Strickland strikes me as a CARICATURE

I mean, he is ultimately unpleasant in every single area imaginable, he is racist, sexist, looks down on many people, is too patriotic and religious for his own good, has terrible hygiene and I suppose is ultimately like any other Guillermo Del Toro villain. He has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and he comes across as a simple caricature.

I think the whole thing about his fingers is justified: he antagonises the Creature and gets his fingers bitten off that way, then accuses Elisa of putting his fingers into a lunch bag and getting them contaminated with mustard, when really it was his filthy habit of washing his hands BEFORE urinating and NOT AFTER that did them in with gangrenous infection, and finally loses them due to his own lack of hygiene. Nope, that stuff was entirely his own fault, and he blames others for it.