Sandbox / Watchmen - Dr. Manhattan

"We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings."

"I no longer wish to look at dead things."

The only truly superpowered character in the story, 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.
• Ambiguously Jewish: On the one hand, his father's speech patterns. On the other, his apparent foreskin, which he may have reconstructed when he regenerated his body.
• 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.
• The Anti-Nihilist: Has become this at the end of the story. While he believed that humanity was unimportant because life isn't important enough to give other planets a chance, he also believes that the sheer improbability of any relationship, especially one so horrid as Laurie's parents' (adoptive and biological), resulting in any one person makes that person's existence a miracle, since so many factors could have gone to either create no life at all, or a different life. Jon in fact becomes so anti-nihilist that he decides to create human life somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy just to study it.
• Ambiguous Situation: The story leaves it vague if John’s deterministic view of time is the correct one or if his lifelong difficulty with making his own decisions just led him to assume he’s powerless to change things.
• 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.
• 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 give him Nigh-Invulnerability 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...
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Even after rediscovering the value of life, he sees life in terms of predictable/unpredictable, instead of good/evil.
• Brooklyn Rage: Inverted. He grew up in Brooklyn but he's completely detached and unemotional.
• Came Back Strong: Although it's not solely his death that is the catalyst of his powers, but the way he died. That is being disintegrated at the sub-atomic level but remaining conscious and disembodied for months before figuring out how to make a new body.
• Chekhov's Skill: A very rare case that doesn't manifest in the story itself, but in the backstory: Jon could only come back to life after the accident with the intrinsic field because he had learned to be a watchmaker during his adolescence, thus gaining the skill to reassemble himself from scratch.
• Classical Anti-Hero: With the flaws emerging from being increasingly detached from mankind.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Due to his intellect and power, Jon becomes very distant from everyone. For instance, he treats "What's up, Doc?" as if it's a logical question.
  Jon: "Up" is a relative concept. It has no intrinsic value.
• 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).
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Since he's an all-powerful being who can see through time, teleport people anywhere and destroy entire areas of the planet with a thought in a world of unpowered humans and vigilantes, it's fair to say Jon doesn't have to worry about losing fights. Even Ozymandias is no match for him, with Jon claiming "the world's smartest human poses no more threat to me than it's smartest termite".
• Cursed with Awesome: He's an all-powerful, omnipotent and omniscient being who can do almost anything...and he absolutely hates it as it has killed almost any traces of his humanity.
• Death-Activated Superpower: Dr. Manhattan is created after his human self is blown apart atom by atom.
• Death by Origin Story: Physicist Jon Osterman is atomized in a nuclear experiment, but returns as "Dr. Manhattan", an immortal indestructible ascended godlike entity. Dr. Manhattan was an Expy of Captain Atom, so it is not surprising that Cap's origin was the same in both the original Charlton version and post-Crisis DC version: his body atomized by a nuclear bomb, he returns with superpowers.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: The Physical God, with a bit of Messianic Archetype thrown in for good measure. While superhero stories have taken ample inspiration from mythology and religion since the genre began (with Superman, in particular, being famous for his Christlike qualities), Doctor Manhattan takes that subtext to its logical conclusion by showing what it might look like if a superhero effectively was God. The story fully explores the complications of that fact, demonstrating how difficult it would be for a man to relate to other humans after being blessed with divine powers, as well as how profoundly his very existence would affect the world.
• Deus Exit Machina: Laurie even called him that when he appeared at Daniel's apartment.
• The Disembodied: A Magical Particle Accelerator tore apart Jon's body, but his mind continued to exist. Apparently thanks to knowledge of nuclear physics and mechanical design, his mind found itself still able to affect the physical universe, even remaking his body. This was and remains his true existence, as his still-disembodied mind does not rely on his physical body to live—his body isn't just replaceable, it seems to just be a convenience.
• Disposable Superhero Maker: Dr. Manhattan's accident.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: Another deconstruction. He could have easily solved the main conflict of the story if he had cared enough to, which in the end, he didn't. Rorschach calls him out on this towards the end when he and Nite Owl show up too late to stop Adrian.
• The Dreaded: So ridiculously powerful, even American citizens who know he's on their side fear him. His mere existence is enough to cow the Soviet Union and other imperialistic regimes into non-aggression, and the Vietcong army's sheer terror and respect ends the Vietnam War.
• Expy: Of Captain Atom.
• Extreme Doormat: He only became a nuclear physicist because his father ordered him to. Even after he became the most powerful man in the world, he still remained a doormat, following the orders of the government. This contributes to his increasing detachment, as he's not motivated by belief in justice or Patriotic Fervor.
• The Fatalist: To an extreme degree. His ability to see the past, present and future has made him believe that free will is an illusion and everyone, even him, is completely at the mercy of the universe's whims and there's nothing they can do about it.
