Watchmen (comics)/WMG

Watchmen

Rorschach is Rick Astley's half brother

It makes perfect sense when you think about it: They're both gingers, they both wear trench-coats ^{[dead link]} , they're both legendary for their refusal to give up...
In a sequel, we'll learn that Rick Astley's father once paid for a fling with Mrs. Kovacs while vacationing in America, and he later returned to reclaim his illegitimate son and raise him. The sequel will take place years after the faked attack on New York, in a future where Adrian Veidt has been elected the leader of the new unified world government and controls it with a complex computer system. Rick will take up his fallen brother's mantle and use his deadly viral video to bring down Veidt's computer network and avenge his brother.

The book is really a prequel to V for Vendetta

The Russians will eventually find out that the attack on New York was faked, and they'll panic once they realize that the Americans have the power to genetically engineer Eldritch Abominations like Veidt's creature. The sheer paranoia from this will end up sparking the nuclear war that will lead to Norsefire taking over the British government. Later, they'll discover one of Dr. Manhattan's synthesized chemicals and test it on the prisoners at Larkhill Concentration Camp...

Dr. Manhattan knew about Rorshach's journal

• Fact 1: Dr. Manhattan is omniscient and has precognitive abilities.
• Fact 2: Dr. Manhattan is nowhere near stupid enough to believe that Rorshach was stupid enough to go to Antarctica wihtout making preparations of some sort beforehand.
• Fact 3: Dr. Manhattan's final words to Veidt (before ditching the Earth to "make human life of his own") are a cryptic "nothing ever ends".

Do the math. Killing Rorschach, in a way, killed Dr. Manhattan; after doing so, he decided to cut and run, and perhaps start over in another galaxy somewhere else. He knew that Veidt's peace wouldn't last, and after realizing that humanity's most stubborn champion had finally given up, he gave up on humanity.

I Actually I disagree. Dr. Manhatten specifically sees his OWN future. And we have no reason to believe he returns to Earth after leaving at the end, at least not in the near future. So if he leaves earth before Rorschach's journal is found, he would never know about it.

Watchmen was actually written by ^{[dead link]} Grant Morrison.

"As the third book in his acclaimed Pirates! Trilogy, Watchmen will never be surpassed, even by the author himself, Grant Morrison.

While I think we all agree that Watchman was a rather clunky start to trilogy--as Morrison attempted to shoehorn a lot of 2000AD continuity into a rather pedestrian tale of pirates--it wasn't until the sequel, Watchman II: A Dire Ship Across Dire Seas, where his true vision became apparent. I mean, what a twist--that ending!

And then Morrison had to go and completely top it all in the third installment, Watchmen. While the (A) plot is a somewhat obvious tale of retired superheroes and sci-fi monsters, Morrison cleverly weaved the true story--a pirate story--into the plot in a series of pirate-comics read by one of the characters. And just when we thought he couldn't top his twist in part II, it turns out that there never were any pirates at all in any of the stories. The pirates are really us, the readers, all along. Morrison's trilogy is actually a cautionary tale of illegally downloading comics off the inter-net. We are the pirates. Who pirates the Pirates, indeed?"

Watchmen is a lead-up to The End of Days.

And by extention Neon Genesis Evangelion...

The Apocalypse starts with 3/4ths of humanity being spirited away to heaven; Watchmen ends with tens of millions of people experiencing either instant death or severe Mind Rape. Both stories hinge on the return of powerful beings (the nonexistant interdimensional aliens in the comic and Dr. Manhattan in the movie, respectively) while in the mean time a deceptive leader and his many tentacles of influence rules the world.

• Then Rorschach, I presume, knows about this fully. The proof: his "disguise" walks around carrying a sign saying that "The End is Nigh", and he speaks of how people will look up to him for help, while all he will do is whisper "No".
• It makes sense. The creature is the Beast and Ozymandias is the Antichrist. At the end of the book, Rorschach's journal is at the news desk, meaning the world will soon know that the alien was a fake set up by Ozymandias. When that happens, the USSR and the USA will see it as a mere diversion, and go back to the Cold War. But the USSR, seeing that the USA is weakened, will strike, starting up WWIII, which as we all know is basically the apocalypse.

Rorschach was turned into a fetus, had his DNA altered, and his memories (but not his skills) wiped and was then teleported into the DCU.

To be exact, he was Bruce Wayne. Dr. Manhattan tried to give him the opposite of what he had as Rorschach, but he wasn't in control of the DCU, and Joe just had to go Off the Rails. Manhattan also placed in him that no killing rule, so he wouldn't be able to go down the same path. So, yes, Rorschach is Batman. Rorschach was intended to show what would happen to someone like Batman 'in the real world'. It makes sense. However, Rorschach is seen in the background of a metahuman bar in Kingdom Come.

• Maybe Bruce retained some vague recollection of his previous career as Rorschach, and the Rorschach outfit wound up as one of his unused ideas when he was trying to design his Batman costume. The guy in the bar could have been another aspiring superhero who simply "borrowed" one of his old ideas.

Rorschach is able to manipulate heat and fire.

Rorschach has the power to manipulate his own body temperature because of his red hair and is therefore able to heat himself up. Think of it...on both occasions where a normal person might need or want heat - when Rorschach is eating cold beans from a can in Daniel's apartment and when Rorschach is in the arctic - Rorschach declines heat. On the first occasion, Daniel offers to heat up the beans and Rorschach declines. On the second, Daniel offers Rorschach arctic gear and Rorschach says he's fine with his normal clothing. So therefore, he can manipulate heat. Also, he didn't use a makeshift flamethrower in Moloch's flat, he makes the fire himself. Because he's a redhead.

Adrian Veidt is V.

Both are charismatic, have superhuman reflexes, are very intelligent. Adrian even signs his letters with a "V--" in Watchmen.

After the events of Watchmen, Veidt leaves his Antarctic base and goes to England. He abandons his role as Ozy and takes on the role of V in order to take action again. V never actually was in a concentration camp, he was Adrian Veidt. He is hiding his identity behind the mask, not physical scars.

V also created a story about a fictional prisoner to give to Evie, who believed it. This makes it plausible that he could have been able to fabricate his own history as well.

• Alternatively, that could have actually happen to him. If this troper remembers correctly, the dates would kind of match up that after Viedt's plan, he moves to England, but everything goes to hell again (they say that entire continents were nuked). Veidt would probably confess to the earlier plan, seeing no other option, whereupon he is taken into custody and sent to the prison camps and one can take it from there.
  • That or he was locked up for being gay- Veidt is hinted at being homosexual, and that's considered a crime in V for Vendetta's dystopian world.

Rorschach, rather than being a repressed homosexual, is a repressed heterosexual.

This is to further expand on the Rorschach is straight below, and it's pretty straight forward. Rorschach is really uncomfortable with expressing his sexuality. He finds normal sexuality to be so strange, that he can't even comprehend homosexuality. (This may seem redundant, but, yeah.)

• So we've officially WMG'd him as a repressed homosexual, a repressed bisexual, a repressed heterosexual, and an open (but disgusted) asexual. I think that about covers it.
  • In any way, we can all agree that Rorschach is messed up!
  • To me it's pretty clear that he's a repressed heterosexual. There are subtle clues in the graphic novel that he is actively repressing a heterosexual desire which he finds disgusting and doesn't know how to deal with. The things that make him uncomfortable are all related to femaleness and the female form.
    • Regardless of his sexual orientation, he is certainly to some degree a misogynist, or at least extremely adverse to women. Given his upbringing, this is not completely out of the blue. And I don't think he'd know how to deal with any desire, whether for men, women, or carnival rides.
    • I think Rorschach "cured" his misogyny by developing misanthropy.

Rorschach has a violence fetish.

Obviously, this stems from his being very violent when compared to the other heroes in the book. But that's followed up with his early childhood memories, like when he burned another kid's eye out. This fetish got so bad, he can't get aroused any other way. This resulted in his seeking out a life as a masked hero. However, his earlier vigilantism didn't involve killing, but as he got more and more violence out of his character Rorschach, he had to find other ways of getting turned on. So, he started to kill. A major turning point in his "career" was when he killed the kidnapper and his two dogs. In the prison, he obviously commits multiple acts of violence. Finally, he is at his most emotional when he is killed, again violently, by Dr. Manhattan. We could couple this with homosexuality, and say that when he was attacking Ozymandias, it was a sex act. Asking Dr. Manhattan to kill him is another way of indicating his attraction to Dr. Manhattan. Thoughts?

This takes place in the same universe as The Incredibles

See The Incredibles.

• Ambiguous. A lot of Silver Age and Dark Age superhero stories explore the idea that the populace might reject heroes. Also, The Incredibles had real powers, while Dr. Manhattan is the only one with real powers here. Finally, we noted above that Watchmen could be a precursor to the End of Days. However, The Incredibles took place in 2004, when it came out. But if Watchmen is a precursor to the apocalypse, the world would be over by then.
  • Nope. The Incredibles takes place in the 1960's.

Ozymandias is another metahuman: his superpower is super-intelligence

Ozymandias isn't stupid; he has a back-up plan

Ozymandias is considered the world's smartest man, and deservedly so. Why then does he come up with such a simplistic solution, whose flaws are apparent? Perhaps because in the event of its failure, he has acquired yet another ace

• This seems believable. Most likely he already has his line for after the process is complete: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings!" said without irony.
• But if he could turn himself into a god, then why doesn't Ozy just skip the Squid-monster plan and turn himself into a god to keep the superpowers in check? And Dr Manhattan could stop him from turning into a god, providing a spannner in the works of that plan.

Some characters have hidden powers

• • The Silk Spectres can emit a powerful sonic cry.
  • Ozymandias can attract or repel metals
    • Then why didn't he repel the bullet instead of catching it after it shot through one of his hands?
      • It didn't seem like it shot through either of his hands. In the panels after he catches it, the hand on his chest has no exit wound, and the other hand is holding the bullet. He probably slowed it down to catch the heroes off guard.
  • Silhouette can control shadows.
  • Mothman is really an alien from a moth-people planet.
    • But he didn't have wings. They were fakes.
  • John can give you cancer, and he'll turn into a car!

• Wait, where is the evidence for any of this besides the name of the characters? And Silk Spectre and Ozymandias don't even relate in name...
  • This Troper's opinion was that the Silk Spectres must have some sort of healing factor, given that they constantly ran around in skimpy outfits and heels and don't have any significant scarring to show for it.

Rorschach is gay.

There's a higher than expected number of alternative sexualities among the masked vigilantes, the only relationship he has with anyone is with Nite Owl, and his dislike of homosexuals is due to internalized homophobia.

• There could be more to it than that, actually. It should be noted that in Watchmen, gay characters have a 100% mortality rate - Hooded Justice, the Silhouette, Moth Man, the Lesbian couple in New York. No gay character gets out of Watchmen alive and Rorschach is the only one of the active modern costumed heroes who dies. In addition to this, he is particularly fond of the Veidt perfume 'Nostalgia', which Veidt himself in one of the Easter Eggs says is deliberately marketed to homosexuals.
  • Rorschach did hate all women as being whores due to his experiences with his mother. Due to his own feelings of betrayal from his mother during a period when he might have even had a Freudian attraction to her, he likely gave up on all women. He subconsciously became a gay but he also hated all immoral sexual activities (his mother was a whore) and so he repressed his homosexual tendencies.
  • Actually, there is no evidence of Moth Man being gay, and he was still alive, albeit in an asylum. HJ could also easily have been straight.
    • There is evidence for Moth Man being gay. Sally's interview with The Probe in September '76 states that "a couple of the guys" were gay, and that "they're both dead now. One died recently". Given the time of the interview, that was probably Moth Man. When Silk Spectre II saw Moth Man in the 70s, he was in very poor health.
    • That only proves that Sally thought he was gay.
    • I always assumed that the one who "died recently" was Captain Metropolis, who had been killed in a car accident.
    • Except for the letter from Sally's agent that states that HJ and Captain Metropolis "act like an old married couple in public," Sally's acts as an alibi for HJ, and makes vague comments about HJ doing "rough stuff" with boys.
    • Also, Moth Man is explicitly stated to be alive, once by Rorschach in the beginning of the comic when he's talking about how vigilantes never have peaceful lives, and Dan mentions in his paper about owls that he was sent to check up on Moth Man by Mason at some point in the 80s, meaning even if he was dead when Rorschach mentioned him, he still would have been alive when Silk Spectre gave that interview.
    • Remember the scene where Rorschach gets back on Archimedes, and Nite Owl has to practically tear his hand free from the handshake? It's virtually identical to the scene where Nite Owl brings Laurie on board, and is one of the first overt signs of Dreiberg's feelings for her. I can't help but feel that the parallels are intentional, with the underlying message being that Rorschach's so thoroughly repressed, this is the only sign of affection he can give.
      • That's a perfectly reasonable interpretation, although you could just as easily say that he's so thoroughly repressed about showing any kind of human emotion (other than violence) that it's the only way he can express any sense of camaraderie or platonic interpersonal affection, quite divorced from sexual longing.
        • "What it was really about was like an embarrassing moment. It was like Rorschach, not really being very much of a social animal, didn't know quite how long to hold on when he shook somebody's hand. It was actually holding on too long. I'm sure we've all met people like that, who maybe stand too close to you, or speak too loudly or too softly, or who touch you inappropriately -- not in a sexual way at all -- but there's just something about how you deal with people in a social or an intimate situation, that if you're not practiced at it, you can easily just go wrong. I think this would particularly affect Dan, because Dan is very aware of that kind of thing. He's very embarrassed when he's around Laurie and very aware of the proprieties and politeness of everything. I think Rorschach is just uncertain about holding onto his hand for too long. You know, Dan was his friend, he wanted to like Rorschach, but he just felt uncomfortable. So I guess it's something to do with Rorschach being lonely and unpracticed in dealing with human beings." --Dave Gibbons
      • There are hints that HJ is gay and maybe sadomasochistic when he rescues Sally from the Comedian's attempted rape- the Comedian taunts him, saying, "you like this kind of stuff, don't you?"
      • Just because The Comedian implied it, doesn't mean it's true. The Comedian was a dick like that.
      • It's implied that HJ and Captain M. were a couple, especially in the movie. Pause it at 1:35 and look to the far right.
  • Actually, Rorschach used the cologne. The aftershave was what was marketed to the gay place. He emphasized that. Unless, of course, he was using aftershave in the second issue, then the point stands.

Rorschach is heterosexual, but has some serious sexual issues.

His mother was a prostitute, a fact he learned at an early age. His dislike of the female form (the dresses, Laurie's revealing costume) is caused by his revulsion at his own heterosexual attraction. (He could only stand the dress he made into his mask by "cutting it until it didn't look like a woman".)

• It would probably be more of a wild guess to say that there's any aspect of Rorschach's life where he doesn't have serious issues.
• I really don't think this qualifies as a guess. It's pretty clear as early as Chapter 1 that Rorschach has some pretty severe sexual hangups. I mean, in his journal entries he lumps in sexual promiscuity with felonies like robbery and murder on the immorality scale. Numerous times.
  • ...Which makes this troper wonder why nobody has yet considered that he could be so screwed up by all his Freudian Excuse baggage that he's flat-out asexual.
    • Actually, despite my posting evidence for "Rorschach is gay" that's pretty much what I think is going on. Rorschach appears to be so turned off sex he never shows the slightest sign of being sexually interested in anything.
      • Can you be hetero-phobic?
        • Asexual and/or sex-phobic, sure.
          • I buy phobic, but not asexual - he's just incapable of acting on, resolving, or enjoying his sexual urges. Note that when he puts on his "face" in the alley, he mentions how being fully Rorschach leaves him with distractions and pains, particularly without "lusts". This bit is written in a caption with a panel showing a "Nostalgia" poster with a woman in filmy lingerie. Another time, he gets distracted for a long moment watching a couple making out in a window.
• He clearly has an Oedipal Complex that was betrayed by his mother (being a prostitute) which stunted his sexual development. Notice how assumes most women he comes in contact with to be whores and treats all whores with violence and incredible disrespect.
  • • • • • • If he was asexual, he wouldn't have had nearly as much problems with sex as he clearly did.

Rorschach is bisexual.

See both the above Wild Mass Guesses combined. Rorschach is screwed up enough for both genders.

• Well, he's so sexually confused, he probably doesn't know what he is.

Rorschach is lesbian.

He is afflicted with female pseudohermaphroditism, and therefore female, but with apparent characteristics of a male. "He" is attracted to females, but knows about his condition, and the confusion over what exactly he should be classified as is tearing him up inside. The Ho Yay with Nite Owl is because "he" thinks "he" should like Nite Owl, but isn't sure if it's actually sexual attraction, a reaction to the anti-gay-superhero attacks, or trying to fit his attractions to "his" physical instead of apparent gender. Cutting the dress into a mask until it no longer looked like a woman wasn't any anti-female or violent sentiment, but to make it more like "him".

• That's certainly a...creative theory...
  • It's called Wild Mass Guessing for a reason.
  • Everything else was done. Alternatively, he's a rather masculine female crossdresser, and the Nite Owl Ho Yay is an attempt to avert the inversion of If It's You It's Okay.
    • This troper has been processing ideas for genderswapped!Rorschach for some time now (affectionately dubbed, as much as she'd let me, Girlschach) and things this particular WMG is made of win.
      • I think I speak for everyone when I say that this WMG has gotten way out of hand even by TV Tropes laid-back standards.
        • You think incorrectly. Again, see the name.

Ozymandias has developed a transparent bulletproof full-body suit.

And he wears it all the time. Which is how he "catches" Laurie's bullet, and also why he wasn't afraid to take out a contract on himself: the bullet would bounce off.

