Batman: The Animated Series/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • How is it in "Pretty Poison" that Harvey Dent passes out 30 seconds after he's poisoned, yet Batman is able to 1. Survive it, but 2. survive it in the middle of a fire and 3. survive it while jumping around, which would increase his heartbeat and spread the poison faster.
    • Because Batman's more badass than Harvey Dent.
  • Batman uses his Batman voice rather than his Bruce Wayne voice whenever he's alone with Robin and/or Alfred. This implies that either he's more comfortable in his invented superhero persona than his real lself or that this is in fact his real voice (i.e. he sees Bruce Wayne as a disguise for Batman, not the other way round). Either way, he seems to be a messed up person.
    • Secret Identity Identity is made explicit in Batman Beyond. Also: Batman being messed up is the point.
    • In the DVD commentary the writers directly state the Batman is his true personality while Bruce Wayne is a persona he adopts.
  • In "Harley's Holiday", why didn't Batman just let Harley skip town? He'd have one less villain to worry about. Instead, back to Arkham with you, where the one guy who made you turn to crime is waiting.
    • Been a while since I've seen that episode but I can definitely tell you that Batman is (a) a control freak, who would want his enemies where he can see them, and (b) the kind of fellow who would consider it unethical to let someone as dangerous as her be someone else's problem in another town. He's obsessive and unyielding.
    • That episode is pretty clear that Bats honestly wants Harley cured. Add to it the episode about Arkham becoming more prison-like:

Lock-up: "I was working WITH you Batman! You apprehended the scum of the earth, and I kept 'em locked away!"
Batman: "I've seen how you treat your prisoners: forgotten and scared, without hope or compassion."
Lock-up: "Can it be you actually care for those creatures? You're just as crazy as they are!"

    • Also Batman stuck with her to protect from an Angry Cop, a vengeful Mob Boss, and the world's most over protective Dad.
    • In this case, Batman knows and understands full well that Harley is merely the victim of circumstance and is trying to help her from everyone else who's after her; it's only when she finally snaps under the pressure and decides to begin throwing bombs around that he has to intervene to return her to Arkham. If he'd managed to get things under control before then he'd have probably just let her go.
    • Also consider that by letting her skip town, he wouldn't have been doing her any favors. She had assaulted people, taken a hostage, caused several traffic accidents in a stolen car... hell, she was committing crimes I don't know the name for (What do you call it when someone sics a pair of hyenas on a security guard?). Getting outside the city limits wouldn't have voided the arrest warrant that was surely pending, it would have just gotten her outside Batman's jurisdiction. Better to capture her himself as gently as possible than let her remain at large as a fugitve, and get gunned down by a SWAT team two towns over.
      • I know that a dog can be considered a deadly weapon which makes the charge Assault With A Deadly Weapon so they'd probably treat the hyenas the same way.
    • It's usually heavily implied that the police either can't or don't capture super criminals. Considering that none of the major criminals serve their entire sentence, they break out and in Joker's case have mundane problems like not having the money to afford bullets. Had Harley skipped town even with those crimes (which lets face it are fairly minor in Batman, its not like she gased an entire city or attempted to get fear toxin into the entire city or attempted to nuke the city or. . .I'm gonna stop now.) the police would probably have taken the same hands off approach they seem to take in general. Basically if Harley is holed up in some house not hurting anybody it's safer in general to leave her be than it is to try to take her into custody.
  • In "The Forgotten" Batman saves the fat villain from the massive explosion, what happened to all the mooks he just knocked out?
    • They probably died. To be fair, he couldn't have known chubs was going to drop an oil lamp on a crate of explosives.
      • Indeed, Batman would have saved the person he was most likely able to actually save, or was closest to him, or if you were to take a more cold and pragmatic approach the one most likely to give him valuable intel about his current case (if he could only save one person). He doesn't kill, and he does try to save every life that he can, but that doesn't mean he's going to stand there and let himself get blown up just because he couldn't save everybody.
    • They're fine- they were wearing helmets.
  • This troper doesn't like it that this show, along with Superman: The Animated Series and Pinky and The Brain, is on Toon Disney. I mean, yeah, the shows are good, but they're Warner Bros. cartoons that, by all means, just don't belong on a Disney-owned network. Surely I'm not the only one who thinks that.
    • ... What?
    • Hey, at least they're on TV at all.
    • It's not a rational response, but you're not alone - I get a shudder from it, too. But that may be due to my pathological hatred of Disney. (And, of course, my obsessive adoration of Batman.)
    • They do censor the shows... further... so that's a valid worry.
    • Your whole reasoning for not liking the show is who it is syndicated to? Really? That's sorta weak, man.
      • Not at all. He's saying he likes the show, but doesn't like the censorship that Disney is putting it through.
      • He should have said something about the editing then, instead of "I don't like it because it's disney owned" Whatever, No natter war
        • He does not ever say that. He says quite clearly that he doesn't like THAT the show is on Toon Disney, not that he doesn't like THE SHOW because it's on Toon Disney.
  • You know, those two guys in the opening didn't really do anything. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time; they're clearly surprised when the bank blows, and proceed to run away rather than, say, rob the bank in the confusion.
    • He was chasing them because they had stolen the Green Lantern Ring Wayne Enterprises had gotten it's hands on for study, and planned to use it to destroy Metropolis for Doctor Poison, who the daily planet was writing an expose on because he was using ground nth metal to power a furnace to burn Jonn Jonz, who the flash was trying to free.
