- They may not watch it in their spare time, but they'd probably subscribe in case the resident supervillain of LA decides to announce on his blog exactly when and where he's going to attack.
- If Hammer doesn't consider Horrible his nemesis, then why does he say/sing in his speech "Everyone's got villains they must face. They're not as cool as mine"...?
- Because there's a whole Evil League of Evil for him to battle, full of villains way more sinister than Dr. Horrible (at least, at the time).
- Read the comic, the Fraternity gave the impression of hating superheroes way more than any DC or Marvel villain ever has hated superheroes. If this WMG is true, then we might get why they'd hate them so much. If all superheroes were such assholes, it'd be reasonable to turn into a villain.
- That would explain why at the end the whole thing flashes back to him sitting forlornly in front of his webcam. I choose to believe that the whole plot happens, but without the superpowers- he's just a regular guy whose love interest hooks up with his nemesis. In his imagination it's cooler.
- And is then murdered by her abusive boyfriend, rather than accidentally killed by an exploding death ray? Actually, a drunk driving accident would be a better parallel in that case...
- The ending is already cruel enough without dragging Hell into it.
- This theory helps explain how Billy "survived" the explosion that hurt Made of Iron Captain Hammer and killed Penny from across the room without damaging his coat or doing anything else to anyone else. Captain Hammer is a mewling wimp; Dr. Horrible has been inducted into the Evil League of Evil, and he cannot enjoy a moment of it because he's too distraught over Penny's death to gloat.
- The explosion happened by Hammer's side of the ray, knocking him back. Since he was still holding onto the death ray when he shot it, it flew back with him as some shards exploded across the room (more or less horizontally to the ray), and Billy was "lucky" enough to be under the range of flying shrapnel and exploding ray, as were the hiding innocent bystanders.
- Maybe Hammer died in the explosion too and they're now sharing the same damnation. Billy loses Penny and Hammer becomes a snivelling mama's boy.
- Wait, they'd ask him to kill someone, but then they wouldn't let him in because he... killed someone? Even Evil Has Standards, but why that standard?
- Point. But then, maybe Penny's death has led to him becoming introverted and ever-so-slightly crazy and delusional. It wouldn't exactly be conducive to good villainy to have a member of your elite group mumbling to himself and doing nothing but sing in morbid tones about the death of Penny. Perhaps Penny's death damaged him that much mentally that he became unhireable. Overly-long and elaborate explanation/new part of theory thought up this minute complete.
- Then again 'introverted and ever-so-slightly crazy' is kind of what you want in a mad scientist...
- Alternatively, the League rejects him because he didn't kill anyone. Captain Hammer fired a malfunctioning death ray despite Billy's warning and accidentally killed Penny. Billy is responsible for that, in a sense, but it's not enough for the League.
- True, but it was Dr. Horrible's death ray either way, so he was at least partially culpable for Penny's death. Plus, he ruined Captain Hammer's reputation and crushed his ego, leading to months of therapy: a social and mental "kill", in a manner of speaking.
- Also, it seems possible that he suffers from multiple personalities: both Dr. Horrible and Billy Buddy refer to each other by name as if they were separate entities, especially at the end of Slipping: "Head up Billy Buddy there's no time for mercy". The final verse of Everything You Ever gives a similar idea: "And now the nightmare is real/Now Dr. Horrible is here".
- In fact, "Everything You Ever" sounds an awful lot like Dr. Horrible is singing it to Billy.
- "My victory's complete..." — Emphasis on the "my." Doc has accomplished his goal, while Billy is indirectly, if not directly, responsible for his love's death.
- "And I am fine" may be Doc professing to Billy that while Billy might have the "softer" emotions, Horrible doesn't.
- "So you think... we all have a choice"— Billy thought he could change the world, but Horrible is not so naive.
- "So hail to the king"— Doc is now the ruler of Billy's mind.
- Um, wasn't Billy vs. Horrible the main theme of the movie? They diverge around the end of Act II.
- The two personalities were the same until Billy was taunted by Hammer near the end of Act II, when he became very evil. Then you can see at the end of Act III how Billy is almost completely dead when he finally puts on his goggles, and with the new red-and-evil suit, and how Billy, rather than Dr. Horrible, gives the last word on the blog.
- It starts off as Dr. Horrible being purely an alias for Billy (so Billy's mind is 90% him, 10% Dr. Horrible); as time goes on, Dr. Horrible manifests himself more and more. Brand New Day was a key turning point, as the two sides of Billy agree with each other: Captain Hammer must die! It also showed Billy throwing away one of his previous qualms (about murder), or rather, Dr. Horrible did it for him (so Billy's mind was approximately 50/50). By the end of Slipping, it's clear that Dr. Horrible is in control, with Billy's nervousness holding him back slightly (25% Billy, 75% Dr. Horrible). Finally, in Everything You Ever, the first 4 lines ("Here lies everything/A world I wanted at my feet/My victory is complete/So hail to the king") are symbolic of Billy's grief about Penny's death and his anger towards Dr. Horrible (who he holds responsible). However, his next line ("Arise and sing!") is symbolic of his surrender to Dr. Horrible: he knows that there is no redemption for him now, and gives in to his Dr. Horrible persona completely. However, it is also one final command to Dr. Horrible: arise and be all that Billy wanted to be, and more! The rest of the song is Dr. Horrible making his declaration of evil, and a slight explanation of Billy's view of him taking over completely: "And now the nightmare is real/Now Dr. Horrible is here" (Billy, or rather, Dr. Horrible's mind is now 90% Dr. Horrible and 10% Billy). Billy gets the last word of the song, but the room he's in is metaphorical: we see Billy, shell shocked and trapped in his room, but the room is in his, now Dr. Horrible's, mind, having retreated into himself due to his grief.
- One of the key pieces of symbolism for this is who's doing the blog posting. In the beginning it's Doctor Horrible's blog and he sits behind the webcam making evil plans and glowering at Captain Hammer but his progress is always hampered by the fact that Billy is the one who operates in the real world and despite wearing Dr Horrible's suit to try and attempting to merge these sides of his personality, Billy being the dominant personality always ends up holding back and being unable to fully carry out the plans his darker, more eccentric personality concocts. However, after the turning point of Brand New Day and subsequently Penny's death, the very last words of the blog are up to Billy, sitting in front of his webcam in a plain hoodie completely repressed and powerless while a red suited Dr Horrible has turned the tables and become a very REAL supervillain.
- A simpler possible explanation along these lines: The Evil League of Evil offered membership to Billy, but he rejected it out of guilt and now spends his time sitting in his room entertaining delusions about what would have been.
- Dr Horrible is just a facade; after what he's done, he's got nothing to lose. He's going to rule and change the world, but not in a utopian way like he implied during his first discussion with Penny; it's going to be a nightmare. But Billy is still here; and he's terribly shocked at what he's done, although he doesn't show it to anyone. He's trapped inside Dr Horrible, and he can't show his grief or he won't even have the League.
- Semi-confirmed by Word of God at the 2008 Comic-con: "Dr. Horrible got what he wanted and Billy lost everything."
- Not only that, but you could see Billy fighting Horrible during "Slipping" and the showstopper in the middle. The line "Hammer, meet nail"? It sounds like Horrible gloating that Hammer has met his match. But what is a hammer's job except to pound a nail into line so that everything doesn't fall apart?
- He's really bad with analogies? "The fish rots from the head, so why not cut off the head?"
- It might be interpreted to be "Hammer, meet nail!" This would imply Dr. Horrible gloating that Hammer has been reduced to helplessness. However, this still holds up under the correct lyrics; Horrible is bragging that - as the nail - he has met the Hammer in combat and succeeded.
- It could be that he's saying "Hammer, meet nail!" as a way of showing Captain Hammer what the metaphorical nail looks like after it's been pounded too much: It snaps.
- Or, since hammers drive nails, he could be saying that Hammer is what really pushed him to be evil.
- Alternatively, this is the story of Billy Becoming the Mask. Rather than a multiple personality, Dr. Horrible was originally just a character he was playing. To create the kind of social change he desired, he needed a supervillain to make people wake up and let go of their obedient apathy — notice that as Dr. Horrible, on his blog, he ends his talk about what's wrong with the world with "I just need to rule it" almost tacked on as an afterthought. Billy wants to change the world, but this "Dr. Horrible" character is supposed to be a supervillain, so obviously he should want to rule it. Later, Billy realises that this made-up reasoning is starting to make a lot of sense and that his goals and Dr. Horrible's goals overlap, which (judging by the lyrics of "On The Rise") worries him; that's when he stops playing Dr. Horrible and starts being Dr. Horrible.
- I don't think he was completely sane to begin with; the way he just so matter-of-factly says the world needs him to rule it is a little frightening. Still, there's something to the Becoming the Mask theory. If the heroes in Billy's world are like Captain Hammer, it's no wonder he can't see himself as one and instead envisions himself as a villain. It definitely seems like he's just playing the Designated Villain to begin with. When he gets angry he starts to act like a real villain which he doesn't seem to be completely comfortable with. He's pretty much psyching himself up/reassuring himself when he sings, "It's gonna be bloody/Head up Billy-buddy/There's no time for mercy/Here goes no mercy!
- "Ludicrous, even by supervillain-story standards"? No, "time-honored tropes". There are more ridiculous things in Superman comics, and as you said, it heightens the drama. Superhero comics are full of cheap heightened drama and convenient coincidences. If hero and villain never met, we'd have no story.
- As for the car throw at the head bit, he said Hammer threw a car at his head; he never claimed that the car hit him. Maybe he dodged and stumbled and, you know, bruised his cheek. Also, the whole stunt falls squarely into the realm of Amusing Injuries and Rule of Funny.
- Perhaps Dr. Horrible genetically altered himself to have super-resistance to strong blows, which explains how he's survived all of Hammer's punches.
- Dr. Horrible used the Freeze Ray on the car. Billy's comment about the Freeze Ray taking a few moments to warm up paints a picture of Dr. Horrible cackling, aiming at Captain Hammer, and firing... only for it to produce a buzzing sound long enough for Hammer to throw a car at Horrible, whose ray finally fires, saving him barely... Budgetary constraints, you know.
- Or Captain Hammer couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. With or without a car.
- But he DID hit the broad side of a Penny.
- As for Hammer appearing out of nowhere when Horrible was trying to steal the can with the Wonderflonium, it makes perfect sense: As Dr. Horrible finds out later, Captain Hammer had been viewing Horrible's video blog. We know that he had been blogging about the freeze ray; it's possible that he also mentioned he needed Wonderflonium to power it. Captain Hammer only had to lie in wait to catch him red-handed. It's also possible that the courier van with the Wonderflonium was set up as bait for any aspiring villain in the city, which would explain the lacking security measures; everyone expected Captain Hammer to stop the bad guys.
- And why Hammer entered the laundromat just when Billy was trying to leave: Penny told Billy that she had told Hammer about her "laundry buddy," and Hammer had expressed a desire to meet him. Given that Horrible had also blogged about Penny extensively (even if he didn't mention or know her name, he may have described her), and that Dr. Horrible was concerned about Penny nearly being run over by the van, it wasn't hard to see the connection. Hammer therefore likely already knew that Billy was Horrible before he even opened his mouth. Just look at him smirk.
- Billy says 'inadvertantly introduced my arch-nemesis to the girl of my dreams' in his blog just prior to the Bridge Dedication, so it's safe to assume that Captain Hammer knew exactly what Penny was to Billy, anyway.
- And, um, wasn't Horrible purposefully waiting until Hammer's song was almost done to use his Freeze Ray? He didn't burst in at an opportune moment, he was hiding under the sheet!
- He was waiting for the freeze ray to charge.
- How is this different from taking the writers of Dr. Horrible, turning them into one conglomerate character, and criticizing the Blog— which is fine to do, but since most/all of us here are Horrible fans, you can pretty much see the reaction above?
- Unless Redemption Equals Death - but even in that case, at least the world in general is better off...
