Mad Scientist / Video Games

Mad Scientists in Video Games.

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• 2Dark has Dr. Ernest Miguele, who both kill children to traffic in their organs, and turns people into deformed, mentally stunted abominations.
• In American McGee's Alice, the Mad Hatter has become one, emphasis on the "mad" part. In addition to creating numerous Clockwork Creatures, he's converted the Jabberwok and himself into Clock Punk automations, and has tried to do the same to the March Hare and Dormouse, unsuccessfully; the two have become delirious and babbling from the constant experiments they've been subjected to.
• Baldur's Gate II: Jon Irenicus is actually an Evil Sorcerer, but you'd be forgiven if you think you are dealing with a mad scientist when you see his dungeon full of people he experimented on, indefinitely kept alive in glass jars powered by magical batteries, his attempts to clone the woman he once loved, and the soul-sucking machine he uses on the hero and Imoen.
• Banjo-Kazooie has Klungo. He's responsible for Gruntilda's Beauty-Stealing Machine, and in Interquel Grunty's Revenge, it is hinted that he also created Grunty's monster army. Unique in the fact he also happens to be The Igor.
• The bad Alice from Bendy and the Ink Machine. She conducts experiments on other ink creatures in attempts to "make herself beautiful." In Chapter 4, she even graduates to having a brutish minion of her own creation.
• Dr. Mastaba, the Big Bad from BioForge, head of the cyborg army project and member of the insane machine cult.
• BioShock: Dr. Suchong is the sinister and detached version, the warped genius behind much ADAM research, including several plasmids, the Little Sisters, and the Big Daddies. He was the linchpin behind virtually everything that went wrong in Rapture, including the protagonist himself — but, at least, he died an ironic death.
• In BlazBlue, there's a heroic example in Jerkass Cat Girl Professor Kokonoe, and a villainous one in one of the main villains, the local Marionette Master and abusive parent Relius Clover.
• BloodRayne features a couple of them:
  • Dr. Báthory Mengele in the first game, is a Nazi scientist that is experimenting on parasitic creatures in order to use them as weapons for the Third Reich. In her Establishing Character Moment, she feeds one of her mooks to the parasites before the heroine just to make a demonstration. Not only looks like Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS but she shares her surname with Josef Mengele, an infamous real-life Mad Scientist.
  • The second game had Xerx Mephistopheles, one of Rayne's many evil-half siblings that serves as the Evil Genius for Kagan's Cult. His inventions includes the Shroud, a gaseous substance created from living human beings use to cover sunlight and allow vampires to walk during the day, and a variety of hi-tech weapons, such as one gigantic bio-armor that he uses in his boss fight against Rayne.
• Bloody Roar: Busuzima 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.
• In the first Borderlands DLC, Dr. Ned is a mad scientist played for laughs. Dr. Zed might not have a doctorate, but he certainly qualifies. A short questline in the sequel involves him creating two hybrid critters, the Skrakks (Skag/Rakk) and the Spycho (spiderant/Psycho).
• Brain Dead 13 has Dr. Neurosis, who plays out every Mad Scientist trope in the book.
• Bugsnax has Snorpy Fizzlebean's sibling Floofty, an eccentric academic who becomes obsessed with studying the effects of Bugsnax on grumpuses, using themselves as a test subject. Their experiments include using Bugsnax to turn their own leg into strawberries, then cut it off, eat it, and regenerate it with an experimental device.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops has four: Dragovich, Kravchenko, Steiner, and lastly Clarke, who not only worked on Nova 6 but also gives Crazy-Prepared a whole new meaning.
• Captive (RPG Maker): The captor kidnapped several people and experimented on them in a lab on B2 in order to find a cure for her ill father.
• Cave Story: The Doctor shows traits of this trope as well, using the Red Flowers to turn the Mimingas into his personal monster army.
• Chicken Feet: Eric is the head of GOOBER Laboratories and is also responsible for unethical experiments. He helped mutate a friend of his into a giant chicken and has been horrifically experimenting to create an Artificial Human.
• Chrono Trigger's Lucca is a rare heroic example, as one of the party members.
  • Chrono Cross has a less heroic version in Luccia.
• 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 realized 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.
  • 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.
• Conker's Bad Fur Day: Professor Von Kriplespac (More commonly known simply as "The Professor") qualifies. He created anti-gravity chocolate and an army of evil teddy bears, and thought that a squirrel would be a good table leg replacement.
• Crash Bandicoot: All main villains are either mad scientists or hideously mutated anthropomorphic animals created by said mad scientists. The scientists all have specific fields they specialize in, combined with a first name starting with the letter N that lends itself to Punny Name when combined with their last. Dr. Neo Cortex, the main villain, specializes in neuroscience and especially in creating Uplifted Animals; Dr. N. Gin is a mad engineer who works mainly with rockets and robots; Dr. N. Brio is a chuckling Frankenstein-like midget who dabbles in biology, chemistry and mutagens; and Dr. N. Tropy's field of choice is quantum mechanics.
• Creature Crunch has a boy named Wesley get transformed into a half-boy/half-creature by an evil scientist named Dr. Drod, who gloats that he is putting together an army of monsters to take over the world.
• The Conductor from Crypt Of The Necrodancer: Amplified, who is attempting to reanimate an undead army with the combined powers of music and electricity, primarily out of scientific curiosity. Notably, however, the Conductor is the only villain smart enough to use the Golden Lute without ending up in its thrall, by hooking it up to machines rather than playing it directly.
• Darkest Dungeon: In his boredom, the Ancestor became one of an occult sort. He learned quickly from necromantic scholars all around the world only to surpass them (and using their bodies as supplies for the art, naturally), held what are explicitly called experiments in blood magic and extraplanar summoning with pigs (these didn't go so well; it needs utmost precision, and he screwed up often), often ran other experiments and research on powerful and sinister artifacts from all around the world, had a fellow amoral researcher who he ran various experiments in alchemy and botany with (until her self-experimentating tendencies and horrid results got too unpleasant for him, he kicked her out, and she became The Hag), and finally made an archeological dig under his own manor, complete with progress logs and documenting what he found, both For Science! and for the possible eldritch power he could find below. All the recklessness and disregard for morality and nature of a mad scientist combined with all the hellish power and dangerous dealings of a warlock.
• Dark Souls: Seath the Scaleless is a dragon that combines this with Evil Sorceror. He is described as the grandfather of sorcery and the creator of various magical creatures like the Moonlight Butterfly. He went insane trying to decipher the one mystery that eluded him his whole life: why he was the only dragon born without the scales of immortality that every other dragon had.
  • Similarly, Lord Aldia from Dark Souls II also sought immortality, and performed many terrible experiments on undead, giants, dragons, and people who were unlucky enough to invited to his manor. And in the end, he experimented on himself, successfully transforming himself into an Eldritch Abomination capable of breaking his world's laws of life and death to the point of removing himself fully from the Eternal Recurrence that has plagued his world for countless centuries...
