Video Game / Doom (2016)

aka: Doom 4

Fight Like Hell.

"They are rage, brutal, without mercy.
But you. You will be worse.
Rip and tear, until it is done."

Doom (stylized as DOOM) is the fifth main installment in the Doom franchise, developed by id Software and published by Bethesda for the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on May 13, 2016. It was ported to the Nintendo Switch on November 10, 2017.

You play as a silent, unnamed Space Marine who wakes up naked in a creepy stone coffin surrounded by zombies. After slaughtering them and acquiring a suit of Powered Armor from an equally-creepy sarcophagus, you discover you're inside a Union Aerospace Corporation facility on Mars in the middle of a demonic invasion.

What were you doing in a coffin? Irrelevant. Why are demons invading Mars? Who cares. You're a berserker-packin' man and a half who's here to Shoot Everything That Moves until The Legions of Hell are obliterated.

Rip and tear, until it is done.

Originally announced in 2008 as Doom 4, the game was designed to be a Genre Throwback to the early days of First Person Shooters — back when guns didn't need reloading, cover was for cowards, players could carry more than two guns at once, and levels were more than just linear hallways interrupted by quick-time events. Having said that, it does preserve a number of features from modern FPS titles: Gun Accessories that provide Secondary Fire modes, having grenades and Pistol Whip assigned to their own buttons (a la Halo), melee-range "Glory Kill" Finishing Moves that allow you to (gratifyingly) beat foes to death with their own limbs and (gratifyingly) collect extra health and ammo pickups from their disfigured corpses, and some Info Dumps hidden in the Encyclopedia Exposita. The game also features competitive multiplayer, where up to twelve players duke it out in a variety of game modes, and a Level Editor called SnapMap, which allows one to create their own map with custom game logic.

Several months after Doom (2016) was released, Zen Studios developed and released a virtual pinball adaptation of the game as part of the Bethesda Pinball collection, available as part of ''Zen Pinball 2'', ''Pinball FX 2'' and ''Pinball FX 3'' and a separate app on smartphones.

Has a direct sequel, Doom Eternal, which was released on March 20, 2020.

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Doom (2016) provides examples of:

