Cacodemon

Cacodemons are large, red, round, one-eyed monsters that float slowly through the air. They are called pumpkins in the Doom novels and by some players. The Doomguy in the Doom comic refers to them as "big-mouthed floating thingies."

The Cacodemon first appears in level E2M1: Deimos Anomaly, at Hurt me Plenty difficulty and above.

In Doom II, their instruction manual description says: ''They float in the air, belch ball-lightning, and boast one Hell of a big mouth. You're toast if you get too close to these monstrosities.''

Combat characteristics
They attack by shooting ball lightning from the mouth or by biting. The Cacodemon often seems to distance itself from the player when attacked, however it is simply being pushed back by the player's weapon-fire.

Cacodemons hiss when they first see the player. Curiously, their pain sounds are the same as a Demon's. When killed, they let out a soft creaky moan and fall to the ground, splitting open like a zipper with copious amounts of blue blood, revealing their brain; their green eye pops out of its socket.

Tactical analysis
Cacodemon attacks are relatively easy to dodge, and with sufficient space large numbers of Cacodemons can be fought while sustaining little or no injury. Because they are slow, and because their pain chance is high, they are fairly easy targets. Chainsaw works excellently against them, as they turn away and are completely unable to fight back. They are relatively easy to trick into attacking other monsters.

Inspiration and development
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 from 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.

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.

Appearance statistics
The IWADs contain the following numbers of cacodemons:

Doom 64
In Doom 64 the Cacodemon underwent a design change, becoming brown, with a single yellow-green eye, and gaining two arms with broken chains attached, and a rather terrifying face. It resembles Doom II's original Pain Elemental. The Nightmare Cacodemon variation remained red.

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


 * Malwrath (gold body, red eye, red throat)
 * Cacodemon (normal colors)
 * Wretched (blue body, olive green eye, bright red throat)

Cacodemons attack three times consecutively and are most weak against axe attacks and plasma blasts.

Hissy
Circa 1997-98, amateur Doom level designer 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 Doom enthusiast Hughe, in response to a challenge from a friend. Pixel 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. Pixel was created before Hughe had any knowledge of the plush Hissy, and was in no way made to compete with her. In fact, it is said that Pixel finds Hissy rather cute.