- "Sorta like a shaved gorilla, except with horns, a big head, lots of teeth, and harder to kill. Don't get too close or they'll rip your fraggin' head off."
- ― Doom manual description
The Pinkies (also known as Demons) are a recurring enemy found in the classic games. Alongside their partially invisible counterpart, they are one of the most common enemies the players will come across, second only to the Imps. Pinkies makes their first appearance in the third level of the first episode and makes their return in larger packs in the second game.
Physical Appearance[]
Pinkies are two legged monsters with relatively big, bulky, masculine, muscular body frames. Appropriate to their nickname, Pinkies are pink in color. They have a large mouth armed with sharp teeth, two white horns on their heads, glowing yellow eyes, digitigrade legs, and three claws on each foot.
Combat Characteristics[]
Pinkies let out a loud growl, similar to a Lion's roar, when they become aware of the player's presence. When in pain, they will make a low-pitch demonic moan that most other monsters make. But otherwise, will resort to making a soft low-pitched growling sound like most other monsters when they are present.
Pinkies do not have a ranged attack, instead preferring to close in on their target as much as possible to bite at them. To make up for this, they have a huge advantage over many other monsters: speed. They can outrun any other beings except the charging Lost Soul, the Cyberdemons, the Revenants, the Arch-viles, and the player. They also run in a zig-zag pattern, presenting themselves as difficult targets, in order to corner their foes. Under Nightmare difficulty, or with the fast monsters setting, the Pinkies move and attack twice as fast, thus becoming the fastest monsters in the game, and the second quickest to attack, after the Cyberdemons.
When killed, Pinkies emit a loud, Pig-like snort and spits up some teeth and blood, their foreheads and stomachs also burst open in two bloody gutting holes.
Tactical Analysis[]
A Demon attacks the player near the exit of Level 3: The Gantlet, in Doom II.
Despite being more dangerous than an Imp, a Pinky overall, should serve as a very minor threat for the player. As they are only melee-oriented enemies, players can take advantage of this by taking them down from a distance. The shotgun is pretty effective to take out an individual Pinky from mid range, as two-three shots will guarantee to take them down.
While Pinkies possess amazing speed and are able to zig-zag around to present themselves as harder targets, they still possess a large body structure, making them easy targets nonetheless. Pinkies possess very high pain chance, making them prone to stunning while being under attacked. The chainsaw can actually work well for this reason, especially if the player is need to conserve ammo.
In DOOM II, Pinkies have now taken the habit of coming together in larger packs than before. This makes them more dangerous than ever. But players are also introduced to the super shotgun, which evens out the odds. It generally takes two shots from the super shotgun to annihilate a single Pinky, but one shot at point blank range will instantly put a Pinky out of his misery. In extreme cases, it is advisable to avoid having multiple Pinkies surrounding you and possibly cornering you.
In monster infighting, healthy Pinkies are able to make short work of Former Humans and Imps. Since Pinkies move faster than most other enemy types, they tend to be hit by projectiles from slower monsters located further away, and thus are generally the easiest monster to trick into attacking other enemies - however, the short range of their attacks make it difficult for a distracted Pinky to provoke other monsters into counterattacking him. Pinkies actually appear to be considerably less intelligent (or more oblivious) than Imps, as they often run around for quite a long time aimlessly before attacking the player.
Data[]
| ID # | Hit points | Speed | Width | Height | Reaction time | Pain chance | Pain time | Mass | Bits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3002 (decimal) BBA (hex) |
150 | 10 map units per frame (175.0 map units per second) |
60 | 56 | 8 | 180 (70.31%) | 4 tics | 400 | 4194310 |
| 1: | 2: | 22: |
|---|---|---|
| Obstacle | Shootable | Affects Kill % |
Melee
| Damage | Sound |
|---|---|
| 4-40 | DSSGTATK |
Damage done by a Demon's bite
| Bites needed to kill1 | Mean | Standard deviation |
Min | Max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Player (100% health, no armor) |
5.16 | 1.20 | 3 | 9 |
| Player (100% health, security armor) |
7.32 | 1.33 | 5 | 11 |
| Player (200% health, combat armor) |
18.86 | 1.60 | 15 | 22 |
| Barrel | 1.50 | 0.66 | 1 | 5 |
| Zombieman | 1.50 | 0.66 | 1 | 5 |
| Shotgun Guy | 1.97 | 0.77 | 1 | 5 |
| Wolfenstein SS | 2.98 | 0.95 | 2 | 7 |
| Imp | 3.29 | 0.99 | 2 | 7 |
| Chaingunner | 3.84 | 0.99 | 2 | 8 |
| Lost Soul | 5.16 | 1.20 | 3 | 9 |
| Commander Keen | 5.16 | 1.20 | 3 | 9 |
| Demon | 7.48 | 1.31 | 5 | 11 |
| Spectre | 7.48 | 1.31 | 5 | 11 |
| Boss Brain2 | 12.15 | 1.59 | 8 | 17 |
| Revenant | 14.31 | 1.57 | 11 | 18 |
| Cacodemon | 18.86 | 1.60 | 15 | 22 |
| Pain Elemental | 18.86 | 1.60 | 15 | 22 |
| Hell Knight | 23.52 | 1.50 | 19 | 27 |
| Arachnotron | 23.52 | 1.50 | 19 | 27 |
| Mancubus | 28.15 | 1.35 | 24 | 32 |
| Arch-vile | 32.84 | 1.30 | 30 | 36 |
| Baron of Hell | 46.72 | 1.79 | 42 | 51 |
| Spiderdemon | 139.43 | 2.32 | 134 | 144 |
| Cyberdemon | 185.64 | 2.97 | 180 | 192 |
- This table assumes that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, and blood splats are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of "consecutive" calls.
- Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.
Appearance statistics[]
In the classic Doom, the Demon is first encountered on these maps:
The IWADs contain the following numbers of Demons:
| Game | ITYTD and HNTR | HMP | UV and NM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ultimate Doom | 163 | 303 | 443 |
| Doom II | 94 | 213 | 331 |
| TNT: Evilution | 137 | 208 | 219 |
| Plutonia | 105 | 123 | 139 |
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