#-D

• 100% Completion: Most levels have three bonus objectives to complete, a combat rating that goes up by killing enemies, and numerous collectibles, mods, and secrets to find. And once you've bagged all of those, chances are you still have to complete some of up to two mastery challenges per weapon. The game keeps track of most categories through various achievements.
• Abnormal Ammo: Most guns avert this despite incorporating Argent power technology one way or another, but the pistol makes up for it by directly converting Argent energy into gel bullets that behave more or less like "real" slugs. It's also a neat explanation as to why the little thing has infinite ammo.
• Absurdly High Level Cap: In multiplayer, there are 600 total levels the player can advance through, with 50 levels scattered across 12 epsilons.
• Action Bomb:
  • Lost Souls fly straight towards you, kamikaze-style.
  • Possessed engineers don't blow themselves up on purpose, but they're melee enemies with a volatile gas tank fused into their torso, so the result is basically the same if you let them get too close and then shoot them without realising what exactly you're doing there.
• Actionized Sequel: While Doom 3 was more of a survival-horror, this entry is a straight-up action game in the vein of the first two.
• Adaptational Villainy: In Doom 3, the UAC were somewhat amoral, but were surprisingly sensible and generally averted the stupidity of most evil corporations like Umbrella. In this Doom, the UAC operate like a cult and are essentially a combination of Satanism and Unitology, getting there by way of Weyland-Yutani, but Played for Laughs (most of the time) while operating with a hilariously cavalier attitude towards the deaths of their employees. Oh, and they don't let their employees take the weekends off. Those monsters. Most of this is due to Olivia Pierce turning the UAC Division on Mars into her own cult, but Samuel Hayden essentially let her do whatever she wanted, as long as he got results (i.e.: working Argent energy).
• Affably Evil: Well-Intentioned Extremist Samuel Hayden, who is unfailingly polite to the Doomguy and assists him throughout despite their at odds agendas - even after Doomguy repeatedly thrashes the UAC facility against his protests, he continues to assist him, and never has anything worse to say than some passive-aggressive comments on Doomguy's preference for violence. Even after turning on Doomguy, he admits Doomguy might be right to completely obliterate Hell, and merely sends Doomguy to parts unknown to keep him from interfering. Partly because killing him would be rude, and partly because he's not sure if he can kill him. He also sincerely thanks VEGA before its sacrifice and meltdown.
• Aggressive Play Incentive: The game has famously utilized a number of mechanics to entice players to aggressively chase demon enemies throughout the levels instead of taking potshots at them from cover. These range from the obvious Glory Kills, which require players to get into melee range but restore some of their Hit Points, to the subtle, like the ranged enemy AI typically backing off as the player approaches, putting the latter in a hunter mindset.
• Ammo-Using Melee Weapon: The Chainsaw requires rare fuel to offset its immense power.
• And Show It to You: The Glory Kill for the Mancubus involves ripping its heart out of its bloated gut and then shoving it down its mouth.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: In multiplayer, playing through matches and advancing through levels and epsilons unlocks extra customization options (armors, colors, and patterns) for the player's personal marine (and their weapons). Completing objectives will unlock customization options earlier. Reaching Epsilon XI Level 50 unlocks the Doom Slayer's armor from the campaign.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Glory Kills drop additional health and ammo if you're running low on either, with more stuff dropping the fewer you have. You can also perform them from slightly outside normal melee range, and are impervious to damage from other demons before and after.
  • The game allows you to return to previously beaten levels, and any upgrade items you find that you missed before are carried into the current level.
    • Your progress towards combat and level challenges is saved even if you die and have to reload a previous checkpoint, so you only have to succeed at particularly difficult challenges once.
  • During Rune Trials where the objective is to kill every enemy in the arena, when you are down to the last few the demons will be highlighted for you, including through walls, as a way of reducing Last Lousy Point situations.
  • When it's time to glory-kill the Final Boss with the BFG, the move can be performed regardless of whether the weapon has any ammo left or not, leaving you free to apply your full stockpile to the thing's face in the grueling battle.
• Alternate Fire: Each weapon except for the Chainsaw, Super Shotgun, and BFG-9000 can have one of two Gun Accessories installed.
  • The pistol, Heavy Assault Rifle, Shotgun, Plasma Rifle and Gauss Cannon can have Charge Attack alts: the shotgun charges either Rapid-Fire or a grenade launcher. The HAR can charge up a salvo of six missiles. The plasma gun charges up a heat sink as it fires normally; this can be discharged right up an enemy's nose. The Gauss Cannon charges an immensely powerful shot with generous Splash Damage. The pistol is charged by holding down the alt-fire button, gradually gaining power.
  • The Chaingun and plasma rifle can have "Seperate but Unrelated" alts: The chaingun can be split into 3 miniguns, tripling its firing rate at the cost of both slowing you down and overloading its coolant system, and the plasma gun can fire a shot with extra electricity, stunning enemies.
  • The HAR and Gauss Cannon can alternatively be equipped with a sniper scope.
  • The chaingun can be equipped with a secondary rotor which allows it to be fired without first spooling up. This can overlap with the Charge Attack category, because its Master upgrade allows it to superheat its bullets.
• Apocalyptic Log: Codex entries detail the decline of UAC as more members succumb to demonic influence. Amusingly, the demons have their own in the form of the Slayer's Testaments, which tells the tale of the Doomguy's nigh-unstoppable rampage through their realm and how they're all terrified of him.
• Are These Wires Important?: Doomguy's preferred method for dealing with Argent Energy equipment, despite Hayden's demands that he use utmost care.
• Arm Cannon: Possessed Soldiers and Security have guns fused to their right arms. Hell Razers shoot beams out of their right arms.
• Artifact of Doom: The Crucible.
• Artificial Brilliance: Go ahead, try to hide somewhere. Not only were most of the combat arenas designed so that just about every point is accessible to the demons (who climb, flank, and shuffle around from every other angle, especially Imps), but they usually lock off hallways to prevent the player from just picking off enemies one by one in tight corridors. And they'll be more than happy to use this against you (found a dead end you can camp from? Have fun with the heavily-armored Pinkies about to charge in after you). Heck, a large number of foes even predict your movement and try to fire ahead of your path unlike the rest of the series, especially in Ultra-Violence, But...
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • Enemies also have a bad habit of flaunting or contemplating what to do next, particularly larger enemies, which leaves them wide open to a rocket in the face to knock them out of their stupor. The aforementioned Imps in particular can throw fireballs while running and love to be quite aggressive - up until they decide to stand in place chucking more fireballs while you barrel towards them with a shotgun.
  • Some enemies, especially the dumb Possessed, think nothing of lumbering to their death in a Bottomless Pit or accidentally hitting an explosive barrel in their zeal to get to you while you're below them.
• Ascended Meme:
  • The opening cutscene quotes the phrase "Rip and Tear" from the Doom comic. However, whereas in the comic it came across as comically over-the-top, in Doom 2016 it comes across as absolutely badass and sets the tone for the entire rest of the game.
  • Doomguy in the Doom comic called the chainsaw "the Great Communicator", and "communicated" his desire to have his enemies' guns via the weapon. What's the best way to get ammo back in this game? Use the chainsaw to rip an enemy in half.
  • There are a huge number of trophies quoting the Doom comic.
  • One fan name for the Doomguy, "The Doom Marine," is now what UAC calls him in-universe.
    • Likewise the "Demon" enemy returns and is now officially called by his fan name "Pinky".
  • The achievement for killing the Cyberdemon is called "Shoot it until it dies.", referencing the "Protip" meme.
  • The "Doom Shuffle" multiplayer taunt is from a popular YTMND .gif edit of the Doomguy doing this cheerful little move.◊
  • At the beginning of the game, the forces of Hell imprisoned the Doom Slayer by dropping a temple on top of him. This isn't the first time in Doom history a space marine has been trapped by the ceiling falling on him. The game proper also starts with him awakening from his coffin, which may or may not be a metaphor for something.
• Ass Kicks You: Execute a Glory Kill on a Pinky from behind and you will rip out its entire rump, smacking the demon across the face with it.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: The main tactic of the demon hordes... and Doomguy. It works. There is no "conservative" or "defensive" play here. There is no safe place to hide, no holdable position. Standing still will get you killed very quickly.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The Tactical Scope for the Heavy Assault Rifle. On paper, having a scope to deal with distant foes is a good thing, but in Doom's frantic, close combat arenas, the minor bump in damage is negligible in comparison to the firepower and mobility of the Micro Missile Launcher.
  • The Mobile Turret upgrade for the Chain Gun. Sure, you now fire three times as fast and can down enemies in a couple seconds of sustained fire. However, you will also burn through your entire ammo supply in those few seconds, with no real improvement on your damage per bullet spent. That said, mastering the upgrade removes the overheating, which in combination with the Rich Get Richer rune shifts the weapon right into game-breaking territory.
• Bad Boss: Olivia Pierce oversees an operation that's dedicated to the sacrifice of its employees and turning over the realms of man to the denizens of Hell. At the end of the game you can find a message from her in which she flat out states that she'll become a god while everyone else will suffer eternal torment in the deepest pit of Hell. It ends with, "Thank you for your service. May you rot in Hell."
• Badass Creed: "Rip and Tear, until it is done"
• Bag of Spilling: Mostly averted; weapons, runes, and upgrades are carried over between levels. However, the colored keys and skulls you'll collect to unlock doors must be gathered fresh each time.
• BFG: The one and only BFG-9000, a massive plasma cannon that fires hyper-charged hell energy and gets used to Glory Kill the Final Boss.
  • While smaller than The BFG 9000, the Gauss Cannon and Chaingun are no slouches in the firepower department, especially with the Siege Mode and Mobile Turret upgrades respectively. Both slow movement to half speed when their altfire is activated and can tear apart demons (and your ammo) within a matter of seconds.
• Big Bad: Olivia Pierce, a scientist-turned-cultist who believes that having the world engulfed by Hell will lead to the next step in human evolution. In the codex entry "A Farewell", Olivia reveals that she seeks to reach the "real heaven" of Argent D'Nur and be made a god. And everyone else? They can just rot in the deepest pit of Hell for all she cares. She eventually gets her wish, merging with the master of the demons to become the Aranea Imperatix - The Spider Mastermind.
• Big Good: Samuel Hayden, who extracted the Doomguy from Hell to be the ultimate safeguard against a demonic invasion. Though he's still a Well-Intentioned Extremist who wants to exploit Hell for its resources.
  • It is also implied that God exists in this game, as it is stated in the Slayer's Testaments that Doomguy was endowed with supernatural fighting ability by an angel.
• Big Red Devil: Imps and Barons of Hell, hell-spawned demons with red skin and horns.
• Bittersweet Ending: One of the very bittersweet sort, near bordering on a downer. After ripping and tearing his way across Mars and Hell, the Doom Slayer shuts down the Well, closes the portal Pierce ripped open, and kills Pierce in the process. However, everyone in the UAC facility is dead except for Hayden, and the Slayer had to overload VEGA's core to reach the Well. Hayden also takes the Crucible from the Slayer, planning to use it to continue his research on Argent energy; he concedes that while the Slayer might have a point about killing every last demon and preventing the UAC from exploiting Hell, Hayden can't just pull the plug since Earth will face an impossible energy crisis if he does. The only silver linings here are that the Slayer made a backup of VEGA and that Hayden doesn't kill him (and probably can't), simply content to teleport the Slayer away so he won't interfere with Hayden's plans and promising they'll see each other again if another demonic invasion happens. Which it does.
• The Berserker: The Glory Kill and Berserk artifact mechanics encourage you to run through enemy attacks to rip demons limb from limb.
• Black Comedy: Not immediately apparent through gameplay, but keep an ear out for the UAC Spokesperson holograms and/or take a read through the Codex sometime. Doom isn't a game one should take seriously.
  • He'll say things along the lines of "Harnessing Hell for a better tomorrow." or "See Jessica in human resources for the Revenant program." Or this gem in later levels about how working at the UAC is meaningful, unlike the rest of your life. Or the bit where he chants in Black Speech with the same calm and cheerful tone.
  • The notifications about a demonic incursion being in progress can cause chuckles, especially the part about "demonic presence at unsafe levels". What, do tell, would be safe demonic presence levels other than zero?
• Body Armor as Hit Points: Armor in this game acts like bonus health; any damage you take is taken out of your armor meter first.
• Body Horror: Argent energy does very ugly things to the the humans it affects. Basic Possessed have gaping holes where their eyes and noses should be, and Possessed Soldiers have their armor fused to their skin. Then there are the possessed engineers, who have explosive gas tanks fused into their torsos.
• Boom, Headshot!: Aiming for the head will deal amplified damage-and cause the enemy's head to pop like an overcooked burrito on death. The assault rifle's scope mod can be upgraded to deal additional bonus damage with headshots on top of that. Fully mastering the pistol, assault rifle, and Gauss cannon also requires killing a bunch of enemies with headshots while specific weapon mods are active^note The pistol requires fifteen headshots with the Charged Energy Shot, the assault rifle requires fifty headshots with the Tactical Scope, and the Gauss cannon requires five headshots on Hell Knights with the Precision Bolt. As a loading screen puts it, "If an enemy has a head, it's a weak spot", which applies to every enemy (except the Cacodemon, which is nothing but a head).
• Boring Yet Practical:
  • The Gatling Rotor for the Chaingun. Compared to the Micro-Missile Launcher and the Mobile Turret, the Gatling Rotor seems rather mundane. However, it allows you to keep your Chaingun ready to fire at an instant as well as having an upgrade that increases the damage when the mod is used.
  • The runes that affect Glory Kills can be considered this. With the exception of Armored Offensive, they don't really do anything spectacular other than make it easier to pull off Glory Kills whether it be increasing the stun time of enemies or increasing the range in which they can be executed, but damn if they don't make siphoning health (and armor with Armored Offensive) far easier this way!