• Dead Space:
  • The original Dead Space has two, one good, the other...not so much. While the first one, Terrance Kyne, has 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 okay sort who just wants to help Issac. The other is Mercer, who will do absolutely nothing to endear you to him.
  • Nolan Stross from Dead Space 2 was also a scientist. In the prequel movie Aftermath, he is exposed to a shard of the Marker and incidentally causes most of the crew of his ship, the O'Bannon, to get killed by Necromorphs. He also murders his wife and infant son in a fit of hallucinations. He's institutionalized on the Sprawl, and links up with Isaac and Ellie; at first, he's somewhat lucid and wants to destroy the marker, but as the game goes on, his hallucinations worsen, and becomes violent, gouging Ellie's eye out. He later tries to murder Isaac, who kills him in self-defense.
• Deus Ex: Bob Page certainly fits this trope. The man has built multi-national conglomerates dedicated to such "grey area" pursuits as transgenics, bioweapons, espionage, nanotechnology, and cybernetics; all an Evil Plan 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.
  • It is notable by other characters in the game that Page himself was never actually very good with science, though he demonstrates a strong respect for it. He fits more closely to the idea of a Corrupt Corporate Executive who organizes and funds mad science as a means to power (even if individual scientists are less "mad" and only benignly understand part of what they are working on.)
• Devil May Cry: At least three villains have been scientists researching, experimenting on, and trying to create demons — Arius in Devil May Cry 2, 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.
• The German RPG game Die Reise ins All has two of them. The good one and one of the playable characters Professor Heisen, and the bad one, Professor Moriarty.
• Disgaea
  • 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.
  • Disgaea 4 introduced the Professor class. One of her personality types is even called "Mad Scientist".
• Donkey Kong Country: King K. Rool takes on a persona based on this trope in Dixie Kong's Double Trouble, under the name Baron K. Roolenstein.
• Doom
  • Dr. Malcolm Betruger from Doom³, who turns out to be behind the demonic invasion of Mars and seeks to bring Hell to Earth. In the expansion pack Resurrection of Evil, he becomes a dragonlike demon by the name of the Maledict, and seeks the Artifact so that he can gain ultimate power.
  • Doom (2016) has two mad scientists, Samuel Hayden and Olivia Pierce, who sought to utilize the energy of Hell itself and weaponize the demons for the betterment of humanity. But while Samuel is content with this, Olivia takes things even further by turning the UAC into a demon cult and seeking to open portals to hell, with the ultimate aim of becoming a god.
• Multiple examples in the Dragon Age series:
  • Dwarven Paragon Caradin from Dragon Age: Origins was one before his disappearance, although when you finally meet him, he is more of The Atoner than anything else. Likewise, Paragon Branka, whose attempt to recreate the lost art of creating golems by finding the Anvil of the Void led her to abandon her entire family and her lover to a Fate Worse than Death deliberately so that she could get past the traps guarding the Anvil with an endless supply of darkspawn birthed by the Broodmothers her female relatives had become.
  • In the DLC add-on Warden's Keep, the mage Grey Warden Avernus conducts research into Blood Magic, demonic lore, and the Darkspawn taint, which, while ghastly, has yielded useful results: the Power of Blood talents your character can obtain in the DLC and the means to prolong one's life and halt the Darkspawn taint through Blood Magic. However, if you give him half a chance, Avernus will admit that he made serious mistakes and asks for a chance to undo the damage he caused. He will even quietly accept execution afterwards.
  • In the Awakening Expansion Pack, the Architect (a sentient Darkspawn who has freed himself from the call fo the Old Gods and attempted to do the same for the rest of his race, accidentally kicking off the Fifth Blight in the first place) has several elements of this trope.
  • In Dragon Age II, Merrill seems to have taken up the mantle of "mage dabbling in Blood Magic", though she's more Cloudcuckoolander than "mad" and there aren't any live subjects involved.
  • In Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dagna is a light-hearted and decidedly heroic example. She works for the Inquisition as an arcanist — a magical scholar whose field of expertise is so exclusive (and widely encompassing) that she is literally the only one. She is able to craft runes, gadgets and weapons even better than the local blacksmith and at least one war table mission its said she was able to fend off Tevinter assassins with by herself, leaving only their silhouettes behind. She also has the most adorable Evil Laugh ever.
• Dr. Muto's title character 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.
• One of the main player archetypes in Dwarf Fortress. The kind who builds a 30-storey engine of destruction just so he can have a million streams of magma pouring down onto hapless goblin invaders at once, or constructs a gargantuan bridge just to find out how far you can throw a goblin.
• Professor Monkey-for-a-Head from the Earthworm Jim games. "Don't make the monkey mad, son!"
• The Elder Scrolls series treats Magic As Mental, so "Mad Wizards" tend to fill this role. (They're usually, but not always, of the Evil Sorcerer variety when they appear.) A few notable examples:
  • Lord Kagrenac from the series' Backstory caused the disappearance of his entire race, the Dwemer, after finding the still-beating heart of the "dead" creator god, Lorkhan, and attempting to tap into it with specially designed tools with the goal of allowing the Dwemer to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. Dagoth Ur and The Tribunal then came along and successfully used the heart to become Physical Gods, setting in motion the plot of Morrowind.
  • Also from Morrowind are the lords of Great House Telvanni, a faction of (mostly) Evil Sorcerers. All of them, even the faction's lone Reasonable Authority Figure, conduct experiments which extend their lifespans, practice Necromancy, and enjoy summoning lesser Daedra as guards and test subjects. Even Divayth Fyr's cure for the Corprus Disease fails on every test subject other than the player.
  • Relmyna from Oblivion expansion Shivering Isles stands out. Obsessed with the power of flesh (no, really), she enjoys creating twisted monstrosities such as Flesh Atronarchs and the Gatekeeper, and considers them her "children". She also conducts some grisly experiments on the concepts of pain and suffering. Oh, and she's on your side.
  • In Skyrim's Dragonborn DLC, Master Neloth, one of the aforementioned Telvanni Mage-Lords, makes another appearance. He's very much an Insufferable Genius, much of what he does is simply For Science!, and he has very little respect for any other mortal, including a world-saving hero like the Dragonborn. His many ongoing experiments include the dissection of Solstheim's Spriggans, collecting Heart Stones (imbued with the power of the Heart of Lorkhan after the eruption of Red Mountain), and would very much like to capture a live dragon as a test subject. You get the opportunity to participate in his experiments (often as the test subject):
  Neloth: "It was fascinating to watch those tentacles grow out of your eyes."
• Elohim Eternal: The Babel Code:
  • In the Sidon Sewers, the party discovers Balaam's lab, where he dissects Idinite and Cainite corpses in order to create brainwashed troops for the Kosmokraters. He also has inferno parts laying around, showing that he's partially responsible for producing and planting these weapons of mass destruction.
  • According to Anne, Kenoman scientists are creating archons, which are a kind of humanoid monster, for the sake of war.
• Escape From St. Mary's: Dr. Paul and Dr. Miranda disguise their time machine as a coffin so that it's "inconspicuous." Their invention threatens to destroy the universe; they seem mostly unmoved by this.
