Batman: Arkham City/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Something that has always bugged me about Strange; the man's an idiot. Throughout Protocol 10, he keeps saying to Batman that he's won, even though Batman's not dead (as Strange had planned) and is now coming to stop him. Even the Joker is sane enough to realize that when Batman's foiled your plan, escaped your death trap, beaten up your guards and is standing RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE, your options are either crying or pulling out your secret weapon. For Joker (in Asylum) it was exposing himself to TITAN. Strange...doesn't have one. Now I know most of this can be shrugged off with "he's insane", but there's one specific thing that he says that doesnt make sense, even for him. When Batman is on the elevator up to Strange's tower to commence Operation F-Up-Evil-Plan, Strange tells Batman that eventually, Batman will kneel before him, and beg for mercy. What? Strange is a psychologist genius. He used his skill to figure out Batman's identity. Therefore, he should KNOW with a clarity that few villains understand that Batman's about as likely to beg him for mercy as he is to give up the evil plan and open a candy store.
    • You ever heard of the trope Kneel Before Zod?
    • I don't think you get it. Strange is certainly a Card-Carrying Villain but given Strange's prowess as a psychologist, saying something like this is a break in character so big it borders on being a plot hole.
      • You remember the Scarecrow sections in Asylum? They weren't just cool set pieces—they illustrated just how tenuous Batman's grip on sanity is. He dresses up in a rubber bat suit to fight crime. Not exactly Mr. Mental Health. The most interesting Batman stories have always portrayed him as a man on the edge, constantly honing his iron will to keep from going as crazy as his nemeses. True to form, it seems like everyone in this game is conspiring against Batman to get him to snap, and forcing him to kill is treated as the trigger because of his rejection of murder as a solution. It's the ultimate compromise of his morality, and proves he's no better than the people he tries to stop. Ra's and Talia want him to kill so he'll join them in their crusade. Strange wants Batman to kill so Batman will recognize his superior intellect and acknowledge his way is the right way. The Joker wants him to kill to break his psyche so he'll go nuts and join the Joker in insanity. Even the very idea of Gotham turned into a city-sized prison and its destiny as the site of Protocol Ten is a corruption and mockery of everything Batman stands for. But in the end, despite all the stressors of immortal fascists, being poisoned with TITAN and slowly dying, seeing the love of his life held at gunpoint (twice!), Batman manages to reject everyone's designs and machinations for him, and never gives in or sacrifices his commitment to the principles of law and order, even when the legal forces of order (i.e. Hugo Strange, as an appointee of Mayor Sharp) do. That's what makes Batman right. Not that he can physically beat up Hugo Strange.
    • Even psychologists are vulnerable to Villainous Breakdown. By this point, Strange was so used to thinking he was in control that he was arguably unable to accept the idea that Batman could singlehandedly stop him. Not to mention, he had his ace in the hole, in the form of Ra's al Ghul. The fact that Ra's pulled a You Have Failed Me... wasn't part of his master plan.
      • ^ Exactly this. Even if Batman had captured Strange, Strange's "powerful friends" would've (or were supposed to have) broken him out and put him back in power within a day.
  • So, Batman takes his share of the antidote and debates to himself whether or not he should give it to Joker. Aaand, what about, you know, the citizens of Gotham? He doesn't bother analyzing it or anything, just ponders about the moral implications before Joker makes him drop it. Makes you really question the priorities of the man.
    • How's he supposed to analyze it? He has no lab with him, and while it's clearly pretty good at isolating substances present at the scene of a crime, identifying the exact elements of a newly-discovered cure for a relatively rare disease would probably be beyond even Detective Mode's limits. Plus, the guy's been run-ragged and slowly dying for nearly ten hours straight and still has the question of how to deal with and whether to save his dying arch-nemesis to address right there right then; we can surely allow him a moment to get his bearings and briefly ponder the implications.
    • Considering he can send almost anything to his lab, AND that he's sent poisons and such in the past, its not far fetched to think he could at least take a sample.
    • He does still have the sample that's spilled on the floor, though; it might not be enough to cure the Joker but it's surely enough to extrapolate more from. He's also got another sample circulating in his system at that very moment.
    • He also has Mr. Freeze on his side now. All Batman has to do is get Freeze the proper ingredients and he can whip up a new batch on the spot.
    • Don't they mention in the game that Lucius Fox had managed to create enough to give to the hospitals? I'm sure of it.
      • Not necessarily. Remember that Freeze already identified the compound required to cure Batman, but he couldn't synthesise it himself despite all his technology. Batman recognises the chemical structure of the hormone as the Lazarus compound and then sets out to get a sample of it. If all the samples are gone, that also presumably removes Freeze's ability to make the cure.
      • Freeze needed Ra's Al Ghul's blood to make the cure (since Ra's had been exposed to Lazarus for centuries). At the end it should be easy to get plenty of that blood.
        • Or not, seeing as his body disappears and the sword is stabbed into the ground. He's likely on a flight to the farthest Lazarus Pit possible.
      • Wasn't the mention of Lucius Fox having produced a cure a hypnotic suggestion planted by the Mad Hatter? Or am I missing something?
        • It's established in the game that Mr. Freeze or Batman's computers can easily create the antidote from blood that's already been exposed to it, which Batman's has been at the end of the game. During Catwoman's last side mission following the credits, Batman is probably back at his lab having the antidote created from his blood, then returns to Arkham City just after Catwoman's dealt with Two-Face to take care of any unfinished business (ie. optional quests).
  • How the hell does Dr. Strange get away with publicly assaulting and incarcerating Bruce Wayne in the most brutal and deadly prison ever invented with no trial and no charges? I know Gotham is a rough place, but that seem to be really stretching it. Has he been crowned king of humanity all of a sudden?
    • He doesn't. Listen in on the GCPD feed after Bruce gets taken in, Gordon is flipping out because he thinks Bruce Wayne's lawyers are gonna be knocking down his door to figure out what's going on. GCPD however isn't allowed inside of Arkham City so they're trying to do what they can to get him out.
    • Strange doesn't have to get away with incarcerating Bruce Wayne for long. He only has to keep the police at bay for ten hours before his masterstroke is complete. If the plan had succeeded, Wayne and every other political prisoner that could implicate Strange on his wrong-doings would be dead and he'd be free to make up whatever line of BS he felt would pacify his political opponents. He'd take some massive political heat, but without concrete evidence, there'd be little anyone could do that his contacts couldn't overwrite.
  • How the hell has Dr. Strange's prison not got every human rights group in the universe on his ass 24/7? Groups like that got hyper pissed off at the US for water-boarding and Guantanamo Bay, so tell me, how is what he was doing not a hundred billion times worse? Why isn't the government of the United States moving against this obvious lunatic? Why is he allowed to build a hell on earth and randomly throw innocents into it with no trial without consequences?
    • It might seem like a cop-out answer, but... well, it's Gotham. Crime has been out of control there for years, so it might seem like a case of extreme measures for extreme situations. But there clearly are voices speaking out against Arkham City regardless; Bruce Wayne set up a campaign to get it shut down, Vicki Vale's constantly on the radio talking about how things are really bad down there, and both make the very obvious point that walling off an entire region of a city and dumping prisoners in it is pretty fucking nuts. But by any objective standards a good majority of the people inside Arkham City legitimately do belong inside a prison, so even if they think Arkham City is a mad idea no one's going to be losing any sleep about the Joker or the Penguin or any of their thugs being locked up. The ones who don't deserve to be there have probably been swept up quietly or thrown in on trumped-up charges, with Strange's powerful connections and the already pretty corrupt nature of Gotham helping to grease the wheels a bit. It only seems to have been Bruce Wayne who's been publicly rounded up and thrown in, and by that point Strange is only a few hours away from activating his masterplan, so he probably doesn't give two shits about a bunch of do-gooders getting irate at the clear violation of civil liberties when he's going to be machine-gunning the lot of them soon anyway. It's also probable that the political prisoners are most likely going to include people who publicly protest this kind of thing anyway; they can protest all they want in Arkham, but no one's going to hear them.
    • In fact, for any Batman story where someone legally does something wildly illegal, it's because It's Gotham City. It's basically the Batman counterpart to A Wizard Did It.
    • There's also the fact that Ra's al Gul is supporting Strange's little project as a test for both the bad doctor and Batman. If Ra's wants something badly enough, his League can make his happen.
  • A couple of questions about the cure - why didn't Clayface give it to Joker after Harley got hold of it, and after Joker drops it, why is the whole matter of all of the civilians who need it forgotten about? Granted, more can always be made with Ra's conveniently impaled on a gate.
    • Talia intercepted Harley before she got back to Joker with it.
      • Also, The cure still exists: inside Batman's blood. So all he has to do is return to the Batcave, have some of his blood taken out, examine the cure and then mass-produce it for the civilians.
    • What I don't get is why the Joker didn't take some of the cure after Clayface captured Talia and brought her to the theatre. He would've had plenty of time to grab it from her and take some before Batman got there, so why not? Then, after Batman beats Clayface, the Joker pounces on him, and stabs him in the arm that's holding the vial, causing him to drop it. The Joker then acts surprised, and tries to drink it off the floor before convulsing and dying. I mean, there's more than a good chance that this is just another one of the Joker's bait-and-switches that will possibly be covered in a third game (here's hoping), but if not, what, did the sickness just finally eat through his brain?
    • Clayface didn't know where the cure was anymore. Harley was supposed to deliver the vial, but Talia got to her first without anybody knowing. Probably before she went along with "Joker". As far as either Joker or Clayface knew, Batman himself had taken it from Harley after she disappeared. Talia only revealed it after Batman arrived and she thought that Joker was dead. Clayface had the cure after that, but he still had to deal with a very tired, very angry Batman. That explains why the cure got juggled around so much.
  • Anyone think it was odd that, er, you could see Mr. Freeze's breath? Like maybe despite his suit and everything, it still wasn't cold enough for him?
    • This makes sense to me. HIS breath is colder than the air around him. It would work like the exact opposite of what we see. Instead of how we breathe warm air into cold air, he breathes cold air into warmer air.
  • On what charges was Bruce Wayne arrested by TYGER? It seemed they just took him and threw him into Arkham City without giving any explanation or actual reasons for arrest. Than on the other hand, Strange had little trouble arresting the freakin mayor...
    • If you tune in to Gotham FM, it is revealed that there is no public reason, effectively making it kidnapping.
    • It's pretty clear Wayne was going to be another of those "political prisoners" Strange had tried to shove under a rock where they wouldn't bother him.
    • He was arrested on the charge of TYGER works for Strange and does what he tells them to. In the extra story bits in the menu, it explains that the GCPD's facing cutbacks and doesn't have as much authority as it used to. Plus, look at how the Arkham logo is slapped on billboards in Arkham City; it's practically a brand. Rocksteady is obviously making some subtle social commentary on the privatization of the justice system.
  • How in the world does Bane stay locked up? Couldn't he easily break loose from where Batman left him?
    • Metal gates like that are stronger than they look. Venom only makes Bane super-strong, it doesn't turn him into Superman. Human flesh and bone, even jacked up, has its limits.
    • Batman states that he knows Bane can escape. It'll just take some time.
  • So, Batman is on the floor with the Joker holding a knife to his throat. Talia appears, offering Joker immortality if only he'll spare Batman. So, when the Joker stands up, why doesn't Talia just kick his ass and help Batman up?
    • Probably because Batman lied to her earlier about wanting to join the League of Assassins. This happened just a few hours later, she's probably still a little bitter with him.
      • It was also a clever ploy; by offering immortality to Joker she's forcing Batman to come after her, and maybe even break his one rule in order to stop him for good. She saves his life and places him in a position where his morals are tested again.
