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Watchmen
Rorschach is Rick Astley's half brother
It makes perfect sense when you think about it: They're both gingers, they both wear trench-coats ◊, they're both legendary for their refusal to give up... In a sequel, we'll learn that Rick Astley's father once paid for a fling with Mrs. Kovacs while vacationing in America, and he later returned to reclaim his illegitimate son and raise him. The sequel will take place years after the faked attack on New York, in a future where Adrian Veidt has been elected the leader of the new unified world government and controls it with a complex computer system. Rick will take up his fallen brother's mantle and use his deadly viral video to bring down Veidt's computer network and avenge his brother. The book is really a prequel to V for Vendetta
The Russians will eventually find out that the attack on New York was faked, and they'll panic once they realize that the Americans have the power to genetically engineer Eldritch Abominations like Veidt's creature. The sheer paranoia from this will end up sparking the nuclear war that will lead to Norsefire taking over the British government. Later, they'll discover one of Dr. Manhattan's synthesized chemicals and test it on the prisoners at Larkhill Concentration Camp...
Dr. Manhattan knew about Rorshach's journal
Watchmen was actually written by
"As the third book in his acclaimed Pirates! Trilogy, Watchmen will never be surpassed, even by the author himself, Grant Morrison.
While I think we all agree that Watchman was a rather clunky start to trilogy—as Morrison attempted to shoehorn a lot of 2000AD continuity into a rather pedestrian tale of pirates—it wasn't until the sequel, Watchman II: A Dire Ship Across Dire Seas, where his true vision became apparent. I mean, what a twist—that ending!
And then Morrison had to go and completely top it all in the third installment, Watchmen. While the (A) plot is a somewhat obvious tale of retired superheroes and sci-fi monsters, Morrison cleverly weaved the true story—a pirate story—into the plot in a series of pirate-comics read by one of the characters. And just when we thought he couldn't top his twist in part II, it turns out that there never were any pirates at all in any of the stories. The pirates are really us, the readers, all along. Morrison's trilogy is actually a cautionary tale of illegally downloading comics off the inter-net. We are the pirates. Who pirates the Pirates, indeed?"
 Grant Morrison. Watchmen is a lead-up to The End of Days.
And by extention Neon Genesis Evangelion...
The Apocalypse starts with 3/4ths of humanity being spirited away to heaven; Watchmen ends with tens of millions of people experiencing either instant death or severe Mind Rape. Both stories hinge on the return of powerful beings (the nonexistant interdimensional aliens in the comic and Dr. Manhattan in the movie, respectively) while in the mean time a deceptive leader and his many tentacles of influence rules the world.
Rorschach was turned into a fetus, had his DNA altered, and his memories (but not his skills) wiped and was then teleported into the DCU.
To be exact, he was Bruce Wayne. Dr. Manhattan tried to give him the opposite of what he had as Rorschach, but he wasn't in control of the DCU, and Joe just had to go Off the Rails. Manhattan also placed in him that no killing rule, so he wouldn't be able to go down the same path. So, yes, Rorschach is Batman.
Rorschach was intended to show what would happen to someone like Batman 'in the real world'. It makes sense.
However, Rorschach is seen in the background of a metahuman bar in Kingdom Come.
Rorschach is able to manipulate heat and fire.
Rorschach has the power to manipulate his own body temperature because of his red hair and is therefore able to heat himself up. Think of it...on both occasions where a normal person might need or want heat - when Rorschach is eating cold beans from a can in Daniel's apartment and when Rorschach is in the arctic - Rorschach declines heat. On the first occasion, Daniel offers to heat up the beans and Rorschach declines. On the second, Daniel offers Rorschach arctic gear and Rorschach says he's fine with his normal clothing. So therefore, he can manipulate heat. Also, he didn't use a makeshift flamethrower in Moloch's flat, he makes the fire himself. Because he's a redhead.
Adrian Veidt is V.
Both are charismatic, have superhuman reflexes, are very intelligent. Adrian even signs his letters with a "V—" in Watchmen.
After the events of Watchmen, Veidt leaves his Antarctic base and goes to England. He abandons his role as Ozy and takes on the role of V in order to take action again. V never actually was in a concentration camp, he was Adrian Veidt. He is hiding his identity behind the mask, not physical scars.
V also created a story about a fictional prisoner to give to Evie, who believed it. This makes it plausible that he could have been able to fabricate his own history as well.
Rorschach, rather than being a repressed homosexual, is a repressed heterosexual.
This is to further expand on the Rorschach is straight below, and it's pretty straight forward. Rorschach is really uncomfortable with expressing his sexuality. He finds normal sexuality to be so strange, that he can't even comprehend homosexuality. (This may seem redundant, but, yeah.)
Rorschach has a violence fetish.
Obviously, this stems from his being very violent when compared to the other heroes in the book. But that's followed up with his early childhood memories, like when he burned another kid's eye out. This fetish got so bad, he can't get aroused any other way. This resulted in his seeking out a life as a masked hero. However, his earlier vigilantism didn't involve killing, but as he got more and more violence out of his character Rorschach, he had to find other ways of getting turned on. So, he started to kill. A major turning point in his "career" was when he killed the kidnapper and his two dogs. In the prison, he obviously commits multiple acts of violence. Finally, he is at his most emotional when he is killed, again violently, by Dr. Manhattan. We could couple this with homosexuality, and say that when he was attacking Ozymandias, it was a sex act. Asking Dr. Manhattan to kill him is another way of indicating his attraction to Dr. Manhattan. Thoughts?
This takes place in the same universe as The Incredibles
See The Incredibles.
Ozymandias is another metahuman: his superpower is super-intelligence
Ozymandias isn't stupid; he has a back-up plan
Ozymandias is considered the world's smartest man, and deservedly so. Why then does he come up with such a simplistic solution, whose flaws are apparent? Perhaps because in the event of its failure, he has acquired yet another ace
Some characters have hidden powers
Rorschach is gay.
There's a higher than expected number of alternative sexualities among the masked vigilantes, the only relationship he has with anyone is with Nite Owl, and his dislike of homosexuals is due to internalized homophobia.
Rorschach is heterosexual, but has some serious sexual issues.
His mother was a prostitute, a fact he learned at an early age. His dislike of the female form (the dresses, Laurie's revealing costume) is caused by his revulsion at his own heterosexual attraction. (He could only stand the dress he made into his mask by "cutting it until it didn't look like a woman".)
Rorschach is bisexual.
See both the above Wild Mass Guesses combined. Rorschach is screwed up enough for both genders.
Rorschach is lesbian.
He is afflicted with female pseudohermaphroditism, and therefore female, but with apparent characteristics of a male. "He" is attracted to females, but knows about his condition, and the confusion over what exactly he should be classified as is tearing him up inside. The Ho Yay with Nite Owl is because "he" thinks "he" should like Nite Owl, but isn't sure if it's actually sexual attraction, a reaction to the anti-gay-superhero attacks, or trying to fit his attractions to "his" physical instead of apparent gender. Cutting the dress into a mask until it no longer looked like a woman wasn't any anti-female or violent sentiment, but to make it more like "him".
Ozymandias has developed a transparent bulletproof full-body suit.
And he wears it all the time. Which is how he "catches" Laurie's bullet, and also why he wasn't afraid to take out a contract on himself: the bullet would bounce off.
Doctor Manhattan misled the US Government about his abilities to avoid a war.
He claims that in a nuclear war he'd only be able to intercept about 50% of the incoming missiles, but his abilities elsewhere are amazing:
Doctor Manhattan created our Earth.
The setting of Watchmen is clearly an alternate history to our own, yet Doctor Manhattan sees the past and future as immutable. So, no parallel universes, and a character who, at the end of the story, expresses an interest in creating human beings. Hmm....
Ozymandias's peace didn't last.
After World War 3, Britain was left as one of the few remaining superpowers. Their previous attempt at a super-soldier like Manhattan hadn't gone so well, so they tried again with a more down-to-earth approach.
Doctor Manhattan was actively preventing his origin from being replicated
Ozzy had an IF machine, so they're not impossible to replicate. Sure, it may be a million-to-one chance to get a God out of the accident rather than a pile of dust, but that just means you have to kill a bunch of people to make it work. Why weren't the Russians throwing thousands of gulaggers into them? One possibility is that they are (or at least used to, they may have given up), but Manhattan is stopping it from working to avoid the creation of more superpowered beings.
Watchmen is set in the alternate 1985 from Back To The Future Part II.
It's an alternate 1985 (October 1985, no less) and Nixon is still president.
The inhabitants of Lesbos banned the word "lesbian".
In Watchmen, they use "gay woman" instead of the more common lesbian. One character accidentally uses "lesbian" and is immediately corrected. And over in The Real World, the inhabitants of Lesbos are trying to ban the word. Somehow they succeeded and convinced the rest of the world to stop using "lesbian" except to refer to people from Lesbos.
The nuclear exchange wouldn't have happened anyway.