• Evolve: Kala Kapur is described as 'between what science can do and what science should do'. Word of God is that she isn't evil outright, but she feels she doesn't have the luxury of inaction because she has the capability to solve the problem despite the cost.
• Fallout
  • The Master from the original 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.
  • Fallout 3 has Dr. Stanislaus Braun, a Vault-Tec scientist who created an advanced simulation program that he subjected the population of Vault 112 to, torturing and killing them in different ways and bringing them back with the technology at his hands.
  • The Fallout 3 DLC Point Lookout gives us Professor Calvert, a Brain in a Jar with a robot filled underground base whose goal is to turn all of Point Lookout's inhabitants into his mind controlled slaves.
  • The Fallout: New Vegas DLC Old World Blues has the Think Tanks, pre-War scientists who chose to make themselves floating Brains in Jars whose stated goal is For Science!. It also doesn't help that they do a lot of drugs on their own free time.
    • Played straight and then subverted by Dr. Mobius, who plays the stereotypical mad scientist bent on domination and revenge with science but it then turns out he is the responsible one (sort of) whose role is to keep the other scientists who are actually far worse than him in check. He's actually pretty chill when not on Psycho.
• Final Fantasy:
  • 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.
    Rubicante: It was Lugae who made chimaerae of your parents. I shared no hand in his perversities. They shame me, as they grieve you.
  • 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 performs a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Kefka Palazzo may qualify as one from Final Fantasy VI, seeing how it was heavily implied that Kefka's the one who invented Terra's Slave Crown.
  • Professor Hojo from Final Fantasy VII is truly an archetypal 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 responsible for nearly everything that’s happened, considering that most of the conflict in the game is indirectly his fault.
  • Dr. Odine from Final Fantasy VIII is undeniably brilliant and perhaps the expert on the power of witches in the world. He's the one who actually explains Time Compression to the party. He's also completely amoral — part of why Laguna continues in the position he has is due to needing to keep Odine's research directed towards productive means that won't cause the destruction of humanity.
  • Final Fantasy XII subverts this with its own Cid. He works for the Archadians to manufacture their Nethicite, lurks in the forbidden and dangerous Draklor Laboratory doing no-one-wants-to-know manner of experiments with Magitek and his first scene shows him walking down a hall talking to himself with a Motor Mouth before apparently noticing Vayne out of nowhere and having a normal conversation with him. However, he's perfectly sane and is exactly aware of what he's doing. The things he studies are just particularly fascinating and important fields to research, he just enjoys being a Large Ham for the fun of it, and he's not actually talking to himself, he's talking to Venat, the Man Behind the Man that for most of the game is invisible to all but Cid. As a whole, like the rest of XII's villains he's revealed as a Well-Intentioned Extremist Anti-Villain once the details of his backstory and personality become clear.
• Five Nights at Freddy's: The Serial Killer William Afton (the "Purple Guy") is revealed to pretty much be one over the course of the series. It's firmly established in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, which reveals that he's been killing the kids to experiment with what's called "remnant", akin to the soul after death. He tried to find a way to allow souls to continue on in robotic bodies, which shines light on his seeming inability to die.
• Gears of War gives us Dr. Adam Fenix. He developed the Hammer of Dawn system, devised the plan to flood the Locust Hollow that required sinking Jacinto, and created the anti-Lambent weapon that appears at the end of Gears 3. He spent more time creating weapons of mass destruction than he did with his family, and he claims that he knew about the impending E-Day but couldn't stop it before it was too late. He tested his anti-Lambent weapon on himself. Unlike many mad scientists, he realized the folly of his work and did everything he could to make up for his failures.
• Ghostrunner: Mara is an engineer who killed her mentor and slaughtered his security force with her self-made Combat Tentacles. Now, she rules over the world of the game with her army of cybernetic minions while also kidnapping people to be made victims of her deadly experiments.
• God Hand: Dr. Ion operates from a colossal, mechanical, mobile crab-shaped base, has legions of cyborg grunts under his command and also seems to be largely robotic himself. He's almost given a position among the Four Divas, but after Gene pummels his arse his reputation plummets. Doesn't stop him from coming back for a rematch, though.
• God of War
  • Pathos Verdes III in the first game is the Ancient Greece equivalent of this trope: an architect charged with building a temple to guard Pandora's Box, he grew gradually insane as his family died one by one during the construction of his magnum opus and this is reflected on as the game progresses, the traps and puzzles become even more elaborate and harder than before. By the end of his life, he kills his wife in a fit of rage and commits suicide shortly afterwards, damning the gods for the misery they inflicted on him.
  • Daedalus from the myths appears in God of War III is just like Pathos, being forced by Zeus to create a new Labyrinth to imprison Pandora, the living key to the Flame of Olympus, and just like Pathos' temple, its filled with deadly traps. Daedalus is in a more sympathetic position since he is forced to work on the promise that Zeus would reunite him with his son Icarus only for Zeus to backstab him and leave Daedalus stuck in his own trap.
• In Guild Wars 2, while the asura are an entire race of Magitek-savvy Insufferable Geniuses, the faction known as the Inquest dive head-first into the realm of Mad Science, performing all manner of unethical experiments on sentient beings in their quest to not just understand but master the Eternal Alchemy. As one character puts it, theirs is genius unbound by morality... with a heaping helping of jerk.
• Faust from Guilty Gear before and after his Heel–Face Turn, although after he's more like a wild, mad, but generous Sociopathic Hero.
• Harvest Moon:
  • Daryl, from Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life. Among other things, he wanders onto your ranch while creepily muttering things, tries to capture a Yeti-like creature in the nearby woods, has a lab that is prone to explosions, spies on your child through the window to observe how children act, tries to steal one of your cows for experiments, and considers taking your DNA to clone you after you die at the end of the game.
  • Gelwein, the Big Bad from the Rune Factory Frontier spinoff, also fits this one to a T, having been kicked out of his research facility for researching the effects of runes for weapon purposes. They Called Me Mad! and A God Am I included.
• Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft has a card named Mad Scientist, complete with stereotypical quotes.
• The Helltaker DLC, Examtaker, is focused around a Half-Human Hybrid ungoing testing from the new demonic ruler of Hell, Loremaster. This is the logical conclusion to Azazel's transformation into a demon, where her curiosity transformed her desire for research into an amoral seeker of new knowledge For Science!.
• Hitman:
  • Dr. Ort-Meyer, responsible for the protagonist's creation. With a reputation as a disgruntled, megalomaniacal geneticist (even pulling an extensive They Called Me Mad! speech in the first game's finale), he was capable of creating a mindlessly loyal and equally lethal version of 47 over the course of the game, which nonetheless ended up being destroyed by 47 (although there survived a more primitive version which went on to serve as a minor antagonist in Silent Assassin). The backstory of Blood Money deals with the impact of his creation's legacy and the prospect of it falling into the wrong hands.
