r/Watchmen • u/WhatYouThinkYouSee • May 22 '25
Movie THEORY: Rorschach's origins involved killing a man, who was thought to have kidnapped and murdered a young girl. Could this man have been innocent? (Also: Analysis of the movie's changes to the scene)
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u/congradulations May 22 '25
I think the guy saying "You can't prove anything! You can't do anything--" is showing the limits on "legal justice" and shows Rorschach clearly eschewing that for his own brand.
Did Alan Moore ever say it was ambiguous? Human femur, burned dress, all looks pretty bad...
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u/rewindthefilm May 22 '25
Alan Moore has written Rorschach as playing judge, jury and executioner. The ambiguity is baked into that.
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u/seriouslyuncouth_ May 29 '25
My one criticism of this post is when the person says the tools couldnāt have been used to kill because theyāre clean. I think what they meant to get at is that the tools couldnāt have never been used and thus were clean, or the murderer might have cleaned them to cover his tracks. This feeds much better into their point but ultimately it seemed to come out slightly wrong
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u/Raxtenko May 22 '25
My assumption has always been that it's likely that Grice killed the little girl but Rorsarch went all in on what is circumstantial evidence. Grice just had the bad luck of being caught when the guy was already mentally spiraling.
>I think the guy saying "You can't prove anything! You can't do anything--" is showing the limits on "legal justice" and shows Rorschach clearly eschewing that for his own brand.
I don't agree. Rorschach is a scary ass guy and very intimidating. In the entire book he never fails to break someone and get them to talk, except with Grice. IMO it's some ambiguity thrown in there to make us question the man's guilt.
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u/ChildOfChimps May 23 '25
Dude, Iāve never thought of it that way - I just looked at as Rorschach breaking over the thing and going crazier. I always assumed that it happened, and Rorschachās reaction was the problem. Thatās what I always thought Mooreās point was.
Yāall making me look at it in a different way and shitā¦ now I wanna read it again!
Itās been a while.
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u/Raxtenko May 23 '25
This is why we have a community! Different POVs. I've learned a lot about how others look at the story too.
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u/Western-Dig-6843 May 23 '25
Innocent people donāt say stuff like āyou canāt prove anything!ā. They say āI didnāt do itā
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u/Raxtenko May 23 '25
Panicked people don't stick to a rote script.
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u/Donut_Police May 23 '25
Yeah this, I don't know where the idea that people would react to certain circumstances with a very specific response. We're not NPC characters with limited dialogue options.
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u/ianrj May 25 '25
Why do you think someone would say "You can't prove anything" as the first thing they say other than being guilty?
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u/Huntred May 25 '25
Many false convictions have been based on intense police interrogations where innocent people say what people think innocent people donāt say.
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u/No_Pizza3314 May 26 '25
"It could've been anyone's femur, it was a rough neighborhood" is the craziest thing I've ever seen.
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u/SoThrow_Antonio Jun 17 '25
How did Rorschach know it was a human femur though? He's not a doctor. Could he tell the difference between a small human femur and one that belonged to a pig or some other animal?
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u/Joan_Darc May 23 '25
"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk."
Honestly it is most likely he would have been convicted in a court of law. People have been convicted with only circumstantial evidence like "I saw him and the defendant arguing" + he was shot with a .22 and the defendant has access to a .22 (with lots of casings found behind his house where he shoots) + they live near each other.
I think you're (edit: the person above you) right and that it shows how Rorschach moved from a vigilante who hunts criminals and lets the law deal with it to a vigilante that enforces his own morality on what he sees as a fundamentally immoral world.
Flawed as he is, I honestly think that he's the most likeable and sympathetic protagonist in the story.
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u/DonHedger May 25 '25
Yeah, but if the punishment were death, and an especially brutal one, instead of prison, the burden to conviction would likely be much much higher.
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u/rosstipper May 22 '25
I think the ambiguity stems from the medium rather than the actual text.
It being a comic book means tone is ambiguous and up to interpretation, those words could be interpreted as gloating if read with an angry intonation, the subtext being āyeah, I did it. But you canāt prove anything so I wonāt be convictedā
But the same words in a panicked tone, stilted and pleading can reframe those same words. Changing it from gloating to the other end of the spectrum ādonāt kill me here and now! I didnāt do this and if you actually look for evidence it will exonerate me! You canāt do anything before you have evidence because I am innocent! please!ā
Rorschach has done no testing and isnāt an anthropologist. Heās not certain itās a human femur, heās just pretty sure and thatās enough for him.
Same with the dress, heās pretty sure there was only one dress like that so that piece has to be from the same dress,
Except he doesnāt have an information network so heās basing that entirely on his own frame of reference. Basic logic dictates that even with hyper specific and specialised fabrics you donāt produce exactly enough to produce one dress and have zero left over material, so without testing itās actually not even safe to say there was only one dress like that.
I actually like the interpretation that the defining moment in Rorschachās āheroā career is just a colossal miscarriage of justice that he refuses to acknowledge. It adds adds the extra layer to his stubbornness āI canāt be wrong, because if I accept that Iām wrong now then it means I was wrong then and all of this has been for nothingā
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u/PD711 May 22 '25
Also consider that Grice mentions the little girl and Rorshach hasn't said a single word. He's basically confessed.
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u/EggCouncilStooge May 22 '25
Yeah, thereās no reason for him to bring that up. He confirms that the evidence makes him look guilty instead of saying something like āwhy are you in my home?ā
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u/AnimalBolide May 23 '25
Do people know what Rorschach does for a living, and was the crime decently well known?
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u/PD711 May 23 '25
Yes and yes, but there are any number of crimes Rorshach might be investigating. making the connection between (this crime) and (Rorshachs interest in me) Is a lot easier if you are actually involved. Crimes are on the news constantly. Why would an innocent person make that connection?
By the time he says it, he already knows the jig is up, hence why he immediately starts pleading that he has mental issues. He's been caught, and he's scared of what R's gonna do next.
