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His laboratory was equipped with the sophisticated tools of modern science: Jacob's Ladders, Van De Graaf generators, bulky pilot-lit cabinets, poorly-adjusted Bunsen burners, retorts bubbling with sinister chemicals, murky jars holding mutant monstrosities, strung wires with bad insulation.

The place where Science! happens. Usually pronounced "lah-BOHR-ah-tor-ee" in ominous, stentorian tones.

Every Mad Scientist has to have a lab. This is typically a refurbished dungeon of some sort, with aging stone walls; some are instead in higher locations, for better access to lightning, astronomical lookouts, and vantage points for Death Rays. Particularly enterprising scientists may have multiple such labs in different points of their home base. Regardless of location, they also must contain most of the following lab equipment:

Never mind that real science does not generally call for all of these things at the same time — or within the same discipline! — the Mad Scientist doesn't specialize. All the same, most of what he does will at least look like chemistry, since nothing shouts "science" to the casual viewer more than a guy in a lab coat fiddling with a beaker of colored liquid.

Laboratory glassware frequently shows up in period settings that predate their invention. Erlenmeyer Flasks, glass retorts, Griffin/Berzelius beakers, separatory funnels, Leibig condensers, and even test tubes date back only as far as the late 18th century at best; some of these were clearly developed in the mid to late 19th century. Dedicated laboratory equipment did not truly exist prior to the early 1800s and even then would have been primitive bearing little resemblance to familiar modern glassware. Prior to that, much chemistry was done with whatever bowls and jars were already available. Other equipment (such as alembics) was made of metal.

Also never mind that modern chemistry has very little use for the big impressive glass-sculpture thing with with a lot of burettes, condensers, and funny coils of glass. (These actually were useful constructs at one time, but they're the chemistry equivalent of doing differential equations on an abacus. Also, even when they were used, a typical experimental setup would have consisted of three to six of the pieces put together; never dozens of pieces, all connected, as shown on the screen.) Most of these glassware setups appear to be inspired by random fuzzy pictures of the classic Miller-Urey experiment which can actually be simplified once you understand what is actually going on. But you need this stuff because otherwise, the audience won't realize that Science goes on here.

A significant portion of mad scientist laboratories are not low budget small scale DIY projects that take up no more than a spare table in a corner. Instead, these labs are very elaborate for someone who usually does not appear to have anyone funding them, let alone working for them. Often the equipment is huge, bulky, unwieldy, and difficult to transport and assemble for just one man, even with an assistant. It's worth remembering that many mad scientists are older men (or physically weak men) who would definitely not be able to manage such a feat on their own. While not a mad scientist, Batman fans will recognize a modern iteration of this dilemma whenever the question is posed of how Bruce Wayne (maybe with Alfred's help) managed to build the Batcave, Batmobile and all his equipment by himself in secret.

The archetypical movie Mad Scientist Laboratory probably came from the classic silent film Metropolis, though Universal's Frankenstein (1931) added a fair amount. Both were probably strongly influenced by a real-life example that was a staple in popular media between 1900 and 1940; the various laboratories of Nikola Tesla, which actually did feature gigantic incomprehensible machinery, scary robotic devices, Tesla coils, and lots of gaudy electric-arc effects.

All of the film, TV, and comic versions of the Mad Scientist's Lab derive originally from Gothic Horror stories of the 18th and 19th centuries, the most famous of them being Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein and H. G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau. The concept developed from older stories about the lairs of alchemists and sorcerers. The Enlightenment put paid to many kinds of mystical dabbling by dilettantes, tinkerers, and wealthy eccentrics, but these characters were replaced in the public imagination by gentleman scientists — many of them self-taught, many very eccentric — who built laboratories and observatories in their homes and made a number of important discoveries in the new disciplines of chemistry, physics, and biology.

