OH SHIT DOCTOR CLAW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, OK, somebody's gotta explain this one to me. Dr Claw, kidnapping blondes, there is NO WAY that's a coincidence.

Any Get Smart nerds able to shed more light?

Inspector Gadget (especially the American version with Mr. Adams himself as protagonist) was highly influenced by Get Smart. "Dr Craw" may have been a cheap "L" joke, but there you have it. I think.

Interestingly, I was looking up these shows to bitch about how "Get Smart" lasted for well over 100 episodes while "Police Squad" lasted only 6. "Inspector Gadget" had 86 episodes. 86. Fucking weird.

jesus zesty, that is a horrifying fact.

Yeah, I know the Don Adams connection, how Inspector Gadget used to be Max Smart until some horrible accident left him half dead, and they had to go all Robocop to save him.

I mean Craw/ Claw, is there actually a link there? Was Dr Claw originally The Craw? Does this mean that we've seen Dr Claw's face, and he is canonically an oriental? That would explain a lot.

Here's Claw's canonical appearance.
Now before you choose to open this link, realize that the image you see won't even come close to whatever you imagined Dr. Claw would look like. You may wish that you had never clicked on it because it's very anticlimactic.

http://s8.postimg.org/jqt2fk3g5/claw1.jpg

If I remember correctly, that appearance is considered speculative, not canon, as it was from a toy line not directly sanctioned by the writing staff. I can't remember precisely where I read that, but it was from some long-winded fan essay, maybe on TV Tropes? Perhaps FanFiction.Org, or a blog?

Christopher Lloyd!

http://tinyurl.com/pch9eo7

My theory is that the original writers liked the idea of using "Craw" as the template. Like he escaped from jail but was destroyed and brought back to life in the same Robocop style as Maxwell Smart hellbent on revenge. By the 80s though, and into the 90s when Dr. Claw's face was first revealed in the Super Nintendo game as a white man with white hair, we were ontologically moving away from racially-fueled jokes, especially in cartoons aimed at kids. Note how South Park's "City (shitty) Wok" restaurant is considered outrageous in the 21st century whereas "Asians aren't good at saying 'L'" was pretty commonplace back in the day.

We all wanted to see what Dr. Claw looked like when we were kids(I was hoping it'd be nothing but a human skull, or that Mad Cat was controlling him) but I'd like to think that at least one of the writers said "hey let's make him look and talk like Dr. Claw from Get Smart" and got shot down because it'd be politically incorrect.

Did you look at the channel this is on? Probably won't last but for now it's a goldmine.