After all, in the real-life cold war there were times when the general feeling was that escalation was inevitable — but despite all the doomsaying and "The Soviets aren't like us, they're desperate and ruthless and capable of anything", the threat of mutually assured destruction did in fact keep hostilities at bay. Consider then how Veidt's nightmare ("I'm swimming towards a hideous...never mind") highlights the parallels between Veidt's story and Marooned. In Marooned, the protagonist commits horrible deeds, repulsive to himself and increasingly evil, finally hurting his own loved ones, leaving him alone in the world and damned forever — all on account of an attack on his homeland which never happened, and never would have happened.
The nuclear exchange would have happened without Veidt's intervention.
The world of the Watchmen is different from our own: in the U.S., Watergate never caused the public to become more cautious about trusting the government's judgement, and Manhattan built up a strong sense of invulnerability, while in Russia, Manhattan caused an attitude of fear and powerlessness, which could have contributed to a powerful wave of resentment and hate above and beyond what existed in our own Cold War. Combined with the numberous times that events in this world almost ended in disaster, Veidt may well have only barely prevented a real apocalypse.
Rorschach has Asperger's Syndrome
Rorschach displays a number of the classic traits of the mild form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome. He clearly doesn't empathize with others or understand how people think, doesn't like talking with people so much as talking at them, has major obsessions, and is said to have been a good student, yet a very withdrawn one. He has daily rituals in the form of his patrols, and his speech and clothing both have significant and very weird quirks, and he tends to take odd ways around problems. (Hence all the work for the Gordian Knot Lock Co.) Along with his incredibly screwed-up childhood, this has left him as the psycho we all know and love.
Rorschach's mask does reflect his facial expressions, but in an arbitrary way.
The inkblot patterns (in the first mask at least) are caused by basically blobs of oil floating around in water, settling aimlessly on the surface of his face. And though he probably doesn't make terribly exaggerated facial expressions much of the time, it would still adjust to raised eyebrows or a sudden change in body temperature. So it * does* display his facial expressions... but nobody wants to hang around him long enough to figure out which one is what.
Dr. Manhattan's bizzarre perception of time is due to him being somewhat aware of the fact that he's a character in a comic book.
Whenever he talks about a past or future event that's happening he's referring to an even that appears elsewhere in the book. He knows he's powerless to change history because the ending has already been written. At one point he mentions how time is something that exists all at once, but humans insist on seeing it one piece at a time because people read comics one panel at a time. Also, note how stops talking as if he everything is pre-ordained towards the end of the book, "Maybe I'll create some.", because that part hasn't been written.
Dr. Manhattan is the Kwisatz Haderach.
The World's Smartest Man is actually an Idiot.
Let's look at the facts, the man decides to name himself after Ramses II—fine, he happens to admire the man. Pity that Ramses II ended up losing to God... Also, interesting choice to pick the version of the name that's explicitly and famously tied to hubris and futility. And his choice of password?
The World's Smartest Man is really only a bit clever.
World's Smartest Man is a publicity based nickname, one that Adrian didn't even choose. Sure, he's probably got above average intelligence. He's a successful man who made a fortune through clever use of his image, and he's able to work out a lot of complicated factors for his Gambit Roulette. But his roulette comes together mostly because he's predicting the behavior of people he knows well, because he's flexible as long as he's moving towards his goal, and he has a lot of money and power to cover his tracks. And as has been pointed out many times, his plan is flawed for many reasons—he can't contain every possible security leak, even if he could he wouldn't be able to maintain a lasting peace, in the long run he's probably as clueless about people as Dr. Manhattan. If I had to guess, I'd say he has an IQ of around 140. Notably above average, but nothing incredible.
Dr. Manhattan created the Soul Swords, and the entire Soul universe.
Ok, I know this sounds weird but... Dr. Manhattan creates a new universe, creates the ancestors of the characters, then, deciding he wants to rid himself of his humanity even further, splits himself into two swords: one a manifestation of his good side, the other his evil side. He watches people fight over him for his amusement. In his own way, this is to make up for the fact he lost his wife to Nite Owl.
Rorschach is a virgin
Think about it. Rorschach is a Celibate Hero depicted as having a total fear of anything sexual, which is implied to be the result of a messed up childhood. It wouldn't be too far off to suggest that Rorschach is a subversion of A Man Is Not a Virgin.
Laurie and Dan's blonde hair is an accidental parting gift from Dr. Manhattan
Because it seems like such a pain to bleach and dye all your facial hair: some radiation leaked out during his dramatic exit, turning their hair blond. The only other person still around (alive) was Ozy, and since he's already blonde, nobody noticed.
Laurie will become The Comedienne
And Dan will have a bat-themed costume (if any), and builds an empire selling his technology.
Ozy's secret weapon in The Movie is Dr. Manhattan
The trailers show New York getting annihilated not by a psychic blast or giant tenticles, but by an explosion of blue flames. According to Entertainment Weekly, the Watchmen movieverse still relies on oil and this is important to the plot (in the comic they've long since switched to electric cars thanks to Dr. Manhattan; he even points out to the retired first Nite Owl that he (Nite Owl) can't be an auto mechanic because cars are so different). Ergo, Dr. Manhattan has just developed an alternative fuel source, Ozy gets ahold of it, messes with it and BOOM, millions of people dead and Dr. Manhattan gets the blame.
There WAS no nuclear war...at all
Ozymandias thought there was going to be a war because he was insane. He was a delusional, psychopathic man with a messiah complex who believed that only HE could "save" mankind from itself. He was clearly bonkers. More so, he saw the "normal" saber rattlings of the Cold War and believed that humanity, known for it's tendency to survive, would do something so utterly, instantly suicidal. This is entirely unlikely, even more unlikely being that if Dr. Manhattan is even half as powerful as he seems (multiplying, size changing, matter control) then stopping 40,000 or 400,000 nuclear weapons should be well within his capacity...really, it's simply not possible to overwhelm someone that powerful, so the only real logical conclusion is Manhattan was either lying or those were rumors or propaganda. Ozy saw this as "real" for some reason. The comic itself seems to imply this: the Black Freighter. The story of the Black Freighter parallels the story of Ozymandias in almost every respect: a man goes mad and thinks he has to "save" his village from pirates, but when he tries to he ends up just killing some people for no reason. It even has the guy fretting over a strawman...as in, strawman fallacy. The symbolism is actually made rather hamfisted when even Ozymandias, at the end, actually hints he's been dreaming of himself in the role of the sailor from the Black Freighter comic. Basically Ozymandias went crazy and killed millions of people because he started to believe his own hype, he started to think he was really "the smartest man in the world" and that only he could see these patterns around him, and only he could save the world and stop a nuclear war. In the end, he saved no one, stopped nothing, and killed half of New York for a pipe dream. It becomes somewhat obvious his plan wouldn't work for real—unless one allows for writer's fiat as an explanation—because the monster was genetically engineered from human DNA...meaning it would still have human DNA in it, or at the very least similar enough that someone would notice. And that is before people begin to question where the rest of this "alien invasion" is years later and why the alien died instantly when it appeared, a pretty piss poor invasion isn't it? Sooner or later people would figure out what happened, and that's assuming no one looks at The Question...er, Rorschach's notes and figues it out. Or that no one in the group breaks ranks, like Laurie.
Ozymandias is the Emperor of Mankind
Genius-level intellect? Check. Peak physical capabilities? Check. Scientific pioneer? Check. Early genetic-engineering expert? Check. Willing to go to any lengths to secure Humanity's future? Check.
Captain Metropolis and Hooded Justice
Are alive and gay.
Nite Owl isn't who he says he is
Dan keeps surveillance equipment around because he doesn't want anyone knowing his real identity. He makes a habit of covering his eyes with glasses or goggles, only going without them around women he trusts. He doesn't let Laurie touch his hair because it's probably fake, and looks like it's about to slip off. He has blonde hair on his face at the end, which is much harder to dye, but makes more sense if he's a natural blonde to begin with, and waits until he's comfortable revealing this to Laurie. So who is Nite Owl? The son of Hollis Mason? The son of Captain Metropolis or Dollar Bill? The brother of Adrian Veidt?
Nite Owl is the killer
Dan, unable to forgive The Comedian for (attempted) raping Laurie's mother, waits several years after the Keene Act when few suspect him, enters The Comedian's apartment and throws him out the window. The cuffs of the killer's sweater match the clothes we first see Dan wearing. He upgrades the lock on his door to keep investigators from finding out who he his. He talks to Ozymandias who separates Laurie from Jon by orchestrating a radiation scare. The Hollis Mason story will hide Dan's identity for another few years, but he needs to get away from public scrutiny altogether, using Rorschach as the fall guy. Telling the police he's at Moloch's, named for the god of human sacrifice, Dan conveniently isn't there to help. When the police come after Dan, it's too late to hide any longer and he takes a risk by breaking out Rorschach, since he wants the investigators to go after multiple vigilante suspects rather than pinpoint him. Dan delays Rorschach's investigation until Adrian, who was funding Dan's equipment all along, is ready to activate the plan. Dan cares more about the thugs who killed Hollis than following Rorschach's interrogation. He knows just how to open the Karnak door, doesn't put up a fight in Adrian's presence, and stops Rorschach twice by making him believe the Lynx is too deadly. Ozymandias covers for Dan, shifting all the blame onto himself by using a flashback story as his only evidence, handwaving it to Rorschach as part of his larger scheme for world peace, while Dan watches to see if Rorschach or Laurie will agree with Adrian. Dan is supposed to convince Laurie and Jon that "Utopia Justifies the Means," but can't convince Rorschach, who is killed for it. As a reward for getting the others to agree with Ozymandias, Dan is given a new identity to start his life over, marries Laurie, and lives happily ever after, finally absolved of his crime.
