Characters / Earth Twenty Seven Crimebusters

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In General

• Badass Normal: With the exception of Manhattan, they were all normal humans.
• Been There, Shaped History: Mostly Manhattan and the Comedian, but they were very involved in historical events before the Manhattaning.
• Breaking the Fellowship: Many died or went their separate ways, only briefly reuniting during the 'Manhattaning' incident.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: All the heroes and ex-heroes, except Dr. Manhattan, who has actual superpowers. Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias is the most obvious, complete with actual Atlas-like bodybuilding fliers and programs and brochures and he even does the ultimate Atlas-style at the end, the Bullet Catch. Incidentally, this is one comic book trope and Silver Age shtick that is more or less played straight in the comics and not subject to any mockery, even if it is blatantly unrealistic and parodied in other comics which note that maintaining Heroic Build, and remaining in permanent fighting conditions would not be realistically possible for someone with Rorschach's malnutrition, leave alone Adrian Veidt's impossible Silver Age Doc Savage feats.
• Composite Character: They take traits from the original comic, movie, and the Before Watchmen comics.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite staying together after their first meeting in this timeline, they just end up as another group of street level crime fighters and still brake up later.
• Precursor Hero: For nearly all the super heroes that debuted later.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Part of the reason they never really got off the ground is that they don't really work well together at all.

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Doctor Manhattan (Jon Osterman)

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The only truly superpowered member of the team, due to a Freak Lab Accident, Jon Osterman gained godlike powers. He's used his powers to revolutionize the world, provide energy for electric cars and blimps, and continues to work on amazing new technology... but as time has passed he has turned more emotionally distant to the people around him and indifferent towards humankind in general, and just doesn't seem to care about anything any more, or do anything unless he's told to.

