Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke

"Biotechnology promises the greatest revolution in human history. By the end of this decade, it will have outdistanced atomic power and computers in its effect on our everyday lives."

— Michael Crichton, introduction to Jurassic Park

Once upon a time, superheroes inevitably gained their superpowers from radiation, the latest and most mysterious-yet-powerful fad of The '50s and The '60s.

Technology Marches On, however, and gene splicing has replaced atom smashing as the most glamorous sciencey stuff: nowadays, many modern remakes of classic superheroes go with Genetic Engineering. Be it a bite from a genetically engineered spider, or exposure to it in a freak accident, genetically engineered origins are the Phlebotinum for the 21st century. It is worth noting that in Real Life rarely are the effects of genetic engineering anything like those portrayed in speculative fiction yet.

Genetic Engineering also lends itself to being weaponized to do exactly the same thing as those ultracool nukes that kill people but leave buildings standing. Now that a nuclear apocalypse is substantially less likely (or at least less likely to wipe us all out), and chemical weapons just aren't destructive enough in terms of human life, biological weapons make a nice scary (and vague) alternative.

Synthetic Plagues may be one of the most mundane examples, but they're certainly one of the most obviously dangerous. A Bioweapon Beast is as genetically designed Attack Animal, for when it needs to be more obviously monstrous.

May lead to Bio-Augmentation and Mutants, or even mutant creatures too horrible to describe. Superpowerful Genetics may either come from this or have a hand on the engineering overall.

It's also interesting to note the other favourite sources of weirdness used by SF writers before the advent of nuclear physics. See also Organic Technology, for (usually) even more advanced version.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In the second season of Birdy the Mighty Decode, it's revealed that there exist spawning sacs left over from the days of The Empire which produce beings called Ixiora, which seem to be based on the Human Alien Altan race. They possess extremely superior strength, durability, and, depending on the type of individual, various other incredible abilities. Whatever their original purpose was, the Federation government uses them for combat in a variety of capacities. Birdy herself is an Ixiora.
• Guilty Crown gives us the Void Genome, a genetic weapon that allows whosoever it's been implanted in the power to draw weapons known as Voids from anyone seventeen years of age or younger. These weapons can be BFSs that can slice clean through Humongous Mecha or ribbons of light than can repair anything (including a completely decimated bridge). Yes, it is a genetic weapon. It winds up being implanted in an Ordinary High-School Student at the end of episode one.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Both types of Super Soldiers qualify. Artifical Mages are genetically engineered so they will be born with full combat mage capabilities. Combat Cyborgs are genetically engineered so they can be given cybernetic implants without their bodies rejecting the foreign object.
  • The Ancient Kings of Belka qualified too. They altered their own genetics to transform themselves into persons of mass destruction as part of a Lensman Arms Race, and they ensured that their descendants would inherit these abilities.
• Mobile Suit Gundam SEED has the Coordinators, human beings whose genes have been improved prior to birth, resulting in a widespread increase in intelligence, talent, and physical aptitude. Unmodified humans are referred to as "Naturals", and there is significant tension (to put it mildly) between the two groups. Interesting enough, the Naturals tried destroying Coordinators with Nukes. It worked pretty well... just not well enough.
• Despite the world of Naruto having generally low levels of technological development, genetic engineering is surprisingly advanced, quickly jumping from eugenicist breeding programs in the past to gene splicing and tissue graft experimentation from mutant sources in the present.
• The God Warriors from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind are both nuclear powered and genetically engineered, in addition to being cyborgs. At least they were honest-to-goodness products of super-science, designed and built (grown) from the ground up to be what they were, not mooks with upgrades.
• The Germa Empire in One Piece. As shown in a flashback, according to the Germa king Vinsmoke Judge, all of his children are the result of heavy genetic engineering and has virtually limitless potential. They were also programmed to have utter Lack of Empathy because Judge saw it as a removable weakness, hence why Vinsmoke Ichiji, Niji, and Yonji are monstrous assholes. Only Sanji (whose enhancements were rendered null thanks to the drug his mother took to save him) and Reiju still have their mother's compassion.
• Euphorics in Speed Grapher gain superpowers based on their fetishes after being carriers to a virus that is activated by contact with Kagura's bodily fluid.
• The girls of Tokyo Mew Mew were "chosen by the earth" — i.e., born as perfect matches to various endangered animals. They were then injected with the DNA of said animals and became a squad of kemonomimi Magical Girls.

Comic Books

By Creator

• Jack Kirby was one of the early adopters of genetically engineered superhumans, with the DNA Project (later Project Cadmus) in Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen (and their opposite numbers at the Evil Factory), and later his creator-owned superhero Silver Star, who is a member of an artificially created posthuman species called homo geneticus.

