Well since the original proposal for this character was plagiarized i decided to re-propose him, and after sitting through the film's god-awful sequel I have decided I have enough data for a proposal. I give you Sebastian Caine from Hollow Man.
What is the Work?[]
Hollow Man is a 2000 sci-fi horror film loosely inspired by H.G. Wells' 1897 novel, The Invisible Man. It's about a brilliant scientist named Sebastian Caine who has been tasked by the pentagon with creating an invisibility serum for the military. Rather than tell the pentagon about his victory in creating the reverse formula he lies and tests the invisibility serum on himself. Having done so, things go about as well as predicted, in which he gradually becomes more insane and begins to commit murder and rape as he struggles to cure himself of his newfound powers, putting the lives of his coworkers in danger.
Who is He? What Has He Done?[]
As i said before, Sebastian Caine is a brilliant, but extremely egotistical scientist who succeeds in creating an invisibility serum under the Pentagon's orders. However he struggles to do the same with the reverse formula. He manages to create the serum that reverses the process and assembles his team (consisting of his ex-girlfriend Linda, his best friend Matt, Sarah, Carter, Frank, and Janice) to test it on a gorilla he turned invisible. It proves a success but Caine lies to the Pentagon about it so he may test the invisibility serum on himself in order to boost his ego. It's also implied that what damaged his ego to begin with and influenced this decision of his was the fact that Linda was seeing someone else (whom unbeknownst to him is Matt). He convinces Linda and Matt to join him in taking the project into his own hands, and they lie to the rest of the team that the Pentagon approved of Caine "volunteering". The serum turns him invisible, and the plan is that he stays dormant in the lab for three days under surveillance of his team.
However Sebastian's behavior begins to take a turn for the worst. Once Sara falls asleep during her shift to look after Sebastian, he grabs her breast in her sleep and leaves once she wakes up. He also becomes a bit more frisky with Linda. Once the serum meant to cure him fails, Caine starts to become more unstable due to cabin fever and radiation testing. He leaves the compound against Carter's wishes and drives to his apartment, but not before using his powers to scare a couple of children because they called him "weird".
Upon arriving at his apartment he notices his attractive neighbor through his window, and at first hesitates upon the idea of using his powers to come into her apartment. However he immediately has a change of heart upon realizing no one will know. So he breaks into her apartment and rapes her offscreen but not before using his powers to scare her a little. The rape is actually in the extended cut of the film, but is at least implied in the theatrical version given he backs her into her bed while she's in her bath robe.
As the attempt to cure him proves a failure, Cain becomes even more jealous of Linda's new life with her boyfriend, and hacks the surveillance camera to put Frank under the allusion that he's sleeping in bed, when he has actually snuck out to spy on her. When he realizes that she is with Matt, he smashes her window, scaring the both of them and goes back to lab-where he takes his anger out on one of his test subjects, an innocent dog, and smashes him across his cage, killing him.
Once he finds out that Matt and Linda plan to tell his boss, Dr. Kramer, he lures the unfortunate old man outside near his swimming pool, where he drowns him to leave his wife to find his dead body. Sebastian has now become completely drunk with power and sabotages the security system to keep his team trapped in. He garrotes Janice, damages Carter's carotid artery which causes him to bleed to death, tranquilizes Sarah with her dart gun before he snaps her neck to kill her, and impales Frank on a crowbar. He then stabs Matt in the side with said crowbar and locks both him and Linda in a freezer to...well freeze to death.
However, as Sebastian is putting on a disguise to make him look more human, and proceeds to set off an explosion in his lab, Linda manages to break her and Matt out of the freezer. She grabs a flamethrower and before Sebastian can escape through the elevator, she torches him, destroying all of his clothes. However his invisibility adapts to the burns and he attacks her from behind. He knocks her down and pushes his foot against her throat, almost killing her. Thankfully, Matt comes from behind and hits him over the head with the crowbar, seemingly knocking him out. However as he and Linda are leaving, Sebastian recovers and tries to kill them from behind. Matt then knocks him into a circuit box, electrocuting the man and rendering his muscles, bones, and internal organs visible. Matt and Linda manage to escape to the ladder above the elevator before the lab explodes. But somehow, Caine survived and grabs Linda by the ankle, pulling her to the roof of the elevator. As he gives her "one last kiss" before trying to kill her, Linda grabs the elevator cable and releases it from the car, causing Caine to fall into the fiery abyss below, killing him. Linda latches onto the cable and she and Matt climb to safety.
Miltigating Factors?[]
I would say no. While there's plenty of evidence to suggest it was the power that made Caine insane and not the serum itself, I feel whether or not the serum influenced him in any way is a bit irrelevant to his PE status. Because prior to testing the serum on himself Sebastian displayed some very deviant and arrogant behavior. He would often spy on his neighbor as she was about to take her clothes off, only to be disappointed when she remembered to close the drapes, and constantly compared himself to God infront of his coworkers much to their annoyance. Also, before he tested the serum on himself he made a joke about Superman raping Wonder Woman-which was obviously meant to foreshadow the kind of person he would become once invisible. He also looks down on Sarah for caring more about the safety of his animal test subjects than the research, even making a sick joke about dissecting the gorilla just to aggravate her. And lets be honest if the serum did have side effects, Sebastian is still at fault for it affecting his behavior considering he tested it on himself, despite the risks involved. Not to mention it was Linda's new relationship that made him want to turn invisible, just to see what it was like and boost his ego even further.
I guess I don't see how Sebastian's case with the serum is that different from Scar's with the snake's venom. It just made a bad man worst. Plus one of the main characters in the sequel, Frank Turner, uses his invisibility powers to stop Michael Griffin once injecting himself with the same formula. So he didn't turn evil. If we are to take into consideration that the serum affects it's host within a longer period of time, Caine molested his coworker after only a day of being invisible, so that also takes the Cabin Fever theory off the charts. He also constantly blames his coworkers for him having to quarantine despite it being his fault, which Matt calls him out on.
All of these actions take away any care he may have had for his coworkers considering he murders most of them in extremely disturbing ways. His death is not played for sympathy in any way and the main characters are glad he's dead by the end of the film.
Heinous Standard?[]
He is the first villain in the duology so he sets the standards. Michael Griffin doesn't quite meet it imo. What doesn't help is that one could argue he was played for sympathy given he was manipulated by the Reissner Institute into being their guinea pig for their formula, so they could use him to murder their political adversaries, which may have driven him insane. Although he was mentioned as being a war criminal before being injected, that statement is too vague and is only heard in one line of dialogue. All in all Griffin is just pawn in the plans for the other bad guys. Sebastian Caine did everything on his own.
EDIT: Plus Griffin falls under Extremists due to the fact that being invisible, he feels like he hears what others say and feel when they don't know he's listening, and therefore he sees the worst in them or something.
Conclusion[]
I say he counts.