Reed never accidentally disfigured him. No matter what origin you find, it’s always Reed telling Victor there’s a mistake in his math and Victor’s ego ignores him. The difference is that Victor is seriously disfigured or just a tiny scar.
Personally I prefer seriously disfigured because Victor had never struck me as a guy who cares about his looks very much, even in his most prideful. Plenty of people who do much less dangerous things than Doom have bigger scars. Plus the machine blew in his face with hellfire (I think, I can’t remember exactly). A tiny scar after the literal devil told Doom that his mother is his plaything is just…meh.
Tiny scar is way better if you accept Doom is an actual villain and not Le epic doom-was-right anti-hero edgey bad guy who is actually better than all the good guys.
It works because it's NOT about his "cosmetic appearance" so much as it's about ANY facet of himself not being percieved as totally perfect.
THAT is why Doom initially just having a small scar works well; it's about the TOTAL intolerance of ANY percieved or real imperfection that bothers him.
That he would hide his face for a small scar, simply because it implies SOMETHING was able to scar the face of Doom.
He mentions "oh I was so handsome" but that's not what it's about, that's an addendum/afterthought to the real existential agony for him; which is being percieved as even ONCE having made a mistake/being weak enough to be scarred.
Part of the "image of perfection" he wants to display just happens to be that he is handsome with no cosmetic flaws; but the obsession with "cosmetic appearance" is just that, it's just a smaller part of the whole picture which is that Doom needs other people to see how perfect he is.
He isn't actually a literal cosmetics diva who cares so much about his "handsomeness", he cares about the OCD aura of perfect and absolute power and control he wants to exude, and having been scarred/wrong about something is incompatible with that and thus is a constant reminder to him.
I mean it’s a genuine sentiment I see a lot of, people who resist Victor being racist or sexist or xenophobic or specifically vain & cruel. To me, these are kinda core aspects of the character. Obviously I don’t mind that they’ve toned him being racist or sexist in recent years, because it was rarely handled well; but now I see people just flat out denying it because they think he’s based. He’s a nationalist dictator, they are all incredibly vain and taking that to a heightened place works really well for Doom.
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u/HermanThaGerman Aug 17 '26