- ...or Hammer would start brutally beating up Dr. Horrible, and Penny would pick up the death ray and point it at Hammer and tell him "Get lost! Leave us alone" and walk out with Billy. But Joss Whedon never does Happy Endings, and Dr. Horrible wouldn't have acquired the aura of tragedy that every good villain or Anti-Hero needs.
- Oh, Hammer is definitely responsible. Think about it. Compare Captain Hammer's track record of blithely inflicting bodily harm on people and emotionally torturing Billy, and Hammer's fascist leanings in the comic ("report the freaks to the police"), with Dr. Horrible's deeds. What evil deeds exactly has Horrible committed? His list of crimes comes up as.... theft of gold bars and wonderflonium (it wasn't even a robbery or breaking-and-entering!), and negligible property damage to the ceiling of a public hall. All of Horrible's weapons prior to the death ray were nonlethal. Hell, they were less lethal than a tazer gun! A freeze ray (stops time), a stun ray, and a gun that was supposed to weaken Hammer's muscles (in the comic) but malfunctioned. So we have two cases of pointing (but not firing) nonlethal weapons at a guy who is invulnerable, one case of pointing a potentially lethal death ray at Hammer (but not firing), and one instance of shooting him with a weapon that simply put him in stasis. Horrible has never hurt a living thing; he abhorred killing. There's nothing there that would warrant a death sentence. Hammer, on the other hand, had no compunction about aiming the death ray at Horrible's head and pulling the trigger...
- This is related, but considering that Captain Hammer goes to Dr. Horrible's blog, he could have been the one to e-mail him asking who "she" was, and thus know exactly who to save.
- Sure, but Billy never said her name, did he? He doesn't say Penny during the Freeze Ray song.
- In Captain Hammer's defense, all he saw when he was unfrozen was Dr. Horrible, his arch-nemesis who had reason to kill him, pointing a ray gun at his head. As far as the good captain knew, he had saved himself just in time before being killed. And almost being killed tends to piss most people off.
- Point, but Hammer had already tried to kill Dr. Horrible at least once by throwing a car at his head — and in light of that, it's not unreasonable to suspect that he might have been about to kill Horrible even sooner, when he was choking him in front of the van, had Penny's arrival not distracted him.
- Captain Hammer seemed to enjoy tormenting Dr. Horrible too much to want to kill him, and only seemed ready to do so when Horrible finally started to pose a genuine threat. Granted, this doesn't make Hammer less of a jerkass.
- Additionally, while it's true that Captain Hammer threw a car at Horrible's head, it's also true that the car missed. Otherwise, Horrible would no longer have a head. It's possible Hammer deliberately missed the throw, and only threw it in the first place to scare him.
- Though there's evidence to suggest that Horrible himself can be hurt with contusions cuts and bruises, but not die from physical injuries. He doesn't die from the death ray exploding (hell he's not hurt even though something should have hit him) and he clearly has a bruise on his face from the incident with the car (it's on his left cheek), and he specifically says "again" right after in a tone that suggests Hammer regularly throws cars at him. That's what I've always kind of interpreted it as. He's Made of Iron in a way that's different from Captain Hammer (who never experiences injuries or pain).
- Another point - the death ray seemed to be working just fine until Captain Hammer became unfrozen. Dr. Horrible fired it into the air several times without blowing it up. The death ray only broke when Captain Hammer punched Dr. Horrible and made him drop it on the floor. Yet another way that Captain Hammer is responsible for the death of Penny.
- Before the death ray hit the floor, it worked just fine; afterward, the gun was sizzling and crawling with red energy discharges. You can hear and see it. When Hammer points the gun at Horrible, who is lying on the floor, you can see Horrible noticing that something is wrong only after he tilts his head and takes a closer look at the gun (he probably heard the sizzle). That's when his expression changes and he says urgently, "Don't...!" Hammer misinterprets that as "Please don't shoot me!" and cuts him off to gloat, when Horrible was trying to warn him, "Don't fire that, it's overloading!" Since Hammer was previously frozen and had not seen the death ray when it was not broken, he probably thought the red discharges were a feature of the gun.
- Hammer says "I don't have time for your warnings," almost as if he didn't care that the gun might not work right.
- Alternate addition: The gun wasn't broken. The gun merely bounced a bit. And what aren't we supposed to bounce?
- Wonderflonium, true. But Horrible said himself in Act I that the Wonderflonium was for his freeze ray, which remained untouched after powering down, and not his death ray. It just broke when it hit the ground (with the force of a guy who was born able to bench press 500 pounds, remember).
- But, at the time, he wasn't planning to make a death ray. It's quite possible he did use it in the death ray. But in the end it doesn't really matter does it?
- Before the death ray hit the floor, it worked just fine; afterward, the gun was sizzling and crawling with red energy discharges. You can hear and see it. When Hammer points the gun at Horrible, who is lying on the floor, you can see Horrible noticing that something is wrong only after he tilts his head and takes a closer look at the gun (he probably heard the sizzle). That's when his expression changes and he says urgently, "Don't...!" Hammer misinterprets that as "Please don't shoot me!" and cuts him off to gloat, when Horrible was trying to warn him, "Don't fire that, it's overloading!" Since Hammer was previously frozen and had not seen the death ray when it was not broken, he probably thought the red discharges were a feature of the gun.
- Why the hell does this make so much sense?
- Shrapnel flying fast enough to dig into the walls would probably leave a larger wound than the ones Penny had.
- Devil's advocate - maybe the walls were just really flimsy material? (It's a homeless shelter, who's going to notice and complain? And they got it fixed pretty fast; there could've been some corner-cutting.)
- Penny's petition at least partly involved taking over an existing building for use as a shelter, IIRC. So the building might be decrepit, but was probably built to code at one time.
- Shrapnel flying fast enough to dig into the walls would probably leave a larger wound than the ones Penny had.
- The fangirls would have to move fast. Weren't they panicking and hiding under chairs?
- "They killed Penny!" "Those bastards!"
- Seriously, we never saw her die. She could have just passed out or gone unconscious; we know that the media there isn't particularly reliable, either...
- One possibility is that the medics got to her in time and she will have to face a world where Dr. Horrible is known to be Billy.
- Commentary! The Musical has several actors and writers refer to her as dead, including Felicia Day herself, so it's not very likely...
- Maybe if he'd gotten to know her better, he might have decided they weren't compatible; that's beside the point now. Now that she's dead, she can go on being his ideal fantasy woman in his head without those annoying real personality traits getting in the way. If anything, he's less likely to get over her now that she's dead.
- Depth and nature of Billy's feelings for Penny aside, there's still the issue that he's at least partially responsible for the death of an innocent person. Even if the loneliness goes away, the guilt will probably linger.
- See, I interpret it differently. He was attracted to Penny because she represented real goodness in the world he was disillusioned with. His feelings for her were real. He scoffed at her "signatures" because of his cynicism, sure, but he wanted to believe in that kind of goodness. He knew what she was really like, but simply failed to give into the better nature that could embrace it. And he seemed to know, deep down, that taking over the world and doing evil deeds wouldn't really impress her, as evidenced by many of his his lines ("No sign of Penny, good I would give anything not to have her see"). Deep down he knew she wouldn't like what he was doing, and that the path he was taking would probably lead to him not getting the girl ("There's no happy ending, so they say, not for me anyway"). That was sort of the point. Had he not been selfish and let his pride and ambitions get in the way, he could have gotten the girl, he would have gotten the girl. The fact that the woman who represented the idealism he longed for died (and the idealism along with it) is not something that will be easy to overcome, especially since he was indirectly responsible. I imagine it will absolutely HAUNT him.
- Just a niggle - pretty sure he scoffed at the signatures because he wasn't paying attention. Had to say something to make it sound like he was listening, so he picked any old word to react coolly to. (And the same conversation shows that his idea of being cool is downplaying everything.)
- But how well could he have known her during the "signatures" conversation when he'd never spoken to her before (seen her from a distance, yes, but never actually talked to her).
- I thought he scoffed at the idea that she might actually believe a petition would sway the mayor's decision. Then he sees that she truly cares and is hurt thinking he scoffed at her because he doesn't care about the homeless.
- How about the fact that it's set in a place abiding by Comicbook Law? He survives a car being thrown at his head, he's defeated every time but never imprisoned, etc. Why can't "Penny is his true love" be one of those? You don't doubt Superman's love for Lois Lane, do you?
- My assumption was that he would watch her talk to other people in the laundromat- which is probably how he even learnt her name since it's clear he can't muster up the courage to speak to her to learn it himself. The first time they talk really is when she approaches him, since he's amazed she talked to him and she says she recognises him from the Coin Wash. The Freeze Ray/Laundry Day song suggests they've exchanged words ("Love your hair" "What?" "I love the, uh, air") but the first time she's paid attention to him properly is when she approached him about the signatures. Which I think he scoffed at because what's a signature going to do in a town full of people who he knows perfectly well don't care about the little people like Billy, Penny, and the homeless? I think it's even said that the homeless rates are "up" at some point.
- What you're saying with this theory is that everything after the beginning of Act II happened in Billy's head. Up until the very end of Act III, where Billy has given up on supervillainy, and being Dr. Horrible, after realizing just how badly things could go. Is this correct?
- To a "T".
- It makes more sense to draw the distinction right before he starts singing "Brand New Day" (which, itself being indisputably in his head, effectively means Act III was imagined. . . which is already all over this page).
- Does that make Captain Hammer the last surviving Ugliness Man?
- His start of darkness was from losing the Australian girl he liked to Kenny Hammerstein because of his own invention.
- Well, if you read the article, "start of darkness" is defined as "a Prequel where we find out how the main antagonist from the original story got to that point." Since Doctor Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog isn't a prequel, it therefore isn't a start of darkness in any case.
- There is a fanmade prequel called "Horrible Turn" which details a Start of Darkness
- This would mean that he's going to become Billy again in the sequel (it being his true self), possibly via a Morality Pet girl who seems like Penny as a child, a girl whom he desperately wants to ensure does not meet the same fate as Penny. He'll end up fighting not only the Evil League of Evil but Captain Hammer, whose need for therapy drove him to villainy in the frantic search for true invincibility (can't handle pain of any sort, physical or emotional). In the end, he makes a Heroic Sacrifice and thus achieves Redemption; his sacrifice empowers the girl to become a hero in her own right, and she becomes the lead of another strong-female-lead series.
- However, the Morality Pet girl could also watch Dr. Horrible make his noble sacrifice and blame society for forcing this turn of events, turn inward in a quest for answers, and stumble upon Dr. Horrible's original beliefs, thus spawning a new Dr. Horrible and starting the cycle anew. It mainly depends on whether you prefer European Linear storytelling or Asian Cyclical storytelling.
- Alternately, the crust is Doctor Horrible. The Billy shown in the final image is a last dribble of Billy left on the bottom crust, after the top crust and filling were scooped out and thrown away once the dead beetle of heartbreak was discovered. The original Doctor Horrible is the top crust, that Billy used to keep from seeming like a completely soft, overly sweet blob of emotion jelly, and the Darker and Edgier Doctor Horrible is the original, bottom crust, which supports the top crust and uses the filling to entice people to accept it, since the bottom crust may be uncomfortably crispier or even unpalatable compared to the lighter, slightly flaky top crust.
- (Original Poster) Great, now I want some pie.
- This theory doesn't work, unfortunately. "There's a third, even deeper level, and that one is the same as the top, surface one." If the third, even deeper level, namely Doctor Horrible, differed from the top, surface one, you would not have a pie at all, but a fruit flan. Additionally, the bottom layer of pie is delicious.
- Or Dr. Horrible is his surface layer, the one he presents to the world — A horrific villain. The second layer, the filling, is Billy, who is the sweet shy laundry guy. But the dirty layer below that is that Billy is just as horrible as Dr. Horrible is. He stalks Penny, lies to her, masquerades as her friend while hoping to become her lover and is... well, just generally terrible to her. Captain Hammer was a better person for her than Dr. Horrible was. (It is, to be fair, a low expectation.) Dr. Horrible is indeed as much the pie as Captain Hammer is. Both have a private side which is, in the end, as much a reflection of their twisted values as their public side.
