Vaughn Du Clark

Vaughn Du Clark is a major antagonist of The CW series iZombie. Vaughn serves as the secondary antagonist in season 1 and the main antagonist in season 2. He is the CEO of a energy drink company that is known to heighten aggression and in combination with a tainted batch of a drug called "utopium", creates zombies.

He is portrayed by Steven Weber, who also played Hugh J. Magnate Jr. in A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!, voiced The Goblin in Ultimate Spider-Man, and Beyonder in Avengers Assemble.

Personality
Vaughn gives of a narcissistic and greedy personality, showing absolutely no concern for his actions nor how those said actions affect others around him and long as they benefit him. He is remorseless and apathetic for human life, being able to let people get hurt or killed based on his actions and not caring as long as it benefits him. He will have people killed just for insulting him on Twitter, indicating a very hair trigger temper. Despite his sociopathic and violent tendencies, he is not as comfortable with violence up close and whenever he sees a zombie attack, whether he intended it or not, he is shown wincing in fear.

Background
Vaughn founded a beverage company called Max Rager and built a fortune making a signature energy drink. It was later discovered that the beverage caused temporary psychosis in several of their more heavy-drinkers. One such incident was the infamous Lake Washington Boat Party Massacre which turned Liv Moore - the show's protagonist - into a zombie. In response, Vaughn payed to cover up Max Rager's involvement in these events, not caring if more occurred. Unbeknownst to him at the time, his energy drink also had another unpleasant side effect when combined with another strain of a drug called "utopium": it made people zombies.

Leaked Memo
When a local athlete, Holly White, saw a memo accidentally sent to a Max Rager employee named Carson McComb saying their products make one in a thousand people psychotic, Holly wanted to forward it to a reporter. Carson told Eliza Marquette, Max Rager's director of advertising, and she drugged Holly with GHB as she jumped from a plane to sky-dive, trying to disguise her death as an accident. Afterwards, Max Rager erased all the helmet cam footage of the jump to cover-up the crime but Holly's ex-sorority sister, M.E. Liv Moore, pushed for an investigation and found out Holly was murdered. To prevent Eliza from talking, Vaughn sent Sebastian Meyer to her house and killed her while she was in the shower.

Vaughn later discovered a journalist named Rebecca Hinton, who connected Max Rager energy drinks to major violent outbursts in otherwise mild-mannered people, somehow received a copy of the same memo Holly tried to leak. Vaughn sent Meyer to kill her and disguised the murder as a burglary gone wrong while looking for the memo. Liv confronted Vaughn in his office, Vaughn played dumb saying a number of things could've caused those outbursts and the memo in question was created by his competitors before security forced her out of the building after Vaughn's assistant, Adele, called them.

Vaughn sent Meyer after Liv to spy on her to find who leaked the document. After Sebastian found out it was Adele, who was blackmailing Max Rager, he killed her and kidnapped Liv while taking the memo for himself and preparing to dump both of them at sea. Meyer, however, underestimated Liv and she bashes him over the head with a cinderblock and starts the boat's engine, with him near it, disfiguring his face and nearly killed him. He barely survived thanks to him licking some of Liv's blood off her face, turning him into a zombie and he washes back to shore.

Discovering Zombies Exist
When Meyer returned to Max Rager, he revealed he lost the flashdrive to a couple of teenagers who hit him and he killed one named Kimber for her brains after being turned into a zombie by Liv. While being questioned Vaughn witnesses Meyer cracked the skull of the doctor interviewing him, Dr. Yeltsin, and devoured his brain before leaving Max Rager to go to his aunt Edna's place. Sebastian eventually devoured his aunt's brain too and sought to kill Liv in revenge for turning him into a zombie but was himself killed. Vaughn had his daughter Rita call the other three teenagers from Kimber's phone offering a reward for the return of that flashdrive.

Vaughn called in Dr. Holland to replace Dr. Yeltsin as the head of research and reveals Sebastian was a zombie and Dr. Holland expresses an interest in studying one. To this end he has Dr. Holland observe Liv when they interview Vaughn about Sebastian and the flashdrive. Vaughn tried to suggest Sebastian was responsible for the deaths of all the teenagers before they revealed Liv killed him before they latest victims turned up dead. After Liv and her partner detective Babineaux leave, Vaughn tells Holland he wants him to develop a drink called Super Max which will eliminate the need for sleep and increase one's strength and endurance to near superhuman levels. When Holland mentioned the possibility of becoming a zombie not factoring in well with that dream, Vaughn says he wants Holland to find out what in Max Rager's energy drink caused people to turn into zombies and eliminate it while Vaughn eliminates the zombies that are already in Seattle.

At the meet site, Rita take the flashdrive and leaves the money while a hitman plants a bomb under his car but it fails to kill him and instead kills a cop while gravely injuring another. The one who had the flashdrive, Cameron Henley, is eventually found and arrested by the police, who then turns over a copy of the flashdrive to the police and Liv leaks everything on the flashdrive to Rebecca's newspaper and they published her story. Vaughn reads it while meditating and is angered the story got out despite everything he did to cover it up but confidently tells reporters this isn't the end of him and his company.

