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    Dr. Manhattan (Jon Osterman) 

Original Miniseries Tropes

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

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

The only truly superpowered character in the story, due to a Freak Lab Accident, Jon Osterman gained godlike powers. He's used his powers to revolutionize the world, provide energy for electric cars and blimps, and continues to work on amazing new technology... but as time has passed he has turned more emotionally distant to the people around him and indifferent towards humankind in general, and just doesn't seem to care about anything any more, or do anything unless he's told to.


  • Achilles in His Tent: Finally leaves Earth after getting tired of saving it over and over.
  • A God I Am Not: Despite being nearly omnipotent, he states that he doesn't think there is a God, "and if there is, I'm not Him".
  • Amazing Technicolor Population: His skin turned blue after the accident.
  • Ambiguously Jewish: On the one hand, his father's speech patterns. On the other, his apparent foreskin, which he may have reconstructed when he regenerated his body.
  • The Anti-Nihilist: Has become this at the end of the story. While he believed that humanity was unimportant because life isn't important enough to give other planets a chance, he also believes that the sheer improbability of any relationship, especially one so horrid as Laurie's parents' (adoptive and biological), resulting in any one person makes that person's existence a miracle, since so many factors could have gone to either create no life at all, or a different life. Jon in fact becomes so anti-nihilist that he decides to create human life somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy just to study it.
  • Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Dr. Manhattan leaves the galaxy to create life somewhere else, effectively fitting the definition of God.
  • Badass Bookworm: Most of what he does with his powers, as well as what he did before he had them, was studying particle physics. It goes even further, it is implied that the reason he was able to return was both because of his knowledge of particle physics and the fact that as a child his father would make him dismantle and reassemble complex clocks. This meant he had both the knowledge and thought process to accomplish this. In other words, he brought himself back as a Physical God under his own ability.
  • Beware the Superman: The very existence and the enormous extent of his powers almost leads to a nuclear war. Although benevolent enough by himself, he is very weak-willed and kills uncounted Vietcong in the Vietnam War and a solid number of American criminals (petty and otherwise) only because somebody told him to. Throughout all of this, he becomes progressively detached from humanity, at one point watching a pregnant woman being killed without even trying to interfere.
  • Blessed with Suck: Manhattan's power. The accident erased him from existence, but he came back with godlike powers. Then again, he's gradually detaching from the rest of humanity...
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Even after rediscovering the value of life, he sees life in terms of predictable/unpredictable, instead of good/evil.
  • Came Back Strong: Although it's not solely his death that is the catalyst of his powers, but the way he died. That is being disintegrated at the sub-atomic level but remaining conscious and disembodied for months before figuring out how to make a new body.
  • Chekhov's Skill: A very rare case that doesn't manifest in the story itself, but in the backstory: Jon could only come back to life after the accident with the intrinsic field because he had learned to be a watchmaker during his adolescence, thus gaining the skill to reassemble himself from scratch.
  • Classical Anti-Hero: With the flaws emerging from being increasingly detached from mankind.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Due to his intellect and power, Jon becomes very distant from everyone. For instance, he treats "What's up, Doc?" as if it's a logical question.
    Jon: "Up" is a relative concept. It has no intrinsic value.
  • Complete Immortality: There's only one known way of destroying Dr. Manhattan's body, and that's by disintegrating him through the same method that gave him his power. That doesn't even matter, because Dr. Manhattan's mind and powers exist outside of his physical body, and no has even guessed what could possibly destroy or debilitate those. He doesn't need his body, and can easily make a new one if it’s destroyed (much faster than he made his first). As he points out, it is inane to try and kill him using the first trick he ever figured out (reassembling his body from being atomized).
  • Death-Activated Superpower: Dr. Manhattan is created after his human self is blown apart atom by atom.
  • Death by Origin Story: Physicist Jon Osterman is atomized in a nuclear experiment, but returns as "Dr. Manhattan", an immortal indestructible ascended godlike entity. Dr. Manhattan was an Expy of Captain Atom, so it is not surprising that Cap's origin was the same in both the original Charlton version and post-Crisis DC version: his body atomized by a nuclear bomb, he returns with superpowers.
  • Deus Exit Machina: Laurie even called him that when he appeared at Daniel's apartment.
  • The Disembodied: A Magical Particle Accelerator tore apart Jon's body, but his mind continued to exist. Apparently thanks to knowledge of nuclear physics and mechanical design, his mind found itself still able to affect the physical universe, even remaking his body. This was and remains his true existence, as his still-disembodied mind does not rely on his physical body to live—his body isn't just replaceable, it seems to just be a convenience.
  • Disposable Superhero Maker: Dr. Manhattan's accident.
  • Drama-Preserving Handicap: Another deconstruction. He could have easily solved the main conflict of the story if he had cared enough to, which in the end, he didn't. Rorschach calls him out on this towards the end when he and Nite Owl show up too late to stop Adrian.
  • The Dreaded: So ridiculously powerful, even American citizens who know he's on their side fear him. His mere existence is enough to cow the Soviet Union and other imperialistic regimes into non-agression, and the Vietcong army's sheer terror and respect ends the Vietnam War.
  • Expy:
    • Of Captain Atom. There are also elements of Superman, a fact even commented on by characters in the story (Superman being a fictional character in Watchmen just as in real life). His origin as a simple meek scientist caught in a science experiment echoes that of The Incredible Hulk and other Marvel origins, putting a quantum spin to their Radiation-Induced Superpowers origin stories.
    • Pre-accident Jon also resembles Peter Parker as drawn by Steve Ditko sans the glasses. His post-accident self is basically a bald, naked Rogue Trooper, whose appearance was also created by Dave Gibbons.
  • Extreme Doormat: He only became a nuclear physicist because his father ordered him to. Even after he became the most powerful man in the world, he still remained a doormat, following the orders of the government. This contributes to his increasing detachment, as he's not motivated by belief in justice or Patriotic Fervor.
  • Full-Frontal Assault: An unusual case. He starts out in a black bodysuit. As he grows increasingly inhuman, he wears less and less — he's in a thong by the Vietnam War. The nudity symbolizes his detachment from the human race, as well as emphasizing his utter invulnerability: nothing can hurt him, so why bother covering up? The only times he bothers to get dressed are at the request of others.
  • Freak Lab Accident: How he got his powers.
  • Heroic Build: When you're rebuilding your body ex nihilo, you might as well treat yourself to some abs.
  • Humanoid Abomination: He shows signs of becoming this throughout the story due to his growing detachment from, well, everything. He ultimately embraces humanity, sort of, but not his own. At best you could say he recognizes the value of humanity. What he actually does is to go off to a galaxy far, far away to play God.
  • Human Weapon: Treated as the ultimate nuclear deterrent and anti-nuclear weapon by the US government. He decides to go play God in another galaxy before things go that far.
  • Hunk: Jon gave himself quite the muscled body. That and his godlike power make him attractive to many women in universe. Apart from Janey and then Laurie, one of the minor characters mentions that his wife also finds Dr. Manhattan hot.
  • Insignificant Little Blue Planet: The way Dr. Manhattan sees it, all life on Earth could end, "and the universe would not even notice."
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Jon Osterman: Osterman means "man from the east" or more literally "man from the rising sun." Jonathan means "God has given," and is a name given to the Bible's example of The Ace.
    • His superhero moniker, Dr. Manhattan, is meant to invoke this, meant to strike the same terror into the Soviets that the Manhattan Project struck into the Japanese. It's also meaningful in another sense, given that, like the Manhattan Project, Jon has ushered in a new age and brought the human condition into serious question.
  • Monster Modesty: He becomes increasingly immodest as he gets further from his humanity.
  • No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: He was created by a lab accident that was "unplanned, and just as certainly unrepeatable", meaning that they can't just make more superpowered beings like Doctor Manhattan. Adrian found that one of his powers, teleportation, could be reproduced, but without Jon's mind controlling the process, anything living died of shock upon transfer, or materialized in an occupied space and exploded. Fortunately for Veidt this was not a problem, since he didn't need his monster to survive the transfer, and he intended it to do as much damage as possible. It's heavily implied that Jon's background as a watchmaker is the key element to the process, with Jon gradually rebuilding his body with the same certainty he did his father's pocketwatch. This is seemingly discounted by everyone, including Veidt and the Russian attempts to duplicate the accident off-camera.
  • Non-Linear Character: Past, present, and future is going on at the same time and so he cannot do anything. This leads him to be positively giddy when he discovers that Veidt has blocked off his ability to perceive the future, as experiencing uncertainty for the first time in several decades also allows him to actually feel excitement again.
  • Not So Stoic:
    • After the accident, he only shows genuine emotion during his interview and later when Adrian attempts to destroy him. According to Veidt however, he might as well have been crying the whole time he was just not able to show his distress or communicate it properly.
      Doctor Manhattan: Please if everyone would just go away and leave me alone... I SAID! LEAVE ME ALONE!
    • He also gets downright giddy at realizing Veidt has blocked his ability to see the future, as he realizes how much he actually missed the excitement that comes with uncertainty.
    • Despite placidly going along with everything he's told, he gets annoyed when shown the stylized 'atomic' logo chosen for him. As a nuclear physicist he finds it meaningless, and replaces it with the hydrogen atom.
  • The Omniscient: In the first part of the story, while he's still a side character. Although while he can see the future, past and present simultaneously, his knowledge of events is limited solely to the point of view of himself at that point in his personal timeline. For instance, he reveals that he knew that Laurie was sleeping with Dan, not because he saw it happening, but because she told him about a minute into the future.
  • One-Man Army: He's one of the key reasons America wins The Vietnam War.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: Professor Milton Glass' book excerpt discusses how Dr. Manhattan, with his godlike control over all matter, has tipped the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union by his mere existence. In the event of World War III, he could theoretically destroy large areas of Soviet territory instantaneously, and intercept at least 60% of the missiles launched at the U.S. before they reached their targets. In other words, he is a walking nuclear deterrent. Only two months after he arrived in Vietnam, he had single-handedly turned the tide of the war, to the point where the North Vietnamese were expected to surrender within the week. The moment he is gone the Soviets invade the Middle-East.
  • Physical God: Though Dr. Manhattan disputes the trope, it's explicitly stated by Milton Glass. Contrary to popular belief, Prof. Glass didn't coin the phrase, "The superman exists, and he's American." What he actually said before the news changed it was, "God exists, and he's American."
  • Posthuman Nudism: Initially Naked on Revival, Manhattan dressed in a black leotard-like costume when in public; as the years went by and he grew more detached from the human condition, he downgraded to a pair of skintight shorts, then a speedo. By the start of the story, he spends his days completely naked, and only bothers with clothing in the event that he needs to make a rare appearance on TV.
  • Powerful and Helpless: Jon laments that despite all his vast power, he is just a puppet of a deterministic universe who can see the strings and cannot alter the future even if it ends in the destruction of humanity.
  • Power Glows: Though once a television producer complains he's too bright, he turns it off temporarily.
  • Prescience Is Predictable: Dr. Manhattan describes himself as "a puppet who can see the strings." Since he views all time simultaneously, he can't change the future because, to him, it's already happening. This causes him to stop caring about what happens and just go with the flow. When a tachyon storm disrupts his ability to tell the future, he becomes excited, saying he had forgotten the joy of uncertainty.
  • Pro-Human Transhuman: At the same time as his transformation to The Anti-Nihilist, as he comes to champion humanity and eventually create life in another part of the cosmos.
  • Radiation-Immune Mutants: Which is great for him, but not for his loved ones who got cancer from him leaking it. That was all a lie by Veidt.
  • Reed Richards Is Useless: Averted. His presence and abilities have definitely solved many of the world's problems. (Not as many as he could solve, though.) Lampshaded by Nite Owl I. He states that he plans to run a car repair shop after he puts up the cape, saying that even Dr. Manhattan can't change cars. Manhattan then explains how he can do exactly that.
  • Self-Made Man: Both in the sense that he came from working-class roots to become a nuclear physicist, and in the most literal sense possible when he reconstructed himself at the quantum level.
  • Shameless Fanservice Guy: His preference is being completely nude, and he'll only wear clothes when he needs to. After his accident, he was actually given a costume which he reluctantly wore. But as he slowly detached himself from humanity, he chose to not be associated with anything in relation to humankind, and clothes were one of the first things to go.
  • The Spock: Once he becomes too insensitive. Even referred to as "goddamn Mr. Spock there" by a minor character at a cocktail party.
  • Story-Breaker Power: Ironically, it doesn't do much. Even when Dr. Manhattan is vaporized and comes back.
  • Straw Nihilist: Dr. Manhattan initially fits this trope. His nonlinear view of time convinces him that his own actions are predestined and he is powerless to change the course of events. His godlike perception of reality leaves him unable to see the lives of individual humans as significant. As a result, despite being the most powerful man on the planet he just does whatever the government orders him to, because life is so devoid of meaning he can't see why it matters. Later he gets better, and comes to value each human life as unique and precious because of its unlikelihood.
  • Superman Substitute: His actual powerset is completely different, but he's the most powerful being in the setting and had his own Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen equivalents...until he grew so detached from humanity that he drove them away. Much like Superman is the "core" of the DC universe, Manhattan's existence irrevocably alters all of society.
  • Superpower Lottery: It's not even fair—nobody else in the series has any powers at all, and he's a Physical God!
  • That Man Is Dead: Manhattan's above quote applies to Jon.
  • Time Dissonance: He experiences time in a non-linear sense. It can make it difficult to have a conversation with him as he simultaneously hears what you're saying, what you've said, and what you're going to say. This gives him an extreme sense of fatalism.
  • Tin Man: Doesn't seem to have any emotions at all, anymore. He does.
  • Token Super: The Trope Codifier. Dr. Manhattan wins big on the Superpower Lottery and ending up as the only hero in the Watchmen continuity to have powers, which are god-like. The rest of the Watchmen are all Non Powered Costumed Heros.
  • Unexplained Recovery: It is hinted that the watchmaking skills taught to him by his father (who ironically later rejected them when he found out about Relativity and told his son to be a Nuclear Physicist instead), his vast knowledge of nuclear physics and the human body, helped him in figuring out how to put his atoms back in the right order, in order of biological human structure (he first appeared as a nervous system and went up from there). Where his mind was (or is) in the interim goes unexplained.
  • The Unfettered: It helps his powers manage to keep him without many hurdles to do what he wants.
  • Walking Wasteland: Dr. Manhattan's presence is said to give people cancer. Subverted, as it's actually Veidt deliberately inducing cancer in Manhattan's past acquaintances.
  • Walk on Water: Near the end of the graphic novel, as he notes his interest in creating life, he's standing on water. The implication is obvious. In the movie, the walking on water scene is visible in a commercial but lacks the symbolism.
  • You Cannot Change The Future: Dr. Manhattan exists in a multidimensional quantum solid state, and quickly tires of listening to his friends talk about what "could have happened" or what "should happen", since he already sees his time-stream. For him, the only difference between past and future is directional causality. The effects of causality on Dr. Manhattan himself are slightly contradictory, as future events can affect him backwards by causing him to report them, but not in any other way; he's unable to use the knowledge to interfere, and sees himself as bound by one-directional causality much like normal people.
    Dr. Manhattan: Miracles by definition are meaningless. Only what can happen does happen.
    Dr. Manhattan: (repeating himself twice) Excuse me, Rorschach. I'm informing Laurie 90 seconds ago.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: Gradually came to such a belief due to his immense powers. Despite being a Physical God, he felt himself powerless before the forces governing the universe. Even though he could see key events before they occurred and could easily have shaped history to his liking, he felt anything he did would be so insignificant in the long run that taking action was pointless. His ability to see the future being disrupted is one of the reasons he stops being passive.

Doomsday Clock Tropes

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  • Anti-Villain. His story arc in the original comics concludes with a greater appreciation of human life (or at least its inherent contradictions) and setting off to explore and create brand new life. Here, his villainy is borne of curiosity.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: He is responsible for a lot of characters being murdered, erased from history, or having their lives otherwise mucked with, but he's not the sole Big Bad of the story, sharing that position with Ozymandias and Black Adam.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: After the incident in Moscow, the JLA tracks Manhattan to Mars and flies there en masse to confront him. Thanks to a combination of not understanding what Manhattan's situation is and badly underestimating his power, they end up getting nuked and seemingly killed. Issue 10 reveals that he didn't kill them at all, but incapacitated them.
  • The Dreaded: Every villain that is even vaguely aware of his presence and actions shits their pants at the possibility that he might show up.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: He refuses to kill the Marionette with the implication that it's due to her pregnancy. Revealed in Issue #7 that it was not due to the child she was carrying in their original confrontation, but the child she is currently carrying, a child whom he sees universe-saving potential in.
  • Expy Coexistence: His inspiration, Captain Atom is the only one who makes any progress in the fight against Manhattan.
  • Foil: Word of God frames him as one to Superman. While Clark Kent is an alien with incredible powers who was raised among humanity and became the Big Good of the DCU, Jon Osterman is an ordinary human who was gifted with incredible powers that caused him to ultimately lose his humanity, and became so desensitized to the Crapsack World he inhabited that he ultimately abandoned it.
  • Fond Memories That Could Have Been: His last moments are spent daydreaming about a world where Janey Slater convinced Jon Osterman to stop and join her for lunch instead of entering the intrinsic field chamber to look for her watch.
  • For Science!: It's revealed he's behind Superman becoming Darker and Edgier, as he starts screwing with Clark Kent's life to see why it is he's a Hope Bringer.
    Manhattan: As others have done, I move to reshape this universe to see how it forms around Superman. I change the past to challenge the future.
  • God Is Evil: The omnipotent creator and destroyer of universes, who is extraordinarily callous and terrifying.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: His actions are the result of him being unable to comprehend how a world with a legacy of superheroes would result in a hopeful world instead of a Crapsack World, leading to him making it Darker and Edgier. Issue 10 shows that he keeps watching Superman's various origins and can't wrap his head around the idea that, despite all of his changes, Superman is still a Hope Bringer — until Superman fighting a battle he has no hope of winning, still strives to protect innocents, and protects the man who essentially killed his parents — then he finally becomes inspired.
  • Have You Seen My God?: His absence is what kicks off part of the plot. The new Rorschach and Adrian are looking for him.
  • Heel Realization: The end of Issue 10 has him realize he's become Superman's Arch-Enemy, as a creature of utter inaction to Superman's action. By the end of the series, Manhattan realizes what Superman means to the metaverse at large and resets history at the cost of his life.
  • He Who Must Not Be Seen: Starting from the beginning of Rebirth up until the end of The Button, and even then it only shows his hands. And despite fully appearing in a flashback as shown in his character image, Manhattan doesn't appear in the present narrative until Issue #7.
  • Hero Killer: He killed Alan Scott and Saturn Girl, as well as Jonathan and Martha Kent. At the end, though he also undoes these deaths.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Two, one attempted.
    • He seems to decide that between Superman killing him or Jon killing the DCU, it's better to let Superman kill him by stoically letting Superman punch him. It becomes moot when Superman instead Stabs The Scorpion.
    • Uses up almost all of his power resetting the DC Universe to revive the Justice Society, the Legion of Super-Heroes and the Kents.
  • Hope Crusher: He plays himself up as this when he shows Firestorm the truth of his origins. In issue 10, it's revealed that he caused the New 52 era to exist by removing Alan Scott and causing the Kents' deaths, making Superman his moody and grimmer self.
  • Karma Houdini: Despite restoring the Justice Society and undoing the deaths of Superman's parents, he basically leaves the DCU without facing any real punishment or making any actual atonement for the untold number of people he traumatized through his "experiment" and the people his callousness erased from existence. He's not even shown making an effort to fully restore the memories of the pre-Flashpoint universe he kept trying so hard to remove.
  • Kick the Dog: He turns Pandora into a greasy smear just for calling him out on what he's done.
  • Kick The Son Of A Bitch: First makes himself known by turning Earth-3's Owlman into a splotch. He later kills Eobard Thawne, too.
  • Loophole Abuse: He has difficulty affecting the energy in power rings but nothing stops him from destroying the rings directly.
  • The Man Behind the Man: He has been controlling Mr. Oz.
  • Morality Chain:
    • Issue 11 reveals that he still very much loves Laurie Juspeczyk, and spares Marionette because her future, unborn child would be adopted by her and Dan Dreiberg and bring them a lot of joy.
    • Issue 12 has Superman noting that every step he takes leaves a photo of him and Janey Slater. It leads to Dr. Manhattan's "Eureka!" Moment that yes, he really does have human emotions left.
  • My Greatest Second Chance: Ozymandias believes that he wants another chance at saving the world, which is why he came to the DC universe.
  • Naked People Are Funny: 75% of the interactions with the DC Universe characters are them commenting on his nudity.
  • Neutral No Longer: Issue #12 results in Jon being this, making him care enough to save the DC Universe... and the Watchman Universe.
  • Not So Invincible After All: Downplayed. The heroes of the DC Universe can actually hurt him, revealing quite a few weaknesses during their fight but he easily heals himself from any damage and showcases that while he can be hurt it doesn't mean defeating him would be easy by any means and said fight ends once he feels done with it. Manhattan also comments that the Metaverse itself is working against him, and he is basically slowly losing the fight against it.
  • Not So Stoic:
    • Even he can't help but react with wonder and excitement over figuring out how to use the DC Universe's magic, happy to learn new things again.
    • He's absolutely shocked at Superman's Stab the Scorpion, the only time as Doctor Manhattan he's ever worn a confused look on his face.
  • Obliviously Evil: It's only after several decades, and some messing around with the DC universe, that he actually comes to the realization that he's being the villain.
  • Poke in the Third Eye: For whatever reason, he has some difficulty looking at the DC universe's history, and has ever since he arrived. Bubastis II can also cause this for him.
  • Prophecy Twist: His vision is either Superman kills him or he destroys the DCU. Turns out his vision is him restarting the DCU.
  • Significant Wardrobe Shift: In issue #12, Jon, despite still being a blue superbeing, is wearing his old suit while with Clark, indicating he's finally rediscovered his humanity.
  • Starting a New Life: Rorschach and Ozymandias speculate that Jon took a new identity in the DC universe, possibly one of the superpowered beings that inhabits it. When he finally turns up, it turns out this isn't true, though he had been thinking about it.
  • Took a Level in Badass: In the original Watchmen, Jon could disintegrate people, teleport, use telekinesis, and synthesize materials, with the suggestion he might be able to create life. He's managed to gain a serious upgrade, becoming a full-blown Reality Warper who Wally West describes as being more dangerous than Darkseid.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: He's also started casually murdering folk who couldn't represent a threat to him if they tried, removed people from history and altered their memories for no readily apparent reason.
  • Villain Takes an Interest:
    • He's focusing on Superman especially for some reason. He's implied to be the one who split Superman in two, abducted Jor-El before his death and was responsible for him becoming Mr. Oz, and is hinted to be responsible for the Kents' deaths in the New 52.
    • He also takes an interest on normal human Calver Colman's life because a) he's his anchor to the DC Universe, and b) his life parallels Jon Osterman's. He ends up giving Calver life advice after his "Eureka!" Moment, which causes a moment of pain for Carver in exchange for later lifetime of happiness and heroism.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: His fight with the heroes of the DC Universe reveals several things that can actually affect him, to his surprise. The Emotional Spectrum is a big one, with him directly mentioning that it's difficult for him to affect, though he can still affect the physical conduits, the power rings, just fine. Magic takes him by surprise until he studies it for a small bit and throws it right back at them. Finally certain types of radiation are able to hurt him, to the point his physical form can be completely destroyed, such as the Firestorm Matrix and Captain Atom's powers.
  • What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: The entire story arc has Jon trying to figure out basic human emotion. He's confused by Superman's heroism, but has a "Eureka!" Moment when Superman has a Stab the Scorpion moment. He resets the entire DC Universe, and is convinced by Ozymandias to restore the Watchman universe, too.
  • Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Implied. He didn't kill the pregnant Marionette. Played with, as it wasn't THAT child of Marionette's he wouldn't hurt, but one that hadn't even been conceived yet and wouldn't be for years. In addition, Jon notes he never had issues with killing children or pregnant women, and the unborn children of Marionette were spared because of their significance, not their inherent innocence.

    Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen (2019) (ALL SPOILERS UNMARKED

Cal Abar / Jon Osterman / Doctor Manhattan

Played by: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II

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As Doctor Manhattan 

Angela's husband. The physicist who became accidentally blue-skinned and superpowered, and changed the world. He is still living on Mars over thirty years after the comic book's events. Or so we thought...


  • Adaptational Attractiveness: Dr. Manhattan always had an immaculate Adonis physique since his reconstruction, but in the original comic his nudity was intended to be very understated and almost unnoticeable, somewhat like a Renaissance sculpture. Thanks to his actor being significantly more well-endowed, suffice to say his nudity is a bit more noticeable in the series.
  • Adaptational Nice Guy: While it can be partly chalked up to Character Development, Dr. Manhattan is a full-blown romantic sweetheart in this series, if still a little detached thanks to his non-linear perception of time. In the comic, he was more of a shameless Casanova for the most part who struggled to truly connect with either of his love interests, and infamously ditched Janey as soon as the younger and prettier Laurie caught his eye.
  • Adaptational Superpower Change: While Dr. Manhattan still retains his powers from the comics, which included changing his size and how bright he glowed, there was nothing to hint he's capable of outright shapeshifting. Here, he's able to change himself from his blue form to looking like a normal African-American man.
  • Adaptational Wimp: Oh so heavily downplayed, but it's still there. This iteration of Doctor Manhattan is able to be killed (albeit with a very convoluted and "one-in-a-million-chance of working" method) and his powers can be neutralized through a cage of synthetic lithium, while the original comic version of Manhattan was shown to have Complete Immortality and be able to No-Sell virtually anything short of tachyon particle interference.
  • And I Must Scream: He implies at one point to Angela that, due to his nonlinear view of time, he is always experiencing his body being painfully disintegrated within the intrinsic field generator.
  • Big Damn Heroes: He rescues Angela from being pinned down by Kavalry gunmen and turns their heads into mush.
  • Blackface: While he did shapeshift, he was still born a white man and is posing as a black one, which led to Veidt chastising him when he comes to meet with Veidt.
  • Blessed with Suck: Let's be real, his powers are awesome. But because he experiences all time simultaneously, he can never, ever get away from traumatizing or painful events because they are always happening to him. It also means that, for him, the future is fixed as long as it's observable: no surprises, no free will. These are all good reasons for him to seal away his memory and powers and live in a "tunnel of love" for ten years.
  • Canon Character All Along: "An Almost Religious Awe" reveals he's really Dr. Manhattan.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: The Millennium Clock shreds him into his elementary particles in a disturbingly slow and painful fashion, to the point where it briefly looks like he's being burned and flayed alive simultaneously.
  • Death by Adaptation: "See How They Fly" sees him die as a result of Trieu's plans. Also, one of the fastest shifts, if not the fastest, from type 1 to type 2 as the character died at the end of Doomsday Clock literally days later.
  • Death Seeker: One possible interpretation of his (in)actions; while he repeatedly claims not to be able to alter the future because he experiences it as the present, he is never shown (in the series or comics) as even trying to prevent a tragedy that he knows will happen, and his capture and subsequent death were preventable in any number of ways with his foresight.
  • Dying as Yourself: Played with. He turns into Cal Abar during his final moments. While this isn't his original form, it still shows that he remembers and treasures his time living as Angela's husband and a human.
  • Face Death with Dignity: His only plea in the face of imminent death is for Angela to stay near him, as he doesn't want to be alone when he dies.
  • The Faceless: Dr. Manhattan's face is kept hidden from the camera in all flashbacks that feature him. By the time he appears in the present, he still chooses to use the face of Cal Abar, meaning that we never get a good look at the face of an adult Jon Osterman.
  • For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: He met Angela during a festival in Vietnam. He used a Doctor Manhattan mask to look like just another festival attendee in a costume.
  • A Form You Are Comfortable With: Took the form of Calvin Jelani, a heart attack victim with no next of kin, at Angela's suggestion.
  • A God I Am Not: Much like his original characterization. He left Europa because his creations' constant desire to worship him left him unfulfilled, and as Cal he tells Topher that God and the afterlife are not real.
  • Hollywood Atheist: He doesn't believe in God or an afterlife and is quick to tell the latter to his own children. Considering he's Doctor Manhattan, he likely has a good reason to.]] It's mostly subverted though, since he isn't portrayed as bad due to this (other things he does don't put him in a good light, though not that). Later we learn that his father wasn't particularly religious either, so his atheism probably wasn't entirely caused by being Doctor Manhattan.
  • House Husband: Cal appears to be the person who stays at home with the kids while Angela is out "baking."
  • Humanity Is Infectious: Having spent ten years as Cal Abar, living like a human being, seems to have really rubbed off on him, because when he regains all his old powers he retains the face of Cal, though blue. His pupils also return to visibility when speaking to Angela, something the old Manhattan never did.
  • Innocently Insensitive:
    • He doesn't seem to recognize or care about the existential dread that he may instill in his young children by telling them that there is no afterlife. This is one of the clearest hints that he is Dr. Manhattan]].
    • Likewise, he sees nothing problematic about stealing a dead black man's identity despite being born white, even if Angela ultimately consented to the idea. Veidt indirectly compares it to wearing blackface when he first sees Jon's new form.
  • Irony: Doctor Manhattan, who is repeatedly called a god (with reason-he qualifies by many definitions), even being actively worshiped by some people, is an atheist himself. He doesn't appear to encourage worship, either, which is not surprising and at least consistent.
  • The Maker: It was Manhattan who created the pocket dimension on Europa, with the original Phillips and Crookshanks serving as his Adam and Eve. Veidt was put on Europa not as punishment, but basically because Manhattan took pity on him.
  • Male Frontal Nudity: In keeping with the comic, he appears to Veidt in the buff and spends his final moments in the cage nude.
  • Mind over Matter: Spends his time building "sand castles" the size of real buildings on Mars.
  • Mr. Fanservice: He's a very attractive man and we see him naked multiple times (with a few instances including Male Frontal Nudity). This is even Lampshaded in-universe, as one of the first things Laurie brings up when talking about him with Angela is how hot he is.
  • My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: Played with as the Seventh Kavalry's lithium cage causes his omnipresence to go haywire, causing him to repeat several lines from the comic as he's reexperiencing past events. However, it's played more straight moments before he dies as he chooses to reexperience all of his happy moments with Angela before checking out.
  • Nice Guy: He's a kind and supportive husband, father and friend.
  • Non-Linear Character: As in the comic, Doctor Manhattan experiences the past, present, and future all at once. He experiences creating life on Europa at the same time he first meets Angela in 2009. He experiences his accident in the intrinsic field generator at the same time he argues with Angela decades later. He is able act as an intermediary between Angela and Will ten years apart, which is how Angela inadvertently gives Will the idea to kill Judd.
  • One-Man Army: He annihilated the Viet Cong and a group of Seventh Kavalry gunmen with minimal effort.
  • Power Glows: Though he is able to control by how much.
  • Race Lift: An In-Universe case, as he's really Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan, thus was originally born a white man, but he took the form of a black one.
  • Restraining Bolt: The "ring" embedded in his head is irradiated with tachyons, which disrupt Doctor Manhattan's future-sense. The ring also erases all his memories, so he's effectively a normal guy unless stuck in a life-threatening situation (like when he unconsciously wished an attacking Kavalryman to Gila Flats.) Angela has to crack poor Cal's head open with a hammer to get it back out.
  • Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: He causes a great many things to happen by telling people that they will happen, and permits things to happen that were totally avoidable by being unable or unwilling to prevent things he's foreseen from coming true. Probably the best example is when he gets captured by the Kavalry's tachyon cannon; he slaughters them all with his power, turns to talk to Angela, and a hiding survivor blasts him from behind, all of which he knew in advance would happen, so he was simply going through the motions of being ambushed rather than destroying the cannon first or teleporting away. He was captured because he knew he would be.
  • Skewed Priorities: Having been reawakened to his Dr. Manhattan memories, he does several things that don't make too much sense (at least, to humans stuck in linear time). He stops an important discussion to start making waffles in the kitchen, fully aware of the people with guns outside his house intending to blow him up. Then it turns out that he was setting up the possible means for his wife to inherit his powers...
  • Star-Crossed Lovers: Told Angela from the outset that their relationship would end in tragedy after 10 years. While Angela is obviously still broken up by his death, her pre-existing awareness that it would happen allows her to cope with it better than she otherwise probably would have.
  • Stop Worshipping Me: The reason he left the original Phillips and Crookshanks behind on Europa was because they wanted to worship him rather than love him. It's one of the reasons he sought out Angela.
  • Time Abyss: As established, time is really...funky...around Dr. Manhattan. For him, the future is set in stone and the past is as real as the present. So he comes off like a guy who's lived about a million years even if he's younger than Will Reeves.
  • Walking Spoiler: He seems to just be Angela’s supportive husband and father to their adopted children; this is turned on it’s head when it’s revealed that he’s really Dr. Manhattan.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: Zig-zagged. Manhattan knows the Kavalry's plan to teleport him away with the tachyon cannon will ultimately work and that he will then be destroyed, but he still assists Angela in her effort to save him despite this apparent futility. He states that the moment Angela decided to save him despite knowing she couldn't was the moment he knew he was in love with her.
  • Your Head Asplode: How he dispatches the Kavalrymen attacking Angela's house.

    Nite Owl (Dan Dreiberg) 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rco012_8.jpg
"It's all crap. Who needs all this hardware to catch hookers and purse-snatchers?"

Rorschach: Used to come here often, back when we were partners.
Dreiberg: Oh. Uh, yeah... yeah, those were great times, Rorschach. Great times. Whatever happened to them?
Rorschach: [exiting] You quit.

A former superhero fan, then full-fledged superhero, and now retired intellectual. A gadget-based hero who flies the night skies in his state-of-the-art airship, Archie, he sometimes questions his use of million-dollar technology to fight petty crime.


  • Animal-Themed Superbeing: Animal Alias variety.
  • Ascended Fanboy: Deconstructed to some degree since Dan describes his crimefighting career as "Some schoolkid's fantasy that got out of hand".
  • Ambiguously Jewish: His name and background seem to suggest that he's Jewish.Alan Moore apparently intended for him to be a Dutch-German Calvinist, but his religion is never touched upon in the series.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: He notes in retrospect that his career as Nite Owl was basically this. He was an undeniably effective crimefighter and his equipment is a major scientific accomplishment in its own right, but you don't need a sci-fi airship or lasers to fight purse-snatchers.
  • Badass Bookworm: Although he isn't as tough or smart as Ozymandias, he's still a caped crimefighter with enough technical wizardry to build his own crimefighting weapons. He doesn't look threatening, and is effectively a comic book geek living out a childhood fantasy.
  • Badass on Paper: Really, if Dan didn't live in the Watchmen universe, he'd fit right in among the Badass Normal characters of DC or Marvel. He's an incredibly skilled martial artist (good enough to take out entire gangs even while out of practice) who invented a physics-defying airship and a ton of crazy gadgets. But in a world where the only thing to use this stuff on is gangs and drug-pushers, he's just some rich fool playing hero because it's the only way he can get it up.
  • Bash Brothers: With Rorschach.
  • Battle Couple: With Laurie.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Timid and kind but as he pointed out to a bearer of bad news, Archie has the firepower to kill any gang in New York. Upon finding out that Hollis Mason, his old hero, mentor, and the original Nite Owl was murdered in his home by hoodlums, mild mannered Dan Dreiberg utterly flips the fuck out and shouts that he's going to kill whoever is responsible. Rorschach has to hold him back.
  • Big Beautiful Man: Once he stopped crimefighting, Dreiberg presumably stopped getting his usual exercise (read: thrashing bad guys) and put on some weight. Under that, though, he's still quite strong, and he has a pretty handsome face to go with it.
  • Boring, but Practical: His approach to crimefighting seems like this next to Rorschach. It doesn't seem very dramatic, but it's far more effective. Rorschach wants to pursue his Entertainingly Wrong assumption about a mask killer by beating up more suspects, while Dan takes the time to question that very assumption, leading them to the trail of the real culprit behind the Comedian's murder: Adrian Veidt.
  • Classical Anti-Hero: Needs his costume to overcome his shortcomings.
  • Cool Airship: Archie.
  • Cool Car: The Owlcar.
  • Covert Pervert: His first attempt at lovemaking with Laurie fails because The Loins Sleep Tonight, but he manages to perform when they try it in their hero costumes later.
  • Crazy-Prepared: When Laurie frets that the cops have figured out Dan is Nite Owl, he nonchalantly mentions that he had set up back-up identities years ago, just in case. He also made one for her. Dan is like the poster boy for the The Silver Age of Comic Books. The amount of equipment he had built for himself is just plain silly. His ship, built for fighting urban crime, has a fog generator, a water cannon, flame thrower and air to freaking air missiles. He also had a different Nite Owl suit for every environ you could possibly imagine. He even has a Snow-Owl suit for crime fighting in extreme cold. Why would you need one of those?
  • Crimefighting with Cash: A deconstruction of this trope, at one point openly admitting how spending millions on dollars on crimebusting equipment to fight purse-snatchers and prostitutes isn't exactly the most economically sound thing to do.
  • Dating Catwoman: Implied to have had this going on with the Twilight Lady.
  • Dogged Nice Guy: To Laurie.
  • The Everyman: Means well but is out of depth with the realities of being a hero.
  • Expy: Of the second Blue Beetle, Ted Kord.
  • Fetish: Seemingly can't maintain an erection unless he and his partner are in costume. While it's partly due to the power and adrenaline that come from thinking of himself as an indomitable superhero, Dan also admits that the spandex itself plays a role. This gives a slightly humorous bent to his status as an Ascended Fanboy of costumed heroes.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: Has an insane amount of gadgets devoted to fighting crime in his basement. Also, while we repeatedly see Airships are commonly used in 1985 as a viable form of transport due to Dr Manhattan being able to synthesise Helium; the fact that Archimedes on the other hand is able to hover with no visible jets seems to suggest that Dan invented some form of anti-gravity technology. That he has Archie in the first (and only) Crimebusters meeting, means that he had cracked this technology as early as 1965!
    • Not just Archie, during that timeframe Dan had created a working exoskeleton, a tiny handheld laser gun, and night vision goggles that at least were as good as the stuff we have available nowadays.
  • Geek Physiques: He's rather chubby, and very geeky.
  • Goggles Do Something Unusual: They have infra-red vision.
  • Heroic Build: Let himself go after retiring. Since his return to superheroism, he may work to get it back.
  • I Call It "Vera": He calls his airship "Archie", short for Archimedes.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: After retirement he tries to convince himself that he's normal, until he gets back into action.
  • In Harm's Way: He probably could have gone on without it, but it's clear he missed his old hero days and was eager to go back.
  • Interplay of Sex and Violence: Gets turned on after committing heroics.
  • The Lancer: The role he ends up playing to either Rorschach, Comedian, or Silk Spectre whenever he's paired up with them. When they're all together, he settles into being The Leader.
  • Legacy Character: He even wrote a letter to his predecessor for permission to use the Nite Owl name.
  • Nerd Glasses: In his secret identity.
  • Nice Guy: What else can be said about a man who can make friends with Rorschach?
  • Night-Vision Goggles: He's incorporating an owl, after all.
  • Odd Friendship: With Rorschach. No-one else seems to even like being in the same room as Rorschach.
  • Only Friend: He's also the only person who Rorschach calls a friend and is willing to actually apologize to. Dreiberg himself admits how hard it is to deal with him.
  • Passing the Torch: The first Nite Owl handed off the hero-ship to him.
  • Powered Armor: Tried to make a set at one point, but the prototype broke his arm in three places and he gave up. (It's one of the only things he leaves behind when fleeing the police. Wonder if someone tried it out?)
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue Oni to Rorschach (Red Oni) though it's briefly flipped when rioters kill Nite Owl I, he then proceeded to give a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown so bad that Rorschach has to hold him back.
  • Second Love: Becomes Laurie's lover after she leaves her first love, Dr. Manhattan.
  • Secret Identity: As Dan Dreiberg, he pretends to be a harmless intellectual. After he retires, it's not so much an act...
  • Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Sensitive Guy to Rorschach's Manly Man.
  • Stylish Protection Gear: The Snow-Owl suit.
  • Superheroes Wear Capes: As an analogue of Batman, a natural.
  • Superior Successor: The original Nite Owl freely admits it. Daniel himself is less certain.
  • Technical Pacifist: He was the least bloodthirsty of the group.
  • Token Good Teammate: Alan Moore says that of all the Watchmen, he is the most like a classic superhero.
  • Tragic Bromance: With Rorschach, and the movie even allows Dan to punch Veidt in revenge once he dies.
  • Unkempt Beauty: He's paunchy, awkward and clearly doesn't put much effort in his looks, and yet still manages to have an undeniably handsome face.
  • Unstoppable Rage: When Hollis Mason (a kindly old man and Nite Owl I) is murdered in his home for the 'crime' of being tangentially associated with superheroes, Dan freaks out. We'll say it again, he unnerves Rorschach with his fury.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Dan's plan to bust Rorschach out of jail gets Hollis Mason killed.
  • Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: He is a wealthy Gadgeteer Genius, and thus makes his own wonderful toys. He also made Rorschach's grappling gun, explaining how the vagabond had such a good gadget.

