History DarthWiki / RWBYKnight

* OriginStory: In the end, the story is one long origin story for Ren, showcasing what drives him to abandon the legal methods of justice and take it up as a superhero, in particular the loss of Nora. Notably, Ren is the only person besides Jaune who witnesses the deaths of every supervillain, and it drives him to be a non-lethal crime fighter.

* LogicalWeakness: Jaune knows how his various Semblances work, but that doesn't mean he can use them as skillfully as their owners can. Several of them have secondary abilities he doesn't know about, his ability to use them doesn't mean he can instinctively be creative with them, and most importantly, he doesn't know their weaknesses. Additionally, he can't use two of them at once, which ends up being part of his undoing.

** Weiss combatting several of the city's supervillains, including Mr. Freeze, Bane, Man-Bat, and Black Mask.

* HiddenDepths: Qrow, of all people, turns out to be a good enough detective to determine what went down in CRDL's murder just from the limited forensic evidence he can gather on the spot, though he does note that the detective role usually falls to Glynda or Ironwood.

** Team RWBY and Jaune still end up in the Ever After thanks to Ambrosius tweaking Watts's request for "something to get rid of them".

** As Hazel later explains, none of Salem's group knew that Tyrian had Jaune as a prisoner in the castle. He also suggests that this was intentional since Hazel would've gone rogue to save him if he'd known about it and, given Cinder's past as a slave, she probably would've reacted badly as well.

** As Pietro details to Ironwood, the Arkham Knight's attack on Winter puts her in the most medically dangerous situation he's ever seen. The bullet put her in a coma but didn't take out her Aura, meaning she's subconsciously keeping it activated and fighting off any attempt to get it out with lethal force, forcing the doctors to cryogenically freeze her to stabilize her until they can figure out how to get the bullet out. Mr. Freeze's crusade then revolves around trying to unfreeze her without her Aura activating and attacking everyone.

--> '''Ozpin''': The police somehow missed a terrorist organization hiding in their walls, everyone I trusted is either dead or insane, the military is in tatters, and the Huntsmen are focusing on stopping the Grimm from breaking down the walls and killing everyone within. Our situation is not exactly optimal, miss Xiao Long.

* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: Scarecrow's attack stresses Ozpin out so severely that he gets unusually blunt with his students, laying out just why damage control has come down to two teams of hilariously unprepared first years.

* SparedByTheAdaptation: Penny's first body is still destroyed, but her second makes it through the story alive as Mantle's resident superhero.

* AdaptationalHeroism: Mercury ends up having far more of a moral code than his canon counterpart; though he's still an assassin, it's largely because he needs the money to keep Emerald safe, and he abandons Cinder long before the gas attack.

* AwesomeButImpractical: Using the Relic of Creation to levitate Atlas into the air is a jaw-dropping spectacle, but all it takes is the wrong person getting access to a Maiden's powers to send it crashing straight back to Remnant.

** Harriet and Vine give their lives delaying Atlas's descent on to Mantle, saving thousands of lives at the cost of their own.

* YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre: Downplayed; as Hazel starts encouraging Mercury to own up to his positive emotions, he abruptly stops to talk to tell Hazel not to bother calling him a good person. Hazel notes that he would never call Mercury a good person, just not a legitimate sociopath like he pretends to be.

** It's easy to miss in the game, but random militia chatter states that they were only given a two minute warning to escape the Cloudburst's blast. Here, because Adam is in charge of giving it, there's no warning at all, so about half of the Militia are caught in the blast.

** Pyrrha's polarity Semblance will become public knowledge.

* OnceMoreWithClarity:
** While Ren and Pyrrha are on the SDC airship attempting to rescue Jacques, Weiss frantically asks Ren for the Car's location, and about two and a half minutes later, there's a giant explosion that covers half the Kingdom in ice. Later on, we see the same events from Weiss's perspective and discover that she was having a massive battle against Militia drones on the ice outside Mr. Freeze's barge, and Freeze had to detonate Winter's cryo-chamber to destroy them all.
** While Ren is patrolling for Militia checkpoints in the Founders district, Yang, who no one has been able to contact for an hour, nearly runs him over with Bumblebee. The next time we see her, we see the brief meeting from her perspective, where we learn she was on the way back to the Orphanage for the next stage of Watts's game.

