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The "good" doctor... and his handiwork.

"When did mankind lose touch with natural selection? No matter how inferior a human's genes are, that person is protected by laws, and can't be killed. Even those incapacitated in accidents or stricken with a serious illness are needlessly kept alive. What a drawn out, wasteful existence. It's this divorce from natural selection that has caused mankind to stop evolving. It's a step down. The devolution of mankind. But I intend to accelerate the culling of genetically inferior humans. To rekindle the refining fire of natural selection!"
Hans Davis, Metal Gear Ac!d

Some evil mad scientists use their twisted intellect solely for personal gain. This particular villain is not so provincial. His genius and his motives go hand in hand, and his concerns are with the welfare of the human species (or so he thinks). Simply put, to the Evilutionary Biologist, humanity is stuck in an evolutionary rut, and it's up to him to put us back on the proper path so we can continue to evolve.

Why the Evilutionary Biologist believes this is necessary varies, as do his methods. Some Evilutionary Biologists simply believe that humanity has erred in its domination of the environment, and thus our very survival as a species is threatened unless they force us to continue evolving. Others see change and so-called improvement as goals in and of themselves and resolve to use scientific advancement to cause them. Still others seek to create a new race of biologically superior transhumans or just the Ultimate Life Form with the power of science, either because they see humans as having outlived their time on the planet or because of a genuine desire to improve the human condition. Some will just be a Maker of Monsters. They often subscribe to the philosophies of Social Darwinism and "The Ends Justify the Means". It's not uncommon for them to practice what they preach and marry someone they see as fit and worthy for them.

Regardless, because of his dedication, the Evilutionary Biologist is willing to break laws, engage in experimental alterations upon other human beings, and ruin lives for the higher goal. Their creations are no less exempt; whether they're Replacement Goldfish, with Clone Angst, or genetically "programmed" to have evil, their "children" are doomed to live sad, short, rebellious lives, unless they really do feel parental. They will never realize that Evil Evolves and will never be able to identify themselves as the villains.

Evilutionary Biologists often create inhuman monsters and artificial humans to serve as minions and Mooks, as well as to populate their extensive Garden of Evil. They themselves may even be willing to suffer the fruits of their experimentation, often resulting in a monstrous, inhuman new body.

Whenever an Evilutionary Biologist appears on the scene — they are the most common form of villainous biologist in many games and Speculative Fiction media — be on guard for a Science Is Bad aesop to rear its ugly head. They might as well be Eco-Terrorist who believes too much in nature, if their disregard for everything led to them carrying out sorts of terrorism.

This is especially ironic because in real biology, one of the core precepts of the theory of evolution is that it does not "improve" a species, because there is no such thing as an ideal form for a species — only what is bestnote  at surviving and reproducing in current conditions. If the environment changes, the species must adapt all over again, which is why genetic diversity (Nature's way of "hedging her bets") is usually a good thing.

Moreover, assuming that a species must evolve if subjected to increased selection pressures (or Applied Phlebotinum-induced mutations) overlooks the harsh fact that most organisms don't adapt in the face of such challenges: they simply go extinct, which is why we're not rubbing elbows with mammoths, sauropods and trilobites today. Deliberately applying such selective forces to humans may let us join them in extinction, not improve upon our current state.

Finally, evolution is conservative, and a species which is thriving (you know, like Homo sapiens) is unlikely to evolve new traits, because it's doing fine the way it is. Sharks, for example, haven't changed much since before the first dinosaurs appeared, and they're just as successful as ever... making the entire mania of the Evilutionary Biologist suspect at best.

Even so, Goal-Oriented Evolution was taken dead seriously by many back in the heyday of the eugenics movement (orthogenesis, the real evolutionary theory positing it, was tossed around for some time), and still gets cited by people who really ought to know better (Singularitarians are frequently guilty of it), along with being a common misconception of how natural selection works.

Examples of this trope will probably be German, and possibly one of Those Wacky Nazis, if we want to be really obvious.

Compare Designer Babies, Uplifted Animal, Super Breeding Program, Transhuman and Eco-Terrorist. noreallife


Examples

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    Anime & Manga 
  • In Bleach, we have Szayelaporro Granz, the eighth Espada, who is obsessed with reaching perfection.
  • Boogiepop Series: The Towa Organization sees it as its duty to help push humanity forward in its evolution as well as seeking out and destroying the individuals who pose a threat to that goal. Much of the conflict in the series is the direct result of their actions, including the creation of Manticore, a human eating monster cloned from an alien. In the novels it seems that Towa wants to keep the "over-evolved" individuals in check and prevent the evolution of humanity in larger scale — ironically, they enforce this ideology with Synthetic Humans who have very little difference to the "over-evolved" individuals, except that most of them are absolutely loyal to Towa Organization.
  • Brynhildr in the Darkness: Takachiho is an amateur geologist who stumbles upon alien corpses and technology while exploring a mine for gold, gets the brilliant idea to replace all of humanity with Half Human Hybrids using the alien's own Fantastic Nuke to do it and, with a group of like-minded individuals, spends 100 years rounding up children under the age of ten and having "researchers", at gunpoint, perform horrific experiments indistinguishable from Cold-Blooded Torture on them to unlock their "true potential" just to achieve this end. At the start of the story, he's on the cusp of succeeding.
  • A Certain Magical Index: Aleister Crowley (yes, that one) is, in this universe, the founder and leader of Academy City, a scientifically advanced city located within Tokyo that is comprised mostly of students. Said students are espers whose studies are mainly focused on the development of Psychic Powers, which they gain through a combination of drug treatment and hypnosis, and the usefulness of which are ranked from Levels 1 through 5. Every esper is essentially a human guinea pig in a massive citywide experiment conducted by the scientists that run Academy City, who range from the amoral to the downright insane (the Kihara family), and Aleister himself is a former magician who turned his back on magic after growing disillusioned with a world in which humans allowed their destiny to be controlled by the magical "phases" that can affect a person's fortune. It's implied that his ultimate goal for the espers is to use the unique energy they unconsciously emit, known as AIM fields, to rid the world of magic, which he believes will direct humanity towards its ideal course in which people are freed from fate and mysticism, and the world is built up from the efforts of individuals rather than that of the gods.
  • Elfen Lied: Chief Kakuzawa's "diclonius" efforts. Unfortunately for him, pissing off the crux of his plans (Lucy) slaps him with the Too Dumb to Live label. His son gets the same treatment.
  • Macross Frontier: Grace O'Connor, the resident Mad Scientist. In Episode 24 she directly states that her main goal is for humanity to become greater than the Protoculture.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS: Dr. Jail Scaglietti, the Mad Scientist behind Project F and several other Artificial Human related experiments. According to Quattro, his ultimate goal is the completion of biomanipulation technology and the creation of a space to do that. That at least several hundred thousand people would die in the process is acceptable collateral damage.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: Dr. Ulen Hibiki, although he hadn't really built his views around evolutionary dead-end, still wanted to advance the human race as much as possible For Science!. So, to produce his Ultimate Coordinator, he didn't stop before using his own yet unborn (in fact, just conceived) son, Kira Yamato, as well as many others, as a guinea pig for his experiments. The fact that he eventually succeeded didn't help him, though, when he was lynched by an angry mob.
  • In Naruto, this trope motivates Orochimaru's Start of Darkness: he just wants to learn all the jutsu in the world, and when he realizes he can't in a normal human lifetime, he starts experimenting to put himself above all else. It's more just for his own sake than for the world's, and he's using human guinea pigs left and right.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion: SEELE's goal is to merge all of humanity and an Eldritch Abomination together because they believe that humanity has otherwise "stagnated" as a species.
  • Sanji's father Vinsmoke Judge from One Piece. He rules a kingdom with an iron fist and is very abusive to his son Sanji. He specializes in Creating Life and genetically engineering humans at the peak of physical prowess. Not to mention he modified his own children to become Super-Soldier Tyke Bombs with the cost of their human emotions and empathy.
  • Project ARMS: Keith White thinks that his pursuit of knowledge leaves him perfectly justified to kill, experiment on, mutate, torture, and otherwise ruin the lives of the human test subjects he works with, most of them children. By the series' end, he has taken to declaring himself God and insisting that he'll nuke the planet so he can remake it in his image. The irony is that the sentient alien meteor he was using for this plan, Azreal, only came to Earth because it was drawn to the novelty of human emotions, after spending millions of years alone in space. It helps the protagonists instead, since it doesn't want to be alone.
  • Serial Experiments Lain: Masami Eiri is an odd example, being a computer scientist who believes that humans have reached the pinnacle of evolution physically and that, in order to continue evolving to more perfect forms, humanity has to give up their bodies for a digital existence. To that end, he secretly puts code into the latest version of the protocol that controls the Wired that would connect humans together on a subconscious level through the network. He also creates Lain a physical body to aid in this effort.
  • Soul Eater: In Medusa's mind, experimenting on children with black blood and reviving the kishin (thus allowing his madness to spread) means the same as allowing evolution to take over. Her older sister Arachne started off an example when she 'borrowed' the work of an Anthropomorphic Personification and combined witch and human souls to create the first Weapons. The effects have lasted centuries, with the Weapon forms even changing over time; there are several gun-type Weapons alongside the older swords or polearms.
  • Tokyo Ghoul: Dr. Akihiro Kanou is a Mad Scientist obsessed with the creation of superior Half Human Hybrids. His ghoulization experiments have an incredibly high mortality rate, with over a 1000 people killed in his efforts to create his hybrids. He claims that he's doing it to free humanity from their cagel; however, considering that he's a sociopath who readily lies to everyone around him, it's difficult to tell how much of this is true. His study at his old laboratory is filled with "hybrids" created by stitching together preserved insect bodies to create things like "Scorpion-Butterflies".

