One Of The Biggest Video Games Ever Got Its Title From A Martin Scorsese Movie

If you grew up in the '90s chances are you either played "Doom" (or wanted to play it but weren't allowed because it was too violent). "Doom" let you to mow down demons in space and featured some remarkably gory animations and graphics for its time. As such, you might not expect a 1986 Tom Cruise sports drama to be the source of inspiration behind its name. But the origins of "Doom" actually do go back to the oft-overlooked Martin Scorsese classic "The Color of Money."

There have been some wonderfully terrible video games. The worst video game of all time brought a beloved superhero to a new low and there was that time a Steven Spielberg classic gave rise to one of the most abject games in history. "Doom" however, is not one of those games. Developer John Carmack created the Doom game engine, which id Software then used to create the inaugural title in the soon-to-be massively popular series. When the first game debuted in 1993 it was truly revolutionary, allowing players to move throughout 3D space as they slayed hell-spawn across the moons of Mars. What more could kids want? 

Not only did "Doom" have a revolutionary engine that redefined video games and downright badass gameplay, it also courted significant controversy for its graphic violence, immediately making it the object of every '90s kids' desires. Even with all that working in its favor, had the game arrived with a lame name like "Space Shooter 2000," it might not have experienced the surge of popularity it did. Before it could be unleashed upon the masses, then, id Software needed a title that was going to match the alluringly dark subject matter of the game, and so, to Tom Cruise they turned.

Back in the '80s, Tim Burton almost directed "After Hours," Martin Scorsese's comedy thriller which ultimately disappointed at the box office upon its September 1985 release. That wasn't exactly what the director needed after his previous movie, "The King of Comedy," also tanked. So, with his next film he used the combined acting might of Paul Newman and Tom Cruise to deliver a critical and commercial hit in the form of "The Color of Money."

A sequel to Newman's 1961 film "The Hustler," the 1986 sports drama sees Newman reprise the role of ex-professional pool player, Eddie "Fast Eddie" Felson, who plays mentor to a young pool hustler named Vincent Lauria (Cruise). Along with Lauria's girlfriend, Carmen (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), the trio set out to hustle pool halls across the U.S. on their way to a tournament in Atlantic City.

It's at one of these pool halls that Cruise unwittingly delivered a line that would soon be co-opted by the makers of a violent first-person shooter. While "Doom" may sound like the perfect title for a game about infernal creatures running rampant in dilapidated industrial nightmare-scapes, it wasn't actually the game's subject matter that prompted such a name. In "The Color of Money," after watching a potential mark beat another player, Lauria approaches the table. The other player to glances at his pool cue case and asks, "What you got in there?" "In here?" Cruise replies with a smirk as he opens the case to reveal the cue. "Doom."

In "The Color of Money," Vincent Lauria's opponent remains unimpressed by the newcomer's unbelievably smug warning and agrees to play the hustler. Lauria then dances his way through the complete and utter decimation of his opponent, potting balls with alacrity while the poor mark can do nothing but watch. In a 1999 interview with DoomWorld, Doom engine developer John Carmack said that it was this moment that ultimately gave him the idea for his game's title. Talking about the way in which Cruise's pool shark lays waste to the unsuspecting patron, the developer said, "That was how I viewed us springing the game on the industry."

It turned out to be a remarkably prescient move on the part of Carmack and id Software. "Doom" did indeed rain doom upon the video game industry in much the same way as Cruise bulldozed his unsuspecting opponent in "The Color of Money." Aside from the fact it changed video games forever and remains beloved to this day, the first game in the saga made a ton of money. Carmack told the New York Times in 2004 that the first "Doom" game was built by five to six people in less than a year and cost less than $1 million. By 1999, the game had sold more than 1.1 million units becoming one of the top-selling games of all time. 

Since then there have been countless entries in the "Doom" video game franchise which has also spawned novels, comic books, board games, and one of the worst video game movies ever. Okay, maybe the "Doom" franchise isn't the perfect analogue for Tom Cruise's flawless pool player, but you get the point.