** At her own request, Jaune mercy kills Velvet and honors her request to not explain why to her parents, even though it leads to her parents calling him a murderer and turning the public heat on both him and the other heroes.
* PowerAtAPrice: Hazel is able to inject Venom directly into his veins due to his Semblance, which severely upgrades his strength, resilience, and speed. The problem is that once it wears off, all of his base attributes are lowered, meaning that the more Venom he uses, the weaker he gets whenever he's off of it. Part of his desperation to get more Venom is the fact that if he doesn't, he'll eventually shrivel up into a husk, and that's ultimately what happens once he overdoses himself on Venom in the final fight against Jaune.

* PragmaticHero: Ozpin puts Ruby, Weiss, Yang, Pyrrha, and Ren in charge of dealing with Scarecrow because the Arkham Knight is targeting them and has already proven himself capable of attacking an army head-on, meaning that the only alternative, putting them on the wall with the other Huntsmen, puts the entire defense of the Kingdom in danger. He fully admits to them that he's basically throwing them to the wolves, but all of them admit that it's the least bad option he has.

** Cinder does not take it well when Pyrrha tanks a dose of fear toxin without feeling a thing. She goes from trying to scare her to murder her in the blink of an eye, saying that "without fear, life is meaningless".
* VillainousPlanInertia: Watts himself is taken out fairly easy in spite of his Semblance, as Jaune can simply use his own to counteract it. The issue is that one of the Semblances he copied was Penny's, which allows him to kickstart the Enlightenment anyway, and only Penny sacrificing her own life is able to bring it to an end.

** Henry Adams in the game managed to manipulate Batman and Robin rather easily, but here he goes even further by managing to stay in control of the situation in the movie studios when he's dealing with an entire Huntsman team.

** Salem is very careful to ensure the Knight never learns that Tyrian works for her, as she knows he would immediately leave her side if he did. She's right; after his arrest, Jaune refuses to admit to anything he did until Pyrrha reveals their allegiance, at which point his mind completely breaks.

** Compared to both ''RWBY'' and ''Batman: Arkham Knight'', Cinder/Scarecrow is played for far more sympathy here. Being exposed to a prototype Fear Toxin gave her traumatic flashbacks to her horrible past with the Madame, driving her mad with fear and locking her into a childlike mentality. Releasing the fear toxin isn't just to cause the Fall of Vale, it's a desperate attempt to make everyone understand the fear she's felt her entire life.

** Jacques Schnee, the fic's equivalent of Simon Stagg, goes even further than Stagg did by purposefully testing the Fear Toxin on a child.

* TheBadGuyWins: In the end, Cinder gets everything she wants; she spreads her Fear Toxin across the entire Kingdom, forces millions of people to feel the fear she felt in her childhood, proves herself more of a threat than Salem, publicly executes Ozpin, and causes international tensions by unmasking Pyrrha as Vale's protector. She doesn't intend to be gassed with a dose of toxin strong enough to render her catatonic, but by that point she's already won, and Vale is still recovering from her actions a year later.

* ClosestThingWeGot: The Cloudburst going off fries the Paladin Car's engine, but because of the gas cloud, the only person who can go in to fix it is Ren, whose Semblance minimizes the effects of the Fear Toxin. This leaves him as the only person able to take on the Knight's drones and Cloudburst tank while everyone else focuses on taking down the Grimm Dragon.

** Dr. Merlot is the creator of Scarecrow's Fear Toxin, the scientist who turns himself into a bat-like abomination, and the serial killer who creates the Dollotrons.

* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Filling both his canon role and Simon Stagg's, Jacques Schnee's morals are as bankrupt as his riches are plentiful. He willingly allies with Scarecrow in an attempt to break into the weapons industry for further profits, even though he's already the richest man on the planet, and provides the test subjects for her Fear Toxin from his own mines.

* DecompositeCharacter: Since different characters all share Batman's role of leading the fight against the supervillains, the ones who get dosed with Fear Toxin all see Jaune taunting him like he saw Joker in the game. All of them see a different facet of Batman's original fears:

* DisproportionateRetribution: Cinder's Fear Toxin showed Watts a vision of his former peers calling him "average". In response to this, he initiates a scheme that leads to the deaths of dozens of innocent people, destroys Atlas and Mantle, and almost endangers the entire world, all to prove that he's smarter than the people ''in his vision'' thought.

