Things about DOOM you used to believe

To mods:

I couldn't find a thread specifically like this, so here's one! Post any myths and misconceptions about DOOM that you used to believe in the past here - the more ridiculous, and the longer you used to believe them, the better. :)

I'll start - for some inscrutable reason, for my entire playthrough of base-game DOOM 1 and 2, I firmly used to believe that hitscan attacks (including melee which I thought of as essentially short-range hitscan) deal more damage the closer to the target's "center" they hit. Since DOOM has no vertical aiming, I thought this was a stand-in for a "headshot" mechanic, and notably used it to explain the RNG in Berserk punches! Not sure when exactly I found out the truth but I sure felt betrayed when I realized all that extra careful aiming I did was for nothing :P

Speaking of Berserk, it wasn't until I was listening to Sandy Petersen talking to Dwars and decino that I realized that Berserk doesn't actually end until the level does. For wider context I'd start at like 13:30, but the specific comment is at roughly 14:52.

edit: I was watching the chat replay this time, and what I'm getting from the conversation is that technically Berserk is still a timed powerup, but you'd have to spend like three years in a level before it would wear off.

I used to believe that hitscanners (Before I knew what a hitscan was) could be dodgable. Oh well.

I'm not sure to this day what actually happened, and I don't suppose I ever will be, but one of the first times I ever seriously played Doom, it was the GBA version in an emulator, and when I encountered my very first cacodemon, something seemed to go wrong with my controls for a few seconds, and at the time I figured "so that's why the cacodemon is so legendary. It has an infamous attack where I guess it paralyzes the player with fear or something."

I also somehow thought the berserk affected the damage of every weapon, despite most if not all of what I knew about it coming from the comic where the marine clearly favors his fists while it's active. Every time it automatically switched me to the fist, I'd switch back, because I wanted to do enhanced damage with a more practical weapon.

I used to think that Berserk only lasted until the red tint went away.

Dunno when I learnt about leaky rad suits but it was definitely long after I first played. Used to think the occasional random damage was because of a hitscanner pinging me from somewhere.

Berserk pack lasted only when the red screen went away.  There is another sound when you die, in DOOM 2.  I used to think that was a mod added in ZDOOM port.

When I was really little and hadn't played Doom myself, but I watched my dad play it occasionally, I was under the assumption that the game never paused when you went to the menu (it does do this in multiplayer, but I only ever saw him playing single player). I must've seen the demo loop while the menu was active, and assumed it was real gameplay that didn't pause. The idea that even pausing the game wouldn't keep you safe from enemies coming towards you was the subject of at least a few childhood nightmares.

When I first played DOOM, I believed that not only was the Berserk Pack only temporary, but so was the Chainsaw. I suspect that I probably switched back to the fist somewhere in E1M2 by mistake, and didn't realise that was how you got to the Chainsaw in the first place.

If you killed all of the enemies in the final room of E1M8 before you died, you wouldn't die and got a better ending.

Splash damage worked on every monster

There were more new weapons in Doom 2 than just the Super Shotgun, but I could never find them

The plots of TNT and Plutonia were canon

All of the atmosphere in all of the levels was toxic, and when you died it wasn't because of damage from enemies, but because the damage broke your suit and you breathed it in (that's why Doomguy holds his throat like he's choking when he dies)

E3M2 was the literal hand of the full, unseen Icon of Sin demon.

That structure in the background of the ending scene with Daisy's head on a spike was actually some kind of giant pyramid

The partial invisibility actually made you invisible to monsters, but they could still hear you which is why they shot at you

You had to play through all of the secret levels in order to actually 'complete' a WAD (before I saw that speedrunners usually just skipped them)

The Spider Mastermind was literally the mother of the Arachnotrons

The giant skull in the E3 intermission screen was literally the skull of a giant demon/creature

The BFG could kill a Cyberdemon in one shot if you were lucky enough

Archviles could resurrect the player, but that almost never happened

i used to think that rockets worked on the mastermind

I remember when Quake came out, I thought Doom would be forgotten. And I certainly didn't think people would be playing Doom 30 years after its release. I didn't even think I'd be doing that. I underestimated the game's appeal. 

And here's another misconception I had. I thought that aliens were taking over the Phobos base when I first played Doom. I was a naive 13 year old when I really got into it (starting with shareware), and without a religious background, I had very little knowledge of the mythology represented in Doom. As I got to know the game better, I figured out it was the forces of hell invading, not space aliens.

And yet another one comes to mind. When I first played Doom as a 12 year old, the episode 1 sky made me think the game took place in South America, not a moon of Mars.

That if you lean against a wall, projectiles like revenant's will deal less damage, and the irony is that I came up with this theory because of exactly that being the case most times. It was before I found out about RNG. 

here is a dumb one: I ended up with the official prima Doom 2 guide for Doom 2, before I even played it fully. In the monster section, it had a list of every monster and how many shots of each weapon would kill them. Not only did I believe this was set in stone, ie a cyberdemon would *always* die in 4 BFG shots, but the Arch-Vile had "-" for every single weapon type; thus I believed it was an unkillable horror that you had to run away from as it resurrected things you'd killed.

The same guide also mentioned killing archviles, so I was very confused. I was around 10 years old or so.

On 4/21/2024 at 8:18 PM, Captain POLAND said:

If you killed all of the enemies in the final room of E1M8 before you died, you wouldn't die and got a better ending.

 

Splash damage worked on every monster

 

There were more new weapons in Doom 2 than just the Super Shotgun, but I could never find them

 

The plots of TNT and Plutonia were canon

 

All of the atmosphere in all of the levels was toxic, and when you died it wasn't because of damage from enemies, but because the damage broke your suit and you breathed it in (that's why Doomguy holds his throat like he's choking when he dies)

 

E3M2 was the literal hand of the full, unseen Icon of Sin demon.

 

That structure in the background of the ending scene with Daisy's head on a spike was actually some kind of giant pyramid

 

The partial invisibility actually made you invisible to monsters, but they could still hear you which is why they shot at you

 

You had to play through all of the secret levels in order to actually 'complete' a WAD (before I saw that speedrunners usually just skipped them)

 

The Spider Mastermind was literally the mother of the Arachnotrons

 

The giant skull in the E3 intermission screen was literally the skull of a giant demon/creature

 

The BFG could kill a Cyberdemon in one shot if you were lucky enough

 

Archviles could resurrect the player, but that almost never happened

 

I thought that you can get a better ending too, but I was like "devs are probably trolling and you should beat game on nightmare to get a better ending"

Ive always seen the ending of E1M8 to be noncanon 'buy the game to find out what happens!' suspense nonsense, its not present in most other versions. Always thought the 'full registered' version would remove the death room and just change the exit teleporter into a real one, like how said ports do it. 'You died and went to hell' just doesn't work, when you canonically then do E2, E3, Doom 2, NRFTL and Doom 64.

5 hours ago, Devalaous said:

[...] 'You died and went to hell' just doesn't work, when you canonically then do E2, E3, Doom 2, NRFTL and Doom 64. 

Agree. Also because if this was the case, in Doom II wouldn't Doomguy just shoot himself in the head after rescuing Earth's survivors so he could go to Hell faster than by going all the way across the city?

I used to believe that Doom had room over room, but after doing some research on the engine, I discovered the horrible truth......

Not about the original games, but something about user made levels: i was pretty sure there was a very strong connection (that one was a big form of inspiration of the other) with this 1994 mod and the same named Raven software game from 2001

some time ago, i used to think that doom was keyboard only when it first got released, but now its obvious just looking through the setup file that comes with the dos version that it was in there since release