  • A more realistic example in Hitman (2016). One of the targets is Silvio Caruso, a brilliant italian scientist who's one of the most renowned microbiologists in the world, and you're hired to kill him to stop the development of a powerful bioweapon. He's also mentally ill thanks to a lifetime of Abusive Parents and bullying, which, on top of his autism, has left him a neurotic, phobic, woman-hating, vengeful manchild.
• 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."
• More of an engineer/designer, given the setting's Magitek, the title applies to Kang the Mad of Jade Empire. It's in his NAME, after all. Not to mention being the literal God of Invention.
  I make things explode, and I make things fly, and I'm very good at both. The things I fly tend to survive. The things I explode... not so much.
• Dr. Elliot Sinclair, Big Bad of The Journeyman Project, and inventor of the Pegasus time machine, which jumpstarted the foundation of the Temporal Security Agency. The third game reveals he has some very understandable reasons behind his actions, however. Turns out that despite the impression he gave in the first game he wasn't quite as much of a paranoid general xenophobe as it seemed — he was mainly suspicious of the particular alien species that made first contact, because he'd seen those ships before, when they destroyed the city he came from. He was still wrong about them, and his plan still went horribly right, but he certainly looks both more sympathetic and more sane after those revelations.
• Kingdom Hearts II: The first six members of Organization XIII were originally assistants to Ansem the Wise and his research on the Heartless. Vexen keeps up his research.
  • Xehanort from Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is also one. He tries to restart a war that destroyed world. FOR SCIENCE!!!
  • The same can be said of the Master of Masters from Kingdom Hearts χ for the same reason. One of his creations includes Chirithy along with his deliberate manipulations directly lead to the original Keyblade War.
  • And Braig, Dilan, Aeleus, and Ienzo too, considering what happened when they went just a liiiiiittle too far trying to make sense of Darkness in the heart...
  • Ansem the Wise fits this category by virtue of being a mentor to the characters mentioned above. Although his own actions aren't as blatantly evil, they're not much better: he began the research that led his apprentices to form the organization in the first place, beginning with dangerous human experimentation on an amnesiac Terra-Xehanort. In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories through Kingdom Hearts II, his "research" included trapping a teenager he kidnapped in a computer simulation and erasing his memory as part of a plot to manipulate another teenager into destroying his former students.
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has Ventrinio, a Token Evil Teammate late in the game who had a hand in your character's death and subsequent ressurrection.
  Protagonist: You're a monster.
  Ventrinio: No, I'm a scientist. I make monsters.
• League of Legends has quite a few of these.
  • Dr. Mundo performed sadistic experiments on anyone he could catch until he was run out of town. Lacking subjects, he experimented on himself, transforming into a drooling brute with immense strength, regenerative powers, and Hulk Speak.
  • Singed is more or less the inventor of chemical warfare, and what his toxins does to people is so horrifying it has not been described but it was enough to destroy Master Yi's entire village and horribly traumatize Riven. In addition to the chemicals he throws around, his personal enhancements have made him immensely strong and durable.
  • Viktor turned himself into a cyborg, and wants everyone else to undergo a similar transformation. Fortunately thus far his method has been to prove how superior his enhancements make him instead of doing unwilling conversions.
  • Ziggs is obsessed with explosives and extremely reckless with them. After saving the Yordle Academy that expelled him for his dangerous methods they admitted him in gratitude and recognition of his skill, then directed him to the League. An honor, certainly, but one that ensures he spends a lot of time away from them.
  • Vel'Koz is an Eldritch Abomination from the Void who is not as much malevolent as curious, eager to study the new world he has entered, particularly the life forms residing in it. Also he studies things by disintegrating them.
• Purah and Robbie, the Sheikah scientists studying ancient technology in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. Purah created a de-aging ray that gave her the body of a six year old, while Robbie made a machine that creates several Hard Light weapons for Link to use. The latter game describes them as "eccentric genius" and "genius eccentric" respectively.
• Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis gives us Jess, a Rose-Haired Genki Girl who loves to experiment with alchemical bombs and medicines. And by "medicines", we mean "potions that magnify cavity pain and/or turn people green." The fact that her experiments tend to blow up in her face might actually be a good thing.
• Doctor Fred Edison from 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.
  • The second game's problems stem from a machine built by the Doc whose only purpose is generating massive amounts of toxic waste. Why? Because the other mad scientists were making fun of him for his inventions being too environment-friendly. That must've been after he dismantled his nuclear reactor chilled by a swimming pool.
• Mass Effect 2
  • Mordin Solus may qualify, although he's more eccentric than outright mad. He's a salarian doctor who was formerly a member of a special forces squad, then ran a clinic where he cured a population of a devastating plague while personally shooting attacking mercenaries in the head, both of which he sees as a public service. He also seems to have a taste for Gilbert & Sullivan. He also keeps up a set of ethics and principles that he refuses to break, notably despising the idea of Playing with Syringes and experiments that lead to more suffering than necessary. In the end, he believes in saving lives, even through questionable means.
  • A better example is Daro'Xen; a quarian who believes the geth should be put back under the control of the quarians, regardless of how much Heel–Face Brainwashing it takes. In fact... especially if it involves that. She casually mentions that she performed surgery on her toys as a kid, and the geth are no different. Tali calls her insane to her face right after. She's appropriately voiced by Claudia Black.
  • Halfway between them both may fall Tali's father; A Well-Intentioned Extremist with poor judgment and a bit too little foresight, he performs experiments on the geth solely because he believes it will help his people (his daughter in particular). It backfires and he dies because of it.
  • Any krogan scientist. One laments that he will never be appreciated for his work in the field of Stuff Blowing Up, which he came to realize after he pulled the knife out of his mentor's chest. He's the sanest one you meet.
  • Henry Lawson. First he creates Designer Babies to continue he legacy and disposes of them whenever they don't meet his standards. And then there's Sanctuary which he advertised as a safe haven during the Reaper War and lured thousands of war refugees and families. Once they got there, they were experimented on and turned into husks and indoctrinated soldiers for Cerberus.
• Master Detective Archives: Rain Code has Greater-Scope Villain Amaterasu head researcher Dr. Huesca, who is not only a ruthless Faux Affably Evil scientist willing to use people's lives for his experiments with no remorse, but is the reason for the city's population consisting of defective homunculi replicating the likeness of Kanai Ward's human residents, which is the cause of Makoto Kagutsuchi becoming the Big Bad in his scheme to cover up Huesca's failure as a scientist.
• Dr. Albert Wily from the Mega Man series. 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.
  • And Wily's also notable in that he's one of the few villainous Mad Scientists whose overall plans actually end up succeeding, albeit posthumously. When you remember that Wily created Zero and infected him with the original strain of the Maverick Virus, and it was that same virus that transferred to Sigma during his first battle with Zero, thus kicking off the Maverick Rebellion, and it was that rebellion that basically kicked off the events of the rest of the Mega Man continuity (barring Battle Network and Star Force, which are an alternate continuity), you've got one effective Mad Scientist on your hands.
  • Dr. Light's status as a Mad Scientist (knowingly) is hinted with his hard work on Mega Man X along with his add-on compartments in his final year.