  • It might be a bit of a stretch to call the iconic Super Shotgun "boring", but it's one of the only weapons aside from the pistol, chainsaw, and BFG 9000 you don't get mods for. But the raw power of the gun itself more than makes up for the lack of secondary fire options. Its upgrade for completing its challenge falls under this trope compared to the other guns, too; It allows the Super Shotgun to be fired twice before reloading, which can absolutely murder demons up close.
  • Fully upgrading the basic Pistol might seem like a waste of precious upgrade points, as its only upgrade increases the efficiency of its charged shot and mastering it requires you to pop off headshots with it. Once mastered, though, it becomes a really consistent mid to long-range weapon, with a fast and accurate projectile that, at full charge, can down minor enemies with a bodyshot and even stun-lock larger ones like Hell Knights and Revenants.
  • The Ammo Boost rune, while it doesn't match the Rich Get Richer in terms of sheer ammo abundance, is more practical to utilize as it doesn't require the Doom Slayer to maintain 100 to 75 points of armor to actually use it. It also has the benefit of having the chance to spawn BFG ammo once upgraded.
  • In terms of equipment, the Hologram is this compared to the frag and siphon grenade. All it does is drop a hologram copy of Doomguy wherever you stand, with it firing a few plasma rounds and, more importantly, drawing enemy aggro to it. While it doesn't do immediate damage or heals you like the latter two respectively, the hologram can draw enemies away and it doesn't expire until the timer ends, thus indirectly saving you some health and armor while letting you focus on certain enemies uninterrupted. With the rune to increase equipment effectiveness and Praetor upgrades to lower the charge time, it'll let you throw out a Hologram effectively 100% of the time and prudent usage of it ensures an easier battle, especially on Nightmare difficulty where the value of its drawn aggro is greater than more damage or healing from the frag and siphon grenade, respectively. Of course, nothing's stopping you from using all of them interchangeably.
• Borrowed Biometric Bypass: Several times, you're required to bypass security locks this way. You rip a dead guy's arm off to bypass a fingerprint scanner, and in one case, you take a dead guy's entire torso to get through an optical scanner. The latter includes a subversion of the usual trope, as there's a second biometric detector inside the chamber that this trick can't fool, and your mismatched readings trip the security system.
• Borrowing from the Sister Series: Borrows the Quad Damage powerup from sister Id Software franchise Quake.
• Bottomless Magazines: In a return to Doom and Doom II, your entire ammo reserves are in a single magazine. The "Rich Get Richer" rune will also grant infinite ammo if your armor is above 100 points. The pistol, on the other hand, has infinite ammo by default. You can find ammo pickups for your equipment (the two grenade types and the hologram) too, but since they also automatically recharge over time, you can never actually run out of them.
• Brain Uploading: Samuel Hayden had the healthy parts of his grey matter installed in a robotic body to cheat death after being diagnosed with brain cancer, most notably the frontal and temporal lobes. This meant that he could think creatively and analytically like a human, but could process and calculate information as quickly as a computer.
• Broad Strokes: The events of Doom, Doom II, and Doom 64 are heavily implied to have happened in something the demons refer to as the "first age", where the Doomguy killed numerous legions of hell. The game also mixes the original Doom and Doom II action gameplay, and a mix of Doom 64 and Doom 3 monster design, UAC base, equipment aesthetics, and storytelling.
• Brutal Bonus Level: The classic maps, especially on higher difficulty levels. They often have you fighting multiple enemies in tight corridors that make dodging projectiles difficult, with unmodded weapons and limited healing options to boot. Worst of all, there are no checkpoints, so a single mistake can send you back to the very beginning.
• Bullet Time: With the Saving Throw rune equipped, you get this if you're hit with a blow that would otherwise be lethal, giving you a chance to fight your way out.
• Call-Back: Trophies include E1M1, IDKFA, Shareware, and IPXSETUP.EXE.^note The latter is to do one multiplayer game, which normally used, on the original Doom, ipxsetup.exe to handle the netcode. Nowadays, the supplier provides it.
• The Cameo: The Icon of Sin shows up in a level late in the game, though it is inactive and does not attack or attempt to stop you. Unless you shoot a rocket into its forehead, which causes it to shoot out a collectible doll and play its speech from Doom II.
• Canned Orders over Loudspeaker: All over the place in the UAC facilities.
• Canon Foreigner: Every enemy in the game is a re-interpretation of an enemy from the classic Doom games, plus the shambling zombies from Doom 3. Even the Hell Guards are reminiscent of the Guardian of Hell from Doom 3, though are now exoskeletons controlled by small worm-like creatures rather than the massive crocodile like beast. Olivia Pierce and Samuel Hayden are new characters for the game, alhough Pierce is a blatant gender-flipped Expy of Dr. Malcom Bertruger from Doom 3..
• Can't Catch Up: The pistol, predictably. Even with its new charging shot feature, by the time one can invest enough points in it to fully upgrade its potential, the player has already acquired a number of far better weapons. It may have an infinite ammo supply, but there's plenty of ammo scattered throughout every level. That isn't even going into the details of the "Rich Get Richer" rune.
• Cap Raiser: Argent Cells, when acquired, boost the player's choice of stat they boost, out of max health, armor, or ammo capacity. Each can only be boosted so many times before they can't anymore and are removed from being selected.
• Chainsaw Good: The chainsaw returns as a melee option, but its mechanics have changed. It's now a One-Hit Kill on most everything, but it requires fuel units to use. Fuel pickups are relatively rare, and bigger enemies need more fuel to take down. Killing an enemy this way also spawns a lot of ammo.
  • Subtly done on audio level. Mick Gordon morphed his music with a sample of the chainsaw sound from the original games to create the main menu theme.
• Charged Attack: Most of the weapon mods work like this in some way.
• Cherry Tapping: By the mid-game, the pistol has been long outclassed by other weapons and it functions solely as an Emergency Weapon, and even then only until you get one of the frequent minor ammo drops. However, it still maintains some tactical value even late in the game for setting up weaker enemies for Glory Kills. More dangerous enemies will generally be taken out with extreme prejudice, but more powerful weapons tend to be overkill for minor foes, so the pistol can help turn every little enemy into a source of health and ammo drops if the player is willing to handicap themselves a little.
• Colorblind Mode: This game has its colorblind settings just filter the game to how it would look like if you had the disability rather than adjusting it to be more useful to such players, making them more suitable for challenge runs/curiosity than actual assistance, though it doesn't require hue recognition that much anyway (green lights often indicate progress against many reddish backdrops, but they are glowing and thus stand out well enough anyway).
• Color Wash: Part of the game's rendering process applies a red filter over the screen.
• The Comically Serious: Samuel Hayden. His frequent exasperation and the seriousness he displays to Doomguy's more 'simple-minded' decisions is a source for some hilarity in the game.
  • When meeting in person and if the player decides to shoot, Samuel will simply say "Save your ammunition".
    Samuel Hayden: Your affinity for guns is apparent. I'm confident you'll find something useful there as well.
• The Corruption: Olivia Pierce may have started out with good intentions and sound judgement, but the practices that she began indulging in for the betterment of humanity weren't kind to her. Eventually her aims go from "bettering mankind" to "obtaining godlike power for its own sake". It even shows as by the time you catch up with her at the end before she becomes Spidey, she looks like a zombie, complete with showing signs of grievous injury/necrosis as well as a bad case of Prophet Eyes.
• Crapsack World: Earth is implied to be this, as it had gone through an major energy crisis prior to the UAC's discovery of Argent Energy, meaning that humanity is solely dependent on the exploitation of Hell itself. Hayden repeatedly warns Doomguy that disrupting the flow of this energy would likely result in a total societal collapse, not that Doomguy pays him any heed. Or, rather, he does pay heed, but decides that it just isn't worth the risk.
• Creative Closing Credits: The end credits begin with fly-bys of 3D stills or lightly-animated dioramas of various scenes from the campaign and other stuff (such as the Doom Slayer's arsenal laid out) as the staff members' names are mapped into the environments, including a humorous scene of one of the Slayer dolls facing off against a Pinky. The dynamic credits end with a perfectly recreated interpretation of the original Doom's famous cover art of the Slayer standing on a mountain of Imps before tossing the one grabbing him into the air and blasting him to bits with the Combat Shotgun.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The Glory Kills all involve inflicting some extremely brutal and painful looking death on demons in creative fashion. They include (but are not limited to) crushing enemy skulls, yanking out a Cacodemon’s Eye, feeding a Mancubus it’s own bomb, and yanking an enemy’s limb off before home-running their body with it, all after blasting them with enough heavy gunfire to stagger them.
• Cryptic Background Reference: There is apparently some major energy crisis going on as the humans have ended up having to open portals to Hell to tap into Argent Energy, a seemingly infinite (or effectively infinite) energy source. The drawback being, of course, you also have demons trying to invade our dimension.
• Cult: After succumbing to demonic corruption, Olivia Pierce has turned the UAC into a secretive demon cult.
• Cyborg:
  • Samuel Hayden, who had part of his brain transplanted into a 3 meter tall robotic body after being diagnosed with inoperable stage 4 brain cancer.
  • Olivia Pierce, to a lesser degree. She's got a titanium exoskeleton grafted to her spine, due to undergoing an experimental procedure to ensure that she wouldn't be permanently bound to a wheelchair after being diagnosed with acute idiopathic scoliosis.
  • Revenants, Cyber-Mancubi, and the Cyberdemon were all cybernetically enhanced by the UAC in their attempts to weaponize Hell. Hell, the Cyberdemon was outright brought back from the dead.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: This game eschews modern mechanics, such as reloading, for a classic feel reminiscent of the first two games. That said, some have been pressing the nonexistent reload button (which actually swaps out weapon mods for your guns) out of pure muscle memory.
  • Oldschool players and classic Doom players were in for a surprise as the assigned number keys for the weapons are different and the Shotgun and Super Shotgun are put into different number instead of the same number.
  • On console at least, when you press what would usually be a reload button you instead bring out the chainsaw, which tangentially functions as a reload, and using it on a demon does indeed net you more ammo.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The Wraiths found in the last level might look demonic even before they were corrupted but the Codex reveals they were Argent D'Nur's first life forms that the people worshiped as gods before they were corrupted by Hell .
• Deadly Dodging: As with the original Doom, you can anger certain demons into infighting by dodging such that they injure each other as they attempt to target you.
• Deal with the Devil: This amounts to how the events of the game got started. Olivia Pierce assisted the forces of Hell in crossing over in exchange for a seat in the "new world". Goes without saying it doesn't quite pan out for either party, now that Doomguy is awake. Olivia crosses over into Too Dumb to Live territory by trying to get into Hell to make the demons give what they promised her. She got it in the form of being turned into a ginormous spider-demon, at least before Doomguy blew her brains out with the BFG.
  • This is also how the demons conquered Argent D'Nur. The Night Sentinels were repelling the forces of Hell rather effectively, until one among their number betrayed them all in exchange for the resurrection of his son. When the source of the Sentinels' power was corrupted, the demons held up their end of the bargain... by bringing the Betrayer's son back as a demon.
• Demon of Human Origin: Olivia Pierce opened the Hell Portal for good to allow the demonic forces to invade Mars in exchange for her own elevation into godhood. It turns out that this means ripping out her original personality and forcefully transforming her into the Spider Mastermind demon.
• Degraded Boss: The Hell Knights compared to their Doom 3 counterparts, they are far more numerous and are typically easier to kill but are still generally competent and last longer than Imps. In the old Doom games, they used to be a somewhat degraded version of the Barons of Hell, just like now.
• Devil, but No God: Averted, but only just barely. In a game positively dripping with demons, "seraphim" are mentioned a single time in one of the Testaments of the Doom Slayer. Specifically, they altered the Doom Slayer and is one of the reasons he's so unstoppable.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The Rocket Launcher's Remote Detonation mod. It is undoubtedly a harder sell compared to the Lock-On Burst, which has far more obvious applications and raw damage output. With practice however, Remote Detonation turns out to be much more useful for crowd-control and for reducing your missed shots (as missing with the Rocket Launcher is extra-risky given the wait between shots), and the mod especially shines once you unlock its Mastery. Now detonating the rocket doesn't take the rocket with it, giving you effectively two rocket explosions for the price of one point of ammo, compared to Lock-On Burst using up three per shot for a similar result.
• Distaff Counterpart: Olivia Pierce is basically Dr. Betruger with no Y chromosome.
• Double Jump: Doomguy eventually comes across some thruster boots that let him jump an additional time in the air.
• Dual Boss: Barons of Hell, if not alone, will usually appear in pairs. The second phase of the Hell Guard battle has you fighting two slightly-weaker Guards simultaneously.
• Dragged Off to Hell: Happens quite a few times, though the last few are a deliberate effort so you can break into Hell.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: Doomguy pumps his shotgun right as he's about to get off the elevator once the first mission, following the title screen. Also a case of Mickey Mousing, since the cock punctuates the last two guitar riffs from "At Doom's Gate".
• The Dreaded: The Doomguy has been elevated to this for the demons. He has already trashed Hell once, and was only stopped by dropping an entire temple on him. The demons fear him and regard him as the biggest threat to their goal after he awakens and breaks free at the start of the game. The demons feared him so much that upon successfully entombing him, they covered the entire site with runes to prevent anything going in/out and heavily protected the site. When the UAC discovered the tomb and retrieved the Doomguy, they noted that the demons fought with levels of desperate ferocity that they had never seen before.
• Driven to Suicide: One of the codex entries on the Foundry level implies that the facility's casualty rate from "accidents" was notoriously high until the UAC thought to institute "re-education" and therapy sessions for low level workers. Given what kind of activities the company was involved in, spiritual and mental health issues are practically a given.