    Comic Books 
  • The DCU:
    • Dr. Love from Infinity, Inc. is a mad obstetrician who created the supervillain team Helix by experimenting on the unborn children of pregnant women under his care.
    • In Legion of Super-Heroes, 1000 years from the present day, Ra's Al Ghul plots to crash the Moon into the Earth to force humanity to pre-emptively evolve to prevent it.
    • In Scare Tactics (DC Comics), Slither was experimented on by his biologist father with the result that he transformed into a Lizard Folk.
    • Dabney Donovan from Superboy (1994), one of the co-founders of the cloning project Cadmus, is a Mad Scientist who feels cloning is the way of the future and humans besides himself are basically worthless. The "Hyper-Tension!" arc gives a horrifying look at what he would become if allowed to experiment to his satisfaction, and it involves "cloning" deceased super-heroes into an obedient army of disturbing mix-and-match people who only vaguely resemble those they were cloned from and taking over the earth.
    • Bertron from Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey is an ancient alien who created the creature Doomsday. He was Hoist by His Own Petard millions of years ago in the days of prehistoric Krypton, but unfortunately for the rest of the universe "The Ultimate" lives on to this day.
  • The Filth: Spartacus Hughes, or at least he tries to be. His dabbling in this seems less like a plan to change humanity than just a particular twisted way of amusing himself.
  • Hybrid Force: Dr. Insomnia is a Mad Scientist and leader of the terrorist organization Testify. He abducted numerous people and genetically altered them into plant/animal people to help him in his plans to Take Over the World.
  • Judge Dredd: Morton Judd was a genetic engineer who once served as the head of Justice Department's cloning project. He started to see it as the solution to crime by creating a docile population, but Chief Judge Fargo vetoed his proposal on the grounds that it was their duty to police the citizens they have, not create the citizens they'd like. Judd went rogue and fled to the Australian wastes, where for decades he built a Clone Army to replace the Judges.
  • Marvel Universe:
    • The High Evolutionary from The Avengers (usually) is one of the earlier examples in the franchise. He can sometimes come across as actually a rather reasonable person. Unfortunately, his A God Am I delusions of grandeur keep driving him to take the theory of evolution and beat it into submission with a sack of rusty doorknobs in order to make his experiments work.
    • Arnim Zola from Captain America is an early-20th-century biochemist and genetic engineer who furthered his research using the notes and equipment of the Deviants and the support of the Nazis. He's still kicking long after World War II thanks to discovering how to transfer human minds to cloned bodies (though his own body is usually robotic) — Jolt from Thunderbolts and Vermin from Spider-Man owe their powers to his cruel human genetic experimentation.
    • The Supreme Intelligence of the Kree from Captain Marvel (Marvel Comics) has committed monstrous atrocities against his own people in order to spur their evolutionary development.
    • The Incredible Hulk villain the Leader is a man granted super-intelligence by gamma radiation. Among his various obsessions is that he wants to create more gamma mutates, and he has repeatedly launched schemes to expose the public to gamma radiation, hoping that the few survivors would develop powers. He successfully gamma bombed a little town and did wind up with a handful of new mutates, along with a whole town full of dead innocent people.
    • In Marvel Zombies, even though he's not infected by the interdimensional zombie plague, Reed Richards nonetheless infects his entire team with said plague, claiming that it's the best course of evolution mankind has been presented with. Being an expendable Crapsack World, this is just the beginning...
    • One issue of New Warriors has the team fight a supervillain team named Eugenix whose goal is to improve the human race by killing or sterilizing everyone who they deem genetically inferior.
    • Miles Warren a.k.a. the Jackal from Spider-Man has a lot of fun cloning Peter Parkers (and Gwen Stacys). Most of the blame for The Clone Saga is his.
    • Gregory Starkfrom The Ultimates is so good at this, and at so many other things, that he made clones of the Hulk (with Bruce Banner's intellect) and Spider-Man just in his free time.
    • X-Men has a few examples of its own. Mister Sinister is the most obvious, a Victorian-era British eugenicist implied to be directly responsible for the abundance of mutants in the modern world due to the strange, forbidden experiments he conducted in his day. His benefactor Apocalypse is of the less scientific "fight to the death and prove your worth" variety. Magneto has also dabbled in this with his creation of the Mutates, genetically altered mutant Mooks created when the normal-variety mutants just weren't cutting it in his Super Supremacist army.
  • The Transformers Megaseries has Jhiaxus, who among other things introduced gender to Cybertron just because he could (never mind that the person he did this to went insane in the process), and Combining Mecha (which was also insane), not to mention turning an entire planet into a replica Cybertron. It's implied that he did this to more than one planet. Just because he wanted to accelerate Cybertronian evolution.
  • Zenith: Dr. Payne created the second generation superhumans with the explicit intent that they replace humanity. They did... after a fashion.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Amazing Spider-Man: Dr. Connors is driven by a vision of a "world without weakness" in which everyone is equal, the limits of the human body having been overcome through science. While he has traces of the Lizard virus in his system, he comes to the conclusion that his Lizard form is a superior creature devoid of human weaknesses, and that his vision can be made a reality by making everyone like him, even if that means forcing the change upon everyone against their will.
    The Lizard: I sought to create a stronger human being, but there's no such thing! Human beings are weak, pathetic, feeble-minded creatures... why be human at all, when we can be so much more?
  • The Car: Road to Revenge: Talen, the Big Bad, believes that he is perfecting humanity and giving it the tools it needs to survive. He secures test subjects through kidnapping and human trafficking and pays his gang by installing cybernetic upgrades in them.
  • Fight Club: Tyler Durden has the motivation, but not the methodology. He believes society and rampant consumerism are stagnating human development. Rather than combat this with mad science, however, he plans to force humanity to "evolve, and let the chips fall where they may" by crashing the global economy.
  • The Fly (1986): For a stretch, Seth Brundle becomes this. After successfully teleporting himself through space via his telepods, Seth has remarkably enhanced strength, stamina, virility, etc. He believes this to be a wonderful unintentional result of the teleportation process, and that anyone else who uses the teleporter will become a superperson. Thus, he starts pressuring his lover Veronica to be teleported — "And I won't wear you out; we'll be the perfect couple! The Dynamic Duo!" When she objects — both due to her nervousness about the process and the stranger changes she's seeing in him, such as odd hairs growing out of a wound on his back, a pronounced Sweet Tooth, and his less-dorky personality — he is furious, declares her a coward, and sets out to find "someone who'll keep up with me", leading to a tryst with another woman. Only Veronica's timely arrival at the loft stops him from forcibly teleporting her. Shortly after this he comes to realize what's actually happening to him — a fly was in the teleporter when he made his fateful trip, and he was genetically fused with it. He is slowly becoming a hideous Half-Human Hybrid of human and insect; all of the "improvements" are a result of this and the downside is just beginning to show. This realization smashes this trope and his ego to pieces.
  • In The Freakmaker, Prof. Nolter believes that creating a race of human/plant hybrids will save the human race by eliminating starvation. He undertakes his research by having The Igor abduct university students so he can experiment on them.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: The High Evolutionary is such a heinous villain because of how he experiments on any living organism to create the "perfect species". Some notable despicable acts he committed include torturing a young Rocket Raccoon, creating a machine that causes animals to rapidly (and painfully) evolve into sentient anthropomorphized beings and destroying an entire planet of his own living creations because of their imperfections.
  • The various film adaptations of The Island of Doctor MoreauIsland of Lost Souls, The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) — make Dr. Moreau into one of these. The original Moreau in the book wasn't trying to improve the species (ours or otherwise), but rather to refine and explore the limits of his unorthodox surgical techniques.
  • Island of the Fishmen: Amanda's father, Professor Ernest Marvin, has been experimenting on the native humans of the island in order to create a race of amphibious humanoid creatures that will replace humanity as the Earth's dominant species once humans go extinct.
  • James Bond:
    • In Moonraker, Big Bad Hugo Drax's scheme is to wipe out humanity with a human-specific poison pollen plant, then repopulate the Earth with the pairs of perfect supermodels he has kept out of harm's way on his space shuttle/Noah's Ark.
    • A View to a Kill: Carl Mortner, The Dragon to Max Zorin, is a Josef Mengele expy who partook in a Super Breeding Program to create Super Soldiers for the Nazis during World War II. His thinking regarding selective breeding has shades of The Social Darwinist, commenting how his principles on horse breeding can be also applied to create the "ideal" human. In fact, he did indeed create a generation of extremely intelligent psychopaths, Zorin being one of them. This isn't surprising, as the real Nazis also believed in (and attempted) this.
  • In A Jolly Bad Fellow, Professor Bowles-Otterly is a Social Darwinist who advocates the removal of those he considers useless to society. However, he veers into Eviutionary Biologist territory when he also advocates the euthanasia of the insane, the physically deformed, the mentally deficient, et cetera.
  • Jurassic Park: Doctor Henry Wu seems to be shaping up to be this in the ongoing Jurassic World trilogy. According to his actor, B.D Wong, the main reason Wu has created such nefarious experiments like the Indominus rex and the Indoraptor (both of whom are basically Ax-Crazy dinosaurian bioweapons) is because he seemingly believes he's truly looking at some sort of bigger picture for our planet.
  • In Kamen Rider: The First, the Nebulous Evil Organisation Shocker's name stands for "Sacred Hegemony of Cycle Kindred Evolutional Realm".
  • Man of Steel: Faora, one of the villains, delivers a lengthy speech to Superman about how "evolution always wins".
  • The Man with Two Brains: Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr is in many ways one of these; as well as being not-quite-all-there and his developing God-complex, he confidently predicts a day where his research will allow "brilliant minds to live on in the bodies of dumb people" and the like. He's somewhat lacking in the evil department, though, as for all the Mad Scientist Character Development that occurs, he's a bit too decent and moral to actually kill in order to achieve his ends.
  • Dr. Mirakle, the villain of Murders in the Rue Morgue. Although insane, his theory of the descent of man from ape ancestors is impressive, given that the film is set 15 years before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species (though it had already been posited before).
  • Painkiller Jane: Erfan enhances humans through genetic modification, saying they'll achieve a higher state of evolution in doing so.
  • Prometheus: Attempting to make something better than humans, David conducts experiments with the Chemical A0-3959X.91–15 mutagen that eventually result in the creation of the Xenomorphs.
  • Resident Evil Film Series: The Umbrella Corporation has shades of this. They started out as just making biological weapons, but upon discovering the zombies the virus created may have useful properties they began conducting super soldier experiments with the same virus. One of the scientists becomes infected himself, overdoses on the vaccine, and turns into a zombie/human/something else hybrid and declares himself the next evolutionary step.
  • Saw: Jigsaw isn't a scientist, but rather an engineer, which still fits the trope well; instead of participating in scientific experimentation, he uses the applied science of engineering to build Death Traps. Similarly, his concerns are social rather than biological or genetic — he's disgusted with the indolence and sloth he sees surrounding him; without the "will to live", humanity would face extinction. His preferred solution is to force people in Deadly Games where they have to mutilate themselves or kill someone else.
  • In Scream and Scream Again, Dr. Browning is looking to create the race of perfect beings by removing limbs and organs from the undeserving and giving them to the worthy.
  • The Spirit: The Octopus is trying to find the secret to immortality and godhood. He actually created the titular hero in one of his experiments when he brought a dead cop back to life. The Octopus' Mooks are also apparently artificial creations.
  • Professor Martin Collingwood from The Titan is seeking to genetically transform the volunteer test subjects so they can survive on Titan. His goal is laudatory in that he's trying to save the human race, but when the subjects start dying or going insane, he's urged to stop and reevaluate the results. He refuses to do so because right now he has the funding and support for his project and wants to race ahead while he has the chance, even though he admits he has no idea what the end result will be.
  • The Werewolf has two of these, who both subvert the one in I Was a Teenage Werewolf and then actually exceed his stupidity. They seize upon an innocent man lost in their remote mountain village and inject him with 'irradiated wolf's blood', causing his transformation. They don't view the werewolf as an evolutionary breakthrough, but as something to be avoided, since they feel this is the fate of a post-apocalyptic humanity, to become ravening beasts once the bombs fall (as always, viewed as inevitable in this era, both in real life and twice over in films). They turn this man into the werewolf so that they can figure out how to let 'geniuses' like themselves survive with their intellects intact. But they like so many others in this trope prove Too Dumb to Live while still managing to be the direct cause of a serious Downer Ending. The lead one was particularly Jerkass and really earned his mauling.
  • In X-Men: First Class, Sebastian Shaw believes that mutants are further along the evolutionary chain than ordinary humans, therefore they should inherit the earth. And by the end of the film, he's convinced others, perhaps more than he wishes he had:
    Erik Lensherr: If you're in there, I'd like you to know that I agree with every word you said. We are the future. But, unfortunately, you killed my mother.