  • What's that blimp doing over Arkham City? It never gets mentioned in game, it has no identifying marks on it, and it doesn't seem to have a part in the story.
    • It has a riddler symbol on one side.
    • Blimps are a symbol of sorts in Gotham City. Ever since the Animated Series. It's just a shout out to that.
  • Why doesn't Batman react when he hears Azrael's name? I know it's not the same guy who filled in for him after Knightfall, but shouldn't he recognize the name?
    • Similiar to Hugo Strange, Batman has not met Azrael yet.
    • But Knightfall has already taken place in the Arkhamverse, so who filled in for Batman if not Azrael?
      • Knightfall might have taken place, but it clearly didn't take place in exactly the same way as it did in the mainstream continuity, so probably Robin or Nightwing filled in.
  • It took the TITAN a whole year to kill Joker, but only a few hours to nearly kill Batman, who was able to resist it in Arkham Asylum.
    • Joker didn't inject Batman with Titan, he injected him with his own poisoned blood. Toxins have been slowly building up in the Joker's blood over the past year, until now having it in your system is downright fatal. It's similar to the plot of Iron Man 2; using a palladium powered pacemaker isn't killing Tony by itself, but it's slowly rendering his blood toxic and that's killing him.
    • An alternate explanation. Joker uses himself as the first test subject to almost all the chemicals he makes and has a near superhuman immune system. The fact that his Titan blood is killing him at all, much less making him sick, is amazing in my eyes. It only stands to reason it'd affect others far more quickly.
    • In several spots in comics and animated episodes, it is explained that Joker is immune to a large variety of poisons. He walks through clouds of his laughing gas unaffected, wearing a gas mask only in the most toxic varieties. Of course he would be significantly more resistant than Bruce, much less normal people.
    • Also, since TITAN is a mutagen, it could be an autoimmune disease similar to AIDS. TITAN-affected cells create antibodies that release toxins, so TITAN exposure starts a slow buildup of the antibodies. This would progress over time, so the blood with the high concentration of TITA Ned cells acts toxicly. That would also explain the 24-hours-of-degrading-health rather than instant death.
    • Joker, apparently, has been sitting in a medical chair on oxygen for much of the time between the games. Batman, on top of the reasons listed earlier, has been running around, exercising, fighting, getting injured, healing, etc, basically keeping his metabolism high.
  • So, if both Joker and Batman were injected with TITAN by the end of the last game, and whatever antidote Joker had to shrink him down didn't cure him completely, why aren't the henchmen he also injected (or even Batman himself) on their deathbeds?
    • It could be a reaction with the chemicals Jack Napier fell into all those years ago, not with regular human blood...
    • Batman took the antidote after a few seconds and never physically mutated, the TITAN may not have had time to affect him. As for the other henchmen, who says they're not dead or dying? A few expendable thugs could die off without anyone caring.
      • Some of the thugs mention in a conversation that Joker took a much larger dose of TITAN than any of his men did at the Asylum. That may have contributed to why Joker was poisoned by Titan and nobody else was seen to be.
      • Wait, why are we assuming that any of the other Titan subjects are still alive at all?
  • So, Catwoman's second mission takes place at roughly the same time that Batman first enters the Steel Mill. At a conservative estimate, that's about six hours before Protocol 10 is enacted, but her third mission picks up right where the second left off, and Protocol 10 is enacted way less than an hour after her mission begins. Riddle me this: How on Earth is that possible?
    • She and Poison Ivy were talking for a LONG time.
    • It's never specified how long it takes you, the player, to cross Arkham City as Catwoman. Conceivably, you could've been faffing about for six hours hunting Riddler trophies or just beating Mooks up, then get to Ivy's place right before Protocol 10.
    • They needed to plan the heist and Ivy needed to grow the tentacle things to burrow into the vault.
  • I don't really understand how Strange thought he would come out of protocol 10 a hero. The city council was very disappointed in him for letting it get this far (never mind that he was actually making it happen) he kills hundreds of people, and it should be obvious to anyone who looks at the wall that it wouldn't really matter how much manpower or firepower they had, it's just impossible for a mass breakout to occur, especially considering how hard it has been for even one person to break out. also, How do Strange and Ra's expect to conquere the world using this? You'd think that after he did it in more than two cities, people would start to smell a rat.
    • Not just in two random cities, either. Metropolis and Keystone. Not only are they a shining example of human achievement and a blue-collar traditional city respectively (and therefore nowhere close to having the mindset of Gotham), they are the homes of Superman and The Flash. In other words, they want to have an Arkham City in the towns of two of the world's most powerful and idealistic superheroes, and they don't see this going badly for them.
      • My bigger problem is looking at the difference in raw power between the villians in Gotham vs Metropolice and Keystone. It's far fetched but understandable that building a wall and surrounding it with armed guards would keep Batman's rogue gallery in check. Though personally I think Ivy's still in Gotham City because she doesn't have anywhere else pressing to be. Between her mind control spores and plant powers it's likely she could walk out the front door if she wanted to and tunnel out making an exit whereever she wanted or in a worse case scenario storm the gates if she really cared. Most Superman villians however are pretty tough and lots don't have alergic reactions to green rocks. Also the villians of Metropolis and Keystone in general seem to get along better than Gotham's bunch (especially the Arkhamverse where aside from the ladies seem to be semi-cordial with each other or at least were in the not too distant past.) and would be more likely to simply charge the gates together than to fight amongst themselves. It just seems like a bad bad plan.
      • More than likely the only superheroes in the Arkham games are Batman and his allies.
      • But there are other superheroes in the Arkhamverse. Some of the newspapers in the game and in Arkham Asylum, for example, reference the "Injustice Gang", which would probably not exist without the Justice League. Plus, If this were the case, why mention Metropolis and Keystone? Why not say they were opening Arkham City-style prisons in, say, New York City and Washington, DC?
    • Yes, but Strange and Ra's specifically mentioned their intentions to rule the world. You don't take over the planet by becoming a hero to the populace. Become a local hero conveys no authority. and even if it did,they only say that they're going to do it in 3 places. No matter how important said places are, 3 places does not equal world domination. plus, they wouldn't really be able to do something like Arkham city more than a few times. After that if anyone suggested doing it in another population center, they'de be refused because everyone would know about how badly that idea had worked the first 3 times. Also Ra's mentioned "wiping the world Clean" which I assume is referring to his usual goal of killing millions of people in order to save those who are left from Eco-disaster. How does setting yourself up as a hero of the people aid you in a quest that will end in the murder of thousands of said innocents?
    • This is a bit of a cop-out answer, but it works within what the game tells us: they're both INSANE. Usage of the Lazarus Pits has not been kind on Ra's and Strange suffers from schizophrenic periods. Of course their plan only makes sense to them!
    • Perhaps Ra's is attempting to destroy faith in the government, which would diminish their capacity to respond to attacks by the league of assassins? A few high profile failures and the citizenry may not support whatever actions would be needed to defend from them.
    • It's important to note that we only know what Strange announces Phase 2 is. It's possible that there are other Phases after it that eventually lead to something global, or (more likely) Ra's isn't giving Strange the whole story.
    • It isn't quite clear what Ra's thought or whether the writers thought this was viable, but it seems fairly obvious that Strange has convinced himself that the public would openly accept it. In reality he would probably be getting a visit from the F.B.I.
    • Okay, guys, I think I got it. Ra's has, after consistently failing, decided that his best bet is to initiate a backlash against superheroes—they can't function without public support. The natural place to start is Gotham, since Batman doesn't have any powers (other than being Batman) and the populace is incredibly cynical/stupid. So, Strange executes Protocol 10 and in the aftermath the "investigation" into why things went wrong shows that Batman was the culprit, either running or backing criminal gangs. The reference to other Arkham Cities in Metropolis and Keystone City is simply an attempt to antagonize Batman—it makes no sense to announce them over a PA, after all. Had the gambit been successful, then other schemes tailored to undermine other heroes would have been undertaken, with the public primed for them by Batman's seeming responsibility for Arkham City. And if it fails, eh, Ra's is a patient man and at least he took out a few hundred lowlifes. Strange may not have been aware of the full plan.
    • If Protocol 10 worked as planned, Strange would have wiped out most of Gotham's criminals and nearly all of Batman's Rogues Gallery - after Batman spent over a decade bringing them to Arkham Asylum over and over again. Remember that common people don't know about political prisoners. The crime rate in the rest of Gotham has fallen. Strange might get a lot of heat (the League would save him from the worst) but to common people, he would be the man Cutting the Knot. And that would have worldwide consequences. Teaching the populace that Murder Is the Best Solution when it comes to criminals - that's basically a Kingdom Come scenario. Strange would not have a literal position of power over the world, but things would be done his way.
    • A central tenet of fascism is that humanity is weak, and needs a strong leader figure to guide them, guard them, and weed out 'undesirable' elements for the good of society. Whether the people like what the guardian class are doing is irrelevant, because, under fascist thought, the people will naturally gravitate towards weakness and degeneracy if left unchecked. It's basically The Spartan Way for society as a whole (Mussolini and Hitler were quite open about this). Hugo Strange is much the same—he's trying to whip humanity into shape, and he's quite confident that, being sheep, once they see how much better life is under his guiding hand, they'll appreciate what he's done for them. And if you think that's far-fetched, remember: Mussolini held power for twenty years.
  • The identity thief is baffling. He was killing people with facial features similar to Bruce Wayne's in order to impersonate him/take his place. Riddle me this: Then why do the fingerprints at the crime scene match Bruce Wayne's, to such an extent that the bat-computer is fooled? Are we to believe that he found enough finger 'donors' to make that possible, somehow used them to change his fingerprints, and then retained enough dexterity to operate on his own face? For that matter, how did he operate on his own body? And how did he plan to get out of Arkham City looking like Bruce Wayne, who was a target of both TYGER and dozens-hundreds of random thugs?
    • More than that, why did all the witnesses say it was Bruce Wayne given that he obviously couldn't have completed the surgery before carrying out the murders?
      • To be fair, the first one says he was torn to bloody hell, and he had found over half of his "donors" before entering Arkham City. Please, though, don't ask me how he knew that the exact people he needed were in there.
    • And to complete the WTF hat-trick, his entire plan was making himself look exactly like Bruce Wayne, and Batman expresses astonishment that this is, apparently, what he has done. So, is nobody going ot mention the massive frigging surgical scars all over his new face that he is making no attempt to hide? What, was he just going to pretend he cut himself shaving?
      • I guess he could pass it off as an injury he received while incarcerated in Arkham City.
    • As to the fingerprints thing. This is Hush we're talking about. He may be off his rocker, but he's actually quite patient, taking months or years putting the pieces of a plan together before enacting it. He likely already had the fingerprints thing done long before the ID thief killings—which would by necessity be the final part of the plan. He's not exactly poor, and likely has connections with those with the means—Lex Luthor in particular doesn't exactly like Bruce Wayne. He'd help in a frame up plan in a second so long as he was sure it couldn't be traced back to him. As for the scars thing. Again, he's patient. He'll let the scars heal up before enacting his plan. Finally, the first witness didn't confuse the killer for Bruce Wayne, he confused the victim. Since Hush was making a Bruce Wayne face, it'd only be natural that his victims would bear a certain resemblance.
