Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter

As you can see, she took after her mother.
"He's a mad scientist and I'm his beautiful daughter."
—Deety Burroughs (Genre Savvy opening line), The Number of the Beast by Robert A. Heinlein

A traditional character, although something of a Discredited Trope these days: a Mad Scientist almost always has only one child—a beautiful but innocent girl in her late teens or early twenties, who loves her father dearly, and whom he has kept cloistered away from the world. Sometimes she has some small doubts about his goals or methods.

When the question of how a shriveled ugly man has a gorgeous daughter comes up, the response is sometimes "she looks like her mother". Or sometimes because he looked better in his youth.

When the Mad Scientist is a good guy, the Daughter is not nearly so cloistered, although she is still a prime candidate as a love interest. Sometimes she ends up The Chick or The Smart Guy in a Five-Man Band when a team relies on the Scientist for their Phlebotinum. This latter version is more common nowadays.

See also Replacement Goldfish, High Heel Face Turn.

Contrast Daddy's Little Villain and Overlord, Jr.. who are evil like their parent, don't fall for the hero (or heroine), and almost never really turn good. Also, Overlord Jrs. often aren't that attractive.

See also Capulet Counterpart. Often overlaps with The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter.

Examples of Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter include:

Anime & Manga

  • Ryoko, daughter of Washuu in Tenchi Muyo!!, is anything but cloistered or innocent. The mad scientist in question is her mother, and Ryoko generally refuses to even admit they're related (even though the resemblance could hardly be more obvious) -- but she still falls for the hero.
    • As it is, her mad scientist mother falls for the hero as well.
    • Some adaptations of Tenchi do have Ryoko rather scared of her mother because she likes using her as a guinea pig.
  • Professor Souichi Tomoe, the Mad Scientist of the third season of Sailor Moon, has a beautiful young daughter named Hotaru. Who actually happens to be a) possessed by Mistress 9, the season's Dragon, and b) unknown even to herself until the end, the heroic Magical Girl Sailor Saturn. (Oh, and she's also about twelve years old. Most of the time. And in the manga, a cyborg. She becomes fully human later though)
    • Hotaru is a slight subversion as she's only around 12 when she's introduced her being reborn as an infant and later grows up to around this age, but appears younger (possibly due to change in art style in the last season) complicates her real age. However when she's possesed by Mistress 9 her body grows up into a beautiful young woman.
  • A subversion would be Lieutenant Nemu Kurotsuchi from Bleach, who is often abused by her father and Captain, Mayuri Kurotsuchi, yet remains unwaveringly loyal to him. This could have something to do with the fact that she was artificially created by him. And not only has she not, nor will she likely ever fall in love with The Hero, she's never even talked to him (she is often shipped with Uryu though).
  • In the continuities where Juuzo Kabuto is crazier, Kouji Kabuto from Mazinger Z fits like the Mad Scientist Cute Grandson. Lorelei -a secondary character Shiro got a crush on- also fits. Lisa, on the other hand, subverted it. Her father -Professor Gordon- was completely sane.
  • In Romeo X Juliet, Romeo Condore Van diMontague is the son of the dictator of Neo Verona, the ruthless Leontes Montague, as well as the love interest of Juliet Fiamatta Errs diCapulet, the long-lost heiress of the Capulets. Actually, there are two Mad Dictator's Handsome Sons: one is Romeo and the other is his half-brother Tybalt, who is still Juliet's cousin since his mom was a Capulet. Or three, if we count Mercutio... Dude, that's one messed-up family tree.
  • Aina Sahalin in Mobile Suit Gundam: Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team is the Mad Scientist's Beautiful Sister, as well as the test pilot for her brother's doomsday device. She eventually decides to turn against him when he goes full-on underpants-on-head crazy and starts shooting at her for trying to negotiate a truce.
  • Fate Testarossa fits surprisingly well despite being The Dragon in the first season of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Beautiful but innocent girl? Check. Loves Mad Scientist mother dearly? Check. Cloistered away from world? Check. Betray mother at inopportune time? Check, though she still held out for her mother's redemption after helping in Storming the Castle. Did so because she fell in love with the heroine? Depending on who you ask, small, kinda check or very, very big check.
  • Played with in Midori Days, where Mad Scientist Shiro Makinoha wants to capture Seiji and Midori so he can experiment on them, and his daughter Nao wants to stop Shiro since she is in love with ... Midori.
  • Made more of in the manga Franken Fran. Madaraki Fran is certainly the beautiful daughter of Dr. Madaraki, for a given value of "beautiful", and for a given value of "daughter". She actually takes after her father and generally everything that happens in the manga is her fault.
  • In D.Gray-man, Lenalee Lee is the younger sister of Mad Scientist Komui. Being an active fighter of evil, Lenalee isn't exactly sheltered, but her brother's attempts to protect her Innocence is the stuff of legends.
  • Ennis of Baccano!, creation and "daughter" of the 1930 arc's Big Bad, Szilard. She does twist it slightly in that she betrays him not for The Hero, Firo (who, at that point, she thought was dead), but for the comic Outlaw Couple, Isaac and Miria.
    • Chane also qualifies, although she does not betray her father.
  • Ritsuko and Misato from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Shinji himself may count as the Mad Scientist's Cute-looking Son, depending on your view.
    • HEY! What about Asuka? Beautiful? Check, Smart? Check, Love Interrest? Check, Loves Mad Scientist mother dearly? Check. Mother is insane? Check (Unless you call: A) Reattempting an experiment that ATE the previous person. B) hanging yourself (After losing what sanity you had in said experiment) so that your daughter would be the first person to find your body. Sane)
    • And Rei, too, with a side order of Mind Screw, Cloning Blues, and Squick.
  • Huge subversion in G Gundam. We thought that main character Domon Kasshu was the Mad Scientists's Handsome Son... but he wasn't. Then we thought he was the Magnificent Bastard's Handsome Younger Brother... Guess what. He wasn't. His partner Rain Mikamura, on the other hand...
  • Dubbing of Star Blazers created one of these, with Princess Invidia in the second series, rewritten to be Zordar's daughter instead of a lover. Because of the prevalence of this trope, the change was fairly plausible.
    • The Japanese manga omake "The Eternal Story of Jura", about Desslok's daughter. The pretty daughter part of it is played pretty straight; even though she's past the doubting stage about his methods and knows he's evil, she loves him. The betrayal was also done by Jura's mother, not Jura, but Jura condoned it.
  • Soul Eater: Medusa's daughter (or son, not explicitly stated which) Chrona jumps to the heroes' side, first unwillingly, but then becomes affectionate towards Maka and the other protagonists too, though to a lesser extent. It gets worse when Medusa kidnaps her back and Chrona becomes insane again.
  • Riza Hawkeye is the Crazy Alchemist's Beautiful Daughter.
    • Not to mention Nina. Sure, she is just five and anything but a love interest to the heroes, but she is cute, adorable, adores her State Alchemist Dad who shelters her and maybe would have grown into a pretty young woman if her father hadn't used her for chimera experiments that ultimately doomed her.
  • Saiko Waitazuki from Supercar Gattiger, though her father isn't mad, but serves as the team's lead scientist. She, of course, ends up as The Chick in their Five-Man Band.
  • Durarara!! has Shinra as the Mad Doctor's Handsome Son. He's... slightly more normal than his father, but he didn't get away without a screw or two loose.