    Literature 
  • Alliance/Union: Union uses Uterine Replicators to produce Azi, who are graded by intelligence from Alpha highest down (Rho is mentioned to be the lowest class used as a production-line type). Subverted however, in that the science is handled relatively well, each class consists of multiple genetic types, and the standard practice is to include as much genetic diversity in a population as possible — indeed, one of the purposes of the Azi is to increase the genetic diversity of the space stations they populate. Your Mileage May Vary as to how evil Ariane Emory is, however. In a further subversion of the idea, Alpha Azi are not usually leaders — they take too long to make decisions because they tend to wait for all the information to become available. Betas make better officers.
  • In The Beasts Of Valhalla by George C. Chesbro, Siegmund Loge is a Nobelist (often a bad sign in Chesbro's work), famed for his work on a mathematical tool used to predict whether a species is too far along the road to extinction to be saved. In his unpublished, un-peer-reviewed work, he has come to the conclusion that humanity is a doomed species and must be forced to mutate into Mix-and-Match Critters to give it a chance to try again. Experiments on human subjects who didn't volunteer, check. German background, check; bonus, in that he is a fanatical Richard Wagner fan. He looks like Santa Claus, has a great public image and has awesome talents in attracting black budget funding from governments who don't know he's on other people's payrolls or what his agenda is.
  • In The Beginning After the End, The Vritra Clan according to Windsom are considered an anomaly among asuras as they are scientists who are constantly studying insights on the workings of mana to evolove their mana arts. After Agrona Vritra Start of Darkness and becoming the Big Bad of the story when he attempted to reveal the truth about the Djinn genocide committed by the Indrath clan regarding aether knowledge. Agrona began experimenting and interbreeding with all of Alacrya to get revenge against Kezess Indrath and all of the Epheotus for betraying and exiling him unjustly. Agrona's experiments lasted for a hundred generations resulted in creation of the wraiths, Vritra blooded Alacryans, scythes, retainers and a very powerful alacryan war machine making a case of a Bad Ass Army and an averted case of Crippling Over Specialization despite that it resulted in the death of many Alacryans as a failed experiments.
  • Subverted in Beyond This Horizon. The world government genetically engineers everybody for maximum genetic perfection (or, at least, elimination of imperfection), except for a carefully guarded population of "control naturals", and strongly encourages particularly hopeful genetic matches, as between the hero and heroine. The subversion is that this is presented as entirely a good thing. (This society is sometimes described as a "socialist" state but bears more in common with Technocracy. Everybody gets a small annual dividend from the output of the whole global economy as if it were a corporation in which all are stockholders; control naturals get a larger dividend, enough for a livable income, in compensation for their genetic inferiority and inability to compete with the average person.)
  • Subverted in Brave New World. The World State engineers everyone into five castes, Alpha through Epsilon, ranked by intelligence. The point is to keep everything exactly the way it is forever; technological progress is restrained for the same reason. The Savage asks World Controller Mustapha Mond "If you can get anything you want out of those bottles, why not make everybody an Alpha-double-plus?" Mond says they once tried colonizing an island with nothing but Alphas as an experiment, but it quickly degenerated into civil war; everybody wanted to be boss, and nobody wanted to do the scutwork. Brave New World is especially dystopian in that the lower intelligence of the lower castes is not a natural product of genetic variability or even "evolution" in the usual sense. Instead, they've been deliberately handicapped by the introduction of toxins during gestation and development.
  • An ironic step-sibling of this trope forms the basis of The Chrysalids. In a post-apocalyptic future (the apocalypse is phrased in religious terms by the characters as "The Tribulation" and implied to have been a nuclear disaster or war), a primitive, theocratic society seeks to exterminate all mutants, whether plant, animal or human. While not Social Darwinists or scientists, the members of this culture are nevertheless striving to "restore" the purity of life on Earth, in an effort to get back into God's good graces.
  • Curiosity House: Nicholas Rattigan, the Big Bad, was driven insane by the atrocities of World War II and thinks the only way to save humans from dying in such horrific ways again is to induce special abilities that will make them harder to kill, even if it means caging test subjects like animals and risking some not surviving the processes. The four protagonists learn in the first book they are the few successful results of Rattigan's experiments.
  • Ender's Shadow: Dr. Volescu genetically engineers super-intelligent humans who have super-short lifespans as a side-effect.
  • Fingerprints: The doctor who first researched psychic abilities, Steve Mercer, eventually came to regret his work and tried to undo it but did not perform a Heel–Face Turn and remained a Well-Intentioned Extremist — just one with different intentions.
  • Galactic Milieu features Marc Remiliard, whose goal is to accelerate the psychic development of the human race to the same level as his prochronistic mutant brother Jac a disembodied brain. He has good PR and merely tells everyone that he wants to let people adopt some cool Designer Babies.
  • Ghost Walkers: Dr. Peter Whitney cruelly experimented on orphan girls by inserting animal DNA and altering their psychic abilities. After it went wrong, he tried again with soldiers. Whitney is a genius and has developed many scientific breakthroughs, but he doesn't really worry about ethics or other people.
  • The Golden Hamster Saga: Professor Fleischkopf, the villain of Freddy in Peril, dissects hamsters' brains while they're still alive in order to research the nature of the mind. He hopes to discover the genetic underpinnings of intelligence so he can rid the world of "knuckleheads".
  • Frank Herbert:
    • In two of the author's fictional settings, the planets Dosadi and Salusa Secundus are both brutally inhospitable prison worlds created to force the beings left on them to adapt and become stronger. The effect seen is more of a cultural (and physical conditioning) change than evolution, though.
    • Also in Dune, there's the Bene Tleilax which created such things as Face Dancers that later on in the series can become "perfect mimics" by absorbing the memories of the individual they've... replaced.
  • Honor Harrington: The only type of biologist in the employ of Manpower Inc. They not only use genetic engineering to breed slaves for unscrupulous purposes, but they also utilize the experience from this practice to improve themselves, as they feel that natural evolution is too slow.
  • Humanx Commonwealth: The Meliorare Society is a group of brilliant scientists and genetic engineers who recklessly violated proscriptions against human eugenics in order to "explore the potential of the human genome". They worked by posing as fertility specialists, among other things, with the plan to reclaim the "superior" children once they started manifesting powers and thereby prove themselves to the galaxy. Instead, several of their more grotesque failures came to light and they were outlawed and hunted down. Those not killed outright were subjected to selective mindwipe, and all of the subjects that could be found were either given mercy killings or "altered" to be as normal as possible. The last few remaining Meliorares went into hiding, carrying their dreams of vindication with them. Flinx, the main protagonist, is one of the subjects who slipped through the cracks, mainly by not manifesting his awesome Psychic Powers until much later in his life, and he has several encounters with Meliorare fugitives who attempt to "reclaim" him. This has not ended well for them.
  • An unusual aversion appears in The Island of Doctor Moreau. While Moreau does conduct horrific experiments on animals with the intent to uplift them to human form, he is more concerned with perfecting his surgical techniques than how the products of his efforts would benefit evolution. He even remarks that he could just as well have turned sheep into llamas as animals into humans; the latter was simply more artistically satisfying to him.
  • Jacob's Ladder Trilogy: The Builders who created Jacob's Ladder belonged to a religious cult of Evilutionary Biologists who believed that humanity could only advance by facing constant adversity. They expected and indeed hoped for massive amounts of suffering and death among the crew in order to make the survivors stronger.
  • Joe Ledger: Cyrus Jakoby in Dragon Factory plans to purify humanity of all "inferior" races through genetically-modified diseases — but he also creates a race of perfect slaves to toil for the remaining few. Not surprising, since in reality, he's Josef Mengele himself.
  • A Macabre Myth of a Moth-Man has no less than three. Vincent Mordein tried to unlock the secrets of the human brain and ended up sticking a penny-sized chip in Jack Daw's head, giving him the ability to control crows. Dr. Wu performed gene-splicing on multiple subjects, including Ozzy and Moth-man. And Dante Eclipse performed experiments on the cult he heads, believing that humanity is inherently flawed and that they must transcend their species to survive.
  • In Oryx and Crake, Crake is the consummate Evilutionary Biologist. He designs a new, "perfected" species of human, the Children of Crake, and decides that humans must be destroyed to make room for them. This plan is pretty much entirely successful; while the super-plague he creates doesn't quite kill everyone, there is absolutely no hope of human civilization ever coming back.
  • In SilverFin, Lord Randolph Hellebore is obsessed with breeding the perfect soldier and is not above experimenting his brother and son in pursuit of his goal.
