Maker of Monsters

Making fiends, making fiends
Vendetta's always making fiends

"The Putty Patrollers will make space dust out of those kids! And the beauty is, if they don't, we can always make more. Now, into the Monster-Matic they go. Ten seconds should do it."

— Finster, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers

The Maker of Monsters is a character, usually a villain, who is notable for creating monstrous creatures, whether ex nihilo or through breeding or mutation of preexisting beings (who likely weren't willing test subjects). These monsters may be unique, one-off beings, but more commonly large numbers of similar creatures will be created together or over time. In either case, the Maker of Monsters will likely shape numerous creations over their career, instead of only making one or two beasts in isolation.

This character's precise motivations for creating monsters can vary. In horror, pulp and science fiction settings, this is typically the province of the Mad Scientist, who will usually be pushing the limits of science a la Frankenstein just to see if he can or may be an Evilutionary Biologist seeking to create "perfect" lifeforms. In fantasy settings, this is often embodied in powerful wizards creating strange creatures through arcane research or dark lords breeding monsters for their armies. When the wizard and the dark lord are one and the same, it's almost a given that they'll be this as well.

Oftentimes, the creatures made by these characters will outlast their creators, breeding on their own and remaining a constant threat and presence in the world long after their makers' downfall.

Introducing such a character may serve a number of purposes. If they're active in the story's timeframe, they may serve as a way to keep the bad guy's army monstrous, diverse and constantly adaptive. If they're part of a more distant backstory, they may be used as a way to explain where a world's diversity of monsters originates from.

See also Mother of a Thousand Young, for when a creature literally births lesser horrors, Monster Progenitor, for when a creature creates a single new species of its own kind through its progeny, The Man Behind the Monsters, for when an army of inhuman monsters is led by a human or someone more resembling a human, and Evilutionary Biologist, for when a Mad Scientist tries to improve upon evolution. Compare with Mook Maker, a video game variant where a device continuously spawns enemies for the player to fight until destroyed, which may overlap with this trope if the maker is an NPC. Compare also the Necromancer, who also specializes in the creation of less-than-presentable beings of a different sort. The products of these characters' work will often be Bioweapon Beasts. They are also a likely candidate to create a Custom-Built Host. Compare and contrast Robot Master.

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Examples:

Alternate Reality Games

• Kirk Odd from The Noedolekcin Archives created his underlings, known as wardens. Each warden shares a different aspect of his powers: Gabore shares his hunger for organic beings, Hypsypops has his power of dream weaving, and the unnamed warden shares his ability to shapeshift.

Anime & Manga

• Both versions of Fullmetal Alchemist have a Big Bad who does this:
  • In the manga, Father creates the homunculi to make himself perfect and further his goals by having a group of sociopathic, super-powered immortals to carry out his will. Father created them by removing his own sins and personifying them, creating loyal followers, though there are only seven of them. While the majority are humanoid, several count as Eldritch Abominations and all take quite a while to get rid of.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Dante has been creating homunculi for centuries, and Envy implies that while there have only ever been seven at a time, Dante has created different iterations of the same sin. Unlike Father, Dante makes homunculi as experiments and to have foot soldiers to execute her plans. However, Dante only created Pride and Greed, as the homunculi are actually the result of failed human transmutations made by others she fed Red Stones to before they could perish.
• My Hero Academia: Kyudai Garaki, the doctor associated with the League of Villains. In addition to being All for One's personal physician, he's also in charge of bioengineering the Nomu, monstrous Artificial Humans with multiple Quirks who serve as the villains' attack dogs. Efforts by the heroes uncover a massive lab where he creates them.
• Servamp: The creator of the Servamps is (at least indirectly) responsible for creating all the world's vampires. While they only created the original eight, these eight all have the power to sire new, less powerful vampires; how exactly they created them has yet to be revealed, though the Servamps are strongly implied to have once been human.

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: In numerous seasons, Big M. has some kind of device at his disposal to create monsters. In Season 1, he has the Black Jewel, which has the ability to turn objects into monsters; in Season 2, he has the Evil Egg, which creates an object that turns another object into a monster if it touches it; and in Season 5, he has the Planet Gray virus to infect people and turn them into monsters against their will.

Comic Books

• ElfQuest: Winnowill creates many horrible creatures over the years, to prey on other elves or humans.
• Marvel Universe:
  • Doug Moench's villain Dr. Demonicus creates Kaiju and Humongous Mecha as his shtick. He's best known for getting into fights with Godzilla and the Shogun Warriors.
  • In Spider-Man and the X-Men #2, the heroes go up against a villain named Sauron who turned some people into dinosaurs and is planning to repeat the trick on a massive scale.
  • In Venom (Donny Cates), the symbiotes are revealed to have been created by an ancient dark god called Knull.

