Doctor Black

Doctor Black

The board game Cluedo, Clue in North America, and the associated 1985 film Clue, contains six murder suspects, all of whom survived into the final 2002 edition of the game. They typically represent "types," or stock characters, of European and American high society, as typified in the murder mysteries pioneered by Agatha Christie. The characters have also become stock types in pop culture, and served as the basis for an Australian advertising campaign by photographer Richard de Chazal, with each character being photographed with one of the weapons and in one of the rooms from the game. In addition to the basic enduring six characters, numerous variations of the original characters have been introduced for spin-off games and international versions. Several new official characters have since been introduced by Waddington's, Parker Bros, & Hasbro for various spin-off games and other licensed media as well. With the addition of the new characters, they were also given elaborate backgrounds for the first time, greatly expanding the Cluedo canon and establishing an often complex and contradictory chronology with each update to the game and new media production.