By Work

• This is the entire point in Albedo: Erma Felna EDF, as the entire furry cast were genetic experiments created by the Creators, also known as the human race, using Earth animals as guinea pigs and putting them on some other planet.
• The Batman two-parter story "Infection" revolves around two Super Soldiers infected by a Bio-Augmentation virus genetically engineered during the Cold War escaping from government custody and coming to Gotham. As part of their genetic traits include the ability to disperse an infectious version of the virus, meaning they risk transforming every human in the city into a mentally addled killing machine like themselves, they really fit the "nuke" part of the trope.
• Marvel Universe:
  • In The Eternals, the godlike aliens called the Celestials create two Human Subspecies by experimenting on humans: the ugly, shape-shifting Deviants, and their enemies, the Physical God Eternals, which after a bit of space-travel and civil war ended up founding a colony on Saturn's moon Titan, which eventually spawned Thanos, who conducted further genetic experiments on himself to make himself stronger.
  • The Celestials split other alien races into Deviants and Eternals as well — the Skrulls are a race of Deviants who conquered their entire planet and built an interstellar empire, after slaughtering the mainline and Eternal offshoots. The Celestial schema seems to be Order/Potential/Chaos: The Skrull Deviants are shapeshifters — their form is chaotic. The Earth Deviants have random genes and forms — their heredity is chaotic. Earth Eternals: Cosmic-powered Flying Brick variants, Skrulls: Contemplative mystics (implied; the last Skrull Eternal married the leader of the Deviants, then elevated them both to godhood). The main control group has untapped potential, though no one knows what the Skrulls' might have been, since the Deviants killed them all.
  • About the time the Celestials showed up on Marvel Earth, the Elder Gods had a similar idea and started making their own species, though these were engineered magically — Set created the Serpent Men, whilst Oshtur and Chthon created numerous good and evil races, respectively, with Chthon going out of his way to corrupt and re-engineer some of Oshtur's (or attempting to, with varying levels of success).
  • A lot of improbable origins, including many of the 'radiation is magic' type, have been retconned as Celestial experiments resulting in people who would gain powers from things that would kill most people. Before this, it was often theorized by fans that maybe these people were mutants with a 'get powers instead of cancer from radiation/toxic waste' power, or latent mutations triggered by the Freak Lab Accident; this seems to be Ascended Fanon without making everybody an X-Man.
  • The Inhumans are a result of Kree experiments exploiting humanity's potential for superhuman abilities. Silent War revolves around S.H.I.E.L.D. getting a hold of the Inhumans' mutagenic Terrigen Mist and trying to create its own Inhumans for military use. It doesn't work out so well.
  • Similar to the above, Spider-Man's origins have moved from being bit by a radioactive spider in the original to being bit by a genetically enhanced "super spider" in The Spectacular Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, and both the original movie and the reboot. The '90s Spider-Man cartoon actually goes half-way, being bit by a spider that was hit by "neogenic" radiation. The mainstream comics eventually decide to hint that his powers might actually be magic, which to be fair makes more sense than radiation.
  • Spider-Man 2099, however, goes fully this way — Miguel O'Hara is a geneticist who's working on ways to combine man with beast for helpful purposes, but he's drugged with the Fantastic Drug Rapture, which affects him on a genetic level. He attempts to cleanse himself of it with a previous version of his DNA, but a jealous co-worker sabotages it, turning him into who we know now.
  • Ultimate Marvel takes this trope all the way, with genetic engineering being compared to nuclear weapons in other ways, such as international Super-Soldier escalation and treaties being proposed to curb it. Several Ultimate Spider-Man rogues (as well as Spidey himself) are re-imagined to be the subjects of secret, illegal super soldier experiments from Oscorp, and other superheroes and villains are designed by secret government projects for the same end. Ultimate Origins reveals that this includes mutants. Mark Millar's big finale to The Ultimates take this to the logical extreme, with the team racing to stop radicalized countries like North Korea from getting their own superhumans.
    Nick Fury: The next war will be a genetic one.
  • The X-Men have always been mutants, but interestingly, the earliest issues of the X-Men comics refer to them as "children of the atom" and say that Xavier is a mutant because of radiation his parents were exposed to before he was born. Current X-Men comics have abandoned the nuclear angle in favor of pure genetics, but all mutants are the end result of genetic engineering — by the Celestials (see above), tens of thousands of years ago. The Krakoan age has established that their ultimate enemy is homo novissima, which are humans who use genetic engineering to create a race full of ultra-powerful metahumans, in contrast to mutans who get their abilities from evolution.
• Subverted in Rogue Trooper. The Genetic Infantry are very good soldiers, and their genetic modifications give them several advantages over regular humans (not least the ability to breathe the poisonous atmosphere of Nu-Earth), but ultimately, they are just a very good light infantry unit. The Quartz Zone Massacre proved that the GIs were badly outmatched by regular human troops with armor, artillery and the element of surprise, and the program was quietly axed.
• Shaman's Tears introduced Bar Sinister (who later got their own short-lived series), a group of genetically engineered, super powered human/animal hybrids.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
  • Knuckles the Echidna's origin has a combination of this and Radiation-Induced Superpowers; his father, Locke, performed "biological enhancements" on himself, noting that Knuckles' was made up of more than just the genetic material of his parents. Then Locke irradiated his son's egg with Chaos Energy from the Master Emerald.
  • It ends up the entire planet of Funny Animals is the result of the alien species called the Xorda dropping a "gene bomb" on the planet, mutating it severely. Yes, the origin story for the heroes homeworld is that Earth was bombarded by genetic engineering weapons that caused fault lines to shift, seas to drain, and left the planet uninhabitable in many places for many years. Which is what you'd expect to happen if a planet got hit by several thousand multi-megaton nuclear weapons.

Fan Works

• Child of the Storm has, like in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a number of attempts at replicating the Super-Soldier serum, resulting in:
  • The Winter Soldier (a mixture of HYDRA enhancements reactivated and stabilized by the Russian 'Infinity Formula')
  • The Russian Infinity Formula as used by Natasha (essentially a lesser variation on the Serum, but effective enough at staving off or reversing the ageing process).
  • More recently, the two variants of Extremis: the unrefined version, created by Maya Hansen, is like the Iron Man 3 version, with physical enhancement, some fire powers, and a scary Healing Factor. The refined version, once HYDRA got their hands on the original, is programmable and far more stable, making for a terrifying super-weapon.
  • Additionally, the Celestials are namechecked as having manipulated humanity's genetics way back in the past, creating Eternals and Deviants, as well as many other species — including, it is suggested, Kryptonians.
• Decades before the events of Manehattan's Lone Guardian, a drug called Zoolinef is created to try to give ponies more animal-like physical qualities. The project is deemed a failure when the one pony injected with the drug is subjected to more mental changes than physical ones. According to the author's comments, if the project had been successful, those involved would've eventually moved on to giving ponies the traits of Equestria's more dangerous creatures.
• The Pokémon fandom contains a number of stories in which humans and Pokemon have their DNA spliced, usually by scientists working for Team Rocket or other organizations with questionable ethics.
• A major theme in The Secret Return of Alex Mack. Genetic engineering Mad Science is credited with creating many of the monsters from the B-movie crossovers, such as The Blob (1958) and Island of Terror, as well as some of the heroes such as Hanna. Many characters who could be considered The Ace turn out to be Breslynn Orphans, designed to be smarter, stronger, tougher, faster, and more attractive than regular humans.

Films — Animated

• Bagi, the Monster of Mighty Nature is about Osamu Tezuka's fear about what happens when people play with genetics.
• In Pokémon: The First Movie, a group of scientists funded by Team Rocket attempt to engineer "the ultimate Pokémon" by splicing genes from a Mew fossil. They succeed.