Fan Works

• Coby's Choice: Velo, an Original Character introduced during the Punk Hazard arc, is a Mad Scientist who is able to create monsters inspired by Lovecraft. These monsters cause the Punk Hazard incident to be a lot harder for the Straw Hats in spite of their greater numbers and strength.
• The Palaververse: The Mage-Lords of ancient Antlertis often dipped into this, especially in the later days of their civilization as their cultural sense of ethics started to fall by the wayside in favor of performing increasingly complex experiments upon magic and living things. They shaped terrible monsters in their laboratories to use weapons against one another or simply for the sake of seeing if they could, and many of these things endured imprisoned or in stasis long after Antlertis' fall to threaten future civilizations — the Sirens, Ahuizotl, Tirek, Scorpan and Discord, powerful chimeric villains from the show's canon, are all identified as Antlertean creations.
• Warband of the Forsaken Sons: Jikaerus, former Apothecary of the Alpha Legion, released mutated monsters on a world already plunged into eternal night and manipulated entire bloodlines so that natural selection and careful breeding would create monstrous recruits for his master.

Films — Animation

• Lilo & Stitch: Dr. Jumba Jookiba is an alien Mad Scientist and self-proclaimed Evil Genius who created Experiment 626 specifically to cause destruction and wreak havoc wherever he goes (he freely admits that he has no higher purpose for this). The sequel series reveals that he had created 625 other such creatures, each engineered to sow chaos in specific and amusing ways.

Films — Live-Action

• Alien: The movies and Expanded Universe heavily imply, if not outright state, that the Engineers created the Xenomorphs as living bioweapons, or at the very least had a hand in their creation via the same hyper-advanced biogenetic technology they used to seed terrestrial life throughout the universe.
• Jurassic Park: Dr. Henry Wu, a senior member of InGen who worked as the lead scientist at both Jurassic Park and Jurassic World, is responsible for creating three known genetically engineered hybrid dinosaurs, two of which were secretly intended to be living weapons for the military that managed to escape containment and ended up causing massive destruction and killing dozens of humans and dinosaurs (the Indominus Rex in Jurassic World, the Indoraptor in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and the Scorpius Rex in Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous).
• Poor Things: Godwin Baxter is a low-key monster-maker, being limited to stitching body parts of different small animals together and performing the occasional human brain transplant.
• Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed: The villain's scheme involves creating real-life versions of the fake monsters the gang had fought before. They destroy the city and wreak havoc for the gang, who can only defeat the villain by dealing with the monsters.