• • Nope. Take another look at the frames: Ozy's bleeding after the bullet hits.
    • Which completely subverts the body suit theory. It actually went through one hand before he managed to catch it with the other.
      • It went through his hand? Neither of them seem to have exit wounds...
  • Okay, a lot of people are confused about the bullet scene. When I told my friend "Only Dr. Manhattan has powers," he replied that Ozymandias must have superpowers because he caught a bullet. And now we have a Wild Mass Guess that Ozzy just HAS to have a transparent magical shield in order to catch a bullet. This is all complete hooey and, no offense, you guys don't understand how guns and bullets behave. It's entirely possible that Ozzy has a layer of steel or something tough that could easily absorb the impact force of a bullet without causing injury. This is possible because forces come in pairs. The shooter experiences the same amount of force as the person being shot. Laurie's hand isn't injured when she fires the gun, because the force is spread throughout the gun itself, and its grips. So why can't Adrian also have something in his hand (a plate of steel would do fine) that would also spread out the impact of the bullet? I don't know what kind of gun Laurie was using but given that it was a revolver and the movie takes place in the 80's, it was PROBABLY a .38 special. And a .38 special bullet is easily stopped by a steel plate that is only a fraction of an inch thick. So, that's it. The fact that Veidt can stop a bullet with his hand is easily explained and it doesn't have to involve super powers. So there!
    • Well, the fact that he could withstand the bullet is explained. Now how about his ability to put his hand in the right place fast enough to catch it on the plate?
      • Decades of training and an absolutely perfect sense of timing.
      • Think of monks and ninjas who catch arrows. Now, think of that with some Suspension of Disbelief thrown in, and you've got a guy who has trained a lot to catch a bullet, and does. Compare this to Nite Owl's wingless flying machine, and I'm more doubtful of Nite Owl.

Doctor Manhattan misled the US Government about his abilities to avoid a war.

He claims that in a nuclear war he'd only be able to intercept about 50% of the incoming missiles, but his abilities elsewhere are amazing:

• He can teleport a hostile group of rioters to their own homes, all at once. This implies incredibly fine control of his teleportation abilities.
• He can see into the future and the past; indeed, he does so continuously.
• He can easily teleport himself to other planets, possibly other star systems.
• He can be in multiple places at once.
• He can create large structures out of dust, and control their movement afterward.
• He can put up forcefields (Laurie's air-bubble on Mars).
• He can change his size.

So why does he say he can only destroy half the missiles? Perhaps he knows that, if the US was entirely invulnerable, it'd immediately get into a war with the USSR, instead of the uneasy (and unbalanced) stalemate of the Cold War. So instead of revealing the full extent of his powers, he claimed to be less powerful so that he wouldn't be the cause of WW3.

• It's possible that he can only catch 50% of the missiles launched, assuming they came from different directions and some came in under radar. Yes, time is meaningless to Dr. Manhattan, but he's also a strong believer in fate. Simply because he knows what's going to happen doesn't mean he can change it.
• Alternatively, Doctor Manhattan was always shown to have been apathetic to the point of insanity. Perhaps, to him, the idea of a few puny humans launching missiles at each other was nothing and did not require his attention, so he might have said it so he wouldn't have to help as much as their strategy needed. Basically, he's saying, sort it out yourselves.
  • Its possible that when it comes to radioactive materials, his abilities aren't as clear cut. After all, his teleportation and clairvoyance are shown to be disrupted by the presence of tacyons, and he outright states that he is unable to clearly perceive a certain time period, and attributes it to the presence of a powerful electromagnetic pulse (such as that caused by a nuclear blast). Alternatively, it could be that he would be unable to stop every missile because there would be too damn many! Afterall, in the real, Dr. Manhattan-less world, at the height of the Cold War the Soviet Union possessed upwards of 40,000 nuclear weapons, with yields up to 100 megatons (capable of destroying everything in a 2,000 mile radius).
    • Or of course Manhattan was telling the truth. BECAUSE that is what he was going to tell the government.
    • Couldn't he make a force feild that entirely surrounds the united states for a few hours, negating the effects of all of the nuclear weapons, and no matter how powerful or many their were, stopping them would be easy (since they wouldn't even explode)
      • There is no reason to believe that he could. He never demonstrates power on that scale. Let's not confuse Manhattan with God.
• Look, in this world it is unlikely that SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) was ever passed because the US thought "hey we have an omnipotent deity" so the USSR could build as many nukes as it wanted, knowing full well it could never hope to match Dr. Manhattan's strength. In the original timeline, the US built nuclear weapons that could have as many as 20 warheads per missile so feasibly it could've happened in this universe to the Soviet Union. Even if the USSR had 3,000 missiles, that amounts to 60,000 warheads all flying from different directions. Dr. Manhattan couldn't possibly deal with that many moving problems all at the same time.
  • Because a human body, complete with a brain and nervous system, and a monstrous floating tower made of gears are way easier to manipulate than missiles headed from point A to point B (which he can erase from existance by looking at them).
    • And you know this from your vast experience manipulating matter and energy at the quantum level? It could simply be that his power has limits we aren't aware of, because they weren't fully explained.
  • Here's an idea: Dr. Manhattan could only stop 50% of the nukes launched because that's all he saw himself intercepting in a hypothetical nuclear future. He could stop all of them hypothetically—but he didn't see himself stopping all of them, so he can't. He really is a slave to time, regardless of his godlike abilities, not unlike the Tralfamadorians of Slaughterhouse Five.
    • Maybe, but remember, he was speaking hypothetically. In reality, there is no time where Dr. Manhattan would have to stop any nuclear missiles, because war has been averted. So combine all of the above theories, and it makes sense that he said what he did.

Doctor Manhattan created our Earth.

The setting of Watchmen is clearly an alternate history to our own, yet Doctor Manhattan sees the past and future as immutable. So, no parallel universes, and a character who, at the end of the story, expresses an interest in creating human beings. Hmm....

• So like. . .God's an overgrown, emotionally detached smurf?
  • That'd explain a lot, wouldn't it?
• My God, this troper just thought he'd come up with that on his own! He created an alternate universe where the costumed vigilantes never came forward, just to see what would happen for the hell of it.
  • Wrong! Manhattan says that he's going to create life in a far off galaxy. Clearly he created Star Wars.
    • Alternatively, the Watchmen Universe is the one Star Wars is set in. After a long time, in a galaxy far, far away, Dr. Manhattan created our galaxy.
      • It could be that our galaxy is the far-off one he was talking about, and somewhere a zillion light-years away is the original Earth in the original galaxy. How would we know?
  • But Dr. M's interest in life and humanity got rekindled because he was reminded that there's so much miraculous randomness to the genetic lottery of conception. Why would he create a near-perfect duplicate of the world he came from (minus a few costumed heroes and himself), if it's the marvels of chance that engage his interest? Better to re-start the clock with bacteria, or at least Homo habilis, and wait to see what happens the second time around.
    • Perhaps we're one of his many Earths, and this one was done to see what would happen in a world where heroes and himself never came to be, to see the randomness of that.
• The likelihood of him finding an almost identical Earth and creating a timeline that was identical for literally billions of years until one century where he averts one or two minor coincidences just to mess with us? Doubtful. The likelihood of him doing all that in a solar system that is identical (remember, in Watchmen they traveled to Mars)? Impossible.

Ozymandias's peace didn't last.

After World War 3, Britain was left as one of the few remaining superpowers. Their previous attempt at a super-soldier like Manhattan hadn't gone so well, so they tried again with a more down-to-earth approach.

• Let's expand this theory further... maybe Dr. Manhattan didn't directly kill Rorschach, but he instead teleported him to somewhere far away in the UK (The "I strongly doubt he'll reach civilization" quote), and Rorschach wandered the land aimlessly until the nuclear war. He got arrested by the Norsefire Party for being not european and he got sent to the Larkhill concentration camp, where he was subjected to mysterious experiments... Valerie's letter, along with his severe traumatization by the war, Ozymandias' (failed) plot, and the experiments made him value invididual freedom much more and he became an anarchist. When he blew up his cell, he was no longer Kovacs, or Rorschach... he was V now. Yes, he would be around 57 years old in 1997, but hey, he's got superpowers now.
  • But V was far more subtle than Rorschach ever was. Plus V takes interest in Evey and, even if it is detached and non sexual, it is nowhere near the perverse hatred of women that Rorschach has. V is polite and charming whereas Rorschach would denounce her as a whore in a second.
    • The fact that Valerie "saved" him might well have "cured" him
    • "Rorschach would denounce her as a whore in a second." Gee, I wonder why.
    • Forget subtlety, misogyny, etc. Can any of you imagine Rorschach singing showtunes etc? (Hrrm. Of course you can. Silly me.)
• Actually, Ozymandias's "peace" directly lead to World War 3. You see, the Japanese attempted to create psychic super-soldiers to fight off the invading aliens. But then there was an accident...
  • And later some actual alien invaders came...
• Seriously, now, there's still indications that it might have turned out that way. Rorschach may not have known the whole plot when he wrote his final journal, and he may not be actually taken seriously, and the newspaper guy may have gone with a different story, but you never know...
• Or perhaps the peace didn't last simply because humans don't like World Peace and found new reasons to fight. And Ozymandias is an idiot who overestimated the human race.
  • That isn't really guessing. Dr. Manhattan outright tells him this before leaving the planet.
  • "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" It wasn't a coincidence that Ozymandias was named after a poem which expresses the futility of trying to create something which will last forever.
    • Whatever, the peace was never meant to last, 'cause people isn't made for World Peace. They screw it quickly for the first excuse the got
    • The other thing to consider is that only one alien appears- after a few years (decades?) of fear, people might think there won't be any more coming- and hey, it'd be a shame to waste all these new weapons we've researched!
    • Sure is cynical in here...
    • Well, let's look at history. Whenever the opposing nations of the world have banded together to fight a common enemy, has it resulted in a lasting peace?
• Planet of the Apes is the far future of the Watchmen world. Dr. Manhattan is the reason why the astronauts had all that technology in 1972.

Doctor Manhattan was actively preventing his origin from being replicated

Ozzy had an IF machine, so they're not impossible to replicate. Sure, it may be a million-to-one chance to get a God out of the accident rather than a pile of dust, but that just means you have to kill a bunch of people to make it work. Why weren't the Russians throwing thousands of gulaggers into them? One possibility is that they are (or at least used to, they may have given up), but Manhattan is stopping it from working to avoid the creation of more superpowered beings.

• Ozzy also was the World's Smartest Man, and had the original result to study, so he had a bit of an advantage. Remember, he was also the first to invent the teleporter, the first to invent genetic engineering, etc.
• The odds may be a lot higher than a million to one. Throw the whole population of the planet in, and you could still get nothing. Or ten times that many. Or ten galaxies' worth. Randomness is like that.
• On the note of the Russians throwing random gulaggers into the IF machine, there's a pretty simple reason why they wouldn't -- a prisoner given godlike power's first act would most likely be to annihilate his jailers. Of course, they may have tried throwing in random party members instead...
  • The Soviets have already had an experience with a Party Member with unlimited powers (circa 1927-1953). It was not a good one.
• On an interesting note: I read one very early draft of a "Watchmen" movie script where Ozymandias' plan was to make a tiny hole in the fabric of space-time to assassinate Osterman before he got disintigrated, eliminating the world's only superhero and turning the Watchmen reality into our reality. This somehow transports Laurie, Dan, and Rorschach to the newspaper stand in Times Square, where the comic-book-reading kid ID's them as "the goddamned Watchmen!"...
• Maybe his hard work in keeping an eye out for this sort of phenomenon is why he has some limitations - why he is so distracted and why he knows he couldn't destroy ALL the missles in a nuclear attack. He's so paranoid he's always keeping an eye on the "limbo" where he formed.

Watchmen is set in the alternate 1985 from Back To The Future Part II.

It's an alternate 1985 (October 1985, no less) and Nixon is still president.

• The Golden Age Heroes exist in Back to The Future verse as well, but simply fell out of favor in the 50s and there was no "Silver Age". However, the temporal paradox caused by old Biff giving young Biff the Almanac caused a flaw in reality which allowed Osterman (who would have other wise died) to come back as Manhattan, thus inspiring a new generation. The Temporal Paradox of Marty "coming back from the future" fixes this, and allows Osterman to die.
• The newspaper from BTTF 2 mentioning Nixon's fifth term says that Nixon "vows to end the Vietnam war by 1985", which means this is not the case.

The inhabitants of Lesbos banned the word "lesbian".

In Watchmen, they use "gay woman" instead of the more common lesbian. One character accidentally uses "lesbian" and is immediately corrected. And over in The Real World, the inhabitants of Lesbos are trying to ban the word. Somehow they succeeded and convinced the rest of the world to stop using "lesbian" except to refer to people from Lesbos.

• Or, alternately, the word never came into use for gay women, as it is believed that it would be disrespect to the Greeks who fought with the 300 Spartans...
• I always thought it was because the word became associated with hate crimes.
  • Or, running with the "Veidt is gay" theory below—Veidt's hardly hiding it—the pervasive use of "gay" became more common regardless of gender with Adrian's influence. Having the world's smartest man be physically formidable, making a focused effort to come across as powerful and all-American as well as ridiculously rich, and very, very gay has to do something for the GLBT community, for good or ill. Probably horribly enrage people like the folks at the New Frontiersman (more) but if there was never so much of a distinction in the first place...

The nuclear exchange wouldn't have happened anyway.

After all, in the real-life cold war there were times when the general feeling was that escalation was inevitable—but despite all the doomsaying and "The Soviets aren't like us, they're desperate and ruthless and capable of anything", the threat of mutually assured destruction did in fact keep hostilities at bay. Consider then how Veidt's nightmare ("I'm swimming towards a hideous...never mind") highlights the parallels between Veidt's story and Marooned. In Marooned, the protagonist commits horrible deeds, repulsive to himself and increasingly evil, finally hurting his own loved ones, leaving him alone in the world and damned forever—all on account of an attack on his homeland which never happened, and never would have happened.

• Confirmed by the events of Real Life.
  • And sheer luck.
• So the real wild theory is...
• Being confirmed by real life does not prove anything. In real life there were no superheroes, and no American God. These factors would have had a massive effect on the politics of the time, and the supplementary information given to us seems to suggest that nuclear war was highly probable.

The nuclear exchange would have happened without Veidt's intervention.

The world of the Watchmen is different from our own: in the U.S., Watergate never caused the public to become more cautious about trusting the government's judgement, and Manhattan built up a strong sense of invulnerability, while in Russia, Manhattan caused an attitude of fear and powerlessness, which could have contributed to a powerful wave of resentment and hate above and beyond what existed in our own Cold War. Combined with the numberous times that events in this world almost ended in disaster, Veidt may well have only barely prevented a real apocalypse.

• That's not a WMG, it's canon.

Rorschach has Asperger's Syndrome

Rorschach displays a number of the classic traits of the mild form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome. He clearly doesn't empathize with others or understand how people think, doesn't like talking with people so much as talking at them, has major obsessions, and is said to have been a good student, yet a very withdrawn one. He has daily rituals in the form of his patrols, and his speech and clothing both have significant and very weird quirks, and he tends to take odd ways around problems. (Hence all the work for the Gordian Knot Lock Co.) Along with his incredibly screwed-up childhood, this has left him as the psycho we all know and love.

