amy and Tails' potentials are being hindered by his strong personality. Most critically, he begins to have develop a genuine love for his AI Sage, eventually accepting her as his own daughter.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: In Frontiers, Eggman gains a more caring side after Sage is introduced and learns to opens his heart more and finally be honest about his feelings. As Sage and later Sonic points out that Eggman always had a heart deep down, but was too stubborn and proud to admit it at times as he buried his feelings for so many years due to losing his entire family and possibly having no friends in his childhood. Plus he grows to love Sage as his own daughter and is happy to have someone in his life. Though Word of God notes that it still stems from Eggman's ego more than anything else; for as much as he does genuinely love Sage, a large part of it is his pride in his own creation than anything else.
• Hyperaffixation: His weapons, vehicles, and a good amount of his Mecha-Mooks will inevitably have "Egg" in their name.
• Hypocrite:
  • In Shadow the Hedgehog, he accuses Shadow of being an Ungrateful Bastard for trying to kill him because his grandfather created him. Which is funny, since Eggman himself is the one trying to conquer the world that his grandfather tried to make peace in (however, it could most likely be an excuse for Shadow to let him live).
  • In Sonic Forces, he ridicules Infinite's decision to leave Sonic alive after their fight in the Mystic Jungle, but prior to that fight, Sonic had been held prisoner at the Death Egg for six months and Eggman did nothing with him in that time, despite deeming him enough of a threat to need to be dealt with in the here and now. He also leaves Tails and Classic Sonic alone after they beat him in the immediate aftermath of the aforementioned conversation, even though he had all the opportunity to eliminate them there and then.
• Hypocritical Humor: Eggman notes in a memo in Sonic Frontiers that Amy Rose must have a difficult time distinguishing herself next to Sonic, given the Blue Blur's massive ego. While he has a point, this is still coming from a man who plasters a cartoonish caricature of his face everywhere, took over a seventh of the planet during Sonic Unleashed so he could build an amusement park dedicated to his greatness called Eggmanland, and has had to occasionally tamp down on one of his minions' own attempts to establish himself as a threat. (Though in Metal Sonic's defense, Eggman took less of an issue with him being too powerful and more with Metal Sonic imprisoning him and attempting to take over his Empire.)
• Hijacking Cthulhu:
  • This has been a running theme with Dr. Eggman since Sonic Adventure. It wasn't until Sonic Generations that he actually succeeded without it backfiring.
  • Back in the Classic Era, he attempts to do this to the Black Dragon, as he enlists Fang (and Trip) to capture it for him in addition of the giant animals living in Northstar Islands. But the arrival of Sonic and his friends to his latest operation flips him out that he puts the plan on hold in favor of taking them down, which fails...again.
• Humongous Mecha: Has piloted many over the years.
• "I Am" Song: Aptly titled 'E.G.G.M.A.N.'
  "I am the Eggman!
  That's what I am!
  I am the Eggman!
  I've got the master plan!"
• Identical Grandson: He looks like younger version of his grandfather Gerald. His descendant Eggman Nega also bears a striking resemblance to him.
• Image Song: "E.G.G.M.A.N." is his primary one. "Theme of Dr. Eggman" is also sometimes included in the series' image song collections, despite being instrumental.
• Improbably High I.Q.: 300, if the background materials are to be believed. It's even more improbably high than Tails, and nearly twice as high as what would be considered a super genius in the real world.
• Inconsistent Dub: Videos from official Sega sources have pronounced his first name as both "Ee-vo" and "Eye-vo." The former was used by Eggman himself during a Twitter Q&A and by Tails in the Japanese dub for the second episode of TailsTube, while Tails uses the latter in the English original for the same episode.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Sonic Frontiers frames his rampant narcissism as this. He puts his imagery everywhere less out of self-indulgence and more to get the attention of others so that he won't feel so alone.
• Informed Attribute: The Sonic Heroes manual claims that Eggman is a "romanticist, a feminist, and a self-professed gentleman." This is never displayed in any of the games he appears. Oddly, it doesn't match his bio in the Japanese manual; it was translated from his profile for Sonic X, where he's more of an Adaptational Nice Guy.
• In-Series Nickname: How the "Eggman" moniker was adapted for the English audiences, starting with Sonic Adventure. It was originally given to Sonic in mockery, but come Sonic Adventure 2, Eggman embraced the name in proud defiance. Nowadays, "Robotnik" is mostly used for Eggman's extended family (grandfather Gerald Robotnik, and cousin Maria Robotnik) and Eggman's companies (Robotnik Corp).
• Insufferable Genius: As you'd expect, he loves to boast about how much of a genius he is and rub it in everyone's faces.
• In Their Own Image: By the time of Forces, he plans to ravage the world using the Phantom Ruby and rebuild it from the ashes in his image.
  Infinite: We move forward with the plan?
  Eggman: Of course! When it's complete, the Resistance will be erased. The world will be nothing but ashes, from which a glorious Eggman Empire will rise!
• Ironic Nickname: His nickname has the word "egg" in it. Eggs are a sign of life; Robotnik himself, however, is a destructive foe who actually tries to kill his enemies when he's a real threat.
• Irony: Sage notes that Eggman actually has a higher success rate for his team-ups with Sonic than he does when he goes it alone, and speculates the two could accomplish great things if they only worked together. However, Eggman's hatred of the hedgehog and his own ego prevents him of ever making good on this except in the most desperate of situations.
• It's All About Me: Clearly. Not only does he paste his own face onto almost all of his creations, he wants the entire world to admire him and his brilliance.
• Jetpack: Sonic CD, Sonic Lost World, and Sonic Mania shows that he possesses one.
• Joker Immunity: Since he's as iconic to the series as Sonic himself, Eggman never dies and has survived numerous explosions and his various vehicles/bases crashing multiple times. That said, he does bite it in one of the (non-canon) endings in Shadow the Hedgehog.
• Kick the Dog: There are many, many examples throughout the franchise, but here are just a few:
  • He often uses small animals to power his machines, despite many games showing that he doesn't actually need to.