Literature

• Bazil Broketail: The Masters of Padmasa along with their servants create many monsters to fight for them.
• A Chorus of Dragons: The god-kings often turned their magic to creating entire species of servants, soldiers and monsters, such as the snow giants, the centaurs, the Thriss Snake People, and the krakens. Many of these species are extinct or nearly so by the present day, having fared poorly after the god-kings fell, but some have continued to thrive and plague civilization since then.
• Chronicles of the Emerged World: Aster the Tyrant is quite proficient at breeding new species of minions and monsters into beings, and makes extensive use of such things in his armies. He has already created the orc-like fammin, the black dragons and fire-breathing birds by the start of the series, and is known to order to kidnapping of immense numbers of humans and gnomes to use as stock to create further monster races. Once the heroes breach his fortress, they are met with pale, hunched and highly aggressive humanoids implied to be the fruit of these experiments.
• The Executioner and Her Way of Life: Every monster in the world was originally created by Pandaemonium's use of her Pure Concept.
• Fate/Apocrypha: Caster of Black/Avicebron has the Noble Phantasm "Golem Keter Malkuth: Royal Crown, the Light of Wisdom", which allows him to create golems using incredibly rare materials. Darnic has the means to obtain these materials en masse to allow Avicebron to mass produce his golems as an army for the Great Grail War. The "villain" aspect of this trope is downplayed as Grey-and-Gray Morality is in play and while a Misanthrope Supreme, Avicebron is a Cool Teacher to his Master, Roche. Or so it seems, as he later uses Roche as Human Resources for the creation of the golem Adam as part of his Evil Plan, which even he admits is something Roche should hate him for.
• Frankenstein: Dr. Frankenstein is an unbuilt example of this. In the novel, he does not try to create a monster — he attempted to simply restore a dead body to life, and created a man who was "wrong" in an unspecified way. That his creation went on to murder several people, including himself, is treated as a tragic outcome. However, later adaptations of the story often portray him as much more actively desiring to create an openly monstrous entity.
• The Island of Doctor Moreau: The titular doctor turns animals into beast-men by grafting them human organs and surgically altering their bodies to be bipedal and anthropomorphic. Over the years he's been doing this, he's created enough such creatures for an entire village of half-man beasts to form in the forests of his island.
• Joe Ledger: In Dragon Factory, there are the Jacoby twins, the owners of the titular Factory, who create fantastic hybrids through genetic engineering. Some they sell to the highest bidder, some are used in hunts for the bored elite (a literal hunt for a unicorn plays an important part in the plot), and some are aimed to be perfect soldiers.
• The Silmarillion:
  • Morgoth created multiple species of monsters in mockery of the creation wrought by God and by the Valar through God's aid and permission. However, as he could not create anything entirely new himself nor anything of beauty, he was limited to twisting and degrading preexisting creatures into monstrous servants. Morgoth's creations include the orcs, created from twisted and debased elves; trolls, made in mockery of the ents; and a variety of beasts made from lesser spirits fallen in his thrall, such as werewolves, vampires and most notably the dragons. All these creatures were bred and perfected over the millennia in Morgoth's fortresses — the dragons, for instance, began as landbound serpents and were later bred to become winged and fire-breathing — and remain in the world long after his defeat, scattering into the wilderness and continuing to threaten civilization in the ages to come.
  • Morgoth's successors such as Sauron and Saruman show traits of this as well, often breeding their orcs like cattle to create specialized breeds for their own use, such as Sauron's Black Uruks, created as a stronger and more vicious fighting breed, and Saruman's Uruk-Hai, bred from orcs and humans to create more disciplined orcs capable of fighting under the sun.
• Star Wars Legends: Sith Lords have a historic tendency to use a combination of the Dark Side and advanced biotechnology to create fearsome monsters known as Sithspawn, usually by mutating natural animals or people, which they use as slave soldiers, guardian beasts and terror weapons. These creatures tend to be killed off en masse in their masters' wars when they aren't one-off creations to begin with, but several strains endure long after the conflicts they were bred for as persistent threats to galactic safety.
  • Most prominent monster-makers lived long before the movie's time, counting Sith such as Naga Sadow, who created an immense wyrm from a space slug to serve as a guardian for his temple-lair; and Exar Kun, who engineered two-headed battle hydras and the Jedi-hunting terentateks; popular among several Sith were also the biomechanical technobeasts created by infecting living humanoids with an engineered virus.
  • Sith active much later in the timeline also dabble into this — Palpatine bred a strain of particularly aggressive rancors to serve as guard animals, while Darth Krayt's Sith servants created a soul-eating Sea Leviathan to use as a terror weapon against the Mon Calamari people.
• Whateley Universe:
  • Dr. Macabre has a Monster Maker device he puts kids in to turn them into monsters such as witches, vampires, and zombies.
  • The Purple Witch, a.k.a. Pandora, possesses a magic box from which she can conjure monsters to do her bidding.
• The Wheel of Time: Aginor, one of the Forsaken, was skilled and entirely amoral geneticist and is revealed to have been personally responsible for the creation of all of the Big Bad's monstrous Mooks. He created the trollocs, for instance, by performing Mengele-esque experiments on his fellow human beings by the thousandfold in order to create ideal soldiers, although his general removal from combat meant he had little idea what made an ideal soldier beyond strength and aggressiveness — consequently, trollocs are little beyond savage, undisciplined killers.
• Worlds of Shadow: Shadow has made a number of monstrous beasts as servants.

