History Literature / Doom

* AndIMustScream: A very real threat to all sentient life except for humans. Their consciousness remains inside their corpse, unless the body is completely destroyed, and all of their senses remain functional. Where ever they drop will be the last things they will ever experience for eternity if nobody is around to retrieve them. Efforts are made to Defy the trope, the dead are recovered and placed in theaters to be entertained. This fate is a given for those unfortunate enough to be captured by the enemy, as they will be endlessly tortured with no hope of saving themselves.

* HumansAreSpecial: The main theme of the final novel and a half.
** Humans have the awesome power of being KilledOffForReal. When the human body dies the consciousness/soul ceases to exist, or goes ''somewhere'', but a dead human is '''gone'''. All other sentient life has their consciousness remain trapped in the defunct body with all of their senses still functioning. They can hear if they're being spoken to or feel pain if somebody abuses their corpse. Resurrection is simple enough but it's possible that there isn't enough remaining of the body to succeed or it's not a priority for others. The dead are rounded up and stored in amphitheaters where operas and other performances are held to entertain them pending a resurrection.
** All other races suffer from MedievalStasis. They evolve and progress at a staggeringly slow pace. When the Freds scouted Earth they arrived at the end of the Middle Ages, saw a Catholic-dominated world armed with swords, and made centuries of invasion plans based on humanity remaining at this stage of development for thousands of years. They never could have anticipated mankind having nuclear weapons and early space-flight within six hundred years.

* OurZombiesAreDifferent: They are capable of firing guns, deranged speech, and can follow orders. Like all the monsters they have a hair trigger and go berserk if hit by friendly fire. Most never blink and Fly believes that's the reason for their poor accuracy. Some are capable of basic tactics like taking cover. Zombies also have a rotting lemon odor which may be linked to some manner of chemical that induces a berserker rage in men. The zombies also require air to breath, a plane full of them dies when the air is purged.

** Baron of hell - hell-prince
** Cacodemon - pumpkin. Later on, the military formally designates the monster as "cacodemon."
** Lost soul - [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin flying skull]]
** Cyberdemon - steam demon.
** Clyde is the name assigned to the vat-grown humans and fills the role of the chaingun zombies. Fly doesn't get the reference to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie_and_clyde Clyde Barrow,]] and he asks why they don't call the clones [[WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones Fred and Barney]] or [[Series/TheHoneymooners Ralph and Norton.]]
** Revenant - bony
** Mancubus - fatty
** Arch-vile - fire-eater

* IdealIllnessImmunity: Arlene gave Jill a sex ed talk during the LA mission. She's lamenting afterward that humanity had beaten [=STDs=], including AIDS, just for aliens to wipe out most of the species.

* SneezeOfDoom: Bill Ritch sneezes while the gang is trying to sneak around the spidermind's army.

* {{Mondegreen}}: As Fly and Arlene are being connected to the Newbie computer simulation, he sees Arlene mouth a message to him: "Patrick". Fly has absolutely no idea what she's trying to convey with that message or how it could help them, all that comes to mind is the story of Saint Patrick who converted the Irish. Once in the computer, he decides to trust Arlene and attempts to convert the monsters. He succeeds and rallies a growing army of the enemy, awed by his Reality Warper powers. Once they regroup in the computer, Fly learns that she said "''battery''", as in "Cut the Juice".

* CanonName: The game's "Doomguy", meant to be the player, is Fly Taggart in the books.

** ''Hell on Earth'': Fly and Arlene are trapped on the 40th floor of the Disney building, enemies pounding at the door, and Jill and Albert flying for Hawaii. But Arlene has a plan to get them down and to Hawaii; involving duct tape, computer wiring, and "the biggest goddamn boot" he can find.

While they are both adaptations of the video game, the novels are a completely different beast from [[{{Comicbook/Doom}} the comic]]. There is no '''RIP AND TEAR''' here.

* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: When Flynn Taggart finds himself confronted with stereotypical demons, but then discovers they're made of flesh and blood and can be killed with a big enough gun, he realizes that whatever they are, they're fakes (because he was raised Catholic, and knows better). He's right. They're aliens who took that form because they knew it would scare us. So he proceeds to blow up lots and lots and lots of them.

* {{Defictionalization}}: As noted on the ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' page, CoversAlwaysLie in that the original game's cover depicts the Doomguy wielding an automatic rifle (which never appears) and with a buddy running to his aid. In the books, Fly wields a 10mm single-shot rifle called the "Sig-Cow" and is backed up throughout the invasion by a fellow Marine, although they have been genderswapped into the female Arlene.

* AscendedFanon: The novels invented the "Sig-Cow" rifle and AB-10 machine pistol based off of the rifle/automatic-looking weapon being wielded in the cover art for the original ''Doom'' videogame; no such weapon actually appeared in the game. This inspired the creator of ''VideoGame/BrutalDoom'' to add an assault rifle to the game to replace the notoriously useless pistol. Every official game since then, from ''VideoGame/{{Doom 3}}'' to [[VideoGame/{{Doom 2016}} the 2016 remake]] to ''VideoGame/DoomEternal'' has included a machine gun or assault rifle type weapon in its lineup.

''Hell on Earth'' is the adaptation of ''Doom II''. The aliens have arrived on Earth and the world governments have collapsed. Fly and Arlene crash land a rocket from Deimos and meet with one of the last bastions of resistance: Salt Lake City. They join with a Mormon sniper, Albert, and a teenage hacker, Jill Lovelace, on a mission to steal enemy intelligence from Los Angeles and deliver it to the resistance military base in Hawaii.

* BattleCouple: Eventualy, Albert and Arlene. However, they never fight together as a married couple, Albert's wounding and inability to finish the mission was the catalyst for Arlene marrying him.

* DoingInTheWizard : The attacking "demons" are, in fact, alien biological constructs made to look like humanity's worst nightmares, based on reconnaissance from TheMiddleAges. Fly was raised Roman Catholic, and is perfectly aware that being able to [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu blast apart actual demons with a gun as if they were simple physical beings doesn't make any sense]], so these are clearly fake, and he's right. While some of the monsters can seemingly vomit fire and lightning from thin air, the others have cybernetic components and weapons installed. Not that it makes them any less dangerous, as Fly himself notes.

* AmazonianBeauty: Fly describes Arlene as being the best looking woman he's ever seen, but not in the conventional sense of beauty, in particular he loves her muscle tone. One newbie to the squad once tried to pull down her pants, the whole squad was interesting in seeing more of her ass but weren't stupid enough to piss her off.

* GagPenis: Twice Fly and Arlene find a bas relief of a hulking demon with an enormous penis that serves as a lever.

* TontoTalk: The spidermind is digging in Fly's head trying to find some horror or trauma to stop him. It digs up the most humiliating event in his life: the day his father, at a Hawaiian museum, yelled "Me heap big chief Kamehameha!" by a statue of the beloved king.

* TheSneakyGuy: Arlene is the unit's scout and Fly describes her as being a ghost. When they reunite Fly learns she managed to sneak past a number of encounters he had to blast a path through.

** Lieutenant Weems. He was so incompetent and cowardly that he ordered his men to fire on a bunch of harmless monks protesting their war efforts, mistaking them for suicide bombers even after one of his scout Arlene told him they were harmless. Throughout the novel Fly has unflattering thoughts about Weems, believing that he's the kind of guy who would side with the alien invaders if it meant saving his own skin, only changes his mind after finding the man's corpse entangled with that of another soldier, each of them having killed the other in a suicide pact upon finding themselves in Hell.

