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Young man, I'm not a god, I'm a scientist. We're like gods, but more irresponsible.
— Rashid, Commitment Hour
There is no off position on the genius switch.
—David Letterman
They're scientists, they're somewhat scatterbrained, and they are frequently working for the bad guys, often building implausible gadgetry or slightly ridiculous superweapons. They tend to wear lab coats, have wild hair, and speak with put-on Central European accents (based on the many scientists who fled Central Europe from the Nazis and the Soviets). Sometimes they will talk like Peter Lorre, or engage in Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness. Often they will possess more than one Morally Ambiguous Doctorate.
Probably inspired by several people fictional and real: Doctor Frankenstein, Rotwang of the silent movie classic Metropolis and Albert Einstein. It's worth mentioning that while prominent scientists through the ages have often been a little... off, they are not true mad scientists: to be a Mad Scientist, both you and the science has to be mad. The one person who's come closest to this in real life may have been Nikola Tesla.
They tend to have vast stockpiles of Applied Phlebotinum available, and are frequently the manifestations of a particularly egregious Ass Pull on the part of the scriptwriters. Mad Scientists often do a lot of hand-waving and cackling as they construct or summon the Monster Of The Week or repair the villain's Humongous Mecha, which is usually only dimly visible in a gigantic foggy cloud of expository Techno Babble. When confronted about their amorality, expect them to shout that the true value of their work is "For Science!"
Some examples more than others emphasize that the bad science is incredibly broad-based. Biology, chemistry, medicine, physics are merely some of the mastered fields. (This may have been more realistic when scientists were "natural philosophers".) Technological mastery may include robotics, mechanical, electrical, and so forth, although in Real Life researchers of basic science such as university professors may not be that swift at using computers, for instance.
Despite being the type that should never attract women (unless a rare tragic figure), the Mad Scientist traditionally has a beautiful daughter for the hero to fall in love with. Or perhaps a child of much stranger provenance.
Often, nowadays, you'll see a good-aligned Mad Scientist (a Techno Wizard), whose job is usually providing the hero with their own stockpiles of Applied Phlebotinum. This character will frequently be an example of The Mad Hatter as well.
A Mad Scientist or two can be responsible for a Schizo Tech world and fill it with the detritus of decades of worth of monster projects, Mecha Mooks, etc, and be perfectly willing to vivisect any interesting specimens... human and non. They also might be the only ones able to resurrect Lost Technology.
A very frequent trope, still around today. It is in webcomics however, that mad scientists have come into their own as leading characters.
Typically comes equipped with a Mad Scientist Laboratory possibly on a tropical island or in a European castle. He'll often be assisted by The Igor.
An increasingly common take on this trope is that Mad Science is a disease, either hereditary (in which case the afflicted may come from a long line of mad scientists), or transmissible through contagious ideas.
The opposite of this character is The Professor, a brilliant scientist who is unambiguously a hero; however, they overlap more and more often lately.
The Reluctant Mad Scientist, a specific type, is a moral free agent who is sought after by both the villain and the hero. He is obsessed with his work and can't be held accountable. He is the only person who can build or disarm the MacGuffin, which he will gladly do for either side if asked because all he cares about is research.
Now, if you excuse me, I have gorillas to cybernize.
See also TV Genius, Evil Genius, and, inevitably, Scale Of Scientific Sins.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Dr. Hell from Mazinger Z is one of the first anime examples and fits this trope to a T.
- Professor Tomoe Souichi from Sailor Moon. To be fair, in the anime version he was possessed by a demonic being that lived in his eye; in the manga, he was just plain evil.
- Washuu, from Tenchi Muyo and its spinoff series Pretty Sammy (a heroic example).
- Dr. Franken von Fogler from the Giant Robo OVA was introduced as a classic ranting Mad Scientist. The series subverts this trope, as successive flashbacks reveal more about his real motivations.
- Icchan from Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer is often mistaken for a Mad Scientist; he seems to encourage it, making over-the-top dramatic entrances, speaking cryptically about his creations whenever he can, and wearing his lab coat all the time.
- However, his invention makes sense, is based on diligent research, operates on the notion that the principles discovered in previous discoveries can lead to new ones, is dependent on capitalism to provide funds and is profitable for mankind in general. Mad Scientists everywhere are very, very disappointed in him.
- At least a third of the major characters in Neon Genesis Evangelion are mad, or at least amoral, scientists.
- Mayuri Kurotsuchi from Bleach is an extreme example, an unholy hybrid of a mad scientist, an Evilutionary Biologist and an outright sociopath, openly boasting of the thousands of souls he's tortured to death in his 'studies'. Yet he leads one of the Soul Society's 13 squads (his contains lots of quirky assistants) and is seemingly a valued member. You begin to see the problem that the rest of Soul Society has with the administration... Just to hammer it home, he even has a daughter whom he made himself. His Arrancar equivalent is Szayel Aporro Grantz, who shares his twisted science. Urahara Kisuke is also very much a scientist and very much whacked out. There's a distinction between him and the other two, however, in that while Urahara is a walking moral gray area, he's not sociopathic or out for bloodshed. Ironic, given the nature of his zanpakutou.
- It has now been been revealed each of the Espada represent an aspect of death. Szayel represents madness, officially making this trope played amusingly straight.
- Also Aizen could count as well, what with his experiments on both shinigami and hollows, and his whole I will become God thing.
- Fullmetal Alchemist, instead of dealing with the Mad Scientist, revives its predecessor-trope, the almost forgotten Mad Alchemist (see below).
- The Movie introduces a scientist who is severely ticked at the world's alchemists for making his work worthless. The "mad" part of this shows up when he reveals that he discovered Uranium and threatens the Elrics with a hand-held nuke. Clearly he never tested the thing.
- Dr. Ni Jianyi from Saiyuki.
- Weiss Kreuz is almost as fond of these as it is of Mad Artists - see particularly Takatori Masafumi, and Tsuji Mayumi in Weiss Kreuz: Glühen.
- Dr. Jail Scaglietti of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Strikers. In fairness, it turns out that he's an Artificial Human who was specifically created to be that way.
- And we have Precia Testarossa, who snapped over the loss of her daughter Alicia.
- Battle Angel Alita: Desty Nova. Mad laugh, human experiments, cloning, nanomachines, lack of morals, the whole works, and he's proud of it.
- Dandankyukyu (called Dantalion or The Professor) from Shakugan No Shana. He is outrageously excitable and creates his mad experiments For Science, and not necessarily for evil means. (One suspects that if he weren't contracted to the bad guys he'd be mostly harmless). Bonus points, he looks exactly like Father Anderson from Hellsing.
