Could the DC Universe version of Cyborg have had his memories altered to make him forget about his best friend, Titans’ Beast Boy? It’s a possibility worth considering, given recent revelations in Doom Patrol regarding how Cyborg’s father, Dr. Silas Stone, electronically manipulated his son’s memories and limited who could contact him.

When it was announced that DC Universe’s first original program would be a live-action Titans series, fans of the original comics were thrilled. That excitement gave way to confusion, however, when it was revealed that Cyborg would not be part of the Titans, but would appear later as part of the Doom Patrol - a team he had never been a member of in the comics. What made this doubly strange was the fact that Beast Boy was originally part of the Doom Patrol in the comics, but was scheduled to be part of the core cast of Titans, with his time in the Doom Patrol limited to one episode of Titans, which acted as a backdoor pilot for Doom Patrol.

The question of why these two characters, who had been best friends forever in the comics, would be randomly separated and switched around confused many. However, an explanation may lie in the idea that the two young heroes became friends during one of Dr. Niles Caulder’s infrequent visits to STAR Labs and that Dr. Stone erased or altered his son’s memory of the visits for fear that Caulder’s “Beast Boy” might prove to be a bad influence on his son. The latest episodes of Doom Patrol confirmed that Cyborg’s father had installed parental controls into his son’s operating systems that allowed him to micromanage every aspect of his son’s life. This, combined with other clues, suggests that Victor Stone might have befriended Gar Logan, before Beast Boy left Doom Manor in Titans.

  • This Page: Beast Boy and Cyborg’s Bromance Page 2: How Dr. Stone Could Have Altered Vic’s Memory of Beast Boy

The Beast Boy/Cyborg Friendship

When writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Perez revamped the classic Teen Titans comic into New Teen Titans in 1980, they rebuilt the team with a combination of established teenage sidekicks (Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl) and their own creations (Starfire, Raven, Cyborg).  Gar Logan was something of the odd man out, having fallen into obscurity since the end of the Doom Patrol comic book over a decade earlier. He quickly became the team’s comic-relief, not taking the idea of joining another team or becoming a superhero again after having started a career as an actor seriously. This led to an unlikely friendship with Cyborg, who was similarly skeptical about the new Teen Titans but more worried about his own ability to use his cybernetic enhancements to help others.

The two young men wound up bonding over their mutually acerbic senses of humor and the difficulties they had in going out unnoticed in public. They also shared a common bond in having lost their loved ones and feeling abandoned by their parents. Thus was forged a friendship that became the basis of a legendary bromance in both the comics and the Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go! cartoons.

No Beast Boy/Cyborg Bromance in Titans or Doom Patrol

Given how close the bond is between Vic and Gar in other Titans media, it stunned fans when it was revealed that neither Titans nor Doom Patrol planned to build up the classic friendship between the two heroes, despite the two series sharing a universe. The reason for this soon became apparent after the second episode of Doom Patrol, which revealed that Cyborg’s life as a superhero had been largely confined to Detroit, with his father monitoring everything he did from STAR Labs.

Gar Logan was similarly sequestered, having been rescued from a disease outbreak zone by Dr. Niles Caulder and going on to spend two years living in Dr. Caulder’s home in Cloverton, Ohio. There was seemingly no chance for the two young men to meet in this reality… or was there?

Page 2: How Dr. Stone Could Have Altered Vic’s Memory of Beast Boy

How Dr. Stone Has Altered Vic’s Memory in Doom Patrol

The possibility that Victor couldn’t trust his memories was first raised in “Donkey Patrol” - episode 2 of Doom Patrol season 1. It was here that Cyborg’s origin story was revealed, as the villain Mr. Nobody tormented the team with visions from their past. In Victor Stone’s case, this led to his being taken back to the night of the explosion in his mother’s lab that killed her and destroyed most of Victor’s body.