Films — Live-Action

• In Bats, the intelligent, omnivorous killer bats are the result of genetic experimentation by a rogue scientist. Had the movie been made 30 years earlier, it's easy to imagine that they would be the product of atomic tests in the desert.
• In what may be one the earliest examples, the 1973 Blaxploitation film Blackenstein features Dr. Stein's new techniques using DNA grafting to regrow lost limbs. His attempt to regrow lost limbs on a disabled Vietnam vet goes horribly wrong when his lab assistant sabotages the experiment, and the subject returns as a Frankenstein's Monster.
• Godzilla vs. Biollante:
  • Biollante is a genetic chimaera of rose, human, and Godzilla DNA which grows to immense size, eventually fighting Godzilla. There are even conversations in the film about the potential dangers of the misuse of genetic engineering, equating them to the dangers posed by nuclear weapons.
  • The Anti-Nuclear Energy Bacteria made from G-Cells is ironically used to stop Godzilla. Nevertheless, other nations see it as a huge threat that could upset the balance of power since it could render nuclear weapons redundant despite Japan making it clear that they only want to use it on Godzilla. In fact, several countries try to steal it, and one agent is sent to kill the only man who knows how to make it.
• Hulk: Bruce gets his power from a combination of genetic engineering, pharmaceutical drug testing, nanomachines, and radiation. It seems like the scriptwriters just figured that one of those was bound to work.
• The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996): In the 1896 science fiction novel by H. G. Wells, Moreau transforms animals on his island into Beast Folk and gives them intelligence through a gruesome prolonged surgical vivisection process that is left deliberately vague, because the author wanted among other things to make a point against animal vivisection, common during his time, so the "how" wasn't the point of the novel. In the 1996 movie adaptation, set in 2010, Moreau uses genetic engineering to create transgenic human/animal hybrids, some of whom look almost perfectly human, while others are humanoid but covered in fur and have snouts, hooves, horns, fangs and claws; without regular injections of Moreau's serum, however, these creatures lose their intelligence and slowly regress to their animal forms.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In The Incredible Hulk (2008), Bruce's research is specifically to recreate the super soldier serum, playing this trope as straight as possible since the original comic origin has Bruce developing a nuclear bomb using gamma radiation for the military.
  • The trend continues into the MCU with villains and heroes being products of attempts to recreate the original super soldier serum and its wild success in Captain America.
• Painkiller Jane: Jane's enhanced abilities turn out to be a result of genetic modification, which Erfan also gave other people (including, the ending implies, himself).
• Planet of the Apes:
  • In the original Planet of the Apes (1968), movies the apes simply "evolved" greater intelligence. In the remakes, they're genetically engineered.
  • In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, it appears that mankind will be wiped out by the genetically engineered virus which gives the apes intelligence instead of the nuclear war from the original.
  • The novelization for Planet of the Apes (2001) reveals that the apes were engineered by the surviving crew of the Oberon to protect them against Big Creepy-Crawlies with a Hive Mind.
• Tremors 7: Shrieker Island: Bill wanted to hunt Graboids and their spawn, but decided that the regular ones weren't dangerous enough, so he decided to tamper with their genome to make them even deadlier.