- Pumpkin pies don't have a top layer that's the same as the bottom layer. And you know what's cheesy on the outside, and has a bottom layer that's different from the top layer and the filling? Quiche. I don't know what this says about Captain Hammer, though.
- Horrible has also made other beings more powerful. He made Moist into a water-based being who changes from solid to liquid form. Since then, Moist is no longer in the henchman's union and is a member of the Evil League of Evil.
- Captain Hammer will become scarred and cynical of the real world and, after going through major Character Development, he'll build giant mecha with rollerskates and TAKE OVER THE WORLD.
- I want to read this fanfic. (The Doctor Horrible vs. the Evil League of Evil one; not the Captain Hammer/Code Geass one.)
Now, whether he'll carry out the plan is anybody's guess.
- This would also explain Captain Hammer's distrust of "brainy" people if we assume that it's now common knowledge that the so-called "Smartest Man in the World" killed half of Manhattan in one fell swoop.
- Ozymandias was never found out. Because of the squid monster, the Keene Act was withdrawn; the world needed superhuman symbols to rally behind. But to prevent the Superheroes from ever becoming a political issue, the government secretly funded a group of costumed criminals: The Evil League of Evil.
- He wasn't found out before the story ended. The last panel teases that Ozzy might, in fact, be found out.
- Ozymandias was never found out. Because of the squid monster, the Keene Act was withdrawn; the world needed superhuman symbols to rally behind. But to prevent the Superheroes from ever becoming a political issue, the government secretly funded a group of costumed criminals: The Evil League of Evil.
- It might take place in the movieverse, where Ozymandias imitated Dr. Manhattan's powers.
That van remote thing? It was light enough to fling across a street so it probably wasn't that durable to begin with, honestly. The gun exploding? Horrible survived unscarred as well and he was just as point blank as Hammer.
And the reason Penny stopped liking Hammer after she started spending time with Horrible? The preventive medicine he had in Horrible Turn could easily have been slipped into Penny's frozen yogurt (or an antidote, since the acid was merely stated to be preventive).Hammers falling out with the public after his defeat could be handwaved with the antidote idea as well. Perhaps a mass produced version Horrible threw in the water main while Hammer was in therapy.
- Then how did how did he peddle a paddleboat at warp speed, even more important how did he keep it straight?
- How did he throw a car at Dr. Horrible's head? Remember, Horrible is the one that says it happened. He definitely has powers.
- In the comic he threw a giant girder, too.
- Horrible and Hammer both could mentally exaggerate Hammers strength also people all love Hammer so much that they also might exaggerate it as well. It would make more sence for Dr.Horrible to sneak some antidote to Hammerhead when he's recovering. Maby he intentionally forgot about his mistake and during the events came across evidence of it and fixed it first with Penny since he already had a formula for that then Hammer. It would also explain Hammers fangirls switching sides, Wait why am I only drinking as much as I gave to Hammer?
- Didn't he say "in my arm"?
- That would spell the end of the theory... but according to Hulu's closed captioning, Hammer's exact line is, "...in my heart and it hurts..."
- They're more likely half-brothers, though, since Captain Hammer has super powers and Dr. Horrible doesn't.
- Depends on how Super Powerful Genetics works in that world; Horrible could be a latent recessive carrier, or maybe super-invention is his power.
- Maybe Horrible got the super-mind, and Hammer got the super-body.
- Or they both have invulnerability.
- Dr. Horrible only thinks Captain Hammer didn't get the super mind but Captain Hammer also has his owm... mental capacity. See the comic. hehe capacity nerd.
- Depends on how Super Powerful Genetics works in that world; Horrible could be a latent recessive carrier, or maybe super-invention is his power.
- You watch too much TV.
- Hot?? Captain Hammer's inexplicable ability to make people believe he's a great guy seems to work across the divide between fiction and reality, to... urgh.
- In "A Man's Gotta Do", Penny sings the line "You came from above". It could be a reference to his arrival in that scene, where he lands on the roof of the remote controlled van. Or, it could reference some kind of Superman type origin story.
- Also, his comic on the Dark Horse MySpace Page has him claiming he was born with the ability to bench press five hundred pounds. This sort of child could not be born naturally unless his mother was Supergirl.
- Also also, in the laundromat, Captain Hammer suggests he's met Billy before at the gym but then realizes he's "naturally this way".
- It explains his shitty personality. He might be only a couple of years old and have spent all that time being told how great he is by the men who made him. He certainly acts like a kid. “lol, I totally made out with a girl!”
- He initially calls out "Mama!" "Someone maternal" is said afterwards, presumably after he realized that his mama isn't there.
- This could also explain why he doesn't seem to have a Secret Identity.
- That's what the sweater vests are for.
- They just are. He can get away with that sort of thing because he is. sweater vests would be sexy on him, anyway.
- He definitely doesn't have a secret identity. It's a dry cleaning bill, not the sweater vests themselves, and if you look very closely (if you watch it on HD on a big enough screen, you can read the bill clearly), the name on the bill is "Captain Hammer." And what name do you suppose he signed with the pen that was in his fist? Whether or not he ever had another name, he is obviously legally recognized as "Captain Hammer."
- That's what the sweater vests are for.
Alternately...
- Nope. Venture Brothers has stated that it was founded in the Victorian Era. Also, Bowie was the Soverign after taking it from Fantômas.
- Which clearly ties this in with Gulliver's Travels.
- Bad Horse being the last living descendant of the Houyhnhnms makes perfect sense: it explains his great intelligence, his powers of speech—plus his general disdain for much of the human race.
- Proven by this video.
- He says he's the real Thomas Jefferson.
- But what about his whinny? His terrible Death Whinny!
- Alternatively, he still is a regular horse, but his henchmen honestly believe that he is a real villain and just consistently misinterpret his behavior and act on what they believe his orders to be.
- No way; anyone who has ever been around real horses can clearly see their potential for evil.
- When the Death Ray accidently killed Penny, and hurt Captain Hammer, he decided to call off testing him further and accepts him, knowing well that the Death Ray killed her by accident.
- We never see him, period. For all we know, Bad Horse is Moist - which would be awesome.
- Waitaminute... Isn't Bad Horse the horse in the Evil League of Evil at the end???
- Then that must mean... SHAPESHIFTING is one of Hammer's powers!
- Or that the horse in the ELE was Fury Leika, and Bad Horse was someone else. It's possible, right?
- He "whinnies," too. Heh. And it'll probably be a dramatic reveal, anyway.
- Hey guess what... This one's true. Check the credits.
- Who didn't see this coming when they called him the "Thoroughbred of Sin"?
- Hey guess what... This one's true. Check the credits.
- He is a horse. He's in the last scene, at the head of the Evil League of Evil.
- Alternately, Bad Horse is a big, skinny donkey. The Evil League of Evils' comic publishers wouldn't let him be called bad Ass.
- Because as we all know, evil alliances shy away from mild profanity and puns in their conduct of mass murder and theft, even if it means compromising the title of their independantly established leader.
- They wouldn't, but their publishers would.
- Alternately, Bad Horse is a big, skinny donkey. The Evil League of Evils' comic publishers wouldn't let him be called bad Ass.
- If that's true, she would need a disguise that she could take off and the end to send him into BSOD. Quite possibly a really good disguise.
- Alternatively, Penny is part of the Evil League of Evil as Dr. Horrible's examiner. Dating Captain Hammer (Dr. Horrible's stated nemesis) is just a convenient way of ensuring she's around whenever Dr. Horrible commits his acts of evil.
- Evidence for Penny being evil: Bad Penny is just too terrible a pun not to use.
- Well, a bad penny does always come back to you.
- She's a fellow League hopeful. Her comment about giving homeless people jetpacks to go to the moon wasn't just sarcasm, she was genuinely intrigued and hopeful when Billy slipped and mentioned Bad Horse, and her song's a disguised origin story (she stopped feeling sad and hopeless once she realized the potential of being a supervillain to cause social change.) She was going to tell Billy after the shelter was running and her plan was in play, but, well...
- She and Dead Bowie could have been Doctor Horrible's testers as in the Laundry Day song there's a poster in his blog called "Dead Not Sleeping" and the fact that Captain Hammer and the LAPD have access to it might mean the League was watching him before sending him the E Lo E request.
- At least, it looks like a top position. Not as top as Dead Bowie, but...
- It helps that the Phased Cannon from "The Palindrome Reversal Palindrome" was the exact same prop as the Freeze Ray.
- First, by having sex prior to True Love's Kiss, she has broken the magic that enables all Disney heroines to find True Love and live Happily Ever After. Hence, it was Sex Signals Death, and a just death too; had she managed to wait around long enough without losing her Virgin Power, she'd be fine and in Billy's arms right now.
- Yes, except Snow White was originally a German Fairy Tale, of The Brothers Grimm variety. The point is moot anyhow.
- Second option: No Sex Signals Death, but she's still waiting for True Love's Kiss to wake her. She might be dead, in which case some extraordinary efforts will have to be used; else, she's simply comatose (which isn't technically "sleeping"). So this story will be completed in the sequel when Billy finally gives up "everything he's ever wanted" while trying to raise her; finally, in despair of ever undoing the damage he's done, he'll kiss her corpse in final parting (much like a certain current animated movie). This love, for which he has given up money, fame, respect (even self-respect)... this love, which prompted Billy to forsake The Evil League of Evil even on pain of death (so now they're after him, and he's in hiding with Penny's body)... this love which has more than proven its redemptive capabilities will bring Penny back to life. (Heck, X-Men never shied from adding a little magic on top of the super-hero stuff.)
- And she will wake to find Billy's freshly death-rayed corpse pressed against her lips, as he wanted to go out kissing his One True Love. With the expected result, of course.
- Unfortunately, Word of God is that the outfit was completely unintentional.
- Also, there are therapists, though given Captain Hammer's experience with them and the general Crapsack World they're probably incompetent.
- The e-mail that leads into 'Freeze Ray' is from someone called dead_not_sleeping. Later, Penny is wearing what essentially amounts to a Snow White costume in the laundromat when she sings her song in the second act. I have no idea what this means, but I feel like it's important. Maybe. Also, hang Word of God. This half-baked theory is likeable way too much to let it go.
- Theory confirmed, details Jossed.
- Blame it on the Villain Song in Act III for making slipping sound so enticing.
- Why would you guess it? Considering this is Whedon we're talking about, and Dr. Horrible himself is almost a perfect Captain Ersatz of the three supervillain geeks combined from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it was a given.
- He reminds me more of Spike, for all the times when Spike was making Puppy-Dog Eyes and was the Butt-Monkey of the universe. The tunes of some of Billy's songs resembled Spike's parts in the Buffy musical. And the parallels: Billy = William the Bloody Awful Poet (both were shy and socially awkward around women). Dr. Horrible = Spike the vampire (the cool guy he longs to be, but who always gets upstaged by his nemesis, Hammer/Angel(us), who mocks him and steals his girl, or in Spike's case, girls). Admittedly, Spike has never stalked someone in a laundromat, AFAIK. ;-)
- It's not wild enough to put here. Just a garden-variety Whedon death.
- Alternatively, Bad Horse was ALWAYS a bad tempered horse, and the term "bad horse" was repeatedly used by his handlers. When he failed to win the Triple Crown, it was simply his breaking point. He gained his sentience, killed his handler, and went off to a career in villainy, taking the name Bad Horse as both symbolic as his status as a supervillain and an ironic name: his past handlers thought he was bad, and now he's going to prove how right they were! The cowboys are simply a facet of his abilities, an astral projection of himself that manifests as singing cowboys and that can be transmitted via phone signals or used to "charge" inanimate objects (like letters...) so that, when they are received by the intended recipient, the cowboys appear and start singing.
