Trivia / Watchmen

Overall

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: According to many people online, one of Rorschach's most iconic quotes is "I wish all the scum of the Earth had one throat and I had my hands around it." While the quote is from Rorschach, it doesn’t appear anywhere in the comic — it was on one of the promo posters released to advertise the upcoming series. It reads as follows: "You know what I wish? I wish all of the scum of the Earth had one throat and I had my hands about it." Rorschach (1975).
• Newbie Boom: With the announcement of the Watchmen film, people swarmed to read the original graphic novel which swelled the fanbase to massive size. That was until some realized what type of story Alan Moore was telling.
• Reality Subtext: The sudden surge of superheroes during World War II, decline in the late 40s and 50s, and resurgence in the 60s was meant to reflect the fluctuating popularity of superhero comic books during the 20th century.

Comic Book

• Ascended Fanon: The fate of Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis has been a source of speculation owing to a couple resembling the two appearing on panel (and in focus) after their supposed demises. Dave Gibbons stated it wasn't intentional, but was far too good of a theory to refute.
• Creator Backlash: Alan Moore regrets that this book helped usher in The Dark Age of Comic Books, admitting that he was undergoing a Creator Breakdown while writing it. He has no issue with the comic itself though. He described in a September 2023 interview:
  When I was doing things like Watchmen, I was not saying that dark psychopathic characters are really cool, but that does seem to be the message that the industry took for the next 20 years.
• Creator's Favorite: When designing the characters, Dave Gibbons said Rorschach was his favorite to draw due to his relatively simpler features. He described:
  If I had a favorite character to draw, ... the one that I'll draw is Rorschach. Basically, you just have to draw a hat. If you can draw a hat, then you've drawn Rorschach, you just draw kind of a shape for his face and put some black blobs on it and you're done. So he's a favorite to draw in that circumstance.
• Disowned Adaptation: Alan Moore does not like the idea of the Before Watchmen prequel comics, and refused to read them or Doomsday Clock, and has abstained from watching the film adaptation or the HBO series. Dave Gibbons, on the other hand, was more open to the idea of prequels, even wishing the new team of writers and artists well; however, he insists that to him, these aren't canon at all, but merely derivative work. Gibbons also states that he is utterly indifferent to Doomsday Clock and that he categorically will not read them and that the interviewer should consider himself lucky that he got more than a "no comment" out of him. He also has a consulting credit on the show and drew the cover on a decorative Bible given to young Jon Osterman as a gift.
• Follow the Leader: It, along with The Dark Knight Returns, is credited with ushering in The Dark Age of Comic Books and the graphic novel era.
• Former Trope Namer: You Are Too Late, which used to be Thirty Five Minutes Ago.
• Inspiration for the Work:
  • Alan Moore cited Harvey Kurtzman's satire "Superduperman" as his main inspiration for the comic. He also described literary inspirations such as Moby-Dick, Thomas Pynchon and Bertolt Brecht for his attitude to the plot. Will Eisner's The Spirit for its humanism, its use of New York locales, and its focus on ordinary people and how they relate to the Spirit was also an influence.