  • He treats his usual Co-Dragons, Orbot and Cubot, pretty badly, even abandoning them in the depths of space after the events of Sonic Colors.
  • Despite being humanized quite a bit in Sonic Frontiers, he still proceeds to laugh uproariously after Sonic is corrupted by Cyberspace and even mock the situation in front his friends.
• Knight of Cerebus: In Sonic Adventure 2, he was portrayed as surprisingly serious. At least until Shadow takes over. His very first act in the game is wiping out an entire army to get to Prison Island (mostly of robots, but it's implied there are at least some human casualties in the mix). He also came close to destroying Sonic, and blew up half of the moon just to test his weapon. However, he certainly still had humorous quirks, despite that. In 06, he's once again this. His plan of unleashing the Flames of Disaster upon the world established him as this, though in this game, he ends up getting upstaged by a far crazier villain.
• Lack of Empathy: Sometimes, as the little mind he pays to the destruction often left in his wake so long as he gets what he wants. To use Lost World as just one example, he doesn't pay any mind to Tails' description of the Cacophonic Conch being "very painful" to the Zeti he enslaved, but only bemoans that it was "very rare" in light of Sonic punting it away. Sonic Frontiers subverts this as Eggman only does these things because he wants people to respect him and his intellect, and have a family who would love him. However, he succeeds in having Sage as his daughter who loves him very much, and in turn he grows to love her almost as much.
• Lampshade Hanging: Not by himself, but the lyrics of his boss theme in the Japanese soundtrack of Sonic the Hedgehog CD references his Bald of Evil as well as one of his more defining traits of being an Evil Genius.
• Large Ham: He's this in general from scheming and even his casual dialogue.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Frequently a victim of this:
  • After failing to pay Team Chaotix at the end of their story in Sonic Heroes, the trio proceed to gang up on and beat him senseless.
  • At the end of Sonic Unleashed, his dream theme park is utterly destroyed, Sonic beats his most powerful robot to pieces with his bare hands while Eggman is still inside, he gets completely upstaged by Dark Gaia, and he's left ruined in the middle of nowhere with his own robot mocking his failures.
  • Sonic Colors ends with yet another one of his theme parks going up in flames, while he himself is left stranded in space with Orbot and the Motor Mouth Cubot.
  • Sonic Generations concludes with him and his past self trapped in an inescapable void, with only each other for company. Unfortunately, they don't exactly get along.
  • After betraying Sonic and Tails at the end of Sonic Lost World, he is once again left in the middle of nowhere with nobody but Orbot and Cubot to annoy him, only this time, half of his iconic mustache has been burnt off.
  • A few quick moments in Sonic Mania show him angrily yelling and barking orders at the Hard-Boiled Heavies. Unsurprisingly, the Heavy King turns against Eggman and attempts to take the Phantom Ruby for himself, completely derailing the doctor's plan.
• Laughably Evil: While it varies Depending on the Writer, Eggman is generally shown to be rather buffoonish and quite immature, often throwing comically-exaggerated tantrums when things aren't working out his way. Classic Eggman is more consistently depicted as laughable, with much more emphasis on his showmanship (building extravagant casinos and carnivals) and lack of competence (some of his boss fights have him use questionable tactics like pinball machines and gacha machines, while Sonic CD shows his robots broken down and malfunctioning in the bad futures); at least in Generations, though, even he is disturbed by his Modern Era self's crazed behavior.
• Leitmotif: Has multiple, such as "Theme of Dr. Eggman" in the first Sonic Adventure and "E.G.G.M.A.N." in Sonic Adventure 2. He had a consistent theme in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) which was reused for Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Colors, but it was dropped after those three games.
• Lethal Chef: In Sonic Unleashed, Professor Pickle complained about the food he served, and neither Sonic or Chip enjoy eating anything from Eggmanland. In Sonic Colors, Tails apparently paid an ill-advised visit to the Bucket O' Sushi restaurant between cut-scenes. His only comment on the experience?
  Tails: (grimly, while clutching his stomach) His cruelty knows no bounds.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: In Sonic Adventure, during the Grand Finale for Tails's campaign, Eggman drops his usual Large Ham personality in favor of a more calm, composed, and surprisingly frightening demeanor in the moments before he fights Tails in his giant robot.
• Loyal Phlebotinum: Wherever the Phantom Ruby came from, it only seems to answer to Dr. Robotnik throughout Mania, either projecting his will into reality or acting on others wills solely to assist him. When destabilized and sent hurtling through time and space, it winds up right at the doorstep of the modern Dr. Eggman, ready to fuel his world domination scheme over the course of Forces.
• Mad Scientist: Of course. Though, compared to his grandfather Gerald (after Maria died), and his descendant Eggman Nega, Eggman is definitely the least insane of the three.
• Malevolent Mugshot: Eggman must be proud of his work, because he stencils his cartoon mug on all of his inventions. The Death Egg even sported a giant mustache. There seems to be some history behind this. The Space Colony ARK in Adventure 2 bears a similar visage when the Eclipse Cannon is revealed, but there's no way Eggman contributed to that, since his grandfather was the last person to set foot on the station.
• The Man Behind the Man:
  • He and Eggman Nega pull this off in Sonic Rush Adventure, being the ones who created Captain Whisker and his crew to steal the Jeweled Scepter.
  • He pulls it off again in Sonic Generations, teaming up with Classic Eggman to use the Time Eater to erase their previous defeats at Sonic's hands.
• Manipulative Bastard: He has manipulated Knuckles repeatedly (though by the third time or so, it might be more Knuckles' fault) and even tricked Tails into revealing he had a fake Chaos Emerald. Also, he tricked Sonic into getting in the center of his ray to unseal Dark Gaia, and used him to get the Deadly Six out of the way.