- Ginias Sakhalin from Gundam: The 08th MS Team, the head of the Apsalus Project, which could be best described as a miniature Death Star that kills cities instead of planets. He starts out relatively sane if overly dedicated, but he deteriorates as time goes on.
- The Elder in Chrono Crusade is a mild example of this trope. He's not completely insane, but his inventions tend to be quirky at best and downright dangerous at worst. Some of the things he's responsible for in the series include purposefully allowing Rosette to steal an experimental bullet with a demon trapped inside so he wouldn't have to test it himself, and apparently fusing a friend with demonic legion in order to make him a better fighter. Oh, and he's a Dirty Old Man to top it all off.
- Nina Einstein from Code Geass, a Teenage Mad Scientist Girl. She is particularly known for being a Psycho Lesbian and inventing weapons of mass destruction.
- Another one is Grace O'Connor from Macross Frontier. Though she doesn't heavily advertise that she is a scientist in the first place, in fact she is, and not the worst one. Given that she's also a Hot Scientist, and what a scheming, amoral, and utterly badass Magnificent Bastard she comes in the end, it's simply unfair to leave her out.
- Sekirei has a few, but the biggest, craziest, and downright hammiest of them all is Hiroto Minaka, MBI's psychotic and manipulative CEO. He's hinted to be behind the discovery of the original Sekirei and the making of the current ones, and is CONFIRMED to be manipulating every single person in the series towards his own bizarre ends and making every character hate him in the process, but earning massive fan love for his Impossibly Cool Clothes and general CrazyAwesomeness.
- Professor Franken Stein of Soul Eater, whose love of dissection is played for laughs early on. The "mad" aspect becomes important later on, as madness is somewhat more concrete in this world. Medusa definitely counts as well.
- Stein's likening for dissection is played for laughs, but it's also what he seriously would have done to Medusa given the chance (and Spirit, and Maka, and Kid, and anyone he saw as interesting..). In the witch's case he settles for dismembering her and shoving a scythe blade into her skull for good measure.
- Getter Robo has a few. Saotome is the most famous example, though he's very low-key (except in the Armageddon OVA) about it and fairly normal on the surface. Professor Shikashima on the other hand has several screws loose (and indeed, actually has one lodged in his skull) but his craziness is mostly played for laughs. In Getter Robo Āḥ Hayato replaces Saotome as the leading scientist, with his trademark Ax Crazy streak.
- Some of the Naruto villains get into this, most notably Orochimaru and his Mad Doctor Bastard Understudy, Kabuto.
- Hakase of Mahou Sensei Negima qualifies. So does Chao.
- Hiroshi from My Dear Marie builds himself a robot girl who both looks identical and has the same name to a woman he has a crush on. When the two meet by chance, he tells everyone that they're siblings as a cover story.
Comic Books
- The original incarnations of Superman's archenemy, Lex Luthor. In the years since, he's also been a Corrupt Corporate Executive and a villainous politician.
- The Mandarin is a Mad Scientist enemy of Iron Man. He spends his time inventing mind-controlling super-cancers that run around like a cross between the Blob and the Borg. Or inventing orbiting Hate Rays to destroy the world with madness.
- Doctor Sivana and his family are similarly the archenemies of Captain Marvel and friends. He's a five-foot-tall gnome of a man with a chrome dome, huge Scary Shiny Glasses, and more often than not a white lab coat. His stated goals (in no particular order): To become Rightful Ruler of the Universe in fact as well as in name; to spread evil, cruelty, and nastiness throughout the cosmos; and to humiliate, discredit, and ultimately KILL CAPTAIN MARVEL! Heh heh heh heh!!! What, exactly, his incredibly attractive and affectionate late wife saw in him is a total enigma.
- A heroic Mad Scientist in The DCU is Doctor Magnus, creator of the Metal Men.
- In the Marvel Universe, AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics) are a terrorist organization of Mad Scientists, who wish to overthrow the world's governments and institute a technocracy.
- The DCU comic 52 had a secret conspiracy who was kidnapping Mad Scientists, good and evil, for a nefarious goal.
- ...and many, many, many others. Mad Scientist is possibly the default comic-book bad guy, and is a common vocation for good guys, as well.
- The Ultra-Humanite (arguably comics' first supervillain) who actually transferred his brain from the standard baldie-in-a-labcoat mad scientist's body into that of a beautiful woman. He was only another Mad Scientist in the Golden Age comics, but in the series The Golden Age, he becomes the arch villain, but poses as a hero and gets the medal of honor. He saved Hitler's brain, too. And put it in an invincible super-body.
- D.A. Sinclair of Invincible is easily one of the most sadistic mad scientists in fiction. He started making zombielike techno-organic minions, Re-Animen, from dead bodies, which is bad enough. But he eventually moved on to live subjects, kidnapping his roommate and tearing out his vocal cords so that he couldn't scream while he operated on him (D. A. is a college student, after all, and can't afford anaesthetic). And he tore his arm off and overrode his free will. Then he started duplicating the process on homeless people. Naturally, the US Government saw to it that he served no jail time when he was caught, and gave him a cushy job making Re-Animen for military use.
- Dr Mindbender from GIJoe is particularily mad. Cloner, Genetic Engineer, Robot designer and master of mind control and inventer of many of Cobra's bizarre superweapons. That he's bald, usually shirtless and has pecs like melons only enhances his image of insanity. He even installed mind control chips in several prominent Cobra members, and prepared for his own death by creating a clone backup. Oh, and before he became a mad scientist, he was a... benevolent orthodontist. Until his freak orthodontics accident (seriously).
- Simon von Simon from Little Gloomy. He's got it all, from his powerful machinery, futuristic inventions (such as the television and the microwave. Before you say anything, he invented them before anyone else did), hunchbacked Halfhearted Henchman, to his seething rage for everybody but himself. Of course, the fact that his plans for world domination were motivated by Gloomy dumping him, and the fact that the series calls him on not marketing his fantastic creations to get on top in a less freaky way undermines his menace somewhat; This, in turn, is offset by his army of ravenous zombies.
- Dr Scyk from the Danish comic-strip "Dr Merling".
- Several villains in the Blake And Mortimer comics fall under this trope. The most notable being:
- Wade/Jonathan Septimusin "The Yellow M"
- Miloch Georgevich in "Sos Météores" and "Le Piege Diabolique"
- Voronov in "La Machination Voronov". Who also ends up being something of a Karma Houdini.
- In Y The Last Man geneticist Dr Allison Mann claims she was illegally cloning a nephew who needed a bone transplant. She later admits this story was fictional to gain Agent 355's sympathy rather than be thought of as a 'mad scientist'; her actual motive was to spite her father who was nearing success in cloning the first human. After several red herrings we encounter the REAL mad scientist is in fact Allison's father, who was seeking to clone his daughter so he could be a better parent the next time round, yet who also sabotaged Allison's cloning experiment out of sheer spite and may have accidentally caused the plague that all but wiped out the male species.
