AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY Rumor May Reveal If Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom Is A Tony Stark Variant - SPOILERS

@DrDReturns - I would have to agree. I like RDJ but his Stark has a really good send off for such a huge and important character in the MCU... his return no matter the role (unless a flash back of sorts) cheapens that.

@IAmAHoot - this is nonsense. He is 1000 percent a Stark variant. When the Russos literally state. "We can’t explain that as it’s part of the story.", that isn't because he JUST HAPPENS to look like Tony Stark. What a dumb scoop by My Time to Shine.

@IAmAHoot - marvel loves there variants and clones maybe marvel is taking some ideas from ultimate comics movie costumes are ultimate looking isn’t there doom in ultimate universe two who is reed?

@WeaponXCII -

@McMurdo - So Human Torch is a Captain America variant?

@Spidey91 - correct but people act like they’re toddlers that can’t stop asking why and just suspend their disbelief for 2 secs

That being said a leaker revealed the in film reason and it’s kind of dumb but also whatever , maybe they’ll change it

@Goldboink - but the Russos said him looking like Stark is part of the story. I was hoping what you said was true until they said that.

@SpiderParker - I'm not quite sure I'm following but I'll respond to the best of my ability.

I don't know how twin DNA works, I won't comment on that, but if I were to take your word for it, there should still be environmental factors that make twins look slightly different. Either way I wouldn't call them variants of each other because they simply exist in the same universe. Originating from separate universes is a necessary starting point for defining variants IMO.

Would Brad Pitt still behave like Brad Pitt if he had Tom Cruise's face? I wouldn't think so, because his face will determine how people perceive him and how he perceives himself and that will change things about his life and his personality, even if slightly.

Now when it comes to two people from two different universes looking identical, why would I consider it enough to call them variants?

Well let's say there exists a parallel universe to ours where not a single person in the history of humanity happens to share any resemblance with me in any significant aspect, except for one single person, who's only resemblance to me is that he looks identical to me. Our family trees down to our respective parent are different in every way, we don't speak the same language, we don't live in the same place, etc. but we look 100% identical. Is it near impossible? Absolutely, but in an infinite universe it's not completely impossible. If that were to be the case, would it not be fair for me to call that person my variant? I would say it is fair.

Now let's add another person to that universe who's life is 100% identical to mine in every way, down to the smallest unit of time, except that he looks as different from me as possible. Yes the fact that he looks totally different from me makes it difficult to believe that his life would unfold precisely like mine, but again, in an infinite multiverse, it's not outright impossible. Would it also not be fair of me to call him my variant? I would say it is fair.

Putting these two people in the same universe may make one pale in comparison to the other in terms of who's more worthy of being my variant, but if we keep each in isolation, I don't think we can just ignore either. This makes the definition of a variant less straightforward than some may suggest.

@SpiderParker -

1/3

You say there's no point stressing too much about external appearances, I say why should we stress about any aspect in particular?

Every singular aspect on its own can be found in other people. What makes a person who they are is set of traits, not just one, and if another person from another universe has a specific combination of those traits (not necessarily all of them) in such a way that we get a feeling that they should be deemed a variant, then we deem them a variant.

It's not necessarily the number of traits that the other person has that matters, but do they have the traits that we accord the biggest weights to.

If a higher power doesn't determine who's a variant and who's not, if the variants aren't connected through some sort of cosmic force, then the universe doesn't really care about, say, the powers of a person or their name, more than it cares about their physical appearance.

It's a personal feeling that made you say "the appearance of a person shouldn't hold much weight in making a person who they are", and it was a personal feeling that made me say the opposite, because I accord a lot of weight to that trait.

If my mom wakes up tomorrow looking like a completely different person, that would be really hard for me to deal with, despite her remaining the same person in every other aspect.

When I talk about appearance, I'm not talking about the face only, I'm not talking about having a striking resemblance like those celebrity doppelgangers you see on the internet. I'm talking about a carbon copy, from head to toe, on an atomic level. That doesn't just happen. That's a "practically zero probability" sort of thing.

Due to the fact that RDJ played Iron Man and is now playing Doom, both of those characters are now completely identical on an atomic level, difference in age not withstanding. That's an incredibly unique trait that they share, and I accord to it a lot of weight.

If anything, building an Iron Man suit or getting bit by a radioactive spider in the Marvel universe is much easier than having the exact same body of somebody else through natural means, so it isn't as special.

3/3

Another more concrete example:

We have our main universe Peter Parker / Spider-Man.