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• Achilles in His Tent: Finally leaves Earth after getting tired of saving it over and over.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: His skin turned blue after the accident.
• And I Must Scream: Jon’s body took a while to see itself back together, and the few times people catch sight of this it’s clear he was conscious and in absolute agony.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Dr. Manhattan leaves the galaxy to create life somewhere else, effectively fitting the definition of God.
• Badass Bookworm: Most of what he does with his powers, as well as what he did before he had them, was studying particle physics. It goes even further, it is implied that the reason he was able to return was both because of his knowledge of particle physics and the fact that as a child his father would make him dismantle and reassemble complex clocks. This meant he had both the knowledge and thought process to accomplish this. In other words, he brought himself back as a Physical God under his own ability.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: His casual clothes.
• Bald Mystic: When he gains his supernatural powers and abilities, John loses all of his hair. Overlaps with Bald Head of Toughness since those abilities make him Nigh-Invulnerable to the point of Complete Immortality and a Physical God.
• Being God Is Hard: Fails to save a pregnant woman that the Comedian had impregnated then killed and gets so sick of dealing with humanity after being falsely accused of giving people cancer that he leaves Earth and heads to Mars.
• Beware the Superman: The very existence and the enormous extent of his powers almost leads to a nuclear war. Although benevolent enough by himself, he is very weak-willed and kills uncounted Vietcong in the Vietnam War and a solid number of American criminals (petty and otherwise) only because somebody told him to. Throughout all of this, he becomes progressively detached from humanity, at one point watching a pregnant woman being killed without even trying to interfere.
• Blessed with Suck: Manhattan's power. The accident erased him from existence, but he came back with godlike powers. Then again, he's gradually detaching from the rest of humanity...
• Combat Clairvoyance: A product of his chronokinesis, Jon can see his own future in a "theoretical sense"; however, this power can be blocked by tachyons. While Jon often considers this ability to be infallible, it is worth noting he has been wrong before. He has, on rare occasion, referred to this as studying a tapestry.
• Complete Immortality: There's only one known way of destroying Dr. Manhattan's body, and that's by disintegrating him through the same method that gave him his power. That doesn't even matter, because Dr. Manhattan's mind and powers exist outside of his physical body, and no has even guessed what could possibly destroy or debilitate those. He doesn't need his body, and can easily make a new one if it’s destroyed (much faster than he made his first). As he points out, it is inane to try and kill him using the first trick he ever figured out (reassembling his body from being atomized).
• Death-Activated Superpower: Dr. Manhattan is created after his human self is blown apart atom by atom.
• Dimension Traveller: Jonathan is able to travel to other planes of existence.
• Disposable Superhero Maker: Dr. Manhattan's accident.
• The Dreaded: Considering Mxyzptlk, a veritable Reality Warper, is afraid of him, you can tell he would be this if he ever decided to become a villain.
• EMP: Although it was not seen in practice, Dr. Manhattan surmised that an EM pulse would cause such "static" that it could obscure the future, hinting at another possible weakness.
• Fighting a Shadow: He exists in a state beyond physical form, such that completely vaporizing his body is about as trivial as stubbing a toe.
• Freak Lab Accident: How he got his powers.
• A God I Am Not: Despite being nearly omnipotent, he states that he doesn't think there is a god, "and if there is, I'm not him".
• Humanoid Abomination: While a rather neutral figure, is hard not to see him as one.
• Human Weapon: Treated as the ultimate nuclear deterrent and anti-nuclear weapon by the US government. He decides to go play god in another galaxy before things go that far.
• Immortality: Never seeming to age, Jon never appears any older both physically and mentally after his accident. He stated that the world grew older around him.
• Immortal Apathy: Doctor Manhattan became immortal in a Freak Lab Accident, and while he hasn't been immortal for very long his perception of time is non-chronological, which means his subjective memory extends much further. He's been shown apathetic to anything going on around him because his perspective is so vast that anything humans do is inconsequential to him.
• Immortal Genius: Blessed with Complete Immortality, being not only effectively unaging but invincible. He's also a brilliant scientist and, thanks to his ability to perceive and interact with sub-atomic particles, is directly responsible for the technological uplift that the world has undergone. Indeed, it's implied that the only reason why he was able to reassemble his disintegrated body and become Dr. Manhattan in the first place was because of his unique knowledge of both particle physics and watchmaking.
• Innocently Insensitive: As he strays away from humanity through the years his tact begins to suffer. When Hollis Mason happily looks forward to spending his retirement repairing cars, Dr. Manhattan more or less informs him that electric cars will shortly make such work obsolete, seemingly unaware of what a bomb he'd just dropped on Hollis.
• Intangibility: Bullets and blows travel through Jon; as such, he can allow all objects to pass through him without so much as a reaction. He can extend this ability to other people and objects.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: The way Dr. Manhattan sees it, all life on Earth could end, "and the universe would not even notice."
• Lousy Lovers Are Losers: Despite Doctor Manhattan being a near-omnipotent man, he fails to be a satisfying lover to Laurie. This is due to his omnipotence leaving him too apathetic and dispassionate to connect with her on an emotional level, leaving their sex feeling mechanical and lifeless. In their last attempt at intimacy, he uses his powers to duplicate himself while in bed with her, thinking she'd enjoy the idea of a Twin Threesome Fantasy, but this just ends up creeping her out and she runs out of the bedroom... only to find that he had more duplicates working on an experiment the whole time while they were supposed to be having an intimate moment. This incident causes her to break up with him. In contrast, her next lover Danny has problems with impotency, but because he and Laurie still manage to emotionally connect as human beings, they do eventually end up having mutually fulfilling sex.
• That Man Is Dead: Manhattan barely thinks of himself as Jon Osterman anymore.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Jon Osterman: Osterman means "man from the east" or more literally "man from the rising sun." Jonathan means "God has given," and is a name given to the Bible's example of The Ace.
  • "Oster" can also be translated from German as "Easter", effectively making his surname "Easter Man". An appropriate name for a Jewish man with both human and divine traits who miraculously rises from the dead after his apparent death (Easter being the day that Jesus rose from the dead).
  • His superhero moniker, Dr. Manhattan, is meant to invoke this, meant to strike the same terror into the Soviets that the Manhattan Project struck into the Japanese. It's also meaningful in another sense, given that, like the Manhattan Project, Jon has ushered in a new age and brought the human condition into serious question.
• Messianic Archetype: Deconstructed. He has multiple striking parallels with Jesus: he's a Jewish-born man who miraculously rose from the dead after his apparent death, he has the power to perform miracles, he's treated as a god in human form, he's the son of a watchmaker ("The Watchmaker" being a popular epithet for God in Deism), his arrival heralds the beginning of a bold new era in human history, and his story ends with him leaving Earth and ascending to the heavens. But his powers are also exploited by the military, he eventually becomes detached from humanity, he openly dislikes being worshipped, and he ultimately concludes that Earth is better off without his influence.
• Mundane Utility: He altered Laurie's biology so she could breath on the moon, since it was simpler than altering the moons atmosphere and has less like to cause a major fallout.
• The Needless: Jon doesn't require food or sleep.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Jon possesses incredible durability and is practically invulnerable to any physical harm. His durability has allowed him to walk across the sun unharmed.
• The Omniscient: His chronokinesis is limited only to his perception of time, Jon can clearly see his past and perfectly relive moments in time in an instant. Likewise, he can grant others the ability to instantly "relive" specific moments of their past, doing such allows Jon to experience these moments from their perspective as well.
• Outside-Context Problem: Upon his debut, he's the only Super in the world (other "capes" do exist, but they're just people in costumes), and sports godlike powers. World politics are changed forever when he shows up. This leads to moments like him ending the Vietnam War in about a week, and the escalation of the Cold War because the Russians are scared shitless. A noted scientist comments that Manhattan is for all intents and purposes God and that absolute terror in response to that statement is, in fact, the sane response.
• Power Glows: Though once a television producer complains he's too bright, he turns it off temporarily.
• Radiation-Immune Mutants: Which is great for him, but not for his loved ones who got cancer from him leaking it. That was all a lie by Veidt.
• Shameless Fanservice Guy: His preference is being completely nude, and he'll only wear clothes when he needs to. After his accident, he was actually given a costume which he reluctantly wore. But as he slowly detached himself from humanity, he chose to not be associated with anything in relation to humankind, and clothes were one of the first things to go.
• Sizeshifter: Able to grow or shrink incredibly fast without a seeming limit. He displayed great abilities and focus while at these sizes without a loss of control in any fashion.
• Stop Worshipping Me: Dr. Manhattan is powerful enough to be considered divine, but resents being perceived this way. He says something like "I don't think there is a God, and if there is I don't think I'm anything like Him."
• Tin Man: Doesn't seem to have any emotions at all, anymore.
• Token Super: The only truly super powered individual in the group.
• Transmutation: He can rearrange matter on the subatomic level, meaning he can effectively turn anything into anything else at a minimum. His control of this power is such that he can be in multiple places at once, teleport, and make people explode.
• The Unfettered: It helps his powers manage to keep him without many hurdles to do what he wants.
• Walking Wasteland: Dr. Manhattan's presence is said to give people cancer. Subverted, as it's actually Veidt deliberately inducing cancer in Manhattan's past acquaintances.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: He didn't kill the pregnant Marionette. Played with, as it wasn't THAT child of Marionette's he wouldn't hurt, but one that hadn't even been conceived yet and wouldn't be for years.

