Syndrome

As a child, Buddy was a huge fan of the superheroes in the city, colloquially known as 'supers' as a general term for anyone born with powers. Most of all, Buddy was the self-proclaimed biggest fan of Mr. Incredible, aka Bob Parker. Mr. Incredible was a super with superhuman strength, and Buddy was a child with super intelligence and an obsessive desire to be part of Mr. Incredible's life. He invented rocket boots and interrupted a super battle to try and become Mr. Incredible's sidekick, 'Incrediboy,' and wouldn't respond to his real name.

That day, Mr. Incredible was in a rush because he was on his way to get married to Elastigirl, and at the same time he was fighting French supervillain and explosives expert, Bomb Voyage. Buddy put himself in danger trying to get his attention and didn't notice Bomb Voyage put a bomb on his cape when he went to fly. In the next sequence of events, Mr. Incredible had to grab him and throw the bomb off of him, letting Bomb Voyage escape and leading to a train track blowing up, then go and rescue the people on the train, leading to a great many injuries. Buddy didn't understand that this was his fault and thought that Bob was simply rejecting him. The child was a genius but very oblivious.

As a note: Buddy does not know he has super intelligence. He thinks it's totally normal for a child to be able to build rocket boots, super weapons, and zero-point-energy engines. Again, he's a genius, but very oblivious. He thinks that he's a normal human and that the supers are all rejecting him.

In the wake of all supers getting into a lawsuit due to the major accident and casualties, the existence of supers was made illegal and all heroes had to go into hiding. Buddy never took responsibility for this, instead throwing away his love for Mr. Incredible and considering himself a new supervillain. He called himself 'Syndrome,' by this point on, and vowed to become Bob's new nemesis. This was hard to do when all heroes were in hiding, so Syndrome worked his way up. For the next fifteen years, he made inventions, sold them on the black market, became an arms dealer, bought Nomanisan Island with his enormous monetary resources, hired his assistant and lover Mirage, and together they made killer robots to kill supers.

These were the Omnidroids, and every iteration was meant to kill a super and adapt the fighting data into programming for the next iteration of the robot. Syndrome had Mirage lure in hiding supers with the promise of a lucrative contract if they got rid of his 'rampaging robot' on the island, considering it 'fine' because he had them sign contracts to accept risks. Again, he never accepted responsibility, this time for being a serial killer. He killed twenty-three supers in this way, going through robot after robot. Finally, Mirage found Bob Parker after tracking his best friend, a super called Frozone. Syndrome went through the same pattern: lure Bob in for money and glory, have him seek out the Omnidroid, try to kill him.

Bob destroyed the first one and it made Syndrome 'geek out,' thinking this was all a game and he was having an epic villain rivalry. The real consequences and families getting hurt never occurred to him. When Bob came back to destroy the second one and got captured, Bob's family came to get him, with Helen (Elastigirl) and their kids, Violet and Dash. Syndrome was shocked Bob had kids, but continued with his plan. He was going to take all the super data and compile it into a giant Omnidroid to attack Metroville, then fly in as their new superhero. He'd sell his inventions so everyone could be like supers, making supers obsolete.

The Parkers followed him and destroyed his robot, which rebelled against him and knocked him out cold. As a last resort, he tried to kidnap their baby, Jack-Jack, so he could raise a sidekick as revenge, but Bob threw Helen to catch the baby as he tried to fly off, and Jack-Jack activated his nascent powers to shapeshift, which broke Syndrome's rocket boots. Syndrome was sent flying into his own jet engine.