E-L

• Early-Bird Cameo: The Heavy Machine Gun appeared in the Steam version of Quake Live.
• Easter Egg:
  • Mick Gordon was bored working on a particular track one day, looking for inspiration he watched a video on Satanic messages hidden in rock music, and became inspired to bury the number "666" and a pentagram into the audio track. As he explains here, you can find it with a spectragraph.
  • In The Necropolis, hidden in the level is a balloon which says "Happy birthday!" with a skeleton with a party hat next to it. You can pop the balloon and either receive applause or jeering. The only explanation given by Word of God is that this is an inside joke within id's development team.
  • Also from the Necropolis, one toy can be collected in the Icon of Sin room, by using the tried and true technique of shooting a rocket in its brain.
• Electronic Speech Impediment: VEGA, as you're shutting it down in the second-to-last level.
• Elite Mooks: The UAC's red-armored Elite Guard (whose armor can be earned in multiplayer) were elite troops cybernetically enhanced by their Powered Armor suits. However, this made them dangerous enough that Hayden had a Self-Destruct Mechanism installed into their suits so they could be dealt with in case of insurrection. Too bad for him, he gave the self-destruct codes to Olivia as well, and she presumably used it to kill them all when she sided with the demons and started the invasion. In the campaign, all they're good for is scavenging their bodies for chips to upgrade your Praetor Suit. Interestingly, these are the chips that were installed as a kill-switch.
  • In bits of the lore it's said their authority was absolute, answering only to the highest ranking UAC members, so Authority Equals Asskicking, apparently.
• Emergency Weapon: Two: the Chainsaw for a spray of ammo and health, though different enemy sizes require more fuel; and the BFG 9000, which can kill everything in one hit, short of a boss. Each has its own specific ammo pickup.
  • The chainsaw requires one fuel unit for most small enemies (imps, possessed soldiers, and the like), three for bigger ones like the Revenant and Hell Knight, four for Pinkies, and five for Mancubi and the Barons. Its ammo pool is upgraded with your suit's Argent cells. And as mentioned, it makes your enemies drop a ton of ammo pickups.
  • The BFG however only has three shots, though ammo can be relatively plentiful in big arenas. It's also good to use against bosses as it takes off about a tenth of their healthbar and stuns them, leaving them open to other weapons which will drop health.
  • The Pistol, a peashooter whose main perk is never running out of ammo, but it also has an upgradeable charge shot so you're not completely boned if you have to rely on it.
• Establishing Character Moment: The first level of the game establishes the particulars of the Doom Slayer's personality pretty quickly: Doomguy awakens naked and handcuffed to a slab and surrounded by possessed zombies, and when he has one hand free, grabs one of the zombies and smashes its head into the slab before grabbing a pistol and killing the rest. When Samuel attempts to greet him, he throws the monitor into the wall. And when he does so again, stating that what they were doing was for all mankind, Doomguy takes a very deliberate glance at the mutilated corpse at his feet before smashing the speaker in.
• Establishing Series Moment: The opening level also serves as a statement of purpose by the game on its intentions to be a Genre Throwback to earlier Doom games and love letter to their fans. The opening dialogue promises you will be scarier than the demons, then In-Universe quotes the famous Memetic "rip and tear" line from the Narmy 90s comic. The game then has the character killing a zombie with his bare hands in 15 seconds, puts you in control with a gun in 20 seconds, starts a Voice with an Internet Connection's Info Dump only to then immediately skip it on its own within two minutes, and within the first three minutes has given you a shotgun.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The demons may be evil but their writings indicate a loathing of betrayers, referring to them as "wretched". Humans who betray their worlds to side with Hell are typically Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves, such as in the case of Olivia and the mysterious Betrayer of Argent D'Nur.
• Everything Fades: Demon corpses and gibs disintegrate after a few seconds. As with Doom 3, this was likely meant to ease up on memory.
• Evil Brit: Olivia Pierce has an English accent, and is the game's Big Bad.
• Evil Cripple: Olivia Pierce's odd appearance is explained in the codex as an elaborate workaround for debilitating scoliosis. It notes that the exoskeleton she wears must be quite painful, but she refused any medication. It also notes that she'd be unable to walk without it.
• Evil, Inc.: The UAC is considerably more unscrupulous and amoral compared to its previous incarnations in the series. From trying to use Hell as a place for resource extraction, to capturing live demons to turn into cybernetic weapons, along with the practically cult-like indoctrination of its employees as seen in the pre-recorded holograms throughout the facility. However, exploiting Hell was the main goal; everything related to Hell otherwise such as weaponizing demons and the foundation of the cult was all Pierce, though the board was content to let her do whatever she wanted as long as she produced results until it became too much for Hayden to ignore.
• Evil Is Visceral: Most enemies look like zombies with parts missing or mashed together, the various demons in particular look incredibly thin and coated in blood, often even like their skin was flayed off. Hell itself is equal parts Fire and Brimstone Hell and Bloody Bowels of Hell, while areas in the mortal plane dominated by Hell end up being covered in Meat Moss, created by the Possessed as they cobble together corpses to create Gore Nests.
• Evil Sounds Deep: The various demonic voices, naturally. A more morally ambiguous version with Samuel Hayden, whose deep synthesized voice growls and distorts menacingly. In comparison, VEGA's voice is equally synthetic but is at a far more natural, human register.
• Evil Versus Evil: While it's not terribly common due to Set a Mook to Kill a Mook being mostly averted for the game, there are a few times when you can glimpse demons battling each other before they notice you. This includes a Revenant fighting a Mancubus over an island, a Mancubus scorching some Possessed and a Baron of Hell using some Imps as target practice for his energy blasts. The only time the player can instigate this is between Hell Knights and Imps, who are the only demons who may attack each other in combat. While demons can still put others into a Glory Kill state if they hit each other, they only care about pounding the Doom Slayer's face in during a fight.
• Evolving Weapon: This game introduces the ability to upgrade your weapons using "Weapon Points" which are earned by killing Demons (5 points per-level), finding secrets (1 point for 50% completion and another for 100%), and completing challenges (3 per mission). Most weapons can be equipped with one of two Mods that grant alternate firing modes, each of which can be switched around mid-combat and have their own set of upgrades with a "Weapon Mastery" available for unlocking every upgrade for a mod then completing a challenge.
  • Combat Shotgun: Charged Burst (fires 3 shots in rapid succession, the Mastery ability gives you a damage boost for your next attack if you hit all three shots) or Explosive Shot (fires a grenade, Mastery turns it into a cluster bomb if you score a direct hit).
  • Heavy Assault Rifle: Tactical Scope (a scope that grands improved headshot damage and can pierce enemies. The Mastery ability is a simple damage boost) or Micro Missiles (fires up to six bolts which embed in their targets before exploding, Mastery lets you continuously fire these missiles without reloading).
  • Plasma Rifle: Heat Blast (firing the weapon fills up a heat sink, which when full can be released to damage Demons around the player. Mastery allows the heat sink to fill up automatically over time) or Stun Bomb (a grenade which stuns enemies. Mastery causes enemies killed while stunned to also stun enemies around them).
  • Rocket Launcher: Lock-On Burst (fires a burst of three rockets which track their target. Mastery allows multiple enemies to be targeted at once with the rockets being split between them) or Remote Detonation (allows you to control a rocket's detonation in mid-air. Mastery results in this detonation not destroying the rocket, essentially giving you two explosions with one shot).
  • Gauss Cannon: Precision Bolt (adds a scope which allows the weapon to be charged. Mastery causes targets to explode upon death) or Siege Mode (adds a stance which immobilises the player, but fires an extremely powerful bolt which pierces enemies and explodes upon impact. Mastery allows you to move while using it).
  • Chaingun: Gatling Rotator (allows you to manually wind up the weapon, with Mastery increasing damage when at max speed) or Mobile Turret (doubles rate of fire but causes the weapon to overheat, with Mastery removing the overheating mechanic).
  • Among weapons without Mods, the Pistol has a Mastery which increases the damage of its charged shot, while the Super Shotgun earns the ability to fire two shots before reloading.
• Exact Words: The Deal with the Devil that frames the story's start.
  • For Olivia Pierce, she wanted power, and was painfully transfigured into the Spider Mastermind.
  • It applies to the backstory, too. The Betrayer of Argent D'Nur wanted his son revived, and he was... as the Icon of Sin.
• Excuse Plot: Subverted. It initially seems this way - questions like "Why are you in a sarcophagus?" and "Why are there demons?" appear to have little answer beyond "Do you want to play Doom or not?", but closer examination reveals a trove of surprisingly rich and detailed lore hidden in audio logs and database entries.
• Exploding Barrels: All over the place, and they're colored red too. The acid barrel sprites appear in the classically-styled areas and maps.
• Explosive Decompression: Downplayed. The UAC facilities are generally kept at a higher pressure than the Martian surface is, and when cycling an airlock open the pressure difference will blow loose objects toward the outer door, but only if they are light, and not at a very far distance at that. Apparently the airlocks' pressure-matching systems are not functioning well...
• Explosive Leash: In the Codex, it is revealed that the Elite Guard (the red guys you get suit upgrades from) are all implanted with "kill chips" to curb their absolute authority in the facility. In case of mutiny, only Samuel Hayden and Olivia Pierce can activate them... which would explain why all these supposedly ultra-badass enforcers are dead by the time you show up.
• Expy:
  • Olivia Pierce is one to Malcolm Betruger.
  • The Summoner enemy is the Arch-Vile in all but name.
    • Further proving the point, its model name, as seen in the Resources Explorer, is "archvile".
• Extremely Short Timespan: The game notably has few, if any, indications of time passing, with most in-game events occurring essentially in real time. This means that the Slayer wakes up and utterly decimates the combined forces of hell in, roughly, a few hours.
• Eyeless Face: A surprisingly large percentage of Hell's demon roster lack obvious eyes, including but not limited to all five subspecies of Possessed, Hell Razers, Hell Knights, and Summoners.
• Eye Scream: A few of the glory kills involve eye mutilation. A few examples would be shoving a Pinky demon's horn into one of its eyes, or crushing/tearing the Cacodemon's eye with your bare fist or chainsaw.
• Face–Heel Turn: One of the knights of ancient world of Argent D'nur betrayed his people to the forces of Hell for the promise of bringing his dead son back to life, leading to the world being absorbed into hell and creating the Argent Energy everyone's after.
• Fall Damage: Mostly averted, in keeping with the game's arcade-y nature. The Doom Slayer's Praetor Suit incorporates a system called Impact Compensation that negates all non-lethal fall damage. Dropping a very long distance stuns him for a few seconds while he recovers from the impact (in a pose that resembles a Three-Point Landing no less), opening him up to indirect fall damage when enemies exploit his momentary helplessness, but only really deep falls can kill him, which usually only happens if you screw up during platforming sequences. The stun on landing can also be avoided through timely deployment of his Double Jump boots in midair.
• Fate Worse than Death: The Revenants, which are created through a horrifying combination of flaying, torturing, and exposing a live human being to Lazarus Waves till they become undead killing machines.
  • The Wraiths, which lie within the Argent D'nur, were originally noble (though apparently mercurial) beings protected by the Night Sentinels and Hell sought to absorb their world so they can gain the limitless power they possess and expand Hell exponentially with the Argent Energy's potential. Well, Hell succeeded and now they are corrupted, trapped in a permanent torment just to be used for the forces of Hell's endless conquest.
• Featureless Protagonist: The Doom Guy has no name nor dialogue just as before. It's not even clear if he's human or just looks human. However, this doesn't detract from him having a personality of his own.
• Final Boss: Olivia Pierce, who transforms into the Spider Mastermind, is the final enemy you face in the game.
• Final Death Mode: Playing on Ultra-Nightmare means that you only have one life. If you die, it's back to the beginning. The places you died previously are marked with the Doom Marine's helmet and a hologram describing the exact time you died and what enemy killed you.
• Finishing Move: The "Glory Kill" mechanic allows the Doom Slayer to perform these on staggered enemies. And it's not just for show; Glory Killing an enemy guarantees that it'll drop health pickups on death. Enemies can also do this to the Doomguy, should he be killed by certain attacks. Glory Kills are the only way to finish off the bosses; if you don't Glory Kill them, they will regain some health and continue the devastating fight.
• First-Person Dying Perspective: All of the Doom Slayer's deaths in the campaign take place from his POV.
• From Bad to Worse: As if the standard Pinky demons with their heavy armor and devastating charge attack weren't bad enough, you later encounter Spectres, which are the same fun package plus being really hard to spot.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Doom Guy starts the game completely naked and Strapped to an Operating Table before breaking out of his chains with his bare hands, picking up a gun, and shooting a bunch of demons before he can even find any clothes.
• Full Health Bonus: The "Rich Get Richer" rune grants the Doom Slayer Bottomless Magazines for all standard weapons as long as his armor is at 100 or higher (or 75 with the upgrade).
• Game-Breaking Bug: Some players have reported accidentally activating Developer Mode, which corrupts saves and disables achievements or multiplayer.
  • There's another bug where all NPC audio goes away. The game is surprisingly coherent without it.
• Gameplay Ally Immortality: Attempting to shoot Samuel Hayden when you finally meet him will simply have his personal Deflector Shield absorb the attack and him telling you to save your ammo.
• Genius Bruiser: Dr. Hayden is one of the greatest scientific minds of his time. He's also a 10-foot tall robot with superhuman strength and energy shielding, powered by a mini-reactor that's exponentially more powerful than a fusion power plant, who personally lead an expedition into Hell to retrieve the Doom Marine from his tomb.
• Genre Throwback: Way back to original Doom and the first generation of first-person shooters. Kill anything that moves, worry about the plot later.