Literature

• In Ancestor by Scott Sigler, biogenetics firms seeking to perfect xenotransplantation (the transplant of animal organs into humans) have shades of this. The book opens with US AMRIID (The Army's counter-biowarfare division) firebombing a firm whose research led to a fatal disease hopping the species barrier. The main plot involves chimeric hybrids in an attempt to recreate a proto-mammalian "ancestor", unleashing quarter-ton, vicious, fast, intelligent monsters on a remote island.
• Done literally in the Burton & Swinburne Series. Eugenicists genetically engineered their own version of a Fantastic Nuke. They create a Destroying Angel toadstool bomb so huge and toxic that it wipes out a city and the last vestiges of civilization. This forces Burton and Swinburne on a quest to create a new timeline that prevents this.
• In Caliphate, the virus being developed by the eponymous Caliphate for use against the rest of the world is 97% fatal, with it believed by the protagonists that the other three percent would be crippled even if they didn't die from the disease.
• Oleg Makushkin's Crystalline Lattice has the world split up between two warring camps: the Cyberempire and the Gaian Republic (both totalitarian states). While the former attempts to achieve perfection through cybernetic implants and computer control, the latter seeks to live in harmony with nature and modify their own bodies (although they don't eschew non-computer technology). The citizens of the Republic are split into three classes: class A are specially bred soldiers who aren't really considered human anymore (they are roughly a match to their enemies' cyborg soldiers); class B are unmodified natural-born humans (all men are class B, as the Gaians have not yet been able to successfully produce a genetically engineered male); and class C represent the majority of the population, being the tube-grown genetically engineered "super"-females. It's stated that the Gaians have developed a Synthetic Plague that can wipe out any human being outside the borders of the Republic. This is used as a counter to the Cyberempire's WMDs in a Mutually Assured Destruction sort of way, which doesn't prevent both sides from engaging in conventional warfare. The Deidran faction within the Republic wishes to engage in more radical genetic modification than currently permitted and to release the virus onto the Cybernetics. The "status quo" faction wishes to keep things the way they are, but they're afraid of the Cybernetics finding out about the Deidran plans and deciding to deal the first blow.
• In Dr. Franklin's Island, the titular Mad Scientist has developed a method involving taking a sample of the test subject's bone marrow, doctoring the cells with DNA from other species, then re-implanting them, causing a Slow Transformation. He has a "zoo" of animals with awkward human features on whom he perfected the process, but really wants to move on to human trials and tells two unfortunate teen castaways about his grand plans, involving colonizing other worlds. The castaways are turned into hybrid creatures, a bird monster and a rayfish monster, and are told by another character that the real plan is to sell vacation packages where someone can take pills or get a shot, change quickly, and spend a couple weeks exploring the Grand Canyon or a coral reef before changing back.
• Genome is all about how genetic engineering results in Designer Babies that are specialized and conditioned to love their "chosen" profession. This ranges from simple mental modifications (e.g., police detectives have a heightened sense of logic and love for truth and law and are unable to form emotional attachments; High Class Call Girls easily falling in love with their clients and cannot fall out of love until the client reciprocates) to physical ones (e.g. starship pilots have a well-developed cerebellum for balance and can shrug off a 30-foot fall; fighters can move in the blink of an eye and have extra arm joints; power plant specialists have radiation-proof skin and hair with the males able to "suck in" their genitals).
• The Hollows replaces the nuclear arms race with the genetic arms race as part of the backstory, which in turn creates the virus which wipes out a big chunk of humanity, allowing the loss of the Masquerade.
• Much of the conflict in Honor Harrington is driven by the, ahem, conflicting opinions about genetic engineering and its outcomes, including the Final War on Earth, and plans of the Mesan Alignment for the galactic domination. Weber even went to record stating that the villains' position on transhumanism and genetic engineering is actually correct, but that they are antagonists because they're dicks about it.
• The Meliorare Society in Humanx Commonwealth is a group of rogue genetic engineers who attempted to "improve" humanity by tinkering with the DNA of unborn children, hoping to create physical and mental superhumans. Naturally, things didn't go as planned, and after some of their more grotesque results came to light, they were outlawed and eventually hunted down. Their "experiments" were mainly destroyed or, where possible, surgically altered to remove their abnormalities. The fate of the few who are left over is a major plot point of the series, forming the origin story of Flinx as well as Mahnami.
• The Hunger Games: There are several weaponized creatures scattered around both the titular Games and the Capitol, including ferocious wasps with hallucinogenic venom and wolf "Muttations" created to resemble the tributes who died in the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games.
• The Iron Dream: While a worldwide nuclear war 1100 years in the past completely polluted Earth with radiation and turned most of mankind and the fauna into a race of mutant mongrels (and the Big Bad faction using radiation to breed their different sorts of mooks), in the end mankind is saved by intensive usage of genetic engineering, which finally even replaces normal procreation.
• In Keeper of the Lost Cities, the main character, Sophie Foster, was genetically engineered not only to have multiple Talents (superpowers) — she has five and is implied to have even more that are dormant whereas other elves only have one, none or two if they are a Polyglot — but also to have much more advanced versions of those Talents, such as an importable mind as a telepath and the ability to inflict positive emotion when the most powerful of Infictor is limited to negative emotions. She even has abilities her specie is not even supposed to have (such as teleportation, that is usually exclusive to Alicorns). She is also much more skilled than other elves at general skills in general, such as telekinesis but strangely she lacks a feature all other elves possess, which is perfect coordination and flexibility and is very clumsy, even by human standards. All of this was done to make her a Messianic Archetype, but she rarely uses the full extent of her powers.
• Used in the Whitney A. Curtis' novel Legacy of Cryptia, in which it turns out that genetically engineered super-warriors doubled as living batteries for the weapons that devastated Wellia with all the force of nukes.
• In Maximum Ride, Max and her friends are all bird-human hybrids, complete with wings. The laboratory that created them specializes in animal-human hybrids. In the sister books (When the Wind Blows and The Lake House), Max is even more bird-like, even to the point of laying eggs and aging faster.
• The Perfect Run: People with superpowers are called "Genomes" because the elixirs that give them power alter their genomes. However, it turns out that this is the least of the elixir's effects. Each elixir gives the drinker access to an Extradimensional Power Source; without that, the knockoff elixirs that Dynamis makes are limited to being powered only by the individual's body. They can make moderate flames, produce some wind, and use weak telekinesis, but not really anything else. Ryan even gives up his DNA to Dynamis without a blink, well aware that they won't be able to copy even the smallest aspect of his power.
• Santa Olivia: The GMOs are people genetically enhanced with having animal DNA spliced into them, gaining superior strength and senses. Loup inherits them from Martin, her father.
• Star Wars:
  • Parts of the Star Wars Expanded Universe involve "Sith alchemy", which does whatever the writers want it to do.
  • In the Jedi Academy Trilogy, Exar Kun spent the four thousand years since his death using it to breed monsters.
  • Quick cloning in The Thrawn Trilogy. With Spaarti cylinders, humans could be safely grown in as little as a year without ysalamiri, and as little as a month with them. While they grew, they received flash training, so it was possible to get an army in as little as two months. The Hand of Thrawn duology has a clone who had a bit of Thrawn mixed into his learning matrix in the hopes of making a leader with Thrawn's ability and long-range thinking. In Galaxy of Fear there is a cloning method that works in hours, but the results are too unstable to be particularly useful.
  • In the X-Wing Series, Evir Derricote created and tailored the Krytos Plague, a very nasty disease with several variants, each targeting a different related group of nonhumans. The Quarren strain spreading to Mon Calamari, the Bothan strain also devastating Wookiees, and so on. He was ordered to make it something that mutated very quickly to infect as many species as possible, but also to be sure that it didn't infect humans, and while he succeeded on both counts that high rate of mutation also meant that once it was released it became less lethal.
  • Galaxy of Fear is kicked off by a Mad Scientist trying to create a creature that would be the "ultimate weapon"; first creating six projects, many of them biological, then using them to make something with All Your Powers Combined.
• In The Troop, it's discovered that the infections are a result of this. Basically, a scientist ended up genetically engineering two new breeds of tapeworm: one to help as a dietary aide, and the other to serve as a bioweapon. No points for guessing which breed escaped containment.
• Vorkosigan Saga:
  • The Houses focused on medical issues on the lawless planet of Jackson's Whole occasionally dabble in this if they think there's profit to be had from it, including the creation of Sgt. Taura, a failed Super-Soldier project.
  • Cetagandans are big on genetic engineering, working toward transhumanism for their ruling caste, as well as various bioweapons.
• In Wild Cards, if you get infected by the Xenovirus Takis-A and manage to avoid a horrible death, heavy disfiguration or virtually useless powers, you may become an ace, basically a Differently Powered Individual. Organizations like the SCARE (Special Commission for Ace Resources and Endeavors) or the U.N. Committee exist to recruit said aces.