The age of the gentleman scientist was ending by the 1850s, when the most famous of them, Charles Darwin, published his Theory of Evolution. More and more, experimental research became associated with facilities provided by universities, foundations, museums, governments and industry. However, the romantic image of the mad scientist — isolated from his fellows and angry with a world that would suppress his ideas — has deep archetypal power. It's also dramatically compact, needing only the scientist, an assistant, and a faithful servant or two as characters. The meme's emotional energy and enactment efficiency has kept it alive into the 21st Century, and it's even routinely projected into future scenarios via television shows like Star Trek and The Outer Limits (1963).

This is edging toward becoming a Discredited Trope, at least in the classic beaker/Jacob's Ladder/operating table configuration. For the more modern variations, see Hacker Cave. For labs that were once this, but ended up being evacuated due to an experiment that went wrong, see Abandoned Laboratory. If someone's paying a visit and goes unnoticed, then it's Unguided Lab Tour.

Compare and contrast the Wizard Workshop, this trope's fantasy and fairytale counterpart.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Dragon Ball Z: The Mad Scientist Dr. Gero has one where he works on his android project. Despite its destruction, the version of his ultimate creation Cell from the future is unaffected thanks to the way in which Trunks' time machine operates.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS: Jail Scaglietti has the operating table, but lacks most of the other stuff. He makes up for it by having rows and rows and rows of People Jars.
  • Mazinger Z: Big Bad Dr. Hell had his own laboratory installed in his Supervillain Lair, but it was barely seen in the series. Dr. Kabuto's lab in the original manga also counts.
  • Rebuild World: Doctor Yatsubiyashi's clinic in the slums he set up for Playing with Syringes on the residents in exchange for free medical treatment looks like this, which is immediately lampshaded by Akira who complains to Sheryl, who doesn't do anything about it because the residents are Too Desperate to Be Picky. Yatsubiyashi says it's inspired by designs used by Precursors. Sure enough, he ends up making a character into a Tragic Monster in its facilities.
  • Soul Eater: Professor Franken Stein has quite an interesting home/lab. Stitched patterns are found randomly throughout the house, both the inside and outside (and also on his clothes and even his person). He has an older looking computer and many chemistry related items such as a Bunsen burner, beakers, Erlenmeyer flasks, etc. (which, it should be noted, he occasionally uses as drinking glasses). Arrows are painted on the floor pointing in different directions, usually away and toward doorways.
  • Tenchi Muyo!: Washuu has a giant laboratory that spans five planets, set up in other-dimensional space and accessible through a door that is usually located under the stairs in Tenchi's house, but which can vanish or move as Washuu wills it.
  • Wild Fangs: Syon was created and grew up in one of these, of the castle dungeon variety.

