Doctor Nefarious

Doctor Nefarious is a fictional character from Insomniac Games' Ratchet & Clank video game series. He has a main role in Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal and cameos in Ratchet: Deadlocked and Ratchet and Clank Future: Quest for Booty. Nefarious has a tendency to "crash" when he becomes extremely stressed, resulting in him being immobile until someone (usually Lawrence) strikes him rather sharply on the head. Nefarious does not seem to notice this, as he continues screaming as if nothing had happened and does not appear to feel the pain of the blow.

Appearances
Most of what is known about Doctor Nefarious' past comes from the less-than-reliable Qwark comics featured in Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. Early in his career while still organic, he attempted to kill everyone in Blackwater City on Planet Rilgar with an Amoeboid army. According to the Vid-Comic, Qwark saved the city and followed Doctor Nefarious to his base on the molten planet Magmos. At his base, Qwark encountered Doctor Nefarious on a bridge. The two flashed back to their biology classes, where Qwark constantly bullied Nefarious. Qwark tried to give Nefarious a wedgie for "old time's sake", which ended up with Nefarious falling into the machinery. As Qwark left the base, Nefarious' robotic arm was seen pulling itself out of the wreckage (completely unnoticed by Qwark); the machinery fused with Nefarious. Qwark fought Nefarious again on Planet Kerwan, where he was again defeated and had his head thrown in a bin. Lawrence then knocked Qwark unconscious and took him to another one of Nefarious' bases, from which Qwark soon escaped.

It is also revealed that Nefarious commanded an army of Amoeboids which guard his base on Aquatos and once were sent to attack Blackwater City on Rilgar. They are seen there during Ratchet & Clank, while Qwark is acting as the announcer for the hoverboard races.

In Up Your Arsenal, Nefarious has taken command of the Tyrrhanoid race, and begins with an invasion of Veldin. In a fairly large backstory to the game, Ratchet and the Galactic Rangers fight the Tyrrhanoids across much of the galaxy. Nefarious himself appears in many cut-scenes, in which he is plotting the downfall of organic life. Courtney Gears appears to have an interest in him, though this is quite evidently not reciprocated. Dr Nefarious is Secret Agent Clank's biggest fan and captured Clank to try and get him on his side. When Clank refused, he built a copy of Clank which he called Klunk to spy on Ratchet and his friends. He spends most of the game on a star cruiser which, when Ratchet, Klunk, and Captain Qwark arrive at, he blows up to try and kill them all. Klunk's true identity is revealed soon after Doctor Nefarious turns all of Metropolis into robots. After he is defeated on Mylon, the Biobliterator blows up and leaves Doctor Nefarious and Lawrence stranded on an asteroid awaiting coming in range of a planet or space station (which won't happen for another 5 to ten milleneums). In Deadlocked, the two were in range of the Dreadzone Station but failed to transport onto it since it was destroyed. Since Nefarious and Lawrence are still alive, they had a chance to re-appear in a future sequel, and they did return in Quest for Booty by unknown means. The plot of a upcoming sequel is supposedly to do with rescuing Clank from Nefarious, as referred to by the ending of Quest for Booty.

Reception
Johnny Liu of Game Revolution said that Doctor Nefarious' "psychotic babbling [...] strikes the right balance between threatening and comical". He was included in GameSpot's "All Time Greatest Video Game Villain" contest and reached the "Round 1a" before losing to Dr. Wily. Dr. Nefarious was listed as the sixth the best videogame villain on PS3 by PlayStation Official Magazine. IGN ranked him 65th on their list of "The Top 100 Videogam Villains", saying he is evil, "but evil in the most loveable way" and that "one of Dr. Nefarious' most charming quirks is his tendency to blow a fuse and stop mid-sentence, occasionally picking up soap opera radio waves in the process" when is under stress. GamesRadar listed Nefarious as one of "Gaming's maddest mad doctors". He was ranked seventh in the "Top Ten A.I. Characters of the Decade" article by Matt Miller from Game Informer, who wrote "Dr. Nefarious is just the villain that this sci-fi series needed. [...] A great villain can make a story, and Nefarious hits all the right notes to fit the franchise."