- That would explain why they're present at the final party...
- The cowboys were obviously real (notice Moist's reaction when they first turn up), and they are so beholden to Bad Horse that he arbitrarily sends them around to provide singing narration to his correspondence (in the case of the phone call, the phone was silent while the cowboys provided the message) simply because he can.
- That would explain why they're present at the final party...
- Wasn't Silver supposed to be...silver?
- Ah, it's probably just a dye job... it's probably necessary... or at least just wanted... you wouldn't know he was Bad Horse otherwise.
- Wasn't Silver supposed to be...silver?
- Hero is the main character: inverted, the villain is the main character.
- Hero can survive through anything through strength of character: subverted, Captain Hammer throws himself into every situation heroically, but once he feels pain for the first time, his ego crumbles and he winds up in therapy as a sobbing wreck
- Hero gets the girl: subverted - she dies (then again, this is Joss Whedon we're talking about)
- Villain is foiled by the hero: partially subverted, Dr. Horrible's plan was to kill Captain Hammer, but ends up killing Penny instead
- Hero is a good and moral person, villain is evil and corrupted: subverted AND inverted - Captain Hammer is a jerk and womaniser, but is still proclaimed as a hero, in a similar way to a Villain with Good Publicity. Dr. Horrible initially has qualms about murdering someone under orders from the Evil League of Evil, but has no qualms about theft. He also cares for Penny, and his key invention is a Freeze Ray which, unlike other villains who would use it for selfish purposes, plans to use it to give him time to speak to Penny without stuttering or mumbling.
- Hero cares about keeping up the masquerade, villain doesn't: inverted - Captain Hammer is (apparently) Captain Hammer 24/7, whereas Dr. Horrible lives a double life.
- On the other hand, the sequence of events constitute a perfectly good tragic origin story for a villain in the superhero genre. At least, this is Dr. Horrible's debut as a scary villain people hear of and take seriously, as opposed to a guy named Billy who had never hurt anyone, was not wanted by the cops, and was taking voice lessons to manage proper maniacal laughter.
- This is a WMG? Isn't it a given that it's a deconstruction of the genre?
- Then there's Moist namedropping a woman called Hourglass, who has some form of time-related powers. Can you think of anybody who might want certain events in his past tweaked?
- Hourglass seems to be able to see someone's future (she knew that boy would grow up to be a future president) like the protagonist of The Dead Zone, but she must probably meet someone in person for it to work; otherwise, she might have told Moist to warn Dr. Horrible against doing certain things. Which she didn't.
- Alternatively, he'll get a hold of her body and harvest her eggs. Thus, he'll wind up with an heir that would allow him to at least pretend he'd slept with Penny at some point.
- So Penny is a Walking Techbane and a Butt-Monkey?
- Well, if she has other powers to back it, that power could have been part of a quasi-reasonable set and theme. Give her regeneration, and you get a living crash-test dummy. Some sort of machine-empathy kind of thing, and she could be a Friend To All Machines, with... super-fixing powers, or something. This could be the reason the van stopped right in front of her: once it was that close, repair powers kicked in, and the van started responding to the remote again. Unfortunately, she wasn't close enough to the death ray; the shrapnel accelerated in defiance of logic too much, and the repair powers could conceivably be limited to circuitry. This leads to the slightly odd conclusion that she died because she was too far away from the explosion. Granted, if she'd been closer, Billy would only have lived if she'd moved to stop Captain Hammer.
- Alternatively, she did realize it (she picked up on the "Head up, Billy buddy" line, after all); but in the shock and trauma of her mortal injury, she can no longer recall anything that's happened over the past quarter hour and so dies believing the integrity of both Billy and Captain Hammer to be unblemished.
- Assuming she did realize it (which seems likely, given that shot of her mouthing what looks like his name), maybe her last line was so that he wouldn't realize that she knew he was Dr. Horrible. After all, if she heard that whole softer part of "Slipping", she knows that he didn't want her to see him like this, and she makes sure he never knows she figured it out.
- Before she says "Captain Hammer will save us," she says "Billy? Is that you?".
- She was near death, and again, had never gotten a real close look at Dr. H; She probably thought Billy was there as a bystander.
- Alternatively: She did realize that he was Dr. Horrible, and said it to torture him, because he did basically attempt to kill her boyfriend out of jealousy and indirectly result in her death. Maybe she wanted revenge
- Course, this was after Penny realized Captain Hammer's a big Jerkass.
- Maybe it's that she knew Billy was Dr. Horrible, wasn't delusional at all while dying, and was sincerely trying to reassure Billy. She was just being much too idealistic and hoping that Captain Hammer would come back in the room after an epiphany, save her from dying, and save Billy from Dr. Horrible... by "defeating" Dr. Horrible in a way that Billy would no longer keep trying to be that persona and could just be her "Billy buddy". (Either that, or by acting like a real hero for once and not someone Billy feels a need to defeat.) Thus "Captain Hammer will save us" by doing something that will leave them free to be with each other, as themselves.
- Well, duh. Joss all but said this on the "Master Plan" page on the site.
- And movies are ...? In fact, you don't even get to see those for free until they're broadcast on TV.
- And regular TV shows have a much smaller window of opportunity. Until reruns — and even then you have to stick to the TV schedule (well, unless you record everything).
- Jossed by Joss himself. Hulu.com has it.
- Unless you live outside of the USA.
- No longer on Hulu. Youtube has it though.
- It is on netflix.
- Doesn't work. Even if Captain Hammer recognized him right away, waiting for Penny to leave the room first suggests that he knows Penny is oblivious to Billy's supervillain identity.
- Sure? Even if Penny did know, or Captain Hammer thought she knew, Captain Hammer did say some things that he probably didn't want his girlfriend to overhear.
- Ah, but in the supplemental comics from Moist and Hammer's perspectives, the good doctor's still in the lab coat.
- Then how is there going to be a sequel?
- Well, that wouldn't necessarily be a problem. But really... there shouldn't be a sequel.
- Agreed. No matter how much we like the character, some stories are... complete in themselves. They are cheapened by sequels.
- How would it be cheapened? Using a sequel to further twist the knife in and show a "true Villain" Dr. Horrible struggling to cope with his dark world after the death of Penny? How would that cheapen it? Besides, Joss himself has said repeatedly he would love to do a sequel/there will be a sequel. He's even implied he already has a story in mind. One of the reasons they haven't begun work on it yet is because Joss is working on Dollhouse, and Neil has a full-time gig on How I Met Your Mother. But they have all expressed interest in it.
- Why two days? Just out of interest.
- His situation needs some time to sink in. The first few days, he just gets swept up by the whole new Evil League of Evil thing, robbing banks, etc., other villains cheering him on. It stops him from thinking about what happened. But once the first excitement is over and Billy faces days (or nights, it's night in the last shot) full of emptiness and despair, walking the city streets, passing by the laundromat where she won't be waiting for him, never again... how long do you think he will last? If he makes it past the first few months, then he'll probably live because he has managed to return to some semblance of normalcy. Or "Billy" as we know him will disappear completely as he commits symbolic suicide by utterly embracing the Dr. Horrible persona and never ever looking back. But even supervillains have to go to sleep. Brush his teeth, eat breakfast, watch as some henchman does his laundry for him...
- Well, that wouldn't necessarily be a problem. But really... there shouldn't be a sequel.
- He does seem the kind of guy who might... name his superheroic pseudonym after his junk.
- What sort of hammer is it, though?
- Claw hammer, if his chest insignia is any indication...
- Ball-peen is funnier.
- Nathan Fillion said it was a ball-peen hammer at a Dragon* Con panel.
- Claw hammer, if his chest insignia is any indication...
- This perfectly explains why Captain Hammer has never slept with the same girl twice.
- Wouldn't even the first time qualify as "the weird stuff" in this case?
- Confirmed: "It is actually shaped like a little hammer... well, little for a hammer."
- Look at what the world is okay with accepting as a hero. If that's their idea of a hero, he couldn't go that route.
- The public police-state-like prejudice against scientists and engineers might even be the reason Billy seems to have no job! He's a brilliant gadgeteer (he can build rayguns that freeze time!); but he has to go to the laundromat to get his clothes washed, so he's probably poor, and he shares an apartment with Moist. Don't ask where he gets the parts for all the gadgets he designs if he is poor... perhaps he steals them, just as he stole the Wonderflonium? Perhaps he used to have more income in the past? Perhaps he's using up an inheritance from his dead parents? In comic books, supervillains and superheroes are either filthy rich or have just enough mysterious sources of income to get along (unless they're called Spiderman) and have access to technical gadgets even if they're living in the sewers. It's just one of those things.
- Billy's whole attitude is a mixture of extreme shyness and bitterness and frustration, like someone who has been beaten up by life so often that he has withdrawn into himself. Normally, you would expect someone like him to be courted by corporate and military headhunters and offered vast sums of money to design weapons. Billy is an anarchist and revolutionary at heart, not to mention a pacifist; maybe he declined those offers and lost his job. Another reason he is bitter. He wants people to acknowledge his genius, but instead they're all cheering for a smarmy jerk who lives on government funding (the Hammercycle, the Ham-jet).
- His true "shift" into real villany was when penny told him "Captain Hammer will save us" His crowning moment was kicked out from under him because of his weakness to kill his arch, the arch takes his gun, ignores his warnings, and causes the death of the girl he loves, the girl who 'refuses to to see Hammer for what he really is even after his antics caused her death' And what does she say as she's dieing? "Captain Hammer will save us" Save you?! He's killed you! * I* was going to save you! I was going to save the WORLD! But no... I see now that the world is too blind to save... * Cue red coat*
- Or, just throwing this out here, he doesn't have a job because he's publicly plotting to take over the world.
- Is there a chance that Dr. Horrible's last name is actually Horrible? That's got to limit your career options.
- Nope. It's Buddy. It's in the credits, and also mentioned in Slipping.
- Is it? I'm pretty sure on the cast list the character's identified as "Dr. Horrible" with no reference to his given name, first or last.
- I've just read through the entire credits; nowhere is the character referred to as anything other than "Dr. Horrible". However, this blogger makes a good case for the name being a reference to Melville's "Billy Budd", which points to "Billy Buddy" being the character's full name. None of the writers or cast appear to have made any statements one way or the other at this point.
- Penny tells Billy to "keep your head up, Billy buddy". This is the reason for the "head up Billy buddy" line in Slipping — Penny encouraged him to keep going and strive for his goal (not knowing what the goal was, of course) when going for the "job" he was trying to get.
- The "Billy Buddy" thing is Penny's nickname for him.
- The public police-state-like prejudice against scientists and engineers might even be the reason Billy seems to have no job! He's a brilliant gadgeteer (he can build rayguns that freeze time!); but he has to go to the laundromat to get his clothes washed, so he's probably poor, and he shares an apartment with Moist. Don't ask where he gets the parts for all the gadgets he designs if he is poor... perhaps he steals them, just as he stole the Wonderflonium? Perhaps he used to have more income in the past? Perhaps he's using up an inheritance from his dead parents? In comic books, supervillains and superheroes are either filthy rich or have just enough mysterious sources of income to get along (unless they're called Spiderman) and have access to technical gadgets even if they're living in the sewers. It's just one of those things.
- Fuck Yeah!
- Instead of just retiring, he becomes a pro-Muggle political crusader with a strong dislike of anyone who meddles with normal folk. His anti-super efforts are so successful that by the twenty-sixth century people with strange powers are considered witches once again.
- Alternatively, the entire thing was a Show Within a Show in the Firefly Verse (as per the hacking of the Emmys; see, Penny's there!) and a younger, more innocent/stupid Mal agreed to play the part for some easy cash. And I'm not the only one who thinks so.
- Adding to this theory, Simon and River Tam are descendants of Billy. The lab coat Simon uses in Ariel was passed down from his ancestor Dr. Horrible back on Earth-that-was. Billy was an inventor and thus, we can guess, pretty smart, which stayed in their genes and reappeared in the Tam siblings. Mal recognizes Simon's heritage at the beginning of the show (though, having forgotten his stint as Captain Hammer, can't quite put his finger on why he hates Simon so much) which results in the initial animosity between the two characters.