    • About Hush's escape, I think that actually wouldn't be very hard. See, early on in the game, you can hear Gordon on the GCPD communications channel, talking about the problems that Wayne going in causes, fearing legal backlash for Strange more-or-less kidnapping him. At the end of the game, you see a bunch of cop cars coming into Arkham City, and Gordon standing outside the gates. I believe that, if they saw Wayne, they'd take him out of Arkham City - if for nothing else, then for damage control. So all Hush has to do is let one of the officers see his face, and they'll get him out. As for the TYGER guards, I don't think they'd have tried to kill him, because they don't do anything that isn't on Strange's orders, and it doesn't seem like he gave the order. I mean, they had the perfect chance to kill Wayne at the start of the game. And also, their helicopters are watching Batman throughout all of the main story, yet only shoot when you break their lights, so that would imply to me that he wanted to keep Wayne/Batman alive. He obviously can't give the order now, so yeah, I don't think they'd be hunting Wayne down. And Hush can probably handle the random mooks. So yeah, he's probably got a better chance of getting out than anyone else in Arkham City.
      • At least until Batman slips out of the suit and places himself with some of the other non-criminals in Arkham City - either the political prisoner camp, the church, or with Vicki Vale. Then someone will point out that Bruce Wayne has been rescued twice and wonder what's going on. Getting out of Arkham is easy. Preventing society from noticing that there's a Bruce Wayne impersonator isn't.
    • As for the identity: It is not unheard of for Hush to use makeup (or prosthetics) to touch up his face. So while he was still collecting parts, he might have helped his current appearance enough to fool people from a distance. As for the scars: With a bit of cosmetic surgery, most of those will fade away. And what remains? Bruce Wayne is a billionaire playboy, it is not a stretch to imagine him getting a bit of work done. If I recall correctly, Hush still has the scars in the comics, and he passed as Bruce to the entire world (except the Bat-family and the Justice League) when Batman was "dead".
  • Why is Batman so worried about the Joker using the Lazarus pit? From what I understand, the pit doesn't make you immortal, just young and healthy again. In order to be immortal, you need to control access to the pit, so that you can use it when you grow old and frail again, then repeat ad nauseum. Batman destroyed clayface, so even if Joker succeeded in using the pit, there would be no way for him to hold the pit against the league of assassins by himself. Hell, he couldn't even beat them with his gang's full support. The league is Badass, and the normal assassins can probably take out typical thugs as easily as Batman. (moreso because they would kill them instead of knocking them out.) Having established that the pit would not have made him immortal, just well, why didn't Batman LET Joker use the pit to save him, and then kick him the fuck out of Wonder City?
    • Because the Joker is an evil genius who, given the opportunity, would spend decades wreaking havoc and at random intervals popping back for a revitalization whether he needed one or not. That the Pit would make him more insane would be a bonus and not at all a deterrent from using it when he didn't absolutely have to.
    • That's not what I meant. without someone really badass like Clayface to back him up, Joker wouldn't be able to even get to the pit to regenerate given that he'd have to fight through the entire league of assassins (a group so badass that they would eat his thug followers for breakfast) to get to the pit in order to use it. and dispite how evil he is, the joker would definitely need help to take on the league in a fight. remember, Joker is a planner, as his physique suggests I'm pretty sure he's useless in a fight. (unless he's drugged out his mind with titan)
    • Exactly. He wouldn't fight. He'd plan. He'd deceive. He'd manipulate. And he'd be damn good at it, because he's the Joker.
    • And remember, the Joker's baseline is "nuts". Imagine that, but with Lazarus-induced madness on top. If you imagine Ra's obsession with "purifying" Gotham and the world is a result of that, imagine if the Joker got that focused on something.
    • Just want to point out that the one time Joker has used the Pit in comics canon, it made him sane (and immediately remorseful) for a few hours.
    • I think the OP point was - Batman was acting as if Joker making it to the pit would practically signal the end of the world, and Joker would obtain "immortality". Whereas what really would happen is that he'd jump in, get cured, go even more bonko than usual for a while (or alternatively sane, as above)...and Batman, who is right there, would whack him in the face. Then drink the vial of blue cure and go ask Catwoman for a date or something.
    • Whether it's lasting immortality or needs to be re-used, and even if Batman stops him that particular time after he's done, letting the Joker know where there's a convenient place right in the city where he lives where he can go to to essentially rejuvenate and become immortal if he just takes a swim in it whenever he feels like it is still practically the dictionary definition of 'a very bad idea'. The League of Shadows might be badass assassins, but the Joker is a genius level intellect with an insane brilliance that practically works on it's own level—you can't predict what he's going to do, which gives him an edge even over the League (as witnessed by the fact that he manages to get the drop on Talia al Ghul -- herself no slouch in the 'badass assassin' stakes; Batman even tells her that she's out of her depth with him and completely underestimating him). Letting him have the opportunity to be reinvigorated this time means he's probably going to want to do it again in future, and if the Joker wants something bad enough, he's going to figure out a way to get to it, and in this case letting the Joker have access to the ability to remain youthful and invigorated whenever he wants or needs it means that the Joker's going to be around to cause more chaos, death and misery for as long as he wants. Plus, in this case, the whole point was that Batman was trapped and wouldn't be able to stop him.
    • Sorry, that still doesn't quite make sense to me - at that time, Joker already knew about the Pit and its properties (Talia had told him). Furthermore, Batman admitted he was going to give Joker the cure, so either way we'd be at square 1 - a cured, not-dead Joker with knowledge of the Lazarus Pits. So I don't see the difference between curing him with the blue vial, or by throwing him in the Pit? The actual jumping in the pit itself wouldn't start the apocalypse or anything, and either way Joker's alive and now curious about that cool bubbly green stuff. So Bats wasn't going to end up happy no matter how it played out, so why act like him jumping in the pit specifically made such a difference to the outcome?
      • To further what the fellow above said, you guys forget that if Joker knows where the pit is, well, so does Batman. With bat-tech. With explosives. Let the Joker take a dip in it, and then blow it the **** up, why won't you?
        • Because that would probably still kill the Joker.
      • The pit is contaminated with Clayface in it, after Batman destroys it. Joker cured is just Joker cured. Still dangerous, but he can't use the pit and get more and more insane.
      • Batman didn't know the pit would be destroyed by Clayface (although, I imagine he expected to destroy it himself). But that is just how Batman operates. He can't let Joker use the pit (a revitalized and youthful Joker is bad) and he has to save Talia. So that sends him in after them, and everything else is a problem for "Batman five minutes from now".
  • After Joker takes Talia and Batman exits the steel mill to see protocol 10 in action, he wants to go and save Talia, but Alfred blocks him and says Batman must save gotham city. what? Gotham city is not in any danger at all. Just Arkham city. I know that Batman even values the lives of criminals, and that some of the people in the prison are just political enemies of Strange, but even if protocol 10 went off without a hitch, it would never had endangered gotham proper at all.
    • Presumably, the success of Protocol 10 would destroy the cure by killing Freeze, Batman, and Joker, thereby dooming anyone infected to die. Plus, if it succeeded, Strange would be free to move to the next phase of his plan with nobody to stop him, and the apparent endgame is either world domination or, considering who else is involved, a Class 1 or 2.
    • But if the main danger to Gotham is Joker's blood then He SHOULD have gone after Joker to get the cure! Even if Batman lets Strange complete protocol 10 to do so, he would have the cure and will have saved hundreds of lives, and lived to tell the tale. He can always stop strange and Ra's later. After all he is THE GODDAM BATMAN!
      • If Batman let Strange finish Protocol 10, then thousands of people would have died. The Joker infected enough people to get Batman motivated, sure. But not enough to warrant neglecting the bombing of every prisoner in the City (many of whom were relatively innocent). Alfred was keeping Batman on the right path. The sick people had time. Arkham City had none. And as for being the Goddamn Batman, Batman has limits. He can't just decide to stop Ra's Al Ghul when it's convenient and have it done in a few minutes.
    • Most of the people in Arkham City were criminals most of the people in the hospitals presumably were not criminals. Further more the Arkham City isn't a very big place that bombardment likely did all the damage it was going to before Batman could stop it anyway. I understand why everybody made the calls that they did but it's still a bit of a headscratcher.
      • A significantly large chunk of them were just people Strange had thrown in there on contrived reasons. Besides which, just because someone's a criminal doesn't mean they deserve to be machine-gunned from above like some kind of animal.
  • While I'm on a roll, did we ever find out how in the hell Strange got Mayor Sharp arrested and thrown into his own prison?
    • Two possibilities: He did exactly what he did with Wayne, i.e. just grab him with some TYGER goons without any stated reason; or, he had evidence against Sharp (perhaps evidence of his insanity) and released it publicly.
  • At one point Strange is ranting at Batman that the quality of villains in the city is his fault. WTF. How can Batman be held accountable for the existence of supervillains like Joker, when EVEN JOKER DOESNT KNOW WHY HE'S JOKER!
    • In one way or another Batman is responsible for Joker's acid bath.
    • What Acid Bath? I'm pretty sure in this continuity he just sort of appeared from nowhere, completelty batshit insane, and no one knows where he comes from. It's pretty clear that they know nothing about how, when, or why he became the Joker since Doctor Young in AA didn't know. Besides, Joker was just one supervillain. Like I said before, Strange claims that the existence of superheros actively creates the existence of super villains. How would Batman be responsible for someone like Solomon Grundy, Killer Croc, or Poison Ivy? Their Start of Darkness(es) were either accidents or (in KC's case) birth defects! what did Batman have to do with that?
      • The Arkham-verse seems to generally match the broad strokes of the DCAU (up until the founding of the Justice League, at least) and the comics, all of which establish Joker in basically the same fashion: Some criminal (career or first-timer, it varies) dressed up as The Red Hood and got knocked into a vat of chemicals. What is probaby confusing you is that nobody knows who he really IS. They know how he got his face messed up, but nobody knows who he was before that (or just how much of that impacted who he became).
    • It's the Superhero Paradox
      • Pretty much this and escalation: As Batman: Year One and The Long Halloween demonstrates before Batman came to Gotham the criminal underworld was run primarily by traditional mob families. But once Batman came to town the 'freaks' like The Joker started popping out of the woodworks. Some gaining power due to the Mob beginning to rely on them to deal with problems.
    • Strange gets a lot of things wrong. This is no different.
    • In the Joker interviews, Strange notes that the one thing all of Joker's origin stories have in common is that Batman is involved somehow. In addition, both Mr. Freeze and the Penguin blame Batman/ Bruce Wayne for their situation in their interviews and the Riddler's whole motivation in both games is to prove that he's more intelligent than Batman. Batman didn't create all the villains, but there are a lot of fairly major villains that are in some way connected to him, plus there is the idea of escalation discussed at the end of Batman Begins.
      • With the Penguin it's a family feud. The Cobblepots were ruined financially because the Waynes made better hotels, basically. Penguin's been carrying that grudge for a while.
    • Strange is also a very manipulative master of psychology who is trying to attack Batman with feelings of guilt, futility and hypocrisy; since Protocol Ten is at least in part 'a monument to (Batman's) failure' he's trying to frame Batman's crusade as pointless and futile because according to this logic Batman is a useless hypocrite who creates his villains and makes things worse for everyone, the exact opposite of what he set out to be and do. Whether it's true or not doesn't matter to Strange as long as he can convince Batman it's true.
    • In Strange's Hannibal Lecture near the end of the game, he also argues that Batman's actions make villains stronger, like a virus that becomes resistant to immunization, which isn't an accurate comparison, but still.
      • Closer to the way antibiotics means that only antibiotic-resistant bacteria survive.
  • So wait. If the sick Joker was actually Joker, and the healthy Joker was Clayface!Joker... who was the dead Joker in the Steel Mill?
    • The quick cutscene showing Batman figuring it out explains this. If you pay attention, Batman gets jumped from behind by a healthy-looking Joker, or rather, Clayface in the mill while investigating the dead, sickly-looking Joker. The scene then shows that that one is the real one; he was playing dead with a rigged heart monitor.
    • But he shows up as deceased in Detective Mode, too.