    • On closer inspection, it is strange that two men would blow up the bank after robbing it. However, if they were innocent, they probably wouldn't have run from the police, climbed all the way up a fire escape, and tried to kill Batman on sight.
    • They were just the lookouts. There was a guy (or guys) inside wiring up the safe to blow it open. Unfortunately, either the explosives the robber(s) inside had were just a bit too powerful and/or the robber wiring them up wasn't as good as he thought he was, blowing him and a large portion of the bank up sky high in the process. The two lookouts, seeing that the plan had gone south in a hurry, decided to cut their losses and leg it, unaware that the Batman was already on their tail.
    • Complaining about plot holes in the opening?! Did anyone consider that the chase was just passing the bank? We don't need to know what the criminals Batman is chasing in the opening did; we just need to know that he's chasing criminals!
      • A bit of fun, dude, it's just a bit of fun.
      • Knowing Batman he probably had already pieced together the clues about what these two were planning in advance. He just arrived a little too later to stop them is all. Plus they pulled guns on him first. Bad move. Batman had to defend himself.
    • Maybe they blew up the bank as an insurance scam?
      • I believe that counts as "doing something."
  • What the hell was with Batman removing Clayface's one chance at being human? Earlier in that episode he said he had people wiling to help with his problems and by the time he got to Stella's place, he could clearly see that Hagen was becoming more defined feature wise, meaning that the process was working. so WTF? I would pay an arm and a leg to see the audio commentary explaining that.
    • At the end of the first Clayface story, Batman offered Hagen a chance to turn himself in and get a possible cure; instead, Hagen fakes his death so he can keep his powers and his freedom. It's stated early in "Mudslide" that the MP-40 will not remove Hagen's powers, but rather wil enhance them so that he can shapeshift and hold any form indefinitely. When Batman does interrupt the experiment, he tells Hagen to come with him for a cure, just as he did the first time; Hagen chooses to fight for his freedom, despite being a wanted criminal, rather than face the music and get his cure a little later. Remember, it's not the interrupted treatment alone that kills him, it's the fact that he fell into the water while trying to *kill Batman* for *daring to suggest that he needs to go into custody for his crimes* that does it. From Batman's perspectivce, and based on the plot itself, noone is "removing Clayface's one chance at becoming human;" he's just insisting that Clayface get his cure under conditions that don't let the superpowered, willing-to-murder narcissist get away scot-free.
    • Maybe he didn't trust Stella not to have made a scientific error that might damage Hagen. Still, he should have foreseen that engaging Clayface in a fight was the absolute worse thing he could possibly do, considering the instability that was already present in his structure.
    • Well, the safe containing the MP-40 he stole from Wayne Biomedical was clearly marked DANGER. It could have been one of those cures that works at first but then slowly kills you or gives you even worse side-effects. Bruce Wayne could have known MP-40 was not safe as a long-term cure, which is why he chose to interrupt and have professionals help Hagen later ("the lab boys can take it from here"). He didn't plan on Stella freaking out and tackling him or for Clayface to engage him in a battle outside in the rain and melt.
    • It might have been Batman being paranoid. At the end of his first episode, Clayface fakes his death- complete with electricity and involuntary shapeshifting and final words. Maybe Batman just figured it would be best to play it safe, and it spun out of control, as mentioned above.
    • Also Batman was pursing Clayface for his previous crimes too, which include but are not limited to attempted murder. Had he come quietly they might have allowed him and Stella to continue the treatments. Not to mention that Clayface actually didn't give a damn about Stella and was using her to keep himself alive and maybe find a cure. This is apparent when he simply parrots a line from one of his movies in an attempt to keep her. Remember that even before his transformation Matt Hagen was an egotistical jerk, which lead to his accident in the first place.
      • He did yell her name mournfully as he "died", that's got to count for something. Yes, he was extremely temperamental around her, but he was dying, anyone would be in a bad mood. The thing about repeating a line from the film could be an indicator not of fault in him, but in her, as it could mean that she's more in love with his characters than him, and thus he felt he had to answer as a character rather than as the real Hagen. Also, what evidence is there of him being an egotistical jerk before his transformation?
        • He could also have been screaming her name in rage and desperation, as in "(DAMMIT, HELP ME) STELLA!" Also it was implied in his first appearence that his jackassery as Matt Hagen is what led to the car accident that disfigured him in the first place. His only friend was his stunt double (I think), and from the way they talk about him no one else seemed to be able to stand the guy. As Linkara points out in in the Time Force installment of his History of Power Rangers there is a difference between having a sympathetic back story and actually' being a sympathetic character. Clayface has a sympathetic backstory that makes us feel sorry for him, but there is no hard evidence whatsoever that he's an actual sympathetic character. I'm sorry about everything that's happened to you matt, but you're still an asshole and a criminal.
  • Poison Ivy is depicted as a strict vegan. Why would anyone who is willing to kill people over plants eat only plants? People who love animals and fight for their rights as sentient beings don't eat animals all the time to express their love. They abstain from meat. Shouldn't Ivy be a carnivore?
    • Ivy's insane. Logic doesn't enter into it.
    • You don't have to kill a plant to gain nourishment.
    • One wonders why she can't just absorb sunlight through the chlorophyll in her skin.