Live-Action TV

• Beetleborgs Metallix divides this role between the criminal cartoonist Less Fortunes, who draws the Monster of the Week and Big Bad Nukus, who brings it to the real world with his sword.
• Mother Melzard from B-Fighter Kabuto turns fossils into monsters by absorbing them with her tail and laying an egg which contains the monster.
• Chouseishin Series:
  • Genseishin Justiriser: Doctor Zora personally creates all of the Cyber Knights under her command.
  • Chousei Kantai Sazer X: After the Descal Space Pirates lose all their kaiju, it falls on Cyclead to make more.
• Being a franchise focused on monster fights, each season of Kamen Rider usually has one character or group who creates the monsters:
  • Kamen Rider: Shocker are a Nebulous Evil Organisation that splices human test subjects with plant or animal DNA to create an army of Kaijin, one of which gets sent out each week to fight our heroes.
  • Kamen Rider Double has a twist on this trope. Museum don't directly create the Dopants, but they do make and distribute the Gaia Memories, whose holders use them to become Dopants.
  • All of the Greeed in Kamen Rider OOO can turn their cells into parasitic monsters known as Yummies, who feed on human desire. They are usually created by inserting one of their cells into a host human, after which the monster becomes stronger when the host indulges themselves with their desire.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Kuroto Dan created each of the characters that appear in Genm Corp's video games, then used the Bugster virus to bring them to life and give them physical forms. While this resulted in a great deal of video game enemies being brought into the real world, it also led to some more benevolent characters being brought to life too, like Poppy.
  • Kamen Rider Build: Faust has a very streamlined process for making monsters. They place a test subject in a tube and expose them to Nebula Gas until they're turned into a Smash monster. Other organizations would later get ahold of and improve upon the process to create even stronger monsters to serve them.
• Discussed in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Morgoth created the Orcs be enslaving and twisting Elves from Beleriand into an Evil Counterpart Race. After his defeat, Sauron made sure they still multiplied in great numbers.
• Monster Warriors: The Big Bad Klaus Von Steinhauer is a former B-list monster movie director who now creates real monsters that the protagonists fight in order to protect Capital City.
• Power Rangers: In certain series, there would be one member of the villains whose role is to create the Monster of the Week the heroes face.
  • In the first season of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Finster shapes monsters out of clay, and place the doll-sized figurine into a machine that would turn it into a human-sized monster.
  • The second season of Mighty Morphin has the Big Bad Lord Zedd being the Monster Maker, as his staff can turn inanimate objects, animals and even humans into monsters.
  • Mora from Power Rangers S.P.D. has the ability to turn her drawings into monsters.
• Seven Star Fighting God Guyferd: Shion is the one who developed Crown's process for creating Mutians, which involves a human subject being put in a tube and exposed to Fallah until they're transmutated.
• Super Sentai: Each evil organization usually has one member or device whose purpose is to make a Monster of the Week each episode.
  • Choushinsei Flashman: Having this role in Mess is why Keflen is Number Two to Lah Deus instead of The Dragon, Leh Wanda. All of the generals and other monsters of Mess were created by Keflen using the Gene Synthesizer.
  • Choujuu Sentai Liveman: Each Volt executive is tasked with creating their own Brain Beasts to menace the Livemen. Since Volt is an Academy of Evil, how effective the Brain Beasts are is an indicator to Great Professor Bias of what level of Evil Genius each of his students is at.
  • Pleprechaun from Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger is a potter for the Bandora Gang who creates their monsters and mooks by molding them out of clay.
  • Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger has two of them. Mikela uses a magical paintbrush to combine a plant, animal and inanimate object into a Trinoid, a human sized monster. Voffa uses an organ to turn his music into a Giganoid; an already giant monster based on famous classical music pieces.
• Ultraman Ace: Yapool is the first Big Bad of the Ultra Series who actively creates enhanced monsters, called "chojus" (a sort of upgraded kaiju), which he unleashes in every episode of the show. More than once in the series, the show gives us a glimpse of Yapool's monster-creation facility in his very own dimension.