Live-Action TV

• The Boys (2019): Frederick Vought, a long-dead World War II Nazi scientist and founder of Vought, does this line of work. He and his work are outright compared to Alan Oppenheimer planning the atomic bomb, even stated to have been successful before the bomb was made. His projects during WWII escalated to the world of Supes we know today. Mildly subverted in the third season when it's revealed that unlike the atom bomb, Soldier Boy saw no actual combat in the war.
• Dark Angel: The superhuman abilities of X5 super soldiers and other Manticore transgenics are the result of mixing genetic material from various humans (generally people who were very strong, smart, or talented) and animals, with some serious tweaking, into DNA cocktails. Genetic engineering is also the explanation for their attractiveness (the ones that don't look half-man half-beast or covered in huge bumps).
• New Doctor Who has a tendency to use genetics and DNA as a sort of Applied Phlebotinum, especially for the Daleks.
• Used in Heroes, in which the plot-arc of a world-changing nuclear bomb from the first season is replaced with the plot-arc of a gene-altering formula in the third season.
• The Invisible Man: The gland that secretes quicksilver was genetically engineered. In the pilot, Darien compares it to the atom bomb. This is disputed by Darien and Hobbes at the end of the second season opener "Legends", after they find and kill an invisible bigfoot. The Official denies their accusations but lets it slip that he knew about these creatures, implying that the original gland did come from a bigfoot but may have been adapted for a human. Strangely, this may imply that quicksilver madness is a natural side effect of the gland, not Arnaud's deliberate sabotage.
• Red Dwarf: About half of the horrific creatures that the Dwarfers face are the by-products of genetic engineering experiments, who were left to fend for themselves after humanity's presumed extinction. This includes the Emotion Eater Polymorph, Master of Illusion Psirens, and the physically horrifying Pleasure GELF. The books go a little further, revealing that they eventually rebelled against humanity and were exiled to Earth, which had just become the dumping spot for the Solar System's garbage, in response.
• Siren (2018): Ben giving himself injections of merpeople's stem cells gives him several natural abilities they have, enhancing his senses, stamina, strength and finally water breathing before he almost transforms into one.
• In one episode of Stargate SG-1, the villain was messing around with genetic engineering. A similar experiment later turns up in Stargate Atlantis. Somewhat subverted, though, as powers tend to come from characters being naturally or artificially evolved toward some post-human ideal that results in ascension. Rather than powers being some unique attribute, all characters tend to evolve in roughly the same way. Other "superpowers" are usually the result of alien technology that operates on unexplained principles or some vague appeal to quantum mechanics (which probably ties back into how near-ascended beings actually do what they do, anyway).
• Star Trek:
  • The Eugenics Wars (aprx. 1993-1996) were a series of wars caused by an attempt to improve humanity through selective breeding and genetic engineering. Records of the era are patchy, so exact causes are unknown, but in 1992 genetically augmented Super-Soldier Khan Noonien Singh gained control over more than half the Eastern hemisphere. The following year, over forty nations were overthrown by Augments, most of whom proceeded to enslave unaugmented humans to varying degrees. The subsequent wars nearly plunged the Earth into a second Dark Age and killed over 37 million. As such, genetics is a scientific field that the Federation is very leery about.
  • Genetic engineering was also a main cause of World War III (2026-2056), a genocidal conflict that killed 600 million, destroyed many of the planet's major cities and governments, and irradiated the atmosphere causing several nuclear winters. Recovery as a species was perhaps only possible through the help of the Vulcans, whom we made First Contact with in 2063, shortly after the official end of the war.
  • In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Founders, the ruling caste of the Dominion, utilize bio/genetic engineering to create super soldiers and personal advisors.
    • Once upon a time, a primate family hid a gravely injured Founder from pursuers. The Founder expressed its gratitude by promising that they will, one day, be transformed into a superior form and rule a vast galactic empire. The primate species is now known as the Vorta, advisers, scientists and policy makers of the Dominion.
    • The Jem'Hadar, super soldiers of the Dominion, are noted to qualify at least dozens of recommendations of the Evil Overlord List in their biological design. They wear no helmets (1, 130), wear carapaces that have no semblance to Nazi uniforms (21, 130), have superior eye sight that makes them expert marksmen (4, 56), possess exceptional strength and hand-eye coordination (236) are asexual in design (33, 43, 51, 84, 153), gain sustenance from a single source the Founders have absolute control over and require nothing else to function (127, 200, fark-9), require no sleep or rest (172, fark-9), work for the pleasure of obeying the "order of things" imprinted in their instincts (44, 48, 94, fark-9), have no fear or qualms using human wave attacks for the "order of things" (75, 234), memorize the entire manual with eidetic memory (57), and finally, can camouflage themselves to match the surroundings (237). And that's just the "design" part, not including their equally thorough training. Their design, summarized by Quark, is that "the Jem'Hadar don't eat, don't sleep and don't have sex".
  • Bashir, also from Deep Space Nine, demonstrates the impact that genetic engineering on Earth had on Federation policy. By law, genetically enhanced individuals like Bashir cannot serve in Starfleet or practice medicine.
  • Deconstructed in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, where Number One's genetically augmented immune system is key to solving the problem of the week in one episode, but gets her arrested by the season finale. Humanity has been so traumatized by the Eugenics Wars that a benign and useful augmentation carried by someone close to being an Ideal Hero gets put down with the same ruthlessness as someone cooking up another Khan. This leads to an Internal Deconstruction in the second season where we see that it's forced those who genetically engineered themselves for survival not superiority are forced to live in fear because of those prejudices.
• The conspiracy in Utopia revolves around a genetically engineered two-part Sterility Plague.