      • For one, it doesn't provide enough energy for sustained movement, and for another, she only gained this ability relatively late in the series' run. In fact, to this troper's memory, only in the DCAU comic books that are set after the series proper had ended. In her appearances during the earlier B:TAS seasons, she is a normal human with artificial immunity to poisons. Only her later experimentations with plant DNA change this, or actually allow her to make a plant-clone of herself and retire.
    • Think about mulch; it's made of plants, therefore plants use the remains of other plants as a food source. How many plants do you know that eat meat?
      • Venus flytraps, pitcher plants, bladderwort and assumedly the giant man eating plants Ivy is fond of.
    • If she's willing to cut up flowers to make poisons she'd be willing to eat fruits and begtables, most of which exist to be eaten by animals anyway.
      • Not from where she is standing. Poison Ivy's whole shtick is her obsessive care for plants above any and all other life. She is willing to murder people to protect some flowers. It's so pathological that she even seems to be forgetting the vital role that animals have in plant reproduction. Yet still she is willing to personally partake of the plants she so obsessively protects. Perhaps she believes that the plants are giving her permission to take parts they don't need in order to continue her struggle?
        • But a flower has yet to reproduce, and picking it prevents it from wilting and producing seeds. I think Ivy gets angry not because they're killing the flower but because they're interfering with the plant reproduction. As for the poisons, presumably you could make them from a single petal, which would not necessarily cause the death of the flower.
    • Human beings (which is essentially what she still is) cannot live on a carniverous diet. As for her being a total vegan, though...I don't know, snobbery of animals so severe that she can't stomach eating them? Or something?
      • Actually human beings CAN live on a carnivorous diet. Inuits do so, as fresh fruits and vegetables are pretty scarce on the Arctic tundra. Just look up "No-carbohydrate diet" on The Other Wiki. The real question is: Where does Ivy get her vitamin B12 if she's a vegan?
        • Supplements? I have no idea when vitamin pills were invented so I don't know if that would be an anachronism.
    • As mentioned above, she's insane. My guess is that it's an attempt to work the plant theme further into her lifestyle just for the purpose of show. I wouldn't put it past the character. She's kind of an uppity bitch like that.
    • It's actually simple; she after large crimes against nature. She would have no problem with growing plants for food, but destroying the last pockets where a rare rose grows or clearing a large forest to produce cardboard will make her come after you.
    • Ivy doing anything but eating vegan would be insane, actually. Where do you think animals get their energy? It's basic ecology; there's a 10% transfer of energy (approximate) from one trophic level to the next. By eating plants herself, Ivy is preserving 90% of the pants that would be eaten by the animals she would be eating if she were strictly carnivorous. It's a net-gain for the plants.
    • It's entirely possible that Ivy's plant body can't process meat. We don't know what she is, biologically; there are no real life plant people to compare her to. Since she's willing to wear flowers as decoration and leaves and vines as clothing in many of her comic book incarnations, and since she's obviously willing to use plants in the name of science, we have to assume that she's pragmatic enough to accept small-scale damage to her babies for what she considers a good cause.
  • Here's what's been bugging me. In the episode, "Eternal Youth", Poison Ivy develops a serum that's powerful enough to grow entire forests in minutes. She wants to get revenge on industrialists who destroyed rain forests and other plant life. So she...turns them into trees? Small, human-sized trees? Isn't that thinking kind of small when you have the power to grow a whole new forest? And even if she was fixated on the whole revenge thing, she could have grown them over factories or businesses or something.
    • The process hadn't yet been made permanent. That's why they could turn the trees back into people. Presumably, Ivy wanted to keep them far from civilization until the effects did become permanent, and possibly transplant them afterwards to somewhere more suitable.
      • Yes, but why bother using it on humans at all? Who cares if the process isn't permanent on humans if she can restore forests? I think the only good answer for that comes back to "She's insane". There isn't enough murder in the "Single-handedly restore the rain forest" plan.
      • This one falls squarely under Laser-Guided Karma combined with a Green Aesop from Ivy's point of view. She's not trying to recreate the rainforest just with them, she's delivering an ironic form of punishment unto them for what she views as their sins. They destroy rainforests for greed, so she exploits their greed for longer life to transform them into part of the rainforests they so callously destroyed.
  • How can Mr. Freeze be both functionally immortal and unable to survive outside of sub-zero temperatures?
    • "Functionally immortal" means that you're immortal until something that can kill you does. In other words, you can't die of "natural causes", but you can die of anything else that's capable of killing you.
  • The Clock King has little clock hands on his glasses. How does he see properly?
    • A wizard did it.
    • What? You've never seen sunglasses with patterned lenses before?
      • No.
      • So...then you've never seen a pair of sunglasses?
    • Clock hands, as in little straight lines in close proximity to one's eyes. Yeah, real hard to see past...
    • This troper has personally worn sunglasses&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&start=0 these before and could see just fine.
  • Christmas with the Joker: How do you gag somebody by sticking a candy cane in their mouth? * loses sleep thinking about these things*
    • It tastes too good to spit out.
    • Stick it in sideways, or too far back.
    • Who says it's a normal candy cane?
      • That would do it, but he doesn't.
    • "If you spit this candy cane out, I'll shoot you in the face. Enjoy!"
      • But they react to them like they're gags. They try to yell through them and such. When he puts them in their mouths mid-sentence, they keep trying to talk for a couple of seconds but don't open their mouths and drop them in the process.