  • Mega Man X gives us Serges (who is speculated to be connected to Wily), Dr. Doppler (although he didn't really have a choice...), and Gate (see Doppler).
  • We also have Dr. Weil from the Zero series, Master Albert from the Mega Man ZX series, as well as Wily and Regal from the Mega Man Battle Network series, and Vega and King from the Star Force series. In fact, it seems most Mega Man villains are mad scientists. How else would they get all those robots, if not building them?

• Monster Lab:
  • The player is an apprentice Mad Scientist when the game officially begins, having been recruited by the Mad Science Alliance as their newest member.
  • Professor Fuseless, Dr. Sonderbar, and Senor De La Sombra all fit the bill as well due to their membership in the MSA, though their specialties differ. Over the course of the story, they're responsible for teaching the player their specialties and helping them to craft new monsters.
• Shang Tsung from the Mortal Kombat series. As he's made plenty of fighters (Mileena, Ermac, and Skarlet) during his time. Quan Chi from Mortal Kombat X does this as well with the Revenants.
• The New Order: Last Days of Europe has Magnitogorsk, led by Trofim Lysenko, as a nation ruled by these. A group of talented but otherwise insane scientists, Lysenko and his fellow biologists make any sacrifices to defeat their enemies, including performing all kinds of abuse and torture on their people under the guise of "experiments" for the sake of their dubious theories in hopes that under extreme duress the tortured people will become super soldiers that are capable to defeat the Russian warlords and Nazi German invaders. In the mod proper, Magnitogorsk starts with the "Mad Scientist" spirit, which improves their defenses and gives boosts to research time, but decreases their manpower.
• Nintendo Wars:
  • Advance Wars has Lash, a girl genius version of the mad scientist.
  • Advance Wars: Days of Ruin has Caulder/Stolos, probably the most extreme mad scientist ever. Among his creations are the game's equivalent to nukes, a giant bomber (as in, so large that two armies can fight on one wing, and each bomb can destroy thirteen buildings in one explosion), cloned humans intended to be used as Super Commanders, and most of all, a virus that kills its host by growing flowers all over its body. He doesn't think that the flower virus is deadly enough, so he upgrades it to kill everyone (rather than just children, which is what the first version did). 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. Guy is a genius. Completely insane nutcase, but still a genius.
• Guildenstern 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.
• Overwatch: Moira is a scientist willing to do anything to "improve" humanity through genetic engineering, and since joining Talon, isn't impeded by the need to experiment ethically.
• In Palworld, the Final Boss is Victor Ashford of the Pal Genetic Research Unit. He's an Evilutionary Biologist in an Eerie Arctic Research Station trying to use the game's titular mons to create Bioweapon Beasts.
• There's a whole faction of them in Pandora: First Contact, though they tend to be good, honest, and upright, they are sometimes too enthusiastic in their search for the truth at the expense of many lab monkeys' brains.
• Pâquerette Down the Bunburrows: Ophéline unapologetically does some experiments on bunnies offscreen, but Pâquerette doesn't want to hear about it. Her coat is also filled with scalpels and needles.
• Daniel Dankovski, Bachelor of Medicine from Pathologic is a subversion — he has reputation of one for his revolutionary and unethical hypothesis and experiments (and also due to having personal enemies in academic circles), but he is a genuinely decent and reasonable man, and, as one of the game's protagonists, fearlessly fights The Plague.
• Dr. Takuto Maruki in Persona 5 Royal. A psychologist and cognitive scientist who was also an Anti-Villain and Well-Intentioned Extremist, seeking to use his knowledge as well as his Reality Warper abilities to make reality into a utopia. Problem is, he wanted to free mankind from The Evils of Free Will and prioritized people's happiness over their own personal ambitions, rewriting their personalities when the two end up clashing. While he truly means well, he's not the most emotionally stable and in the Non-Standard Game Over for failing to complete his Palace in time he robs Joker of his will to live, leaving him bedridden while operating under the delusion that such a fate is preferable to a stressful life. His Palace theme is titled "Gentle Madman" to drive the point home even further.
• Phoenix Point: You'd expect the lead scientist for a Nietzsche-reading billionaire's purity-obsessed private army to have at least shades of insanity, right? Wrong. Dr. Abongabeli Smith is, in spite of his focus on weapons research and vivisecting aliens, a rational and mild-mannered man, who laments the necessity of spending his time both creating weapons and torturing mutants, and will be very happy if you propose cruelty-free solutions to his problems.
• Plants vs. Zombies has Dr. Zomboss, Big Bad of the series. Also, Big Good Crazy Dave is implied to be one.
• Pokémon
  • In Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, Colress was an Affably Evil scientist obsessed with finding the limits for the strength of Pokémon to the point he was willing to help Ghetsis Take Over the World For Science!, although he has a Heel Realization and becomes The Atoner.
  • Pokémon X and Y: Lysandre was a brilliant scientist whose earlier attempts to fix the world legitimately, through the inventions and profits of Lysandre Labs, didn't have the effect he was looking for — where he expected the needy to be sated, they instead yearned for still more. His two main conclusions: (1) World aggregate happiness is effectively finite; after a certain amount of beings, happiness and survival can only be attained by taking it from/denying it to another. (2) The vast majority of humans (and maybe even Pokémon, if his musings about Mega Evolution are anything to go by) are irredeemable, incapable of anything beyond the most narrow selfishness. Therefore, the only way the world will ever know beauty and hope everlasting is to expunge all those imperfect creatures who ought never have existed, who can only ever be plagues on existence. As his report in Lysandre Labs puts it, "either everything is lost, or only a handful are saved". After being defeated he has a Villainous Breakdown, screaming that the player's "condemned the world to a future of misery and death" and attempts a Taking You with Me.
  • In Pokémon Sword and Shield, a scientist named Cara Liss is in charge of helping you revive fossil Pokémon. If her disheveled get-up and her being stationed in a remote place don't immediately clue you in, then the fact that she revives fossil Pokémon by fusing two incompatible fossils into a horrible Mix-and-Match Critters instead of making a whole Pokémon out of a single fossil should tell you how unhinged she is.
  • In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, The Professor Sada/Turo was obsessed with perfecting their Time Machine and hiding the monsters it created to the point that they effectively abandoned their only son Arven. After they're revealed to have been Dead All Along as a result of their experiments, their friendly AI Virtual Ghost is turned into the Final Boss by the programming restrictions they placed on it and is horrified by the lengths they were willing to go to protect their creation in spite of the damage it caused.
• The Portal series gives us Aperture Laboratories, a company full of mad scientists. Driven by their grandiosely insane founder and CEO, Cave Johnson, they got started in The '50s by recruiting the best of the best of humankind and employing them as human lab rats in a vast array of Mad Science experiments. Said experiments involved such things as Body Horror transmutations, irradiation, DNA injections, and their signature Thinking Up Portals device, one result of which was the Handheld Portal Device that forms a core part of the gameplay. Their crowning achievement was Artificial Intelligence, but even here they only succeeded in creating an AI as madly deranged as they were. GLaDOS proceeded to take over the research program... by murdering all the scientists with a deadly neurotoxin. It is then up to the protagonist to enter this maze of insanity and find a way to escape. The closing song to the first game (sung by GLaDOS) makes all this starkly clear.