- In addition to Dr. Robotnik/Eggman, the Archie Sonic The Hedgehog comic has Dr. Finitevus and Dimitri, both of whom work for the Dark Legion, a gorup who believe in self-augmentation with technology.
- Hank Pym (aka Ant-Man aka Giant-Man aka Goliath aka Yellowjacket aka The Wasp). Just take for example his origin story:
Panel of Scientists: "You should stick to practical projects"
Hank Pym: "No! I'll work only on things that appeal to my imagination...like my latest invention."
Panel of Scientists: "Oh...what's that?"
Hank Pym: "I won't tell you yet! You would only laugh at me as you've done before! But when I've finished it, I'll show you! Then you shall know I'm a greater scientist than any of you!"
- Marvel's High Evolutionary. The man built his own planet!
- Mr. Freeze is one of the more sympathetic examples of this trope, verging on woobiness
Film
Literature
- In Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, the Alchemists' Guild are also Magitek mad scientists. Inverted with the character of Jeremy Clockson, subject of the quote above, who has the detachment from reality and dangerous obsession of the typical Mad Scientist because (most of the time, and in a very specialised way) he's saner than normal people.
- The Igors of the Discworld series. Though typically the assistants of a Mad Scientist, they're known to conduct their own experiments, such as growing noses with feet, and their own special version of "self improvement." Though to be fair, the Igors in general are remarkably Genre Savvy - they know their place in the chain, and how to react when that chain is shaken. In fact, the clan basically foists off the most 'modern' variant of their clan upon the Night Watch in an attempt to cease the corruption: that is to say, Mr. "Noses With Feet". Similarly, in Carpe Jugulum, an Igor working for vampires revolts at their innovations and revives the old master — not so much reviving the Good Old Ways as the Moderately Less Odious Old Ways.
- Making Money gives us Hubert Lavish, a mad economist. With a really, really Crazy Awesome laugh.
- The inspiration for both Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein and the adaptations which distorted Frankenstein into a Mad Scientist came from a much older literary and popular tradition about Mad Alchemists, and their blasphemous, yet entertaining, obsessions with the creation of homunculi and the secrets of eternal life. So while the Mad Scientist might seem quintessentially modern, in fact he's Older Than Steam at least. The most well-known remnant of the old 'Mad Alchemist' trope today is the Faust myth, and its literary adaptations in Marlowe's play Dr. Faustus and Goethe's epic poem Faust.
- Victor Frankenstein, as originally conceived in Mary Shelley's novel, was not quite a Mad Scientist. Although he sees himself as a descendant of Mad Alchemists, Shelley makes his character more rounded and his mental instability more subtly portrayed. However, within decades wildly popular nineteenth-century melodrama theatre adaptations recast him as a cackling Mad Alchemist.
- The King of the Mountain in Enid Blyton's The Mountain of Adventure.
- This forum story
 , The Mad Scientist Wars, pretty much uses this trope as its foundation stone. The players are all fans of the above-mentioned Narbonic and its new successor, Skin Horse (about a government agency that basically cleans up after Mad Scientists), so it was only natural.
- This Troper, who is Andrew Tinker in the forum, would like to add that it's a pretty good example. Flying rabbits, lightning guns, nano-bots, and reality warping have all come into play.
- HP Lovecraft definitely had one more than one Mad Scientist character.
- Herbert West. Just... Herbert West.
- The stories "From Beyond" , "At the Mountains of Madness" , "The Dreams in the Witch House" and "The Shadow Out of Time" spring to mind.
- Arthur Machen's "The Inmost Light" written in 1894 contains a rather horrific version of this trope.
- Don't forget the one in Great God Pan, either. While the novel seems desparate to make him slightly sympathetic, at least to a modern reader he comes off as a Complete Monster. Yeah, lets practice some experimental brain surgery with a teenaged girl completely infatuated with you, and clearly incapable of truly informed constent. What could go wrong?
- Most of Doc Savage's foes are mad enough to the point that their death machines could not have been a large scale threat after retrieval and close examination by Doc. At least, that's what he says...
- Sadistic pavlovian Ned Pointsman, one of the main villains in Gravitys Rainbow.
- Dr. Impossible, of Soon I Will Be Invincible, suffers from "malign hypercognitive disorder". His mentor, Baron Ether, had the condition as well. Symptoms include not following safety protocols while working with high energy physics experiments, extreme long-term planning, robotic servants, death rays, extreme long-term planning, maniacal laughter, wondering why you just didn't get a normal job while powering up the death ray, and insomnia.
- The villain of Hilari Bell's The Last Knight is a rare example of a mad scientist in a fantasy setting, performing dubiously ethical experiments in order to give magical powers to humans (as, in the story's universe, only plants and animals have magic).
- HG Wells' Dr. Moreau from The Island of Dr. Moreau. The titular vivisectionist isn't as early as Frankenstein, but he played a major role in shaping the trope. He had Einstein Hair - decades before Einstein. He had the Mad Scientist Laboratory - his island (and he likely brought tropical island laboratories into vogue). Cast out from society, with only one assistant? Oh, yes. He did it all For Science but used extremely painful methods that would give any PETA representative nightmares. Turned on by his own creations? Of course. Several films adaptations even give him a beautiful daughter of his own creation. He also provided the beginnings of the Reluctant Mad Scientist - he never intended to get revenge on the other scientists who cast him out, and in his own mind he had noble purposes for his work; it's only his (possibly willful) ignorance of how torturous his methods are that makes him less than a sympathetic character.
- In James Swallow's Warhammer 40000 Blood Angels novel Red Fury, Caecus persists in his efforts to make replicae of Space Marines over his Chapter Master's overt disapproval. (His servant Fenn falls more under Old Retainer than The Igor, because he vocally disapproves of it all.)
- Subverted to some extent in the George R.R. Martin-edited Wild Cards books. There are Mad Scientists a plenty, on both hero and villain sides. Or at least folks who have been infected with the wild card virus who are now determined to build androids, giant mecha suits and all manner of mad-sciencey devices. The kicker is that the inventions they create really are just piles of unworkable junk, and the particular power they have developed is the ability to make their crazy inventions work. Any attempt to analyze and reproduce the devices prove to be fruitless and show that there is no way they should function in the first place. (Much to the chagrin of the creator of Dr. Travnicek who created Modular Man with the intent of selling armies of humanoid robots to the military.)
Live Action TV
- Jha'Dur on the Babylon 5 episode "Deathwalker".
- Beakman on Beakmans World had the outward appearance of one, but as this was an Edutainment Show, most of his science was pretty sound. Most of it.