Comics

  • Doctor Sivana, nemesis of Captain Marvel, has a daughter with the painfully obvious name "Beautia"; naturally she sides with the Captain against her father.
    • In this case Sivana also has a good/handsome son and an evil/ugly daughter and son, who are perfectly happy to help their dad go up against Captain Marvel.
    • Though in more modern works, his handsome son and daughter are portrayed as self-centered, spoiled brats while his ugly, brilliant children are their mother's un-favorites and running their own experiments just to impress their mostly absent father.
  • Talia, the daughter of Ra's Al Ghul in the Batman comics. Her loyalty to her father is... complicated.
  • Princess Aura, daughter of Ming The Merciless, in the various versions of Flash Gordon.
  • Alicia Masters of the Fantastic Four, daughter of the Puppet Master.
  • The Yellow Claw, a Marvel Comics Captain Ersatz for Fu Manchu, had a Beautiful Grandniece, who repeatedly betrayed him due to her love for FBI agent Jimmy Woo. Eventually, he put her in suspended animation until he could fuse her soul with that of a suitably power-mad Egyptian princess. Really.
  • Sorta done in Werewolf By Night. When traveling to an island for a cure for his werewolfism, Jack meets the local mad scientist Miles Blackgar and the beautiful daughter Marlene. Marlene helps Jack at first and doesn't even fear him when he's in wolf form, but after he knocks out her father she turns out to have a Gorgon gaze and turns Jack to stone for grabbing her arm. She also seems to help Jack more out of self preservation, since she mentions that her father ultimately intended to experiment on her, to cure her gaze of stone.


Fairy Tales


Fan Works

  • Globally subverted in the forum story The Mad Scientist Wars. In the story, the trope is reimagined as the "Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter ploy", in which the daughter will always pretend to help the hero escape, then drop him into some even nastier bit of trouble. Apparently, it's hard on the heroes and fun for the daughters.
  • In the French Harry Potter fandom, Voldemort was supposed to have a daughter called Ange (false rumors copied on every fan site). She was rumored to enter Hogwarts in book five. Actually it was one of many false rumors that were copied from one French Harry Potter fansite to another.
    • If fanfiction is anything to go by, Voldemort has about a million Mary Sue daughters. It seems he mostly sends them to Hogwarts to kill Harry only for them to (of course) fall in love with Harry. Expect her to show up openly using "Riddle" as her surname with the author acting as though we won't see The Reveal coming a mile away. If it's explained who her mother is, it will probably be Bellatrix.
    • For awhile, it was rumored that Snape was Luna Lovegood's father, which would have kind of fit this trope. Too bad the identity of Luna's father was firmly established from the moment of her first appearance. Still J. K. Rowling ended up refuting this on her website.

