History ComicBook / Watchmen

** The Comedian is a nihilist who sees the world as nothing but a joke, and just doesn't care about right or wrong, Rorschach is an objectivist and a moral absolutist who refuses to see the world in any terms other than black and white, Dr. Manhattan is so alienated from the human experience that the very concept of morality escapes him, and Ozymandias favors an overall utilitarian liberal ideal of doing good to build a better society. While Laurie and Dan Dreiberg are more grounded everyman types who more or less don't act out or impose a moral view on the world.

* MischiefForPunishment: Captain Carnage is said to have done this, the kink version. He only pretended to be a supervillain so he'd get off from the superheroes kicking his ass, ultimately meeting his end when he tried it on Rorschach and was dropped down an elevator shaft for his troubles.

* MistakenForThief: Zigzagged for the first meeting between Ozymandias and [[BloodKnight The Comedian]]. Comedian beats Ozymandias and claims it's because he thought Veidt was a burglar, but it's implied that actually he knew who Ozymandias was, Blake just wanted an excuse to beat up someone he didn't like.

** Blaire Roche, the little girl Rorschach failed to save, was kidnapped because she had the same last name as some rich family.
** Hollis Mason was killed because it was thought he was the Nite Owl who busted Rorschach out of jail.
* MistakenForRelated: Rorschach's CynicismCatalyst was a little girl who'd been kidnapped by a man who thought she was related to a rich family due to having the same surname. On realizing his mistake, the kidnapper murdered her and fed the corpse to his dogs. Rorschach burned the man alive and became the NinetiesAntiHero we all know.

* MenGetOldWomenGetReplaced: There were originally two female members of the Minutemen team which existed in the 1940s: Silhouette and Silk Spectre. When the Crimebusters formed as their replacements, there were two veterans of the Minutemen: Captain Metropolis and the Comedian. Silhouette was [[BuryYourGays killed after being outed as a lesbian]] and Silk Spectre was replaced by her younger daughter.

* MindRape: The effect that the "monster" has on survivors, even ''halfway around the globe'', is to instill paranoia. The psychic attack is stated to drive some victims to madness.

** The UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev still becomes the leader of the Soviet Union, but in the Watchmen 'verse he is seemingly far more combative and hawkish than his real-world counterpart.

* HyperlinkStory: The book has a main cast of 6 costumed heroes with an intricate past and history, and an extended supporting cast of ordinary humans who weave in and out of the larger story and contain many parallel vignettes that counterpoint the main story. Moore said that he conceived the story as an ensemble and felt that the characters were meant to work in conjunction with each other, and that ultimately there is no one main character in the book, and the perspective and point of view keeps being passed between five of the main cast, the Comedian is the most prominent PosthumousCharacter.

* IDidWhatIHadToDo: Ozymandias destroys half of New York City to save the world from nuclear armageddon.

* HomophobicHateCrime: In the {{backstory}}, Watchmen member Silhouette was outed as lesbian and expelled from the group (which apparently ran on a version of "don't ask, don't tell," as at least two other members were [[OpenSecret believed to be gay but nobody said anything]]), then murdered along with her lover for being gay. This is briefly shown in [[Film/{{Watchmen}} the film's]] opening montage.

* HowWeGotHere: Everything about the Comedian is this trope. After all, he's an omnipresent character... who was killed ''at the beginning of the story''.

* HorribleHousing: Rorschach lives in a squalid apartment and dislikes his landlady.

* HollywoodLaw: Rorschach was sent to Sing Sing before even being tried for his crimes, while in reality he would be held at Riker's Island until trial. He also would likely be kept isolated from other inmates as a notorious vigilante crime fighter, which is not only for his protection but to avoid an incident like in the cafeteria.

* HoboGloves: Rorschach wears them while carrying his "The End Is Nigh" sign.