• 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.
• Full-Frontal Assault: An unusual case. He starts out in a black bodysuit. As he grows increasingly inhuman, he wears less and less — he's in a thong by the Vietnam War. The nudity symbolizes his detachment from the human race, as well as emphasizing his utter invulnerability: nothing can hurt him, so why bother covering up? The only times he bothers to get dressed are at the request of others.
• 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".
• Heroic Build: When you're rebuilding your body ex nihilo, you might as well treat yourself to some abs.
• Humanoid Abomination: He shows signs of becoming this throughout the story due to his growing detachment from, well, everything. He ultimately embraces humanity, sort of, but not his own. At best you could say he recognizes the value of humanity. What he actually does is to go off to a galaxy far, far away to play God.
• 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.
• Hunk: Jon gave himself quite the muscled body. That and his godlike power make him attractive to many women in universe. Apart from Janey and then Laurie, one of the minor characters mentions that his wife also finds Dr. Manhattan hot.
• 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 (then again, his lack of interest in bombs dropping is a plot-point).
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: The way Dr. Manhattan sees it, all life on Earth could end, "and the universe would not even notice."
• Invincible Hero: Jon is completely indestructible and there doesn't seem to exist any weapon that can put him down permanently with Veidt only able to inconvenience him for a few moments at best.
• 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.
• 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.
• Monster Modesty: He becomes increasingly immodest as he gets further from his humanity.
• Mr. Fanservice: His new body is quite impressive and he spends almost all his time naked or in nothing but underwear to show it off.
• Mundane Utility: For all his amazing power, one of the main things that makes him able to change society is not his status as a walking nuke, but rather his comparatively less cool ability to synthesize normally rare elements. He can use this to make lithium and helium for free, allowing them to see use in electric cars and airships where they would normally be prohibitively expensive.
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: He was created by a lab accident that was "unplanned, and just as certainly unrepeatable", meaning that they can't just make more super-powered beings like Doctor Manhattan. Adrian found that one of his powers, teleportation, could be reproduced, but without Jon's mind controlling the process, anything living died of shock upon transfer, or materialized in an occupied space and exploded. Fortunately for Veidt this was not a problem, since he didn't need his monster to survive the transfer, and he intended it to do as much damage as possible. It's heavily implied that Jon's background as a watchmaker is the key element to the process, with Jon gradually rebuilding his body with the same certainty he did his father's pocketwatch. This is seemingly discounted by everyone, including Veidt and the Russian attempts to duplicate the accident off-camera.
• Non-Linear Character: Past, present, and future is going on at the same time and so he cannot do anything. This leads him to be positively giddy when he discovers that Veidt has blocked off his ability to perceive the future, as experiencing uncertainty for the first time in several decades also allows him to actually feel excitement again.
• Not So Stoic:
  • After the accident, he only shows genuine emotion during his interview and later when Adrian attempts to destroy him. According to Veidt however, he might as well have been crying the whole time he was just not able to show his distress or communicate it properly.
    Doctor Manhattan: Please if everyone would just go away and leave me alone... I SAID! LEAVE ME ALONE!
  • He also gets downright giddy at realizing Veidt has blocked his ability to see the future, as he realizes how much he actually missed the excitement that comes with uncertainty.
  • Despite placidly going along with everything he's told, he gets annoyed when shown the stylized 'atomic' logo chosen for him. As a nuclear physicist he finds it meaningless, and replaces it with the hydrogen atom.
• The Omniscient: In the first part of the story, while he's still a side character. Although while he can see the future, past and present simultaneously, his knowledge of events is limited solely to the point of view of himself at that point in his personal timeline. For instance, he reveals that he knew that Laurie was sleeping with Dan, not because he saw it happening, but because she told him about a minute into the future.
• One-Man Army: He's one of the key reasons America wins The Vietnam War.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Professor Milton Glass' book excerpt discusses how Dr. Manhattan, with his godlike control over all matter, has tipped the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union by his mere existence. In the event of World War III, he could theoretically destroy large areas of Soviet territory instantaneously, and intercept at least 60% of the missiles launched at the U.S. before they reached their targets. In other words, he is a walking nuclear deterrent. Only two months after he arrived in Vietnam, he had single-handedly turned the tide of the war, to the point where the North Vietnamese were expected to surrender within the week. The moment he is gone the Soviets invade the Middle-East.
• Physical God: Though Dr. Manhattan disputes the trope, it's explicitly stated by Milton Glass. Contrary to popular belief, Prof. Glass didn't coin the phrase, "The superman exists, and he's American." What he actually said before the news changed it was, "God exists, and he's American."
• Posthuman Nudism: Initially Naked on Revival, Manhattan dressed in a black leotard-like costume when in public; as the years went by and he grew more detached from the human condition, he downgraded to a pair of skintight shorts, then a speedo. By the start of the story, he spends his days completely naked, and only bothers with clothing in the event that he needs to make a rare appearance on TV.
