The Doom Patrol discovers that a previous incarnation of the team (which actually uses the name) existed. This inspires them to track down a school for gifted youngsters to find three heroes from decades past.
Tropes for this episode include:
- Accidental Murder: A studio producer is killed by Rita melting on him and suffocating him.
- Ambiguously Evil: It's left up in the air by the show whether the Chief's actions were this or not.
- Asshole Victim: A studio secretary helps Rita cover up her Accidental Murder. While it's unclear what the secretary thought was really going on, she states the man was scum.
- Broken Pedestal:
- Jane develops this for the Chief when she discovers that he was going to send her to the Doom Patrol's school which is a Lotus-Eater Machine.
- Mento develops this for Rita as he discovers her Dark Secret.
- Casting Couch: Rita is willing to have sex with the producers in exchange for getting back into movies.
- Dark and Troubled Past: The original Doom Patrol's caretaker Joshua has not aged in decades if Larry recognizing him from his test pilot days is any indication. Joshua is also willing to to look after three broken heroes alone by himself for decades. Also if the illusion of Chief is any indication he has committed terrible things in the past and is trying to make up for it.
- Dark Secret: Rita apparently has multiple ones but "Mary Beth" is the one she regrets the most. The audience doesn't find out who this was or how it relates to her other secrets.
- Despair Event Horizon: The original Doom Patrol's defeat at the hands of Mr Nobody was both brutal and devastating. He turned them against each other by driving them insane with their worst fears, destroying them on an emotional and mental level that left them broken for decades. So much so, that they spend the rest of their days taking comfort in an shared illusion.
- Devoured by the Horde: When the police tries to stop Mr. Nobody's jukebox, the jukebox turned the police into piñatas and the people in the area tore apart the piñata polices and ate all the candy inside them.
- Glamour: All of the original Doom Patrol members are geriatric and insane, believing themselves to be young and heroic thanks to Mento's mind-tampering.
- Incessant Music Madness: Weaponized by Mister Nobody, who put a jukebox that plays "Hot Diggity" (and only that) on repeat until everybody within earshot went completely insane, a process that took at most twenty minutes.
- Kick the Dog: Mister Nobody is revealed to have done a fairly horrible series of terrorist attacks that verge on
Crazy Is Cool. He drove an entire park full of people insane with "Hot Diggity", a buttocks-shaped balloon, and turning cops into pinatas that were subsequently eaten by the mob. - Let Them Die Happy: This is the Chief's motivation for dealing with the original Doom Patrol. The thing is that they live decades thereafter in an illusion.
- The present day Doom Patrol decides to leave the original to their dream.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: The entire Doom Patrol school is an illusion created by Mento with his powers. It allows the three to live happy lives with nonexistent students. They're all nonfunctional outside of their illusion and have become old and sickly.
- Mythology Gag:
- The X-Men parallels with Steve Dayton is similar to how in the comics, after Mento went mad, he formed a team of villains consisting of pastiches of the X-Men.
- Among the trophies in Steve Dayton's collection are Ultimax/The Brain's robotic jar and Garguax's robe and crown. Both are members of the Brotherhood of Evil, with the former being the leader.
- The original Doom Patrol's fight with Mr. Nobody is a reference to issue #96 of the first Doom Patrol run which also involved a jukebox and a large number of people going insane.
- Rita Farr and Steve Dayton's relationship fell apart because Steve used the Mento helmet to read Rita's mind without her consent, which was also a significant factor of their break-up in Keith Giffen's run.
- Power Incontinence: Mr. Nobody's attack on the original Doom Patrol incurred severe psychological damage on each of them, and they now have trouble controlling their powers. Even under heavy medication they do stuff like sleep in a huge block of ice that is on fire.
- Psychic Powers: Mento possessed these naturally and enhanced them with his helmet.
- Spotting the Thread: The gang realize that Celsius's account of the Doom Patrol's battle with Mister Nobody makes no sense because she says the Chief led the charge, and he has no superpowers.
