Batman Beyond/Headscratchers

The Episode "Sneak Peek"

 * In this episode Bruce Wayne claims that Peek isn't actually a criminal because being a reporter isn't against the law. I'm pretty sure trespassing is illegal and videotaping people without their permission violates a ton of privacy laws. Not to mention the fact that a lot of the information he reveals seems to put people directly in danger... or that he has been knocking out security guards and setting fire to buildings. Seriously, the guy's a supervillain, why is Bruce acting like its not their job to take him down?
 * It's because the guy is being portrayed as no different from any other papparazzi. He's just really good at it. Bruce at the very least thinks it's beneath Batman to go after the papparazzi.
 * Probably the bias of the show's writers. Despite being a sleazy, privacy-violating, thieving reporter, Peek is still a reporter, and from the viewpoint of a lot of people, pesky laws like private property and property rights don't apply to The Fourth Estate, who can do as they please as long as it's in the name of bringing "news" to the people.
 * At the end of the episode, Ian Peek sinks into the earth's core and begins to go crazy. Okay...but then why exactly does he start laughing maniacally and then wave goodbye to Terry as he sinks to his doom?
 * He finally realized he was boned and just snapped
 * Why did he keep Taka's research? The statement that causes Bruce to realize that Peek murdered Taka is when he revealed that he kept all of Taka's research on his computer, as well as the belt. Why keep the research if he only used the belt?
 * So you're saying he should keep the highly experimental belt, but it's a good idea to get rid of what is, in effect, the operating manual? Yeah, you certainly wouldn't want to know how the thing you're staking your life on works, that'd just be nuts.
 * Why was Peek's disappearance so quickly forgotten? A famous journalist announces on television that he knows Batman's identity in what would quickly become global news and the day he is set to reveal it he mysteriously vanishes, never to be heard from again. All that time after no one becomes the slightest bit suspicious of Batman, who is already known as a dangerous (for criminals at least) vigilante who operates outside of the law?
 * Maybe there was a security camera on one of the floors he fell through that showed him falling through solid matter. People put 2 and 2 together and realized he wasn't coming back.
 * The Commissioner of the GCPD is Barbara Gordon. She's willing to trust Bruce's word that Terry didn't murder Peek (and even if she isn't Bruce can just show her the footage from Terry's helmet cam). With her on their side Bruce and Terry have nothing to fear from the cops.
 * It's also important to remember that Peek hadn't exactly been making himself a lot of friends. Even if he hadn't started dishing on any powerful political figures yet, his information rustling abilities would have certainly made those figures start looking over their shoulders. Even without Barbara's help, some Senator probably decided that if Batman had murdered Peek, Batman had done him a favor, and threw his weight around to get the investigation closed.

The Episode "Splicers"
In Season 2, episode 1, there is a villain who can completely control his genetics to become a monster. When he pulls out all the stops to beat Batman and becomes a huge monster, he uses the legs of a snake. He can pick any legs in the animal kingdom, and he goes with one of the few animals that does not have any legs.
 * I'd come up with a good argument for this but you lost me at "the legs of a snake". I know what you mean, but, um... <:/
 * Well, he turns into a giant snake (I think with arms). He's admittedly a one-shot Batman villain, so it's pretty clear his grip on sanity was pretty lackluster in the first place, but that's still not something I'd consider my favorite option. It's probably just there to excuse his eventual hoist by own petard; as a reptile, he's a lot easier to count as non-human than the leonine or bovine splicers. It was still one of those big fridge logic moments in a series with more than its fair share of them.
 * He chose nothing. He grabbed a random handful of injectors and used whatever they had in them. The dice rolled up snake, among a zooful of other things.
 * Plus, y'know, Giant Snake... Rule of Cool
 * Giant Snake with a face like The Phantom of the Paradise even!
 * This troper seems to recall the villain proclaiming that he made himself a "true chimera", so it seems like he chose that form for fashion rather than functionability.
 * For what it's worth, he was winning, even with his odd choice of "legs." It could be that he found a way to fudge the physiology a bit and make it work. (According to the DCAU Wiki, a later episode reveals that he had a stint working for Kobra. Maybe Cuvier just liked snakes.)
 * Didn't he say that he turned himself into a "true" chimera? So it would make sense if he were modeling himself after something from mythology. Plus he also seems to have a god complex.
 * Chimeras do have a snake for a tail, after all.
 * The first form, giant snake man, was entirely intentional. He was dosing on specific gene cocktails and does make mention of having conscious control of the mutation (God only knows how). When Batman tried to overdose him, he loses control.