  • Cyrus, the main villain of Space Assassin, is a cruel despot who travels across the galaxy in his Planet Spaceship and regularly sends his robotic minions to abduct sentient lifeforms on various planets for him to mutant, transform and dissect to his liking. His lair is filled with mutated minions of his working, the scariest being a six-armed Frankensteinian Monster called a "Deity" which is seemingly made by stitching together a dozen differrent life forms.
  • The Space Trilogy: In the first book, Professor Weston develops interplanetary travel so humanity and their descendants (whatever they evolve into) could go out into the stars and survive throughout the cosmos. However, Weston doesn't care that this plan may involve wiping out other intelligent life. (In the second book, he abandons this goal in favor of a New Age-y philosophy he dubs "Spiritual Evolution", which has nothing to do with this trope.) The trope is taken further in the third book, in which the N.I.C.E. plans to replace all organic life with a machine life.
  • Starship's Mage: The Eugenicists in the backstory started out by quietly manipulating human lineages on Earth to encourage magic in their families. They later took over the Mars colony and began overtly controlling the population and force-breeding test subjects, triggering a war with Earth.
  • Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars: The scientists of Chrysalis are attempting to make a new breed of humanity to inherit the world. They're even developing a special strain of streptococcus that the supermen are immune to so they can clear the way for them.
  • Tarzan: "God" from Tarzan and the Lion-Man is an English Mad Scientist who came to Africa to conduct genetic and evolutionary experiments on gorillas. He rejuvenated himself with gorilla genes, but gradually assumed their physical characteristics.
  • Downplayed in This Immortal. George Emmet is not the villain of the piece but lives purely For Science! and exhibits a Lack of Empathy, which causes him to do whatever he thinks would improve a species without considering what the moral implications would be. When, at the end of the book, his wife Ellen is pregnant again, he wants to try embryo surgery to create a child capable of breathing underwater... Ellen isn't having any of that, though.
  • The Turner Diaries by white-supremacist William Luther Pierce (writing as Andrew Macdonald) recounts a racial war that ends with the death of all Jews, nonwhites and "mongrels" — all of them, everywhere in the world. Most white people also die in the fighting and general disruption; the population of the United States is reduced to 50 million. Only those bearing "especially valuable genes" survive. This fulfills the dream of the "Great One" (Hitler) for an "all-White world." The historical Hitler would at least have allowed the non-whites to live on as slaves. The necessity of this appears to be based on "Cosmotheism," a belief-system that is Pierce's own invention, which is a curious mishmash of the seemingly incompatible beliefs of racism and panentheism, firmly advocating Goal-Oriented Evolution that he claimed would lead white people to the status of God.
  • In Veniss Underground, Quin wants to eradicate humanity in order to pave the way for his genetically engineered meerkats to become the new dominant species.
  • Vorkosigan Saga: The Cetagandan haut caste, especially the women, are basically running a very long-term genetic engineering project to turn themselves into Transhuman Aliens.
  • The Wheel of Time: Aginor, one of the Forsaken, is revealed to have been personally responsible for the creation of all of the Big Bad's monstrous Mooks, having performed Josef Mengele-esque experiments on his fellow human beings by the thousandfold.
  • X-Wing Series: Dr. Edda Gast was a biologist working at Project Chubar "humanizing" alien species so Zsing could make use of them as minions. This involves tortuously altering them to "improve" them against their will. While the uncle, who originally led the project, had eventually killed himself in guilt along with his favorite subjects after coming to love them, Gast feels absolutely no remorse. Indeed, she never displays any caring for anyone else at all.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Babylon 5: Both the Shadows and the Vorlons attempted to force the evolutionary development of the younger races. Disagreement about the best way to go about this eventually led to all-out war.
  • In The Boys (2019), Evil, Inc. Vought's founder Frederick Vought was a Nazi geneticist who invented their Super Serum with the intent of elevating white people into a Master Race of supermen.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In the fourth season, Adam plans to combine demon and human parts to create a superior race.
  • Doctor Who:
    • John Lumic, creator of the "parallel Earth" Cybermen, sees his creations in this way. Davros, in the original series, created the Daleks for much the same reason.
    • And the Daleks themselves, who in "Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of the Daleks" tried to create Dalek/Human hybrids to overcome their weaknesses — only for Dalek Sec to be influenced a little too much by his new human side. He, naturally, pays the price.
    • In the episode "The Face of Evil", all of the characters are victims of a eugenics experiment being run by Xoanon. By and large, they bear him no hard feelings for it afterwards.
    • In Big Finish Doctor Who, Rassilon, Founder of Time Lord Society, tried to prevent any races evolving that could threaten the Time Lords. He seeded other worlds to make sure life like the Time Lords would evolve and imprisoned races in other universes which are in the dungeons of his Foundry.
  • In Heroes, Arthur Petrelli wants to make Super Serum generally available for this reason.
  • In Kagaku Sentai Dynaman, the villains' collective name is the Jashinka — from jashin (evil god) and shinka (evolution). In other words, their name actually translates to "Evilution". However, their plan to convert humans doesn't go so well, so they go the usual mass destruction route.
  • Law & Order: SVU: In "Design" Dr. McManus is very concerned by what he perceives as a drop in average IQ, so he's paying men with high ones to donate sperm hoping it can be raised. Stabler calls him a Nazi trying to make a master race. Cragen refers to him as "Dr. Frankenstein". Wong says he's considered brilliant in the genetics field and invented many highly innovative selection techniques, but his eugenicist views are very controversial. However, he seems to abide by medical ethics, though his daughter April (unbeknownst to him) certainly does not.
  • Midsomer Murders: The mastermind behind the murders in "Master Class" is obsessed with the work of Sir Francis Galton, the developer of eugenics, and particularly his belief that 'imperfections' could be bred out of the human race. He attempts to put this theory into practice with his own family.
  • Murdoch Mysteries: In "Future Imperfect", Dr. Dryus Alger is a prominent member of the Eugenics Society who is abducting dogs and conducting illegal experiments in his attempts to 'perfect' humanity.
  • Orphan Black: Dr. Aldous Leekie's Neolution movement is all about "self-directed evolution" and he sees no problem in creating human clones or experimenting on them to advance this goal.
  • Primeval: Helen Cutter is a different kind of Evilutionary Biologist: in her own words, she wants to save the world, not humanity. She ends up going back to the Pliocene to kill hominids and prevent the human race from ever evolving.
  • Stargate Atlantis: Michael eventually becomes one of these, with his plans to create a race of human-Wraith hybrids and wipe everyone else out. His first experiments were possibly the most atrocious, with him forcibly implanting people with Iratus bug eggs so he could find out the effect of different levels of DNA from either species, creating some sort of Xenomorph Xeroxes in the process.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Dominion establishes its rule through this trope. Their stormtroopers are bred from birth to fight and made dependent on drugs to keep them docile. Their emissaries are programmed to believe the Founders (the head honchos) are gods. The Dominion isn't above letting loose a super-plague to punish insurgents, either. Not that the Federation is above it, either. However, the Federation expressly bans genetic augmentation, which is a major plot point for one of the characters who was illegally genetically modified as a child. While said character (Dr. Bashir) turned out for the better, many of his other cohorts weren't so lucky.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise:
    • Dr. Arik Soong is the more benign flavor of Evilutionary Biologist, balking at his creations' evil natures. He later switches to machines, and his descendant in Star Trek: The Next Generation ends up being just a really innovative scientist (however, even his first creation turns evil).
    • Dr. Phlox in "Dear Doctor", in which he refuses to help the Valakians despite having a cure to the plague that's threatening to wipe out their entire species. Why would the good doctor refuse to help them, you might you ask? Because the Menk, a Neanderthal-like subspecies that lives on the planet, will apparently only reach their evolutionary breakthrough once the Valakians are dead. Despite the fact there is absolutely no proof that they will evolve or that the presence of the Valakians is hindering their development in anyway. Particularly baffling, since without the Valakians, the Menk would have died out centuries ago.
  • Time After Time: Dr. Edward Munroe is an unhinged geneticist intent on improving humans by enhancing them with a serum he's created. Unfortunately, it's turned all his subjects into homicidal maniacs thus far, but he doesn't let that stop him. He's delighted after getting ahold of John, who was Jack the Ripper, believing that his DNA is the key to fixing this. Appropriately, he also serves In-Universe as the inspiration of the eponymous doctor in The Island of Doctor Moreau. Like most, he explicitly claims "survival of the fittest" rules, while mentioning John as being the "next stage of evolution", indicating his poor evolutionary knowledge (unsurprisingly).