    • It could be just some random victim made-up to look like Joker. It's not like you get the chance to perform a DNA analysis or anything.
    • No it couldn't. In the quick shot of him figuring it out, the "dead" Joker MOVES. Watch carefully, you'll see his arms shift a bit.
    • Simple. Joker uses makeup to appear healthy. The one that knocked Bats out was the real Joker, while the other one was Clayface.
    • That idea actually doesn't work, because as shown later in the game, when you see Clayface Joker in combat, he appears without any bones. So unless he can form bones inside of his shape-shifted body, the best idea here so far is that dying Joker was just waiting there with a rigged heartbeat monitor. Maybe Batman's Detective mode only picks up heartbeat levels between a certain value? That way the Joker could have used either chemicals or relaxation/meditation techniques to keep his heartbeat level low enough? Then again, that doesn't explain how Bats' Detective Mode can pick up unconscious mooks' heartbeats and oh no I've gone cross-eyed.
    • From the "reveal"/flashback cutscene where we See Clayface-Joker standing before Real!Joker in the chair hooked up to the equipment, is the one the troper mentioned above where the real Joker moved. So I take it we're just meant to understand Joker faked death or rigged the machine somehow to fool Batman - how isn't important I suppose.
  • This is the first time Bats has encountered any Azrael. Just what the hell happened in the Arkhamverse's equivalent of Knightfall?
    • Maybe this time logic prevailed and Dick was allowed to become Batman for a spell?
      • He was in the original comics, after JPV was fired, though not many people remember. I'm not sure Knightfall happened in this continuity, aside from a one-off reference that could just be a Shout-Out. Incidentally, I like the idea of the Order of St. Dumas as "good" (I assume) counterparts to the League of Shadows.
    • The answer's kind of simple. There's more than one Azrael in the DCU. Jean-Paul Valley was the Azreal that substituted for Batman against Bane, but the one you meet in Arkham City is one Michael Lane. Hense the confusion.
      • Er, no. The fact that Batman doesn't react at all to hearing the name Azrael makes it clear this is the first time in this 'verse he's met anyone with that name. He doesn't mention Bane or Valley or say "I know someone else called that." That's where the confusion comes from-
  • How did Harley end up tied to a pole and gagged in the Steel Mill? Did I miss a cut-scene?
    • Talia stole the cure from her.
  • This isn't an Arkham City question per se, but: Is there a reason he's "MISTER Freeze" and not "DOCTOR Freeze"? You can't be a brilliant cryogeneticist without a doctorate in something, and, granted, once he fired up his freeze gun, I'm sure the Gotham City AMA yanked his license to practice, but still, considering the fact that his whole MO is trying to heal the most important patient in his life, you'd think he'd keep his title. Maybe there's a Dr. Freeze in the Marvel Universe and DC didn't want to get sued?
    • Mr. Freeze makes for a better villain name. In-universe, if I'm not mistaken he took that name for himself once he built his suit and turned to a life of crime, as his actual last name isn't spelled that way. You'll note that in his Bio, the "Real Name" section does in fact say "Dr. Victor Fries."
      • Haha. Rule of Cool. Mr. Freeze. I get it.
      • Whenever Freeze has to go out and do crimes to get the money to pay for his research, he doesn't consider himself to be acting like a man of science should. Thus, he can no longer bring himself to refer to himself as a doctor - hence Mister.
  • Maybe its because my Batman lore is pretty rusty, but the fact that Catwoman was originally an inmate in Arkham Asylum rather than Blackgate strikes me as odd. I mean, yeah she's a high class thief, but she's not insane...unless Sharp counts her affinity towards cats as insanity, which, knowing him, admittedly wouldn't be that much of a stretch.
    • She considered to be a kleptomaniac, which could be a pretty valid reason to have her incarcerated for a time.
    • It's a problem that crops up in many Batman stories when writers get a bit lazy. Catwoman simply should not be in Arkham Asylum. Neither should the Penguin, and probably not Mr. Freeze. But sometimes writers forget that Arkham Asylum is, y'know, an asylum and not just a prison for super-criminals.
      • In this timeline, while Penguin not be as obviously mad as the other Batman super-villains, he's clearly not a very psychologically well-adjusted human being. He's often described in savage, animalistic terms, and appears to have very pronounced sadistic and megalomaniacal tendencies in this universe. It's possible it was thought appropriate that a stay at the Asylum was appropriate by the authorities at one point.
      • Arkham Asylum is also often described as a facility for 'special needs' prisoners—i.e. people who might not strictly be sane but can only be housed by facilities in Arkham that more routine prisons don't necessarily have. Hence why Mr. Freeze, despite technically not being insane, tends to end up there a lot. This could apply to Penguin and (at a stretch) Catwoman as well.
      • At least in the video game continuity, it should be remembered that Quincy Sharp was eventually revealed to be insane himself and with a vengeance streak a mile wide. He could have easily arranged for super villains to be declared insane and moved to his facility.
    • All this is ignoring that Arkham City is not Arkham Asylum. It's stated in intro that all the inmates from both Arkham Asylum AND Black Gate (the regular prison) are there. Which easily enough explains Catwoman, as well as all the regular mooks running about. As for Penguin, in this continuity, it's not clear whether he's ever been arrested for anything - his interview tapes reveal that he was a crime boss operating out of the Iceberg Lounge in freedom, until the neighborhood was slated to become Arkham City, at which point they offered him a chance to leave. Of course, Cobblepot is far too proud and possessive to take that offer.
  • Is R'as really pronounced as Raysh? I always thought you said it like Razz or Roz
  • When Catwoman escapes from Two-Face, she frees her hands, but her feet have some how gotten untied before she even flips away.
    • She had already gotten them loose, and was somehow faking them being tied to produce a false sense of security?
    • Catwoman breaks her wrist bonds, yes, but what she does is she flips up to cut the feet ropes using her claws.
  • When Batman captures Two-Face when exactly did Batman tie Two-Face's hands?
  • As much as I was moved by Batman carrying the dead Joker in his arms at the end of the game, shouldn't he have done that with Talia instead? It seems like a case for hoes before bros if you don't mind my expression.
    • Talia can wait. Joker was Batman's lifelong nemesis and the most elusive villain in Gotham City; Batman had to carry his body out to the police in any case. Might as well do it with a great deal of symbolic parade. I mean, really, what's Talia al Ghul compared to friggin' Joker?
    • Besides, Talia is part of the whole Lazarus Pit thing. And there are more than one. I don't remember if she's ever been dipped in it before, but it's certainly something her Elite Guard would have done in the event of her death. Joker, however, has no such connection. For him death is death.
    • Look at the concept art for that scene. Now look at the very first picture one sees with the Catwoman episodes installed. It's mirror to Cain and Abel with Cain carring Able's dead body to their parents. The final scene is to raise the question if Batman crossed the line or if it's a reversed situation with Able surviving and Cain dying.
    • Also, batman can't really risk that Harley decides her beloved "Mister J" needs a dip in the Lazarus Pit. Granted, she shouldn't even know about the existance of the pit, but what would then happen? Talia's elite guard is described as every single one is capacable of taking down 100 men, but it doesn't say how many women.
    • Remember Batman and the others fell down that hole into the area with the Lazarus pit. By the time Bats climbed back up to where Talia was she had probably already been carried off by members of the League.
    • I interpreted that as the point of Arkham City, that Batman and The Joker are actually Friendly Rivals. Batman says he still would've saved him and Joker makes a valid point that he's the only person who really understands Batman and vice-versa. Thinking back to Arkham Asylum, when the fake kitten bombs are announced Batman instantly knows it's a lie. Because he knows The Joker. They Really Do Love Each Other.
  • We see that after taking Riddler down, Aaron Cash and the other doctors stay at Riddler's hideout. Zsasz's two hostages also stay in Zsasz's hideout. The rest of Riddler's hostages (Eddie Burlow, William North, Anne Bishop, Adam Hamasaki, a male doctor and a female doctor) eventually end up in the church, alongside Jack Ryder, Vicki Vale and Quincy Sharp. But then there are Stacey Baker and Fiona Wilson. After saving them, Batman encounters them again later on, safe and sound, when he has to return to the areas he left them in, but upon returning to those areas again, they are nowhere to be found anymore. What in the world could have happened to them? Did they escape to somewhere else? Where they discovered by the bad guys? Questions, questions...
    • Their fates are never elaborated upon, but given that Batman already beat down every enemy in the area and that TYGER withdraws after Strange is gone, they likely escaped to relative safety.
    • To strengthen the above, the game locks you into completing the main story pretty much after you re-enter the Steel Mill / Wonder City, so you're not likely to return to these areas a third time until the game's completed—by which point the GCPD appear to be entering Arkham City en force and claiming the TYGER facilities. It's possible that the police located them. Furthermore, IIRC Batman makes a comment to both of them that they seem to be really good at hiding; it's possible they've tucked themselves away into somewhere he can't find them until things really quieten down.
  • So, why does Freeze's face turn into Joker's for a split second while Batman beats him down? I assumed it was because the Mad Hatter was stalking him, but it's never really explained.
    • I thought it was a delayed effect of the Dragon's blood you drink in Wonder City.
    • Joker mentions hallucinations as a side effect of the TITAN poisoning, it was likely that.
    • I think it's intended as a "moment of clarity" for Batman. At the point the face thing happens Batman's been beating the snot out of Mr Freeze, who's had his suit disabled and therefore no longer a physical threat to Batman; he's basically laying a beatdown on a defenceless man. The implication is that Batman's lost, or on the verge of, losing control. It's also there because Batman realises the Joker's manipulating both Freeze and Batman: Freeze's mania is chiefly due to the fact his wife's missing (taken by Joker), while Batman's mania is because he's dying (because of Joker's blood). By both of them fighting, the Joker is "laughing" ... in that he profits while they fight. That moment is just a metaphorical "dash of water to the face" for Batman.
  • Why do all the thugs on the street attack Batman? They are already in jail, their bosses can't watch them all, and several of them personally know what Batman can do to them.
    • Well, it wouldn't be a very fun game if all but the most dedicated and insane mooks fled you on sight. As for justification, bear in mind they are all in an anarchic prison environment. Showing fear is dangerous; it does them no good to avoid a beating from Batman if another group of in-mates decides to shank them later.
    • Admit it, you would still go after them if they fled.
        • I wouldn't. Those punks are more annoying than entertaining now that I'm mostly hunting down Riddler Trophies and other side quests and by the way all of their bosses are either captured, dead or in hiding. I think the only major ones left at large are Riddler and Two-Face. Besides they don't have to flee, they could politely pretend they didn't see me, the same way I was politely pretending I didn't notice them until they started trying to cut me.
      • If you pay attention you'll notice that some thugs DO flee and cower from Batman. You can't beat them up though, they just run for the nearest bit of cover and curl into a ball.
    • They all hate Batman too, and they usually outnumber him a dozen to one or more.
    • They're probably told they'll be killed if caught running from Batman (or anyone else). Given how many thugs he beats unconscious over the course of the game, word probably got around that Batman is unlikely to kill.
  • Deadshot's list includes both Bruce Wayne and Batman. His employer is Hugo Strange who knows the redundancy here. What was this, some sort of elaborate trick to avoid paying him full price?
    • Strange might know the redundancy here, but he doesn't want anyone else to know until such a time that it suits him; his knowledge of Batman's secret is really his only leverage against Batman, and it's lost if he lets the secret slip. Plus, he doesn't know whether Deadshot once in Arkham City will encounter Bruce Wayne out of costume or whether he'll be Batman by that point; by listing both he ensures Deadshot targets and gets at least one of them.