  • Huge maps, with a dedicated map-screen. Key hunting, the option to remove objective markers, boss health bars, etc. No reloads, circle strafing, carry a massive arsenal. Oh yeah, it's a throwback with kickass visuals and high quality graphics and production.
  • It also makes up for certain throwbacks by straight-up replacing how they might work in a modern game. There's no sprint meter because your default run speed is incredibly fast. The standard "reload" button pulls out the chainsaw, which makes enemies explode into ammo fountains. There's no aim-down-sights because left trigger is an alt-fire (and guns are actually really accurate, so you don't need aim-down sights).
• Glass Cannon:
  • The Doomguy can mow down enemies like no one's business, but his health doesn't regenerate and especially on Nightmare, he cannot take much damage. This is mitigated as the game goes on and the player upgrades their maximum health and armor.
  • Lost Souls deal massive damage but can be killed with only a few hits from any weapon including the humble pistol.
• Godzilla Threshold: The demonic invasion is the point at which Samuel releases the Doomguy to contain it. Samuel is unhappy that Doomguy wrecks everything in his path, but has little other choice given the circumstances. Later on, Samuel resorts to other drastic measures, like shutting down VEGA in order to re-route the power to let Doomguy stop the invasion once and for all. Also invoked in the opening loading screen:
  Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
• Gone Horribly Right: The researchers attempted to give the Cyberdemon an Argent Energy generator to help it automatically recover any damage done to its body. Unfortunately, once the system was activated the first thing it regenerated was the frontal lobes of the brain the researchers had surgically detached to keep it unconscious.
  • From Samuel Hayden's perspective, releasing the Doom Marine from his captivity to defeat the demons works, but results in the argent energy collection system being totally destroyed. Considering humanity was saved from a devastating energy crisis by the UAC's exploitation of Hell, the Doom Marine's disregard could cause widespread societal disruption on Earth. It is for this reason that Samuel eventually betrays the Doom Marine and sets up the Sequel Hook.
  • Related to the above, after the Slayer wrecked the one thing that was staving off Earth's energy crisis, the game ends with Hayden planning to use the Crucible to continue his exploitation of Hell's resources. Considering that the sequel will be set in Hell on Earth, he sure succeeded in averting another energy crisis... by getting most of mankind wiped out by the Legions of Hell.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: When Doomguy is breaking free at the beginning, it's shown that his hands and arms are covered in hairline scars. Someone even branded his left palm, possibly himself. Demons and zombies on the other hand have horrific, giant scars all over their bodies.
• Gorn: This game does not shy away from gruesome and bloody violence as used by both the Doomguy and the forces of Hell.
• Gratuitous Latin: The Spider Mastermind is also named the "Aranea Imperatrix", although that acutally translates to "Spider Empress".
• Greater-Scope Villain: The unseen Lord of Hell, who is the one who made a deal with Olivia Pierce to open the Hell Portal and start the demonic invasion. Its voice can occasionally be heard when you go trekking through Hell, urging the rest of demonkind to stop you.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: The Doomguy can rip off the limbs of demons and use them against them in some glory kills or the demons can do the same to him when he is killed such as the Imp, Revenant, and Baron of Hell.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Only a handful of secrets, collectibles and upgrade sources like Argent Cells or Elite Guards can be found in areas you visit automatically as part of the campaign. The vast majority is hidden in out-of-the-way corners of the game world that're often tough to spot, with some having prerequisites to even become accessible in the first place (the Classic Maps with their fiendishly well-hidden switches are a prime example for the latter). It's highly unlikely for first-time players to find more than half of the available secrets and upgrades without consulting a detailed guide.
  • While most level challenges aren't difficult to set up and complete, a few might require a push in the right direction, usually because they can only be done at a specific point in the level without that fact being readily apparent.
• Gun Nut: At one point, Samuel Hayden sarcastically notes that Doomguy seems to have an affinity for guns.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: This is often the result of using the Chainsaw on a demon. Doomguy himself can also suffer this fate if he is killed by a Summoner's energy wave or a Hell Razer's beam, just to name a couple of examples.
• Harder Than Hard: Ultra-Nightmare, in addition to being as viciously tough as Nightmare, gives you only one life. If you die, you have to start from the beginning.
• Have a Nice Death: There are a number of special death animations depending on who or what kills you. A few enemies, such as the Revenant, can even tear you apart in a method not unlike the Glory Kill. In addition, a death on Ultra-Nightmare mode is punctuated with the words "The torment has ended."
• Head Crushing: Several Glory Kills involve smashing an unlucky demon's head into paste, either from above with his boot or the demon's head being between the Doom Slayer's fist and a hard surface.
• Heavily Armored Mook: Mancubi and Pinkies now have armor covering their bodies, protecting them from any hits on those parts. Pinky armor can be destroyed with enough firepower, but its generally more cost-effective to just shoot them in their vulnerable backsides.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • The Slayer's Testament mentions the Doomguy was helped by a denizen of Hell who decided to aid him in his quest, constructing the Praetor Armor he wears.
• Hell Is That Noise: Literally. You can usually tell there are demons nearby from the incessant hiss/moan/growl noise the Possessed emit.
  • Also invoked in the game's soundtrack. Composer Mick Gordon stated in several interviews that a lot of the synth sounds in the game were inspired by the concept art depicting raw Argent Energy, so he tried to create an audio representation of said energy. What he came up with was breaking sound down into its most basic forms (sine waves and noise), then running those played frequencies through a huge rack of analog compressors and distortion units to corrupt the sound into a Hellish, unrecognizable form.
• Hell on Earth: Demons are invading from Hell into our universe through a rip in reality on Mars (although it isn't until Eternal that they actually go to Earth).
• He Who Fights Monsters: The Doomguy has apparently been changed by his journey(s) to hell and exposure to demonic energies. The first thing he does upon waking is rip his way out of thick iron chains and crush a zombie's head with his hand. His armor now bears strange runes, and can only be worn and activated by him. And, in addition to being hyper-violent, he can absorb demonic energies and runes that lore indicates would kill or cripple a normal human. Which, clearly, they no longer are.
• Hidden Depths: While Doomguy's standard mode of operation is "rip and tear", he's not as much of a rampaging berserker as he might otherwise seem. He hesitates before he starts destroying the Argent Plasma filters, hinting that he might regret dooming humanity's energy production, and he takes time to backup VEGA despite having no reason to do so. He may be absolutely dedicated to killing all demons and destroying Hell, but, especially in his interactions with other people, he shows that he is capable of rational thought and careful consideration.
• Hidden Villain: The current ruler of Hell: the as-of-yet unnamed dark lord of the fourth age. He is never seen, although he is mentioned in the data logs and at a few points in the campaign his voice is heard.
• Homage: If the Doomguy dies from falling into the molten metal in the foundry, he gives a weak thumbs-up à la the T-800 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
• Horrifying the Horror: Later in the game, it's revealed that the demons are absolutely terrified of Doomguy, seeing him as an unstoppable fighting machine who they struggled to seal away.
• Human Sacrifice: As they fall to Hell's corruption, the UAC start performing human sacrifices in their research in Argent Energy. Don't worry, it was entirely voluntary on the sacrifices' part.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: In deliberate defiance of modern (at the time of release) FPS conventions, Doomguy can carry every single gun at once. In fact, the player will often go through the entirety of their gigantic arsenal in a single battle, swapping out one weapon for the next depending on the situation (and ammo count). In addition to eight "standard" guns^note pistol, combat shotgun, super shotgun, heavy rifle, chaingun, plasma rifle, gauss cannon, rocket launcher, there's two mods for each gun (except the pistol and super shotgun) which can be swapped on the fly, as well as the chainsaw and BFG which are not located on the "main" weapon selection wheel. As well as frag grenades, holograms, siphon grenades. Meaning that Doomguy has nineteen discrete weapons systems at his fingertips.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: VEGA says this when you're going towards his core to shut him down. Therefore, he helps you with the process.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: There's five difficulty levels. The first four are playable from the start, but Ultra-Nightmare is unlocked after completing the fifth mission in the single player campaign.
  • "I'm Too Young To Die" (Easy mode)
    Select this difficulty if you prefer a more relaxed gaming experience. When entering combat you will have a high chance of success. While not without its challenges, this difficulty should help keep your blood pressure in check.
  • "Hurt Me Plenty" (Normal mode)
    Choose this difficulty if you want to play the game without any adjustments. You will need a balance of focus, aggression, and fearlessness to ensure your survival.
  • "Ultra-Violence" (Hard mode)
    For players who want a challenge. This will test your awareness and reflexes, with your path to success determined by choosing the right tool for the job. There are fewer tutorials.
  • "Nightmare" (Very Hard mode)
    For the expert player. Combat is a knife edge. One mistake can be the difference between living and a gruesome death. There are no tutorials. You will be unable to adjust difficulty settings after starting the campaign on Nightmare. Are you sure you want to continue?
  • "Ultra-Nightmare" (Very Hard mode, but you have to start the game all over again when you die)
    This is Nightmare with one major adjustment - if you die your campaign is OVER and a death marker will be left behind as a reminder of how far you progressed. You can save your campaign upon completing a mission and dying or falling in a Rune Trial will not affect your progress. Just to confirm, are you willing to put yourself through this?
• Interface Screw:
  • Cacodemon ranged attacks temporarily blur the entire screen. The data logs reveal it's a narcotic bile, meant to intoxicate prey so it can eat them.
  • Powerful impacts in close proximity to the Doom Slayer, like a Hell Knight's pounce attack landing nearby, shake the whole screen including things like health bars, ammo count, and the crosshairs. Justified in that they're part of the in-universe HUD in the Praetor Armor's helmet, as seen when Doomguy puts it on near the beginning.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: The Argent Tower level, where you have to ascend said tower in pursuit of Olivia Pierce.
• I Was Quite the Looker: There's a photo of Olivia Pierce in the UAC's "hall of most valued employees" in the complex's main HQ. She looks significantly healthier and more attractive than her current "female Mr. Burns" appearance. The photo's not even that old, either, as it lists her as "Director of the Lazarus Project". It seems the constant pain from her exoskeleton and dealing with occult powers really took a toll on her, even before she opened the hell portal and started slowly turning into a living corpse.
• Jawbreaker: Just one of the many Glory Kills you can perform, usually triggered by attacking the target from behind. One of the earlier levels requires you to kill four imps this way to complete the Chiropractor challenge.
• Jump Physics: Normally, you have very little air control when you jump. However, you can get a rune that allows you to have greater midair movement with your double jump. Upgrading the rune allows that enhanced movement to also apply to single jumps.
• Kill Enemies to Open: The demonic presence has a lot of areas placed under lockdown, so they need to be cleared of demons in order to advance.
• Large and in Charge: Zigzagged with Samuel Hayden, his robotic body eclipses the Doomguy in size and stands higher than a Hell Knight, but he isn't interested in picking a fight directly. That said, it does however take some balls to willingly lead a charge through Hell itself to rescue the Doomguy from his tomb to begin with. In the codex it is said that he used his 3 meters tall body to pull a 12 foot lever to start the argent flow, almost as a show of symbolic power... and yet when he was questioned about the size of his robotic body, he answered that you never know when you might need a hero.
• Laser Blade: You are told at one point that Doomguy once had a sword. Your dear friend Samuel Hayden revealed it to have been the Crucible all along, and has stolen it from you. Doubles as a Cool Sword.
• Last Chance Hit Point: If you have the Saving Throw rune equipped, a hit that would normally kill instead leaves you at 5 health and gives you a brief period of Bullet Time to escape your predicament.
• Lead the Target: The few guns that aren't Hitscan, like the Plasma Rifle, the Combat Shotgun's Grenade Launcher upgrade or the Rocket Launcher, require you to do this against moving targets. However, and more importantly, enemies are very adept at this, too. Simply staying in motion during battles is not enough to escape incoming enemy fire, you must keep changing directions continuously in order to survive.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: You're either playing as the Sole Survivor of an ancient land invaded by Hell who swore eternal vengeance on the demons, or the Player Character of Doom and Doom II who became such a Memetic Badass over those games he's now some sort of everlasting vengeance god.
  • Doomguy has a bad habit of smashing screens, radios, and other communications devices any time Hayden tries to dump a load of exposition on him, which is basically one hundred percent an intentional reflection of the player fanbase with no patience for the plot and who're only here for the demon-blasting.
  • The legions of Hell are terrified of the Doom Slayer in part for his ability to run endlessly without tiring, go without food or sleep, and draw strength and vitality from those he has killed — in other words, he's an FPS protagonist.
• Lethal Lava Land: The Foundry level. Well, it's actually molten metal instead of lava that's flowing all over the place, but close enough.
• Level Editor: The game lets you create SnapMaps that can be shared online.
• Life Drain: The Siphon Grenade steals health from enemies in the blast radius and gives it back to the Doomguy.
• Lighter and Softer: While the game is still a bloodbath, it puts far less focus on horror and tension than Doom 3, and takes its story far less seriously.
• Lore Codex: The codex is a series of data entries that contain information about enemy monsters encountered during the campaign, in addition to weapons and modifications which have been acquired.
• Ludicrous Gibs: A lot of the enemies can be easily gibbed. Enjoy a HELL of a bloodbath!