    Tabletop Games 
  • Airship Pirates: The backstory involves an Evilutionary Biologist that confined most of humanity to fortified Victorian cities and let the rest of the world get taken over by nature.
  • Magic: The Gathering:
    • This is a common archetype for Blue/Green characters and factions, as Green is the color of nature and living things and Blue the color of science, progress, and embracing change for its own sake while discarding old traditions. The result often tends to be a philosophy that's big on preserving and propagating nature and living things while eagerly "improving" them as needed. One such group is the Simic Combine of Ravnica, a guild ostensibly focused on medical and agricultural research but in practice very much this trope. Their projects have included biological grafts meant to give their bearers new and useful organs and more recently the krasis, biological chimeras of various creatures meant to thrive in Ravnica's endless cityscapes — crocodile frogs, fish people, sharktocrabs, snake-headed jellyfish and so on — which are then let loose in the world.
    • Then there was Yawgmoth, a firm believer that strength came from conflict. And then he created a biomechanical hell named Phyrexia where Cybernetics Eat Your Soul.
    • In New Phyrexia, three of the five Phyrexian factions are this to varying degrees. Jin-Gitaxias of the Blue faction is one to the greatest extent (the name of his faction, The Progress Engine, is saying something). The leaders of the Green Vicious Swarm, Vorinclex and Glissa, are all about "encouraging" natural selection instead, via extreme predation and survival of the fittest. And the White Machine Orthodoxy wishes to either unite all beings into one (by stitching them all together!) or to transform them all into "perfect" soulless dolls. The two factions not concerned with this are the Black Seven Steel Thanes (who are too occupied trying to slit each other's throats over becoming the new Father of Machines) and the Red leader of the Quiet Furnace, Urabrask the Hidden, who just wants everybody else to leave him and his servants in peace.
  • Rifts has Dr. Desmond Bradford. He is head of the Lone Star Complex, a Pre-Rifts genetic engineering facility that experimented in intelligent mutant animals. Bradford has created a variety of mutant animal soldiers for the Coalition States, but also secretly performs experiments on humans, attempting to create powerful psychic humans. Note that even the Coalition would pale if they knew what he was up to. Not that Bradford cares; he literally believes that he is a god and above such petty things as "morals" or "ethical concerns".
  • Siren: The Drowning features Echidna, leader of the Current of Oceanus, who wishes to improve Humanity through her experiences so they will have more chance to survive the upcoming Deluge. Unfortunately, she is completely insane, and does so by turning any human she gets her hands into monstrous non-sapient Fish Person called a Voldianoi.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness features Doctor Feral. A wealthy humanitarian scientist of Scrupulous alignment, the good Doctor spends his time honestly working toward a better future for all of humanity. His list of medical advances is long, he donates his medical expertise to assist in difficult cases, and even paid to send his maid's children to college. Too bad he only thinks of human life as being sacred and can routinely be found vivisecting sentient mutant animals in his underground lab while he works on that human immortality drug which he is pretty sure he is close to finishing. In a game where all the characters are intelligent mutant animals he tends to come off as a less than altruistic person.
  • Transhuman Space is a relatively low-key near-ish future SF setting, and so doesn't feature very many mad scientists. However, genetic engineering is quite advanced, and some of its practitioners do slip into a tendency to do things just because they can.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • Fabius Bile, like most things in the setting, is this trope turned up to eleven. His master race are superpowered versions of the existing Super Soldiers, with the difference that they're all homicidal megalomaniacs, and he's turned the population of entire planets into shambling mutants with his experiments. Oh, and did we mention that his labcoat is sewn from human skin? His most ambitious project: to clone the Emperor.
    • Tzeentch, the Master of Change. His entire existence is based on evolution, so his followers enjoy having random "gifts" happening at any moment (read: every moment). Which leads into...
    • An inversion by Ahriman, who turned the entire Thousand Sons legion (the ones loyal to Tzeentch) into living coffins to stop the mutations/evolution. Needless to say, he is not well liked, even among the Thousand Sons.
    • Unlike most Genestealer Cults, the Cult of the Twisted Helix was created by the deliberate machinations of its human subjects. The scientists and researchers of the medical-industrial world Vejovium III were able to produce a serum from the dissection and study of captive Genestealers that they believed would allow them to achieve immortality and biological perfection. The original batches of the serum simply transformed their test subjects into Genestealer hybrids, but the cult's leadership, now long-since transformed into equivalents of magi and biophagi, continues to experiment and seek true perfection. Most of their experiments result in their test subjects becoming twisted monsters — aberrants, metamorphs and more unique horrors — that are put to use as shock troops to fuel the cult's hunger for resources and fresh guinea pigs.