Tabletop Games

• Chaotic: Overworld scientist Mommark creates new creatures in his castle from gathered DNA. Unfortunately, his creations are often unpredictable, and while several are his loyal servants, several others turned against him and joined the ranks of the Underworld, his faction's mortal enemy.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Several Demon Lords are associated with particular species of monster that plague the realms, and are said to be responsible for their creation. Some of the better known examples:
    • Baphomet the Horned King is said to experiment with the creation of new monsters in his personal fortress, the Tower of Science. His most well-known creations are the minotaurs and the buffalo-like demons known as goristro. If an orc tribe starts worshipping him and request he grant them a boon, he will corrupt a generation of their unborn children, causing them to be born as half-orc, half-demon monstrosities called tanarukks.
    • Demogorgon the Prince of Demons is said to have created the first chimera in response to his cultists summoning him to the Prime Material Plane, as he found most of the lifeforms around him boring and unworthy. He is also indirectly responsible for the existence of the two-headed ettins (who mutated from orcs that tried to worship at one of his altars) and the merrows, an evil sub-race of merfolk (a tribe of merfolk were driven insane by one of his idols, travelled to the abyss to worship him, and were corrupted by their new environment).
    • Graz'zt the Dark Prince is directly responsible for the existence of lamias, lion-like monsters he creates by transforming his favored cultists, and jackalweres, jackals he mutates into Beast Men and gives to his lamias as servants. It is also said that the demons known as babaus were born from drops of his blood, shed when the Archdevil Glasya tried to strike him with her sword.
    • Lolth, Demon Queen of Spiders, is the patron goddess of the dark elves, and has the power to transform those that displease her into elf/spider hybrids called Driders. She also has a race of demons who are exclusively formed within her lair and act as her servants — the shape-shifting Blob Monsters known as Yochlol.
    • Orcus the Lord of Death is said to have created the first undead entity when he was still a mortal prior to his acsension to Demon Lord status, and all undead throughout the planes ultimately owe their existence to him. He can also reward lesser demons who please him by transforming them into a unique form called a Devourer.
    • Yeenoghu the Lord of Savagery is the one who created the gnolls, and unleashed them on the universe, their ceaseless hunger (which he caused) causing them to rampage around destroying and devouring everything and creating more gnolls from the offal. He exists entirely to destroy civilization, and uses the gnolls to do it. He is also the creator of the leucrottas and shoosuvas (both Mix-and-Match Critters that, like gnolls, have hyena-like traits) and is the only Demon Lord to be served by Maw Demons.
  • The infernal duke Alloces, the Prince of Beasts and the Father of Monsters, was a sadistic torturer who became obsessed with shaping living flesh and became a skilled creator of monstrous beings. He takes no part in the politics of Hell outside of creating monsters for the armies, herds and kennels of the archdevils in exchange for victims and raw materials, although he won't sabotage or interfere with rival devils' beasts. His creations mainly include a variety of patchwork horrors crafted from various mixes of mortal souls, bodies and body parts, as well as improved breeds of Hellhound. He also taught mortals how to create flesh golems and the reptilian, swarming kruthiks. Interestingly, he claims credit for the creation of monsters which are naturally occurring or were created by other beings, such as nightmares, chimeras, and manticores, to have bred the first cambions and to have infected the first lycanthropes. No scholars believe this, but the rumors persist. He is chiefly worshipped by amoral doctors and wizards, barbarians who revere strength and wild beasts, and some of the more intelligent monsters.
  • Eberron: The daelkyr are each said to be the creators of specific races of monster; Belashyrra, the Lord of Eyes created beholders, Dyrrn the Corruptor created Illithids and corrupted the goblinoid races into the Dolgaunts, Dolgrim and Dolgarr, Kyrzin, the Prince of Slime created slimes, gibbering mouthers and mimics, Orlassk, the Lord of Stone created medusas, basilisks and other monsters associated with the Taken for Granite trope, and Avassh, the Twister of Roots created shambling mounds and other forms of mutant plant-life. On a lesser scale, there's Mordain the Fleshweaver, who seeks to master the magic of the daelkyr; he specialises in adventure setups like "he'll pay very handsomely for part of a weird, hard-to-kill monster" or "someone teleported a giant mutant into Fairhaven".
• Pathfinder:
  • Lamashtu, the Mother of Monsters, is a deity associated with monstrous things, mutation and deformed births, and creates new and horrific creatures as an end in and of itself. She's believed to be responsible for the creation of numerous monster species, including gnolls, chimeras, vavakia demons and the immense sea monsters know as Mothers of Oblivion.
  • The alghollthus believe that other forms of life exist for them to control for their own benefit, which combined with their considerable skill in shaping living flesh has led to them breeding numerous types of monsters as servants, soldiers and agents. The cloakers and the shapeshifting mimics and faceless stalkers were created as various flavors of infiltrators, spies and saboteurs, the immense deep walkers as guardians and the fishlike skum as expendable slave soldiers. As alghollthu influence receded or individual creations ceased to be of use, many of these creatures were left to their fates and continue to roam the world, acting on ingrained drives to infiltrate and sow discord or reverting to bestiality and barbarism.
  • Yamasoth, the Polymorph Plague, is a qlippoth lord concerned with vile experiments and mutation, and is obsessed with twisting and mutating captured creatures into new and monstrous shapes. His experiments have birthed countless horrors; many were one-off creations, but others resulted in the creation entire species of qlippoth.
  • Alaznist, one of the runelords of Thassilon, learned the art of fleshwarping from Yamasoth himself and used it to great effect to create monsters with which to bolster her armies. She was the creator of the sinspawn, humanoid monsters that would go on to become the runelords' favored shock troops, and of other terrors such as the swarming, spider-like shriezyx. Many of these creations lingered long after Thassilon's fall, haunting the ruins of her empire into the present day. She additionally created many other beasts as experiments, and players come across a fair few of these warped creatures in the closing acts of the Return of the Runelords adventure path.
• Princess: The Hopeful: While most Darkspawn are created from those who crossed (or were pushed across) the Moral Event Horizon, one of the more terrifying powers of the Dethroned is the ability to create new Darkspawn ex nihilo. It's mentioned that often one of the first clues to the presence of a Dethroned is a heretofore unknown specie of Darkspawn popping up.
• Warhammer:
  • Warhammer and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: The Skaven of Clan Moulder specialize in the creation of horrific rat monsters through the use of selective breeding, alchemical and magical mutagens and Frankensteinian surgeries, coupled with weapon implants provided by the magitek engineers of Clan Skyre. These can range from "regular" Rodents of Unusual Size and hulking Rat Ogres to immense and bloated Brood Horrors or the horrific, writhing behemoths known as Hell Pit Abominations. All of these monstrous creations are then sold to other Skaven clans for hefty prices to be used as war animals and living siege engines.
  • Warhammer 40,000: The Haemonculi of the Drukhari habitually create horrific monstrosities through arcane and nightmarish processes designed to be as painful as possible. Their most common creations include Grotesques, hulking Frankensteinian horrors created from those that have crossed a Haemonculus; and the floating, biomechanical horrors known as the Engines of Pain that harvest raw materials for their creators.