• Maybe. Having good friends with Aspergers myself, he seems not messed up where he should be, and messed up where he shouldn't be. A lot of the description fits, though. Note that while Aspies often don't understand people, they * do* crave social interaction like the rest of us. Of course, Rorschach's stupidly depresssing past could've easily beaten that out've him.
  • I agree with the above- most people with Asperger's are fairly normal, but then again, most aspies didn't grow up like Rorschach did.
    • I'm SORRY for Rorschach, but he can't be an aspie. He survives in the streets on his own. He's an outlaw wanted by the cops. He fights crime with his bare fists. ALL AT ONCE. And somehow manages to get away with it. For years. This is not very Asperger-like. A true aspie would have given up the very first week. If somebody DESERVES to be called an aspie, this is DOCTOR MANHATTAN. Doc has an immense talent, but lacks of the ability, the willpower and the motivation to put his gifts at good use. He spends his time in a world of his own, and dislike interferences. He barely cares about anything outside his little sphere of interests. He leads a life of reclusion and seems happy about it. He's a genius dealing with unanimated things which work in a simple, logical pattern (clocks, neutrines & the likewise). But he sucks when it comes to relating with pesky emo talking primates. He just doesn't get people's feelings, and people fails to get what's in his head. In spite of his apathy, he has a crush for a perky girl (or that was me?). He's a nice guy who does what he's told but shows no enthusiasm nor initiative. He respects autority and wouldn't question an order... usually, but he doesn't like being questioned himself. When he says "enough", he MEANS it: he doesn't feel like wasting time in discussions. He feels bad about people dying because of him. But if there is somebody else doing the killing... of course it's not his business. Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not an expert), but an aspie is like Doctor Manhattan without the super-powers. Rostcharch is not like Doctor Manhattan. Ergo, Rorschach can't be an aspie.
  • Aspies are the highest function autists around, so your arguement is moot.
    • Not always, it varies by degree—some cases of Aspergers' are worse than others.
  • Or alternately, Doctor Manhattan is a relatively well adjusted person with Asperger's, and has learned to function- barely, and not well, but prior to his 'accident' does just fine. Rorschach is what he might have been had life really screwed him over- abusive home, awful childhood, and on and on and on. DM's life may not have been peaches and partying but compared to Rorschach's... (Maybe they function at different levels?) Diagnosing Rorschach takes some dot-connecting but Doctor Manhattan-as-aspie makes good-ish sense to me...
    • Even more alternatively, his disconnection comes from the lack of any bodily function, which will eventually lead to him becoming nothing more than a self aware natural phenomenon...
  • I don't know, as a troper with a family member who has aspergers, I think that Rorschach could easily do all that, because you say that he is motivated, and that an aspie couldn't be motivated. But my brother, who has aspergers, is very motivated. I could well believe that rorschach has aspergers.
    • User:Mac Phisto has Asperger Syndrome. He does not like the term "Aspie". Not that he feels victimized—he just thinks it sounds stupid. That being said, while he does believe that Rorshach fell somewhere between Autism and Anti Social Personality Disorder, he did not have A.S. Doctor Manhattan, on the other hand, did not have A.S -- but Alan Moore certainly gave him the personality traits of someone who did.
• Didn't Rorschach go with social interaction with Nite Owl early on? I am more inclined that to believe Rorschach was raised as a "special little snowflake" that snapped here and there leaving him with no social skills growing up. That one murder case just further broke him as a person. So I think his similarities to having Aspberger's is in the same vein as a shark and dolphin looking similar. Different reasons, same effect.
  • Raised as a "special little snowflake"? By whom? By his mother, who beat him and told him that she should've aborted him? By the Charlton Home? Abusive mother followed by institution does not add up to "special little snowflake".
• There are other Autistic Spectrum Disorders. Rorscach might have one that isn't Aspergers. Someone who cares more than me should check sometime, one might fit.
  • I agree with this one, but, as a sufferer of mild Asperger's Syndrome, I object to the term "aspie". That's like calling someone with downs syndrome a "retard". I thought we'd moved out of the madhouse era as a society.
    • As another suffer of mild Asperger's, I agree. I much prefer "social failures". Makes the other AS people squirm.
      • Really? I find it a term of pride.
• I find it funny how we're all judging aspies without actually having it. I have Aspergers and I can tell you that Rorscach and Dr. Manhattan are A LOT more screwed up than a normal aspie would be. Also everyone seems to forget that they both had gone through events that would mess anyone up.
  • I believe the intent was "Asperger's plus a ton of other issues on top of it." I'm sure we're all aware that Asperger's doesn't make people that disturbed without other issues getting involved.
  • It's a spectrum disorder, there is no "normal" level as it covers many levels of disfunction. But neither of them really display Asperger's symptoms. (I have it badly enough to be on permanent disability, but I've seen much worse cases, and they don't resemble any of the Watchmen characters.)
• Do Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan really need disorders to explain their behavior? Rorschach had a childhood that would mess up anybody. Dr. Manhattan has trouble thinking like other people because of his superpowers; he doesn't seem to have a problem with this before his accident. If they had Asperger's Syndrome, that really wouldn't be the worst of their problems.
  • Explain them, no. Not everything that Rorschach or Dr. Manhattan does really has to have anything to do with Asperger's Syndrome. However, they do show some of the symptoms and the description does possibly apply to them. Moreover, their screwed-up lives may be a cause rather than an effect of Asperger's Syndrome, or cause and effect could be a two-way street.
    • The case for Dr. Manhattan's having A.S. does strike me as considerably weaker than Rorschach's, since Jon Osterman's life before having superpowers is shown to have been that of a fairly ordinary if somewhat shy and nerdy scientist. However, the effect his superpowers had on his perspective could well have induced something similar to having Asperger's; just as some claim we're all aspies when we're on the internet (because of the reduced capacity for giving and receiving social cues), maybe Manhattan isn't inherently an aspie, but behaves like one due to the unique way his powers socially isolate him.
    • As for Rorschach, how much of his personality is inherent and how much of it came from his traumatic upbringing is always in question, but he does show a lot more of the obvious Asperger's symptoms. The awkward handshake with Daniel Dreiberg is particularly telling: he just plain missed the social cue that ten seconds or so is enough and then he should stop shaking hands with his friend. Rorschach also has a lot of trouble with simple common courtesies (such as answering the rhetorical greetings of others, and greeting his friends when they come to break him out of prison), though he's hardly lacking in compassion; Daniel's girlfriend Laurie in particular finds his odd behaviors very rude and offputting, though Daniel sees through this to Rorschach's better qualities and tries to tell her about them. Rorschach also displays a rather single-minded devotion to his work as a costumed hero, typical of an Aspergerish obsession. As Daniel Dreiberg mentions at one point, back when they were regular partners, Rorschach was both a brilliant tactician and very unpredictable although he believes "that mask has eaten his brains" too. All the fighting Rorschach does later demonstrates he still is very talented at this. One could tentatively identify any number of other personality disorders in him, but these symptoms do fit Asperger's Syndrome particularly well.

Rorschach's mask does reflect his facial expressions, but in an arbitrary way.

The inkblot patterns (in the first mask at least) are caused by basically blobs of oil floating around in water, settling aimlessly on the surface of his face. And though he probably doesn't make terribly exaggerated facial expressions much of the time, it would still adjust to raised eyebrows or a sudden change in body temperature. So it * does* display his facial expressions... but nobody wants to hang around him long enough to figure out which one is what.

• I'm not sure, but I think it's established that Rorschach doesn't HAVE facial expressions.
  • He speaks in a really creepy monotone at all times, and without his real face he seems to be expressionless—but with it on, who can tell? He might not raise his eyebrows a lot, or let his mouth fall open, but it has to be reacting to something.
  • I think the reason he doesn't have facial expressions is because since the mask "is" his face, when he doesn't have it on, he perceives himself as not having the capability or need to express emotions, since the people he's talking to are just seeing his "mask."
• Although I can't seem to find it now, I remember once visiting a website where all of Rorschach's mask patterns where listed. Most of them corresponded to Rorschach's emotional state at the time. If memory serves, this is why his mask looks exactly the same when he discovers that Jacobi is dead as when he realizes that the abducted child was killed, chopped up and fed to the two dogs. In both cases, he was clearly shocked/surprised.
  • Two blot patterns repeat themselves noticeably: The shocked one mentioned by the troper above, and the "Never compromise" pattern he makes when he says that phrase in different points of the story.
• So when he gets what looks like a big goofy smile on his face after shaking hands with Nite Owl...
• The most obvious case this troper noticed was in the film just before Rorschach leaves Karnak. The mask shifts so that there's a long streak of black from his eyes down his cheeks. She only noticed on the second viewing, but she's now quite sure Rorschach was crying.
• Actually, it's blatantly stated in this video from the development team that the mask changes to reflect his emotions, and they have about fifteen "set patterns" taken directly from the comic that they even defined as expressions. So, in this case, the WMG is right.

Dr. Manhattan's bizzarre perception of time is due to him being somewhat aware of the fact that he's a character in a comic book.

Whenever he talks about a past or future event that's happening he's referring to an even that appears elsewhere in the book. He knows he's powerless to change history because the ending has already been written. At one point he mentions how time is something that exists all at once, but humans insist on seeing it one piece at a time because people read comics one panel at a time. Also, note how stops talking as if he everything is pre-ordained towards the end of the book, "Maybe I'll create some.", because that part hasn't been written.

• "We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings."
• Wait. Doctor Manhattan writes Fan Fiction?
• And I assume he's somewhat on friendly terms with Deadpool then?

Dr. Manhattan is the Kwisatz Haderach.

• He can see into the future and the past; indeed, he does so continuously.
• He can easily teleport himself to other planets, possibly other star systems.
• He can be in multiple places at once.

All qualifications of the Kwitsatz Haderach- also, that blue skin? That's not from the radioactivity...

• • He needs to get laid?

The World's Smartest Man is actually an Idiot.

Let's look at the facts, the man decides to name himself after Ramses II—fine, he happens to admire the man. Pity that Ramses II ended up losing to God... Also, interesting choice to pick the version of the name that's explicitly and famously tied to hubris and futility. And his choice of password?

• • Uh, I'm pretty sure that was deliberate on his part. He DID do it 35 Minutes Ago.
• In Exodus the Pharoh is just called Pharoh, not Ramses II, so Ramses did not lose to God. For that matter, Ozymandias did lose to God, Doctor Manhattan defeated him. As for his choice in name, it could be an attempt at irony. Another possibility is that he liked Alexander the Great (who loved Greek culture) so, in respect for his former hero, chose the Greek form of his new hero's name. We also do not know how famous Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem is in Watchmen. His password could have been all part of the plan.
  • Ozymandias didn't lose to God, he beat him three times. He got Dr. Manhattan to exile himself, blew him up (something no one else ever did), and made world peace while he was gone.

The World's Smartest Man is really only a bit clever.

World's Smartest Man is a publicity based nickname, one that Adrian didn't even choose. Sure, he's probably got above average intelligence. He's a successful man who made a fortune through clever use of his image, and he's able to work out a lot of complicated factors for his Gambit Roulette. But his roulette comes together mostly because he's predicting the behavior of people he knows well, because he's flexible as long as he's moving towards his goal, and he has a lot of money and power to cover his tracks. And as has been pointed out many times, his plan is flawed for many reasons—he can't contain every possible security leak, even if he could he wouldn't be able to maintain a lasting peace, in the long run he's probably as clueless about people as Dr. Manhattan. If I had to guess, I'd say he has an IQ of around 140. Notably above average, but nothing incredible.

• • Two problems with your thoughts. One, 136 is entry level genius intellect according to scientists so 140 would qualify him as genius. Two, he accomplished genetic engineering (Bubastis), successfully blew up a god (even if he did reassemble himself), developed teleportation technology, and predicted the Keene Act years before it was even a discussion.
    • Read again. The WMG isn't about if Veidt is a genius, it's about if he's The World's Smartest Man.
    • "Technically genius" may look good on a business card or get you into Mensa, but it ain't "incredible" by any stretch—it's the bare minimum on an arbitrary number scale. And he did none of those things by himself except predicting public disillusionment with vigilantes (not a fantastic accomplishment, just Genre Savvy), he had a huge research company and Manhattan himself helping out. None of that makes him anything close to "The World's Smartest Man".
    • I doubt there's many other people in the world who can attentively watch dozens of television stations at once while simultaneously reflecting on the sociological implications of the programs and considering stock options or dictating philosophical discourses.
      • I've got an IQ of 142, and from where I'm standing he still comes off way smarter than anything I'm capable of.

Dr. Manhattan created the Soul Swords, and the entire Soul universe.

Ok, I know this sounds weird but... Dr. Manhattan creates a new universe, creates the ancestors of the characters, then, deciding he wants to rid himself of his humanity even further, splits himself into two swords: one a manifestation of his good side, the other his evil side. He watches people fight over him for his amusement. In his own way, this is to make up for the fact he lost his wife to Nite Owl.

• Considering that the Soul Calibur was created out of Soul Edge, it means he initially had lost all goodness. And as of Soul Calibur 4 its more "order sword and chaos sword" than good or evil, so he's lost all sense of human morality over time...

Rorschach is a virgin

Think about it. Rorschach is a Celibate Hero depicted as having a total fear of anything sexual, which is implied to be the result of a messed up childhood. It wouldn't be too far off to suggest that Rorschach is a subversion of A Man Is Not a Virgin.

• • I think you're probably right. He expresses extreme discomfort around women even at a young age, and can't even bear to be around women's clothing at sixteen. Maybe he just really really needed to get laid.
    • Somehow, I think having sex would just make it worse. He'd probably scrub himself afterwards with a brillo pad until he scoured all his skin off.
    • What would've happened to the woman? Would she "no longer have a woman's shape" by the time he was done?
      • I doubt Rorshach would be very active in the sack. He'd probably be paralyzed with fear during the process.
      • Given that his default reaction to anything he doesn't like is violence, it almost certainly would not end well. And considering his personal hygiene and "ugliness", any woman who would sleep with him would probably be exactly the type to push his Berserk Button.
    • Not neccessarily. She sees sex as the ultimate expression of love, give her a major savior complex, put her in a situation where she gets a glimpse of Rorschach's utter woobie side, add a too-strong belief in Love Redeems... No idea how Rorschach would react to all of that, but it is a scenario where a nonpromiscuous girl would be willing to sleep with him. Now I wish I could write this.
      • Rorschach would kill her violently.
      • Booze. Lots and lots of booze. Problem solved!

Laurie and Dan's blonde hair is an accidental parting gift from Dr. Manhattan

Because it seems like such a pain to bleach and dye all your facial hair: some radiation leaked out during his dramatic exit, turning their hair blond. The only other person still around (alive) was Ozy, and since he's already blonde, nobody noticed.

• • Alternatively, going on the "Dan and Adrian are related" WMG, Dan is already blonde.
• Ozy might have offered to use his genetic engineering skills to alter their hair genes or something. It would help them stay incognito, which is what both of them wanted.
• One of the technologies created by Veidt and Manhattan was a much more convenient and comfortable hair dyeing system.

Laurie will become The Comedienne

And Dan will have a bat-themed costume (if any), and builds an empire selling his technology.

• And then they'll both be shot in an alleyway in front of their son? Who then discovers the basement full of Nite Owl/Bat gadgets and black Comedienne body armor and masks and decides to use them along with the money from his father's company, despite the police hunting him when he does?
  • No, no. Laurie and Dan will have a falling out, and she'll swear to ruin his life to get revenge. Of course, like her mother, she'll just have her son live out her dreams for her. With a slight change to the super alias, of course.
  • Better: Dan had developed a hovorboard, painted his armor green and added an aweseome helmet...! If they have kids, they're going to be exquisitely messed up, but would we expect anything less from a Deconstructor Fleet tale?
    • Like Batman isn't exquisitely messed up? I'm telling you, man. The way Dan is totally watered-down and wishy-washy when he isn't being Nite Owl? His talent for building gadgets and naming them weird? Laurie's ruthless streak and desire to be independent, anonymous, and in control with her superheroics? Dammit, guys. NITE OWL HAS A GODDAMN NOT-BATCOMPUTER IN HIS NOT-BATPLANE.

Ozy's secret weapon in The Movie is Dr. Manhattan

The trailers show New York getting annihilated not by a psychic blast or giant tenticles, but by an explosion of blue flames. According to Entertainment Weekly, the Watchmen movieverse still relies on oil and this is important to the plot (in the comic they've long since switched to electric cars thanks to Dr. Manhattan; he even points out to the retired first Nite Owl that he (Nite Owl) can't be an auto mechanic because cars are so different). Ergo, Dr. Manhattan has just developed an alternative fuel source, Ozy gets ahold of it, messes with it and BOOM, millions of people dead and Dr. Manhattan gets the blame.

• Now that the movie is out: This is exactly right!
  • I don't know whether to be happy or upset that I'm right, especially since I haven't seen it yet!
    • Then why did you read the spoilers? Spoilers Always Spoil! (Also, the "blue flames" in the film are just a teleportation signature, so you got the right answer for the wrong reason.

There WAS no nuclear war...at all

Ozymandias thought there was going to be a war because he was insane. He was a delusional, psychopathic man with a messiah complex who believed that only HE could "save" mankind from itself. He was clearly bonkers. More so, he saw the "normal" saber rattlings of the Cold War and believed that humanity, known for it's tendency to survive, would do something so utterly, instantly suicidal. This is entirely unlikely, even more unlikely being that if Dr. Manhattan is even half as powerful as he seems (multiplying, size changing, matter control) then stopping 40,000 or 400,000 nuclear weapons should be well within his capacity...really, it's simply not possible to overwhelm someone that powerful, so the only real logical conclusion is Manhattan was either lying or those were rumors or propaganda. Ozy saw this as "real" for some reason. The comic itself seems to imply this: the Black Freighter. The story of the Black Freighter parallels the story of Ozymandias in almost every respect: a man goes mad and thinks he has to "save" his village from pirates, but when he tries to he ends up just killing some people for no reason. It even has the guy fretting over a strawman...as in, strawman fallacy. The symbolism is actually made rather hamfisted when even Ozymandias, at the end, actually hints he's been dreaming of himself in the role of the sailor from the Black Freighter comic. Basically Ozymandias went crazy and killed millions of people because he started to believe his own hype, he started to think he was really "the smartest man in the world" and that only he could see these patterns around him, and only he could save the world and stop a nuclear war. In the end, he saved no one, stopped nothing, and killed half of New York for a pipe dream. It becomes somewhat obvious his plan wouldn't work for real—unless one allows for writer's fiat as an explanation—because the monster was genetically engineered from human DNA...meaning it would still have human DNA in it, or at the very least similar enough that someone would notice. And that is before people begin to question where the rest of this "alien invasion" is years later and why the alien died instantly when it appeared, a pretty piss poor invasion isn't it? Sooner or later people would figure out what happened, and that's assuming no one looks at The Question...er, Rorschach's notes and figues it out. Or that no one in the group breaks ranks, like Laurie.

• Unless the entire story is part of his delusion, this makes little sense. From what we know of the World of Watchmen, there seem to be massive differences between said world and are own. One of these is Doctor Manhattan. His existence has pushed the Soviets into a conner, and they only have two options. One option is to submit to the United States, the second is to go out in a blaze of glory. It seems that they may choose option two. As for the alien having human DNA, it does not seem likely. The explotion was not the result of TNT, or a normal explosive, it was the effect of having one's atoms scrambled and re-arranged. One could assume that such an event might severally damage the DNA of the effected. So the DNA might not look all too human. The death of the alien could be seen as the invaders not yet prepared enough to take out earth, which would give people hope. The lack of invasion is a greater problem, but according to Ozymandias, he will be manipulated the world by then. It should also be noted that if there is one psychic, then there might be more. Rorschach's journal was not part of the plan, so it should not really count. It was an unprediactable variable. It should also be noted that his journal is full of such insanity that no one would believe anything in it by the time they got to the end. Also, the Newspaper it is printed in does not suggest much confidence, few seem to take it seriously.
  • But that's the thing, the story depends on people doing something completely illogical. There IS no real reason, at all, for the Soviets to ever think they could "go out in a blaze of glory". Realistically, Dr. Manhattan would be impossible to stop. He can reproduce himself at least four times, as we have seen him do this. If one of him can hold off more than 50% of their missiles, then four should be able to defeat all of them. And that assumes all the nukes are missiles, since planes would be vastly eaiser to shoot down for a teleporter who can kill with a thought, and tactical nuclear weapons would not "destroy" the US or even annoy Manhattan. More so, the alien's DNA would have to at least be someone human in nature by virtue of the fact it is, at heart, a human being turned into a giant monster...it would still have human blood type, human bodily chemicals, things that havn't evolved in other races on Earth let alone in another star system. The existence of even one psychic is really bizarre, as no one on Earth knew but Ozy, but logic dictates that the existence of other psychic would only make it worse...presumably the quality is genetic in nature, and scientists would then be able to determine it's origin as terrestrial as it would have evolved from some other human genetic mutation, by definition, as the psychics are human. And all the massive problems with "manipulating the world" into believing the invasion is on not withstanding, it would still never hold together under any kind of objective scrutiny: Where are the other aliens? How did it get here? Why did it die instantly? Why have no more appeared? You can manipulate the world but even then you can't manipulate logic. If anything like real world logic applies to the Watchmen universe then Ozy's plan would fall apart in weeks, not even months. Rorschach's journals would only be the nail in the coffin...

