50 Fun Facts About Doom

Which tech boss was digitally superimposed into Doom for a video promoting his new operating system?

Bill Gates was dropped into the game to pitch Windows 95 as a home for games. By late 1995, Doom was estimated to be installed on more computers than that operating system.

Which name for a player-versus-player mode, now used across gaming, was coined during Doom's development?

Deathmatch was what one designer called the team's four-player sessions once multiplayer was coded, a month before release. He said fighting games such as Street Fighter II inspired the mode.

Which cereal brand gave away a kid-friendly shooter, built on the Doom engine, as a prize inside its boxes?

Chex Quest is known as the first video game ever included as a cereal box prize. Its hero sends slimy Flemoids home with a zorcher instead of gunning them down, and the promotion won two advertising awards.

Doom Eternal shared its launch day with a game from which Nintendo series, inspiring friendly crossover fan art?

Animal Crossing: New Horizons arrived the same day, and fans drew its cheerful Isabelle as best friends with the Doom Slayer. The pairing trended online, and the director of New Horizons acknowledged it.

Which actor played Sarge, the marine squad leader who turns villain, in the 2005 Doom film?

Dwayne Johnson was first offered the hero's part but chose Sarge instead, drawn to the character's darker side. Vin Diesel had already turned the lead down.

In the original release of Doom 3, the marine could not hold a weapon at the same time as which item?

Flashlight or gun was a deliberate choice, since darkness was Doom 3's main horror tool. Fans answered with a duct tape mod that strapped the light to weapons, and the 2012 BFG Edition made it standard.

Doom's idea of fighting demons with technology came from its makers' campaign in which tabletop game?

Dungeons & Dragons left a long mark on the studio: the same campaign also influenced the design of Quake and Daikatana.

Which European country classed Doom as harmful to minors and restricted its sale until 2011?

Germany's youth-protection office listed Doom soon after release, so shops could not sell it to minors or even display it where they might see it.

Whose severed head, an in-joke by two id Software artists, is hidden inside the final boss of Doom II?

John Romero found the joke while working on the level's sound, then topped it by recording a distorted, reversed message for the boss to growl at players. Damaging his hidden head is what wins the game.

Doom's makers, in an office they named Suite 666, drew inspiration from noises at which nearby business?

A dental practice sat beside the dark office building the five-person team moved into as work began in late 1992. They also cut ties with their old publisher there, choosing to release Doom themselves.

Doom was named after a line in which 1986 film starring Tom Cruise as a young pool hustler?

The Color of Money gave John Carmack the title: in the film, the word is a character's one-word answer about what he is carrying in his case. It replaced a much ruder working title.

Under which sales model did only about 1% of Doom's downloaders pay, yet earn id Software $100,000 a day?

Shareware meant the opening episode could be copied and passed on freely, while the other two were sold by mail order directly from id Software. The company was in profit within a day of release.

Which opening episode of Doom (1993) was given away free to tempt players into buying the full game?

Knee-Deep in the Dead takes its name from a phrase in id Software's first press release about the game, issued at the start of 1993. The episode ends with a fight against a pair of Barons of Hell.

What is the subtitle of Doom II, the first game in the Doom series to launch on shop shelves?

Hell on Earth sends the marine home to find the planet overrun by demons. It became the best-selling software product in the United States in 1994.

In Doom (2016), which melee finishing move on a stunned demon restores the player's health?

Glory Kill finishers returned in Doom Eternal, where stringing them together also recharges a heavy melee strike called the Blood Punch.

Which Australian composer wrote the score of Doom (2016), which won a Game Award for music and sound design?

Mick Gordon also scored Doom Eternal, but a dispute over that game's soundtrack release led to a public falling-out with id Software and a parting of ways.

Which publisher released the 2016 Doom reboot after its parent company ZeniMax bought id Software?

Bethesda took over from Activision, which had published Doom 3 in 2004. The reboot was first announced as Doom 4 in 2008, then restarted in 2011 before being re-revealed under the plain title.