Films -- Animation

  • The Disney telling of Beauty and The Beast features this trope to the letter, apart from the fact that the mad scientist is also a good person (more of a Bungling Inventor, really) and the plot starts because the mad scientist's daughter is loyal to him.
  • Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick, has Dr. Finklestein and his beautiful artificial creation Sally. He's smotheringly overprotective, to the point that she has to poison him repeatedly to get a simple night out. Also, Finklestein is actually on friendly terms with Skellington—really, the person he antagonizes most is Sally.
    • Interestingly, in an alternative ending, Finklestein being on friendly terms with Jack is subverted with Finklestein being Oogie Boogie, in order to teach Sally about choosing Jack over him, making the Finklestein/Sally relationship seem more carnal. This, along with canonically the next person the Doc creates to replace Sally seems to be a wife (who looks exactly like him and even shares half his brain), has quite a few fans calling bullshit on the "beautiful daughter" explanation.

Films -- Live-Action

  • In the 1996 film adaptation of The Island of Doctor Moreau, they give the title doctor a beautiful cat-woman daughter—who conveniently slides into love interest for the hero Douglas.
  • As the song goes, "Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet", based on The Tempest, as Altaira, the Beautiful Daughter of the Mad Scientist, Dr. Morbius.
  • Occasionally appearing in a Godzilla movie as well, most notable Terror of Mechagodzilla. Also, it is worth mentioning that Emiko Yamane, heroine of the original Godzilla film, was The Professor's daughter.
  • Natalie Connors from Agent Cody Banks fulfills this trope as if the writer had been reading this Wiki.
  • Mostly played straight in The Mask of Zorro, except that Elena is actually Zorro's daughter, taken from him by the bad guy as a baby.
  • Freder Frederson of Metropolis is a Slightly Unhinged Dictator's Handsome Son. Incidentally, the Mad Scientist was in love with Freder's mom.
  • In Willow, Sorsha plays the Mad Sorceress's Beautiful Daughter. With some help from a Love Potion and Heel Face Turn from her mother.
  • Tara from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes fits the trope almost perfectly (right down to the betrayal part), except for having been created by her mad-scientist father to be a cook, house-cleaner and sex-slave. You may Squick if you wish.
  • Bullshot (1983). Rosemary Fenton, though her father is more of an Absent-Minded Professor who's being forced to work for the villain. She does fall in love with the hero though.
  • Cally in Doomsday. Notable mostly because her father has given up on winning her over to his cause, and now just wants her dead.
  • Blade. One of the vampire scions helps bring down her house.
  • Repo! The Genetic Opera. The protagonist Shilo Wallace is the daughter of a Mad Scientist, and is later coerced into betraying him.
  • Helen Kokintz in The Mouse That Roared, except that her father is not mad.
  • Nanelia in Battle Beyond the Stars is a fairly archetypal example.
  • Dione, the daughter of Melanthius in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger is an example of the daughter of a good scientist. And he is not really mad, just a little batty.
  • Young Sherlock Holmes. Professor Waxflatter is more eccentric than mad, but his daughter is quite beautiful.
  • The learned Rabbi of the silent movie The Golem has his beautiful daughter Miriam, who promptly falls in a forbidden love with the christian Knight Florian. Their romance turns out to be a Red Herring Twist, though.
  • Hillary Flammond from Top Secret!. Her dad's being held captive by the Communists.