Nite Owl is Adrian's spy
Using Adrian's method of looking for symbols and meaning in random chaos, we find Dan associates with Horus and the eye of vengeance, corresponding to the third Egyptian statue, the third mugshot in the New Frontiersman, and the third kid dressed as a pirate. Adrian's dreams reflect the pirate's life in Tales of the Black Freighter, yet Dan is the pirate symbol because Ozymandias uses him like an avatar to scout and get information. The pirate outfit has an eyepatch covering the right eye, as the smiley face has the right eye smudged to represent the coming 11th hour, represented most by Nite Owl, who sits at the right eye of Archie while its right window becomes obstructed to make the symbol. When Jon makes the symbol it's due to measuring time, expressed not by his emotionless face but a clock face, a tool mechanically pointing to the right side out of inevitability, not choice, while Dan chooses to stay on the right side as a marker to willingly follow until the end, tracing the symbol with his fingers in Chapter VII.
Dan shows his knowledge of Greek and Egyptian history by not only knowing the Greek name of Ozymandias, but worshiping the symbol of birds in "Blood from the Shoulder of Pallas," where the owl sits at the right shoulder of Athena, goddess of craft, war, wisdom and philosophy, areas that Ozymandias excels in, with the owl being the right hand attendant, intelligence gatherer, and spy. Dan has surveillance equipment he looks at apprehensively in Chapter VII, which could report back to Adrian. Dan's love for Greek and Egyptian mythology is how he respects Ozymandias, the man who believes he's the Greek who conquered Egypt to unite their culture. Dan mentions Athena on the face of Greek coins, a likely reference to coins in the eyes of the dead used to cross the river Styx, making Athena/Ozymandias a guide from this world to the next.
Odd is his observation that modern people look at a hawk scientifically while "the Egyptians once saw Horus and the burning eye of holy vengeance incarnate," and that we need to "transform our mere sightings into genuine visions" to be true passion. Dan respects the Eye of Horus, the eye of the hawk/falcon, representing the analytical mind of letters, numbers, thoughts and senses when on the face's right side. When the detective "looks ahead" at the calendar in Dan's house, he sees a hawk attacking its prey, a clue to Dan's identity that he keeps hidden. Horus, the god of the sky, has the head of a hawk/falcon, which is the rightmost statue in Ozymandias' office, opposite the leftmost statue off panel, which corresponds to The Comedian and the devil costume.
Rorschach corresponds to the center statue, the jackal headed Anubis, who brings people to the afterlife and measures the worthiness of the dead. Rorschach wears the inkblot symbol and sees the dog in an inkblot, making the dog face his symbol, and analyzes Anubis in terms of watching over the dead. As Anubis is the brother of Horus, Rorschach is the spiritual brother to Nite Owl, and Nite Owl can't kill Rorschach, but needs to escort him to Karnak, Adrian's "tomb" to die a symbolic death and be reborn in the new world, avoiding Alexander's literal death, accompanied by three associates who die before Adrian walks into Karnak, as three men escort Alexander's chariot in the painting, three gods escort Adrian to the next world, and three heroes die for him, though one has his conscience and identity die to spare his mortality and live on in the next world with Adrian. Alan Moore does this kind of thing using myths and symbolic meaning all the time, in Promethea for example, so yeah.
Nite Owl seeks Adrian's protection
In contrast to the stereotypical 1940's Nazi villain Captain Axis, modern racist and anti-Nazi paranoia continues from the ongoing conflict in Europe. Dan Dreiberg has a Jewish surname, and to avoid persecution, adopts the last name Hollis as the original Nite Owl was given the name from his dad's friend to hide his secret Jewish ethnicity, while German music reminds him of oppression when hearing Ride of the Valkyries or the later band Kristallnacht, and out of fear, publishes his book to give himself an American Montana background, since his association with novelist Denise could bring suspicion among conspiracy theorists who believe Jews run the media, just as people make an issue of whether reporter Woodward Bernstein is Jewish, The New Frontiersman gets mail about Jewish conspiracies like the "Jewnited States of America," and even shows a cartoon with a fat Jewish man controlling big business, in league with Communism and organized crime, hiring black prostitutes to sell drugs and Asian street thugs to increase violence, despite having a cartoonist named Feinberg. Nite Owl is wary of the bigoted attitude he sees in Captain Metropolis, who puts the label "black unrest" over the lower United States and makes racist statements about Hispanics and blacks, and Hooded Justice, who supports the ideology of the Third Reich, or the news vendor who accidentally implies all blacks know each other, and the New Frontiersman editor who hates anything Chinese or Russian. Ozymandias believes the subtle meanings taken from the chaos of the media point to a shared ideology, and this racist paranoia is subconsciously promoted by the war.
Ozymandias takes advantage of this racist attitude by calling his rivals Nazis to further villainize them, as he calls The Comedian a Nazi to see if Rorschach agrees, and the Pioneer Publishing office is vandalized with Swastika and Sieg Heil graffiti, likely by competitor Nova Express, owned by Triangle Incorporated, a Veidt subsidiary. The New Frontiersman retaliates by calling Nova Express a Communist anti-American publication, but its fringe views will hardly make a dent in the media, though people already have anti-gay, anti-porn, anti-liberal, and anti-foreign sentiment, which Ozymandias uses by misdirecting the public's fear on each other instead of on him, and gets away with using parts of these ideologies to further his business goals, promoting the human perfection ideal of the Nazis and the societal utopia of Communism justified at any cost, without being called a Communist or Nazi, by dedicating Capitalist resources to sell products based on responses to these fears as a form of mass comfort.
After the attack on New York, Ozymandias gets to clean out old businesses, replacing the Gunga Diner with a Russian restaurant in hopes of new pro-Russian attitudes, while people alleviate their fears by associating brand names like Nostalgia and Millenium with true love. Ozymandias gets to run his Capitalist empire, pacifying the world in consumerism, and is allowed to by having his sole opposition, costumed heroes, comply with him and not interfere. Ozymandias believes he's conquering the evils of the world by controlling and manipulating prejudice, and assures Dan Dreiberg he won't be persecuted in his new world order once Dan takes on his new identity, and Dan agrees.
Hooded Justice is related to Rorschach
The exposé "Under the Hood" is an opportunity for Hollis to cover his past to the public by inventing much of his early life and his associates that we never see, while misdirecting the identity of Hooded Justice. His claim that he saw Hooded Justice and was inspired by him is his way to publicly deny knowledge of who Hooded Justice is, with the wrestler speculation as a further alibi. Nite Owl had a close partnership with Hooded Justice and wanted to keep his identity hidden, mirroring the modern relationship of Nite Owl and Rorschach (as a professional partnership, or a different kind altogether). Hooded Justice's vigilante fighting style was the inspiration for Rorschach, as Rorschach's trainer, or his father, who sees Rorschach's mother when she's working as a whore, and calls himself Charlie. Rorschach respects his father enough to follow in his crimefighting footsteps, haunted by his human side which he blames on sin and all the wrongs of the world, projected onto his mother, a product of the world he has no control over.
Hollis Mason is related to Adrian Veidt
Hollis Mason is a pseudonym given by Mason's father to him. We don't know Hollis' real name or his dad's. Hollis is 23 in 1939, is blonde, and has a face shot that looks surprisingly like Adrian Veidt, born in 1939. Hollis may have escaped Germany after anti-Nazi sentiment, seeking to prove his loyalty to the US by battling Nazi villain Captain Axis as Nite Owl, while keeping his German heritage hidden. His son Adrian disowns him and makes up stories about his parents immigrating to the US with tons of wealth and dying when he's 17, and continues his life alone, perfecting his skills to live up to his Ãœbermensch ideal. Hollis meets Dan Drieberg and trains him, treating him like a son, letting him avoid prejudice by doing good deeds as Nite Owl. Dan uses the name Hollis to stay anonymous, just as the name has always been used.
Hollis Mason has a secret
Owl figurines surround the trophy of the first Night Owl given during a banquet, which says "In Gratitude." Dan isn't only thankful for being trained by Hollis, he's thankful Hollis has kept his secrets for so long. So are others. What secrets does Hollis know?
Hollis knows which of his friends and associates have become heroes and villains, why someone became a hero or villain if they aren't giving the real reason, which costumes have been traded to keep identities alive, what real names are behind which made up alter egos, where someone is from, whose last name isn't what they claim it is, who is secretly related to whom, who has had intimate relationships with whom, what secret opinions or ideology is whose, what became of heroes reported dead or missing, what secret backstories do all the minor villains have, what professional, romantic, or familial relationships any of the briefly seen civilians may or may not have with anyone, and anything else we just don't know.
