50 Fun Facts About Watchmen

In Watchmen, Laurie Juspeczyk takes over which costumed identity from her mother?

Silk Spectre. Laurie never wanted the job: her mother, the original, pushed her into the 'family business' of crimefighting, and she was glad to quit when masked heroes were outlawed.

Which Bob Dylan song plays over the opening credits of the 2009 Watchmen film?

The Times They Are a-Changin'. The credits montage reworks famous images of the past, from Warhol to the Zapruder film, to show decades of history bent out of shape by costumed heroes.

How many issues did the original Watchmen comic run for?

12. Contracted for twelve, Alan Moore realised he had plot for only six, so he alternated plot issues with origin-story issues about the characters.

Alan Moore first pitched Watchmen to DC as a murder mystery starring which publisher's heroes?

Charlton Comics. Moore's initial idea used the Mighty Crusaders, another shelved set of heroes, and opened with the Shield found dead in a harbour.

Why did DC bar its newly bought heroes from Watchmen?

The plot wrecked them. Moore said DC saw its expensive new heroes ending up 'dead or dysfunctional', so editor Dick Giordano had him rebuild the cast as look-alikes.

Which Mad magazine parody did Watchmen's creators say they wanted to turn '180 degrees'?

Superduperman. Harvey Kurtzman's 1953 spoof played a Superman figure for laughs, and Moore, who calls Kurtzman's Mad the 'best comic ever', wanted the same idea 'dramatic, instead of comedic'.

Before Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons made short strips together for the British weekly that is home to which character?

Judge Dredd. His comic, 2000 AD, was a shop window: DC hired several of its artists in the early 1980s, Gibbons among them, and in 1983 signed up Moore, one of its writers, as well.

How did Alan Moore get late Watchmen script pages to Dave Gibbons?

Hired a taxi to drive 50 miles. As deadlines closed in, the pages went out by cab in small batches, and Gibbons's wife and son ruled up his blank pages to help him keep pace.

Late in writing Watchmen, Alan Moore found that its ending resembled an episode of which TV series?

The Outer Limits. The episode was 'The Architects of Fear', and Moore gave it a belated nod: it turns up on a television in the last issue.

Who is the first masked vigilante in Watchmen's alternate history?

Hooded Justice. He appears in 1938, and the comic never confirms who was under the hood and noose, a gap that HBO's sequel series filled with its own answer.

Which US president is still in office in Watchmen's October 1985?

Richard Nixon. He amends the constitution in 1975 so he can keep running, and Watergate never breaks: the Comedian jokes about two murdered reporters named Woodward and Bernstein.

What does Vietnam become after the American victory in Watchmen's history?

The 51st state. Doctor Manhattan is sent in by the president in 1971, and within two months of his arrival the Viet Cong surrender.

In Watchmen, which 1977 law outlawed costumed vigilantes?

The Keene Act. It was rushed through as an emergency bill after a police strike, and spared only the two heroes who worked directly for the government.

Whose murder in his New York apartment sets the plot of Watchmen in motion?

Edward Blake. Thrown from his high-rise window, he turns out to have been the Comedian, which convinces Rorschach that someone is killing off costumed heroes.

In the original Watchmen comic, what is Rorschach's real name?

Walter Kovacs. When police tear off his mask, he proves to be the red-haired doomsayer who has been carrying a sign through the streets since the first chapter.

Rorschach began as Alan Moore's stand-in for which Steve Ditko hero?

The Question. Moore saw that faceless detective as a mainstream version of Ditko's far harsher Mr. A, and carried the black-and-white morality of both to its extreme in Rorschach.

Who played Rorschach in the 2009 Watchmen film?

Jackie Earle Haley. He had come back from more than a decade away from acting to earn an Oscar nomination for Little Children, and its co-star Patrick Wilson joined him in Watchmen.

Who plays an ageing Adrian Veidt in HBO's Watchmen series?

Jeremy Irons. Early episodes show him only as an unnamed lord idling on a country estate, which turns out to be his prison on the distant moon Europa.

Nite Owl was modelled on which existing comic-book hero?

Blue Beetle. The Ted Kord version had taken over from an earlier Beetle, so Moore gave Dan Dreiberg a predecessor as well: Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl.

The Comedian was modelled on which existing comic-book character?

Peacemaker. The original was a diplomat so devoted to peace that he would fight for it; Moore and Gibbons turned him into a cynical, patriotic government enforcer with a dash of Nick Fury.

In Watchmen, physicist Jon Osterman gains his powers after being locked inside what?

An Intrinsic Field Subtractor. The machine tears him apart, and over the following months he rebuilds himself in stages: first a nervous system, then a circulatory system, then a skeleton.

Nite Owl's airship Archie is named after Archimedes, the pet owl of which wizard?

Merlin. Dan Dreiberg keeps the owl-shaped ship in his basement long after retiring, and Laurie nearly burns the place down when she hits its flamethrower button while looking for a lighter.

In Watchmen, who is Laurie Juspeczyk's mother?

Sally Jupiter. She kept from Laurie that her real father was the Comedian, the teammate who had once assaulted Sally and with whom she later had a consensual affair.

Where does Doctor Manhattan exile himself after being accused of giving his friends cancer?

Mars. With America's living deterrent gone, the Soviets go on the march within days and the world slides toward nuclear war.

Where is Adrian Veidt's private retreat, the setting for Watchmen's climax?

Antarctica. From his fortress there Veidt floods the region with tachyons, particles that cloud Doctor Manhattan's view of the future, so that even he cannot see the plan coming.

In the Watchmen comic, what does Adrian Veidt unleash on New York to unite the superpowers?