- Alternatively, Captain Hammer was super strong from some other source, then, faced with his own apparent mortality, joins the legitimate priesthood to protect his immortal soul, but is later approached by the First Evil and offered a more violent path to "immortality" — the First's power ups.
- Alternatively, the usual Whedonverse Theory with the blog added on. Caleb becomes Captain Hammer and then would later become Malcolm Reynolds as detailed in some of the other theories on this page.
Their powers are basically the same, so it's not too much of a stretch. As well, he might take the name Commander to help himself recover from his humiliation, signifying that he's now "in command" of everything in his life.
- It would have been avoided; Penny was waiting for Billy at the laundromat and doubting her relationship with Captain Hammer ("This is perfect for me - So they say/I guess he's pretty okay...") in "So They Say". If Dr. Horrible didn't get whipped up into a frenzy and start plotting Hammer's death, he would have got the girl, no problem.
- It would have been avoided even before that! If Billy had stopped fiddling with the remote control for the van, ignored the whole Wonderflonium heist idea, scrapped the freeze ray plans, and said: "Gee Penny, I really am interested in this homeless shelter idea of yours! Tell me more!", they'd both be living happily ever after by now. (If they also hadn't both had the misfortune of being in a Joss Whedon production, that is)
- Until the ELE kills them. The lines "this grade will be your last" and "there will be blood, it might be yours" in Bad Horse's songs might have darker meanings.
- Why do you have spoilers?
- And that rhymes with Billy Buddy!
And they all lived happily ever after.
- Aw shucks.
- I'd say Captain Hammer sounds more like a Communist supervillain possibly with a sidekick called Little Sickle.
- Well, there are the hammer-nazis from Pink Floyd's The Wall. That's actually what his insignia made me think of.
- This is now canon in my mind.
- As an addendum, his clothing may be all black (with some white), and he will be GRIMMER and DARKER. Like Frank Castle.
- Aren't those the writers? Therefore, Bad Horse's ability to control the writers makes him an extremely powerful foe.
- Only one of them (Jed Whedon) is a writer. The other two were supposed to be Joss and Zack Whedon, but they couldn't do it for reasons I don't remember, so the other two cowboys are Rob Reinis and Nick Towne, who also play the two moving guys from "So They Say."
Either that, or it severely injured him, probably internally since we can't see it. The pain is now omnipresent and, again, is something he's never had before even in small doses. He's in no shape for heroics and in perfect shape for someone to come finish the job if he doesn't drop off the radar.
- "Blow of that magnitude"? It's a death ray. The explosion is more than heat and kinetics. It's an explosion of death.
- Though it seems more likely that Captain Hammer is a complete baby when it matters. He isn't constantly in crippling pain so much as traumatized by his one exposure to it. If he did lose his powers, though, he would have a more legitimate reason to be going to a therapist. Can anyone actually make out what he's saying to that guy?
- Word of God says it's canon that yes, that being the first pain he'd ever felt, even if it was like a paper cut it would be comparatively agonizing.
- The only intelligible thing he says is "I've never had an injury in my life, I can't believe it"
- Though it seems more likely that Captain Hammer is a complete baby when it matters. He isn't constantly in crippling pain so much as traumatized by his one exposure to it. If he did lose his powers, though, he would have a more legitimate reason to be going to a therapist. Can anyone actually make out what he's saying to that guy?
- The Death/Stun Ray became the basis for the designs those guards carried in "Ariel".
- For that to be true, either you'd have to have time machines, or a designer of the Firefly cruisers would have to be a Doctor Horrible fan. If you look in the background as the good doctor does his blog, you can clearly see what appears to be Serenity.
- Jossed, apparently that's just "a collection of pots and pans hanging in a window in Dr. Horrible's lab".
- That's brilliant.
- This is the single best WMG ever to appear on TV Tropes.
- Congratulations, you have won the award for Greatest Theory On The Site. I take my lampshade hat off to you, sir. (No, this was not sarcastic.)
- Alternately, he never stopped admiring him. Since approaching the guy and asking to be his sidekick just isn't the way these things work, Snow wants desperately to get the chance to fight Horrible so he can invoke Defeat Means Friendship.
- Alternately, Johnny Snow is one of Dr. Horrible's own little group of fans, and in denial of his man-crush.
- Alternately, Johnny Snow is a villain - no one said that villains can't have other villains as nemeses. "Slipping" implies that Captain Hammer's the only hero around. (maybe the fee's too pricey/for them to realise/your disguise is slipping) This basically makes Snow the Syndrome.
- My god, this makes so much sense!
- It seriously does. The entries Doogie makes into his journal at the end of every episode — remind you of a certain villain's blog? And anyone who's seen Doogie express his views on the state of the social system and homelessness and the like can easily see the parallels. For example, in the episode "Every Dog Has His Doogie," Doogie is perfectly willing to break the rules or his friends' and family's expectations of him to achieve what he thinks is morality. This happens a lot. His poster in his bedroom, "Save the Humans"— sound familiar? It also brings up the possibility, or probability, that Horrible's doctorate is not morally ambiguous at all, which can be evidenced by the gizmos around Horrible's lab (brain scans, models of the digestive tract, etc.)! Also, both Doogie and Horrible live(d) in the same city — Los Angeles!
- Watch "Doogenstein" and tell me that is NOT a young Dr. Horrible.
Once he starts to get resigned to his Designated Villain status, he is no longer (as) tormented; YHWH makes sure that he's still miserable by setting up Penny and Captain Hammer. Hammer being aware that he's dating Billy's dream girl was the icing on the cake. Penny herself may be a reincarnation of Jibril, who "protects" Billy in this life by helping him keep his morality and compassion; but her protection is slowly eroded due to Alexiel's required misery and YHWH's manipulation, and Penny's last attempts to help Billy fail because of her death. After that, YHWH's job is done because Billy killed an innocent person and the love of his life without ever telling her how he felt. His acceptance into the ELE will always remind him of that, and he will spend the rest of his life suffering because Penny isn't there to help him through it—and it's his fault.
Billy's a Cosmic Plaything to the max.
- Canon, as sung in Commentary! The Musical
Compound this on top of the line about Penny and Captain Hammer "French kissing or something", which honestly, sounds very immature and not something you'd hear out of someone over the teenage gap, and you have the possibility that while Penny could be around 23 or 24, Billy could be 18 or 19.
- According to the comics he's at least 28, since we first see him when he says he's 8, then we get a "Twenty years later" skip to what seems to be the first time he meets Captain Hammer.
- Also, becoming a horse might appeal to something from her childhood. When a young girl in a cartoon wants something unreasonable, often it's a pony.
However, as life takes its toll on Billy and he suffers humiliation and defeat, the mental blocks break down; the older personality reasserts itself, leading to a progressively more dominant "Doctor Horrible" (possibly a reference to his old foe, and his thoughts on him?) taking complete control, with the cover personality removed. Give it a few more weeks and Doctor Horrible will be dancing to I Can't Decide as he torments Captain Hammer.
- HIS BLINKING TIC! He squints when the drums get stronger, just like Yana did!
- Think about it - he gets the tic when Billy's personality is clashing with Horrible's. And guess who Dr. Horrible really is?
- You guessed it: Dr. Horrible is the Master's personality trying to take control.
- Think about it - he gets the tic when Billy's personality is clashing with Horrible's. And guess who Dr. Horrible really is?
- Except that what he says about everyone being a hero is incredibly arrogant, setting himself up as always a better hero.
- Baby Steps.
- Buzz Lightyear's also arrogant except Captain Hammer's an idiot and doesn't know that asserting his own superority for half the speach is a bad idea. What makes Captain Hammer seem evil and not just stupid is the fact he basically said I'm going to sleep with her just because I can and you can't to Dr. Horrible. If you want you can say he was trying to make sure Dr. Horrible wouldn't hurt his love.
- The Evil League of Evil is in or in charge of hell, hence supposedly-Fake Thomas Jefferson and Dead Bowie and everyone looking like a Tim Burton villain reject. The Evil Costume Change isn't because he's dead, it's just one of hell's dress code! "There will be blood, it might be yours, so go kill someone, signed Bad Horse"... It's not If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!, the only way to get there is by dying!
- He said Captain Hammer threw the car at his head, but he never said the car actually made any contact. All he's saying is that the car came in his direction.
- I had a very similar idea, and in fact came to this page just to pose it. To wit: The entire musical is in fact Neil Patrick Harris's coming out as a supervillain, in disguise ("Now the nightmare's real / Now Doctor Horrible is here..."). His entire diabolical plan will be to release some sort of genophage which will resequence the entire world's DNA to turn them into Neil Patrick Harris clones, so that they know what his life is like, and as he is the 'original', they will have to defer to his greater level of experience at being Neil Patrick Harris. And because he's already Neil Patrick Harris, he won't feeeeel... a thing~.
- My extrapolated the above theory: Assuming that this plan exists, Neil would carry it out at some point. Since Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is The Reveal of his plan, no doubt Commentary! The Musical is the best place to execute it, no? To be specific, NPH activated the "Make-The-Whole-World-Neil-O-Tron" at the beginning of the song "Neil's Turn". Everybody else turned into duplicates of Neil, which is how he could "sing my own harmonies". He's alone not because everyone left, but because everyone's Neil. The Power of Friendship reverses the transformation at the end of the song. Most of the world dismissed the Neil-ness as a hallucination or bad dream (or good dream? Neil's Crazy Is Cool, after all), but everyone in Commentary! knew about it. This, incidentally, is why Felicia calls Neil a douche immediately afterwards: he just put a Plan of Ultimate Evil into action, after all.
- Possibly dovetailing this with the "Dr. Horrible is the Master" theory above, bearing in mind the events of The End of Time. Use the immortality gate to achieve the transformation
- My extrapolated the above theory: Assuming that this plan exists, Neil would carry it out at some point. Since Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is The Reveal of his plan, no doubt Commentary! The Musical is the best place to execute it, no? To be specific, NPH activated the "Make-The-Whole-World-Neil-O-Tron" at the beginning of the song "Neil's Turn". Everybody else turned into duplicates of Neil, which is how he could "sing my own harmonies". He's alone not because everyone left, but because everyone's Neil. The Power of Friendship reverses the transformation at the end of the song. Most of the world dismissed the Neil-ness as a hallucination or bad dream (or good dream? Neil's Crazy Is Cool, after all), but everyone in Commentary! knew about it. This, incidentally, is why Felicia calls Neil a douche immediately afterwards: he just put a Plan of Ultimate Evil into action, after all.
- There is the magnificent fanfic Billy Stinson.
- Physiologically or psychologically? There's a huge difference...
- Apart from there being no real reason not to take Dr. Horrible at his word, Captain Hammer surviving the exploding death ray at point blank at all, the sheer distance he got tossing Penny to one side, and his general reputation as a full-fledged superhero, it says a lot that he was fully prepared to stop an out-of-control van with his bare (well, gloved) hands. Turned out not to be necessary since Dr. Horrible managed to get the brakes working, but he was clearly banking on super-strength and invulnerability at that moment.
- There's also a brief scene during his date with Penny where he pedals a two-person pedal-boat around comically fast. I do like the way you think, though.
- It's worth pointing out that Captain Hammer: Be Like Me! was indeed exaggerating his Horrible-throwing-ability. We see the same event in Moist: Humidity Rising, and according to Moist, Hammer just punched Horrible to the ground.
- This also increases the chance that Penny has survived the ending due to Slayer toughness. Once she recovers, Buffy will order her to kill Dr. Horrible.