- Professor Maggie Walsh and Warren Mears on Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
- Parodied on one episode of Dinosaurs: a scientist on TV gives the "They called me MAD!" speech before unveiling his latest creation, a giant living squash. When his assistant calls him mad, the scientist calmly agrees, adding that what made him seek revenge is that he's angry-mad, not insane-mad.
- John Lumic from the Doctor Who two-parter "Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel". In addition to being an Evilutionary Biologist, he explicitly considers himself above law.
- Doctor Who is filled with Mad Scientists, ranging from the slightly unhinged, endearing sort to the completely unrepentant, Omnicidal Maniacs. The best example is, of course, Davros, the creator of the Daleks, who easily conveyed just how twisted he was even without an Evil Laugh.
- Don't forget the Rani!
- Topher from Dollhouse and, even more so, Alpha.
- Topher is more a Lab Rat with delusions of mad scientisthood.
- Walter Bishop of Fringe, most of whose nervous tics and general mental confusion disappeared about the same time he was released from the mental asylum (he claims that they were side effects of the drugs he was taking). Of course, he's still a "fringe scientist", which means he's focused on things like teleportation, astral projection, reanimation, and diseases-that-turn-skin-and-muscle-tissue-translucent.
- Disappeared? What show were you watching?
- Dr. Yes and others on Get Smart.
- Heroes, Volume 3 Mohinder Suresh crosses this line when the Super Serum he's injected himself with causes him to become increasingly unstable as the season progresses.
- Daniel Faraday on Lost, especially the "scatterbrained" part.
- Dr. Bunsen Honeydew of The Muppet Show.
- Dr. Clayton Forrester on Mystery Science Theatre 3000; his mother later takes up the role.
- Joel also qualifies to some degree. He built smart robots out of ordinary spaceship parts, and his invention exchange concepts are a little... odd.
- Stargate SG 1 has a woman known to many as the Destroyer of Worlds for her twisted experiments with genetics and chemistry.
- Degra, Dr. Crell Moset, Dr. Chaotica and numerous other specimens can be spotted on every incarnation of Star Trek.
- Dr. Miguelito Loveless, The Wild Wild West.
- Comic Book Evil, of the sort perpetrated by Mad Scientists, is the reason The Middle Man organization exists.
Mythology
- The mythical Greek inventor Daedalus may be regarded as the first Mad Scientist.
- The god Hephaestus/Vulcan deserves honorable mention for his two mechanical servant girls.
Tabletop Games
- The original Mage: The Ascension gameline had the 'Sons of Ether', a "Tradition" of technomantic mad scientists who see their magick as the ultimate form of True Science. Virtual Adepts and Iteration X also fit this mold.
- Then There is the fan made Genius: The Transgression, which is all about Mad Scientists so crazy that they can create stuff that breaks the laws of physics
- Well, not so much breaks the laws of physics as delicately bending them.
- Fabius Bile of Warhammer 40000. His lab coat is made out of human flesh. That about sums up his state of mind.
- Magnus the Red, Daemon Primarch of the Thousand Sons, arguably qualifies for this trope, though he's more of a mad wizard. He's got the reckless pursuit of knowledge, megalomania, production of the odd superweapon, and lead an entire legion of super soldiers into daemonic corruption.
- Every Mekboy ever. When they aren't building big stompy idols of Gork and Mork, they're building chaotic field artillery or welding
small big guns onto bigger guns.
- The Adeptus Mechanicus tend to get like this as you get further up the chain of command, especially with Masters of the Forge- part Space Marine, part Techno Wizard, all trouble.
- In the Warhammer universe, pretty much any Skaven from Clans Skyre, Moulder or Pestilens. They nicely cover all three of the main Mad Scientist archetypes: Moulder are the Frankenstein types, stitching together psychotic, uh, things to make even bigger psychotic things. Pestilens are the disease merchants, mixing together various toxic goops with the eventual goal of making the perfect plague to unleash on the Overworld. Skyre are the engineers, making Warpstone shooting gatling guns, cannons that fire green lasers, and giant armoured hamster wheels that throw off green lightning indiscriminately. These three clans then sell their services to all the myriad Warlord ("normal") clans, to aid them in their conquests. For the record, the other "techhologically advanced" races have only just invented gunpowder, and most are still on bows and arrows.
- The Demon Prince Vapula from In Nomine. He... stands out a bit from the more traditional Demon Princes.
- Magic The Gathering features Niv-Mizzet, leader of the red/blue Izzet faction in the Ravnica block. Combines the raw power, volatility, and vanity of a dragon with the intelligence and madness of a Mad Scientist.
- Mad Science is an arcane background, and the Mad Scientist a standard character archetype, in Deadlands. It's caused by demons whispering secrets of future technology into the ears of promising inventors, which is as good a reason as any to go insane, I guess.
- Its sequel, Hell on Earth, is set in a future where Mad Science brought about the Apocalypse. As a result ( this was the ultimate goal of the demons who caused mad science in the first place, so they stopped 'helping' when it was achieved), traditional mad science stopped working, and was replaced with techno-shamanism and a more [[Anvilicious anvilicious]] source of insanity: "gun spirits".
- Genius The Transgression adds mad scientists to the World Of Darkness notible for including mad psychology, mathamatics and even mad philosophy.
- Given that most D&D settings don't have scientists of any sort, it's up to Ravenloft to take up slack for the others on this trope. Being a Gothic horror game-setting, it does so in spades, with golem-crafters (Victor Mordenheim, Emil Bollenbach), Biological Mashup-makers (Frantisek Markov, Vjorn Horstman), Mind-Raping psychiatrists (Daclaud Heinforth, Celeste d'Honaire-Levode), and Woobie-ish crackpots trying to reconstruct their dead loved ones (too many to list). And that's not counting all the cackling weirdos who'd more properly be classified as Mad Necromancers.
Videogames
- Advance Wars had Lash, a girl genius version of the mad scientist. The reboot Days of Ruin has Caulder/Stolos, probably the most extreme mad scientist ever. Among his creations are the games equivalent to nukes, a giant bomber, cloned humans intended to be used as Super Commanders, and most of all, a virus that kills its host by growing flowers all over it's body. He also loves to manipulate people into fighting each other just so he can observe them and views humans as little more than test subjects... Including himself.
- Klungo from the Banjo games. He's responsible for Gruntilda's Beauty-Stealing Machine and in Grunty's Revenge is hinted that he also created Grunty's monster army. Unique in the fact he also happens to be the The Igor.
- Dr. Suchong from Bioshock is the sinister and detached version, the warped genius behind much ADAM research, including several plasmids, the Little Sisters, and the Big Daddies.