    Silk Spectre (Laurie Juspeczyk) 

Original Miniseries Tropes

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rco026_5.jpg
"I don't know anybody! I don't know anyone except goddamned superheroes!"

"I'm used to going out at 3 in the morning and doing something stupid."
Stage-mothered almost from birth into continuing her mother's legacy, Laurie has become very bitter and disillusioned since the Keene Act and starts out in the story as Dr Manhattan's girlfriend.
  • Action Girl: More than a match for any man except Veidt.
  • Anti-Hero: She's only in the hero gig because her mother pushed her into it, making her a Classical Anti-Hero.
  • Battle Couple: With Dan.
  • Big "NO!": When she realizes that the Comedian is her father.
  • Combat Stilettos: She wears heels as part of her costume.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Especially with her mother.
  • Expy: Of both Dinah Laurel Lance/the second Black Canary and the Phantom Lady.
  • Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Laurie is all but a chain smoker. Like her father.
  • The Heart: Of the main characters Laurie is by far the most selfish and the one the least concerned with ideals, but the moment she sees the aftermath of Adrian's plan she's completely horrified, to the point of trying to kill Adrian on sight.
  • Hime Cut: Along with a headband in the comic.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: Initially; she doesn't actually enjoy being a costumed vigilante and chafes at being kept by the government as Dr. Manhattan's leash. When she comes out of retirement with Dan, though, she remembers what a thrill heroics gave her.
  • Legacy Character: The "original" Silk Spectre retired early in this world's history and started training and stage-mothering her daughter to succeed her. After discovering The Comedian is her real father she seems eager to become a Legacy Character for him instead. She's last seen discussing new elements she wants to adopt into her superhero persona; a mask, a more protective leather outfit, and a gun.
  • Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: She's aware that her mother's husband is not her father, but doesn't find out the actual identity until later, largely because she grows up assuming Hooded Justice was her dad. It's the Comedian. Her conversation with Jon on Mars makes her realize that all the evidence was there the whole time, she just didn't want to see it.
  • Morality Pet:
    • For Dr Manhattan. Likely a Morality Chain as well, as he says she's his only connection to humanity.
    • For the Comedian as well. She's the only woman that attacked him — in Laurie's case, spilling her drink on him at a party while intoxicated — and that he didn't maim or hurt. It's because he was her father, and for all his wicked deeds, Comedian never wanted to hurt her.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Though she (and Rorschach) hated her costume.
  • Mysterious Parent: At first, she thought that her real father was the Hooded Justice. Then it turns out to be the Comedian.
  • Never a Self-Made Woman: Laurie inherited her mother's identity, and spends the graphic novel dependent on her love interests. Ultimately subverted with Laurie in the end, who expresses that she doesn't want to settle down with a family, but take up crime fighting again. But then again, she seems to be following in her recently revealed father's footsteps in that regard as well based on her description of improvements to her costume...
  • Nom de Mom: Granted, she never knew her father, so going by Sally Jupiter's pre-Americanization surname is a given. Her birth father, Edward Blake, offhandedly notes (in a flashback) that Laurie didn't take her "father's" last name, apparently alluding to Laurence Schexnayder, Sally Jupiter's ex-husband, but actually making a surreptitious reference to himself.
  • Oblivious to Love: To Dan at first.
  • Only Sane Woman: The most level-headed of the "Watchmen", given she's not as depressed as Dan.
  • Passing the Torch: More like having the torch shoved into her hand against her will, gratefully throwing it away, and then deciding it wasn't so bad after all.
  • Pretty Freeloader: Until the events of the novel, she's spent most of adult life on the government payroll as Doctor Manhattan's girlfriend. A spook even points out that, after Doctor Manhattan exiles himself, she's out of a job. She takes up with Dan instead, who's rich and wants company. She's been raised from birth to be a superhero and has no other skills.
  • Satellite Love Interest: She was employed by the US government essentially to be one of these for Dr. Manhattan after she quit her old job in the Superhero business. Deconstructed in that she actually does have a personality, and it winds up conflicting to some extent with her mission of keeping Manhattan focused/sane/human, because the fact that he's too much the first of those and not enough the third upsets her, which in turn upsets him.
  • Shared Family Quirks: A reread shows just how much Laurie matches her father. She's quick-witted, smokes like a chimney, and has a fairly snarky nihilistic view on life, much like the Comedian himself. An even less subtle example is near the end where she decides she wants to dress in leather and carry around a gun, just like her old man did.
  • Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She eventually realizes that Jon really loves her. Although his detachment from humanity caused him to be used as a walking murder weapon during the Vietnam war, she's attracted to his omniscience, his virility and his power over her. She also realizes that, as a god, he's unable to care for her the way a normal guy could. So she ends up with the nerdy, mild-mannered, fat, initially impotent Dan Dreiberg, and they live happily ever after.
  • Smurfette Principle: She was the only female "Crime Buster." But being Watchmen, this is a Deconstructed Trope. Most Token Female characters in The Silver Age of Comic Books were presented as the most emotional and/or empathic, and usually as the less physically powerful of their respective teams. Laurie is definitively the most emotionally-driven of the main characters, being almost exclusively motivated by her relationships (with Jon, with her mother, with Dan and with her real father). The empathy part is quite arguable as Laurie acts with indifference at best and great sceptism to the value of the superheroes or the ideals other characters fight for. And as for the "less physically powerful", she ironically is the one that comes the closest to defeating the arguable Big Bad Veidt by engaging Why Don't You Just Shoot Him? on sight.
  • Stripperific: Her superhero outfit. She doesn't like it (and neither does Rorschach).
  • Strong Family Resemblance: The Comedian notes that Laurie looks just like Sally except for the brown hair... something she inherited from him.
  • Superhero Packing Heat: What Laurie decides to be in the end.
  • Superior Successor: Her mother had her train practically her whole life to be this.
  • Teleportation Sickness: It always makes her ill.
  • Token Good Teammate: Shares this role with Dan.
  • Tyke-Bomb: Trained from a young age for the sole purpose of being a superheroine.
  • Women Are Wiser: To the rest of the team, especially Doctor Manhattan.

Watchmen (2019) Tropes

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/laurie.jpg
"God snaps his fingers, and the hero goes to Hell."

Played by: Jean Smart

Laurie: Do you know how to tell the difference between a masked cop and a vigilante?
Angela: No.
Laurie: Me neither.

Formerly known as Laurie Juspeczyk, a.k.a. Laurie Jupiter, a.k.a. Silk Spectre II. She is a former costumed adventurer turned investigator in the FBI's Anti-Vigilante Task Force.


  • Actually Pretty Funny: She finds what's possibly Doctor Manhattan's response to her joke — that is, to drop a car in front of her as a way of acknowledging her "falling brick" gag — to be genuinely hilarious.
  • Awesomeness by Analysis: She quickly figures out that Judd's closet had a secret compartment, in part because one was found in her father's closet, and deduces both that Angela had removed what was inside and that the Seventh Kavalry weren't involved in Judd's murder.
  • Been There, Shaped Alternate History: The Peteypedia reveals she and Dan Dreiberg (Nite Owl II) were arrested after preventing the Oklahoma City Bombing.
  • Boxed Crook: It’s implied she’s working with the FBI to avoid jail time for her actions as Silk Spectre and Keene implies she might also be trying to work out a release for Nite Owl as well.
  • Breaking Speech: Attempted one on Sister Night, was genuinely surprised when it didn't work.
  • Character Development: Laurie has changed very significantly in the years since her comics appearance. She expresses contempt for "masks" in general, telling a cruel joke in her message to Doctor Manhattan showing this in contrast to her once proudly being Silk Spectre. She embraced being Edward Blake’s daughter sometime back, after having initially been very distraught that he turned out to be her birth father, calling him "my dad" and adopting his last name. It's also clear she's taken up a lot of his dark personality and nihilistic worldview, contrasting to how generally optimistic and upbeat she was previously.
  • Deadpan Snarker: She has developed her already snarky attitude in the thirty years since the events of the comics.
  • Happy Ending Override: Laurie and Dan spent ten years as outlaw superheroes until they were captured by the Feds. Dan is out of the picture because he is in federal custody, and Laurie stated during her interrogation that the two weren't talking anymore because of "irreconcilable differences".
  • Inspector Javert: She fills this role as a member of the FBI's Anti-Vigilante Task Force, and sees no distinction between illegal costumed vigilantes or legal masked cops.
  • Irony: Laurie spent much of the original comic despising Edward Blake, a.k.a. the Comedian, because of his attempted rape of her mother, unaware that the two later had a consensual affair and that Blake was her father. Laurie later adopted both her father's name and moniker, and by 2019 has become a government operative like he was. It also appears as if the Comedian's near-sociopathic personality has rubbed off on her somewhat. Like her father, she also learns that world has surprises for even the most die-hard cynic.
  • Pronouncing My Name for You: In one of the Peteypedia memos, she teaches an agent interrogating her to pronounce her (mother's) surname as "juice-pez-ick". The problems with pronouncing her name is probably one of the reasons she started going by her father's surname instead. The only character who manages to pronounce it right is Adrian Veidt in episode 9.
  • Knight in Sour Armor: The critical difference between her and her father is that she still believes the world can be saved, she just admits that the flaws are pretty stark and not going away soon. As Veidt finds out the hard way, she's also since come to believe the ends don't justify the means, especially if they're motivated by pride.
  • Legacy Character: In the '80s, she took up her mother’s Silk Spectre identity. Before she joined the FBI, she has taken her father's alias, albeit with some liberties, as an outlaw costumed crimefighter.
  • Like Father, Like Daughter: After taking up her father the Comedian's moniker for some time, she also becomes a government agent with a misanthropic philosophy and a shoot-first-think-later mindset, just like him. As if to emphasize this, her debut episode uses her telling a Brick Joke as a framing device. Peteypedia also reveals she adopted the alias "The Comedienne" for a while.
  • May–December Romance: She has a one-night stand with her partner Agent Petey, who is half her age.
  • The One That Got Away: She appears to feel this way for Doctor Manhattan. She sometimes makes long-distance calls to Mars to leave messages for him, and carries around a humongous blue vibrator in her luggage along with a suggestive Esquire cover showing the two of them. She doesn't appear to have as much affection for Nite Owl by comparison.
  • Rabid Cop: She's willing to shoot a fleeing Mister Shadow In the Back without caring whether he will die. She also blows away a Seventh Kavalryman who sneaked into Judd Crawford's funeral and is threatening everybody with a suicide vest she learns is wired with a heartbeat sensor deadman's switch, thinking it's a bluff — the fact she sneaked a gun into an event that required all attendants to leave their firearms at the entrance speaks for itself. It's a good thing the bomb had a delay.
  • Retired Badass: As far as her costumed hero days as Silk Spectre are concerned — she and Nite Owl had a good decade of heroic adventures after the tragedy in New York City before the feds caught up to them. She instead works as a government operative, ironically doing some of the same things that she did while wearing a costume.
  • Secret-Keeper: Laurie has kept her word to the other surviving New Minutemen and stayed quiet about Veidt's role in the 11/2 incident. But after witnessing and surviving another potentially world-ending event in the finale, Laurie realizes that humanity will always endure despite the odds and decides to belatedly arrest Veidt for his crimes.
  • Seen It All: As both an experienced costumed vigilante and government agent (and government agent who takes down costumed vigilantes) she has more experience than almost anyone else with superhero nonsense. When the leader of the Kavalry is about to explain his plan to her, she rolls her eyes at the silliness of it all. Though the audacity of the actual plan, hijacking Dr. Manhattan's godlike powers, manages to shock her.
  • Took a Level in Cynic: Laurie is noticeably colder than she was in the 1980s (in the comic), and has seemingly adopted her father's nihilistic worldview. She also shoots a fleeing vigilante in the back without knowing or caring whether he's wearing body armor. And then there's this line:
    Laurie: Men who end up hanging from trees with secret compartments in their closets tend to think of themselves as good guys. And those who protect them think they're good guys too. But here's the thing about me, Sister Night: I eat good guys for breakfast.
  • Too Clever by Half: She likes a good Breaking Speech and she's Genre Savvy enough to crack most of the plot by following breadcrumbs. The resulting arrogance allows people to take her by surprise - Angela outright mocks her big speech while Mrs. Crawford captures her because Laurie expected to have to work a bit harder to confirm her theories.

    Ozymandias (Adrian Veidt) 

Original Miniseries Tropes

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rco011_6.jpg
"I don't mind being the smartest man in the world. I just wish it wasn't this one."

It is as Rameses said: "Canaan is devastated, Ashkelon is fallen, Gezer is ruined, Venoam is reduced to nothing, Israel is desolate and her seed is no more, and Palestine has become a widow for Egypt... ...All countries are unified and pacified."

Probably the most successful and effective hero of the lot after Dr. Manhattan. Adrian has honed his body and mind to near-superhuman perfection, created a multibillion-dollar corporate empire, and mastered the sciences to change the world.