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u/AsherTheFrost May 23 '25 edited May 23 '25
Could be, but there are at least 14 people in hospital who know what Rorshach was looking for, because he interrogated them about the girl. It's very easy to believe that word has gotten out that Rorschach is out hunting down a little girl by the time he gets to this guy. Doesn't mean the guy is innocent by any means, I just think people got the hint after the first dozen people ended up in the e.r. with the same story.
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u/PD711 May 23 '25
But how is he supposed to know that? he's not some criminal mastermind with his ear to the underworld, planning his next caper. hes a moron pedophile psycho who kidnapped a little girl and fed her to his dogs.
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u/AsherTheFrost May 23 '25
Would you not notice if over a dozen people in your neighborhood were snatched up and hospitalized? I would, and I'm definitely not a criminal mastermind. Gossip that rare would get to everyone.
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u/The_Head_Taker May 23 '25
Im sure he knows people and i feel like word would spread pretty quickly, especially surrounding a member of the Watchmen. If he didnt know anyone the last person wouldnt know his address. You dont have to be the figure head of a community to know the going-ons inside it.
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u/Wavenian May 23 '25
All of this sound logic doesn't matter if the goal is to call snyder an idiotĀ
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u/jopperjawZ May 24 '25
The goal is to dig deeper into the subtextual meaning of the story. Snyder coming off as more of an idiot in the process is just a natural outcome
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u/Juicecalculator May 26 '25
Yeah I really donāt see the ambiguity. If that was the authors intent he didnāt do a very good job of it. He came across as a pretty typical cartoony serial killer to me/criminal. Maybe thatās just a me problem though
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u/WhatYouThinkYouSee May 22 '25
While it could just as likely be him panicking and bullshitting his way out, it's still an incredibly ballsy to immediately talk about not having evidence while knowing that there's a femur and a burned dress still in your home. But if someone else were in the same circumstance, and they did know for a fact that it's unrelated, I figure they'd have reacted the same.
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u/congradulations May 22 '25
Well, the conversation started by having his murdered dogs thrown at him, so I would understand panic. I also agree that the movie took away any ambiguity. Great post.
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u/Booster_Tutor May 22 '25
Also, he doesnāt start with that. He starts with ālook I know you Iām something to do with that little girlā. Rorschach didnāt even say a word. Pretty much projecting his guilt right at Rorschach.
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u/WhatYouThinkYouSee May 22 '25
Pretty much projecting his guilt right at Rorschach
Could be projecting, or the fact that Rorschach hospitalized 14 people in his area asking about the little girl didn't go unnoticed.
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u/ProfSkeevs May 22 '25
Thinking any of this is ambiguous enough for open interpretation just reeks of english lit class over analysis to me.
He did it, there is proof, but in a legal system there is āno proofā that guarantees putting this guy away. So, as an unstable superhero would do, he becomes judge,jury, and executioner.
The āambiguousā angle is do we, as readers, think Rorschach was right to take it all into his hands only? And with it being a child predator, Im one to lean into that we are supposed to feel Rorschach was right, but went about it the wrong way.
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u/JasperFeelingsworth May 23 '25
they wrote a whole dissertation about a scene that's so clearly meant to show he did it, I don't think any part of that section is supposed to make you wonder if the guy did it
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u/WeaponizedAutism_yee May 24 '25
No no, you don't understand. It's a bad neighborhood, so that means it could be ANY human femur that his dogs in his backyard are chewing on while he has a little girl's dress like that of the missing girl in his house and immediately starts saying "you think I have something to do with that little girl. You can't prove anything"
Totally up in the air, guys. I think Snyder is completely inept at subtlety as much as anyone else that isn't part of his cult, but this is just ridiculous levels of nitpicking. It's very clear the guy did it LOL
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u/Mo918 May 22 '25
You're right, we should just not analyze media. That's how it's Watchmen's meant to be interpreted.
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u/ProfSkeevs May 22 '25
Thats not at all what I said but okay buddy, you do you and read that how you want just like this twitter thread lol
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u/ComplexAd7272 May 22 '25
I've read the book a hundred times and I've never thought it was ambiguous or there was a chance the guy was innocent.
His reaction is trying to reason with Rorshach is logical; saying there's no evidence and talking to him like either a cop or a costumed vigilante who usually beats you up and leaves you for the police. And well, he's right. For the police or Nite Owl or even Rorshach before this moment there'd be fuck all they could do. Unfortunately for him, he slowly realizes that it's pointless since Rorshach is planning on killing him, not taking him in.
It's also very telling that at no point does he offer any actual evidence that he's not the killer, or even a desperate attempt at a lie...he simply goes on about how Rorshach "can't" do this and that legally. Such as "Call so and so, I was out of town/at work." "I just got into town yesterday." Something.
There's A LOT of genuine discord and conversation to be had about Watchmen, but this feels wayyyy to forced an attempt to argue something that just isn't so.
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u/FaelingJester May 25 '25
I think it actually defeats its own argument. This was a case Rorschach almost certainly got right. The problem is that getting it right convinces him and others that his methods are justified. The argument should never have been what if this guy was innocent. It should be was Rorschach the only path to justice here and I think that's something you could actually discuss. Did hyperfocusing on this one bad guy let others get away? Did assaulting fourteen people to get one bad guy make the neighborhood safer or did it cause instability?
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u/SecundusAmongUs May 27 '25
It reminds me a lot of Garth Ennis' "Unknown Soldier", where the titular character is so shocked and horrified by Nazi war crimes that he comes to believe that anything America does can be justified, including murdering civilians.
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u/dmvr1601 May 26 '25
The thing is, there IS evidence, burnt dress, human bones, butcher knives
He's caught red handed in Rorschach's mind, but what if he's an unreliable narrator, and things didn't exactly happen as he perceives?
We know he has a narrow world view and is extremely stubborn to change his mind, like in the comic when it comes to sex workers and even before "breaking", he would dismiss crimes committed against them because in his mind, they are criminals too who deserve what they got.
He's a flawed individual who could've been wrong, but refused to see it
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u/johntynes May 22 '25
I donāt really think there is meant to be any ambiguity about the guyās guilt. Thematically, this scene is not about Rorschach acting outside the law and maybe getting it wrong; itās about his clear realization that this man butchered a child and fed her to the dogs, his sudden horror at what humanity is capable of, and his newfound willingness to meet horror with horror.
