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When did mankind lose touch with natural selection? No matter how inferior a human's genes are, that person is protected by laws, and can't be killed. Even those incapacitated in accidents or stricken with a serious illness are needlessly kept alive. What a drawn out, wasteful existence. It's this divorce from natural section that has caused mankind to stop evolving. It's a step down. The devolution of mankind. But I intend to accelerate the culling of genetically inferior humans. To rekindle the refining fire of natural selection.
German Detective: You're playing God!
Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: Somebody's got to!
Some evil mad scientists use their twisted intellect solely for personal gain. This particular villain is not so provincial. His genius and his motives go hand in hand, and his concerns are (he thinks) with the welfare of the human species. Simply put, to the Evilutionary Biologist, humanity is stuck in an evolutionary rut, and it's up to him to put us back on the proper path so we can continue to evolve.
Why the Evilutionary Biologist believes this is necessary varies, as do his methods. Some Evilutionary Biologists simply believe that humanity has erred in its domination of the environment, and thus our very survival as a species is threatened unless they force us to continue evolving. Others see change and so-called improvement as goals in and of themselves, and resolve to use scientific advancement to cause them. Still others seek to create a new race of biological ubermensch with the power of science, either because they see humans as having outlived their time on the planet or because of a genuine desire to improve the human condition. Any one of these may be a Darwinist or Well Intentioned Extremist.
Regardless, because of his dedication, the Evilutionary Biologist is willing to break laws, engage in experimental alterations upon other human beings, and ruin lives for the higher goal. Their creations are no less exempt; whether they're Replacement Goldfish, with the Cloning Blues, or genetically "programmed" to have evil In The Blood, their "children" are doomed to live sad, short, rebellious lives, unless they really do feel parental. They will never realize that Evil Evolves, and will never be able to identify themselves as the villains.
Evilutionary Biologists often create inhuman monsters (sometimes including examples of Biological Mash Up) and artificial humans to serve as minions and Mooks, populate their extensive Garden Of Evil. They themselves may even be willing to suffer the fruits of their experimentation, often resulting in a monstrous, inhuman new body.
Whenever an Evilutionary Biologist appears on the scene — they are the most common form of villainous biologist in many games and Speculative Fiction media — be on guard for a Science Is Bad aesop to rear its ugly head.
This is especially ironic because in real biology, one of the core precepts of the theory of evolution is that it does not improve a species, because there is no such thing as an ideal form for a species — only what is best at surviving and reproducing in current conditions. If the environment changes, the species must adapt all over again, which is why genetic diversity (nature's way of "hedging her bets") is usually a good thing. Also, evolution is conservative, and a species which is thriving (you know, like Homo sapiens) is unlikely to evolve, because it's doing fine the way it is. Sharks, for example, haven't changed much since before the first dinosaurs appeared, and they're just as successful as ever... making the entire mania of the Evilutionary Biologist suspect at best.
They will probably be German, and possibly one of Those Wacky Nazis, if we want to be really obvious. Depending on how far their experiments go, they may qualify for Complete Monster status.
Compare Gattaca Babies.
Examples
Anime
- Evilutionary Biology was the hidden goal of SEELE in Neon Genesis Evangelion.
- It's also a possible interpretation for Gendou and even Fuyutsuki, Yui and a few others.
- Really every major adult except Misato and Kaji.
- Well, we never really get to know what Kaji was after, so, everyone except Misato. And the Techies.
- Chief Kakuzawa's "diclonius" efforts in Elfen Lied. Too bad for him that pissing off the crux of his plans (Lucy) slaps him with the Too Dumb To Live label.
- Okay, so he's a computer scientist, not an evolutionary biologist. But Masami Eiri from Serial Experiments Lain could fit this trope nonetheless. He believed that humans had reached the pinnacle of evolution physically, and that in order to continue evolving to more perfect forms, humanity had to give up their bodies for a digital existence. To that end, he secretly put code into the latest version of the protocol that controls the Wired that would connect humans together on a subconscious level through the network. He also created Lain a physical body to aid in this effort.
- His exact goals were unclear. To this troper it seemed that he was going to control the minds of all humans connected to the Wired (essentially everybody), thus becoming a genuine God.
