8 Weirdest DOOM Enemies (And What They Represent)

Rejoice, Doom Slayers, for the gates of Hell have been cast open, and the time of demons is nigh. That means but one thing: it is time to rip and tear, through the cracked obsidian foundations that have spewed forth abominations, and deeper still into the very fabric that binds them, to find the inception point of such foul creation. Armed with your chainsaw, locked in your Praetor Suit, and with nothing but fiery rancour running through your veins, it is time to know your enemy better than you ever have had need to before.

Or at least, what I mean to say is that I concocted a brand new Monster Manual for you guys based on the illustrious Doom series itself, spraying blood and viscera in an endless stream of carnage to hunt the very strangest sacks of twisted flesh you can take down in the franchise.

Looking at what inspired the minions of hell in all their repugnant glory, there's plenty of parallels drawn between lore and the real-world - so let's crack open these atrocities down the middle and see how they came to be, shall we? It's time to raze hell.

Imps are the most common enemy you'll come across in the Doom franchise, cropping up in almost every entry across the canon. Throwing fiery projectiles and flitting about the map, they were implemented as the troops of hell - the backbone of their forces that will harass you at every turn. No bother, they chop up just as easily as anything does when you take a chainsaw to them.

So what brought about the inception of the imp? Well, like everything in Doom, it all started with a game of Dungeons and Dragons. John Romero has said of their campaign: 'I got greedy trying to procure a magic sword and caused the entire world to be overrun by demons. Something just clicked.'

Much like in mythological belief that imps are minions of the devil, in D&D, imps are lawful evil 'tiny fiends' that have wings, can shape shift, and turn invisible - with the latter nicely linking to the Doom Imp's ability to quickly travel across the map. It feels like a natural step that the enemies imp-lementation (get it?) could have been from D&D, especially when you consider the original design of the imp was meant to be a winged demon itself, too.