Literature

  • The above two comic book examples both draw elements from Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu mythos, including the Beautiful Daughter; however, Fu's own daughter Fah Lo Suee was a full-fledged Femme Fatale (or even Vamp) rather than a cloistered innocent—just as likely to turn against him, but because she wanted to take his job....
  • A Lampshade Hanging: in Robert A. Heinlein's novel The Number of the Beast, Deety Burroughs introduces her father and herself to her future husband Zeb Carter by declaring, "He's a Mad Scientist, and I'm his Beautiful Daughter." Zeb, in his role as the Narrator, comments immediately on the cliché.
    • And then, in true Heinlein fashion, starts an argument based on an exact semantic analysis of her statement. They eventually conclude that her claim has zero factual content -- the word 'mad' has several possible meanings and she failed to specify which one, and 'scientist', 'beautiful', and 'daughter' are ultimately descriptive opinions, not objective facts.[1]
  • Hawthorne published Rappaccini's Daughter in 1844.
  • Though Sloan from the Inheritance Cycle is more Jerkass than Big Bad ( though he does betray his village in Book 2), his daughter Katrina might count.
  • Philip Jose Farmer gleefully inverted this trope with "The Beautiful Scientist and her Mad Daughter."
  • Children's author Allan Ahlberg wrote a notably creepy poem called The Mad Professor's daughter.
  • In the Animorphs series, the Andalite Estrid fits this outline fairly well, although she is only a protege of the Mad Scientist character, Arbat. (Ax speculates that Estrid may be Arbat's niece, but she is no relation at all.) Arbat is a kind of alien General Ripper who intends to deploy a biological weapon (which he designed with help from Estrid) that will destroy both the Yeerks that are invading planet Earth—and probably the human race along with them. When Estrid meets the Andalite main character Ax, they hit it off and she becomes Ax's Girl of the Week. Estrid was initially a Well-Intentioned Extremist who agreed with Arbat's goals, but she became convinced it was wrong and helped to defeat Arbat.
  • The First Law plays this straight with Bayaz and Tolomei. Then, in a brutal twist, it is revealed that Bayaz was the one who threw her from the tower, not her Mad Scientist father, in order to hold a monopoly over the secrets which she possessed.
  • The heroine of Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Monster Men is the daughter of a mad scientist who is producing the title Monster Men—he hopes to marry her off to one. (He gets better, though.)
  • The likeliest "tradithion" to spawn the beautiful Igorinas in the Discworld.
  • Mercedes Lackey's Mage Winds trilogy features Nyara, biological daughter and sexual/magical plaything of Big Bad Ma'ar in his latest incarnation. She "attempts escape" several times, but her Heel Face Turn doesn't actually occur until Skif nearly dies to save her.
    • Lackey's retelling of Swan Lake, The Black Swan, makes Odile into one of these. Her father expects her to betray him, which is painfully ironic since she is a textbook example of a Well Done Daughter Girl—when he starts supernaturally compelling her to obey him, it prompts a very subtle Heel Face Turn and results in a happy ending for all.
  • Elizabeth Faulkner, the daughter of an irrational Elizabethan steam-engineer, in Phra the Phonecian by Edwin Arnold.
  • Georgette Cuvelier in Harry Dickson's Adventures. The young woman turns out to be the daughter of Pr Flax, a former archenemy of the hero. Played straight in that she has a huge crush on Harry Dickson. Subverted in that she remains evil and would rather avenge her father and die than surrender.
  • Angie Mitchell in William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy, particularly in Count Zero.
  • Played with in Theodora Goss's short story "The Mad Scientist's Daughter", which also namedrops a who's who of iconic Mad Scientists in fiction.
  • Andre Caroff's Madame Atomos was a vengeful scientist with a hard-on for radioactive zombies and madness beams. She created a younger version of herself named Mie as a backup plan, who promptly turned on her after falling for Atomos's nemesis, Smith Beffort of the FBI.
  • In the short story "The Girl of My Dreams" by Hilary Ayer (a crossover between the Torg and Paranoia roleplaying universes), this is not just a trope, but a law of nature.

Professor Thistlebottam: I was a Scientist, therefore I had to be either Sinister or Mad. I seem to have been cast as Mad, therefore by the laws of the cosm, I had to have a Beautiful Daughter.

  • In The Bride of the Wind, the titular character's father was a scientist, and she said to be beautiful, if unique-looking.

Live-Action TV

  • In the Angel episode "Guise Will Be Guise", plays this straight - with MAGIC! In order to save Cordelia, Wesley is forced to impersonate Angel and ends up playing bodyguard to an evil Warlock's beautiful daughter. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Play straight in Denji Sentai Megaranger which Hinelar had beautiful daughter name shizuka.
  • Several examples can be found in the original Star Trek.
    • Such as Rayna, Flint's "ward" from Requiem for Methuselah. He was neither evil nor mad, he just didn't want his privacy to be disturbed (and for good reason).
    • Inverted in "Conscience of the King", where it is the daughter who is the mad one, trying to protect her accused father (he wasn't squeaky clean either tho).
  • And then there's Tora Ziyal from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the innocent daughter of Gul Dukat who always tried to give her father the benefit of the doubt. It didn't end well for her: she dies a pretty pointless death at the hands of Dukat's Dragon.
  • Alex on Lost fits this role, giving information learned from her adoptive father to the crash survivors. Different because it was, perhaps, simply a form of teenage rebellion against him, especially his treatment of her boyfriend.
  • Her dad isn't really a Mad Scientist (he employs them instead), but Elle from Heroes works too, down to flirting with the protagonist (Peter). Of course, she's pretty damn evil, and her way of flirting is to electrocute him a little bit each day to make him want it, but still....
  • Ziva David in NCIS could be considered this, to a point. Her father could be viewed as a Well-Intentioned Extremist but he's more likely just a Jerkass. Gibbs himself points out to Ziva that her father, despite being the director of Mossad, is dirty and sometimes crosses the Moral Event Horizon into pure, selfish evil. Her response? Sometimes she's on his side, sometimes she's on Gibbs... and now she seems to have crossed permanently into Gibbs' camp by quitting Mossad and terminating all contact with dear old dad.
  • Male example: Fringe has a female lead and the son of a Mad Scientist who doesn't exactly approve of his father's activities. As of this writing there's no sign of romance, but the show is in its infancy and they seem to be setting up an interesting take on this trope.
    • By the end of season 2 romance between Peter and Olivia is canon.
    • An interesting take indeed, in that the complicated relationship between Peter and Walter has been given the same emphasis (if not more at times) as the Peter/Olivia relationship.
  • Parodied in an episode of The Monkees where they spend the night in a mad scientist's house. Micky opens a door and finds a woman standing there:

Micky: Who are you?
Woman: I'm the doctor's beautiful daughter.
Micky: Well, what do you have to do with all this?
Woman: Nothing, I'm in the sequel.

  • Lampshaded in Danger UXB when Lieutenant Ash delivers a defused bomb to Dr Gillespie and his daughter Susan, who are building a Heath Robinson Machine in their backyard for steaming explosives out of unexploded German bombs. Ash later reports to his superiors on the phone, deriding the device as completely impractical and describing Gillespie as the proverbial Mad Scientist who even has a Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter — said daughter has of course just entered the room behind him.
  • Spooks: Ros Myers isn't exactly sweet or innocent, but she does prove to be the weak link in her father's Well-Intentioned Extremist conspiracy.


Myths & Religion

  • From Greek mythology: Medea of "Jason and the Golden Fleece" fame—she is the daughter of King Aeëtes who sets seemingly impossible tasks for The Hero Jason before he can have the fleece. Although Medea herself is evil and out to serve only her own interests; she eventually betrays Jason, too, although not before killing her own brother and her own children.
    • She only killed her children intentionally if you rely on the Euripides version of the myth. Earlier versions had it either being an accident, or murder by other people. Also, the brother she killed? She did it to save Jason's ass from her father. In fact, the only people she didn't kill for Jason, according to the earlier myths, were the princess of Corinth, whom Jason abandoned her for, and the King of Corinth, who died trying to save his daughter.
    • But it didn't help that Jason himself had begun showing interest in the much younger Corinthian Princess, and increasingly ignoring Medea and her boys. Medea had given up everything for this jerk-I mean hero, and didn't have anything to go home to.
  • Theseus and Ariadne of Chrete. Ariadne betrayed her father and her people for Theseus and his friends. Theseus and Ariadne fall in love, but Theseus comes up with an interesting way to break it off—leaving Ariadne stranded in an island in the middle of nowhere because of a dream. The myths explain that the dream was sent by a god (more exactly, Dionysius the god of wine, theater and fertility), and basically was a "Hands off my woman" message. It may have included a fairly detailed explanation of why one does not want to play the Romantic False Lead to a god. He picked her up after Theseus decided to wisely drop her off; one hopes he told her why instead of just shoving her overboard at the suggested drop site and fleeing. Also, Theseus soon gets some Laser-Guided Karma for abandoning Ariadne like he did. He had promised to use white sails on his ship to let his beloved father Aegeus know he was alive... he forgot to change his black sails, Egeus saw that and was Driven to Suicide. And not to mention what happened when he got involved with Ariadne's sister Phaedria, too...


Theater

  • Older Than Steam: Miranda, the daughter of the sorcerer Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest. She fits the trope, except for the betrayal part. Prospero's actually for the match, he just wants to make sure Ferdinand's love-at-first-sight won't end up as out of sight, out of mind.
  • Jessica (Shylock's daughter) from The Merchant of Venice.
  • Odile from Swan Lake. Daughter of the evil sorcerer, he sent her to seduce the hero.
  • Though not quite a mad scientist, Caldwell B. Cladwell's daughter (appropriately named Hope) in Urinetown certainly fits. It is often remarked upon how beautiful she is, she has no idea how cruel her father is, and, of course, falls in love with Bobby Strong. Also a good example of a Daddy's Girl.