      • And also, makes sure he wastes time hunting for the other one, should Deadshot not be able to confirm the kill or find evidence that Bruce Wayne is also Batman.
    • There's also Hush. Who has made himself LOOK like Bruce Wayne. Strange doesn't know him, but imagine what could have happened if Batman hadn't found out about Deadshot until too late. As Batman was listed AFTER Bruce.
    • I figured Strange wanted Batman to take him out, another way to cover his tracks. He'd go after Batman, Batman would take him out, Strange gets out of paying Deadshot, doesn't have to worry about Deadshot spilling the beans and he takes out most of his list.
    • It could just be Strange's method of screwing with Deadshot's obsessive ethics; if he somehow miraculously took down Batman, then it would likely be revealed he is Bruce Wayne, and Deadshot probably wouldn't sit well with getting a "two-for-one". If he kills Wayne and then comes after Strange as Batman, then he has to deal with having killed his client if he wins. And/or it could really just be an intentionally self-terminating list, Strange knowing Batman/Bruce Wayne would probably win and so intentionally leaving him for last with the main objective complete.
    • Alternatively, maybe he wants Deadshot to waste his time looking for Batman after he killed Bruce Wayne, so that he'd be in the city when Protocol 10 starts? He may not want anyone hiring Deadshot to come after him...
  • Character bio-> Quincy Sharp -> Tape 2 -> The creeper does exist in this continuity, but if it's not Jack Ryder, then who?
    • Actually he does, according to Jack Ryder's character Bio in asylum. But like you have pointed out, His character Bio in City does not include creeper. I have been wondering about this myself
    • At certain points in his life Jack Ryder and Creeper haven't known that they were the same person.
  • Did anyone live in the slums before they were walled off to create Arkham City? Was it explained in the backstory where they were relocated to?
    • There are eviction notices on many of the buildings, but everyone was relocated and building owners were compensated.
    • It says in the pause menu text screens that Mayor Sharp bought out the slums via Eminent Domain.
  • I'm not that familiar with Batman canon and this is a different continuity, but wasn't that company, Ace Chemicals, where Joker fell into the acid bath?
    • Yes.
  • What the hell does that acronym, TYGER, stand for? GCPD stands for Gotham City Police Department or something like that, I think.
  • I don't get Freeze's logic in bargaining the cure for to Batman to save Nora? Wouldn't it make more sense to cure Batman so he would be at full health to save his wife without the risk of his dying from the blood poisoning?
    • Freeze has no guarantee that Batman would go look for Nora immediately after gaining the cure considering how many other, bigger problems there are in Arkham City. By with holding the cure, Freeze keeps a bargaining chip that forces Bats to retrieve Nora before Joker's thugs can do anything that might harm her. Of course we know that Batman would do it anyway, but Freeze is far too worried about his wife to think in more rational terms.
  • How does Batman deactivate protocol 10? All he did was push one button. that shouldn't stop hundreds of helicopters and gunman from shooting criminals.
    • The TYGER guards are all brainwashed to follow Strange's orders. Once the ceasefire was sent out, they followed the command.
      • Also he got Oracle able to access to the system so I assume she turned off automatic weapons, computer guidance, and a host of other stuff.
  • If all of Arkham City is sealed off from the rest of Gotham, how do weapons get in? They wouldn't have the resources to manufacture their own, and any pipeline to bring materials or whole guns in would be better used by would-be escapees.
    • I have one serious response, one slightly less so - a) as you kind of indicated, the same way drugs get into modern prisons: Black Market. Dumping a load of weapons into the compound in the hopes they kill each other may even be an unwritten rule, who knows? It seems they're very invested in keeping crooks in, but after that? Meh. b) It's Gotham.
      • On that note, and this a pretty non-serious response, but it does go with the weapons drop idea, perhaps Sharp not only hopes they'll kill each other, but wants them to. Maybe he's trying to turn Arkham City into some sort of bizzare battle royale-style experiment, hell, he wanted to burn Poison Ivy alive and lobotomize Harley Quinn, is this really a stretch?
    • Since Sharpie is the mayor, it's possible that he's the one supplying the weapons in hopes that the thugs will kill each other, and maybe even get Batman.
    • Also, let's not forget that we've seen promotional footage of buildings marked "Sionis Industries," hinting that the Black Mask could have a hand in all this. As 'Mask is one of Gotham's most notorious crime-bosses, it makes sense that he'd still have ties to whatever buildings bare his name. Plus, some of his own men were locked up in Blackgate before Sharpe closed it and Arkham, so they probably know where a lot of his hidden weapons caches were in that part of Gotham from working with him.
    • Related to above, Arkham City is essentially an entire region of Gotham which has been sealed off; chances are all of the villains had weapons stashed away in various hidden locations around the city, and some of those locations would have fallen within Arkham City's borders.
    • Turns out there's a canon explanation. Strange shipped them in to create a crisis, which he could use to get the City to activate Emergency Protocol 10, which gives him even more power over Arkham City. He and Tyger can then kill anyone in it at will.
    • Penguin was also sealed IN Arkham City. Explaining how his crew got the best stuff.
      • I'm pretty sure the game all but flat-out shouts at you that Strange had been supplying guns to Penguin.
  • How is Quincy Sharp mayor? Isn't there a buttload of evidence proving that he's insane?
    • The only person who ever saw the evidence of Sharp's insanity was Batman, and Bats isn't the type of person to share that kind of information.
      • Plus, it's Gotham. The number of people who'd believe Batman if he revealed what he knows is small, and the number of people who'd act on that knowedge is smaller. Not to mention the fact that it's all circumstantial evidence based on a bunch of rocks with writing on them, placed in areas where hardly anyone can find them.
      • There's audio accompanying them, though, isn't there? And there's a lot of evidence in a room that Sharp was locked in. As for the "not many people would believe Batman", well, he didn't exactly take the evidence with him when he left Arkham, and Gordon and the rest of the GCPD would kind of have to find it. As for "Batman's not the type to share that kind of information", well, that really depends. I think he would once Sharp began running for mayor, as Sharp's clearly completely insane and could do anything with the city (and has, evidenced by Arkham City's existence). I'm sure that there'll be an explanation given, but until then, I can't not consider it fridge logic.
        • I always thought the 'audio' was just the game's way of representing Batman's translation of the engravings on the rocks and the resulting deductions he makes based on it; as in, there wasn't any actual audio (since, let's face it, Sharp's crazy but he's probably not that stupid to leave around tape recordings of all his insane plotting) but it's just representing what is being translated. Even if there was, though, since there's only one bit which is recognizably Warden Sharp speaking, he could easily cry fake. Furthermore, Sharp is the Warden of an insane asylum full of criminally insane psychotics, many of whom have genius-level intellects and among other things make a specialty of weird labyrinthine mind-gamey plots; it wouldn't be incredibly hard for him to pass off any evidence found by the cops (who, let's be fair, probably wouldn't do as well at finding or interpreting it as Batman) or Batman as fakes designed and planted by one of the inmates as a way of trying to discredit him. I mean hell, the Riddler left a whole load of trophies and riddles and scrawlings on the walls tucked away in all sorts of places in the asylum; who's to say (and more importantly, who wouldn't believe) that he didn't do it?
      • Batman is absolutely the type of person to share that kind of information; since when has he ever let psychotic lunatics off the hook just because they are a Villain with Good Publicity ? He'd expose him the first chance he got. Its simply lack of evidence that stops him, though one wonders why he couldn't leak the little he has. The main problem with this premise is that there are multiple witnesses to the fact that Batman was the one who saved the day- including the Police Commisioner and several Arkham guards-; and, the fact that the breakout happened on Sharpe's watch should kind of affect the idea that he is supposed to have put an end to it, since one would think people would wonder if his negligience was part of the problem in the first place (though, to be fair, Gotham might have realised by then that no amount of security is good enough for The Joker).
        • Witnesses? Batman saved the day live on the ten o'clock news.
        • Although to be fair, Commissioner Gordon spent most of the crisis either held hostage or experiencing brief moments of not being held hostage, so it's not like he's really in a position to challenge Sharpe's effectiveness much. As for other witnesses, it's been speculated that Sharpe probably took the "I coordinated the retaking of the asylum and Batman was following my lead" approach—and since most of the surviving witnesses spent most of the crisis holed up in various places in the asylum with only Batman going backwards and forwards between them, there's no one really to challenge that. Alternatively, this is Gotham we're talking about, and he's got Hugo Strange of all people pulling his strings; a hefty dose of bribery, voter fraud and / or mind control isn't entirely off the cards. For what it's worth, though, one of the Arkham City tie-in comics has Vicki Vale call Sharp on precisely this issue during an interview.
    • The game reveals the truth: Hugo Strange had connections that would ensure Sharp won. Strange's connections turned out to be Ra's al Ghul and the League of Assassins.
  • In the cinematic trailer, why does Hugo Strange feel he has to torture his own henchmen to death to get info out of him? I'm pretty sure he'd be forthcoming about the big-scary-man-in-a-cape who beat the crap out of him if his employer had just asked. It doesn't look like a case of You Have Failed Me... either, as Strange clearly expected the attack on Batman to fail ("This was just one more twist of the knife... to test him.")
    • Strange seems to be using some kind of truth serum on the henchman; he probably wants to get as completely accurate a rendition of events as possible while ensuring that said henchman doesn't feel like embellishing the account, downplaying it to sooth his pride (since one guy beating the crap out of him and his entire unit has to smart a bit) or otherwise playing with the truth. He just happens to use more than the henchman can take without killing him, but then, he's Hugo Strange, and it's doubtful he really gives a shit. You Have Outlived Your Usefulness probably plays a part as well.
  • So the Joker donated a bunch of his now-toxic blood to hospitals across Gotham to make Batman find a cure. Did they not test it?
    • The idea is he secretly had healthy blood that the hospitals already had swapped with his own.
    • On top of this, his plan to ship his toxic blood to hospitals in Gotham is no kind of grand, supervillainous plan. First off, his blood would be marked by the blood type it is, and thus would only be given to patients matching that blood type. Otherwise, incompatability between blood types would kill the patient before the toxins did. Secondly, blood transfusion patients are checked up on after the fact. Batman began to show the effects of the bad blood within an hour, and that was after just being drip-fed the blood. After a full transfusion? It wouldn't be hard to pinpoint the cause, and the hospital's blood reserves would be analysed and destroyed. I guess we can chalk this up to mad, dying desperation, though. We have to cut Joker a break for that.
      • Remember that the Joker works by sowing the seeds of chaos. If he has tainted blood sent to hospitals (and it can be safely assumed that he had it send to a number of different hospitals well-disguised in order to make identifying it difficult, and had key people bribed or blackmailed for their participation as mentioned below), then even if people figure out what's going on before too long then that still means that the blood donation and transfusion is effectively shut down until they can isolate and destroy the tainted packs. So even if it's only people of a certain blood group who are affected (which is unlikely; they'll probably have to analyse and / or destroy the entire supply just to be on the safe side, just in case the Joker thought it would be funny to taint other packs as well), that sill means that there's now a huge supply of blood which has to be tested and / or destroyed just in case. And then that blood needs to be replaced from clean, uncontaminated sources. Which takes time. This means that a huge and essential part of the medical system is essentially shut down. That means that there's still a lot of people who may urgently need blood transfusions who are now unable to get them. It means that people who may die without an immediate transfusion are probably going to die where they wouldn't have had the Joker not interfered. And, of course, it means that the people who were given the tainted blood before the problem was identified are still dying unless Batman finds the cure. And then there's the natural panic that sets in once word spreads that the Joker's contaminated the blood donation system. Even if only a few people are exposed to the tainted blood, the ripples spread out and engulf Gotham's entire medical system. It's actually quite a clever supervillain plan.
