Cacodemon



Cacodemons are large, red, round, one-eyed monsters. They attack by shooting ball lightning from the mouth, and float (but move relatively slowly). The Cacodemon graphic first appeared in the code of an alpha version of Doom, released on May 22, 1993; it first appeared as a live adversary in a press release version of Doom released on October 4, 1993.

Inspiration


The name (which comes from the Greek kakodaimon meaning "bad demon" or "ugly demon") may have been taken from the "Cacodemon" spell in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

The design was inspired by the beholder and astral dreadnought in D&D. In fact, it appears that the sprite was created directly from an illustration of an astral dreadnought taken from a D&D book, which has later circulated on the Internet.

Appearance statistics
The IWADs contain the following numbers of cacodemons:

Hissy


Circa 1997-98, chrozoron created Hissy, a plush Cacodemon which quickly become famous in the community. Hissy can be found as a character in Skulltag, Cacodemon Squad and EarthBound Doom; the plush Cacodemon itself is on a "world tour", being passed from one community member to another.

Pixel


Pixel is a plush-toy cacodemon created in late 2004 by Hughe as a challenge from a friend. He was created to be as accurate in form as possible using five different materials, including all his horns, seperate teeth, upper mouth and single eye. He was created before Hughe had any knowledge of the plush Hissy, and was in no way made to compete with her. In fact, it's said that Pixel finds her rather cute. Pixel himself is now used as something of a mascot and avatar for a small group of cacodemon-adoring Doom fans living in the UK.