    Video Games 
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum: The Riddler comes off as shades of this, justifying his actions by pointing out that if the residents of Gotham weren't so stupid, they wouldn't die in his traps.
  • Binary Domain: Yoji Amada Junior's goal is to create a new race of androids who will infiltrate civilization and... live, eventually supplanting humanity as a saner dominant species in the long run. Note that he doesn't care about the rest of humanity; he just believes that the world is on the brink and that his creations will not survive otherwise. The hollow children's ability to literally interbreed with actual humans to create Hybrids, purely biological genetically modified humans, is the main shocker.
  • BioShock:
  • Breath of Fire III: Palet wanted to revive his dead mother, and was very willing to break the laws of nature to do so.
  • Chrono Trigger: If you bring Lucca and/or Robo to the final battle, they reveal that Lavos has the DNA of all living creatures on Earth inside of itself. Then they work out why: Lavos caused human evolution from primitive cavemen to modern-day humanity. Why? Because it's a Planet Eater, and sentient life is more filling, particularly if it's intelligent.
  • Code Vein: Juzo Mido believes that Revenants can evolve beyond what humanity assumed they were capable of, and to that end he did countless experiments on the orphan children in his care. The vast majority of these experiments ended with the children becoming powerful Lost under Mido's control. Worse, he wants to remove the Red Mist keeping Revenants trapped because he believes that only by fighting the world-ending "horrors" outside can the revenants evolve further. He doesn't particularly care that this will most likely kill nearly all of them.
  • In Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, Kane's primary plot is to build and launch a world-altering Tiberium missile that will spread Tiberium across the entire planet. He states that this will trigger the next step of humanity's evolution as a species.
  • Cookie Run: Dr. Wasabi Cookie uses her Wasabi Syrup to mutate the genetic makeup of her subjects, thus setting off the chain of events that happen in her Island of Memories, as well as the story line of Cookie Wars.
  • Crash Bandicoot: Drs. Neo Cortex and Nitrus Brio, who both created the Evolvo-Raynote  that created most of the mutant animals, Crash included.
  • Criminal Case: Grimsborough: Kelly Speltz, one of the suspects in Case 21. She's been known to perform illegal experiments on animals which she claims will make humanity better than it is now and she also created the serum that killed Rachel Priest.
    Speltz: People don't recognize my genius often enough. They call my work inhumane and try to have me shut down. Such as that rotten reporter, Rachel Priest. She even tried to have me stop experimenting on animals! I don't even know what she's talking about! My latest guard dog has survived every single experiment so far. No, people like Rachel don't realize I'm doing the work of God: I'm trying to create a new, better, stronger humanity!
  • Dead Space features two Mad Scientists; one relatively helpful and benign despite his insanity, and one who is more clearly villainous. The evil one is an evilutionary biologist, and more than happy to sic his nigh-invulnerable genetically engineered super monster on you.
  • The primary plot of Dragon Quest IV concerns the application of the "Secret of Evolution" to make monsters into more powerful monsters.
  • Fallout:
    • Deathclaws and mole rats were developed pre-war as biological weapons against China. Deathclaws were developed for close combat and search-and-destroy missions, while mole rats were developed to be an invasive species to be seeded in enemy territory. While mole rats are relatively harmless, can be domesticated, and have a genetic kill switch, deathclaws are 9-10 feet tall and live up to their name, and are capable of breeding.
    • The Master from the first Fallout is very much an adherent of Evilutionary tenets in the Well-Intentioned Extremist mold (certainly, the backdrop of a post-nuclear apocalypse lends his reasoning some gravitas). Science characters, after passing a skill check, can point out that the Master's Super Mutants are entirely sterile and thus doomed to extinction. They're actually physically incapable of biological evolution.
    • The Enclave, the adversary of the sequel Fallout 2, is in fact a kind of inversion of this trope. Being among the last "pure-breed humans" in the world, they plan to commit genocide on all of the various mutated strains of humanity that have cropped up, effectively "turning back the clock" on evolution. It is up for discussion whether one of the optional courses of action towards the end of the game, in which the Player Character convinces one of the scientists responsible for the plan to turn the WMD they had intended to use for this upon his fellows instead, is a case of using the Evilutionary argument in a more "benign" context.
    • Fallout: New Vegas: The Old World Blues DLC has the Think Tanks, with Dr. Borous in particular being responsible for the Cazadores and Nightstalkers (which he claims are as docile as they are sterile) as well as subjecting his dog Gabe to some pretty terrible experiments (though it's possible to make him feel regret for the latter). They're also responsible for a special spore that infects living people and have made lobotomized people into psychotic zombies (or Lobotomites), a process that you barely manage to survive due to the bullet in your head from the beginning of the game.
    • Fallout 4: The Institute (basically MIT in post-apocalyptia) generally focuses on creating merciless cyborgs, making breakthroughs in science and technology with no sense of control for the social ramifications, and crushing anyone who could interfere with their work. They're considered the bad guys because even though they mean well and can be highly rational, they've cut themselves off from the Commonwealth and treat its people like toys. This includes testing the FEV on them and loosing any "failures" upon the Commonwealth as the Super Mutants. The head of the project sabotaged the lab because nothing was getting done, yet the CEO kept ordering him to continue with the project and turn the "failures" loose, without so much as even an observational capacity. They don't treat the synths they create any better than they do the people of the Commonwealth either.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy IV: Dr. Lugae, the original Evilutionary Biologist and Mad Scientist featured in the series.
    • Final Fantasy VII: Professor Hojo embodies every trope associated to Evilutionary Biologists and Mad Scientists. A thoroughly nasty piece of work, he's pretty much responsible for almost all the tragedies and deaths in the game and its spinoffs.
    • Final Fantasy XIV: One of those serving Zenos yae Galvus in the expansion pack Stormblood is the Garlean scientist Aulus mal Asina. Asina views the Empire's Magitek weaponry as "an extrinsic solution to an intrinsic problem", namely the Garlen race's complete inability to use magic. With Zenos' personal endorsement, Asina has performed hundreds of human experiments to "correct" that issue and bestow magic powers on those who were not born with the ability, or further the power of one who could use magic to begin with.
    • Final Fantasy Brave Exvius: Dr. Lazarov is a twisted, amoral, unethical, inhuman, raving lunatic with a depraved personality and a sociopathic disregard for human life. An Immortality Seeker that will not stop at anything to accomplish his goal, there's no line he will not cross. Lazarov pretty much admits the only reason he's working for the Six Sworn of Paladia is because the war they wage will leave a nice amount of fresh corpses on its wake... fresh corpses he will put to good use.
  • In Headhunter, the Big Bad, unbeknownst to The Dragon, was creating a race of super-humans, the first of which he called... Adam. He was also releasing a virus that would wipe out humanity (himself included) and which Adam was immune to — any humans left alive would be quickly wiped off the face of the Earth by Adam. Since there was only one creature (so no Eve) made and "he" didn't have any genitalia, it's not very clear how said super-race would have been built.
  • In I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, Nimdok's story involves him facing the fact that he was a Nazi scientist and Josef Mengele's partner and atoning for his actions. His experiments later come back to bite him when AM uses them (for example, a youth serum created via the deaths of countless Jewish children) to torture him and the other remaining humans.
  • Mass Effect: Shepard's crew can't go two weeks without tripping over some hideously immoral experiment. Usually involving Cerberus or the Reapers in some manner.
  • Mega Man X: Quite a few villains follow the robotic version of this, trying to improve the technological advancement of their species beyond what humans made them for. Lumine and Sigma (in the MHX remake) actually mention evolution. In the Mega Man ZX, both Serpent and much more notably Master Albert fit this trope to a T. In addition, it is possible that Master Thomas is an example of this trope as well. Prometheus calls out Albert on this point, however, declaring that his grand plan of evolution is nothing but a farce and "epic sham", and considering Albert's A God Am I tendencies, he might have something of a point.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty's infamous Gainax Ending had the Colonel A.I. justifying the Patriots by referring to this with regards to cultural evolution, considering the Internet to be what disrupted natural selection. (Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots reveals that they were probably less than honest about this motivation.)
  • The New Order Last Days Of Europe features Trofim Lysenko, the technocratic ruler of Magnitogorsk. A historical person known for his pseudoscientific beliefs and ardent support of Lamarckist interpretations that living organisms inherit the acquired traits of their forebears and that plants can acquire desirable traits if they grow under extreme duress, he came to the "realization" that this can apply to humans, too, and to promote the desirable traits is necessary for mankind's benefit. In the abandoned city of Magnitogorsk, Lysenko set up a massive system of "experimental chambers", where kidnapped people are subjected to torture in his futile attempts to confirm those theories and turn prisoners into Super Soldiers that will help him to liberate the war-torn Russia from Nazi Germans and warlords.
  • Nintendo Wars: Caulder, the Big Bad of Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. Strictly speaking, "evolution" isn't his goal, but he's a Mad Scientist whose involvement in cloning gets him pretty close to this trope. It turns out that he is actually a clone who killed the original, then made clones of himself in an attempt to sell a clone army.
  • Overwatch: Moira O'Deorain is single-minded in her pursuit of knowledge (when she spawns, she says, "Science will reveal the truth"), and she has wound up working with Talon because the multitude of ethical and moral issues with her experiments have made her such a controversial figure that she can't get work.
  • In Palworld, the Final Boss Victor Ashfordnote  is a Mad Scientist in an Eerie Arctic Research Station who seeks to use the game's mons to create Bioweapon Beasts, with his partner Shadowbeak being his first success. While the game is an Affectionate Parody of Pokémon rife with Black Comedy directed at the mons, Victor's Playing with Syringes is decidedly not Played for Laughs as he speaks of them in a cold, clinical tone through his journals. He melted them down into slurry that was fed to their fellow Pals to make them stronger (with the player able to take advantage of his research), merged them together in horrifying ways and discarded them when the results failed to live more than a few seconds, and generally tore into them just to find out how they ticked.
  • Parasite Eve:
    • The first game has Dr. Klamp, who is the one who ultimately created Eve and willingly assists her in her genocidal goals because he wishes to "help humanity evolve".
    • Parasite Eve 2: The key antagonists are a shadowy cult who intend to counter the anthropogenic extinction of thousands of species by "diversifying" humanity into filling all the ecological niches — by transforming everybody into hideous and inevitably hostile monsters. Made particularly chilling by the fact that about half of their stated plan — namely the use of retroviral engineering — isn't too far from being a real possibility.
  • Colress from Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 is a Mad Scientist obsessed with discovering the limits to the strength of Pokémon and becomes The Dragon to Ghetsis to take advantage of Team Plasma's resources while helping them weaponize the legendary dragon Kyurem. However, he was ultimately a Punch-Clock Villain and becomes The Atoner after Ghetsis' defeat upon realizing he was going about it the wrong way.
  • Resident Evil:
    • The Umbrella Corporation, makers of such fine biological weapons as the T-Virus and the Nemesis.
    • Resident Evil 5 takes it to a new level with Project W. Ironically, this was one of the first projects Umbrella started in the timeline. Umbrella founder Ozwell Spencer envisioned the rise of a superior breed of humans (consisting of humans infused with the Progenitor Virus at a young age) indoctrinated with his own Social Darwinist values and presumably his interest in biological studies. In other words, this was an Evilutionary project to manufacture more Evilutionary Biologists. Fortunately, the project was ultimately a failure since Albert Wesker and his sister Alex Wesker were the only children to survive the virus injections all the other Wesker children received.
    • Last but not least, there's Wesker's evil plot itself from the same game as above. To put it in his own words, "Natural selection leaves the survivors stronger and better."
  • RWBY: Grimm Eclipse: Dr. Merlot believes the Creatures of Grimm to be the ultimate form of evolution and has experimented on them to see how far he can take them to perfection and give them a purpose in life as also explained in his Villain Song "Lusus Naturae".
  • Sam & Max: Freelance Police: Parodied with Stinky, an evilutionary cook, who wants to advance mankind by making really bad food that only the strongest can survive eating.
  • Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey: In a sense, this is Mitra's motivation. On encountering humans, he begins experimenting on them to see what they can do without. The problem is that, since demons are made of spirit, he doesn't seem to understand that we need such things as "a functioning brain", "blood", "air", and "skin"...
  • The main villain of Skeleton Krew is Moribund Kadaver, an evil geneticist and biologist whose experiments caused a massive number of human prisoners to mutate into nightmarish abominations.
  • StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm: Abathur is the Zerg evolution master, tinkering with DNA to create new Zerg creatures or improved strains of existing ones; the transformation of Sarah Kerrigan into the Queen of Blades back in StarCraft was also his work. He has no sense of empathy, which is evident in how creatures which he considers to be failures are painfully dissolved back into raw material while they're still alive, because he thinks the tiny amount of effort required to Mercy Kill them first is an unnecessary waste.
  • Super Catboy: Dr. Ungefog, the game's Big Bad creates his personal army of hyper-obediant soldiers by experimenting on animals like cats and dogs. For some reason, cats are consderably on the "superior" side, with felines like the titular Catboy being reserved as Super Soldiers.
  • Tomb Raider I: Jaqueline Natla wants to use Atlantis' powers to create a predator for humans, thereby giving evolution "a kick in the pants".
    "Evolution's in a rut, natural selection at an all-time low. Shipping out fresh meat will incite territorial rages again, will strengthen and advance us. Even create new breeds."
  • Warframe: Tyl Regor is the lead geneticist of the Grineer Empire, working to solve the Grineers' major problem with Clone Degradation. He is fiercely protective of his "Tubemen" project, the intended next step in Grineer evolution, lacking the genetic weaknesses of clone rot or aging. Early fruits of his labor can be seen in the Grineer Manics, dangerous lunatics that are significantly more agile than your common Grineer grunt and employ Teleport Spam.
  • Wild ARMs 4: The scientists who ran the White Orphanage took orphaned children and used a variety of cruel methods to attempt to mass-produce artificially evolved humans who could use the eponymous ARMs. Of all their subjects, only nineteen survived the initial experiments, and only two were not eventually killed or turned into mutated horrors.
  • Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom: The Big Bad is a Well-Intentioned Extremist that let his extremism evolve into a Nazi Germany-style pogrom, including developing a nanotech-based bioweapon that kills based on preselected genetic criteria. It kills by altering the cellular RNA of an infected person that doesn't measure up, whose own immune system attacks them, liquefying their flesh. Slowly. At first, it's thought that it's a plague, until the main protagonist finds out the truth behind this, and another weapon that destroys ships by somehow igniting the atmosphere within, turning spacecraft into impromptu furnaces) during a covert mission to the Big Bad's stronghold/spaceship. It doesn't exactly help that the Big Bad is a member of the same military that the protagonist is and is actually higher in rank. The purported reason behind all this is that "humanity has gotten weak" without the perpetual warring of the first three games and needs to be "pruned to be able to face the next adversary". Naturally, the protagonist has to stop this out of moral indignation, and the Big Bad is deliberately inciting another war through his use of this stuff.
  • X-Kaliber 2097 has Dr. Blast, the scientist who performs Morph experimentations to create legion of mutants and monsters. You battle him in his own research lab, filled with his creations, and Blast even injects himself with his own chemicals to transform into a monster.