Shriek
Okay, it's nice to see an inversion of the typical mad scientist coming up with dozens of valuable inventions that could change the world with the intent of killing a punk in spandex. Still, we're talking a disk-sized object capable of blowing holes into walls, in a world where most handheld weapons can't even scratch the Batsuit or cement and even ship-born weapons not being much more capable, without the risks of uncontrolled fire or nasty side effects. You can Fridge Brilliance it -- Powers was pretty obviously taking the man to the cleaners -- but you'd think the man would be smart enough to call bull.
 * Not to mention his "Noise Canceler". I live in a loud apartment building, I'd pay good money for one of those.
 * Even more so, the "Pleasure Fork". It's like happy drug you never run out of, only have to pay for once, and doesn't seem to be addictive. They would probably sell faster than you could make them. Although to be fair, it seems like by the time he made that he was already on the road to crazy revenge-land.
 * An item that makes you happy whenever you want, requires no upkeep and has no negative side-effects... yeah, that's not going to be addictive at all.
 * Guy Shriek gives it too seems to be fine. While he probably is addicted to it, as there's almost no scene he's in that he doesn't use it, there don't seem to be any negative side effects. He can put it down at the drop of a hat and function as though he were just reading a funny book.
 * Re: "addictive." There are such things as chemical, physical and psychological addictions. I don't see your body becoming dependent on the sonic pleasure but your psyche might. Hence, non-addictive. Habit forming? Sure!
 * Kind of like something else we all know?
 * I can see the human body becoming dependent on it. Shriev said it works by stimulating the "pleasure center" of your brain, presumably by stimulating the release of endorphins. Endorphins are basically naturally-occurring morphine. Your body may not become addicted to the endorphins themselves, but through frequent use it could become dependent on the pleasure fork to release endorphins.
 * Also: "addicted" means the psychological phenomenon. Drug addiction is compulsive drug-seeking behavior; drug dependence is the physiological need for the drug. You can be dependent without being addicted, or addicted without being dependent; just because something doesn't cause physiological dependency doesn't mean it's non-addictive.
 * Several things come to mind:
 * We have no idea how much it would cost to mass produce. Shriev making some working prototypes of the sonic weapons for his own use is one thing, but enough for an entire army? What is it made of? What energy source does it use and what are its power requirements?
 * As I recall, in the real world most types of sonic weapons (the kind that cause deafness at any rate) are banned by international treaty, and it's reasonable to assume they would also be banned in the DCAU. Derek Powers may be a pretty shady business man, but even he can only go so far.
 * The noise canceler thingy is not as cool as it seems. It doesn't just block out loud noises, it blocks out ALL noises. What happens if you turn on your noise canceler to block out your neighbor's loud music and the phone rings, someone knocks on the door, or the fire alarm goes off? Plus, hearing is one of the primary human senses. Blocking it out like that can't be good for you (remember, sensory deprivation is considered a form of torture).
 * It's tunable, though. Shriek was able to block all sounds except Batman's footsteps. No reason the tuning couldn't be set to block just the problem sounds.
 * Shriek doesn't tune it to block out all sounds but Batman's footsteps. He dramatically increases the sensitivity of his helmet speakers so he can just barely hear Batman's footsteps. And the end of that episode demonstrates a rather serious flaw in that design. If the sound blocker suddenly fails your ears are blasted with INCREDIBLY LOUD NOISE. Accidentally knock the sound blocker into the sink and you're instantly deafened.
 * ...software safeguards? If the sound output exceeds a certain threshold, stop amplifying anything (or stop doing anything at all).
 * Still not worth the risk. If the software glitches out or takes a second or two to register the loud noise and turn off the device (say if the machine has started overheating) then your eardrums will still get permanently blown out. Given that you could solve the problem by simply calling the cops on your loud neighbors or investing in a pair of earplugs, the risk isn't worth the hypothetical reward.
 * Shriek's weapons can hurt the Batsuit and whoever's inside it, but that's honestly not that unusual. Mad Stan (Blow it all up!) can punch hard enough to knock Terry around, and carries dozens of explosives that would be implied to be very bad to take a direct hit from, without any particular military equipment. There's a place for them in demolitions, but the nature of that sort of work (blowing things up) means that the line-of-sight requirements combined with the costs of anything using a unique alloy really might leave the profitability very questionable.
 * Ah, the pleasure fork. As Shriev's assistant demonstrated, it IS addictive. Oh, and any one-off merchandise is no good merchandise, from the merchant's point of view: customers won't come back for more, and/or don't need maintenance on it? Where's the profit in this?
 * Lots of goods are a one of purchase. Most people will buy only one house, yes I know they are expensive but you buy it once off. Really if you could buy a drug that you only needed once I could imagine that it would immediately attract all drug users and be more attractive then crack. Heck why use alcohol when you can do this.
 * But they don't usually buy just one house. Pretty much every house (that's not a mansion) built in the last 50-60 years has been made of ply wood and sheet rock so that they're cheap and quick to put up. They last 10 years, maybe 20 on the outside. Then you move to a new house. And if you don't move, you put 2-3 times the cost of the house into repairing and replacing the broken or worn bits. The "One house for your whole life" brick and mortar houses went out of style when our grandparents were buying their homes, because they are a lot more expensive and take a lot longer to build and code. (and of course, they can't tear those down and rebuild new ones again.)
 * We never saw what the batteries looked like. Create a proprietary battery pack with a special amperage or whatever, it's not complicated. Give away the razor and sell the blades, people.
 * Big fan of Planned Obsolescence eh? Just sell the damn things for 1000 bucks a pop. Or make them so they wear out after being flicked a few 100 times. Plenty of ways around this "flaw."
 * Speaking of the Noise Canceler, how does Shriek use his sonic weapons, while using a device that cancels out all sound waves? I call shenanigans.
 * From a physics standpoint it would be impossible to literally "cancel out all sound waves". Sound is a wave of pressure traveling through air. In order to "cancel" it you would have to take away the air's ability to carry pressure waves. In other words, patently ridiculous. Clearly the noise canceler doesn't literally "cancel" noise, it just makes it impossible for the human ear to detect any noise. The sound is still there, but it's been converted to a frequency above or below the human hearing range (or something).
 * This idea is supported by the episode Shriek first appears in. He shows that his suit is able to tune into specific noises during the noise canceler, which means the sounds are still there, and Ace is shown reacting to the noises while in the Batmobile, while Bruce doesn't hear anything.

