Boris wearing his plague doctor costume on his way to murder some kids, 1949 (colorized)
So here we are, my first Pure Evil Proposal! I already had in mind the first candidate I wanted to bring up, and I want to discuss him mainly because he is a pretty straight forward one despite being niche. He is from a indie horror game that is unfortunately not as popular as others and I figured that no one else would propose him, so it was the best character to start things off. There are a couple of other candidates I have in mind that will be pretty clear cut, and than there will be others that will be a bit more interesting to discuss.
Before starting, I would like to say a couple of things. First of all, I am the one that wrote his page and, while I still wanted to write the "What did he do?" segment myself rather than copy and paste it from what I wrote in his page, there might be some parts that might seem similiar because of my writing style. Second, english isn't my first language, so I apologize for any grammatical mistake I might make in this. Lastly, this proposal will obviously contain spoilers of the work, so if you don't want to spoil your expirience you should either buy the game on Steam or watch a gameplay, either complete or in part. But if you don't mind spoilers or have already played the game, than I hope this proposal will be of your likings.
So, without further waste of time, let's get started!
What's the work?[]
The Imaginary Friends series is a indie horror videogame series created by Grant Marrs currently made up of two games, The Friends We Left Behind, released in 2023, and Imaginary Friend Asylum, released in 2024, with a third game called Imaginary Friend Institution being in the work, at the moment scheduled for release in 2025. While the proposed villain is directly responsable for what happens in the fist one (as I will later explain), he only physically appear in the second, so I will focus on that.
Imaginary Friends Asylum is set in 1949 and follows Anthony Rivers, a 8 years old child who is sent to the Hathmoore Children's Asylum. Here, he befriend the other childrens confined in there and gets to know their Imaginary Friends, mysterious entities which are attached to specific childrens but are invisible to the eye of adults and childrens that don't have a Imaginary Friend themselves. The nurses that works in there are abusive and the childrens are constantly put throught procedures that, according to the doctors, should cure them of their mental diseases, but are actually more like tortures. However, the staff members aren't the main threat, since in the walls of the asylum there is a mysterious individual known by the childrens as "the Ghost of the Asylum", which is rumored to have killed several childrens throught the years. As the Ghost starts murdering several people in the asylum, Anthony decides to bring light upon the mystery, trying to save himself and the other childrens from a gruesome fate.
Who is Boris Frenzy? What did he do?[]
Boris Frenzy is a man that started working in the Hathmoore Children's Asylum several years ago, seemingly to help children, but with a far darker plan in mind. At night, he puts on a plague doctor costume, taking the identity of what the childrens calls "the Ghost of the Asylum", and goes around the Asylum, tormenting the kids in it for his own fun. After finding the ruins of the old Asylum beneath the new one, he decides to make it his base of operation and turns it into his personal dungeon. At some point in the past, he kidnapped two childrens, Arnold Simmons and Hilda Reed, brought them to his lair and brutally tortured them to death, cutting off their faces which were the only things that the police managed to find of the two poor kids. After that, he also kidnapped another child, Christopher Boyd, alongside a nurse. He tied up Christopher to a bed, forcing him to watch as he killed the nurse throught lobotomy just to psychologically torment him, before proceeding to lobotomize him too and locking him in a cell, leaving him to die of starvation. It's unclear how many more victims he made during his years in the Asylum, but given the corpse of another unknown nurse is seen hanging to the ceiling of his dungeon and the huge amount of organs he harvested and are exposed in his lair, it's safe to assume this four weren't his only victims during the ten years he took the identity of the "Ghost".
