Nightmare Fuel / Doomsday Clock

• The entirety of the first issue and the premise of the comic as a whole. It starts off Rorschach's journal being publicised by the news press which brought back tensions between the United States and Russia. However, this time the whole world is definitely on the brink of annihilation with Russia invading Poland and North Korea possessing missiles that can reach Texas. Ozymandias is now branded a fugitive and is a subject to a manhunt from both the United States and Russia, widespread chaos is evident as one reporter claimed that there was a shootout in the White House, and there is no sign of Nite Owl & Silk Spectre anywhere. Overall, his so-called 'peace' had just lasted for seven years.
  • The DC Universe is no better, as there are protests against the 'Supermen Theory' which crippled the reputation of Batman and the other DC superheroes (sans Superman) and that there is a second Cold War brewing where each country/continent has their own metahuman team.
• The Mime and brutal ways he kills his enemies. Even the new Rorschach is freaked out by him. Worse, it's strongly hinted that he's the Watchmen universe's equivalent of the Joker.
  • Then there's The Comedian, who is The Dreaded to Mime and Marionette, and he's just as ruthless as he is in the original Watchmen.
• New York's destruction.
  Civilian: Look! Up in the sky! Is that a plane?
• Several people managed to survive exposure to Veidt's psychic monster... many of them clearly wish they hadn't.
• When Reggie first meets Dr. Mason, he has a hallucination of the Squid's eye appearing in the center of his forehead.
• Marionette's first murders - the two cops who were shaking her father down for protection money. The first man gets his throat slit with a pair of scissors, the latter strangled with her father's puppet strings. Mind you, she was a grade-school-aged child when she killed those guys.
• Issue #6 highlights how the villain community of the DC Universe are terrified about the prospect of the Superman theory/Metahuman crisis, with one case where the Suicide Squad was sent to terminate Black Adam in Kahndaq but failed with Captain Boomerang being left as a sole survivor, and another being Green Lantern's enemies fleeing the planet.
• The Reveal of how Dr. Manhattan changed the DCU and caused all of this: he went back in time and stopped the Justice Society from existing. We’re explicitly shown how he manipulates events to ensure Alan Scott died in a train wreck without ever becoming Green Lantern, with the implication that he did similar things to Johnny Thunder and all the other Society members. And his reason for it? Just to see if he could.
• The horrifying implications of the fact that Dr. Manhattan’s future vision only goes up to a certain point - him and Superman fighting while the world explodes around them. Then it just stops. So either Superman kills Dr. Manhattan... or Dr. Manhattan kills everything. Mitigated by the fact Bubastis II blocks his temporal vision, according to Ozymandias, meaning he simply can't see. The rage on Superman's face, however...
  Dr. Manhattan: "His eyes burn with anger as he throws his fist forward. Then I see nothing. And I wonder...One month from now...Does Superman destroy Me? Or do I destroy Everything?"
• "Adrian does not have cancer."
• When Firestorm is attempting to revert a boy back to normal from glass, his strain briefly replaces half of his face with a skull, making him look a hell of a lot like his Evil Counterpart Deathstorm.
• The aftermath of Dr. Manhattan murdering Alan Scott reaches far, far into the future when it's implied it tainted the time stream so badly it stopped the Legion of Super-Heroes from coming into existence. The beginning of issue 9 has Manhattan holding a bloody Legion flight ring in his hands, which apparently belonged to Ferro Lad. The ring got tossed back in time when Ferro Lad sacrificed himself to destroy the Sun Eater. But the moment Manhattan thinks about how he killed Alan Scott and stopped him from becoming Green Lantern, he looks back at his hand and the ring is gone because it never existed.
  • There are larger implications around this that only make this scene look worse. Since the New 52, there've been several different versions of the Legion of Super-Heroes appearing in the present day DCU. But each of their appearances have been incredibly erratic and inconsistent, from the "Legion Lost" team stranded in the present, the Adult Legion in Action Comics, the Legion of the New 52 ongoing series, the amalgamated team in Justice League United, the two evil versions from Superboy and Justice League 3001, and the version Saturn Girl hails from. Manhattan's casual mutilation of the DCU's timeline has seemingly destroyed whatever true future there is for this version of the universe, and the true reason why the Legion's appearance has been so off kilter is the timelines they come from are constantly being destroyed thanks to instability of the present. Saturn Girl fades away the moment she admits Superman doesn't remember her. That was all it took to erase her. Even the previous Legions before Flashpoint changed everything were more substantial, and Manhattan's carelessness destroyed that.
    • Coming off that, there is the knowledge that a new Legion was once again born from Manhattan's meddling and that they have absolutely nothing to do with Superman. There's this idea that Superman unwittingly forgave the being that was responsible for destroying his childhood friends.