- All humans were already connected. Eiri attempted to abuse that connection, either by controlling the humanity throught the Wired, or possibly simply by writing himself over every human mind in existence, making humanity one, collective extension of himself. Or at least that was this troper's interpretation.
- Dr. Ulen Hibiki from Gundam SEED, although he hadn't really built his views around evolutionary dead-end, still wanted to advance the human race as much as possible — For Science! So, to produce his Ultimate Coordinator, he didin't stopped before using his own yet unborn (in fact, just conceived) son, Kira Yamato, as well as many others, as a guinea pig for his experiments. The fact that he eventually succeeded didn't help him, though, when he was lynched by an angry mob.
- Astro Boy had a lot of run-ins with guys like this. His own father even became one.
- In Bagi, the Monster of Mighty Nature, another Osamu Tezuka creation, Ryo's mother was one of these.
- The Towa Organization in the Boogiepop Series see it as their duty to help push humanity forward in its evolution as well as seeking out and destroying the individuals who pose a threat to that goal. Much of the conflict in the series is the direct result of their actions, including the creation of Manticore, a human eating monster cloned from an alien.
- In the novels it seems that Towa wants to keep the "overevolved" individuals in check, and prevent the evolution of humanity in larger scale - ironically they enforce this ideology with Synthetic Humans who have very little difference to the "overevolved" individuals, except that most of them are absolutely loyal to Towa Organization.
- Dr. Jail Scaglietti of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, the Mad Scientist behind Project F and several other Artificial Human related experiments. According to Quattro, his ultimate goal is the completion of biomanipulation technology and the creation of a space to do that. That at least several hundred thousand people would die in the process is acceptable collateral damage.
- Grace O'Connor, the resident Mad Scientist from Macross Frontier. In Episode 24 she directly stated that her main goal is for Humanity to become greater than the Protoculture.
- Zeus from King Of Thorn.
Comic Book
- Marvel Comics is filled with these: Mister Sinister, Phaeder, Maelstrom and also possibly Apocalypse, depending on how strict a definition of biologist is used.
- Magneto also dabbled into this a bit, with his creation of the Mutates, genetically-altered mutant Mooks created when the normal-variety mutants just weren't cutting it in his Darwinist army.
- There's also the High Evolutionary (yeah) who is actually a very reasonable person, or rather would be if he stopped taking the theory of evolution and beating it into submission with a sack of rusty doorknobs in order to make his experiments work.
- Marvel's most notable example is probably Miles Warren, aka the Jackal, an enemy of Spider Man. He had a lot of fun cloning Peter Parkers (and Gwen Stacies). Most of the blame for the Clone Saga was his.
- Longtime X-Men villain (and once or twice hero, depending on how whacked-out the writing was that year) the High Evolutionary. Tends to turn people into animals, or animals into people, or whatever the hell the writer wants a guy with the word "evolution" in his name to do that month, but usually it's with the excuse of guiding evolution to the next step.
- Dr Payne in the British comic book series Zenith created the second generation superhumans with the explicit intent that they replace humanity. They did. After a fashion.
- Bertron, the alien who created the creature Doomsday, in the Superman comics.
- In The DCU, there was the mad obstetrician Dr. Love who created the supervillain team Helix by experimenting on the unborn children of pregnant women under his care.
- 1000 years from now, Ra's Al Ghul will plot to crash the Moon into the Earth to force humanity to pre-emptively evolve to prevent it.
- In tracts by Jack Chick every single believer in evolution is like this. No exceptions.
Film
- Regressing humans into caveman/werewolf hybrids was the only way for humans to develop further, according to the villain of I Was A Teenage Werewolf.
- Tyler Durden of Fight Club has the motivation, but not the methodology. He believes society and rampant consumerism are stagnating human development. Rather than combat this with mad science, however, he plans to force humanity to "evolve, and let the chips fall where they may" by blowing it back to the Stone Age.
- While, like the above example, he is no scientist, Jigsaw from the Saw movie franchise is disgusted with the indolence and sloth he sees surrounding him. Without the "Will to Live", humankind faces extinction. Or something. Anyway the solution is to maim and murder people in interesting ways.
- Rather he kills two birds with one stone; he gives people the opportunity to prove his critique of human nature, and then maims and murders them in interesting ways.