Nite-Owl (Daniel "Dan" Dreiberg)

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A former superhero fan, then full-fledged superhero, and now retired intellectual. A gadget-based hero who flies the night skies in his state-of-the-art airship, Archie, he sometimes questions his use of million-dollar technology to fight petty crime.

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• Alliterative Name: Daniel Dreiberg.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Animal Alias variety.
• Ascended Fanboy: Deconstructed to some degree since Dan describes his crimefighting career as "Some schoolkid's fantasy that got out of hand". He does not have any life or motivation besides to be a masked vigilante, and when this is taken away from him, the highlight of his life becomes listening to his predecessor's reminiscing about the glorious past.
• Badass Bookworm: Although he isn't as tough or smart as Ozymandias, he's still a caped crimefighter with enough technical wizardry to build his own crimefighting weapons.
• Badass on Paper: He's an incredibly skilled martial artist (good enough to take out entire gangs even while out of practice) who invented a physics-defying airship and a ton of crazy gadgets. But in a time where the only thing to use this stuff on is gangs and drug-pushers, he's just some rich fool playing hero because it's the only way he can get it up.
• Bash Brothers: With Rorschach.
• Battle Couple: With Laurie.
• Boring, but Practical: His approach to crimefighting seems like this next to Rorschach. It doesn't seem very dramatic, but it's far more effective. Rorschach wants to pursue his Entertainingly Wrong assumption about a mask killer by beating up more suspects, while Dan takes the time to question that very assumption, leading them to the trail of the real culprit behind the Comedian's murder: Adrian Veidt.
• Classical Anti-Hero: Needs his costume to overcome his shortcomings.
• Cool Airship: The Archie (Achimedes), A vaguely ovoid craft capable of both aerial and underwater operation. Dan named the aircraft after Merlin's pet owl in the "The Sword in the Stone".
• Crimefighting with Cash: He deconstructs it, admitting that spending a fortune catching prostitutes and purse-snatchers isn't very economically sound.
• Cultured Badass: Dreiberg appears to have old-fashioned tastes in music, preferring 1930s-1940s jazz (Billie Holiday, Nellie Lutcher, Louis Jordan) to more contemporary pop music.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: He and Silk Spectre II utterly thrashed a young Bruce Wayne and Oliver Queen when they were still working for the League of Assassins.
• Dating Catwoman: Played straight and deconstructed with his relationship with Twilight Lady. Dan enter a relationship with Lady Twilight in hopes he could reform her, but Twilight was only interested in being Dan's romantic partner. After a long and tumultuous relationship, Dan and her parted ways.
• The Everyman: Means well but is out of depth with the realities of being a hero.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Has an insane amount of gadgets devoted to fighting crime in his basement. Also, while we repeatedly see Airships are commonly used in 1985 as a viable form of transport due to Dr. Manhattan being able to synthesize Helium; the fact that Archimedes on the other hand is able to hover with no visible jets seems to suggest that Dan invented some form of anti-gravity technology. That he has Archie in the first (and only) Crimebusters meeting, means that he had cracked this technology as early as 1965!
  • It's also Deconstructed since his gadgets are Awesome, but Impractical because most villains he fights are just normal people.
  • Not just Archie, during that timeframe Dan had created a working exoskeleton, a tiny handheld laser gun, and night vision goggles that at least were as good as the stuff we have available nowadays.
• Happily Married: To Laurie Juspeczyk.
• I Call It "Vera": He calls his airship "Archie", short for Archimedes.
• In Harm's Way: He probably could have gone on without it, but it's clear he missed his old hero days and was eager to go back.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: Gets turned on after committing heroics.
• The Lancer: The role he ends up playing to either Rorschach, Comedian, or Silk Spectre whenever he's paired up with them. When they're all together, he settles into being The Leader.
• Legacy Character: He took the role after Hollis Mason retired.
• Manchild: Downplayed, but Dan does have a certain child-like wonder when it comes to be a superhero, considering his status. He also likes to wax nostalgic with his old mentor, as if he's a kid reminiscing with his dad.
• Morality Pet: Whenever his friends, family, or acquaintances would quarrel, Dan would often be unable to pick sides or take action which would cause any problems. He avoided such drama whenever possible, often leaving the rooms during arguments.
• Nerd Glasses: In his secret identity.
• Nice Guy: What else can be said about a man who can make friends with Rorschach?
• Odd Friendship: With Rorschach. No-one else seems to even like being in the same room as Rorschach.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Blue to Rorschach's Red.
• Second Love: He becomes this to Laurie after she breaks up with Dr. Manhattan.
• Secret Identity: In order to hide his superhero activity, he pretends to be a harmless intellectual. After he retires, it's not so much an act...
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Sensitive Guy to Rorschach's Manly Man.
• Technical Pacifist: He was the least bloodthirsty of the group.
• Unstoppable Rage: When Hollis Mason (a kindly old man and Nite Owl I) is murdered in his home for the 'crime' of being tangentially associated with superheroes, Dan freaks out. He unnerves Rorschach with his fury.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Dan's plan to bust Rorschach out of jail gets Hollis Mason killed.

Ozymandias (Adrian Veidt)

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A former costumed hero and considered the smartest man alive, he left heroics shortly before the Keene Act came into effect and became involved in business.

