"thermodynamic miracle." Realizing that such a miracle can apply to any living thing on Earth, Manhattan is persuaded to return to protect humanity, rather than disregarding it as insignificant. It's discovered that Veidt framed Brooklyn. It was part of his plot to avert World War III by attacking New York with an engineered monster, killing half of the city in the process. Although Manhattan and Laurie return too late to stop Veidt, they teleport to his base in Antarctica to confront him. Veidt tries to disintegrate Manhattan, only to have Manhattan restore himself more quickly than Veidt expected. Upon seeing that Veidt's plan has averted war, Manhattan realizes that exposing him would be too dangerous for life on Earth and agrees to remain silent. Rorschach leaves intending to expose the truth, causing Manhattan to vaporize him. Manhattan decides to depart Earth again, suggesting that he desires to find a galaxy "less complicated than this one." When Veidt asks if his plan worked out in the end, Manhattan replies, "In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends." In the DC Universe The New 52 and DC Rebirth After departing from the Watchmen universe, Manhattan was aware of the DC Universe being filled with hope inside humanity and traveled there to find a place among those people and start a new life. But at some point, his visions showed him an arms race among metahumans that caused an incoming "World War III", leading Manhattan to have a confrontation with Superman, and then he saw "nothing". This revelation led Manhattan to modify the DC Universe's mainstream timeline to fix the fissures caused by the several Crises across the Multiverse; unaware it was the doing of Perpetua to free herself from the Source Wall. However, those actions would not get the expected result and would lead to the creation of The New 52. During the events of Flashpoint, Manhattan deceived Pandora into convincing Barry Allen to merge three separate timelines (the DC Universe, the Wildstorm Universe, and select Vertigo titles) to create Prime Earth. The merger enabled him to erase ten years from the reverted universe, which not only reversed the age of its inhabitants by ten years but also caused the multiple resurrections of several deceased characters. In the new timeline, Manhattan prevents the last wizard of the Council of Eternity from revealing to Pandora how to open the skull-shaped box, and