Ozymandias is the Emperor of Mankind

Genius-level intellect? Check. Peak physical capabilities? Check. Scientific pioneer? Check. Early genetic-engineering expert? Check. Willing to go to any lengths to secure Humanity's future? Check.

• I seem to remember there being something about the Emperor being every important historical figure ever...
  • Ozymandias certainly thinks he's every great historical figure ever...
• This makes even more sense considering that he's securing humanities future by making man stop hating and fearing his fellow man.....and start hating and fearing aliens with psychic powers.
• He has connections with the U.S. government and the White House, making them a puppet government, and the President a figurehead.

Captain Metropolis and Hooded Justice

Are alive and gay.

• Not a WMG.
  • The alive part is.

Nite Owl isn't who he says he is

Dan keeps surveillance equipment around because he doesn't want anyone knowing his real identity. He makes a habit of covering his eyes with glasses or goggles, only going without them around women he trusts. He doesn't let Laurie touch his hair because it's probably fake, and looks like it's about to slip off. He has blonde hair on his face at the end, which is much harder to dye, but makes more sense if he's a natural blonde to begin with, and waits until he's comfortable revealing this to Laurie. So who is Nite Owl? The son of Hollis Mason? The son of Captain Metropolis or Dollar Bill? The brother of Adrian Veidt?

• That is actually very intruiguing... I just figured (in the comic) he wore shades all the time because it was stylish and because it reminded him of his time as a masked superhero.
  • I just figured he was nearsighted and wearing prescription lenses.

Nite Owl is the killer

Dan, unable to forgive The Comedian for (attempted) raping Laurie's mother, waits several years after the Keene Act when few suspect him, enters The Comedian's apartment and throws him out the window. The cuffs of the killer's sweater match the clothes we first see Dan wearing. He upgrades the lock on his door to keep investigators from finding out who he his. He talks to Ozymandias who separates Laurie from Jon by orchestrating a radiation scare. The Hollis Mason story will hide Dan's identity for another few years, but he needs to get away from public scrutiny altogether, using Rorschach as the fall guy. Telling the police he's at Moloch's, named for the god of human sacrifice, Dan conveniently isn't there to help. When the police come after Dan, it's too late to hide any longer and he takes a risk by breaking out Rorschach, since he wants the investigators to go after multiple vigilante suspects rather than pinpoint him. Dan delays Rorschach's investigation until Adrian, who was funding Dan's equipment all along, is ready to activate the plan. Dan cares more about the thugs who killed Hollis than following Rorschach's interrogation. He knows just how to open the Karnak door, doesn't put up a fight in Adrian's presence, and stops Rorschach twice by making him believe the Lynx is too deadly. Ozymandias covers for Dan, shifting all the blame onto himself by using a flashback story as his only evidence, handwaving it to Rorschach as part of his larger scheme for world peace, while Dan watches to see if Rorschach or Laurie will agree with Adrian. Dan is supposed to convince Laurie and Jon that "Utopia Justifies the Means," but can't convince Rorschach, who is killed for it. As a reward for getting the others to agree with Ozymandias, Dan is given a new identity to start his life over, marries Laurie, and lives happily ever after, finally absolved of his crime.

• Problem: Moloch's recollection of the Comedian is in keeping with Adrian's story.

Nite Owl is Adrian's spy

Using Adrian's method of looking for symbols and meaning in random chaos, we find Dan associates with Horus and the eye of vengeance, corresponding to the third Egyptian statue, the third mugshot in the New Frontiersman, and the third kid dressed as a pirate. Adrian's dreams reflect the pirate's life in Tales of the Black Freighter, yet Dan is the pirate symbol because Ozymandias uses him like an avatar to scout and get information. The pirate outfit has an eyepatch covering the right eye, as the smiley face has the right eye smudged to represent the coming 11th hour, represented most by Nite Owl, who sits at the right eye of Archie while its right window becomes obstructed to make the symbol. When Jon makes the symbol it's due to measuring time, expressed not by his emotionless face but a clock face, a tool mechanically pointing to the right side out of inevitability, not choice, while Dan chooses to stay on the right side as a marker to willingly follow until the end, tracing the symbol with his fingers in Chapter VII.

Dan shows his knowledge of Greek and Egyptian history by not only knowing the Greek name of Ozymandias, but worshiping the symbol of birds in "Blood from the Shoulder of Pallas," where the owl sits at the right shoulder of Athena, goddess of craft, war, wisdom and philosophy, areas that Ozymandias excels in, with the owl being the right hand attendant, intelligence gatherer, and spy. Dan has surveillance equipment he looks at apprehensively in Chapter VII, which could report back to Adrian. Dan's love for Greek and Egyptian mythology is how he respects Ozymandias, the man who believes he's the Greek who conquered Egypt to unite their culture. Dan mentions Athena on the face of Greek coins, a likely reference to coins in the eyes of the dead used to cross the river Styx, making Athena/Ozymandias a guide from this world to the next.

Odd is his observation that modern people look at a hawk scientifically while "the Egyptians once saw Horus and the burning eye of holy vengeance incarnate," and that we need to "transform our mere sightings into genuine visions" to be true passion. Dan respects the Eye of Horus, the eye of the hawk/falcon, representing the analytical mind of letters, numbers, thoughts and senses when on the face's right side. When the detective "looks ahead" at the calendar in Dan's house, he sees a hawk attacking its prey, a clue to Dan's identity that he keeps hidden. Horus, the god of the sky, has the head of a hawk/falcon, which is the rightmost statue in Ozymandias' office, opposite the leftmost statue off panel, which corresponds to The Comedian and the devil costume.

Rorschach corresponds to the center statue, the jackal headed Anubis, who brings people to the afterlife and measures the worthiness of the dead. Rorschach wears the inkblot symbol and sees the dog in an inkblot, making the dog face his symbol, and analyzes Anubis in terms of watching over the dead. As Anubis is the brother of Horus, Rorschach is the spiritual brother to Nite Owl, and Nite Owl can't kill Rorschach, but needs to escort him to Karnak, Adrian's "tomb" to die a symbolic death and be reborn in the new world, avoiding Alexander's literal death, accompanied by three associates who die before Adrian walks into Karnak, as three men escort Alexander's chariot in the painting, three gods escort Adrian to the next world, and three heroes die for him, though one has his conscience and identity die to spare his mortality and live on in the next world with Adrian. Alan Moore does this kind of thing using myths and symbolic meaning all the time, in Promethea for example, so yeah.

Nite Owl seeks Adrian's protection

In contrast to the stereotypical 1940's Nazi villain Captain Axis, modern racist and anti-Nazi paranoia continues from the ongoing conflict in Europe. Dan Dreiberg has a Jewish surname, and to avoid persecution, adopts the last name Hollis as the original Nite Owl was given the name from his dad's friend to hide his secret Jewish ethnicity, while German music reminds him of oppression when hearing Ride of the Valkyries or the later band Kristallnacht, and out of fear, publishes his book to give himself an American Montana background, since his association with novelist Denise could bring suspicion among conspiracy theorists who believe Jews run the media, just as people make an issue of whether reporter Woodward Bernstein is Jewish, The New Frontiersman gets mail about Jewish conspiracies like the "Jewnited States of America," and even shows a cartoon with a fat Jewish man controlling big business, in league with Communism and organized crime, hiring black prostitutes to sell drugs and Asian street thugs to increase violence, despite having a cartoonist named Feinberg. Nite Owl is wary of the bigoted attitude he sees in Captain Metropolis, who puts the label "black unrest" over the lower United States and makes racist statements about Hispanics and blacks, and Hooded Justice, who supports the ideology of the Third Reich, or the news vendor who accidentally implies all blacks know each other, and the New Frontiersman editor who hates anything Chinese or Russian. Ozymandias believes the subtle meanings taken from the chaos of the media point to a shared ideology, and this racist paranoia is subconsciously promoted by the war.

Ozymandias takes advantage of this racist attitude by calling his rivals Nazis to further villainize them, as he calls The Comedian a Nazi to see if Rorschach agrees, and the Pioneer Publishing office is vandalized with Swastika and Sieg Heil graffiti, likely by competitor Nova Express, owned by Triangle Incorporated, a Veidt subsidiary. The New Frontiersman retaliates by calling Nova Express a Communist anti-American publication, but its fringe views will hardly make a dent in the media, though people already have anti-gay, anti-porn, anti-liberal, and anti-foreign sentiment, which Ozymandias uses by misdirecting the public's fear on each other instead of on him, and gets away with using parts of these ideologies to further his business goals, promoting the human perfection ideal of the Nazis and the societal utopia of Communism justified at any cost, without being called a Communist or Nazi, by dedicating Capitalist resources to sell products based on responses to these fears as a form of mass comfort.

After the attack on New York, Ozymandias gets to clean out old businesses, replacing the Gunga Diner with a Russian restaurant in hopes of new pro-Russian attitudes, while people alleviate their fears by associating brand names like Nostalgia and Millenium with true love. Ozymandias gets to run his Capitalist empire, pacifying the world in consumerism, and is allowed to by having his sole opposition, costumed heroes, comply with him and not interfere. Ozymandias believes he's conquering the evils of the world by controlling and manipulating prejudice, and assures Dan Dreiberg he won't be persecuted in his new world order once Dan takes on his new identity, and Dan agrees.

Hooded Justice is related to Rorschach

The exposé "Under the Hood" is an opportunity for Hollis to cover his past to the public by inventing much of his early life and his associates that we never see, while misdirecting the identity of Hooded Justice. His claim that he saw Hooded Justice and was inspired by him is his way to publicly deny knowledge of who Hooded Justice is, with the wrestler speculation as a further alibi. Nite Owl had a close partnership with Hooded Justice and wanted to keep his identity hidden, mirroring the modern relationship of Nite Owl and Rorschach (as a professional partnership, or a different kind altogether). Hooded Justice's vigilante fighting style was the inspiration for Rorschach, as Rorschach's trainer, or his father, who sees Rorschach's mother when she's working as a whore, and calls himself Charlie. Rorschach respects his father enough to follow in his crimefighting footsteps, haunted by his human side which he blames on sin and all the wrongs of the world, projected onto his mother, a product of the world he has no control over.

• Probably isn't Rorschach's father. HJ is gay, after all.
  • Ambiguous. It's entirely possible Hooded Justice is straight, and Mothman or Captain Metropolis or Dollar Bill are gay. We're never told straight out that anyone is gay.

Hollis Mason is related to Adrian Veidt

Hollis Mason is a pseudonym given by Mason's father to him. We don't know Hollis' real name or his dad's. Hollis is 23 in 1939, is blonde, and has a face shot that looks surprisingly like Adrian Veidt, born in 1939. Hollis may have escaped Germany after anti-Nazi sentiment, seeking to prove his loyalty to the US by battling Nazi villain Captain Axis as Nite Owl, while keeping his German heritage hidden. His son Adrian disowns him and makes up stories about his parents immigrating to the US with tons of wealth and dying when he's 17, and continues his life alone, perfecting his skills to live up to his Ãœbermensch ideal. Hollis meets Dan Drieberg and trains him, treating him like a son, letting him avoid prejudice by doing good deeds as Nite Owl. Dan uses the name Hollis to stay anonymous, just as the name has always been used.

Hollis Mason has a secret

Owl figurines surround the trophy of the first Night Owl given during a banquet, which says "In Gratitude." Dan isn't only thankful for being trained by Hollis, he's thankful Hollis has kept his secrets for so long. So are others. What secrets does Hollis know?

Hollis knows which of his friends and associates have become heroes and villains, why someone became a hero or villain if they aren't giving the real reason, which costumes have been traded to keep identities alive, what real names are behind which made up alter egos, where someone is from, whose last name isn't what they claim it is, who is secretly related to whom, who has had intimate relationships with whom, what secret opinions or ideology is whose, what became of heroes reported dead or missing, what secret backstories do all the minor villains have, what professional, romantic, or familial relationships any of the briefly seen civilians may or may not have with anyone, and anything else we just don't know.

The above WMGs on Hollis and Dan are true

The director was so devoted to the text he didn't have a chance to explore them.

Dr. Manhattan goes on to create the world of 2001: A Space Odyssey

This is why 2001 is populated entirely by monotone people with no emotional connection to each other, and the explanation for the glowing baby at the end: Osterman placed the monoliths and created a successor/heir out of Dave Bowman. He also is the one that put the FIRST monolith there, to bring sentience to the apes. This would ALSO explain why, in the year 2001, that universe has space travel, sentient AIs, and the USSR. It isn't OUR timeline.

Dr. Manhattan goes on to create the universe of Star Trek

Dr. Manhattan went as far away from his earth as he could, and then proceeded to create the known Star Trek universe. Somewhere in the quadrant where Voyager is is the Watchmen-Earth, and Q is what eventually became of Doctor Manhattan once he ascended in power.

• I don't think Dr. Manhattan would be as big of a jerkass as Q (on purpose).
  • Maybe he's all the Q's? Like, he split his consciousness when he realized that no 1 being should hold so much power, or something like that.
    • And the part of him that remembered the Comedian's jerkassery became the Q that bugs Picard et al.
• Probably Jossed by the flashback to the dinner in The Comedian's honor. One of the people Eddie's talking to says he's "all right. Not giving everybody the creeps like goddamned Mr. Spock over there". Unless Dr. Manhattan liked Star Trek so much he decided to create a universe exactly like it.

Dr. Manhattan goes on to create every universe ever

Including this one, but especially Deconstructor Fleet worlds like the BSG and NGE 'verses. At some point managing all these worlds becomes too much, so he sends out the Bokurano fighters to thin the herd. Once he's commenced Jumping Off the Slippery Slope he creates the Warhammer 40,000 universe to envelope everything, leaves the Chaos Gods (initially Order Gods) to manage things until it all gets completely out of hand, destroys the universe with another Big Bang and starts all over again.

(Movie) Ozymandias is gay

Think about it. He dresses in crisp purple suits at work, his hair is never short of perfect, his corporate office building has downward-pointing triangles everywhere, he has a folder on his computer labeled 'boys,' and in the opening credits he's seen at Studio 54 at what looks like one of their infamous "Sundays at Studio 54" parties.

• • This troper attributed the suits to a)it being The Eighties, and/or b)Oz being an idiomatic pimp. It's worth pointing out that at the Antarctic base has a lot of pyramids and general pointyness.
    • Matthew Goode, the actor for the film version also supports the concept that Ozymandias is a homosexual, and seems to believe Rorschach has suppressed homosexual desires towards him.
  • Comic Ozymandias is gay, too. Rorschach comments "Possibly homosexual? Must remember to investigate."
    • Rorschach is a sociopathic, homophobic nutjob. Ozymandias never expressed affection for anything other than himself or Bubastis.
      • Besides, if he were gay you'd think those three chubby servants of his would be hotter.
  • You're crazy. Ozymandias is the pinnacle of alpha manliness.
    • Manly =/= heterosexual. Perhaps even Ozymandias doesn't know what he is vis-á-vis sexual attraction, or doesn't think it's consequential enough to waste time on.
      • Really, in the comic Ozymandias could be gay or straight, since sex and romance are so irrelevant to what we see of him. If the movie version isn't actually gay he was made awfully "swishy," that is effeminate and stereotypically "gay looking." At the same time, (with unfortunate implications) he became overtly sinister and seemed more evil. And he picked up a vaguely European accent. And grew a big black handlebar mustache. (Okay, that last bit isn't true.)
      • His actor's European. That covers all but the mustache.
  • Well, he did say that he tried to model himself after Alexander, and Alexander did have a male lover he was very attached to. Which was fairly common for that time period.
    • Why can I see this leading to some damn good fic? (Perhaps because in my mind Veidt is pretty much a straightforward asexual.) Him trying to get his Alexander on, mostly out of a desire to have someone adequate for the job of being his Hephaestion. And hey, some asexuals enjoy porn.
  • Watch the folder names when Dan is going through Ozy's computer. One of them says boys. Figure that one out.

There will be a sequel to The Movie

It'll take place in The Nineties and be a deconstruction of the X-Men with Veidt taking responsibility for the Bizarre Baby Boom he created. "Mrs. Hollis" will be hired as Team Mom since she's the only person who's had long-term experience with an actual super-powered being, but she's not very useful because she's not used to super-powered beings with actual (and out of control) emotions; plus there's that whole "teaming up with the mass murderer who framed her lover" thing.

• If there is, heads will roll.
  • According to I'm a Marvel And I'm a DC, Rorschach himself is after the people who want to make Watchmen 2. On the other hand, Deadpool's interference with his interrogations might hinder his attempts a bit...