        • The Joker just put that in your mouth, Mr. Hostage. If you drop it and break it what else is he gonna put in there next!? Sounds like maybe you ought to be careful not to drop it then.
        • This troper always thought that the candy canes are coated with some kind of special glue. It's strong enough to stick on the lips and not be able to spat out, but weak enough to allow for a strong enough tug to tear away.
        • Adding to the above: presumably, the mysterious substance coating the candy canes reacted with saliva to form an adhesive. The Joker might even have rubbed a bit of something on his hands that counteract the effects.
  • Two-face: Why do the doctor and nurse recoil so dramatically at the sight of Harvey's scars? Didn't they see him when he first came in, when the sight would have been much nastier? Besides, this is a freakin' Gotham City hospital - surely they see worse on a regular basis.
    • Also, since when are burn scars sky blue?
      • Gotham chemicals. Just look at what chemicals did to Mr. Freeze; Dent's injury is tame by comparison.
      • If that's the case, we might as well just say A Wizard Did It.
        • No, we might be on to something. Besides Fries, this is the same town with chemicals that turned Jack Napier into the eclectically-colored Joker and made Clayface all but invincible. In fact, that's not a bad explanation -- they might have seen Harvey even more messed-up beforehand, but they weren't expecting him to be blue.
      • Different Doctor and Nurse? Hospitals have more than one of each.
      • Simpler explanation: It's a cartoon.
    • They might have expected his face to heal, and were shocked when it not only didn't, but possibly got worse.
      • LOOK at his face, it looks like it's partially melted, I know that the art style of the cartoon might not make it scary looking to you, but in real life that would be pretty horrifying.
        • True, but those who work in the burn ward are specifically trained to not show any negative reaction. The patients have already been through enough without their Doctors looking at them like freaks or monsters. A Nurse or Doctor reacting like they did in the show would never work with burn victims again! Of course, dramatic effect trumps all.
          • Remember, this is the pseudo 1940s. Doctor training was quite a bit different back then.
  • What's the Statue of Liberty doing in Gotham city in "Off Balance"?
    • The DCU as a whole doesn't really have a New York City, so maybe the statue is a Gotham landmark in this continuity.
      • Isn't Metropolis meant to be the New York analogue? As for the presence of the statue, perhaps it's the doing of some sort of space-time warping supervillain or something.
      • DCU logic often says that both Gotham and Metropolis are NYC, albeit below and above 125th Street, respectively. A one-time Atlas of the DCU placed Metropolis in NJ, with Gotham in Delaware. Take That! Wayne's World.
      • Actually, it's Metropolis in Delaware, and Gotham in New Jersey.
      • New York exists in the DCU and several heroes have been based there at some point, from Kyle Rayner to Wally West. It's just not as crowded as its Marvel counterpart.
      • I always thought Metropolis was New York during the day and Gotham was New York at night.
      • Frank Miller once said something similar. Batman writer and editor Dennis O'Neil once said, "Batman's Gotham City is Manhattan below Fourteenth Street at eleven minutes past midnight on the coldest night in November."
    • That's the Lady Gotham statue. In the 40s, Gotham decided they needed more tourism, and decided to just rip off the design of the Statue of Liberty with a few minor adjustments and call it their own landmark.
      • This is absolutely true in the Golden Age comics, where it's called "The Sentinel of Liberty" and carries a lantern rather than a torch. It even showed up in Batman Forever.
    • France has a much smaller model of the Statue of Liberty on an island in the Seine River. Gotham could have its own imitation, for whatever reason.
    • New York City exists in the DCU; Metropolis and Gotham are based on it thematically, but they aren't meant to be its fictional-universe counterparts.
    • I always get Boston impressions from Gotham that and Arkham Asylum.
  • How did Baby Doll plan to continue her fantasy if she blew her whole cast to death with that dynamite?
    • She was just going to kill Spunky, who, as you know, was just a Cousin Oliver. With his death, the cast would be back to its original members, and her plan would proceed from there.
    • She probably had not thought it through. She's delusional.
  • This is just a nitpick, but in Birds of a Feather, right after Veronica and the Penguin almost get mugged, watch out for this bit of poorly-staged and pointless animation: Veronica takes the Penguin's hat off and hands it to him, only from him to immediately put it back on.
  • In See No Evil, Ventrix seems to have studied the jewelry shop he robs in order to make his getaway, judging by how easily he finds that a door leads right to an alleyway. So why did he fail to acknowledge that said alleyway is under construction,which includes the pouring of wet cement that would detect his footprints and slow him down should something go wrong?
    • The construction started after he cased the place. Poured cement dries within hours.
      • Yeah, but drilling the old pavement away to lay the cement takes a few days.
      • So he assumed he'd make it out before the new cement was poured or after it dried. What's the problem here?
      • He also wasn't anticipating that Batman would be there and ready to pursue him; he might have had an alternative exit in mind or a way of getting around the cement without leaving prints, but Batman changed the game-plan a bit.
  • In the episode The Clock King, Batman drives around the city with Alfred as his chauffeur in broad daylight, and even makes a few stops in which he gets out of the car. What if someone had seen him and taken the license plate number?
    • And do what with it? He can't take his story to the papers because they'd just dismiss him as a kook ("Oh really, you were stalking Bruce Wayne's car and saw Batman burst out of it? Really? Security! Who let this nutjob into my office?"). And he certainly wouldn't get anywhere trying to blackmail Batman.