    Comic Books 
  • Robin (1993): Tim leads the Teen Titans into a secret underground lab belonging to Lex Luthor that's full of autonomous robots, half-finished experiments, and vials of manufactured cures and diseases in search of a cure for Superboy, who was dying at the time.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Wonder Woman (1942): Paula's lab hidden beneath Holliday College is full of large strange electronics and knife switches tied into her Space Converter alongside tables covered in glassware full of colorful liquids. There's also an operating table surrounded by the equipment needed to make a Purple Ray strong enough to heal the very recently deceased.
    • Wonder Woman (1987): Dr. Lazarus's lab is more tidy version than normal filled with shelving, computers and tables with the centerpiece a strange round thing with giant cocoon like objects hanging from it and several spark gaps, calling to mind a Jacob's Ladder but actually being part of his machine with which he intends to resurrect his son.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 
  • The Emperor's New Groove: Yzma's "secret lab", which contains dozens of transforming potions.note  Yzma and Kronk enter it by a roller coaster ride accessed by pulling a lever on the wall, though Kronk occasionally pulls the wrong one.
  • Megamind: Megamind, a science-based supervillain, has an impressively huge one, complete with Tesla coils and blinky dials.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Back to the Future: Doc Brown's lab, originally the garage of his family estate, is crammed full of all types of scientific gear. He even has the old tape drives to (presumably) the 1950s/'60s style computer he would have used to invent time travel.
  • Blackenstein: Despite all his talk of DNA and laser surgery, the Dr. Stein's laboratory set uses Kenneth Strickfaden's original sparking and zapping electrical equipment from Frankenstein (1931).
  • A Cure for Wellness: There's a locked tower on the spa grounds that the protagonist Lockhart eventually breaks into. He finds stairs leading down to a grotto containing an underground laboratory, which is replete in 19th century-style with beakers containing mutated fetuses, dissected eels, and scientific notebooks. It turns out the anachronistic look is not a coincidence, as the doctor who runs the spa is a lot older than he appears.
  • The Dark Crystal: The Chamber of Life, where the Skeksis drain innocent Podlings of their life essence. It's filled with Ridiculously Cute Critters in cages, which skekTek the Scientist performs cruel experiments on.
  • Dracula vs. Frankenstein: Dr. Durea has a secret laboratory hidden beneath the Creature Emporium — the house of horrors he runs at the amusement park — where he conducts all of his experiments in developing his blood serum. Much of the electrical lab equipment in the lab are props originally used in the 1931 Frankenstein film. Ken Strickfaden, who had designed all the electrical gadgetry in that film, supplied the equipment.
  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (A'yoy): Jekyll has one, full of technicolor chemistry and stuff. Although the potato doesn't really do anything.
  • The Fly (1986) updates and downplays the "gentleman scientist" inspirations for this trope with Seth Brundle's lab. It's located on the top floor of an Abandoned Warehouse in a lonesome part of Toronto, and despite it also serving as his living quarters with a small kitchen, bedroom, etc. retains a stark appearance with its basic furnishings and lack of décor, since Seth is a Workaholic and has no social life. It has a skylight that factors into the climax (allowing him to sneak into the central room by Wall Crawling and get the drop on Stathis), shelves full of binders of papers, etc. serving as background detail, and is ultimately centered upon the exotic-looking "telepods" and the imposing computer that controls them. Early on, Seth actually provides some exposition to reporter (and later love interest) Veronica explaining that he had to commission the individual components for the telepods and "stick them together, but nobody knows what the project really is." His work is financed by a company (they met at a press event in the opening scene), "but they leave me alone because I'm not expensive, and they know that they'll end up owning it all, whatever it is."
  • Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks: Count Frankenstein's laboratory contains operating tables, Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks, and an improbable number of Jacob's ladders.
  • Frankenstein Island: Sheila Frankenstein has one in her house that is part electrical lab and part intensive care unit.
  • Iron Man: Tony Stark has an updated version in the basement of his house: robot assistants, machine shop, electronics fabrication, CADCAM system.
  • James Bond: The films have their resident good-guy Mad Scientist, Q; almost every film features a peek into his lab, which usually features several assistants participating in such dubious experiments as testing a new bulletproof vest by putting one on and getting shot.
  • Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter: Maria has one set up in the monastery. The lab was actually composed of props from Universal Horror movies, and would largely be reused in Young Frankenstein.
  • Kiss Me Quick!: Dr. Breedlove's laboratory has all of the standard mad scientist accoutrements, including Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks, an arcing Jacob's ladder, and a talking skull.
  • Lady Frankenstein: Baron Frankenstein maintains one under his castle. It is filled with Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks, arcane electrical equipment, strange clockwork, a walk in cold room for keeping corpses...
  • The Man Who Changed His Mind: Dr. Lurience's home lab, where he appears to swapping minds between bodies using a Jacob's ladder. His new lab at the Haselwood Institute looks far more high-tech and antiseptic, even if it performs the same function.
  • Metropolis: Dr. Rotwang's laboratory is perhaps the earliest example of the trope on film, and features all the necessary paraphernalia, along with large pentagrams to tie him to the classical magician/alchemist archetypes.
  • The Resurrected, a 1991 film adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, recreates the scene where the hero has to navigate his way out of a subterranean laboratory/oubliette of failed Body Horror experiments after dropping his lamp.
  • The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Dr. Frank N. Furter's lab is full of Big Electric Switches and octagonal monitors. The tank that Rocky is born in is the same one from The Revenge of Frankenstein.
  • Sherlock Holmes (2009): The "ginger midget" Luke Reordan, who turns out to be on Lord Blackwood's payroll, has two laboratories that are visited after his body is found in Blackwood's coffin. The first one's in his apartment, and the second is in a slaughterhouse. The walls of both places are adorned with writings and drawings that speak of experiments to combine sorcery with science as well as Reordan's connection to Blackwood who presents himself as The Antichrist. Holmes finds from the first laboratory most of the clues that later turn out to be essential in proving that Blackwood accomplished all his magical feats with science and trickery. The second laboratory was where Reordan created the chemical weapon Blackwood attempts to gas his opponents in the British Parliament with, and it's also where Dredger killed Reordan after the latter had delivered everything Blackwood wanted.
  • Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow:
    • The laboratory of Dr. Walter Jennings (with mutated fetus and tiny elephant), and the room in Shangri-La (shown in a deleted scene) where Totenkopf conducted experiments on radiation victims from his uranium mine.
    • Dr. Totenkopf requires a special mention here as his 'laboratory' is a whole factory complex, complete with a rocket launch silo.
  • Van Helsing: Being a send-up of Universal's classic horror movies, these naturally show up. The film opens in the laboratory of none other than Victor Frankenstein as he successfully brings his monster to life, and Dracula later appropriates the lab for his own purposes and then moves it to his own castle where he tries to complete the experiment. Another lab is shown earlier in the film where Carl develops weapons for Van Helsing to use against Dracula.