- Not to mention the fact that he was the linchpin behind virtually everything that went wrong in Rapture, including the protagonist himself — but, at least, he died an ironic death...
- Busuzima from Bloody Roar went so far as to freakishly mutate his co-worker Stun to steal his research. Starting as a child who wanted to create a creature that would never die, he's fallen to become a Jerkass who would sacrifice anybody for money and power. He can also turn into a chameleon and fight quite well, but (unusually for his occupation) that's a natural part of him.
- City Of Heroes and City of Villains have several of these, not including player character concepts: Dr. Aeon is the foremost example, tapping the energy of a slumbering demon in order to power his city. There's also Vernon von Grun, a Mad Scientist-In-Training Lab Assistant.
- The Clockwork King thinks that he's a Mad Scientist, but he's actually an extremely powerful psychic whose creations work because he believes they do.
- Brutally expanded on in a high level story arc, where an alternate universe version of the Clockwork King has realised his own sanity, and focused enough to conquer the entire planet and kill everyone on it.
- And there's Dr. Vahzilok, obsessed with conquering death, with fairly typical results.
- Don't forget the Council, of which all of The Center's generals are mad scientists (SIX of them!). The lower ranks of the Council are filled with their creations.
- It's mentioned at least once that Arachnos (the Big Bad Organization ruling the isles in which the game takes place), intentionally trains and recruits mad scientists, in order to stay ahead of the mad science game, ensuring their dominance above lesser criminal organizations.
- The Hamidon is the result of a very, very insane ecoterrorist using science and black magic to turn himself into a giant amoeba that threatens to devour the entire earth. The Hamidon is responsible for spawning the faction known as the Devouring Earth.
- The Doctor from Cave Story shows traits of this trope as well.
- Chrono Trigger's Lucca is a rare heroic example.
- Every single villain in the Crash Bandicoot franchise is either a mad scientist (usually with a first name starting with the letter N, which lends itself to Punny Names such as Neo Cortex (the usual megalomaniac Big Bad), N.Gin (the Yes Man and more recently, The Igor), Nitrus Brio (a chuckling Frankenstein-like midget), N.Tropy, N.Oxide and N.Trance) or a hideously mutated anthrophomorphic animal created by said mad scientists.
- Doc tor! Gregor! Hoffman!
- Mao in Disgaea 3. Despite being the main character, Mao is quite possibly the archetypal mad scientist. Thoughts of experimentation on interesting subjects send him into an excited fit, even if the subject turns out to be himself. The main story ends with Mao capturing and continually experimenting on the Big Bad, instead of killing him.
- Dead Space has two, one good, the other...not so much.
- The first one, Terrance Kyne, while he's gone a bit batty after being thrust into the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse, and has a habit of talking to his late wife (although that's not a sign of mental illness, it's a manifestation of the Marker), he's an ok sort who just wants to help Issac.
- The other is Mercer, who will do absoluely nothing to endear you to him.
- Bob Page from Deus Ex certainly fits this trope. Hell, the man has built entire multi-national conglomerates dedicated to such "grey area" pursuits as transgenics, bioweapons, espionage, nanotechnology, and cybernetics; all as part of a Xanatos Gambit to rule the world.
- Bob Page also employs plenty of other scientists, some of whom are completely ignorant about what they're doing, some of whom were captured and forced to work and some of whom are just completely without morals.
- Dr. Neurosis in Brain Dead 13, who plays out every Mad Scientist trope in the book.
- At least three Devil May Cry villains have been scientists researching, experimenting on and trying to create demons - Arius in the ignored title, Agnus in Devil May Cry 4 and Chen from the second novel. It's debatable as to how "scientific" this line of work is, though, so we could call them Mad Pseudoscientists or something.
- K.Rool from Donkey Kong Country takes a persona based on this trope in Dixie's Double Trouble.
- Professor Monkey-for-a-Head from the Earthworm Jim games. "Don't make the monkey mad, son!"
- The Master from Fallout, who beneath a calm, arrogant exterior topped by the reasoning of a Well Intentioned Extremist exhibited a multiple personality disorder and overall emotional frailty.
- Final Fantasy IV gives us Dr. Lugae, one of Rubicante's servants. He gleefully turned Edge's parents into hideous monsters, and when the party confronts him attacks them with a giant robot named Barnabas before turning into a mechanical skeleton to continue the fray. When the heroes finally reach Rubicante, he actually apologizes for Lugae's actions.
- Hojo from Final Fantasy VII is truly an archetypical Mad Scientist, right down to his outfit and sociopathic habit of sacrificing a great deal for the sake of scientific discovery (which, in his case, underlies his utter insanity). When you get down to it, Hojo may very well be the leading villain in the game, considering that most of the conflict in the game is indirectly his fault.
- Cid, one of the trademark characters of the Final Fantasy series, is sometimes portrayed in this light. Examples are in Final Fantasy VI, where, despite working for The Empire, he is a sympathetic character, and in Final Fantasy XII, where he is a main villain and fits this trope to a T.
- Dr. Curien in the House Of The Dead series. The third game has little cutscenes that chronicle his transformation from "scientist-trying-to-find-cure-for-sick-son" to "zombie-obsessed-psycho."
- Impossible Mission: Two words: Elvin Atombender.
- The first six members of Organisation XIII in Kingdom Hearts II were originally assistants to Ansem the Wise and his research on the Heartless. Vexen keeps up his research.
- Doctor Fred Edison from the PC game Maniac Mansion, its sequel Day Of The Tentacle, and the television program arguably based on them. Granted, his desire to take over the world and generally be evil was planted in his head by a purple meteor, but as the sequel shows, even when he's not being controlled, Fred is still a very whacked-out and amoral scientist.
- Dr. Albert Wily from the Mega Man series; arguably, the heroic Dr. Light as well.
- Wily's so nuts, some of his own creations are mad scientists, too; most notably, Gravity Man, whose data card quote is taken from Galileo.
- Mega Man X gives us Serges (who is speculated to be connected to Wily), Dr. Doppler (although he didn't really have a choice...), Gate (see Doopler).
- Guildernstern from the Onimusha series of videogames, and his successor in the fourth installment Rosencrantz (see a pattern here?), both qualify as mad scientists. Guildenstern can't help but experiment with demon and human anatomy to come up with truly horrifying monsters for the protagonist to face. Even in the second game where he is never seen, he is mentioned in many in-game texts as the reason your character has to go through such hell with biomechanical demonic constructs plaguing him at every other turn.
- The game Psychonauts. The villain Dr. Loboto has all the trappings of a mad scientist, while using the style of his doubtless-failed career in dentistry.
- Ewei/Wei Queyin from Romancing Sa Ga is a solid example. He does not have a lab assistant, however, but does have a Cosmic Keystone.
- Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik from the Sonic The Hedgehog series. He has a recorded IQ of 300 and an almost admirable level of persistence.
- Also Eggman's grandfather, Gerald Robotnik, brilliant scientist who designed a working orbital space colony and dabbled with artificial life forms among other things. He was driven insane after being interoggated and tortured by G.U.N.. The depths of his hatred for the world and his desire to destroy it shocked even Eggman himself.
- Andross in Star Fox, who employed several bio-weapons (as in, lifeforms created as weapons) in Star Fox 64 and Command. The later however somewhat redeems his actions by revealing that he had been working on a device that would terraform the aptly named planet Venom into a more inhabitable one. Which just happens to be the perfect counter to the new threat, which come from the acidic oceans of the planet.
- Lemon Browning from Super Robot Wars. While not really 100% evil, she did conduct very mad researches that borders on playing God, such as the premise of W Numbers, which is to create an Artificial Human that is as perfect as possible compared to usual humans. She's also sort of the Evil Twin of Excellen Browning.
- Also from Super Robot Wars, Aguila Setme and Egret Fehu. Both pretty much are similiar to Lemon, except she at least had human decency and Alas Poor Villian. Aguila mind fucks CHILDREN and turns them in living weapons, and figures any psychological scarring her sick experiments inflict can simply be removed with more brainwashing, or retained in some form if it make them fight even better. Egret builds Artifical Human Machinery Children, who basically agree with his belief Humansare Bastards (not to mention we suck from a biological standpoint), and is willing to kill all of humanity to acheive his end goals.
- Kenzo Kobayashi was one of these (still is to an extent), but performed a Heel Face Turn in
Original Generation (officially, was doing so slowly anyway after he developed a conscience prior)
- The Tales Series has a few of these.
- Dr. Muto is a protagonist example: His machine accidentally destroyed his own planet and he spends the game trying to collect the MacGuffins required to rebuild everything, aided by the fact that he can transform into various creatures to progress.
- The Medic and The Engineer of Team Fortress 2. The former is a German Deadly Doctor who heals out of convenience rather than anything resembling altruism, while the Engineer is a Texan holder of numerous degrees Gadgeteer Genius who has a great Evil Laugh.
- Thief II: The Metal Age features Father Karras of the Mechanists. He's mentioned in the first game as the fellow responsible for Garrett's replacement ocular, but by the second instalment, he's gone completely 'round the bend and is cheerfully intent on bringing about The End of the World As We Know It. He also has a preoccupation with Garrett...
- Dr. Kranken from Viewtiful Joe 2 fits the trope (like everything else in the games) to a stereotypical T.
- Professor Emma from Wild Arms 1 has shades of this, most notably when she led the team to a secret underground base that none of your teammates knew anything about, although the team spellcaster is the princess of the town it's built under.
Hanpan: There you go again, with another crazy idea... Isn't this illegal?
Jack: Someone stop this crazy professor...
Emma: I wasn't sure what I was getting into, so I didn't bother getting a permit.
Webcomics
- Casey And Andy was created with the tagline "mad scientist roommates who periodically die". Both the eponymous mad scientists have, frequently, died, often at each other's hands, and often while indulging in mad science experiments. It doesn't help that one of them dates (a female) Satan, and their neighbour is an extreme Weirdness Magnet who is also an international jewel thief.
- The Russian atomic bomb researcher from Atomic Robo
- Girl Genius is set in an alternate timeline where "Mad Scientists rule the world. Badly." Some people are born as "Sparks", with Mad Scientific ability as an inheritable trait — accompanied with a tendency to go into a berserk, ranting fury, and a strange charisma to gather flunkies with.
- Mad Scientists seem to actually outnumber sane scientists in this world. Even those without the "Spark" seem a little crazy.
- Narbonic has "going Mad" as an inheritable genetic disorder. The main characters are a mad scientist, her hapless lackey, her gun-toting assistant, and a superintelligent gerbil she created.
- A Miracle Of Science, is set in a future where Mad Science is a memetically-transmitted mental disease.
- Nukees features Gaviscon van Darrin ("I'm not mad, just really disappointed"), Danny Hua (creator of the Giant Robot Ant), and His Royal Highness King Luca, Monarch of the Nuclear Engineering Department of U.C. Berkeley.
- Umlaut House and its successor involve several mad scientists, of both good and evil varieties, and even had a Mad Science Convention.
- Sluggy Freelance has Dr. Schlock, time-traveling expert of Inflatable Technology, and Riff, a violently-minded tinkerer. And they're two of the good guys.
- And let's not forget Dr. Crabtree, who created Y2k incompliant nanites that nearly killed off most of humanity, and turned herself into a nanite cyborg. And Dr. Steve Hereti, who claimed to have created Oasis and could control her via a wrist watch. And Dr. Scab Moreaureau, who created "Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Gas", which forces two DNA strands to battle each other for supremacy to make genetic clean-up a fun game for the kiddies. Did I mention he's one of Santa's Elves? Yeah, Sluggy Freelance is lousy with Mad Scientists.
- Mad About U. is about a college for mad scientists.
- El Goonish Shive has Tedd Verres, a teen Mad Scientist, and Dr. Germahn, as Stereotypical German Scientist of the 'good, but mad' variety. Tedd also has an Evil Counterpart from a Mirror Universe, who seems to be determined to kill all of his alternates. Finally, there were the scientists who worked on Project Lycanthrope, only one of whom lived to tell the tale (Because he was caught for his fatal mistake before their gruesome consequences applied, oh the irony).
- Note that time has somewhat diminished this: most of Tedd's experiments were given a Ret Con, and are now either gifts from aliens (the Transformation Ray) or just things he picked up (Jeremy) — though Tedd was still smart enough to tune/program said items to his liking. Lord Tedd, meanwhile, has become a Brother Chuck.
- Dr. Germahn hasn't been seen in a while, but at last sighting he was mixing a tiny bit of Horny Scientist with Mad Scientist (minus the evil part, mind you), creating such things as a drink that makes sweat temporarily eat clothing (he was thinking of joining a gym), another that turns people into Anthromorphic cows (cause seriously, why not?), another that turns people young (he's rather old), and of course, a soda that shrinks people. All of which he tests on his hapless assistant.
- One of Dr. Germahn lines PERFECTLY defines him as a Mad Scientist: "This isn't about money, you foolish intern! It's about having cool stuff to play with!"
- General Protection Fault has Nick Wellington and Dr. Wisebottom (his uncle), not to mention Nick's evil Mirror Universe duplicate, Emperor Nick. There has been discussion of an "Inventor's Gene" running in the family.
