Judge Doom

Template:Villain Infobox

**Baron von Rotten** (non-canon graphic novel only), better known as **Judge Doom**, is the main antagonist of the 1988 Disney/Touchstone hybrid live-action/animated film *Template:W*.

He is the ruling judge of Toontown, Eddie Valiant's arch-nemesis, the owner and CEO of Cloverleaf Industries and the boss of the Toon Patrol. He wants to kill all toon characters with the Dip: a vile and noxious chemical creation of his (composed of Acetone, Benzene, and Turpentine) that has the power to permanently kill a toon by dissolving their paint, so he can build a highway and make profit from it.

He was portrayed by Template:W, who also played Grigori Rasputin in Don Bluth's *Anastasia*, The Hacker in *Cyberchase*, Merlock in *DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp*, Lord Imaru in Golden Films' *The Secret Treasure of Machu Picchu*, Bill Crowley in *I Am Not A Serial Killer*, Dr. Heep in *Baby Geniuses*, Kruge in the *Star Trek* universe and Master Xehanort in *Kingdom Hearts III Re:Mind*, Switchblade Sam in Dennis the Menace and Helgait in The Mandalorian.

## Description

### Appearance

Judge Doom dresses ominously like most villains would; his attire consisted of a black overcoat, round shade glasses, a white shirt, a black bow tie, black pants, gloves and leather shoes and a black hat that he pulls over his head a bit. He also walks with a cane with a silver skull on top.

When he revealed his true identity, his hat and fake eyes were removed, revealing a pale white curly top and piercing red cartoon eyes. Completely content with his true colors revealed, Doom taunts Eddie in his high-pitched Toon voice: which fearfully reminded him of Doom’s sinister laughter after killing his brother.

### Personality

Judge Doom started off as a cold-blooded, manipulative, ruthless, and violent judge who holds a deep hatred towards Toons, even mistreating his own Toon Patrol when they laugh at something hilarious. In fact, when first introduced, he cruelly dips an innocent Toon Shoe in the Dip and killing it, just to show how risky the Dip really is to Toons. Judge Doom seems to also be somewhat hypocritical by saying that Toons should respect the law while Doom himself continuously breaks the law, even committing a serious crime such as murder (but this could very likely be an act of manipulation, as Doom is comfortable with framing others for his own atrocities). By his nature, even human citizens seem to dread him since Judge Doom is completely taken seriously in the movie. However, when the movie goes on, we see the much darker side of Doom.

When capturing Eddie and Jessica, Doom proves he's indeed far worse than he initially comes across. A callous, genocidal, hateful, insane and cruel person, Doom's hatred towards Toons is so bad that he plans to completely destroy Toontown by spraying Dip all over it with The Dipmobile so he could make a freeway for money. However, Doom is also a highly brilliant mastermind since he can easily manipulate people and get away with many crimes. He's also difficult to beat since he's very powerful and quick thanks to his nigh-invulnerable Toon physics as well as superhuman strength granted by them.

When Doom is finally revealed to be a Toon, he shows his true personality that he would have hid up until that point; a sadistic, insane, savage, and monstrous Toon with no redeeming qualities who commits crimes for pleasure and fun. It's also revealed that his prejudice and hatred towards Toons wasn't as visceral as he'd portrayed and that he was just going to destroy Toontown more for fun than genuine bigotry. This also makes his main goal even worse because it reveals that he's prepared to commit genocide on his own kind not only for greed, but also a twisted gag to satisfy his twisted sense of humor.

## Biography

For the majority of the film, Doom poses as a high-ranking judge. However, he employs tactics that are at odds with traditional views of justice, such as the employment of a treacherous mob of five toon weasel gangsters known as the Toon Patrol (whom he has hired as his new henchmen) and the execution of Toons through a ghastly green chemical paint thinner solution called the Dip, which is said to be the only way to truly kill a Toon forever.

During the start of the film, Toontown owner Marvin Acme was found dead as a large safe fell into his head at the Acme Factory. Suspicions points out to a Toon rabbit named Roger (due to pictures of Marvin playing "patty-cake" with Roger's human wife Jessica, and thus also framing a plausible revenge motive) and Eddie Valiant gets into hot water for provoking Roger with the pictures in the first place. Judge Doom arrives to the scene, as he swears to catch, convict, and execute Roger for the murder. Eddie was also told that Doom became a judge due to spending millions of dollars to buy the judicial election.

