Meet Victor Frankenstein, the quintessential mad scientist. Harboring an unhealthy obsession with decay, this eccentric genius decided to play God and cobble together his own creature from assorted corpse parts. When his "child" predictably turns against him, Victor chases it to the North Pole, only to die on an expedition ship. Like any narcissist worth his salt, he dubbed his creation "Frankenstein's Monster."

However, while Victor created the monster, the real creator was author Mary Shelley, who penned her first draft of Frankenstein in 1816 at the tender age of eighteen. Shelley drew inspiration from 17th-century alchemist Johann Konrad Dippel and Luigi Galvani's bizarre experiments with electricity and dead tissues. Rumor has it that Shelley's own husband, Percy, also influenced this fictional scientific disaster, often writing under the pen name Victor.