    • Joker does it the same way he gets people to do things he wants like assistence like breaking out of Arkham: he bribes & blackmails. Think about it: Joker probably has goons on the outside who haven't been caught. He has them threaten the doctors with harm to them or their families and/or pays them off to "let things slide" and tell the people that they're fine after the transfusion. Not that hard of a stretch to believe.
      • ^ What he said. And even if someone does realize something's wrong, that's one person who's guaranteed to die unless Bats finds the cure. One person is enough.
  • Why was Oracle missing? I don't remember anything explaining her absence.
    • Apparently she was just occupied with other things, but what those were aren't mentioned.
    • In the DCU she's no only the primary source of info for the entire Bat-Family, but leads the Birds of Prey & is the prime information centre for all the superheroes in the world. We know that at least Superman, Robin and Nightwing exist in Arkhamverse, so at the very least she could also be helping them, along with investigating and compiling information for dozens of others things.
  • Why didn't the Mad Hatter remove Batman's mask? He has an obsession with hats alongside his obsession with Alice in Wonderland. One of his main motivations for going against Batman is to collect his cowl. He had Batman unconscious for enough time to drag him back to his lair - so why wouldn't he take off the mask during that time?
    • He says outright that he wants Batman to fight for him. Think about it; he's just one weak minor villain in Arkham City with no following of his own, and to that end he's been hypnotising henchmen from Joker, Two-Face and Penguin to use as his own. In the cut-throat world that is Arkham City, the opportunity to have the Goddamned Batman (and all the fear his complete costume instils in criminals everywhere) fighting for you is way too much to pass up on.
      • Yeah, but why not take the mask off and replace it with the mind-control cowl?
      • I guess his reasoning goes that if he takes the mask off, it might just look like he's dressed someone up as Batman using an incomplete costume he's found somewhere, which diminishes the effect somewhat, whereas if he keeps the costume intact and puts the mask on over it, it looks more like he's actually captured Batman, which strengthens the overall 'holy-shit-Hatter's-got-Batman-working-for-him' effect he's going for.
    • Maybe Batman still have countermeasure on his mask like in Batman: Hush(except for ladies, of course)?
    • If you look at the map after you leave from that mind trip, you'll see Hatter's hideout is relativly close to where you took the bait for his trap. It could be that Batman woke up from the drug only a few moments from ariving at the mad tea party so he didn't get the chanse to take off the cowl.
    • One thing that a lot of people forget in Super Hero situations is that not everybody recognizes everybody on the planet. Bruce Wayne is the exception in that he's shown as being some what famous. It's never really clear if he's supposed to be A-List famous (Think major celebrity, people who literally can't just stroll down the street without being recognized) or B-List Famous (think of all the famous people who you've heard the name but if they sat down beside you at in a park it would take you a second to figure out who they were). It's possible that the Hatter just assumed that removing the mask wouldn't gain him anything other than knowing Batman's hair color.
  • Okay, so in the non-standard Game Over, Wayne Manor is under attack from the Joker's forces. How did Joker survive Protocol 10 without Batman's intervention?
    • Compromised, not under attack. IOW, the attack's over, Joker's probably using the batcave as a base, and is laughing his ass off at the idea of Bruce "prissy little rich boy" Wayne being Batman. To answer your question, remember, Talia had come to Joker and offered him a swim in a Lazarus Pit. Entirely possible the League of Assassins got him out of the city once Protocol 10 kicked in.
      • Why would they do that? The League of Assassins was behind Protocol 10. Why would they undermine it by smuggling Joker out?
      • I'm not sure how, but presumably after getting a nice rejuvenating dip in the Lazarus Pit the Joker was sufficiently reinvigorated and not consumed by his own impending death to turn Protocol 10 to his own advantage somehow; he's kind of an ingenious dick that way. It's possible the Joker had some kind of plan for how to turn Arkham City and the whole situation to his advantage, but we never learnt what it was because it hinged on him being cured, and that ultimately never happened.
    • Joker survived because he was in the Lazarus Pit, which is directly underneath Wonder Tower. Not much chance Professor Strange is going to blow up the building he himself is in on the off chance it'll make Wonder City collapse. From there, Joker probably climbed the Tower and took Strange out.
  • Where does the shark in the museum go? Okay, you deliver an awesome beat-down, but it should still be in there somewhere, yet whenever you fall in the water afterwards you can get right back out without getting bitten in half.
    • It knows better than to try and mess with Batman, and its poor-eye sight can't tell the difference between him and Catwoman.
    • Shark Repellant.
    • Considering the shark was swimming around in the sub-zero water with ice on it, it could be assumed it's some sort of Arctic Megalodon (though how it got cloned would probably be hand waved), so it could easily be that it just died when the water began to warm up.
    • Well, the water below the ice was almost certainly warmer than 0 degrees celsius. Water has its greatest density at 4 degrees celsius, so that's presumably the temperature at the bottom of that pool.
    • Sometimes the simplest explanation is the best. Considering the fact that the average shark can be driven off by an average person punching it in the eye, I have no problem believing that Batman beat Tiny to death. Maybe Catwoman will steal the corpse and make herself a sharkskin catsuit to rob Penguin in in the sequel.
  • A minor one, but it still confuses me. When you complete the sidequest with Azrael, he gives Batman a prophecy about his victory in Arkham City and how this will lead to some sort of crisis in the future, saying that Bats will "be the warrior to close the gates of hell." Batman's response? "I don't believe in fairy tales." .....uh, why not?
    • Why should he believe it? Yeah, the mysterious disappearing ninja guy is probably worth looking in to, but there's no reason to believe everything he says without any evidence.
      • Also, Batman is usually shown in modern depictions as being very suspicious and at times derivative of magic. That could extend to a disbelief in fairy tales in this universe.
  • When listening to Zsasz's life story during the side quest, he mentions that he lost what was left of his money in a card game with Penguin. Victor had four 6's, and Oswald had a strait flush 4-7. But if he had a six in that hand when Zsasz had them prior, he obviously cheated. Why didn't Victor call him out on it and take his money back? I mean honestly. There were other people there to testify the fault.
    • IIRC this is happening in the Penguin's own club—i.e. he sets the rules about what happens there (most likely in his favour) and most of the people there who can 'testify the fault' are either the Penguin's goons or people who are affiliated with the Penguin in some way, so they're unlikely to be taking Victor's side here. Hell, the whole point was probably to set him up to fleece him in the first place. Victor protests it, likely result is he gets the crap kicked out of him (which, again IIRC, is exactly what happened anyway). And in any case, the Penguin is a major crime lord and, in Arkham City, a sociopathic borderline Complete Monster—who in their right mind is going to risk pissing him off (and in all likelihood getting fed to his shark) in a gambling dispute by taking the side of some nobody (at that point at least) who's just had his cash wiped out over a stupid bet?
    • I don't remember, were they playing Draw? Because if it was Hold 'Em, a Straight Flush beating 4 sixes could legally occur although would be extremely unlikely.
      • There weren't any mentions of normal hold'em terms(flop, turn, river, etc.), so I assume they were playing either Draw or Stud.
    • What seems stranger is that Penguin would casually cheat a rich young man out of all his money. Penguin's continued existence relies on the social elites not taking offense to his club's shady nature and fleecing one of them is not a good way to keep that goodwill. There's a reason why organized crime doesn't cause too much trouble for the rich, it gets the police (even the corrupt ones) sent after them.
      • One thing to remember: Arkhamverse =/ DC Universe. In the DCU, Penguin puts up a gentleman fasaud, hobnobbing with the beautiful people, but in the AU he's clearly more of a vicious, street-thug asshole who could sub-let a shit about his good PR or lack thereof. Thus, the DCU Pengy probably wouldn't fleece Zsasz unless Victor pissed him off somehow, whereas the AU Pengy would do it For the Evulz.
    • You know in some casinos they do use multiple decks.
    • It's also likly that Victor just did not notice.
      • I believe it's stated somewhere in supplementary material that his IQ score is 78 or something similarly below average, so that's not much of a stretch.
  • So Batman destroyed the Lazarus Pit. Batman also watched Ra's al Ghul stick himself with his sword. Doesn't this sort of mean Batman killed someone?
    • The Demon's Head stuck HIMSELF with his sword. Plus, there are other pits around the world. Batman's hands are clean of Ra's blood.
      • Why exactly did Ra's impale himself with his own sword again?
      • Most assume he was trying to kill both himself and Batman. There are other theories on the main page, but I'll just go with the most straightforward. Really, there's not much reason not to - I mean it's not like Ra's has any reason to fear death.
  • So, the Riddler forces Batman to solve his riddles and find the trophies he's hidden in Arkham City to prove that he is smarter than the Dark Knight. Okay. But what about the trophies he placed for Catwoman? Does he want to prove that he's smarter than Catwoman too? She's not exactly known for being a genius. And it's not a case where the trophies are intended for Batman but only Catwoman can access them; if you try to grab one as Batman, Riddler explicitly tells you that it's not for you.
    • There are a couple possible explanations: 1) He knows she's a sometimes ally of Batman, and wants to test her skills so he'll know what he's up against if she ever decides to try and take him down. 2) He's bitter that she's considered a better thief than him, and is trying to humiliate her by showing that she's incapable of "stealing" all the trophies.
    • My personal off-the-wall theory was that Eddie put out those trophies for Catwoman because he liked her and wanted to impress her with how clever he was. Also, notice, while Batman gets zapped if he tries to take a Catwoman trophy, Catwoman can pick up Batman trophies just fine.
  • Couple of things about the combat system:
    1. Why can't Batman block shield attacks? I'm pretty sure he has the physical strength necessary to put out his hands and just stop the shielded guy's attempted thrusts. We're talking about a man who bench presses a thousand pounds.
      • The shields the thugs are using are a new kind of riot shield. Push a button on the handle and the entire shield turns into a tazer. (Note that when you get hit with a shield, the screen does the same "static" effect it does when a thug with a stun stick hits you.) Just grabbing the shield would get Bats nothing but zapped.
    • For starters, I'm fairly certain it is physically impossible for anyone to bench press a thousand pounds. As for why he can't stop the thrusts, it would hurt Batman more to try and block it, since all the force of the blow would be concentrated on his arms and the shield doesn't have a good spot for him to get a grip while it's heading towards him.
    1. Why do Batman and Catwoman let blade-wielders have multiple swings before taking them down? Batman in particular has armguards that can deflect even the katanas of Talia's guards, so why are these highly-trained martial artists giving their attackers more than one chance to attack?
    • They're waiting for them to overcommit themselves to an attack, trying to knock them out sooner would have resulted in getting slashed. Before that point if they tried to go for a KO the attacker was in a position to bring the blade back along to stab Batman/Catwoman in the side, AND the blade hand is a full arm's length away. For example the normal blade fiends slice horizontally, and can simply bring the blade back easily to stab Batman, but the last hit they're going down vertically, which is when Batman grabs their wrist because it's right in front of him instead of a full-arm's length away.
    1. How the fudge does wearing improvised armor protect you from punches thrown by a human being who has trained himself to physical perfection? Armor helps against piercing and cutting attacks, but the concussive force of a blunt attack will still carry through—unless I failed physics somewhere.
    • Probably because Batman isn't punching them as hard as he can, since that would be needlessly exhaustive. When he does ground take-downs or dive kicks he puts more force into it to take them down.
    • The armor is padded, helping to absorb the shock of the punches. This is most likely due to the henchmen knowing that Batman never, if at all, uses weapons (gadgets, yes, but not guns or knives or whatnot) when in combat.
