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MegaSphere

Is hell in Doom christian hell?

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Aside from the pentagrams nothing seems to indicate it is I like to think it's just a hostile dimension people called hell because it's the closest to it like Labyrinth from Hellraiser. Does God even exist in Doom universe? If he does then he is completly useless and people should just worship Doomguy instead.

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It' is Christians hell. On E1M6 there is a hidden room with a Bible and it explains that it is indeed A Christians hell

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Jeffo2448 said:

On E1M6 there is a hidden room with a Bible

What? Are you sure? Bible doesn't even exist in Doom as an item.

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Doom's hell is like a mixture of Dante's Inferno, modern popular culture's depictions and symbolism of hell, and bio/cyber/steam-punk.

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ChekaAgent said:

What? Are you sure? Bible doesn't even exist in Doom as an item.


Yes it does! It's technologically infused within the torso of a contorted preacher on a big stick.

The room's super secret. Like, even magazines don't know about it, man.

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Doom alpha did have "unholy bibles" as Wolf3D-like treasure. Take them as you will. Their graphics still survives in the press-release PWAD available with MBF.

Hell doesn't belong to one religion or another. It doesn't have to. It's really a generic myth belonging to any culture with a moralist religion. Think of it as an "underworld". It exists below all of our "flat" Earth. And for any religion's point of view, all the sinners and non-believers end up there. Which means that all religious and atheist people and cultures belong in hell. Which means that hell is multicultural by excellence. And now I realize that with the social trends, we're going straight to hell without dying yet.

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Doom's hell have a lot of influences, including the christian hell, dante's inferno, surrealism\chaos, technological synthesis, body horror and lovecraft symbolism.

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Wikipedia says in the "Hell in popular culture" page:

The famous Doom series also involves the concept of Hell, but with a science-fiction twist, as a future teleportation experiment accidentally opens a gate to Hell, releasing demons. Hell is treated in the Christian conception, replete with Satanic symbols and corporeal demons, as a parallel universe of crimson skies, black mountains and oceans of fire. At the end of the second game in the series Hell is wrecked, and the main character wonders where evil people will go when they die. In Doom 3 the player must travel to Hell to obtain a powerful Martian artifact.

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Not all the symbols were Satanic however, quite a few of them were actually occult symbols, and some Pagan symbols such as the pentagram for instance.

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I don't think it's literally hell. That's just the way that the alien dimension looks. Alien symbols and alien gods on an alien planet.

But a human makes the connection to the christian fairy tales and the occult naturally :D

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I thought there were several references to the stock Judeo-Christian/Dantesque conception of Hell -pentagrams, inverted crosses, corpses in stances that remind of crucification etc. There's even a wall texture which, viewed from afar, reminds of the Shroud of Turin, while even Doomguy's death pose is kinda reminiscent of that.

If anything, Doom has an 80s/90s metal cover album stylized depiction of Hell (think of e.g. Metallica, AC/DC, etc.). All that's missing are the subliminal reverse messages...

OK seriously, what were the chances that Doom would be based on e.g. Buddhist or Muslim Hell, when it's as American as apple pie?

Avoozl said:

Not all the symbols were Satanic however, quite a few of them were actually occult symbols, and some Pagan symbols such as the pentagram for instance.


NEWSFLASH: practically all major Christian confessions lump those symbols together under the Pagan/Satanic category, and condemn them accordingly.

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Doomguy is a Buddhist monk who is not concerned with Heaven or Hell, he is fighting his own inner demons in order to better follow the Noble Eightfold Path in persuit of the Dharma and, later, Nirvana.

ChekaAgent said:

What? Are you sure? Bible doesn't even exist in Doom as an item.


I can already tell that this is going to be a great thread.

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I always thought the Hell in Doom was built upon the souls of the departed. Like all the walls and floors etc were constructed out of dead human energy. Each demon you kill slowly destroys part of constructed hell. But the human souls remain dead and never return. And when you kill the spider mastermind hell is defeated forever. Hooray! Then sequels. Many sequels. So I guess hell is immortal then. Well that destroys my theory. Never mind.

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Doomkid said:

Christian Hell sounds like an unreleased Zappa album


Watch out where the demons go, and don't you eat that yellow glow.

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Gez said:

The first thing to do before you can ascertain whether the Doom Hell is the Christian Hell is to define what the Christian Hell is.

Ding ding ding! It always amuses me when people speculate about Hell given our perception on it is based off of millennia of beliefs merging and melding. Since the bible is woefully vague on the subject, you only have the Church's teachings to look towards, which did its best to assimilate Greek, Hebrew, and Pagan thoughts in order to reach widespread appeal.

I think Doom only represents the Christian Hell insofar as it's a "bad place you definitely don't want to go to", but outside of that it's just a melting pot of stereotypes and iconography.

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There is clearly some kind of broadly defined Hell, which in modern times is mostly tied to Christianity, that is volcanic and sulfuric. Depictions of hell in non-Western religions seem to also favor something in the vain of the "fire and brimstone" meme. Getting off topic, but I figure the tendency to witness the frightening and destructive force of a volcano must have been a major influence on the depiction of hell. To people long ago, what could be scarier? Hell is always this cavernous, massive, underground place, and lava is pretty much a given.

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