Villains of FFVII Part 3: Sadistic Scientist

With this villain post, we reach one of the most crucial villains of FFVII. This character shows us the chilling results of extreme ideology and unchecked power. We’re talking about Hojo, the scientist responsible for cruel acts against countless individuals in the FFVII universe. If you don't like to read about really horrible people doing horrible things, like children being harmed, better skip this one. It's a real doozy.

Birdy, @BirdBlackSocial

Hojo uses his position to manipulate, destroy and commit vicious acts of torture on innocent victims. Nothing is out of bounds for him. Although he claims his acts are in the name of science, he blatantly ignores any code of ethics, and doesn’t truly maintain clear objectives. He is fascinated by pushing exceptional subjects to their absolute highest potential, regardless of the risks or costs. He learns nothing from the consequences of ‘failed experiments.’ This is most obvious when his madness reaches its peak, and horrifically experiments on himself near the last act of the original FFVII.

In his youth as a budding megalomaniac, Hojo’s boss, Professor Gast, discovered a specimen in the northern crater. They thought this to be an ancient Cetra, a race of superhumans connected to the planet’s lifestream. They studied the specimen’s DNA and performed experiments thinking that they would harness properties attributed to this ancient race of super beings. Little did they know what they were actually experimenting with was the doom of the Cetra, an extraterrestrial they named Jenova.

Not to be outdone by the other scientists on the team, Hojo injected Jenova cells into his own baby, while still in the womb. This experiment produced Sephiroth. Numerous other hosts received Jenova cells, and later became the subjects of Hojo’s ‘Reunion’ theory that eventually all the hosts who received Jenova cells would return together. The eerie black robed figures in the northern crater are men who have been rendered zombies for Hojo’s Jenova project. He refers to them as failed experiments. When Sephiroth discovers a room full of pods, each containing a Mako infused human, the implications that he is a monster, and a lab subject just like them triggers his descent into madness. Hojo, it turns out, hoped that Sephiroth would make this discovery, and later when Sephiroth is found in the Northern Crater, Hojo celebrates his success at having predicted that all the subjects infused with Jenova cells would return to Jenova’s original resting place to reunite together. I’ll talk more about Jenova and Sephiroth in my next post.

Vincent Valentine was left for dead in a casket by Hojo, after Hojo performed an unknown number of experiments, because science.

Hojo had Aerith and Red XIII abducted in one of his more far-fetched attempts to breed a super being with Cetra DNA.

Cloud and Zach were also made part of Hojo’s Jenova project, although Hojo was certain that the injections would lead them to losing their minds completely.

The list goes on and on.

Hojo lives with the misconception that to be a scientist is to abandon one’s ethics and humanity. His general goal of seeking exceptional subjects, and in turn idolizing Sephiroth as an enormous success shows a deeply skewed perspective, His version of science is little more than a thinly veiled series of murders and atrocities well within earshot of ghastly real world examples like Joseph Mengele and Jeffrey Dahmer. In heroic fiction, good writing shows a villain’s evil through their actions, and the list for Hojo is exceptionally terrible. He goes beyond FFVII's other examples of every day evil and people with character weaknesses, and repeatedly commits crime after crime that inexplicably do not land him behind bars.

Anyway, if you made it this far, I hope you find something fun and light to recover from the darkness of all the specifics of Hojo’s villainy. I know I need some Parks and Rec, or maybe some thoughts about Belle and Moana.