- This would explain her babbling at Hammer after being rescued. Her Slayer powers would have meant she'd be able to easily survive being hit by a van (Buffy herself was hit by a truck once and got up with barely a scratch on her). When Penny was saying thank you she wasn't in shock, she was overcompensating.Penny: Thank you Hammer man, I don't think I can/Explain how important it was that you stopped the van/I would be splattered, I'd be crushed into debris/Thank you sir for saving me
- While I admit that "Everybody's a Hero" sounds more like someone who sucks at public speaking, it is also extreamly self obsessing. Really, everyone is completely apathetic except Penny, although I wouldn't say that Billy/Dr. Horrible cares about that.
- Hammer lets the runaway van nearly careen into Penny because he's busy singing about how great he is. In the comic he encourages reporting smart and weird kids to the cops as potential supervillains. As for the homeless shelter business, it might still have been to get with Penny, because he directly states he's just dating her to piss off Horrible. Besides, one of the moving guys notes that the shelter is the only time he's used his fame to help people ("about time").
- He was also arguably prepared to murder Dr. Horrible in cold blood after "saving" Penny, and undoubtedly either trying to publically execute him or somehow humiliate him by revealing that the ray doesn't work (remember, he was frozen and didn't see it in operation).
- That seems to be the general consensus, especially considering that Dr. Horrible still has a head.
- Because, for whatever reason, the standard laws of comic book combat are assumed not to apply in this world. Go figure.
- It's a Deconstruction. Of course the combat is more realistic.
- That's also why the Death Ray exploded and killed Penny. The plot said that it was supposed to work and Captain Hammer killed Dr. Horrible, which would become Penny's own Start of Darkness, but the Wonderflonium in the gun had been bounced, so it screwed up the plot.
- Is this a WMG? It's just about as close to canon as a conjoined twin.
- With her Mad Reportin Skillz™, the Reportress could tell that Captain Hammer was a total jerk. He didn't actually sing "Everyone's a Hero", despite being a huge jerk - he sung an actual inspirational song, and the Reportress "embellished" the lyrics with her knowledge of his character.
- When Doctor Horrible arrives, the Reportress uses her Mad Reportin Skillz™ to discover his actual motives (ELE, Penny, etc.). Because "Slipping" is incredibly awesome, the Reportress simply recorded the lyrics as they were, no embellishment necessary. When she's mis-spelled "horible" (sic) on her journalling paper, she's not writing about Doctor Horrible. She's actually written: "Anarchy! That I run!/It's Doctor Horible's turn!" (sic), and when Doctor Horrible spots this, he helps her correct it.
- Finally, the Reportress fled the scene when the death ray exploded - she did see the shrapnel's destination, however, and wrote "Everything You Ever" based on the evidence of the shrapnel, and the knowledge of Horrible through Mad Reportin Skillz™. She wrote the tune based on Mad Reportin Skillz™, and most of the lyrics based simply on supervillain cliche statements.
- After all this work, the Reportress found Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day. She got them to do a re-enactment of the shelter scene, based on what she'd written down. This is what we see in Act III. What really happened in the shelter? We may only learn in the sequel.
- Killed him to death? How many other degrees of killing do your Death Rays let you reach?
- Yes they do. Captain Hammer's gloves had ridges along the back of the hand. Horrible's were pure rubber. Also, it's possible that Captain Hammer cannot remove his gloves, be they fused to or the actual skin of his hands. Or perhaps his hands are some horrific amalgamation of steel and flesh. Wildly mass guess about it.
Shortly after the last shot, Moist and Hourglass manage to snap Billy out of it. He is horrified, and, naturally, decides not to go through with it.
- An alternate form of the theory. Johnny Snow is a woman (or an androgyne) who thinks she'll get by better in the whole superhero-supervillain thing with a male persona.
- Penny becomes Johnny (Joni?) Snow.
- Either she repeatedly arranged "battles" with Horrible to reveal her true persona to him, but never getting the chance due to his constantly spurning her for Captain Hammer; or she adopted the Penny persona after being rejected, in order to secretly get back at Horrible.
- Since she clearly watches the vlog, she knew what day the Wonderflonium heist was. She deliberately came up to Horrible when she knew the courier van was about to be loaded, in order to make him feel guilty; she intended to finish this off by deliberately stepping in front of the van, faking her own death with an impact-absorbing undershirt.
- Captain Hammer put a stop to that plan, but Penny realized she could drive the knife even deeper by going out with him. Eventually, she got too fed up with the buffoon to go on any further. When the Death Ray exploded, the undershirt protected her from the shrapnel, at which point she faked her own death as she'd originally planned.
- And Penny loves frozen yogurt
- This might be right. Everyone in their world seems to treat the battle between heroes and villains (and resulting damage) as pure entertainment. When Captain Hammer supposedly becomes "a crusader", it's treated like any celebrity advocacy — something to be fawned over more than anything. And when Dr. Horrible goes on his rampage in the auditorium, notice just how many reporters stay — and how no law enforcement shows up. All right, their world clearly sucks, Billy was right. But for all he talks about "social change," he's clearly playing the game as much as the next guy — he's trying to get famous, and get all the perks that come with that. On top of that, he stalks Penny and treats her as a prize to be won back from Captain Hammer. Penny, meanwhile, is the only one genuinely trying to help anyone, and just make her way in the world. Her death, not Dr. Horrible's reaction to it, is the real tragedy of the story.
- Along with the fact that the comic book story "Penny: Keep Your Head up" indicated her parents died when she was young, the lyrics to "Penny's song pretty much cements this in what clearly sounds like a classic heroes origin: "Here’s a story of a girl/Who grew up lost and lonely.Thinking love was fairytale/And trouble was made only for me/...Grief replaced with pity/For a city barely coping/Dreams are easy to achieve/If hope is all I’m hoping to be/..."
- Plus she tends to wear the classic Superhero color pallet of red/yellow/blue while Hammer and Horrible are confined to the classic melodramatic color pallets of black and white ( though assigned to the opposite character.)
- Though Hammer's fangirls can, possibly feeling this way after comparing their personalities.
- Some people also feel empowered by wearing the costume. His so called evilness is him being confident. It's not a split personality, it's a sad story. Just like in Watchmen with Dan and Nite Owl. He's only confident as Nite Owl, but Nite Owl is essentially Dan Dreiberg.
- Yes, this is what I was getting at. He's not as shy as Dr. Horrible because he is empowered in costume and because there are few Penny scenes to make him crumple. Almost everyone experiences it in some form. Taking on another persona who is meant to be greater than you and is made to appear "separate" from you is of course going to be psychologically liberating in many ways.
- You don't have to have multiple personality disorder to take on multiple personas. That's what acting is. Dr Horrible is not a split personality, but rather our name for the darkness in Billy. The conflict between them is no more than the human decision-making process. Look me in the eye and tell me that you've never had a debate with yourself in your head.
- Yes, this is what I was getting at. He's not as shy as Dr. Horrible because he is empowered in costume and because there are few Penny scenes to make him crumple. Almost everyone experiences it in some form. Taking on another persona who is meant to be greater than you and is made to appear "separate" from you is of course going to be psychologically liberating in many ways.
- Like Marvel's Sentry, or JLU's Hawkman/Shadow Thief, they could be two products of the same Freak Lab Accident.
- Thank you for mentioning this. I've always looked at it this way, and seeing 'Dr. Horrible' and 'Billy' constantly referred to as seperate people was really odd to me. I was planning to add this if no one else did, and you put it much better than I would have.
- This actually does make perfect sense, as surprised as I am to say it. Many people just Hand Wave the "threw a car at my head" thing as Captain Hammer threw a car and missed, and Billy was just pointing out how extreme that was. On the other hand, he has a gigantic bruise over his face, showing his face and head were hurt. This was usually taken as Captain Hammer beat him up afterwards. But the line is funnier and simpler if you interpret the bruises as the car actually hit him. In which case he would need such powers to even have a head still on his shoulders. It would also explain how a guy who can pick up and throw a car could punch Billy and show intent to kill in Act III, and send Billy across the room, without leaving so much as a scratch. Or we could just chalk it up to the MST3K Mantra in a comic-book style world allowing a non-powered Billy to take the abuse.
- Also, it makes sense that if he only has the defensive part (not being hurtable) and not the strength that usually goes with it, he'd take up science. Think about it, what is one of most common ways to gain powers, if not THE? Accident in the lab. What is the reason you don't experiment with weird combinations of components without a long and tedious process of finding out if there is any chance it'd explode or electrify you? You'd die. So, someone, especially a main character, who works in a lab in a world where powers exist is likely to obtain a power. And someone who can make progress in technology much faster than other scientists is likely to cut some corners. Not to mention, he doesn't have to fear anything other than imprisonment, so a few simple, concealable, devices to escape prison, and he's free to be a major villan without fearing that the heroes will ever manage to hurt him. Notice how his attitude towards Hammer isn't "Oh no! A Hero! My life is in danger!", but rather "Oh great, the idiot's here again"
- This might also, assuming the events actually do happen outside of his imagination, explain why Hammer doesn't just take him in to the proper authorities. Leaving a few villains out there who can't be stopped by normal cops might be a good business investment for the the town's hero.
- One of the comics had Dr. Horrible try to duplicate Captain Hammer's powers, but he gained his mental traits as well so he reversed it, with encouragement from Moist. Maybe he kept some of the durability.
- Also, it makes sense that if he only has the defensive part (not being hurtable) and not the strength that usually goes with it, he'd take up science. Think about it, what is one of most common ways to gain powers, if not THE? Accident in the lab. What is the reason you don't experiment with weird combinations of components without a long and tedious process of finding out if there is any chance it'd explode or electrify you? You'd die. So, someone, especially a main character, who works in a lab in a world where powers exist is likely to obtain a power. And someone who can make progress in technology much faster than other scientists is likely to cut some corners. Not to mention, he doesn't have to fear anything other than imprisonment, so a few simple, concealable, devices to escape prison, and he's free to be a major villan without fearing that the heroes will ever manage to hurt him. Notice how his attitude towards Hammer isn't "Oh no! A Hero! My life is in danger!", but rather "Oh great, the idiot's here again"
- It's also been said before.
- He's a scientist he obviously uses science to come up with ways to make himself able to survive such attacks and to heal himself afterwards makes me wonder why he didn't give himself superstrength.
- The sequel will be about his fight with Dr. Horrible, who he can never defeat because of guilt over what Horrible became. Hammer may find a new Love Interest, which Horrible will kill in revenge, causing Hammer to kill Horrible, and give up the concept of being a "hero".
- Or not.
- some time shifting applied in terms of when Dr. Horrible happened to account for Alexis' age.
- So why is he friends with the Pink Pummeler, eh? (Whose room I'm assuming it was, by the way, since Moist is shown in the comics to live in an undecorated one-room apartment, including the restroom).
- Yeah, because straight people can't possibly be friends with a gay without doing them.
- Read the Pot Holes, Bury Your Gays is Pummeler's M.O. Whether that sarcasm was trolling or just ignorance... * sigh of exasperation*
- Am I the only one who got the vibe off the Bait & Switch double-date thing that one of them (probably Switch) was a guy? He doesn't sound disappointed, just a little weirded out.
- Yeah, because straight people can't possibly be friends with a gay without doing them.
- It's cumin, as in the spice. It's supposed to be a joke about gold bullion/bouillon.
- Cumin is a yellow spice, which would look quite a lot like gold. Since we know that Captain Hammer and the police watch Dr. Horrible's blog...
- "They were transported...in bar form..."
- If boullion can come in cubes, it can come in bars.
- Ditto the Death Ray explosion.
- Captain Hammer is not indestructible (at least not by that much), and look what happened when he tried to imitate him!
- Captain Hammer has another type of immunity to death, but that explosion was a little too much... the kind that left him with a closed head-injury type of energy feedback. He probably couldn't feel his legs for a while, and even then, as he said... in his heart, it hurts.
- Penny might also have Retrometabolism, but the regeneration process probably'll render her a little twisted, just like it has to Dr. Horrible.
- Alternatively, they are Alternate Universe versions of each other, both with the power to induce music on those around them. Billy probably has the same Freudian Excuse about being bullied, but unlike his counterpart, he never discovered the Mind Control singing power—instead his ability just got sublimated into unconsciously making people sing, and he took a scientific path to villainy instead.
