History ComicBook / DoomPatrol

** Polly Polly Tinker Boy is the sole one of Dorothy Spinner's imaginary friends who never makes a physical appearance, his existence only confirmed through Dorothy mentioning him.

** Frequent in the earlier issues from UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks, to wit:

* TakeThat: Towards the end of their run, Morrison put out a one-shot Doom Patrol special entitled "Doom Force". It highlighted every trope of the [[Creator/RobLiefeld Liefeldian]] [[UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark Age]] had to offer, from the artistic failings to the horrible characters. It ended with one member of [[strike:ComicBook/YoungBloodImageComics]] Doom Force dead, and the remaining members declaring him a creep, walking away in an EverybodyLaughsEnding.

** Orqwith is a parasitic dimension that was created when a dictionary about it was written in a langaguage that didn't exist. It sends [[HumaoidAbomination Scissormen]] to cut people from our world and bring them to Orqwith. The city itself is very bizarre, with bone buildings, surreal constructions (Such as a "weeping clock" or a machine that tracks the movement of the starts using the skull of kid) and a sickening brown atmosphere.

* BackstoryInvader: Rachel Pollack's run had the False Memory, a character who had the power to make people remember things that weren't really there. She tries to infiltrate the Doom Patrol by using her power to dupe the team into believing she's a longtime associate of theirs, but is ultimately forced to leave when Dorothy Spinner refuses to believe her deceptions and convinces the rest of the team to pull the wool from their eyes.

* WildChild: One of the backup stories in the original 1960s series' later issues that expanded Beast Boy's past established that he briefly lived by himself in the wild shortly after he was orphaned.
** Crowdark has this as her army.

* TheBusCameBack: Gerard Way's run has established that the entire history of the Doom Patrol before ''ComicBook/{{Flashpoint|DCComics}}'' still happened, picking up where Keith Giffen's run ended and acknowledging most of Morrison's run, with no mention of the team's New 52 appearances.

* CanonDiscontinuity: As far as Gerard Way's ''Doom Patrol'' is concerned, the team that appeared in the New 52-era ''ComicBook/{{Justice League|2011}}'' don't count, and instead the series picks up an ambiguous amount of time after Giffen's series ended[[note]]Admittedly, Giffen had already rid himself of the last few old members by having Nudge sawn in half with machinegun fire and her companion Grunt run off into the wild in a panic[[/note]]. The Doom Patrol is relatively rare among DC titles in that it's never had a true reboot (except for Creator/JohnByrne's, which rapidly got un-rebooted), and all the previous series "count" to [[BroadStrokes some]] [[ComicBookTime extent]].

* ChekhovsBoomerang: In one of the earliest scenes in Gerard Way's Doom Patrol, there's a murder of someone in a cape, a girl lying on the ground, and a man in a suit holding a bloody brick that has the words "I'm so sorry!!!" written on it. Later on, the scene is partially explained for Casey's origin - [[spoiler: Danny the World tells her that he was then Danny the Brick and traveling the universe with Crazy Jane when someone ambushed them and used Danny as a weapon to murder someone. This scene reappears again to start the Milk Wars, it turns out the victim was the God of Superheroes and he was murdered by Retconn so that they can take the stories of the Trinity and corrupt them.]]

* FaceHeelTurn: In Gerard Way's run, "D" or [[spoiler:The Disappointment]] used to be a superhero called [[spoiler:Haxxalon the Star Archer]], but the cancelation of his comic book right before he was to be married to the love of his life, Starlene, turned him into a deicidal {{Yandere}} obsessed with bringing about the matrimonial story that never was.

** Robotman's dark civilian wear of jeans and a leather jacket with shoulder pads from the Grant Morrison run made quite the impression, to the extent that he is depicted with such apparel in [[ComicBook/DoomPatrol2016 Gerard Way's run]] as well as [[Series/DoomPatrol2019 the live-action TV show adaptation]].

* MaliciousMisnaming: Mr. Nobody calls the team the "Dumb Patrol" in the tenth issue of Gerard Way's run.
* ManicPixieDreamGirl: A non-romantic example with Terry None in Gerard Way's volume. She just shows up at Casey Brinke's apartment one day, does a tap dance for her birthday because she thought Casey looked sad on the subway, and [[spoiler: accidentally blows up Casey's asshole roommate]] before moving in with her. Though after [[spoiler:Lotion]] makes himself scarce, Casey decides to [[spoiler:have sex with Terry in the meantime.]]

