Watchmen
From Lostpedia
Watchmen is a comic book series written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons originally published by DC Comics from 1986-1987. It tells the alternative history of a world on the brink of nuclear war. The 'superheroes' are portrayed as very human, with faults and weaknesses, and complex, adult ethical themes are explored throughout.
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Confirmed influence on Lost
Damon Lindelof called Watchmen "the greatest piece of popular fiction ever produced". Source: Entertainment Weekly Also, writer Brian K. Vaughan, who is best known for his works in the field of comics, cited Watchmen as "definitely" the inspiration for his start as a writer.[1]
Shared themes
- Deadly scheme to save Humanity
- In Watchmen, a character named Adrian Veidt forms a theory that war and environmental damage will lead to humanity’s destruction in the mid-1990. Veidt then concocts a way to save humanity. The plan involves the deaths of millions of innocent people, but he justifies the cost by knowing that he has saved the world. This scheme is reflected in the storyline of the alternate reality game The Lost Experience. The TLE's Sri Lanka Video describes Enzo Valenzetti's predicted demise of humanity, and Alvar Hanso's plan to avert that disaster. It also describes Thomas Mittelwerk's extension of the plan which involves the killing of large numbers of people, justified by the end result of saving all of humanity. Writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach revealed that the DHARMA logo at the start of the video is of a hydrogen atom, and a direct reference to Watchmen [2].
- Flashbacks
- In both, Lost and Watchmen, the story is told in two ways. One is the principal plot (the present) and the other is the past of the characters as flashbacks
- Secret Island
- In Watchmen, Adrien Veidt sends a group of scientists to his secret island. This is very similar to the operations of Alvar Hanso and the DHARMA Initiative on the Island.
- The same name
- Blake
- Both Watchmen and The Lost Experience have major characters named Blakes. In Watchmen, Edward Blake was murdered for discovering the secrets of an island, where evil plans were being hatched by scientists; in the Lost Experience, Rachel Blake's life is at stake because she is uncovering the Hanso Foundation's secret plans for the Island in the Sri Lanka video.
- Bernard and Rose
- In Watchmen there is a character named Bernard, who opened a newsstand to meet people after his wife, Rose, died. In Lost, Rose and Bernard are two minor characters, and Rose should be dead.
- Blake
- Statues
- Adrien Veidt’s name as a masked adventurer was Ozymandias, the Greek name for Ramses II. The following is a poem about Ozymandias, which may be analogous to the statue seen in "Live Together, Die Alone":
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In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone, - Horace Smith. | ” |
- Furthermore, Shelley's version of this poem is the one that actually appears in Watchmen. It deals more directly with the impermanence of political power and civilizations, and therefore is thematically relevant to the fall of the DHARMA Initiative during the Purge, or the fall of human civilization as predicted by the Valenzetti Equation :
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I met a Traveler from an antique land, - Percy Bysshe Shelley. | ” |
- Nonlinear time:Desmond and Dr. Manhattan
- After the episode "Flashes Before Your Eyes", Desmond seems to be experiencing time in a non-linear fashion, much like the Watchmen character Dr. Manhattan, whose abilities, like Desmond's, were derived from being trapped in an accident in a high-energy physics device. Other similarities between the two characters include Desmond's and Dr. Manhattan's post-accident nudity, as well as Desmond's photograph with Penny, which is similar to the photo Dr. Manhattan took with him to Mars of himself with his old girlfriend.
- Smiley face
- The smiley face design on The Balloon closely resembles a recurring symbol in Watchmen.[[3]]
- Thrown from a building
- John Locke is a attacked and thrown from an apartment window in a near identical way to how Blake/Comedian is at the start of the novel.
- Massive corporation
- Videt Corporation owns numerous shell companies and engages in both a public front (Shoes, Perfume) and secret scientific research in the same way that the Hanso Foundation does.
- Ships
- The black ship the Desmond and Sayid are on is referred to as the Freighter. A comic that a kid reads in Watchmen has since been called "The Black Freighter".
See also
- Apocalypse - Article on apocalyptic references in Lost
- Comic book
- Comic conventions
External links
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| Alias • Blue Danube • Boston Red Sox • Celtic FC • Green Lantern and Flash: Faster Friends • Myst • Pi • Star Trek (Redshirts) • Star Wars • Voltron • Watchmen • Wizard of Oz | ||||||
![[3]](http://www.timemachinego.com/linkmachinego/images/watchmen_smiley.jpg){kind=link}