      • The hypothetical spectator could give the information to supervillains, Like Strange tried to do.
      • And why would they believe some random dude who claims he saw Batman appear out of Bruce Wayne's car?
      • Why couldn't Batman commandeer a helpful civilian's car, anyway?
        • If confronted he could say that that's exactly what was done. After all, Alfred being Batman's butler isn't exactly common knowledge isn't it?
  • Two questions about "Mask of the Phantasm", more precisely the "Batman vs GCPD" scene: First, how does Bruce survive that fall towards the end? Second, how come that no one in the GCPD is able to recognize Bruce Freakin' Wayne after he has lost his cape and cowl? For that matter, couldn't he have used smoke bombs or something to hide himself at least? Reminds me of Batman 701 where Bruce is shown to have a spare cowl in his utility belt. Then again, Grant Morrison being Grant Morrison, Bats might have been in a Batgod moment...
    • He was a good distance away, they mostly only saw him from behind and emotions were high. The cops were probably too focused on catching up to him to really notice and absorb his face. It's not a very desired charateristic of a police officer, but it probably happens a lot in the real line of duty when the situation has a high level of excitement.
  • The Robin suit...how the heck from TAS to TNA, how does Dick's old Robin suit totally get a new look yet some HOW be a perfect fit for little Tim Drake! Tim was like a young teenager in that series! When Dick left he was in college! The size and height difference! It just doesn't add up!
    • A planned, but never animated, scene from "Robin's Reckoning" would've shown Dick when he first became Robin as a much younger child right. Tim probably found a costume from that point in his career.
    • Four words: Alfred. Scissors. Sewing machine.
    • I'm pretty sure Tim wears an entirely different suit from Dick's old suit. because in Over the Edge when the police are chasing Bruce and Tim through the Batcave, Dick's old Robin suit is knocked over.
      • Except that's entirely non-cannon. While it's likely that Tim wears an entirely different suit "Over the Edge" is a Scarecrow induced nightmare and might not accurately portray anything to be honest.
    • Regardless, the suit Tim wears has to be one of Dick's old ones that just happens to fit Tim. When Tim comes in during The New Adventures, he's not recruited by Batman, he puts on a Robin costume on his own initiative and follows Batman and Batgirl to fight Two Face. Even Alfred wouldn't have been able to fabricate an entirely new costume in the time it takes for Tim to follow them (he got there halfway through the fight, so unless the delivery truck he hitched a ride on was faster than the Batmobile, he had to have left soon after Barbara and Bruce).
  • How come Paul Dini gets credit that belongs to Alan Burnett? I am constantly at a loss as to why Alan Burnett is left out when talking about the DCAU. This is not a knock on the amazingly talented Paul Dini, but Paul and many other writers worked FOR Alan, who was the driving creative force behind most all of the DCAU on the writing side, just as Bruce was on the art and production side.
    • Could you be more clear about what bothers you?
    • Not the original poster, but this is an issue that definitely makes me scratch my head as well. By and large, when people discuss the DCAU they seem to always credit it as a Bruce Timm/Paul Dini production, to the point where it's often referred to as the "Timmverse" or "Diniverse". What's strange about this is that Timm's partner and the head of the B:TAS writing staff was in fact Dini's boss, Alan Burnett. Paul Dini is, of course, a fantastic writer, but there is absolutely no logical reason why Burnett should get passed up for the credit he is due. If you take a look at the original B:TAS series bible, it's clear that in its early stages the show was shaping up to be a decent but unspectacular action cartoon; it's Burnett who was most responsible for making it into something truly special. So dude, where's his respect?
  • The Showdown episode's main story is Ra's Al Ghul's narrative of Jonah Hex foiling his plan to conquer America in 1883, and capturing his son and second-in-command, Arkady Duvall, who subsequently served 50 years of hard labour before wandering away, his mind shattered by the hardships he'd suffered. The old man Ra's kidnapped from the Gotham retirement home at the beginning of the episode is revealed to be a seemingly vegeative Arkady. How could Ra's, with all his intellect and resources (this is the man who deduced Batman's identity based on a worldwide survey of goods that could be used as Batman's equipment) have taken 60 years (assuming this is 1994-1995) to find his son, let alone lose track of him? And how did Arkady end up in a retirement home in Gotham having (presumably) spent years as a near-mindless homeless derelict?
    • Your assumption is wrong. Look at the cars people are driving, the clothing they are wearing and the weapons they use. Look at the planes as well and the World's Fair in Mask of the Phantasm is clearly the 1939 World's Fair. 50 years after 1883 would have been 1933, crazy old Arkady had probably been wandering around for less than a decade. He certainly hadn't been wandering around in that condition for nearly sixty years.
    • Well, remember that Arkady got captured partly because Ra's abandoned him, feeling he was unfit as an heir. He probably didn't keep track of him in prison because he had no more use for the boy. He may have a lot of resources, but he's not omniscient; he's still human, after all. Later on, he probably assumed he had died in the interim, or he was too busy with other plots to bother looking for a disowned son that he had no interest in, and who he probably didn't want trying to usurp him. Ra's then got some information on him much later and decided to go see his son.
  • When the goons are giving Matt Hagen an overdose of the chemical that turns him into Clayface, are they pouring it down his throat or just over his face? It's shown in silhouette, so it's hard to tell.
