![]() ![]() This set up a new image of the scientist as a sort of natural resource, to be sought after by both sides. This usually makes them into a Living MacGuffin as far as the plot is concerned. Unlike ordinary Mad Scientists, they are not heroes or villains per se they are simply the only person who can be trusted to handle the new Weapon of Mass Destruction they invented. The new generation of Reluctant Mad Scientists mark a refreshing non-villainous departure whose work was undeniably of immediate value to civilization, but only in the right hands. The obviously charismatic Einstein and other early 20th-century physicists somehow inspired the notion of the Reluctant Mad Scientist who is generally beyond good and evil by virtue of sheer genius, leading to this new version of the Mad Scientist. Or at best he'd commit a Heroic Sacrifice so that our sensible, down-to-earth protagonists can right the wrongs he created. In traditional accounts, the mad scientist himself suffers a nervous breakdown of some sort and becomes either the villain or the victim of his own experiments. ![]() Prior to the introduction of this trope, all stories about Mad Scientists (Faust, original Frankenstein, Lovecraft) seem to revolve around the scientist's own ethical and mental condition, usually involving Things Man Was Not Meant to Know that somehow cause him to go mad. Reluctant Mad Scientists (and wizardly/seer variants) do not require a change of heart to do good they merely need a change of employer, but they have Magic Nerd License to do what they want either way, as attested to in real life characters. The Reluctant Mad Scientist considers himself a sensible man of science whose quest of discovery is unaccountably misused by his Evil Boss for destructive purposes. Wernher von Braun, inventor of the V2 ballistic missile and the Saturn V rocket (and a notable non-example of this trope as per the USA's Operation Paperclip)
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