Silhouette wasn't murdered for being gay.

In the comic, Silhouette is outed, expelled from the group, and murdered six weeks later. So it's natural to think it whoever did it was motivated by homophobia. But she was murdered by "one of her former enemies", ie someone with a motive to kill her that preceded the scandal. Even in the 1940s, "beats up violent criminals" is more likely to provide a motive for murder than "is a lesbian". So the only connection between her being outed and being murdered is that the press revealed her identity in the process and she lost the protection of the group. There's a weird parallel here with Kitty Genovese, the woman who inspired Rorschach. She was also a lesbian who was murdered by someone who either didn't know or didn't care about her sexuality. You'd think Alan Moore did this intentionally, but Genovese wasn't publically revealed to be a lesbian until 2004.

• Of course he knew, Moore's a Time Lord.
• The two aren't completely mutually exclusive—someone who wanted to kill Silhouette for other reasons (most likely revenge, as suggested above) might be spurred into acting on that impulse by the outing, In addition to the "lost the protection of the group" opportunity noted above, the killer could be both vengeful and homophobic, or perhaps he killer could be vengeful and clever enough to figure that the risk of being caught afterward was less (because the authorities would jump to the wrong conclusion about the motive, and would be less motivated about investigating a crime against a lesbian).
• Also, note that the "Lesbian Whores" text written at the crime scene was only in the movie; in the comic, we never see the murder scene and it is only referenced to briefly.

Moloch is Rorschach's father.

Watch the opening credits carefully. The "customer" coming out of Rorschach's mother's room bears a striking resemblance to Moloch, though his ears are only slightly pointy. He ruffles Walter's hair, something probably nobody else would care enough about him to do. It would fit the archetype, wouldn't it? Framed for killing his own (unknown) father?

• I highly doubt this. They were played by different people in the movie (Moloch was played by Matt Frewer, Young Moloch was played by Mike Carpenter, and the john was played by Tony Bardach). AND, in the graphic novel, the john pushes Walter out of the way (in the face).

Dr. Manhattan made the "Magic Bullet"

In The Movie, it was outright shown that the Comedian shot JFK (most likely for Nixon). Since Dr. Manhattan and the Comedian are the only legal "superheros" during Nixon's term, it wouldn't be too far off to assume that Dr. Manhattan made (or was tricked into making) the bullet that gave birth to the "Single bullet theory". One Fridge Logic question though, what could Nixon possibly gain from having Kennedy killed?

• Kennedy made Nixon look bad on TV during their debate, and Nixon is great at holding grudges.
• It would allow him to go on as president, having five terms as it turned out.
  • I thought the "Magic Bullet" thoery had been disproved in real life because the weird angles were caused by one of the people either sitting in a repositioned seat or standing/leaning in some way.
    • Watchmen isn't our universe. It's entirely possible somebody wasn't sitting/standing wierdly in this version of events, and the wierd angles were caused by a magic bullet. Since we couldn't get one to work, Dr. Manhattan doing it kind of makes the most sense.
      • The scene with Kennedy's assassination showed the bullet hitting the side of his head, while the real Kennedy was shot in the back of the head. The term "magic bullet" was the result of people not understanding how governor Conally was sitting when he was shot; since the conditions where changed so much, there probably wouldn't be any talk of "magic bullets"

Bubastis will ascend to godhood.

Bubastis was subjected to the same process as created Dr. Manhattan. Her disembodied mind would have had the opportunity to Meanwhile, Rorschach's journal was secreted away as soon as the New Frontiersmen editors figured out what it was and it becomes a MacGuffin to bring down Veidt. But just as Veidt's actions are highly questionable, so is the idea of desabilizing everything in the name of the truth, leading to a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero ending. observe Dr. Manhattan rebuild himself. The fulfillment of Her prophetic name will be the fulfillment of Ozymandias's, as she remakes the world.

• No, Bubastis was designed to produce the same effect, not subjected to the process. Moreover, Bubastis doesn't have the same level of intellect as Jon and so can't rebuild herself.
  • Look again. In both the movie and the book, Bubastis gets caught in the field effect with Manhattan. And how do you know how much intellect a genetically engineered supercat has?

Bubastis and Dr. Manhattan merged when subjected to the IFS.

The new big blue guy that appears shortly afterwards is actually a gestalt entity, hence the personality change in which he stops being fatalistic, kills someone, and goes off to create some inferior beings to play with.

• I like it. Especially since he comes back so large that everybody else is vermin-sized in comparison.

Watchmen is somewhat influenced by H.P. Lovecraft

Ozymandias seems to have more than a few parallels with everybody's favourite messenger of the Outer Gods. Let's see: he's extremely intelligent, and responsible for several unusual inventions (although Dr Manhattan helped with those), is fascinated with Egyptian history (his research facility is a fricking Egyptian temple in the Antarctic!), he has a pet tiger ("wild beasts lick his hands"), he's completely uncaring about individual human lives (although unlike Nyarly, he actually wants to do what's good for mankind as a whole), and his plan to unite the world features a giant extradimensional squid that mindrapes people (Great Cthulhu, anyone?). You could also draw parallels between Dr Manhattan and Yog-Sothoth, but that's mostly because Yog-Sothoth is essentially Lovecraft's version of God and Manhattan is a Physical God.

• • Perhaps Ozymandias himself was literally inspired by Lovecraft for his plan.
    • Heck, Ozymandias practically hired his universe's Lovecraft to do the job.

Rorschach is a Waste Lock

He is a conduit for negative human emotion, which causes him to gradually become more and more homicidally insane and pseudo-emotionless, just like Nny. (He's got other parallels - paranoid, believes all his killing is justified by the victims being bad people, writes everything down in a journal - but it isn't quite relevant right now). He therefore belongs in neither heaven nor hell - and, let's face it, he wouldn't. This means that killing him may have destroyed and reset the universe.

• But waste locks are typically not a threat to anybody but themselves, Nny was a rare exception to the rule.

The movie Laurie has cancer

In both the comic and movie Adrian says he "had to kill" the Comedian because "he found out". In the comic The Comedian discovered an enclave creating a giant psychic alien squid, but this doesn't exist in the movie. So what did he discover in the movie that would require his death?

In both the comic and movie, The Comedian warns Moloch he's "on the list", which subsequent events strongly imply is a list of people with cancer, leaked to Nova Express. The entire list is never revealed, but all the cancer victims are people with long associations with Dr. Manhattan. Who else in the movie had a long association with Manhattan? In the comic, which had the squid, Laurie claims she did not have cancer, but this never happens in the movie.

The only thing The Comedian ever showed affection for is his daughter, Laurie. If her name was also on the list, Adrian's life would be in deadly danger, making the removal of The Comedian necessary.

Watchmen shares a continuity with...

Another deconstruction of the superhero genre featuring a hodgepodge, lopsided cast of "superheroes" who, for the most part, are just incredibly flawed human beings with no powers to speak of. I'm thinking it fits in pre-Keene Act.

• Dr. Manhattan? Maybe you should put some shorts on or something, if you want to keep fighting evil today.
• When I clicked that link, I was expecting it to be League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Which sort of makes sense, although I'd be very sad if there was a LOEG that invoked as few literary canons (ie, none) as Watchmen did.
• I once saw Ozymandias lift a city bus...!

Finish this sentence- Rorschach's splatter looked like...

• A pretty butterfly
• A skull
• His 'signature'
• A splatter.
• A snow angel.
• Two lovers.
  • Two lovers?
• Trench knives.
• His demonic symbol, from which he shall eventually emerge to cleanse the earth of criminals.
• The head of the rabbit costume from Donnie Darko. Time Paradox away!
• An angel made of blood... or a cat.
  • An angel made of a cat? Ew. Poor cat.
• Rorschach's face (or Kovacs' mask, it's up to you). Really.
  • Part of a dress.
• an inkblot.

In The Movie, the increased blood was all part of the deconstruction

It had to work in a deconstruction of what made comic book movies different from the books somewhere in the direct translation from page to screen. What is the most common theme in comic book movies? More blood, more violence. So they did the best they could to increase the quantity of red stuff, going Beyond the Impossible in the process to show just how much there'd be.

• It also reinforces the idea of comics as immature and over the top, so a new viewer might assume it has the same literary value as Judge Dredd.
• Judge Dredd is a brilliant satire, it's socially relevant and well-written. It has tons of "literary value".
  • No, the movie Judge Dredd.
• Or maybe it was just because it was that 300 guy, and he likey the blood and the violence. :P
• Actually, the tendency is for over-the-top stunts and special effects with the violence, but no blood. Look at The Dark Knight. One of the scariest, most violent superhero movies out there. No blood. Ever. No blood in X-Men. No blood in Spider-Man. The only one I can think of is Blade, and that's about vampires, so you can't really do it without blood. Also, 300, but that was the point. The stunts in Watchmen are "people fighting with fists and kicking" stunts, not the usual "dude dodges a helicopter blade using teleportation" stunts or "dude throws a dude through a concrete wall" stunts - superhero stunts. Other than Dr. Manhattan exploding people, which he does in a manner no more fantastic than the ordinary hand grenade, the stunts are simply not fantastic - that is, not fantasy-based. Also. The sex. When was the last time you saw a superhero movie with sex? They ARE deconstructing it, and they're doing it the same way the comic did. Unfortunately...
  • The stunts are not fantastic? People in the movie move like ninja in a low-gravity environment. The fighting is always sped up, slowed down or otherwise altered to seem less like a street fight and more like an application of movie magic. If that's a deconstruction of glamorized violence it looks an awwwwful lot like a straightforward, un-ironic use of glamorized violence.
• See, I'm thinking this was a case of Zach Snyder deconstructing himself. Notice that, when the slo-mo effects kick in, it slows at all the wrong parts—rather than slowing down the moves and impacts, making the violence look like ballet, it slows down on shots of bones piercing skin and the like—the parts that are just plain gruesome.
  • Bloody, disgusting combat is very in-tone for Watchmen. The storyline is gritty and realistic compared to normal comic books. Using the slowed motion to really bring the injuries to the fore in the combat scenes therefore feeds and informs the tone of the movie.
  • Seeing as how Watchmen is essentially deconstructing the whole superhero thing it makes a lot of sense that the movie would be so incredibly brutal. These guys aren't going to web up the thugs and leave them for the cops where they will be promptly arrested. They're going to tear them right the hell apart, breaking enough bones to stop them from ever being a threat again... if they don't kill them outright to stop them. It may have been disgusting to watch but it's pretty authentic to the idea of what's being done.

Watchmen is going to kick off a trend of stupid, mindlessly R-rated superhero movies.

If it does well, it's going to be just like when the comic came out. The producers are going to see that people liked The Dark Knight and Watchmen and go "Hmm. I guess we need to start making this shit Darker and Edgier." Ignoring, of course, that the damn plot was why people liked them. Effectively, the history of comic movies is going to echo the history of comics after the sixties done in fast-forward. Wont' THAT be fun.

• rated-blockbusters Jossed by the film's lackluster box office. In fact, we probably won't be seeing any R-rated blockbusters in the near future.

Watchmen is going to kick off a trend of stupid, mindlessly PG-13-rated Superhero/Sci-Fi/Horror movies because it failed

The industry will discontinue R-Rated blockbusters reguardless of the source material. And continue to play it safe with PG/PG-13 genre films. The days of R-rated blockbusters are now long gone (Unless it's a comedy). And might always have been.

Watchmen is going to kick off a Reconstruction of superhero films.

Contrary to the above Guess, now that Watchmen has come out the spate of superhero flicks, and action movies in general, have gotten about as dark as they should go. When Superman is a neglectful, absent parent, that's about it. Maybe Hollywood will finally say that it's time to lighten up and give the public a superhero who is unabashedly, unashamedly, unironically good and heroic.

• The Middleman: The Movie. Please let some Hollywood screenwriter be reading this.

Watchmen is was going to kick off a trend of Pirate comics.

Well, it would have. But after that Real Life Somali pirate attack, it's unlikely now.

Watchmen isn't going to kick off any trends.

Hooded Justice wasn't German, he was Russian, and Colonel Volgin's non-electric sibling.

Well, they're both tall, muscular, sadomasochistic, rather Hard Gay types (although Volgin was actually bi) who were excessively fond of hitting people really hard. This may also have provided additional incentive for him to refuse to reveal his identity to the HCUAC if he was the brother of a Soviet colonel.

• Alternatively, Volgin and Hooded Justice are actually the same person.

Dr. Mahattan becomes Tim from Braid.

Think about it.

They can percieve time differently, both have experience in nuclear development, both have issues understanding/developing relationships with women, and both have big regrets.

After Manhattan left earth, he created the strange monster filled, painted background world that Braid is in order to sort out his conflicting feelings on himself, Laurie, and how he fits into the universe.

By this line of logic, Laurie is the Princess, and Dan is the White Knight.

Firefly is the future of Watchmen

Veidt Corporation becomes Blue Sun, and Veidt was partially responsible for starting the Anglo-Sino Alliance. The Alliance has done the whole kill-several-million-people-to-save-more only they didn't have good intentions or the competence of Veidt.

• River and Simon are the direct descendants of Laurie and Dan—they have the looks, the intelligence, and wealth inherited from Dan's inventions. River is also a descendant of Ozymandias, resulting in prodigy-level intellect and physical ability, unusual thinking patterns, and potential mental instability—she must be Simon's half-sister, as Simon shows no signs. Either Doctor Manhattan has chosen her to test his theory of creating superhumans, by granting her a small amount of his omniscience, or she is also a descendant of the psychic sacrificed by Ozymandias to create his monster in the comic.

Battlestar Galactica is the future of Watchmen

It's just not the future of Watchmen's Earth. At the end, Dr. Manhattan decides to go to another galaxy and create life -- which he does. And watches the same cycles occur over and over again, because his creations are all following patterns that echo his own life. This is why "All Along The Watchtower" is significant in both settings.

• "He doesn't like to be called that."

Dr. Manhattan goes back in time and becomes the Genie from Aladdin.

They're both blue, able to defy the laws of physics, and have a habit of making copies of themselves. The Genie's goofy personality is probably Dr. Manhattan's attempt to better identify with humanity through humor (it also explains how the Genie could know about present-day celebrities).

• That cracks me up.
• This offically the biggest WTF in WMG.
  • "I can't kill anybody. EECCCH. So don't ask." - Of course not, because if he can kill anybody, he can kill everybody, and he doesn't want to effect such long-lasting changes on humanity, especially not before Jon Ostermann was even born.
  • "I can't make anybody fall in love with anybody else, MMMWA! you liddle put'm there!" - Couldn't salvage his relationship with Laurie, and says one of the things he "can't change" is human nature.
  • "I can't bring people back from the dead, it's not a pretty picture, I don't like doing it!" - If he could do that, why wouldn't he?
  • Also, when he makes Jafar into another genie, that genie is red and severely limited in his power. He obviously did not duplicate the same experiment that "made him". Probably just game him some illusions of power before locking the crazy mo-fo away (sequels being non-canon of course).
    • Along that same vein: "...and NO wishing for more wishes! That's it, THREE: uno, dos, tres. No substitutions, expansions or refunds!" - he also carefully limits the wisher's power, no need letting himself be a TOTAL puppet again ._. .
  • It all begs the question; what happens now that he was actually WISHED FREE?
    • He created and alternate timeline that would become the Disney Animated Canon

Rorschach didn't die

Dr. Manhattan teleported him to near-future England, where he was rounded up by the government due to his strange behaviour. While in captivity, an unethical medical experiment turned him into a a superhuman anarchist. He later fakes his death after destroying the fascistic British regime.

• This troper refuses to believe he's dead.
  • This troper agrees.
• Thanks for writing my favourite WMG of all.
• It's a little known fact that being the subject of horrible medical experimentation gives you a voice with inflection, a sense of humor and a taste for art and music. And a British accent.
  • And presumably does a 180 of your political opinions as well.
  • And makes you grow to be over six foot tall when you're only five foot five?
    • The Dr. M completely wiped Rorschach's memory and maybe altered his appearance for good measure. The spatter on the snow was just a byproduct of this particular form of transformation. When he landed in the UK he lived a relatively normal and peaceful life until High Chancellor Susan/Sutler came into power.
• Well, I mean, think about it. This is what I thought, too, although sub in "Amazonian rain forest" or "other planet inhabited by humanoid life" for "near-future England." A few pages later, Doctor Manhattan even says something like "I doubt he'll make it back to civilization." They never said that he actually, y'know, died!
  • Assuming the premise of the guess, I figured he would have gone to Mars. It's unlikely that he'd make it back to civilization, and he would survive for a while assuming it was daytime and he stayed close to the ground. He's gone a while with decreased oxygen (hiding in a fridge) before, and it's not as cold as a lot of places in Antarctica.
• Memetic Mutation over on /co/ sees it as a Quantum Leap scenario, Rorschach is constantly hopping from fictional world to fictional world, hoping the next leap will be the one home.
• What happened is that Instead of blasting him into oblivion, Dr. Manhattan actually put Rorschach through a process similar to the one he himself went through. He thus turned Rorschach into a version of himself, but Rorschach must figure out how to "put himself back together"; Jon doesn't believe that Rorschach has the intellectual capacity to do this, hence his remark that he doubts Rorschach will reach civilization. As an aside, this happens to everyone that Jon has blasted. This also makes Rorschach's statement that the "politicians and whores of the world" will beg him to save them, and he'll reply "No", a sort of prophesy...
  • My dear god...imagine Rorschach with Manhattan's powers...

Ozymandias is actually Light Yagami

• Think about it.They're both handsome, light-haired, charismatic, messiah-like figures who want world peace through mass-murder just as planned...thirty-five minutes ago. At the same time, Rorschach is L. They're both slightly weird, talk in a monotone, parentless, raised in a home, and like to rant about justice. Also both has a regular stash of sugar cubes.
  • This troper belives Dr. Manhattan actually destroyed Rorschach and reconstructed him six years in the past as a new person, while still maintaining the majority of his personality, where he went on to become L. See above, and also note questionable methods to achieve their goals.