  "Aperture Science: We do what we must because we can.
  For the good of all of us, except the ones who are dead.
  But there's no sense crying over every mistake;
  You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
  And the Science gets done, and you make a neat gun,
  For the people who are still alive."
  • Portal 2 ups the ante, primarily by sending the player on an exploration of Old Aperture — the test facilities from The '50s, where prerecorded messages from Cave Johnson lay out the founding principles of the company and its decline into bankruptcy and despair, culminating with the aforementioned push for AI.
  Cave Johnson: "For this next test, we're going to have a superconductor turned up to full power and aimed directly at you. No idea what it'll do. I'll be honest, we're just throwing science at the wall here to see what sticks. Best case, you get some superpowers. Worst case, some tumors, which we'll cut out."
  • More than likely, Cave's overzealous drive to experiment and try anything, even going so far as to fire anyone who questioned the safety of these activities, weeded out any sane scientists and encouraged the eccentric thinking of remaining staff. In the end, Aperture Science was operating off the grid, paranoid of any government oversight, in effect walling themselves into one giant death-trap lab.
• In [PROTOTYPE], the Mad Scientist behind the outbreak of the Blacklight virus is Alex Mercer. He wanted to take the original virus and develop it into an even deadlier form. Unfortunately for New York City, he succeeds, brags about his achievement, and then goes and releases it in Penn Station. The player-controlled protagonist character is actually the sentient result, who has assumed Mercer's identity as its Shapeshifter Default Form.
• In Psychonauts, the villain Dr. Loboto has all the trappings of a mad scientist, while using the style of his doubtless-failed career in dentistry.
  • Sasha Nein is a rare good example.
  Sasha: Now, just relax. You won't feel a thing. Unless something really very bad happens.
• Quest for Glory IV: Doctor Cranium is out to reanimate dead tissue and all, but he really doesn't think he's a Mad Scientist. A bit perturbed about the world situation and how he gets so little respect, sure, but not mad.
• Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army gives us Dr. Victor. Prone to Milking the Giant Cow, gleefully invoking Living Forever Is Awesome, and not a drop of evil in sight. He's way madder than most and a massive ham to boot, but that only makes him even more awesome. KUZUNOHAAAAAA!!!!!!!!
• Ratchet & Clank:
  • Dr. Nefarious, the series' most recurring villain, is a crazed robot scientist who hates organic beings and is obsessed with taking over the universe using superweapons he designed like the Biobliterator capable of city-scale Unwilling Roboticization.
  • Ratchet himself has some inclinations, considering his list of inventions includes a nuclear sled, antimatter bathroom buddy, and electrified underwear. It's implied somewhat that this was the lombax's hat.
• Re:Kuroi: Marie has a secret lab underneath the Old Magic School, where she experiments on monsters in order to learn more about magic. She also has the stereotypical mad scientist trait of being more interested in her research than interacting with people and doesn't particularly care about the monsters she experiments on. Fortunately, she's mostly using her experiments for benevolent goals, since she's researching ways to turn monsters back into humans. Unfortunately, she's willing to unleash monsters in the city to set up a chain of events that will allow her to further research this topic.
• Reality-On-The-Norm: The recurring character Dr. Die Vie Ess, who fills every evil scientist cliche, complete with a mansion and a basement with a big vat of acid, as well as having his eyes go crazy when he talks.
• Rescue Team 9: Evil Genius has Dr. Jack Ross, who creates irregular weather (such as snowstorms in the jungle) to demonstrate his abilities.
• Any and every scientist working for Umbrella in the Resident Evil series is virtually guaranteed to be a Mad Scientist. The majority of the games in the franchise have also had a batshit insane researcher as the Big Bad, including Albert Wesker, William Birkin, Alexia Ashford, James Marcus, Wesker, again, and Four-Eyes. In the series overall, besides Wesker, we also have Spencer (even though he only really appears in one game), who was originally a scientist who worked on the Progenitor Virus.
• In Robopon, Dr. Zero is this in both games. The sequel reveals it runs in the family with his brother, Zeke, and his father, Dr. Zero, Sr.
• Ewei/Wei Queyin from Romancing SaGa is a solid example. He does not have a lab assistant, however, but does have a Cosmic Keystone.
  • Also, Word of God states that he experimented on himself, infusing monster cells into his own, extending his own lifespan, however he is still mortal regardless.
• This is a racial trait of Ryzom's Matis race, who enjoy doing all sorts of zany experiments on plants; including, at one point, messing around with a species of intelligent plants known as Slaveni that went about as well as you'd expect.
• SaGa Frontier: The Bio Research Lab consists of multiple scientists who have performed all sorts of bizarre experiments on themselves, resulting in them transforming into hideous monsters when provoked. The Remastered version also has them using kidnapped Mystics as test subjects.
• The Big Bad of Secret Agent and the head of DVS ^note Diabolical Villain Society is Dr. No Body, a Brain in a Jar in a robot body, who stole the plans for a powerful space laser and seeks to rebuild it to threaten the world.
• The Secret World features quite a few of these working for both the allied factions and the more openly villainous groups.
  • The Templars have their own mad genius in the form of Iain Tibet Gladstone, an anthropologist and archaeologist with a lifetime of experience of delving into the world's mysteries on a firsthand basis — often via travelling to improbably remote locations, taking powerful psychoactive drugs, or both. However, Gladstone really became infamous for attempting to study the formation of cults by starting one of his own, and actually had over a hundred thousand people ready to commit mass suicide at his command before he ended the experiment. As a result, the Mad Social Scientist has been placed under house arrest at the Temple Club, where he spends his days cultivating hallucinogenic molds in the books and meditating skyclad.
  • Dr Charles Zurn is a rather laid-back Omnidisciplinary Scientist employed by the Illuminati; formerly the head of the MK-ULTRA project and responsible for dozens of civilian experiments on extrahuman beings, he now works out of a laboratory decorated with embalmed corpses deep within the Labyrinth, researching whatever field agents send back to him. Players who side with the Illuminati will wake up Strapped to an Operating Table in Zurn's care during the intro, and Kirsten Geary latern warns you that he's thinking of making a show-and-tell out of you after all you've been through... or having you outfitted with a skull camera to make you a more effective agent.
  • Outside the Big Three, we have Dr Anton Aldini, played with scenery-chewing magnificence by Peter Stormare; currently preoccupied with continuing his great-grandfather's^note Who just so happens to be the historical inspiration for Dr Frankenstein, or so Aldini claims work of creating a perfect being from cannibalized human remains, his work is financed by The Modern Prometheus, a back-alley plastic surgery clinic allowing players to change their appearance. For good measure, his patchwork creations actually trigger mad-scientist envy in Zurn, who decides to compensate by creating a squid-squirrel.