    Webcomics 
  • In 8-Bit Theater, Red Mage has been known to dabble into this field from time to time, as a parody of chocobo breeding in Final Fantasy VII.
  • In The Dragon Doctors, Preston Chang turned himself into the Crax, a species that starts out as parasites until they grow to take control of their hosts and become amorphous blob creatures and can adapt to practically anything but cold, all so that Chang could become immortal. Kili, the shaman, faces Chang in the spirit world twice, the first time when removing a Crax from a patient; his spirit is driven off and the parasite defeated. The second time he just shows up and drags her through a bunch of painful memories in an attempt to drive her to surrender her body to him. Then she realizes that she was talking to a ghost — the Crax's hyper-fast evolution had determined that Chang's megalomaniacal mind was a weakness and discarded him, then evolved into harmless gut flora.
  • Dresden Codak: Kim Ross moves towards this trope over the comic's run. Starting with a basis in technological transhumanism, she's been stealing memories from hapless passersbys to help create an A.I. model to help trigger this event. She tries to allow the time-travelling AI that practically lands in her lap to develop in the present, doing the same thing more quickly, despite the current evidence that says it'll probably wipe out most of humanity in the process. Currently she's gotten her hands on a mini-version and is uploading her model into it. Oh, and she's the protagonist. At the end of the arc where she encounters the time travelling A.I., she has somewhat learned to not take her beliefs to the extreme of misanthropy and human inferiority the way her future self did.
  • Parodied in Everyday Heroes. As a Shout-Out to Marvel's High Evolutionary (mentioned above), two members of the S.A.V.E.U.S. team were created by the Somewhat-Below-Average Evolutionary.
  • Girl Genius: Dr. Dmitri Vapnoodle specialized in making monsters for the purpose of "culling the herd"... though he was careful to engineer in absolute loyalty to himself so that he wouldn't be one of the culled, of course.
  • Magellan: Professor George Lonsdale, (the real) Big Bad of "Worst Field Trip Ever", truly believes that splicing animal and human DNA is the next big evolutionary leap. But then, he's also clearly shown as experimenting on innocents (including his own son) For the Evulz as much as anything else.
  • Narbonic: Many mad scientists fall into this, some to create new life because it's somehow 'better', others because they just can. Helen Narbon, for example, likes gerbils, and one such product, Artie, notes how the gerbil is a much more ecologically sustainable form. Near the climax, a group of conservative-minded hamsters take this logic to its natural conclusion, seeking to wipe out almost all of humanity.
  • One-Punch Man: Dr. Genus, founder of the "House of Evolution", creates genetically spliced monstrosities out of his extreme contempt for regular old human beings. Witnessing Saitama's unexplainable and completely illogical strength causes him to give up on science and just start selling takoyaki instead.

