The Adventures of Dr. McNinja/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


If you are confused because of the lack of scientific accuracy and real life physics, remember, Hastings himself has said that the world runs on the same sort of physics that govern a Mortal Kombat stage. Do not bother trying to understand the logic of this world. Anything regarding the powers of the McNinja family has already been answered by A Wizard Did It in the form of "ninja tricks".

  • Was anyone else just apalled by the end of Judy gets a kitten? I mean, that was just awful.
    • It bugged the hell out of Chris Hastings himself, too... which is why you'll notice that the kitten survived. He just has an eyepatch. The power of retcon!
  • If Sparkle Lord was sent back in time and transformed into a motorcycle, resulting in a millennia-long time loop, where did the original Sparkle Lord go off to?
    • Perhaps Sparkle Lord had no original. He's a motorcycle in our world, because that is the Raddest Thing Possible, not because he is trapped. Sparkle Lord, his memories gone, might then have attacked the Radical Land by transporting from our world, and was eventually returned to it again after being defeated by King Radical, then taken in by the antique dealer, and then eventually tossed into the vortex to start all over again.
    • My interpretation was that he fused with his older self.
  • It bugs me that it bugs me that there's a race of tricky lobster people. Why can I accept people turning into giant lumberjacks, super mime powers, raptor-riding banditos, growing mustaches out of sheer force of will, Ben Franklin turning into the headless horseman, Dracula's Moon laser, and a Hulk Expy, but I suddenly draw the line at lobster people? What gives?
    • You're weird.
    • It might be that it's because the other stuff is cool. The Lobster man? Not so much.
  • Speaking of The Robster, how does he wear that business suit? His claws are bigger than the sleeves.
    • In my mind, there's only one explanation. It's been tailored directly onto him.
    • Word of God is that he doesn't know either.
      • Chris Hastings doesn't know, or The Robster doesn't know?
        • Yes.
  • I'm an idiot; what distinguishes the safe-to-step-on tiles from the others here?
    • None of them are safe. He's stepping on the cracks so he doesn't activate them.
    • I got the impression that none of them are safe, but he's just distributing his bodyweight using his aweosme ninja abilities so that none of the tiles are pressed down far enough to activate.
    • It's kinda hard to tell, but the "safe" ones have five teeth showing, while all the rest have six.
      • Seemingly confirmed by the Alt Text: "Yes, there is a difference in the tiles."
    • Presumably he can tell which ones are safe due to ninja tricks. The rest of us poor mortals obviously can't tell the difference, as we do not have the mighty power of ninja tricks.
  • Okay, so... Doc fights Dracula, but it's actually a ROBOT Dracula, right? So why doesn't the robot have any reflections in the hall of mirrors? Did I miss something?
    • He was fighting the real Dracula; the real one switched out for a robot duplicate at some point during the chase.
      • Ah, that makes sense. I was thinking about it late at night and must have gotten the order of events mixed up.
  • How did Gordito follow the Doctor, Sparklord, and King Radical? He doesn't have a motorcycle of his own.
    • He does have a raptor.
    • Raptor > Unimotorcycle.
  • Rather than making him effectively invisible, wouldn't a hall of mirrors actually put Dracula at a huge disadvantage? I mean, think about it. If he has no reflection, then any Dracula that Dr. McNinja sees in the hall of mirrors is guaranteed to be the real one. Is Dracula just dumb like that or did Chris Hastings not think this one all the way through?
    • You'll note that Drac was actually hanging from the ceiling (see the panel where he slowly lowers from above, behind the Doc). He was never in the hall of mirrors, or at least, he was taking an unexpected position, so having no reflection would make it that much harder for the Doc to find him, because Drac's out of his line of sight, he's got no reflection of Drac to help find him with, and there's the whole disorienting affair of being in a hall of mirrors working against the Doc. Meanwhile, Drac has a perfect vantage point, showing him where the Doc is.
  • Wait. If ninjas can eat through their Masks, then why do they have to lift them to brush their teeth?
    • Because brushing your teeth takes a lot more precision than eating, and you need to be able to see what you're doing to do a good enough job to avoid tooth decay and gum disease.
    • Toothpaste stains are pretty hard to get out of ninja masks, I'd bet.
    • They do lift up their masks to eat. It's just that they do in within a milisecond with their lips. They have to lift it up with their hands for tooth brushing because the food only has to pass into the mouth, it doesn't have to sit around on the teeth and move around and stuff. Same with ninja shaving.
    • Word of God says that "Any further questions regarding the McNinja's masks can be filed under 'ninja tricks.'"
  • Could someone please explain to me the timeline of Chuck Goodrich's life? I assume he became an astronaut and the Mayor of Cumberland after he time travelled back to the past, but where is he originally from? The far-flung future where there's been a ninja Zombie Apocalypse?
    • Yes.