  • Among the more villainous scientists in the game, there's Dr Klein. An Orochi Group scientist formerly employed in the excavation of The Ankh, he ended up getting a little too interested in The Filth and deciding to investigate its role in the end of past Ages by infusing his colleagues with it. When that didn't provide any answers, he resorted to giving himself a microdose; as a result, he's more sentient than most Filth-infectees, but still under the power of the Dreamers... and now using the entire Orochi outpost as his laboratory. Rather telling is the moment when, during his boss battle, Klein notices the local Filth reacting in an unusual way and quickly determines that it's generating "something more than reality can contain" that will consume everyone in the area if unleashed... and gleefully prepares himself to do exactly that.
  • Another notable Orochi scientist appears in the form of Dr Schreber in Issue #7. The head of the facility known only as "The Nursery," he's decided to explore his belief in "a child's plasticity" by enacting a series of experiments charting the effects of the world's most dangerous magical phenomena on children, including ghosts, demonic possession, parastoid fungi, and anima infusion. More disturbingly, he's actually found tangible results, even using a child variant of lycanthropy to create individuals who can transform into anything. In the end, he's undone when he decides to try infusing children with the Filth — only to suffer a microdose in the process. As a result, he degenerates into paranoia, releases his subjects from containment, and goes on a rampage that leaves the Nursery staff either dead or infected. For good measure, Kirsten Geary makes it clear that one of the reasons why Schreber is so dangerous ( even before the Filth infection) is because he goes to such pains to seem lucid despite being so obviously delusional; friendly mad scientists like Zurn are less dangerous because they don't even pretend to be sane.
  • However, the greatest of all mad scientists in the game is Lilith. An immortal said to be among the very first sentient beings in the entire universe, she has spent most of her long life either conquering nations from within or pioneering the sciences in highly-unethical ways. Known throughout history as the Mother of Monsters, entire races have been created due to her genetic tinkering, including vampires, werewolves, the Deathless, and countless others; she's also tried tinkering with the Gaia Engines and doing business with the Dreamers, both of which which blew up in her face and ended the Third Age. For good measure, it's also apparent that most of the Orochi initiatives that you run into over the course of the game are under her command, thanks to her public alias as Orochi chairwoman Lily Engel.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey has Affably Evil demon lord Mitra. He cordially invites you to share in the bounty of the Schwarzwelt and offers to make you and your comrades citizens of his kingdom-to-come. He also has a tower full of human experiments and is developing insanity-inducing mutagens (which he eventually tests on one of your crew). And his science is... wrong. Very, very wrong. The experiment reports clearly state the demons have really no idea what makes humans tick, so they're cutting as many as they can so they can get a better idea. With all that implies.
  • And then we come to Evil Brit Captain Jack. His crew has been fusing demons. So what. The problem is, they're not using the series' traditional Demon Fusion machines — they're using their own. Which mostly involve ripping apart two demons and weave them together.
• Shovel Knight: Plague Knight looks like a Plague Doctor, but is far more interested in using alchemy to create bigger and bigger explosions. When you fight him, he jumps around erratically, throwing flasks full of explosives everywhere. Mona, his partner-in-crime, is also enthusiastic about explosive alchemy, but is not as confrontational as him...at least until she was made playable herself in Shovel Knight Showdown.
• The University of Planet, in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Imagine an entire faction made up by a bunch of power-crazed scientists getting together and hanging out. The pursuit of greater knowledge for it's own sake is absolutely imperative to the continued survival of the human species, and if that means never allowing it to be fettered by stupid, petty things like "informed consent", "human rights" and "conventional morality", then so be it.
  • The Gaians are Mad Biologists, insofar as using science to integrate themselves into the alien ecosystem and become best buddies with mind worms. The Morganites also have a tendency to hire these, though they're a faction of Corrupt Corporate Executives.
• In The Sims 2, Mad Scientist is actually the top career rank for the Science career. Also, Loki Beaker from Strangetown is obviously supposed to be one, according to his bio. He also has 0 nice points, which makes him an Evil Genius as well. He and his wife Circe have Nervous Subject in their house and according to the family bio, they are torturing him.
• Mad Scientist: Von Frog II in the Something series. He's smart enough to build a tank and an UFO, but he went out of his way to attack a helpless village of bears.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik. He has a recorded IQ of 300 and an almost admirable level of persistence. He is, however, entirely sane, relatively speaking.
  • 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 his granddaughter was killed by G.U.N. The depths of his hatred for the world and his desire to destroy it shocked even Eggman himself.
• So uh, a spaceship crashed in my yard.: Subverted due to Ambiguous Syntax from multiple meanings of "mad". He's not insane, he's just angry. Partially because you steal his Shrink Ray.
• Star Fox: Andross, who employed several bioweapons (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. However, the same game also hints that he was the one who created the new threat in the first place in the Good Bye Fox scenario.
• In Star Sweep, Dr. J sends her robots after people and plans to destroy stars to fill the sky with stardust.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic: The Imperial Agent's companion, Dr. Eckhard Lokin qualifies. Going Professor Guinea Pig on himself, he's now able to voluntarily transform into a rakghoul. That, and he's had a long and storied career in Imperial Intelligence with a ton of NoodleIncidents it's probably better not to know the details about. Under torture, he mocks their shoddy technique, claiming he's done worse to family members.
  • On the Republic side, the Consular gets Tharan Cedrax, who is more Downplayed than Lokin. Still, a vehement Nay-Theist when it comes to the Force, he whips up oddball technological toys as easily as breathing, has a sentient hologram for an assistant/long-term girlfriend, and is always fascinated when there's some scientific breakthrough on the line, no matter how destructive it is or how completely unethical the methods were to get that discovery.
  • For the expansions, Dr. Oggurobb (a Hutt science genius) qualifies, referring to his experiments as "art" and casually suggesting that you find a Force-sensitive to feed a Dashade you free from stasis in an optional quest.
  • There is also Sannus Lorrick, the villain of two rakghoul flashpoints who experiments with the rakghoul plague to make it more effective and to infect the galaxy at large for being thrown out of the Tion Hegemony for his unlawful practices.
• In Stellaris it's possible to recruit scientists with the "Maniacal" trait, increasing their research speed and increasing the chances of "dangerous" technologies becoming available.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Professor Elvin Gadd of Luigi's Mansion fame also qualifies, albeit he's a benevolent nutcase who seems to channel his eccentricities into his inventions (a machine that turns ghosts into paintings, among other things). It's later learned that he's inadvertantly responsible for all the woes caused in Super Mario Sunshine.
  • There's also the demented Iggy Koopa, one of Bowser's Koopaling minions. He built the mechs that he and his siblings fought Mario with in Yoshi's Safari. He also has the fits maniacal laughter down pat.
• 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 are similar to Lemon, except she at least had human decency and Alas, Poor Villain. 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 Artificial Human Machinery Children, who agree with his belief Humans Are Bastards (and we suck from a biological standpoint), and is willing to kill all of humanity to achieve 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)
  • Dr. Bian Zoldark. Initiates research on alien technology and starts a war to get the Earth prepared for alien invasion. Where's the mad part in that? He made Valsione for his daughter.