• Meaningful Name: Besides "Eggman" aptly describing his appearance, his full name Ivo Robotnik is meant to be this; the first name 'Ivo' was picked because of the phonetic similarity to the word 'evil' (according to former Sega of America employee Dean Sitton, his intention was that the name would have been pronounced "ee-vo" rather than "eye-vo"). In addition, Ivo is the reverse of Ovi, which is the genitive singular form of the Latin word ovum, meaning egg. The term "Robotnik" is derived from the Czech words for "work" and "forced labor" and an older Slavic term for "slave". Given he imprisons animals inside capsules and his killer robots on a regular basis, his name thus makes him out to be an "Evil Slave-Driver".
• Misanthrope Supreme: Subverted. He's mostly indifferent to the fact that many of his plans cause untold amounts of casualties and suffering, and as such doesn't really go out of his way to cause it either; it's just a means to an end. This is mostly linked to his narcissism, and he stops short of desiring the complete destruction of humanity, since he obviously needs a populace to rule over when he conquers the planet.
• Morality Chain: Sage seems to be one of these to him. She isn't really any more heroic than Eggman, and even refers to the world as "his to conquer", but she's able to get him to (begrudgingly) help Sonic, and she's the only one he shows any sort of care or affection towards.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: It's not remotely clear where his doctorate is from, but it's apparently genuine, because even his enemies call him "Dr. Eggman". He's also apparently the authority on robotics. Too bad he's also an evil megalomaniac.
• Motifs: Eggs. It's in his name, and (almost) every one of his creations' names.
• Mysterious Past: He seems to have popped out of nowhere to terrorize the world. Most of what we know about his past is second-hand through his grandfather, and even then mostly through implication.
• Narcissist: Fitting his Insufferable Genius nature, Eggman has a massive ego, to the point that he plasters his face on damn near everything he conquers and tends to blame his own failures on either his minions or Sonic himself. This is Deconstructed in Sonic Frontiers, as the reason for his narcissism is due to a lack of attention in his childhood, causing him to be desperate for people to respect his intellect and not make him feel alone.
• Never My Fault: He never learns from his mistakes and always blames others for his failures. A good example of this is in Sonic Lost World, where he blames Sonic for the situation they're in. While it's true that Sonic kicked the conch anyway, he had no way of knowing what it was for, and it's still Eggman's fault for abusing the Zeti in the first place.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In Sonic 2006, every time Silver attempts to kill Sonic, Eggman kidnaps Elise. In a way, he actually saved the world, as Sonic being killed in front of Elise would have had far worse ramifications, as the Final Story revealed.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: He has a knack to laugh this way started from Sonic CD within its boss soundtrack, which eventually carries over in the succeeding games.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: His earliest design was a caricature of US President Theodore Roosevelt.
• Not Me This Time: Even with his usual evil scheming, there are some moments in which he’s not responsible for the latest evil thing.
  • When his grandfather’s Space Colony Ark is set for a crash course for Earth, Knuckles accuses him of trying to destroy the planet, though the person at fault is his grandad Gerald, who had that feature built in when the 7 Chaos Emeralds were put in its Space Cannon.
  • He brags to Team Sonic that he’s built the Egg Fleet and it will deploy in 3 days if not stopped. It’s revealed that while Eggman DID build the fleet, he’s been imprisoned in the Final Fortress’s flagship by Metal Sonic, who stole his creator’s identity in a complex plan to copy Teams Sonic, Rose, Dark, and Chaotix’s data so he could beat Sonic to become the real Sonic.
  • When Knuckles is transported into a Cyber Gate on ruins that were older than Angel Island, he immediately thinks Eggman tricked him again. However, it’s Knuckles’s own curiosity that’s at fault this time since Eggman himself was already sealed into Cyber Space by Sage, his AI, during the effort to use the Ancients' technology for the Eggman Empire because she witnessed them getting slaughtered en masse by THE END.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Yes, he's a Ditzy Genius who kept forgetting that Evil Is Not a Toy for quite a while. But it's made clear time and time again throughout the series, especially in Sonic Forces, that if Sonic wasn't his adversary, he'd be ruling the world right now. It's even lampshaded in Forces; Knuckles remarks that he'd normally laugh off any of Eggman's schemes, but Eggman's already taken over most of the world.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: On some level, Eggman does seem to genuinely believe that the world is better off with him in charge, and desires to create a technologically advanced society ruled by scientists. However, this belief is warped by a blind faith in science and a complete disregard for all life. It's shown that any time he actually succeeds, the world is a polluted, mechanized hellscape, completely depleted of natural resources and plagued by Eggman's increasingly desperate attempts to eradicate all opposition.
• Obviously Evil: His gaudy villainous mustache, his ego-driven habit of putting his face on anything he owns, and his aforementioned meaningful name go hand-in-hand with his Card-Carrying Villain stature.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: No explanation has been given for how he or his past counterpart escaped from the timeless void leftover from the destruction of the Time Eater. They got out of there somehow (if they didn't, there would be no more games for the rest of the series), but how they did it when they had access to absolutely no technology is left up in the air.
• Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: Averted. Eggman seemingly gets the money and resources for his schemes through a strong mixture of small-time crime between bigger plots, selling stripped-down versions of his robots to the highest bidder (while keeping the good stuff for himself obviously), and shell companies like MeteorTech. All in all, he has a pretty steady stream of cash and supplies to build his armies, fleets, and weapons with.
• Oh, Crap!: Has multiple every time Sonic shows up and is about to defeat him.
• Omnicidal Maniac: He may have devolved into this in Sonic Forces, or he could specifically be trying to wipe out all his enemies in one fell swoop, though he does mention wanting to rebuild the world in his image. It's hard to tell, but it's certain that he very well might have destroyed or at least ravaged the world in Sonic Adventure 2 if Sonic hadn't thwarted his plan, the world hadn't surrendered to him, and the cannon wasn't rigged to initiate a Colony Drop instead of firing.
  Eggman: "The world will be nothing but ashes, from which a glorious Eggman Empire will rise!"