The above WMGs on Hollis and Dan are true
The director was so devoted to the text he didn't have a chance to explore them.
Dr. Manhattan goes on to create the world of 2001: A Space Odyssey
This is why 2001 is populated entirely by monotone people with no emotional connection to each other, and the explanation for the glowing baby at the end: Osterman placed the monoliths and created a successor/heir out of Dave Bowman. He also is the one that put the FIRST monolith there, to bring sentience to the apes. This would ALSO explain why, in the year 2001, that universe has space travel, sentient AIs, and the USSR. It isn't OUR timeline.
Dr. Manhattan goes on to create the universe of Star Trek
Dr. Manhattan went as far away from his earth as he could, and then proceeded to create the known Star Trek universe. Somewhere in the quadrant where Voyager is is the Watchmen-Earth, and Q is what eventually became of Doctor Manhattan once he ascended in power.
Dr. Manhattan goes on to create every universe ever
Including this one, but especially Deconstructor Fleet worlds like the BSG and NGE 'verses. At some point managing all these worlds becomes too much, so he sends out the Bokurano fighters to thin the herd. Once he's commenced Jumping Off the Slippery Slope he creates the Warhammer40K universe to envelope everything, leaves the Chaos Gods (initially Order Gods) to manage things until it all gets completely out of hand, destroys the universe with another Big Bang and starts all over again.
(Movie) Ozymandias is gay
Think about it. He dresses in crisp purple suits at work, his hair is never short of perfect, his corporate office building has downward-pointing triangles everywhere, he has a folder on his computer labeled 'boys,' and in the opening credits he's seen at Studio 54 at what looks like one of their infamous "Sundays at Studio 54" parties.
There will be a sequel to The Movie
It'll take place in The Nineties and be a deconstruction of the X-Men with Veidt taking responsibility for the Bizarre Baby Boom he created. "Mrs. Hollis" will be hired as Team Mom since she's the only person who's had long-term experience with an actual super-powered being, but she's not very useful because she's not used to super-powered beings with actual (and out of control) emotions; plus there's that whole "teaming up with the mass murderer who framed her lover" thing.
Silhouette wasn't murdered for being gay.
In the comic, Silhouette is outed, expelled from the group, and murdered six weeks later. So it's natural to think it whoever did it was motivated by homophobia. But she was murdered by "one of her former enemies", ie someone with a motive to kill her that preceded the scandal. Even in the 1940s, "beats up violent criminals" is more likely to provide a motive for murder than "is a lesbian". So the only connection between her being outed and being murdered is that the press revealed her identity in the process and she lost the protection of the group. There's a weird parallel here with Kitty Genovese, the woman who inspired Rorschach. She was also a lesbian who was murdered by someone who either didn't know or didn't care about her sexuality. You'd think Alan Moore did this intentionally, but Genovese wasn't publically revealed to be a lesbian until 2004.
Moloch is Rorschach's father.
Watch the opening credits carefully. The "customer" coming out of Rorschach's mother's room bears a striking resemblance to Moloch, though his ears are only slightly pointy. He ruffles Walter's hair, something probably nobody else would care enough about him to do. It would fit the archetype, wouldn't it? Framed for killing his own (unknown) father?
Dr. Manhattan made the "Magic Bullet"
In The Movie, it was outright shown that the Comedian shot JFK (most likely for Nixon). Since Dr. Manhattan and the Comedian are the only legal "superheros" during Nixon's term, it wouldn't be too far off to assume that Dr. Manhattan made (or was tricked into making) the bullet that gave birth to the "Single bullet theory". One Fridge Logic question though, what could Nixon possibly gain from having Kennedy killed?
Bubastis will ascend to godhood.
Bubastis was subjected to the same process as created Dr. Manhattan. Her disembodied mind would have had the opportunity to
Meanwhile, Rorschach's journal was secreted away as soon as the New Frontiersmen editors figured out what it was and it becomes a MacGuffin to bring down Veidt. But just as Veidt's actions are highly questionable, so is the idea of desabilizing everything in the name of the truth, leading to a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero ending.
observe Dr. Manhattan rebuild himself. The fulfillment of Her prophetic name will be the fulfillment of Ozymandias's, as she remakes the world.
Bubastis and Dr. Manhattan merged when subjected to the IFS.
The new big blue guy that appears shortly afterwards is actually a gestalt entity, hence the personality change in which he stops being fatalistic, kills someone, and goes off to create some inferior beings to play with.
Watchmen is somewhat influenced by H.P. Lovecraft
Ozymandias seems to have more than a few parallels with everybody's favourite messenger of the Outer Gods. Let's see: he's extremely intelligent, and responsible for several unusual inventions (although Dr Manhattan helped with those), is fascinated with Egyptian history (his research facility is a fricking Egyptian temple in the Antarctic!), he has a pet tiger ("wild beasts lick his hands"), he's completely uncaring about individual human lives (although unlike Nyarly, he actually wants to do what's good for mankind as a whole), and his plan to unite the world features a giant extradimensional squid that mindrapes people (Great Cthulhu, anyone?). You could also draw parallels between Dr Manhattan and Yog-Sothoth, but that's mostly because Yog-Sothoth is essentially Lovecraft's version of God and Manhattan is a Physical God.
Rorschach is a Waste Lock
He is a conduit for negative human emotion, which causes him to gradually become more and more homicidally insane and pseudo-emotionless, just like Nny. (He's got other parallels - paranoid, believes all his killing is justified by the victims being bad people, writes everything down in a journal - but it isn't quite relevant right now). He therefore belongs in neither heaven nor hell - and, let's face it, he wouldn't. This means that killing him may have destroyed and reset the universe.
The movie Laurie has cancer
In both the comic and movie Adrian says he "had to kill" the Comedian because "he found out". In the comic The Comedian discovered an enclave creating a giant psychic alien squid, but this doesn't exist in the movie. So what did he discover in the movie that would require his death?
In both the comic and movie, The Comedian warns Moloch he's "on the list", which subsequent events strongly imply is a list of people with cancer, leaked to Nova Express. The entire list is never revealed, but all the cancer victims are people with long associations with Dr. Manhattan. Who else in the movie had a long association with Manhattan? In the comic, which had the squid, Laurie claims she did not have cancer, but this never happens in the movie.
The only thing The Comedian ever showed affection for is his daughter, Laurie. If her name was also on the list, Adrian's life would be in deadly danger, making the removal of The Comedian necessary.
Watchmen shares a continuity with...
Another deconstruction of the superhero genre featuring a hodgepodge, lopsided cast of "superheroes" who, for the most part, are just incredibly flawed human beings with no powers to speak of. I'm thinking it fits in pre-Keene Act.
Finish this sentence- Rorschach's splatter looked like...
In The Movie, the increased blood was all part of the deconstruction
It had to work in a deconstruction of what made comic book movies different from the books somewhere in the direct translation from page to screen. What is the most common theme in comic book movies? More blood, more violence. So they did the best they could to increase the quantity of red stuff, going Beyond the Impossible in the process to show just how much there'd be.
Watchmen is going to kick off a trend of stupid, mindlessly R-rated superhero movies.
If it does well, it's going to be just like when the comic came out. The producers are going to see that people liked The Dark Knight and Watchmen and go "Hmm. I guess we need to start making this shit Darker and Edgier." Ignoring, of course, that the damn plot was why people liked them. Effectively, the history of comic movies is going to echo the history of comics after the sixties done in fast-forward. Wont' THAT be fun.
Watchmen is going to kick off a trend of stupid, mindlessly PG-13-rated Superhero/Sci-Fi/Horror movies because it failed
The industry will discontinue R-Rated blockbusters reguardless of the source material. And continue to play it safe with PG/PG-13 genre films. The days of R-rated blockbusters are now long gone (Unless it's a comedy). And might always have been.
Watchmen is going to kick off a Reconstruction of superhero films.
Contrary to the above Guess, now that Watchmen has come out the spate of superhero flicks, and action movies in general, have gotten about as dark as they should go. When Superman is a neglectful, absent parent, that's about it. Maybe Hollywood will finally say that it's time to lighten up and give the public a superhero who is unabashedly, unashamedly, unironically good and heroic.
Watchmen
Well, it would have. But after that Real Life Somali pirate attack, it's unlikely now.
Watchmen isn't going to kick off any trends.
Hooded Justice wasn't German, he was Russian, and Colonel Volgin's non-electric sibling.
Well, they're both tall, muscular, sadomasochistic, rather Hard Gay types (although Volgin was actually bi) who were excessively fond of hitting people really hard. This may also have provided additional incentive for him to refuse to reveal his identity to the HCUAC if he was the brother of a Soviet colonel.
Dr. Mahattan becomes Tim from Braid.
Think about it.
They can percieve time differently, both have experience in nuclear development, both have issues understanding/developing relationships with women, and both have big regrets.
After Manhattan left earth, he created the strange monster filled, painted background world that Braid is in order to sort out his conflicting feelings on himself, Laurie, and how he fits into the universe.