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• Actually a Good Idea: At one point, the Comedian disrupts the first Crimebusters meeting by pointing out how the inevitability of nuclear war would render the Crimebusters' efforts of fighting petty criminals unimportant in the long run. Ozymandias quietly agrees with the Comedian and decides to end the Cold War by killing half of the population of several cities with bombs. However, it's subverted by the fact that only Ozymandias thinks his plan is a good one as most of the other protagonists find his plan to be morally questionable and Dr. Manhattan implies that Ozymandias's solution is only temporary, which was proven right a few years later thanks to the rise of even more superheroes, villains and other threats.
• Adaptation Origin Connection:
  • The radiation from his bomb accidentally caused Kimiyo Hoshi and a pregnant Miya Shimada to become ill and activate their meta-genes.
  • His actions accidentally caused Lux Beata to conceive Alyce Sinner.
• Ambiguously Gay: Rorschach suspects as much of Veidt, though as the sequence is told from Rorshach's perspective it's fifty-fifty whether Veidt is Straight Gay or if it's just Rorshach being his usual sexually confused homophobic self.
  • Averted after he is revealed to be bisexual.
• Anti-Villain: His ultimate goal is to prevent World War 3 by massacring millions to make the world powers assume it was an alien attack. A horrendous course of action, but done with the best intentions in mind. Also, the subsequent weight of this action torments his conscience.
• Awesome by Analysis: One look at an opponent's fighting style and he already learns how to counter it. According to him, The Comedian had a skillful feint and a devastating uppercut, but little else. Not that it stopped the Comedian from beating him to a pulp in his younger days.
• Broken Ace: He is a handsome blond super genius who is insanely rich, at the peak of intellectual and athletic achievement, has America in his hands and defeats Rorschach, Silk Spectre, Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan at the end. He is also the antagonist, who kills millions of people in order to save the world from nuclear war.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": The symbol of Veidt Industries is a giant letter "V", and he stamps it on everything he owns. The main exception is his costume, because having his initials on it would've kinda defeated the whole Secret Identity thing.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Veidt is at the peak of physical ability in strength, speed, agility, reflexes and durability. His abilities are such that even Rorschach is wary of facing him in combat.
• The Chessmaster: Engineered the whole villainous plot.
• Child Prodigy: He was exceedingly intelligently since early childhood, and had to hide his intelligence for a time on orders from his parents due to his genius intellect having the strong possibility of ostracizing him or causing unwanted attention.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Has a savior complex that can be seen from space.
• Dark Messiah: He causes the deaths of millions in order to unify the world and prevent the nuclear Armageddon he believes is otherwise inevitable.
• The Dreaded: Even Rorschach is wary of this man to the point he left behind his notes before confronting Veidt because he knew he likely wouldn't survive the confrontation.
• Evil Plan: He is motivated by the desire of a 'better, more loving world'. To this end he orchestrated Comedian's murder and the destruction of New York and other cities to avert a nuclear war.
• Fanboy: He's a huge fan of Alexander the Great and sees him as his only worthy peer, pitying the fact that his greatest idol died millennia before his birth. During his global travels, Veidt retraced the exact steps of Alexander's crusade of conquest throughout the civilized world, wishing to one day realise Alexander's goal of uniting the entire world under one banner. He concludes that the only way to do so is not through conquest, but trickery. Veidt even professes a desire to gain the direct approval of Alexander in the "Hall of Legends".
• Frame-Up: Framed Manhattan for the destruction of several cities in what's remembered as "the Manhattaning".
• Genius Bruiser: Veidt is referred to as the smartest man alive. His mental performance allows his mind to operate in the most efficient and rapid manner possible. One manifestation of this is his tactical genius; the ability to quickly process multiple information streams and rapidly respond to changing tactical situations. Veidt is able to view a wall filled floor-to-ceiling with television screens, each showing a different image he is able to pay attention to each one simultaneously.
• Greater-Scope Villain: His plot to destroy several cities affected the lives of countless people, many of which were future heroes and villains.
• He Who Fights Monsters: He would save billions of people from dying by causing millions of people to die.
• Honest Corporate Executive: Adrian really isn't motivated by greed or a lust for personal power. He obtained his vast wealth by skillful understanding of the stock market and legitimate business ventures. He's a Knight Templar or Well-Intentioned Extremist, but not a sellout.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Destroying half of New York and other countries to save the world from nuclear armageddon.
• Intelligence Equals Isolation: By his own admission. Part of what leads to his Evil Plan is that as the smartest man he believes it's up to him to find a solution but his loneliness means he either can't trust anyone's help or simply fails to see a better way
• Knight Templar: Sacrifices millions to save billions.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After he nearly destroyed the world with The Manhattaning, he became the most wanted man in the world, with the Keene Act being lifted just to have heroes help hunt him down.
• Minor Major Character: His actions practically changed the face of the Earth, with many future heroes becoming affected by the Manhattaning, but he has been missing for over 30 years since being ousted.
• Omniglot: Veidt is fluent in English, Turkish, German, Russian and various other languages.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Adrian's No-Holds-Barred Beatdown of the Comedian, despite the latter sent beyond the Despair Event Horizon by the former's plan, isn't unsympathetic, considering Blake was a rapist and murderer.
• Photographic Memory: Veidt also possesses an eidetic memory, meaning that he never forgets anything and has perfect recall.
• Purple Is Powerful: Preferred to wear a purple cape as Ozymandias, and he was more than a match for Nite-Owl and Rorschach.
• Right-Hand Cat: Ozymandias's genetically-engineered lynx, Bubastis.
• Self-Made Man: He inherited a fortune. He then donated all of it and proceeded to make his own fortune from scratch just to prove that it's possible.
• Technical Pacifist: He prefers brains over brawn, but is not above punching enemies.
• Trade Your Passion for Glory: Rorschach sees him as a sellout. Ozymandias merely sees his work as doing what superheroes ought to do in real life, save the world and avoid nuclear war, no matter the costs.
• Tragic Villain: He is never punished for his actions; they do hurt him psychologically, though. But the real tragedy is that in trying to save humanity, Ozymandias loses his soul by becoming the very evil he wanted to destroy. His vast intelligence even grants him the ability to not only fully comprehend his terrible actions but also "feel every life" he has taken.
• Unperson: After Perry White exposed him as the true culprit of "the Manhattaning" and the murderer of Edward Blake, Veidt went into hiding from the globe by the FBI and other authorities worldwide from hunting him and his company's assets ends up being sold to LuthorCorp.
• Visionary Villain: Ozymandias not just slaughtered half of New York but also killed half million of other cities like London, Moscow, Paris, Tokyo, Washington, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Boston, Beijing, Cairo, Mexico City, etc. in an attempt to save the rest of the world from a nuclear apocalypse.
• You Are Too Late: Was originally the Trope Namer via "Thirty Five Minutes Ago", telling the Crimebusters he already set off the bombs.
• We Used to Be Friends: With Perry White of all people. Didn't last after Perry exposed his crimes.

