The Batman/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternative Character Interpretation - Were Chief Rojas's reasons for going after Batman legitimately because he believed Batman to be a menace or was his hunt of Batman because of something else? Depending on your views, Rojas might've been a Dirty Cop. He did once say that about Ethan Bennett that "He never knew how to play ball." Plus there's his timing of partnering Ellen Yin and Bennett up shortly after Thorne was defeated and some of his tactics in hunting Batman were similar to the comics version of Gillian Loeb.
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: Robin's introduction in Season 4.
    • Black Mask's first animated appearance gave them a reason to hope for Season 4 as well.
  • Cliché Storm - D.A.V.E is a very cliched villain, but considering the fact he's made from most of Gotham's criminals, this is the point.
  • Complete Monster - The Joker. Once a man who wanted to make people laugh, he fell into a vat of chemicals and became an insane, murderous Monster Clown and Batman's Arch Enemy. Devoid of any empathy, Joker commits crimes he views as "jokes" at the expense of Gotham. Terrible things he's done include poisoning people with his deadly laughing gas; putting people in various death traps; torturing Detective Ethan Bennett for hours and causing Bennett's mutation into Clayface; impersonating Batman and gassing people for minor crimes; using Bane's venom to go on a rampage; attempting to drop a teenage boy into a vat of chemicals; frequently mistreating his henchmen and his girlfriend Harley Quinn, as well as abandoning them to be arrested or even to die; and filling the abandoned tunnels and mine shafts beneath Gotham with miles of dynamite to collapse the city. That he manages to qualify despite being toned down to all get-out is a testament to how twisted a character Joker is.
    • Professor Hugo Strange is an amoral psychiatrist who slowly graduates to one of the most wicked villains Batman ever faced. His stint as a psychiatrist ending after he toyed with his patients' well-being just out of curiosity, notably curing Arnold Wesker of his split personality Scarface only to break his mind again and drive him to nearly killing himself, Strange became a full-fledged supervillain when he created D.A.V.E (Digitally Enhanced Villain Emulator), a machine that ran on data of all of Gotham's worst villains and acted out to become Gotham's "ultimate criminal mastermind", putting the city and many human lives in jeopardy, which Strange intended so that he could observe how Batman responded and possibly figure out his true identity. Strange later infected Batman with a hallucinogen that made him attempt to transform the entire population of Gotham into zombies under Strange's control. In his grandest moment of depravity, Strange, having gone pure Mad Scientist, allied himself with the alien race known as the Joining, selling out humanity to be destroyed by the Joining and assisting the aliens in incapacitating the Justice League in order to steal their powers, all for nothing more than the promise of ultimate knowledge of the universe. As corrupt as they come, Hugo Strange repeatedly showed himself to be among the very worst of Gotham's criminals.
    • Black Mask is a thoroughly nasty crime boss who claims to control several crime syndicates in Gotham City, meaning that he's had influence in who-knows-how-many acts of crime and villainy that have gone on in the show. He also Would Hurt a Child, as he demonstrates with Robin and Batgirl. When he passes the You Have Failed Me sentence to his Number 1 henchman, he shoots him dead and demonstrates a We Have Reserves mentality by telling another member of his gang "You're my new Number 1!"
    • Tony Zucco in this show is portrayed as one of the most cold-blooded and heartless individuals in Gotham City. He not only arranged for Robin's parents to be killed because they couldn't pay him the amount of money he wanted, but when he has Batman at his mercy, he ties him to a wall and starts throwing knives at that wall for fun. During this, Zucco admits to having killed his own father with chilling causality - according to him, he and his father used to always practice knife-throwing together, and when asked by Batman about what became of his father, he sums it up with "Well one day...I missed." Oh, and to top it off, he's voiced by Mark Hamill.
  • Contested Sequel - For both the long-canceled DCAU Batman shows, and the DCAU as a whole.
  • Creator's Pet: Batgirl in Season 3. She was added in a bid to attract more females to the show. Unfortunately, her introduction came at the expense of Detective Yin, she was initially a Bratty Half-Pint, and writers continued to push her into more scenes. By Season 4 & 5 however, she was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap thanks in part to writers giving her less focus.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome - The original theme, written and performed by The Edge. It's so atmospheric, it even has guitar-made bat squeals
  • Ensemble Darkhorse - Cash Tankinson.