    • I'm working under the assumption that there are now actually two Chuck Goodriches in the past; he's looped back on himself in a non-temporal logic violating way. Unlike Sparklelord.
  • Why do the bad guys continually attempt kidnapping Doc instead of Sean? I mean, do they not realize that Dan and Mitzi would probably care more if Sean got kidnapped?
    • Because Doc doesn't live with Dan and Mitzi. So either A. they'd have to fight through all three of them to get Sean, or B. they'd know about it a lot sooner.
    • Bad guys kidnap Sean all the time: http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/17p43/ . I guess those standard kidnappings just aren't exciting enough for the comic.
  • Okay, so the dinosaurs took over Earth insted of peacefully cohabiting with humans because fossil fuels contained dinosaur remains. What do they fuel their jetpacks with then?
    • Same thing they used to fuel their spaceship.
    • Human remains.
    • Remember that these dinosaurs are smart due to mutations from cosmic radiation. They likely have the intelligence to create a highly effective clean energy source of some sort. Miniturized fusion reactors, or something.
  • So a ninja can just take off their mask and disappear? Well the bad guys could look out for a real pale guy with a tan around his eyes. Its unusual and easily spotted.
    • Yeah, its not like they could use makeup or something.
    • And are the "bad guys" going to have a worldwide network scouring the globe for anyone and everyone who has an odd tanning pattern on his face? And they're going to be able to do this in the, what, day or two of tanning that it would take to correct the pattern?
    • a pair of Aviator Sunglasses would solve that problem.
  • Not necessarily something that bothers me, but something I've been wondering about. How big is the age gap between Dr. McNinja and Dark Smoke Puncher? It sounds like DSP is still in high school, and I've been under the impression that Dr. McNinja is in his thirties. So they're at least fifteen years apart; does that sound about right?
    • Perfectly normal for parents to have kids with that kind of age difference, this troper's youngest sister is 16 years apart in age from him.
    • Seeing as he streamlined the college process and probably cheated with mad ninja skills, and assuming Sean is in fact in High School, their ages could be as close as 17 and his late 26. Or, like I do after being bothered by this myself, you can just keep telling yourself Sean is in college and just lives at home. There are still people who don't like nerds in college.
      • Yeah, Dark Smoke Puncher pretty much screams insecure frat boy.
    • One of the comics confirms that Doc is 35 years old. We don't know how old Sean is, but 17 seems reasonable, given that as of AWOL MD, he is a high school senior.
  • Maybe it's just me, but if I were Frans Raynor I'd move my weak point to my pinky toe or the tip of a finger and cut it off a lot earlier.
    • Cutting off your weak point will probably kill you.
      • He got it amputated later in favor of a robotic leg. Maybe the weak point has definite mass, and would not fit in something so painlessly removed.
    • But...but...
  • When Sparklelord is shown standing on two legs with his army beneath him, he somehow traded his front hooves for hands. This wouldn't bug me if they said anything, anything at all. He found an evil magician, he tripped in some magic mud, he's got super cool unicorn powers, he grew them through sheer force of will, etc. But since they don't even handwave it it bugs me immensely.
    • The only time Sparklelord appears with hooves was during a hallucinogenic dream where he's projecting himself as a unicorn that Doc is riding while fighting a flaming baldy demon guy. That's not a terribly accurate depiction there.
  • So throughout this whole evil dinosaur storyline, where's our old favorite non-super genius dinosaur, Yoshi? I don't think they mentioned him at all.
    • Ahem. Which, to be honest, is just a quick handwave but makes sense and leaves potential to bring him in later.
      • Ah thanks, must have missed that. Still doesn't explain where our favorite pet raptor is, but like you said, it leaves potential for him to appear later and save the day (maybe).
    • You wanna know where Yoshi is? There's Yoshi.
  • This might just be me, but is the Ultimate Diplomat supposed to be a reference to something? I can't help but feel it's an inside joke that I'm on the outside of.
    • Barney.
  • So, the bad future was stopped, but eventually, won't another Chuck come to the past because of, I don't know, a vampire epidemic or something? The larger problem of the infinite apocalypses has yet to be solved.
    • ...How is this a headscratcher? "The current problem has been solved, but the larger problem that caused it is still there". That's true of so many works, there's probably at least two tropes about it. You might as well complain that "The Villain got away".
      • This is part of King Radical's plan. Eventually a Chuck will come from the future where Radical has won, only that will end the cycle of Chucks coming back as Radical kills that iteration, cementing his future victory.
  • Where is Mayor Chuck? Only Dinosaur Future!Chuck died.
    • Figuring out where Chuck is is in fact part of the plot of this particular arc.
      • He was last seen on vacation so...
  • Now that I've said this it'll probably be explained tomorrow, but if Dr. McLuchador was Dr. McNinja the whole time, who was he fighting in the hospital?
    • My guess is Doc's clone.