Is Doom based on any religion in particular?

[Banana]

I know Doom has hell, demons, etc etc, but is it necessarily related to one religion in particular? There are a lot of religions that have hell.

[Pure Hellspawn]

I would venture to say no. I'm pretty sure a question has been asked if they are satanists for which they said no. Also, don't forget that a lot of DOOM is tech-based as well where you have to kill zombies. However, a lot of DOOM is based off of the Doom Bible (1992) by Tom Hall. Though there are some differences.

[EarthQuake]

None of the developers are/were religious at the time Doom was created (other than Sandy Petersen who was Mormon and quite okay with working on the game), so I don't really see the game as being "based on" any sort of religion. They just took a basic concept of Hell and demons and built a game around it.

So, short answer: no.

[Banana]

I kinda thought that, as I've never heard any details in of any particular religion in the game's story. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.

[Maes]

I'd say it's based on the common Western world Judeo-Christian preconceptions of hell and daemons, judging from the appearance of fire pits, lava, goat-headed daemons, pentagrams and inverted crosses (the goat was often used as a symbol of Satan or wickedness in the Bible).

Oh well, at least there are no red-suited guys with pitchforks in Doom (there are in Heretic though).

[Gez]

Not really.


One part of Doom's metaphysical landscape is that you have mortals on one side, and demons on the other. No angels. No holy relics and artifacts. There is a dimension of supernatural evil, but supernatural good is nowhere to be seen.

And you won't find many religions like that. It's a cosmology a bit too depressing to take seriously.

[Maes]

Gez said:

One part of Doom's metaphysical landscape is that you have mortals on one side, and demons on the other. No angels. No holy relics and artifacts. There is a dimension of supernatural evil, but supernatural good is nowhere to be seen.

That's right, but it's also clear that they chose to represent said evil side with symbols that most of the world's population, be it through Judeo-Christian proseletism, or be it via popular culture, would spontaneously associate with hell and evil.

Another clearly Judeo-Christian reference would be the Archvile, whose appearance (stigmata) and abilities (resurrection, but only of foul creatures and of limited power) seem to make him a demonic mockery of Jesus Christ, or even an incarnation of the Antichrist.

Plus, I always thought there was an eerie similarity between Doomguy's death face and the Holy Shroud...

[printz]

Oh.. the dead marine head does look like hanging by a crucifix, now...

I'd say that Doom One may be inspired quite loosely by literature more than religion, that being Dante's Inferno; notice the Episode 3 level names.

[Maes]

printz said:

I'd say that Doom One may be inspired quite loosely by literature more than religion, that being Dante's Inferno; notice the Episode 3 level names.

Again, this seems to fuel the Judeo-Christian "theory" even more: it's not as if they used e.g. the Taoist or Buddhist concepts and terminologies for hell. Possibly just because of the fact that Dante's depiction is popular and/or because being the authors of the game of Judeo-Christian heritage themselves, they just used the depictions of Hell closer to their own culture.

If they were Japanese/Sintoist/Buddhists, then perhaps Doom would look more like Bonze Adventure, and the monsters and places would still look hellish/creepy but also out-of-place for most westerners.

They also went with the most explicit "fire and brimstone" depiction of hell in western culture, much like those in medieval paintings, and not e.g. as a Dantesque frozen lake or an abstract place "devoid of God" (although there are some Limbo and void themed maps). Doom 3 combines the classical "fire cavern" representation with that of a suspended planar void.

[Jimmy]

I'm pretty sure that Doom was heavily inspired (or even based off) Dante's Inferno in numerous respects.

[Gez]

Nah, it's generic hell with Id's own twists. Of course it's mostly stereotypical Judeo-Christian imagery, need I remind you that the guys at Id Software are westerners who grew up in Western culture?

Based on Dante's Divine Comedy? The Nine Circles of Hell in Inferno are:
1. Limbo: basically, paradise without God. You're not tortured or tormented, you just are denied the bliss of spending your afterlife with God.
2. Constant storm.
3. Constant freezing rain, hail, and muddy slush.
4. Huge and cumbersome loot bags everywhere.
5. The river Styx.
6. A graveyard of flaming tombs.
7. Now you're talking! Rivers of boiling blood, thorny trees, burning sand, fire raining from the sky... That's looking like the cliché hell everyone knows!
8. A cliff with ten caves linked by various bridges. Kinda boring.
9. A frozen lake.

[Kyka]

Gez said:

Not really.


There is a dimension of supernatural evil, but supernatural good is nowhere to be seen.

Another side you could argue is that the supernatural good in Doom's cosmology is represented by DoomGuy himself. I mean, killing thousands of demons and singlehandedly saving the whole human race does lend a certain godlike stature to our hero.

And let's not get started on the whole Doomguy infinite lives thing, or we may end up deciding that everyone at id in 1992 was secretly Hindu.