  • Regarding the total lack of concern the police had for the officer murdered by Penguin:
    • The seven remaining officers travel from the entry foyer to the iceberg lounge, stopping to gather weapons and construct a barricade. Yet despite passing within feet of the body, none of them bother to retrieve their fellow officers remains (it is still where it originally fell).
      • The place is swarming with criminals, both inside and outside; it's sad that their colleague is dead, but he is dead, and they have to put the men who are still alive first and get them to a position of safety before they can start wringing their hands over their dead colleague. Carrying around a body is both heavy and time-consuming; at the very least, it's at least two guys who are now able to carry less stuff which could be used to defend themselves and are now in a weaker position to defend themselves should they be attacked by anyone, which could lead to them getting killed.
    • One of the officers is seen playing with Penguin's umbrella gun that was used to murder the officer, even accidentally firing a shot. This weapon was used to murder a police officer, and the culprit has not yet faced trial. You would assume they would set it aside (they have plenty of other weapons), or that The World's Greatest Detective would suggest to stop contaminating evidence.
      • The Penguin is already in prison, and has commited so many crimes and left so much proof (all the trophy cases pretty much contain admissions of guilt) that it honestly wouldn't make a difference. Of course, since it's Gotham, he'll probably get off lightly.
      • And the cop's not playing with it; he's arming himself with it. They're the only seven-or-however many police officers in an entire city-region swarming with criminals; they need all the weapons they can get their hands on, and the umbrella gun appears to be a pretty formidable one, so they'd be fools not to use it if it gave them an advantage. It's a pretty desperate situation and the chain of evidence can probably take a backseat to staying alive at that point; not much point preserving it if you're going to be dead. Not to mention that fingerprints aside, an umbrella gun is still a pretty rare, unique and distinctive choice of weapon; it shouldn't be too hard to link it back to the Penguin..
    • Might be a spare. In some incarnations Oswald has several different umbrella weapons kept together. Why not keep an extra rifle handy?
  • OK, Batman fans, there is this one place in Arkham City that is right between Park Row and Amusement Mile. There is an REC door but when you open it all there is behind it is a brick wall, one that looks similar to the fake brink wall to the Riddler's Death Traps. However nothing opens it, not even three Explosive Gel. Does anyone know why its there?
    • Not sure about the location, but if I'm correct, that's part of the solution to a Riddler riddle. Turn on detective mode when you look at it.
  • Why does Penguin have speakers in his throat?
    • Well Penguin is a smoker...
  • Just to check, in the Arkham Verse, is the Lazarus Pit under Gotham the only pit, or is it like the regular DC with multiple ones around the globe? I ask because Ra's was making a pretty big deal about that one pit (building Wonder City around it, coming back decades later and ordering his men to dig down to it). You'd think that if there was more than one he'd have easier access to another (I may well have missed mention of other Lazarus Pits...).
    • You forget that He's behind Hugo Strange, so he does have an interest in keeping his Pit underneath Arkham City secure. As for building Wonder City around it, he was using it as an experiment and Gotham was the perfect place to put it in.
  • How do the various gangs move about Arkham city? The roads are all broken, blocked, etc... And that's not even counting the places that are, errr, vertically unreachable without flight, a grapple gun, or wall-clinging powers. Heck, the Industrial district has no land linking it to the rest of Arkham City, so how does the Joker send his people places? How does Harley Quinn even manage to go to the GCPD?
    • The henchman getting to roofs and such can be fanwanked by saying they can actually enter the buildings and you can't. No explanation for the stuff that is cut off by water though.
      • Perhaps they... swim?
        • In the middle of winter and with no protective clothing? Not a very good idea.
      • Some of them got trapped when Joker's crew took out the bridges. Other might be using rafts.
      • There's subway tunnels under Arkham City, and presumably other kinds of underground networks as well; could be that some of them haven't yet been flooded in those areas and so can still be used to get from place to place by the inmates. Batman doesn't find or use them because he doesn't need to, having his glider cape and grapple guns and such.
    • You can see Joker's Mooks all over the Subway tunnels, which lead directly into Penguin's territory.
  • Maybe I'm not all that clear on how the Creeper's powers work, but why didn't Jack Ryder just transform when those guys were beating him down?
    • Refer to the post further above the page. In short, either Jack Ryder isn't the Creeper in this continuity, or he isn't aware that he is.
      • I think we have to go with "Ryder isn't the Creeper". If he was, getting his ass handed to him would've been the perfect impetus to say, "Much as I hate it, change time". (Assuming, for the sake of the arguement, Jack's Creeper powers in the Arkhamverse work the same as in the D Cverse.)
      • According to his Asylum profile he is the Creeper, so either they retconed that out in City or for an unamed reason he declined to become Creeper.
      • This is a tad weak, but the game's prequel comics note a rivalry between him and Vicki Vale and even after being beaten down by thugs and nearly being killed by Deadshot, he's still determined to be the one that breaks the story to the public, not wanting to let "that Vale bitch" take it from him, as well as get back at Strange by telling everyone what he had done. It's possible that he kept himself from turning into the Creeper because he was just that determined to do this, perhaps thinking that transforming would hinder him. This seems a bit silly to me, but I can't really think of any other explanation. I would note that perhaps he simply hasn't become it yet, as there seems to be some Story and Gameplay Segregation with the profiles sometimes talking about things that haven't happened yet in-universe - for example I believe the Lazarus Pits are mentioned in Ra's' profile in Arkham Asylum, yet in Arkham City Batman's learning about it for the first time - if it weren't for the fact that Vale mentions the Creeper in an interview with Sharp, meaning he canonically exists already, and I kinda doubt it's someone other than Ryder...
  • Way back before Arkham City got all controversial, Hugo Strange was by all accounts a Villain with Good Publicity. And chances are he wanted to keep it that way in order to get the whole thing off the ground. Why then, when he was making a deal with Mad Hatter, a deranged, schizophrenic and possibly pedophelic madman with mind-control technology, in which he hires him to kidnap and brainwash the mayor in order to get everything he needs, even going so far as to bribe him with some unseen kidnapped woman (or girl), did he decide to TAPE THE WHOLE CONVERSATION?? Mad Hatter would have been easy enough to throw in Arkham City, but imagine if somebody besides Batman found those tapes? What if they had been found before he had gotten all the power he did?? You'd think a Magnificent Bastard such as Hugo would be a little smarter than that!
    • It's either just Gameplay and Story Segregation, to let the player get a look into the background workings of Strange's plan, or that, as a psychologist, he just kept the habit of taping things. He's insanely smart, had both an army of brainwashed soldiers and the League of Assassins at his back, so he probably felt pretty secure.
    • Mention Strange is full of himself and like Riddler leaving riddles or Two Face's duality recording his "therapy" sessions is just his thing.
  • Story and Gameplay Segregation, I know, I know, but still. Freeze gives ONE freeze grenade to Batman. ONE. How come Bats has all those marvelous infinite grenades by the time he faces Clayface? Where is he getting those things? They're not Wayne Tech. They're not around the map. Freeze never said he would give him more. I know the desingners just wanted to use the cool new toy at the boss battle, but damn. Not even a little explanation?
    • Same place he keeps his infinite Batarangs, infinite explosive gel, infinite...
  • So... where are Talia's elite assassins by the time she's killed? Wouldn't that be a good moment to flip the ***** out and help Batman in a fight?
    • Ra's probably restrained them on his tower after he tried to kill her. You know, she could get mad and try to kill him herself and take all his organization, and the last thing he wants is a woman running the League of Assassins. Alternatively, they were drinking soda with Robin.
  • At the very least Robin is confirmed for this universe. Nightwing is only DLC and not shown or to my knowledge mentioned in the story. Barbara is Oracle by this point so there may or may not be a Batgirl at this point. Still between being sick and Protocol 10 (which Batman has no reason to suspect is murder everybody and given the difference in power between the Gotham Rogues and the Metropolis Thugs is even MORE reason to do what I'm proposing) why didn't Batman immediately call in all guns?
    • Because there is other crap going on? Joker tainting the blood supply will cause riots (having a cape helping the cops is a smart move, so let's say Robin). Gotham DOES have more villains (the various crime families in addition to countless other super-villains like Firefly, so let's say Nightwing or the Birds of Prey). I think, at this point, Batman also suspected Ra's was involved in Protocol 10 and he knew Joker would probably kill Talia if he saw anyone but Batman. So let's ignore making sure Gotham as a whole is safe, and focus on Protocol 10. Nightwing and Robin can focus on helping people to safety while Batman goes after Strange (and Ra's). And Joker and Talia are left for the endgame because they are, sadly, less of an immediate threat. Remember, Batman trained the entire Batfamily, he doesn't need to hold their hands. They generally know where they can best be deployed (except for poor Tim).
      • Original Poster here. I mean before that. As soon as Joker poisoned him the first time at the Steel Mill if not earlier. Arkham City is pretty big, there are are at least five (Joker, Two-Face, Penguin, Riddler and Ivy) Super Criminals on the loose with several other probables (Croc, Scarecrow, Black Mask, Freeze) loose in Arkham City to say nothing of the countless regular villians. If Arkharm City doesn't rate all hands on deck at the beginning, and it still doesn't after Bats is so sick he's hallucinating what exactly does qualify calling in help? I guess my larger problem is I don't understand why Nightwing or Robin even exist in this continuity if Batman is so adamant about not needing help that things can get as bad as they get in Arkham City and he not only doesn't ask for help, he actively turns it down.
    • The Batman in this universe is shown to be both incredibly stubborn and unwilling to accept help from others (did you forget that Robin's sole appearance in the game is him essentially being blown off by Batman, despite the latter being close to death from poisoning?). It's totally in-character for him to refuse to ask for assistance from the rest of the Bat Family.
      • As for Nightwing, he is mentioned in a Vickie Vale interview along with Huntress.
    • Batman's initial plan was simply to figure out what Protocol 10 was. Calling in all his buddies to beat the crap out of every inmate in Arkham City would not be the best way to conduct that investigation—if anything, it could have made Strange play his hand sooner. Before Batman was poisoned, he had no reason to think there was anything really dangerous going on in Arkham City other than his own suspicions. After he was poisoned, the solution still looked relatively simple: go to Freeze, kick Freeze's ass until he makes a cure, and fix everything. Things got worse after that, and his buddies were needed in Gotham to keep things under control. Besides, he managed to save the day again anyway without them.
  • How does The Joker know his blood type is the same as Batman's? It seems to me that there's a huge possibility that they're both different blood types and so when he gave Batman his blood via the drip Batman would keel over and die quickly from his body rejecting it.
    • Wasn't Joker O negative?
    • And, hey, what's the worst thing that can happen? Batman refuses to help him and he's... exactly where he started. By which I mean, dead. Might as well try.
  • How did Riddler set up some of his riddles? The trophies, cameras, camera control consoles, and most of the riddles and breakables could have been set up months before Batman arrived, but some of the breakables and two of the riddles clearly are not present at the time when Batman first passes through the areas they appear in. The riddle concerning Mr Freeze and his wife can be considered plausible, as Riddler could have known where Nora was and guess that Freeze would either find her or be told of her location eventually, but what about the one concerning the Abrovomici brothers? He had no way of knowing that the two would reconcile when he posited that riddle to Batman, much less the exact room the reunion would take place in.
    • For some of the riddles, we can perhaps assume that he's only referring to the subject of the riddle, not necessarily the specific surroundings or circumstances in which Batman deduces it (the map, in this case, works as a tool for the player, not necessarily a tool for Batman). While naturally he can't predict precisely if or where the Abrovomic brothers would reconcile, he does know that the subject of the spoiler is something that's in the prison and that Batman could conceivably come across at some point. In this case, Batman happens to come across it at that specific location, makes the link there, and solves the riddle; in-universe he could conceivably solve it somewhere else, but that's just where he happens to make the mental link required to solve it.
