History ComicBook / DoomPatrol

* EldritchAbomination: Many, the two most notable probably being the Decreator and the Candlemaker.

* StepfordSmiler: Elasti-Girl is given this trait in a team-up story with TheFlash. We're told that since she used to be a glamorous movie star, being turned into a "super-powered freak" was especially hard on her, and she smiles constantly in order to "look pretty" and keep others from being afraid of her. She has no idea that it actually has the complete opposite effect. This isn't brought up again in any other DP story; WordOfGod says that it took place during the team's early days (post-Byrne reboot) when Rita was still getting used to her new life.

* DarkAndTroubledPast: Subverted in Rachel Pollack's run. In #83, the False Memory gave Coagula fake memories of being joint-raped by her "husband and his friend". Kate spends the rest of the issue trying to figure out when it happened until Dorothy manages to bring her back to her senses. Kate is outraged that the False Memory believed she was giving Kate's life more "meaning" by making her think she was sexually violated when she was a teenager.

* HappilyMarried / HappyMarriageCharade: Rita and Steve, DependingOnTheWriter

* HollywoodCyborg: Cliff Steele
%%* IWouldSayIfICouldSay

** [[spoiler: Though it's later revealed in ''JusticeLeague'' that Celsius and Tempest actually faked their deaths and have gone into hiding just to get away from Caulder, while Karma, Scott Fischer, and two unseen members called the Negative Twins are dead.]]

* ExiledFromContinuity: Morrison's run actually predates Vertigo and was considered part of the main DCU. Pollack's run, though, was technically confined to the Vertigo sub-verse along with its sister titles in the 90s. And the next Doom Patrol, John Arcudi's, was technically part of the main DCU again but still considered Pollack's run in continuity.

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

** Chief

->'''Tempest''': You shot your imaginary friends? With what?
->'''Dorothy Spinner''': An imaginary gun! What else?
-->--''The Doom Patrol''

* EnemyMine: The original Doom Patrol was forced into this situation with the Brotherhood of Evil on more than one occasion, usually to avert

* AGodAmI: The team briefly encountered a dapper entity called "Red Jack" that insisted it was also God and created the universe. Since it was clearly insane almost nothing it said could be taken at face value, though, except for the fact that it needed pain to live (so Jane freeing all his pinned butterflies starved him of pain to feed off of, destroying him).

** John Byrne's run retconned the entire Doom Patrol history and rebooted the series. Keith Giffen then retconned the Byrne reboot so all versions of the Doom Patrol, including Byrne's (and Pollack's, the only run that actually ran [[ExiledFromContinuity under the Vertigo imprint]]), were in continuity.

%%* EndOfTheWorldSpecial

* BananaPeel: The [[http://superdickery.com/images/stories/monkeys/doompatrol034009fa.jpg cover of Doom Patrol #34]] showed a heavily armed gorilla walking along the street pushing a baby carriage and about to slip on a banana peel.

** [[spoiler: Though it's later revealed in ''JusticeLeague'' that Celsius and Tempest actually faked their deaths and have gone into hiding just to get away from Caulder, while Karma, Scott Fischer, and two unseen members called the Negative Twins are dead.]]

In 1963, DCComics published a book with a new kind of superhero team: the Doom Patrol. They were loners, misfits, mistrusted by the public, and led by a genius in a wheelchair. Despite obvious similarities, this team actually came out several months before the [[Comicbook/{{X-Men}} X-Men]] were published by the [[MarvelComics distinguished competition]], which has led to accusations of plagiarism. The entire series was written by Arnold Drake and pencilled almost entirely by Bruno Premiani. The Patrol first appeared in ''"My Greatest Adventure''" #80 (June, 1963) and continued appearing in subsequent issues. With #86 (March, 1964), the book was renamed after the team. While the X-Men eventually flourished in the [[TheSeventies 1970s]], initial sales of ''Doom Patrol'' died down and the original series ended quickly when Drake decided to go out with a [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat bang]] and [[KillEmAll kill them all off]]. The last issue was numbered #121 (September-October, 1968).

-->'''The Patrol:''' [[BringIt Fire away, Zahl!]]

* FollowTheLeader: At one time the Patrol acted as a school... [[ComicBook/{{X-Men}} for young mutants]]. The two groups debuted within months of each other, however, not nearly long enough for one to be based on the other. That being said, there are also some very clear parallels between the original Doom Patrol and the ComicBook/FantasticFour, who came first by a much wider margin.

* CaptainErsatz: Willoughby Kipling is one for JohnConstantine.

* AnyoneCanDie: [[DeathSeeker Sometimes they actually want to.]] And because it's quite a minor series, they often stay dead.

Since then there have been a few subsequent revivals which reverted the series back to a traditional superhero comic. John Arcudi wrote an unsuccessful series turning them into Corporation superheroes for a couple issues before entangling them in schemes involving corporate manipulation, a soul-stealing demon and Chinese sorcerer spirits. John Byrne did a ContinuityReboot that was ill-fated to begin with and [[CanonDiscontinuity downright ignored by other DC books of the time.]] It eventually ended with the CrisisCrossover ''InfiniteCrisis'', which undid most of Byrne's changes and restored the team's history. Byrne did finally manage to bring original member (the ''only'' one who had yet to return) Elasti-Girl BackFromTheDead , though. After an appearance in the ''ComicBook/TeenTitans'' comic and [[WesternAnimation/TeenTitans Animated Series]], their popularity resurged enough for them to get their own new series in 2009, written by Keith Giffen (of ''JLI'' fame) who was practically begging for the position. This time, the original team were employed as a policing force of sorts on Oolong Island, the haven for [[MadScientist]]s from Comicbook/FiftyTwo.

