Well, looks like this is my first proper PE proposal. I figured that now that I'm on the whitelist, I might as well propose who I find to be one of the most detestable villains I've ever seen: Dr. Fuyuiko Date, better known as The Doctor.
Note that I'm doing this proposal from memory, but I have played the game and I remember enough of the events to say that this is mostly accurate and I'm not exaggerating his crimes.
What's The Work[]
Cave Story, known in Japan as Doukutsu Monogatari, is an indie game released in 2004. It is about a robot who wakes up in a cave in a floating island, and meets a village inhabited by a race of rabbit-like creatures called Mimigas. It starts off lighthearted, but gets much darker from there.
Who is The Doctor? What does he do?[]
Dr. Fuyuiko Date starts off as being a nobody who weaseled his way into an expedition team with Kazuma, Momorin, Sue, Itoh and Professor Booster to the floating island the game takes place on. He was pretending to act as their medical doctor, but in reality, he went because he was aware of the Demon Crown and wanted to use its power to rule the world. In the intro of the game, he is seen taking the Demon Crown and gaining its power, with him gaining Misery and Balrog as slaves to obey his every order due to a curse put on it before the story started.
Early in the game, the Doctor is mentioned as kidnapping and killing Mimigas from the Mimiga Village and is feared by everyone. He searches for the Red Flowers, which can awaken a Mimiga's true strength at the cost of turning them into a remorseless killing machine. Despite you and Curly's efforts to stop him from getting them, the Doctor obtains some in the Sand Zone, which is also his first physical appearance outside the intro. He has Misery bring Toroko, a young Mimiga to him to test the effects of a Red Flower. He has Balrog force-feed Toroko a Red Flower that turns her into a Frenzied Mimiga. King, the leader of Mimiga Village, tries to stop this from happening, but the Doctor drops a lightning bolt down on him, killing him. He then comments on how fragile Mimiga bodies are. You arrive in the room where this happens, but you're too late and Toroko turns into a monster that you have to kill. It's worth noting that the game doesn't play the "boss defeated" fanfare after this and the text telling you you defeated her doesn't have the same excited tone as the previous boss defeats.
It's implied he indirectly causes Professor Booster's death in the normal route, but this can be prevented by avoiding obtaining the Booster V.1.0.
After you find your way back to Mimiga Village, you find that the village is completely empty and the happy music has been replaced by creepy music. All of the Mimigas have been kidnapped. If you decide to go to Santa and Chako's houses in Grasstown, you'll find that they've been taken as well. The next thing you can do is go to the Egg Corridor, which has now been wrecked by an explosion caused by the Doctor. The place appears to be broken in many places, including the Sky Dragon eggs. All over the place, you can find the corpses of the Sky Dragons, and some of them have been turned into hostile zombies that seem to be crying blood (this game is rated E10+ in the US and 7 in Europe, by the way). After making your way out of this, you find that Kazuma wants to just escape all this conflict, but if you choose to escape, the game gives you the bad ending where it's implied The Doctor wins.
When you arrive in the Plantation, you'll find that many Mimigas are being forced into slave labor for the Doctor, where he's having them make sprinklers to help grow Red Flowers so he can corrupt all of them into his living weapons he can wage war on the world with to dominate it. These Mimigas are not allowed to talk to you, and the ones that did break the rules were forced into prisons. At one point, you get thrown into the prison yourself, but you manage to escape.
After getting through the Last Cave, you arrive on the Balcony, where 4 Mimigas that have been turned into monsters are waiting. After dealing with them and defeating Misery, you meet the Doctor, face to face. In his room are many Mimigas trapped inside cages. He has created the Red Crystal, which allows him to harness the power of the Red Flowers and control it without losing his mind. He then fights you with this power, but eventually, he loses control of the power and is turned into an unthinking monster called Muscle Doctor. After Muscle Doctor is defeated, he dissolves to nothing.
He's certainly dead now, right?
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Actually, no.
In the room above the one you fought him in, there is the Core, a boss from earlier in the game, but this time it's colored black. In there, Misery attempts to take Sue hostage, but she is then shocked when the Doctor reveals he is still alive in the form of a ghostly red cloud and the Red Crystal. Misery tries to attack him, but it doesn't work, and he decides that since she tried to betray him, she doesn't deserve free will anymore. He declares that "[Misery] will be [his] puppet until the day [she] die[s]" and turns her into a monster under his control, doing the same to Sue when she tries to escape. He then merges his consciousness with the Core and becomes the monstrosity known as the Undead Core. Although a difficult battle, the Undead Core is eventually destroyed, ending the Doctor for good and turning Sue back to normal. It's unknown what happened to Misery, but since she was able to send Balrog to rescue you from the Sacred Grounds after defeating Ballos, she was probably turned back to normal as well.
What he did[]
Long story short, he turns at least 5 Mimigas (one of them being a child) into monsters and forced you to kill them, attempted to turn many more of them into monsters as well, murders King, blows up the Egg Corridor and turns the baby dragons there into zombies, forces Mimigas to do slave labor for him, turns Sue and Misery into his puppets and is ultimately responsible for the game's turn to darkness.
Freudian Excuse/Mitigating Factors[]
None. He is entirely selfish, condescending and has no regret for any of his crimes.
One thing that may give one pause though is the Demon Crown. However, the crown does not affect his moral agency, everything he does after taking it is things he was going to do anyway, and even then, he deliberately took the crown, knowing what would happen.
While he's mindless as Muscle Doctor, this means nothing as his slavery, murder and acts of turning innocents into mindless monsters were before this happened, and in the scene before the Undead Core battle, he acts the same way as he did before becoming Muscle Doctor, so he clearly still has agency.
Heinous Standard[]
Easy pass. The only other villains are Balrog, Misery, the unnamed ancient king and Ballos. Thing is, Balrog and Misery are under the Doctor's control because of the Demon Crown's curse, so everything they do is a result of the Doctor. The ancient king (not to be confused with the character King I mentioned before) is entirely Ghetsis-style Offscreen Villainy (heck, we don't even see what he looks like nor do we get a name for him) and Ballos is not only Tragic, but also his worst crime was pure Offscreen Villainy. The Doctor is the most evil since his crimes are presented on-screen in a way that isn't Fridge Horror.
There was a war that happened in the story before the game started, but any effects of this war are completely offscreen.
Conclusion[]
He is one of the most easily deserving indie game villains to be called Pure Evil.