  • Steve Ditko was a major inspiration for both Moore and Dave Gibbons. The characters are derivatives of Ditko's Charlton creations, while Rorschach was intended as a Deconstruction of Mr. A. Both Moore and Gibbons also took inspiration from Ditko's eye for character creation to create figures who were iconic and recognizable even if they were one-shot characters. Gibbons also cited Ditko's art on his run of The Amazing Spider-Man as a major inspiration, especially for its blend of real places with the bizarre and fantastic as well as his use of the 9 Panel Grid.
• Parody Assistance: Real-life artist Joe Orlando is mentioned as a comic book writer in-universe responsible for a run of stories in Tales of the Black Freighter and later commissioned for the creation of Veidt's alien squid. Orlando himself illustrated a single page intended to be an excerpt from this run; this is the only illustration in the original series not drawn by Dave Gibbons.
• Science Marches On: The finale wouldn't last five seconds in the modern world. DNA tests on the "alien" would reveal it to be Earth-based, especially if done on the brain (which would reveal it to be human). At that point it's an open question what the government would think, but "We need to make peace so we can prepare for alien invasion" is almost certainly off the table.
• Throw It In!: While Gibbons received extremely dense and detailed instructions from Moore's scripts, tiny details like much of the smiley face motifs throughout the book were added of his own volition.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Rorschach's original costume was a form-fitting white full-body leotard with his inkblot patterns all over it. Later they threw the hat and coat on him to better resemble the Question (which had the unfortunate effect of making him look like a tattooed albino flasher) and finally dressed him up completely, leaving only the mask with the inkblots.
  • The story was originally meant to star the heroes of the now-forgotten MLJ Comics stable, but when Moore realized he didn't have the rights to MLJ (MLJ's successor Archie Comics did; ironically, they would later license the MLJ heroes to DC for a period), he turned to Charlton Comics that DC Comics had recently bought —Captain Atom, the Blue Beetle, The Question, etc — but Alan Moore's story didn't mesh with DC's plans to integrate them into the revamped DCU that would follow Crisis on Infinite Earths, so he created a bunch of Alternate Company Equivalent that are now arguably more famous than the characters who inspired them.
    • One source say it would have taken place on Earth-Four if the Charlton characters were used.
  • At the time they were promoting Watchmen, Moore and Gibbons discussed a potential prequel idea around the Minutemen days, albeit insisting they weren't interested in any sequel of the comic, nor were they interested in other ideas floated to them by DC (such as comics focused on the Comedian in the Vietnam). Moore later said that had DC not stiffed him and Dave Gibbons, he might have eventually come around to work on Minutemen, which in any case would have been highly different from the series put out in Before Watchmen decades later.
  • Rorschach was apparently meant to survive at one point, but Alan Moore claimed that as he fleshed out the story, he came to the realization that Rorschach had no chance of making it through to the end.