- Schlock Mercenary has several, most notably Kevyn Andressyn. One particular Mad Scientist, 'Gav' Bleuel (who is the cryonically-preserved author of Nukees) accidentally duplicated himself millions of times over, making himself one of the largest human ethnic groups in the galaxy.
- Jyrras Gianna in Dan And Mabs Furry Adventures. Dabbles in mixing science and sorcery (though he is not a wizard himself), invents a 'cosmetic patch' that alters one's appearance, builds hypertech weaponry out of boredom, and accidentally created new life forms twice (three times, if you count his part in the creation of the Mows). Unlike most mad scientists, he had enough on the ball to make a fortune from his inventions.
- Jordan Kennedy in Exploitation Now!, an embittered and tragic Teen Genius who is the last survivor of a project to enhance human intelligence to super-human levels. Known for holding countries for ransom with stolen nuclear weapons and an orbital laser or two.
- Morgan La Fey, in Arthur King Of Time And Space is an amoral sorceress in the baseline arc, but a Mad Scientist in the Western arc. And in the future arc, she's an amoral scientist and a Mad Sorceress.
- The same webcomic also applies elements of the Mad Scientist trope to King Pelles and his daughter Elaine of Carbonek, and their quest to create the ultimate hero of Christianity (Galahad), by merging their line with Lancelot's. The newspost under the strip revealing this plan (and that Elaine is based on Helen Narbon) calls them "Mad Theologians".
- Most members of the Society of Inventors in Scary Go Round are in fact somewhat benevolent mad scientists. Other characters in the series (such as Archie Stanwyck and the monkey-obsessed Dr. Petrescu) are mad scientists pure and simple. Especially Petrescu, who's idea of a mobile phone is a normal landline strapped to a monkeys head.
- Eric, the nerd from Loserz, having a mad scientist moment.
- Smic, also known as Sir Reginald, is a British mad scientist of neo-victorian style. His antics include, harnessing the power of sunspots to fill a house with pizza, defeating an acid monster with his bare hands and raising the recently deceased
- Molly the Peanut Butter Monster, Galatea the Other Peanut Butter Monster, and Dean Martin in The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob. Poor Dr. Jean Poule would probably qualify as well, with her bizarre pet project which accidentally generated Molly—if not for the fact that Jean is, in many ways, the sanest person in the whole comic, a quality which in her universe is actually a bit of a handicap.
- In Flintlocke's Guide to Azeroth, the group of engineers who constructed the Ultimate Goblin Engineered Weapon, and the titular character.
- Minions At Work: Offering An early retirement plan with a fresh, minty after-taste!
- In the Lagend side story, Mary Mendele the titular character is a mad scientist who is also a nun.
Web Original
- The titular character of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is very obviously drawn from this trope's cliches. With a few tweaks.
- Sukebe from Pokegirls - in an odd application of the trope, he does succeed in bringing about the Apocalypse... mostly. But it's not compete, and the world got better eventually. Still, he will always be remembered as having 'showed them all', that's for sure.
- The Fan-made Genius The Transgression for The World Of Darkness is all about Mad Scientists.
- A parody of Sorceress Edea by SpoonyOne in his review of Final Fantasy VIII (Part 8). Spoony portraits himself as 'Dr. Insano', a Mad Scientist who won the 2008 Presidential Election. Even he was surprised to learn that he won even though he used the name 'Dr. Insano' and his running mate is Fu Manchu.
- In the Whateley Universe, some 'mad scientist' types (as well as other superpowered people) have the 'madness as a disease' trope. The universe has an illness called Diedrick's Syndrome that only affects some mutants. Due to an imbalance of neurotransmitters, the person can get paranoid, megalomaniac, etc., and that makes the imbalance worse, so things escalate until finally, said character is insanely screaming about destroying the planet because, say, he originally just lost his car keys.
- Carina Appelbaum from Open Blue of Seran's science corps holds a commission as a captain, allowing her to use a ship to scour the ocean for additional 'test subjects'. She carries a Hyper Space Arsenal of mysterious vials that could contain anything from explosives to poison.
Western Animation
- Professor Farnsworth on Futurama takes this to the lengths of parody and beyond. Case in point:
- "Even I laughed at me when I proposed the cross-species genetic analyzer, but I guess I showed myself!"
- Professor Frink of The Simpsons is a rather more amicable Mad Scientist, always apologetic when things go wrong with his inventions, and a passion for inventing crazy things like self-aware robots that only scrub floors, auto-diallers with retractable wheels, automatic tap-dancing shoes, buildings that can sprout legs and run away from danger, and hamburger earmuffs.
Frink: (as a radio controlled baby-plane with his son in it crashes) Oh dear. My wife is going to kill me.
- The Brain of Pinky And The Brain.
- Dr Karbunkle in Biker Mice From Mars.
- Dexter, main character of Dexters Laboratory. And his rival Mandark.
- Dr. Blight on Captain Planet And The Planeteers is literally mad. She is pretty much insane and she is a brilliant scientist, and represents unethical scientific research and technology in the wrong hands, though sometimes, she simply causes environmental for the sake of doing so.
- Simon Bar Sinister from Underdog.
- Dr. Mephesto on South Park. The guy's greatest experiment is a FIVE ASSED MONKEY!
Chef: Hey, you're that crazy cracker from up on the hill.
Mephesto: Sir, if making mutant animals spliced with humans is crazy… then… uhhhhh… hmmm… oh, nevermind.
- A fairly large share of the Recurring Characters on Kim Possible, notably major antagonist Doctor Drakken. But hey its not like any of them are a real threat anyway.
- Parodied by Sheep In The Big City's Angry Scientist (who becomes especially angry whenever anyone incorrectly refers to him as a mad scientist).
- Professor Norton Nimnul from Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers.
- Dr. Weird from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
Dr. Weird: Gentlemen! I have created... this thing.
Steve: What is it?
Dr. Weird: I don't know! Stand over here.
Steve: What, over here - hey!
- Chrome Dome from The Tick. El Seed and the Breadmaster may also quality for developing formulae that make plants come to life and bread explode, respectively.
- Dr. Bad Vibes from C.O.P.S.
- Megavolt from Darkwing Duck. Likewise Bushroot, who's usually ignored in this capacity, because his "mad science" is botany.
- Dr. Jumba Jookiba from Lilo And Stitch (although he prefers to be called an "evil genius.")
- Dr. Sevarius from Gargoyles isn't quite mad so much as he is amoral, but he displays a touch of the theatricality that is the hallmark of the best nutty professors.
- Then again, he is being portrayed by Tim Curry. Go figure.
- Dr. Cinnamon J. Scudworth of Clone High certainly qualifies, even though his day job is as a high school principal.