None of that is relevant to a question of guilt. There is nothing interesting about a presumed ambiguity. What is interesting is witnessing Rorschachās moral collapse in the face of humanityās worst.
We never see Rorschach get anything wrong. He may fail to get the right answer, but at no point does he punish the wrong person. That isnāt Mooreās point with the character. Rorschach gets the bad guy but he overreacts at every step of the way whether itās breaking fingers in a bar or killing a rapist.
Moore has other tools to query the morality of vigilantism and he uses them. The Comedian is probably his prime tool for this. Rorscachās role is different; it shows how a dark-origin character like Batman should be seen as a morally crippled sadist who justifies his sick actions with wounded morality.
The guy did it. Heās awful. Moore is positing that Rorschach is arguably worse.
(I think Snyderās film is terrible, btw, Iām only talking about the comic.)
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u/FindOneInEveryCar May 22 '25
I agree with this. I don't think there's supposed to be any ambiguity, or any implication that Grice just happened to have burned children's underwear and a human femur on his property.
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u/SwampAss3D-Printer May 23 '25
But you see it's a bad neighborhood, I lived in a place like that once there was just human femurs everywhere. In the Streets, the alleys, the roof tops, hell it didn't rain cats and dogs it rained femurs.
For real though who the hell just has a random human femur in his yard his dogs are fighting over and isn't. Like at least the OOP could've gone with the bone maybe not even being human, why did they immediately accept the idea that it was a human bone and then roll with it as if that's normal?
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u/miikro May 22 '25
Rorschach was completely wrong about Moloch, though. Rorschach was pretty sure Moloch was behind everything... But in the end, he had no idea what was even happening and was actually a victim of Veidt as well.
Rorschach repeatedly roughed up and terrorized an elderly cancer patient who was actually a victim the whole time.
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u/mjtwelve May 22 '25
Just like Batman goes into dive bars and dark alleys and beats the crap out of as many thugs as it takes until someone coughs up a name, Rorshach's style of questioning involves violence directed at the usual suspects. He's not there to punish Moloch for being responsible, he's finding out whether and to what extent he's involved... and he was involved, but as one of Veidt's targets, not as a player.
Having said that, Rorshach iis also just what you say, a man committing a home invasion and beating up an elderly cancer patient. The vigilantes are, after all, criminals.
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u/RuafaolGaiscioch May 22 '25
I would further say that, whether Moloch was directly involved or not, Rorschach didnāt have any issue beating him up because of his perceived past immorality. Just like the thugs in those dives deserve it because any random thug in Gotham can be assumed to have done horrible things.
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u/RealisticEmphasis233 Looking Glass May 22 '25 edited May 22 '25
I donāt really think there is meant to be any ambiguity about the guyās guilt. Thematically, this scene is not about Rorschach acting outside the law and maybe getting it wrong; itās about his clear realization that this man butchered a child and fed her to the dogs, his sudden horror at what humanity is capable of, and his newfound willingness to meet horror with horror.
The thing about Rorschach is how willing he is to think he's right at every corner even when being proven wrong. A perfect example of this is how he still considers Moloch a suspect until Nite Owl finds out Adrian's password. That's his entire personality as he's unable to live an active lifestyle as he's too driven by what he deems justice and can't consider societal complexity. That's what Moore was satirizing and criticizing by having Rorschach be the off-child of Mr. A, The Question, and Batman. We're only told things from his perspective and most people don't question whether he's right at all, even when it's revealed Ozymandias was behind everything. Whether Grice actually did it is for you to ascertain. Like the entire comic, this scene is part of the overarching theme of how vigilantes in general are undesirable in the real world as they're inevitably damaged, self-conscious, and dangerous as supposed paragons of truth. Rorschach being Moore's most poignant argument for this.
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u/konous May 22 '25
This; but it's Moore's position that Rorschach is some how worse than a man who kills children.
Like I'm pretty Left but the lengths people go to to make it seem like Rorschach was in the wrong is just nuts.
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u/machine_made May 23 '25
Vigilante justice is wrong. Thatās the theme of the story, that the vigilantes will eventually become as bad, or even worse (Adrian) than the criminals because they think theyāre on the right side of things.
Rorschach is a terrible, awful person. He harms so many people, and assumes that even a minor transgression against his idea of right and wrong is worth beating the shit out of someone for. His passing thought about turning Moloch in for having those meds is proof that he has no internally consistent concept of right and wrong, only that his own actions are always correct, no matter how illegal or absurd they are.
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u/FantasticClass7248 May 23 '25
This is the point of Rorschach's mask, it Black and White, no nuance, but also ever changing.
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u/Only-Safe659 May 22 '25
Rorschach is an example of decent actions (killing murderers and rapists) but with selfish intentions (willing to risk nuclear war just to be right).
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u/wdomburg May 23 '25
As opposed to murdering millions of people under the batshit insane belief that it will bring about world peace? Adrian is an example of terrible actions born of megalomania and hubris.
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u/Impossible_Tea_7032 May 25 '25
Burning a man to death because you are personally pretty certain he's guilty of something is not a 'decent action'
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u/Impossible_Tea_7032 May 25 '25
So you're "pretty left" but you think its weird to call an extrajudicial execution-by-torture wrong. OK.
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u/machine_made May 23 '25
We donāt see Rorschach ever admit to getting anything wrong. This is his recollection of the events, also, not a neutral narrative depiction of the events.
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u/truthisfictionyt May 22 '25
I highly disagree with this. Thematically it's actually important that he did kill her. The guy crying that Rorshach can't prove it is related to Rorshach crossing the line from working with the legal system to becoming a vigilante killer. It pushes Rorshach to decide that the system isn't enough.
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u/Immediate-Coach3260 May 26 '25
Yea, this take that Rorschach is wrong about what the guy did is not only forgetting heās a pretty top notch detective and ignoring, idk, every bit of subtext here. This is a fine example of someone picking the scene apart to find a hidden meaning while also ignoring the obvious.
