Dr. Rupert "Jacques" von Hämsterviel, also simply known as Dr. Hämsterviel, is the main antagonist of Disney's Lilo & Stitch franchise.
He is the arch-nemesis of Stitch, the boss of Captain Gantu and Reuben, and the former partner and best friend of Dr. Jumba Jookiba.
He was voiced by Jeff Bennett, who also voiced Ozzy in The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure, the Brain-Eating Meteor in Grim & Evil and Father in Codename: Kids Next Door (when he is not dressed in shadow)
His Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Him Heinous?[]
- He has made many sentient experiments with Jumba Jookiba presumably for the intent of taking over the galaxy with them. While Jumba showed he cared for them as a parental figure, Hämsterviel only saw them as means to an end (while evil) or ultimately a liability (once reformed).
- Even when they were working together, Hämsterviel was never really friends with Jumba, who recollects all he ever did was con, humiliate, and steal from him before ratting on him to the Galactic Federation, implying that he intended on betraying Jumba and taking the experiments for himself in the long run. Jumba brings this up when Hamsterviel attempts to persuade him to work with him again, and his subsequent actions prove that he was trying to manipulate him and that Jumba was not exaggerating when he recollected the false friendship.
- While he was initially courteous and cordial with Gantu, being patient when the latter became defensive of him criticizing his failure to capture Stitch (Experiment 626), he mistreats and verbally abuses Gantu regularly for his failures, even when he makes at least some accomplishments; being nagging and impatient as Gantu sent him Amnesio (Experiment 303) and Hunkahunka (Experiment 323), threatening to fire him in the former instance, and his remarking of his capture of Angel (Experiment 624) as "miraculous" showing he had low faith in him. (Gantu and Reuben (Experiment 625) both enjoy coming up with names for him, but this is a byproduct of this abuse.) He has also fired him multiple times.
- He has Gantu capture Jumba with the intent of interrogating him on the whereabouts of the experiments and when he refuses to answer his questions, he has Gantu unleash Experiment 625 hoping that it would torture Jumba to the point of where he'll talk only for it to be revealed that the experiment was harmless and lazy and only has interest in making sandwiches.
- He then decides to hold Jumba for ransom, telling Pleakley on a phone that if he wants to see him alive again, he should bring him all of the experiments in due time at the location he tells them to meet him at.
- Upon capturing Lilo and Stitch with Gantu's help, he takes Stitch with him so that he could cut him in half in order to clone him while leaving Lilo at Gantu’s mercy (Gantu decides not to kill her, but he plans to trap her in a zoo, and while she would most likely be treated humanely, this is still a violation of her human rights), only for Sparky (Experiment 221) to disable the machine and save Stitch and capture Hämsterviel allowing Stitch to save Lilo and the two of them to outsmart Gantu. And unlike Gantu, who was mad at Lilo for throwing away his boss's experiment pods, Hamsterviel didn't have an excuse for cutting Stitch in half.
- After the experiments end up escaping and spread across all over Earth, he has Gantu try to get them back only for him to constantly fail at doing so.
- In "Skip", it's revealed that in a possible future he has taken over the world and successfully captured all past experiments.
- In “Shush”, he plans a mind control headband on Mertle’s head, and uses her as a weapon against Lilo and Stitch. While he did enjoy being Myrtle’s pet, this invalidates this potential redeeming quality somewhat.
- In “Bad Stitch”, he turns Stitch from good back to evil.
- He breaks into Jumba’s lab and forces him to create another evil experiment, one like Stitch except evil this time and with a red color on his fur, Leroy, under the threat of having him be killed by having Gantu shoot him with his laser gun if he does not comply. To add insult to injury, he also forces Jumba to act like a jerk to Pleakley. Even Gantu is shown to be frightened by the resultant experiment.
- After Jumba has finished, when Stitch breaks into the lab, he has the experiment, whom he now named as Leroy, attack and capture him.
- Afterwards, he has Stitch, Jumba, and Pleakley put into a small spaceship and sent it into a black hole with the presumed intent of getting them vaporized to death quickly but painfully. And he wouldn’t let Pleakley return his rented van to the college. While his reaction to Pleakley’s protest is darkly comical, it doesn’t diminish the seriousness of the scene.
- He then has Leroy disguise himself as Stitch to take over the ship Stitch was in charge of.
- He proceeds to make lots of clones of Leroy and uses them as an army to take over the galaxy as ruler.
- Meanwhile, he has Leroy capture all of the experiments and bring them to an arena on Earth.
- While he decided not to kill the Grand Councilwoman, he usurped her position and made her his servant.
- Upon capturing Lilo and Reuben, he tells the former that Stitch, Jumba and Pleakley had died (or so he thinks), before having Gantu imprison them in a cell before proceeding to fire him for failing to capture the experiments for 3 years while mocking him about it as well, even though Gantu had busted him out of prison and had helped him with the creation of Leroy to begin with. Incidentally, this plan would leave Reuben the last of his kind (aside from Leroy) as he planned to kill Jumba and Stitch as well.
- Upon arriving at the arena where the experiments are at with his spaceship, he tries to kill them all by trying to have his Leroy clones fire a giant laser cannon at them. Since the experiments are technically a species and a high number at that, by doing this, Hämsterviel is committing both attempted genocide and attempted mass murder at the same time. The experiments were technically a threat to his plans, but mass murder was not necessary.
- He almost killed Mertle who was kidnapped alongside one of the experiment, and while she was a jerk, she didn't really deserve to die. (He may not have been aware that she was there, but it was possible.)
- When the cannon gets destroyed by Stitch, Lilo, Jumba, Pleakley, and a reformed Gantu, Hämsterviel unleashes his army of Leroy clones to make one last attempt to kill all of them and the experiments. And while he does seem disheartened when Leroy falls, one can argue that isn’t necessarily because he cared for him, but because his plan has failed. (While he refers to Leroy as his most loyal and most trusted servant, it is plausible he says this to spite Gantu.) It is implied afterwards he is sent to prison for life.
- While the Grand Councilwoman did consider doing worse than he did by gassing Earth on two occasions, it is left ambiguous as to whether Hamsterviel himself had the means to do the same, and he lacks the good intentions that she had.
- Also, while some of the experiments like Holio and Richter had a higher attempted kill count, he stands out from them due to lacking any of their redeeming qualities and not seeking redemption, as well as potentially endangering the universe with his law.
What Makes Him Inconsistent?[]
- Despite his lack of redeeming qualities, Hamsteviel is played for laughs far too much to be Near Pure Evil or Pure Evil, due to his own incompetence, his threats and insults being treated as annoying rather than intimidating by more serious-minded individuals like Gantu and the Grand Councilwoman (even when Hamsterviel seemingly finds a way to interrogate Jumba successfully, the plan still ends up failing comedically due to Reuben being a slightly failed prototype of Stitch), being mistaken for a gerbil and people constantly getting his name wrong. Although there are instances of him taken more seriously (ex. having an army of Leroys in Leroy & Stitch), none of them completely take away his humor.
External Links[]
- Jacques von Hämsterviel on the Villains Wiki
- Jacques von Hämsterviel on the Disney Wiki
- Jacques von Hämsterviel on the Lilo and Stitch Wiki
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 Inconsistently Heinous
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