  • Watch 'Heart of Ice'. Watch the heart breaking scene when Batman sees Fries getting jumped by the big rich guy, and turned into Mr. Freeze. Now, really, that's one hell of a security camera, idn't it? Cutting to different angles that a security camera wouldn't show, going back and forth between faces for dialogue, conveniently being RIGHT there for incriminating action shots...that security camera is fucking amazing.
    • Yeah, the creators pretty much went on record to say this doesn't make any sense, but they did it for dramatic purposes.
    • This is incredibly common I'm going to suggest it as a new trope.
      • I'm pretty sure it exists as a trope already, actually.
      • Indeed.
  • "Mask of the Phantasm". Pre-Batman Bruce Wayne fights some thugs but gets distracted with Andrea and is defeated. Makes sense. However, afterwards he makes a rather drastic conclusion out of this that he should give up the relationship alltogether, since he "cannot be on the line with somebody waiting for him at home". Wait, isn't this the exact way every single soldier/policeman/firefighter/rescuer in the world operates? They are on the line, their relatives are back home worried sick. Obviously she's not supposed to be on the front line, but what makes him so different that he suddenly cannot combine dangerous work with family life?
    • Bruce isn't saying that nobody can handle it. He's saying he, personally can't handle it. He gives more or less the same reasons to Wonder Woman when she comes onto him in JLU.
      • Besides, not everyone have killer clowns hating their guts
      • Check the divorce rates between civilians and military and police personell. It's a fair statement to say that not MANY people can handle it. Bruce is just humble enough that he refuses to ruin another life, and potentially children's lives, by trying.
  • In Baby Doll's second appearance, why was she acting all kiddy-like when she was at home with Crocky? It made sense for her to act like that when they were committing crimes, since that's her schtick, but why act that way at home when she wants to have a relationship with him?
    • She's nuts. How did you miss that part from her first episode?
      • But she does act like a normal person in her first episode, when she wants to. Which leads us right back to the question. Is it possible, that Killer Croc is a pedophile and enjoys her acting like this? You know what, let's just drop this question.
      • Being nuts doesn't preclude occasional lapses into lucidity. As for Croc, you forget that he spent all his free time hanging out with bar floozies. If he was a pedophile he would have stayed home with Babydoll. It's quite apparent he sees her as a slightly annoying partner in crime, nothing more.
    • Dahl's particular brand of delusion is a fixation on the role she played as Babydoll. As such, she's only ever happy when she's being Babydoll. You'll notice that whenever she acts as a mature, relatively sane and lucid person, she seems dull and sullen, not happy. So when she decides that being with Croc will make her happy, she acts happy in the only way she really knows how--as Babydoll. She's playing house with him, and he knows it and is annoyed by it, but puts up with it because they work well together.
    • Speaking of Killer Croc. Wasn't he about to receive the death penalty in that episode? When Batman got him back to prison, how did Croc escape capital punishment? Also, why was he the only super villain to receive it?
      • Because Croc is one of the few actually successful murderers in the series (Albeit before we actually get to see him) who is also not insane.
  • In "Perchance to Dream" Batman figures out, that he's dreaming, when he tries to read the newspaper and can only see nonsense. He says, that it's because only one part of a brain is active in a dream and suchlike. At least in this troper's experience it's entirely possible to read in dreams - books, labels, messageboards were major parts of it. Now, it's possible to guess it's a dream, when you understand, that you're not "reading" as much, as "get the meaning instantly", but he never alluded to that. Furthermore, if it's not controlled by the Hatter, only a "very good dream", it should be, well, a dream. Dreams rarely have a coherent structure and oftentimes jump from event to event, from location to location, with little transition in-between. Look at some of David Firth's stuff, to see a really good portrayal of dreams.
    • Personal experience has taught me that you can get a sort of "feeling" about the dream environment, depending on what your mind is trying to relay to you. For example, your dream can create a totally original person you've never met, but have the feeling it's someone you've known your whole life. It can feel like years have passed when it's been mere moments. Heck, maybe the transitions and cutaways were the same for Bruce as they were for us. What's more, Hatter's machine obviously had some control, as evidenced by A) Tetch saying he couldn't/wasn't supposed to wake, and B) the fact that his dreams were all positive, alluring and inviting. One could argue that while the device could not implant dream ideas into Batman's mind, it could "guide" his unconcious thoughts into a dream world so pleasant he'd never want to sacrifice it for the waking world.
    • The mere fact that all writing appears as nonsense to him is an immediate tip-off that what he's seeing is not real. The newspaper shouldn't be gibberish, it should be perfectly legible. This combined with the fact that the last thing he remembers before waking up as Bruce Wayne is some contraption swooping down on his head while he was chasing the Mad Hatter, yeah, it's pretty logical he would conclude it was all a dream.
    • As implied above, the important thing is that Batman knows he can't read in his dreams.
      • What the troper was tryin to say, is that it's entirely possible to read in dreams. It's just a common urban legend, that you can't.
      • thanks to this episode it's become a running gag whenever this troper reads something in a dream to immediately remark "screw you Batman I CAN read in my dreams!"
      • I've read that the 'tell' that alerts you you're in a dream is very subjective, for some people it's reading, for some it's time telling. We can assume that Batman's 'tell' is reading, and being Crazy Prepared, he's probably experimented with lucid dreaming to find this out in advance.