    Literature 
  • Comrade Death, a short story by Gerald Kersh, features Sarek's Under World, the underground nightmare where his company's increasingly horrible chemical weapons are developed.
  • The Chronicles of Professor Jack Baling: The titular character has a rather mundane version of one of these in a shed in his backyard, but in the second episode he encounters some really sophisticated ones in the Prometheus Corporation's HQ, some of which even have Jacob's ladders and bubbling beakers.
  • Franny K. Stein: Franny's room is her laboratory, where the little girl mad scientist frequently conducts her experiments using whatever chemicals and technology she needs.
  • Gaunt's Ghosts: The Ghosts' main objective in Salvation Reach is to raid a well-defended Chaos research facility and capture as much intelligence material as possible, which may be further used in advantage to the Crusade. The laboratory is described as grim halls filled with strange and disturbing devices. Although they cannot read them, even the mere touch of scrolls and dataslates stored there fills the Imperial Guardsmen with a feeling of dread.
  • Heart of Steel: Alistair Mechanus has a sprawling labyrinth of a lair inside a dormant volcano on Shark Reef Isle, mainly comprised of laboratory and research space.
  • Herbert West–Reanimator: The eponymous Mad Scientist has a hidden laboratory, first in a dilapidated farm house and later in his cellar, for his experiments of dead body revival and other, more gruesome, things. He also pursues a quasi-legitimate career in medicine and research at the Miskatonic University and could procure scientific apparatus — without attracting unwanted attention — by plain old theft.
  • Something More Than Night: Played with. The Mad Scientist's secret basement laboratory is the site of genuine unethical mad science research, but because it was bankrolled by a movie mogul with an overdeveloped sense of drama and kitted out by his set construction department, a good proportion of the buzzing machines, bubbling tubes, unidentifiable specimens, etc. are just leftover props irrelevant to the actual task at hand. And the stone walls turn out, on closer inspection, to be textured plasterboard.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Breaking Bad: The meth lab on wheels. It's got the smoking flasks, mysterious colored goo, and pretty much anything else they can cover with Rule of Cool.
  • Forever:
    • Henry's basement lab resembles one, and Jo even refers to it as such after searching it, describing it as containing "human organs" (Henry is a Medical Examiner) and "torture devices" ("Oh, those are for sex!"). It's entered through a trap door hidden under a rug, and there are Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks containing colored substances when they're not neatly put away in cabinets, as well as a large fish tank containing jellyfish note . It doesn't help that Henry pronounces the word "laboratory" with emphasis on the second syllable, which most Americans associate with movie mad scientists.
    • In the pilot, the Villain of the Week has created a lab in his garage, with Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks sporting bright purple residue from the aconite flowers he's creating poison with. Justifies as he's a chemist.
  • The Munsters: Grandpa has a laboratory in the dungeon under the house where he performs experiments both scientific and mystical. For added fun, his Igor is a bat.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000: For seven seasons, the villains work in an Elaborate Underground Base; the audience occasionally glimpses chemistry equipment, chalkboards, computer consoles and mysterious air ducts. Things become tighter when the villains' replacements have to work out of a space-travel-equipped VW Microbus, but this lasts for only one season — they return to a more appropriate environment soon enough. In the Screwed By the Studio Motion Picture, Dr. F's lab gets a major overhaul, complete with a fish tank filled with acid.
  • Once Upon a Time: Of both Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll.
  • Star Trek: The interior of a Borg ship can come across like this.
    • Star Trek: Voyager: At the start of "Dark Frontier (Part 1)", the ship is lit by blue flashes and the sound of electrical arcs, with the occasional burst of steam, even before they enter combat with Voyager.
    • Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Brothers", we start at the requisite glass containers full of bubbling chemicals and a tube generating lightning-like effects before panning across to the more homely aspects of Dr. Soong's hideout.
  • Supernatural. Played straight in "Monster Movie", where the Monster of the Week is a fan of monster movies like Frankenstein, and so has his own laboratory to electrocute Dean via Big Electric Switch. More updated versions are seen in "Asylum" and "The Man Who Would Be King" — the latter being the most disturbing of all given that it involves Affably Evil Crowley dissecting demons while discussing business with supposed good-guy Castiel.