Tabletop Games

• After the Bomb can be summarized by this trope, and this trope alone. It's a postapocalyptic setting brought about by genetic modification becoming so commonplace that everybody and their little kid could buy a kit from the store to do it, and the consequences of that coming back to bite everyone in the ass (a program to breed a better chicken accidentally produces theropod dinosaurs, for instance).
• While genetic engineering is mostly a low-level background affair in the BattleTech universe (sometimes offhandedly mentioned as having been used to adapt a particular plant or animal species to a new world, but even the Clans' warrior breeding program relies primarily on just old-fashioned eugenics), the recent Wars of Reaving sourcebook introduced DNA-targeted viruses capable of selectively infecting trueborn in general, particular bloodlines, and even specific individuals if desired as part of the arsenal of the renegade Clan scientist faction known as "the Society". (Of course, part of what made them effective in this case was that Society members had easy access to DNA samples of their intended targets courtesy of the scientist caste being charged with managing the breeding program just mentioned in the first place.)
• Deviant: The Renegades offers this as a potential origin for the titular characters.
• The d20 Modern remake of Gamma World abandons nuclear power in favor of this; the Big Blast Out was a horrific spasm of genetic engineering and nanotechnology gone haywire that annihilated civilization and unleashed all manner of ghastly abominations, including giant snake/bears that are eternally, ravenously hungry, featureless shadow-skinned humanoids, and worse.
• GURPS: The current (4th) edition has one volume, GURPS Ultra-Tech, dedicated to mechanical and electronic SF and futuristic technology — and another volume of comparable size, GURPS Bio-Tech, dedicated to biotechnology, medicine, and genetic engineering. While, in keeping with the system's realism-based model, most of the products of genetic engineering described there are relatively low key, there are some radically advanced options, such as biological spaceships and "proteus viruses" that completely transform living things. This approach goes back to earlier editions, and the Transhuman Space setting carries it over from the main body of game material.
• In Pokémon Tabletop Adventures, genetic engineering and gene therapy are big parts of the Babel campaign setting from the Do Porygon Dream of Mareep? splatbook. In this setting, Eevee is reimagined as an artificial Pokémon created through genetic experimentation, and the evolutionary stones are machines invented specifically to stimulate and modify its malleable DNA through gradual radiation exposure. Other Pokémon which traditionally evolve through these stones can only do so if gene therapy has been used to infuse them with an Eevee's genes; if they haven't received this therapy, they can't evolve. Technical Machines are likewise reimagined as trips to a gene therapy clinic to teach Pokémon moves that they cannot learn naturally.
• In Splicers, La Résistance employs living Powered Armor and Beasts of Battle to fight a Robot War.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The Emperor of Mankind used genetic engineering to create super soldiers to defend humanity. His first attempts, the Thunder Warriors and the Custodes, were powerful but were also physically and mentally unstable and too difficult to mass produce respectively. He managed to solve both problems when he created the Space Marines. In the Space Marines' case, the Emperor didn't specifically modify the subjects' genetics. Instead, he created special organs that could be implanted into them, essentially making them fleshy cyborgs.
    • Not all Space Marines could undergo that organ transplant treatment, primarily being too old when they started. Different methods were used accepted to alter these recruits (most notably Kor Phaeron of the Word Bearers and Luther of the Dark Angels) into something close enough to be acceptable. While Kor Phaeron simply had as many organs as he was compatible with implanted, Luther instead underwent genetic engineering and biochemical enhancement.
  • The Old Ones took this to an extreme, creating an entire race to fight a war for them: the Orks. The Orks were for the most part a success. It's too bad the Old Ones had already taken such heavy losses when they made them — the desperation being the entire reason they were willing to create the Orks — that they died off before they could install one last feature they held off on to rush the Orks into battle: the off-switch. According to the fluff, the Old Ones seemed to have had a general passion for creating life, including humanity (though they didn't have a specific plan for us; they were just bored). They created the Eldar to balance out the physically impressive but psychically weak Orks, making them essentially the opposite so that both species would complement each other during the War in Heaven. They were only barely enough to defeat the Necrons... and then the Enslavers turned up.
  • More recent editions have mentioned "Men of Stone" and "Men of Gold", along with the better known "Men of Iron" that eventually turned on Mankind at the end of the Dark Age of Technology. According to Games Workshop veteran Alan Merrett, the former were artificial beings made of silicon, manufactured to spearhead humanity's expansion into deadly cosmic conditions. The latter were genetically engineered to be a superior offshoot of humanity, intended to rule and direct Stone, Iron, and Human. That did not go as planned.