The Brain Trust
Specifically, the guy whose psychic power was basically invulnerability, which Bruce explains as psychic because of "shamans who walk on coals mentally conditioning themselves to ignore pain." First off all, that's not a mental thing, it's a conductivity thing. Second, how does "ignoring pain" allow you to fall 50 stories, leave a crater, and walk away like nothing happened? The only way to reconcile this is that Bruce was wrong... but that's also impossible!
 * Perhaps he knows of a group of psychic shamans who use powers to walk across miles of coals slowly.
 * He was probably just simplifying for Terry's benefit. Alternatively, when he said "shamans" he might have been referring to guys like those Shaolin monks who can have bamboo sticks and concrete blocks broken over their backs with no apparent injury, among other impressive feats (this troper once saw a demonstration of a Shaolin glass-eating technique). So Bruce wasn't "wrong", just... not correct.
 * He read this and realized what a good idea it was.
 * Bat man eats lunch with magicians and martians, and goes to the circus with superman. It's not like he hasn't met plenty of people who can fall off buildings.

Terry's pay check
How much does Bruce pay Terry, if he pays him at all? From what I've seen after re-watching some of the series, Mrs. McGinnis seems to have occasional trouble making ends meet before and after Terry starts taking his job "seriously". My memory is shot to hell but didn't somebody say that Terry was the breadwinner of the family?
 * Bruce probably pay Terry enough to make it looks like he has small job of taking care of the old man house and giving him his meds...yeah, Bruce probably make it looks like Terry got late Alfred's job. So he is probably not paid much. Of course, Terry isn't paid for the being-Batman stuff, else he should probably make a few thousand of bucks a night. Bruce would probably step in if money became a real issue for the McGinnises.
 * The quote you're thinking of was delivered by Derek Powers when Bruce came to visit the office once with Terry in tow. "Well, I guess with your father gone that makes you the breadwinner." He was most likely just being a snide jerk to Terry.
 * Terry's also said it to Dana in defense of him missing dates because if he neglected his job, he wouldn't be able to support his family.
 * Lots of teenage boys who've lost their fathers say that. Doesn't mean they actually provide the family's main source of income.
 * Not particularly relevant to Terry's specific case?
 * Also Terry's mother presumably receives full death benefits from his Wayne/Powers, since denying her that would just make people suspicious of Derek Powers.
 * Also, Bruce may be subtly manipulating that payout in order to make sure she's well taken care of. In all their interactions it seems like he's genuinely fond of her.
 * This is probably the case.

Meltdown--Gotham's Weather Patterns
Okay, I love the episode Meltdown, it was a fitting ending for Mister Freeze. However, there's one thing that's iffy about it for me. Attempting to cure Blight, an evil scientist lady cloned Mister Freeze in an apparently normal body, then they find out his condition is reversing itself and try to kill him. The scene where he escapes shows him walking out into a snowstorm. The next scene is them apparently conferring about Freeze's escape, only shortly after the fact. The doctor mentions that gotham's having a heat wave, and it reached 70 degrees, so Freeze has to be dead. Anyways, Freeze later (as in the very same day) blasts Blight halfway across Gotham, causing him to land in a frozen over pond (with very thick ice), surrounded by snow-covered trees. Then, later (as in, still in the same day), Blight's mooks find him, apparently not to far from where he landed... and there's no snow (and the trees have leaves). Just irks me that somehow, Gotham flips from winter to spring, back to winter, and then back to spring again, all in the span of 24 hours.
 * Global warming?
 * Or maybe Freeze froze the pond and the trees on his way to confront Powers, to make sure his new suit was working properly.
 * While I hate to say this about what is essentially an WMG ... that actually makes perfect sense.
 * In certain areas, weather patterns like that are not completely uncommon. This troper has worn shorts and shoveled snow in the same week.
 * While I can't say anything for certain about why the ice was there in the first place, the reason for it being gone later is obvious: Powers was emitting so much radiation that it all melted by the time they got there.
 * I was under the impression that the snowstorm was Freeze's fault -- it's probably not coincidence that the first time we see snow in that episode is when his powers start reverting and he feels too hot.