By this line of logic, Laurie is the Princess, and Dan is the White Knight.
Firefly is the future of Watchmen
Veidt Corporation becomes Blue Sun, and Veidt was partially responsible for starting the Anglo-Sino Alliance. The Alliance has done the whole kill-several-million-people-to-save-more only they didn't have good intentions or the competence of Veidt.
Battlestar Galactica is the future of Watchmen
It's just not the future of Watchmen's Earth. At the end, Dr. Manhattan decides to go to another galaxy and create life — which he does. And watches the same cycles occur over and over again, because his creations are all following patterns that echo his own life. This is why "All Along The Watchtower" is significant in both settings.
Dr. Manhattan goes back in time and becomes the Genie from Aladdin.
They're both blue, able to defy the laws of physics, and have a habit of making copies of themselves. The Genie's goofy personality is probably Dr. Manhattan's attempt to better identify with humanity through humor (it also explains how the Genie could know about present-day celebrities).
Rorschach didn't die
Dr. Manhattan teleported him to near-future England, where he was rounded up by the government due to his strange behaviour. While in captivity, an unethical medical experiment turned him into a a superhuman anarchist. He later fakes his death after destroying the fascistic British regime.
Ozymandias is actually Light Yagami
The Doom Marine is the reincarnated soul of Eddie Blake/The Comedian and Hell invades in a futile effort to get his soul back/damage control.
Hell is destroyed in Doom 2 and this is the only explanation on how the Doomguy is awesome enough to do this.
The infamous Saturday Morning Watchmen
It's mentioned that Ozy made a lot of money by licensing his likeness, and the others, having secret identities, wouldn't be in a good position to sue, so can't you just see him putting together a Saturday morning cartoon? Especially one that appears to have Anvilicious Aesops about environmentalism and The Power of Friendship?
actually exists in the Watchmen universe
Rorschach's Journal is actually a Death Note
A bored shinigami took notice of Rorschach after he murdered the kidnapper in the 1970s and saw to it that their Death Note found its way into Rorschach's hands. However, it underestimated Rorschach's indomitable refusal to compromise, so the Note is incapable of killing anyone Rorschach does not judge to be totally evil (the other heroes of the story, for example).
Rorschach is a genuine superhuman
Not exactly high-end, but still genuine. I don't mean his amazing fighting and investigative skills, but something much simpler: He can function normally while he's wearing his mask, which is opaque.
Rorschach and Dexter Morgan (of 'Dexter' fame) are the same person
Stick with me for a moment on this one. At the end of Watchmen Dr. Manhattan doesn't kill Rorschach but sends him to an alternate reality, deaging him, to give him a chance of a normal life. The young Walter Kovacs, memory erased, is taken in by the Morgans as a child in the 80's of their universe and grows up to be our favourite serial killer of bad guys. Stilted voice-over: Check. Strange and twisted sense of morality: Check. Only killing badguys but enjoying it thoroughly: Check.
Planet of the Apes is the far future of the Watchmen universe.
Assuming that Ozymandias' peace didn't last. 1972 is pretty technologically advanced in Planet of the Apes too.
Watchmen is the prequel to the CoDominium Universe.
After a few decades, it became clear that the aliens weren't coming back (bookverse)/Dr. Manhattan had vanished (movieverse), so the US/Soviet alliance turned their attention to population control and space colonization. Ozymandias invented the Alderson Drive as a final gift to the world before he passed away, and his self-improvement techniques were later used by the Sauron Supermen. The general technological decay (in some respects) between the two settings can be explained by Dr. Manhattan's absence: without him synthesizing lithium, electric cars became uneconomic, etc. Also, the CD Marines' Nemourlon armour may be related to the material used in Rorschach's mask.
Rorschach is asexual.
I can't believe no one said this before.
Rorschach is very childish. He's very naïve. Sounds farfetched? Not really. There are plenty evidence that Rorschach is, in fact, stuck at a very childish mindset, and therefore thinks nothing of sex.
Silhouette is Kroenen's (the film version) sister
She's an aristocrat from Austria, has uses blade weapons, dresses all in black, and has very refined tastes for someone who chose to become a superhero, which isn't the most elegant profession in the world. One of her opponents is Captain Axis, a gas mask wearing Nazi. Captain Axis could be a stand-in for Kroenen in recreated fights for the public, since Kroenen is Nightmare Fuel to everyone
At the end of the book Rorschach was teleported to Discworld.
He ended up in Ankh-Morpork and tangled with Vimes.
Ozymandias's plan went off perfectly.
After his engineered peace he proceeded to unite the world politically even as he expanded his business empire over the entire Earth and into every industry. After essentially seizing control of the Earth he tried to keep the population happy and sedate. He succeeded in engineering a technological utopia that outlasted him. Some time after his death his company underwent a bout of re-branding and emerged with a new image. Unfortunately they didn't pay enough attention to environmental issues. The garbage piled up and the humans escaped into space. And then a single robot had to reverse the dramatic consequences of this mismanagement.
Watchmen is the prequel to Ender's Game.
Just think about this for a second, it hit me right after reading tv tropes and watching the movie (finally). In the comics, the world unites under the threat of aliens. So, they build spaceships and shiny new weapons and who do they find out there? Buggers. Bonus point: Ender is actually a clone/descendant of Veidt.
Dr. Manhattan wasn't detached; he was just a Jerkass
Like...Mike Warner levels of jerkassery. Everything ascribed to his detached inhumanity, is actually just him being a tremendous douche.
Dr. Manhattan's ordeal transformed him into the Watchmen version of Anonymous
Bored with life and humanity, the only reason he returns from Mars is because humanity reveals a new capacity to interest him. Face it, he's in it for the lulz.
Dr. Manhattan's nudity is acutally a sign of his humanity, rather than his inhumanity
He just likes streaking. And showing off his junk.
Predestination wasn't Dr. Manhattan's problem - he was just a putz
Before the accident, Jon was a terribly passive guy who did what people wanted him to do. His father dictates (then re-dictates) his choice of career. His first wife pursues him aggressively in a era when that wasn't terribly normal. After the accident, he becames...a very passive guy who did what people wanted him to do, just with more vaporized Vietnamese or gangsters.
He calls himself a puppet who can see the strings, but we never saw him so much as try to tug at them. He just sees the future and goes along with it, exerting no effort to change things. The fact that he sees other people, unable to perceive the future, do the same things he foresaw only serves as his excuse for being utterly passive.
Osterman's accident was not an accident.
Think about it, what kind of dangerous experimental test chamber that personnel routinely occupy has no manual override to open it? The military sought and hired a person who would passively follow orders without question, while also being intellectually predisposed to survive the experiment. They then hire a woman to seduce him, in order to assure his allegiance and keep him from learning the truth. Finally, they steal his watch and set up the fatal accident. Dr. Manhattan becomes aware of this immediately after his creation, but reveals it to no one because he doesn't want them to lose faith in the U.S. military.
Dr. Manhattan was unable to percieve most of the world around him
Similar to the Kwisatz Haderach theory above. Presumably he rebuilt his body incorrectly, and he is blind and possibly deaf or lacking sense entirely. Thus, the only way he can interact with the world is by following his prescient vision in lockstep. One false step means that he is completely blind.
When Ozymandias dies, he'll go the the Ancient Egyptian afterlife
They'll let him in as an honorary member.
Asian Baby Mama's daughter survived to do...something
Dr. Manhattan was 'cheating'; he invoked Tricked Out Time to teleport the baby away.
Ozymandias is planning to have all dissenters hunted down
There's a reason he's planning on guest starring in a cartoon about fighting terrorists. It's all a matter of who gets defined as 'terrorist'. Perhaps someone spreading subversive stories that threaten the newfound world peace might qualify?
Watchmen is a fictional story written in The DCU
Someone had the idea to ask "hey, what if instead of moral and upstanding men and women our heroes were sociopaths? And also didn't have superpowers?" and write a comic about it. Presumably everyone agreed that this would indeed suck and they're lucky to have good heroes.
The current Earth-4 was created by Dr. Manhattan following Infinite Crisis and 52.
As mentioned in the above WMG, there is an Earth that is a DC-ified version of the Watchmen comic. At the end of Watchmen, Jon mentions that he might create some humans of his own. Well after Infinite Crisis, Jon takes advantage of the newly reborn Multiverse to make his Earth (and universe). And he actually managed to make it better (in that it his counterpart isn't as removed as him and that it doesn't appear that a giant squid had destroyed New York).
When Doctor Manhattan was created, he went someplace. And it was very, very cold for a very long time.
And that's why his skin is blue. (Incidentally, it makes sense if you accept the interpretation that his disintegration power is teleportation. Only not with the cold->blue skin correlation being literal.)
Which is why he was always going on and on about his different view of time.
Dan Dreiberg is a furry
The only time he can get aroused is when he's in his fursona.
