Syndrome

NOTE: This page explains his original version and excludes the Lego version. Therefore only the information of the original version should be put here.

Pure Evil

Adult
Young

Full Name

Buddy Pine

Alias

Syndrome

Brophy
Brody
Skippy (last 3 by Mr. Incredible)
IncrediBoy
Sitter
Little Oaf (by Bomb Voyage)

Origin

The Incredibles

Allies

Mr. Incredible (one-sided)

Mirage (both formerly)
Omnidroids
Unnamed security guards

Powers / Skills

Genius-level intelligence
Technological genius
Supreme leadership
Weaponry expertise
Expert tactician
Combat prowess
Immense wealth and resources
Psychological manipulation
Various hi-tech weapons and gadgets:

Control over the Omnidroids
Rocket boots
Utility gauntlets
Tracking devices

Goals

Become Mr. Incredible's sidekick (failed, abandoned).
Lure supers to test his Omnidroid and have them killed (succeeded temporarily).
Have his revenge on Mr. Incredible for rejecting him by killing him and his family.
Become a "hero" in the eyes of the public by pretending to save the city from the Omnidroid and enjoy his fulfilled life.
Sell his technology, rendering the "real" supers useless and destroy the entire concept of them.
Kidnap Jack-Jack to make him his partner as revenge against the Incredibles for ruining his future reputation from him. (all failed).

Moral Event Horizon

Luring over a dozen supers to his lair and having them killed through his Omnidroids.

Shooting missiles at Elastigirl's plane with her children aboard to spite Mr. Incredible.

Kill Count

Dozens (indirectly)

Hundreds to Thousands (endangered)

Worst Crimes

Abuse of power

Arms dealing
Serial murder
Kidnapping
Torture
Terrorism
Endangerment
Psychological abuse
Attempted cultural genocide
Impersonating a federal officer
Crimes against humanity

Type of Villain

Vengeful Supervillain

“	Sure, it was difficult, but you are worth it! I mean, after all… I am your biggest fan.	„
	~ Syndrome's most famous quote as he reveals his true identity to his former idol Mr. Incredible. noicon

“	I'll give them heroics. I'll give them the most spectacular heroics anyone's ever seen! And when I'm old and I've had my fun, I'll sell my inventions so that everyone can be superheroes. Everyone can be super! And when everyone's super (laughs)… no one will be. (continues laughing)	„
	~ Syndrome explaining his ultimate goal to render the supers effectively worthless noicon ‎

Buddy Pine, formerly known as IncrediBoy and better known as Syndrome, is the main antagonist of Pixar's 6th full-length feature film The Incredibles.

He is the former self-proclaimed "biggest fan" turned arch-nemesis of Mr. Incredible who desired to become his sidekick. When he was rejected by Mr. Incredible, Buddy wanted revenge for what had happened to him since then. Years later, Syndrome lured and had many supers killed as he waited for his moment to do the same with Mr. Incredible.

He was voiced by Jason Lee.

What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]

In General[]