Film

• Acclaimed Flop: A common joke among critics was "Who watched the Watchmen? Not many." It was a comic book-based movie that was rated R, which is potentially a box office killer for this sort of film (although it's said to have come from Dr. Manhattan's frontal nudity for the most part). Also, being based on a comic book, mainstream audiences expected a superhero romp but got a cerebral deconstruction of the genre instead.
• Approval of God: Dave Gibbons had some interaction with the cast and crew, and was very impressed with the level of detail to the sets, sometimes not realizing a particular detail was taken directly from his art.
• Career Resurrection: Although he regained much critical respectability through his work in Little Children, Jackie Earle Haley didn't fully become a recognizable presence again until his portrayal of Rorschach drew the attention of general audiences. His acting was widely commended as one of the film's best components, with many noting how closely his performance hewed to the comics.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
  • The superhero team is not called the "Masks".
  • The Times (UK) captioned a photo of Silk Spectre II "Sally Jupiter", rather than her daughter, Laurie.
  • Web videos from ComiCon - ComicCon for the love of cake - claimed that Carla Gugino and Malin Åkerman were playing the first and second "Silk Sceptre", though this could just be a typo.
  • Ironically, the "Crimebusters" super-group convened by Ozy and Captain Metropolis was renamed "The Watchmen" for the purposes of this film, creating an inverse situation.
• Creator Backlash:
  • In a 2020 interview, Malin Åkerman admitted that she believes she was way out of her depth during the process of the film's production, with the film's scale and her working alongside highly trained theater actors while having no training herself contributing to an intense feeling of impostor syndrome. She stated that her experience on the film motivated her to recalibrate career-wise and pursue projects that aligned more with her likings and interests, and abandon her previous mindset of simply taking the jobs that came her way.
  • In a 2010 interview, Jeffrey Dean Morgan stated that he didn't enjoy his role as Comedian, and compared his experience working on the film unfavorably to that of the 2010 film adaptation of The Losers, in which he starred as Clay. According to him, playing Clay was far less complicated than playing Comedian, and because of the radically different approach, The Losers gave him more freedom and allowed him to be more playful with his character.
    "This guy has a real, actually much better sense of humor than the Comedian did. He’s not nihilistic. It’s completely different. This is much lighter. A much lighter load for me. There's also kind of room for me to interpret this as a project where, in Watchmen, you had to– look, I was playing the Comedian in the most revered comic book ever written. I was confined to that. In this, I could fine-tune a lot of what I thought Frank Clay is and get to play with it a lot more."
• Creator's Favorite Episode:
  • Night Owl actor Patrick Wilson has stated that this is one of his few movies that he watched "front to back."
  • Similarly, Snyder has expressed the similar sentiment and loved the movie "100%."
• Darkhorse Casting: Except for Patrick Wilson, none of the actors who played the main characters were huge stars at the time of the film's release. Arguably the two biggest names (Jackie Earle Haley and Jeffrey Dean Morgan) had primarily gotten work as a child star and in parts on TV, respectively.
• Dear Negative Reader: If you hated the movie (especially before you've seen it), you can all line up and suck Matthew Goode's dick because he doesn't give a fuck.
• Disowned Adaptation: As part of his continuing vendetta with DC Comics, Moore put a hex on the film, literally. It worked as well as hexes ever do, though Moore reportedly did enjoy gloating over the film's box-office failure.
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • Jackie Earle Haley, who has naturally dark hair, went redhead to play Rorschach.
  • In a physical sense, Haley had an asphyxiating mask, both Goode and Patrick Wilson wore bodysuits that made them sweat profusely, Malin Åkerman wore a cold latex suit in the already chilly Vancouver, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan went through hours of make-up. The one who endured the least was Billy Crudup, because he just had to wear a light-emitting mocap suit.
  • Patrick Wilson gained 25 pounds to portray the older and out of shape Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl.
• Enforced Method Acting: Lori Watt, who played Rorschach's mother, accidentally hit Eli Snyder in the face. The scene was meant to be staged, but she reacted badly because she hit Zack's son, but stayed in character. Neither Zack nor Eli had any problems with it, and Eli enjoyed the experience.
• Fake American: Silk Spectre, Hollis Mason, Moloch, and Janey Slater are played by Canadian actors Malin Åkerman, Stephen McHattie, Matt Frewer, and Laura Mennell respectively. Richard Nixon is played by English actor Robert Wisden. A couple minor characters are also performed by local Vancouver actors, such as Ted Cole as talk show host Dick Cavett and Don Payne as Dollar Bill.
• Fake Nationality: The German-American Ozymandias is British actor Matthew Goode.
• Real-Life Relative: The son of Zack Snyder plays young Rorschach.
• Role Reprise: In the Italian dub, Richard Nixon is dubbed by Luciano De Ambrosis, who already dubbed Frank Langella's portrayal of him in Frost/Nixon.
