Doom was a cultural phenomenon in the ’90s, which meant movie deals, action figures, novelisations and comic books. A line from the comics has become a meme over the years, and it’s slyly referenced in the new game.
Image Credit: Doomworld
The new Doom opens with an ominous demonic symbol and voice over:
They are rage, brutal, without mercy. But you. You will be worse. Rip and tear, until it is done.
The first level of the game is also called Rip & Tear. It’d be easy to imagine such a phrase is merely setting the tone for a violent, brutal game, and while that’s true, it’s also pulled straight from that comic released in 1996!
The premise involves the ubiquitous Doom Marine, referred to as Flynn “Fly” Taggart in the spin-off books but not in the games themselves, quickly slaying a series of demons with the aid of the berserker item. In Doom, the berserker makes the player incredibly powerful, allowing them to demolish — or, say, rip and tear — enemies using only their fists.
Image Credit: Doomworld
It’s a terrible comic, and was apparently never sold at retail; it was given out as a promotional item at some game convention. (It’s not clear which one, maybe E3?) But Doomworld makes it sound like a hilarious read:
One of my most favourite parts in the comic is when the marine inadvertently falls into some radioactive sludge and suddenly, in the middle of a massive killing spree, starts to preach about how humans are ruining the environment and how we’ll be leaving a destroyed planet to our children and our children’s children. The whole panel is such a random segment from the rest of the comic, which provides wholesome family fun (in the form of killing shit) and then goes off on a tangential environmental crusade, albeit a pretty half-assed one.
If you wanna read it for yourself, the comic is available at Doomworld.
Comments
5 responses to “Doom Has A Reference To A Comic Book Meme From 1996”
I admit, I cringed a little when the game opened with that phrase.
Guess it could have been worse, Doom Marine could have shouted “Hoy hoy I’m the boy” when he woke up
If you haven’t read the Doom comic, I implore you to do so. It’s a classic.
Who’s a man and a half?! I’M a man and a half!
I like the recontextualisation of the rip and tear line. In the game it sounds like it’s said by some kinda of Dr. Frankenstein figure to Doomguy, with a tinge of a religious vibe to the wording. That with all the lore in-game about the demons fearing Doomguy like he’s some kind of Eldritch God make the Doom lore far more interesting than I ever expected it to be.
“No John. You are the demons.”
No reference to the best Doom of all time, the fanfic Doom: Repercussions of Evil?
https://youtu.be/n3LKadZ4LFU
Back in the dark old days of web 1.0 when we used to share things on floppy disk since downloading was so slow, I received a different dramatic reading, using Mass Effect music as the background music. Desperately want to hear it again but two decades later I guess it’ll never happen 🙁