In the game, he first appears as the Ghost immediately after Anthony enters the Asylum, spying on him and targetting him as his next victim. Anthony starts knowing the other childrens within the structure, meeting their respective Imaginary Friends too, with the latter being mysterious entities that attaches to specific kids and act as their friends while invisible to the eyes of the adults. The next day, Boris presents himself to the child alongside Dr. Fig, the head doctor of the structure, acting friendly towards Rivers to gain his trust. He tells him that he knows how abusive the nurses are and he is against such treatment, specifying that if he needs any help he can count on him in an attempt to make him think he is the only adult in the structure that cares about them. That same day, Anthony starts hearing from the other childrens about the "Ghost of the Asylum" a mysterios individual believed to be a ghost by the kids, who roams the corridors of the asylum and made several of the patients disappear. Through Annabelle, a girl locked in the asylum, and her Imaginary Friend Pooky, Anthony discovers that the "Ghost" usually creepily watches the childrens sleep at night, and last night he said that he needed to "visit his new toy", talking about Anthony. They tell Rivers he might be in grave danger, and that they will make some research about this mysterious individual to know more about it.
Boris later on assists Dr. Fig as he injects something in Anthony as part of his "treatment" to cure him of his supposed mental disease, an injection that causes him to faint. Waking up in Boris' office, he tells the child that Fig's "cure" is actually causing him a fever, and if he continues with the treatement he will slowly die of poisoning. Boris, not wanting his new toy to die so soon, tells him to change the content of the injection to water in order to avoid being poisoned. That night, Anthony and his friend Niccolo go to the operation room and change the content of the injection, but as they are about to exit two nurses almost find them and they aren't caught only thanks to the "Ghost" sudden appearence. Thinking he is trying to help them, they follow him, only to discover that he actually only wanted them to see what he was about to do, as he pulls out a knife and slits the throat of one of the nurses, traumatizing the two kids who runs back to their room. Going back to his normal clothes, Boris is alongside everyone else as they gather around the nurse's corpse, with Fig visibly enraged by what happened while Boris pretends to still act friendly.
The next night, Annabelle asks Anthony to meet her at the shack outside the asylum, but as he arrives there he sees the "Ghost" running outside of it. Rivers than starts hearing knock at the door of the shack, and if he opens it the "Ghost" will run at him with a axe, killing him with a single strike. However, canonically he doesn't open the door and Annabelle later arrives there too, with the girl telling him that she discovered that the "Ghost" is actually a man, and she gives him a tape that the "Ghost" left in her room for her to see. After this discoveries, Anthony starts seeing his own Imaginary Friend, Hollows, a female angel-like doll with which he had a falling out after a certain incident. Regardless, the child goes to the operation room for his injection, finding Boris who tells him to pretend to fall asleep to not make the other nurse know that he is actually only injecting him with water. But as he is alone in the room and pretends to be asleep, the "Ghost" suddenly appears with a camera next to him and prepares to kill Rivers while he records himself doing it, only being stopped by the arrival of another girl and her Imaginary Friend, who forces him to retreat.
Anthony, Annabelle and Edward, another kid, go to the projection room to see the tape, seeing in it the recording of what the "Ghost" did to Arnold Simmons and Hilda Reed, something that rightfully traumatize them. Later that night, Anthony go to take a bath, and once he goes out he sees a nurse in front of a door from which a lot of noise comes. Blood starts flowing below the door, and as it opens the corpse of a nurse fall down. As the other nurse attempts to escape, Anthony faints and is later rescued by his Imaginary Friend Hollow and two other girls, who tells him that when they arrived everything seemed to be cleaned off and that they found a tape next to him, most likely left by the "Ghost" himself. The nurse who attempted to escape is said to have disappeared too, meaning that she was eventually caught and killed by Boris in his "Ghost" persona.
The next day, Anthony goes to the operation room to take the injection as always, finding Boris who, knowing that the syringe only contains water, decide to just let him stay in the room without doing any injection, simply telling him to not exit the room. He also informs Rivers that Dr. Fig is the main suspect for the murder of the nurse, but as the police are searching for him he seems to have disappeared, possibly running away to avoid capture. Boris than exit the room, and while Anthony is in it he watches outside the window and see the "Ghost" bribing a nurse, making him realize that the plague doctor have paid the staff members to keep silent about everything.