Now in another universe we have a Peter Parker who looks like main Peter, lives in Queens, has the same family tree, his parents are alive, his uncle and aunt are alive, he never got bit by a spider, never met marry jane, none of his supporting cast or rogues gallery, leading a normal life, etc.

In that same universe we have some other guy from Brooklyn, different name, different appearance, different family tree, his parents died, he lives with his aunt and uncle, gets bit by a spider, uncle dies, becomes Spider-Man, wears the suit, falls in love with Mary Jane, fights the rogues gallery, the whole thing.

Which of these two people is the variant of our main universe Peter Parker / Spider-Man? Again, to me it's not a clear cut thing.

I have to evaluate the whole person in context of the universe around them to give a solid answer.

Now I understand that's not something we have or should go through when making a story, but if we're gonna ask these nerdy questions, I feel compelled to think about them on a nerdy level.

@SpiderParker -

I wouldn't say that it's shallow to accord a high degree of affection to my mother's physical appearance. It's comforting, it's all I ever knew since I was a baby. If she looked like Viola Davis all her life and one day I woke up to find Meryl Streep in her stead, I will be in a state of shock. My mind wouldn't comprehend it. It's unnatural to see her behavior come from a totally different body. For all I know that's an imposter, no matter how much she resembles her in behavior.

My father's genes and my mother's genes culminated in making my genes, but I have neither of their traits. Traits and genes aren't the same thing. I don't have both of my father's nose and my mother's nose at the same time, and the same goes for almost every physical part of my being. Even when it comes to genes I only have half of each, and there's a lot that is lost in the the halves I don't get.

When I say separate a person's trait into two sets, I mean separate their traits, their emergent observable aspects. For Iron Man, it's the physical body, it's the suit, it's the beard style, it's the family tree, it's location of residency, it's the friends and love interests, it's the enemies, it's the life experience, it's the personality, it's the time of birth and death, it's everything that defines him exclusively, which his father has none of, which no other person in history has anything of. The genes are also included but they're only a part of it, and even if they were the whole of the matter, they're not enough to make him and his parents the same person.

Wanna talk about genes? Okay, why would you put emphasis on the 99% of DNA that ALL humans share? It's irrelevant. If you're not human to begin with, you wouldn't even be included in the discussion when we talk about human variants. It's the ocean of infinite decimals in the remaining 1% that makes all the difference between every two humans that have ever walked this earth (only talking about biological uniqueness here).

For all intents and purposes, it's as improbable for a creature to have that 99% that qualifies it to be human as it is for a human to have the same remaining 1% as another human. Two people leading similar lifestyles in the same time in the same place can still be astronomically different because of a single value difference in the decimals of that remaining 1%.

So when two characters have the same identical remaining 1% because they're played by the same actor, that's a pretty big deal as far as I'm concerned. Add to that that depsite different environmental influences that should alter the body to some extent as it grows, they still grew up to have the same body (because they're played by the same actor), and that's more of a big deal. The only difference is their brains because they're clearly on different paths in life. But even the same person can have different brain chemistries depending on which point in their life they're at, leading that person in two radically different life paths.

And to say that it's impossible to have carbon copies of the same person in two different universes is ridiculous notion considering the infinite nature of the multiverse, I mean Doctor Strange went through a universe made of paint for crying out loud. We don't even have to be shown such things in order to be able to imagine the vastness of possibilities.

And then we can bring up none-human variants, like Alligator Loki, Frog Thor, Spider-Ham, which by the way is a spider turned pig. It happened after he got bitten by an anthropomorphized pig, because pigs are the humans of that universe. So he's not even a member of the dominant sapient species in his world. So imagine a universe where humans run the world instead of pigs, and Peter Parker bites a Spider, due to which that spider turns into Spider-Man. Assuming you still think this spider has the potential to earn the title of "Spider-Man variant", does he now need to adopt the name of Peter Parker (or Peter Porker in pig universe) to be deemed a Spider-Man variant? It sure helps his case, but I wouldn't say it's necessary.

So when I bring up my example of the Spider-Man from Brooklyn that's not Peter Parker, I don't see why you would be so quick to disregard his worthiness of the title. We can also think of Spider-Man 2099. Hell, even when we look at the 3 Peter Parkers of No Way Home. They may share the same name, their aunts and uncles may share the same names, but on a biological level they're not the same person and they're family members aren't the same people. Would it suddenly be a step too far if they didn't even share the name? I wouldn't say that their names alone are more important than their life experiences in making them Spider-Man variants, so in light of that I still nominate my Brooklyn Spider-Man.