In desperation to prove his innocence, Roger seeks help and advice from Eddie, despite the latter's reluctance to get involved in another case involving a Toon. Eddie’s hesitancy is due to a bad case when a Toon robber murdered his brother Teddy while getting away with a zillion simoleans, which made Eddie extremely cynical of Toons.

However, Eddie soon learns of a hidden will that Acme has bestowed which will allow the Toons to have ownership of Toontown, and that a company called Cloverleaf Industries (which has already bought the local trolley company known as the Red Car) will buy Toontown unless Acme's will shows up by midnight. Eddie also learns that he was used as a patsy by studio head R.K. Maroon in an attempt to blackmail Acme into selling Toontown to Cloverleaf, so that Maroon could sell his studio to Cloverleaf for $3,000,000. Arriving at Maroon's office, Eddie confronts Maroon, who confessed that he only wanted to blackmail Acme with the pictures as Cloverleaf refused to buy the studio unless Acme sold Toontown to them first. However, before Maroon could explain further, he is murdered by an unknown gunman.

At first, Eddie believed the gunman to be Jessica as she was in the studio during the murder. However he soon learned that Doom was the real murderer after following Jessica into Toontown, with Doom remorselessly admitting to his act and voicing his intent to kill them. However, anticipating that he would be followed, Doom captures Eddie, Roger and Jessica, and has the Toon Patrol to hold them prisoner at the Acme factory.

At the Acme factory, Doom confessed to be the true owner of Cloverleaf Industries as he explained his true plan: to destroy Toontown in order to build a freeway over the entire area. To that end, he has built a huge vehicle that can literally erase Toontown from existence via the use of high-pressured cannons filled with Dip. Doom also explained that he killed both Acme and Maroon and framed Roger to cover his tracks, and that he bought the Red Car to dismantle it so that he can retire as a jurist and take control of the profits of the new road system.

Doom orders the Toon Patrol to tie up both Roger and Jessica to have them sprayed with Dip, but Eddie foils this by making the weasels literally laugh themselves to death with crazy antics, much to Doom's strong annoyance. Deciding to take matters in his own hands, Doom fights Eddie, but ends up squashed flat by a steamroller.

However, Doom survives being squashed, revealing himself to be a Toon using fake props to hide his unknown true appearance. After re-inflating himself by inhaling the contents of a helium tank, he reveals himself, much to Eddie's horror, as the same Toon who murdered Eddie's brother, Teddy Valiant, thus triggering his hatred towards Toons and explaining how Doom managed to buy the judicial election and the trolley car company in the first place.

His voice grow higher until it reaches a terrifyingly high pitch and his eyes turn to daggers, showing Doom's intent that he is now out to kill him as well.

With an evil grin, Doom sprouts a cartoon anvil and buzz-saw to kill Eddie, but the latter uses a Toon glove-loaded hammer to open the vehicle's Dip vat, leaving Doom doused in his own concoction. As he begins to melt, Doom shows more of his "Toony" nature as he cannot resist doing a direct spoof of the Wicked Witch of the West's death throes (screaming in pain that he is melting) in Template:W.

He finally melts in a flood of Dip and fatally dissolves, leaving behind only his clothes, fake teeth, and rubber mask. Following the arrival of the police, Eddie exposed Doom's plan to clear Roger's name, and Roger found out that the will was in his love letter all along, as Acme used disappearing ink to hide the contents, thus leaving the Toons in ownership of Toontown for good.

## Killed Victims

* Teddy Valiant (dropped a piano on his head from 15 stories up)
* Marvin Acme (dropped a large safe on his head)
* A Toon Shoe (dipped in the Dip)
* R.K. Maroon (shot in the back twice)
* Untold number of innocent toons in Toontown or elsewhere (presumably dipped in the Dip)