While he started off as a nice enough kid who admired Mr. Incredible (if a bit overly obsessed), he threw all of that aside as he grew up, subverting every potential redeeming quality he ever may have had.
Even when he was a child, his quintessentially immature anger at Mr. Incredible rejecting him became heavily outweighed by his self-serving desires and lack of regard for what a Super means. This is especially true since as a child, he was very reckless and ignorant; he went into Bob's car without permission and even claimed that he didn't have to worry about training him because he, as Mr. Incredible's biggest fan, already knows everything he knows. He believes that being a super is about wearing cool outfits and beating people up instead of protecting and saving lives.
- This shows that he had no true desire to help other people and just wanted to be a superhero just for fame and glory. Neither as a child nor adult does he acknowledge that his recklessness nearly got himself and civilians on a train killed if it weren't for Mr. Incredible sacrificing stopping Bomb Voyage to save him, leading to Bomb Voyage's getaway, the explosion on the train tracks, and one of the lawsuits that forced Supers into hiding.
  - And if that wasn't enough for him, he wanted to kill all of them when leaving them to their mundane lives could have been perceived as even crueler. This is evidenced by Bob, Frozone, and all the others struggling to adjust to average citizen life and missing their glory days as superheroes.
    - Even when Bob admitted he could have been kinder to Syndrome, the latter proved his pettiness by claiming that Bob was sorry only because he was hitting someone who had grown strong enough to hit him back, despite all evidence to the contrary.
    - Ultimately, Bob rejected him not only because he genuinely preferred working alone, but also that it would have been irresponsible of him to take a child (who is unaware and/or ignorant of what a superhero really is) under his wing in a dangerous field of work. While it can be argued that Bob allowing his children to fight alongside him is hypocritical of him since he didn't let Buddy do it, this is not the case because Bob is Dash and Violet's father and therefore, he and Helen trained them into becoming great supers and taught them everything that being a superhero is all about, whereas he was aware that Buddy had zero clue of what being a superhero really means despite his claims of knowing everything Mr. Incredible knows, and Bob was right about Syndrome all along.
      - His ignorance and unawareness of the danger almost got himself killed by Bomb Voyage had Mr. Incredible not forgone apprehending the former to save him, therefore proving child endangerment is illegal for a very good reason, and he brought his own misery onto himself.
        In summary, he has absolutely no reason to be lethally prejudiced against Supers or to endanger innocent people with the Omnidroid v.10. In theory, getting rejected by Bob should have motivated Buddy to do heroics and become a superhero himself. However, he decided to become a villain who would eventually kill dozens of supers who had nothing to do with the incident instead. Not only that, but he should have matured to forget about it, considering that this happened when he was a child.
        Overall, he hates Mr. Incredible solely because he was facing off with Bomb Voyage and correctly said it was a bad time to chat, childishly assuming he was prejudiced against those without superpowers and using that alone to justify being prejudiced against the opposing demographic. And lastly, Syndrome eventually says that he has outgrown Mr. Incredible after all those years, which outright confirms that he is indeed his arch-nemesis and has nowhere near the "biggest fan" attitude he had as a child.
Even if Syndrome did have any genuine insecurities over not getting to be a superhero like his idol, they are in no way played for sympathy due to his recklessness as Incrediboy and his petty revenge plan as an adult.
Although he has multiple comedic moments such as him accidentally flinging Bob into the air and over a waterfall, being launched out of the Incredibile, laughing upon finding out Mr. Incredible married Elastigirl and both of them had kids, the one-shot scene of him meeting Kari and deceitfully saying the 'S' on his outfit stands for "sitter" and making an adult joke that he couldn't wear an outfit that says "BS" on it because it would be too vulgar, and Jack-Jack pummeling him and tearing his hair out of his head while being comically scared, none of them detract from his heinousness as he is taken seriously and feared by the characters in-universe (especially after his true plan was revealed).
While endangering thousands of citizens is shared with Screenslaver's sabotaged boat, Syndrome stands out as the worst for being the only one who instigated plans to kill people and successfully kill them, combined with his personal villainy towards Mr. Incredible.

Background[]