Toys

• BIONICLE: The Makuta species was originally tasked with creating the ecosystem of the Matoran Universe, populating it with all sorts of fantastical animals. Several political upheavals later, Makuta Chirox and Mutran continue the work as a hobby, only they've turned to one-upping each other in the field of incredibly violent and destructive monsters. Many of the most dangerous beasts of the Matoran Universe can be attributed to them, such as the Visorak, the Doom Viper, and the Shadow Leech. (Chirox notably only made violent and destructive monsters even before the Makuta went rogue.)

Video Games

• Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II: Luvia Bloodmire is an insane alchemist who has developed surgical techniques for transferring limbs and organs from one creature to another. Most of her Flesh Golem creations are fought in the Bloodmire Manor level, and another villain, Lady Arogazia, sometimes contracts her to make custom monsters to further her plans.
• Borderlands: In The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, the titular doctor's experiments are responsible for the zombies and few wereskags (alien weredogs) of Jakob's Cove, which he uses to defend his lab.
• Castlevania: Curse of Darkness: The Devil Forgemasters Hector and Isaac were once part of Dracula's army, using their talents to create monsters. In fact, it's hinted throughout the lore that Hector and Isaac (along with any heretofore unseen Forgemasters) were responsible for the entirety of the enemies that the player faces throughout the Castlevania series, save for unique ones like bosses. Their method for doing so here is described as creating creatures out of "pure darkness", with the creatures forged being completely loyal to the Forgemaster.
• In Dragon Age, the elven goddess Ghilan'nain is usually only considered the creator of the halla in modern stories, but older myths describe her as a creator of monsters in general, which were then hunted by Andruil, the Goddess of the Hunt because they were so violent. At Andruil's behest, Ghilan'nain undid all of her creations with the exception of a few flying monsters that she presented to Andruil as a gift, an unidentified sea creature that she considered too well-made to destroy, and the halla because she valued their grace. She was rewarded with ascension to godhood.
• Dwarf Fortress: Necromancers can create Experiments out of sapients and livestock, with successful experiments being vertebrates and failed one being blobs.
• EXTRAPOWER: Mensouma, one of the Co-Dragons of Dark Force, specializes in breeding and creating creatures for use as in combat.
• Fallen London: The strangest of the Tracklayer factions during the Great Hellbound Railway storyline is composed of bizarre visionaries with expertise in Shapeling Arts who call themselves the Prehistoricists. Rather than the anarchic and aggressive Liberationists and the simply unionized Emancipationists, they believe in the system, all of the system down to the Great Chain of Being, and are simply convinced it's missing given parts to it. Namely, that while humans shouldn't be subjected to the dangerous and exhausting working conditions of having to lay railroad track in the Neath (among other such dangerous jobs), something should take that role instead, and are more than willing to whip up monstrosities to be that "something" since the Chain sure didn't provide any. The giant track-laying mammoth with railway iron instead of tusks (their leader Cornelius calls it a Ferrocephalus) is but one example.
• Fallout:
  • Fallout: The Master is responsible for several of the Wasteland's more dangerous monsters, which he created as soldiers for his armies. The most notable examples are the Super Mutants, created by forcefully turning captured humans into dim-witted, violent Super Soldiers, but he also made the centaurs by fusing multiple humans and animals into monstrous wholes, created the floaters from flatworms and further experimented on and perfected the deathclaws.
  • Fallout: New Vegas: Dr. Borous, a scientist employed by the pre-War government, was very fond of genetically altering creatures into large, dangerous forms. He's directly responsible for the creation of both the giant wasps known as cazadores and the coyote/rattlesnake hybrid nightstalkers, the latter of which he apparently created on a dare.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy IV: Dr. Lugae, whose experiments of turning people into monsters disgusted even Rubicante, as shown after Rubicante finds out that the good Doctor turned Edge's parents, the King and Queen of Eblan, into monsters.
  • Final Fantasy VII: Experiments of Hojo, a scientist of Shinra, resulted in many monsters that the player fights throughout the game.