Video Games

  • Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories features Rozalin, the Evil Overlord Zenon's Beautiful but Spoiled Daughter who's contractually bound—much to her annoyance—to follow the ridiculously impulsive hero on his quest to kick her father's ass. While she starts out as outright murderous, things do start to change when she starts realizing that daddy doesn't seem to want her back safely so much as he wants her out of the way. Then again, he's not actually her father. Or the real Overlord Zenon, for that matter...
  • Due to the traits of Lemon Browning, Lamia Loveless of Super Robot Wars arguably fits here, as she is the creation of Lemon that eventually got her own conscience and rebels against her creator. She's not the only daughter, however. Lemon also has another daughter and another son (though they did not directly rebel)
    • A Mad Dictator's Handsome Son variation exists in Super Robot Wars Destiny, the male protagonist Joshua Radcliff. He did respect his father in a way, but in the same time, he dislikes his father for being too workaholic and bordering a Mad Scientist, because he experimented Rim mercilessly to further his research/job, uncaring that she develops a Split Personality afterwards. And guess what, said father got killed and absorbed into the Big Bad Perfectio and Joshua ends up killing his father to amend his wrongdoings.
    • Someone's forgetting Lune Zoldark, daughter of the original Big Bad Mad Scientist Bian Zoldark, who eventually joins the good guys because she got a crush on one of the heroes, Masaki Andoh. Her defection from her father and falling in love are backwards, (she meets up with the good guys when she's coming back to fight her father, who she thinks has been corrupted by power, and after they've already defeated him), but she's probably one of the best examples.
  • In Fire Emblem: Sword of Flame, we get both the Handsome Son (though "younger" than most, in a sense) and the Beautiful Daughter. Ninian and Nils are the children of the Big Bad of the game, the Dark Druid Nergal.
    • Not to mention another beautiful—okay, cute—daughter in Sonia's (adopted) child, Nino. Sonia is actually one of Nergal's morphs.
    • Thracia 776 also has Sara, who is the granddaughter of the mad priest Manfloy.
  • Jade Empire has Silk Fox, the insane emperor's beautiful daughter.
  • Mass Effect: Liara is the daughter of Matriach Benezia, and it is possible to romance her whether your character is man or woman. Benezia's "madness" isn't her fault, though. It's somewhere between Brainwashed and More Than Mind Control in her case.
    • In Mass Effect 2, we discover Tali's father Rael, who performs some ethically questionable experiments on geth, even if he is not evil per se.
  • There's also Alyx Vance from Half-Life, daughter of relatively stable physicist and teleporter scientist Eli Vance. Given that he worked in the Lambda complex and was therefore at least partially responsible for the events which brought the combine to earth, he probably counts as a little bit mad.
    • Next to Doctor Magnusson, Eli is arguably the most sane among the Black Mesa survivors. Alyx's "uncle" and family-friend Isaac Kliener definitely fits the role of Mad Scientist, however; not only does he dabble in experimental and often dangerous technology (such as teleportation and patchwork rockets), he also keeps a defanged, flesh-eating alien parasite for a pet.[2]
  • Wario Ware has Penny Crygor, Mad Scientist's Beautiful Granddaughter. Of course, she's just as crazy and intelligent as her grandfather, and given the males of the series, is probably grateful for the lack of romance.
  • Marta in Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World.
  • Nina Cortex from Crash of the Titans, the young niece of longtime series Big Bad, Dr. Neo Cortex.
    • More of a subversion, if anything; She's not exactly 'beautiful', and the reason for betraying Cortex was because she felt he wasn't being evil ENOUGH, and becomes the game's Big Bad. She's still a villain, if somewhat more minor, in her other appearances.
  • Keira from Jak and Daxter is the daughter of a mad green eco sage who serves as the main love interest, and serves as the resident Wrench Wench.
  • In Overlord, either mistress you run into in the game turns out to be a daughter of the Big Bad (or rather, they are daughters of the wizard who became possessed by the Big Bad).
  • Ace Attorney Change "scientist" to prosecutor, and "daughter" to "adopted son", and you get Miles Edgeworth, especially if you take into consideration the strong emotional bond (platonic or otherwise) between him and Phoenix.
    • Franziska von Karma, Manfred von Karma's actual daughter and while she holds to her father's perfectionist ways she's actually got some moral fiber to her. In the third game she becomes an indispensable ally. Edgeworth needs to be a defense lawyer in Wright's place, but apparently he can't technically do that. After they make sure they get a judge who doesn't know Edgeworth, Franziska comes in to serve as prosecutor because she's the only one who won't rat him out.
    • In Apollo Justice, take the mad artist's pretty daughter, Vera Misham.
  • In Trauma Team, we have Rosalia Rossellini, Professor Sartre's adopted daughter.
  • Pop'n Twin Bee has Dr. Murdock and Madoka.
  • Chrono Trigger: Schala is a Magitek version of this. Her mother, Queen Zeal, ordered the creation of the Mammon Machine and Black Omen which exploits the power of Lavos which in turn is eating the planet from its core. She succeeds, and become an immortal at the cost of Schala and Janus.
    • Chrono Cross: Kid is Schala's clone/reincarnation/something like that.
    • Lucca and her dad are a Subversion in that both of them are fairly mad (10th century time machine!), but are otherwise decent people and are on your side.
  • From Pokémon Black and White: N. Let's see: Mad dictator for father? Check. Only son? Check. (If they are related at all...) Beautiful? I think we can let the fangirls field this one. Innocent? His views about the relations between Pokemon and Humans are certainly naive. Late teens? Check. Loves his father dearly? Unfortunately. Kept cloistered from the rest of the world? Oh yeah, to the point where much of Ghetsis' plan revolved around the way this would warp his views! Sometimes has doubts about his methods? He certainly starts to question himself after hearing the PC's Pokemon talk. Falls in love with the hero/heroine? Well...something like that, anyway. At the very least, he comes to see the PC as a friend. Betrays his father? Not until said father has already revealed himself as a Complete Monster, so that's a no, but otherwise, N has this trope covered.
  • Lady in Devil May Cry 3 is the daughter of Arkham.
  • In Tactics Ogre, we have Mad Necromancer Nybeth, who loves experimenting with the dead. He has three beautiful daughters, two of which rebel against him.