Hollow, his Imaginary Friend, than appear to him and decide to come clean and reveal everything that is happening. Some time ago, Anthony was killed by a kid bully but Hollow, not wanting him to die, was able to reach a place outside reality where a god-like being simply known as "Celestial Being" resided. This creature, in exchange for her colors, allowed her to go back in time and kill the bully before he could kill Anthony, changing the events and creating a "second timeline". This was the event that caused the falling off between the two, since seeing a child die in front of him deeply traumatized Anthony, which caused him to be sent to the Asylum.
However, this is not all since she explain that this isn't the second timeline, this is the third one since Hollow went back in time twice. We are than shown what happened in the second timeline, with Anthony hearing the police and rushing downstairs, only to be taken as a crazy kid by the police and caught by the nurses who saw him out of the operation room. Locked up in the isolation room, Anthony was reached by Boris who revealed to him that, since Dr. Fig was still missing, he was now the head doctor of the structure. Now that he was where he wanted to be, Boris left the mask of the nice guy fall, sadistically telling Anthony that he would now lobotomize him as a punishment for disobeying him, taunting him by saying to chin up since he soon wont be able to even cry anymore.
A rappresentation of the childrens of the Hathmoore Asylum after being lobotomized by Boris. Quick reminder, all of them are 4 to 9 years old.
Hearing of this, Annabelle decided to pretend to run away from the Asylum, so that she would be the one punished instead of Anthony, a plan that worked since Rivers was freed by the nurses since they were already dealing with another patient and had no time to lobotomize him too. However, this came at a great cost since Annabelle was lobotomized by Boris, with Anthony seeing her after the operation and apologizing to her. After everything that went down in it, the Asylum was soon shout down and Anthony was transferred to another structure, where he than learned that the other childrens of the Asylum disappeared soon after he was transferred. Decades later, Rivers became a private investigator and went back to the Asylum, seeing the Imaginary Friend who roamed the place as aggressive entities, bringing us to the event of "The Friends We Left Behind" where he have to escape them before they kill him.
Managing to escape from the Asylum, Hollow explained to Anthony that his friends were ALL lobotomized by Boris, something that completely broke their minds and forced their Imaginary Friends to possess their bodies against their will. Desperate to change this fate, Anthony asked Hollow to go back in time like she did with that bully, something she does, trading her eyes with the Celestial Being to go back in time once again, creating the third timeline in which the events of the game takes place. Learning this, Anthony decide to remain in the room as the police arrives, causing the events of the second timeline to never take place. He remains in the room as Boris comes back and tells him that he is now the head doctor before going away, with both Anthony and Hollow noticing how he acts nice but he is willing to ruthlessly lobotomize childrens for no real reason.
The childrens decide that the only way to end this is watching the tape in the hope of finding some hints as to who this "Ghost" might be, and Anthony, Annabelle and Niccolo go to the projection room, noticing that the projector is missing. Since Boris have another one in his office, the group goes there, with Pooky remaining outside to guard the place. The three kids and Hollow watch the tape, seeing what the "Ghost" did to Christopher Boyd, and noticing that the plague doctor seems to be skilled with lobotomy and knowing what happened in the second timeline, Anthony and his Imaginary Friend understand that Boris is the "Ghost". But as they do, the "Ghost" appears in the room through a secret passage, attacking the group but being stopped by Niccolo who throw a chair at him before all of them escape in the same secret passage he came out of.
The group discover the ruins of the old Asylum through this passage, seeing Boris' dungeon and the corpses of his victims as they are chased by the man himself. The four find the corpse of Dr. Fig too, who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Boris himself, and they are than cornered by him. Boris than reveals that he does what he does simply because he sees the childrens as nothing more than toys for his own entertainment, telling them that if he didn't kill them before it's simply because he wanted to have fun with them and that once he finishes torturing them he will kill them and add them to his sick collection of victims. They rightfully tells him that he is a monster, and as a response he punches Anthony and starts slashing Niccolo repeatedly. To save him, Hollow intervenes and attacks Boris, managing to grab his knife before stabbing him repeatedly, fatally wounding him. Pooky than arrives in the room, furious for the fact that he attempted to kill Annabelle, and stomps Boris' head, crushing it with a swift motion and ending the life of this crazy serial killer once and for all.