M-Z

• MacGuffin: The Crucible.
• Macross Missile Massacre:
  • The Micro Missile mod for the Heavy Assault Rifle lets you fire six micro-sized missiles at a time. At full mastery it can fire as many darts as you have ammo without reloading.
    • With the Rich get Richer rune, full armor, and fully upgraded mod, the heavy AR can launch infinite missiles without pausing or reloading.
  • The Rocket Launcher has the Lock-on Burst mod, which fires three rockets at the locked target.
  • Revenants can fire a missile barrage with their MLRB implants, rather than the two-at-a-time from the original Doom games.
  • The Cyberdemon now has a MLRB system implanted in its back. The grafted launcher in its left arm can launch a hefty salvo as well, one at a time.
• Made of Plasticine: What any demon becomes should the Doom Slayer get his hands on them while they're wounded and momentarily recuperating. Exaggerated when the Doom Slayer is enraged by a Berserk powerup, where they don't even need to be heavily wounded to be ripped and torn even more brutally.
• Mad Scientist: Olivia Pierce. Samuel Hayden has shades of this, as while he is far more morally sound, he still considers it a good idea to deal in Hell energy despite the problems caused as a result of it falling into the wrong hands.
• Magnetic Weapons: The Gauss cannon uses magnets to fire projectiles. (Though the game refers to it as a Guass cannon, its appearance is that of a rail gun.)
• Marathon Level: Lazarus Labs. So long that the level is actually split into two parts.
• Mascot Mook: While the Cacodemon has held this honor for previous Doom games, the Revenant seems to take the spot for this installment, being featured in the most promotional art and even having getting its own statue in the special edition.
• Meaningful Name: "Argent" is the French word for "money," meaning that in the future, everything will literally be powered by greed.
• Minimalist Cast: Besides the Silent Protagonist player character, the game's only real characters are your ally Samuel Hayden and main antagonist Olivia Pierce. You also receive the occasional messages from VEGA, the base's A.I., and various creepy pre-recorded corporate propaganda messages from a UAC Spokesman.
• Model Museum: Hunting down figurines throughout the campaign lets you view models for a variety of monsters, weapons and characters.
• Monster-Shaped Mountain: The Titan region in Hell is named after the giant, skeletal remains from Hell's greatest champion littering the landscape, having been done in by the Doomguy at some point before the game.
• Monster Threat Expiration: Even with your downgraded weapon loadout, the Cyberdemon battle is a hell of a lot easier in the Tower of Babel classic map thanks to his strategy going back to what it was in the original game, with the rocket launcher being his only ranged attack.
• Mook Horror Show: Downplayed with the Slayer's Testament; historical records found in Hell which recount the Doomslayer's unstoppable slaughter of Hell's demons from their own perspective. To humans it's a victory against the dark, to the demons it was one of the most terrifying disasters in history.
  • Using glory kills and the chainsaw can give players a momentary glimpse into the fear the demons have before getting slaughtered. Using the chainsaw on one in particular has the victim throw their arms across each other in a vain attempt to block the incoming attack.
• More Dakka: The further you progress through the game, the more bullets you can unleash in ever-decreasing time spans. The evolutionary chain roughly goes like this: pistol —> shotgun —> Heavy Assault Rifle —> Macross Missile Massacre upgrade for said assault rifle —> Heavy Gatling Gun —> gatling mod that turns the weapon into a triple gatling turret —> BFG 9000.
• Multiversal Conqueror: The Legions of Hell do this, and each world that falls to them gets added to Hell's landscape.
• Musical Nod: Much of the music in the game is heavily inspired by "At Doom's Gate", the well-known music of the first map of Doom, but with that signature Mick Gordon heaviness.
• Mythology Gag: Many.
  • Several from Doom 3: One of the fingerprint scanners you have to use requires Z-Sec clearance, and you can find the (sadly unusable) Soul Cube in Olivia's office. You can also find a playable Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3 arcade cabinet. One of the flavor texts is a straight reference to a PDA message that specifies the exact details for a demonic ritual.
  • The Martian Hero Stele in Doom 3 which depicts an unknown figure wielding the Soul Cube against the demons can be found in the final level◊. This raises questions about the connection between both games, and the issue of an "Ancient Martian Civilization" gets brought up again in the sequel when the Slayer visits the Lost City of Hebeth during the Mars Core mission.
  • Logos for the Mixom corporation pop up on some equipment. In Doom 3, Mixom is the manufacturer of the chainsaws, and accidentally ships several to Mars.
  • The illustration on Samuel's desk of the Doomguy fighting ancient demons has them drawn very similarly to how they looked in the original game's cover art.
  • The doors in the foundry level make the classic Doom Doors sounds, and several of the doors in both Mars and Hell are visually based off of the original game's door textures.
  • Later in the game while in Hell, there's an arena based off the "Dead Simple" level in Doom II, and the "Barrels O' Fun" level gets a nod by being the name of a suit upgrade.
  • The BFG-9000's visual design heavily resembles its appearance in the Doom film, and fires up similarly. You also need to grab body parts to access areas, just as Sarge had to do in the flick - and you have to use someone's arm to get into the BFG room, just as Sarge.
  • The Doom II manual states that the Spider Mastermind isn't equipped with a plasma gun, and thank god for that. Guess what Spidey has in this game.
  • The theme for the game that plays in both the opening and the ending, as well as part of various tracks, is a very heavy synthetic remix of the iconic 'E1M1' song from the first Doom. The ambient music that plays after returning to the destroyed Argent facility sounds much like the opening notes of 'E1M2' as well.
  • A lot of thought went into the musical cues for this game. For example, BFG Division contains a segment of the main riff from the original game's Waltz Of The Demons (E2M7) in glorious heavy metal (around 2:38). Likewise, the Argent Facility combat music (prior to going to Hell) is a heavily remixed version of the main menu theme of Doom 3, and the music that plays when you first see Olivia Pierce in person is a remix of Suspense (E1M5) from the first game. The track that plays over the main menu, HellWalker, is a remix of several songs from the first two games.
  • The achievement obtained by upgrading and fully mastering all your weapons is called simply IDKFA, the original doom all weapons/ammo cheat code.
  • One of the datapads the player can find instructs employees to fill out a "WAD-E1M4" form to turn in to their Command Controller. This refers to the naming convention of level data files in the original Doom (specifically Episode 1, Mission 4, called Command Control) and the .WAD file format.
  • There's an option to switch your weapon's onscreen position from the now-standard right corner to the center, mimicking the look of the classic games.
  • The last note of the track that plays when you fight the Spider Mastermind is the first note of Spider Mastermind's theme from Doom 1 played backwards.
  • The very last scene of the credits, which shows the Doom Slayer getting swarmed by Imps and Possessed, is a shot for shot remake of the original game's box art. Though it's taken a step farther and has the Doom Slayer yanking the Imp grabbing his arm into the air with him and instagibbing it with his shotgun.
  • The infamous "Rip and tear" line from the Doom comic is used, albeit in a far more ominous and threatening manner. The "GAME COMPLETED" screen may also be a reference to the comic's final panel; both feature the Doomguy standing over the corpse of his slain opponent, holding the BFG.
  • According to gameplay designer Jason O'Connell, the final combat arena of Kadingir Sanctum was deliberately modeled to resemble the starting area of Doom 64's Map 17, "Watch Your Step". In addition, Kadingir Sanctum is alternatively known as "Blood Keep", which is Map 16 of the aforementioned game. This is one of the biggest indicators that both the classic and new series are connected, later expanded upon in Doom Eternal and retroactively alluded to in the re-release of Doom 64.
  • The 'Centered Weapons' option moves all of your weapons in first-person to the bottom center of your screen, mimicking the quirky-by-today's-standards weapon animations of the classic Doom games. The Shotgun in this mode also gets a unique backhand pumping animation that mimics the same from Doom and Doom II.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The forces of Hell, who collectively call themselves "The Slaves of Doom" are so terrified of the Doomguy they all know him as "the Doom Slayer". The UAC christens him the "DOOM Marine".
• Neck Snap: Doomguy does this on several Glory Kills. The game doesn't shy away from providing some appropiate sound effects.
• New Weapon Target Range: Right after obtaining the BFG, there's a room full of various Possessed and other demons. Since a new weapon is always selected by default upon pickup, the player will be wielding the BFG and likely immediately fire it upon seeing the sheer scale of the demon-possessed hordes. It takes only one shot to turn everything in the room into Ludicrous Gibs and immediately gets the power of the gun across in less than three gorefilled seconds.
• N.G.O. Superpower: The UAC is a large, powerful corporation with its own private army and access to technology that nobody else does. Earth and the other Solar System colonies are completely dependent on the Argent Energy produced by the UAC Mars facility. The UAC has also been putting cybernetic attachments on the Revenants, Cyber-Mancubi, and Cyberdemon to turn them into living weapons.
• No Fair Cheating: This game provides a horrific (and possibly unintentional) example; entering any cheat through the console automatically enables "Development Mode" which not only disables Steam achievements but also prevents you from playing Multiplayer or creating Snapmaps. The true kicker though is that the only to turn Development Mode off is to completely wipe your save files. Thus far, Bethesda have not produced a patch to fix this.
• No OSHA Compliance: Counting how many absurdly flagrant safety violations the UAC is guilty of in their day-to-day operations is a fun little side game— and an incredibly dangerous Drinking Game, too. Of course, there's nothing in the game to suggest that the UAC operates with oversight of any kind, let alone regarding workplace safety.
• No-Sell: If you try to shoot Dr. Hayden upon meeting him face-to-face, your projectiles will dissolve harmlessly against some sort of personal energy shield, and he'll simply tell you to "save your ammunition". His tone isn't even annoyed, just matter-of-fact.
• Nostalgia Level: A few examples.
  • Every level has an area using the textures and maps of the original two games, which unlocks said levels in full from the menu.
  • The Icon of Sin makes a reappearance, still dead as a doornail.
  • One of the levels in Hell features an adaptation of Dead Simple.
• Notice This: Grabbable ledges are often clearly marked with green lights.
• Obviously Evil: The UAC isn't even trying to hide its cultish side. Various documents you find and the recorded spokesperson speeches freely talk about things like chanting, sacrifices, magi, and exploiting hell.
• Oh, Crap!: The first time you are sent to Hell an ominous voice simply says "he is here" you can find runes about why the voice is not happy about it and there is a recorded conversation with Olivia where the voice is clearly angry she woke up the Doom Slayer.
• One-Hit KO:
  • The chainsaw now takes down anything in one hit, but it takes fuel to do it. Naturally, it doesn't work against bosses.
  • The Berserk powerup lets you kill absolutely anything^note it probably doesn't work on bosses, too, but since the powerup is never found during boss battles, it doesn't matter all that much with a single melee attack, which arguably makes it even more powerful than the ever-popular Quad Damage.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: One Rune Challenge pits you against various demons from zombie and imp to Hell Knight and Pinky, with nothing but a shotgun and 1 hp, and no health pickups even dropped from glory kills, forcing you to rely on armor to survive.
• One-Hit Polykill: A lot of weapons can be upgraded to either deal area damage (Combat Shotgun, Plasma Rifle, Assault Rifle), overpenetrate targets (Pistol, Super Shotgun, Gatling Cannon), or both (Gauss Rifle). The Gauss Rifle reigns supreme in this department, especially its Siege Mode upgrade that's capable of clearing entire corridors packed wall-to-wall with enemies in one shot, two at most, as long as most of them are lined up right. These weapons often require you to perform a number of poly-kills to master the respective upgrade.
• One-Word Title: Just like the original game.
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: There's really no way to make the "Rich Get Richer" rune trial easy, as it were, since the demons on the map are positioned so they can quickly box you in if you dash forward to try circling the arena or if you run to the center. Because of that, however, doing a quick 180 and running in the opposite direction from where you start out gives you more space to maneuver and start thinning out the enemy ranks before they can all close the distance and overwhelm you.
• Le Parkour: The Doomguy is surprisingly agile, able to grip onto ledges to find secrets and hidden powerups.
• Pass the Popcorn: Subverted. You can occasionally observe groups of demons fighting each other in the distance, but if you stay put for too long while you watch them tear each other apart, the game will spawn a bunch of enemies right on top of you.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: The Doom Slayer mercilessly rips and tears his enemies apart in the most brutal ways imaginable as they scream in terror, leaving a mountain of corpses in his wake. However, since his enemies are literal demons from Hell, nobody really feels all that much in the way of pity for them.
  Voice: They are rage, brutal, without mercy. But you. You will be worse.
• Person of Mass Destruction: If the demon logs are any indication, the arrival of the Slayer is treated as an apocalyptic event by the combined forces of hell. No matter what they do, they simply cannot stop him.
• Pet the Dog: With how violent the Doomguy can be and how frequently he destroys expensive equipment for the hell of it, it's surprising that he gets a moment of compassion when he decides to back up VEGA despite no compulsion to do so when he's told to destroy his core to enter the Well.