- This actually makes quite a lot of sense.
- Alternatively, Dead Not Sleeping is Hourglass. She's giving Dr. Horrible a warning about him taking any measures to bring Penny back from the dead. She knows that he would try, and ultimately fail, without that subconscious warning in the back of his head.
- Penny is Euphemia - a still-hopeful idealist who wants to change the world by being kind. The ideological dynamic between Dr. Horrible and Penny seen in "My Eyes" is very close to the dynamic between Lelouch and Euphemia. Suzaku's character type doesn't fit into this story, unless you stretched very, very far and compared him to Captain Hammer, Corporate Tool.
- I agree, with a few additional remarks:
- Billy Horrible: straight A student. His geekiness coupled with an unfortunate last name makes him withdraw in on himself and study even harder. He decides to use his last name as a Take That! and styles himself Doctor because he intends to pursue a doctorate later in life, when he gets out of this crapsack High School. He starts to devise pranks, such as stealing cumin-spiced soup from the cafeteria.
- Bad Horse: John Horse, a DM. Billy is trying to get in on a Dungeons & Dragons game, but they all ropleplay as Evil (Dead Bowie is Neutral Evil, Fake Thomas Jefferson is Lawful Evil.) He has to prove he can role-play evil, and starts a Blog where he acts like a supervillain. Bad Horse's parents own a western-themed singing-telegraph buisness.
- Captain Hammer: Matt, Captain of the football team (The Hammers) and known bully. He has a habit of taking Billy's lunch money: notice how he always takes him to the same corner at recess to punch him? Referred in the school as Captain Hammer, or Hammer for short.
- Penny: the Lunch Lady. She wants the school to build a new Cafeteria, but the board is indifferent. Billy has a crush on her. Hammer offers to drive her home just to make Billy jealous. Things get out of hand. The lunch lady knows what she is doing is wrong because she is much older. She becomes very guilty. Instead of giving the extra frozen yogurts to Hammer she tries to give them to Billy, but Billy stops going to the cafeteria while he is plotting his revenge.
- Moist: Billy's roommate. Moist doesn't shower often.
- Billy's rant about the system: school sucks. No one notices when Hammer punches Billy at recess, or cares. Hammer is the idol of the school because he wins football games, so they let everything slide. He suspects Hammer is using amphetamines and cheating, and that the school knows and lets him play anyways, because they have a chance at winning the title. The school board has gone insane.
- Hammer convinces the Principal to build a new Cafeteria. He doesn't really care about a new cafeteria: the football team has its own dinning room. After all he doesn't want to mingle with the bums (other less-cool students).
- Hammer * DOES* throw a car at him the day the principal breaks ground on a new cafeteria. It's a Tonka Truck. It smarts.
- During Hammer's speech at the inauguration of the new Cafeteria, Billy sets his plan in motion. It is a very elaborate pratical joke that involves acid pilfered from the school's chemistry lab. Everyone gets to see Hammer's use of amphetamines had a negative effect on his... hammer. Hammer is utterly humiliated in front of the entire school and runs away crying, shattering his jock image completely. Also, the acid hurts in a way slamming into someone wearing full protective gear and a helmet doesn't: it's the first time he feels that burn. The prank is in so poor taste the lunch lady is disgusted and actually quits, and moves to another town. Billy's ruthless pranks and pratical jokes make him a terror on the schoolyard. He gets accepted at the D&D game, but he realises he's no longer acting, he really is Chaotic Evil.
- My mind has now been blown. I demand this be made!
- The protagonist is undone by his hesitation to take revenge, destroying basically everything he cared about in the process, despite achieving his goal.
- Penny is an amalgamation of Ophelia (The Ingenue caught between the men in her life, who dies as a result) and Queen Gertrude (romantically involved with the antagonist, who accidentally kills her in an attempt to off the protagonist).
- Specifically, Dr. Horrible is Calvin, Billy is Hobbes's personality after he has to throw away his stuffed tiger (see Fight Club page), Penny is Suzie, and Captain Hammer is Moe. Even the hair matches up, except for Hobbes of course. Moist is just Moist.
- Also the presence of the Bad Horse could be a sign that their universe does contain other anthropomorphic animals besides Hobbes.
- Specifically, Dr. Horrible is Calvin, Billy is Hobbes's personality after he has to throw away his stuffed tiger (see Fight Club page), Penny is Suzie, and Captain Hammer is Moe. Even the hair matches up, except for Hobbes of course. Moist is just Moist.
- YES.
- I actually thought this was true. Penny, shy and with a sad past, doesn't seem like the kind of girl who'd sleep with a guy on their second date. Sure, Hammer tells Horrible he intends to sleep with her, but Penny has a say in it too. He only wants her for sex (and to stick it to Horrible) and the only reason he's still with her in Act III is that she's holding out on him—long enough for him to begin to want her badly enough for a second time. During "Everyone's A Hero" Penny looks shocked and leaves when he blatantly lies that they "totally had sex". In fact, if they had had sex, Penny would already be disillusioned (there's a reason he only has sex once per woman).
- That's not how it worked, though— Love Potion #10 was supposed to make everyone love each other because everyone took it; it's solely inward, and thus it only affected others.
- I lol'd
What could turn present-day society against science to the point that a genuinely gifted inventor and doctor of horribleness apparently has no day job?
A catastrophe caused by a similarly-gifted and extremely unhinged inventor in the past, perhaps...
It all fits! You never see them in the same place, they both talk idealistically about a better world, and Billy seemed to drop off of the face of the Earth when Dr. Horrible got serious about the ELE.
- ...You're kidding, right? Cause if not...
I know, I know, that dude is so prissy, but they are both cheesy and self-absorbed, both claim to date Penny, and they are never seen together.
She didn't really misspell Dr. Horrible's name, it's just that the second "r" was blurred by her sweat!
I mean, those theories about it being the premier of Neil as a villain seem a bit far-fetched. This is just my two cents.
Listen to Penny's song and you'll get where I'm coming from. In this universe, Anthy never succeeded in finding Utena. Utena began to become a pessimist until she saw the homeless suffering and used this to fill the gap she lost when she gave up her 'prince' role. Her fleeting wish for a prince is what drove her to blindly accept Captain Hammer. Also, red hair is pink in anime.
- Not always true. See Asuka Langley Sohryu (Neon Genesis Evangelion), Yoko (Gurren Lagann), and Dextera/Sinistra (Kiddy Grade)
Hear me out. This is the Horrible Turn universe.
She was initially a Doctor Horrible fan, and curious about who he liked. She watched the song "Laundry Day," but the actual blog was just him singing in front of a camera, no footage from the laundromat.
She helps the homeless in order to do her part in making the world a better place.
She is affected by Love Potion 10 when she meets Captain Hammer, and thus falls in 'love.' She doubts him, but decides that she "believes there's good in everybody's heart." Ironically, this is the point where she stops watching his blog and thus doesn't learn who the girl from the laundromat is.
Her doubt intensifies with "Penny's Song," but when she's about to turn to Billy, Captain Hammer comes in with the good news and she realizes she has to be with Captain Hammer. Still, she curiously looks at the blog when Captain Hammer claims to be "too busy" and everything crashes down on her.
Love Potion 10 is an enhancer, but it can only do so much. The spell was broken, and she sent a message telling him who she was and asking him to come to the laundromat to talk over some frozen yogurts, but he didn't check the comments since he was busy making the Death Ray at the moment. In "So They Say," she wonders if she should just go with Captain Hammer and help make the world a better place, especially since Billy isn't coming. She finally decides it's for the best, as long as it's for "A Brand New Day."
However, she cannot believe she used to like him when she watches "Everyone's A Hero" with the Potion useless, and thus walks out. She knows about 'Billy Buddy' during "Slipping," but doesn't go out to stop him because she's pretty angry at Hammer too, but starts to go to stop him when she realizes he doesn't want to do it.
She takes no action during the scene with Hammer because she realizes the gun won't hurt Billy, but instead Hammer. When the last words came along, I'm gonna go with the "verify Dr. Horrible as a villain" theory.
- SECONDED.
- Wait a second. So Linkara's a Jerkass?
- Well, Linkara and Captain Hammer are so utterly and completely DIFFERENT it kind of works...Linkara's a nice, feminist, nerdy guy with a decent brain and Captain Hammer is a Jerkass, womanizing, buff idiot. It could be possible, in a weird sort of way, that the they are completely opposite from their alternate universe version.
- If the current Atop the Fourth Wall storyline is anything to go by, yes he is. And he's just now starting to realize it.
- Wait a second. So Linkara's a Jerkass?
- Two puns in one name!
- Alternatively, he catalyzed sometime during Brand New Day, making him a Neid. This fits with the fact that the Death Ray is obviously a Wonder, which explodes due to Havoc when Captain Hammer handles it. The obsession with getting revenge on someone fits nicely with the Neid template.
- Wouldn't that make him a Grimm or a Hoffnung? The song IS about him discovering the best way to change the world (Hoffnung): killing his arch-nemesis (Grimm).
Or maybe he's a Spark from Girl genius?
- They're actually shown in the movie, with Moist at Everything you Ever. Two girls.
- ... one cupI'MSOSORRY
The sequel will presumably cover the last bit of Barney's tale, eight years later.
Finally, Commentary! is set entirely in MacLaren's, and is actually sung by Barney's friends as they respond to his story.
- Surely, Sheldon is Bad Horse in this scenario? Elitist, socially inept (presumably it's hard to interact with people when you're a horse), and with all sorts of rules Horrible/Leonard have to meet. No clue on Raj though.
- Either he's Dead Bowie or the Camp Gay Captain Hammer/Dr. Horrible fan boy.
- Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars made a stop in Sunnydale (or maybe Cleveland), and things did not go well.
- Don't worry. Captain Hammer will save us...
- Wait. The man who can go into Hell itself uncorrupted is evil, but the guy who goes into restaurants and gives (fiscally) poor married waitresses 30 minutes to decide "have sex with me for millions for a weekend or not" and then ditches before they can decide to give them gnawing guilt for years is a good guy? Oookay then.
- We all know that Superman Is A Dick, and we have the comic book covers to prove it.
- That would give new importance to "the hammer is my penis."
- "Not become corrupted" doesn't necessarily mean he is completely pure. In fact, it could mean the exact opposite: Superman is already as corrupt as he can get, and Hell has no effect on him. But that's speculation for another series entirely...
- Or, Lex Luthor could have paid for some nice Anti-Superman propaganda
- We all know that Superman Is A Dick, and we have the comic book covers to prove it.
- He fired into the air or the ceiling more than the crowd. Still, good point.
- Firing at the crowd, especially with reporters in the room, would blow his cover. Ceiling pieces falling would provide the illusion of accident.
- It's entirely possible that since he modified it from a stun gun, the Death Ray only affects organic material. So by firing it at the (presumably non-organic) ceiling he wouldn't be doing any harm at all (except maybe some scorch marks), just putting on an intimidatingly flashy show.
Might also explain why the explosion of energy still caused the usually invulnerable Hammer pain despite seemingly not physically damaging him (as it might work by severely disrupting the body's electrical or other systems, rather like a stun gun would on a lesser level).
- Specifically, several years earlier. Emp (still a college student at the time) was there when Dr. Horrible had a car thrown at him; noticing how ineffective it was inspired her to write an entire paper debunking it.
- More importantly, Captain Hammer will eventually dye his hair, promote himself through the vaguely-defined ranks, and go right back to hero-ing as Major Havoc. Billy, meanwhile, will have developed even more personality problems, and now spends his nights cleaning up Dr. Horrible's mistakes... as The God-Damn Maid Man.
- This makes a lot of sense in the context of Moving Guy's comment that it's "about time" Hammer cleans up the streets. Clearly, all his effort has been put into fighting supervillains rather than anything else, even normal criminals; knowing Hammer, he probably fought them even when they weren't doing anything, causing a lot of collateral damage.