Victor mocked Mr. Nobody for thinking this vision could disturb him, because “I relive this every time I go to sleep! I relive this when I close my eyes!” Victor went on to say that the whole reason he became Cyborg was to make up for the fact that he caused the explosion that killed his mother after they got into an argument and he knocked over a tray of chemicals. Mr. Nobody applauded Victor’s passion and said that he had a fantastic origin story, before adding that it was too bad it was “a load of donkey (poop).”

This prompted Cyborg to try and access the security footage from the lab and compare it to his memories in “Puppet Patrol,” episode 3 of Doom Patrol season 1. The footage did show him arguing with his mother, as he remembered, but the video cut out just as the explosion started. Victor attempted to authenticate the footage and make sure that it hadn’t been altered or tampered with, but everything seemed to be in order.

Despite this, Victor was still skeptical of his controlling father’s intentions. Even if he had no proof that Dr. Silas Stone had altered his memories in order to instill a guilt complex to drive him to be a better superhero, he still had issues with his father spying on him through his hardware and attempting to hinder his efforts to find the missing Dr. Niles Caulder. This made Victor even more determined to go it alone without his father’s guidance and, when his next encounter with Mr. Nobody ended with Victor needing his father’s help to repair his systems, he begged Cliff “Robotman” Steele to watch his father and make sure that he didn’t do anything else to Victor while he is in sleep mode.

What Doesn’t Add Up In Vic’s Memories

The question of just how deeply Silas Stone’s control of his son’s systems was raised again in “Therapy Patrol,” episode 7 of Doom Patrol season 1. As he is waiting for the rest of the team to show up for the meeting he scheduled, Victor is notified by his operating system, Grid, that he just got a message on a dating app called Cazh and that there are 267 other messages waiting for him. Vic remembers making a profile on the app as a joke right before he became Cyborg, but doesn’t recall ever getting a response. A call to his father confirms that there were “parental controls” he installed on Victor’s systems that allowed him to filter out anything that was addressed to Victor’s e-mail that Silas thought would distract him. Another curiosity which may point to further signs of Silas’ meddling in Vic’s memories is that several girls on Cazh ask for Cyborg to say “Boo-yah!” which he doesn’t remember ever using as a catch-phrase.

While this doesn’t relate directly to the question of just how reliable Cyborg’s memories are, it does show just how complete Silas Stone’s control of his son was and how he went out of his way to control who Victor talked to and spent time with. Knowing this, we must now question the scenes from “Donkey Patrol” in which we see Dr. Niles Caulder and Victor Stone going out for a jog and getting ice cream together, with Dr. Caulder talking about how much he’d like for Victor to come visit his home in Cloverton and how there are people there he might find interesting company. While it makes sense that Victor would latch on to the more openly supportive father figure represented by Dr. Caulder, it does seem odd that Dr. Stone would allow his son to leave the lab with someone he disapproved of so strongly.

How An Erased Beast Boy Explains It All

Many of the inconsistencies regarding Dr. Caulder and Cyborg’s relationship in Cyborg’s memories vanish if one considers one idea - Gar Logan was there with them. While Dr. Stone would almost certainly object to Dr. Caulder spending time alone with his son (even if he could remotely monitor everything through Vic’s systems), Dr. Stone is not so cruel a father or so callous a scientist to ignore the possibility that an encounter with another young man going through similar circumstances might be a benefit to Victor. And Dr. Caulder would certainly consider it worth the effort to introduce Gar to Victor in order to help him adjust to his unique circumstances. Call it a controlled experiment or a play-date - it would be just the thing to help both Gar and Vic with their emotional issues.

Naturally, given the explosive personalities involved, it would be inevitable that there would be some conflict and the two young men would be denied any further contact once their respective caregivers had an argument. It would be a simple matter then for Dr. Stone to erase any mention of Gar Logan from his son’s memory and block any attempts Gar made to call or e-mail his best bud. This may have led to Cyborg’s memory healing itself by recalling his hanging out with Dr. Caulder in place of his lost best friend. With any luck, we’ll see a reunion between the two somewhere in the DC Universe, either in a future episode of Doom Patrol or in Titans season 2.

More: Doom Patrol Theory Says One of Crazy Jane’s Personalities Can Time Travel