A fake alien squid-like creature. Built in secret by artists and scientists and teleported into the city, it dies on arrival in a psychic shockwave that kills New Yorkers in vast numbers.

Who stars as masked detective Angela Abar in HBO's Watchmen?

Regina King. Her detective fights crime in a nun's habit as Sister Night, because the show's police hide their identities from a white-supremacist militia; the role won her an Emmy.

In Watchmen, to which newspaper does Rorschach mail his journal?

New Frontiersman. The right-wing paper files it in its 'crank file', and the last panel shows an assistant reaching into that pile for something to fill a page.

What does Doctor Manhattan reply when Veidt asks whether he did the right thing in the end?

Nothing ever ends. With that he leaves Earth, saying he may create some life of his own elsewhere, and Veidt never gets the reassurance he wanted.

What page layout does Dave Gibbons use throughout Watchmen?

A nine-panel grid. Gibbons liked its 'authority' and it let Moore control the pacing, though colourist John Higgins remembered it differently: 'Nine panels per page? Agony!'

Watchmen's fifth chapter, 'Fearful Symmetry', takes its title from which poem?

The Tyger. Gibbons drew the issue to match its title: the first page mirrors the last, the second mirrors the second-to-last, and so on in to a symmetrical centre spread.

What is the name of the pirate comic read within Watchmen?

Tales of the Black Freighter. Moore and Gibbons reasoned that people who lived alongside real costumed heroes would not want superhero comics, so pirate titles fill the newsstands instead.

The ship in Watchmen's pirate comic is borrowed from 'Pirate Jenny', a song by which playwright?

Bertolt Brecht. Moore, a self-declared big fan, took the ship from The Threepenny Opera, where a put-upon hotel maid dreams of pirates sailing in to flatten the town.

What stains the smiley face on Watchmen's last page, echoing the blood on its first?

Hamburger sauce. It spatters the smiley on a newspaper assistant's T-shirt just as he reaches toward the pile that holds Rorschach's journal.

Which Roman satirist coined the line 'Who watches the watchmen'?

Juvenal. In his Satires the worry is domestic: a husband told to lock up his wife asks who will guard the guards, and only later was the line turned on those in power.

In 1988 Watchmen won which science-fiction award, in a category called 'Other Forms'?

Hugo Award. With no prize for comics, it won under that catch-all heading against prose rivals such as the Wild Cards anthology; a graphic-story category arrived only in 2009.

Watchmen was the only graphic novel on which magazine's 2005 list of 100 greatest novels?

Time. Its critics chose English-language novels published since 1923, the year the magazine began, which put Watchmen on one list with To Kill a Mockingbird and The Sound and the Fury.

Alan Moore's rights dispute with DC covers Watchmen and which other work?

V for Vendetta. Both contracts returned the rights once the books went out of print, and Moore says DC never meant to stop reprinting either; DC's account is that he objected to a ratings label.

Which team of costumed adventurers, formed in 1939, came before Watchmen's main heroes?

The Minutemen. Captain Metropolis tried to found a successor group in 1966, the Crimebusters, but it fell apart after a single meeting.

Who wrote Doomsday Clock, the 2017-19 sequel that folded Watchmen into the DC Universe?

Geoff Johns. DC had laid the ground in its 2016 Rebirth relaunch, hiding Watchmen imagery in the opening special, before the sequel brought Doctor Manhattan face to face with Superman.

Who wrote Rorschach, the 2020-21 standalone comic sequel to Watchmen?

Tom King. In his story, set 35 years on, the man who dies in a Rorschach mask during an assassination attempt turns out to be an elderly, radicalised comic-book artist.

Which director made the 2009 Watchmen film?

Zack Snyder. Warner Bros. gave him the job on the strength of 300, after Terry Gilliam had decided the comic could not be squeezed into a film and later directors had come and gone.

Which studio bought Watchmen's film rights in 1986 and later sued to block the 2009 movie?

20th Century Fox. It claimed it still held part of the rights, and after a year of legal wrangling Warner Bros. settled by handing over up to 8.5 percent of the film's gross.

Ozymandias's armour in the 2009 Watchmen film parodies the costumes of which earlier superhero movie?

Batman & Robin. The armour sends up that film's sculpted muscle suits, and Gibbons, who was not consulted, approved: the comic had played on superhero comics, so the film plays on superhero films.

Which star of 300 voiced the sea captain in the animated spin-off of Watchmen's pirate comic?

Gerard Butler. He had long been linked with a part in the live-action film that never materialised, so his 300 director brought him in to voice the cartoon's doomed mariner instead.

Who developed the 2019 HBO Watchmen series?

Damon Lindelof. The Lost co-creator called it a 'remix': not a retelling but a sequel set decades later with mostly new characters, and it won the Emmy for outstanding limited series.

In which city is HBO's Watchmen series mainly set?

Tulsa, Oklahoma. The series opens with a dramatization of the city's 1921 race massacre and traces its heroine's family back to that night.

Which Hollywood actor is US president in the 2019 of HBO's Watchmen?

Robert Redford. It pays off a joke from the comic's closing pages, where a headline asks 'RR to run in 88?' and the initials turn out to mean the actor, not Reagan.

What was the title of the episodic video game released alongside the 2009 Watchmen film?

Watchmen: The End Is Nigh. The title is the slogan on the placard Rorschach carries through the streets out of costume; the game is a prequel brawler starring him and Nite Owl.

What kind of animal is Bubastis, Adrian Veidt's genetically engineered pet?

A lynx. Veidt dotes on her, yet in the final chapter he uses her as bait, disintegrating his own pet in a failed attempt to destroy Doctor Manhattan.