- The Man With Two Brains: Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr is in many ways one of these, as the quote at the top of the page demonstrates; as well as being not-quite-all-there and his developing God-complex, he confidently predicts a day where his research will allow 'brilliant minds to live on in the bodies of dumb people' and the like. He's somewhat lacking in the 'evil', part, though, as for all the Mad Scientist Character Development that occurs, he's a bit too decent and moral to actually kill in order to achieve his ends.
- In the James Bond film Moonraker, Drax' scheme is to wipe out humanity with a human-specific poison gas, then repopulate the Earth with the pairs of perfect supermodels he has kept out of harm's way on his space shuttle/Noah's Ark.
- The Octopus from The Spirit is trying to find the secret to immortality and godhood. He actually created the titular hero in one of his experiments when he brought a dead cop back to life. The Octopus' Mooks are also apparently artificial creations.
- In Kamen Rider The First, the organization Shocker's name stands for "Sacred Hegemony Of Cycle Kindred Evolutional Realm."
- The mad scientist in the Japanese/American co-production B-movie The Manster.
Literature
- Crake in Margaret Atwood's novel Oryxand Crake is the consummate Evilutionary Biologist.
- Dr. Volescu in Orson Scott Card's Enders Game sequels featuring Bean. He genetically engineers superintelligent humans that have super-short lifespans as a side-effect.
- Siegmund Loge in George C. Chesbro's The Beasts of Valhalla. He is a Nobelist (often a bad sign in Chesbro's work), famed for his work on a mathematical tool used to predict whether a species is too far along the road to extinction to be saved. In his unpublished, un-peer-reviewed work, he has come to the conclusion that humanity is a doomed species, and must be forced to mutate to a Biological Mash Up to give it a chance to try again. Experiments on human subjects who didn't volunteer, check. German background, check; bonus, in that he is a fanatical Richard Wagner fan. Looks like Santa Claus and has a great public image, and has awesome talents in attracting black budget funding from governments who don't know he's on other people's payrolls or what his agenda is.
- The Meliorare Society in Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth series is a group of brilliant scientists and genetic engineers who recklessly violated proscriptions against human eugenics in order to "explore the potential of the human genome". They worked by posing as fertility specialists, among other things, with the plan to reclaim the "superior" children once they started manifesting powers and thereby prove themselves to the galaxy. Instead, several of their more grotesque failures came to light and they were outlawed and hunted down. Those not killed outright were subjected to selective mindwipe, and all of the subjects that could be found were either given mercy killings or "altered" to be as normal as possible. The last few remaining Meliorares went into hiding, carrying their dreams of vindication with them. Flinx, the main protagonist, is of course one of the subjects who slipped through the cracks, mainly by not manifesting his awesome Psychic Powers until much later in his life, and he has several encounters with Meliorare fugitives who attempt to "reclaim" him. This has not ended well for them.
- Subverted in Robert A Heinlein's first published novel, Beyond This Horizon. The world government genetically engineers everybody for maximum genetic perfection (or, at least, elimination of imperfection), except for a carefully guarded population of "control naturals," and strongly encourages particularly hopeful genetic matches, as between the hero and heroine. The subversion is that this is presented as entirely a good thing. (This society is sometimes described as a "socialist" state but bears more in common with Technocracy. Everybody gets a small annual dividend from the output of the whole global economy as if it were a corporation in which all are stockholders; control naturals get a larger dividend, enough for a liveable income, in compensation for their genetic inferiority and inability to compete with the average person.)
- In two separate SF universes created by Frank Herbert, the planets Dosadi and Salusa Secundus are both brutally inhospitable prison worlds created to force the beings left on them to adapt and become stronger. The effect seen is more of a cultural (and physical conditioning) change than evolution, though.
- Subverted in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The World State genetically engineers everyone into five castes, Alpha through Epsilon ranked by intelligence. The point is to keep everything exactly the way it is forever; technological progress is restrained for the same reason. The Savage asks World Controller Mustapha Mond, "If you can get anything you want out of those bottles, why not make everybody an Alpha-double-plus?" Mond says they once tried colonizing an island with nothing but Alphas as an experiment, but it quickly degenerated into civil war; everybody wanted to be boss and nobody wanted to do the scutwork.
- Dean Koontz's portrayal of Dr. Victor Frankenstein in Dean Koontz's Frankenstein.
