Trivia: When Dan and Hollis hear a TV news report referencing Rorschach, they glance at the screen in time to see grainy black and white 'file footage' of Rorschach walking quickly away and to the right of the camera position, glancing back over his right shoulder momentarily. That footage is intentionally designed to precisely mimic the infamously-disputed film of Bigfoot (known as the Patterson-Gimlin film of 1967). (00:17:50)
Trivia: If you look closely, one of the movies playing on one of Ozymandias' screens is "The 300 Spartans", which deals with the same subject as director Zach Snyder's previous film, "300".
Trivia: This is for the trailer rather than for the final film, but worth a look. At 1:33 in the trailer, just after seeing Rorschach slam someone against a wall, we see another fight. Pause it and look at the guy in black - he's holding a walkie-talkie, which in the next shot becomes a gun. This is only trivia, not a mistake, because it's only valid for the trailer. The MPAA don't allow guns to be pointed at the screen in trailers, so Zack Snyder, in a tribute to the infamous gun-editing from E.T., replaced the gun in that one shot with a walkie-talkie. (00:01:30)
Trivia: On the countdown screens at the end of the movie, written below the timers it says "S.Q.U.I.D." A little nod to how the explosion went down in the graphic novel.
Trivia: The plot to force peace by uniting against a common enemy is similar to the Outer Limits episode, "The Architects of Fear." A nod to this is that just after the scenes in Antarctica, you see a TV with the classic Outer Limits opening.
Trivia: In the scene where Ozymandias is observing his TV monitors, one of the screens in the lower left corner is showing Apple's infamous Super Bowl commercial for the 1984 release of the Macintosh computer.
Trivia: In the opening credits, after the Comedian is dead and photo shoots are taken from the old vigilantes, the Sally Jupiter retirement party picture resembles Da Vinci's Last Supper (table, hands positions, room columns, mountains in the back). (00:07:10)
Trivia: When Rorschach is in jail and is being shown the inkblots, he sees one that looks to him like two lovers. At the end of the movie, when he is killed by Dr. Manhattan, the blood stain on the ground is in the exact same shape.
Trivia: In the opening credits, when Ozymandias is outside Studio 54, you can see David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Divine, and the Village People.
Trivia: The war room in which Nixon is planning the first strike on the Soviet Union has a wonderful similarity to the war room in Dr. Strangelove.
Trivia: When the Dr. Manhattan-esque bomb goes off and we see a man's briefcase fly open, look at the combination on the lock, it's set to 299 so that "300" is visible, a film also directed by Zack Snyder.
Trivia: At the meeting of the Watchmen, where the Comedian burns the United States map, check out the Zippo lighter he uses - it's etched with the same image of Silk Spectre that appears on the bomber in the beginning.
Trivia: In the scene showing the cogs within the machine built by Dr. Manhattan for Veidt, a gear is shown imprinted with EDY192485, a nod towards Edward (Eddie) Blake, known as 'The Comedian', born in 1924 and died in 1985.
Trivia: In the Watchmen timeline, Rorschach's polymorphic head mask was supposed to be a commercialized offshoot of Dr. Manhattan technology. It was a double-layered, temperature-sensitive fabric that changed patterns in response to fluctuating body heat, and it was originally intended to be marketed in the garment industry. That is where Walter Kovac (Rorschach) discovered the fabric, when he worked for a dressmaker in his youth. He privately used samples of the fabric to create his own head mask. Unfortunately, the novelty fabric was a commercial failure in the Watchmen timeline, which is why we don't see it used anywhere else in the Watchmen film.
Trivia: Carla Gugino plays Malin Ackerman's mother in the film, even though in real life she's only seven years older than Ackerman.
Trivia: Veidt mentions Dr. Manhattan's subtle facial twitches when he is speaking about his master plan. An example can be seen during Rorschach's initial encounter with Manhattan at the military base. (00:27:25)
Trivia: Halfway through the film the camera pans a street and passes over a news stand run by an old man with a boy sitting against a fire hydrant reading a comic ("Tales of the Black Freighter", which has been animated and will be released on DVD). There is no time to expand the characters for the film but in the comic they play a larger role and provide the location where Rorschach catches up with the news.
Answer: He has spent years as a costumed vigilante despite the fact that it was illegal. He has a very strict idea of what is right ("never compromise") and has proven himself incapable of doing otherwise. So no, there was no real chance of negotiating with him - Rorschach himself made it clear he'd have to die if they wanted his silence.
Garlonuss ★
Death was not the only choice. Doc M could easily have teleported/banished Rorschach to Mars/anywhere secluded in an oxygen bubble. He could have spared his life and just made him mute or manipulate his brain chemistry/atoms to remove the memory of what happened. The point is Doc M is all powerful and could manipulate matter at his whim; death was just a plot device creating a chance of an emotive martyrdom/sacrificial ending.
Ethically speaking, exiling him to Mars or erasing his memory of the event can be considered just as cruel as killing him, because then his agency is being taken away from him. Rorshach's malcontent with the situation poses a problem for the other heroes, and since Dr. Manhattan isn't willing to let him tell the truth of what happened, he obliges Rorschach's demand that he kill him instead.
Phaneron ★