  • When Strange was run through by Ra's, he bled. This is expected. When Joker was run through by Talia, he didn't bleed. This makes sense, since the person being impaled was really Clayface acting as Joker's Body Double. But when Ra's ran himself through, there was no blood. Why?
    • 'cause he's so old his blood is dust? Like Mr Burns?
    • Maybe we just couldn't see the blood through the breastplate he was wearing. Although that does raise the question of why he was wearing armour which could be so easily pierced.
      • Easily pierced by his really cool sword, after already enduring repeated blows from Batman.
  • Why didn't Catwoman just take the briefcases with her when she went to save Bats? Seems like it would kill two birds with one stone.
    • They are heavy and she wouldn't be able to climb around or fight with both hands full. Though, after her boss fight with Two Face, Catwoman does go and collect all that stuff by beating up his lieutenants.
    • Okay, I accept that they were too heavy to carry and jump around with, I've seen enough of her fighting style that I'm certain that while it would look like the most absurd Jackie Chan fight scene ever she is quite capable of hand to hand with two briefcases. That doesn't explain however why she didn't take a whopping ten seconds to stash them better. There were overhead vents she'd climbed through, she could probably have thrown them in a trash can pretty much anything but what she did. Also aside from a little fetish fuel for us why was Catwoman casually strolling away from Batman not sprinting the way you would be if you'd left two breifcases worth of one assumes gold and the like. (It glowed when she opened it and the common thugs like it enough to keep it. The average mook wouldn't know how to fence a Jade Tiger certainly not inside Arkham City so it wasn't likely to deep into her theme. It probably wasn't cash which is probably equally worthless but perhaps not.)
      • Slowing down at all would've wasted the time possibly needed to save Bats.
  • A recent edit on the main page brings up a good point - the Arkham City Stories mention that Ra's discovered the Lazarus Pits in this adaption by seeing them bring Solomon Grundy back to life. The same stories also cite Grundy as originally coming back in the 19th century, and Ra's as being around six hundred years old, as is in most adaptions. So how exactly did he live long enough without Lazarus to discover this? Is the Arkham-verse secretly set in the 2400s?
    • He discovered the Gotham Lazarus Pit in the 19th century, but that doesn't mean he didn't already know about others. Granted, the same story claims that he believed Lazarus could be used to "defeat... death itself" which suggests he didn't already have that ability at the time, but it could be interpreted as meaning that up to that point he used the rejuvenating powers of Lazarus to extend his life and only worked out how to outright raise the dead in the 19th century.
  • Why does everyone seem to believe Joker's child will be a son? All we know is that Harley is pregnant. She could very well give birth to a daughter.
    • It may be because everyone's expecting the kid to grow up to be just like their father, and associating that with the Like Father, Like Son trope.
    • She has a son in the Batman Beyond canon if I'm not mistaken.
      • Harley has two twin granddaughters in Batman Beyond, but it's never mentioned if they related to Harley through their mother or father. You're probably thinking of when Tim Drake is abducted by the Joker and Harley and turned into "Joker Jr."
    • Male pronouns are as close as the English language gets to generic. Also, because it doesn't even slightly matter what the gender of a fetus is for any reason except buying the right color of generic Baby stuff to present as a gift, and Batman is very unlikely to attend Harley's baby shower as a guest, so who the Hell cares?
  • Whatever happened to the criminally insane mooks like the Lunatics or the High Security Henchmen from the first game? Arkham City is meant to be a prison for both regular inmates and the psychotic patients from Arkham Asylum, but all the mooks themselves are just typical Blackgate thugs who are cruel and dangerous but not particularly insane.
    • It was mentioned somewhere that the lunatics were used as target practice by Penguin, and the High Security Inmates probably joined up with one of the gangs.
  • Why are people thinking the game is sexist just because some thugs call Catwoman a "bitch"? Catwoman is a former prostitute in one of her origin stories if I'm not mistaken.
    • I seriously doubt any of the random Mooks on the street are aware of that. But regardless, they are in a prison, with less than a handful of women with men all over the place. Men who are mostly all thugs. Not like they'd be using very PC language.
    • That's just fans being over-sensitive. It's ridiculous to label a game sexist because the villains are acting sexist. The devs clearly don't expect you to agree.
      • Strangely, some of those same fans were complaining that the thugs' language being realistic was not an excuse. And then some would turn around and complain that the game is also sexist because Catwoman's costume is impractical for winter. In other words, unrealistic.
      • The dev team is a bunch of guys. Sometimes when something like this is made the few female characters do come out unrealistic, it's not good but that's what happens. Especially when the focus is on a male protagonist and male villains.
      • I don't think that's fair to say about the devs. The female characters have pre-determined personalities from the comics; the writers wrote the women accordingly. If there's a failing in how they're portrayed, it would be the "fault" of the comics, not the game itself.
        And I'm going to chime in on the "sexist" accusations: people are being idiots. It would be absolutely ridiculous for a city full of male criminals who happily follow extremely disturbed individuals to also be feminists who treat women as equals and would never dream of slut shaming or using derogatory language. All the men being sexist assholes are criminals. They're murderers. And statistically, at least some of them must be rapists. That's not a winning combination for gender equality. I'm honestly stunned that anyone would consider the game/writers to be sexist for writing the thugs this way.
        • See, I don't think they really do. They know that the word is sexist, and it makes them uncomfortable, and it was put in the game on purpose. These are, after all, the villains. They're supposed to be awful people, and that is signaled by having them indulge in speech habits that are generally upheld (with good reason) to be awful.
      • Also, the most Elite Mooks in the game are a bunch of utterly badass women, the women Batman saves from Joker's people (one doctor, one nurse, and one TV reporter) are all tough and cool-headed (Vickie Vale comes off much better than Jack Ryder did under similar circumstances, and the kidnapped doctor is smart enough to arm herself and attack anyone who comes after her, for example), and thugs taunt their male enemies just as much as they do Catwoman. So, yeah, no excuse for the "sexist" thing.
    • Incidentally, Bruce Wayne also gets called "bitch" in the game, and the convicts talk about a lot more disturbing stuff than just calling a female character by this expletive, for example how fun they've had torturing people to death in horrible detail. For some reason people find the latter funny but "bitch" offensive. The game does have an unfortunate sexist side in its depiction of female characters (could we have one who doesn't dress like a fetish model?), but the way the convicts talk is not a part of the issue.
  • Where are the female prisoners? There has to have been a section of blackgate for female convict, if not just a section then a whole prison made for them. Where are they?
    • They're invisible! ...But seriously, I think that's just something the devs didn't want to deal with. A possible in-game explanation: from the comments the thugs make, both to each other and to Catwoman, it's pretty clear what would happen if they mixed the genders. I'm assuming that the women are housed in an area that Batman never goes to (maybe inside the facility itself, rather than the city?) because there's no threat there for him to deal with. All the villains are male save for Poison Ivy (who is not currently an active threat and is best left the hell alone regardless) and Harley Quinn (just leave her with her puddin', and no one gets hurt). There's also Catwoman, who has her own apartment. All of them are perfectly capable of defending themselves, and Catwoman and Ivy wouldn't find breaking out very difficult. Might as well let them roam.
    • Maybe they're hiding in the buildings we can't enter. There WERE a lot of houses and apartments in Arkham City, no one ever said they were empty.
      • That would make sense. The whole game takes place in one night, they could simply be indoors.
    • It wouldn't explain all those thugs talking about how they never see any women (except Harley, Catwoman, and Nora Fries' frozen silhouette), though.
    • It's possible Blackgate doesn't have a female wing at all and the few female prisoners we see are either from Arkham Asylum (Harley and Ivy were both in Asylum) or possibly broke in (Catwoman, Talia and her ninjas). Considering nothing in the story indicates that Arkham City is really THAT secure (Robin apparently flies in, does his bit and flies out. Batman's costume gets in within minutes of being summoned. Clayface isn't supposed to be in Arkham at all. The men are all complaining about the lack of women. It seems to me that Blackgate either didn't have women at all or they just stayed at Blackgate.
  • I have just finished the Riddler Rooms and theres something odd. In the final room theres a list of people in the room where riddler is typing on the computer and thinking of riddles. Some of the people on the list have their names crossed out in red, perhaps meaning they are dead. But if you turn around and count the number of people in the room there are too many people even if you assume the crossed out ones are still alive. Whats going on?
    • Maybe they're the names of people he considered putting in his deathtraps? The crossed-out ones could be people he rejected for whatever reasons.
  • Maybe I'm the only one who doesn't get it, but, I'm not entirely sure what the point of Joker using Clayface to trick Batman into thinking he had taken the cure was. Oh, I understand the point of using Clayface to double for him, keeping up appearances is an extremely valid concern among his gang and his rivals. But using it to mislead Batman the way he did doesn't make sense. In fact, it seems counter intuitive. To simplify, after Harley steals the cure, Joker, or rather, clayface Joker, basically taunts Batman, saying, "Ha, I got the cure and you don't, if you want any chance of living, you better come get me!" Then a very long sequence of Batman fighting through the steal mill, then through snipers, then clayface, to finally come face to face with real Joker, who says to Batman, basically, "No seriously, give me the cure." "But you got the cure!" ofcourse Batman would say that! that's what "Joker" said. But if Joker still needed the cure, what was the purpose of luring Batman in, when Joker should know Batman doesn't have the cure? He knows Batman doesn't have the cure because he uses the cure to lure Batman in the first place! Joker should know that Harley stole the cure, but then someone stole it from harley. (he may not neccesarily know Talia did it.) Joker still needs the cure. He should be trying to reign Batman back in to go get the cure for him, but he doesn't. He lies, wastes everyone's time, (including his own,) and for no discernable purpose. It was only coincedence that Talia stole it and showed up with it. Joker couldn't have known she had it. The game trumps this all up, like Clayface imitating joker is this huge shocking game changing twist, but as far as getting the cure for himself, I don't really see the point.
    • Remember that Harley hadn't checked in with the cure because Talia stole it, so he thought Batman either had it, or needed it because someone had stolen it. Joker being Joker, he probably thought that Bats would hunt down anyone who had the cure with them, and if he thought Joker already had some of the cure, he would be even more hellbent on the search because now he was dying AND Joker was healthy. Or maybe he just felt like it and made shit up as he went.
    • As Joker points out, Arkham City's the last place you want people to think you're sick and dying. It could also have served as a morale-boost to his men for the assault on Gotham (which you see in the Nonstandard Game Over if Catwoman runs off with the loot.)
      • Still doesn't make sense. We don't know exactly how long Arkham Asylum was open or how quickly the disease set in but it was common knowledge that Joker was dying. By pretending to be well he lowered his chances of getting a cure since Bats would either take it or ship it out of Arkham to deal with the infected civillians. It makes sense to have a back up plan mind you but even for Joker this was irrational. As or h Nonstandard Game Over it's unlikely that was the plan and not just dumb luck. He didn't know about Protocol 10 (assuming he's not lying) and its in it's chaos (presumably that he escapes) given the body count we hear about I don't think that was hours after he escaped, that was at least days. Unless the long term plan at that point was for Clayface to become Joker full-time, which may have been Clayface's plan. He certain doesn't seem to have told Joker about the immortality bath that's not to far away and it's not guarded by anything capable of stopping Clayface and Mr. Hammer.
  • How did Catwoman get to the steel mill in time. The sewer exit she took was far from the steel mill, and was in the bowery. How did she cross town quick enough to break in and save him
  • The floor in the Iceberg Lounge. Penguin blows it up to knock you into Grundy's chamber, but when you go back to get the Mine Disruptor from the cops, it's completely intact.
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