Top 5 Cameos of DOOM - #3: A Different Kind of Rocket Launcher

It doesn’t take much for a major pop culture franchise like DOOM to spread its influence.

Let’s take a look at some of the series’ more interesting (or just flat-out odd) cameos, both within and outside the sphere of video games.

3. A Different Kind of Rocket Launcher

We are presently in the midst of a fascinating new space race. Instead of nation competing against nation, government and private companies are now neck-and-neck to corner every aspect of space exploration, from cost to distance to just-plain-coolness.

One of the most high-profile companies in this race in the US is Space Exploration Technologies Corp. – better known as SpaceX – founded by Tesla founder and jet-setting eccentric Elon Musk. One of the projects in development at SpaceX is the Super Heavy and Starship, a two-stage rocket system intended to be a fully reusable launch vehicle with the ability to (relatively) cheaply and (relatively) easily deliver satellites to Earth orbit, transport passengers to lunar orbit or even make trips to Mars and back.

So why are we talking about this here? Well, before being christened the Super Heavy and Starship, the project was known as the “BFR.” Now, officially, this stood for “Big Falcon Rocket.” But Musk made it clear in a 2015 interview with GQ that he really had something else in mind.

“This is a very obtuse video game reference," he said. "In the original DOOM, the gun that was like the crazy gun was the BFG 9000 or something like that. So it was sort of named after the gun in DOOM." For a rocket that could potentially eventually end up on Mars, we have to say that’s appropriate. Let’s just hope there’s no gateways to Hell awaiting us there.