Doctor Evil

Dr. Evil is a fictional character played by Mike Myers, the chief villain of the Austin Powers series, and Austin Powers' archnemesis. A parody of any number of James Bond villains, Dr. Evil routinely hatches schemes to terrorize and take over the world.

Background

According to his own account in International Man of Mystery, delivered at a group therapy session with his estranged son Scott, Dr. Evil's upbringing went as follows:

''The details of my life are quite inconsequential.... Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize; he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament... My childhood was typical: summers in Rangoon... luge lessons... In the spring, we'd make meat helmets... When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds — pretty standard, really. At the age of 12, I received my first scribe. At the age of 14, a Zoroastrian named Wilma ritualistically shaved my testicles — there really is nothing like a shorn scrotum — it's quite breathtaking... I suggest you try it.

Dr. Evil's real name is later revealed to be Douglas "Dougie" Powers. He is in fact Austin Powers' brother and the son of Nigel Powers — a fact revealed in the third Austin Powers film, Goldmember. It is revealed that Douglas and Austin were separated as babies after a car explosion, and that Nigel thought only Austin survived. Douglas was raised by Belgians, which is what made him so evil. His home town is Bruges.

Dr. Evil claims to have attended "evil medical school" for six years (and "he didn't do it so he could be called 'Mister Evil', thank you very much"). He also attended a school with Austin, and is frustrated that Austin won the "International Man of Mystery" award, while he, the school's best student, got nothing.

In the first film, Dr. Evil is cryogenically frozen in 1967 and reawakened in 1997. Like Austin Powers, he faces challenges in acclimating to the new period. (Although he has his staff, who remained behind, to help him)

His signature gesture is placing his little finger near his mouth (see picture). He repetitively uses the word frickin'. He occasionally makes use of finger quotes when speaking technical terms such as laser. In Goldmember it is revealed that he has a tattoo on his buttocks that reads "E. Diddy." The scar on Dr. Evil's face is very likely a remnant of Mensur fencing, an activity in which secretive elite European student groups participate.

Entourage

Dr. Evil employs a diverse and highly stereotypical group of minions.

Perhaps closest to Dr. Evil is his assistant, Frau Farbissina. In the second film, The Spy Who Shagged Me, they make love, which results in the birth of their son, Scott. (In the first film, it is asserted that Scott was created via Dr. Evil's frozen semen.) In Goldmember, Farbissina and Dr. Evil also kiss while he is in prison; although the two enjoyed it, the purpose was to transfer a key to Evil so that he could escape from his handcuffs.

Dr. Evil carries on a strained relationship with his son Scott. In fact, he frequently tries to have Scott killed, but he never succeeds. He liquidates their therapy group because he thinks them "insolent."

Number 2 is the leader of Dr. Evil's industrial empire, Virtucon. Another assistant, Mustafa, designs the cryogenic freezing process that preserves Dr. Evil for 30 years. These two, like many of Evil's henchmen, are punished by incineration in the first film. Number 2, however, survives, returning in the second film with burn marks.

Also in the second film, near the beginning, Scott Evil is brought on to an episode of Jerry Springer, directly after which his father is brought on to boos and hisses ("What? WHAT?"). Also present are four other people; one of which is a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and another a Nazi officer. When Scott asks why his father left, he claims he was not evil enough.

He says, in his distinguishable speech pattern and Canadian dialect,

"You're quasi-evil. You're semi-evil. You're the margarine of evil. You're the diet coke of evil. Just one calorie, not evil enough!"

Things, as usual on the show, soon break into a fight, and swearwords are constantly BLEEPED out - even from Springer himself. Dr. Evil steals the KKK member's hood, running around with it shouting "Got your hood!" and holds up a globe to the screen, "Here, see this? Mine! The world is mine! The world is mine!" He smashes it on the floor. The next time Dr. Evil is seen is at Starbucks headquarters, Number 2's Virtucon's coffee business.

Evil is rarely seen without Mr. Bigglesworth, his Angora cat, which is rendered furless as a side effect of cryogenic freezing and who is henceforth played by a Sphinx cat.

The second film introduces Dr. Evil's clone, Mini-Me, who is 1/8th his size. Dr. Evil considers him more of a real son than Scott, provoking the latter's jealousy.

Schemes

Dr. Evil's projects for world domination are often named after pop culture trademarks (Death Star, Alan Parsons Project, Preparation H) and he is often unaware of the accidental pun. For example, when Dr. Evil says he will turn the moon into a "Death Star" (said with finger quotes), Scott laughs and calls him "Darth". Scott also coughs and mutters "Rip-off!" After a slight pause, his father says, "Bless you."