- Moist kmows he will never get into the E.L.E. afterall he has no special skills but realises he will benefit from Dr.Horribles sucess. Judging from his blog to Jhonny Snow and his reactions to Moist suggestions Billy will just back out last minute, and maby blow up Caption Hammers statue or something to save face, instead of actually going through with his plan. Moist sabatodges his freeze ray hoping that if he wusses out, the freeze ray will run out of time, and he'll be forced to shoot Captain Hammer as a reflex. It doesn't work that way but he's not complaining.
- YES. I am so glad I'm not the only one to think/see this. Perhaps the singing is just a manifestation of his desire to be a professional singer? *Runs with the theory* And this was when he was still a Younger Adult and more of a Jerkass than he is in Metro City. Maybe the crushing of Dr. Horrible and the physical pain were enough to make him somewhat more decent.
- For the hell of it. Bernard is Horrible after he died his hair or something. Maybe Horrible was wearing contacts.
- The real Bernard never changes his expression and Roxanne says "I didn't know you had feelings!" at one point. After all, Horrible/Billy say "And I won't feel a Thing."
- And then Bernard was watching Megamind to see if he could be accepted into the Evil League of Evil?
- Mega Mind was supposed to kill Roxanne his 'Penny' thus was rejected.
- This is now this troopers personal cannon.
He was skipped at least three grades as a kid, he's 28 around the time of the show, and he clearly has quite a bit of genuine scientific knowledge that he's just too shy and awkward to make good use of, so it's possible. Just that between his supervillain aspirations and the anti-intellectualism of the setting, he ironically gets more cred out of fake Morally Ambiguous Doctorate posing than he would for his real doctorate.
- He uses a Morally Ambiguous Doctorate because using his real doctorate in medicine would bring suspicion upon the past identity he changed his name to escape.
- Sad song sad song sad song, Make the whole world Neil... No longer sad song as it's too damn funny.
- In the prequel comic, it's heavily implied his father was a Soviet spy. Espionage and intrigue is In the Blood, perhaps?
- For that matter, we don't know what job Moist had before becoming a henchman, other than it was at a large but nondescript office building, and he calls it "boring," "inconsequential and uninspiring," but not "low-paying." Although he lives in "a closet with a toilet ... a half-bath" and drives a "reliable car," he never complains about money and seems not to mind spending four dollars a minute spilling his guts to unnamed phone sex operators. It could very well be his former job paid well but required anonymity and a low profile, although it was also obsolete and unnecessary, like the job of a Russian spy analyst in America after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
- Another possible clue: The names of the characters on Moist's double date with Conflict Diamond. The "conflict diamond" name could be a hint to the Love Triangle of Billy/Penny/Hammer having four points, but the character's name is Conflict Diamond, not Love Diamond (or even the more common - and more supervillainy - phrase Blood Diamond). Combined with "Bait & Switch," this could very easily be a Stealth Pun combined with a Brick Joke.
- During "Bad Horse Chorus," it's not Dr. Horrible to whom the cowboy sings the line, "A murder would be nice, of course." In fact, that's the only lyrical line sung to or by Moist, not just in that song, but in the entire movie.
- It goes without saying Moist is much more comfortable with murder - even of children and the elderly - than Horrible is. "Do I even know you?"
- If he is a spy, he may also be a Double Agent. Dr. Horrible assumes Captain Hammer and the LAPD watch his blog because they were ready for him at the Superhero Memorial Bridge ceremony, but in the Emmy hack, Captain Hammer lacks even the most basic knowledge of computers and the Internet. On the other hand, in the scene immediately after Horrible's assumption, Moist is wearing a "NJ State Police" t-shirt. By the way, just who is the "he" who's "still not answering" when Moist is making a phone call during "So They Say?"
- On that note, why did Dr. Horrible's freeze ray fail both times? The assumption is he's incompetent, but he's learning. Unless someone were sabotaging his weapons so they would take a second to warm up or shut down at inconvenient times. Someone he trusts. Someone who knows everything. Someone with keys to his apartment. Someone who could introduce something notoriously bad to sensitive equipment, something like... moisture.
- Of course, for Moist to pull off all these convoluted plans, he'd need to be playing a pretty mad game of Gambit Roulette, right? Not necessarily. Moist has something neither Dr. Horrible nor Captain Hammer have: a Crystal Ball. Or more accurately, an Hourglass, who can see a random kid in Iowa becoming president. A common question about the movie is why Hourglass doesn't warn Moist of the futility of Horrible's plans, with fan justifications ranging from You Can't Fight Fate to Not So Omniscient After All. But what if Hourglass did tell Moist what could happen with just a little push, and he, well, uh... pushed?
- A couple minor nitpicks:
The "he" that's "still not answering" is pretty clearly Dr. Horrible. It goes with the Half Empty Two Shot of Penny in the laundromat to show that Horrible is so deep into plotting Hammer's demise that he's neglecting/ignoring the things he should be paying attention to: Namely his best friend and his Love Interest who care about him.
And when it comes to his inventions malfunctioning, we see both the parking meter and the muscle-reducing ray not working, and Hammer snarking "What does this one not do?", before he meets Moist, implying that his inventions have always tended to not work. And when combined with things like: him ignoring talking to Penny to steal Wonderflonium when the whole reason he wanted it was to finish his Freeze Ray and use it to... get the courage to talk to Penny; not considering that Hammer and the police might read his blog; not realizing the Freeze Ray takes time to warm up; not realizing that a serum that's Essence of Hammer might give him Hammer's mind as well as strength, and so on—the impression I get is that the reason Horrible's inventions tend to not work is because he's too short-sighted/impatient/one-track-minded and doesn't think things through properly.
...everything else in your theory is rather interesting food-for-thought, though. - It's possible that this was originally supposed to be canon, and the character of Moist is The Artifact. It would explain the existence of Nobody Wants To Be Moist.
- A couple minor nitpicks:
- It doesn't matter how much would have to be changed, or how much would end up being a love story. But there needs to be a Happy Ending. There just needs to be.
- If Dr. Horrible wouldn't have intervened during the homeless shelter opening, Penny still would have edged away and probably broken up with Hammer. In an Alternative Character Interpretation Hammer really was beginning to feel compassion, or at least Penny had finally awakened that part of his brain - but he still had a lot of to work to do on his ego. Penny wold have broken up with him still, but it was what started an introspective period for Hammer, after which he would have become a better person and probably a better hero by extension.
- Maybe the ELoE saw this as a possibility and is why they still admitted Billy even though it wasn't Hammer who was killed. Billy still killed the FutureGood!Hammer, just not the person.
- The Brain and Doctor Horrible are AU counterparts of eachother. The Brain is just lucky enough that's with all the crap the world throw at him, AU Captain Hammer WASN'T one of them, and that his Morality Pet is a good friend as Pinky
- The Brain decided that he would have a better chance to Take Over the World if he was a human, so he either turned himself human or builded a better Human suit. he was forced to leave Pinky in the lab (maybe the scientists wouldn't care of one mice ran away, but two may attract too much attention. maybe he needed him to keep an eye on another project (or, more likely, the next step of whatever his overcomplicated plan is). or maybe he couldn't turn pinky human\ bulid him a human suit and was afriad that someone might step on Pinky) and as a result got more and more cynical as time went. he started taking interest, and falling in love with Penny becuase he thought she would make a good Pinky substitute .
- like the last one, but Brain's plan happend in one of those episodes that are inexplicably in another time period - this time, the year 1980. due to a miscalculation about the age differences between humans and mice, the... Turn-Mice-Into-Humans-Thingy turned Brain into a two years old toddler, and later adopted and given the name Billy. leaving him with his brilliant mind, but without any memory of Pinky or his life as a mouse. (if you consider the prequel comics canon)
Dr. Horrible loses his passion for villainy and just gets more and more depressed, until one day he decides to quit the ELE, improve his freeze ray, and revolutionize the world of cryonics, since instead of freezing someone with incredibly low temperatures it just leaves the person stuck in a moment in time while the rest of the world keeps moving. Since they're all living in such a Crapsack World, everyone wants to try the procedure and leave the fixing of the world's problems for others to deal with. The thing is, the entire population uses the freeze ray procedure, and with everyone in the world frozen for one thousand years, the Earth is at a standstill. Everyone, except Dr. Horrible. Unencumbered by the sheeplike masses he so despised, he lives out the rest of his days mourning Penny, finally alone and finally the most important man on Earth. A long time after he's dead and gone, about four hundred years into the freeze, the process malfunctions and all people under its control die, and thus ends the era of the human race.
About two years before the start of the show, Billy experienced some sort of a horrible trauma, leaving him delusional and living in a made-up world of super-heros and Mad Scientists. the blog is basically him bubbling about "crimes", made-up super heros and villains ,singing at the camera and being kinda creepy (just imagine the opening scene in the real world, that's pretty creepy) mostly visted by people who thinks about it as Bile Fascination and Trolls (Such as "2Sly4U" and "Johnny Snow") who poke fun at the poor insane man. Moist was Billy's friend from before the trauma with a bit of a sweating problem that found himself having to play along his friend's delusions, fearing that telling him the truth will only make it worse, while subtly trying to make to stop the super-villain stuff (the murders he suggested in Act II were mostly to try to make Billy stop wanting to be evil). The non-ELE villians are simpilly "Moist" 's friends and the ELE are completely made up (the reason Penny heard about Bad Horse is because it became a Memetic Mutation in this world). Penny is mostly the same, but less of a Mary Sue and has a boyfriend who is also volunteering for Caring Hands. Captain Hammer was at first a made-up character - but after Billy learned that Penny has a boyfriend, he put him as Captain Hammer. the van robbery was mostly a hallucination, beside the Penny part. Penny wasn't really interested in Billy, but talked with him mostly out of politeness and pity. The Freeze Ray Noodle Incident was just him breaking into some dedication of a bridge with his prop, causing panic and almost caught by the LAPD. Penny's Boyfriend just came to the coin wash tell her they got the buliding and then left with Penny, he recognized Billy becuase he used to watch the blog. he rest of the Billy\Captian Hammer conversation wasn't real. All of "So They Say" was a fantasy too, the death ray being just a rifle. While Penny's Boyfriend did made the speech that Billy's mind turned into "Everyone's a Hero", it was in the name of all of the Caring Hands volunteers and was actually positive. nobody did anything in Slipping because... well an insane guy in a lab-coat and a rifle just started shooting wildly into the air and rambling about weird stuff, would you do something? during the shooting, he accidentally hit Penny (something his brain "translate" into "it was all Captain Hammer's fault") and before she dies - she mumble bunch of meaningless word, that, to Billy's wraped mind sounded like "Captian Hammer will save us". the guilt and grief on the death of Penny caused him to completely lose connection with the real world, dreaming about honor and fame while mumbling to his webcam - totally borken.
[[WMG: Even more alternatively, Doctor Steel is future Doctor HorribleGoing with theory that Billy and Dr. Horrible alle two different personalities it is possible that he could develop thirth that consumed the others or that they somehow merged. This new persona has viarous traits of both Doctor Horrible (mad scientist at the verge of world domination) and Billy (wants to make a world a better place) but also repressed his memories, creating fake origin about blowing up toy factory. This however resulted in them manifesting as longing to something else - just as Billy/Doctor Horrible misses Penny and times when she was alive, his new personality misses his happy childhood. Try pretenting this is singed by Horrible, espetially the second part, and you may understand where I'm coming from with that idea.
- I love you.
- Or just like Maximus.
Also, just because (and sequel-ness), Penny will watch the blog, and make a vow to try and make the world a better place for Billy so that he won't have to be Dr. Horrible anymore. From that point, the focus will be on her being a 'hero' to the city, and generally trying her hardest to achieve that goal.
Probably doesn't mean anything, but I thought it was interesting.
- Or maybe Penny faked her death because she was originally trying to be good but realized it was hopeless.