  • The Ace: At the peak of intellectual and athletic achievement.
  • Actually a Good Idea: At one point, the Comedian disrupts the first Crimebusters meeting by pointing out how the inevitability of nuclear war would render the Crimebusters' efforts of fighting petty criminals unimportant in the long run. Ozymandias quietly agrees with the Comedian and decides to end the Cold War by killing half of New York with a psychic "alien". However, it's subverted by the fact that only Ozymandias thinks his plan is a good one as most of the other protagonists find his plan to be morally questionable and Dr. Manhattan implies that Ozymandias's solution is only temporary.
  • Affably Evil: In addition to being a Well-Intentioned Extremist, he's also gentlemanly, witty, and calm, even in hand-to-hand combat. He treats his underlings kindly (right until he drugs them and leaves them to die of exposure to prevent his secrets from getting out.) When his former crimefighting colleagues track him down and learn of his already-in-progress master plan, he gives them the opportunity to keep silent, and when all of them (except Rorschach) agree, he trusts them enough to not only let them live, but to offer them hospitality in his fortress and allow them to leave freely. Hardly seems fair to hold the deaths of millions of innocent people against him.
  • Alexander the Great: Veidt sees Alexander of Macedonia as his only worthy peer, pitying the fact that his greatest idol died millennia before his birth. During his global travels, Veidt retraced the exact steps of Alexander's crusade of conquest throughout the civilised world, wishing to one day realise Alexander's goal of uniting the entire world under one banner. He concludes that the only way to do so is not through conquest, but trickery. Veidt even professes a desire to gain the direct approval of Alexander in the "Hall of Legends".
  • Allegorical Character: It's heavily insinuated that the Sea Captain from the Show Within a Show pirate comic book interspersed throughout the main story is a parable for Ozymandias, which does not bode well for the implied consequences of Adrian's actions.
  • All for Nothing: A few words from Jon throw the end goal of Adrian's plan completely upon its head. The "world peace" Veidt achieves is still extremely fragile, all things considered, and if Rorschach's journal gets published, there's no telling what effect it could have upon the world.
  • Ambiguously Evil: Was his master plan tragic but necessary or just wrong? Or both?
  • Ambiguously Gay:
    Rorschach's Journal: Possibly homosexual? Must remember to investigate further.
  • Anti-Villain: His ultimate goal is to prevent World War 3 by massacring millions to make the world powers assume it was an alien attack. A horrendous course of action, but done with the best intentions in mind. Also, the subsequent weight of this action torments his conscience.
  • Artistic License – History: On page 20 of Chapter 12, Adrian quotes the Egyptian Pharoah Rameses "Canaan is devastated, Ashkelon is fallen, Gezer is ruined, Yenoam is reduced to nothing...Israel is desolate and her seed is no more, and Palestine has become a widow for Egypt...All the countries are unified and pacified." The Annotated Edition points out that the Merneptah Stele hieroglyphics from 1203 B.C.E., which this quote stems from, was done at the behest of Pharoah Merneptah (to celebrate the victory of a major invasion he had successfully repelled) who ruled Egypt immediately after Rameses II, so Adrian is technically incorrect in his quotation, though not disingenuous since surely some of the aforementioned pacification was Rameses' doing. However, Dave Gibbons suggests in the same anecdote that Adrian simply made a mistake due to the mental stress from all that had just happened (flying to the Antarctic, killing millions of people, catching a bullet, etc.)
  • Awesome by Analysis: One look at an opponent's fighting style and he already learns how to counter it. According to him, The Comedian had a skillful feint and a devastating uppercut, but little else. Not that it stopped the Comedian from beating him to a pulp in his younger days.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: While the bad guy part is left up in the air, Adrian certainly isn't the good guy.
  • Big Bad Friend: A genial and polite man who's made a friend/acquaintance out of most of the characters in the story later on turns out to be the primary source of all of the mishaps going on throughout the story—with the exception of the Cold War tensions, mind you.
  • Black-and-White Insanity: Subverted and Played With. Both Dan and Rorschach initially assume that Adrian must be insane, finding his description of his own master plan too ludicrous to believe. He assures them that he is more than rational. However, Adrian's views of the world are rather unrealistically binary. To him, there's the savagery of the past (and present) where chaos and unrest run rampant, and the utopian unity of the future where humanity's flaws will magically cease to exist. He is seemingly vindicated by the ensuing world peace brought about by his act of destruction, but Jon leaves him with a margin for doubt that the peace will last.
  • Broken Ace: He is a handsome blond super genius who is insanely rich, has America in his hands and defeats Rorschach, Silk Spectre, Nite Owl and Dr Manhattan at the end. He is also the antagonist, who kills millions of people in order to save the world from nuclear war.
  • Brought to You by the Letter "S": The symbol of Veidt Industries is a giant letter "V", and he stamps it on everything he owns. The main exception is his costume, because having his initials on it would've kinda defeated the whole Secret Identity thing.
  • Bullet Catch: He pulls this off near the end of the story, because he is Charles Atlas Superpower incarnate. And even he admits he wasn't sure he could actually do it. Also, he is injured by the bullet, as there is a considerable amount of blood. In the film version, he has an inch-thick padding on his palm, into which the bullet sinks (but still breaks the skin). The bullet's momentum causes him to lose his footing and go tumbling down the stairs, leaving him stunned for a few seconds at the bottom.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: His feats are mostly believable through most of the story, but in the final act, he catches a bullet. (It tears up his hand, and he doesn't quite believe it himself.) There's an interview he has at the end of the second-to-last comic where he firmly believes any normal human can be just as physically capable as he is; you just need the will to see it through.
  • Child Prodigy: He was exceedingly intelligent since early childhood, and had to hide his intelligence for a time on orders from his parents due to his genius intellect having the strong possibility of ostracizing him or causing unwanted attention.
  • Chronic Hero Syndrome: Has a savior complex that can be seen from space.
  • The Chessmaster: Engineered the whole villainous plot.
  • Contemplative Boss: Does this while fighting two superheroes. When his Right-Hand Cat joins the scene and the fight ends, he continues while walking his corridors.
  • Crazy Enough to Work: His Evil Plan is so ridiculous that when he sums it all up in a single sentence Dan can't help but break out into laughter; Adrian plans to end hostilities between the world's superpowers by unleashing a fake Eldritch Abomination onto New York; when said Abomination kills millions upon impact due to its horrific psychic abilities, the world's leaders will conclude it is a creature from another world, and therefore will be forced into uniting their forces against the possibility of an impending alien invasion. The sheer absurdity of the plan is what ultimately makes it work; The Comedian and the other heroes are brought to their knees when the Fridge Horror hits and the scale of Adrian's plan becomes fully known to them.
  • Crazy-Prepared: While it doesn't clarify if he did build it solely for that purpose or not, The Annotated Edition of Watchmen points out it would have required some remarkable foresight on Adrian's part to build an Intrinsic Field Separator (a device that basically recreates the accident that created Dr. Manhattan in the first place) for the sole purpose of using it to rid himself of Dr. Manhattan should he be cornered in spite of already handicapping him with the Tachyon Generators. Of course, if that was the case, Adrian probably didn't factor in that Dr. Manhattan could just rebuild himself again afterward, which he immediately does—it's not like the accident that gave him his powers managed to kill him in the first place, after all.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: Dishes one out to the Comedian before killing him, then later subdues Nite Owl and Rorschach in similar fashion.
    • Was on the receiving end of this when he was a younger hero, courtesy of the Comedian. He never got over it.
  • Dark Messiah: He causes the deaths of millions in order to unify the world and prevent the nuclear Armageddon he believes is otherwise inevitable. The comic itself refuses to either obviously support or condemn his actions.
  • Deliberate Under-Performance: He was always brilliant, but deliberately downplayed his intelligence in school to avoid unwanted attention.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: It's implied that part of his reason to kill the Comedian (as he knew he was too much in shock to do anything with the truth about his evil plans) was payback for their first fight where Blake laid him out. It's why he personally beat him up instead of using his usual roundabout methods.
  • Dissonant Serenity: While ultimately remorseful and uncertain about his plan's success in the long run, Veidt is initially ecstatic that his master plan seemingly went off without a hitch, triumphantly yelling "I did it!" like a child. In general, he's intelligent enough to understands the gravity of the horror he has inflicted upon the world in scientific terms, but clearly unable to reconcile it with his egotistical messiah complex.
  • The Dreaded: Even Rorschach is wary of this man to the point he left behind his notes before confronting Veidt because he knew he likely wouldn't survive the confrontation.
  • Evil Plan: He is motivated by the desire of a 'better, more loving world'. To this end he orchestrated Comedian's murder and the destruction of New York to avert a nuclear war.
  • Expy: Of Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt. Though there's also a bit of Reed Richards, Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne in him.
  • The Extremist Was Right: He brought the world's superpowers together at the cost of millions of lives, which is exactly the goal he'd pushed for since the beginning. That being said, the story makes it very clear that Veidt's artificial hope is just as fragile as the state of the world had been even before he'd executed his plans, and the very last panel of the story indicates that his efforts may very well be reduced to nothing.
  • Fallen Hero: He appears to have averted this given he managed to become a rich businessman instead of a nervous trainwreck once retired from superhero duties... but then the ending reveals he truly went from hero to Knight Templar.
  • Foil: To Rorschach. Both are ultimately unstable Übermensch who are unflinching in doing what they think is right, no matter what the cost. They just play it in very different ways.
  • Genghis Gambit: Plans to force America and Russia to put aside their differences and work together by making it seem as if a massive Alien Invasion is imminent. Whether or not it works in the long run is left up to the reader.
  • Genius Bruiser: Smartest man on Earth, still strong and fight-capable enough to take on two fellow heroes.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: He would save billions of people from dying by causing millions of people to die.
  • Honest Corporate Executive: Adrian really isn't motivated by greed or a lust for personal power. He obtained his vast wealth by skillful understanding of the stock market and legitimate business ventures. He's a Knight Templar or Well-Intentioned Extremist, but not a sellout.
  • Hunk: The picture of the Western ideal of male beauty.
  • I Did What I Had to Do: Destroying half of New York City to save the world from nuclear armageddon.
  • Intelligence Equals Isolation: By his own admission. Part of what leads to his Evil Plan is that as the smartest man he believes it's up to him to find a solution but his loneliness means he either can't trust anyone's help or simply fails to see a better way.
  • It's Personal: While he kills the Comedian because He Knows Too Much, it's strongly implied that this was simply an excuse to finally get some payback on the Comedian beating the ever-living snot out of him when they first crossed paths in the 60's. Granted, Blake had caught wind of Veidt's plan, so the necessity of killing him was still there.
  • Just Giving Orders: There's a hint of this regarding his actions as noble due to the fact it's not like he killed them with his own hands (his mass murder of millions in New York) or giving a noble spin for his actions (Killing The Comedian for being an Asshole Victim or saying that Vietnamese servants "died" due to being so drunk to open the Vivarium.)
  • Just Between You and Me: He talks freely about his plan because the Rorschach and Dan are too late to stop him. Furthermore, they are not his enemies but his former comrades, and he believes that he can convince them that he did the right thing. He succeeds with Dan.
  • Karma Houdini: He commits a massive act of unadulterated mass murder and not only gets away with it scot-free, but is actually aided in covering it up by the heroes - because to expose the scheme would endanger the world even more. Although it's left open to interpretation whether or not his plan will ultimately succeed: before chasing Adrian, and with strong suspicions about his plan, Rorschach left his personal notes at the local newspaper. In the last page, after the Happy Ending, a guy at the newspaper reaches for a stack of papers and documents ("the crank file"). The diary is near the top. In the film adaptation he at least gets a good beating from Dan and a lecture on why his actions were wrong. Granted, Adrian knows damn well his actions are wrong, but points out inaction would have been catastrophic.
  • Kick the Dog: He hires numerous artists from across the world to help make his monster. Once they're done, he kills them. Likewise, he poisons his servants, who have Undying Loyalty to him, simply so they won't tell anyone about what he's up to. While he feels bad about doing these things, it also doesn't stop him actually doing it in the first place.
  • Knight Templar: Sacrifices millions to save billions.
  • Lack of Empathy: He's said himself he has trouble relating to others which is why he executes his Evil Plan without regret. Ultimately subverted, however, since the weight of his actions severely troubles him afterwards.
  • Lantern Jaw of Justice: He has a very impressive chin, as befitting his "perfect human specimen" image.
  • Let's You and Him Fight: These fights happen a lot in Superhero stories, and he got into a meaningless brawl over nothing with The Comedian the first time the two of them met. He seems amicable about the "misunderstanding" when recollecting it, though he does spin it to sound as if he lost to the Comedian on purpose. Of course, by the time the reader finds out about this fight, it's been revealed that Adrian is guilty of murdering The Comedian, so it's entirely possible he's more bitter about their encounter than he's letting on.
  • Light Is Not Good: Well, it's not entirely bad either, but he wears the brightest, most pristine-looking superhero costume out of all the main ex-Crimebusters yet commits the most unthinkable atrocity for the greater good.
  • Lonely at the Top: Hidden under dense layers of ego and posing for the eyes of history. The reveal is his insecure last exchange with Dr Manhattan.
  • Manly Tears: When his monster attack causes the US and Russia to discuss peace.
  • Meaningful Name: Ozymandias, which suggests the final fate of his "better, more loving world". His last name, Veidt, comes from German actor Conrad Veidt, whose appearance in The Man Who Laughs directly inspired the character design of The Joker.
  • A Million Is a Statistic: Subverted. When discussing the aftermath of his plan, he tries to make it clear to Dr. Manhattan that he's made himself feel every death he's responsible for.
  • Narcissist: Adrian is implied to have some narcissistic tendencies. Rorschach decries him as vain, and a sellout, due to the man's willingness to make a lucrative business about his past as a superhero. Adrian also personally carries out the violent death of the Comedian, implied to be payback for Blake's previous beatdown of him. Finally, Adrian is convinced that he alone has the resources and the will to carry out his plans and avert nuclear war, and is wholly unconvinced of humanity's potential to avert war on their own terms. His constant comparisons of his own achievements to Alexander the Great's also compound his vanity.
  • Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Ozymandias is a misunderstood villain. He single-handedly kills off half of New York City in order to avert a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union that would destroy the world.
  • Older Than He Looks: He is still quite good looking despite being in his forties. As the unproduced movie screenplay describes him:
    Although he's DREIBERG's age, his face is serene and unlined by worry. Blond and pale, he looks thirty. When he's sixty he'll look forty.
  • Omniscient Hero: He has everything so well figured out that the morality issue is reduced to whether or not the goals he achieved was worth all the lives he sacrificed. However, two of the last few scenes make the whole thing ambiguous, leaving it to the reader/viewer do decide if the trope is played straight or subverted.
  • Out-Gambitted: Its implied that Adrian built an Intrinsic Field Separator for the sole purpose of dealing with Dr. Manhattan physically (by recreating the accident that initially destroyed him) should the Tachyon Generators fail to keep him occupied. While it technically does do its job, Adrian doesn't factor in that if Dr. Manhattan was able to rebuild himself from scratch after being disintegrated in the first place, what's stopping him from doing it again? As a disappointed Dr. Manhattan spells out to him immediately after regenerating, that was remarkably shortsighted for someone as intelligent as him.
    Dr. Manhattan: I am disappointed, Veidt. Very disappointed. Restructuring myself after the subtraction of my Intrinsic Field was the first trick I learned. It didn't kill Osterman'...did you think it would kill me? I've walked across the sun. I've seen events so tiny and so fast they hardly can be said to have occurred at all, but you...you are a man....and this world's smartest man means no more to me than does its smartest termite.
  • The Paragon: Many saw him as the best and most successful of the team considering he'd managed to maintain a stable superhero career through sheer strategy and skill. He was known for being considerably successful and was the last person anyone suspected of being the Big Bad.
  • The Perils of Being the Best: As a child he came to realize that performing at his full capacity would bring ...unwanted attention from others, and adjusted accordingly.
  • Prescience by Analysis: As the world's smartest man, he's able to use his vast intellect to predict and anticipate changes in politics, society, culture, human psychology and by smart timing, such as publicly revealing his secret identity at a time of widespread distrust in superheroism, he is able to cultivate an image of respectability and goodwill that he uses to build an immensely successful corporation, whose resources he then taps into to unleash his devastating master-plan to save the world. He also anticipates that in a world without the cold war nuclear tensions, there would be an incipient baby boom, and he advises his company to invest in baby-care products to maximize profits.
  • Pyrrhic Victory: Not only does his plan destroy him, he isn't even sure it worked and ask Jon if it was worth it.
  • Reed Richards Is Useless: He was averting this long before ...well, it hardly needs to be said at this point.
  • Rich Recluse's Realm: Has become so wealthy that he's been able to create his own private retreat in Antarctica — and given that no governments hold any claim to the continent, he is allowed to do as he pleases there. Known as Karnak, his estate comes complete with a palatial house, a laboratory complex and a terrarium garden, all decorated in traditional Ancient Egyptian style. Normally quite chummy with journalists, Veidt has begun to spend more and more time here in recent days — and not out of fear of assassins. He's actually using the place as a base of operations for his efforts to prevent World War III via faked alien invasion.
  • Right-Hand Cat: Ozymandias's genetically-engineered lynx, Bubastis.
  • Self-Made Man: He inherited a fortune. He then donated all of it and proceeded to make his own fortune from scratch just to prove that it's possible.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: Adrian's whole role in the story is sort of ironic, really. He goes through all this trouble to create a fake Eldritch Abomination and use it to kill millions in order to force the world's powers to see how utterly meaningless fighting each other is when there are "much bigger things" at risk. But in the end, he finds himself full of doubt as to whether or not his actions really would have the effect he wished for, and the very last panel of the story gives a vague implication that all of his efforts will be for naught anyway.
  • Shoot the Dog: He springs a trap that kills Bubastis and disintegrates Dr. Manhattan. He hadn't intended to kill the former, but when Manhattan pursued him to confront Veidt for his actions, he had to use his pet as bait and sacrifice him .
  • Significant Wardrobe Shift: For most of the comic, Ozymandias dresses in civilian clothing. When he gets ready to launch his plan, he wears his old superhero costume in his Arctic lair even though there is no apparent need for him to do so. In his mind, Ozymandias sees this as the culmination of his superhero career and wears an outfit to better suggest how he views his actions, and especially given he's aware that Dan and Rorscharch are approaching the lair, he wants to impress on them the context in which his actions should be seen.
  • Straw Nihilist: His nihilism exceeds even The Comedian's — but weirdly, he's a somewhat optimistic variation without really being considered an Anti-Nihilist. His ultimate plan is to kill half of New York with a giant eldritch horror of his own creation. The reason it works is because Earth's leaders come to the conclusion that it is a creature from another world, and they decide to pool their efforts and resources into uniting themselves against the threat of alien invasion. In short, Adrian manages to bring the world together by making them see how utterly insignificant they and their struggles truly are. And what pushes him to do this is his desire to bring peace.
  • Superheroes Wear Capes: Along with Nite Owl, one of the few who decided to keep them.
  • Technical Pacifist: He prefers brains over brawn, but is not above punching enemies.
  • This Is Reality:
  • Took a Level in Badass: While no attention is drawn to it, he goes from getting his ass kicked by the Comedian during his early days as an adventurer to killing him with his bare hands years later. While the Comedian was caught off guard the second time, it still suggests that Veidt became a much better fighter in the time between their two clashes, or at least more ruthless and/or pragmatic.
  • Totalitarian Utilitarian: His goal is to end the Cold War and then use his abilities to control the Earth and make it a paradise on Earth. His problem is mainly a type 1, killing half of New York in a Genghis Gambit, but the ending implies it may also be a type 2, assuming naively that this is all that is required to defuse a 40+ year old nuclear standstill and failing to take into account Rorschach's diary.
  • Trade Your Passion for Glory: Rorschach sees him as a sellout. Ozymandias merely sees his work as doing what superheroes ought to do in real life, save the world and avoid nuclear war, no matter the costs.
  • Tragic Villain: While he is never punished for his actions; they do hurt him psychologically, though. But the real tragedy is that in trying to save humanity, Ozymandias loses his soul by becoming the very evil he wanted to destroy. His vast intelligence even grants him the ability to not only fully comprehend his terrible actions but also "feel every life" he has taken.
  • Übermensch: Adrian represents the Nietzchean post-human ideal almost to a tee, being a borderline superhumanly intelligent specimen with his own peerless moral percipience, (mostly) free of any fear from a divine creator's judgment. His vision to unite all the nations of the world under one peaceful society also reflect the Ubermensch's role in rejecting nihilism that Rorschach and the Comedian embody, instead providing humanity goals to strive towards. In the end, though, Veidt still demands Dr. Manhattan's appraisal, fuelling his doubts.
  • The Unfettered:
    Nite Owl: No. I just don't buy it. Any of it. You wouldn't kill half of New York. You couldn't...
    Ozymandias: I could. I did. If you like, I'll tell you how.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: He is a public hero and has his own product line, including action figures.
  • Villainous BSoD: Implied after his conversation with Doctor Manhattan—when he asks Jon for assurance as to whether or not what he did truly had been the right thing "in the end," Jon's reply is a benign "Nothing ever ends, Adrian." This pulls into question if Adrian's new peace will truly last as long as he believes it will, and the last we ever see of Adrian himself is a single panel of him with an intensely troubled expression on his face.
  • Visionary Villain: Ozymandias slaughtered half of New York, killing millions, in an attempt to save the rest of the world from a nuclear apocalypse.
  • Walking Spoiler: His true plans for kill millions of people across the world don't get revealed until the final chapter.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Possibly the most successful one in fiction. He kills 3 million people to achieve world peace...and, as far as the reader can tell, it works, though the last panel opens up the possibility that it may have all been for nothing.
  • Whole-Plot Reference: To Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias, though this may not entirely be too apparent on an initial reading (which speaks volumes of Moore's writing skill). In the end, the results of Adrian's schemes have pretty much gone the way he'd planned them to go. Earth's leaders are now collaborating to better keep the world safe from the threat of war. But in the end, this peace is on a very shaky foundation that can easily be shattered by the notes written in Rorschach's journal — the "stronger loving world" that Adrian has created is still standing on the precipice of the apocalypse. In short, his efforts may very well be rendered meaningless due to forces outside his control. This parallels the ultimate fragility of the original Ozymandias's great achievements, which he believed would be memorialised eternally, only to instead be buried under the desert dunes and forgotten by the passage of time.
  • You Are Too Late: Was originally the Trope Namer via "Thirty Five Minutes Ago", and has one of the most iconic uses of it.

Doomsday Clock

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rco030_2.jpg

"We're all considered criminals now. But if we find Manhattan... if I convince him to save the world... we'll be the heroes again."

  • Adaptational Karma: Reggie saves his life just so he can spend the rest of his days in prison for his crimes against humanity.
  • Adaptational Villainy: Zig-Zagged. This depiction of him is decidedly on the Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist side of things, considering he's willing to undermine the efforts of actual heroes to look good in comparison. Contrast with his guilt at what he did in the original comic. On the other hand his final plan was to get Superman to persuade Manhattan to do the right thing and he does leave the heroes the evidence they need to clear Superman's name.
  • All for Nothing: His plan of bringing the world peace fails after a mere seven years, due to his scheme being uncovered, partially thanks to Rorschach's diary. This is taken further with Issue #7, where Jon refuses to accompany Adrian back to the Watchmen universe and save the world — Adrian's goal for the series up until that point — causing Adrian to decide to take matters into his own hands.
  • The Atoner: Intends to make up for the horrible events of New York by seeking out Doctor Manhattan and convincing him to return to fix the awful mess he made.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: His evil plan in the later half does work....thing is unlike his last one this really DOES end up saving the world. The only thing that doesn't go according to plan is that Reggie chooses to save his life so he can face justice for his crimes.
  • Cruel Mercy: Rorschach gave one to Ozymandias in Issue #12 after he was shot by The Comedian, and despite him stating that he will die as a hero, Rorschach having his revenge, and Dr Manhattan getting a newfound purpose, he was instead imprisoned in his own Veidt HQ Building after Dr Manhattan restarts the Watchmen Universe.
  • Deal with the Devil: Tries to form a partnership with Lex Luthor in order to find Dr. Manhattan. While Lex is a clear cut villain at this juncture it's hard to tell who the devil in the deal actually is.
  • Disappointed by the Motive: On the receiving end of this from Luthor, who thinks his plan from the original comic to achieve world peace through mass murder was transparently dumb and finds it bizarre that Ozy ever thought the peace he achieved would last more than five minutes:
    Lex: You dissected a psychic's brain, enlisted the morally bankrupt minds from the likes of Hollywood and comic books, and created an "alien invader" to murder three million people to unite the world...and you're SURPRISED that humanity hasn't stayed united? If you're the smartest man on your planet, I'd hate to meet the dumbest!
  • Evil Plan: In issue #11, it's revealed that Ozymandias was behind the reveal of the Superman Theory and the metahuman community's attempt to take down Dr. Manhattan. He wants to destroy the faith in Superman and other metahumans so he can swoop in and save the world again. In issue #12, he instead claims he did all of this to push Manhattan into being inspired by Superman to save the worlds again.
  • Good All Along: In motives, though not methods, which are nearly as vile as in the original series. His entire mission was to save the Watchman universe by trying to get Jon to recognize his humanity, and saves the DC Universe in the process.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: Sought to unite the world in fear by creating a monster. He succeeded.
  • Heel–Face Turn: Gone from Big Bad to being the closest thing among the Watchmen cast to a hero. And then utterly subverted. He's actually managed to get worse.
  • Humiliation Conga: He gets exposed for his crime, finds out he has cancer, has to partner with the legacy character of a hero he dislikes greatly, and is on a quest to find Dr. Manhattan.
    • The Conga continues in Issue #3 when Ozymandias finds himself in a fight with the Comedian and is forced to retreat. Through the window. Oh, the Irony.
    • And it continues AGAIN in Issue #12, where he is saved by Reggie Long not for mercy, but to pay for his crimes in the Watchmen world (despite claiming that he isn't Rorschach to begin with and he should be seeking mortal revenge against him).
  • Ignored Epiphany: After he's forcefully shown the folly of his first attempt to manipulate the world into peace, he has a brief Heroic BSoD... and goes straight back at trying to do the same thing. The galling thing is that in many ways, thanks to his adjusting his approach, it actually works - though he still gets what's coming to him.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Expresses this attitude about the "New York Massacre" to Rorschach II during their first encounter. How much of it is genuine is up in the air.
  • Never My Fault: A lot of the discussions on his actions with the DC characters demonstrate him frequently shifting the conversations whenever the topic arises, or instead straw-manning the DC characters and criticizing them for not doing anything in their worlds. Although his criticism becomes moot when one realizes that neither he, nor the DC characters, are morally superior to the average person.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Ironically, after all of his efforts trying to unite the world and cover up the crimes of his involvement, all he did was make things worse than they were before. Which is compounded by the fact that the tensions in his world never went away naturally like they did in ours or the DC universe. Who knew killing millions in order to unite the world was a bad idea in the first place?
  • Not Me This Time: To Batman when he assumes that Adrian must be behind the Superman Theory. As it is, he isn't, but he is entirely willing to exploit it.
  • Power Nullifier: Bubastis II, a clone of the original, has the ability to blind Dr. Manhattan's Clairvoyance.
  • Underestimating Badassery: His initial Humiliation Conga and Lex Luthor's sneering remark of, "If you're the smartest man on your world, I'd hate to meet the stupidest" (after Adrian revealed his original plan) makes it very easy to underestimate him and assume that he's completely out of his depth in the DC universe. In fact, he's actually considerably more dangerous than in the original series - among other things, he literally talks Saturn Girl to death, plays the entire DC universe like a fiddle, and ultimately succeeds in manipulating Manhattan and getting almost everything he wants bar the Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Villain Has a Point: During a meeting with Batman, Ozymandias makes the argument that while his efforts failed he at least tried to help the world while the heroes of the DC Universe haven't even made an effort to improve actual problems.
    • Also when blamed for the chaos currently happening in the world by Batman, he points out that he's not the one responsible for it. He loses this point when he goes and makes everything worse.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: Enjoys a reputation as a great humanitarian following the New York Massacre. Until the contents of Rorschach's diary are revealed to the world.
  • Worf Had the Flu: During his rematch with the Comedian, Adrian is nowhere near his best, thanks to his supposed cancer and ultimately has to run for it.

Watchmen (2019) Tropes

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ozymandias_79.jpg
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ozymandias_1.jpeg
"Nothing ever ends. It has only just begun..."

Played by: Jeremy Irons

"The only way to stave off mankind's extinction is with a weapon more powerful than any atomic device. That weapon is fear."