  • On picking up the Classic Guy collectible, the Doomguy adjusts its arm and stops to give its tiny fist a brotherly bump.
• Photo Mode: Still called "DOOM Photo Mode [Beta]" in the settings. Lets you unpause the game frame-by-frame and comes with a few lenses, though it removes the Doom Slayer from the shots.
• Piñata Enemy: As literal as it can possibly get - hit any enemy particularly good (as in, apply your chainsaw to its face) and they'll cough up a veritable torrent of ammunition, often enough to completely refill your entire stockpile for all weapons. Also, glory-killing enemies always yields some health and occasionally ammo (plus armor if you have the Armored Assault rune active) from their mutilated corpses.
• Pinball Spin-Off: Courtesy of Zen Studios, there's an everyone-ten-and-up way to enjoy slaying demons - a virtual pinball table where demonic foes appear as pop-up cutouts and animated figures bloodlessly shoot and bash each other.
• Pocket Rocket Launcher: An alt-fire mode for the Assault Rifle is a miniature heat-seeking missile rack, that fires in bursts of six. After achieving Weapon Mastery, it launches an uninterrupted stream of them.
• Post-Peak Oil: Mankind hasn't just run out of oil, they've started running out of uranium and plutonium too. This gives context to Hayden's insistence that humanity needs Hell's argent energy to survive.
• Powered Armor: Doomguy's Praetor Suit, which according to the Slayer's Testaments, was created/improved by a demon who betrayed Hell and sided with him.
• Purple Is Powerful: The Quad-Damage powerup is purple, and causes you, your weapons and projectiles to glow purple when in effect.
• Quad Damage: Makes its Doom debut after being a staple item in id's Quake, and shows up in both single-player and multiplayer.
• Rated M for Manly: Oh HELL YES! Between the blood, the gore, the Glory Kills, and the one-man onslaught against The Legions of Hell, Doom is all about being a badass.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Samuel Hayden lashes out on the Doomguy for his tendency to blow up everything as the sole solution to the Hell disaster, which he says cost them the unlimited energy source that could have been used to solve the energy crisis back on Earth.
• Reconstruction: After the deconstructive Doom 3 - where it shows you just how terrifying it would be being a lone marine, trapped on Mars, with monsters teleporting from a nightmare world - this game brings the series back to its roots:
  • The space marine running, gunning, ripping, and tearing his way through The Legions of Hell with all the guns and chainsaws you can carry makes sense, because here he isn't some nameless Mook soldier right off the boat. Instead the Doom Slayer is a badass Eternal Hero that's been around for eons, is able to channel Argent energy (one of the great energy sources of hell) to become stronger, is so full of rage that it makes him a twisted form of Incorruptible Pure Pureness making it impossible for hell to corrupt him, was eventually empowered by the seraphim with physical power like unto a demi-god, and later gained armor that, in the lore, is nigh-indestructable. While the horror is every bit as bad as in Doom 3, it's very clear that you aren't trapped on Mars surrounded by demons; rather, the demons are trapped on Mars with you.
  • Tied in with the above, this game shows you what it would take and who would be powerful enough to challenge the hordes of hell. Then it shows how terrifying it would be for the demons if such a warrior were successfully smashing through their ranks without slowing down.
  • It also shows under what conditions it would take for the UAC to be knowingly complicit with the harvesting of energy from hell and how it would be allowed. The answer? Only the highest executives know what's going on, and even they only know that the energy comes from another dimension. Samuel Hayden, who reports directly to them, does know the implications but only tells them what they need to know and not the more disturbing truths. As for why people would knowingly work on a project that draws energy from hell? They're carefully selected and the project headquarters is the site of a cult, with all the workers being a part of it, and see the use of hell energy as a good thing while the more amoral people in charge ignore this because they can use these workers/cultists for experiments and the situation gets results.
• Retraux: Hidden rooms in the campaign use layouts, textures, and sprites of the first two Doom games and entering them unlocks the full, similarly-styled level.
• The Remake: This 2016 game takes the name, general premise and core run 'n gun gameplay of 1993's Doom, while also using modern graphics, gameplay elements, story telling conventions and so on. However, as revealed in Doom Eternal, it's also a Stealth Sequel to the classic games.
• Replay Mode: From the menu of your save file, you can not only replay the levels you've cleared, but also the Rune Trial minigames you unlock in them. The only condition for the latter is that you must have cleared them at least once.
• Revisiting the Roots: After Doom 3, which was more of a survival-horror, this Doom returns to the fast-paced action of the classics with some updated polish and new tricks up its sleeves.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Argent D'nur fell to the demons when one of its defenders betrayed them in exchange for his son being revived. The demons kept their bargain by reviving him as a demon because "the wages of treachery are suffering".
• RPG Elements: Doom's biggest concession to modern FPS design is a number of skill and uprade trees used to pemanently make the Doom Slayer more powerful as the game progresses.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: What the Doomguy's motivation for fighting against Hell is hinted to be. Codex entries and The Slayer's Testament imply either a) he's the original Doomguy who lost his squad in Doom, his Earth in Doom II, and has been wandering the realms fighting Hell over the eons since the end of Doom 64, including at one point the world Argent energy comes from, Argent D'nur. b) He was part of the Night Sentinels, the protectors of Argent D'nur, before they were betrayed from within and Hell absorbed the entire realm, leaving only the Slayer still alive. Doom Eternal reveals that in fact both of these backstories are true.
• Rocket Jump: You can get a boost for your jumps by using the Gauss Cannon's recoil to get a little more airtime.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: As the Doomguy is less durable but harder-hitting, much of the gameplay involves rapidly chasing down demons and killing them quickly, while scooping up health and ammo and avoiding being killed by their damaging attacks. This is particularly evident on the higher difficulties where stronger demons can easily kill you in a couple solid hits.
• Rule of Cool: The game runs on this entirely. Why does killing hordes of demons enable you to upgrade your guns further? Why do civilian delivery drones carry military weapon upgrades? Why do demons drop tons of ammo when you murderize them with a chainsaw, and only with a chainsaw? What are chainsaws doing on Mars in the first place?^note This one gets even lampshaded by the item description itself Who cares?! It all makes the game more entertaining, and that's all that matters.
• Save Scumming: Every action you take that counts towards a level challenge or weapon/rune upgrade is saved the moment you perform it and doesn't reset with a death, reload or exit to the main menu.
• Satire: Yes, seriously. The fact that, in the future, humanity chose to take energy from hell itself rather than any other renewable energy source should make this obvious. In addition, the Argent Facility having several clear human rights violations and questionably ethical experimentation on demons brings to mind shady corporations that treat their employees like crap. In the end, the UAC is every real-life MegaCorp taken up to eleven.
• Scenery Gorn: The effects of an invasion from Hell into our world are immediately obvious and quite visceral. Every area that has been corrupted by demons is either soaked in blood, decorated with violently mutilated human remains, or on fire. Usually all three.
• Scenery Porn: The environments and landscapes that appear throughout the game are stunning. The first times you see Mars and Hell in all of their glory are sure to leave one hell of an impression.
• Sealed Good in a Can: The Doomguy. The demons call him the Doom Slayer as he ran riot across Hell after the fall of Argent D'nur, only being stopped when he was led into a trap and entombed. He's discovered by the UAC and hidden away by Samuel Hayden, who believes him to be the only person capable of stopping a invasion should one happen. He's right.
• Secondary Fire: Some weapon mods give secondary firing modes, like an explosive shot for the shotgun or mini-missiles for the heavy assault rifle.
• Secret Level: Thirteen of them, all recreations of classic Doom and Doom II levels, which can be unlocked after finding the appropriate hidden rooms throughout the campaign.
• Sequel Hook:
  • After you defeat Olivia Pierce, you are tethered back to Mars by Hayden, who still believes that he's in the right before snagging the Crucible from the Doomguy and, rather than kill him, decides to send him elsewhere to prevent him from interfering with his plans, but remarking that they'll meet again soon enough... In this instance Samuel has no choice, killing the Doom Slayer ensures that, should something as catastrophic as this ever happens again, no one who can stand up to the demon invasion will be left. Also? It might not be possible.
    • The game also tantalizes you by showing Hayden rip the Crucible off your person and ignite it like a lightsaber into a giant hellish energy blade before walking off into the darkness and rolling the credits.
  • The Doomguy saves a backup of VEGA before destroying him. In Eternal, VEGA has become the AI that runs the Slayer's orbital fortress.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Much like Doom and Doom II, the player can instigate monster infighting by causing them to hit each other in the midst of combat. There's also a number of scripted sequences that involve enemies already attacking each other, which the player can interrupt or let them weaken each other first.
• Shield-Bearing Mook: Possessed Security have large shields that defend them from frontal attacks.
• Short-Range Shotgun: To be expected from a game like this. The Combat Shotgun has a maximum range of about ten meters and stops dealing its full damage if the target is more than two steps away. The Super Shotgun is basically useless against anything beyond punching distance, but inside that range it will obliterate anything smaller than a Hell Knight with a single shot.
• Shout-Out:
  • As with the original, one of the difficulty settings is "Ultra-Violence".
  • If you die by falling into a lava pit, the Doom Marine will give a Terminator-esque thumbs up.
  • The illustration that you can find on Samuel Hayden's desk of the Doomguy fighting demons is in the style of the Ark of the Covenant's woodcut illustration in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
  • The Pistol and BFG-9000 act very similarly to Quake II's Blaster and BFG 10K, respectively. The Pistol's visual design also resembles the Dominator pistol from Psycho-Pass.
  • Just as in Quake III: Arena, picking up extra armor that surpasses your default meter will decay over time.
  • One of the multiplayer taunts is Carlton's dance.
  • In one of the Hell levels, it's possible to find a skeleton with a horned helmet and an arrow through its knee.
  • One of the Hell levels also has the helmet of Commander Keen, and the Dopefish shows up on various noodle containers laying around the UAC base. There's also a Marineguy figure painted to look like Commander Keen himself.
  • A door early on in the game has a Vault-Tec logo on it.
  • An early collectible is "Vaultguy", Doomguy with his armor painted like a Vault suit. A couple of the late-game collectable figurines are Keenguy and Quakeguy. Phobos is there as well.
  • The demons Apocalyptic Log is titled the Slayer's Testament.
  • The description for the Hologram in the Codex as much as says it was designed to mimic the effects of the Holoduke in Duke Nukem 3D.
  • The hidden Super Turkey Puncher 3 arcade cabinet has a logo that's designed to resemble that of Street Fighter Alpha 3.
  • One of the Cyberdemonic armors from the multiplayer mode has a spiked pauldron on its left shoulder and a small shield on its right.
  • One of the Glory Kills you can inflict on the Revenant is horrifically reminiscent of a particularly gruesome bit of violence on Game of Thrones involving thumbs in eyesockets, followed by the Doom Slayer snapping the demon's neck, then crushing its skull in an explosion of gore.
  • The Quad Damage powerup is taken straight from Quake.
  • There are many visuals references to Half-Life, itself heavily inspired by the 90s Doom games.
  • The Hell Guard bosses are a subtle reference to the Rahkshi, being suits of armor controlled by a larval creature.
• Shows Damage: Some enemies can have limbs blown off without actually being killed. Olivia Pierce as the Spider Mastermind becomes increasingly bruised and has greater trouble moving as you damage her. A bit of an exaggeration of the normal situation in that by the end of the fight, she's just flailing lasers and limbs that can no longer support her weight at you in an attempt to get you to relent.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Any justifications Hayden comes up with are ignored by the Doomguy. Doomguy even takes the time to listen to his excuses for why mining Hell is a good idea before smashing the equipment to show that he does hear Hayden, but he rather violently disagrees.
• Silent Snarker: Not only silent, but faceless, too. Though he remains a Heroic Mime, the Doomguy's characterization has been subtly upgraded to visually indicate what is perhaps a surprising level of cynical perceptiveness in regards to the Hellish insanity going on around him, especially in regards to Hayden. When Hayden assures Doomguy over the radio that the UAC's work has been "for the betterment of mankind", Doomguy looks down at the mutilated corpse in the elevator with him, as if to say "Well, there's mankind. Does he look better off to you?"
• Sniper Pistol: The game's basic pistol can, when upgrade, function as a fairly reliable if unimpressive sniper weapon. Careful charged shots can one-shot lower level enemies at a great distance and, thanks to its unlimited ammo, chip away at the damage of tougher enemies indefinitely. It's not necessarily very quick (or even very fun) but it's a good way to clear some easy kills if you can keep your distance.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Strangely averted in a few cases; for example, you have to slaughter several Hell Knights well before the first Pinky demon shows up (although admittedly the 2016 Doom Pinky is considerably stronger than it was in the classic games).
