Ultimate Doom

In late 1995, Doom was estimated to be installed on more computers worldwide than Microsoft's new operating system Windows 95, despite million-dollar advertising campaigns for the latter. The game's popularity prompted Bill Gates to briefly consider buying id Software, and led Microsoft to develop a Windows 95 port of Doom to promote the operating system as a gaming platform. One such presentation to promote Windows 95 had Bill Gates digitally superimposed into the game.

The Ultimate Doom Contained an additional episode, "Thy Flesh Consumed", in addition to the original three episodes (with very slight modifications to some levels).

Doom has appeared in several forms in addition to games, including a comic book, four novels by Dafydd Ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver (loosely based on events and locations in the games), and a film starring Karl Urban and The Rock released in 2005. The game's development and impact on popular culture is also the subject of the book Masters of Doom by David Kushner.

Doom was and remains notorious for its high levels of violence, gore, and satanic imagery, which have generated much controversy from a broad range of groups. Yahoo! Games has it listed as one of the top ten controversial games of all time.