The Doom Marine is the reincarnated soul of Eddie Blake/The Comedian and Hell invades in a futile effort to get his soul back/damage control.

Hell is destroyed in Doom 2 and this is the only explanation on how the Doomguy is awesome enough to do this.

• The Doom Marine's name has been revealed as John Stalvern. Why would Blake change his name?

The infamous Saturday Morning Watchmen actually exists in the Watchmen universe

It's mentioned that Ozy made a lot of money by licensing his likeness, and the others, having secret identities, wouldn't be in a good position to sue, so can't you just see him putting together a Saturday morning cartoon? Especially one that appears to have Anvilicious Aesops about environmentalism and The Power of Friendship?

• This is practically canon; note the advertisements in-novel for the action figures of Rorschach, Comedian, Moloch, etc.
• Except for the fact that in Saturday Morning Watchmen, it says "Jon can give you cancer." Not only is that NOT Saturday morning approved, but they world only just found out that he "gives people cancer." Also, Bubastis is a girl. Other than that...
  • The "Jon can give you cancer" bit, as well as the direct scene parodies from the comic, are inventions of the Literary Agent that brought the cartoon to our world.
• Alternately, it's a biting satire created after the truth came out.

Rorschach's Journal is actually a Death Note

A bored shinigami took notice of Rorschach after he murdered the kidnapper in the 1970s and saw to it that their Death Note found its way into Rorschach's hands. However, it underestimated Rorschach's indomitable refusal to compromise, so the Note is incapable of killing anyone Rorschach does not judge to be totally evil (the other heroes of the story, for example).

• You really don't understand how the Death Note works, do you?
  • This was a joke theory. I know how a Death Note works.
• Which journal, the coded one he usually uses or the translated one he gives to The New Frontiersman? Since Rorschach writes in shorthand it might not work since he tends to not write someone's whole name.
• If Rorschach got his hands on a Death Note he either wouldn't use it (he seems to prefer to use his own hands) or he'd use the hell out of it and the criminal population of New York would suddenly take a nosedive. And then he'd find out it was all a Xanatos Gambit by Veidt, and then he finds out that not all polititions and hookers are irrideemably evil.

Rorschach is a genuine superhuman

Not exactly high-end, but still genuine. I don't mean his amazing fighting and investigative skills, but something much simpler: He can function normally while he's wearing his mask, which is opaque.

• Pffftt...forget god-like powers, I give you Rorschach, with the phenomenal power to SEE THROUGH LATEX!
  • Wow. That would be the awesomest power ever for anybody who didn't have a severe aversion to all things sexual.

Rorschach and Dexter Morgan (of 'Dexter' fame) are the same person

Stick with me for a moment on this one. At the end of Watchmen Dr. Manhattan doesn't kill Rorschach but sends him to an alternate reality, deaging him, to give him a chance of a normal life. The young Walter Kovacs, memory erased, is taken in by the Morgans as a child in the 80's of their universe and grows up to be our favourite serial killer of bad guys. Stilted voice-over: Check. Strange and twisted sense of morality: Check. Only killing badguys but enjoying it thoroughly: Check.

• And they're both redheads.
  • According to another WMG, it would make him Dexter from Dexter's Lab, too. Oh, the possibilities.

Planet of the Apes is the far future of the Watchmen universe.

Assuming that Ozymandias' peace didn't last. 1972 is pretty technologically advanced in Planet of the Apes too.

Watchmen is the prequel to the CoDominium Universe.

After a few decades, it became clear that the aliens weren't coming back (bookverse)/Dr. Manhattan had vanished (movieverse), so the US/Soviet alliance turned their attention to population control and space colonization. Ozymandias invented the Alderson Drive as a final gift to the world before he passed away, and his self-improvement techniques were later used by the Sauron Supermen. The general technological decay (in some respects) between the two settings can be explained by Dr. Manhattan's absence: without him synthesizing lithium, electric cars became uneconomic, etc. Also, the CD Marines' Nemourlon armour may be related to the material used in Rorschach's mask.

Rorschach is asexual.

I can't believe no one said this before. Rorschach is very childish. He's very naïve. Sounds farfetched? Not really. There are plenty evidence that Rorschach is, in fact, stuck at a very childish mindset, and therefore thinks nothing of sex.

• If you read the essey he wrote when he was a child about his parents, you see what he thinks of his father back then, even though he never met him. At the first page of Watchmen, at least 30 years later, he still thinks the same thing. And I quote- "They could have followed in the footsteps of good men like my father, or President Truman. Decent men, who believed in a day's work for a day's pay."
• Rorschach conception of "truth or nothing", thinking that telling the truth is always the good thing to do, is also quite childish and naïve.
• He seems to be fond of… sugar cubes.
• This WAS discussed earlier on this page under different topics. I still don't think he's asexual, as I think he displays signs of being sexually repressed. His line about "American love" has always struck me as an odd thing to say as I don't believe he knows anything of the subject. I think that the desire is there somewhere, I just don't think he can sort it out and is physically repulsed by it. Your theory of him being "child-like" is interesting when you consider that his reaction to sex is pretty much the same as when he walked in on his mom when he was a kid - he doesn't understand it, he thinks it's disgusting and he's probably afraid of it.
• If he was really asexual he wouldn't be so obsessed with other people's sex lives.
  • This troper begs to differ, though her obsession tends to the other extreme.

Silhouette is Kroenen's (the film version) sister

She's an aristocrat from Austria, has uses blade weapons, dresses all in black, and has very refined tastes for someone who chose to become a superhero, which isn't the most elegant profession in the world. One of her opponents is Captain Axis, a gas mask wearing Nazi. Captain Axis could be a stand-in for Kroenen in recreated fights for the public, since Kroenen is Nightmare Fuel to everyone in the forties.

• Alternatively, Silhouette and the Nurse are a tragic version of Abe Kroenen.

At the end of the book Rorschach was teleported to Discworld.

He ended up in Ankh-Morpork and tangled with Vimes.

• The splatter of blood was from something that happened to be at the place he was teleported to. Ankh-Morkpork has no shortage of blood.

Ozymandias's plan went off perfectly.

After his engineered peace he proceeded to unite the world politically even as he expanded his business empire over the entire Earth and into every industry. After essentially seizing control of the Earth he tried to keep the population happy and sedate. He succeeded in engineering a technological utopia that outlasted him. Some time after his death his company underwent a bout of re-branding and emerged with a new image. Unfortunately they didn't pay enough attention to environmental issues. The garbage piled up and the humans escaped into space. And then a single robot had to reverse the dramatic consequences of this mismanagement.

Watchmen is the prequel to Ender's Game.

Just think about this for a second, it hit me right after reading tv tropes and watching the movie (finally). In the comics, the world unites under the threat of aliens. So, they build spaceships and shiny new weapons and who do they find out there? Buggers. Bonus point: Ender is actually a clone/descendant of Veidt.

• Problem: Veidt's German whereas Ender's father is explicitly Polish.
  • Who said Veidt was German? And Ender's mother could be the blood relation just as easily. Heck, if Ender's a clone, then the whole family history is a lie.

Dr. Manhattan wasn't detached; he was just a Jerkass

Like...Mike Warner levels of jerkassery. Everything ascribed to his detached inhumanity, is actually just him being a tremendous douche.

• Leaving his wife for a sixteen year old.
• Letting the Comedian shoot the Asian Baby Mama.
  • • He explained that he cannot change the future because for him is already happening, pinning the death of the mama Asian Baby Mama on him is taking away The Comedian act from him. The novel would had ended very quickly if he was a jerkass he would had just kill them all and go to Mars and be done with it if that were the case. And Janey left him not the other way around IMO she was already thinking on leaving him out of all her issues with his new found powers and Laurie was just the last straw.
      • Yes. He explained that the future is already happening. And Jerkass doesn't mean Chaotic Stupid; it's more fun to let them live and mess with them.
      • Just if you think that leaving Earth is the best way to mess with humans... And if you don't trust him as a reliable narrator we might as well say that Rorshach was the one that kidnapped the little girl and feed her to the dogs, that Veidt's was just a foil for Dan's masterplan (the real genius of the book because not even the audience found out) and that Asian Baby Mama was hatching an Alien into her womb and The comedian saved humankind by killing her...
        • That's it! You've solved everything!

Dr. Manhattan's ordeal transformed him into the Watchmen version of Anonymous

Bored with life and humanity, the only reason he returns from Mars is because humanity reveals a new capacity to interest him. Face it, he's in it for the lulz.

• • He wears the suit.
  • There's a legion of him.
  • He "doesn't forget" so hard that he remembers things that haven't happened yet. No word on forgiveness.
  • Rorschach killed the dog.
• So, we're doomed; none of us are as cruel as Dr. Manhattan
  • Too bad Ozymandias wasn't Anonymous; "None of us are as cruel as Ozymandias" has a nice ring to it.

Dr. Manhattan's nudity is acutally a sign of his humanity, rather than his inhumanity

He just likes streaking. And showing off his junk.

• To be fair, this is the only realistic explanation I've heard of for why he's bright blue.
  • He was color blind as a human, and just put his skin back together wrong.
  • He uncosciously mimicked the Cherenkov radiation that accompanied his re-embodiment.
  • Fashion choice.
  • He was into the Smurfs before it was cool.
  • He precognitively foresaw the Blue Man Group.
  • He just really likes to glow blue. Remember, in both the book and the movie he alters his color before the TV interview, and he marks the Hydrogen symbol on his head in black, plus he can reconstruct his molecules at will, so he can obviously look however he wants.

Predestination wasn't Dr. Manhattan's problem - he was just a putz

Before the accident, Jon was a terribly passive guy who did what people wanted him to do. His father dictates (then re-dictates) his choice of career. His first wife pursues him aggressively in a era when that wasn't terribly normal. After the accident, he becames...a very passive guy who did what people wanted him to do, just with more vaporized Vietnamese or gangsters.

He calls himself a puppet who can see the strings, but we never saw him so much as try to tug at them. He just sees the future and goes along with it, exerting no effort to change things. The fact that he sees other people, unable to perceive the future, do the same things he foresaw only serves as his excuse for being utterly passive.

• • • I think his trip to earth was him trying to find a way to care again about humanity. Even if he knew that conversation was going to happen he never explained why. For me he looked for a reason to save us and Laurie gave it to him.

Osterman's accident was not an accident.

Think about it, what kind of dangerous experimental test chamber that personnel routinely occupy has no manual override to open it? The military sought and hired a person who would passively follow orders without question, while also being intellectually predisposed to survive the experiment. They then hire a woman to seduce him, in order to assure his allegiance and keep him from learning the truth. Finally, they steal his watch and set up the fatal accident. Dr. Manhattan becomes aware of this immediately after his creation, but reveals it to no one because he doesn't want them to lose faith in the U.S. military.

• Or because he was ordered not to.
  • This troper always thought that Jon was a guina pig who was likly to survive the "accident" and the military ordered Janey and the other scientists to keep quiet.

Dr. Manhattan was unable to percieve most of the world around him

Similar to the Kwisatz Haderach theory above. Presumably he rebuilt his body incorrectly, and he is blind and possibly deaf or lacking sense entirely. Thus, the only way he can interact with the world is by following his prescient vision in lockstep. One false step means that he is completely blind.

• He let all the disasters and deaths happen because he had forseen them, and to prevent them would be to destroy his vision of the future, leaving him completely blind.
  • I think he just can't change the future, because there is no future for him everything happens at once, even the events before the accident.
    • This is the way things are in the book.
• That's why he seemed so stilted at the end of the book, because the tachyon field, and the monster bomb had completely disoriented him.
  • Possibly, being blown apart allowed him to reconstruct himself properly and he then has senses again.

When Ozymandias dies, he'll go the the Ancient Egyptian afterlife

They'll let him in as an honorary member.

• Bubastis is already there, waiting for her master.
  • Whoa. I just experienced a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
    • Awwww!

Asian Baby Mama's daughter survived to do...something

Dr. Manhattan was 'cheating'; he invoked Tricked-Out Time to teleport the baby away.

• Teleported her back in time about twenty years. To, say, Silk Spectre.
• One of the minor characters elsewhere in the series.
• The mostly off-panel Silhouette.
• Adrian Veit. The baby's gender wasn't mentioned, right?
• You know what would be funny if it were Rorschach but he is a red head no way Asian and dark haired could produce that offspring.
  • Manhattan tweaked the kid's genes to help hide. They could look like anyone.
    • I think this idea has merits. Had he stared too much at the corpse he might be detached but he is not a morbid God and she had a big belly so the baby had a chance to survive do we have any Asian looking character that could be of the right age on the GN or even the movie?
      • Or, perhaps Dr. Manhattan took the unborn child and teleported it through time and space, before putting it in the body of a virgin woman to give birth to it. That's right, Jesus is the child of The Comedian and his Asian Baby Mama.
      • The problem with that is though is that he would have to have seriously changed the childs genetics so it would look vaguly Israeli.
• The child was himself.
• I thought the same thing before I've read the end of the graphic novel. I thought the Comedian's murderer was the grown-up child of the Vietnamese girl. He (or she) wanted revenge on his (or her) father for trying to abandoning his (or her) mother and killing her. The child would have been hired by Ozymandias, who most likely learned about this.
• The baby was transported to the regular DCU and became Cassandra Cain.

Ozymandias is planning to have all dissenters hunted down

There's a reason he's planning on guest starring in a cartoon about fighting terrorists. It's all a matter of who gets defined as 'terrorist'. Perhaps someone spreading subversive stories that threaten the newfound world peace might qualify?

Watchmen is a fictional story written in The DCU

Someone had the idea to ask "hey, what if instead of moral and upstanding men and women our heroes were sociopaths? And also didn't have superpowers?" and write a comic about it. Presumably everyone agreed that this would indeed suck and they're lucky to have good heroes.

• That's actually the case. The Question bought it at an airport bookstore to read on a long flight in an issue of his series.
• And now, a very similar Earth exists in the multiverse as Earth-4 where all of the expies... are actually the characters they were based on (Nite Owl(s)=Blue Beetle, Dr. Manhattan=Captain Atom, etc.). In fact it is so similar...

The current Earth-4 was created by Dr. Manhattan following Infinite Crisis and 52.

As mentioned in the above WMG, there is an Earth that is a DC-ified version of the Watchmen comic. At the end of Watchmen, Jon mentions that he might create some humans of his own. Well after Infinite Crisis, Jon takes advantage of the newly reborn Multiverse to make his Earth (and universe). And he actually managed to make it better (in that it his counterpart isn't as removed as him and that it doesn't appear that a giant squid had destroyed New York).

When Doctor Manhattan was created, he went someplace. And it was very, very cold for a very long time.

And that's why his skin is blue. (Incidentally, it makes sense if you accept the interpretation that his disintegration power is teleportation. Only not with the cold->blue skin correlation being literal.)

Doctor Manhattan was a Dune Fan Boy

Which is why he was always going on and on about his different view of time.

• The Blue skin? He went overboard with the Cosplaying.

Dan Dreiberg is a furry

The only time he can get aroused is when he's in his fursona.

• This provides a little more evidence to that belief.

In the movie, Dan and Adrian are friends, explaining the difference in Dan's actions in the end

This should be obvious, considering Dan is the one to go and warn Adrian in the movie instead of the comic. Adrian also talks casually with Dan during this meeting, giving the impression that they may get together often, or at least keep in touch. This differs from the comic, where Adrian and Dan have no interaction except when they were part of Crimebusters and the very end during the confrontation in Karnak. Since they were so distant in the book, Dan reacts to what Adrian does with dumbfounded confusion and the certainty that Adrian is messing with them and outright lying about his plan until Adrian shows them proof that he did what he said, leading to a downtrodden and beaten Dan simply agreeing to go with Adrian's plan without a struggle.

Not so in the movie. Having an actual relationship with Adrian causes Dan to react somewhat differently. Instead of being flabbergasted at Adrian's plan, he's enraged that one of the people he considered a friend has chosen to do something so drastically evil, his two-faced nature on the issue coming off as betrayal to their personal friendship to Dan. This explains why he takes a more aggressive road in how he reacts to the way Adrian states his plan, as opposed to the brow-beaten, soft spoken way he does in the comic. It also helps make his aggressive statement to Adrian about how Adrian's corrupted humanity make more sense; it's his anger and grief not just from Rorschach's death, but from having a friendship he clearly cared about so utterly betrayed.

You could also make a case that Adrian's actions show this friendship as well, as he goes easier on Dan during the fight in Karnak than he does on Rorschach. While he still beats the crap out of Dan, he mainly keeps to simply striking him, whereas Adrian freely flings or kicks Rorschach into structures around the main foyer without a second thought. There's also the fact that he allows Dan to even go ahead and beat on him in the first place after Rorschach's death.

Adrian Veidt is asexual.

• In both book and film. Sissy Villain Ozymandias in the film is essentially his version of Rich Idiot With No Day Job. It tends to throw people off. (Partying with the Village People, too.)

== Dr. Manhattan is a Time Lord. ==

Dr. Manhattan created the Time Lords.

• The events in Watchmen took place A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away; the other Earth (the one we know and love) was a subconcious recreation of Dr. Manhattan's homeworld, with the events that led to his being removed by the Time Lords later. Dr. Manhattan created the Time Lords in a human image because he wanted creatures that both reminded him of his humanity and could understand the burden of existing beyond time. Dr. Manhattan has since reached enlightenment and withdrawn completely from existence, but his favorite child, also called a doctor, continues to do his work.

Rorschach is a zombie powered by sheer force of will.