• Powerful and Helpless: Jon laments that despite all his vast power, he is just a puppet of a deterministic universe who can see the strings and cannot alter the future even if it ends in the destruction of humanity.
• Power Glows: Though once a television producer complains he's too bright, he turns it off temporarily.
• Prescience Is Predictable: Dr. Manhattan describes himself as "a puppet who can see the strings." Since he views all time simultaneously, he can't change the future because, to him, it's already happening. This causes him to stop caring about what happens and just go with the flow. When a tachyon storm disrupts his ability to tell the future, he becomes excited, saying he had forgotten the joy of uncertainty.
• Pro-Human Transhuman: At the same time as his transformation to The Anti-Nihilist, as he comes to champion humanity and eventually create life in another part of the cosmos.
• 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.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Averted. His presence and abilities have definitely solved many of the world's problems. (Not as many as he could solve, though.) Lampshaded by Nite Owl I. He states that he plans to run a car repair shop after he puts up the cape, saying that even Dr. Manhattan can't change cars. Manhattan then explains how he can do exactly that.
• Self-Made Man: Both in the sense that he came from working-class roots to become a nuclear physicist, and in the most literal sense possible when he reconstructed himself at the quantum level.
• 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.
• The Spock: Once he becomes too insensitive. Even referred to as "goddamn Mr. Spock there" by a minor character at a cocktail party.
• Story-Breaker Power: Ironically, it doesn't do much. Even when Dr. Manhattan is vaporized and comes back.
• Straw Nihilist: Dr. Manhattan initially fits this trope. His nonlinear view of time convinces him that his own actions are predestined and he is powerless to change the course of events. His godlike perception of reality leaves him unable to see the lives of individual humans as significant. As a result, despite being the most powerful man on the planet he just does whatever the government orders him to, because life is so devoid of meaning he can't see why it matters. Later he gets better, and comes to value each human life as unique and precious because of its unlikelihood.
• Superman Substitute: His actual powerset is completely different, but he's the most powerful being in the setting and had his own Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen equivalents...until he grew so detached from humanity that he drove them away. Much like Superman is the "core" of the DC universe, Manhattan's existence irrevocably alters all of society.
• Superpower Lottery: It's not even fair—nobody else in the series has any powers at all, and he's a Physical God!
• Symbol Motif Clothing: Inverted when it comes to the clothing aspect. Doctor Manhattan's nudity represents the fact that he's far beyond anything mortal, but also that he's mentally, emotionally, and socially disconnected from humanity and morality, unbothered by the idea of wearing clothes outside of public appearances.
• That Man Is Dead: Manhattan's above quote applies to Jon.
• Time Dissonance: He experiences time in a non-linear sense. It can make it difficult to have a conversation with him as he simultaneously hears what you're saying, what you've said, and what you're going to say. This gives him an extreme sense of fatalism.
• Tin Man: Doesn't seem to have any emotions at all, anymore. He does.
• Token Super: The Trope Codifier. Dr. Manhattan wins big on the Superpower Lottery and ending up as the only hero in the Watchmen continuity to have powers, which are god-like. The rest of the Watchmen are all Non Powered Costumed Heros.
• 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.
• Walk on Water: Near the end of the graphic novel, as he notes his interest in creating life, he's standing on water. The implication is obvious. In the movie, the walking on water scene is visible in a commercial but lacks the symbolism.
• You Cannot Change The Future: Dr. Manhattan exists in a multidimensional quantum solid state, and quickly tires of listening to his friends talk about what "could have happened" or what "should happen", since he already sees his time-stream. For him, the only difference between past and future is directional causality. The effects of causality on Dr. Manhattan himself are slightly contradictory, as future events can affect him backwards by causing him to report them, but not in any other way; he's unable to use the knowledge to interfere, and sees himself as bound by one-directional causality much like normal people. Especially pointed out when Laurie tries to confess that she slept with Dan, only for Dr. Manhattan to premptively reveal she is going to in a few minutes, leading to them discussing his future sight and state of puppetry. When concluding the discussion by apologizing for sleeping with Dan at the exact time Dr. Manhattan said she would confess it to him, he becomes upset as if being told this for the first time.
  Dr. Manhattan: Miracles by definition are meaningless. Only what can happen does happen.
  Dr. Manhattan: (repeating himself twice) Excuse me, Rorschach. I'm informing Laurie 90 seconds ago.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Gradually came to such a belief due to his immense powers. Despite being a Physical God, he felt himself powerless before the forces governing the universe. Even though he could see key events before they occurred and could easily have shaped history to his liking, he felt anything he did would be so insignificant in the long run that taking action was pointless. His ability to see the future being disrupted is one of the reasons he stops being passive.