    Web Original 
  • Twig: Professor Hayle uses this philosophy in order to justify his decision to sink his departmental funding into six separate projects, children with Super-Intelligence who would act as a gestalt. The plan is that the most successful project will be kept and expanded upon in order to iteratively improve the human brain until a firmly superior product is produced, but the fact that his project takes years to come to fruition means he has much less academic clout than his colleagues, who produce plagues, superweapons, and armies of reanimated corpses.

    Western Animation 
  • Action Man (2000): Doctor X is a textbook Evilutionary Biologist obsessed with triggering the next step in human evolution by causing all sorts of disasters in the hopes of culling unfit humans and causing beneficial mutations in the survivors.
  • Adventure Time has Doctor Gross, who led a class of young girls into becoming Seekers: hyper-muscular agents trained to keep anyone who strays from their home island in check. Years later, Gross is shown to have modified her own body to the extreme, with scissor hands and telescopic spider legs.
    Dr. Gross: They used to ask me that all the time back at the island. "Oh, Doctor Gross, what're you doin'?! You'll never get away with this!"
    Finn: Lady, you are sick!
    Dr. Gross: None of you normies know what you want, so it's up to me and my hybrid army to drag all the other humans into a golden age!
  • Ben 10: Doctor Animo is obsessed with advancing the evolution of planet Earth by any means necessary.
  • The biology company Sycorax in Big Hero 6: The Series, as revealed in Season 2. They're responsible for the majority of the series' villains getting their "Phase 2" upgrades, and if you weren't already a villain, they'll just make you one. For the sake of progress, of course!
  • Dex Hamilton: Alien Entomologist: Syrrus's goal is to breed an army of super insects to allow him to take over the galaxy.
  • Dino Squad: Victor Veloci wants to turn regular animals into prehistoric creatures and return Earth to the rule of the dinosaurs.
  • Exo Squad: Dr. Ketzer is a genetic engineer who alters a group of villagers (and himself) in the Amazon to give them plant-like abilities. He also infects Nara Burns with the mutating agent as a ploy to get Marsh to do his dirty work for him.
  • Futurama:
    • As well as the other ways in which he's an utterly raving Mad Scientist, Professor Farnsworth often rants about creating, amongst other things, a "race of atomic supermen", which he once actually does in order to win a basketball game.
    • One episode of The Scary Door (a parody of The Twilight Zone) features one of these. He combines the evilest genes from the world's most evil creatures to form the evilest creature of them all:
  • Gargoyles: Dr. Anton Sevarius is a freelance geneticist specializing in clones and mutates. So long as he gets plenty of test subjects and money, he doesn't really seem to care what his creations are used for, having sold his services to almost every Big Bad in the series.
  • Legion of Super Heroes (2006) has Dr. Londo, who was responsible for transforming Timber Wolf into what he is now. It's also heavily implied that he wasn't the only test subject, and subtly implied that he was aware of his father's work before he was transformed.
  • Mighty Max: Dr. Eggbert Zygote's goal is to use his evolution machine to create a perfect race of humans. In practice, he mostly just makes monsters.
  • In The Spectacular Spider-Man, Dr. Octavius (who eventually becomes Dr. Octopus) is recruited to assist a shady organization with their genetic experimentation by turning criminals/hired thugs into enhanced superhumans.
  • Street Sharks: Dr. Paradigm starts out like this, as evidenced by his monologue about how great his human test subjects will be post-transformation and sans those silly human morals. He abandons this goal pretty early and switches to simply taking over the town/world. This is after getting a taste of his own medicine makes him seven kinds of Ax-Crazy, though.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): The Kraang are either directly or indirectly responsible for every mutant created in the series due to their creating the mutagen that started it all. While some of their "creations" escape (i.e., Splinter and the baby Turtles), many of them are kept prisoner and experimented on (like Leatherhead).
  • Transformers: Prime: MECH wanted to steal the deadliest technology available so they could further their goals of remaking the world in their image. As such, they become very interested in the Cybertronians when they learn of their existence. This leads to their kidnapping/trying to dissect Breakdown, almost gutting Arcee, stealing Bumblebee's and Starscream's T-cogs, and creating Nemesis Prime (a remote-controlled Cybertronian with the power of Optimus Prime). They cross the Moral Event Horizon when they put Silas' barely alive body inside and basically turn him into a human-Cybertronian hybrid. You know a group is bad when both the Autobots and the Decepticons hate them.
  • In Ultimate Spider-Man (2012), Dr. Octopus starts out working for Norman Osborn to replicate Spider-Man's powers, leading to the creation of Venom, the Green Goblin, the Lizard, the Rhino, et cetera.
  • X-Men: Evolution implies that Magneto is the one responsible for Nightcrawler looking like a demon, via one of his many, many experiments.


 
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Doctor X

Seeking to push humanity past its natural limits, there is no ethical line that Doctor X won't cross to pursue his goals.

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