Under the mask, he shouldn't be able to breathe—not a problem if you don't really need to. (Somebody else gets to explain how he talks.) This is also why he didn't need any obvious protection setting off on foot towards an Antarctic moon base. Injuries take longer to heal, and he still has to eat, but this does explain to some degree his utter disregard for personal comfort. And when he gets a-sploded at the end? How else to dispose of someone who's already dead?

• "(Somebody else gets to explain how he talks.)"—Sentence fragments. No grammar.

The film flopped because of the sundial lobbies.

Of course the story isn't actually about watches, but those sundial people are idiots. They didn't even know this was originally a comic before they started protesting.

Rorschach is Dreiberg's Stalker with a Crush, but is otherwise asexual.

Come on, it's at least as plausible as any of the other prosposed hypotheses.

Captain Carnage wasn't killed, just crippled for life

• They never said if Captain Carnage was killed or not. Plus, when Rorschach is sent to prison, he is charged with the murders of the Child Murder, The multiple rapist and Moloch. But no one else was listed. It's possible that CC survived the drop by sheer luck, but was crippled in the process.
  • I have to disagree. Rorschach was found with Moloch and admitted to killing the child murderer. The rapist was obviously him. Rorschach said that he learned to kill criminals instead of mollycoddling them (his words, not mine), and he must have killed more than just those two people (he didn't kill Moloch). He breaks bones of people who make jokes about him (when they're drunk, no less), so saying that he only killed those two people is ridiculous. We can also look at how willing he is to kill when he chases Big Figure and kills him in the bathroom (we can easily assume), even though he posed no threat. Also, Captain Carnage was dropped down an elevator shaft before the Keene Act was passed, and since he was dressed as a supervillian, the police just thought he had been killed by one of the Watchmen, not necessarily Rorschach. There was no evidence that he was the killer, and it would not hold up in court. To borrow from Mythbusters, BUSTED!
    • No, to borrow from Mythbusters, PLAUSIBLE. There's nowhere in the comic or movie that actually says whether Carnage lived or died, and without data, you can have no conclusion. He's in Schr�dinger's Elevator Shaft, neither alive nor dead.

Walter Kovacs helped kill Rorschach

At the very end, it wasn't Rorschach demanding that Dr. Manhattan kill him, it was Walter Kovacs. That's why he took off Rorschach's "face".

Veidt is psychic

He predicted the attitudes of the coming future just from watching some random screens (with bizarre accuracy, might I add). He can tell where people are going to jump if pushed. He knows the precise moment for catching a bullet. Now, it could just be his intelligence, but I think that precognitive abilities are a much simpler explanation.

Manhattan foresaw himself stopping 50% of the missiles.

He saw himself only stopping half the missiles, because the plan did eventually fail. At the end (when he says "maybe"), that's him going Off the Rails, and giving a big "Screw You" to Destiny. If he leaves forever and never comes back to stop the first 50%, if they're even lauched with him gone, that proves the future isn't immutable.

Veidt is a furry.

Only less the "I put on my robe and owl hat" fursona type and more the "Why hello, there, you sexy, sexy cat goddess" semi-bestiality type (semi- because there's nothing that says Bubastis isn't sapient). He had PSL for someone in the mythology who roughly fit Bubastis' eventual form, and set out to create her. The autophilia is because he's just that narcissistic.

Dr. Manhattan is trying to create a being similiar to himself.

He's travelling between worlds and either creates or enpowers from shadows many beings, trying to create perfect companion for him. Hoever, he's not happy with results of those experiments for some reasons and just left them live in their worlds, despide consequences. He's responsible for creating Alucard, Haruhi Suzumiya, at last one of Elder Gods, Akira, Adam, Lilith, Sisters of Twillight, Anthony Fremont, Zalgo, Willow Rosenburg and many others.

Adrian is not simply a genius, but a Genius.

He's basically the Hoffnung from Hell, admit it. After a certain point, he became scary Illuminated. (Rorschach may also be some kind of latent Genius. He was catalyzed by despair and anger at humanity, has always been clever, is good at whipping together weapons in a hurry...)

• I gotta admit, when I read the description for Hoffing, I kept thinking 'Ozymandias, Ozymandias, Ozymandias'... I would not be at all surprised if Watchmen was a major inspiration for that Catalyst. And Rorschach may be a Grimm.
• Dan is a saner Staunen.
• Doctor Manhattan is an Orphaned Wonder. Think about it for a moment. It explains EVERYTHING.

The "Intrinsic Field" that Dr. Manhattan lost during his creation was actually his AT Field

That is why he is slowly losing his humanity while becoming a God-like being: he is losing his identity and becomes pure existence. Meanwhile, on another universe, a group of scientists, one who rivals Adrian in intelligence and keeps clasping his hands, capture an alien made of quantum mechanical matter and plans to use it to create an emotionless god and bring world peace by killing millions....

Ozymandias is a Time Lord

Matthew Goode was the 2008 host of Masterpiece Contemporary --- then he got replaced by David Tennant. Therefore...

Ozymandias was second-in-command of Crimebusters.

Ozymandias meet Captain Metropolis and the two become allies. Ozymandias would listen to Captain Metrpolis' stories about his adventures with the Minutemen. When he learned how Captain Metropolis was unhappy when the Minutemen disbanded, Ozymandias suggested that they should form a new team. So Captain Metropolis formed the Crimebusters, and Ozymandias helped recruit members.

This stems from the film, where Captain Metropolis has no part in the Crimebusters and Ozymandias seems to be the leader.

Dr. Manhattan created Pandora

Dr. Manhattan went off to create life at the end of the story - a race of blue alien cat people called the Na'vi, possibly inspired by Bubastis and his own giant blue form. For more details, see Avatar

The Watchmen Movie is actually the prequel to Ghostbusters

Okay, after Doctor Manhattan was first hit by the Intrinsic Field nullifier thing that first vaporized him, he spent several weeks appearing as screaming skeletons or masses of nervous systems and such. Also, we see that the IF energy completely erases things from existence while Manhattans attacks leave masses of blood and gore behind. Thus, Ozys energy weapon thing didn't copy Manhattans attacks... it copied the IF energy that originally created him! (Ozy might not even have noticed this since he has scientists set up the machine... and he killed and vaporized them soon afterward and apparently didn't test the machine before blasting cities).

In short, all those cities that Ozymandius vaporized were hit by IF energy... and all those millions of people are 'ghosts' who may be trying to reassemble themselves! Since Manhattan was originally a nuclear physicist and only managed to reassemble himself into a glowing blue guy, who knows what a bunch of people without knowledge of physics or anatomy will look like?

That's right, a few years after New York is vaporized, there will be mass sightings of shrieking skeletons and ghosts moving around. Their bodies would be composed of some sort of unstable glowing matter (people will call it ectoplasm) and they will be impossible to kill by normal means. Manhattan himself can be affected by tachyons and his body could be vaporized by IF energy... so maybe he could be 'pushed around' by things like particle beams, lasers, and energy containment grids. Thus, the Ghostbusters will have to use particle accelerators and such to round up all the imperfect Manhattan ghosts and keep them contained somewhere before the learn how to nuke the Earth.

Rorschach pays his rent with Tooth Fairy money

Rorschach is unable to hold down any sort of job and his strong moral fiber would prevent him from stealing money from the criminals he brings to justice. Instead, he punches crooks in the face repeatedly until the cough up their teeth, he then collects the teeth and puts them under his pillow at night. The tooth fairy then gives him money in exchange for the teeth and he uses that money to pay for food, rent, and trench coats. This also explains why his information gathering techniques are a bit violent... all the teeth he knocks out of bar patrons helps to pay for bus fare.

• Is that the same "strong moral fiber" that makes him obey the law and keeps him from beating the crap out of people and killing them? Oh, wait...
  • [not original troper] No, it's the strong moral fiber that keeps him regular despite living off canned beans and garbage. I don't know where you got that he didn't beat up and/or kill people, there's a lot of subtext that he does. On a related note, though, the tooth fairy isn't a magical being, it's just a tooth-themed underground hero/villain/nut that simply hasn't crossed the line into Rorschach's "villain" category yet.

Osterman was killed by the AT chamber, and his becoming Dr. Manhattan (and everything that followed) was his last-second Dying Dream.

The Watchmen are all a Hoax

• The watchmen are all a simulation created by an engine that badass normal superheroes like robin or batman built in order to understand the various outcomes that might occur to them in their line of work. This is the resson why most of the superheroes in the comic/movie are depicted without superpowers, they are all just different conceptual variations of teen titans' Robin.
• Dr. Manhattan serves as a representation of all the superheroes that are distinctly superhuman. There is only one of him in order to focus on the radical influence his existance has on the rest of humanity, as well as the team. So the watchmen are a simulation created by Batman in order to understand and comprehend the effect that his job would have on him from various points of perspective, and in the form of Manhattan he is able to anticipate and thwart his superpowered teammates (as demonstrated by Ozymandias)
  • Um, I'm not sure how to respond to this WMG, considering you clearly only watched the movie. Other than that, though, it's an interesting theory, if just more applicable to the movie-verse. But yeah, they're not a team, and they're not called the watchmen.
  • Yeah, consider this as the movie-based WMG.

Jon/Manhattan reassembled Bubastis, fixed her ear-horns (at least in the movie continuity), and 'ported her to an exotic animals rescue shelter.

It was part of his newfound respect for Petting the Dog, since when the smartest man and the smartest termite aren't all that different to you, the cutoff line for "living things to be nice to" doesn't end with "things in Laurie's species".

The civilian the Comedian shot for writing "who watches..." graffiti? Was just fixing the flag mural.

Because he's The Comedian.

Every named non-bit character is gay and repressed or bisexual and repressed, with the exception of Doctor Manhattan, who is asexual.

For Rorschach, Ozymandias/Veidt, and Hooded Justice, see above. For Silk Spectre I, see canon. Silk Specter II hasn't had the chance to have sex with anyone but Jon and Dan, since she has an aversion to cheating. Dan has a huge thing for Night Owl I. Nixon got a spiked drink during his third term, things got a little freaky. The Comedian is Anything That Moves, or would be if his machismo wasn't so outrageous, as evidenced by the nature of his taunting of Hooded Justice. Bubastis is Anything That Moves when in heat. And while Jon may have been straight or asexual, Manhattan himself is completely asexual, only having sex because he would know he would have and because (if he actually did still care about even certain people, and wasn't just doing everything that he knew he would until the tachyon interference blocked his view) it made Laurie/his former wife happy.

Manhattan's life was a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy until and only until (in the movie) the interference from Ozymandias' Manhattan Bombs blocked his view.

When he said that he had to do what he knew he would do, it was everything, not just the things he needed an excuse for. The Laurie situation, the cancer-interview freakout, the microbe-ship, not stopping the bullet, pulling down on his tie instead of using his telepathy on it then, too. Everything. He immediately cheers up because he doesn't see the future properly any more, and what he does see is fuzzy enough that he can ignore the specifics. From the time he reformed himself to the time he teleported back from Mars, he was Doctor Manhattan, Justified Fatalist. Before and after, he was Jonathan Osterman, Watchmaker Extraordinaire.

Every character in Watchmen are all bisexual hermaphrodite lovers.

If you're going to WMG, might as well push it to its logical conclusion.

• Doctor Manhattan did it. He's not asexual or disconnected, that's just how we see him because our simple minds can't handle his brilliant, blue, glowy wang-tasticness (his penis going from understated in the comic to distractingly wobbly in the film is due to present society's more open mindset). He also created the squid, because what's hotter to him than a New York full of bisexual hermaphrodite orgies? A New York full of bisexual hermaphrodite orgies and Naughty Tentacles.

Rorshach isn't the only one making an accusation

Hell, he's probably not even the only person trying to blame Veidt. But if this is anything like similar disasters in the real world, there are going to be letters pouring in blaming everyone and their grandmother for the incident. Dr. Manhattan alone will probably get thousands of people blaming him, and at least several people will claim the Pope was behind the whole thing.

Comic!Manhattan created the Movieverse

He's trying out different scenarios to see which ones don't end in mass murder. Eventually, he settled on us, one with no superheroes at all. But he didn't want to entirely throw out all of his alternates, so he put one of them into a film, which appeared only after CGI technology made its effects plausible, retroactively altering reality to make it so that it had been in Development Hell until that time.

Rorshach borrowed street drugs from the dealers he caught as painkillers.

And then one day he got a tainted batch, or just mixed up one white powder for another, and had a really bad trip in which he hallucinated a little girl's corpse torn apart by dogs, and what followed. It was on that day that Rorshach was truly born. And that's really why he keeps going after criminals; to hide his addiction (even from himself) under a storm of dead serial killers and rapists, when his real targets all along are those who—inadvertantly and involuntarily—keep him supplied. At one time, he was with-it and together enough to be invited to join a superteam, and spoke in complete sentences; now he hardly feels pain, neglects his hygeine, attacks with the strength of a madman, and believes his face was being torn off by police. And as the prison scene shows, he's even worse when he's in withdrawal...

Veidt was the result of Nazi superscience.

We know that he's German and was born during the time that the Nazis were in power, at least. It's entirely possible that his father was a geneticist decades ahead of his time. Using his own genetic material he created a child that was the picture of Aryan perfection: A blond-haired, blue-eyed German who would grow up to be "the smartest man in the world" and an Olympic gymnast well into middle age. He saw the writing on the wall and fled to America before the war was over. Years later, Adrian found his father's notes and expanded on them, using them to create Bubastis and The Squid.

• • ...DUDE. DUDE. I've been using a variation on this for my RP Veidt for like a year now- the differences being that Adrian's father was merely a camp commander who volunteered his pregnant wife over for experimentation on their unborn child. And it wasn't his father's notes that lead Adrian into knowing about genetics. But still. That brings me to my personal WMG:

Adrian Veidt is the true father of Johan Liebert and Nina Fortner.

At some point, the young Veidt had a tryst with a young woman named Anna, who later took up with a soldier and believed him to be the father of her children. Her blond, super-genius children, one of whom is conditioned into sociopathy. Johan inherited exaggerated versions of all of their father's negative traits (and his dress sense, if one goes by movie!Veidt), while Nina got the positive ones (idealism, badassery, physical prowess).

Even if people believe Rorshach's Diary, Veidt's plan still works.

Veidt is "the world's smartest man." Isn't it possible that he'd plan for a contingency in which he would be exposed and, as such, recast himself as the enemy of all civilization in order to save humanity? His resources will permit him to begin a terrorist crusade against both the United States and the Soviet Union and he'll unite the world against a threat which he can maintain, unlike the one-time use of the cosmic horror bomb which masquerades as an alien invasion. Alternatively, Veidt planned and permitted himself to be exposed by Rorshach to set himself up as an enemy of humanity and Rorshach's extremist leanings mean that by the time the truth comes out, Veidt will have hidden himself away to begin his war. Yes, yes. Just like the Zero Requiem.

Rorschach is a Tsundere.

Tsundere for humanity as a whole, specifically. His "whores and politicians" spiel in the beginning makes him seem like a misanthrope, but when he finds out about half of NYC getting killed he's deeply upset, it's even implied that he was crying under the mask. Rorschach. Crying.

Seymour is Rorschach's younger brother.

Seymour (the guy who works at The New Frontiersman) is the only other red-haired character who is named in all of Watchmen. Coincidence? I think NOT! As for the math, at the end of Chapter 6, in the arrest report, it says Rorschach Kovacs was born in 1940. At the end of Chapter 8, it says that it is 1985. Kovacs is 45, for everyone who failed first grade math. At the end of Chapter 6, it says that Kovacs was 16 when his mother died. He went into the home when he was 10, leaving plenty of time for Sylvia to have another son who was taken away (or was a baby when she died and they didn't think Kovacs was suitable to take care of a child, so they gave his to a foster family).

• Idea for future story: Seymour reads the journal, does some research, and learns the truth about his brother Rorschach. He then makes a new mask, trains, and becomes the new Rorschach, set on exposing and killing Veidt to avenge big brother Walter.

Veidt is...NOT GAY

Its an elaborate ploy to throw people off his true intentions of world peace through destruction. Afterall, people are less likey to suspect a more feminine, swish man than a more "manly" guy. He might still be something of a metrosexual, with his hair and the rest of it. Notice how he shows much more masculinity at times, particularly in times of danger, when the act could be slipping.

• Whoa, Unfortunate Implications much? Here's a wild theory: movie!Veidt is gay and metrosexual and manly. Plus, it was (lamentably) the 80s.
  • Its only Unfortunate because unfortunately thats how society thinks. Besides, this is WILD Mass Guessing.
    • The "Unfortunate Implications" are in the masculinity being a sign of being metrosexual instead of gay. Hard Gay is a trope for a reason.

Veidt is the only character who was straight. Everyone else was a repressed homosexual.

Except for the people who were open about. And when I say everyone, I mean, even background characters who only appeared in one panel.

• And of course, they were all gay for Veidt. Yes, even the women. Shut up.

Fate is not predetermined, Manhattan just makes it that way

Think about it. If fate was predetermined then the Watchmen universe would not exist, as only one world would be possible, and therefore the entire Alternate History would be moot. When Jon sees the future, he sees every possible future, and then "forgets" all the ones that didn't happen. When he says something "will happen" that's only with the most obvious causality, as he's seeing many possible futures with the same event brought on by present causality. When he says it, that just causes it to become a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, as by his actions the universe course corrects. In short, he's subconsciously selecting which future will happen, and forgetting all the others. For example he creates a future in which he meets Laurie because he subconsciously does not want to spend the rest of his life with a woman who's clearly disturbed by who he is, he then subconsciously creates a future where Laurie leaves him because he wants a future where she's happy. He also subconsciously creates a future where America dominates because at first he's subconsciously very nationalistic. Then in Vietnam he becomes disillusioned, and subconsciously creates a future where Veidt goes through with the squid plan because he subconsciously wants peace. All this without him ever being aware of it.