* HelplessWindowDeath: Dr. Osterman's first death occurred when he hastily returned to the Intrinsic Field Chamber to get the watch he'd left behind. When he turned to leave, he found the door closed and his colleagues staring at him in horror through the observation window: with the experiment active, the door couldn't be opened until it was complete, leaving the other scientists watching helplessly as Osterman gets disintegrated.

* HeelFaithTurn: Hollis' former archenemy The Screaming Skull discovered religion.

* HaveANiceDaySmile: The Comedian wore a smiley face button.

* HeroWithBadPublicity:
** Veidt claims that, when he retired in 1975, he was "the only hero retaining public sympathy," and what we see of how the media treats him post-retirement bears it out.
** Dr. Manhattan's reputation is ruined by a concocted story accusing him of giving cancer to anyone near him.

** Rorschach gets two, first after the child murder that prompts him to become Rorschach full time, and the second when realizing he could either prevent Armageddon or he could serve the truth, but not both, shattering his black-and-white worldview. He chooses the latter, knowing that it would force Manhattan to put him out of his misery.

** Nite Owl's robotic armor, which he never used more than once [[OldShame after he broke his arm trying to use it.]] When the police storm Nite Owl's hideout, the suit is the only thing that he left behind!

--->'''Rorschach:''' Can I leave now?\\

* BadGuyBar: Rorschach prefers to get his information by visiting bars and torturing criminals he finds there.
* TheBadGuyWins: Subverted. Though Ozymandias successfully carries out his plan and proclaims that he has ushered a new era of peace, Dr. Manhattan cryptically suggests that his triumph is but temporary. The final panel also heavily implies that his crimes are about to be revealed to the public.

* AbandonedWarChild: What the Comedian planned to do to a Vietnamese woman he impregnated. Instead, she attacked him with a broken bottle, scarring him for life, and he shot her dead.

* AnAesop: Empathy is a hero's most important quality. Regardless of honorable intent, committing atrocities [[UsefulNotes/{{Utilitarianism}} for the sake of the greater good]] never ends well; neither does [[BlackAndWhiteInsanity singleminded, uncompromising adherence to a code]]. You can't solve the world's problems if you're indifferent to other people's suffering.