Nightwing
Seriously, what happens to Nightwing in this continuity? He doesn´t even appear in "Return of the Joker" and, if this troper remembers correctly, is mentioned once over the course of the series. So, where is he?
 * Nightwing is still active in Bludhaven. Barb mentions him in "Return of the Joker"
 * There's no indication, that he still active as Nightwing. Barb has the line, "Look up Nightwing some day. Boy, has he got stories to tell," but that doesn't mean he's active. There's been no real indication that Terry knows Dick Grayson was Nightwing. He didn't know Barb was Batgirl till she casually walked into the Batcave. Anyhoo, the long and the short of it; all we know is that Nightwing eventually split up with Batman on very bad terms.
 * Why would she tell him to look up "Nightwing" if he wasn't still operating? She would just say "Look Up Dick Grayson" if he was actually retired.
 * There's an episode, I think second season, where Terry mentions Grayson in relation to other Bat-family members. So he is aware of who Dick is/was.
 * Unless Terry wasn't paying attention, he does know Dick Grayson is Nightwing. Barbara flat out tells him at the beginning of the flashback in ROTJ
 * This is a continuity where Bruce and Dick never reconcile. The biggest middle finger Dick could give him is to keep operating even after he forced Tim and Barbara to quit.
 * Plus, this is Nightwing we're talking about, not Robin (not anymore). He's always been a solo act who comes home to help if they need him.
 * There's an episode where Terry digs an old tux out of Bruce's attic, reads the initials on the tag, and asks "Who's 'DG'?" Bruce immediately tells him to drop the subject.

"The Last Resort"
Remember the episode with all Terri's friends being brainwashed in what was supposed to be a program for troubled teens? Why exactly was this being done? The episode never mentions a motive, just focuses on the horrors of "the ranch" and all the disturbingly accurate methods used to break the kids down.


 * Evidently, some combination of Well-Intentioned Extremist and For the Evulz
 * The episode mentions something about "parental liability laws" or somesuch. It's possible the director is just a quack trying to scam nervous parents out of their money.
 * The effed-up thing is that it did work -- after a fashion. "Sleep deprivation, endless harangues; it's classic brainwashing." It's also basic military training. Meaning that the kids who came back were obedient and unobtrusive for the foreseeable future. A decade or so down the line they'll probably beat their own kids into comas, but so what? They're out of their own parents' hair forever.
 * Erm, there's a bit more to military training than sleep deprivation and emotional abuse. The whole point of breaking down new recruits is building them back up again afterward to be better than they ever were before. But we never saw any indication that the program included anything like that. Not to mention that you can always voluntarily wash out of military training (at least in the US).
 * And, y'know, that level of military training is usually voluntarily undertaken by adults.

Terry's tactics
I get in the first episode that he's new to the hero scene, so his first fight isn't elegant.

But then in the second episode, he goes to holding his own against one of the most badass characters in the series. Still fresh, but quite competent given the situation.

He continues to show an increasing degree of competency in dealing with villains, even handling Mr. Freeze and Blight at the same time. Once again, characters who are not to be trifled with. Of course, he doesn't deal out any real damage, but he does do amazing control.

Doesn't he have any other tactics?
 * Hey, what works, works. If I had to deal with superpowered villains every night of my life, I'd spring for an easy OHKO.
 * It's not really that Terry is intentionally overloading his opponents, so much as it is that Terry is pretty consistently depicted as a Combat Pragmatist. He uses whatever's at hand. That this often leads to villain overload is mostly coincidental, and often a result of fighting villains in places where they have their stuff lying around (such as the nerve agent, Venom skin patches, and Cuvier's mutagen syringes).

The Cadmus Paradox
I love the idea that Terry is technically Bruce's son. But what was Cadmus trying to accomplish in creating a person who would only become a hero if the hero he was modeled after had to ultimately fail? Bruce Wayne's parents die because at the time, Gotham was a pretty nasty city and crooks ran amuck.

For Terry to go under the same circumstances and for it to be believable, Batman would have to fail as a hero. Crime would have to continue to run rampant in the same matter. If you need the hero to fail in the first place to create a v2.0 hero, why is your hopes any higher for this secondary hero?


 * Waller explicitly sated that Batman was getting old.Any man even Batman, is still just a man. She knew that The bat was the only thing keeping Gotham from going (back) to Hell. And she was right. Terry was meant as a "Back-Up" to ensure that Batman would live forever on.
 * Consider that in between batmans shit got incredibly worse, at first rumours of the Batman kept criminals off the streets but then they returned in droves like the Jokers and T's these were just gangs and they were murderous! Bruce was the Dark Knight because he brought Justice to the dark of Gothams streets, Terry was the Tommorow Knight because he brought the light back to Gotham, the city was a dystopia and he saved it, it's like the opening text crawl says "Apathy, Greed, Corruption, Hope."