In the movie, Dan and Adrian are friends, explaining the difference in Dan's actions in the end
This should be obvious, considering Dan is the one to go and warn Adrian in the movie instead of the comic. Adrian also talks casually with Dan during this meeting, giving the impression that they may get together often, or at least keep in touch. This differs from the comic, where Adrian and Dan have no interaction except when they were part of Crimebusters and the very end during the confrontation in Karnak. Since they were so distant in the book, Dan reacts to what Adrian does with dumbfounded confusion and the certainty that Adrian is messing with them and outright lying about his plan until Adrian shows them proof that he did what he said, leading to a downtrodden and beaten Dan simply agreeing to go with Adrian's plan without a struggle.
Not so in the movie. Having an actual relationship with Adrian causes Dan to react somewhat differently. Instead of being flabbergasted at Adrian's plan, he's enraged that one of the people he considered a friend has chosen to do something so drastically evil, his two-faced nature on the issue coming off as betrayal to their personal friendship to Dan. This explains why he takes a more aggressive road in how he reacts to the way Adrian states his plan, as opposed to the brow-beaten, soft spoken way he does in the comic. It also helps make his aggressive statement to Adrian about how Adrian's corrupted humanity make more sense; it's his anger and grief not just from Rorschach's death, but from having a friendship he clearly cared about so utterly betrayed.
You could also make a case that Adrian's actions show this friendship as well, as he goes easier on Dan during the fight in Karnak than he does on Rorschach. While he still beats the crap out of Dan, he mainly keeps to simply striking him, whereas Adrian freely flings or kicks Rorschach into structures around the main foyer without a second thought. There's also the fact that he allows Dan to even go ahead and beat on him in the first place after Rorschach's death.
Adrian Veidt is asexual.
Dr. Manhattan is a Time Lord.
Dr. Manhattan created the Time Lords.
Rorschach is a zombie powered by sheer force of will.
Under the mask, he shouldn't be able to breathe— not a problem if you don't really need to. (Somebody else gets to explain how he talks.) This is also why he didn't need any obvious protection setting off on foot towards an Antarctic moon base. Injuries take longer to heal, and he still has to eat, but this does explain to some degree his utter disregard for personal comfort. And when he gets a-sploded at the end? How else to dispose of someone who's already dead?
The film flopped because of the sundial lobbies.
Of course the story isn't actually about watches, but those sundial people are idiots. They didn't even know this was originally a comic before they started protesting.
Rorschach is Dreiberg's Stalker with a Crush, but is otherwise asexual.
Come on, it's at least as plausible as any of the other prosposed hypotheses.
Captain Carnage wasn't killed, just crippled for life
Walter Kovacs helped kill Rorschach
At the very end, it wasn't Rorschach demanding that Dr. Manhattan kill him, it was Walter Kovacs. That's why he took off Rorschach's "face".
Veidt is psychic
He predicted the attitudes of the coming future just from watching some random screens (with bizarre accuracy, might I add). He can tell where people are going to jump if pushed. He knows the precise moment for catching a bullet. Now, it could just be his intelligence, but I think that precognitive abilities are a much simpler explanation.
Manhattan foresaw himself stopping 50% of the missiles.
He saw himself only stopping half the missiles, because the plan did eventually fail. At the end (when he says "maybe"), that's him going Off the Rails, and giving a big "Screw You" to Destiny. If he leaves forever and never comes back to stop the first 50%, if they're even lauched with him gone, that proves the future isn't immutable.
Veidt is a furry.
Only less the "I put on my robe and owl hat" fursona type and more the "Why hello, there, you sexy, sexy cat goddess" semi-bestiality type (semi- because there's nothing that says Bubastis isn't sapient). He had PSL for someone in the mythology who roughly fit Bubastis' eventual form, and set out to create her. The autophilia is because he's just that narcissistic.
Dr. Manhattan is trying to create a being similiar to himself.
He's travelling between worlds and either creates or enpowers from shadows many beings, trying to create perfect companion for him. Hoever, he's not happy with results of those experiments for some reasons and just left them live in their worlds, despide consequences. He's responsible for creating Alucard, Haruhi Suzumiya, at last one of Elder Gods, AKIRA, Adam, Lilith, Sisters of Twillight, Anthony Fremont, Zalgo, Willow Rosenburg and many others.
Adrian is not simply a genius, but a Genius.
He's basically the Hoffnung from Hell, admit it. After a certain point, he became scary Illuminated. (Rorschach may also be some kind of latent Genius. He was catalyzed by despair and anger at humanity, has always been clever, is good at whipping together weapons in a hurry...)
The "Intrinsic Field" that Dr. Manhattan lost during his creation was actually his AT Field
That is why he is slowly losing his humanity while becoming a God-like being: he is losing his identity and becomes pure existence. Meanwhile, on another universe, a group of scientists, one who rivals Adrian in intelligence and keeps clasping his hands, capture an alien made of quantum mechanical matter and plans to use it to create an emotionless god and bring world peace by killing millions....
Ozymandias is a Time Lord
Matthew Goode was the 2008 host of Masterpiece Contemporary —- then he got replaced by David Tennant. Therefore...
Ozymandias was second-in-command of Crimebusters.
Ozymandias meet Captain Metropolis and the two become allies. Ozymandias would listen to Captain Metrpolis' stories about his adventures with the Minutemen. When he learned how Captain Metropolis was unhappy when the Minutemen disbanded, Ozymandias suggested that they should form a new team. So Captain Metropolis formed the Crimebusters, and Ozymandias helped recruit members.
This stems from the film, where Captain Metropolis has no part in the Crimebusters and Ozymandias seems to be the leader.
Dr. Manhattan created Pandora
Dr. Manhattan went off to create life at the end of the story - a race of blue alien cat people called the Na'vi, possibly inspired by Bubastis and his own giant blue form. For more details, see Avatar
The Watchmen Movie is actually the prequel to Ghostbusters
Okay, after Doctor Manhattan was first hit by the Intrinsic Field nullifier thing that first vaporized him, he spent several weeks appearing as screaming skeletons or masses of nervous systems and such. Also, we see that the IF energy completely erases things from existence while Manhattans attacks leave masses of blood and gore behind. Thus, Ozys energy weapon thing didn't copy Manhattans attacks... it copied the IF energy that originally created him! (Ozy might not even have noticed this since he has scientists set up the machine... and he killed and vaporized them soon afterward and apparently didn't test the machine before blasting cities).
In short, all those cities that Ozymandius vaporized were hit by IF energy... and all those millions of people are 'ghosts' who may be trying to reassemble themselves! Since Manhattan was originally a nuclear physicist and only managed to reassemble himself into a glowing blue guy, who knows what a bunch of people without knowledge of physics or anatomy will look like?
That's right, a few years after New York is vaporized, there will be mass sightings of shrieking skeletons and ghosts moving around. Their bodies would be composed of some sort of unstable glowing matter (people will call it ectoplasm) and they will be impossible to kill by normal means. Manhattan himself can be affected by tachyons and his body could be vaporized by IF energy... so maybe he could be 'pushed around' by things like particle beams, lasers, and energy containment grids. Thus, the Ghost Busters will have to use particle accelerators and such to round up all the imperfect Manhattan ghosts and keep them contained somewhere before the learn how to nuke the Earth.
Rorschach pays his rent with Tooth Fairy money
Rorschach is unable to hold down any sort of job and his strong moral fiber would prevent him from stealing money from the criminals he brings to justice. Instead, he punches crooks in the face repeatedly until the cough up their teeth, he then collects the teeth and puts them under his pillow at night. The tooth fairy then gives him money in exchange for the teeth and he uses that money to pay for food, rent, and trench coats. This also explains why his information gathering techniques are a bit violent... all the teeth he knocks out of bar patrons helps to pay for bus fare.
Osterman was killed by the AT chamber, and his becoming Dr. Manhattan (and everything that followed) was his last-second Dying Dream.
The Watchmen are all a Hoax
Jon/Manhattan reassembled Bubastis, fixed her ear-horns (at least in the movie continuity), and 'ported her to an exotic animals rescue shelter.
It was part of his newfound respect for Petting the Dog, since when the smartest man and the smartest termite aren't all that different to you, the cutoff line for "living things to be nice to" doesn't end with "things in Laurie's species".
The civilian the Comedian shot for writing "who watches..." graffiti? Was just fixing the flag mural.
Because he's The Comedian.
Every named non-bit character is gay and repressed or bisexual and repressed, with the exception of Doctor Manhattan, who is asexual.
For Rorschach, Ozymandias/Veidt, and Hooded Justice, see above. For Silk Spectre I, see canon. Silk Specter II hasn't had the chance to have sex with anyone but Jon and Dan, since she has an aversion to cheating. Dan has a huge thing for Night Owl I. Nixon got a spiked drink during his third term, things got a little freaky. The Comedian is Anything That Moves, or would be if his machismo wasn't so outrageous, as evidenced by the nature of his taunting of Hooded Justice. Bubastis is Anything That Moves when in heat. And while Jon may have been straight or asexual, Manhattan himself is completely asexual, only having sex because he would know he would have and because (if he actually did still care about even certain people, and wasn't just doing everything that he knew he would until the tachyon interference blocked his view) it made Laurie/his former wife happy.
Manhattan's life was a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy until and only until (in the movie) the interference from Ozymandias' Manhattan Bombs blocked his view .