My thesis is it's not one aspect that makes two people (from different universes, that's important) variants of each other. It's not just the physical body, or the name, or the lineage, or the powers (or lack thereof), or the personality, or whatever. There isn't an end-all be-all element. Some elements may be more important than others, but you still gotta take the mixture of them all as a whole and judge it in the context of the universes they inhabit.

@SpiderParker - Regardless of whether it's fictional or not, I don't care how much Dominic cooper resembles RDJ, no son will ever be a clone of his father, that's the important part, and if he did, He's surely not a clone of his mother at the same time. Looking almost identical to a person and looking like a clone of a person are two things that are light years apart, let alone actually having the exact same body, or at least the vast majority of it, which goes far beyond superficial looks. Even identical twins usually have some small distinctive features, as you mentioned. The virtual impossibility of it happening within the same universe is what gives value to two people having the same body in separate universes.

Now don't put words into my mouth, I wouldn't disregard what my mother means to me if her appearance changed out of the blue due to a disfigurement or some other reason. At the same time it will still be shocking and hard to deal with. Why are disfigurements considered tragedies? Disfigurement makes a person look NOT like what they're supposed to look like. The furthest extreme of it is looking inhuman, but on the same spectrum, looking human but other than yourself is still disturbing.

It's an uncontrollable biological reaction that one gets accustomed to overlooking when dealing with their loved ones. My mom doesn't need to wake up with the head of a cow for it to start feeling wrong, there isn't a threshold. If it's not a gradual change like the wrinkles that come with age, it won't be easy to digest. Hell, at least even disfigurements from accidents are rarely able to erase the fundamental essence of a person's appearance, but going from Viola Davis to Meryl Streep is a whole other level.

Of course, as you say, we don't know if RDJ is going to have any makeup that changes his face, but assuming that he doesn't, why would you keep insisting that having carbon copies isn't possible when his mere appearance on screen as Doom looking just like he did as Tony Stark (albeit a little older) is enough proof that in an infinite multiverse you can have carbon copies in separate worlds? I didn't say the environment can't influence a person's body despite what they're genes might dictate, I'm saying that in the case of Doom and Tony Stark, their respective environments either didn't do that to any measurable degree, or they happened to influence them identically, given that they still look identical.

And I'll give it to you, may initial statement is lacking, and it does contradict what I have come to settle on ultimately. The Doom from the second universe, who looks like Tony but has Doom's life, is only a variant of Tony if the following condition is met: By contextualizing the similarities between him and the Tony of universe 1, we find that those similarities are extremely rare to come across in his universe. For example, as I said before, if everyone in his universe is identical in their physical body to RDJ, then his physical body becomes a trait which importance is highly questionable when we evaluate his candidacy for being a Tony variant.

And please, once again, a person looking exactly like me within my own universe, in the past or in the future, has nothing to do with the variant conversation. The colloquial definition of a variant requires it to be from a different universe. You can use a different word for it, and I'm not saying it's not a big deal. If a person within my own universe shares every aspect of my life with me, physical body and otherwise, then yes, he is in essence a variant of me, but I see no point in bringing it up when talking about the multiverse variant, which tends to have a narrative weight in these fictional worlds, an idea that basically says "yeah this person is supposed to be the same guy you all know and love, but from a different universe".

And in light of that, by casting RDJ as Doom and saying he's not a variant of Tony, you meddle with the magic that comes with creating identical looking people from different universes, because we all would immediately say "these two guys must have some sort of connection" when we see them out of context, without the filmmakers telling us that they don't. You plant that idea in the audience when you make that narrative choice, whether you intend it or not. That's the magic of it. If it happens within the same universe, my first reaction would be "this is either a clone, a reincarnation, or (if we see it from the POV of either one of the characters) that character must be hallucinating". Now if we come to learn that RDJ's Doom simply stole Tony Stark's face or took over his body, yeah, I can then easily understand them saying that Doom isn't a variant of Tony Stark.

Aside from that, I don't know what you intend to say by the Spider-Man example. I never said that a Spider-Man that doesn't look like Peter Parker can't qualify to be a Spider-Man variant, I said that him looking like Peter Parker certainly strengthens his position of being a variant of other Peter Parker-looking Spider-MEn. And another ordinary person having Peter Parker's body but not being Spider-Man is still in consideration to be a variant as well if the context of his universe proves it to be something worth noting. I said that when I talked about the Brooklyn Spider-Man example.

@RedFury - oh it's fake. It's as fake as it gets.

@TheVisionary25 - that is 100% Dooms attitude. Doom could be talking to a Doom variant and both of them think they’re the version all other versions are based off of.