A former costumed hero, turned millionaire businessman, turned mass-murderer that successfully prevented World War III. Currently declared legally dead.


  • The Ace: Despite being in his seventies, Ozymandias is still shown to be in absurdly good shape. He is depicted as a competent horseman, a master archer, a perfectly capable astronaut and a detective capable of glancing at a girl for a few seconds and deducing she is the clone of a cleaning woman he barely noticed over thirty years ago.
  • Adaptational Comic Relief: In contrast to the Knight of Cerebus in an already dark story that he represented in the original comic, the Ozymandias in the television series is a frequent source of comedy and his mostly self-contained storyline has a quirky, irreverent appeal even when it dips into Black Comedy. This is partly thanks to Jeremy Irons' infectious Upper-Class Wit performance influencing the direction of the character.
  • Adaptational Dumbass: Although he still proudly bears the title of Smartest Man in the World over thirty years later, Ozymandias is generally portrayed as more pathetic in this version, tying in with his Adaptational Comic Relief status. While his prolonged imprisonment in space and old age are to blame for his compromised mental state in the present, the show also retroactively introduces many glaring mistakes into Veidt's earlier history such as his lack of security in his office leading to his illegitimate daughter's conception via bottled sperm sample and his baffling decision to reveal his role in the Squidfall disaster to President Redford only a few years after the fact in spite of his great lengths to destroy all leads back to him in the original comic.
  • Adaptational Jerkass: He is even more arrogant and self-important than he was in the comics. While some of this could be attributed to bitterness in his old age, even flashbacks show him as so narcissistic as to be collecting his own sperm in case the world ever needed someone as smart as he was in the future, and his overall attitude was more smug satisfaction with himself and annoyance at not being appreciated by those who are aware of his actions, while in the comics he more visibly regretted the terrible things he nonetheless felt compelled to do. His treatment of the clones is far more nasty and petty than anything the comic Veidt did as well, and while this happened after a period of thirty years, it still seems out-of-character for a man who was a totally sincere (if not necessarily correct) Well-Intentioned Extremist in the original.
  • Adaptational Karma: The end of "See How They Fly" finally sees him arrested for what he did to New York City to end the Cold War.
  • Ambiguously Gay: He doesn't believe Lady Trieu is his daughter and emphatically states he has never been with a woman, comparing himself to Alexander the Great.
  • Ax-Crazy: It's quite clear that Veidt's sanity had taken a dip for the last thirty years if casually murdering scores of your clone servants would indicate quite well.
  • Bad Boss: Since his servants are Expendable Clones, Veidt has no problem frequently killing them in horrible ways.
  • Bait the Dog: In the first episode he seems like a good boss if eccentric, nice to his servants and wants them to star in a play he wrote. The second episode turns this on its head, impatiently rushing them through the anniversary song, acts as a harsh director to his servants and is willing to have one of his expendable servants burned alive for his play.
  • Cabin Fever: The reason he's killing his cloned helpers with increasing severity is because he's been imprisoned in a pocket dimension on one of Jupiter's moons for the past four years.
  • Celibate Eccentric Genius: He reveals himself to be one, saying he's never been with a woman as sex is a distraction from his work.
  • Deadpan Snarker: He has this exchange with a particularly dimwitted servant/clone before the "Watchmaker's Son" performance.
    Mr. Phillips: Oh sir — forgive me, but I shall require the watch I gifted you. As a prop.
    Veidt: Oh. Has it ever occurred to you, Mr. Phillips, that you are the prop?
    Mr. Phillips: Would you like for it to occur to me, sir?
    Veidt: There are so many things I would like to occur to you.
  • Deal with the Devil: A complicated case. He is the Devil in that he bargains with Doctor Manhattan to gain access to the paradise on Europa. But then he realizes he was the victim in the deal, in that "paradise" is boring, making Doctor Manhattan the Devil. Then he decides that it is better to rule in Hell than be a prisoner in Heaven, making him the Devil figure all over again.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: He incinerates the first Mr. Phillips onstage basically because he was stupid.
  • Dude, Where's My Respect?: By the end of the season, he's fed up with people still persecuting him for what he believed was a justified massacre to save the world. This time, though, Wade and Laurie weren't having it.
    Veidt: Who do you think you are to hold judgement over me, huh? I saved mankind! Again! And you have the audacity to—!
    (Wade knocks Veidt out with a wrench)
    Wade: That guy talks too much.
  • Ex-Big Bad: Masterminded the events of the comic, however in the present time he is not directly involved in the events in Tulsa.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: "Evil" might be too strong a word, but he still committed mass and petty murder in this continuity. Nonetheless, he's shown to be genuinely fond of his servants... though this becomes subverted with the reveal that Veidt's servants are Expendable Clones that he casually kills on a regular basis.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Veidt seems to consider that Trieu taking Doctor Manhattan's powers and making herself omnipotent is simply going too far.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: Since the whole "dropping a squid on New York City" thing that happened back in 1985 more or less created the world that the characters are living in now, and he's indirectly responsible for Cyclops remaking itself into the Seventh Kavalry. But it goes even deeper than that, as he engineered Robert Redford's election and has controlled the world through fear.
  • Heel Realization: Downplayed. In the finale, when confronted by his daughter Lady Trieu and her plan, Veidt accepts that his motivations in 1985 were ultimately narcissistic. Veidt being Veidt, though, he still feels that the ends justified his means and is completely surprised when Laurie and Wade arrest him for mass murder.
  • Idiot Ball: After taking extensive measures to cut down every loose end, in order to ensure that nobody knows the truth about his role in the squid attacks, Adrian Veidt took the time to personally record a blackmail video message to Robert Redford that explains how he was behind 11/02 all along. Adrian sent it in hopes that he could use President Redford as a political pawn to create his utopia. But of course, the realistic consequences followed, leading to the Seventh Kavalry eventually finding out about the truth decades later which in turn gives Agent Blake and Looking Glass enough evidence to ensure Adrian can be convicted in the court of law.
  • Irony: Adrian Veidt, a self-proclaimed narcissist, is unceremoniously defeated by a looking glass.
  • It's All About Me: By 2009, Veidt became bitter that he wasn't given the credit he felt was due for the "utopia" he created and that world leaders had stopped taking his advice. The whole reason Cal/Doctor Manhattan sent Veidt to live on Europa was because Veidt would be surrounded by beings who would enthusiastically serve him. But even that wasn't enough to satisfy Veidt's egocentric need for validation:
    Veidt: This is not my home. My home is 390 million miles away. And my children — all eight billion of them — are undoubtedly standing in their cribs, crying out in desperation for me to return. Heaven is not enough because... Heaven doesn't need me.
  • Jail Bake: Inadvertently (probably). Due to a bug in his mental programming or whatever, Philips keeps offering Veidt a horseshoe with his cake. In Episode 8, Veidt notices the horseshoe has been baked into his annual cake and gleefully uses it to start digging himself out of his cell.
  • Karma Houdini Warranty: When Rorschach's journal was revealed, Veidt managed to get off completely by dismissing it as the writings of a raving lunatic, and he got to live comfortably. However he has disappeared and is considered legally dead. And the third episode reveals that the fancy European castle he lives in is a Gilded Cage. While he originally thought of it as a paradise, he grew to resent it as a prison and his attempts to come up with an escape have failed, to his frustration. Plus he grows increasingly impatient and furious with the cloned servants that serve as his company. After his escape and foiling his daughter’s plans, the end sees his disk to Redford bite him in the ass as Wade and Laurie finally arrest Veidt for his role in the destruction of New York and the deaths it caused.
  • The Man Behind the Man: After engineering the squid attack, Veidt facilitated President Redford's rise to power behind the scenes and, after Redford was elected, blackmailed him into advancing his utopian agenda.
  • Naked Nutter: The first indication that Veidt has gone a little bit loopy in the decades following his victory is a scene in which he's found stark naked and writing while a servant massages his leg muscles.
  • Narcissist: This aspect of his original characterization returns. Veidt's video for President Redford made on the eve of the New York attack and seven years before Redford was sworn in under Veidt’s machinations is dripping with self-satisfaction and egotism. The prosecution lawyer at his trial accurately characterises him describing his desire to escape with "a series of self-aggrandizing monologues emphasizing his own superiority." And part of the reason Doctor Manhattan sent Veidt to Europa was because Veidt complained that people on Earth had stopped taking his advice. He’s ultimately aware of this as he acknowledges that his daughter gets it from him.
  • Nice to the Waiter: Subverted and Played for Horror: in the first episode, the staff at Veidt's mansion seems pretty damn quirky but full of Undying Loyalty to their master and Veidt seems to treat them like friends. Then in the very next episode, he casually torches his butler to death and demonstrates that not only are they Expendable Clones, that are mass-produced, but he's also slaughtered so many of them that he's running out of room for the cadavers.
  • Once an Episode: Gets another candle on his cake every episode (except for a couple where we skip the cake entirely), to indicate each Veidt segment takes place a year after the last, over the long period of his imprisonment.
  • Pet the Dog: He set up a hospital to deal with the survivors of his squid hoax, seemingly the only thing he could do to approach making up for it.
  • Prison Changes People: Having been imprisoned in a Prison Dimension on Europa, the restrictions on his lifestyle, servile clone assistants, inability to escape and overall impotent rage have resulted in Adrian transforming from a narcissistic but Affably Evil Well-Intentioned Extremist to a Faux Affably Evil psychopath who regularly murders his servants in fits of pique.
  • Retired Monster: At the start of the series — or rather, six years and change before the present day — he's retired to his estate, unrepentant about what he did in order to save humanity.
  • The Reveal: In episode 5, we finally see why he’s been killing his servants and shooting them into the atmosphere while testing some kind of environmental protective suit: he’s in a pocket dimension on one of Jupiter’s moons. He uses the suit to move outside the atmosphere and then use the catapulted bodies to write “SAVE ME D—“ on the moon’s surface large enough for a passing satellite to capture. "See How They Fly" reveals that he wrote "SAVE ME DAUGHTER" as a message to his daughter, Lady Trieu.
  • Sanity Has Advantages: His eroded mental health winds up causing him to make the very mistakes he purposely averted back in 1985, namely monologuing like a mad supervillain when Laurie comes to arrest him and leaving himself open to a wrench to the back of his head.
  • Sanity Slippage: Being imprisoned on one of Jupiter's moons in a Gilded Cage has turned the previously Affably Evil Veidt into a very unstable sociopath.
  • Shrouded in Myth: He withdrew completely from public view seven years prior to the start of the show and has just recently been legally declared dead, with numerous theories about how he was killed or that he's still alive.
  • The Sociopath: In the original comic, he engineered the deaths of millions to trick humanity into averting nuclear Armageddon. Here, he casually murders Mr. Philips just for annoying him and apparently has plans for his charred corpse and the other servant/clones he's killed.
  • Spared, but Not Forgiven: He ultimately survives through the whole show, and although he is pivotal in ensuring his daughter's defeat, Laurie makes it clear that he is very much not pardoned for the catastrophic damage he caused over thirty years ago as she arrests him in the finale.
  • Theme Naming: His horse is named "Bucephalus," after Alexander the Great's horse. Because of course he still hasn't given up on comparing himself to ancient monarchs.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: While the Veidt of 1985 was a mass murderer regardless of his disposition, he was still genuinely pleasant to his opponents and seemingly remorseful of his actions. Time, imprisonment on one of Jupiter's moons, and poor company have made him much more irritable and callous, his congeniality little more than an act.
  • Unexpected Virgin: Veidt, who's at least in his sixties (Jeremy Irons is seventy one) reveals he's has never been with a woman as it's distracting from his work. This may be the source of the rumor he was gay in the comics, since he never married or had relationships with women that we see. On the other hand, his statement doesn't exclude having sex with men, though presumably that would be distracting as well.
  • When All You Have Is a Hammer…: The only inexhaustible resource Veidt has in his new home is his cloned servants. So he uses their bodies —hundreds of them— to spell out an SOS on the surface of Europa.
  • Worthy Opponent: Considers his daughter, Lady Trieu, as one.

    Rorschach (Walter Kovacs) 

    The Comedian (Edward Blake) 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rco021_6.jpg
"Whatever happened to the American Dream? It came true. You're lookin' at it."

"Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense."

A veteran "hero" who was vicious even when young, and has since become a full-blown hired gun on government payroll. Dies on the first page, though we only later find out why.


  • Anti-Hero: At best, he's a hero only in name. That said, he does have a few redeeming qualities.
  • Artifact Alias: In-universe, Eddie Blake continues to operate under the nom de guerre "The Comedian" long after he discards the wisecracking jester gimmick that he used in the 1930s. The name takes on a different meaning later in his career, though, as it references his nihilistic worldview and his belief that higher ideals are a joke. The smiley face pin is the only vestige of this in his costume.
  • Asshole Victim: Not many people were exactly sad upon hearing of the Comedian's death. By the end though, some readers do feel some sympathy for him. But he was still a sociopathic asshole. Subverted with Sally Jupiter, who actually felt sorry for him. This is probably no surprise when it's later revealed that they reconciled.
  • Back from the Dead: The details are still vague, but it appears Doctor Manhattan teleported him to Metropolis in the middle of his fatal fall, allowing him to survive and later confront Ozymandias. This is turned on its head in the final issue, when Lex Luthor uses a vibrational emitter to return him to the moment of his death, so he dies anyway.
  • Badass Boast: "Turnin' the lights off? That's your big move? C'mon, Ozzy. I've never been afraid of the dark. I thrive in it..."
  • Bait the Dog: During the flashback to the day the Minutemen had their group photo taken, he's shown cracking wise and engaging in playful flirtatious banter with Sally, behavior that would hardly be out of place for the Plucky Comic Relief of a standard superhero team. Then he tries to force himself on her when she stops playing along, and suddenly all illusions of him being a Lovable Rogue are shattered.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: He invoked The Gadfly trope trying to show society their own dark side with a jester-like costume. nobody got the joke, so he quit that idea an settled into being a Troll. Until the Crime Busters reunion, when he at least managed to be The Gadfly without even trying by showing the truth to Veidt. This would result in the Comedian crossing the Despair Event Horizon when he discovered Veidt's Evil Plan, forcing Sarcasm Failure in the Comedian.
  • Becoming the Mask: At one point Rorschach theorizes that The Comedian took on his persona in order to become a satirical reflection of society's corruption. If this theory is true (Rorschach is hardly an unbiased observer), Blake appears to have gotten into the part a bit too much. Also, he defies this trope when he discovers Ozymandias' plan and raves about it to Moloch: He discovers that even he cannot laugh this off as another joke:
  • Been There, Shaped History: Comedian probably killed President Kennedy, Woodward and Bernstein and singlehandedly rescued the American hostages in Iran.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality:
    • Sally Jupiter mentions that after they met again in 1949, he legitimately had no idea why she would hold a grudge for his attempted rape years earlier, and his baffled response at her shouting at him led her to realize that emotions worked differently for him than other people. Upon this realization, she couldn't sustain her anger any longer.
    • Similarly, after their affair, he believed all the bad blood between them had been dealt with. As such, he was legitimately confused when Sally refused to let him near her—their—daughter.
  • Byronic Hero: This trope could very well be renamed to "The Edward Blake" because of how well he fits the guidelines. Intelligent, bitterly cynical, has a pronounced disdain for humanity and the world in general, carries strong personal convictions, and winds up getting killed because of said convictions... it all fits.
  • Cannot Spit It Out: A justified example; he could never tell Laurie outright that he was her father and that he wanted a genuine positive parental relationship with her. That's because he could never live down attempting to rape her mother once and breaking her ribs when she refused, as Laurie bitterly recounts to Rorschach. Sally for her part tells the Comedian to back away when the latter talks to Laurie as a teen, and the Comedian respected her wishes to not tell Laurie who her father is.
  • Captain Patriotic: Subverted to hell and back. He crafted this persona late in his career, wearing flag-printed body armor as he helps quell riots in New York and eventually fights at the front lines of the Vietnam War. He looks like a patriotic superhero to the average citizen, but the whole gimmick is really just his way of mocking the high ideals that most superheroes claim to uphold. In reality, he's an amoral sadist who believes that ideals are a joke, and he only fights crime as a way of venting his violent urges.
  • Carpet of Virility: When he was with the new generation, his uniform let his chest hair open.
  • Cool Mask: After receiving his facial scar in 'Nam he began wearing a leather gimp mask with the rest of his costume.
  • Cool Old Guy:
  • Combat Pragmatist: Prefers guns and a straight fighting style over the more stylized moves others use.
  • Deadpan Snarker: It's his whole shtick.
  • Deconstructive Parody: Reportedly, Moore created him as something of a mockery of the character he's loosely based upon, the ''Peacemaker: a character whose tagline was "a man who loves peace so much he's willing to fight for it!" Moore saw Peacemaker as an imperialist justifying his actions with a philosophy of blatant hypocrisy, and so Blake doesn't shine away from depicting the nasty sides of a Super-Soldier, and his own philosophy is "At Least I Admit It" taken up to maximum.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: His most brutal on-screen acts take place in response to attacks upon his person...which he provoked.
  • Domino Mask: The only thing he wears on his face. However, after getting a nasty face scar from a Vietnamese girl he impregnated, he switches to a leather gimp mask.
  • Don't Explain the Joke: In Doomsday Clock he laments that he is unable to hurl Adrian through Lex's office window, commenting that it would have been poetic. When he tries to explain how, Adrian cuts him off.
  • The Dreaded: Marionette is terrified of him.
  • Eagleland: A solid type II. He's a self-righteous jingoist and who happily gets his hands dirty on the behalf of the Nixon administration whether he's overthrowing foreign governments or assassinating political enemies. Interestingly, he openly considers the American dream to be a farce and doesn't even consider himself a patriot.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Genuinely attempted to connect with Laurie on two separate occasions and notably didn't react the way he usually does after she publically lashed out at him and dashed him in the face with a drink. According to the RPG, he was also composing a letter to her before Ozymandias killed him. He also seems to have had real feelings for Sally Jupiter.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • Rorschach stresses that the Comedian is essentially a nihilist, just like him. Unlike Rorschach’s anti-authoritarian belief in justice, however, the Comedian is fundamentally amoral, driven only by a desire to be uglier than the world (hence his breakdown once he realizes that Ozymandias’s nihilism exceeds his own).
    • In Doomsday Clock he comments that despite everything he has done, he would get a medal for killing Adrian.
  • Everyone Has Standards: He's also genuinely sickened when Sally implies that his interest in his child is incestuous in nature, and he thinks Hooded Justice was a sick man. Also, Ozymandias's plan to slaughter millions of innocent people was too much for even him to shrug off.
  • Excellent Judge of Character: For all that he's an amoral asshole, he is very good at reading people. He picks up on Dr. Manhattan's increasing isolation from humanity well before anyone else appears to have, and is quite insightful about the shortcomings of most costumed vigilantes.
    Comedian: You're driftin' outta touch, Doc. You're turnin' into a flake. God help us all.
  • Expy: Of Peacemaker. Comedian also looks a lot like Bucky in his Minuteman days who somehow grew into a wise-cracking, cigar smoking, woman beating version of Captain America, with a bit of Wildcat and a pinch of Nick Fury. His Captain Patriotic elements and wartime status come from The Shield, whom he was going to be in the very earliest pitch of Watchmen. Not only that, in his path from being a dashing young war hero in WWII to his later life as a top super-spy with a fondness for cigars, greying temples and a facial scar, he bears a strong resemblance to the original Nick Fury.
  • Famed In-Story: Somewhat. According to the RPG Sourcebook, a movie called "Okinawa Dawn" was filmed in 1949 about The Comedian's exploits during WWII. Well, not exactly...
  • Foil: To Rorschach. He is seen as a good guy simply because he works for America yet he is completely amoral. He also discovers Veidt's ruthless plan to end the Cold War and gets killed because He Knows Too Much.
  • The Gadfly: He invoked this trope in his early career, using jester costume to show society their own dark side, but nobody got the joke, so he quit and just tried to be a Troll. Until the Crime Busters reunion, where he managed at last to be The Gadfly without even trying by trolling every hero but making Veidt see the truth.
  • Glasgow Grin: Half of one, courtesy of his upset Vietnamese girlfriend.
  • Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: The Comedian smokes cigars in almost all of his appearances.
  • The Gunslinger: He's the only one of the adventurers who regularly uses plain old firearms, keeping with his military theme, and showing that he's quite a bit darker of an antihero than the others.
  • Hate Sink: Despite his redeeming qualities, Alan Moore intended Comedian to be completely unsympathetic and despicable. Unfortunately, many people missed the point, much to Mr. Moore's frustration.
  • "Have a Nice Day" Smile: Wears a pin with that. That once hit with a splash of blood, becomes the series' logo.
  • He Knows Too Much: Comedian found out Veidt's plan to end the Cold War. He was very much aware that this meant Veidt would come for him sooner or later:
    Veidt: He understood. In the end, he understood.
  • Heel Realization: He seems painfully aware of how cruel and amoral he is and desperately tries to change that before dying. Or rather... he was fully aware of it the entire time, it's just that before he died he started to feel bad about it.
  • Heroic BSoD: He freaks out when he discovers Ozymandias' plan.
  • Heroic Build: Kept in excellent shape even in his sixties.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: Won a bet during WWII about whether he could kill seven Japanese POWs with just eight bullets at a range of 50 paces. Y'know, he might, just might, not be a very nice guy...
  • Jerkass Has a Point: His major trademark. Comedian is a complete asshole, but much of the things he says to antagonize others often have some — or much — truth to it. For example, he was one of the first to notice Dr. Manhattan's humanity beginning to falter when Manhattan didn't even try to stop him from killing a woman pregnant with his child (aside from weakly protesting for him to not do it). Even Ozymandias admitted that his analysis about the futility of the masked vigilantes to resolve the real problems of the world was right.
    Ozymandias: [He] opened my eyes. Only the very best comedians can do that.
  • Kick the Dog: Killing a pregnant woman and attempting to rape a fellow superheroine, for examples. Some choose to see the first as a sign of him going off the deep end, especially how he blames Doctor Manhattan simply for not stopping him. He may have even done it just to see whether, for all his talk, Doctor Manhattan would even bother to save her and to confront him with his loss of humanity.
  • Lack of Empathy: Doctor Manhattan says that Blake sees the stupidity and pain but just doesn't care.
  • Let's You and Him Fight: In a parody of how superhero stories tend to just have heroes fight each other over vague misunderstandings, the first time The Comedian came face-to-face with Adrian Veidt he attacked him immediately, "mistaking [him] for a criminal." That reasoning is the typical logic that leads to these sorts of fights in comic books, but given the Comedian's abrasive and antagonistic personality, it's a transparently flimsy excuse.
  • The Lost Lenore: He becomes this to Sally.
  • Luke, I Am Your Father: It's eventually revealed that he's Laurie's father.
  • Made of Iron: His medical history in the RPG Sourcebook is a long list of injuries (and STDs), which could have easily ended his career as a government agent, but he kept on truckin'.
  • Mistaken for Misogynist: When Laurie confronted him about her mother's rape, Blake answers with It was only once. He is not trying to insult Laurie or her mother Sally, but instead he is trying to explain her that he reconciled with Sally after that, and in fact Blake is Laurie's father. Laurie thinks the worst of him because Blake is a well known troll.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: By the end of his life, he's a regretful mess, sobbing a confession to Moloch about the horrible things he'd done to women.
  • Never My Fault: Comedian kills the Vietnamese woman he impregnated yet blamed Dr. Manhattan for not stopping him.
  • Not Helping Your Case: Comedian has another chance to talk to Laurie, only she's mean drunk and angry at him for attempting to rape her mother. She confronts him about it, and his response is, "Only once." True, yes, as we find out, but also not the thing you want to say to your daughter.
  • Out-of-Character Moment: His behavior in Doomsday Clock doesn't seem consistent with what was seen in Watchmen. Even Veidt noticed that Blake seemed to look forward to getting a medal for killing him when he hadn't cared for such things previously. Blake claims that being dead helped change him... Except he was saved from being killed.
  • Pet the Dog:
    • When he and Sally reunited in 1949, he was apparently very kind and gentle toward her, something she recognized as deeply atypical. In her eyes, she felt that she touched something romantic and beautiful within him.
    • It's shown he was kind and civil to Laurie, even after she smashed a drink into his face. It's because she's his daughter.
  • Posthumous Character: The book opens with his murder.
  • Practically Joker: Subtler than most, but his psychosis, attitude, association with smile and alias are reminiscent of the Clown Prince of Crime. Interestingly, his Straw Nihilist views predate the Joker's characterization as such that was popularized by The Killing Joke.
  • Psycho for Hire: To a certain extent, suggested to have merely become a masked vigilante for a reason to kill people. Despite most of his comrades recognizing this he appears to have impressed part of the mindset that led him to such actions onto every one of them, with varying reactions. He becomes a more classic example, or so it's implied, after the very government that claims vigilantes are dangerous hires him as a political assassin.
  • Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Attempted, of the first Silk Spectre.
    The Comedian: Only once.
  • Redemption Equals Death: Downplayed as he didn't repent but he dies after refusing to go with a plan that will result in millions of deaths.
  • Sarcasm Failure: His Heroic BSoD to Moloch shows even he can't crack jokes at Veidt's plan, begging someone to avert his own personal interpretation of Don't Explain the Joke.
    Comedian: Someone explain. Someone explain it to me.
  • Scars are Forever: He never loses the half-Glasgow Grin he got in Vietnam, just as the perpetrator intended.
  • Silver Fox: Whereas the rest of the surviving Minutemen have all to varying degrees gone to seed, he remains a roguish Hunk well into his sixties. His rather despicable behavior and, in his later years, nasty-looking facial scar take away from this somewhat, though.
  • Straw Nihilist: Frequently spews how life is meaningless, particularly given how men have all they need to wipe out every living being on Earth.
  • Superhero Packing Heat: Two .45 caliber hand guns, according to the RPG. He's also made use of rifles and the like.
  • Token Evil Teammate: He even went as far as to try to rape one of the other members of the team. Whether or not the other members are any better than the criminals they go after is debatable (excepting both Nite Owls, whose biggest flaw in both cases is being largely ineffective), but The Comedian is definitely the worst of them and seems to thrive on torturing and killing people. He even kills a pregnant woman (carrying his own child!) back in Vietnam. He's also more or less the exact opposite of Captain America (consider his stars-and-stripes patriotic outfit), inverted on the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism.
  • Took a Level in Badass: He was already badass when he started out, but over the years he started wearing body armor (after getting stabbed) and carrying guns.
  • Tragic Villain: Likes being mean for supposedly heroic sakes, but can cry at the atrocities he does. Rorschach's Pagliacci Joke is about him.
    • His defining trait as the Comedian, being a nihilistic parody of human ideals attempting to vainly mask its "true nature of savagery", grants him a point of view which mentally breaks him when he discovers Veidt's plan and can fully comprehend both the full scope of its horror as well as its seeming necessity. It is the ultimate conclusion and example of his view on life and it destroys him utterly.
    • Point in note. One of the most iconic images of Watchmen franchise and especially of the Comedian is a blood-spotted Smiley face pin button. The bloody splotch is actually the Comedian's bloody tears as he mournfully declares that "It's all a joke" just before his death.
  • Troll: He eventually gets to a point where he says things just to try pissing people off, especially in the "Crimebusters" flashback.
  • The Unfettered: It's all a part of his persona: he regards all of society's conventions as a joke, so he laughs at them. With his fists. And occasionally his gun.
  • Unusual Euphemism: Kept calling Veidt's Evil Plan a "joke" and "gag".
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Much like Captain Metropolis, his mockery about the futility of another superhero team like the Crimebusters to resolve the real problems of the world — like prevent a Nuclear War — is what gave Ozymandias the first point in his plan.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: For all his acts, he's a sanctioned, government-funded operative after the Keene Act.
  • Villain Protagonist: As detailed in Token Evil Teammate, he's the least heroic of the main characters.
  • When All You Have Is a Hammer…: According to Veidt, he has a skillful feint, a killer uppercut and not much else. He generally gets by fine with just those, though he almost always packs heat in case they aren't enough.
  • Who Shot JFK?: He's also implicated to be behind Woodward and Bernstein's deaths (which didn't happen in our timeline), although this is much more speculative. In the movie, the assassination is shown outright, and The Comedian also remarks while he's violently dealing with an angry mob: "I haven't had this much fun since Woodward and Bernstein!"
  • The Worf Effect: When he is electrocuted into unconsciousness by the Joker in Doomsday Clock.
  • Worf Had the Flu: Not only was he well into his sixties by the time he took part in the fight that ultimately killed him, but he was also caught off guard and clad in only a bathrobe. That he had recently crossed the Despair Event Horizon also likely impacted his performance.
  • Would Hit a Girl: First time when he assaults Silk Spectre and the second time when he and Nite Owl are doing riot control. He also killed a woman who was pregnant with his child!