He defied Mr. Incredible's demands for him to go home instead of getting the police, and while he didn't know he endangered a train and helped make Supers illegal inadvertently, it's likely he wouldn't have cared regardless.
After being brought home by the police and presumably grounded by his mother, he gave a look with pure hatred at a big photo of Mr. Incredible he had in his collection of Mr. Incredible memorabilia before angrily removing the photo from the wall, thus kickstarting his path to villainy. It's also implied that he destroyed the rest of his Mr. Incredible collection such as the toys and the comics despite how much money this would have cost his mother for the collection.
He lured several Supers to his island for years and used them as test subjects to perfect his Omnidroid as it progressed, with Gazerbeam being slammed into an underwater cave by one of the prototypes. Some Supers destroyed an Omnidroid, but every time they did, he would improve and modify it into a new model, with at least 20 supers being killed this way, which is shown when Bob reads a newspaper and finds out about Gazerbeam's disappearance and later discovers his remains in the underwater cave. Later, when he sneaks into his base, he finds that all the previous superheroes had been "terminated". It is even heavily implied that he was going to go after Helen and Frozone at some point in the near future.
- While he promises them money if they fight the Omnidroid, he does this in order to gain their trust, similar to what he does to Mirage and his minions. And even if they managed to destroy the Omnidroid, they would be slaughtered by its successor in round 2, as the previous superhero doesn't survive the next Omnidroid.
- A good handful of the supers were Mr. Incredible's friends who knew his and Elastigirl's secret identities and vice-versa and attended his wedding, which makes him seem even worse as it's implied he specifically went after them.
- While some of the supers are jerks, like Gamma Jack who admitted to saving the pretty ladies first as well as believing supers are a superior race to average people, and Hypershock who is an alcoholic brute, none of his kills were justified as they all still wanted to protect innocents from danger.

The Incredibles[]

He ordered Mirage to lure Mr. Incredible to their island, intending to have the Omnidroid kill him. Though thankfully, Mr. Incredible survived and destroyed the Omnidroid.
- While he did call his effort impressive and told Mirage to invite him to dinner, this was only to get Mr. Incredible to trust her and lure him into his trap rather than out of genuine honor.
When Mr. Incredible apologized to Syndrome for how he treated him as a kid, he assumed that he was bluffing him and said that he only respects him in the present day because he is a threat, and continued monologuing without showing remorse for his actions.
- Also, when he recalled on how Mr. Incredible treated him at that moment, he omitted Bomb Voyage's presence and made his quote ("Fly home, Buddy. I work alone.") in a condescending tone rather than for his own good, proving that he has a self-serving memory that he uses to justify his petty revenge.
When Mr. Incredible threw a log at him then charged right after him, Syndrome easily dodged it and continued to mercilessly throw his arch-nemesis around with his zero-point energy rays up until he accidentally threw him over a waterfall, followed by Syndrome trying to kill him with a bomb.
After electrically torturing Mr. Incredible for information about a government plane requesting permission to land on his island, increasing the voltage each time he doesn't give an answer, he launches missiles at the plane operated by Mr. Incredible’s family, allowing the audio to continue to force him to listen as the missiles destroyed the plane as a way of trying to break his spirit while refusing to hear his pleas. Even after hearing that his children were on the plane, he still didn't care, sadistically telling Bob that his pleas were "15 years too late".
After the missiles destroy Elastigirl's plane, he taunts Mr. Incredible over seemingly killing his family, both thinking he had succeeded, and proceeds to mock him by saying he preferred to "work alone", and then laughs at him in an intentionally sinister and cruel tone.
While his relationships with his minions is never shown in full detail, it is highly likely that he doesn't care about them, being that he is never giving them any kind of loyalty and doesn't seem to mind their deaths. This is without mentioning his treatment of Mirage, which eventually led to her betraying him. His mistreatment of Mirage is especially evident given the following:
- When Mr. Incredible threatens to kill Mirage if he isn't freed, he heartlessly goads him to do it, showing how little regard he has for other lives, and when Mirage later confronts him about this, he claims to her that he knew Mr. Incredible wouldn't go through with it, leading her to remain haunted by the utter lack of remorse he showed for it. This is also in spite of the fact that Mirage had never done anything remotely disloyal, and it was completely unnecessary for any of his evil schemes to succeed in any tangible way.
  - His cruel gesture of showing his willingness to risk Mirage’s precious life was also done in spite of protecting him from the enraged Mr. Incredible just to provoke him, which also shows how ungrateful he is for others’ kindness and courage.
  - He is also perverted towards Mirage as he groped her chin and attempted to kiss her.
  - While Syndrome was technically right in that Mr. Incredible wouldn't really kill Mirage (due to superhero code), this doesn't tone down his actions in the slightest, especially considering that it demonstrates how much he couldn't care less about the well-being of his allies and sees them as expendable pawns whom he can discard whenever he wants.
He essentially planned to commit cultural genocide against superheroes, since by selling his inventions so that "everyone can be super", actual superheroes would have been rendered worthless.
- While sounding somewhat harmless for innocents at first, this could have also led to criminals getting those inventions for their crimes, putting the public in even more danger.
He unleashed the Omnidroid v.10 upon Metroville, and had it destroy major parts of the city and endanger many people so that he can appear and act as a "hero" to stop it. While his minions did enjoy the show to some extent, they most likely assumed that he had the situation under control.
- While it's unknown how many people died, there's at least six fatalities on screen (four soldiers were killed when the Omnidroid destroys a tank, and presumably two more when the Omnidroid shoots one helicopter down, and car drivers were crushed when the Omnidroid rolls across the street).
While he does save a woman and her baby from being crushed by a truck, he does it only to make himself look good and after announcing his name, he destroyed the truck for no reason besides his ego, throwing it behind him without even looking to see if there was anyone he could have incidentally killed.
- He even cowardly pushed citizens out of his way to escape from the Omnidroid once the machine outsmarts him.
He manipulated Kari into believing he is her replacement babysitter so he could try to abduct the Parrs' infant son Jack-Jack, with the intent of influencing him to be his future sidekick.
After the Parr family arrives home to find Syndrome with Jack-Jack, he reveals that he plans to mold Jack-Jack into his future sidekick before making his escape.
Before being killed in a gruesome manner, he unwisely taunted Bob that he'd try to abduct Jack-Jack again.
While his death of being shredded to pieces after his cape gets caught in the jet turbine and vaporized by the explosion, leaving no trace of him behind at all, is very ghastly and horrifying, especially for a kids movie, it is never played for sympathy or horror, but rather satisfaction as a well-deserved comeuppance, considering not only for his personally vile misdeeds against Mr. Incredible, but also for his hidden yet obvious disregard for anyone else's life.
Even after his death, he has a posthumous impact in the sequel, as all of his reckless actions that led to the Super Relocation Act in the first place caused Evelyn Deavor and her brother Winston to lose their parents in a burglary attempt because they were reliant upon supers at the time. This means that he is indirectly responsible for all of Screenslaver's crimes and motivation in the sequel because of all of his actions.