• The chronologically final installment of The Tale of ALLTYNEX trilogy, Kamui, has the Big Bad Xaffiquel become this after his daughter Panafill de Alice was uploaded into one of the titular Kamui fighters.
• Tales of Monkey Island features the foppish French (or faux-French) doctor, the Marquis De Singe. (Pronounced by some of the characters like the English word meaning "burn", but "singe" is also French for monkey.) At one point Guybrush asks him why he would build a lightning machine powered by voles and he exclaims, "Science!"

• Reison from Tales of Phantasia spearheaded construction of the Mana Cannon, more than enthusiastic to use it against Dhaos and his forces, despite the massive danger it poses to the environment.
• The Medic and The Engineer of Team Fortress 2. The Medic, a German Deadly Doctor, is an eloquent, musically inclined follower of Nietzchean Ideals, using his tech to make him and his team nigh-invincible... all the better for them to dole out the maximum amount of pain and suffering possible. The Engineer is a genial, gentlemanly Texan good ol' boy whose normally serene nature masks a burning passion For Science, and a deep seated contempt for and willingness to kill anyone who would dare disrespect him.
  Engineer: ...Like this heavy-caliber, tripod-mounted little ol' number designed by me, built by me, and you'd best hope...not pointed at you.
  • The Medic now shows further mad science in his Meet the Team video.
  Heavy: Doctor, are you sure this will work?
  Medic: (Evil Laugh) I have no idea!
• Pathos in Telepath Tactics, though we (thankfully) aren't given much detail into her "experiments". She seems primarily responsible for breaking the slaves' will through psychological manipulations. Given that her entourage in the final battle consists of ghosts, she may also be a Necromancer (or the closest thing there is to one in the Telepath universe, anyway).
• 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 installment, he's gone completely 'round the bend and is cheerfully intent on bringing about The End of the World as We Know It. Among his achievements are the successful invention of robots, cameras, voice recordings, and motion-sensing automatic cannons in a vaguely Medieval Steampunk setting, along with horrific cyborgs that constantly weep in agony and beg for death. He also has a preoccupation with Garrett...
• Dr. Synthesis from The Ultimate Haunted House is a pretty standard one of these, with a voice like the singer of the Monster Mash. However, he's also pretty subdued for a mad scientist, until you make him angry...
• Lezard Valeth from Valkyrie Profile and it's sequels show Lezard as a mad wizard/alchemist with mad scientist traits. (Though that may be an understatment considering how important to the plot his mad scientist skills seem to be.) He also has one of the creepiest laughs ever to appear in a video game.
• Guillaume from Vampire Night. He uses humans for his experiments and even views the vampire hunters as potential test subjects, for crying out loud.
• View from Below: Rose once had a second-in-command who used their scientific knowledge to create all the puzzles of Below. They were also just as complicit in the sacrifice of mortals, and the puzzles were likely created to slow the mortals down and make them easier to catch.

• Dr. X from A Virus Named TOM. He says it best himself in the intro movie:
  "I even cured walking...Then, I invented Globotron, which would destroy anyone FOUND walking."
• Warframe has a few mad scientists to its name.
  • Doctor Tengus, a Grineer scientist responsible for: unleashing uncontrolled Infestation on the Origin System, making Tenno-hunters out of three soldiers so unhinged they started killing their comrades en route to mission, turning Vay Hek into a flying barely-human Cyborg he is and developing horrifying ghouls that terrorize the Plains of Eidolon.
  • Alad V, a rogue Corpus director who sought profit by turning inert warframes into Tenno-hunters. When that didn't work out, he turned to Infestation to make it infect machines and eventually control warframes. He hasn't stopped at that, tinkering with technology of Sentients, the bogeymen of the Origin System that almost completely destroyed it a long time ago.
  • Tyl Regor, another Grineer scientist, researching a way to revert Grineer Clone Degeneration, resulting in not just powerful Drekar units, but also Manics, whose name should tell you something. He does this all in underwater bases under the surface of Uranus' oceans.
• Whiplash: Tons, usually tormenting chimps in humorous ways until you show up. Notably, the game has two different types; "regular" scientists which can be either male or female and are The Goomba, and the more dangerous "mad" scientists, which are always male, throw potions at you, and drink potions to breathe fire at you.
• Professor Emma from Wild ARMs 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.

  • Alhazad on the villains' side is a much nastier version. He never passes up an opportunity to subject humans unfortunate enough to deal with him to horrific experiments that mutate them into mindless monsters. And his motivation? It's fun.
• The Wolfenstein series has Dr. Schabbs, one of the bosses in Wolfenstein 3-D, and Dr. Wilhelm Strasse, a.k.a. Deathshead, the Big Bad of the new Wolfenstein series.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Wrath of the Lich King had two, both undead. Grand Apothecary Putress of the Forsaken performs unholy experiments to create a new Plague to destroy both the undead Scourge and all life in general. Professor Putricide of the Scourge tries to do...the same thing, but without the 'destroy the Scourge' part. He also fits the trope better for having a Laboratory of Alchemical Horrors and Fun, as well as being the implied creator of most all of the abominations and similar the players have fought since arguably original WoW.
    • Great news, everyone! Professor Putricide's become something of an Ensemble Dark Horse since his introduction to the game. Memetic Mutation probably helps.
  • The goblin race as a whole fits this, too. Usually, their inventions involve Stuff Blowing Up.
  • Deathwing, Big Bad of Cataclysm, spends his time experimenting with dragons to create new breeds, eventually culminating in his Magnum Opus, Ultraxion. His son, Nefarian, takes after him with some creations of his own serving as raid bosses, and he in turn has his subordinate Maloriak, who isn't nearly as successful as either of them.
  • Rik'kal the Dissector, a Mantid Paragon, often asks his fellow Paragons to serve as test subjects, and often makes parenthetical asides while giving quests to the player, such as suggesting that the Shek'zeer loyalists' experiments may be dark, but they are not as dark as his, and that only he deserves such power. The other Paragons are wary of him at best.
• From Monolith Soft's Xeno games:
  • Xenogears has Krelian, one of the true villains, for whom everyone on the planet is a test subject, and, on the heroic side, the decidedly eccentric Dr. Citan Uzuki. His eccentricity is partially Obfuscating Stupidity, as he's actually a spy. A very intelligent spy.
  • Xenosaga goes its predecessor one better, giving us an only slightly mad Strangelove Expy in Sellers, the classic obsessive type with pretensions of chessmastery in Dimitri Yuriev, and the tragic and misunderstood type in Joachim Mizrahi. Mizrahi gets extra points for falling to his death while reciting Scripture at the top of his voice.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 1: Professor Klaus/Zanza destroyed the previous universe in an experiment gone wrong, and created a new one in his own image. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 fleshes him out a bit more, showing that he was genuinely trying to save humanity with his experiment, and that Zanza is actually his evil split personality, with his good half remaining in his home universe.
  Professor Klaus: "Once, only a God could perform such a miracle. But today, mankind moves one step closer to the divine!"

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