Supporting Characters

    Nite Owl I (Hollis Mason) 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/paste_400e044269bad080783dbde29c4b53f84f2e0de3_7.jpg
"Y'know, it was a cryin' shame they put you youngsters out to grass in '77. You were a better Nite Owl than I ever was."

"This is the left hook that floored Captain Axis!"

One of the first superheroes to fight crime, and a former police officer, Hollis Mason has since retired, revealed his identity and written an autobiography that provided dramatic insights into the world of superheroes. He has seen the rise and fall of superheroics in the world, and fears for the new generation of costumed crimefighters.


  • Animal-Themed Superbeing: Animal Alias variety. His costume really isn't owl-like at all.
  • Boxing Battler: His primary fighting style. Best seen in the film, when he drops into a 30's boxing stance to take on a group of home invaders. He's eventually overpowered and killed, but puts up a hell of a fight beforehand, expertly ducking and parrying the blows of the much larger, younger men.
  • The Cape: He was inspired by Superman, after all.
  • Cool Old Guy: He was always the nicest and most level-headed of the Minutemen, and he's only gotten better with age. The movie amps this up, showing that he's almost as spry as he was as a young man, fighting off 3 Knot-Tops before they gang up on him and kill him.
  • Cowboy Cop: In the movie, Hollis describes how in response to gangs dressing up in costumes to hide their identities, he and other off-duty policemen started doing the same to inflict vigilante justice, kicking off the whole masked hero craze.
  • Death by Irony: Only ever a brief blip on the pop culture radar, poor Hollis gets killed in a case of mistaken identity, with the murder weapon being an old award.
  • Domino Mask: He points out the advantages of spirit gum adhesive versus a simple string or piece of elastic when wearing a Domino Mask.
  • Expy: Of the first Blue Beetle, Dan Garrett.
  • Go-Karting with Bowser: The first time we see him in the story, he's telling Dan about how he'd just bumped into one of his old enemies, The Screaming Skull in the supermarket. Bit of a wrinkle on this trope as they're both long retired, but the sentiment is the same as they still hit it off like dear old friends. "We traded addresses. Nice guy!"
  • Good Old Ways: Only knows how to fix cars that run on gas. Manhattan accidentally ruined him when he made mass produced electric cars possible.
  • Hauled Before A Senate Subcommittee: Was forced to testify and reveal his true identity to the HUAC. Thanks to his services in the police, he was cleared almost immediately.
  • Heroic Dog: Phantom: Nite Owl brought him along on missions during his vigilante days and the hound later dies trying to save his master.
  • Ironic Echo: His "left hook" quote advice. We hear it again during Dr. Manhattan's flashback but there we hear that that is all Mason knows to fight crime, compared to Manhattan and his godlike power.
  • I Should Write a Book About This: Wrote an autobiography called Under The Hood about his superhero career.
  • Mistaken Identity: Killed because the second Nite Owl broke Rorschach out of jail, and one guy in a drugged-up gang of top knots knows where "Nite Owl" lives.
  • My God, What Have I Done?:
    • Although he voted along with the other Minutemen to kick Silhouette out for being a lesbian, he felt ashamed afterward and expressed his regret in Under the Hood.
    • According to the RPG Sourcebook, he mentions in an interview that he feels pretty bad about airing Sally's dirty laundry (re:the Comedian's rape attempt).
  • Nice Guy: Doubles as the Only Sane Man. He's humble, friendly, and took up his career because he genuinely wanted to fight for justice and help people. About the only thing he did in the story that could even count as mean was calling out a few people in his autobiography, and the only person who really got it was The Comedian.
  • Old Superhero: He retired long before the story began.
  • Only Sane Man: In a far, far less comedic sense than the usual application of the trope.
  • Passing the Torch: Handed off the heroship to a fan of vigilantes and nocturnal fowl, and retires to be a mechanic and neighborhood old guy. Until his head is bashed in by a mob of drug-addled punks for being vaguely related to the controversial badass and Well-Intentioned Extremist Rorschach, that is.
  • Retired Badass: Subverted - a reader accustomed to this trope might expect him to fight off the street gang that breaks into his place with ease. This, to say the least, is not how it plays out.
  • Sacrificial Lamb: A nice old man victimized by mob violence and the unintended consequences of his Legacy Character.
  • Self-Deprecation: His autobiography is full of it. He fully embraces the silliness of his old life as a super-hero and mocks himself for indulging in such a childish fantasy, though admits he still loved it.
  • Silver Fox: He looks rather good in his old age, though he's still visibly elderly.
  • Superheroes Wear Capes: Tried it, but after he discovered how hard it was to walk around his own house with the thing on without it catching on things, he decided to go without.
  • Token Good Teammate: Like Nite Owl II, he comes the closest of the Minutemen to being a true hero.
  • Vigilante Execution: Inverted trope — He is killed by a sadistic gang of drugged-up "top-knots" who apparently think they are dealing out street justice on "the Nite Owl." And even then, they panic when they realize he's dead and split, leaving him Dying Alone.
  • White-Dwarf Starlet: Downplayed. While he's surrounded by his own memorabilia and has nothing to do but tell Dreiberg stories of his past exploits, he seems to have mostly made peace with his obsolescence.

    Silk Spectre I (Sally Juspeczyk/Jupiter) 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rco010_0.jpg
"Laurie, I'm 65. Every day the future looks a little bit darker. But the past, even the grimy parts of it... well, it just keeps on getting brighter all the time."

"Things are tough all over, cupcake. It rains on the just and unjust alike."

A former model who started fighting crime for publicity and became a founding member of the Minutemen, but hasn't been doing much since, except training her daughter to follow in her footsteps.


  • All Girls Want Bad Boys: Even after Eddie Blake viciously assaulted her and attempted to rape her, she still ended up starting a romantic relationship with him and had his child. She explained to her husband that Eddie's demonstration of gentleness at the time for someone like himself was worth it as she managed to reach a part of him that was seemingly impossible to uncover or in her words: "That magical romance and bullshit that they promise you when you're a kid." Her husband thought otherwise.
  • The Beard: For Hooded Justice.
  • Becoming the Boast: A rare-third person example. Her first fights were staged, but she eventually learned how to genuinely fight.
  • Broken Bird: She's a typical superstar tragedy story, except she's also coping with a failed marriage to her former agent, an estranged daughter, and a barely thwarted rape by a former comrade (and her subsequent self-loathing for later having his daughter). Nowadays, she's stuck in a California rest home, subsisting on memories of the days when she was a household name.
  • Civvie Spandex: It's a showgirl costume.
  • Deadpan Snarker: It's pretty much all she can do at this point. When she stops snarking, it's almost always a case of O.O.C. Is Serious Business.
  • Expy: Of both Dinah Drake Lance/the first Black Canary and the Phantom Lady.
  • Fiery Redhead: When she was active, she was a real firecracker. She still is, she just lost the red hair
  • Glory Days: She constantly harps on hers during her younger days. See her quote.
  • The Heart: She served as this along with Lawrence Schexnayder, as all the members (except Silhouette) were very fond of her and the group fell apart after they left.
  • I Didn't Mean to Turn You On: A dark example. Judging from dialogue and a couple of pictures, she and Eddie can be said to have been a bit flirtatious with each other while he was with the Minutemen, but she never took the flirtations seriously. However, he very clearly thought there was more going on there than there actually was and acted horribly upon it.
  • I Was Quite a Looker: To the point where she decides to keep a Tijuana bible of herself to remind herself of the good old days.
  • Light Feminine Dark Feminine: The light to the Silhouette's dark in her Minutemen days.
  • Lady Drunk: Loves her spirits.
  • Ms. Fanservice: The entire point of her career. Also deconstruction of both The Chick and Ms. Fanservice. She's made out as a sex symbol and a media flukie instead of a legitimate superhero, and gets mistreated constantly by others who think she's nothing more than a vapid and vain pretty face, including being raped as the case with the Comedian.
  • My Beloved Smother: Laurie feels her mother put a lot of pressure on her to follow in her footsteps.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Later in life, she would decry the expulsion of The Silhouette from the Minutemen as unjust.
  • Never a Self-Made Woman: Sally's career was aggressively built by her husband/manager.
  • Of Corsets Sexy: Her costume consisted of this and some fishnets, obviously playing up her sex appeal for all it was worth.
  • Pass Fail: Changed her name from Juspeczyk to cover up her Polish heritage.
  • Rape as Drama: Part of Sally's backstory.
  • Rule 34: In-Universe. Sally has an unlicensed porno comic of herself among her memorabilia, making this trope Older Than The Internet.
  • Self-Deprecation: Is fully aware that the main factor in her former popularity is her sexuality, and status as a porn fetish icon, but jokes about it and even retains memorabilia alluding to it well into her declining years.
  • Sole Survivor: The sole living member of the Minutemen by the end of the story.
  • Stage Mom: Coached her daughter to take up her profession.
  • Stocking Filler: She wear stockings and suspenders.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Although her first fights were staged, she had to learn how to fight properly as a member of the Minutemen.
  • Violation of Common Sense: The fact that she would end up sleeping with Eddie Blake, the man who attempted to rape her, is a massive plot point that factors into why Jon changes his mind about humanity. The fact that someone like Laurie could come from an interaction as improbable as that, convinces Jon that human existence and life itself is a biological miracle.
  • White-Dwarf Starlet: By the time 1985 has rolled around. Subverted in that while she's lost her beauty and her following (and never got the actress career she wanted), she is happy in retirement, with no wish to take up adventuring again, only to reminisce about her glory days and live vicariously through her daughter (whom she raised and trained to be Silk Spectre II) a bit.

    Twilight Lady (Elizabeth Lane) 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/watchmen_twilight_lady1.JPG
Men Are So Naive

An influential vice queen and bordello owner who operated in the 1960's and a Old Flame lover and later enemy of Nite Owl.


  • Dark and Troubled Past: During a stakeout, she implied to Dan she was once an abused prostitute who clawed her way into becoming a current influential criminal, deeply regrets it, and wishes to at least create an environment where women who made similar mistakes can be safe from harm.
  • Dating Catwoman: Play straight and deconstructed. Dan's relationship with Lady, though passionate and loving, is inherently toxic and ends in tears. Dan wants to make the city a better place, while Lady profits and advances its darker enterprises for profit and fun. Becomes worse in End Is Nigh as Lady becomes more corrupt after her breakup with Dan and he ends up threatening her to leave the city in disgust.
  • Does Not Like Men: Due to her past, she has a deep disgust of men in general, but will gladly exploit them through sex and trickery to get what she wants.
  • Expy: Of Catwoman.
  • Mama Bear: She's this to her call-girls and prostitutes in general due to her own dark past in prostitution.
  • Miss Kitty: A rather influential Madam who runs a stable of high-priced call girls and fetish operations. Her clients include much of the police force, commissioner, mayor and the state senator, offering many connections and protections from the law.
  • Of Corsets Sexy: Her costume consisted of this and some bondage gear, obviously playing up her dominatrix appeal for all it was worth.
  • Shameless Fanservice Girl: Loves to flaunt her sexuality to confuse and taunt men, much to the disgust and rage of men like Rorschach. Her first meeting with Dan was her apprehending a perp of his while stark naked and playfully taunting him for being embarrassed.
  • Single Woman Seeks Good Man: In Before Watchmen, Dan's kindness and endearing care for her makes Lady fall in love with him, but she decides to break off any serious relationship due to being afraid of falling in love and her own self-loathing at being a criminal sex worker.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: Was originally a helpful flirty ally of the Crimebuster Duo. At some point in 1968 she was sent to prison as seen in the videogame End Is Nigh. Upon being released, she engaged in more corrupt practices and has started employing teenage girls as prostitutes for her business. When confronted, she even tries to have Dan and Rorshach killed for trying to stop her.
  • Tragic Keepsake: She left a portrait of herself for Dan and he keeps even in his older years due to lingering attraction.
  • The Vamp: Makes a business out of using sex from her call girls and sometimes herself to gain money and power.

Minutemen

    Captain Metropolis (Nelson Gardner) 

Original Miniseries Tropes

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/latest_1_628.jpg
"Specialized law enforcement is standing still. Crime isn't."

"Please! Don't all leave...Somebody has to do it, don't you see? Somebody has to save the world..."

A former Marine who applied his knowledge of military strategy to crime-fighting. A very insecure and nervous person. Remained active until 1974, when he was decapitated in a car crash.