• Only Known By His Nickname: In Japan, Ivo Robotnik, at first, wasn't his full name; he's always simply been called "Eggman". However, TailsTube would give his real name as Ivo Robotnik in all regions and the official Japanese website, Sonic Channel, would remove the line that says his real name is unknown as a result.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Eggman's default setting is Large Ham, but it's when he stops being a Large Ham, that lets you know he is pissed. See Tranquil Fury below. Also, he wants to conquer the world, not destroy it, and will team up with the heroes to save their planet from being destroyed. But there are a few times where he attempts to destroy the world himself.
• Opaque Lenses: Eggman's blue pince-nez glasses.
• Papa Wolf:
  • Aside from the way his Classic counterpart treats him in Sonic Mania Adventures, Eggman seems to have some paternal care for Metal Sonic, often going out of his way to personally repair and upgrade him after his various defeats.
  • He is a caring, loving father towards Sage and is highly protective of her. He is also against the idea of putting her life in danger and regrets letting her go to help Super Sonic stop THE END as she pulled a Heroic Sacrifice afterwards. But luckily in the ending he was able to revive her by uploading what he could salvage of her code up to Egg Net, and was happy he was able to save her and have her back. In the Golden Ending, it's quite telling that it's Eggman who fires the shot to defeat THE END, especially after Sage nearly gave her life to save him.
• Paper-Thin Disguise:
  • Wears these in Sonic Shuffle.
  • Sonic accuses King Sharyar of doing this in Sonic and the Secret Rings, only to find out it's not Eggman. Then again, Sonic did this to almost everyone in the Sonic Storybook Series, but starts to get used to it eventually, only briefly confusing the blacksmith for Tails and then only stating that Gawain reminds him of Knuckles and not even mentioning Percival's resemblance to Blaze.
  • He also tried this in Sonic Free Riders, disguising himself as King Doc in an attempt to steal the contestants' racing data for his own Extreme Gear. Needless to say, none of the characters fall for it.
• Parental Favoritism: In Frontiers, Sage notes that for all effective purposes she is his daughter and Orbot and Cubot are her older brothers. Eggman often dotes on Sage and complains about Orbot and Cubot's general incompetence. Considering The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog and the Sonic Colors promotional short, this trope seems to also apply to Metal Sonic due to his siblings seeing him as one of them.
• Parental Neglect: Implied in Sonic Frontiers, where, as misguided as his feelings may be, Eggman mentions in one of his Egg Memos that he never really knew his cousin Maria, and appears envious of "all that love for someone who was gone while I was! Right! There!" In turn, he wonders if Sage is similar to Maria, and this may be why he dotes on Sage so much as his surrogate daughter.
• Person of Mass Destruction: In all of Eggman's schemes, he always manages to cause horrendous collateral damage, either directly or indirectly due to whatever Cosmic Horror spirals out of his control.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Eggman wants to rule the planet. As such, his schemes — while rarely concerned with collateral damage — are never designed to destroy the world outright and he will reluctantly ally with Sonic to stop threats that are either less concerned with keeping the world intact or otherwise will take away his chance to rule the world for himself.
  • In Sonic Adventure 2, it's his Broken Pedestal for his grandfather Gerald came as a result of learning about Gerald's plan to slam the ARK into the planet out of petty revenge— which would, of course, have killed him along with everyone else on the planet. Likewise, in Shadow the Hedgehog, he's genuinely horrified and disgusted when he learns that Gerald Robotnik seemingly sold out his species and home planet to Black Doom for the sake of research. He didn't, and Gerald built the Eclipse Cannon to deal with Black Doom when the Black Arms made their move.
  • In Sonic Rush Adventure, he freaks out when Eggman Nega activates the Egg Wizard's Planet Buster Laser in a last-ditch effort to defeat Sonic and Blaze, risking the destruction of the planet and hence the two doctors with it.
  • In Sonic Lost World, after activating his Extractor that's designed to sap life energy from the world, he makes sure that it reaches a small threshold before turning it off since he only wants to borrow some of it rather than draining the whole thing dry— which is what the Deadly Six attempt to do once they hijack Eggman's machinery, hence his Enemy Mine with Sonic and Tails. On the other hand, it's also heavily implied that his rescue of Tails was so his truce with Sonic would appear more altruistic than it really was, and thus drive away suspicion towards his plan to reclaim the energy from the Extractor— and at the end of the game, despite all the damage the Zeti have done, he's still insistent on conquering whatever's left on the planet.
  • In Sonic Frontiers, when THE END shows its true colors for the first time, his first instinct is to order the Egg Fleet to blow it out of the sky, and notably never fights Sonic, instead helping him out so that THE END can be defeated.
• Pride: As shown in Sonic Lost World, he is capable of planning around Sonic being able to defeat other threats to his plans. However, he seems to have a constant inability to accept Sonic always being able to defeat him, which results in him always getting defeated.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Despite being an Evil Genius and Sonic's Arch-Enemy, Eggman is very childish and immature. He's prone to temper tantrums when he loses or things don't go his way, and several of his bases are deadly amusement parks.
• Recurring Boss: Not as much in later games, but he certainly plays this trope straight in the classic 2D games, where he's fought as a boss at the end of each zone, each time piloting a variant of his Egg Mobile.
  • Sonic Adventure is the first main series game where Eggman loses the honor of being the opponent in all but a small handful of boss battles, and even then, he has three distinct boss machines that Sonic and Tails fight against^note the Egg Hornet is fought by both of them, Tails fights the Egg Walker, and Sonic fights the Egg Viper, and he also serves as an Assist Character for Chaos 6 in Sonic and Tails's stories.