Mitigating Factors[]
Boris kills a nurse simply to torment a tied up kid, not caring about the nurses being the closest thing to "allies" he have.
| “ | I tried so many things to get your attention, Anthony. Did you really think that it was a coincidence that I killed those women in front of you? Or that I stopped Dr. Fig from poisoning you to death? That idiot almost ruined my fun. I love to play games with my toys. | „ |
| ~ Boris revealing why he helped Anthony change the content of the injections, throwing away any semblance of mitigator factor he could have had |
He doesn't really have any mitigating factors going for him. His past is completely unknown, so there is no traumatic past or fraudian excuse, he does what he does simply because he sees people, and childrens more specifically, as toys that he can use for his entertainment and nothing else. There is also nothing that points toward him having moral agency issues since, while he is crazy, he still know what he is doing given that he can easily put up a façade of a nice and friendly doctor before switching up to his real and ruthless self.
Fridge Horror is also not a problem. While some of his crimes are in the past, we directly see the murders of Arnold Simmons, Hilda Reed, Christopher Boyd and the nurse through his tape, finding all of their corpses in his dungeon too. We also see Dr. Fig's body after he murders him, while we directly see the aftermath of him lobotomizing the childrens in the second timeline, making all of his crimes either partially on-screen or with heavy on-screen consequences (either throught corpses or lobotomized people). Despite being revealed to be the "Ghost" only at the very end of the game and having few spoken lines after that, he is still characterized enough given both his actions and words show a clearly sadistic and cruel individual who kills childrens simply for his own pleasure, enjoying breaking them through torture and lobotomy because he sees them as weak, useless toys, not as human beings.
As he himself explains, him helping Anthony changing the content of Fig's injection was just to prevent him from dying too soon to not "ruin the fun", and similiarly the fact that he doesn't kill the childrens when he could (like when Anthony faints and is a easy target) is out of sheer sadism, given that he wants to enjoy their suffering a bit more rather than kill them too soon. The fact that he doesn't hesitate a moment to kill Anthony if he opens the shack door during that brief encounter and that he have no problem attempting to kill them all in his lair clearly show this.
Lastly, he doesn't care about anyone outside of himself. He kills his superior, Dr. Fig, without hesitation simply to make it seem like he ran away after being suspected of the murders, and he even kills the other nurses just to traumatize Anthony, with said nurses being the closest thing to allies he has given he bribes them. The only thing that might hint at any semblance of care is him saying that he "will treasure" Anthony and his friends well since he takes "beautiful care" of his toys, but I dont' think I have to spend too much time explaining why this isn't even close to being a mitigating factor. When he talks about "toys", he is speaking of his previous victims that he already have killed and the childrens he is targetting or planning to kill. Considering what I have explained in the previous section, we already know what he did to his previous victims, so this "care" is his twisted way to say "torture", nothing else. To drive this point home, immediately after saying this Annabelle shout at him that they aren't toys and that he is a monster, with him replying by punching Anthony in the face and repeatedly slashing at Niccolo to the point of almost killing him, all while laughing and telling them they are useless. So yeah, this is his "beautiful care".
To put it simply, he is a complete monster who doesn't have any reason to do what he does outside of sheer sadism, not caring for anything outside of his own twisted enjoyment.
Heinous Standards[]
Annabelle on a wheelchair after being lobotomized by Boris. After seeing this, I wanted to punch him so badly
| “ | Chin up. Soon you wont even be able to cry. | „ |
| ~ Boris taunting Anthony after telling him he will lobotomize him ... this guy is the worst |
The heinous standard of the series isn't exactly high, but it isn't low neither. Murder, either attempted or successful, is kinda common among several characters, but Boris goes far above that and is easily the most heinous individual of the series without a doubt. To make a quick recap of all the other villains/antagonists in the games:
- The Imaginary Friends: they aren't really villains, and their heinousness is really circumscribed. The Imaginary Friends attacks a adult Anthony in the second timeline when he returns to the Asylum, trying to kill him, but they do so simply because they have lost control of themselves after their hosts were lobotomized by Boris. Also, Pooky kills a wounded Boris at the end of the game, but given everything I have talked about I think we can all agree that he deserved it. Hollow also killed the child bully, but it was only because he killed Anthony in the first timeline and she didn't want it to happen in the second timeline too, so it was in defense of someone she cared about.