Rorschach compromised.

Specifically, when he demanded Jon kill him, he was trying to avoid having to go against Ozymandias. He knew that it would be hard and ultimately futile to continue fighting, but he felt couldn't live with himself if he didn't. His plans to stop Ozy, however, crumbled when Jon came to stop him. At that point, everyone was against him. He probably could have pretended to be pacified until Jon went off back to Mars or wherever, but he no longer saw the point in going on when he knew he would never make a difference against so big of a force. He felt disillusioned with his own worldview, having seen that people can do horrible things with the intent to do good. No longer knowing what he stood for, clinging desperately to principles he was too afraid to question, but still ashamed of the concept of surrender, he committed suicide by Physical God. When he removed his mask, it wasn't a case of him Dying As Himself. It was instead the opposite: he felt that, having abandoned all he believed in, he was no longer Rorschach.

• Note that in the letter young Walter wrote about his parents he mentions how he supported Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, i.e. sacrificing millions of innocent lives to prevent continuance of the war is justified, indicating his willingness to compromise and accept sacrifice in the name of deterring further destruction. By the end of the story it seems Rorschach has undergone a complete 180, disagreeing with Adrian's Truman-like sacrifice of New York to prevent nuclear war, but his childhood consequentialism prevails in his allowance to be destroyed by Doctor Manhattan.
  • He still thinks Truman did the right think in the events of the novel, he mentions Truman being a "good man" in the first chapter.

A law of the Conservation of Superpowers exists

Other universes have many superheroes who are moderately powerful. This one has one hero, and he is basically god.

Doctor Manhattan experienced/is experiencing/will experience the heat death of the universe

While it may not look like this sometimes, we have to remember that "Doctor Manhattan", as we call him, is no longer truly a physical being. He is an omnipresent, nigh omnipotent(but not omniscient), bodiless "entity" that exists unbound by space and time. The smurf is just a physical avatar created for the human's convenience(Like Yuki Nagato, but less cute). He(it?) is completely and utterly immortal, for all we know, at any given point in time experiences the entirety of his existence-past, present, and future. Billions of years mean nothing. He will still be there, floating in the quantum background of reality when the heat death happens and the universe turns into a cold, lightness void... for all of eternity. And he experiences every second of that eternity of loneliness and cold every moment of his life. No wonder the guy is emotionally detached. He already has/will have an infinite amount of failed checks on the Isolation track.

Rorschach is the Question

Doctor Manhattan didn’t kill Rorschach at all – merely de-aged him and moved him into a parallel universe. When he’s there, he adopts the identity of Vic Sage, and begins a career as a similar masked vigilante. When he joins the JLU he begins to recover from the psychological damage inflicted on him by his mother when he meets Huntress, the first woman he has ever regarded as an equal. JLU rules force him to stop killing, but he can sympathise with her because he has been in her position and come out the other side.]]

• • Perhaps Doc toyed with his mind a bit to help him out, making him a bit saner. Remember, the DCAU Question is a redhead (he dyes his hair)...

Silk Spectre throws up whenever Doctor Manhattan teleports because of the alcohol in her system

It was said the Doctor teleported her because she was drunk and fighting with the Comedian, causing a big scene. It may be that the excess alcohol remained in her system when she was teleported and activates itself whenever she gets telepoted again, no mater how sober she is.

Dr. Manhattan is not sentient due to his every thought being predestined and simultaneous.

If, as he says, everyone is a puppet, why would that stop at the level of external interactions? It is possible he has no capability of individual thoughts or feelings, and is not even consience. This, of course, would extend to every other life form, particle, and metaphysical phenominon in the universe. However, he is unique in his nonlinear experience of time, meaning he does not get even the pretense of conscience or control. He, experiencing every feeling, thought, and action as simultaneous and constant, would not even have the capacity to think about the true horror of his situation. He could not have any independent thoughts at all. Because of that, he couldn't even think that he had thoughts, so self-awareness is beyond him. He can't perceive anything, as that would require a thought to come in response to a stimuli. He is nothing but an Empty Shell. This troper just realized this and is now feeling quite horrified and disturbed.

• • He is no more an empty shell than anyone else. All actions of people are predictable with an advanced enough knowledge of the past (with the exception of decisions directly based on quantum uncertainty), Dr. Manhattan is no different. His thoughts, like all thoughts, derive from his senses and his past - it's simply that his senses include the results his thoughts will have. If you consider humans self-aware, you must consider Manhattan self-aware for the same reasons. From the fact that he can be tricked by tachyons, he does not do everything simulatenously, he just sees across time. And if you think he doesn't have the capacity to feel horror of it, I suggest you read the Mars chapter again.

Rorschach didn't die. He was sent back in time and to an alternate universe to become Walt Kowalski

Think about it. First name is the same. Kovacs sounds like a corrupted version of Kowalski, which his mother may have been using to distance herself from her ethnic roots. Both have a tendency to isolate themselves from everyone around them. Both take justice into their own hands. Both are....not PC, to say the least. Both lose control over similiar incidences of brutality towards women, Rorschach over the girl's horrific death and Walt over the teenage girl he has befriended being beaten and raped. And at the end, both choose to die in their own way. So, in a nutshell, Rorschach became Clint Eastwood, because he is just that badass.

The Scientists who worked on the IF generator which created Dr. Manhattan went on to found the Black Mesa Research Institute.

The door closes and they can't open it - it's a safety feature??? Sounds like where Gordon Freeman ended up working.

Scientist 1: Osterman doesn't need to hear all this, he's a highly trained professional!

Adrian Veidt is realated to Conrad Veidt.

Adrian was born in 1939, and Conrad died suddenly of a heart attack in 1943, so its possible that in the Watchmen universe Adrian is the son of Conrad and his wife Ilona Prager. Note how Conrad lived in Germany until 1933 where he left after marrying the Jewish Ilona. Also, Adrian's parents where wealthy immigrants. Conrad was a famous actor.

In the graphic novel, Veidt is Jewish.

• The reason this troper doesn't actually endorse this is hot damn the Unfortunate Implications, but his parents were getting the fuck out of Germany in 1939, while his mother was heavily pregnant, which would imply some urgency. It might have been for another reason, but with how stereotypically Aryan Veidt looks (handsome, blond and powerfully built) and the implications of making any superhero Ambiguously Jewish it would make a decent theory. If not for the um, pretty much terrible implications of "handsome, Ambiguously Gay, ridiculously rich super-secret-stealth-Jew liberal committing mass murder for peace".
  • This only works in the GN, though. Matthew Goode has explicitly stated that film!Veidt was the son of a Nazi family himself, and it was ironically him rebelling against that upbringing that lead him to go down the path he ultimately embarked on.

Ozymandias has turned himself into a superhuman.

Veidt, despite being older than Rorschach or Nite Owl, is able to effortlessly beat the shit out of both of them while talking about his plan; he also has retired from crimefighting, making it even more unlikely for him to maintain or reach such a level of skill and power. He does, however, have a genius-level intellect as well as insanely high ressources, so it's possible that he already created some kind of Super Serum that gave him superhuman reflexes, speed, strength, and endurance. At least in the comic, his experiments could have, more or less directly, led to the creation of the monster which he set on New York.

The Question I was Rorschach's father.

It takes a special kind of person to feel most comfortable without a face. Possibly genetic? Must investigate further. Also, Question's real name was Charles. As in, Charlie. Think about it.

The Comedian was trying to get the Keene Act started.

Every horrible thing he did was part of a conscious effort to convince the public that costumed vigilantes were dangerous and unstable.

Dr. Manhattan is a Planeswalker.

Prior to the storyline of Time Spiral, older planeswalkers were immortal, invulnerable, shapeshifting beings capable of bending reality to their whim. Most planeswalkers ignite their spark by having a near-death experience, and Jon Osterman's spark may have been the only thing to save him from the Intrinsic Field Subtractor.

== All the victims caught in the Explosion at the end, ascended and became the The Nines ==. I mean look at Doctor Manhattan, a living person caught in the energy and became a walking god. At the end all those victims didn't implode like those that Doctor Manhattan waves at. Millions of people consumed by the same power as him. Time goes by they reassemble as higher life forms able to tune into the universe and control it. One of them, a former Canadian who has a passing resemblence to Ryan Renolds

Veidt's plan was truly a Xanatos Gambit.

He's not concerned with being caught. If the world finds out he did it, that just allows them to unite over hatred of him, like Lelouch.

Dr Manhattan is God.

After the end of the story, he learnt how to time travel, and went back to the dawn of time to create the universe, and ultimately create life and human existence. He, technically, would have created himself!

The second coming of Christ will involve him coming back to save humankind from the nuclear fallout resulting from Rorschach's journal.

And God is American.

The US Government kept The Comedian on their payrole after the Keene Act so he wouldn't kill innocent civilians.

They probably were aware he was a psychopath who loved nothing better than to kill his victims. They were also aware that he was mainly into contract killing to quench his blood lust. So they figured that keeping him in work would stop him from killing innocents.

Dr. Manhattan becomes Galactus

Dr. Manhattan goes off across the universe to start his new civilization. He watches them over the millions of years, as the new humanoid race becomes known as Taa. Dr.Manhattan then integrates into this society under the guise of Galan, and eventually forgets all about his past and powers. Then, when the Big Crunch happens, it's Galan's/Manhattan's dormant powers that let him survive and merge with the sentience of the universe. He became Galactus, with powers amped to an insane degree. Turns Norin Radd into the Silver Surfer, as it stirs old memories of a past life that Galactus can't fully recall.

There is no squid

The squid itself is a hallucination brought on by psychic Mind Rape. Rather than go through the trouble of developing an entire scientific field of cloning and genetic manipulation to a ridiculous level, Ozymandias limited himself to psychic mind-control technology and made everyone in the world believe there was a squid. However, he didn't stop there, he also made it so everyone recognized Enemy Mine as the only solution. This way, you need the less technology, but get a more reliable end result which still matches everything in the comic. This also explains why the news reports the kidnappings of several artists, and why Ozymandias mentions using a psychic, but you never hear about an entire army of biologists being kidnapped, or see a large enough base anywhere to house a city-sized squid. It also explains why the squid can violate the square cube law and not instantaneously collapse and explode like a beached whale. Any news material could be edited before the effects wear off, or perhaps the trans-dimensional research institute released a helium blimp with a post-hypnotic suggestion symbol making anyone who sees that symbol automatically see the giant squid. Even Dr. Manhattan's prediction can be explained - the psychic manipulation works on Ozymandias himself, but not Manhattan, so he doesn't know what flaws the plan would have anymore (such as the psychic bomb only effecting those currently alive, or perhaps the effects being only temporary).

Ozymandias' peace DOES last

We are giving the "idiot" in the "slush pile" way too much credit. Just because he was reaching for Rorschach's journal does not mean he will choose it. It could be rejected by the "idiot". It could be rejected by the author. It could be rejected as your typical tabloid trash by the general public. Just because it's there, doesn't mean it will amount to anything. For all we know, they'll just use it for firewood.

Ozymandias' genetically enhanced himself

Fact 1: Early in his career, Ozymandias got the crap kicked out of him by the Comedian. Fact 2: During Watchmen, Ozymandias demonstrated physical abilities far beyond everyone else in the story ( except Manhattan, natch ). Fact 3: Veidt is known to have knowledge of genetic engineering, sufficient to create semi-intelligent animals, and giant psychic death monsters.

Question: How did Ozymandias go from being someone Comedian could beat up, to someone who casually destroyed everyone without even trying? If Ozymandias had the kind of physical abilities earlier on, its difficult to see Comedian beating him, even with Veidt being relatively inexperienced. Further time and training doesn't cover it, as Veidt had a much shorter heroic(?) career than the Comedian. Aging doesn't cover it, as while the Comedian was older, he was also still actively doing crazy black ops crap; clearly he wasn't slowing down. Weird implied quasi-mystical training regimens don't really cover it, as that was *before* Veidt started his heroic career; if forgotten arts of the east ( and hallucinagens ) taught him how to bullet time, he'd have had that ability early on.

Supposition: We know Veidt gained considerable personal physical capability between the beginning and end of his career. We know he has considerable, superscience level, knowledge of genetic engineering. Therefore, I propose that at some point between time A and time B, Veidt developed genetic ( or other biological ) enhancements, and granted them to himself. Why did he never say anything about them? Either because its an advantage for people not know about an edge, he doesn't want to admit that he 'cheated', or both.

Rorschach isn't the "The End Is Near" guy, it was a mistake.

There is no real proof that he was. Besides, they only superficially look like each other: Rorschach is short, with a long figure, cheekbones, and shaved off forehead sides. The other guy is taller than the newspaper man, slightly puffed up, and with wild hair.

• "superficially"?? They look exactly the same; the newsdealer and landlady recognize Rorschach's picture. The only difference is a haircut and some bruises he gets in prison; the police mugshot shows Rorschach with the "The End Is Nigh" sandwich-board guy's haircut. The guy stands next to the newsdealer in book three and is clearly shorter. Rorschach's apartment even has the sandwich-boards. The guys picks up Rorschach's messages. The "I bet there's all kinds of stuff we never notice..." scene clinches it.

Veidt is a renegade Templar who left the Order.

The squid was just a distraction to conceal that he actually intended to use a Piece of Eden to control the world as he saw fit, not bending to either side of the ancient war.

Jon is not Dr. Manhattan: the real Manhattan is just an Eldritch Abomination who acquired Jon's memories in order to understand humanity.

Veidt's Xanatos Gambit was to turn Bubastis into a Physical God.

This relates to the WMGs above about Veidt being welcomed into the Egyptian afterlife, and about Bubastis being fused with Dr. Manhattan.

Veidt figured if Bubastis became a goddess, then she could make him into a god in the afterlife. The only way to do this was to fuse her with the only known Physical God in their universe, Dr.Manhattan.

And he knew that Bubastis would be able to reconstruct herself as Dr. Manhattan had done, once she had his memories.

And because he's "the smartest man in the world", he doesn't test his theory out on himself, of course.

Bubastis was pissed for a while, but eventually forgave him. Besides, she's the only one he ever really loved.

Ozymandias wanted The Comedian to find out about his plan.

The Comedian finds out about Veidt's plan by accidentally discovering the island where they're building the monster, as well as finding a list there that includes all the people Veidt has given cancer. However, this raises more than one question:

• 1) Since Veidt didn't want anyone to discover his plan, why had he written such a list in the first place, instead of just keeping it in his head?
• 2) Why was the list on the monster island? The monster and the cancer victims were unrelated parts of Veidt's plan. Why compromise the plan’s security by having the list and the monster on the same island, when the list doesn't need to be there at all?
• 3) How did The Comedian know the list was a "cancer list"? If Veidt is so smart, he probably didn't title the list People I'm Gonna Give Cancer To. At that point, only one of the people on the list had died from cancer, and even if Janey and Moloch had already been diagnosed with it, there's no way The Comedian would have known about that. For all The Comedian knew, it was just a random list of people related to Dr. Manhattan.
• 4) Even if The Comedian did somehow find out that the list was a cancer list, how did he deduce Veidt's overall plan from that, and from seeing the monster? In order to do that, he would have needed to find out what the monster’s final purpose was, but nothing on the island indicated it was anything else than a horror movie prop. If he somehow found out the list is a cancer list, it wouldn't have taken much brains to realize Veidt wanted to taint Dr. Manhattan's reputation, but the other parts of his plan would be impossible to deduce from the evidence The Comedian supposedly had.

The only logical explanation to all this is that Veidt wanted The Comedian to find out about his plan. He intentionally planted enough evidence on the island that The Comedian could figure it all out. The reason why Veidt did it? In the first and only meeting of the Crimebusters The Comedian humiliated Veidt, saying that humanity is doomed and cannot be saved. As we find out, this is the moment where Veidt first comes up with his master plan. However, Veidt (being a vain man) isn't content with just saving the world, he wants The Comedian to know that the world can be saved, that in the end he was right and The Comedian was wrong. After seeing the tape of The Comedian spilling his beans to Moloch, Veidt knows that The Comedian believed the plan would work. Veidt still has to kill The Comedian, because he's unreliable and might blow the lid off the plan, but what matters to Veidt is that before his death Veidt managed to convince him he was wrong for all those years.

Magic: The Gathering alignments

Mark Rosewater started it back in 2003 with Ozymandias, so why the Hell not?

• Rorschach is White and either part Black or Red. I'm leaning towards the latter because of how emotionally fucked up he is, though the other option is funny because of the pun.
• Nite Owl II was Green/White.
• The Comedian was Black/Red
• Silk Specter II is very much Red. Her mother seems Green, in a more balanced, tolerant way rather than the "nature" way.
• Ozymandias is White/Blue (Mark Rosewater said he was the perfect White villain, but most people seem to agree he has some Blue aspects as well)
• Dr. Manhattan was Blue (hurr hurr).
• The Giant Squid was colourless, like an Eldrazi.

Ozymandias is Bubastis-Sexual

They were married 35 minutes ago and they had babies who were half-man, half-genetically altered lynx. And those babies were gay.

The world of Americas Best Comics is a sequel to Watchmen

The advanced "modern" world is the product of the faked alien attack although probably not the utopia that Ozymandias had in mind. Remember that both are written by Alan Moore and are published by DC and take place outside of the main universe and probably even the multiverse(although it could have been a pocket universe within The Wildstorm universe given that America's Best Comics is an imprint of Wildstorm which was in turn an imprint of DC Comics).

• • It can't be, since the ABC world has a history of superheroes, robots, monsters, and other supernatural beings that goes back to WWII and further, and none of that stuff is ever seen or mentioned in Watchmen.

---

Back to Watchmen (comics)