Trivia[]

Originally, Syndrome was going to be a minor antagonist similar to Bomb Voyage and the Underminer, since the planned main villain at the time was Xerek, who would have been Elastigirl's ex-lover who wants her to be his. Have this been kept, Syndrome would not qualify as PE as this version would simply be a bog standard villain, or perhaps not even a villain at all, and would furthermore be killed off in the opening scene of the movie.
Interestingly, in the film's script, Syndrome "bows his head in respect" after learning from his probe that he seemingly killed Mr. Incredible, whilst in the movie, he merely gives a self-satisfied smirk. This is notable because the movie's writer, Brad Bird, was also its director, meaning that when he adapted his script to film, he made a decision to change this moment that might originally have disqualified Syndrome for Pure Evil and make him Near Pure Evil instead.
Even though he is Pure Evil, the fact he became so is somewhat unfortunate, because if he hadn't let his insecurities and perceived "disrespect" he received from Mr. Incredible change him, he could have been a great superhero given his engineering and inventive prowess. However, this is not intended to make him sympathetic, it is simply unfortunate he chose to become a villain. Though given his self-serving reasons for being a superhero and general disregard for the consequences of his actions even as an adult when trying to present himself as a hero, he likely would have only become a reckless anti-hero at best.
In a scrapped scene of the first film, the same jet he targeted with his missiles would've actually killed someone, that being Snug, who pilots said jet instead of Elastigirl. If this would've been kept in the final product, this would make Syndrome even worse.