* DerivativeDifferentiation: Moore and Gibbons gradually retooled the Charlton characters from their original mostly by putting a gritty spin, that altered the dynamics and personalities either by inverting it or playing with the tropes:
** The Peacemaker was a U.S. diplomat and MartialPacifist who believes in peace so much he fights for it, and works with government authorities to take down warlords and dictators. Moore found the idea bizarre (believing in peace and pacifically subverting foreign governments and passing it off as diplomacy) and so made him The Comedian who thinks everything is a joke and nihilistically serves the U.S. Government's foreign policy even if he's entirely cynical and indifferent to its idealistic and political justifications.
** The Question, as Moore noted in interviews, was Ditko's self-created audience-friendly whitewash of ComicBook/MrA. Where Mr. A was outright propaganda for Randian ideas, the Question subscribed to objective ideas but had a civilian and superhero work/life balance working as an IntrepidReporter who had a smart-guy scientist create the chemicals that gave him his face-mask, which made his adventures work like a traditional superhero story with Randian subtext that audiences could take-or-leave. Moore made Rorschach a full-time superhero without a civilian identity, while also making him a SmallStepsHero interested in seeking the truth like the Question and Mr. A, which meant that Rorschach became a hobo and the only avenues for "truth" he would be interested in are extremist publications that validate his biases (like the New Frontiersman).
** Ditko's Ted Kord Blue Beetle was a LegacyCharacter to Dan Garret's Blue Beetle (civilian alter-ego created by Creator/WillEisner) and he was intended to be athletic, energetic, and enterprising compared to Garret. In Moore's version on account of Dr. Manhattan's arrival ending the costume superhero age just at the moment that Dan Dreiberg aka Nite Owl II wanted to get in, the dynamic is reversed. Hollis Mason or Nite Owl I is a fit-for-his age handsome older man who has a sense of achievement and contentment about his life, while Dreiberg o Blue Beetle II is a mid-life crisis pot-bellied JadedWashout.
** Captain Atom or Allen Adam as he was called in the Charlton Era was a lab technician who accidentally got atomized during a nuclear rocket launch[[note]](DC would later call him Nathaniel Adam and alter his origin into a willing test subject)[[/note]] and then somehow reformed his own atoms and became a being of pure energy who needed to wear special outfits to shield people from radiation. Moore updated this very obvious origin (a Silver Age ExcusePlot made without any real awareness of actual particle physics and radiation) with QuantumMechanicsCanDoAnything, noting that reforming oneself into matter would not happen on the atomic but on the smallest possible level and rather than an excuse plot, the quantum understanding of the universe fundamentally changes and alters Jon Osterman's personality and understanding of life. This also allowed Moore to do away with radiation and with that a need for a special outfit to shield others, hence why Dr. Manhattan walks around nude.
** Nightshade was a woman who was the daughter of a U.S. Senator and a woman with magical powers and teleportation abilities. Moore and Gibbons didn't find her especially interesting so they borrowed from the Black Canary who had Golden and Silver Age versions. However, Nightshade's dad being a U.S. Senator informs Laurie's revelation that her father is The Comedian, a government operative and black ops assassin.
** Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt created by Peter Morisi (a former NYPD cop turned writer) was a Charlton acquisition that had traits common to Doc Savage and Bruce Wayne, namely in that he was an orphaned child of philanthropists who traveled around the world and became a McNinja. He was also known for using "the unused portion of the brain" and being super-intelligent with the ability of clairvoyance and anticipating future outcomes. Moore kept the "unused portion of the brain" pseudo-science and played it straight (since it allows Adrian Veidt, Ozymandias to be a compelling villain) but played up the entire clairvoyance and idea that he could predict and future as an expression of an overly deterministic and utilitarian mindset, and likewise leaves it ambiguous and uncertain if what Veidt did averted an apocalypse, if it was AllForNothing, and also revealing in the end an entirely uncertain and unsure man behind the facade of superhuman intelligence.

By the 1940s, superheroes are a very real part of American life and culture, but they're ultimately unprepared for the new ''status quo'' of the early 1960s, when the U.S. government's experiments in theoretical physics lead to the birth of "Doctor Manhattan", an omniscient PhysicalGod with the power to remake the universe at will. The latter half of the 20th century sees the US winning UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar with Doctor Manhattan's help, leading to a greatly escalated UsefulNotes/ColdWar.

* DifferentWorldDifferentMovies: The existence of real superheroes led to the American comic book industry developing very differently than in our world, ultimately resulting in superhero comics falling out of popularity and comic books about ''pirates'' becoming popular instead. To elaborate: Congress chose not to [[NewMediaAreEvil scapegoat]] comic books during the national panic over juvenile delinquency in the 1950s (since this might have cast the U.S. government's relationships with comic book-inspired "costumed adventurers" in a negative light), meaning that the UsefulNotes/{{the Comics Code}} was never established under government pressure, Creator/ECComics never went out of business due to their crime and horror comics suffering heavy censorship, Creator/DCComics never overtook EC to become an industry leader, and Creator/MarvelComics (apparently) never took off by painting themselves as the YoungerAndHipper alternative to DC.

-->'''Manhattan''': "In the end?" Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever does.

'''Warning:''' As ''Watchmen'' came out three decades ago, there will be untagged spoilers from this point forward.

* OneSteveLimit:

* AnimatedAdaptation: In-universe, the memo from Veidt's marketing department (included between chapters) mentions that they've been working on a SaturdayMorningCartoon starring Ozymandias, Bubastis, and unlicensed versions of Rorschach, Nite Owl II and Moloch; the show is expected to tie into Veidt's new line of action figures. Out-of-universe, the concept's been [[AffectionateParody parodied]] with Creator/HarryPartridge's ''[[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/485797 Saturday Morning Watchmen]]'' and played with by the Watchmen "motion comic" DVD. Also parodied on ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' with 'Watchmen Babies in V for Vacation'.