The Mad Doctor

The Mad Doctor in the CG realm.

The Mad Doctor is a secondary player in the Disney Villains Wars. First appearing in the Mickey Mouse short, "The Mad Doctor," the Mad Doctor is one of Disney's more popular cult villain. His most notable modern appearance is in the Epic Mickey game series.

Disney Villains War

Origins

The power of creation is a strange and wonderful thing. To have the gift to create something from nothing using only your own two hands is a power that brings great joy and pride to many. Some handle this power with grace, creating great works of art or inventions that change the path of history. Others, however, become consumed by the power that their talents give them, descending into madness.

Josef Mengele was a prodigy from an early age, becoming known for his habit of tinkering with objects he found around his house in Germany to create toys for himself and his friends. Although he came from a poor family, Mengele's parents recognized his skills and saved every scrap of money that they earned to send Mengele to the most prestigious college they could find in order to give their son the opportunity to follow his love of science.

Upon graduation, Mengele set out to discover the secrets of creating life. Inspired by ancient myths about a powerful sorcerer who crafted the world they lived in, Mengele began examining animals to see if he could uncover the power that gave them life. After years and years, however, Mengele was no closer to finding the secrets of life than he was when he first started.

The Hooden Mad Doctor, as was seen in the fight between him and Dr. Drakken in Disney Villains War

Frustrated, Mengele turned back to his original inspiration, trying to see if there was any truth to the ancient legends. One night, after poring over ancient tomes, a dark figure approached Mengele in his dreams, claiming to have been a servant of the creator spoken of in the legends. He told Mengele to travel to the forbidden lands known as the Wasteland and to speak with another man who had similar interests in the secrets of life.

Finding the one the dark figure had told him about, a sinister individual known only as the Coachman, Mengele learned of a second part of the legends that most had forgotten: a Black God rejected by his creator who had rebelled and was the one who shaped the world into the one it was today. The Coachman took Mengele into his care, teaching him the ways of the Black God and demonstrating his powers to turn young children into donkeys.

The Hooden Mad Doctor in the Universe CGI

Although initially sickened by the Coachman's powers and his disregard for the sanctity of life, Mengele couldn't help but feel jealous that the Coachman had succeeded in uncovering a method to turn one form of life into another. Determined to surpass the Coachman, Mengele returned to Germany, where his work took a darker turn. Mengele began advertising his services as a physician, but when patients came to him in search of healing, Mengele would take them for cruel experiments in dissection and vivisection. Mengele's experiments led to him becoming known as the "Mad Doctor" to his unfortunate subjects.

Although many died in the Mad Doctor's laboratory, which was hidden in the ruins of a medieval castle, he was shielded from the law by fellow servants of the Black God. Nevertheless, the Mad Doctor's greatest enemy was himself. Although he continued to believe his work would one day make him a god with power over life and death, a small part of him wondered if such a goal was worth so much suffering and longed to return to the wonder he had during his childhood crafting toys.

Battle of the Doctors

However, the Mad Doc didn't have long to ponder over his decisions made when, many years later, Doctor Drakken invaded his caste retreat, believing it to be the hiding place of one of their mutual enemies, the Phantom Blot, due to the lies fed to him by Doctor Doofenshmirtz. Mengele was well aware of the earlier deception at hand and at first disguised himself in a black robe to take advantage of Drakken's confusion before doffing it immediately afterwards. Realizing he had been tricked by his rival, Drakken angrily demanded that Mengele pay with his life as retribution for Doofenshmirtz's lies. But Mengele simply laughed at Drakken's face, before proceeding to summon hordes of skeletons that he had managed to revive from the dead thanks to his training with the rest of the Cult Worshippers in order to show the intruder the way out. The skeletal warriors actually cause Drakken's Bebe warriors to malfunction by the mere prescence of their dark magic interfering with the robots' guidance systems. As Drakken tries to escape, he gets caught in the floorboards. Mengele thus wasted no time in freeing Drakken from his predicament by cutting out the floorboards then knocking the poor criminal unconscious to lock him up in the dungeon for future usage in his experiments, those of which would never come to pass due to Drakken escaping some time later by some unknown means of safety.

A New Creation

Mengele, sensing the time was approaching for the Black God to soon rise again, decided to leave the comfort of his castle ruins and travel to New York City in order to secure his services to David Xanatos, hoping to manipulate the genius billionaire into becoming an unwitting pawn for his master.  Nonetheless, Xanatos seemed to get an idea not to fall for the Mad Doctor's manipulations and instead trick him right back in order to have him use his satanic experimenting for the benefit of Xanatos Industries, the first result of their partnership being the creation of Feral Mickey by using Mengele's eldritch magic to summon Scar's spirit to Earth and rot Mickey Mouse's mind into a feral state while inside his body, all for the single purpose of eliminating possible rivals who might get in the way of Xanatos' own plans to unite the world under his protective leadership. Mengele, unaware of Xanatos' backtracked deception, plays right into his hands by having the feral mutate go after the Big Bad Wolf and kill him off as a test of his strength. However, Feral Mickey actually proves even more efficient than just simply killing him right then and there; he delivers the Big Bad Wolf alive for experimentation.

The Mad Doctor, as an Animatronic