Maybe merge with Mad Doctor?: The Mengele

I came across the page for The Mengele recently,and while it did go through YKTTW, I notice that the concept is basically that of Mad Doctor, although some examples of it are probably under Mad Scientist and/or Mad Artist too. Overall, I can't really see a difference between The Mengele and the already existing trope(s).

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong on this, but from reading the two tropes' descriptions, I get the impression that The Mengele is about a scientist who does horrific things for his or her own enjoyment while claiming to do them in the name of science. I think that Mad Doctor is more specific to medicine, while a Mad Scientist is more successful. I see a lot of overlap between Mad Scientist and The Mengele so I would be in favor of adding some of the unique stuff in The Mengele trope's description to Mad Scientist.

That being said, given that the actual trope namer (Mengele) is listed as being close to a real life example of Mad Scientist, I wonder if the two tropes could be merged.

edited 8th May '11 10:51:08 AM by LouieW

I feel I'm gonna have to concur with the OP. Mad Doctor is already described as "The counterpart of Mad Scientist in the field of medicine" and human experimentation.

The only specific trait for The Mengele that this trope can boast is that in The Mengele's ideas and hypotheses are often not supported by the conclusions reached in their experiments, but the trope name is NOT indicative at all of that concept. When most people think of Mengele, the first thing that they'll most likely associate with him is the horrific nature of his work—not that his his experiments were usually failures.

^^Mengele is actually listed as a chief Real Life example on both Mad Scientist and Mad Doctor. Mad Doctor is written to be more geared towards concepts of human experimentation associated with Mengele though so I'd associate this more closely with that trope.

edited 8th May '11 10:55:25 AM by SeanMurrayI

Well, it is worth noting that the motives of the real life Mengele are about as close as For the Evulz as you can get in real life, whereas the typical Mad Doctor / Mad Scientist is motivated For Science!. However, I don't think we currently have any "motive" criteria for either of those tropes. And as mentioned above, what people first remember about Mengele was simply the horrific nature of his "experiments", so I doubt there would be many unique examples of this trope, even among those characters who are clearly based off of him.

I say cut and merge any unique examples onto Mad Doctor.

There's the possibility that this is supposed to be somebody pretending to do things For Science!, but their methodology and apparent motivation as shown by their actual deeds go strongly against that.

The dividing line would be that if you can credibly say "Bullshit" to the guy claiming he's doing it For Science!, you have what I'm seeing as a possibility.

If you think, "Hey, why is this guy leaping to kidnapping humans after performing the surgery once on a dog who didn't last three days? Why not try and make sure that your experiment doesn't end entirely predictably, if you're going to go that extreme?", I think you might have this trope.

Thanks Luc "Devil's Advocate" French

Meant to reply. I don't think the competent versus uncompetitive sadistic doctor distinction is all that important. For example, Mengele's Japanese equivalents are listed under The Mengele page even though it notes that they had somewhat more scientific backing than he did.

And I'm not sure how to put this, but with some examples like Mayuri or the Human Centipede guy, I get the impression that the work itself wants you to see them as a (very warped) genius even though viewer fridge logic indicates they aren't doing anything but satisfying personal sadism.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's hard to find a good scientific reason to torture people and so any character who tries to find one isn't going to sound all that logical.

Tl ; dr version- Competence isn't really a meaningful measure to distinguish one group of Mad Doctor types from another.

The fact that most people assume Mengele was a semi-competent mad scientist is one of the reasons I named the trope after him. Education.

I'll remove the Japanese ones. Don't know who put them there.

It's not really a question of competence, more of scientific method and value. Heidlers experiment is pretty much pointless except to show that he can do it, and to have his own "pet"; as for Mayuri, its more explicit in the manga that he is simply a sadist, in the scene (not in the anime) where he tells Uryu exactly what his experiments on the other Quincy entailed.

edited 17th May '11 2:03:53 PM by masamune1

^ That still doesn't tell us much about how this is supposed to be separate from Mad Doctor.

The Mengele isn't necessarily a medical doctor (which seems to be the main difference between the Mad Doctor and the Mad Scientist), and he is more clearly just a sadist. Or power mad.

edited 18th May '11 11:42:32 AM by masamune1

Still The Same But More Specific.