## Trivia

* Doom's death is an allusion to the Wicked Witch of the West's death in MGM's 1939 film *The Wizard of Oz*, as they both melt while shouting "I'm melting! Melting!". In addition, both have weaknesses to liquid. The Witch's demise comes from water while Judge Doom's demise is the Dip (a paint thinner).
* The character was originally going to have an animated pet vulture (one of the two that appeared in Disney's *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs*) named Voltaire (after the French philosopher) that sat on his shoulder, but that idea was dropped in the interest of saving time. However, the vulture later resurfaced with Doom when a bendable action figure was produced.
* Christopher Lloyd correctly guessed Doom's true identity as a Toon when he was told not to blink in his script.
* Doom originally had seven weasels accompanying him, rather like the Seven Dwarfs, but he ultimately ended up only having five. He was also to have a jury of kangaroos, as in "Kangaroo Court". These elements were all dropped, because animating them would be too expensive.
	+ In a deleted scene, when Doom attempts to dip Roger at the bar, the patrons protest that Roger should at least have a proper trial. The judge agrees, then pulls out a suitcase from which jumps a group of kangaroos that hold out signs reading "Y-O-U A-R-E G-U-I-L-T-Y" (a literal Kangaroo Court, in other words).
* Originally, Doom was going to dip a Toon gopher instead of the cartoon shoe seen in the film. This was likely changed for the film to keep a PG rating.
* It is believed by a large group of spectators that Judge Doom is also the Toon who robbed the 1st National Bank of Toontown. This is never told in the film: they only say that it's a day they were searching the guilty party for a rob in this bank that Eddie and Teddy met Doom for the first time and that Doom killed Teddy. Also, they think that the money Doom gave to the Toons for being elected was the one he previously robbed in the bank.
* The ending scene was originally going to have Doom reveal his Toon mouth and red hands with long nails.
* In early drafts for the film, he was revealed to be Man from *Bambi*, as in the early drafts Eddie mentions offhand to Roger that the person who killed Teddy was probably the one who killed Bambi's mother. However, this dialogue was cut from the film, because the idea that Judge Doom was the hunter who was responsible for the death of Bambi's mother, who happened to be a Toon, would have contradicted the concept of Toons being immune to anything other than Dip.
* In the *Bonkers* series, *The Collector* is the reverse of Judge Doom. He is a human disguised as a Toon, but shares a similar personality and glasses.
* Though Doom's real identity remains a mystery in the film, the yellow paint that remains of him following his death may hint that he was a Toon of a yellow or gold color, as evidenced from the yellow/gold-animated props (handles of his knife-like eyes, springs in his heels, anvil and buzz-saw) that sprouted from his black suit during his second fight with Eddie.
* Judge Doom can be seen as a dark reflection of Eddie Valiant, as both have dislike for toons. But while Eddie wished to dissociate himself with toons due to the fact his brother was killed by one, Judge Doom was determined to destroy them as he was mentally unstable. If Eddie hadn't learned to put his prejudices aside and put the past behind him, he might have taken the same dark path as Judge Doom.
* Prior to the publication of *The Resurrection of Doom*, many fans speculated that Doom's real Toon form was the "Pistol Packin' Possum", a Toon seen on one of the posters in R.K. Maroon's office. This is mainly because the Possum has red eyes just like the Toon that killed Teddy Valiant as well as the exact same gun that Judge Doom had in the scene where he shot Maroon.
	+ Additionally, in the first scene where Valiant talks to Maroon about taking on the snoop job, behind Maroon are posters of cartoons on a rotating wall. The one on the right is a poster of the "Pistol Packin' Possum". When Valiant and Maroon walk over to the desk to discuss more business, the rotating wall is closed and the poster (along with the gun the possum is holding) is always pointed towards Maroon with his back turned to it.
		- Even after the release of *The Resurrection of Doom*, this theory could still be somewhat valid, as "Baron Von Rotten" was known as "the toon with a thousand faces" and played many disguised roles, one of which might have been Pistol Packin' Possum, and not everyone considers the Novel canon, with certain alleged plot holes like this backstory contradicting the lore established in the film (that toons could not be severely injured like humans).
* The name "The Toon with a Thousand Faces" seems to be a reference of the late Mel Blanc (the man of a thousand voices), who was known to voice various *Looney Tunes* characters like Daffy Duck and Wile E. Coyote (who also appear in the film as cameos).
* There are many instances throughout the film that foreshadow the fact that Judge Doom is a Toon, or more precisely, that he isn't human at all:
	+ In the bar, he backs away from the spilled Dip, which is later shown not to affect regular people. Also, when he demonstrates the Dip's effectiveness for the first time by dunking a toon shoe in the chemical, he wears a rubber glove to protect himself, despite already wearing gloves (though one could argue that he used gloves to not get his hands stained with the toon shoe's remains). Also, when he decides to get Benny off the road so he can capture Eddie Valiant and Jessica Rabbit, he kicks the Dip and keeps a distance from it.
	+ When Doom was playing "Shave and a Haircut" to lure Roger Rabbit out of hiding, Eddie begins to wonder whose toonier, Roger Rabbit or Judge Doom ("I don't know who's toonier, you or Doom"), which is because the idea was somehow ridiculous for capturing a murderer.
	+ On several occasions, Doom is shown to detest laughter. Seeing as it is a Toon's role to be funny, too much laughter may have blown Doom's cover. Despite this, he is described as laughing on at least one occasion (in Eddie's account of his brother's death).
	+ When Doom falls on some fake eyeballs, he trips in a cartoonish way before falling down - he doesn't fall directly but slips a few times until he suddenly falls (normally, a human would fall directly after slipping once, as Eddie did), making the Toon Patrol laugh at him (which he once again ordered to stop). Also, when he gets back on his feet after falling, he hides one of his eyes, not because it is in pain, but so as to conceal his actual red toon eyes with the fake eyeballs that he's wearing. It is especially noticeable since Doom is always seen wearing glasses over his eyes. The fact that he had to cover one of the eyes implies that the glasses are indeed fake, a fact hinted in the bar when all the glasses in the establishment broke from Roger Rabbit's loud screaming, but his glasses did not.
	+ Doom's face is shown to be rather stiff, literally never blinking and rarely smiling or frowning, always speaking with simple jaw movements. His teeth are also unusually white with flat edges, similar to simple cartoon teeth. This is because he wears a rubber mask.
	+ Doom constantly performed an exaggerated toon-like turn whenever he turns his body.
	+ A dramatic gust of wind almost always blows on Doom's cape even when he's in an area where there's no wind (for example, Eddie's house).
	+ Eddie states that Doom's "lamebrain freeway idea could only be cooked up by a Toon", due to the plan being so absurdly simple for all the complicated planning underwent to make the plan a reality, how it was over-the-top in villainy due to the heinous actions leading up to it without a humane sense of guilt and the lack of foresight to the inherent flaws of the freeway system that a human with common sense would realize after properly thinking it over. This made it all the more obvious that Doom was a Toon who by nature, lacked common sense and was naïve to how the world actually works, and possessed an over-the-top flair that he could not entirely suppress, despite his best efforts to do so.
	+ In Toontown, when Jessica shot Doom to save Eddie, Doom quickly recovered from the gunshot and continued running without injury from the shot.
	+ When Doom reveals his plans to Eddie about building the freeway, he suddenly gets very theatrical and over-the-top while he gushes about everything it would entail (as well as the fact that he would profit off of it all) to the point that it contrasted so much with the mostly cold and understated personality he had shown up until then, that it came off as somewhat out-of-character. This makes perfect sense once it's revealed he's a Toon; it's in the nature of many cartoon villains to be very flamboyant and over-the-top, so as much as he tried to disguise himself as a more normal, understated human being, he couldn't resist hamming it up like cartoon villains normally do when revealing their plans. To especially observant viewers, this is one of the biggest clues that he's not quite what he seems.
	+ A clue about his specific identity comes from his first scene: he assumes that Eddie is still working for Toons, and brushes off Eddie's rudeness as drunkenness, even though a) Eddie makes it perfectly clear that he's not working for Toons, and b) he had not been drinking at all that morning; both of these hint that Doom knows more about Eddie than he would be expected to know.
	+ When Doom is run over by the steamroller in the ACME Factory, he is merely compressed and flattened. If he was a human, it would have been a lot messier.
	+ His name is also a hint since it's not the kind of name a real human would be called.
	+ Even the clothes he wears resembles the type of villain you'd see in cartoons.
* If one pauses at the shot of Doom getting knocked by the spray of Dip, they will notice the dummy used for filming.
* According to the non-canonical graphic novel *The Resurrection of Doom*, Doom's real name was "Baron Von Rotten", who worked as an actor until an accident resulted in him believing that he was a villain.

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