In Doom (2016), which classic weapon makes any demon it kills drop a shower of ammunition?

Chainsaw kills are instant as long as the weapon holds enough fuel, which turns the series' famous melee tool into a way to restock in the middle of a fight.

Which American institution chose Doom in 2007 as one of ten games in a canon worth preserving?

Library of Congress recognition came again in 2026, when the game's soundtrack entered the National Recording Registry. In 2015 Doom also joined the first class of the World Video Game Hall of Fame.

Doom's designers have confirmed that Doomguy is a descendant of which hero of the Wolfenstein games?

B.J. Blazkowicz is the soldier players guide through Wolfenstein 3D, the Nazi-fighting shooter id Software released the year before Doom.

The Cyberdemon, the giant boss of Doom's second episode, has which weapon grafted in place of its left arm?

Rocket launcher volleys come three at a time, and the Cyberdemon itself takes no splash damage from explosions. It went on to pose on the retail box of Doom II.

In Doom's secret level Fortress of Mystery, a room of Barons of Hell can be lured into fighting which monsters?

Cacodemons fill the second room, and herding the two groups together lets them wear each other down. Survive, and the level hands over every weapon available at that point in the game.

Fortress of Mystery is the secret level of The Shores of Hell, the Doom episode set on which moon?

Deimos vanishes at the start of the story and turns out to be hanging above Hell itself, which the marine learns only after beating the episode's boss.

Which boss, armed with a rapid-fire chaingun, waits at the end of Inferno, the original Doom's third episode?

Spider Mastermind returned as the last boss of the 2016 reboot. Its original sprites were photographed from a metal and latex model built by sculptor Gregor Punchatz.

Which fast-moving Doom II monster can raise slain demons back to life and sets the player ablaze from afar?

Arch-vile revivals can push a level's kill tally past 100%, because the player gets credit for every monster killed a second time.

Which weapon, still in the Slayer's hands in Doom: The Dark Ages, was the only new gun added in Doom II?

Super shotgun is a very powerful double-barrelled take on the first game's weapon. The sequel's other addition was a new power-up, the Megasphere.

In the 2005 Doom film, the initials of the BFG are said to stand for what?

Bio Force Gun is a cleaned-up reading of initials that the original design document and the Doom II manual spell out with a swear word. Quake II's manual softened the name in its own way.

In Doom 3, the marine defeats the Cyberdemon guarding the Hellmouth with which artifact unearthed on Mars?

Soul Cube in hand, the marine fells Hell's mightiest warrior, and the relic then seals the Hellmouth. He first had to fight through Hell itself to retrieve it.

Which Doom power-up, which looks like a dark medikit, makes the marine's punches ten times stronger?

Berserk packs also restore health to 100% and wash the screen in a red haze for about 20 seconds, while the stronger fists usually last until the level ends.

Which hero of an earlier id Software platform series is found hanged in a secret level of Doom II?

Commander Keen figures hang around the exit switch, and all four must be destroyed to reach it. The grim joke came from artist Adrian Carmack, who preferred gory themes to the cute character.

Which three-letter file type stores Doom's levels and art outside the engine, making the game easy to modify?

WAD is said to be short for a question asking where all the data is. Keeping that data outside the engine was John Carmack's way of inviting fans to build their own levels.

Although Doom was released for MS-DOS, its developers built it on workstations from which computer company?

NeXT workstations, running the NeXTSTEP operating system, were where the code was written, largely in C. Their maker was the company Steve Jobs founded after leaving Apple.

The Doom team set out to blend the horror of Evil Dead II with the style of which James Cameron film?

Aliens was half of the pitch John Carmack made in late 1992, when the whole Doom team numbered just five people.

Which composer wrote the original Doom's music and sound effects, drawing on metal bands such as Pantera?

Bobby Prince built the monster noises from the cries of real creatures and pitched them to cut through the MIDI music. His Doom work entered the US National Recording Registry in 2026.