    Pinball 
  • Strange Science: The entire playfield is decorated like a classic laboratory. Operators can also install a backbox topper resembling a Jacob's ladder with an electric arc between the poles.

    Roleplays 
  • Dino Attack RPG: XERRD — an entire organization of Mad Scientists — has three notable Mad Scientist Laboratories where they perform experiments on dinosaurs: the Dino Island Laboratory, the LEGO Island Laboratory, and the Adventurers' Island XERRD Fortress.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Genius: The Transgression: A lab is very important to the protagonists. The problem is that lab space is expensive and obsessively making things that break when Muggles touch them is bad for the bank balance.
  • Spirit of the Century: Der Blitzmann is a German Mad Scientist who has a portable lab in the form of his mechanical exoskeleton. Despite the nontraditional size and style, it does come complete with Tesla coils. Weaponized Tesla coils.
  • Warhammer 40,000: The workshop of a Mek, an Orc with both an instinctive understanding of technology and the Orks' general insanity, becomes one of these in short order, quickly filling with discarded parts, flashy lights, bare cogs and wires, spinny bits, and arcing electricity. This is generally an Invoked Trope, as many or most of these don't serve any real purpose; the Meks literally just put them there for the look.

    Toys 
  • Franchise/LEGO:
    • LEGO Friends: Olivia's Inventor's Workshop, complete with colored beakers of liquid and helpful robot assistant. Might be a bit too pink to completely qualify, though.
    • LEGO Studios and LEGO Monster Fighters play this trope more straightly, with each line's resident Mad Scientist having his own personal laboratory where he creates a Captain Ersatz of Frankenstein's Monster.
  • The Mighty Max toy line had a number of mad science-themed playsets, notably Dr. Gore's Haunted Castle in Skull Dungeon, which had a Frankenstein theme, and Professor Zygote's Volcano Lair in Dino Lab, located in a volcano, which had a distinct Jurassic Park theme to it.
  • The Doctor Dreadful line of playsets allowed kids to basically have their own little mad scientist laboratories, complete with flasks, beakers, test tubes and other goodies, which they could use to make edible snacks.
  • Nickelodeon produced the Thingmaker Chill-A-Tron Lab, which was like a cross between Doctor Dreadful and Creepy Crawlers; like Doctor Dreadful, it had a mad scientist theme to it, but, like Creepy Crawlers, you couldn't eat what you made. It worked using ice rather than heat.

    Video Games 
  • The 7th Guest: Henry Stauf has one, rather well hidden in his mansion. It is infamously known for a now-impossible minigame of Infection inside a microscope there. On top of that, a rather squicky cutscene can be watched of a ghost patient who wakes up and finds that half of his head is missing, then reaches down and tries to put his brain back.
  • Animal Crossing: Cobb, a pig villager, tends to decorate his house along these lines. In Animal Crossing: New Leaf, he has walls lined with bookshelves, a large whiteboard, a set of metal shelves filled with flasks and bottles, a laboratory sink, a large computer bank of unclear purpose with a Florence flask filled with green fluid laid on it, and a "laboratory bench" consisting of a metal bed attached to a pair of defibrillators shaped to fit over a person's temples. In Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, his required items are the shelves of bottles and the Florence flask from his New Leaf home, alongside a giant tube filled with green liquid and a vague bobbing shape. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, he goes for a more bookish theme, retaining the library walls but swapping out the high-tech furniture for piles of books, loose documents and crumpled papers, although he does retain a whiteboard covered in indecipherable writing.
  • Bad Mojo: Roger Samms converted half of his apartment into a small version of this as part of his research to kill cockroaches. His desk is cluttered with glassware and bug specimens, alongside a bulletin board covered in news clippings, biology schematics, scrawled notes, and eyes clipped from pictures. To top it off, the player gets to see this up close thanks to Roger having been turned into a roach by a mysterious locket.
  • Baldur's Gate II: The first dungeon (known as "Chateau Irenicus" in the community) has "pickled" people in jars, rampant clones, a lightning generator, portals to other dimensions and other crazy contraptions, and a horde of duergar serving as Igors. The only difference with a traditional mad science lab is that the owner is an Evil Sorcerer and all the contraptions are powered by magic. Half the protagonist's canonical party from the first game ends up Strapped to an Operating Table, and not everyone walks away...