  • This trope is downplayed in the Sonic Advance Trilogy, Sonic Heroes^note very heavily downplayed in this case; only three of the seven non-Last Story boss fights are against Eggman directly (two of the others are just multiple waves of robots while Eggman floats around and taunts the heroes without taking any direct action), and come the endgame, it's revealed that Eggman was locked up the whole time and the Eggman the heroes were fighting was Metal Sonic in disguise, Sonic Rush^note when playing as Blaze; Sonic fights Eggman Nega instead, Sonic Rivals^note or so it seems; The Reveal of the game is that Eggman got locked up before the start of the game yet again and the heroes have been fighting Eggman Nega disguised as Eggman, and even then, only Shadow and Silver get to learn this, Sonic Rivals 2^note same twist as its predecessor, except this time everybody gets to find out, and Sonic Mania, where Eggman is just the vast majority of the boss fights as opposed to all of them.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: His outfit.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In most of the American/European non-game media, he is depicted with red eyes and black irises. In the games, though, he has normal blue eyes hidden behind his glasses.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Is the red oni to Tails and Sonic. Likewise, Modern Eggman is the Red Oni to his Classic Era self's Blue Oni.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Although in his case it's more "Reed Richards is a Jerk". His technology has the potential to revolutionize the world many times over, but he has absolutely no interest in using it for the benefit of others. His only concern is world domination.
• Ret-Canon: As of Adventure 2, Robotnik became his surname worldwide, and reinforced with the TailsTube series which would also canonize his first name.
• Robot Master: Creates tons of robots and mechs.
• Scarf of Asskicking: Wears one in the Sonic Riders series.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Manages this every once in a while, usually with a massive, toothy grin.
• Science Is Bad: Sonic Team designed him to represent technology and development unrestrained by conscience and uncontrollably destructive to nature. He's a contrast to Sonic, who represents freedom and the natural world, and Tails, who represents a much more beneficent approach to technology.
• Sibling Rivalry: More like "Cousin Rivalry". Ivo admits in one of his Egg Memos that he always had a seething jealousy of his cousin Maria Robotnik as a kid; Maria was the family favorite, doted on and lavished with praise before and after her death, leaving Robotnik — who never really knew her that well — to spend his childhood feeling like he was competing with a ghost for his family's affection.
• Sinister Shades: The above-mentioned glasses.
• Smug Smiler: His default expression is a very aggravating smirk. He loves to do this at the end of the game if you missed any Chaos Emeralds.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: In Sonic Frontiers, it finally reveals that underneath the mask of a megalomaniacal, bad-tempered Mad Scientist is a insecure loner who just wanted his intelligence to be respected and have a family of his own.
• Super-Speed: Eggman is very athletic and can surprisingly fast, despite his rotund appearance. In Sonic Riders, one of his turbo boost moves has him carrying his board and running on foot at a very fast pace.
• Strong Family Resemblance: He looks a lot like his grandfather Gerald, and his descendant Eggman Nega looks exactly like him, just with a white mustache instead of a brown one.
• Stout Strength: On and off, he's shown to be stronger than he appears, smacking a giant robot's hand away with his stomach, and punching a(n albeit small) defense turret off the wall with his bare hands. Sonic Lost World has him punch through a wall of solid ice without so much as a (visible) scratch. He's also defined as a Power class in Sonic Riders, being able to punch out walls, cars, and even trains along the track.
• Super-Strength: In Sonic Riders, he is classified as a Power character and he can punch large obstacles out of the way.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: He was always Eggman in Japan, but in the English localization, the name first showed up in Adventure as an insulting nickname from Sonic and his friends, and by Adventure 2 he's started using it himself.
• Surrounded by Idiots: His robots Orbot and Cubot beginning with Sonic Colors.
• Tactical Suicide Boss: It's cropped up a few times over the decades - Eggman sets himself up for defeat in Sonic 3 & Knuckles during his fight in Lava Reef by controlling the flow of magma such that his own floating, discarded projectiles hit his machine, for instance - but a special case has to be during the fight with Chaos 6, where Eggman actively impedes his minion by providing freezing robots as reinforcements for an aquatic entity that Sonic and Knuckles can simply toss at Chaos.
• Take Over the World: What he wants to do in most installments/adaptations. By Sonic Forces, he succeeds.
• Taught by Experience: After several Villain Team Ups led to him getting stabbed in the back after he was no longer needed, Eggman seemed to become cautious enough to implement a Restraining Bolt to make sure they remained loyal to him. In Lost World, he keeps the Deadly Six subservient with a conch that plays a siren painful to them (only losing power over them after Sonic carelessly destroys it). In Forces, meanwhile, after repeated failures and impudence from Infinite, Eggman, seemingly savvy to another rebellion, reveals he has control over the Phantom Ruby, teleporting it and Infinite to his base and swiping the Ruby for his own devices.
• Team Rocket Wins: Eggman has never earned a long-term victory against Sonic, but there have been rare occasions where he got the upper hand. In Sonic Adventure 2, he nearly succeeded in killing Sonic by trapping him in a pod, launching it into space, and blowing it up, with Sonic only surviving because he somehow managed to use Chaos Control with a fake Chaos Emerald to teleport to safety, which should have been impossible. In the opening of Sonic Unleashed, he actually manages to defeat Super Sonic, steal the Chaos Emeralds from him, and tear the planet apart, launching Sonic out into space after the fact. This changes in Sonic Forces, where Eggman has actually conquered 99% of the world.
• Technologically Advanced Foe: Make no mistake, Eggman has no equal when it comes to advanced technology^note barring perhaps the Ancients, and even then they're pretty much long extinct by the time the games start. Both GUN and Tails have made attempts to reverse-engineer his creations, but the results are always flimsy and easily get crushed by Eggman's own robots. Also, nine times out of ten, any industrial environment seen in any Sonic game most likely had Eggman involved to some degree in its creation. The fact that Sonic can still regularly defeat him with no real technology irks Eggman.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: In Frontiers, he's very unhappy about having to team up with Sonic again (even referring to previous cooperation as being borne of desperation) and has to be cajoled into it by Sage, even "inducting Sonic into the Eggman Empire" in a very hasty and irritated tone.
• Terrible Artist: His drawing skill is almost on par with a child scribble, as his attempt to make a doodle of Black Dragon is... left more to be desired, to put it lightly.
• Terrible Trio: He forms one with Orbot and Cubot.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: In Eggman's view of things, only he is allowed to defeat Sonic and conquer the world and it must be done his way. He will tolerate independent allies, but not rivals, as individuals like Infinite and the Zeti often end up learning the hard way. He won't even tolerate Sonic dying from natural causes — in the 8-bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, he rescues Sonic from falling into a bottomless pit solely so he can defeat him fair and square.