Rorschach (Walter Kovacs)

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A violent, noir detective/anti-hero and only non-government superhero still active as of the beginning of the "Manhattaning" portion of Earth-27. With a black-and-white worldview and an uncompromising moral code, Rorschach is well-known among criminals as the terror of the underworld.

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• Abusive Parents: His mother was certainly a horrible parent. How bad was she? When informed of her death, Walter only had one thing to say: "Good".
• Anti-Hero: Rorschach is one of the best and most famous examples in comic books.
• Ax-Crazy: See what he did to the child abductor and his dogs.
• Becoming the Mask: "NO! MY FACE! GIVE ME BACK MY FACE!"
• The Blank: The whole idea behind his mask.
• Bystander Syndrome: Inverted. He beats up thugs who have harmed people he's never met and idealizes people he doesn't know (Kitty Genovese, Harry Truman, etc.) but loathes virtually everyone he does know. Familiarity breeds contempt, indeed.
• Celibate Hero: He's freaked out beyond all recognition about anything to do with sex, due to child abuse.
• Coat, Hat, Mask: He sports the basic outfit, but with a head-covering mask (as opposed to the standard domino) with a shifting black-and-white pattern that initially inspired his moniker.
• Combat Pragmatist: To an insane degree. Rorschach's solution to the "Gordian Knot problem". When faced with an impossible lock, Rorschach will simply kick the door down.
• Confusion Fu: Dan says that Rorschach was a good fighter because he was unpredictable. Probably related to the fact that he's not quite sane.
• Cool Mask: Made from a failed prototype for a designer dress. Contains black fluids in latex which move from heat and pressure but never mix into grey.
• The Cowl: As the main Terror Hero who works as a vigilante operating outside the law to bring down criminals when the police are inept.
• Creepy Good: Rorschach is firmly on the side of justice and despises criminals, but suffers from a horribly severe case of Black-and-White Insanity, to the point he literally cannot properly function in normal, modern society.
• Determinator: Deconstructed with Rorschach. He is uncompromising and he still fights crime after vigilantism was proscribed. Yet, he is abrasive, his black-and-white world view clearly viewed as unhealthy and insane, and when he is confronted with the wrongness of his world view, he quickly becomes vulnerable, not to mention it is his determination that gets him killed.
• Does Not Like Women: From his poor experiences with his mother.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: A rare Anti-Hero version. Rorschach's identity was mostly a secret until it is revealed he was that guy who carried a "THE END IS NIGH" sign.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": "You keep calling me Walter. I don't like you."
• The Dreaded: Rorschach's mental instability is well known; even without his costume or any of his friends about, he is an intimidating man and has made many people flee in his presence.
• Expressive Mask: And how. It does more than cover his face; to Rorschach, it is his face. His actual face, in contrast, is like a mask; his expression almost never changes. The black and white splotches in his mask never mix, representing his morality. For him there is only black and white, never gray.
• Face Death with Dignity: How he goes out. He does not beg and refuses to compromise.
• The Fettered: Kovacs' principles are all that matter to him; the good must be protected, and the evil must be punished, no compromise or nuance allowed. When he's finally confronted with his own failure to completely live up to his standards and faced with a dilemma he can't solve just by appealing to his code, he breaks down.
• Freudian Excuse: A good part of his personality, his isolation, his self-righteousness, his dismissive view of adult society, his attitude to women (which can be summed up as a Madonna-Whore Complex) derives from his very abusive childhood as the son of a prostitute, which results in his fixation and obsession with purity, moral and sexual. This leads to his refusal to compromise, an attitude that manifests itself when he calls those he considers Sell-Out (such as Adrian Veidt) "prostitutes" in the metaphorical sense, and his Slut-Shaming of Sally Jupiter, Laurie, and his landlady (though he regrets that last part) and his tendency to view everything in extremes.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Before crimefighting was outlawed he seemed to get along relatively well with his costumed peers, albeit with some criticism of his methods, though Nite Owl was always his closest ally.
• Friend to All Children: One thing he won't stand for is someone else hurting a child, even if he isn't necessarily nice to them himself. The murder of Blair Roche pushed him over the edge, driving him to commit his first killing.
• Genius Bruiser: Holds his own in a fight, and has decent, albeit not exceptional, detective skills. Dan Dreiberg is the overall better detective, and is the one who actually figures out that Adrian Veidt is behind The Conspiracy.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: One of Rorschach's signature tools, until the police take it away after his arrest. It gets turned into an Improvised Weapon at one point. It was originally designed for him by Dan, back when they were partners.
• Hates Being Touched: Rorshach isn't really one for physical intimacy on even a basic level.
• Hates Their Parent: He couldn't give less of a shit when he's told his mother died.
• Hero with an F in Good: Not only he's The Cynic, but his methods are violent to the point of shocking even other heroes.
• Heroic Willpower: After the events which made him take on the personality of Rorschach, in every aspect of his life, he developed a desire to make sure that all crime is punished. Even after masked adventurers became detested and banned, he continued his vigilante activities. He has also defied odds against a large number of armed police officers that surrounded him at Moloch's home. Veidt described Rorschach as having the "tenacity of a true sociopath." Rorschach also had demonstrated a high tolerance for pain as he was thrown into marble walls and crashed into TV sets with great force yet he remained conscious despite having no armor. In Antarctica, he was able to withstand incredibly cold temperatures while wearing only his trademark suit and trench coat.
