Dr. John A. Zoidberg is a fictional character in the television series Futurama.

He is an alien of lobster-like form. The character traveled to 30th century Earth from the planet Decapod 10. On Futurama, he serves as staff doctor for Planet Express, even though he knows very little about the physiology of humans.

Zoidberg is voiced by Billy West, who performs the character with a Yiddish-inflected accent, in an imitation of actor George Jessel. He can basically be described as the series' comedic sadsack, and is one of the show's most popular characters. Zoidberg is the company doctor at Planet Express.

Although he claims expertise in human medicine, particularly internal medicine, his knowledge of human anatomy and physiology is negligible. For example, he cannot tell the difference between robots and humans (or human males and females), believes food is digested in the heart and that humans have multiple mouths. His only knowledge of humans seems to come from television advertisements, although his skills as a physican generally vary; in "Put Your Head on My Shoulder" he managed to successfully transplant Fry's head onto Amy's body after an accident left Fry's normal body fatally injured, but in "Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder" he incorrectly declared Fry dead only for him to wake up a few seconds later.

In the episode "Parasites Lost", due to his incompetence as a physician, he comes to the conclusion that Fry, who is frequently injured, is a hypochondriac, an accusation he makes when Fry sits before Zoidberg with a lead pipe through his chest. He claims he lost his medical degree in a volcano in "A Clone of My Own". He is looked down upon by coworkers, with Bender saying he is "desperately poor and miserably lonely", and Leela disputing this, saying that his loneliness is due to his being "hideous".

Despite his career as a doctor, Zoidberg is repeatedly identified as living in crushing poverty, lonely and desperate for friendship and attention. The crew, especially Hermes, who seems to intensely dislike Zoidberg, are often disgusted by his foul habits, such as squirting ink or eating from trash cans. Fry and Professor Farnsworth are usually the only ones of the group to refer to Zoidberg as a friend, as in "Bender's Big Score", in which Zoidberg says, "He was the only one of you who never struck me!" while attending Fry's funeral.

However, in the episode "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?", Fry was forced to fight Zoidberg after Zoidberg initiated a duel to the death as part of his race's mating customs. In which Zoidberg cuts off Fry's arm,which Fry uses to savagely beat Zoidberg with. Zoidberg has ambitions to be a stand-up comedian, but is entirely unsuccessful at this endeavour.

He has an uncle, the silent hologram star Harold Zoid (a parody of Harold Lloyd), who advises him to give up on comedy and finance a film whose script Zoid is writing.

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