• Token Human: In continuities where all the other characters are either anthropomorphic animals, robots, or otherworldly beings at least.
• Took a Level in Badass: In Sonic Adventure 2 in his plots, going so far as to take hostages. Even partly lampshaded by our boy in blue.
  Sonic: (smugly) You've turned into a big-time villain, doctor!
  • In Sonic Unleashed, he captures Sonic in his super form and drains his Emerald energy to power a machine that detonates the entire planet!
  • In Sonic Colors, he creates a gargantuan space station that chains multiple planets together so as to capture aliens to power his machinery (with not a single treacherous Eldritch Abomination in sight).
  • He goes through another level in Sonic Generations, where he, yet again, gets ahold of an Eldritch Abomination and uses it to neutralise the entire hero squad. Only this time, he manages to keep it under control without it betraying him!
  • Sonic Lost World has him gain control of six very powerful Zeti and take measures to prevent their betrayal. His control over them is so great, he only loses control thanks to Sonic. And that's not even mentioning him punching through a screen of ice and devising a plan to use Sonic to defeat the Deadly Six and regain his status as the Big Bad.
  • Sonic Forces sees his biggest level-up yet. From the very beginning of the game, Eggman gained the phantom ruby alongside an assistant that allows him to take over 99% of the world, with only small pockets of resistance fighting back. Which he plans to eliminate in one fell swoop with his latest creation. Similar to in Generations and Lost World, he also has precautions to keep said creation under his thumb.
  • Another way of putting it is that Eggman, despite becoming a more comical villain, had become capable of a Class X Apocalypse How in Sonic Unleashed, then a Class X-2 in Sonic Colors, and finally a Class Z in Sonic Generations. And he's trying for another Class X-2 in Sonic Forces.
• Trademark Favorite Food:
  • EGGman has a lot of egg-themed robots and vehicles. This obsession is so strong that his most powerful weapons include the Death EGG, the EGG Carrier, and the EGG Fleet.
  • According to an official guide, Eggman's other favourite snack is, appropriately enough, fried chicken. He's also seen chowing down a massive and highly-detailed Hero Sandwich within the space of about twenty seconds in a Sonic Unleashed cutscene.
• Tranquil Fury: Eggman is a Large Ham by default, but there are a few times he will drop the Large Ham part in favor of being dead serious.
  • In Sonic Adventure, after Chaos 6 is defeated and his Egg Carrier crashes, he tries to fire a missile at Station Square in a desperate attempt to salvage something from having his plans completely fall apart in the last few hours. The missile, unfortunately, is a dud and Eggman has to detonate it manually, but Tails beats him to it and disables it. Eggman, though extremely pissed, barely raises his voice as he threatens to make Tails pay before summoning his Egg Walker. It's not clear whether he's so angry because his last-ditch effort was beaten and he was finally on his last nerve, or he was insulted that it was Tails that beat him this time.
  • And again in Sonic Lost World. When Zavok and Zazz taunt Eggman about how the energy from the Extractor is making them stronger, Eggman threatens to destroy everything they love in the most chilling voice possible before smashing the ice wall they were speaking from.
  • Happens again towards the end of the Another Story scenario from the "Final Horizon" update in Sonic Frontiers. As he's about to finish off THE END alongside Sonic, he is dead silent. No witty banter, no triumphant Evil Laugh, nothing. He just faces the cosmic horror with a Death Glare and shoots it with a makeshift cannon containing an empowered Super Sonic inside of it. The reason? Not just because THE END had only moments ago tried to kill him, but also his daughter.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Eggman's typical modus operandi for what he does is to establish his view of a perfect world — the dishonor given to his grandfather hinted to be part of the motivation — with his technology at the core of it. Needless to say, he's willing to go to all lengths to establish it, and as the Despotism Justifies the Means references on this page will tell you, he seems to be solely interested in his twisted take of a perfect world, alternate viewpoints be damned.
• Underestimating Badassery: He tends to get both ends of this. He frequently underestimates Sonic's ability to stop whatever new plan he's hatching, and always fails. However, Sonic sometimes gets too cocky when it comes to Eggman, allowing the doctor to get the upper hand and surprise his nemesis.
• Unexplained Recovery: While him always somehow showing up after certain defeat again is a tradition for the series, Sonic Lost World makes no effort to explain how he escaped from being trapped in the White Space at the end of Sonic Generations.
• The Unfavorite: He alludes to being this in Sonic Frontiers in one of his unlockable diary entries, feeling that his family constantly overlooked him in favor of his cousin Maria, even long after she died. He doesn't particularly resent her for it, and is more curious as to the kind of person she was to receive such adoration.
• The Unfought:
  • Eggman is never actually fought at any point during Sonic Heroes, as he was betrayed and imprisoned by Neo Metal Sonic before the events of the game. The "Eggman" the various teams confront was actually Metal Sonic in disguise.
  • Despite being a playable character in the Riders sub-series, you never actually get to race Eggman in any of the first two games' story modes. Averted in Free Riders, as the Final Race story has a race with Eggman as an opponent.
  • In Sonic Frontiers, Eggman spends half of the game trapped in Cyber Space and when he finally escapes, he's forced to team up with Sonic to stop THE END from obliterating the world.
• Unknown Rival: He knows E-123 Omega exists, having built him, but the final E-Series robot's defection doesn't really come up much with him. Certainly, Eggman will defend himself whenever Omega (often with Shadow or Rouge supporting him) makes a go at his life, but he rarely ever acknowledges Omega's score with him, nor does he even consciously view Omega as a threat in the same vein as even Shadow, who is one of the few heroes willing to more or less leave Eggman alone or even work with him of his own volition unless their goals don't align. In the end, Omega is a footnote to Eggman at most, and most of his ire is directed in the direction of the blue blur.
• Unwitting Pawn: In Sonic Adventure 2, he's manipulated by Shadow into carrying out Gerald's revenge.