  • Castlevania: Dracula tends to maintain at least one in each game, complete with all the glass containers, arcing electrical devices, and operating tables typical of the trope. It's usually where Frankenstein's Monster and other artificial monsters are created and fought.
  • City of Villains: The base editor has all requisite mad science lab items, with classic items ranging from operating tables to Jacob's ladders of various sizes to organs in jars (ranging from preserved to rotted), and more modern items like microscopes, X-ray machines, and LCD monitors.
  • Crash Bandicoot:
    • In the original game, Dr. Neo Cortex has a sinister tower castle. To the top, his lab, which is shown in the intro cutscene, contains his Cortex Vortex, N. Brio's Evolvo-Ray, and countless cages where a lot of marsupials are fearfully waiting for their turn to come. The Lab level has shades of this too, with its electric ray traps and its Blob Monsters who come out of nowhere.
    • Crash Team Racing: N. Gin Labs is a big homage to labs and factory levels from the first two games, having one section where you turn around the Evolvo-Ray, radioactive barrels as a trap, and a big corridor where you can constantly boost.
  • Deus Ex: A large number of them exist. Somewhat justified in that several factions are technocratic cabals who see "technology alone as a source of political power", and some of them are on your side. Still, applies mainly to scientists serving the Big Bad.
  • Fallout: New Vegas: Old World Blues: The Big MT (Big Empty) is a non-OSHA compliant research facility run by Mad Scientist brains in jars. Both this and the main game have chemistry sets where you can craft drugs.
  • I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: AM builds a mock-up of a Nazi death camp for the character Nimdok to explore. One part of it includes a bunker containing a laboratory that fits this trope per the World War II setting, with implements from a teletype, a morphing creature in a bell jar, and a Golem made from steel and clay. It's also significant by the fact that Nimdok himself once performed experiments here alongside Dr. Mengele. Some of them included genetic manipulation and a youth serum, which is how AM kept Nimdok and four other humans alive for 109 years, and warped one of them into a mutant just for fun.
  • Insanity: There's one of these labs located in the basement of the Murai mansion, belonging to Shigeki Murai, the Mad Scientist patriarch of the Murai family, where he carries out his experiments in an attempt to resurrect the dead. It's not too creepy or bizarre-looking... well, except for the over-sized cages and the human corpses.
  • Killing Floor 2: Dr. Hans Volter has one underneath his manor in Switzerland, where it's implied he performs Zed-related experiments. The Descent map shows that it extends over a kilometer below the surface, with at least 11 different floors.
  • Monster Lab: Mad Science Castle is, of course, Exactly What It Says on the Tin. You get no less than four laboratories, three that correspond with the three disciplines of mad science (mechanics, biology and alchemy) and a fourth where Lightning Can Do Anything.
  • Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army and Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon: The whole Gouma-Den. Hosted by lovable lunatic Dr. Victor. Complete with virtually all of the accoutrements of the standard lab.
  • The Room (Mobile Game): The final area in The Room Two is a tower on an island belonging to Professor de Montfaucon, set up in his research to save his dying sister Lucy. His equipment ranges from bug specimens and stimulating a hand with electricity, to the Null and a still-living heart. Lucy died before he could complete his research.
  • Shovel Knight: The Explodatorium, domain of Plague Knight, is a place chock full of oversized labwear, exploding rats, flamethrowers, barrels full of boiling chemicals and scientists all trying to further chemical warfare.
  • In The Sims 2, the aptly-names Beaker family have one in their house, complete with a cell in the basement to keep their test subject in
  • Stay Tooned!: Dr. Pickles has a couple of places replete with items of this trope, some of which can be interacted with.
    Dr. Pickles: Will you help me with mein experiment?
  • The Ultimate Haunted House: One of these can be found, in the house's basement, belonging to Dr. Synthesis. You can use it to create a monster of your own, or even use parts found in the house to put together the Ultimate Monster.
  • Wolfchild: The fourth world has Wolfchild entering the CHIMERA labs hidden beneath the hidden island temple. The area features People Jars, conveyor belts and large vats of presumably mutagenic substances used by CHIMERA to build their army.
  • World of Warcraft: The Forsaken apparently discovered this trope in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, as their bases in Northrend tend to be full of traditional Mad Scientist equipment like Tesla coils, Jacob's ladders, and mechanical arms that move vials of glowing chemicals around.