- The Dark Knight always seemed to be neck-deep in mad scientists on Batman The Animated Series. Within the first five episodes of the show, he runs afoul of Man-Bat, the Scarecrow, and Poison Ivy, scientists-turned-supercriminals all. Scarecrow actually goes the whole hog with the trope, as his initial appearance features a plot to ruin the university he was fired from and murder all those who called his sanity into question.
- Yes, killing them all will show that you are PERFECTLY sane...
- Johnny Test's older sisters Susan and Mary are both Mad Scientist teenagers. Also their friendly enemy, a.k.a. "Bling Bling Boy".
- The title character of Invader Zim is a mad scientist himself. In fact, in a script for an incomplete Start Of Darkness episode about him, Zim was actually a military scientist for his race whose creation, an "Infinite Absorbing Blob" was responsible for killing two of his previous leaders.
- Dib and Professor Membrane would arguably qualify as Mad Scientists. (Dib, perhaps more so since his inventions revolve around his all-consuming obsession to destroy ZIM, whereas his father's inventions are more geared toward helping humanity. Even the Super Toast.)
- Plankton from Sponge Bob Square Pants shows signs of being this.
- The Spectacular Spider Man's Doctor Octopus is one of these.
- Tarantulus of Transformers: Beast Wars is, if not a mad inventor, certainly crazy enough and scientific enough and treacherous enough to qualify for Mad Scientist.
- Transformers Animated has Prometheus Black. He started out messing around with biochemical enhancements to try and beat out Professor Sumdac's robotics industry, but after a lab accident changed him into the supervillain Meltdown he went into full vengeful mad science mode. The chemical warfare specialist Oil Slick might also count, although outside the fact that he's a ninja who developed the Transformer equivalent of ebola not much is known about him.
- Dr.
Quest Venture on The Venture Brothers, although his lack of ambitions and general ineptitude mean that he comes up with far fewer superweapons and far more get-rich-quick schemes than most of his ilk. Other M.S.'s in the Ventureverse include Pete White and Master Billy Quizboy, Jonas Venture Jr., Otaku Senzuri from the lost pilot, Professor Impossible, Mike Sorayama, Dr. Septapus, Baron Ünderbheit (implied), and Phantom Limb (implied confirmed, as part of his backstory)
- One episode of Inspector Gadget features the M.A.D. Scientist - that is, a scientist that works for M.A.D. However, he gets really, really peeved when someone calls him a mad scientist, screaming, "I'M NOT MAD!!!"
- "I'm not MAD! I'm Dr. Focus!" *gets arrested* "Now I'm really mad!"
- Doctor Two Brains in Word Girl
- Dr. Doofenschmirtz on Phineas and Ferb
- Phineas and Ferb themselves actually. They do build things like city-spanning roller coasters, time machines and space ships after all, not to mention entire landscapes in their backyard. But they are very mellow for mad scientists, I'll admit.
- The Tick has several: Brain Child, Profewssor chromedome and, a more benevolent version, Dr. Tungtung.
Music
- Dr. Steel is a steampunk themed industrial musician whose look consists of a shaved head, pointy beard, vintage welding goggles and a mad scientist lab coat.
- The Abney Park song "The Secret Life of Dr Calgori" is about a Mad Scientist.
- The Mono Puff song "Poison Flowers" is about a young would-be mad scientist lamenting the beginning of the school year as he will no longer have time to build bombs and death rays, or to write manifestos.
- Jonathan Coulton has at least two: "The Future Soon", about a socially rejected nerd who dreams of becoming a mad scientist in order to get revenge and conquer the world. The other is "Skullcrusher Mountain", which is from the point of view of a mad scientist talking to a woman that his deformed assisstant had kidnapped for him to woo.
"I made this half pony, half monkey monster to please you,
But I get the feeling that you don't like it. What's with all the screaming?
You like ponies. You like monkeys. Maybe you don't like monsters so much.
Maybe I used too many monkeys.
Isn't it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?"
Real Life
- No report on mad science is complete without the man who might have given creation to the whole trope; Nikola Tesla, and his Teleforce Death Ray. If that's not mad science, this editor doesn't know what is.
- How about harnessing the world's biggest waterfall to power an entire city, producing 150-foot lightning bolts from his ominous mountain laboratory in Colorado, and plotting to broadcast free power to the world from the Wardenclyffe Tower?
- Albert Einstein and the German nuclear physicists heavily influenced early Mad Scientists like Rotwang in the late 1920s. Crucial to the popularity of these "eccentric German physicists" was how they rehabilitated the image of scientists as Spockian pacifists in the wake of WWI, at a time when both war and Germans were intensely unpopular. (Einstein, with his characteristic wild hairdo, became the first scientific superstar and the first Popular Geek, helping spawn the concept of a Reluctant Mad Scientist whose inventions are inevitably misused.)
- Nazi scientist Josef Mengele, AKA "the Angel of Death". When this editor first saw his name, he thought it was pronounced "Mangle". Given what he did to the death camp prisoners, that wouldn't have been too much of a stretch.
- Austrian-American psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, whose work on human sexuality led him to "discover" Orgone Energy, an omnipresent cosmic lifeforce that was generated (among other things) by orgasm. He sold Orgone Accumulators and even built Orgone-powered "Cloudbusters" which could supposedly make it rain, and ended up being shut down by the Food And Drug Administration for selling lunatic medical devices that didn't work.
- Aforementioned webcomic Casey And Andy twice had the "Casey And Andy Mad Science Award" for examples of Mad Science in real life. Both times, NASA won: in 2004 for the Genesis Probe and again in 2005 for the Deep Impact space mission.
- Thomas Edison - often portrayed in popular fiction as an evil mad scientist - not because of his scientific skills, but because of his vicious business acumen.
- Well, that, and because of his probable cocaine addiction, probable sociopathy, and certain theft of the scientific inventions of everyone around him.
- DARPA, the US Government's official program to fund Mad Science. Their only mission is "radical innovation". They fund all sorts of seemingly off the wall projects. Among their successes are night-vision goggles, GPS, and a little thing called the Internet... oh, and funding a little thing called the DARPA Challenge, for self-driving cars.
- There is a real life psychological diagnosis known as 'Mad Scientist Syndrome,' so named because it tends to be a case of actually believing (some wacky event) such as alien invasion, or collapse of the world economy will "Show them all that I was right!"
- Yet another article from Cracked about the dangers of science here. Surprisingly, Josef Mengele didn't get mentioned. Perhaps the Cracked writers didn't want to dedicate an entry to a guy who's idea of "science" was torturing helpless prisoners for kicks.
- Heston Blumenthal specialises in useing scientific study to create tastier food, his resterunt is currently number two in the world. I quick look at the menu will tell you why he's earnt a place of honour on this list.
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