Secondly was for the Justice League, a 'Batman' will always be needed in the JLA to supply it with integrity and keep it grounded on earth so they don't get big headed, there are things only "Batman could do"

Finally you can never defeat crime forever, Waller knew that, but she also knew that without a Batman no one would do anything for Gotham City, think about it before Terry took up the cape who was dealing with the crime? just the police there were no capes.
 * And crime was somewhat bad people like Powers were going around uncontested, the Jokerz were becoming a big issue, and all the of the weird future crime.
 * Cadmus wasn't trying to create another Batman. Waller was trying to create a new Batman. Cadmus was trying to create weapons powerful enough to defeat the Justice League should they ever turn against the US like the Justice Lords did on their Earth. As poorly as they are protrayed in the show I don't think it's a bad idea to have a back up plan for either the Justice League turning against you or worse something sufficiently powerful to defeat the Justice League arriving and you being stuck with absolutely nothing you can do.

The Fact That Bane Is Still Alive At All
Whether the show is forty or fifty years in the future (I prefer the former, 'cause "Epilogue" pushes it another ten years), Bane should be dead. Not near comatose attached to life support machines, dead. Venom appears to (at least in part) increase hormone levels and blood circulation to increase strength. This would wear out his internal organs much faster than a normal man. Outside of cryogenics, there's no reason to think that his possible life span should be equal to Bruce Wayne, who engaged in intense physical activity without chemical or mechanical augmentation for the majority of his life.
 * Ahh but the reason Bruce is so crippled at his advanced age is because he pushed his body beyond its limits and his body degraded quicker, also keep in mind that with life support systems literally doing everything, supposedly being very rich, and advanced medicine (Static says that despite being a 50+ year old man he looks and feels 30ish)
 * Bruce continually engaged in intense physical training for his entire adult life. One might even wonder if he pushed himself too far, and that weakened his heart to cause his current condition. Bane relied on Venom to give him his strength. Too much of it mutated his body with extra muscles such that his cardiovascular system became dependent on the Venom to keep things working. As for Static's postmodern medicine, he started getting the life-extending treatments of the future at an age at least thirty years younger than Bruce. Starting younger means his body adapted to it.
 * There's no telling what kind of medical breakthroughs were made in the intervening years between Batman:TAS and Batman Beyond. It's possible some sort of treatment was discovered that would allow Bane to just barely hang on despite multiple organ failures. And it's not like Bane is doing jumping jacks or anything. He's obviously much worse off than Bruce and could kick the bucket any day now. In which case his lifespan wouldn't be equal to Bruce Wayne's.
 * Exactly. When we see Bane, he's a decrepit, near-comatose vegetable who's barely even aware of his surroundings and basically confined to a wheelchair and has tons of machines hooked up to him just to keep him alive. It's actually rather disturbing. It's clear that the Venom has wreaked horrific damage on his body, and that he likely doesn't have much longer to live after that episode. So yeah, Bruce outlives Bane by a long shot.
 * It's possible the Venom is the only thing keeping him alive.
 * It's explicitly stated in the episode that Venom is the only thing keeping him alive. (Fridge Logic: )
 * I'm one hundred percent positive that Bruce Wayne has had the Venom formula for decades. If he wanted he could whip some more up for Bane. Whether he would is another question.
 * The slappers seem to have only entered circulation recently, implying Bane has not been in his current condition for long. He could have delayed the addiction and decay for quite a long time through careful use - after all, it is shown that while he used Venom, he doesn't tend to rely on it too much, unlike certain schoolboys.

Ink?
In "Lost Soul" Bobby is seen at his desk doodling on a piece of paper with a fountain pen. On the desk next to him in an inkwell. Paper itself is a rarity in the series' futuristic setting, but why would he need an inkwell?
 * The same reason people in the present still like to use quills to write sometimes.
 * Plus, he's the heir to a huge and powerful megacorporation. He can afford the luxury of paper and ink.