• Homeless Hero: He lives in squalor and has poor personal hygiene. Since he is entirely devoted to his work as a superhero and doesn't really have ties to civilian life in terms of friends and family, he doesn't really care about being poor.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Went over the edge after failing to save little Blair.
• Memento MacGuffin: Rorschach kept a journal chronicling the events in his life as well as that of his fellow Crimebusters. Rorschach continued writing in the journal as late as October of 1987 when he began investigating the murder of former colleague Edward Blake, aka, the Comedian. Rorschach kept his journal in short-hand, which oddly enough, also reflected the way that he spoke to other people. Rorschach's final entry in the journal was in late October and took place just prior to his ill-fated mission to Antarctica to confront his former colleague, Adrian Veidt. Before leaving, he trusted the journal to an unknown associate. The journal would eventually be given to Perry White.
• The Mentally Disturbed: Some call Rorschach a sociopath, driven to his nature by the horrid nature of mankind. Whatever the case or cause might be, Rorschach is not a stable individual in modern public society and is only suited for his special brand of justice.
• Mercy Kill: One way of interpreting his request that Dr. Manhattan kill him near the Manhattaning.
• Noble Bigot with a Badge: Is among other things a misogynist and homophobe. But unlike many examples, instead of white washing his behavior, it only serves to further showcase how unpleasant a person he is, and why you shouldn't entirely identify with him uncritically.
• Obfuscating Insanity: Granted, he is pretty crazy as it is, but he typically adopts the identity of a loopy prophet of doom as a civilian disguise.
• Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality: Rorschach is extremely uncomfortable around anything even remotely related to sex or the female form, making numerous disparaging comments about sex workers and "fornicators", and was deeply uncomfortable even handling women's garments when he worked in textiles. This is in no small part due to his past with his prostitute mother.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: His modus operandi.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Rorschach may be batshit insane, Ax-Crazy and treat even his team-mates with suspicion and abuse, but he does make it very clear that he does value his friendship with Nite Owl and apologizes when Nite Owl calls him out on his behaviour.
  • When Dan is upset to the point of tears over Hollis Mason's death, Rorschach actually attempts to comfort him. It doesn't come out in the traditional way, being Rorschach, but Dan appreciates the effort.
  • When Daniel and Rorschach go to retrieve Rorschach's spare mask, and he calls his landlady a whore to her face, but doesn't press further after seeing her kids
• Pintsized Powerhouse: The guy's 5'6". He wore elevated heels as a part of his outfit.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: His black and white morality and extreme views of justice result in this. He has no patience for proof or rights when pursuing criminals and applies torture liberally. He sees addicts and prostitutes as scum beyond redemption, no matter how victimized or desperate they are. He's explicitly misogynistic and darkly puritanical about sex and women. For instance, has a less than sympathetic reaction to one character's survival of a sexual assault. The fact that he deeply admires and stubbornly defends the Comedian, easily the most politically incorrect character in the story, is pretty good indication itself. Not to mention his subscription and alignment with The New Frontiersman which has even more extreme views. It should be noted, however, that a lot of his views are the result of severely traumatic experiences he'd had as both a child and throughout his superhero career.
• Posthumous Character: Killed shortly after the "Manhattaning".
• Pragmatic Hero: Initially, Rorschach was this during the early days of his career. He was in better health mentally, being a vigilante was still legal, and he would leave criminals to be arrested by the police, instead of murdering them. But the Keene Act and mentally snapping after the brutal murder of a girl caused him to lose it.
• Principles Zealot: Most people easily see him as this. There is however one time where he could be viewed as straying from his principles. A former criminal, Edgar Jacobi, previously known as Moloch the Mystic, had cancer and in his desperation to save his life he took illegal drugs that probably wouldn't save him anyway. Rorschach let this offense slide, for Edgar. He did however take the name of the company that sold the drug down, so in this case he might be viewing Edgar as a scam victim instead of a criminal.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Red to Nite-Owl's Blue.
• Related in the Adaptation: He's the maternal half-brother of Cardinal Matthew Glick from Dogma. They never met before Walter died.
• Snow Means Death: Dies alone in Antarctica.
• Son of a Whore: He developed a number of sexual hang-ups thanks to growing up around his mother's work. Well, that and being beaten and verbally abused by his mother, and bullied by other kids for being a Son of a Whore.
• Terror Hero: Rorschach's well-earned reputation for brutality means even civilians are terrified to be around him.
• Tragic Hero: A man who grew up in a hellish childhood and tried so hard to uphold some a strong set of moral standards guided by a twisted perception of integrity and driven by a growing list of tragedies and failures before ultimately being destroyed by it.
• Übermensch: In addition to creating his own meaning and morality, Rorschach's view of life is largely misanthropic. That said, he does follow his own rules to try to make the world a better place.
• Unreliable Narrator: He claims to have met Kitty Genovese before her murder, but despite his certainty his own recollections seem shaky, casting doubt on his entire backstory.
• Walking Disaster Area: He tends to create a mess a lot. It ranges from the relatively mild, such as easily breaking Dreiberg's locks and busting into his house to eat his cans of beans, to the extreme brutality of burning down a house, terrifying a load of bargoers just by showing up to break a criminal's fingers, and wrecking his cell and a prison restroom to kill his victims.