- The bully: he killed Anthony in the first timeline for no apparent reason. It is surely heinous, but nowhere near as heinous as what Boris does.
- Annabelle's mother: she killed her husband, dismembered his corpse and put it into the fridge, traumatizing her daughter. While it is heinous, there is not enough context to properly judge this action, and in general this action is completely overshadowed by what Boris does.
- The nurses: they repeatedly abuse the childrens locked in the asylum, both physically and psychologically, taking great pleasure in doing so. This abuse is aimed at childrens who are already mentally fragile because of traumatic expiriences in their lives, making it even worse. This was so heavy that Annabelle genuinely considered taking her own life just to escape this abuse, not doing so only because she didn't want to leave the other girls alone. While this is very heinous, they are definitely a "hate sink" and it is very satisfying when they are all arrested, this is still not enough to surpass what Boris does, given that his actions are far worse than that.
- Dr. Fig: he is just incompetent more than anything. He is physically violent against the childrens after the first murder because he thinks they are the culprints, but aside from that him injecting Anthony with weird stuff to make him have a fever, an action that would have killed the child, is mostly done out of incompetence rather than malice. Definitely not even close to being a problem in heinousness for Boris.
- The Celestial Being: it is a god-like entity that exists outside reality, chill inside what is seemingly a black hole and have full control over space and time. This alone gives it such a ridiculous resource difference that any comparison between the two would be unfair. Despite this, the Celestial Being itself isn't really "heinous" since all he does is taking Hollow's colors and eyes to allow her to travel back in time twice. It is more similiar to the Truth from Fullmetal Alchemist more than anything else. It is confirmed that he will come back in the third game that will come out next year, but regardless of what it will do the resource difference is still too big for any comparison to be fair.
Given what I have written in the "What did he do?" section, I think it is pretty clear that Boris surpass all of them. To give a very quick recap: he kidnapped two childrens and tortured them to death (the corpse of one of them is tied to a Wheel of Catherine, which shows how horrible this torture was), ripping off their faces too; kidnapped another child and a nurse, forcing the child to watch as he killed the nurse through lobotomy before lobotomizing him too and locking him in a cell to die of starvation; killed three nurses in front of Anthony (a child) just to traumatize him; kidnapped, tortured and killed Dr. Fig; lobotomized all seven childrens (with their age ranging from 4 to 9 years old) within the Asylum in the second timeline; attempted to kill Anthony, Annabelle and Niccolo, severely wounding the latter to the point he had to be hospitalized.
What to me is his most heinous action (the lobotomy he did to all seven childrens in the Asylum) does happen only in the second timeline, with it being erased thanks to Hollow's time travel. However, time travel in the Imaginary Friend series works by replacing the previous timeline with a new one rather than creating a separate one, as such this did happen in the future in which the game take place, but this action was simply changed by the time travel. If not stopped in time, Boris would also have done the same thing in the third timeline too, and this action is the basis for the first game in the series, so this doesn't affect the heinousness of said action. And all of this is without even talking about some minor stuffs that makes him even worse, like: harvesting the organs of his victims to put them in a twisted "collection" of his, recording himself while he commits the murders in what are basically snuff tapes, sending this tapes to the childrens to traumatize them, creepily watching the childrens sleep during the night, which have some really creepy implications, and more.
So yeah, he doensn't only pass the baseline, he sets the baseline, to the point that the villains of the third game (which should be a cult from what I heard) will have a pretty hard time surpassing him in heinousness.
Verdict[]
In my opinion, he is a easy yes. He doesn't have any notable mitigating factor and he easily passes the heinous standards (both of the settings and the general ones) without problems. This guy is a complete monster who kidnaps, torture, lobotomize and kill childrens simply for the fun of it, and is definitely the most evil character in the series. But as always, the decision is up to you all!