        • Nah; he actually says "its impossbile to read in a dream", and says its because dream and reading are controlled by two different sides of the brain.
    • This Troper has had many dreams that felt like normal days, sometimes to the point of being unable to keep track of which day it is. Also, even though the Hatter isn't controlling the dream directly, he is influencing it. We know he somehow made sure that in the dream Batman would get everything he wanted. If he can do that then he should be able to prevent the place/time jumping that happens in a lot of dreams.
  • The whole implied relationship between Barbara and Bruce. It just grosses me out. Yeah, I realize that they aren't that far apart in age, but Babs is Bruce's surrogate son's ex, and the idea that they might go out (or that their personalities begat a realistic adult relationship) just doesn't jive. Also, what narrative purpose does it serve, besides being a Base Breaker that Bruce Timm put in the revamp of the show for shits and giggles?
    • Well their relationship did fall completely to pieces, for what it's worth. And I think that was supposed to be the point. It was never a serious adult relationship. Barbara was still flying on her schoolgirl crush. And Bruce...I doubt Bruce ever really connected with her at all, which was probably why they broke up in the first place. Once Barbara came to her senses she realized that without her hormones pushing her forward there was nothing between them. It's supposed to demonstrate how emotionally detached Bruce is and how much Barbara has grown as a person when we finally see her again in Batman Beyond.
    • The producers even stated that they wanted it to feel wrong. The relationship takes place during or immediately after Gotham Knights, which is a point in the series where the writers were trying to demonstrate Bruce's flaws more than they had previously done.
    • You're not the only one, it's even gross for characters in-series as it's implied that Bruce's relationship with Barbara was the final nail in the coffin and the reason Nightwing no longer associates with either of them.
  • In The Underdwellers, why does Bruce "guns are a coward's weapon" Wayne have a room filled with them?
    • They're for display, probably inhereted from his family.
    • That, and. He fights a lot of cowards. You have to train to deal with their weapons. To learn how to counter guns, you have to train against guns. He probably had Alfred hold one on him plenty of times to practice taking guns away from someone holding him at gunpoint, and did the same thing when training Dick and Tim. He'd also need to learn how to disable various types of guns... hitting one on the slide with a batarang might disable it, another might be completely unaffected by it, and to learn the difference he'd actually need to look at and handle both kinds.
  • In "Two-Face", Harvey hits several places which all happen to have two-related names. At first, this seems to reflect Two-Face's gimmick, but then you realize that all of these places were owned by Thorne. Why would Thorne use so many "two" places as fronts? Why did Thorne hide his files with E. Doubleday? Does Thorne have a two-obsession himself?
    • Two possibilities. It's either just a contrived coincidence serving as a Red Herring for both Batman and the viewer (though ironically, that red herring would quickly go on to become Two-Face's real gimmick), or Thorne controls so much of Gotham that Harvey could pick and choose targets that are both owned by Thorne and also have thematic names (partly because that's his gimmick, and perhaps also to distract the Gotham PD and Batman from his real target). He certainly did get lucky with "E. Doubleday," though.
  • In the episode where the kids were telling stories about Batman, um, why were three kids (four counting the Joel Shumacher kid) wondering the streets of Gotham at night. They have parents because the mention them, but the parents sort of suck in that case. Gotham is the worst place to be alone, DURING THE DAY. At night, it's suicide. And there's an arsonist on the loose.
    • There are ALWAYS arsonists and such running around Gotham. It's not like they're particularly more safe inside. This is Gotham we're talking about, and these are Gotham kids. they know the score.
    • Plus, as we all know, it's utterly impossible for kids to sneak out and do stuff at night without telling their parents.
    • Also, Gotham is full of horrible people, some of which could also be terrible parents who don't care what their kids do or where they are.
  • In Lock-up, if Crane wasn't going back to crime, why was he in his costume.
    • Simple. He was lying.
  • Is Crane supposed to be 6 ft tall in this? If he is, how the hell tall is Bolton?
    • Bolton's probably a case of "tall as he needs to be to be imposing". Looming over Scarecrow is less a sign that he's physically that much larger and more that he's just that intimidating. Comics and animation do this all the time (witness how often Optimus Prime is drawn as having a head roughly the size of a normal car, even though being a semi truck he shouldn't be anywhere near that large).
  • In Judgement Day how is Two Face able to get into costume without anyone seeing overpower the guards, all within a few seconds (the penguin turns as Harvey leaves, goes to the vault places loot in and the Judge is standing there.)
  • Ok, so when Harley and Ivy kidnap Bruce Wayne in "Holiday Knights", how did all of the clerks in the "Bergduff's" department store completely fail to react to the two super villains on a shopping spree? It's not like they were out on parole; it had been established earlier in the episode that they were both fugitives, and trying to lay low to avoid the cops' attention. They were wearing their costumes and everything. The store employees just didn't care that a pair of notorious, wanted criminals were there as long as their money was good? Also, they had a billionaire mind-controlled, and they made him buy them jewelry and clothes? They could have used the zombifying lipstick to enslave the cashier and walked out with anything in the store they wanted; why didn't they make Bruce Wayne transfer a couple million to a numbered Swiss bank account or an offshore holding corporation? I always assumed that Ivy and Harley were supposed to be smart, but this particular caper was pretty dumb.
