In the 2003 anime, Dr. O'Shay speculates that the days Tenma spent with Tobio/Astro were probably the happiest days of his life. So what's the first step in Tenma's Villainous Breakdown? Erasing Astro's memory so he can relive those days.
Also in the 2003 series, Tenma tries three times to sway his son to his side, in the exact same place with pretty much the exact same rhetoric, failing to actually learn or better himself. He's also noted several times to be Driven to Madness and not at all rational. Now, what’s the definition of insanity? Trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
The 1982 anime features an episode where two robots fall in love due to what O'Shay explains is a strange tendency for robots with similar designs to form strong attractions. Several episodes later Astro gets a love interest in Nuka, a robot based on his prototype blueprint.
Also crossing over with Fridge Horror, but the aforementioned robot girl known as Nuka was made to be a bomb. Could be unintentional, but her name sounds an awful lot like the word "nuke" (the English dub calls her Niki however).
In the 2009 movie, the Laws of Robotics are brought up repeatedly, but the only one that's ever actually invoked is the law that says robots can't harm humans. This is the one rule that both Isaac Asimov and Osamu Tezuka included in either version of the Laws of Robotics.
This one is more Fridge Funny, but Dr. Tenma's female assistant, Dr. Honda, had her name translated in English as Dr. Ford.
In the old Astroboy mangas/show, Astro gets oil by having some device plugged into his butt. Strange, yet innocent, right? Well, think about it: This is a robot who looks like a nine-year-old boy. He's having a phallic-shaped oil-delivering object being shoved into his butt while every other robot in the mangas/show receives their oil by drinking it from a cup. Of course, it begs to be added that Astro is the only robot that looks like has has no clothes on save for some underpants and shoes. The other robots have clothes. Remember: the creator was trying to make a robot replacement for his dead son... Pass the Brain Bleach, please.
The end of the movie is supposed to be happy, but then you remember that Toby is still dead. Without a body to bury.
Within the first ten minutes of the movie, Toby is seen rewiring his personal care robot into doing the complete opposite of what he wanted to do. No discussion, no debate, he just reaches in and fiddles with wires until he gets the answer he wants. In this world, that would be the equivalent of opening someone's head and messing with their brain to make them more compliant.
Almost every robot in the movie is sentient to some degree...even the war drones. How do we know? Before being violently exploded, one of them turns to another and says "I hate this job." So to recap, we have robots being forced to do jobs they clearly don't want to do, diving right into danger and aware of it the whole time. The robots are basically humans with everything except free will.
Before Astro steps in to fight Stone!Peacekeeper, the military is seen preparing to engage. Come Astro's arrival to a war torn city, and the warship accompanying the attack force lurches out from behind a skyscraper immediately before it is revealed that it is attached to Stone!Peacekeeper's arm. But what happened to the soldiers trying to stop him?!