When he said that he had to do what he knew he would do, it was everything, not just the things he needed an excuse for. The Laurie situation, the cancer-interview freakout, the microbe-ship, not stopping the bullet, pulling down on his tie instead of using his telepathy on it then, too. Everything. He immediately cheers up because he doesn't see the future properly any more, and what he does see is fuzzy enough that he can ignore the specifics. From the time he reformed himself to the time he teleported back from Mars, he was Doctor Manhattan, Justified Fatalist. Before and after, he was Jonathan Osterman, Watchmaker Extraordinaire.
Every character in Watchmen are all bisexual hermaphrodite lovers.
If you're going to WMG, might as well push it to its logical conclusion.
Rorshach isn't the only one making an accusation
Hell, he's probably not even the only person trying to blame Veidt. But if this is anything like similar disasters in the real world, there are going to be letters pouring in blaming everyone and their grandmother for the incident. Dr. Manhattan alone will probably get thousands of people blaming him, and at least several people will claim the Pope was behind the whole thing.
Comic!Manhattan created the Movieverse
He's trying out different scenarios to see which ones don't end in mass murder. Eventually, he settled on us, one with no superheroes at all. But he didn't want to entirely throw out all of his alternates, so he put one of them into a film, which appeared only after CGI technology made its effects plausible, retroactively altering reality to make it so that it had been in Development Hell until that time.
Rorshach borrowed street drugs from the dealers he caught as painkillers.
And then one day he got a tainted batch, or just mixed up one white powder for another, and had a really bad trip in which he hallucinated a little girl's corpse torn apart by dogs, and what followed. It was on that day that Rorshach was truly born. And that's really why he keeps going after criminals; to hide his addiction (even from himself) under a storm of dead serial killers and rapists, when his real targets all along are those who— inadvertantly and involuntarily— keep him supplied. At one time, he was with-it and together enough to be invited to join a superteam, and spoke in complete sentences; now he hardly feels pain, neglects his hygeine, attacks with the strength of a madman, and believes his face was being torn off by police. And as the prison scene shows, he's even worse when he's in withdrawal...
Veidt was the result of Nazi superscience.
We know that he's German and was born during the time that the Nazis were in power, at least. It's entirely possible that his father was a geneticist decades ahead of his time. Using his own genetic material he created a child that was the picture of Aryan perfection: A blond-haired, blue-eyed German who would grow up to be "the smartest man in the world" and an Olympic gymnast well into middle age. He saw the writing on the wall and fled to America before the war was over. Years later, Adrian found his father's notes and expanded on them, using them to create Bubastis and The Squid.
Adrian Veidt is the true father of Johan Liebert and Nina Fortner.
At some point, the young Veidt had a tryst with a young woman named Anna, who later took up with a soldier and believed him to be the father of her children. Her blond, super-genius children, one of whom is conditioned into sociopathy. Johan inherited exaggerated versions of all of their father's negative traits (and his dress sense, if one goes by movie!Veidt), while Nina got the positive ones (idealism, badassery, physical prowess).
Even if people believe Rorshach's Diary, Veidt's plan still works.
Veidt is "the world's smartest man." Isn't it possible that he'd plan for a contingency in which he would be exposed and, as such, recast himself as the enemy of all civilization in order to save humanity? His resources will permit him to begin a terrorist crusade against both the United States and the Soviet Union and he'll unite the world against a threat which he can maintain, unlike the one-time use of the cosmic horror bomb which masquerades as an alien invasion. Alternatively, Veidt planned and permitted himself to be exposed by Rorshach to set himself up as an enemy of humanity and Rorshach's extremist leanings mean that by the time the truth comes out, Veidt will have hidden himself away to begin his war. Yes, yes. Just like the Zero Requiem.
Rorschach is a tsundere.
Tsundere for humanity as a whole, specifically. His "whores and politicians" spiel in the beginning makes him seem like a misanthrope, but when he finds out about half of NYC getting killed he's deeply upset, it's even implied that he was crying under the mask. Rorschach. Crying.
Seymour is Rorschach's younger brother.
Seymour (the guy who works at The New Frontiersman) is the only other red-haired character who is named in all of Watchmen. Coincidence? I think NOT! As for the math, at the end of Chapter 6, in the arrest report, it says
Veidt is...NOT GAY
Its an elaborate ploy to throw people off his true intentions of world peace through destruction. Afterall, people are less likey to suspect a more feminine, swish man than a more "manly" guy. He might still be something of a metrosexual, with his hair and the rest of it. Notice how he shows much more masculinity at times, particularly in times of danger, when the act could be slipping.
Veidt is the only character who was straight. Everyone else was a repressed homosexual.
Except for the people who were open about. And when I say everyone, I mean, even background characters who only appeared in one panel.
Fate is not predetermined, Manhattan just makes it that way
Think about it. If fate was predetermined then the Watchmen universe would not exist, as only one world would be possible, and therefore the entire Alternate History would be moot. When Jon sees the future, he sees every possible future, and then "forgets" all the ones that didn't happen. When he says something "will happen" that's only with the most obvious causality, as he's seeing many possible futures with the same event brought on by present causality. When he says it, that just causes it to become a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, as by his actions the universe course corrects. In short, he's subconsciously selecting which future will happen, and forgetting all the others. For example he creates a future in which he meets Laurie because he subconsciously does not want to spend the rest of his life with a woman who's clearly disturbed by who he is, he then subconsciously creates a future where Laurie leaves him because he wants a future where she's happy. He also subconsciously creates a future where America dominates because at first he's subconsciously very nationalistic. Then in Vietnam he becomes disillusioned, and subconsciously creates a future where Veidt goes through with the squid plan because he subconsciously wants peace. All this without him ever being aware of it.
Rorschach compromised.
Specifically, when he demanded Jon kill him, he was trying to avoid having to go against Ozymandias. He knew that it would be hard and ultimately futile to continue fighting, but he felt couldn't live with himself if he didn't. His plans to stop Ozy, however, crumbled when Jon came to stop him. At that point, everyone was against him. He probably could have pretended to be pacified until Jon went off back to Mars or wherever, but he no longer saw the point in going on when he knew he would never make a difference against so big of a force. He felt disillusioned with his own worldview, having seen that people can do horrible things with the intent to do good. No longer knowing what he stood for, clinging desperately to principles he was too afraid to question, but still ashamed of the concept of surrender, he committed suicide by Physical God. When he removed his mask, it wasn't a case of him Dying As Himself. It was instead the opposite: he felt that, having abandoned all he believed in, he was no longer Rorschach.
A law of the Conservation of Superpowers exists
Other universes have many superheroes who are moderately powerful.
This one has one hero, and he is basically god.
While it may not look like this sometimes, we have to remember that "Doctor Manhattan", as we call him, is no longer truly a physical being. He is an omnipresent, nigh omnipotent(but not omniscient), bodiless "entity" that exists unbound by space and time. The smurf is just a physical avatar created for the human's convenience(Like Yuki Nagato, but less cute). He(it?) is completely and utterly immortal, for all we know, at any given point in time experiences the entirety of his existence-past, present, and future. Billions of years mean nothing. He will still be there, floating in the quantum background of reality when the heat death happens and the universe turns into a cold, lightness void... for all of eternity. And he experiences every second of that eternity of loneliness and cold every moment of his life. No wonder the guy is emotionally detached. He already has/will have an infinite amount of failed checks on the Isolation track.
Doctor Manhattan didn’t kill Rorschach at all – merely de-aged him and moved him into a parallel universe. When he’s there, he adopts the identity of Vic Sage, and begins a career as a similar masked vigilante. When he joins the JLU he begins to recover from the psychological damage inflicted on him by his mother when he meets Huntress, the first woman he has ever regarded as an equal. JLU rules force him to stop killing, but he can sympathise with her because he has been in her position and come out the other side.]]
Silk Spectre throws up whenever Doctor Manhattan teleports because of the alcohol in her system
It was said the Doctor teleported her because she was drunk and fighting with the Comedian, causing a big scene. It may be that the excess alcohol remained in her system when she was teleported and activates itself whenever she gets telepoted again, no mater how sober she is.
Dr. Manhattan is not sentient due to his every thought being predestined and simultaneous.
If, as he says, everyone is a puppet, why would that stop at the level of external interactions? It is possible he has no capability of individual thoughts or feelings, and is not even consience. This, of course, would extend to every other life form, particle, and metaphysical phenominon in the universe. However, he is unique in his nonlinear experience of time, meaning he does not get even the pretense of conscience or control. He, experiencing every feeling, thought, and action as simultaneous and constant, would not even have the capacity to think about the true horror of his situation. He could not have any independent thoughts at all. Because of that, he couldn't even think that he had thoughts, so self-awareness is beyond him. He can't perceive anything, as that would require a thought to come in response to a stimuli. He is nothing but an Empty Shell. This troper just realized this and is now feeling quite horrified and disturbed.