*** Even the Knight is unnerved by the concept of Fear Toxin when it's first introduced to him, but [[SubvertedTrope Cinder gets him to come around eventually]].

** When Weiss learns that Jacques not only helped Scarecrow with the Cloudburst but personally tested the Fear Toxin on a child, she completely abdicates her role in the SDC because she can't stomach the thought of working for an organization that perpetuated such a horrid crime. It's later noted that when Whitley took over the company and made a speech disavowing Jacques' actions, he became so overwhelmed by the list of crimes that he started crying.

** Cinder's canon backstory is given even more weight here, as accidentally getting dosed with Fear Toxin sent her straight back to the horrible treatment she endured as a child slave and drove her mad. Her obsession with Fear Toxin isn't just to make other people feel her fear, it's to finally conquer her own after being consumed by quivering fear for her entire life.
** Neo's abuse from her parents combined with her dissociation with her imaginary friend means that she has a crippling fear of abandonment, which is why she latches so hard on to Roman and never leaves his side. Roman's death in a bullhead crash combined with a dose of the Fear Toxin drives her mad with a desire for love, and this leaves her wide open for Tyrian to latch onto.

* AMillionIsAStatistic: Cinder violently reacts when it's suggested that she personally dose a child with Fear Toxin, but shows no reaction whatsoever when she's reminded that she intends to gas a Kingdom where ''thousands'' of children live. It's the personal image of hurting a child that affects her - when she can distance herself from it, she's not affected by it.

* MotiveDecay: InUniverse, Jaune internally discusses how insane Cinder has become that she's completely lost sight of her previous goals. While she once desired nothing but the Maiden powers, now she's so devoted to spreading the Fear Toxin as far as she can that she ignores several opportunities to just walk into Beacon and take them.

* NightmareFetishist: Dr. Merlot is obsessed with everything related to Grimm and their physiology, having conducted experiments that led to the destruction and slaughter of Mountain Glenn. As a result of these experiments, he discovered the glands and chemicals that allowed him to create a prototype Fear Toxin, which makes people hallucinate their worst fears.

** Jacques doesn't test the Fear Toxin on children not because of any moral quandaries, but because the only time he did led to Cinder almost killing him in a blind rage.

* TookALevelInBadass: In the beginning, Pyrrha is very self-conscious and unsure of herself as a leader, largely dictating her actions on her fears. Ruby's "death" completely changes her mindset and makes her go on the offensive, and by the end, she's become confident enough that Scarecrow's Fear Toxin has no effect on her.

** Having finally had enough of Cinder's attitude, the Arkham Knight provokes a fight with her in Merlot's lab, and it causes her to ingest a prototype Fear Toxin. This leads to her becoming the Scarecrow, going rogue from Salem, taking over his operation, causing the Fall of Vale (thus kickstarting the Age of Heroes), and leading to several more supervillains being created in her wake.

** Cinder does not take it well when Pyrrha tanks a dose of Fear Toxin without feeling a thing. She goes from trying to scare her to murder her in the blink of an eye, saying that "without fear, life is meaningless".

* BittersweetEnding: With a heavy emphasis on the "bitter". Ultimately, Jaune, Nora, Sun, Neptune, Ilia, Ironwood, Winter, Glynda, Qrow, and countless innocents are all dead or dying, Blake has become disillusioned with both sides of the law and is now striking out on her own, Jaune is BarredFromTheAfterlife so he can guide his friends from purgatory, and Salem isn't defeated permanently, so she's going to strike back at some point. However, Jaune completes his redemption by killing or otherwise permanently defeating all the supervillains he's responsible for creating, Vale is recovering within the year, and heroes like Ren, Weiss, Ruby, and Yang continue to patrol the city, so it will be protected for the future.

* DisproportionateRetribution: Cinder's Fear Toxin showed Watts a vision of his former peers calling him "average". In response to this, he initiates a scheme that leads to the deaths of dozens of innocent people and almost endangers the entire world, all to prove that he's smarter than the people ''in his vision'' thought.

** Jaune's identity as the Arkham Knight will be revealed to his former friends, but not the world at large.

* VillainousBreakdown: Cinder does not take it well when Pyrrha tanks a dose of Fear Toxin without feeling a thing. She goes from trying to scare her to murder her in the blink of an eye, saying that "without fear, life is meaningless".