    • Quite a few of the villains got their own fanbases, Hugo Strange, for being a Magnificent Bastard, The Riddler, for his backstory, his new gothic look, and being pretty damn cool, Clayface got this status for being an outright tragic character, as well as his alter ego.
    • Robin. His introduction was actually one of the reasons so many fans consider the 4th season the strongest.
  • Fan Dumb - Many varieties, including the persistent complaints about "Rasta Joker", even though the idea that the Joker would talk in a Jamaican accent was only ever an unconfirmed rumor. Then there were all the complaints that the series was absolutely terrible because it changed things like villain backgrounds and motivations, when those same things had already been changed from the original by the previous cartoon.
    • And of course, the huge "it's bad because it's not Batman: The Animated Series, the DEFINITIVE Batman" Hate Dumb crowd. Batman is a character who has undergone many changes and interpretations over the years and, as great as Batman: The Animated Series is, it shouldn't in any way be the only, definitive version of Batman to ever be on TV.
      • Of the negative reviews of The Batman, almost all of them make comparisons to BTAS. This is in spite of the fact that the show makes it clear from the outset that it's a very different interpretation of the character.
    • Some people are particularly upset at the changing of Mr. Freeze's back story to remove Nora, when Nora was invented for B:TAS and his back story here is more faithful to his first comic book origin.
  • Fridge Brilliance - Clayface is almost always frowning or appears to be frowning, while Joker is always smiling, bearing resemblance to the "Tragedy and Comedy" masks, symbolized even more by Ethan's life being outright ruined by becoming Clayface, a tragedy if you will.
  • Fridge Horror: In the final season episode featuring Wrath and Scorn, when the duo are caught at the end after learning Batman and Robin's identities, Joker comes in and uses his joker gas to break their minds. Keep in mind that means he brain damaged a CHILD.
  • Growing the Beard - The show is often agreed to have improved significantly by its second season; the exact turning point is generally considered to be the first season finale, which put a tragic twist on the origin of classic villain Clayface.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight - "Brawn" isn't the last we'll see of a Venom-infused Joker...
  • Nightmare Fuel - Vampire Joker has actually become the the picture for its section of the pages.
    • Seeing Batman under the effects of Joker toxin in "The Laughing Joke" is just wrong. Oh so very wrong.
    • Blackmask. Particularly his mask...not only is it scary, it's apparently unable to be removed. Is he even human underneath?
    • Nightmare Fuel - Ethan Bennet's treatment by the Joker near the end of the first season is just terrifying, especially near the end of the episode, where Ethan's face melts, as he's turning into Clayface.
  • Jerkass Woobie: The Riddler in "Riddler's Revenge" (the poor guy...) and Poison Ivy in "The Batman Strikes" comics (it's quite sad to see her cry.)
  • Magnificent Bastard: Hugo Strange.
  • Moral Event Horizon- Joker definitely crosses it in "The Apprentice" where he tries to throw a teenage boy into a vat of potentially lethal chemicals. And Tony Zucco crosses it in the first ten minutes of his appearance by killing Dick Grayson's parents (before he became Robin), just because he called the cops when Zucco got a bit threatening.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap - Batgirl was saved in season 4 thanks in part to playing a smaller role, as a result no longer being accused of being Spotlight-Stealing Squad, and her Character Development.
  • The Scrappy - No one, not even fans of the show, really liked Chief Rojas, which was pretty much the point. Unlike Yin, when Rojas got Brother Chucked, the fans didn't miss him.
  • The Smurfette Principle: Ellen Yin for seasons 1 and 2, Batgirl for the rest. There isn't even a woman on the Justice League.
  • Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Batgirl in Season 3, and Robin in Season 5.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In "Grundy's Night", Alfred is constantly on edge and nervous concerning the Grundy legend, which seems like obvious buildup to the reveal that Alfred is among the descendants being targeted by Grundy. But nothing comes out of it and Alfred just ends up looking lscared for no reason.
  • Tough Act to Follow: See Hatedom.
  • The Untwist: It is virtually unthinkable to not give Mr. Freeze his Tragic Backstory in any modern incarnation... but this series decided to forego all that and give a more traditional supervillian origin. Although if you can get past that, this version of Freeze has his own merits as he still isn't outright evil and his powers were appropriately unique compared to other criminals Batman faced.
  • Villain Has a Point: Francis Grey's complaint about his sentence:

Francis: I took a watch! Everything else was just an accident.

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