    Webcomics 
  • Commedia 2X00: Dottore's lab is packed with this stuff — literally, in the storage basement, the boxes are labeled with things like "blinkenlights", "boss themes (casettes)", and "mecha-piranhas, x-mas decs". Being Dottore, it's also stocked with warp-pipes, wall-mounted chainsaws, an inexplicable fiery lake of lava (complete with Heli-Kraken)...
  • Evil Plan: Doctor Kinesis has a multi-level lab, complete with minions and a vat of "acid".
  • Girl Genius: Sparks — the setting's name for pathological mad scientist — tend to feel an active compulsion to keep at least one handy laboratory stocked with assorted mechanical and/or surgical tools, chemical reagents, interesting specimens and past experiments in jars, and a metal bad with leather straps for holding uncooperative test subjects.
    • Castle Heterodyne has quite a lot of them, so that every Spark in the family can perform their own experiments without getting in each other's way. And so they don't have to drag the bodies far when the urge strikes.
    • In the novel Agatha H. and the Airship City (an expanded prose version of the first few comic volumes), Agatha asks Gil why he needs four labs aboard Castle Wulfenbach. He replies that his father has forty-three plus two ground-based facilities, so by comparison he's a model of efficiency. And that's not counting all the other labs on Castle Wulfenbach that the Baron set up for his employees, one of which is labeled "Lab Full of Exploding Things #5".
  • Narbonic is all about Mad Scientists. If you don't have the Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks around, you fail to grasp the principles behind mad science.
  • Sluggy Freelance: Riff rents out some tunnels to act as his secret underground lab. At least when Minion Master's not using it as his "Domicile of Evil".
  • Tales Of Gnosis College: Professor Joseph Corwin houses his Apsinthion Device, a tank with a tentacle monster, and in impressive amount of weird glassware in a mad scientist's laboratory located in a derelict red-brick brewery that rather resembles an old-fashioned castle.
  • Thog Infinitron: The Opians, an alien race, have an interstellar spacecraft with an onboard laboratory where they engineer ways to destroy Thog.