Silk Spectre (Laurie Juspeczyk/Jupiter)

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Laurie Juspeczyk was chosen by her mother to succeed her as Silk Spectre, she has became very bitter and disillusioned since the Keene Act and she used to date Dr. Manhattan before she would marry to Dan Dreiberg.

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• Action Girl: More than a match for any man except Veidt.
• Anti-Hero: She's only in the hero gig because her mother pushed her into it, making her a Classical Anti-Hero.
• Arrow Catch: She caught an arrow Oliver Queen shot at her and stabbed him with it.
• Badass Driver: Laurie is a talented operator of most road-based vehicles, including being trained in high-speed pursuit and defensive driving techniques.
• Combat Stilettos: She wears heels as part of her costume.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: She and Nite Owl utterly thrashed a young Bruce Wayne and Oliver Queen when they were still working for the League of Assassins.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Part of the reason she dated Dr. Manhattan as long as she did was to annoy her mother Sally.
• Deadpan Snarker: Especially with her mother.
• Happily Married: To Dan Dreiberg.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Initially; she doesn't actually enjoy being a costumed vigilante and wanted to be a veterinarian instead. She chafes at being kept by the government as Dr. Manhattan's leash. When she comes out of retirement with Dan, though, she remembers what a thrill heroics gave her.
• Leg Focus: Her costume is meant to accentuate her legs.
• Legacy Character: Kind of forced to take the mantle of her mother Sally Jupiter.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Laurie's desire to learn her father's true identity haunted her for much of her life, giving her intense nightmares and causing her to become irrational when she felt she was close to discovering her father's identity. When she finally did learn the truth, it nearly destroyed her to learn the circumstances surrounding her conception and to know that she had avoided her father all those years and was now too late.
• Morality Pet: Laurie's insecurities also would get her the romantic attention of both Dr. Manhattan and Nite-Owl. When in relationships, Laurie became highly self-monitoring and would over-emphasize the importance of intimacy in her relationships.
• Mysterious Parent: Before learning the true identity of her father, Laurie believed that "Hooded Justice" was her father.
• Never a Self-Made Woman: Laurie inherited her mother's identity, and mooches off of her romantic partners because she doesn't have any real skills outside of crime fighting.
• Nom de Mom: Granted, she never knew her father, so going by Sally Jupiter's pre-Americanization surname is a given. Laurie preferred to use her full Polish surname and embraced her polish heritage over her mother's Americanized stage name. Laurie's younger brother Loren preferred the opposite approach.
• Omniglot: Laurie is fluent in English and Polish. She is capable of carrying on a light conversation or reading Spanish, Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, German, and Russian.
• Only Sane Woman: The most level-headed of the Crimebusters, given she's not as depressed as Dan.
• Passing the Torch: More like having the torch shoved into her hand against her will, gratefully throwing it away, and then deciding it wasn't so bad after all.
• Pretty Freeloader: She was this for Doctor Manhattan and became this to Dan (he insisted). Can't blame her since she has no job skills aside from fighting crime.
• Related in the Adaptation:
  • She's the paternal niece of Zinda Blake/Lady Blackhawk as she's the twin sister of her biological father Edward Blake.
  • She's also the half-sister of Loren Jupiter, making her aunt of Lilith Clay/Omen.
  • Her other half-sibling is Paula Nguyen, making her also the aunt of Jade Nguyen and Artemis Crock, as well as great-aunt of Lian Harper and Tommy Blake Jr.
  • Her father's younger sister Mabel is the mother of her cousin John Winchester and makes her the aunt of Dean and Sam.
  • Her uncle John Blake Jr. is the grandfather of Thomas, RJ, George, Daphne, Jerry, Dennis, Yvonne and Adam Blake.
• Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: She became a Pretty Freeloader to Dan because she doesn't have any skills outside of superhero work.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: To her half-brother Loren. She was trained from birth to be a hero and hated her mother for forcing her to become a hero. Loren meanwhile is a Hero-Worshipper and respects his mother's status as a hero.
• The Smurfette Principle: The only female member of the Crimebusters.
• Superior Successor: Her mother worked hard to make sure she was one.
• Teleportation Sickness: Like canon, she pukes when she is teleported.
• Tyke Bomb: Trained from a young age for the sole purpose of being a superheroine.

The Comedian (Edward "Eddie" Blake)

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The gleefully amoral and borderline sociopathic government vigilante, The Comedian had a history of terrible deeds. His murder causes the chain of events in the story. He is known for his twisted sense of humor, his nihilistic worldview and his smiley-faced badge.