Dr. Evil seems to have a problem in general with understanding money, especially regarding the modern American economy and inflation. In the first film, he intends to hold the world ransom for $1 million, but doesn't understand that $1 million doesn't come to much in 1997. In the second film, however, Dr. Evil goes back to 1969 and plans to hold the world ransom for $100 billion, an amount of money that didn't exist back then. In the second film, Dr. Evil says, "Why make trillions when we can make...BILLIONS?," not knowing that trillions are larger than billions. In the third movie, he demands "1 billion, million, fafillion, shabolubalu million illion yillion...yen."

One of Dr. Evil's greatest desires is to have sharks with "frickin' laser beams attached to their heads," and is disappointed when he can't have the sharks due to laws on endangered species. Instead, Number 2 gives him mutated sea bass, which Dr. Evil grudgingly accepts, muttering "well, it's a start" (they were ill-tempered, as the bass do manage to eat the head of one unfortunate henchman hired by Dr. Evil). Scott, however, manages to get him the said sharks in the third film as a father-son gift.

Dr. Evil can't resist cracking puns at his own work (he says his submarine lair is "long, hard, and full of seamen"). He creates models of his plans, worried that they are too complicated for his minions to understand. He also cares nothing for the companies (Virtucon, Starbucks, Hollywood Talent Agency) that fund his plans, ignoring all suggestions from Number 2 on how to increase the profit of such companies.

Often Dr. Evil's lairs are right in the open: atop the Starbucks headquarters in Seattle, behind the Hollywood sign, and in a gigantic submarine shaped like himself. In the second movie, his lair in 1969 is inside a volcano carved to resemble him with his finger to his mouth.

Parody

The James Bond Films

Just as Austin Powers lampoons James Bond, Dr. Evil parodies several James Bond villains. The first is Ernst Stavro Blofeld, as portrayed by Donald Pleasence in the film You Only Live Twice. (Ironically, Pleasence was a regular to the Halloween movie series, whose villain is named Michael Myers.) Blofeld has a white Angora cat, parodied by Dr. Evil's Mr. Bigglesworth.

Dr. Evil also wears clothing with a strong resemblance to Dr. No from the 1962 film of the same name, specifically gray Nehru Jacket jumpsuits.

While Dr. Evil is primarly a send-up of the 1960s Sean Connery-era Bond villans, the 1970s Roger Moore-era also gets skewered: The interior of Dr. Evil's space station in The Spy Who Shagged Me resembles Sir Hugo Drax's space station from Moonraker, and the film's title spoofs The Spy Who Loved Me. Dr. Evil has three testicles, as is proven in Goldmember when he checks to see that "they're all there" following a rather painful blow to his groin. This is most likely a nod to James Bond villain Francisco Scaramanga from 1974's The Man with the Golden Gun, who had three nipples. Mini-Me may also be another reference to Scaramanga, who had a dwarf servant named Nick Nack.

Others

Some of Dr. Evil's facial and vocal expressions are allegedly patterned after Lorne Michaels, producer of television's Saturday Night Live, where Myers worked for a number of years. It should be also noted he has what sounds like a thick Canadian accent.

Also, a character reminiscent of Dr. Evil appears in "The Eiger Sanction"; it is uncertain whether this was an homage to Myers.

Parody of the Doctor

Dr. Evil himself was parodied by Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Sabrina writes a short story on a magic typwriter about an evil genius named Dr. Bad (who was envisioned as an evil Mr. Kraft) who blew up the high school. When the typewriter causes the story characters to become real, Dr. Bad appears to resemble Number 2, wearing a grey business suit and an eyepatch, and, like Dr. Evil, enjoying a good bout of evil laughter. Dr. Bad, being envisioned as Mr. Kraft, is played by Martin Mull.

Translations

French (France): Docteur Denfer.
French (Québec, Canada): Docteur Terreur.
Italian: Dottor Male.
Português (Brasil): Doutor Mal
Spanish: Doctor Maligno (in Latinamerica, sometimes Doctor Malo or Malito).
Russian: Доктор Зло.
Hungarian: Doktor Genya
Polish: Doktor Zło
Croatian: Doktor Zloćko
Swedish: Doktor Ond
Icelandic: Doktor Illur

Dottor Male | Dr. Evil | Доктор Зло | 邪惡博士

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