Basic Trope: A Mad Scientist who seeks to "improve" humanity.
- Straight: Dr. Nefarious believes that self-interest and immorality are crippling society and stifling evolution, and attempts to systematically wipe out everyone he considers immoral.
- Exaggerated:
- Dr. Nefarious is obsessed with the idea to the point where it consumes his hobbies, social life and even time for eating and sleeping. His definition of immoral is, essentially, everyone except him and his ring of allies.
- Dr. Nefarious is an Eco-Terrorist who sought to replace the planet inhabitants with nothing but his own non-destructive creations.
- Downplayed: Dr. Nefarious merely makes a comment to the effect of implying that he wants to morally cleanse society, and is shown pursuing that goal secondary to other goals.
- Justified:
- This is the only way civilization can be improved at all in the setting.
- Nefarious is psychologically disturbed and understands morality in a different way from other people. He believes that it can be pruned like a hedge.
- Inverted:
- Dr. Nefarious is a fierce individualist and objects to the idea that someone forces "improvement" on the world on principle.
- Dr. Nefarious considers evolution a tyranny to be liberated from through deliberate design - via either Designer Babies or mechanical bodies.
- Bob is a Science Hero who believes that humanity should be improved, and wants to cure all diseases and grant people helpful superpowers to do so. Savage Sam, his Arch-Enemy, is an Evil Luddite who opposes this noble goal.
- D-evilutionary biologist; Dr. Nefarious wants to devolve humanity into a more primitive or animalistic species.
- Subverted: After some discussion and thought on the matter, Dr. Nefarious decides that mad biology cannot improve humanity.
- Double Subverted: Instead, he'll just devolve them all into Purgatorius and then improve the dolphins instead!
- Parodied: Dr. Nefarious is convinced that humanity is inferior for their loss of ability to grab things with their feet and is dedicated to restoring it for the sake of being able to easily grab and use the remote.
- Zig Zagged: Dr. Nefarious believes in improvement but he specifically doesn't want the rest of humanity wiped out by their efforts. Only by specifically rendering them /irrelevant/. Either they abandon and follow after being surpassed and only a fringe margin remains or their own unmeddled with self destruction. Otherwise they would survive forever as a hypothetical better way instead of the oblivion they deserve. He acknowledges the possibility of failure and that he may have missed something. If he should fail then his ideas were folly and it was meant to be that way.
- Averted: Dr. Nefarious specifically likens his work and impact on humanity to every other technology like vaccinations or eyeglasses, scoffing at the notion it is changing humanity.
- Enforced: "There are a few too many Omnicidal Maniacs in this story. I need to make a villain who is evil in a progressive way without being sympathetic."
- Lampshaded: "What are you going to do to try and "uplift" humanity next?"
- Invoked: "This code of experimental ethics is a little strict for my tastes. I guess I know what my career path is."
- Exploited: An accomplice of Dr. Nefarious interferes in the experiments, effectively piggybacking traits they prefer into Dr. Nefarious' work.
- Defied: "If I try and edit humanity, that might just show other people it's possible. I'll just keep my hands clean of that particular scramble."
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Dr. Nefarious successfully manages to eradicate all "unwanted" traits from the gene pool. However, as humanity continues to breed over several generations, the same traits get passed on over and over again, eventually leading to the equivalent of inbreeding. The population suffers from devastating side effects and dies off.
- Dr. Nefarious' utter ignorance of actual genetics results in his attempts at "improving the breed" going nowhere.
- Reconstructed: Having learned from his mistakes before everyone dies out, Dr. Nefarious manipulates the human genome to retain some capacity for selection, but ensuring that everyone has some of the most valuable traits in common (this being "valuable by Dr. Nefarious' standards").
- Played For Laughs: Nefarious introduces slapstick and pun-based humour into the genome, resulting in an episode of surprising hilarity considering the issue addressed.
- Played For Drama: The audience is introduced in disturbing detail to Nefarious' experiments as he cheerfully demonstrates to the captured hero what his plans are for them. The hero must plot their escape and also rescue or euthanise as many experiments as possible in the process.
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