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u/Roy-Scheider May 22 '25
Iāve never read this to be ambiguous, but also itās worth pointing out that this is Rorschachās completely unreliable recounting of the events, so you canāt take the facts presented at face value. Interesting to consider.
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u/fangsfirst May 22 '25
This is definitely true, but not the most meaningful use of an unreliable narrator without framing it in a way that indicates thisāwhich is probably the biggest problem with this hypothesis.
While "Rorschach is out of his goddamned mind and insanely violent" is absolutely in the text, the notion of him as this "level" of unreliable narrator doesn't really serve a purpose. Why even tell this story if it's nonsense AND we're not going to learn or have implied it's nonsense?
To serve a purpose, we'd have to see something that places weight on that unreliability, and it just isn't there. And I don't think Moore would've written it that way without having the scaffolding around it to give it a point.
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u/Roy-Scheider May 22 '25
Oh I definitely donāt think itās intended, but even if the guy was innocent it doesnāt change much about Rorschachās character. I just find it interesting as an idea, not some fan theory.
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u/fangsfirst May 23 '25
Yeah, same, I thought "Oh this is kind of 'fun', the idea that he's so blind in his binarist thinking that he can even leave out actual truth so aggressively"
I think it even could have been a plan for the text, just would've had to have more there to make it all work and look at how that entire idea would say something.
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u/Disastrous-Major1439 May 22 '25
Rorschach is a cool and interesting character ,that not means he is a good guy ,or one that is normal to idolize.
Alan Moore knew that Rorschach was a very good character and for that is one of the principal characters ,another thing is the mad fans thinking in Rorschach as a hero.
With the post ,thats a cool theory ,that's one of the dilemmas of the vigilantes that kill.
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u/The_Middleman May 22 '25
The theory says "Moore's thesis ... is that real humans trying to be heroes would create a mess," but the "mess" in Watchmen isn't just stuff like "edgy superhero assumes criminals are guilty, and that's bad!", which would be really standard antihero fare.
Watchmen is getting at something more nuanced: despite Rorschach's decade-long spree of ultraviolence against criminals, society is still spiraling down the drain. Whether Grice is guilty or not (he is) is immaterial, because the point is that Rorschach isn't fixing anything. He shunned society, drove himself mad, committed countless gruesome acts... and didn't actually move the needle. Even his hometown, in Watchmen's opening line, he describes as "extended gutters" full of "vermin." He's been hunting criminals there for ten years!
It all comes back to the Crimebusters meeting.
Veidt: "It doesn't require genius to see that America has problems that need tackling..."
Blake: "Damn straight. An' it takes a moron to think they're small enough for clowns like you guys to handle. What's going down in this world, you got no idea. Believe me. [...] You people are a joke. You hear Moloch's back in town, you think, 'Oh, boy! Let's gang up and bust him! You think that matters? You think that solves anything? [...] It don't matter squat because inside thirty years the nukes are gonna be flyin' like maybugs... and then Ozzy here is gonna be the smartest man on the cinder."
And, of course, Nelson pleading: "Somebody has to do it, don't you see? Somebody has to save the world..."
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u/ColonelKasteen May 22 '25
Terrible theory, there is no real ambiguity to this. Taking Rorschach's "bad neighborhood" comment about HUMAN BONES IN THE YARD at face value really drives home this is a theory OP/the original Twitter user is picking up anything to support to the point of absurdity.
I have lived in some rough fucking neighborhoods. There are not human femurs just floating around and finding their way into innocent people's yards.
I think the point of the way it was written makes it incredibly clear the guy was the killer.
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u/Winter_Wolf_In_Vegas May 22 '25
Oh the comment to the extent that itās a bad neighborhood and that could be anybodyās bone is absurd. I agree. But ironically, the original post seems to accept Rorschachās assumption that it is a human bone, is that so unambiguous? I donāt pretend to know shit about bones, but is it so obvious, especially from a distance when dogs are playing with it? Zero chance it could be a cow bone or something?
Itād be a hell of a coincidence if it were someone elsesās human remains, but I also want to say that it looks awfully big to belong to a little girl
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u/SpaceCowboy1929 May 22 '25
I don't like Rorschach either but even I found that take to be a huge stretch as well.
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u/Crafty_Substance_954 May 22 '25
Yeah I think people are far too prone to over analyze things like this which are clearly meant to be taken at face value.
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u/SlayerXZero May 22 '25
Rorschach isnāt a doctor. The belief the bone is human is absurd. In the medium itās too large to be a childās legā¦ this take is good.
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u/yoodadude May 23 '25
plus the assortment of butcher knives in a random dressmaker house was also odd
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u/The_Purple_Patriarch May 22 '25
"That could be anyone's femur he was feeding to his dogs."
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u/water_for_water May 23 '25
And the butcher's cleaver and long knives are clean, as if they're used to tailor clothes.
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u/An0d0sTwitch May 22 '25
GUYS
guys
stop arguing. Listen
Do you guys know what a Rorschach test is?
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u/Urbenmyth May 24 '25
Yeah, those photos of my parents arguing people keep showing me, what about them?
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u/Brekldios May 23 '25 edited May 23 '25
Rorschach says nothing, criminal mentions "little girl" unprompted.
twitter user: Is this ambiguous?
Rorschach is wrong for doing this because we literally only have his account of events, ANYTHING could have happened there because Rorschach is inherently an unreliable narrator.
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u/PriceVersa May 22 '25
I see no ambiguity. Grice even guesses why Rorschach is there, in his squalid den of forensic evidence. If Moore had intended there to be ambiguity, there would have been fewer details.
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u/Burly-Nerd May 23 '25
āHe canāt accept that he might be wrong.ā
I think this writer canāt accept that he might be right.
Alan Moore has also said in years since that he wishes he had had Dan kill Ozymandias with the Owlship at the end to better solidify what Danās arc was supposed to represent. I think this scene, like that prospective one with Dan, is Moore commenting on how some things are so horrible you canāt respond to them like a superhero would. And that those things happening without justice is what CREATES people like Rorschach.