Most subtropes could be dismissed with The Same But More Specific, if you choose to ignore the intent of that page and go strictly with the name of it. A Wild Take is a specific type of The Take. So are Eye Take, Spit Take, Double Take... every subtrope listed on the The Take page is "The Take but more specific about how it's done".

Here's the difference I see:

The Mad Doctor: He does weird stuff in a genuine belief that he's working on something valuable. His experiments may not be evil at all; they're always weird.

The Mengele: He does sadistic or evil stuff, nominally in the name of science but it's made clear that he's as much or more inspired by his ability to cause pain and suffering. His experiments may not be weird at all; they're always cruel and sadistic.

edited 13th Jun '11 12:52:28 PM by Madrugada

Well, I'm not seeing much of a difference between "Mad Doctor" and "Mad Doctor who is a sadist" to reasonably argue that the added qualification in this case is the acceptable kind of The Same But More Specific.

Again, the real Dr. Mengele was doing his work with the intention of making scientific breakthroughs and research so he wouldn't even properly fit the description you give to this new trope; he's already listed as the Trope Codifier for Mad Doctor, too.

edited 13th Jun '11 1:08:53 PM by SeanMurrayI

Hmmm. You're right. as the current page is written a Mad Doctor must be evil. That's the problem I was having — the name indicates that he's the medical counterpart of the Mad Artist and Mad Scientist, who don't have to be evil, just crazy or misguided. Why does the Mad Doctor have to be evil?

Except for Discworld Igors I can't think of any non evil ones. Using people as guinea pigs is generally an evil thing to do.

^^ As I see it, Mad Doctors will specifically experiment on people or other living things whereas a Mad Scientist's experiments do not necessarily have to involve mutilating flesh and organs or living tissues in general, thus allowing them the chance to be seen as "innocents" (like Emmett Brown).

Key words for Mad Doctor should probably emphasize "horrific" and "disturbing" more than "evil" though.

edited 13th Jun '11 1:31:55 PM by SeanMurrayI

That change would work for me.

Actually, many of Mengele's victims, and even his associates and peers, had a hard time believing that he was expecting to get anything of scientific value. At least one of them burned the results he sent to him for review (bare in mind this was a fellow Nazi Scientist) because it was so clearly bunk and sadistic.

The Mengele is not really a sub-trope of Mad Doctor or Mad Scientist quite as much as he is a sub-trope of Serial Killer (I should probably index that). Its not so much that he's necessarily a bad scientist, just that at least some of his "research" is clearly just an excuse to indulge in a sick power game, even if he is deluded enough to believe otherwise.

And a Mad Doctor sounds more like a specifically medical doctor, whereas The Mengele could be that or another kind of scientist like a biologist (which is what Mengele purpotedly was).

edited 14th Jun '11 9:46:50 AM by masamune1

Not believing Mengele would get anything of scientific value from an experiment =/= Mengele intentionally killing and maiming people and only using the name of "science" as a flimsy excuse for it.

Many of Mengele's experiments may not have been expected to work, but that does not mean he wasn't actually interested in performing scientific work and research.

It also brings up the problem I mentioned earlier that The Mengele suffers from the same problem as other character-named tropes—essentially, naming the trope after a character who isn't precisely known for what is being described in the description. When people think of Mengele, they generally think of Mad Doctor, not this specific definition that hinges on how much (or, rather, how little) scientific progress the mad doc makes through his work. Nor do I feel that this is an important distinction for us to make concerning the work of Mad Doctors.

edited 14th Jun '11 10:11:03 AM by SeanMurrayI

That only means I should edit the description. What matters is less that they may or may not think that their work has genuine scientific value, and more that there is a clear and typically overriding element of sadism or power fantasy in their work, and quite often the scientific value is nil. The possiblity that Mengele believed his work actually had merit doesn't really change the fact that all the evidence suggests he was enjoying what he did, the harm he was doing and the power he had over people.

