Arch-vile

"One of the worst of a bad lot. You can't think of enough rotten things to say about him. He's fast, hard to kill, casts spells, and resurrects dead monsters! At least these suckers are rare."

- Doom II Manual description

Arch-viles are very tall, emaciated-looking, peach-skinned humanoid figures with a grotesque appearance, including stigmata. They also have no flesh around their abdomens, revealing some of their ribcage and spinal column. The Arch-viles first make their appearance in Doom II in MAP11: Circle of Death.

Inspiration and development
The idea and name for the Arch-vile came from Sandy Petersen.

Bobby Prince said: "The Archvile is an evil healer. Anyone getting in his way is blasted with fire and disintegrated. This includes other demons. But, after he has wrought his destruction, he then goes around and reanimates all of the demons. Because of this interesting dual personality, I decided to give him a very evil laugh as an active sound. For his death sound, I recorded a young girl saying 'why,' pitch shifted it down and mixed it with other sounds. The Archvile just doesn't understand why anyone would want to kill him as he sees himself as only doing good for his fellow demon." 

Doom RPG
In Doom RPG, the Arch-vile appears as a class of monster. There are three variations, identified by color:


 * Infernis (blue)
 * Archvile [sic] (gold)
 * Apollyon (red)

The Arch-vile class of monsters are particularly susceptible to axe attacks and also appear to share a similar weakness to the fire extinguisher that lost soul-class monsters do, much the same as in the novelisation of Hell on Earth. They also possess the ability to revive dead monsters, though this will fail if the player is standing on its target's corpse at the time. Something that should be noted is that when attacking, no matter if the Arch-vile is an Infernis or Apollyon or just plain Arch-vile, it always uses the unmodified costume of the regular arch-vile raising its arms and catching fire.