Since then there have been a few subsequent revivals which reverted the series back to a traditional superhero comic. John Arcudi wrote an unsuccessful series turning them into Corporation superheroes for a couple issues before entangling them in schemes involving corporate manipulation, a soul-stealing demon and Chinese sorcerer spirits. John Byrne did a ContinuityReboot that was ill-fated to begin with and [[CanonDiscontinuity downright ignored by other DC books of the time.]] It eventually ended with the CrisisCrossover ''InfiniteCrisis'', which undid most of Byrne's changes and restored the team's history. Byrne did finally manage to bring original member (the ''only'' one who had yet to return) Elasti-Girl BackFromTheDead , though. After an appearance in the ''ComicBook/TeenTitans'' comic and [[WesternAnimation/TeenTitans Animated Series]], their popularity resurged enough for them to get their own new series in 2009, written by Keith Giffen (of ''JLI'' fame) who was practically begging for the position. This time, the original team were employed as a policing force of sorts on Oolong Island, the haven for MadScientists from Comicbook/FiftyTwo.

Since then there have been a few subsequent revivals which reverted the series back to a traditional superhero comic. John Arcudi wrote an unsuccessful series turning them into Corporation superheroes. John Byrne did a ContinuityReboot that was ill-fated to begin with and [[CanonDiscontinuity downright ignored by other DC books of the time.]] It eventually ended with the CrisisCrossover ''InfiniteCrisis'', which undid most of Byrne's changes and restored the team's history. Byrne did finally manage to bring original member (the ''only'' one who had yet to return) Elasti-Girl BackFromTheDead , though. After an appearance in the ''ComicBook/TeenTitans'' comic and [[WesternAnimation/TeenTitans Animated Series]], their popularity resurged enough for them to get their own new series in 2009, written by Keith Giffen (of ''JLI'' fame) who was practically begging for the position.

* DroppedABridgeOnHim: Nudge and Grunt are killed and run away respectively in the first issue of the Giffen series, with Nudge getting KilledMidSentence.

* AscendedFanon: Scott Fischer wasn't given a superhero name during his time in the book, but prominent letter writer Charles J. Sperling decided that his name had to be "Blaze". Near the end of that era, the book's editor said that "Scott has adopted the name of Blaze, I think, but he hasn't officially used it."

* TheAntiGod: Decreator, also known as Anti-God, the first shadow cast by God's light. Once awakened, it will unmake all existence. However, Crazy Jane points out that it's a reflection, a vibration...and therefore, can be interfered with like any other wave-form. With the help of Rebis and an occultist they manage to set up a countervibration that almost completely cancels out the Unmaker so that it's now only unmaking the universe very, ''very'' slowly.

* ArtificialLimbs: Cliff Steele.

* BlessedWithSuck / CursedWithAwesome: The whole point of the original field team; each had a horrible disfigurement, or some other way in which their powers were supposedly as much a curse as a blessing. The problem is, this wasn't really true of Elasti-Girl; WordOfGod says this is the reason she was the only member of the original team not brought back for Morrison's run.

* BreakfastClub

* DeadpanSnarker: Flash Forward is soon nicknamed Negative Man by his teammates for his icy temperament.

* EndOfTheWorldSpecial

* FourTemperamentEnsemble: The original team is one of these.
* GeniusCripple / EvilCripple: The Chief

* IWouldSayIfICouldSay

* InsufferableGenius: Chief

* PromotedFanboy: The series has been out of the mainstream enough that many of the writers were fans of earlier series. Paul Kupperberg, Grant Morrison and John Byrne were all fans of the original Drake run, Rachel Pollack had written letters to the book during Morrison's tenure, and Keith Giffen admitted he'd been trying to launch a Doom Patrol book for years.

* RealityWarper: Dorothy Spinner

*** Was it really? From the way I read that issue, the False Memory had used her abilities to insert herself into the team and had just been screwing with Cliff's memories of Jane. In that same issue Cliff had finally explained the circumstances as to why he left Jane and Danny the World.

* SchrodingersButterfly

* SomethingPerson: The original team was made up of these: Robotman, Elasti-Girl, Negative Man and later Negative Woman. As time when on, though, Cliff (who hated being called Robotman anyway, since he wasn't technically a robot) just went by his real name.

* SplitPersonality: Crazy Jane has ''64'' of them.

* StepfordSmiler: Elasti-Girl is given this trait in a team-up story with TheFlash. We're told that since she used to be a glamorous movie star, being turned into a "super-powered freak" was especially hard on her, and she smiles constantly in order to "look pretty" and keep others from being afraid of her. She has no idea that it actually has the complete opposite effect.
** This isn't brought up again in any other DP story; WordOfGod says that it took place during the team's early days (post-Byrne reboot) when Rita was still getting used to her new life.

* ThatManIsDead: Rebis, who is a combination of Larry Trainor and a nurse. Cliff still refers to him/her as "Larry," even though Rebis denies being Larry Trainor anymore.

* WelcomeToTheRealWorld: It is heavily implied that the final issue of Grant Morrison's run takes place in the real world. Aside from the fact that this world apparently has no superheroes, it also has the same colour scheme as [[spoiler:the last issue of Morrison's Comicbook/AnimalMan]], which explicitly takes place in "our" world.
** Unless the Animal Man story was just [[AllJustADream a peyote trip]].