Exterminating the Zombies
After the article came out, Max Rager profits have been plummeting and lawsuits were filed against the company, but the company managed to survive. Vaughn confidently tells the board that despite these setbacks they are still rich and even if Super Max has the same side effects, they will be too rich to care and hangs up on them while praising their input. Vaughn asks Rita why he can't just have them all killed and Rita tells him they need their money and once Super Max is out he will be untouchable. Rita then tells him about a man who can detect zombies and who they can use to kill them: Major Lilywhite. Vaughn calls Major into his office and blackmails him into killing potential zombies based on their spending habits or they will kill Liv. Major reluctantly agrees and is given the nickname of "Chaos Killer" by the press.

When Taylor Fowler is killed by a hitman, it is revealed that she was married to the head of the Max Rager Board, Terrence Fowler. It is also revealed Vaughn was sleeping with Taylor when Clive and Liv interview him for details. Vaughn however denies the affair and acts surprised when Liv runs into Major as he prepares to coach him as his personal trainer. Rita confronts Vaughn about the affair as Terrence represents an important swing vote but Vaughn just sarcastically tells her it won't happen again and reminds her his sleeping with married women is how she was born. Terrence visits Vaughn in his office and tells him he plans to vote him out of the company and take his place as revenge for sleeping with his wife. Vaughn tries to reassure him with promises of wealth, but Terrence knows the company is close to liquidation so Vaughn shows him his secret lab. Vaughn then locks Terrance into a room with Dr. Holland, who suffered a lab accident and was turned into a zombie, and watched as terrance is eaten alive, while showing a small sign of shock.

Vaughn and Rita argue over Major's loyalty as the head to his secret laboratory and observe Super Max's effects on a zombie. When the head scientist, Dr. Lockett, suggests they start human trials, Vaughn volunteers to be the test subject. While exercising with Major, Vaughn tells Major to max out the weights while on Super Max and effortlessly lifts them up and give the other cans to Major as a gift. Vaughn then throws a weight ball at someone else exercising and screams at him to grunt again, showing drinking Super Max has the same symptoms as Max Rager heavy drinkers, but it only takes one can of Super Max to make a person violent.

Raking in the new year, Major gives Vaughn a fitness band as a gift and the two men bond while Vaughn lifts weights. Vaughn then gets a call about something Dr. Lockett wants to show him and Major asks what that was about. Vaughn tells Major he has a lab in Tacoma but major is skeptical and they just go back to working out. Rita warns Vaughn that Major is playing him and appealing to his ego for information, stating her mother said Vaughn Du Clark is the smartest man in the world until someone strokes his ego and then he is like all the rest. When Dr. Lockett gives Major a thumbdrive with information on zombies, Major turns it over to Vaughn and Vaughn shows him his underground lab. Vaughn then locks Dr. Lockett in the room filled with zombies and watches Major's reaction as the zombies start to go for Dr. Lockett. Vaughn eventually lets Dr. Lockett out and reveals the whole thing with the flashdrive and having Lockett killed was a charade to test Major, which he passed with flying colors. Vaughn then delivers the good news to Rita, unaware that the fitness band Major gave him is bugged.

Major walks into Vaughn's office as he is reading tweets from trolls badmouthing Max Rager with Rita and his security consultant Janko, whom he introduces to Major. Rita asks why Vaughn obsesses over tweets from the haters when Max Rager has over three millions followers and Vaughn responds that no one should slip through the cracks. On that note, Vaughn asks Major why DA Floyd Baracus, a man that Major said wasn't a zombie, is suddenly a victim of the Chaos Killer.

Major defends himself, stating someone must've copied his MO to target Baracus out, but Vaughn is skeptical considering his spending habits indicate he is a zombie. Vaughn warns Major he better not be lying, because he is the type of guy who gets even with interest, like what he is about to do with one of the internet trolls badmouthing Max Rager. Vaughn then directs Major to chose the hater he will go after and he chooses a guy in Bangkok who called Max Rager poison, suspecting his father died of a heart attack because of it.

Known Victims

 * Richmond, Virginia - December 2013: Numerous customers - splashed in the face with fry oil by a female fry cook.
 * Jackson, Mississippi - February 2014: Numerous participants of a charity bike race - mowed done by a long haul trucker.
 * The Lake Washington Boat Party Massacre - May, 2014:
 * Numerous people killed by zombies.
 * Numerous zombies killed.
 * Numerous people, including Liv Moore, Blaine DeBeers, and Marcy Kahn, turned into zombies.
 * DeGaulle College: Jason Frye, A.K.A. The Library Killer's victims:
 * A kid - Skull cracked
 * a girl - Chucked through a display case; survived
 * Holly White - Drugged by Eliza Marquette and impaled on a branch.
 * People killed by Sebastian Meyer:
 * Eliza Marquette
 * Rebecca Hinton - Pushed down a flight of stairs.
 * Adele - Punched in the face with brass knuckles.
 * Kimber Cooper - Neck snapped.
 * Dr. Yeltsin - Head repeatedly bashed in and skull cracked open.
 * Edna Timmons - Skull cracked.
 * Two Seattle police officers - blown up by an unnamed hitman; one survived.
 * Cameron Henley - attempted to blow up with a car bomb.
 * Terrence Fowler - Lured into his lab basement where he let Dr. Holland (who turned into a Romero zombie after a lab accident) devour him.
 * Trickstar107 - Killed in a staged motorcycle crash.