• Luigi's Mansion: The last portrait ghost Luigi encounters, named Vincent van Gore (based on the famous painter Vincent van Gogh), is revealed to be the one responsible for creating the mook ghosts that inhabit the Mansion, despite not being the Big Bad (that honor goes to King Boo). He dedicates the rest of his afterlife into making his creations, and the fight against him revolves around fighting wave after wave of ghosts that spawn from his paintings.
• Majesty has a few Villainous Legacy-style examples, where the creators are long dead but their monsters are still roaming free to cause problems – the sorcerer Andravus created the Minotaurs to be his shock troops, and the Grisnot Goblin Tribe bred the first Giant Spiders to use as guard animals. The most prolific and successful was an infamous dark wizard named Pyrog the Shadowed. He started with Flowering Strangleweeds, moved on to Rustspitters, then Evil Oculi, and died under mysterious circumstances while creating something even more powerful and dangerous (hinted to be the Abomination).
• Resident Evil: The Umbrella Corporation is responsible for creating Bio-Organic Weapons (or B.O.W.s for short), animals and humans transformed into monstrous beasts. Some of their products include Cerberus, highly aggressive mutated dogs; the Hunters, hulking reptilian humanoids; and human-derived monsters such as the Lickers and the Tyrant, in addition to manufacturing different viruses such as the T and G strains which are used to create the monsters.
• The Secret World: Over the course of her career, Lilith created vampires, werewolves, the Deathless, and countless other monstrous races through the blending of magic and science, and later went on to create her own special trio of assassins by extracting a troubled young woman's multiple personalities and giving them bodies of their own.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: Just as Dr. Eggman specializes in building robots, his grandfather, Prof. Gerald Robotnik, specialized in creating organic lifeforms for war. He created the Biolizard, Shadow the Hedgehog, and a small army of Artificial Chaos; and everything Eggman himself knows about making living creatures, he learned from reverse-engineering Gerald's technology.
• Spyro the Dragon:
  • Spyro the Dragon (1998): It's mentioned in the intro cutscene that the Gnorcs that Spyro faces on his journey (and possibly other enemies as well) were created by Gnasty Gnorc from the treasure hoard he stole from the dragons prior to the start of the game to build his own army. This explains why they drop gems upon defeat.
  • Spyro: Year of the Dragon: The first boss, Buzz, is created by Bianca, one of the villains, turning a rabbit into said monster with sorcery. The next 2 bosses, Spike and Scorch, are created by the Big Bad Sorceress by transforming two of her Rhynoc subjects, again using sorcery.
• String Tyrant: Pygmalie made all of the dolls and traps in the manor. Most of the sequences where Mary is defeated involves a visit to Pygmalie to finish the transformation.
• Alhazad from Wild ARMs is notorious for this. Horribly mutilating unfortunate humans until they are nothing more than a mindless monster is his idea of entertainment. He makes enough monsters to overrun Saint Centaur and, later on, attempts to do the same thing to Court Seim.
• Witch Hunter Izana: The vampire Verand unleashed a transformative curse that is rapidly converting the inhabitants of the local island into monsters. Beyond that she will directly transform party members in her boss battle. She also transformed Nocha and Rosemary into vampires, and made Elvira the doll.
• In World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, the Necrolords of Maldraxxus are adept at turning leftover bodies from allies and enemies alike into Flesh Golems to be inhabited by a new Maldraxxi soul. The House of Constructs are specialists in this art with scientists like Stitchflesh leading the efforts. None are more skilled at reshaping flesh than Margrave Gharmal. His talent is so great that after his death, his heart is given to the Kyrian of Bastion to use as a power source to create better Ascended.
• XCOM 2: The "Alien Hunters" DLC reveals that Dr Vahlen becomes one of these after finding an abandoned genetics laboratory at some point after the events of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. She finds three cryogenically frozen aliens within the lab and begins to perform unethical gene-splicing experiments on them, eventually mutating them into King Mook versions of some of the game's regular enemies: the Viper King, Berserker Queen and Archon King.