Video Games

• The "Mutation!" table of Balls of Steel is about a genetic experiment that has mutated into a deadly green Blob Monster.
• BioShock: All of your plasmids and power-ups have abilities that, even with the most advanced bioengineering in the world, would be physiologically if not physically impossible. One of the worst offenders is a tonic that alters the way your research camera behaves.
• Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter:
  • So-called "Genics" are genetically-engineered creatures, that are used as either workers, food, or weapons of war. Apparently, genetic engineering gives them Elemental Powers as well. It also extends to Nina, who was turned into a living air filter, but for some reason gained magic as well.
  • More on the "Nuke" part, dragons, which devastated the surface and forced survivors underground, are also products of genetic engineering. Aside from the usual dragon stuff, their powers also include being almost invulnerable to anything but another dragon, and able to transform a bonded human into a new body for themselves.
• In Civilization: Beyond Earth, genetic engineering comes up a lot with the Harmony affinity and its sister hybrids in Rising Tide (Harmony/Supremacy and Harmony/Purity). Pure Harmony does everything from breeding Godzilla-like tamed monsters to hybridizing their human foot soldiers with alien DNA and giving them a Healing Factor whenever they breathe otherwise poisonous spores, all with the intention of integrating humans into the alien ecosystem to prevent the Great Mistake from ever happening again. Harmony/Purity uses gene-engineering with the expressed purpose of creating the perfect human being, creating superhuman shock-troopers. Harmony/Supremacy combines radical gene-engineering with cybernetic augmentation and a "power at any cost" mentality to create a new species so far removed from humanity that they're completely unrecognisable.
• In the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, genetic engineering in the form of the Jenova Project and its side-projects is responsible for producing Sephiroth, Genesis, Angeal, the Tsviets, and most of the series' other Super Soldiers.
• Crusader implies that Silencers are genetically engineered living weapons, just one of many in the Cliché Storm.
• Downplayed in Deus Ex. The Denton brothers have been cloned and genetically modified, but this is to accept nano-augmentation, which is the real innovation. The same goes for Adam Jensen, whose genetic modification merely allows him to be mechanically augmented without requiring Neuropozyne to counter rejection.
• In Evolva, your Genohunters will change their physical appearance (change colors, develop spikes or horns) based on the DNA (acquired from your enemies) they've used to mutate themselves.
• The Fallout games play with this trope a fair amount. While most of the games' creatures — such as the ghouls, the numerous and varied kinds of Big Creepy-Crawlies and the two-headed cattle and deer — are explicitly descended from normal animals mutated by nuclear fallout and lingering radiation, many others are eventually descended from experiments in biotech.
  • The most common cause is the FEV, the Forced Evolutionary Virus. This was a mutagen created by the U.S. government in an attempt to create living weapons for the war against China, whose effects mostly center on increased muscle mass and aggression, as well as decreased intelligence and complete sterility. The super mutants — stupid, vicious and aggressive hulking green humanoids — are the result of humans being exposed to the FEV. Other such mutants include the super mutants' hounds, the centaurs, and the first game's Big Bad, the Master.
    • What's more, some comments from the developers indicate that tensions surrounding FEV research were the flashpoint for the global nuclear war that ravaged the planet, making this trope almost literally true.
  • Other creatures in the games are the result of separate genetic engineering projects.
    • According to some sources, Deathclaws are the products of direct genetic engineering to create ideal soldiers, resulting in three- to four-meter-tall hulks of armor, muscle, fangs and aggression.
    • According to other sources, the mole rats were created as the ultimate invasive pests to be planted in enemy territory, with their resulting high adaptability and rapid breeding rates allowing them to survive and thrive in the wasteland.
    • This applies to a number of other (significantly less widespread) creatures as well, with more canonical certainty. The cazadors — wasps the size of eagles — and the nightstalkers — coyotes with the heads and tails of rattlesnakes — were created officially as security animals, and in reality because a Mad Scientist got bored.
• The titular Galerians in Galerians are a group of genetically engineered superhumans designed to supplant the human race.
• This is also the entire premise of GEM: Genetically Engineered Monsters.
• The premise of the Geneforge series was the creation and alteration of new life-forms with magic and 'essence'. Indeed, all of the game's plots consist of one side trying to keep irresponsible people from creating life and others trying to stop the other from hoarding their power. Two of the more obvious examples are massive, fast-breeding bugs that are equally likely to eat your crops and yourself, or canisters that make spellcasting part of your DNA.
• In Guilty Gear, the titular Gears were created by extensive genetic modification of humans and animals, along with being empowered by magic, as weapons of war. Gears come in different classes which vary wildly in appearance and ability, but nearly all Gears are exceptionally resilient and difficult to kill, and they can rapidly regenerate their wounds — Dizzy, a young Command-class, was able to survive a thousand-foot-high drop from an airship. Sol Badguy, the Gear Super Prototype, has nonchalantly got up and completely recovered after being riddled with machine gun fire, shrugged off being impaled through the chest with a BFS that was specially designed to kill Gears, and tanked an ICBM going off in his face. Sin, a human-Gear hybrid, was once punched by Sol so hard that the tree he was tied to was uprooted and flung several hundred yards and crashed through other trees behind it and was only slightly dazed for a bit. The more humanoid gears such as the ones mentioned also possess an affinity for magic and all the destructive power that goes along with it.
• In inFAMOUS 2, Cole uncovers Joseph Bertrand's Evil Plan: he created the Corrupted and had Vermaak 88 turned into pseudo-conduits with the intention of selling them to various foreign powers in what Cole called a "superhuman arms-race" not for the money, but so he could sow distrust of conduits in the general human populace and have them all purged in a holocaust. The trope is later given reality when Cole and Zeke fire a nuclear missile (having been bought and stored away by Bertrand as a last resort) at the Beast — the most powerful conduit to ever appear in the series — and it manages to rebuild its body within minutes.
• While NESTS from The King of Fighters does engage in actual cloning, some of their "clones" are actually pre-existing humans subjected to genetic engineering experiments to turn them into superpowered living weapons, such as K', Krizalid, and possibly Kula Diamond.
• In Master Detective Archives: Rain Code, the overarching mystery of the game is that a Mad Scientist named Dr. Huesca created homunculi out of the citizens of Kanai Ward and those homunculi replaced the city's original human population while the clones were none the wiser, with Makoto Kagutsuchi covering up the incident as the only one with stable genetics due to the genetics of the homunculi of everyone else in the city being flawed.
• The subjects of Les Enfants Terribles in Metal Gear Solid and its sequels. They use the 'genetically engineered from before birth' and 'nanomachine enhanced' versions.
• Pokémon:
  • According to the Pokédex, Mewtwo was genetically engineered (from the DNA from Mew) to be the most powerful Pokémon ever. Unlike most of what the Pokédex says, this was unmistakably true, at least in Generation I. Not only was the Psychic-type a total Game-Breaker, but Mewtwo had the highest base stat total of all 150+1 mons at the time. Later generations have introduced Pokémon that would surpass the Genetic Pokémon, but Mewtwo is still one tough bastard.
  • Mewtwo later takes back his title as the world's strongest Pokemon with his Mega Evolutions, which are stronger than Arceus. Of course, where the Mega stones for the man-made Mewtwo came from isn't explained.
  • In Pokémon Black and White, this trope is also the method in which Genesect was created. Its backstory is that it was revived from a fossil and fitted with a laser cannon. The project was officially scrapped by N due to what he perceived as "tampering with a perfect design", but a scientist continued the project and Genesect was the end result.
  • Attempted in Pokémon Sun and Moon with Type: Null, a Pokémon engineered from scratch by the Aether Foundation as a means of defense against Eldritch Abominations known as Ultra Beasts leaking into Alola. Three were created and were initially called "Type: Full". Unfortunately, all three Type: Fulls rejected the RKS system and went berserk. Eventually, they were fitted with masks and the project was deemed a failure. Type: Full was renamed Type: Null and they were put in cryostasis. That is, until the events of the game, when Gladion, the son of the Aether Foundation President, snuck out of Aether with one of the Type: Nulls, discovers its latent power and evolves it into Silvally, who is able to properly control its power and can combat the Ultra Beasts.
• Resident Evil 6 has a literal example of this trope, with the Big Bad Carla Radames possessing airburst missiles filled with the C-Virus in gas form, which she launches on the city of Tatchi in China to cause an instant Zombie Apocalypse.
• Shadow the Hedgehog from the Sonic the Hedgehog series, the Ultimate Life Form. Envisioned as a great defender of the world, and this is indeed what he ultimately becomes in spite of a setback after his creator went mad with grief over Maria's death, then amnesia, and then discovering that one of the genetic templates for his creation was an Eldritch Abomination. Shadow has gone on to destroy or take part in destroying a number of Eldritch Abominations and armies of Mecha-Mooks.
• In the Utopia DLC of Stellaris, Biological Ascension allows you to add and remove genetic traits from different populations within your empire, allowing you to optimize their traits based on their environment and what you want their role to be and giving great flexibility when it comes to expansion and production. For instance, you could make your primary species more intelligent or allow a species that evolved on a desert world to colonize a predominantly tropical world. More sinister uses include making dissident or enslaved pops more efficient at gathering certain resources or even removing their ability to feel emotion, boosting their productivity and ensuring that they'll never rebel.
• In Syndicate, Eurocorp and Aspari use gene splicing in their Agents. One of the fruits of this is Agent Crane, who has an accelerated Healing Factor.

Visual Novel

• In Portal, the key weapon of the Mind Wars is an incurable genetic disease which robs its victims of all free will, eventually leading to death by the literal loss of will to live. It's so effective, in fact, by the time the story ends, the Mind Wars have killed 75% of Earth's population.

