Cacodemon



Cacodemons are large, red, round, one-eyed monsters. They attack by shooting ball lightning from the mouth or biting, and float (but move relatively slowly). Uniquely, the Cacodemon seems to distance itself from the player when attacked while it shoots back (most likely it is scared).

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. In the finished version of Doom, the Cacodemon first appears in level E2M1: Deimos Anomaly, at Hurt me Plenty difficulty and above.

They are unchanged for the Doom novels, with the exception that they are found in various sizes.

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 (AD&D).

The design was inspired by the beholder and astral dreadnought in AD&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.

Doom 64
In Doom 64 the Cacodemon underwent a design change, becoming brown, a red eye and gaining two arms with broken chains attached. It resembles the original Pain Elemental this time around while the Doom 64 Pain Elemental resembles the original Cacodemon somewhat. The Nightmare Cacodemon variation remained red.

Doom RPG
The Cacodemon appears in Doom RPG as a class of monster. There are three different variations, identified by color:


 * Gold body, red eye and red throat : Malwrath
 * (Normal colors) : Cacodemon
 * Blue body, olive eye and bright red throat : Wretched

Appearance statistics
The IWADs contain the following numbers of cacodemons:

Hissy
Circa 1997-98, Jonas "Chrozoron" Feragen created Hissy, a plush Cacodemon which quickly become famous in the Doom community. Hissy can be found as a character in Skulltag, Cacodemon Squad and EarthBound Doom; the plush Cacodemon itself is on a "world tour." She has been in the hands of over a dozen community members in the past eight years.

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, separate 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.