- In C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, Professor Weston develops interplanetary travel so humanity and their descendants (whatever they evolve into) could go out into the stars and survive throughout the cosmos. However, Weston doesn't care that this plan may involve wiping out other intelligent life. (In the second book, he abandons this goal in favor of a New Age-y philosophy he dubs "Spiritual Evolution", which has nothing to do with this trope.) The trope is taken further in the third book, where the N.I.C.E. plans to replace all organic life with a machine life.
- The Turner Diaries by white-supremacist William Luther Pierce (writing as Andrew Macdonald) recounts a racial war that ends with the death of all Jews, nonwhites and "mongrels" — all of them, everywhere in the world. Most white people also die in the fighting and general disruption; the population of the United States is reduced to 50 million. Only those bearing "especially valuable genes" survive. This fulfills the dream of the "Great One" (Hitler) for an "all-White world." (The historical Hitler would at least have allowed the non-whites to live on as slaves.) The necessity of this appears to be based on "Cosmotheism," a belief-system that is Pierce's own invention, which is a curious mish-mash of the seemingly incompatible beliefs of racism and pantheism.
- The only type of biologist in the employ of Manpower Inc in David Weber's Honor Harrington series. Not only they use genetic engineering to breed slaves for unscrupulous purposes, but they also utilise the experience from this practice to improve themselves, as they feel that natural evolution is too slow.
- In HG Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau, the titular Dr. Moreau.
- Actually an aversion, as the original Moreau wasn't trying to improve the species (ours or otherwise), but to refine and explore the limits of his unorthodox surgical techniques. It's his film incarnations that bought into this trope.
- An ironic step-sibling of this trope forms the basis for John Wyndham's novel The Chrysalids. In a post-apocalyptic future (the apocalypse is phrased in religious terms by the characters as "The Tribulation", and implied to have been a nuclear disaster or war), a primitive, theocratic society seeks to exterminate all mutants, whether plant, animal or human. While not Darwinists or scientists, the members of this culture are nevertheless striving to "restore" the purity of life on Earth, in an effort to get back into God's good graces.
- From Fingerprints, the doctor who first researched psychic abilities, Steve Mercer. He eventually came to regret his work and tried to undo it, but did not perform a Heel Face Turn and remained a Well Intentioned Extremist - just one with different intentions.
- Lord Randolph Hellebore from the Young Bond novel Silver Fin is obsessed with breeding the perfect soldier and is not above experimenting his brother and son in pursuit of his goal.
- Julian May's Milieu books feature Marc Remiliard, who's goal is to accelerate the psychic development of the human race to the same level as his prochronistic mutant brother Jac a disembodied brain, of course he had good PR and merely told everyone he wanted to let people adopt some cool Gattaca Babies.
Live Action TV
- Both the Shadows and the Vorlons in Babylon 5 attempted to force the evolutionary development of the younger races, disagreement about the best way to go about this eventually led to all out war.
- This is the plan of Adam from the fourth season of Buffythe Vampire Slayer, by combining demon and human parts to create a superior race.
- John Lumic, creator of the "parallel Earth" Cybermen in Doctor Who, sees his creations in this way. Davros, in the original series, created the Daleks for much the same reason.
- And the Daleks themselves, who tried to create Dalek/Human hybrids to overcome their weaknesses—only for Dalek Sec to be influenced a little too much by his new human side. He, naturally, pays the price.
- Alpha from Dollhouse.
- In the Super Sentai series Dynaman, the villains' collective name is the Jashinka - from jashin (evil) and shinka (evolution.) In other words, their name actually translates to "Evilution." However, their plan to convert humans didn't go so well, so they went the usual mass destruction route.
- Dr. Soong in Star Trek Enterprise was the more benign flavor of Evilutionary Biologist, who balked at his creations' evil tendencies.
- Helen Cutter in Primeval is a different kind of Evilutionary Biologist: in her own words, she wants to save the world, not humanity. She ends up going back to the Pliocene to kill hominids and prevent the human race from ever evolving.
Tabletop Games
- Magic The Gathering's Dungeon Punk setting of Ravnica has deranged elf sorcerer/scientist Momir Vig,
 the leader of the Simic Combine, a whole guild of such characters.