    • You're right, they're recognized supervillains. People are going to know what they can do--it's likely that the standard procedure for Gotham citizens, when faced with a supervillain, is "Just leave them alone until Batman shows up." Honestly, it's probably safer than the alternative of either confronting them, or risking them seeing you call the cops.
      • I always assumed in Gotham that if you saw a rogue, you ignored the problem until it went away. Confronting them is suicide.
  • In "Night of the Ninja", Bruce is losing to Kyodai Ken on purpose because Summer Gleason can't be allowed to see him beat the ninja... why? When he does get serious, he doesn't win by throwing gas grenades or Batarangs, he just does karate on him. Summer had already been told that they studied at the same Dojo, and Bruce is quite visibly larger than Kyodai. Would it really have looked so suspicious if Bruce beat a (he could claim) slightly more skilled opponent by virtue of being in a higher weight division?
    • Study at the same dojo doesn't necessarily mean, in Gleason's eyes, that Bruce could take a professional ninja. Aloof Billionaire Bruce Wayne knowing some karate because he was bored for a while and decided to go to a dojo is one thing. Aloof Billionaire Bruce Wayne beating a full-time ninja, however, is gonna be suspicious. Also, size isn't necessarily that big of a factor with karate.
      • Furthermore, that same episode stressed that fighting styles are like fingerprints. Even if Gleason didn't get suspicious that Bruce Wayne could defeat an experienced ninja, all it would take is for her, or someone else, to find footage of Batman in action and comparing his moves to those of Wayne's, and his cover is blown.
      • That's something else that's always bugged me. I really don't buy this idea that every person's fighting style is so distinct that you can instantly recognize them decades later just by fighting them again. It sounds like one of those cheesy martial arts myths, like the Death Touch.
      • Well, first of all, "it sounds cheesy to me, a complete amateur who knows nothing about it" is not a good reason for dismissing anything. Unless you are yourself a master martial artist, you're not in a place to dismiss what a master martial artist can or cannot discern from someone's movements and fighting style. Second, none of that matters either, because in the universe this cartoon takes place in, that's explicitly stated to be how it works, just like it's the reality in the martial arts movies that the idea was likely taken from.
  • Why did Clayface become evil? He just got the ability to take on any face he wanted. He could've become the most highly paid actor on Earth, but instead, he goes into a breakdown about how his career is over. He claimed it was because he couldn't hold a form for too long, but he clearly shows he's able to hold a form at least long enough to get a shot done.
    • "Become evil" is a gross oversimplification and misunderstanding. He was, firstly, out for revenge. Then he was trying to find and make himself a cure. At no point did he decide, "You know, I'll be evil from here on in."
  • In Never Fear, how long was Scarecrow supposed to be unconscious for after Batman strangled him. He blacks out on the train and seems to still be out when Batman and Robin are walking down the street. The train scene takes place at night while the street scene the sun seems to at least be rising. How did Crane not get permenent brain damage?
    • ...Because it's a cartoon. If you're going to bring real-world science into this, Batman should have dislocated his shoulder a thousand times by now just from swinging around on those grappel lines.
  • What happened to the Retro Universe when the series became The New Batman Adventures>
    • It was quietly ignored, and as far as it goes In-Universe, things never changed. Call it a Retcon.
  • The ending of "Bane". Batman delivers the beaten Bane to Thorne's office and...leaves him there. Uhm...what? Why isn't he taking Bane to prison? Then he plays a recording of Thorne's assistant conspiring with Bane to eliminate Thorne, while said assistant is in the same room. Uhm...WHAT?! Doesn't Batman realise that he's just sentensed her (and likely Bane as well) to death? I'd probably understand if he'd used the recording to make her testify against Thorne or cooperate with him in another way, but that whas just pointlessly cruel! Hell, ethical considerations aside, wasn't dissent in enemy ranks working to his advantage?
  • "Baby Doll". If the girl couldn't age, how could she speak in an adult voice? Sure, she an actress, but should her vocal cords allow that?
    • (My understanding of hypopituitarism is limited so please bear with me.) It's not that she doesn't age, it's that her pituitary gland doesn't produce as much growth hormone as it should. According to The Other Wiki, people with severe growth hormone deficiencies can be as short as 48-58in tall and develop facial features reminiscent of a Kewpie doll, which seems to match Baby Doll's symptoms. However, she still would have gone through puberty eventually (albeit several years delayed) which could account for her adult voice.
  • The same episode. Why would those thugs, including one quite competent martial artist, work for her? She's a hapless and unemployed actress, how сould she afford their services and even if she could, what exactly prevented the thugs from just taking whatever money she had by force?
    • One could ask the same thing about most of Batman's rogues gallery. Where does the Joker keep finding A) minions crazy enough to work for him, and B) enough money to pay them?
      • True, but Joker is an adult, a capable fighter, meaning he can stand for himself, very smart and a hardened criminal, meaning he can devise enrichment schemes to either raise funds by himself (in many heists we see it's just him and Harley) or entice minions, and, last but not least, a scary-as-fuck psycho, who can probably intimidate regular goons into submission. More or less the same can be said about other major villains. Baby Doll seems to lack all of those advantages.
      • Baby Doll is an adult too, even if she doesn't look like one. And she can adopt an adult voice and act like a grownup when she chooses, so it's not like she always looks, acts, and sounds like a toddler. On top of that, we saw in "Love is a Croc" that her child-like appearance can apparently be pretty useful for a criminal enterprise.
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