• Vague Age:
  • Unlike most of the heroes, Eggman's age has never been officially stated. His speech patterns in Japanese (such as using washi as his personal pronoun) suggest that he's at least past middle age, and it's left ambiguous whether he was alive or not when Gerald and Maria were, around 50 years ago.
  • Concept art◊ for Sonic CD put his birth year as 1931, which would make him 62 in the year that game came out. Of course, this was early on in the franchise and isn't representative of how he's depicted today.
• Varying Tactics Boss: The Trope Codifier. Aside from already being a highly extreme example of a Recurring Boss, Eggman's various Mini-Mecha creations always have a new strategy for attacking Sonic during each of his boss battles. It's argued in this analysis video that the in-gameplay reason for this is so that Eggman (whose presence already indicates to the player the boss' weak spot to attack) can challenge the player to determine new and faster ways to approach each boss, as a mirror to how determining new and faster ways to approach the level design is the crux of Sonic's normal gameplay.
• Vehicular Assault: Being a mad scientist with a penchant for machines, this is Eggman's go-to tactic of choice, pulling out all kinds of different and quirky machines and mechas to battle Sonic and his friends. His classic Eggmobile in particular is extremely versatile, pulling out a new gimmick each time you face him.
• Villain Decay: Starting with Sonic Adventure and continuing throughout most games since, Eggman has been consistently overthrown as the main antagonist by a kind of all-powerful villain, due to his own evil schemes frequently involving awakening said power to harness it to take over the world. Starting with Sonic Colors, however, it appears he's recovering and has begun to reclaim his mantle as the series villain. Sonic Generations sees him return to form greater than before, and Sonic Forces shows him outright defying this trope entirely.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Pretty much tied with Dr. Wily as a master of this — once Sonic foils a plan of his, he retreats and always comes back with another one, battle mecha included.
• Villain Has a Point: While his words are nothing if not hypocritical, his assessments of Sonic's friends in the Egg Memos in Frontiers as being held back by their connection to Sonic hold some serious weight. Despite them not actually hearing the critique, Amy, Knuckles, and Tails all decide to go their separate ways at the end of the game, to find their place distinct from Sonic or their current roles in life.
  Egg Memo 22 (about Amy Rose): It seems like she had some trouble finding herself. But when you hang around with someone with as big an ego as Sonic, self-identification has to be a challenge.
  Egg Memo 24 (about Tails): Young Prower has a keen mind and loads of potential. Yet he's fixated on worshipping Sonic.
• Villain Respect:
  • As much as he hates Sonic, he does seem to respect him as a Worthy Opponent to a degree. Best shown in Sonic Adventure 2, where, when he believes that Sonic has died, he utters a brief yet respectful farewell to his "admirable adversary"… before spending the following recap being giddy about the hedgehog's death. He echoes this statement to Sage in Frontiers; while he's vocal about hating Sonic's very existence, Eggman cannot deny that the hedgehog is a formidable adversary and respects him on that merit, not to mention admitting in Egg Memo 20 that Sonic's powers are nothing to sneeze at.
    Eggman: Still, for a purely organic creature, obtaining Mach 1 of his own volition is impressive. I'm man enough to admit that.
  • In his Egg Memos, he also expresses respect for Amy and Tails, and even recognizes that their true potentials are being hindered by them being in Sonic's shadow— though he says he prefers it that way, lest they become as problematic to him as Sonic is.
• Villainous Breakdown: Whenever Sonic or any other hero is on the cusp of victory against him, Eggman tends to crack under the pressure and lash out against his enemies.
  • In Sonic Colors, Eggman suffers breaks down right before the Final Color Blaster. It's notably the first time he's been reduced to complete incoherence in the games.
    Eggman: You. You... You...! Yooooouuuu!! YOU HORRID LITTLE HEDGEHOG!!!
  • Eggman, after reclaiming the spot for being the Big Bad of the game, has one during his fight in Sonic Lost World (but only in the 3DS version).
    Eggman: I'm sick of you getting in the way EVERY! SINGLE! TIME!
• Villainous Parental Instinct:
  • On the whole, he seems to have a genuine attachment to Metal Sonic. According to supplementary material, Eggman goes out of his way to repair him after he's defeated by Sonic, and he's often shown treating him more like a son, with The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog drawing the parallel directly. This might just be an extension of his own ego, though, since Eggman just as often takes his frustration out on Metal when he doesn't succeed.
  • Despite his villainy, he created Sage in Sonic Frontiers and begins to treat her like she was his own daughter. He even speculates if his late cousin Maria was like this and that was what endeared so many in his family to her. And he's genuinely devastated over her Heroic Sacrifice in the base game's ending, to the point where he makes sure to salvage her code to upload to the Egg Net and ultimately bring her back. This continues in the "Final Horizon" update, where after their harrowing final battle with THE END, almost costing Sage's life, he states she did well, and calls her his "dear daughter" for the first time to her face.
• Villainous Friendship:
  • With Shadow, to an extent, each treating the other with respect, and Shadow outright stating he doesn't want to fight him, something he almost never does. However, it's made clear that this is impersonal to their agendas, and they will both still gladly manipulate or even try to kill each other to achieve their means regardless.
  • Also with Bowser, which is extremely notable because neither party ever plots against the other, despite Bowser having a hard time even getting along with other versions of himself, much less other villains, and Eggman constantly losing his status as the main villain to others and his other non-canon villainous friendship with Dr. Wily turning sour due to Albert finding him too evil, though they reconcile by Worlds Unite. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games shows they're quite amicable to each other, likely due to their similarities and hatred of their franchises' respective heroes.
• Villainous Valour: As the series had gone in, Eggman has proven himself to be quite the Determinator who will fight Sonic to the bitter end, help out against an even greater threat, or even claw his way back to the Big Bad position after being upstaged, sometimes all in the span of a single game.
• Visionary Villain: Robotnik has a glorious vision of a world where he rules over an orderly world of mechanical wonder as an Emperor Scientist, and he will do whatever he can to make that dream a reality.