• Spiritual Antithesis: The 2016 Doom game can be thought of as the spiritual antithesis of Gears of War. The two games have a lot in common aesthetically, being shooter games that attracted notoriety for allowing you to dispose of monsters in spectacularly gory ways, but beyond how they look, these two games couldn’t be more different in how they play. Gears features slow movement, no jumping, and Regenerating Health, all of which encourage you to Take Cover! in one place in order to stay alive. Doom on the other hand, features fast movement, Jump Physics, and non-regenerating health, which encourage you to constantly move around the battlefield to avoid enemy fire and pick up health dropped by dead enemies. Both games were also released a decade apart, with Gears establishing trends that the shooter genre would follow for the next ten years, and Doom getting attention for defiantly bucking those trends. Though for what it's worth, regardless of how the developers intended for people to play Gears, pinballing around the map at high speed with a shotgun is how everybody actually plays it, so in practice the two games are more similar than initially apparent.
• Step One: Escape: The game starts with the Doom Slayer shackled on an examination table surrounded by dead bodies and an enemy shambling toward them. The Slayer/Player manages to free one hand, kill the enemy, arm themselves and kill more, find their armor in the next room, and then fight their way out of the facility. Only then does the title actually appear.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: If you run into a large pile of ammo, health, and armor, you can expect a boss fight to follow shortly.
  • The battle with the Hell Guards is preceded by a corridor filled to bursting with health and armor pickups.
  • When destroying the cooling systems, or in other big arenas, there will be a surprising amount of BFG ammo laying around, enough to refill its entire pool of three shots.
  • Most of the final level is non-stop ammo resupplies, especially around the corpses of the Wraiths.
• Static Role, Exchangeable Character: As with Stealth Sequel, it's made ambiguous as to what this game's Doomguy is. The Slayer's Testaments are ambiguous as to whether he was the leading knight of a separate dimension known as Argent D'nur, or the Doomguy from the original games, or even Doom 3 - several documents around the UAC facilities make it clear a lot of dimensions are invaded and absorbed into Hell, and the Slayer's Testaments also make it clear he rampaged anywhere where demons could be found. The Slayer's Testament also notes he was the one who slew someone very important to the demons - either the Icon of Sin from Doom 2, or Betreuger from Doom 3. The ambiguity is cleared up drastically in the sequel, which confirms that the Slayer is indeed the very same Doomguy that fans know and love from the original series.
• Stealth Sequel: It's implied that the Doomguy in this game is actually the very same one from the original two Doom games. The next game outright confirms it.
• Stylistic Suck: The "Classic" maps have blocky textures, almost no shading effects, 2-dimensional sprites for gore and pickups, and cheesy speed metal MIDI solos playing throughout, to emulate the feel of the first two Doom games. In fact, the classic maps are even worse in appearance than in the original games. The light levels are all static instead of varying from sector to sector like, and texture misalignment is ubiquitous (though the originals had occasional, but far fewer, instances where the wall textures weren't aligned cleanly).
• Tranquil Fury: How else can you describe a man who carves through the forces of hell without uttering a word.
• Turned Against Their Masters: The Revenants, Mancubi, and Cyberdemon were all created by the UAC to be used as weapons. Being Too Dumb to Live, they seem to have engaged in mass production before even having figured out a way to control the damn things.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Doomguy clearly has no patience with Hayden's expositing ways while Hayden finds Doomguy's habit of smashing things to be incredibly frustrating. Nevertheless, the two need each other's help to stop the invasion from hell.
• Title Drop: The demons call Hell "Doom", with their collective forces the "Slaves of Doom", and the Doomguy himself known as "the Doom Slayer". Really, the word "doom" is all over the place in this game.
• To Hell and Back: You will travel to and from Hell a total of three times over the course of the game. The first time occurs when Doom Slayer gets caught in a nexus he is racing to stop but the two times after that are deliberate jaunts to reclaim an artifact and finally seal the source of Argent energy once and for all.
• Took a Level in Badass: A number of returning enemies from the past games are significantly faster and more aggressive than before, and have new attacks and capabilities.
  • The basic Imp is now capable of chucking fireballs while running in any direction, will lead moving targets, and has pinpoint accuracy. It is also capable of navigating the environment with startling agility, and will cling to pipes and walls to rain fireballs down. They also have a charged up massive fireball which can wipe you of all your health in the higher difficulties.
  • The Possessed Soldier is a good deal tougher and hardier than the classic Zombieman, and now packs a plasma weapon instead of a puny rifle.
  • The Possessed Security, this game's version of the Shotgunner, has received a significant buff as it is the only hitscan enemy in the game now, and is equipped with a riot shield that deflects bullets back at the player.
  • Pinkies now sport chitinous armor that resists most attacks from the front, and will charge at the player with impressive speed, while having enough agility to track the player's direction mid-charge.
  • After being absent in Doom 3, the Baron of Hell is back and is far quicker than before, capable of keeping pace with the player and making great leaps to close the distance, as well as having a number of powerful melee attacks on top of its green fireball attack.
  • The Cacodemon's spit now causes your vision to blur for a brief moment should you be hit, and they will constantly advanced on the player to use their bite attack once in range.
  • The Revenants, which in the originals were more of a Glass Cannon that gradually became passé as time went on, got a pretty significant buff that turns them into Lightning Bruisers with the bonus of being able to fly and smoke you out with a shit load of missiles.
  • The Mancubus now has a number of means to stop players from circlestrafing it at close range, including a ground pound move that repels anyone who gets too close. Taken even further with its much more powerful and durable variation: The Cyber-Mancubus!
  • The Summoner, effectively a renamed Arch-Vile, retains many of the abilities it had in Doom 3 but is much more mobile, teleporting around the area and never staying in one place for more than a few seconds.
  • The Cyberdemon as well, even though its lost his Damage Sponge status, its far more competent as an opponent and, despite its size, is frighteningly fast, forcing you to keep on your toes or be in for a world of hurt. Not only does it keep the rapid fire rocket launcher, it can launch a swarm of missiles, charge across the map, create a forced corridor, throw sword beams, and has a lock on beam that tracks your movement. On top of being able to stomp on you if you get too close. But unlike Doom 3, it can be weakened by normal weapons instead of the Soul Cube.
  • The Spider Mastermind. Rather than the weak end-boss she was back then, this one puts up far more of a fight than she did in the original, being much more durable and packing a number of different weapons, including a plasma chaingun, lasers, and mines.
• Tranquil Fury: Doomguy never speaks, but still turns the forces of hell to Ludicrous Gibs. Also seen with Samuel Hayden, where he regularly destroys Hayden's means of communication but never directly attacks the head of the UAC.
• Turns Red: Inverted with the Spider Mastermind, which becomes increasingly bruised and crippled after a considerable number of hits are landed on it. It is eventually reduced to pathetically cowering from you, spewing lasers at random and trying to shield itself with its limbs.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: Rune Trials are still mostly about killing demons, but they're completely detached from your current campaign task, they happen in another dimension, impose very specific restrictions on you, can be repeated indefinitely despite most failures resulting in your death, and a few even completely lack enemies or anything else to shoot.
• The Unfought: Samuel Hayden, knowing full well they'll probably be murdered in a fair fight, instead cooperates with Doomguy long enough until they can find a way to temporarily entrap him long enough to escape. Notably, they do this because they know they won't stand a chance of winning against Doomguy.
  Samuel Hayden: I am not the villain in this story. I do what I do because there is no choice.
• Unfriendly Fire: Aside from the classic "trick enemies into shooting each other", glory-killing a possessed engineer results in the Doom Slayer kicking the guy across the room where he'll explode upon impact, potentially blowing up a fair number of his fellow demons in the process.
• Unobtainium: The Argent energy used to power everything drives a portion of the story, being from Hell itself and all. Thanks to all the problems it causes, when told to disable the Argent processor in the mission "Argent Facility", Doom Slayer instead simply destroys all the filters, cutting humanity off from the substance entirely.
• Unstoppable Rage: The Doom Slayer has this as his ruling emotion when it comes to demons and anything related to them, as the lengthy killing spree in Hell before the game as well as his demeanour towards any demon in the present day showcases very clearly.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Samuel Hayden believes that opening a portal to Hell, a good chunk of the UAC becoming Luciferians (including his protege, Olivia Pierce), and the UAC facility's subsequent slaughter by the demons was all acceptable losses in exchange for a clean, bountiful energy source.
  Samuel Hayden: Our interest in their world was purely for the betterment of mankind. Everything has clearly gotten out of hand, yes, but I assure you, it was worth the risk.
• Variable Mix: The game's soundtrack transitions between ambient and combat music. Events such as glory kills seem to have an independent measure that's merged with music playback, and sometimes a changing situation also adjusts the intensity of the combat music.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Like Brutal Doom, the game has Glory Kills, which enable the player to violently finish off a weakened enemy, and performing one give the player health. Additionally, several Runes encourage the player to perform these to gain its benefits.
• Virtual Sidekick: VEGA is an AI that was saved by the Doomguy who later on became his fountain of exposition.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The Siege Mode of the Gauss Rifle. It requires the firer to be stationary, has a lengthy charge up time, and will kill virtually all enemies within 2 shots, as well as any enemies near the path of the beam. Upgrades shorten the firing time and let you move slowly with it.
• We Can Rebuild Him: The Cyberdemon is the result of the UAC finding the remains of a powerful demon lord in Hell, doing experiments on them with Argent Energy, and then deciding to cybernetically enhance the result.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist:
  • Both Olivia Pierce and Samuel Hayden, the former working with Hell to bring about a new world for mankind and the latter wanting to utilize Hell for its resources to usher in a better world for mankind as well. Although in Olivia's case it eventually degenerates into "Obtain God-like power".
  • Doomguy fits this, considering that his world was destroyed by The Legions of Hell, it seems justifiable in wiping out every last trace of it when he reawakens to try and stop Earth from suffering the same fate. However, according to Samuel, the discovery and collection of argent energy in Hell saved human civilization from being destroyed by an energy crisis; a crisis the overzealous Doomguy may have restarted after destroying the systems that were processing the hell-energy and transporting it to Earth.
• Wham Shot: Seeing Samuel Hayden for the first time. You've just paved your way through a facility on Mars, wiping out Imps and Possessed until you get your first upgrade next to a computer. Samuel appears on the screen, and it turns out that he isn't just some executive in a suit, but a towering robotic Cyborg.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Samuel Hayden gets really annoyed at Doomguy smashing up the energy conduits rather than carefully removing the power source, chastising him on the importance of hell power and how they'll be facing an energy crisis thanks to him. This actually ends up motivating Samuel's betrayal in the cliffhanger ending, pointing out that the Doomguy would rather destroy Hell than prevent humanity's Argent-dependent society from collapsing. But if Doom Eternal is to be believed, he eventually realized that Doomguy was right.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Doomguy solves every problem he encounters by punching the shit out of it. Find an upgrade bot? Punch the shit out of it. Ammo cache? Punch the shit out of it. Fragile, highly-valuable energy conduits powering a tower of doom? Kick the shit out of it.
• World of Badass: The main character is an immortal butcher machine. The Corrupt Corporate Executive is a 3-meter tall robot. The imps have cheetah-speed agility and the pinpoint accuracy to match. The AI uses terrawatts of electricity and can accurately calculate how to create portals from HELL ITSELF to Mars and back. The Hell Knights are relentless giant apes that are only eclipsed by Hell Barons. The hellboar "pinkies" have anti-rocket armor and sometimes psychic stealth camoflage. The Cyberdemon can now trap the player in a corridor and spam rockets/sword beams. There's a worm that can power and pilot a murdergolem - no wait, there's three. The crippled old lady turns into a giant robot spider with all the upgrades that should have been tacked on to the original Final Boss of Doom 2. Even the pathetic zombies can eat straight through Hellforged Power Armor. Everyone else has GUNS grafted to their arms and/or mouths. It's undoubtedly a Crapsack World, to be sure... but it's one that's still totally fucking awesome.
• Worthy Opponent: Implied by the Slayer's Testament to be how the demons perceive the Doom Marine. The testament speaks unflinchingly about how thoroughly he terrorized demonkind, lionizing his destructive prowess despite it being directed against them, in a tone of respect or even admiration. There's no indication of whether these sentiments are mutual, however.

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Demonic threat eliminated. Lockdown disengaged.