- In the book, there's a footnote that explains that he's the last of his specific race of elves, but that he's gone on the record was saying that it's pretty much a good thing that they aren't any others left. This troper has always took it to mean that Vig's elf race was a race composed of EvilutionaryBiologists.
- As far as Magic goes, it was probably inevitable that Green/Blue would be the Biologist guild, since Green is the "Biology" color and Blue is the "Fuck with..." color.
- Warhammer 40000 has
Fabius Bile Fabulous Bill, and like most things in that universe, is this trope turned up to eleven. His master race are superpowered versions of the existing Super Soldiers, with the difference that they're all homicidal megalomaniacs, and he's turned the population of entire planets into shambling mutants with his experiments.
Video Games
Webcomics
- Kim Ross of Dresden Codak has been moving closer towards this trope over time. Starting with a basis in technological transhumanism, she's been stealing memories from hapless passersby to help create an AI model to help trigger this event. She tries to allow the time-travelling AI that practically lands in her lap to develop in the present, doing the same thing more quickly, despite the current evidence that says it'll probably wipe out most of humanity in the process. Currently she's gotten her hands on a mini-version and is uploading her model into it. Oh, and she's the protagonist.
- Though she is the protagonist, it's been highlighted that she's probably still not right in her beliefs, and that in fact they probably stem from her abandonment issues. In other words, she's the protagonist... not the hero. (So far.)
- Parodied by Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal here◊.
- Also parodied in Everyday Heroes — as a Shout Out to Marvel's High Evolutionary (mentioned above), two members of the S.A.V.E.U.S. team were created by the Somewhat-Below-Average Evolutionary.
Western Animation
- As well as the other ways in which he's a utterly raving Mad Scientist, Professor Farnsworth in Futurama often rants about creating, amongst other things, a "race of atomic supermen", which he once actually did in order to win a basketball game.
- Doctor X, of the Action Man animated series, was a textbook Evilutionary Biologist obsessed with triggering the next step in human evolution by causing all sorts of disasters in the hopes of culling unfit humans and cause beneficial mutations in the survivors.
- The villain of Felidae turns out to be doing this, with cats.
- Dr. Anton Sevarius of Gargoyles is a freelance geneticist specializing in clones and mutates. So long as he gets plenty of test subjects and money, he doesn't really seem to care what his creations are used for, having sold his services to almost every Big Bad in the series.
- Dr. Paradigm from Street Sharks starts out like this, as evidenced by his monologue about how great his human test subjects will be post-transformation and sans those silly human morals. He abandons that pretty early and switches to simply taking over the town/world though.
- This is after getting a taste of his own medicine makes him seven kinds of Ax Crazy though.
- One interpretation of Magneto implies that he is the one responsible for Nightcrawler looking like a demon, via one of his many, many experiments.
Real Life
- "Dr." Josef Mengele, who performed grotesque experiments on Jewish twins during the Holocaust, trying to create Hitler's version of the "perfect race."
- Although Mengele was less of an Evilutionary Biologist than a full-blown Mad Scientist.
- Mad alright, not so much scientist, though — Mengele always knew exactly what kind of conclusion was going to be drawn from any kind of "experiment" at all. So, more like Random Insane Torturer.
- Especially since he didn't give a damn about Nazi ideology - he was just happy to be provided an endless stream of "test subjects" for his sadistic mutilations. There was very little real science behind his projects, neither serving the ideology of a "perfect race," nor otherwise.
- The scary thing about the twin experiments is that while ethically wrong by any standard we use today they do make scientific sense. You want to see how the human body works do your test on a human, he just happened to have access to a group of humans that were determined to be of no value. You need a control subject, what better control subject can you have but someone's natural clone? Stuff like this is why bioethics is such a big deal in Real Life
- We do use twin studies today; the idea of using a twin as a control isn't the unethical part. That's the, you know, torture and all.
- Nazi eugenics in general, actually.
- Of course the Nazi eugenics movement was nothing special, since every other country in the world had the same damn theories. Most of us just decided to sterilize the mentally handicapped and start collecting the sperm of geniuses rather than, you know, genocide.
- In fact, it's only the fact that Nazis practiced it that discredited the science in the public eye, and the research followed afterwards.
- James Neel has been accused of this, though the evidence is ambivalent at worst.
- William Shockley, though an engineer.
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