  • Batman Gambit: In one of the RPG modules (which had input from the original creators), he secretly arranged the kidnappings of the 1960s heroes' loved ones in order to force them to work together, in an effort to make them more amenable to the idea of teaming up as The Crimebusters. If considered canon (there's nothing in the comic that contradicts it), the plan obviously didn't work, but he wasn't exposed as the mastermind.
  • Boomerang Bigot: Was very conservative and reactionary like many white Americans of the 1950s...in spite of the fact that his being gay would be detested by such a group. He voted Ursula Zandt out of the Minutemen for having been revealed to the public as a lesbian as well.
  • Brought to You by the Letter "S": An "M" on his chest, though its significantly more subtle than most examples.
  • Butt-Monkey: Compared to the rest of the masked heroes, much of Captain Metropolis' screentime is devoted to making him seem rather pathetic and desperate.
  • The Cape: Of all the characters, both first generation and second, he is one of the least cynical. To the point of Deconstruction, actually, as he naively believed that superheroes and teams could be a force for positive social change, when most people regarded them as fad celebrities at best. His idea of positive social change is also a bit reactionary, to say the least.
  • Chronic Hero Syndrome: Check his quote.
  • Delicate and Sickly: Asthmatic and sickly as a child, but overcame it has he grew up, eventually joining the Marines.
  • Determinator: Continued attempting to uphold justice as a masked crimefighter well into middle-age, long after the other surviving Minutemen had retired after acknowledging their obsolescence or, in the Comedian's case, allowed cynicism to crush their pretensions of being a hero. While his doing this is presented as being admirable to a degree, it's mostly used to emphasize how ineffectual trying to be a superhero is at resolving the world's problems.
  • Did Not Think This Through: The massive societal and political problems of The '60s are not going to be affected by some superheroes dressing up and taking on a supervillain, as the Comedian points out to him.
  • Formerly Fit: Had a classic Heroic Build in his youth, but sported a prominent gut in his later years.
  • Hauled Before A Senate Subcommittee: Was forced to testify and reveal his true identity to the HUAC. Thanks to his military record, he was cleared almost immediately.
  • Heroic Build: In his day. Toward the end of his career, he went to seed.
  • I Was Quite the Looker: He was a chiselled blond with a Heroic Build in his youth. By the end of his life, he was a paunchy loser, which was only further emphasized when he wore his superhero costume.
  • The Leader: Was implicitly this for the Minutemen, being the one responsible for uniting them in the first place as well as the only one among them with the strategic knowhow to coordinate a team. By the time he attempted to form the Crimebusters, though, he had long since decayed to the point of being a Leader Wannabe.
  • Noble Bigot with a Badge: Racist and hidebound, but he means well enough.
  • Non-Indicative Name: In spite of taking the name Captain Metropolis, he was actually only a Lieutenant when he was in the Marines. Of course, "Lieutenant Metropolis" doesn't sound as catchy.
  • Posthumous Character: Died in a car crash before the beginning of the story. He was around recently enough that he's still a fairly regular presence in relatively recent flashbacks, though.
  • Semper Fi: Averted Trope - this former Marine is a lot less confident and boisterous than this trope would lead you to expect.
  • Straight Gay: Had an affair with Hooded Justice.
  • The Strategist: Largely an Informed Ability due to lack of appearances.
  • Superhero Packing Heat: A .38 special, to be exact. (According to the RPG.)
  • Superheroes Wear Capes: He's got one.
  • Super Zeroes: Probably the most conventional example in the story; a racist washed-up loser whose biggest scene is as a paunchy has-been desperately trying to claim that his moderate fighting skills will solve all the ills of America.
  • Undignified Death: Getting beheaded in a car accident is likely not the way a man who presented himself as The Cape would want to go out.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The line at the top of his entry here is what gave Ozymandias the first point in his plan.
  • White-Dwarf Starlet: Captain Metropolis is a borderline male example; clinging to his heroic past and trying to organize a new team in the late 60s, despite the fact that where he was once dashing and handsome, he has since become a neurotic, paunchy mess whose prejudices have come to the fore.

Watchmen (2019) Tropes

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/captain_metropolis_5.jpg

Played by: Jake McDorman

Former Marine who formed and led the 1940s costumed-hero group the Minutemen, taking inspiration from Hooded Justice.


  • The Atoner: In the years since the disbanding of the Minutemen, Nelson began to realize how he drove Will away with his own racist attitudes and indifference towards the black community. His aborted effort to start the Crimebusters with a focus on the inner city was in part his attempt to make amends. Before his death, as "penance", Nelson modified his will to leave his entire estate to Will and bequeathed all proceeds from any auction of his Minutemen paraphernalia to the Southern Poverty Law Center. He even went so far as to order that his remains be cremated, with no funeral or grave marker, feeling it was what he deserved.
  • Awesomeness by Analysis: Nelson managed to deduce that Will was tied somehow to Hooded Justice by comparing his patrol route with the sites of Justice's exploits. Subverted in that his own racism initially kept him from considering the possibility that Will was Hooded Justice.
  • Fetish: Tries to get Hooded Justice to have sex with him with their masks on. This is something of a Call-Back to the original comic, where both Hollis Mason and Sally Jupiter admit to suspecting some of the Minutemen to have been turned on by the masks and spandex.
  • Former Bigot: He became one, or at least tried to, after his relationship with Will ended.
  • Glory Hound: Its implied that he and the other members formed the Minutemen, and even became heroes in the first place, was for the spotlight rather than fight crime. Which is one of the reasons Will as Hooded Justice became jaded regarding justice.
  • Good Victims, Bad Victims: Nelson invokes this when he dismisses Will's discovery of a white supremacist plot to hypnotize the residents of Harlem into killing each other, saying that Harlem is a violent neighborhood anyway and that "black unrest" is not the Minutemen's problem.
  • Jerkass Realization: In his later years, Nelson's views on race changed and he regretted the way he treated Will, deciding to leave him his estate and giving a heartfelt apology in his will.
  • Never Found the Body: His head was never found after he was decapitated in a car accident.
  • Politically Incorrect Hero: Yes, he was a closeted homosexual, and yes, he had an affair with a black man, but he was also a white man living in the 1940s. No matter how tolerant Gardner claimed to be, he was still as racist as the next guy. The end result was a total indifference to what the Klan was planning and not seeing "black unrest" as the Minutemen's problem.
  • Posthumous Character: Long dead by the time of both the comic and the series, he is only seen through Will's fragmented memories of him that Angela witnesses after taking a Nostaglia overdose.
  • Straight Gay: He had an affair with Hooded Justice, a.k.a. Will Reeves.

    Dollar Bill (Bill Brady) 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/picture_2_2.png
"If he'd designed (his costume) himself, he might have left out that damned stupid cloak and still be alive today."

"Dollar Bill was one of the nicest and most straightforward men I have ever met, and the fact that he died so tragically young is something that still upsets me whenever I think about it. "- Hollis Mason, Under The Hood

A star college athlete from Kansas who was hired by a bank to be their in-house superhero. Died in 1947, when during an attempt to foil a bank robbery, his cape got caught in the door and he was shot.


  • All-American Face: He was designed to play this up. His background as a small-town college athlete definitely helps.
  • Alliterative Name: Bill Benjamin Brady.
  • Born Lucky: According to the RPG, his sporting and superhero career were studded with incredible strokes of good luck. Up until a certain day, that is...
  • The Cape: Both the attitude, and personified by the actual cape on his costume which gets him killed.
  • Cape Snag: In the backstory, he was ordered by his sponsors to get a cape as a part of his outfit, in order to increase his marketability. However, one day, when he tried to stop a bank robbery, his cape got caught in a revolving door, allowing the bank robbers to shoot him to death. Nite Owl notes (somewhat bitterly) in his memoir that Dollar Bill would likely be alive today were he allowed to design the costume himself.
  • Captain Patriotic: His outfit has red and white stripes on a blue background, likely intended for this image by his sponsors.
  • Corporate-Sponsored Superhero: He was made to wear a garish costume as one of the conditions of his sponsorship. The cape was caught in a revolving door, trapping him long enough for a crook to shoot him dead as he tried to stop a bank heist.
  • Impractically Fancy Outfit: The bank who sponsored him insisted that he wore the cape that led to his untimely death.
  • Meaningful Name: "Bill" is part of his superhero name as well as his real name. His middle name is Benjamin, another slang term for money.
  • Nice Guy: At least, according to Hollis Mason in Under the Hood.
  • Politically Incorrect Hero: Bill was a bigot, a sexist and a homophobe.
  • Posthumous Character: Died long before the events of the story take place.
  • Satellite Character: The least focused on of the Minutemen, to the point of not getting so much as a single line of dialogue. Almost everything we know about him comes from the two brief paragraphs discussing him in Hollis Mason's autobiography.
  • Superheroes Wear Capes: Deconstructed, as Alan Moore was showing how impractical wearing a cape is, and how wearing a cape led to his death.
  • Undignified Death: Got shot up by a random bank robber after getting his cape stuck in a revolving door.
  • The Voiceless: Never utters a word throughout his (limited) screentime.

    Hooded Justice (Possibly Rolf Muller) 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rco009.jpg
"You sick little bastard, I'm going to break your neck..."

"Frankly, I don't go in for all this razzle-dazzle. I'd rather be on the streets, doing my job."

Possibly the first costumed superhero. Little is known about him, save that he was extremely violent and brutal, and a supporter of The Klan and Nazis. Disappeared in 1955, possibly at the hands of the Comedian.


  • Abusive Parents: Rolf Muller's father violently abused him and his mother, until thirteen-year old Rolf (then over six feet tall) beat him senseless.
  • Affectionate Nickname: Sally called him "HJ" for short.
  • Anti-Hero: Vicious, cruel and a Nazi supporter. Only the fact that his rage was directed at criminals keeps him on the "hero" side.
  • Armoured Closet Gay: The comic only implies he's in a gay relationship with another Minuteman, but it's heavily implied in the movie that he's very sensitive about it. Given that he's a third Reich supporter and that Nazi ideology was anti-gay to the point of exterminating them in death camps, he probably wanted to suppress the contradiction.
    The Comedian: (Being beaten by Hooded Justice) Is this what you like, huh? Is this what gets you hot?
    Hooded Justice: WHAT?!
  • The Berserker: In his first ever case as a vigilante, HJ beat up a street thug so bad he lost the use of his legs for the rest of his life.
  • The Big Guy: The largest, strongest member of the Minutemen.
  • Bondage Is Bad: His outfit invokes this and he is one of the most brutal vigilantes.
  • Boomerang Bigot: A homosexual with Pro-Nazi views.
  • The Brute: An anti-heroic version.
  • The Cowl: He is a really intimidating vigilante by size alone and his beatings are savage.
  • Culture Equals Costume: Justice's costume references the circus (leotard and cape), The Klan (face-concealing hood, noose), and bondage (ropes on ankles, wrists, waist and neck) — all things Muller/Justice are associated with.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: Was a big supporter of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. In general, too, his costume evokes the horrific form of vigilante "justice" enacted by lynch mobs and the Klan in the past who would hang racial minorities for the flimsiest reasons. He's also noticeably cold to Silk Spectre immediately after saving her from being raped by the Comedian, assuming his disgust isn't for a different reason.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: One theory of his death put forward by Ozymandias. When Hooded Justice disappeared, the Comedian was charged by the government to track him down, but failed to do so. Ozymandias suggests that the Comedian actually succeeded, but instead of bringing him in, killed him in cold blood and reported failure. All as payback for Hooded Justice stopping his attempted rape of Silk Spectre.
    The Comedian: (after Justice stops him) One day the joke'll be on you.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: As extreme as he was, he did seem to genuinely care about Sally, and immediately came to her aid when he witnessed Blake attempting to force himself on her.
  • Freudian Excuse: According to the RPG Sourcebook, Rolf Mueller's father abused both him and his alcoholic mother, then ran off and left them, whereupon his mother crawled even further into the bottle and never got out. Eventually Rolf ran off and joined the circus as a young teen, where he was implicitly sexually abused by one of the male performers, after which he burned himself all over with a red hot poker and collapsed into tears. So he's got a couple of issues going on.
  • Good Is Not Nice: He would have been a straight up villain if he didn't prey mostly on rapists and criminals.
  • Hauled Before A Senate Subcommittee: When super-heroes were required to appear before Congress during the McCarthy-era witch-hunts, Hooded Justice instead just vanished, apparently having chosen to end his super-hero career rather than go through the process. As Under The Hood points out, this lends credence to the idea that he might have actually been Rolf Muller, who was a German immigrant. Between that, his homosexuality, and the many statements he made supporting Nazi Germany, there would have been no way he'd get through the witch-hunts.
  • Heroic Build: Hollis Mason suspects that Rolf Muller is Hooded Justice due to their disappearances occurring at the same time and their distinctive strongman physiques.
  • Hide Your Gays: In-universe, Hooded Justice had to keep his sexuality under wraps due to being a super-hero active in the 1940s. Silk Spectre (possibly out of gratitude for saving her from a rape) acted as his beard in public. This was so under wraps that even certain other members of their team didn't know; Hollis Mason briefly muses in his book how weird it was that Hooded Justice never seemed to return any of her affections despite publicly dating.
    "Even though Sally would be always hanging onto his arm, he never seemed very interested in her. I don't think I ever saw him kiss her, although that might've been because of his mask."
    • This extends to Laurie assuming that Hooded Justice was her real father.
    • Sally Jupiter also hints at Hooded Justice's sexuality in an interview following Silhouette's murder, where she uncomfortably admits that other members of the Minutemen were also gay.
  • Interplay of Sex and Violence: It's implied a few times that he's into BDSM and when he's beating up The Comedian, he's mocked that the only reason he became a hero was because of the sexual thrill he gets out of beating the crap out of people. Would explain his tendency to be so violent.
  • Irony: He was a Nazi sympathizer back in the day, yet was suspected of being a Communist spy by HUAC. One way to get investigated by HUAC officials was Premature Anti-Fascism.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Fast enough to take on three armed men and win, strong enough to cripple and kill with his bare hands.
  • Like an Old Married Couple: According to Larry, Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis were like this in public. Larry complained that this made it harder for him to cover for them.
  • Manly Gay: By implication.
  • Married to the Job
    "I'd rather be in the street, doing my job."
  • Minor Major Character: Hooded Justice is a fairly insignificant character within the conventions of the main plot, but is responsible for the setting branching off into an Alternate History through his actions as the world's first masked crimefighter.
  • Multiple-Choice Past: Might have been a circus strongman. Might have been a Russian spy. Might have been a Nazi spy. Might have been all three.
  • Politically Incorrect Hero: His pro-Nazi views caught up to him and he had to disappear.
  • Riddle for the Ages: Was he Rolf Muller or not? Either way, are "they" dead? Hollis has no idea, and concludes that reality is a messy place where mysteries often go unresolved.
  • Shrouded in Myth: He might have been a circus strongman by the name of Rolf Muller. The implication is strong, but still somewhat ambiguous. There are semi-canonical sources from Moore that imply that he was Rolf Muller, but that was just one of his many aliases.
  • The Spook: His identity was never known and he promptly disappeared when people started asking questions, never to be seen again.
  • Superheroes Wear Capes: Played with: his cape is decidedly more villainous-looking than the others, but he's still ultimately a (anti)hero.
  • Uncertain Doom: No one's sure if Hooded Justice is still alive.
  • Wife-Basher Basher: Seeing women hurt gets him furious. His first appearance involved him stopping a rape (crippling one of the attackers in the process), he beat the Comedian severely following his attack on Sally Jupiter, and according to the backstory presented in the RPG Rolf Muller's father abused his mother — Until thirteen-year-old Rolf beat the crap out of him.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: If he's indeed Rolf Muller, according to Under the Hood he was assassinated by his Communist superiors.

    Hooded Justice in Watchmen (2019) (ALL SPOILERS UNMARKED

Will Reeves / Hooded Justice

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/willreeves.jpg
"You think I can lift two hundred pounds?"
In costume 

Played by: Louis Gossett Jr., Jovan Adepo (younger)

June: "...You are an angry, angry man, William Reeves."

A mysterious, elderly man who survived the Black Wall Street Massacre nearly a century before the events of the series. A former New York City cop and the very first costumed adventurer.


