Batman: Mask of the Phantasm/Headscratchers


 * Where's Harley Quinn?
 * Probably she was too lighthearted a character for this movie. In-story, it's possible she was in Arkham at this point and the Joker didn't bother to bust her out.
 * Or she and Joker were having one of their fights and she was crashing with Ivy.
 * The Joker evidently prefers Hazel the robowife.
 * Harley Quinn was introduced in 1992. While BMotP was released in '93, it was most likely written and in production several years before that. Thusly, it's pretty likely that Harley wasn't even thought up, yet.
 * Possible this is while she's still Harleen Quinzel and the Joker hasn't met her yet.
 * Nah, they met years before the series starts. There's a first season episode that has Harley in it, too. She doesn't wear the costume, but it's "Joker's Favor," she dresses up as a cop to bring in the cake to the dinner in Gordon's honor.
 * The movie doesn't necissarially take place at the same time as the series...
 * Oh, good point there. Taking into account the various "pre-Batman" a-ha moments Bruce goes through in the flashbacks (the ninja-like disguise, the prototype Batmobile at the World's Fair, encountering Jack Napier at the Beaumont's home), it looks like he's within the first couple of months of his career...Granted, the presence of the Batwing may or may not scupper this, but this is Batman we're talking about. Remember, Andrea hasn't aged that much either...only a couple of years is my personal guess. Her hair is still red, yes, but the scar tissue of her father's death is still fresh. Oh, and, the people of Gotham, Cmsr. Gordon notwithstanding, still don't know what to do with the Batman.
 * I've always liked to imagine that it takes place (obviously out of canon, and with several differences as far as events go) a few months after the events of Batman Year One, since there is a scene reminiscent of Batman's run from the police from that book, so Batman's been around for a while, but not long enough to have learned everything yet. He's still working without Robin for one.
 * My guess is Robin/Dick Grayson is away at college, like he was for most of the first three seasons.
 * At the very least, it takes place after the episode On Leather Wings, because Harvey Dent is absent for Reed's "Bat bashing" campaign and thus probably already Two-Face.
 * Or it can be much earlier, and Dent might not be the District Attorney just yet.


 * What happened with Andrea and the Joker? He obviously didn't die.
 * There's a sequel comic that reveals that she let him live because she realized he wasn't really the same person who killed her father, or something along those lines
 * If she had killed him off for real we wouldn't haven't gotten the excellent Return of the Joker seven years later.


 * Andrea was just a regular but in shape human. The Phantasm suit consisted of cloak, a gas-mask/voice changer, a smoke dispenser, and a blade in each hand. How the hell did she do stuff like dodging multiple bullets in a smokescreen even though your silhouette stands in place, running fast enough to stay ahead of a plane, fitting through a three inch opening in a window, and literally teleporting!? Mask Power?
 * She's as good as Batman.
 * Since this universe has a device that can freeze time, I don't think a personal teleporter unit is so far fetched.
 * It's long been fan theory that she was a metahuman with low level defensive powers.
 * Batman was analyzing and describing a sample of the fog to Alfred at one point, saying it was a complex synthetic polymer he hadn't seen before. The scene quickly shifted focus, but I figured that was the Hand Wave for her seeming teleportation and bullet dodging tricks: somehow the fog itself might be responsible, perhaps by making her body intangible for a few seconds.
 * In this review of a follow up of the movie Mask of the Phantasm, we see that Andrea really is only a human being who now works as a hired assassin, just as good as Batman sneaking up and disappearing. (the first pages show us how she and the Joker cheated death in the movie (Batman & Robin Adventures - Annual #1: Shadow of the Phantasm).
 * When
 * In Mask of the Phantasm, Bruce has a flashback to the night he proposed to Andrea. When they get to her house, we see throw a cigarette at Bruce's car, presumably because he was done with it. Then when Andrea has a flashback to the same moment from her point of view,  is lighting up just moments before when he would have been throwing the cigarette. This troper can only imagine it is because the people who are remembering this night are only human, and it was ten years ago, so they are bound to misremember some things.
 * Maybe he was trying to quit smoking, so he told himself, "I'll light up, but two or three puffs is it."
 * This is we're talking about here. He probably just did it to be a dick.
 * Maybe he was trying to quit smoking, so he told himself, "I'll light up, but two or three puffs is it."
 * This is we're talking about here. He probably just did it to be a dick.