Cornelius Hawthorne

Evil-doer
Full Name	Cornelius Hawthorne
Alias	None
Origin	Community
Occupation	Owner of Hawthorne Wipes
Powers / Skills	Manipulation Business
Hobby	Unknown.
Goals	Prevent minorities and homosexuals from using Hawthorne Wipes. Stop Pierce from getting an inheritance (succeeded). Hide his relationship to Gilbert (failed).
Crimes	Child abuse Animal cruelty Adultery
Type of Villain	Xenophobic Businessman

“	Are these your friends, Pierce? Minorities, Jewesses, and the unseasonably tan?	„
	~ Cornelius Hawthorne

Cornelius Hawthorne is a minor antagonist in season 3 of the sitcom Community, serving as the main antagonist of the episodes Advanced Gay and Digital Estate Planning. He is the father of Pierce Hawthorne and Gilbert Lawson, and the owner of Hawthorne wipes. He is an extremely Xenophobic old man who manipulates his children.

He was portrayed by Larry Cedar.

History

Early Life

Cornelius founded the company Hawthorne wipes. He married Marian Hawthorne and had a son, Pierce. He also had an affair with the cousin of one of his maids and sired an illegitimate son named Gilbert, although he denied their relationship. He was extremely manipulative and emotionally abused both of his children. When shooting a commercial for Hawthorne wipes, he denied Pierce the role and casted another child as his son. He made Gilbert his personal assistant and forced him to do demeaning tasks. At some point he divorced Marian, and Marian liked to pretend that Cornelius was dead. As Cornelius got old, he lost his hair and refused to buy a wig as most wigs come from Asians. Instead he wore a whalebone toupee. He also got organs from "questionable sources". Pierce at one point asked his father to invest in video games, but Cornelius refused. However, he had Chinese video game developers make a racist video game in order to torment Pierce. He then had the developers deported to China.

Season Three

Hawthorne Wipes became featured in a song for the LQTBQ community. Pierce decided to take advantage of this for profit. However, Cornelius refused to sell his products to homosexuals. He manipulated Pierce into making Hawthorne wipes a "straight-only" product. In order to escape the outrage, Pierce faked a heart attack, and Cornelius remarked that he taught Pierce to do that. In the hospital, Jeff confronted Cornelius, seeing him as a stand-in of his own father. After yelling at Cornelius, Cornelius then had a heart attack, though Jeff assumed he was faking. As Jeff "killed" Cornelius, he got his Toupee. At Cornelius's funeral, Pierce showed no sadness, and in fact, celebrated Cornelius's death.

A few months later, Gilbert summoned the Study Group to play a video game. The winner of the video game would get an inheritance from Cornelius. Cornelius had hoped to turn Pierce's friends against him using the game. He programmed the game to mock both Pierce and Gilbert. He also designed the game to be extremely racist and xenophobic, with the enemies of the game being black people, Mexicans, and homosexuals. When Gilbert reached the end of the game, a prerecorded message from Cornelius told Gilbert that he had to deny being Cornelius's son in order to get the inheritance. Gilbert refused. Cornelius's avatar then became a powerful boss and tried to kill Gilbert and the Study Group. However, the Study Group managed to defeat him. Cornelius said that since he was a "man of honor" he programmed the game to allow his defeat. Pierce then decided to give Gilbert the inheritance after realizing the struggles Gilbert had to go through.