Rorschach didn't die. He was sent back in time and to an alternate universe to become Walt Kowalski
Think about it. First name is the same. Kovacs sounds like a corrupted version of Kowalski, which his mother may have been using to distance herself from her ethnic roots. Both have a tendency to isolate themselves from everyone around them. Both take justice into their own hands. Both are....not PC, to say the least. Both lose control over similiar incidences of brutality towards women, Rorschach over the girl's horrific death and Walt over the teenage girl he has befriended being beaten and raped. And at the end, both choose to die in their own way. So, in a nutshell, Rorschach became Clint Eastwood, because he is just that badass.
The Scientists who worked on the IF generator which created Dr. Manhattan went on to found the Black Mesa Research Institute.
The door closes and they can't open it - it's a safety feature??? Sounds like where Gordon Freeman ended up working.
Adrian Veidt is realated to Conrad Veidt
Adrian was born in 1939, and Conrad died suddenly of a heart attack in 1943, so its possible that in the Watchmen universe Adrian is the son of Conrad and his wife Ilona Prager. Note how Conrad lived in Germany until 1933 where he left after marrying the Jewish Ilona. Also, Adrian's parents where wealthy immigrants. Conrad was a famous actor.
. In the graphic novel, Veidt is Jewish.
Ozymandias has turned himself into a superhuman.
Veidt, despite being older than Rorschach or Nite Owl, is able to effortlessly beat the shit out of both of them while talking about his plan; he also has retired from crimefighting, making it even more unlikely for him to maintain or reach such a level of skill and power. He does, however, have a genius-level intellect as well as insanely high ressources, so it's possible that he already created some kind of super serum that gave him superhuman reflexes, speed, strength, and endurance. At least in the comic, his experiments could have, more or less directly, led to the creation of the monster which he set on New York.
The Question I was Rorschach's father.
It takes a special kind of person to feel most comfortable without a face. Possibly genetic? Must investigate further. Also, Question's real name was Charles. As in, Charlie. Think about it.
The Comedian was trying to get the Keene Act started.
Every horrible thing he did was part of a conscious effort to convince the public that costumed vigilantes were dangerous and unstable.
Dr. Manhattan is a Planeswalker.
Prior to the storyline of Time Spiral, older planeswalkers were immortal, invulnerable, shapeshifting beings capable of bending reality to their whim. Most planeswalkers ignite their spark by having a near-death experience, and Jon Osterman's spark may have been the only thing to save him from the Intrinsic Field Subtractor.
All the victims caught in the Explosion at the end, ascended and became the TheNines .
I mean look at Doctor Manhattan, a living person caught in the energy and became a walking god. At the end all those victims didn't implode like those that Doctor Manhattan waves at. Millions of people consumed by the same power as him. Time goes by they reassemble as higher life forms able to tune into the universe and control it. One of them, a former Canadian who has a passing resemblence to RyanRenolds
Veidt's plan was truly a Xanatos Gambit.
He's not concerned with being caught. If the world finds out he did it, that just allows them to unite over hatred of him, like Lelouch.
Dr Manhattan is God.
After the end of the story, he learnt how to time travel, and went back to the dawn of time to create the universe, and ultimately create life and human existence. He, technically, would have created himself!
The second coming of Christ will involve him coming back to save humankind from the nuclear fallout resulting from Rorschach's journal.
And God is American.
The US Government kept The Comedian on their payrole after the Keene Act so he wouldn't kill innocent civilians.
They probably were aware he was a psychopath who loved nothing better than to kill his victims. They were also aware that he was mainly into contract killing to quench his blood lust. So they figured that keeping him in work would stop him from killing innocents.
Dr. Manhattan becomes Galactus
Dr. Manhattan goes off across the universe to start his new civilization. He watches them over the millions of years, as the new humanoid race becomes known as Taa. Dr.Manhattan then integrates into this society under the guise of Galan, and eventually forgets all about his past and powers. Then, when the Big Crunch happens, it's Galan's/Manhattan's dormant powers that let him survive and merge with the sentience of the universe. He became Galactus, with powers amped to an insane degree. Turns Norin Radd into the Silver Surfer, as it stirs old memories of a past life that Galactus can't fully recall.
There is no squid
The squid itself is a hallucination brought on by psychic Mind Rape. Rather than go through the trouble of developing an entire scientific field of cloning and genetic manipulation to a ridiculous level, Ozymandias limited himself to psychic mind-control technology and made everyone in the world believe there was a squid. However, he didn't stop there, he also made it so everyone recognized Enemy Mine as the only solution. This way, you need the less technology, but get a more reliable end result which still matches everything in the comic. This also explains why the news reports the kidnappings of several artists, and why Ozymandias mentions using a psychic, but you never hear about an entire army of biologists being kidnapped, or see a large enough base anywhere to house a city-sized squid. It also explains why the squid can violate the square cube law and not instantaneously collapse and explode like a beached whale. Any news material could be edited before the effects wear off, or perhaps the trans-dimensional research institute released a helium blimp with a post-hypnotic suggestion symbol making anyone who sees that symbol automatically see the giant squid. Even Dr. Manhattan's prediction can be explained - the psychic manipulation works on Ozymandias himself, but not Manhattan, so he doesn't know what flaws the plan would have anymore (such as the psychic bomb only effecting those currently alive, or perhaps the effects being only temporary).
Ozymandias' peace DOES last
We are giving the "idiot" in the "slush pile" way too much credit. Just because he was reaching for Rorschach's journal does not mean he will choose it. It could be rejected by the "idiot". It could be rejected by the author. It could be rejected as your typical tabloid trash by the general public. Just because it's there, doesn't mean it will amount to anything. For all we know, they'll just use it for firewood.
Ozymandias' genetically enhanced himself
Fact 1: Early in his career, Ozymandias got the crap kicked out of him by the Comedian.
Fact 2: During Watchmen, Ozymandias demonstrated physical abilities far beyond everyone else in the story ( except Manhattan, natch ).
Fact 3: Veidt is known to have knowledge of genetic engineering, sufficient to create semi-intelligent animals, and giant psychic death monsters.
Question: How did Ozymandias go from being someone Comedian could beat up, to someone who casually destroyed everyone without even trying? If Ozymandias had the kind of physical abilities earlier on, its difficult to see Comedian beating him, even with Veidt being relatively inexperienced. Further time and training doesn't cover it, as Veidt had a much shorter heroic(?) career than the Comedian. Aging doesn't cover it, as while the Comedian was older, he was also still actively doing crazy black ops crap; clearly he wasn't slowing down. Weird implied quasi-mystical training regimens don't really cover it, as that was *before* Veidt started his heroic career; if forgotten arts of the east ( and hallucinagens ) taught him how to bullet time, he'd have had that ability early on.
Supposition: We know Veidt gained considerable personal physical capability between the beginning and end of his career. We know he has considerable, superscience level, knowledge of genetic engineering. Therefore, I propose that at some point between time A and time B, Veidt developed genetic ( or other biological ) enhancements, and granted them to himself. Why did he never say anything about them? Either because its an advantage for people not know about an edge, he doesn't want to admit that he 'cheated', or both.
Rorschach isn't the "The End Is Near" guy, it was a mistake.
There is no real proof that he was. Besides, they only superficially look like each other: Rorschach is short, with a long figure, cheekbones, and shaved off forehead sides. The other guy is taller than the newspaper man, slightly puffed up, and with wild hair.
Veidt is a renegade Templar who left the Order.
The squid was just a distraction to conceal that he actually intended to use a Piece of Eden to control the world as he saw fit, not bending to either side of the ancient war.
Jon is not Dr. Manhattan: the real Manhattan is just an Eldritch Abomination who acquired Jon's memories in order to understand humanity.
Veidt's Xanatos Gambit was to turn Bubastis into a Physical God.
This relates to the WMGs above about Veidt being welcomed into the Egyptian afterlife, and about Bubastis being fused with Dr. Manhattan.
Veidt figured if Bubastis became a goddess, then she could make him into a god in the afterlife. The only way to do this was to fuse her with the only known Physical God in their universe, Dr.Manhattan.
And he knew that Bubastis would be able to reconstruct herself as Dr. Manhattan had done, once she had his memories.
And because he's "the smartest man in the world", he doesn't test his theory out on himself, of course.
Bubastis was pissed for a while, but eventually forgave him. Besides, she's the only one he ever really loved.
Ozymandias wanted The Comedian to find out about his plan.
The Comedian finds out about Veidt's plan by accidentally discovering the island where they're building the monster, as well as finding a list there that includes all the people Veidt has given cancer. However, this raises more than one question:
Magic: The Gathering alignments
Mark Rosewater started it back in 2003 with Ozymandias, so why the Hell not?
Ozymandias is Bubastis-Sexual
They were married 35 minutes ago and they had babies who were half-man, half-genetically altered lynx. And those babies were gay.
The world of Americas Best Comics is a sequel to Watchmen
The advanced "modern" world is the product of the faked alien attack although probably not the utopia that Ozymandias had in mind. Remember that both are written by Alan Moore and are published by DC and take place outside of the main universe and probably even the multiverse(although it could have been a pocket universe within The Wildstorm universe given that America's Best Comics is an imprint of Wildstorm which was in turn an imprint of DC Comics).
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