The Wayne Fortune
Okay, given that the Wayne fortune is, by this time, all factors considered, probably large enough to make Bill Gates look like a pauper, how much does Terry stand to inherit when Bruce joins the choir invisible? I mean, sure, various charities will probably take their due (Bruce having been a philanthropist for most of his life) and his living proteges will probably get a decent amount, but Bruce relies on Terry in ways that he never had to back in the day, not to mention the whole DNA-transplant thing with Warren McGinnis that makes Terry his son.
 * They've never put a number on the Wayne Fortune, probably so that it won't be seen as a ridiculous number one way or the other. Terry could probably expect to get Wayne Manor itself, since he's Batman and that's where the Batcave is (and since he technically, and a solid share of Wayne Enterprises. Both of those will probably be shared at least partly by Dick, since he was, for all intents and purposes, Bruce's adopted kid.
 * In the comics Dick has his own small fortune that started out as a trust fund his parents had set up for him before they died. Thanks to Lucius Fox it may not be nearly as big as Bruce Wayne's multi-billion dollar company, but it was enough to buy and save his old circus from financial ruin (which Dick then also made into a success, thus earning him even more money) and allows him to finance his crimefighting career as Nightwing.
 * According to Old Wounds in The New Batman Adventures, Dick has a trust fund his circus friends set up for him, from the insurance money collected when his parents died. Even before he formally quits being Robin, he resolves he's not going to live off Bruce's money anymore.
 * As well as Tim, most likely, since he was similar.
 * Tim will definitely have a huge chunk set aside for him, as Bruce to this day is tormented by guilt over what happened to Tim at the Joker's hands. I'm willing to bet that from the end of Return of the Joker onwards, Bruce is probably already paying the bills for whatever psychiatric care that Tim requires.
 * I'd imagine Barbara will probably get a chunk of Bruce's fortune too.
 * It's BATMAN. He's taking it all with him.
 * Word of God is that the Wayne Fortune isn't a fortune. DVD commentary reveals that Bruce has essentially lost it all with the loss of control of Wayne Enterprises and the ensuing years. His stock options still give him influence over the company and a reasonable income, but stock wealth is all on paper. To turn that into actual cash he would need to sell his stock and, though that would probably get him quite a little nest egg, he would likewise lose what little influence of WE he has, and he would never do that. The writers actually said that they regretted not making this more explicit in the series, but they accepted it amongst themselves.
 * But he probably still has quite a substantial personal fortune given the fact that he can afford to pay the property taxes for Wayne Manor (which are probably quite substantial, considering the fact that it's a huge estate). Bruce also has the use of limousines for personal non-company-related affairs too apparently.
 * Although during the series proper Bruce's fortune and control of the company was diminished, at the beginning of Return of the Joker, which seems to take place maybe a few months to a year after the end of the series proper, Bruce has apparently regained control of Wayne Enterprises. Remember the line where Bruce tells Terry "I've worked long and hard to regain my family's company," and that he's quite happy that it's back under Wayne family control instead of under the control of the CorruptCorporateExecutives that Derek Powers had brought in. Chances are, Bruce has secretly edited his will to give control of the company to Terry one day.

What was the rest of Amanda Waller's plan?
Bat-genes or not, Terry wasn't going to just turn into Batman when his parents were killed. The McGinnis's seem to be reasonably well-off and middle class, but Terry couldn't possibly have had all the resources Bruce needed to travel the world and be trained by experts. He would likely just have been sent to live with relatives or put into foster care. If Waller overtly stepped in to help, she wouldn't have wound up with the kind of hero she wanted because Batman's a loner by nature.

She could've tried to manipulate it so that he found a mentor but it wouldn't have been easy. The only member of the Bat family still (possibly) operating would've been Nightwing and he wouldn't have gone along with it if he knew what she'd done to him. She also must have realised that she'd get found out eventually, at which point she'd have one very angry Batman on her hands. Possibly even two, if Terry had run into Bruce before figuring it out. I figure Waller planned to use her Cadmus contacts to nudge/guide Terry toward Batmanism, either by letting him "find" equipment, or by hooking him up with Bruce directly.
 * Nightwing just may possibly have decided to train Terry even if he knew the circumstances (Keep in mind that this isn't the Dick that got to hang out with the Teen Titans every weekend, but he did have brotherly relationship with Tim Drake), if it was what Terry wanted. Bruce pointed out to Barbara that every single one of his allies came willingly, all he did was teach them now not to die. However if Dick was in charge from the time he was very young it's possible that Terry may have ended up as a very different kind of Batman, if he became Batman at all.
 * My take on it is that Waller's plan was more involved, but she didn't tell Terry about any of the steps past parent-murder because that's where the plan stopped, and the rest of it was irrelevant. Also, keep in mind Bruce has a history of taking in recently-orphaned youngsters, even if there's barely any connection to them--Warren worked for Wayne Enterprises, which puts him a bit closer than, say, Tim was.
 * Actually I think you're forgetting what Batman is. He isn't the gadgets, he isn't the suit, nor is he the batcave or the Batmobile. Batman is nothing more than an iron hard sense of justice wrapped in a squishy human shell. You strip him naked and toss him into a ring with Bane he'll still be the fucking Batman. If Terry would ever be the Batman he needed to be he would find a way to fight crime and bring hope to Gotham.
 * Granted, but the gadgets, suit, and support certainly help.
 * He's also the pushups.
 * Step 1: Clone Bruce
 * Step 2: Kill Parents
 * Step 3: ???
 * Step 4: Batman
 * I think we all know what step three is...
 * Perhaps that's the real reason Waller didn't try again with a different assassin after the first one got cold feet. She realized it was a stupid idea that would never work.
 * Or maybe the fact that she'd asked a hardened killer to do something and they couldn't do it because it was too immoral made her reconsider the path she was taking. While she sounds very pragmatic and matter-of-fact discussing the whole thing, that's just Waller... she's human too, and she does feel things, even if (like Batman) she does her very best not to show it.
 * It's possible that Waller was planning to either arrange for social services to ask Bruce if he'd be willing to take in the orphaned Terry, or that Waller was planning to ask Bruce herself, thus guaranteeing that Terry would end up in Bruce's care from a young age. Of course, Waller obviously wouldn't tell Bruce that she herself had caused Terry to be orphaned. But even if Bruce found out, it's very possible that the now-elderly Waller would be perfectly fine with that, knowing that even if she was punished, Terry would already be under Bruce's tutelage and on the way to becoming Batman.
 * Maybe Waller was planning to take Terry in herself, or have a third party in her employ do it, to subtly exercise the sort of psychological influence that would be required to set Terry on a similar emotional path as Bruce.