• Saved from Development Hell: It took over twenty years to adapt the graphic novel into a film. See here for more details.
• Spoiled by the Cast List: The comic has The Reveal when Rorschach is unmasked as the reader may catch that he was in some scenes as a Recurring Extra, a red-haired man who appeared homeless while holding a picket sign saying "The End is Nigh." But he was one of a number of minor background characters, and being a comic they aren't played by actors. The movie faithfully replicates this development, but with Jackie Earle Haley announced in the role anyone familiar with him will be cued in to this twist.
• Trend Killer: The failure of the film killed any attempts at R-Rated graphic novel-based movies for nearly a decade. It wasn't until the success of Deadpool in 2016 that they were considered again.
• Vindicated by Cable: According to Greg Silverman, the former executive at the Warner Brothers, the strong DVD and Blu-Ray sales has made the movie very profitable.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Jude Law was originally cast as Ozymandias in the film, but departed the project due to various filming delays and budgeting concerns, despite being a fan of the original comic.
    • Tom Cruise, Kevin Costner, Rutger Hauer and Simon Pegg were also approached for the role of Ozymandias before Matthew Goode was cast. Pegg reportedly turned down the offer due the fears of being typecast as the character.
  • Paddy Considine was the initial choice for the part of Rorschach before the casting of Jackie Earle Haley. Pegg was offered the role, but felt that "There would be too much "Simon Pegg IS Rorscharch".
    • John Hurt, Sean Penn, Daniel Craig, and Robin Williams were considered for the role of Rorschach as well before the casting of Haley.
  • Thomas Jane was offered the part of The Comedian before Jeffrey Dean Morgan was cast, but turned it down due to scheduling commitments to Dark Country.
    • Ron Perlman, Mel Gibson, Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones were also considered for The Comedian before the casting of Morgan.
  • Joaquin Phoenix, John Cusack, Nathan Fillion, and Richard Gere were considered for the role of Nite-Owl II before the casting of Patrick Wilson.
  • Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Jennifer Connelly, Liv Tyler, Hilary Duff, Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman, and Catherine Zeta-Jones were considered for Silk Spectre II before Malin Åkerman was cast.
  • Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky, Paul Greengrass, and David Hayter were all attached to direct the movie at various points of production. Gilliam had a screenplay written by Sam Hamm (writer of Tim Burton's Batman) to work with, while the others had one by Hayter himself. Much like the final film and more so than Hamm's, Hayter's treatment was pretty faithful, more prone to simplifying or cutting things out rather than changing them. However, it was set in the then-present day (2005), Laurie's alias was changed to "Slingshot" (Dr. Manhattan gives her the power to shoot energy balls), and the ending is changed even further than it was for the final film. The squid is also replaced, this time by a solar energy beam. More importantly, Nite Owl changes his mind about compromising and (barely) defeats and kills Ozymandias, since "that's what Rorschach would've done.". Well, having worked on Metal Gear really makes your mind go places. Though, according to Hayter, he actually managed to get the approval of Alan Moore concerning his version of the screenplay.
  • Sam Hamm's draft changes the ending even more, as instead of attacking New York at all, Ozymandias opens a wormhole back in time and uses it to kill Jon Osterman before he becomes Dr. Manhattan. This somehow has the effect of dumping the main characters into our world, and turning their timeline into a comic book. There's a reason that the fandom talks about the early screenplays not in terms of "It could have been", but in terms of "At least it wasn't."
  • Ozymandias' storyline ended in death in a lot of the earlier scripts, as a way of not letting him get away with his actions:
    • Sam Hamm version: Ozymandias is vaporized, leaving only a pair of boots behind.
    • David Hayter version: Nite-Owl stabs and kills him with his "owlrang".
    • Alex Tse version: Ozymandias is crushed by Nite-Owl's ship and bleeds to death. His body is then set aflame by the ship's afterburners as it leaves Karnak.
    • According to screenwriter David Hayter, the film's different ending from the graphic novel where Ozymandias frames Dr. Manhattan by blowing up New York with their machine's energy, instead of building a "squid" monster that destroys the city and appears to be an attack by aliens came about because Hayter signed his contract with Universal the day after 9/11; Fearing that mirroring the recent massacre in film would be too painful, he rewrote the ending to instead mirror the more distant bombing of Hiroshima.
• Word of Saint Paul: While the original text says Adrian Veidt gave up his family's fortune at an early age to prove he didn't need it to achieve greatness, Matthew Goode has speculated on the details of his character's past, where he grew up, and, specifically, his giving away the money being motivated by his family having been Nazis.
• Writer Revolt: The executives wanted a steamy sex scene. Zack Snyder and crew placated by accentuating it with Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah".
• Viral Marketing: Veidt Enterprises had the products - Nostalgia and The Veidt Method - appear. Keene Act informational movies are throughout.

HBO Series

• See here.

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