Dr. Manhattan was the son of a watchmaker who pushed him into studying atomic physics instead of following in the family business. He was involved in research at the Gila Flats under the direction of Professor Milton Glass. During this time, he had a love affair with colleague, Janey Slater. While retrieving a watch he fixed for her, he accidentally became trapped in an intrinsic field separator. His atoms were smashed, but, eventually, methodically, he reconstructed himself and emerged as Dr. Manhattan, a blue-skinned superhuman who can do anything because he has a quantum consciousness that reveals time, space, and matter as they truly are--in atomic detail.

Manhattan's unusual hyperconsciousness allows him to perceive time in multiple facets. He slides through time and has a keen sense of predestination. For him, all time is simultaneous; all things happen at once. Therefore, he knows what "will" happen in "the future" but is incapable of doing anything about it. An obviously complex, distant, otherworldly character, Manhattan is ageless and indestructible but poignantly paradoxical in his fatalistic yet omnipotent existence.