** Lieutenant Weems. He was so incompetent and cowardly that he ordered his men to fire on a bunch of harmless monks protesting their war efforts, mistaking them for suicide bombers even after one of his scout Arlene told him they were harmless. Throughout the novel Fly has unflattering thoughts about Weems, believing that he's the kind of guy who would side with the alien invaders if it meant saving his own skin, only changes his mind after finding the

* DungeonBypass: Subverted. Fly gets fed up with hunting for key cards and fighting monsters over them so he blasts a door open with a few rockets. This is the only locked door he ever destroys: he meets the barons of hell shortly afterward and they can withstand four to fix rockets a piece. From that point on rockets are reserved for emergencies and "boss fights" and he and Arlene run the dungeons looking for key cards. One time he suggests the option to Arlene to avoid entering a maze of unnatural darkness to find the key. Their rocket supply is dangerously low so they brave the dark maze instead of risking taking the next baron without ammo. They encounter a baron in the maze and they kill it for the key. Running the dungeon cost them all their rockets when the Dungeon Bypass would have used a few.

* ThePasswordIsAlwaysSwordfish: Lampshaded by Fly in the Newbie computer. There is an eleven character password to open the backdoor out of the system, and like a smartass he attempts "PASSWORD___". He is stunned when it works and then he mentally rages at the idiot who would do such a thing, given he attempted as a joke. It could be actually be Invoked by him given as he and Arlene have Reality Warper powers while in the computer.

** Cacodemon - pumpkin. Later on, the military formally designates the monster as "cacodemon".

** Clyde is the name assigned to the vat-grown humans and fills the role of the chaingun zombies. Fly doesn't get the reference to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie_and_clyde Clyde Barrow]], and he asks why they don't call the clones [[WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones Fred and Barney]] or [[Series/TheHoneymooners Ralph and Norton]].

** The Mormons have their own conventions using Biblical/demonic terms. The only confirmed name, by an Albert POV chapter, is moloch for cyberdemon. A force of "brownies" and "baphomets" attack Salt Lake City; brownie is almost certainly the imp and baphomet is probably the demon, as both are the grunts of the alien monsters. "Shelobs" are mentioned in the same vein as moloch-cyberdemons, the biggest and most powerful of the monsters. Given the name comes from ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', shelob is probably the spiderminds.

** An imp talks to Fly early in ''Keep-Deep in the Dead''. This is a minor plot over the series and becomes a major plot point in ''Endgame''. However, there was a second talking imp the first book. All it did was crack a bad joke but this is never mentioned again. Every time the subject of monster intelligence comes up, "that talking imp" was the only time it ever happened so far as the characters are concerned.

** Jill's last name changes between the second and third books. She's Hoerchner in ''Hell on Earth'' and Lovelace in ''Infernal Sky'' and ''Endgame''.
** Fly nicknamed the imps "spiny" in the first book, Arlene demanded to call them "imps". After ''Infernal Sky'', both POV characters repeatedly insist that it's Arlene who calls them "spiny".

** Fly makes a comment about how dangerous and weird the facility is, saying that any random door may have machine gun-toting Nazi Schutzstaffel behind it. This is a reference to the secret levels of ''Doom II'' that recreate levels from ''VideoGame/Wolfenstein3D'', complete with machine gun-toting SS.
** Fly and Arlene, with Bill in tow, find themselves repeating the first area after they left the hyperspace tunnel. Arlene says "Deja", Fly follows with "Vu", and Bill quips "Dejah Thoris". Arlene catches the reference to ''Literature/JohnCarterOfMars'' and snickers.

* StandardFPSGuns: The first book makes use of the trope, not surprising given the novel is an adaptation of the TropeMaker.

* MagneticWeapons: The Fred ship comes under railgun fire when crashing on Skinwalker. This frightens Fly as last he had heard about railguns they would destroy their target and then suffer a catastrophic meltdown. If the Newbies have functional anti-ship railguns then they have already surpassed human technology.

* TheNeidermeyer: Hidalgo starts this when when introduced to Fly and Arlene. He instructs them that he's not going to fraternize with them, demands proper uniform maintenance, and tells Fly that almost saving the world nearly makes up for punching his last CO. Fly's natural dislike of officers, their experience with Lt. Weems, and the high stakes of the mission lead Arlene to suggest killing Hidalgo if he's a liability.