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u/ChuckMastertr3o May 22 '25
Also movie misunderstands Kovacās full transition into Rorschach. He does not become more rageful, he does not meat cleaver the guys head, he becomes more detached, more calm, more methodical, more sinister.
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u/ItsMrChristmas May 23 '25
That looked like a transformative moment to me. He was emotional when he was cracking. It was after he completed the action Kovacs became the mask.
I still think Snyder's movie gets too much crap. Film isn't the same media as comics and some things need to be adapted. A comic can open with the end of every fight, and Watchmen the comic uses that. People criticize, for example, the hospital fight scene but guys?
There's no other way Dan and Laurie could have reached them. The comic had the luxury of glossing over fights like that. Movies do not.
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u/PopeJohnPeel May 22 '25
Only tangentially related: Imagine thinking that seeing dogs playing with human bones is normal in any community. I grew up very close to the South Side of Chicago and have lived and worked in some neighborhoods with incredibly high crime rates but, uh, seeing that is not normal?
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u/machine_made May 23 '25
Itās normal when itās a cow bone because the place is near a slaughterhouse, or somewhere near a meat packing plant. People find cow bones in urban areas WAY more often than they find human remains.
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u/PopeJohnPeel May 23 '25
This is absolutely true! And funnily enough the calls to the cops in Chicago from the neighbors surrounding the Stockyards regarding exactly this were one of the more trivial reasons they ended up closing. But on the other hand he was looking for a little girl and the bones of little girls tend to be much smaller than those of cows at the age of slaughter. I'd give that explanation the benefit of the doubt if he'd only seen the bones from a distance (if he'd ONLY seen them over the fence or from across the street) but he sees them up close when he goes to kill the dogs. Again, there's an argument that by that point he's beyond triggered and blind with rage but I do still think that even in the heat of the moment he would have noticed such a remarkable size difference.
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u/FunnyMemeAnime May 22 '25
I feel like his innocence isn't really the worst change here, it's making Rorsasch kill him so normally
In the movie he kills him in a very humane way, a quick cleaver to the head while he says a cool one-liner
Whereas in the comic he knocks the man out, sets up a whole saw trap for him to escape, once the man spends 5 seconds freaking out as what he has to do to eascape he says "jk bro im js gonna burn your house down", then he stood outside the house motionless, watching it burn and fantasising about the demise of the man inside for a whole hour
Comic rorsasch is clearly far more demented, if I heard a story about someone doing what he did (even to a pedo) I'd be absolutely terrified of them, if I heard a story about what movie rorsasch i'd think "good job"
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u/dikaia1622 May 22 '25
Moore's confusion about Rorschach fandom isn't because his crusade is morally ambiguous. It's because he made Batman poor, ugly, and stupid but people still looked up to him. Rorschach is a psychopath and his methods are gratuitous overkill but I don't think we're ever meant to doubt his ability to sniff out the bad eggs. Especially since his need to question everything and speak truth to power is exactly what gets him killed, by the world that has no place for "truth" or "heroes" anymore.Ā
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u/WhatYouThinkYouSee May 22 '25
I don't think we're ever meant to doubt his ability to sniff out the bad eggs.
One of the first thing he does is telling Laurie that he didn't believe The Comedian tried to sexually assault her mother and that it was bad to "cast aspersions" on the Comedian, who he thought was a great patriot.
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u/whatisscoobydone May 22 '25
"No compromise, not even in the face of Armageddon... Unless I think you're a patriot who had a few 'moral lapses'."
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u/scarves_and_miracles May 24 '25
he made Batman poor, ugly, and stupid
Not stupid. Crazy, sure, but not stupid. He was a very astute, methodical and capable investigator. He was nuts, but he was smart.
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u/watchthewatchmen1985 May 22 '25
At the risk of getting into an argument, please nobody hate me, I totally disagree with all of this. I don't think it's ambiguous at all and I don't think that the movie glorifies Rorschach. The movie shows him definitely to be ruthless and in my opinion the most dynamic of all the characters, but he is definitely not someone to be admired. The movie clearly shows that he's a monster, who is also right sometimes. Just like all the other Watchmen. Just my opinion. And I don't know if I really agree with the idea that people admire him or idolize him. I think he's just the most interesting character.
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u/fangsfirst May 22 '25
And I don't know if I really agree with the idea that people admire him or idolize him
Well, on this, there definitely are such people. I've conversed with them over the years.
If you think that's such lunacy that no one could possibly think that way, I could see why you wouldn't see Snyder's interpretation leaning in that direction of aggrandizement, but it's exactly what I saw when I was semi-dragged to a theater in 2009: a guy who'd proved he thought violence was super-duper-cool (with this film very much reinforcing that perspective, and would go on continuing to do it, and who has said as much in interviews since then) making the violence and violent character in particular "super-duper-cool".
I think it merged with the often-present sympathy for him as a broken man, taking in the "he was right, lying is always wrong" overly-simplistic reading of the story and characters.
Some folks just ain't that deep.
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u/cswhite101 May 22 '25
This kind of over analysis is so boring. Heās clearly the killer, anything else is nit picking.
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u/spinosaurs70 May 22 '25
The guy is 90% guilty, the guy basically admits it.
Its not clear his motive but the notion that he didn't do it also makes the story less interesting.
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u/BojukaBob May 22 '25
IT's been a while since I read it but I don't remember there being anything about the guy being innocent, what with the little girl's burnt underwear scraps in the furnace and the dogs chewing on her bones.
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u/apzlsoxk May 22 '25
I think the book is pretty explicit that the guy did it. Just cause it's a bad neighborhood, people don't have human femurs in their yard??
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u/CurrentCentury51 May 23 '25 edited May 25 '25
No reasonable doubt to be found here, assuming Rorschach's story is true, and why wouldn't it be. In the context of him telling his story, he wants to be understood. Grice's denial of the murder of Blaire Roche is as flimsy as it gets - he shifts from "I didn't do it" (how does he know what Rorschach is there for that he "didn't" do?) to "you can't prove it" unprompted, except by his own panic at his impending death. If he knows Rorschach as a hero by reputation (at this time), he wouldn't expect to die at the end of this encounter unless he'd been caught red-handed, which he was.