Web Comics

  • Helen Beta Narbon, the main character of Narbonic, who is actually a clone of her mother (and comes from a long line of clones) and a mad scientist herself.
  • Michelle Flammel from Monsterful, her father Lionel Flammel is a handsome Mad Scientist/alchemist/magician known for his mad creations. Michelle loves her father dearly but she also thinks that he can be very stupid at times.
    • This is expanded in the ongoing Narbonic fanstory The Mad Scientist Wars, where Jane Narbon is the (incredibly beautiful) daughter of Helen Beta and Dave. In addition to being The Vamp, she's also (yup) Mad.
  • Given the backstory to Girl Genius, "Mad Scientists rule the world. Badly", it's not surprising that there are a lot of these, played straight, inverted, bent, folded, spindled, or otherwise mutilated:
    • Backstory-only: Lucrezia Mongfish, daughter of evil Mad Scientist Lucifer Mongfish, and a Mad Scientist herself. She denounces her father's evil and marries The Hero Mad Scientist Bill Heterodyne. She turns out to be more evil than her father, and is in fact the Big Bad. Maybe. Her two sisters qualify for this as well. maybe.
    • Agatha Heterodyne, Bill and Lucrezia's daughter, the protagonist. Also a Mad Scientist.
    • Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, Handsome Son of the Mad Scientist and Anti-Villain (not-so) Evil Overlord Klaus Wulfenbach. Also (say it with me) a Mad Scientist.
    • Tarvek Sturmvoraus, Handsome Son of the current (now deceased)leader of a not-so-Ancient Conspiracy. Potential love interest and also (you knew this was coming) a Mad Scientist. He has a sister, who decidedly does not fit the trope.
    • The whole thing gets sent up by Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer (and, of course, Mad Scientist): he meets Agatha while imprisoned aboard Klaus's flying airship castle, and, being Genre Savvy, assumes she must be his captor's previously-unknown beautiful daughter, there to either taunt him or set him free.
  • Oasis was one of these to Dr. Steve during her first appearance in Sluggy Freelance. Interestingly, Steve actually uses his mind control device to make Oasis fall in love with Torg, much to Torg's displeasure.
  • Hannelore from Questionable Content. Raised on a space station by a Mad Scientist and a Corrupt Corporate Executive. She rebels, but doesn't betray either of them. Also, she was less "cloistered away" and more "neurotic to the point she wouldn't talk to anyone except the station's AI".
  • Order of the Stick has Therkla, whose relationship with her employer, Kubota, has adopted-child overtones before she falls in love with the hero, Elan. (Kubota even partially Lampshades this, annoyed that Therkla would turn for someone who didn't at least pretend to love her back.)
  • Shortpacked has one. Her name is Conquest (Connie for short), and the phrase Anything That Moves hardly does her justice. She is known for giving out sex "free with purchase", any purchase, at her father Galasso's toy store. Nevertheless, he seems to be under the impression that she is a virgin, even though he has continually forced her to copulate with anyone he considers capable of producing a (male) heir for him. There's even mention of a time he witnessed a heroic horse, and tried to use her to breed centaurs. Despite having a head full of air and a libido that's Up to Eleven, she is surprisingly canny and eventually rebelled against her tyranical father, and is now aparently one of his main business rivals. She's still a tramp, though, and considers a tryst with one of Galasso's more attractive male employees a suitable substitute for a briefcase full of cash as a bribe.
    • She's also pretty much a direct parody of Talia al Ghul (see above). Galasso decided to name Ethan his successor, and gave him Conquest as part of the deal. He went for it at the time, but later discovered that he is gay and refused to go through with it any more. Galasso didn't even seem to understand the concept, and then ordered Robin to impregnate Connie instead. For the record, Robin is a girl. Yeah, the jury's still out on how someone like Galasso managed to acquire a daughter to begin with.
  • Jordan from Does Not Play Well With Others is aware of this trope and finds it very, very useful when she's caught in her evil layer without her armor on.