Which creator of the Call of Cthulhu tabletop game joined id Software ten weeks before Doom shipped?

Sandy Petersen went on to design the majority of levels in the first two games, and he also chose the names of the demons, items and difficulty settings.

Which Microsoft employee, later the head of Valve, led the team that ported Doom to Windows 95?

Gabe Newell's port happened because id Software turned down Microsoft's request to do the job itself. Microsoft wanted the conversion to show off Windows as a platform for games.

Doom's small, shareable demo recordings are credited with creating the community around which gaming pursuit?

Speedrunning took off because demo files were tiny compared with video and easy to swap on bulletin boards. Records set in 1998 were still being broken in 2019.

Id Software licensed the Doom engine to other studios, producing which sword-and-sorcery shooter in 1994?

Heretic was followed on the same engine by Hexen and Strife, and together with Doom the four are usually counted as the engine's Big Four.

The guns seen in the original Doom were photographed from models built out of the combined parts of what?

Children's toys supplied the weapons, and the artists' own bodies supplied more: Kevin Cloud's arm is the one holding the gun, while Adrian Carmack's snakeskin boots became a texture.

The 1990s Doom novels gave the nameless marine which name, later hidden as an Easter egg in Doom Eternal?

Flynn Taggart, nicknamed Fly, never won everyone over: one of Doom's own designers said in 2002 that he was no fan of the name. The original games left the marine nameless so players could imagine themselves.

In classic Doom multiplayer, players are indigo, brown, red or which colour, the marine's own in single-player?

Green armour with a light grey helmet is the marine's classic look. By Doom 64 the armour had gained black highlights, a black helmet with an antenna and a blue visor.

Which cheat code, typed during play, switches on the invulnerable god mode in classic Doom?

IDDQD brings up a message announcing degreelessness mode. The classic codes stop working on the hardest difficulty setting, apart from two that reveal the map and warp between levels.

Which Doom difficulty setting, named after a phrase from A Clockwork Orange, sits one step below Nightmare?

Ultra-Violence was the top setting in the first mail-order copies of the game. Nightmare arrived in version 1.2, after players on Usenet complained that even the hardest option was too easy.

Daisy, whose head appears on a pike in the ending of Doom's Inferno episode, was the marine's pet what?

Rabbit owners can share his rage: a later ending shows the marine holding Daisy's head, with text vowing that someone will pay. The first ending never actually said she was his pet.

Which arcade publisher's San Diego studio developed Doom 64 under the supervision of id Software?

Midway's team worked under the tentative title Doom: The Absolution and gave the weapons and monsters new sprite graphics. It also added the nightmare imp and a new final boss, the Mother Demon.

Final Doom pairs The Plutonia Experiment with which other 32-level set, bought by id just before its free release?

TNT: Evilution was made by the hobbyist group TeamTNT, which is why Final Doom was the first game in the series not developed by id. Its companion set was built at id's request by Dario and Milo Casali.

In Doom: The Dark Ages, the Slayer pilots a mech as tall as a 30-storey building, known by which name?

Atlan mechs help make The Dark Ages the first Doom game that lets players pilot vehicles. The other ride is a winged cybernetic beast.

Which asymmetrical multiplayer mode in Doom Eternal pits one Slayer against two player-controlled demons?

Battlemode was built in-house by id Software after the outsourced multiplayer of the 2016 game was criticised as disconnected from the campaign. It launched with five playable demons.

Which final level of Doom's second episode stages the first fight in the series against the Cyberdemon?

Tower of Babel takes its name from the Bible's tower to the heavens, and the level and the episode both end the moment the giant dies. Four supply rooms around the arena hold the ammunition for the job.

Sigil, an unofficial fifth episode for the original Doom, launched in 2019 with music by which guitarist?

Buckethead's music came with the paid edition, priced at 6.66 euros, while a free version followed days later with a different score. The episode was announced for the game's 25th anniversary.