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• Anti-Hero: At best, he's a hero only in name. That said, he does have a few redeeming qualities.
• Back from the Dead: Doctor Manhattan teleported him to Codsville in the middle of his fatal fall, allowing him to survive.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • Sally Jupiter mentions that after they met again in 1949, he legitimately had no idea why she would hold a grudge for his attempted rape years earlier, and his baffled response at her shouting at him led her to realize that emotions worked differently for him than other people. Upon this realization, she couldn't sustain her anger any longer.
  • Similarly, after their affair, he believed all the bad blood between them had been dealt with. As such, he was legitimately confused when Sally refused to let him near her — or rather, their — daughter.
• Carpet of Virility: When he was with the new generation, his uniform let his chest hair open.
• Cigar Chomper: As seen on the picture, he's always smoking a cigar.
• Combat Pragmatist: Prefers guns and a straight fighting style over the more stylized moves others use.
• Deadpan Snarker: it's his whole shtick.
• Determinator: Blake was regarded as having an immense willpower. He can resist torture and interrogation, push himself through pain and injury.
• Eagleland: A solid type II. He's a self-righteous jingoist and who happily gets his hands dirty on the behalf of the Nixon administration whether he's overthrowing foreign governments or assassinating political enemies.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Rorschach stresses that the Comedian is essentially a nihilist, just like him. Unlike Rorschach’s anti-authoritarian belief in justice, however, the Comedian is fundamentally amoral, driven only by a desire to be uglier than the world (hence his breakdown once he realizes that Ozymandias’s nihilism exceeds his own).
• Excellent Judge of Character: For all that he's an amoral asshole, he is very good at reading people. He picks up on Dr. Manhattan's increasing isolation from humanity well before anyone else appears to have, and is quite insightful about the shortcomings of most costumed vigilantes.
• Glasgow Grin: Half of one, courtesy of his upset Vietnamese girlfriend.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: The Comedian falls into this upon learning of Ozymandias’ plans and the depths he’s willing to go to for it. The Comedian ends up a blubbering mess and winds up crying in front of Moloch an old arch nemesis, his ramblings nonsensical and fragmented, while his mind is unable or unwilling to make sense of the horrors Ozymandias is going to unleash. Even when he is killed by Ozymandias he doesn’t even fight back.
• The Gunslinger: He's the only one of the adventurers who regularly uses plain old firearms, keeping with his military them, and showing that he's quite a bit darker of an antihero than the others.
• "Have a Nice Day" Smile: Wears a pin with that. That once hit with a splash of blood.
• He Knows Too Much: Comedian found out Veidt's plan to end the Cold War. He was very much aware that this meant Veidt would come for him sooner or later.
• Heroic BSoD: He freaks out when he discovers Ozymandias' plan.
• Heroic Build: Kept in excellent shape even in his sixties.
• Kick the Dog: Killing a pregnant woman and attempting to rape a fellow superheroine, for examples. Some choose to see the first as a sign of him going off the deep end, especially how he blames Doctor Manhattan simply for not stopping him. He may have even done it just to see whether, for all his talk, Doctor Manhattan would even bother to save her and to confront him with his loss of humanity.
• Lack of Empathy: Doctor Manhattan says that Blake sees the stupidity and pain but just doesn't care.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: It's eventually revealed that he's Laurie's father.
• Never My Fault: Comedian kills the Vietnamese woman he impregnated yet blamed Dr. Manhattan for not stopping him.
• Plot-Triggering Death: His murder was what began the unraveling of the conspiracy behind the "Manhattaning".
• Polar Opposite Twins: He and his sister Zinda grew up to be polar opposites, with him turning increasingly cynical while she remained idealistic after she resurfaced long after he was killed.
• Posthumous Character: The story opens about his murder.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Attempted with the first Silk Spectre.
• Related in the Adaptation:
  • Here he's the twin brother of Zinda Blake/Lady Blackhawk.
  • Paula Nguyen's bio reveals the child of the pregnant woman he killed, (who was carrying his child) survived, which would make him grandfather of Jade Nguyen and Artemis Crock, and would make him great-grandfather of Lian Harper and Tommy Blake.
  • His younger sister Mabel is the mother of John Winchester, the father of Dean and Sam, which also makes Eddie the uncle of John and granduncle of both siblings.
• Scars Are Forever: He never loses the half-Glasgow Grin he got in Vietnam, just as the perpetrator intended.
• Straw Nihilist: Frequently spews how life is meaningless, particularly given how men have all they need to wipe out every living being on Earth.
• Superhero Packing Heat: Two .45 caliber hand guns, according to the RPG. He's also made use of rifles and the like.
• Token Evil Teammate: Deconstructed (naturally) with the Comedian. He is originally kicked out of the Minutemen for being this — not for being an Anti-Hero or Heroic Comedic Sociopath, but for trying to rape his teammate, Silk Spectre. He is then invited back to join the Crimebusters, but he himself torpedoes the group.
• The Unfettered: It's all a part of his persona: he regards all of society's conventions as a joke, so he laughs at them. With his fists. And occasionally his gun.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Much like Captain Metropolis, his mockery about the futility of another superhero team like the Crimebusters to resolve the real problems of the world — like prevent a Nuclear War — is what gave Ozymandias the first point in his plan.
• Villain with Good Publicity: For all his acts, he's a sanctioned, government-funded operative after the Keene Act.
• War Hero: He fought in both World War II and The Vietnam War, though the "hero" part is questionable.
• Worf Had the Flu: Not only was he well into his sixties by the time he took part in the fight that ultimately killed him, but he was also caught off guard and clad in only a bathrobe. That he had recently crossed the Despair Event Horizon also likely impacted his performance.
• Would Hit a Girl: First time when he assaults Silk Spectre I and the second time when he and Nite-Owl are doing riot control. He also killed a woman who was pregnant with his child!

Bubastis

Adrian Veidt's genetically engineered lynx-like pet.

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• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: An artificially created feline with red fur.
• Panthera Awesome: This incarnation looks like a combination of a lynx and a tiger.
• Right-Hand Cat: For Adrian Veidt.

Captain Metropolis (Nelson Gardner)

See the Minutemen page

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