| Character | |||||
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| Mike Sorayama | |||||
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| 1st appearance: | Past Tense | ||||
| Voice Artist: | Steve Park | ||||
Mike Sorayama was a friend of Dr. Venture's while attending college, which Hank dubbed "Super Crazy No Way School." Their circle also included Pete White, Pete's roommate Baron Ünderbheit, and Rusty's roommate, Brock Samson. In college Sorayama expressed an interest in robotics after having seen Blade Runner. He'd later become a genius in this field.
Mike began to despise his friends after a series of incidents led to psychological pain and embarrassment. He'd spend years plotting revenge and scheming to win back the love of his life, Leslie Cohen. His obsession became so strong that she took out a restraining order on him.
In Past Tense, Rusty, Brock, Ünderbheit and Pete White are summoned to attend Mike's funeral. While carrying away the casket, they were knocked out and taken to an unknown location. There they discovered that Mike Sorayama wasn't yet down for the count. Later they found that the 'Mike' they had seen was a robot built in his image to continue the pursuit of Leslie and to take revenge on those he believed to have wronged him. Mike really had died and was stored in a coffin in the corner of the robot control room.
Billy Quizboy's memory returns to him in The Invisible Hand of Fate and reveals a meeting the boy genius had with Prof. Fantomas. Fantomas inspects Billy's newly acquired robotic hand and recognizes it as a design of Sorayama, one of his former pupils. The professor says that Mike was "the brightest mind [he'd] ever taught" until he met Billy. Since the hand was given to Billy by OSI, it leads to the assumptions that either OSI bought or stole Sorayama's designs, or that Sorayama once worked for OSI.
[edit] Fun Facts
- He may be a parody of Dr. Z.
The end credits refer us to [1], the site for erotic robot illustrator Hajime Sorayama. He drew shiny chrome sex robots that look just like the Lesliebots. They also look like typical pin-up-style robots from 1980s Heavy Metal magazine, which Dr V name-checks in this episode.