Talking is a REALLY free action
If anyone goes into a fight with Terry expecting Spider-Man type banter, they must think he's completely insane. His half of the conversations with Wayne seem to go completely unnoticed by villains, what gives?
 * He may not be talking as loud as he seems. He could be whispering through a throat microphone and they just show him talking at a normal volume for the benefit of the audience.
 * And it's not entirely unnoticed. At least two or three villains (Inque comes to mind) have remarked that he seemed to be talking to someone else during a fight.
 * Which would make sense. When emotions get high and your adrenaline starts pumping you raise your voice.

Why does make Starro invulnerable?
This one hit me when I saw Batman hitting them with a missile during the second part of "The Call." Seriously, he hits  where Starro is, and Starro is completely unharmed. This is believable for. A space starfish? not so much. Considering that a brief burstt of heat vision is enough to put one down for the count... Does  just exude some aura of invulnerability or something?
 * Yes. In response to the age old question "Why isn't Superman naked after he walks through acid/the sun/nuclear explosions?" some writers have explained Supermans indestructibility as a forcefield he projects a few millimeters thick around his body (and thus also protecting his costume), others gave him some sort of telekineses power over everything he touches (thats why airplanes he lifts don't break) istead of just saying "the censors wouldn't let us print it otherwise". If I remember correctly (not a big Superman fan) both explanations were used in the golden age were Superman got new powers on a weekly basis and were ignored since then.
 * They weren't ignored, the whole telekinesis thing was used extensively by Superboy, who got actual telekinetic powers due to Cadmus futzing about with DNA they didn't properly understand. They also pop up occasionally, both in comics and in novels, it's just that like most parts of the Superman mythos they fall in and out of fashion with various writers.
 * Alternatively, Starro could have shifted around Superman's body to protect himself. The Starro aliens can control people no matter where they're attached. We know this because the boss Starro was attached to Superman's chest but the smaller Starros were face-hugging Aquagirl and the other Leaguers, yet neither had trouble controlling the host. Maybe when Batman hit him in the chest with a missile Starro was hiding on Superman's back or something.

What did Tim Drake do after his recovery?
He grew up, got married, got a really good technical geek job, yes, but he was awfully young when he quit being Robin, and the implication is that once he quit, he and Bruce cut contact. Did he run off and live with Dick or Barbara or Superman until he was eighteen?
 * The thing with that viewpoint is, due to a confusing mix of Comic Book Time and Retcons, he more or less would have been eighteen by the time the flashback in ROTJ would have taken place. Word of God says that it takes place after the end of Justice League Unlimited. Batman was with the League for at least a period of five years (judging by references to the passing of time within the series) and Tim was thirteen years old during The New Batman Adventures. So... by the time Tim left Bruce, he would have been legally an adult. Heck, Tim was even made to look and sound older in appearances after the production of ROTJ (for example, he was supposedly the same age as Static/Virgil Hawkins during their crossover episodes together). Barbara does mention that he went out on his own as soon as left... perhaps he tried solo crime-fighting for a little while, or maybe he even went straight ahead with working on a career. Who knows?

Why didn't she just tell them?

 * In the Eyewitness episode, Terry accidentally ruins a police sting operation because he didn't know it was a set-up. Barbara knew there was a risk that Batman would see a "weapons deal" and intervene. So why didn't she contact Bruce and tell him not to let Terry get involved in that specific weapons deal at that time/ignore that specific vehicle and anything going on near it, or even to only intervene in the unlikely situation of one of the perps getting away. The failure of that sting operation is as much her fault, for keeping it to herself, as it was Terry's.
 * She already made it clear from the getgo she isn't her father. She still didn't completely trust Terry. Error in judgement obviously on her part. But she still doesn't trust the kid, it's that simple.
 * It's more than that. It's pretty clear that throughout the series, especially in the early parts, any anger or dislike Barbara shows towards Terry is really deflected emotions she feels towards Bruce. She's mad at Bruce, not Terry, but since Bruce is Batman and Terry's wearing Batman's suit, she takes out her anger on Terry. Notice that while as the series goes on, Barbara relaxes a little towards Terry and starts showing a willingness to work with him, she doesn't act that way towards Bruce.