• The Reveal towards the end of issue 9: The Superman Theory is completely true, though not nearly as far-reaching as claimed. Firestorm, Metamorpho, Man-Bat, the Creeper, Typhoon and an unknown number of other superheroes and villains are the result of the DEO purposefully causing or engineering the “accidents” that activated their Metagenes, either to study the effects or to create deniable, superpowered agents. Firestorm in particular was created as a way of getting a DEO mole into the Justice League; Martin Stein works for them, and deliberately started the accident that caused him and Robbie to be fused together.
• Dr. Manhattan effortlessly curb-stomping almost the entire Justice League, plus the Titans, Doom Patrol, Metal Men, and Marvel Family, all at the same time. No doubt about it; Manhattan may very well be the single greatest threat the League has ever faced thus far.
  • The way Manhattan just casually breaks Guy Gardner’s ring to bits. And this happens after Manhattan claims his powers don’t work as well on Lantern tech because of their emotion-based nature. Green Lanterns have a degree of immunity to his powers and it still doesn’t do much to help.
  • At the start of the “battle” (if you can even call it one), the magic heroes hit Manhattan with a bunch of spells. At first this seems like the right move, as there’s no magic in the Watchmen-verse, so Manhattan can’t defend against it right? Wrong. It takes him a moment, but he quickly analyzes their magic and how it’s a fundamental force in the DCU, and since it’s a fundamental force he can manipulate just as easily as any other. He promptly demonstrates by casting a massively powerful spell that sends most of the heroes flying. So not only did the League fail to even put a dent in Dr. Manhattan, they made him even stronger.
• While almost all of the other heroes are heading to Mars to confront Dr. Manhattan, Wonder Woman stays behind to speak to the UN and try to quell tensions. She doesn’t get very far into her speech before Black Adam and his army of Super Supremacists smash their way in to attack the UN and announce their stance against humanity. And with most everybody else in space and Superman in a coma, the only ones left to stop them are a woefully outnumbered Wonder Woman and Batman. Things have, to put it bluntly, gone to shit.
• As made clear from his issues, Issue #10 Dr. Manhattan has shown himself literally changing and warping all of the DC Universe's timelines and the Multiverse simply to make it into, as he calls it, a Metaverse, due to his curiosity about Superman being connected to it all. The result leads to, as stated above, causing the death of Alan Scott and several others, including frickin' Ma and Pa Kent, just so Superman can become detached from humanity.
• Issue #11 shows how the world went From Bad to Worse ever since Dr. Manhattan's Curb-Stomp Battle against the DC Heroes and Ozymandias' scheme being pulled in Moscow. It shows Batman being desperate in halting the inevitable loom of World War 3 by trying to stop the government soldiers about to set the nukes off before being tackled by the National Guard, while Wonder Woman is desperately fighting against Black Adam's army at the UN conference before being whisked away by Thermiscyran forces after getting overwhelmed. Oh, and the mistrust against the metahumans became much worse now that Ozymandias leaked the Supermen theory in order to further lose faith amongst the general public to which Gotham and Metropolis have now became hotbeds for widescale riots, with reports highlighting how the reputation of metahumans and superheroes alike is completely shattered.
  Reporter: ...Suspected arson in the burning of the Flash Museum and the metahuman-themed restaurant chain across from it...
  • Saturn Girl being erased from history when she answers Ozymandias's question whether or not Superman knows her, with a simple yet evidently shocked "no".
  Saturn Girl: Long Live...
  Ozymandias: Our Worlds.
  • The final page shows Superman and Dr. Manhattan meeting face to face, with Supes' giving out the Death Glare towards the (near) omnipotent being while Ozymandias declares that "it's time" somewhere as the whole DC existence reaches its climax.
    • Worse, the Doomsday Clock is within a minute away till midnight. It's safe to say that everything ends in both the DC and Watchmen Universes (Unless Ozymandias "saves" them both somehow). Oh, and the last panel showing the Doomsday Clock one minute away till midnight is not actually blood, but Superman's cape draping over it.
• Issue #12: Every metahuman team has converged in Washington D.C to fight against/alongside Superman, now that the metahuman crisis has reached the apex of this new Cold War in the DC world.
  • The fact that Doctor Manhattan being so apathetic throughout the metahuman fight is somewhat unnerving, despite having the power to just simply wipe them all out in a whim but chooses not to do so.
  • And of course, the prophecy that Doctor Manhattan envisioned with Superman, the former so seething with rage when Doctor Manhattan reveals that he was the one changing his life, and being resigned to the fate of either Superman killing him or Doctor Manhattan destroying everything in history. Luckily, it was neither of the two.
  • When Doctor Manhattan gets his hope back after being reminded of Superman of who he was before along with his relationship with Janey Slater, he takes all of his power to Retcon the entire DC history all over again, and despite being a Moment of Awesome in DC comics, it eerily shows Superman looking like he's being disintegrated◊ while other DC/Watchmen Characters looking horrified◊ at what Doctor Manhattan is currently doing.
  Doctor Manhattan: "I understand now. Everything ends."