Dr. Fooler

Dr. Fooler is a reoccurring villain in the Osamu Tezuka Star System. He is a mad scientist with an immature and egotistical personality, and his inventions usually bring chaos or personal gain.

Manga
Dr. Fooler appears in several Tezuka works as a villain in lighter slapstick stories. He is usually very childish, and while he is not benevolent, he or his creations usually are poorly-conceived and bring calamity. In the Astro Boy manga, Fooler is a frequent character in the Shogaku Ninensei manga series, which was serialized from 1980 to 1981. In these stories, he is a stingy and envious scientist with a one-sided rivalry with Professor Ochanomizu. He also appears in the manga Don Dracula, as Professor Hellsing. His character there is as a ridiculous and dramatic vampire hunter, whom is open about having hemorrhoids. Despite his older age, he is hunting Dracula despite many decades of failure.

1963 series
Dr. Fooler is dubbed as Dr. I.Q. Plenty, and appears in the episode "The Wacky Machine". He is the creator of the titular Wacky Machine, a device only designed to make all other machines go out of control.

1980 series
Dr. Fooler appears in the 1980 series episode "The Baby Elephant Pook", renamed as Dr. Huntley in the English dub. He is the creator of a robot safari in Central Africa, which was initially designed as a robot zoo, but has expanded to include a hunting range. His robots are mostly benevolent, except for his giant killer robot Zora, with formatting that he wants Ochanomizu to refine. He also created a tribe of humanoid robots that behave like a stereotypical cannibal tribe. Fooler is not a villain in this role, but he is a shady for-profit scientist.

NOW! Comics series
In the NOW! Comics series, Dr. Fooler appears as I.Q. Plenty once again, now a genetic engineer. He is accompanied by a dog named Spud, who talks with the help of a radio collar. I.Q. Plenty is very egotistical, constantly vying for the position of head of the Institute of Science. He has feelings for the Institute employee Rebecca, one of his former students. When another employee, Lance Lumiere, begins to advance on Rebecca, Plenty creates an odious slime monster named Sludge and sends it after Lance.

I.Q. Plenty and Spud were introduced as comedy relief during the comic's very dark early arc. They were two of the favourite characters of the creative staff, and they had major roles in later issues until writer Brian Thomas took over the series.

2003 series
Dr. Fooler appears as Dr. Minimini (ミニミニ博士), a rogue researcher specializing in micro machines. Before the Ministry of Science, he puts up a front of being an eccentric scientist, but he and his assistant are actually black market weapons dealers being pursued by the police. Minimini becomes interested in copying Astro Boy's operating system, which he desires to reformat into an emotionless humanoid super weapon.

Minimini's assistant implants Uran with a robot virus in order to promote his Virtual Exploration System as a solution. He has his machinery clone Astro into a tiny functioning model. While the tiny Astro is being forced into fighting the virus, Minimini attempts to make a run for it with the full-size Astro in his machine. However, Astro, still tiny, manages to destroy Minimini's machine, and Minimini is arrested shortly after.