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 
  • Biker Mice from Mars: Dr. Karbunkle has a pretty spacious lab, which includes, among others things, his transporter.
  • Dexter's Laboratory is a little light on the flatware, but even so he occasionally carries around a beaker. More often, he can be seen endlessly turning a nut with a wrench, against a background of computer banks, et al.
  • Futurama: Mostly averted with Professor Farnsworth's lab, which is usually surprisingly sparse, with only one piece of equipment at a time, although in one episode he's shown to have about a dozen different doomsday devices tucked away.
  • He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983): Man-at-Arms has a big and impressive lab (good for those trademark Filmation long, slow pans), although it's not at all sinister-looking, since he's a nice guy.
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends: In "The Great Rainbow Caper", the gizmonks' base is essentially a giant laboratory filled with complicated machines in various states of completion, caged test subjects and exotic animals, and assorted trappings of mad science.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • "Feeling Pinkie Keen": Twilight Sparkle's basement is shown to be filled with complex sensory apparati, tubes and bottles of colorful bubbling liquid, racks of test tubes, bookshelves, and giant tubing and machines of unclear purpose, with many of the larger pieces having tree roots wound around them.
    • "It's About Time": Twilight has a second laboratory slash observation room in her attic, this one featuring a number of large, complex telescopes alongside abstruse graphs and piles of loose documents.
  • Rick and Morty: It's revealed in season 2 that Rick built one in the garage, causing Beth and Jerry to have a $6,000 electric bill. It appears in later episodes being used to work Rick's various projects of the day.
  • SWAT Kats: Dr. Viper's laboratory, seen in "The Giant Bacteria", is pretty impressive to behold, featuring retorts, racks of test tubes, flasks, beakers and even a microscope that for some reason has smoke pouring out of the eyepiece. Interestingly, production notes called for even more chemistry equipment to be seen, but for some reason the animators didn't get the message.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures: Parodied in "Hare-Raising Night". There's a panning shot of what appears to be Dr. Gene Splicer's laboratory, with a bunch of spiraling glass tubing and oddly-shaped chemistry equipment (flasks, beakers, etc.) in the foreground... only for the pan to continue and reveal it's just a painting, titled "Dad's Place". Dr. Splicer's actual laboratory is a surprisingly mundane office building (the giant vat of "gene juice" aside).
  • Pinky and the Brain: The titular mice, being uplifted lab mice, naturally have Acme Labs as their home/base of operations. While the scientists there perform subpar experiments, Brain puts the equipment and resources to more ambitious use in his endeavors to take over the world.
  • Xiaolin Showdown: Jack Spicer has a slightly more detailed laboratory than Dexter, but again, much more often computer-y than chemistry-set based.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Mad Science Lab

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Rotwang's Robot

Rotwang gives his new robot the appearance of Maria.

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