Web Original

  • Jadis Diabolik of the Whateley Universe, in her first (chronological) appearance, even references this trope. It's one of her hot buttons that she's the daughter of the infamous mass murderer Dr. Diabolik, and she has the Exemplar superpower, but she's still as homely as she was as a small child.
    • Well, to be fair, Jadis isn't actually homely- she's plain, but compared to all the other Exemplars running around, she's incredibly ugly. (Plus, it hasn't been stated for certain that she is an Exemplar and that something her father did doesn't just mimic the effects). Despite this, she did have a guy vying for her attention after she saved him from a smalltime super villain thug, and two others at Whateley (though one's a creep and the other just wants favours from her father and the parents of the Bad Seeds).
  • Gaia Online's Gino Gambino might be a dude, but he otherwise fits this trope.
  • Doctor Gladiola Thanos, a Diabolical Mastermind from the '"Global Guardians PBEM Universe is the doctor of Mad Scientist Doctor Thaddeus Thanos. Her father was active in the 1980s and regularly fought the heroic Captain Challenger until he was killed during a lab explosion that resulted from a fight between the hero and Doctor Thanos's minions. While she originally followed this trope by helping the hero fight against her father's diabolical plots, his death sent her into a Heroic BSOD that ended with her following in his footsteps as a supervillain. Her first act of villainy was to find and kill Captain Challenger and his entire family.
  • An unofficial Champions character named The Scientist has a young, beautiful, virgin daughter. And he always calls her that, much to her chagrin, until her kidnappers (the evil M.A.C.R.O.N.) return her and say "Here you are, your young, beautiful ... daughter." ("It was my idea, daddy. Have you seen what this hunk looks like under his armor?!")


Western Animation

  • Though a departure from her portrayal in the comics, Lorna Dane aka Polaris is made into something of a Mad Scientist's beautiful daughter in Wolverine and the X-Men. She, unlike her siblings, is intentionally kept innocent and naive of the reality of the society her father (Magneto) created on Genosha. And in one episode she falls for Gambit who, while his status as a hero may be suspect, is the enemy of her father (in that he plans to steal from him.)
  • Aelita from Code Lyoko, though her father's sanity is more questionable than definitely not present.
  • Bonnie Lapton in the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command episode Eye of the tempest, the All Grown Up daughter of a former Star Command scientist who became mad after experementing on himself.
  • Jimmy Neutron's nemesis, Professor Calamitous, has a daughter who's actually named "Beautiful Gorgeous". Contrary to the trope, she's possibly more evil than her father, and almost certainly more effective at it.
  • Melody from My Life as a Teenage Robot is a mad scientist's beautiful robot "daughter"... unbeknownst to her love interest Brad as he struggles to escape from her father's captivity.
  • Vanessa Doofenshmirtz on Phineas and Ferb plays with this trope in different ways. In early episodes she was outright disdainful towards her father and his experiments, generally playing the role of Deadpan Snarker. She's warmed up to him in recent episodes, though she remains somewhat annoyed by his exploits and his attempts to make her into a Daddy's Little Villain (though some of her actions hint she may head down that path anyway). She's also notably uncloistered (she only spends alternate weekends with her father anyway) and keeps her relationship with his nemesis friendly but strictly platonic.
  • Subverted in the short-lived MTV cartoon Spy Groove with Sierra Nevada, the daughter of a mad robotics genius/casino owner. Turned out she was the mad genius; daddy was just a robot she built to draw attention away from her while she played this trope to the hilt to fool do-gooders.
  • The second season of The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest not only brought back the Quests' arch-nemesis Dr. Zin, it also gave him two daughters, Anaya and Melana, one whom becomes romantically involved with Hadji.
  • Though not necessarily a bad guy, Dr. Orpheus from Venture Brothers is an out-of-place scientist/necromancer with a relatively normal teenage daughter, Triana, whom he loves and cares for, humorously mixing his medieval, renaissance faire-like attitude with the trials of a modern-day single dad.
  • In Danny Phantom, Jazz defiantly takes after her mother.
  • In The Legend of Korra Asami Sato is a case where she didn't know she was the daughter of a mad scientist who hid behind the image of a successful business owner that secretly supplies weapons and Mini-Mecha to the Equalists. Even if her father had a strong Freudian Excuse for doing so, she is not happy to discover this.


Real Life

  • Catherine Barton was the niece of Isaac Newton (he never married and had no children), but she did live in his house in London. She was renowned for her beauty and wit.
  1. ↑ Although Zeb did concede that a sufficiently rigorous DNA analysis could factually prove that last one.
  2. ↑ But it's all right! Her fangs have been removed!
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