• Vocal Evolution: Compared to how he voiced Eggman in the dub of Sonic X before the jump to playing him in the video games, Mike Pollock's performance would start to become a bit raspier and hammier by the time of Sonic Unleashed. During Sonic Colors, he's also given more opportunities to snark with that voice. Sonic Frontiers tones down his hamminess, due to the game's more serious tone and focus on his fatherly relationship to Sage.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The little known details about his planned Eggman Empire apparently involve scientists as the high-class citizens, indicating that it is essentially the scientist version of Outer Heaven. If it is true that his world domination plans are inspired by the perceived injustice of Gerald Robotnik's arrest, that might give him an understandable reason for desiring this. His desire to rule also appears to have come from illusions that doing so would rehabilitate his grandfather's vision of making the world a better place. If this is all true, he went from that to complete megalomaniac in about 10 years.
• Who's Laughing Now?: After a long duration as the Butt-Monkey of the Rogues Gallery and being treated as a mere annoyance by even the secondary good guys, Unleashed onwards shows Eggman being a more deadly threat, taking the heroes by surprise far more often and being more able to maintain the position of Big Bad against competing antagonists. Generations and Forces are key examples, as they outright start with him triumphing over Sonic and co and he is savvy enough to keep control of his Sealed Evil in a Can.
• Worthy Opponent: He considers Sonic as such. A scene between Eggman and Sage in Frontiers has Eggman admit that he truly hates Sonic, but can respect the hedgehog's tenacity, determination, and power at the same time.
  Eggman: Oh, I hate that hedgehog. But that doesn't change the fact that he is a formidable adversary. I respect him, but I don't have to like him.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • Most of his enemies are in their teens, with a few being young kids. Most darkly emphasized in the 8-bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, where the bad ending (not getting all the Chaos Emeralds) implies, at the very least, he absconded with Tails and Sonic will never see him again, if he hasn't out-and-out killed the young fox. And in Sonic Forces, this is upgraded to "Would Utterly Obliterate Several Children".
  • He also gets quite hostile towards Tails (issuing some pretty cold threats before the fight with the Egg Walker) at the end of his story in Sonic Adventure, although by this point, he had been thwarted several times and was at the end of his rope, ready to stomp anyone who got in his way, child or otherwise. In addition, the different storylines have slight differences in dialogue (as he comes off much less scary in Sonic's cutscenes than he does in the same events in Tails' versions of the same), implying that this is more influenced by Tails' perspective of him
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Sure, he's an evil bastard, but throughout the series, he's tried so many times to establish his Eggman Empire, coming quite close more than a few times, when suddenly and quickly all his hard work goes up in smoke. So much so that sometimes, it's not even because of Sonic's interference. You start to feel sorry for the guy...
  • There was that time in Triple Trouble, in which Eggman finally gets all the Chaos Emeralds, without Sonic knowing, only for an accident during the testing phase of one of his new weapons to cause the gems to get scattered to the far corners of the Earth, with him only saving one of them. And of course, this catches Sonic and Tails' attention. Even the Japanese manual states he's disappointed that he has to fight Sonic due to his own screw-up.
  • Then in Sonic Adventure 2, Eggy gets all the Chaos Emeralds inserted into the Eclipse Cannon, causing him to think he's invincible and can do whatever he pleases. Nope. His granddaddy's secret planet-destroying program is initiated when he inserts the last emerald.
  • Happens twice in Sonic Unleashed. Not only does Eggman beat Super Sonic and rid his Green Rocks of their invincibility-granting powers, but he manages to collect energy from Dark Gaia and finally builds his long-awaited Eggmanland. Unfortunately, his latest pet disobeys him (once again) and he ends up stranded in the desert with nothing but a back-sassing robot who maliciously reminds him of his constant failures.
  • Also Sonic Riders. His plan manages to work, he gets the good guys to hand over a treasure (which he's expecting to be better than an angel wing that could rule the world)… and it turns out to be a very soft carpet. He then faints and the good guys say what it really is (which still isn't as good as what he was expecting).
  • In Sonic Colors, Eggman's plan and execution are reasonably professional and almost free of buffoonery. Sonic and Tails show up to keep an eye on him, but even then, he is poised to activate his latest and greatest evil device. It promptly explodes because his dim-witted minions forgot to clear robotic debris from the first boss that lodged into part of it after Sonic defeated it. And this is after Eggman gives us one of the best boss fights in the series...
  • In Sonic Forces, Eggy finally gets rid of Sonic and conquers the world, learned from his past mistakes, and prepared in case the Resistance put up more of a fight than he expected. The only reason his plans failed was because of Infinite's carelessness. He decided Sonic was Not Worth Killing, meaning the Resistance kept their most powerful member. He let the Avatar go after killing their teammates, leading them to join the Resistance and team up with Sonic. And most importantly, he dropped a Phantom Ruby Prototype during his fight with Silver, which was then found by the Avatar and used to cancel the Colony Drop.
  • In Sonic Frontiers, he'd actually been on the Starfall Islands for a while, but finally pulling out Sage to hack the Cyber Space Portals gets him trapped, putting his world-conquering plans on hold while Sage tries to find a way to rescue him. At first he's a jerk to her and just wants to leave to continue his plans, but he gradually comes to actually, genuinely see Sage as a sort of surrogate daughter, to the point of even openly admitting it to her in the finale at last as he grows to be fond of her in the Egg Memos...right before her Heroic Sacrifice. His last shot in the base game's normal ending is reaching out for the falling pieces of the final battle before mourning Sage's loss. Thankfully in the Golden Ending, he manages to restore Sage, with a soft, "That's my girl." In "Final Horizon" update's ending, this is fully subverted, where not only does he manage to work with Sonic to destroy THE END, Sage didn't need to sacrifice herself in order to do so, surviving thanks to the help of Tails, Knuckles, and Amy. After THE END and SUPREME are destroyed, the two watch the stars fall over the island, with Eggman notably proud of how well she did, along with offering her his hand as they go home together, calling her "dear daughter" for the first time to her face.

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