* MindScrew: Although the Doom Patrol were always considered weird, this really came to a head with all of Creator/GrantMorrison's and Rachel Pollack's runs. Much later, Gerard Way's run made a return to their unfiltered strangeness.

* MostCommonSuperpower: The concept of comic book superheroines being depicted with large breasts is lampooned in the ''Doom Force'' one-shot, where Doom Force members Flux and Spinner (an older version of Dorothy Spinner) as well as Count Zero's sister Una are depicted with sizeable mammaries.

* OutOfFocus: The Brain was established in the original series as the Doom Patrol's greatest enemy, but would have his prominence downplayed in the subsequent series. He doesn't appear at all in Paul Kupperberg, Rachel Pollack and Gerard Way's runs, he makes only a handful of appearances in Grant Morrison's run, John Arcudi's run only features him in a minor two-part story that involves the current roster of the Doom Patrol having their minds trapped in the bodies of the original roster, his sole appearance in John Byrne's run is in an alternate timeline in issue 14 (specifically the ''ComicBook/SupermanAndBatmanGenerations'' continuity) and Keith Giffen's run only includes a flashback cameo in issue 6 (which, to be fair, was because of the Brain and Mallah being killed off in ''Salvation Run'').

* RuderAndCruder: Grant Morrison, Rachel Pollack and Gerard Way's runs have considerably stronger language than the other eras due to having mature ratings.

* TokenEvilTeammate: The Brotherhood of Nada in Gerard Way's run seems even less malevolent than their Dada predecessors with the very notable exception of the Brutalist who feeds on the pain and misfortune of others by beating them to death.
* TokenBlack: Joshua Clay is the sole African-American member in Paul Kupperberg and Grant Morrison's runs, with Lucius Reynolds fulfilling that position in Gerard Way's run.

** Robotman's dark civilian wear from the Grant Morrison run.

** Another Bad Future occurs in ''Weight of the Worlds''. [[spoiler:Cliff continued to upgrade into a planet, and Mento tries to stop him but loses control. This ends up trapping the team in a city called Goliath on Planet Cliff. Overtime Rita has lost control of her body, looking like a large bud-like creature; Beast Boy became trapped as a chimpanzee; Casey entered Jane's Underground and became trapped, with her becoming Jane's dominant and only personality; Danny disappeared; Flex became lost in space; Larry was used as a power source for Mento's helmet.]]

** The fourth issue of ''[[ComicBoo/DoomPatrol2016 Weight of the Worlds]]'' ends with the villain Skarg being left naked as a result of the Secret Spandex being separated from his body, his crotch [[SpeechBubbleCensoring obscured by his own speech bubble]] and his humiliation at everyone seeing his privates being played for humor.

* MeaningfulRename: Occurs several times during ''WeightOfTheWorlds'':

** The fourth issue of ''Weight of the Worlds'' ends with the villain Skarg being left naked as a result of the Secret Spandex being separated from his body, his crotch [[SpeechBubbleCensoring obscured by his own speech bubble]] and his humiliation at everyone seeing his privates being played for humor.

* NoNameGiven: In ''Weight of the Worlds'', issue 5, Cliff meets a young boy whose last name is "Clark". When the boy is about to tell Cliff what everyone calls him, he is cut off. It is heavily implied that "Clark" might actually be a version of [[spoiler:Kate Godwin, since Kate's dead name was Clark. Some implications are their same green eye color, a Pride poster in Clark's room, and Clark's references to ''Doom Patrol'''s Vertigo run, in which Kate first appeared.]]

* NothingIsTheSameAnymore: By the end of ''Weight of the Worlds'', several characters have gone through changes:

* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: During ''Weight of the Worlds'', both Casey, inhabiting Jane's Underground, and Mento set out to stop the BadFuture from happening. They both travel back in time, independently from each other. Mento arrives with no memory of how he got there, while Casey travels through Jane's underground to send a message to herself. [[spoiler:Mento almost causes the BadFuture to happen again while Casey!Jane stops it, erasing that future version of herself.]]

* SpeechBubbleCensoring: Issue four of ''Weight of the Worlds'' ends with the villain Skarg being left naked when the Secret Spandex is removed from his body. His crotch is obscured by his own speech bubble exclaiming "My bits!"

* WellIntentionedExtremist: Throughout ''Weight of the Worlds'' Cliff becomes this due to his fixation with heroics and upgrading his new body. It leads to him becoming a planet called Planet Cliff and trying to assimilate whole planets to "fix" them.