Webcomics

• All over the place in The Cyantian Chronicles. First, the Rumuah created the immigrant Cyantians. Then the Squids enslaved the Cyantians and augmented some as pit fighters, forming the first generation of Elites. Finally, Exotica Genoworks has been creating new species of Cyantians ranging from skunks designed as air fresheners to psionic raccoons. The WMD version shows up as well when ED accidentally wipes out most of the fox species with a virus.
• The protagonists of DNA are a group of genetically engineered furry humanoid children, known as Species X. Most of them have superpowers.
• Freefall:
  • It's mentioned that "very strong laws" normally exists against creating beings like Florence. In fact she and the rest of her "species" was only created as experimental "proof of concept" prototypes regarding potential colonisation efforts on Death Worlds (ie, uplift the local fauna) and would most likely either have stayed as frozen Zygotes, or be forced to grown up under extremely controlled conditions if it wasn't for Dr. Bowman's meddling.
  • Dr. Bowman's species was eventually classified as biological weapons once their Sociopathic Soldier nature became known to the public. Leading them to all die off except him and which probably explains why laws against uplifting animals exists in the first place.
  • Averted with Designer Babies. Which are very common.
• In Genocide Man, genetic engineering became cheap enough for open source "biohackers" to wipe out 90% of humanity with designer plagues and create genetically enhanced super soldiers. The titular Genocide Project was started to counter them with augmented but genetically completely human "Genocide Men" and their own targeted plagues.
• In The Kenny Chronicles, one can guess why a bunch of pirate scientists would create the Tarnekis, though they probably didn't intend them to rebel and form a "nation" of ships on the Pacific.
• M9 Girls!: Genetic engineering is what allows the M9 Girls to absorb cosmic energy and gain superpowers. The procedure can really go bad, however, as the main antagonist can attest.
• Chapter 2 of Mushroom Go involves a piranha plant genetically engineered to be intelligent.
• Spinnerette:
  • This trope is lampshaded and double subverted at the start. The title character gains her powers from a Freak Lab Accident involving a "genetic infusion chamber" used to study spider heredity. This occurs soon after the head researcher berates a reporter for suggesting such nonsense.
    Dr. Lambha: God damn you idiots in the media! I'm doing research on spider genetics, and you infer that I'm going to cure fatness or turn people into spidermen! Do you understand nothing about science?
  • In-universe, this is known as the "Cherenkov-Kirby Reaction". It was being studied by Dr. Universe as a clean source of power before he and his assistant Greta turned evil.
• In String Theory (2009), a forced evolutionary virus creates "man-kitty-things" that get into everything. Schtein also keeps one as an adorable pet.
• Tuesday Titans: The Titans were created by humanity to act as soldiers and war machines. A single Titan, even a "small" one, is capable of wreaking terrible amounts of destruction by herself. Fortunately, they're firmly on the side of humanity. Or at least, on the side of Enotria, a human nation.

Web Original

• "The Gate" is an 8-minute 2001 sci fi/horror film about people being mutated by unregulated performance enhancing drugs bought online.
• Plonqmas: The chicken Plonq purchases in "A Plonqmas Tale — 2012" appears to have been heavily engineered, given that it has six legs and three breasts.
• Taerel Setting: The backstory mentions that Genetic Engineering was used, alongside nanotech to create the kin'toni (vampires), who caused the Xerea zu'aan Empire to fall.
• In Twig, the unlocking of the secrets of life by a "great mind" (heavily implied to be Mary Shelley) caused a massive leap forward in biological manipulation in the early 19th century, resulting in the British Empire expanding far beyond its historical height, at constant war with the rest of the world and routinely employing sterilizing plagues against its enemies.
• Whateley Universe: Jobe is one of the great genetic engineers of the planet, despite only being fourteen. He has a plan for taking a person and changing her into a perfect drow. He accidentally gets an injection of the serum and finds out it has Gone Horribly Right.
• Zero Punctuation: Whenever Yahtzee reviews a game that involves the creation of super-soldiers, bio-engineered zombies and monstrous bioweapons, he almost always questions how this is more efficient than regular bombs and nukes.

Western Animation

• This trope comes up a few times in Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers. On the lighter side is a Noodle Incident with mutated, flying plants that smell horribly when decomposing. "Marshmallow Trees" has the titular trees (genetically engineered crops) growing out of control and threatening to destroy a colony world. The darkest example is the Supertrooper Project.
• Danny Phantom: During his Freak Lab Accident, Danny has his genetic makeup modified with ectoplasm, thus making him half-ghost.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • In Batman Beyond, one of the groups of villains are the Splicers, who splice animal DNA into their own, generally lizard or snake. However, most of them rarely use them for fighting, just purely cosmetic. To them, it is pretty much getting a tattoo in today's time. Just as tattooing can have unwanted side effects (such as allergies and infection) even with clean equipment, splicing can have negative effects as well (increased aggression and impulsiveness are noted in the episode "Splicers").
  • The Justice League episode "Epilogue" reveals that Terry McGinnis from Batman Beyond is the result of this: Amanda Waller decided that there should always be a Batman and sought to create one, stealing some DNA from Bruce Wayne, genetically altering Terry's future father so that he was now Bruce Wayne DNA-wise, and (when Terry was old enough) trying to get his parents killed. However, the would-be-assassin (Andrea Beaumont, the Phantasm) just couldn't go through creating another Bruce and called out Waller over it. Ultimately, Derek Powers would unwittingly finish the job.
• Gargoyles has Anton Sevarius, a geneticist working for Xanatos (or whoever else is paying him at the moment), creating a genetics-altering compound that mutates Derek Maza and three other humans into Gargoyle-equivalents. The compound combines bat, big cat, and electric eel DNA, among others.
• Several of the monsters which Godzilla, Jr. fights in Godzilla: The Series are the result of gene-altering, such as the DNA Mimic and the D.R.A.G.M.A.s.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man uses this as the Phlebotinum du Jour, not only with Spider-Man's genetically altered spider-bite, but with Electro's powers, granted partly by being electrocuted. The Lizard too, is a result of Curt Connors dosing himself with an electrically catalyzed formula containing genetically modified lizard DNA. The big one, though, is many of Spidey's enemies — Rhino, Sandman, Kraven, etc. — are the result of OsCorp experiments designed to create superhumans, some of whom were pitted against Spidey for the sole purpose of distracting him so that he is too busy dealing with them to worry about The Man Behind the Man Tombstone and all the crime he is behind (other villains are tech based). The Green Goblin, likewise, got his powers from an experimental superhuman serum. The series was Screwed by the Network, but had it continued it would have adapted The Clone Saga which would have continued using this trope as a theme, with Mad Scientist Miles Warren already working on such stuff by the end of the second season.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series uses a weird mixture of this trope and its predecessor. Several of the heroes and villains series get their powers from the "Neogenic Recombinator", a device that uses a controlled beam of radiation to rewrite a subject's genetic code, and "neogenics" is a new science which is being investigated by many parties. The trope is almost invoked the trope by name when Mad Scientist Herbert Landon claims that metal is the way of the past, the material for the future being human flesh.

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