Terry's cracked ribs

 * In Curse Of The Kobra, Terry falls quite a fair distance, probably several hundred yards, and gets his wings torn off in the process. He breaks part of his fall with the boosters, but he still hits the ground hard enough to crack four ribs. Understandable. However, he's been shown falling before from long distances (the bit right before the final fight scene in Plague comes to mind), and doesn't seem that hurt (in Plague, even, he says he's okay). I know the show is inconsistent about the power of the suit, but this bit did stand out to me, since Terry didn't quite receive the blunt force of those several hundred yards.
 * The suit's weakness seems to be electricity. Maybe the guy with the electric nunchucks who jumped him shorted it out? Or the sensor that activates the impact protection was damaged when the wings were ripped off. Although seeing as how the Hunter once dropped one of Terry's classmates off a building and onto a car and the kid wasn't dead, Batman getting cracked ribs is even more problematic.

Why splice only animal DNA?
As for Bruce, I'd say he was probably joking when he said that to Superman. Bruce is even initially against using the Lazarus Pit to be young again, remember, and he's seen what happens to people who go after power like that, and he might not trust himself to not go crazy with it.
 * This question rose up in my head when Bruce said to Superman that he "could use some of that Kryptonian DNA" in regards to aging. So considering how advanced gene splicing seems to have become, why doesn't Bruce just get spliced with some super genes? What's more, this is still the DCU where meta humans are pretty abundant. Heroes may have some moral qualms with gene splicing, but the villains probably don't, so why don't we see them making private armies of meta powered henchmen?
 * Well, it has been tried a couple times, as I recall--but usually whoever's behind it takes a Batman to the face before they can really get the ball rolling. Also, there's the Ultimen, remember.
 * It may be explicitly illegal. If the Gotham Attorney General was up in arms about kids giving themselves cat's eyes or leopard spots, imagine the uproar if people could splice themselves up with superpowers.
 * Doubtful for two reasons. The first is that the kids are doing it on such a scale that it's clear splicing is supposed to be like getting a tattoo. Perhaps a little dumb since it's something permanent and most of the people getting them are too young to be making permanent decisions but not inherently bad or illegal. Second Kryptonians are physically indistinguishable from humans and Tamarians just have green eyes. There doesn't appear to be a side effect of being the Flash or an Amazonian. So even if splicing was illegal it would be easier to hide a splice of Kryptonian than cat's eyes. My guess is the writers simply weren't thinking about that possibility or perhaps as similar as we look to Kryptonians perhaps the fact that we do share a common ancestor with the earth born slug but presumably don't share a common ancestor with Kryptonians. Look they failed biology. They aren't the first writers to have that problem!
 * Actually being physically indistinguishable from normals makes it even more likely that splicing up with superpowers is completely illegal. A street thug spliced up with bull genes is easy to spot. The horns and the cow nose are a dead giveaway. So it's no surprise when he turns out to be super-strong. But how do you spot someone spliced up with Kryptonian DNA? You can't. Not until they've already punched your head off at a quarter the speed of light.
 * Bruce is definitely just joking. He's clearly never been interested in giving himself any more superpowers than he can do with his gadgets. Remember, villains were splicing genes and creating half-human hybrids back in the early days of his own adventures, he's had decades to trick himself out genetically if he intended to.

What happened to the heroes?
Aside from Batman we have six confirmed heroes in the entire world. Considering that JLU was all about a veritable army of super heroes, one must wonder; where the hell did they all go? Even the ending of Kingdom Come had more heroes, and that's after they were fucking nuked. Now that I think about it, where did all the villains go too?
 * Obviously the real reason is because JLU was barely a twinkle in the creators' eyes back then. That said, just because we don't see more than six or so heroes doesn't mean there aren't more running around out there. The better question would be what happened to the Justice League in between JLU and BB. They went from dozens (hundreds?) of members down to a small handful. How did that happen?
 * Presumably it was decided at some point that having a completely united and organized group of heroes posed as many problems as it solved, especially regarding god complexes and corruptibility. That was, after all, a major theme of Justice League, Who Watches the Watchmen and all that, particularly the season with Cadmus and the comparisons to the Justice Lords dimension. Presumably they decided at some point that they'd be safer if most of the heroes worked independently and simply teamed up on occasion, so they could more effectively act as checks on any potential corruption among their ranks..
 * A lot of heroes may have retired for various reasons, as well, without many new ones rising up to replace them. Remember that a lot of the members of JLU were Bruce's contemporaries as far as their age, which means all the unpowered ones are likely dealing with being elderly about as well as he is, and not all of the powered ones would have powers that necessarily kept them in fighting shape into their seventies or eighties. (Vixen, for example... animals get arthritis and brittle bones too, after all.)