I suppose saying that they are using For Science! as an excuse is a bit too specific, but there are still enough differences between this and the Mad Doctor or Mad Scientist, neither of whom have to be sadists even if they are unethical. Like I said, it is- or was meant to be- more of a Serial Killer or torture trope, that just happens to be about a character who is claims or believes there is something scientific about it. I'll change it to reflect that.

edited 14th Jun '11 10:26:28 AM by masamune1

However, this behavior is already very typical of your average Mad Doctor. By virtue of working in a medical field that would involve experimenting on living subjects, there's already going to be "an overriding element of sadism," and by virtue of being mad, they already may have power fantasies.

And whether or not their work is of "scientific value" is totally moot (a Mad Doctor's work usually doesn't carry much scientific value, anyway). Bringing this point into the discussion just makes your concept The Same But More Specific and not really all that important in differentiating Mad Doctors.

Mengele also wasn't a Serial Killer. I quote,

Mengele operated out of a single location (namely, the concentration camp at Auschwitz) where every day he would oversee the maiming and killing of multiple people on a much more regular basis. He's far more deserving of the title Mass Murderer; after all, he was working (while a Serial Killer typically kills out of compulsion) and never had a "cooling off period" in between any of his crimes—which is very key to distinguishing any type of serial criminal from other types.

edited 14th Jun '11 10:56:25 AM by SeanMurrayI

No, you are wrong. The fact that they experiment on living subjects does not mean that there is going to be an element of sadism in the work. They could be indifferent, or even sympathetic, to any undue pain that their subject might be put through. The experiments they perform might not even involve any suffering at all, but could be immoral or warped for other reasons (saying, giving the patient untested drugs. And a Mad Doctor does not need to be mad because he has power fantasies and even if he does, thouse fantasies don't have to have anything to do with the control they excercise over the subject, but the products of their work. And though their theories may be utterly warped at times, in fiction quite often they still turn out to be true.

Serial Killer might not be the most accurate term to use but mass murderer just kind of underplays the fact that he personally tortured and killed well over a thousand people. Also the qualification about cooling off periods and location (though on that note, several serial killers perfomed the murders in their own homes, or in specially made torture chambers; they are still classified as serial killers) has something to do with the fact that society generally frowns on their activities- that is, they don't have the freedom to get away with it. For someone like Mengele you should think of a Serial Killer, or potential killer in his case, who was given free reign to do what he would. A state-sanctioned serial killer, if you will, which kind of throws out the rulebook.

Regardless thats a matter of semantics. The point is that The Mengele is not a so much a Mad Doctor who happens to be a sadist; he is a sadist who is, or even just pretends to be, a doctor or some other kind of scientist. Whether or not he meets that definition of a serial killer is moot; the point is he is interested in torturing the patient as its own end, not just in whether his science has merit.

Just because Mad Doctor can potentially include more "innocent and eccentric" characters does not mean that the evil, sadistic ones are excluded.

Besides, Mad Doctor is explicitly described on its page as a character who represents all of the exaggerated, morbid fears people have of doctors and medical professionals.

To quote,

The sadism, the gore, the blood and guts... everything you want to emphasize in your trope is already right here. You would have a better shot at spinning off the "innocent eccentric" variant of the Mad Doctor as a separate trope. The darker, sinister, ultraviolent variants you are emphasizing are already being described on an another page.

And The Mengele still isn't a fitting name for any of this, anyway, because it doesn't clearly represent your concept. What can The Mengele, at face value, possibly mean? Nazi Scientist? An evil doctor who experiments on children? What possible characteristics of Mengele's that people would immediately think of when they hear his name are people supposed to associate with your page? "State-sanctioned killer" definitely ain't it, nor is it a very accurate description of what he really did (nor do many current examples involve characters with state sanctioning to do what they do).

edited 14th Jun '11 1:52:22 PM by SeanMurrayI

Bump. Can I get a mod opinion on this page?

Trope description appears to have been rewritten to rebrand this as "more of a sub-trope of the Serial Killer", despite the fact that, like I've been saying, Josef Mengele was never a serial killer.

I do not see the value in keeping this as a separate article when every single one of its examples can also fit in Mad Scientist or Mad Doctor. We only value subtropes when they make a useful distinction. If people can't tell the difference, then it's not a useful trope.

With all due respect to the trope's author, attachment to a trope's name over its substance is a generally bad thing. You run into all of the problems of Fan Myopia combined with a character-named trope.