  • The Ace: As Hooded Justice, Will Reeves was this to the Minutemen. Captain Metropolis even tries to recruit him on the basis that HJ's presence alone would legitimize the entire team in the eyes of the public.
  • Action Survivor: As a child he narrowly survived the Black Wall Street Massacre, with his parents placing him in a coffin alone when there wasn't room for them all.
  • Adaptational Backstory Change: Given that the Hooded Justice was definitely not Rolf Müller in this version, barring being lovers with Captain Metropolis, all of Müller's implied backstory in the comic is non-applicable.
  • Adaptational Sexuality: Will is bisexual, whereas Hooded Justice in the comic was implied to be homosexual. HJ's apparent interest in BDSM is also absent.
  • Adaptational Heroism:
    • The Hooded Justice of the original comic was described by Hollis Mason as a Nazi sympathizer. Given all the crap he's dealt with, Will clearly isn't. Damon Lindelof would later confirm in an interview that Will only made those statements as a smokescreen to further hide his true ethnicity.
    • Hooded Justice in the comic was also a straight Nominal Hero, into crime-fighting only for the sexual satisfaction it gave him. Here, Will became Hooded Justice as a means of stopping racial violence that he wouldn't be able to as a police officer.
  • Adaptational Job Change: Part of Hollis Mason's In-Universe speculation in the comic was that Hooded Justice was a circus strongman. Will was a member of the NYPD like Hollis.
  • Adaptational Nationality: Part of the In-Universe speculation about Hooded Justice in the comic is he's from Germany. Will is an American.
  • "Angry Black Man" Stereotype: Deconstructed. Will is not just angry at the generalized unfairness of being black in America as this Dead Horse Trope is a caricature for. The show goes into excruciating detail to show exactly whom and what Will's anger is for: the institutionalized racism that allowed for the KKK to destroy his hometown, murder his parents, permeates through law enforcement, and almost got him lynched. And the consequences of his rage on his family when he decides to deal with it by fighting the Klan as Hooded Justice is also shown. June decides to move back to Tulsa with their son after Will massacres Fred's Klan group in a rage.
    • Also, unlike the trope, Will doesn't see befriending white people as a betrayal to his cause as he ends up having a sexual relationship with Captain Metropolis.
  • Ascended Fanboy: He adored a silent movie about Deputy US Marshal Bass Reeves as a child, in which Reeves wore a hood and might have contributed to the Hooded Justice costume.
  • Batman Grabs a Gun: Hooded Justice was known for mostly taking out guys with his bare hands. But when Will finds out that he's not getting any help from the Minutemen and that he is literally standing next to the heart of the conspiracy, he pulls out his revolver and blows away everyone in the building, quickly and methodically.
  • Been There, Shaped History: An inverted example. Will shook hands with Samuel J. Battle, the first black police officer in New York City. During Will's formal acceptance into the NYPD, Lieutenant Battle vaguely warns him to, "Beware the Cyclops." It would latter be revealed that "Cyclops" is a reference to a cabal of Klansmen who have been working with members of the NYPD to strategically target black communities in the city. This revelation, combined with the string of racial injustice Will himself has suffered through, inspires the young black man to become Hooded Justice and inadvertently shape the world of Watchmen as we know it in the process.
  • Blackface: Inverted during his Hooded Justice days, as he wore makeup to make himself appear white.
  • Blatant Lies: He tells Angela he's Dr. Manhattan. Naturally, Angela doesn't buy it for a second and with minimal prodding, Will acquiesces that he isn't Dr. Manhattan.
  • Broken Ace: As he bitterly notes, you "can't heal behind a mask"; being Hooded Justice made him famous, but even being free of the corrupt police only hamstrung him due to Captain Metropolis' belief in Good Victims, Bad Victims and ruined his marriage. He only started to come back together once he retired.
  • Canon Character All Along: He turned out to have been Hooded Justice.
  • Cerebus Retcon: In-Universe.
    • American Hero Story speculates on the meaning behind Hooded Justice's noose, whether it just a superficial accessory for his Executioner motif or some kind of obscene bondage kink he wore on his sleeve. The truth? It was the same noose Will's fellow officers in the NYPD used to lynch him. A constant reminder of the racial injustice he's suffered throughout his entire life.
    • It is popularly assumed that Hooded Justice refused to unmask and disappeared either because of showmanship or because he was taking a principled stand against the McCarthy show trials. The truth was that Hooded Justice was concealing his true identity as a black man because his very survival depended on it.
  • The Commissioner Gordon: Subverted. Captain Metropolis specifically reached out to Will under the belief that he was Hooded Justice's Friend on the Force. The thing is, Will is Hooded Justice. A fact that causes June to laugh in Nelson's face when he comes into their home acting like he's got her husband all figured out.
  • Cool Old Guy: He's more than a hundred years old and he's fighting a conspiracy that had at least the Chief of the Tulsa Police and the previous Governor of Oklahoma as members. He may also either have powers or is just really tough]]. More than that, it turns out he's the true identity of Hooded Justice, the very first costumed hero.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: As Hooded Justice, he wore a creepy costume that resembled both a medieval executioner and a hanging victim (which, as it turns out, he originally was). He turned vigilante after he regained his bearings due to a genuine desire to protect his community in spite of police racism and corruption from Cyclops.
  • A Day in the Limelight: "This Extraordinary Being" is a Whole Episode Flashback exploring Will's troubled past and his rise to becoming the world's first costumed superhero.
  • Deal with the Devil: He betrayed Doctor Manhattan to Lady Trieu in exchange for Trieu destroying Cyclops. Subverted in that Doctor Manhattan put him up to it knowing that it was necessary to defeat Trieu.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: It took 98 years, and he had to endure decades of injustice and heartache and loneliness along the way, but Will eventually secured vengeance against Cyclops on behalf of the victims of the Black Wall Street Massacre, including his parents. He also gains a family he barely knew he had when Angela accepts him into her and her adopted children's lives.
  • Expy: He's meant to be a cross between Batman and Superman according to Lindelof. The former is because he has two key events in his life that drive him, the first being horrific childhood trauma that led to the second, choosing to be a vigilante as an adult. The latter is from his Moses in the Bulrushes background and being the earliest known superhero in his universe.
  • Luke, I Am Your Father: He doesn’t directly state it but the call Angela receives giving her the results of the test on Will's DNA reveals that he is her grandfather.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: While in Angela's captivity, Will somehow drinks scalding hot coffee without a problem and later reaches into a boiling pot of water to grab an egg without even flinching. He also claims to be the one who killed and hanged Judd Crawford despite being an old man bound to a wheelchair. Whether or not this actually means he has powers of his own remains to be seen. Though as noted below, he's not actually crippled and it's later revealed he used a strobe light to force Crawford to hang himself.
  • Moses in the Bulrushes: His parents stuff him into a coffin in the back of a truck to get him out of the brunt of the massacre that claimed their lives. This is an homage to Superman who was meant to be an allegory to the Biblical story and his Jewish creators' experience as the children of immigrants who fled antisemitism in Victorian-era Eastern Europe. Later the homage is made explicit when Will hears the Superman story in 1938 when it first came out, recollecting his own past (he also found a baby the same way).
  • Obfuscating Disability: A centenarian, Will is now wheelchair-bound. However he shows little difficulty standing up and walking around in front of Lady Trieu.
  • One-Man Army: In his prime as Hooded Justice, Will was capable of taking down dozens of criminals at once with nothing more than his bare hands and sheer Unstoppable Rage.
  • The Oner: In the sixth episode, Will is featured as the center of two fight scenes that are shot in this style.
  • Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Will uses a strobe light to force Crawford into doing what he wanted: hanging himself.
  • Race Lift: While his identity was never confirmed in the comics, Hooded Justice was speculated to be a white German. This version is a black man who wore whiteface around his eyes. In-Universe, American Hero Story portrays him as white.
  • The Reveal: It turns out he was Hooded Justice.
  • Retired Badass: The man was the first-ever costumed hero, and is 105 years old.
  • Sarcastic Confession: He's fond of making statements that are seemingly either false or metaphorical, but later turn out to be much more literally true than expected. Exact Words come into play quite a bit.
    • When questioned about who he is, he readily admits to being Judd's murderer. Angela disbelieves him since he is seemingly wheelchair-bound; later we learn he is actually Obfuscating Disability, making the confession much more plausible...
    • Will also playfully claims that he used "psychic powers" to kill Judd. This also turns out to be true on a technicality as he used a miniaturized mesmerizing device he confiscated from Cyclops to force Judd into committing suicide.
    • At one moment, he remarks that he has "friends in high places". This turns out to be literal when the car Angela puts him in is lifted from the ground by an aerial vehicle.
    • He claims that the pills he takes "help [him] get [his] memory". Later we learn the pills are "Nostalgia", a product that can be fairly described as memories in pill form, which causes the subject to have vivid flashbacks.
    • Subverted when he suggests he might be Doctor Manhattan, which a moment later he admits is false. There is even an element of truth to that in a sense: Will is Hooded Justice, the first costumed superhero like how Dr. Manhattan was the first (and only) superhero with actual superpowers. Since he met Doctor Manhattan and learned about Angela's existence from him in 2009, it's also possible that he's teasing her a little knowing who her husband really is.]]
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: When Will says that he has friends in high places, he wasn't kidding. Episode 4 reveals that one of these friends is none other than Lady Trieu, the trillionaire CEO who bought out Adrian Veidt's company.
  • Shrouded in Myth: Much like the comics, not much as known of Hooded Justice In-Universe for the show — which helped to make "This Extraordinary Being" such a Wham Episode as the show's depiction is a still-living 105 year old African-American former cop, not a dead white German former circus strongman.
  • Spared by the Adaptation: In-Universe in the comic, it was assumed that Hooded Justice was dead, with some speculating the Comedian had killed him as revenge for HJ stopping his Attempted Rape of Sally Jupiter. Here, Will simply retired after being Hooded Justice destroyed his life.
  • Trauma Conga Line: Will's entire life. At five years old, he witnesses his parents and neighborhood getting wiped off the map by rioting Klansmen, forcing him and his eventual wife June to flee Tulsa. Then he joins the NYPD, where he is ostracized for his race, quickly runs afoul of a clique of racist cops who belong to a Klan offshoot, and almost gets lynched. This makes Will disillusioned with the law, take up costumed vigilantism as Hooded Justice, and join the Minutemen in the hopes that they can help stop the Klan... only to realize that the Minutemen don't care about "black unrest", forcing him to foil the Klan's mass hypnosis scheme on his own. Will murdering the Klan causes June to cut him out of her life and move back to Tulsa with their son. Damn.
  • Walking Spoiler: Will's true identity is so integral to the Watchmen mythos that it's nigh impossible to talk about him without diving into spoiler territory.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: He gets into a heated argument with Captain Metropolis over the phone after Nelson refuses to summon the Minutemen to help Will stop a very real conspiracy to kill black people en masse. He also gives Judd Crawford one of these over his personal ties to The Klan shortly before he makes the Chief hang himself.

    Mothman (Byron Lewis) 

Original Miniseries Tropes

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mothman.png
"I think that the pressure he was under at the time prompted the beginnings of the drinking problem that has contributed so much to his later mental ill-health."

"My friends! My friends. What time is it?"

A millionaire playboy who decided to become a superhero both out of a desire to add spice to his life and out of guilt over his privileged lifestyle. Ultimately, his alcoholism (and being hauled before the HUAC) turned him into a shell of his former self, and was eventually committed to a sanitarium.


  • Animal-Themed Superbeing: Animal Alias variety.
  • The Alcoholic: Eventually committed to a sanitarium due to his alcoholism.
  • Berserk Button: Racism, which led to him attacking a fellow student in his youth and getting into a fight with Captain Metropolis at one point.
  • Broken Bird: A male version of this trope.
  • Expy: Of Batman, complete with the neuroses that should cripple him.
  • Hauled Before A Senate Subcommittee: Which didn't help his alcoholism one bit. Compared to the rest of the Minutemen, he was subjected to particularly lengthy and ruthless investigations from the Committee due to having had left-wing friends during his student years.
  • Irony: As Sally pointed out, Mothman's in the bughouse now.
  • Millionaire Playboy: And guilty about it, hence why he became Mothman.
  • Not Quite Flight: Thanks to the wings on his costume.
  • Rich Boredom: This and guilt are two of his prime motivating factors.
  • Wide-Eyed Idealist: The RPG sourcebook reveals that, like Captain Metropolis, he believed that he could use his fame as a superhero to be a force for positive change in society (progressive change, in his case).

Doomsday Clock Tropes

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rco023_4.jpg

"I visualize it. I picture it right up here. I see what I want to see. And what I see is what is."

  • Ascended Extra: Was a very minor character in the original Watchmen. While he only appears in a single issue here, he plays a fairly crucial role as Reggie's mentor.
  • Cardboard Prison: Byron leaves anytime he likes, and he allows himself to be caught and returned.
  • Cloud Cuckoolander: Thanks to being senile. That said, he ends up still coming off as surprisingly lucid for the most part.
  • Cool Old Guy: Despite his age, he is able to build mechanical wings that he repeatedly uses to escape the asylum.
  • Driven to Suicide: Walks into the burning Fitzgerald facility wearing his wing contraption, like the proverbial moth to the flame.
  • I Did What I Had to Do: It's heavily implied - and later confirmed by Adrian - that he destroyed the later records of Dr Long's research on Walter Kovacs, since learning the truth behind Kovacs as a person and the effect it had on his father would've driven Reggie over the edge.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: With Reggie.
  • The Mentor: Becomes this to Reggie at the Fitzgerald asylum, teaching him fighting techniques so that he can defend himself from the orderlies.
  • Mentor Occupational Hazard: Self-inflicted.
  • Naked People Are Funny: Prefers to fly completely naked. He claims clothes add too much weight, but it's strongly implied he's just into nudism.
  • Nice Guy: To the point where he asks Reggie to consider the possibility that Veidt might not be responsible for New York.
  • Posthumous Character: Byron is dead by the time the story starts, but issue #4 reveals that he’s the one who mentored Rorschach II and inspired him to escape the asylum they were locked in.
  • Tears of Joy: He cries when he receives a message from his estranged sister after the Manhattan incident that she's okay. He realizes that not only is she alive, but she did read his letters to her. He writes one last letter before his suicide to her thanking her for listening.

    The Silhouette (Ursula Zandt) 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/silhouette_dc_comics_watchmen_minutemen.jpg
"Perhaps the Poles thought so too, eh? You agree, Sally?"

"I mean, she wasn't the only gay person in the Minutemen. Some professions, I don't know, they attract a certain type... Sally Jupiter"

A bored Jewish aristocrat who fought crime for thrills. Was exposed as a lesbian and drummed out of the Minutemen in 1946, and killed by an old foe afterward.


  • Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Gives off the vibe of being a cold, arrogant beauty from what little we see of her.
  • Bury Your Gays: Not long after being kicked out of the Minutemen, she was murdered in a hotel room alongside her girlfriend by an old foe.
  • Civvie Spandex: In the comics, her costume is a simple black pantsuit with a red sash. The Movie makes it look more super-heroic.
  • Deadpan Snarker: If her sole line of dialogue is anything to go by, she was prone to this trope.
  • Death Glare: The RPG Sourcebook describes her as having a particularly fierce one of these.
  • Expy: Of Nightshade.
  • Light Feminine Dark Feminine: The dark feminine to the first Silk Spectre's light.
  • Lipstick Lesbian: Feminine-looking enough not to qualify as a Butch Lesbian.
  • Posthumous Character: Died long before the events of the story take place.
  • Rebellious Princess: Well, Rebellious Aristocrat, but according Hollis Mason in the RPG Sourcebook, she was the wild "Blackboard Jungle" type who hated people telling her what to do (and would often do the opposite for spite) and a "women's libber" ahead of her time.
  • Rich Bitch: Her only line (seen under her picture) is an insulting dig at Sally (who had changed her name to hide her Polish heritage), and indeed, Sally found Ursula to be an unpleasant person in general. In an interview, Hollis Mason notes that he and Mothman got along with her decently, but that she was rather standoffish with the others. Ironically, he also notes that she seemed quite friendly with Larry Schexnayder.
  • Rich Boredom: One of the reasons she became a hero, though in her favor she seems to have taken her crimefighting very seriously.
  • Sacrificial Lamb: When her sexual orientation (officially) became common knowledge, Laurence Schexnayder, the Minutemen's publicist, pushed hard to have her kicked off the team, as it would have hurt the group's image at a time when superheroes were falling out of favor. (If the film adaptation is anything to go by, she might have been invited back for Sally's retirement party, which would be her last public appearance before her murder.)
  • Smoking Is Cool: Ran with and held her own among a pretty badass crowd, and was always seen with a cigarette in her few behind the scenes appearances.
  • Smoking Is Glamorous: Pretty damn attractive, and loved her tobacco.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork:
    • Being Jewish, she despised Hooded Justice, who was openly supportive of the Nazi regime.
    • According to the RPG sourcebook, she and Sally grew to hate each other. Even so, she did attend Sally's retirement party if the film's opening credits sequence is anything to go by, and Sally, for her part, still feels guilty about her death.

Doomsday Clock debuts

    Reggie Long / Rorschach II 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ror.jpg
Click here to see him without his mask. 

  • Affirmative-Action Legacy: Underneath his mask, this Rorschach is African-American, which he reveals by removing his gloves and showing his hand to Marionette.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: When staying as a guest in Wayne Manor in issue #3 he complains guest rooms are too large and wants something smaller. He ends that issue locked in a small cell in Arkham Asylum.
  • Berserk Button: Implying he is superior to his predecessor, because he sees it not as flattery but for the Backhanded Compliment, Stealth Insult and faint praise that it is always intended as.
  • Broken Pedestal: After finding out how the original Rorschach ruined his dad's life, Reggie seems to have lost at least some of his delusions about Kovacs. Subverted by issue #12 where he dons the Rorschach mask again after gaining some encouragement from Batman and Alfred, using the masks to reinvent back in something better: a heroic vigilante
  • Character Exaggeration: Reggie's sentence fragments are far more prominent than Kovacs’. It at least makes sense in this instance, since Reggie never personally met Walter and only emulates the syntax of Rorschach’s journal.
  • Cloud Cuckoolander: A dark example.
  • Despair Event Horizon: By issue #9, Reggie's so far gone after the revelations of issue #7 that he's out in the streets and holding up "The End is Near"-type signs like his predecessor.
  • Dramatic Irony: He idolizes the original Rorschach, but he is initially unaware, or rather misled, of his less savory attributes.
  • Fatal Flaw: According to Ozymandias, Reggie sees in people what he wants to see and not who they truly are. Which Adrian was all too happy to exploit.
  • Gone Mad from the Revelation: He was near ground zero when Ozymandias attacked New York and managed to survive the massive telepathic attack that killed so many of his fellow citizens. But the mental trauma and learning that his family wasn't as lucky as him drove him off the deep end.
    • Issue #7 puts poor Reggie through this again. He learns that Veidt lied about his brain cancer and that Kovacs caused his parents' marriage to fall apart, leading to Reggie beating the crap out of Veidt and the Joker and abandoning the Rorschach moniker.
  • Hypocritical Humor: Like his predecessor, he thinks very litle of criminals, but doesn't hesitate to steal food when the opportunity presents itself.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: With Byron Lewis, the former Mothman turned mental patient.
  • Legacy Character: Is the new Rorschach following Walter Kovacs.
  • Meaningful Name: He merits the moniker of Rorschach for the same reason the first one, he sees in others what he wants to see, and not what it is, applying the Ink Blot test to the real world, when as noted by his father Dr. Long in the notes suppressed by Byron Lewis, those blots are meaningless, and it's the people who interpret it that give it meaning.
  • Misaimed Fandom: invoked In-Universe, Reggie reflects the portion of the Watchmen fanbase who admire the original Rorschach despite him being a hard-right lunatic and a walking critique of moral absolutist heroes.
  • One-Man Army: Subverted. Byron trained Reggie by teaching him how each of the Minutemen fought, which resulted in what Reggie described as becoming "a one-man Minutemen." However, Surprisingly Realistic Outcome as even before entering a world full of superhumans, Reggie can't win all of his fights with his newfound skills.
  • The Pig-Pen: Lives in his car which is filthy and smells terrible.
  • Reimagining the Artifact: In the end, Batman acknowledges Reggie's issues with Rorschach, and inspires him to do what he himself did - take the mantle of his fears and hatreds and make people see something new - a true hero.
  • Scrubbing Off the Trauma: The moral dissonance in helping Ozymandias after this attack on New York killed his family and drove him insane gave Reggie a complex in regards to filth and cleanliness. Soon after being allowed to use a shower, he tries to wash away the wretchedness of what he's doing by scratching at his scalp so hard that it starts to bleed.
  • Spin-Offspring: Is revealed eventually to be the son of Dr. Malcolm Long, Kovacs' psychologist.
  • Superior Successor: Zig-zagged. Reggie lacks a great number of Kovacs' faults, including his uncompromising Black-and-White Morality, his bigotry and his sociopathic streak. However, his personality is even more unhinged and deranged, and he seems to lack any of the skills that gave Kovacs his reputation. On the other hand, where Rorschach was misled because of his warped ideology, Reggie is misled by people who are trying to use him, and when given the truth, he explodes into a fit of rage that allows him to do the one thing Rorschach I never did and always wanted to, beating Ozymandias to a bloody pulp, unlike Walter who couldn't even land a single punch. By issue #12, the zigzagging goes into Playing It Straight as Batman and Alfred convince Reggie to become something better, thus Reggie becomes a heroic costumed vigilante, saving Adrian's life so he can receive justice than dying in revenge.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Compels Batman to read Walter Kovacs' journal so that he will know what Ozymandias did. While succeeds in making him believe in the threat, he also ends up convincing Batman that Reggie is insane and should be locked up in Arkham Asylum.
  • Take That!: Basically a negative portrayal of characters and people who try to emulate Rorschach under the delusion that he's someone to look up to.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Hates Ozymandias but is working with him to save their world. He mentions wanting to kill Veidt more than once and actually tries to make good on the desire once his Berserk Button gets pushed. The fact that Ozy is dying and is trying to be The Atoner is the only reason he's working with him, and tries to tear Veidt to pieces when he finds out Veidt was lying to him the whole time.
  • That Man Is Dead: Declares that Rorschach is dead and takes off the mask at the end of Issue #7, seemingly for good.
    • Averted at the end of Issue #12 when Batman and Alfred convince him to instead turn the idea of Rorschach into what it can be rather than what he used to be. After the Comedian shoots Ozy, Reggie instead uses Rorschach's mask onto the wound to save him. When Ozy calls him out by saying he "isn't Rorschach", Reggie responds with:
      Reggie: Rorschach is me.
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill: In the end, how Reggie differs from Kovacs. Given the chance, he refuses to kill the man he despises, nor does he engage in Murder by Inaction.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Pancakes.
  • You Killed My Father: Holds this against Ozymandias because both of his parents were killed when his fake monster appeared in New York.
  • You No Take Candle: Reggie's Verbal Tic as Rorschach II.

    Erika Manson / Marionette 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mm1_3.jpg

  • Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Manson does absolutely nothing to discourage her husband's antics, though she does tell him to drop the Wounded Gazelle Gambit and hurry up in one instance.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Erika was the young daughter of an immigrant toymaker who was continuously harassed by two corrupt cops demanding protection money. Eventually, after the cops beat up her father and threatened to take Erika to the crime boss they were working for, he was Driven to Suicide. Upon finding his body, Erika was attacked by the cops and, with aid from Marcos, killed them both. The two subsequently grew up together on the streets as the Marionette and the Mime.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Severs the finger of the loudmouth bank manager with her Razor Floss, only to find out too late that she needed his hand intact to open the vault.
  • Distracted by the Sexy: As she is being confronted by Doctor Manhattan, a living deity and no doubt the most recognizable person in the Watchmen universe, she can't help but compliment his briefs.
  • Expy: Of Jewelee, being a theatrical, crazy criminal in a loving relationship with someone just like her.
  • Expy Coexistence: She's a clown-themed villainess who goes looking for The Joker shortly after entering the DCU.
  • Karma Houdini: Despite being a criminal and causing mayhem in both the Watchmen and DC Universes, she and Marcos are left unscathed by the end of the series, and even inheriting Nite Owl's Owlship as their new mobile home for themselves and their upcoming daughter. Justified as Doctor Manhattan needs them to be an "anchor" in the DC universe in order to make a bridge between the two worlds for their son.
  • Mama Bear: The very first thing she does upon seeing the picture of her son is to shove Rorschach against the wall and demand his whereabouts.
  • An Offer You Can't Refuse: Rorschach holds her and Mime in place with the promise of giving them the location of their child.
  • Oh, Crap!: The instant Rorschach opens her cell, she backs off, desperate to stay away from him until he proves he's not the same Rorschach who once threatened her.
  • Only Sane Woman: Of the Watchmen characters. It says something that despite her own problems every other Watchmen character has issues that make her the sensible one.
  • Razor Floss: Her signature weapon, which she uses throughout the miniseries to inflict Fingore, Eye Scream, and slicing open a human head.
  • Remember the New Guy?: Never mentioned in Watchmen but had fought Doctor Manhattan and Rorschach before.
  • Sexy Jester: She's themed after a clown puppet.
  • Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: As a small school-aged child, Erika took revenge on the corrupt cops responsible for her father's suicide by stabbing one of them in the throat with a pair of scissors and garroting the other.
  • Undying Loyalty: To Mime. In #6, she refuses to allow Marcos to perform a Heroic Sacrifice, stating no matter what, they're together.
  • Would Hurt a Child: Threatened a teller's son during the bank robbery.

    Marcos Maez / Mime 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mm2_0.jpg


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