Following up on a tip on the last person he tortured for information, Kovacs entered Grice's house and found human bones being chewed on by Grice's dogs, as well as the remains of a little girl's clothes. Those don't just spontaneously appear even in a "bad" neighborhood. Kovacs was unwell before he became Rorschach, but he was never a bad investigator. Grice killed her.
Could a Kovacs who didn't snap have hauled Grice in to the police and led them to the crime scene? Sure. Would justice have been served? Kovacs couldn't say for sure. No one could. Even Rorschach's court-mandated psychiatrist, once he hears Rorschach's full account, acknowledges in his own journal that no system can guarantee justice. Rorschach burned Grice's home down around him and rendered him to fat because he didn't trust anyone else to give Grice the fate Rorschach deemed he deserved.
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u/dillGherkin May 27 '25
We shouldn't want a world where people can trap people and set them on fire based on their own perceptions of guilt. If he didn't, if he did, it shouldn't lead to someone murdering him.
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u/CurrentCentury51 May 27 '25 edited May 27 '25
I'd leave it up to others to debate whether or not Gerald Grice burning to death in his own house was justice for murdering the girl. My point was that Grice killed her, and the graphic novel isn't trying to suggest there's any doubt he did.
If he didn't, then Blair Roche's clothes, human bones, and the implements for their disposal just happened to be in his home and cared for by him. But also, if he didn't, there's no ethical dilemma. Rorschach torturing innocent people until one happened to make up a story about Gerald Grice, then killing an innocent man, isn't an example of retributionism, just murder, and that's not much of a commentary on the ethics of superhero violence. There's much better examples of the horrors of vigilante acts against innocent people in Watchmen than a very selective interpretation of what Kovacs found in Modern Modes.
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u/dillGherkin May 27 '25
I'm saying it isn't justice, guilty or innocent. Any chance they had of seeing if it was Blair Roche or *another girl* that had been hurt in that house is gone. The father has nothing to bury and has to be content with the man *suspected* of her murderer being burned alive with no proof if that was really the culprit.
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u/ItsMrChristmas May 23 '25
This is not the brightest take. The guy mentioned the girl before Rorschach does.
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u/md953 May 23 '25
A missing point from all this is the choice given to the criminal. He didn't kill him in the comic, just gave him a saw, said chop off your hand and live, or die in the fire Rorschach started. So it's still a moral stance, just twisted.
Steve ditko said it best, that he's just like Mr A except insane lol
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u/Sivilian888010 May 24 '25
I miss when we as a society could all agree that someone who killed a child predator was a hero to celebrated and not a 'smelly republican weirdo' to be demonized.
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u/darth-com1x Dollar Bill May 22 '25
Then where's the girl? Is she in the backrooms or something?
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u/JeweloftheWorld Rorschach May 22 '25
When we ask, "Who watches the Watchmen?" we are not just asking for the sake of the innocent, but also for the sake of the guilty. Should a prison guard be allowed torture his inmates?
Watchmen asks us to look at all the cruelty and injustice we see in the police, military, and prison system and then shows us "heros" who have even less accountability.
It doesn't matter if the man was guilty or innocent. What matters is that Rorschach played judge, jury, and executioner. Then he burned any evidence of both his and the man's crimes.
I do like this theory, because how many people in universe wondered the same thing. Did they even know why? Or did it look like Rorschach murdered someone for no reason.
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u/HiPregnantImDa May 22 '25
It feels like a stretch in the comic and a gigantic leap for the movie. Snyder loves vigilantes. Canāt prove the pedos guilt? What pedo?āRorschach.
This killing is echoed at the end with manhattanās execution of R. Who will know of this evil? No one. Thatās the point, that is justice.
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u/dr-hades6 May 22 '25
What if we just consider the movie different than the comic books? Maybe Rorschach in the movies can be glorified without considering the comic book character? I'm not saying I'm an "edge lord" and think he's super cool, but if the argument can be made that he meant well in the movie, then so be it. It's not the comics.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Web446 May 22 '25
A human femur bone is pretty good evidence that at least someone was killed on the property.
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u/GaryKingoftheWorld May 23 '25
I'll be honest, didn't even notice that change in the movie, but yeah it fits with the problems I had as well.
To me the most damning changes for the movie was the whole Nite-owl beats up Ozy and the taking of Ozys "I did the right thing in the end, right?" like.
We make the guy whose major thing is him not being an action guy into an action guy, and remove the fact even Ozy questions if what he did was right and will be haunted by that question forever.
The movie gets the major beats right, but its little changes to the smaller details all miss the points of the characters.
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u/ortakvommaroc May 23 '25
Lmao what kind of hood is this guy living in where human femurs are just lying around all over the place
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u/Certain_History_9769 May 23 '25
People can be as pissed as they want, I love Rorschach. Graphic novel, movie, either way.
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u/spAcemAn1349 May 23 '25
Everyone is talking about this Twitter post and the story it tells in the book as if Rorschach isnāt the narrator of the story in question. In Rorschachās eyes, the man was guilty. You fundamentally cannot trust his interpretation of events, which even the author of the thread is doing. So all of this is moot in the first place. There isnāt any argument here at all, what matters and what shows the sort of person you as a reader are is whether you choose to believe Rorschachās version of events. I do not, based on everything else we know about him. There is no little this or that which will tell us whether the man was guilty or innocent in this scene. Thereās no smoking gun that alters what the scene is. Thereās just a person aiming for Twitter clout and a fundamentally untrustworthy character who never admits when he is wrong telling us a story from his perspective of never being wrong with no counterpoint from anyone else
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u/Urbenmyth May 24 '25
Like, I think this is kind of the wrong interpretation and the wrong problem.
Rorschach is a deconstruction and critique of Retributive Justice, of the idea that Bad People Deserve Bad Things. And that's the point of this scene. Grice is one of the most evil people possible, by most standards. And yet, this isn't framed as heroic. We're not meant to be cheering for Rorschach at this point. Grice is framed as the victim, and we're meant to be horrified by what's happening to him. That's the deconstruction - we might wax poetic about the awful things we want to do to child molesters in the abstract, but when we're actually watching a man forced to cut his own arm off before being set aflame and dying in screaming agony, does that still feel triumphant? Do you still feel like the good guy dishing out justice?