Web Animation

• Monster Lab (2021): Katz and Uno are a rare non-villainous example. The monsters they make are mostly just a Servant Race that help around the house and give them company. Well, mostly — any monsters that don't fit this mold go evil by accident.
• In RWBY, Salem is the once-human ruler of the Creatures of Grimm, which are drawn to negative emotions. Salem commands them in her campaign to destroy what humanity has built, and while she didn't create them herself- that would be the God of Darkness- she has experimented with them to create several new breeds, such as winged Beringels or the Hound.

Webcomics

• Champions of Far'aus: Mr.X spirit melds spirits, objects, creatures, and people to create his "experiments". Karla initially notes that such combinations should be impossible to pull off, but Mr.X is one part of an unreasonably powerful ancient summoning staff turned sentient, and is so far, the only one known to be able to pull off such a feat.
• Girl Genius: Most Sparks (i.e. Mad Scientists) end up transforming wildlife and/or people into monsters with which to terrorize the local populace, unless they spend their time making terrible machines instead. The most talented do both. Of all Sparks specializing in the creation of monsters, Dmitri Vapnoople was perhaps the most dangerous in the modern era, to the point even the otherwise unflappable Albia of England feared him.
• One-Punch Man: Dr. Genus is an Evilutionary Biologist with a god complex who creates all kinds of monsters, making powerful Bioweapon Beasts that can easily destroy an entire city. He could probably have been able to Take Over the World easily if Saitama hadn't crossed his way.

Western Animation

• Batman: The Animated Series: In "Critters", the city is attacked by a villain who has mutated farm animals and common mantises into monstrous beasts.
• Castlevania (2017): Like in the games, Hector and Isaac are Devil Forgemasters who join (and lead) Dracula's war against humanity, creating the vast army of creatures that Dracula requires for the effort. Unlike in the games, however, their methods are more fleshed-out and distinct here: Hector is seen using surgical tools to bring once-living things back to life with full memories and personality intact, while Isaac is shown using a magical dagger to tear the souls of the damned out of Hell itself to occupy the body of someone or something that was once alive — immediately mutating them into twisted abominations. These methods double as Personality Powers: Hector is the nicer and meeker of the two, and wants to use his abilities to give those who died a second chance at life, while Isaac is a devout Muslim who took the prophet Muhammad's teachings that "one day there will be no human beings left in Hell" literally and believes his abilities to be the key to fulfilling that prophecy while also punishing the wickedness of mankind on Earth.
• Creepy Crawlers: This is the MO of Professor Googengrim. He uses the Magic Maker to create the Crime-Grimes that help him in his schemes, usually using a recipe held by his assistant to get the type of monster he needs. Notable in that the same machine was also responsible for the creation of the heroic Goop-Mandos, but Googengrime stole it from the hero.
• Cybersix: Von Riktor's bio-engineered forces pose a regular danger to Meridianna. In addition to his normal Mooks, the Fixed Ideas and the Technos, Von Riktor also makes hyper-sonic gargoyles, a deadly werewolf, a living wave of mud, and other monstrosities to take out the heroine. In fact, Cyber Six herself and her ally Data Seven are also creations if Von Riktor's that went rogue.
• Kim Possible: DNAmy was a geneticist who loved "Cuddle Buddies", a "Beanie Baby"-like set of collectible toys that featured mixes of animals. She loved them so much that she spliced animal DNA to make her own live Cuddle Buddies.
• Making Fiends: Vendetta is a wicked young girl who creates monsters, called "fiends", by literally baking them into existence from a recipe book (pictured above), and uses them to control the town of Clamburg and turn it into a bleak and forbidding place. The premise of the show is that a new girl named Charlotte comes to the town and is oblivious to all of this, leading Vendetta to make more and more fiends to try and kill Charlotte, only to fail over and over.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Grogar is referred to as the Father of Monsters, and states that during his reign he gave life to foul, monstrous creatures and set them loose upon the world.
• Abomination magic in The Owl House is primarily used to create Muck Monsters to follow the caster's commands, though more skilled witches can directly manipulate the abomination goo as a Morph Weapon. It's also a rare non-malicious example, as it is treated as being no better or worse than any of the other forms of magic. In fact, almost every named abomination witch in the show goes on to be one of Luz's major allies.
• Patrol 03: Each episode, Professor Molo creates a new monster to aid in Pamela's latest plan to Take Over the City.

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