[myk]

Based is too strong a word, but influenced visually and in name by the Divine Comedy seems plausible. I don't think that the title of episode 3 and name Dis as the final level are gratuitous. Obviously the game is not trying to reenact part of Dante's work, but try reading the work and in many areas, particularly the seventh canto, you'll think of DOOM's hellish textures. Pandemonium is also the name given to Hell's capital in Milton's Paradise Lost. I would more easily dismiss any light classical (Christian) influences had Sandy Petersen not been in charge of that part of the game design. Working on a game like this anyone knowing those works would have thought about them during development. I don't think the combination of thorny trees, rivers of blood and flames and desert landscapes are such a generic stereotype... when present they easily bring Dante to mind. Also, for Slough of Despair see Slough of Despond.

Maes said:
Another clearly Judeo-Christian reference would be the Archvile, whose appearance (stigmata) and abilities (resurrection, but only of foul creatures and of limited power) seem to make him a demonic mockery of Jesus Christ, or even an incarnation of the Antichrist.

Could be, to a point... after all, Sandy Petersen proposed most of the monster abilities for DOOM II.

[DooMAD]

Doom IS a religion.

[Maes]

DooMAD said:

Doom IS a religion.

DooMAD WINS the thread.

[WillWater87]

DooMAD said:

Doom IS a religion.

As in doomsday? :P

Seriously the answer is simple, no it isn't based on any religion

[the iron hitman]

DooMAD said:

Doom IS a religion.

Epic win on so many levels.

[Maes]

tubers93 said:

Seriously the answer is simple, no it isn't based on any religion

Explain the inverted crosses, then. They are a symbol of evil only for Christianity, as is most of the rest of the symbolism in the game (goat heads, pentagrams).

True, it's not "based" on a religion the way the Bible Games and Super 3D Noah's Ark are, but IMHO the fact that it uses Christian symbolism (at least a certain subset of it) is enough to set it apart from something more abstract.

[Jodwin]

Duuuude, Doom was so originally based on Buddhism. Don't believe it? Then tell me why was there a Buddhist temple in the original E1M4!

[Maes]

So we're actually fighting Buddhist daemons in Doom? Makes sense, because of their continuous respawning...reincarnation?

[WillWater87]

Maes said:

Explain the inverted crosses, then. They are a symbol of evil only for Christianity, as is most of the rest of the symbolism in the game (goat heads, pentagrams).

True, it's not "based" on a religion the way the Bible Games and Super 3D Noah's Ark are, but IMHO the fact that it uses Christian symbolism (at least a certain subset of it) is enough to set it apart from something more abstract.

If it was religious, then the game would be doing religious things (i.e. Pray to god/satan, believe in jesus or Mohammed, etc.) instead of just killing monsters all the time.

[Maes]

tubers93 said:

If it was religious, then the game would be doing religious things (i.e. Pray to god/satan, believe in jesus or Mohammed, etc.) instead of just killing monsters all the time.

There's already Bible Games for that, and it sucked :-p

IMHO a game influenced by religion != a game about religion.

If you view religion just as a mass culture phenomenon, you can fit way more games and movies in the first definition, while the second one is more stringent.

E.g. The Ninth Gate and The Da Vinci code would both be movies influenced by mainstream religious themes (hell, apocalypse, Christ, the Vatican, the Antichrist etc.) while something like The Passion of Christ and Quo Vadis or all these Bible-historical films that get aired during the Holy Week would fit the second definition.

I don't know if there are films/movies where all they show is just people praying, but there sure are "educational" videos about Christian morals and the such, those would too classify in the second category, although on a very boring/specialized corner.

[DooMAD]

Yay for custom title.

[Kyka]

tubers93 said:

If it was religious, then the game would be doing religious things (i.e. Pray to god/satan, believe in jesus or Mohammed, etc.) instead of just killing monsters all the time.

But if Doom is a religion, then killing monsters is doing religious things.

[Gez]

"Thou shalt strive to kill all monsters"
"Thou shalt strive to find all secrets"
"Thou shalt strive to pick up all items"
"Thou shalt strive to do all that under the par time"
"And never shalt thou stay for one hour or longer in the same place, lest thou be branded sucks"

[GreyGhost]

John Romero - patron saint of deathmatchers.

[Use]

doom

[40oz]

doom

[Fulgrim]

They used hell as a base due to the fear associated with it. Much like horror movies use haunted houses to inspire a feeling of fear. Its just a setting for the game.

I bet they did it to also add a lot of originality to the game. Even at the time there where a crap loads of games set in haunted houses and even space stations. Setting a game in hell was a new concept back then.

IMO you guys are looking to deep into this.

[myk]

Satyr000 said:
IMO you guys are looking to deep into this.

If we were all like that we wouldn't have discovered a ton of details about the game. To me, aside from obviously playing and modifying the game, examining the game's bits and pieces, both technical and design-related, is part of the hobby. It comes easier the more knowledge one has of the part of the game and any references being examined, of course.

More importantly, our faith requires us to interpret the holy game, so as to find the red light of DOOM. Beware of blasphemous thoughts, for you will be judged by the Romero head!