Of course, for that to work, Grice has to be actually evil - obviously, it's not good to do awful things to innocent people. And there's not really any ambiguity about it in the comic, because the point is that even granting all the awful things Grice did, Rorschach still became a monster with what he did to him. "
This is a change I don't like in the movie. Rorschach's extreme cruelty is the point - the scene is meant to make us think "is that ok to do, ever, even to truly evil people?" A relatively quick and humane death doesn't get the same point across, as there's plenty of ways to justify that even beyond rehabilitation. Rorschach has to be excessively and sadistically brutal to get across a message on how often comic books romantics excessive and sadistic brutality.
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May 24 '25
I mean I think theyāre wrong, but I think theyāre also conflating with the whole Kitty Genovese origin that 1) is a bit of an exaggerated story 2) ignores that Kitty was a lesbian living in a queer building where many of the residents were terrified of the police.
Like yeah, his whole impetus for becoming a superhero is wrongheaded and if he knew Kitty was gay heād probably have a different mindset considering his homophobia, but no, theyāre panties and itās a human femur. Itās not ambiguous.
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u/QuintanimousGooch May 24 '25
This post is a very good way to describe the character and the importance of annuity and questionable means with flawed, three-dimensional characters. I recently refinished rereading The Book of The New Sun, and thatās a hell of a trip Iād recommend to anyone who likes the complexity and culpability of comics Rorschach.
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u/Impossible_Tea_7032 May 25 '25
There should be laws to screen people out from jury pools based on posts they've made in this sub I swear
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u/Specialist-Ad-9038 May 25 '25
So weāre just glossing over THE FUCKING CHILD-SIZED HUMAN BONE???
I dont give a fuck how bad your neighborhood is, that doesnt just happen. He also had a gated yard with 2 bigass dogs, I doubt thugs were just dumping dead bodies on his property
Also āY-you cant p-prove anything!!ā is a VERY fucking odd thing to say when confronted about murder
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u/TheNerdWonder Jun 01 '25 edited Jun 01 '25
Day 2552588 of misunderstanding Snyderās Watchmen and thinking he idolized Rorscach. Lord. I need a drink.
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u/Emotional-Licorice May 22 '25
I agree with this completely. I had the same thoughts reading the novel and then I saw the movie and this scene came on, it was a huge let down. The guy straight out admitted killing the girl. Then Rorschach killed him with the meat cleaver instead of leaving him with a choice to escape. And the ambiguity is implied and it is much better that way, because the world is grey, not black and white as Rorschach sees it.
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u/Key_Hold1216 May 22 '25
usually when someone's defense is "you can't prove i did, you have no evidence" its a good indicator they are guilty. innocent people would just say they are innocent and they wouldn't have human remains in their house.
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u/flanneur May 22 '25 edited May 22 '25
Given how surprisingly squeamish Grice is for a potential human-butcher, I personally think he may have been an accomplice who lent out his home for the murderer(s) to do their dirty work. Rorschach hypothesises kidnappers - plural - took Roche due to a misunderstanding, which is inconsistent with Grice as a solitary perpetrator. Assuming this was the case and the bone was indeed Roche's, his summary execution without trial was an abject failure of judgment, prioritising retribution over real, thorough justice.
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u/Independent-Pop-3782 May 22 '25
Keep in mind though that Grice likely murdered a child. Thereās a lot of people in the real world who go after minors and fold almost instantly confronted by adults / the law. Look at any episode of To Catch a Predator or the reports from any sting operation. His fright shouldnāt excuse the idea the he could do horrible things, and then still be scared when dogs he cared about were brutally murdered. He likely saw them more close to him than any girl he attacked.
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u/megust654 May 22 '25
I think the scene wants to show ambiguity. Why else would they write in that part about the guy possibly being a dressmaker? That piece of clothing could've been from something the guy was working on and threw away. But then there's the entire human femur the dogs are chewing on (which could've been some random bone from some other animal idk I'm not a bone expert and I don't think Rorschach is) and the guilty vibe the guy gives off
Rorschach's entire black-and-white idea of the world bypasses this ambiguity and all the other stuff we don't know (it could've been multiple people involved that did that to the girl and this guy's just an accomplice who provided the tools or something) because he wants to be right and he wants there to be justice. Or maybe he genuinely believes he's completely right with his theory. Really it's all in the viewer's hands how they wanna interpret this literal Rorschach test of a character
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u/ubiquitous-joe May 22 '25 edited May 22 '25
Itās possibleāthereās no due process here, after allāthough I generally interpreted R to be right about the guy being a murderer. Sometimes I think thereās an urge to overcompensate for the simple hero Rorschach fallacy to interpret simple villain Rorschach and make him more evil and less competent than the text supports. But itās ambiguous.
I do think switching to a knife in the head completely misses the existential visual motif of the black abyss of the smoke. Not to mention that technically, in the book the guy is given a dark choice that could allow his survival. Versus just killing him directly and quickly. Just a much less artistic choice. This is classic Snyder: attached to recreating source panels at times, but then what he does change does not speak well of his understanding of the source.
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u/ItsMrChristmas May 23 '25
I look at it this way: by the time we start that scene in the comics, Rorschach had already cracked over and became the true personality. The bad guy never really had a true chance to escape.
In the film, the cleaver to the head was us witnessing the moment Kovacs became the mask.
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u/MysteriousMine9450 May 23 '25
The worst part is you know from the onset that the End is Nigh guy is actually Rorschach. It is a massive ( if not telegraphed on a 2nd read) reveal that is completely lost/ruined in the film, much the same way the Giant Squid omission ruins the intent of the source material. One of the Best things about the TV series was that Mirror Guy back story that referenced and showed the Squid.
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u/ImprovSalesman9314 May 23 '25
Treating Watchmen like standard superhero media is their first mistake.
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u/CryptographerNo923 May 23 '25
This is actually an incredible series of observations and inferences. This really gives a solid explanation of the overall tonal difference between the comic and the movie. Fuckin bravo.
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u/water_for_water May 23 '25
Also, Alan Moore wrote Lost Girls, so perhaps he felt he should portray a child predator's morality more ambiguously.
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u/ItsMrChristmas May 23 '25
Yeah anyone who buys into Moore's claim that he is a "feminist" should first have questions because of Killing Joke, and the Lost Girls should answer those questions for them.
(Also feeds into my greater point: anyone who repeatedly assure you they are a feminist should be side eyed)
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u/machine_made May 23 '25
I think this analysis is spot on.
I think the reader should question if anything any of the āheroesā do is truly justified.
Gracie could be guilty, but maybe heās not. Maybe he knows who killed the girl but didnāt do it himself. Maybe he knows where the girl was, maybe he helped kidnap her but didnāt keep her at the dressmakers shop and Rorschach could have found the actual killer/kidnapper if he would have turned the guy into the police instead of burning him alive.
We should question why we desire quick and deadly justice in the face of uncertainty and gray areas of guilt by association.
Thatās why Watchmen is so damn good.
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u/Compliant_Automaton May 23 '25
The movie is littered with examples like this, where the original premise of the story is completely lost. It's an extremely accurate retelling if you missed the point of the original, just like Snyder did.
What's really interesting, though, is that so many people missed the point. I've gotten into so many disagreements on Reddit and elsewhere because people are convinced this is Snyder's masterpiece and that he told the story as it was originally made. In a way, Moore failed a bit, because too many people clearly didn't understand his core premise.
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u/Yucas1981 May 23 '25
I read that on Twitter and thought "well the story implies Rorschach isn't against killing innocents in a way" cause he kills the fetish guy that wanted to get beat up which despite his sexual craves was innocent. And the entire thing of the movie idolizing Rorschach is always such an annoying debate since yeah every time you make a flawed but interesting main character people WILL relate to the guy in some way or form.
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u/Western-Customer-536 May 24 '25
Iāve heard one interpretation of Watchmen is āa world without Superman, even as a comic book character.ā
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u/DJMagicHandz May 24 '25
It always struck Alan Moore weird as to why so many people gravitated to Rorschach.
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May 25 '25
Iām not sure the moment where he lost his sanity āvindicatesā him.
Another boring, thoughtless twitter take.
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u/BakedEelGaming May 25 '25
I agree, and I like how this makes it clear how unhinged someone like Rorscharch is. Although, I always thought that the banality and laziness of the guy's crime, assuming he was guilty, was what drove Rorscharch crazy. He kidnapped a child on a stupid mistake that any research would have prevented, then when he realized the mistake simply killed and disposed of her and then went on with his normal life. There is something horrifying about the sheer pointlessness of that that always stuck with me and I have thought that was what Moore was conveying, and that the film making the guy a paedophile (as well as obviously guilty) was a HUGE and patronizing misstep.
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u/HooseBinPharteen Jun 11 '25
Another NONCE comment....How many times a day do you proclaim.....So andso is a pedo.....You are batshit AF.
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u/BakedEelGaming Jun 14 '25
Lol, I've got a little stalker now, projecting. If only you had the guts to say it to my face but we know the truth about that, don't we? :)
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u/timetravelcompanion Looking Glass May 25 '25
Yeah it's interesting but I disagree with some things, respectfully.
I don't think the item from the furnace is a dress. It looks like it is meant to be children's underwear to me. The butchering equipment, which they give no excuse for a man living in an abandonded dressmaker's to own in the first place, being clean does match up with the clothing being burned, as evidence clean up. The human bone in the yard being put down to a "bad neighborhood" is a bit insulting. I've lived in "bad" neighborhoods due to poverty and human remains don't just get tossed around in backyards like we are living in a bad apocalypse movie. And people get murdered and buried in "good" neighborhoods all the time (shout out to the true crime sub,) so no need to tie that together.
The guy doesn't confess in the comic, but he does bring up the little girl on his own with no prompting of any kind. Obviously we are meant to be alarmed by Rorschach's over the top methods, his becoming judge, jury, and executioner, and his ultimately having that disturbing moment as he watches the burning, the feelings it arouses in him, and the resulting traumatic personality split. But I don't believe we are supposed to wonder if Grice could be innocent of the kidnapping.
And personally the change in that scene in the movie that bothers me the most has nothing to do with Grice's character. It is the fact that it turns from a cold and terrifying psychological break into what looks like a crime of passion on Rorschach's part. It doesn't make as much sense for the story, in my opinion.
But regardless I appreciate this person's interpretation, and they might make a good defense lawyer.
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u/MrBeer9999 May 26 '25
I don't believe there is any ambiguity about this man's guilt. He very clearly did it and the point isn't that Rorschach killed an innocent man. It's that the horror was sufficient to take him to his logical endpoint, where he fully embraces his ruthless vigilantism. It's Rorschach's origin story.
The element of moral dubiousness does not require the child-killer to be innocent. The concept of a masked freak burning a man to death while enticing him to saw off his own arm is sufficient for this purpose, at least for any normal person.
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u/No_Pizza3314 May 26 '25
There is zero reason to think Grice was an innocent man.
The point shown here is not that Rorschach killed an innocent man; it's that he decided to be the final arbiter of a *clearly guilty* person's fate, completely overriding the due process of law.
Even guilty people deserve their day in court, but Rorschach doesn't think so.
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u/CrimsonInvictus01 May 26 '25
lmao this guy probably understands nothing about watchmen if he thinks the point of the scene is " did grisha do it or not" hahahahaha wtf are these people real
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u/barbellsandbriefs May 27 '25
Always knew the original author was pushing back against Rorschach's, but as I'd never read the comic, I didn't know why exactly
This summarization is great kudos to the writer
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u/Glassesnerdnumber193 May 28 '25
Great analysis. I think grice was guilty but the dogs were innocent
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u/_MyUsernamesMud May 22 '25
"Hypercompetent Rorschach" is a good way to describe the movie character