* WildCard: By the time of Scarecrow's attack, Blake only cares about serving her own ends. As a result, she fluctuates between sides based on whatever helps her the most in the moment, though she ends up proving vital to depowering Jaune before she leaves the heroes entirely.

** The Arkham Knight kidnaps Ruby in order to send her team into chaos, but he can't bring himself to actually harm her. He threatens Cinder to get her away from her and tells the White Fang that if anyone touches her, he'll kill them on the spot.

** Even the Arkham Knight is disgusted by Adam's disregard for the lives of his soldiers, noting that while he may kill people for failing him, he at least doesn't let them slaughter each other due to Fear Toxin out of pure sociopathy. Sienna Khan also publicly disavows his sect of the Fang once the news of his involvement in the gas attack becomes public, and it's noted that even die-hard racists believe her rage that he was paid to participate is genuine.

* AdaptationalSympathy: Compared to both ''RWBY'' and ''Batman: Arkham Knight'', Cinder/Scarecrow is played for far more sympathy here. Being exposed to a prototype Fear Toxin gave her traumatic flashbacks to her horrible past with the Madame, driving her mad with fear and locking her into a childlike mentality. Releasing the fear toxin isn't just to cause the Fall of Vale, it's a desperate attempt to make everyone understand the fear she's felt her entire life.

** Both Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight are worse than in the game. In the game, they gave Gotham a chance to evacuate first (albeit because the bomb was big enough for it to not matter), which kept everyone but the thugs out of harm's way as the rest of the attack raged on. Here, the warning doesn't give the civilians time to evacuate, and is only done so that the resulting fear causes a Grimm attack that keeps Vale's Huntsman population on the walls.

* PetTheDog: Blake does her best to comfort Yang when they're led to believe Ruby died and, in part to atone for her role in keeping Yang from helping her, tags along with her to the Arkham Knight's HQ to finally defeat the maniac once and for all.

* AdaptedOut: Several of Batman's RoguesGallery simply don't transfer over to established ''RWBY'' characters, meaning that there are no equivalents of Mad Hatter, Ra's al Ghul and the League of Assassins, Hush, or Deacon Blackfire.

* SpannerInTheWorks: Taiying agrees to lure Pyrrha to the Arkham Knight's HQ by sending out a distress call and banking on her coming alone, hoping to hand her over to Scarecrow in exchange for Ruby. Unfortunately for him, Blake and Yang tag along, and the trio ends up defeating the Arkham Knight anyway, rendering the entire trade pointless.

* TheBadGuyWins: In the end, Cinder gets everything she wanted; she spread her Fear Toxin across the entire Kingdom, forcing millions of people to feel the fear she felt in her childhood, has proven herself more of a threat than Salem, publicly executed Ozpin, and caused international tensions by unmasking Pyrrha as Vale's protector. She didn't intend to be gassed with a dose of toxin strong enough to render catatonic, but by that point she's already won, and Vale is still recovering from her actions a year later.

* DiesDifferentInAdaptation: In the show, Roman is eaten alive by a Griffon during a fight with Ruby in the Fall of Beacon. Here, he's in a Bullhead when Qrow murders the pilot and he's killed in the crash.

* InSpiteOfANail: Despite the drastic changes to the evening, Blake still abandons Yang after Cinder's attack winds down. Unlike canon, however, she does leave a note to explain her reasoning, and it's indicated that she's willing to come back if Yang truly needs her.

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: After Jaune begins his redemption quest, he begins seeing a vision of Nora egging him on and helping him stay on the right path; it later appears as he's dying, telling him that he can rest. The others dismiss it as a hallucination, but the vision gives him information that he has no way of knowing at the time, and Jaune himself is later tethered to the mortal plane after his own death, so it's never clarified just what it is.

** Out of fear for what may happen to her, Velvet locks Coco in a cell in the movie studios and forces her team to back off when they try to free her. This leaves her completely defenseless when Scarecrow attacks the base near the end of the night, and she alongside Pietro are used as hostages to force Pyrrha and Ozpin's cooperation.

* AdaptationalWimp: In ''Arkham Knight'', while the Militia is eventually defeated, they're able to effectively hold Gotham hostage for the entire night and prove a strong resistance against Batman's attempts to liberate the city. Here, their command structure gets taken out early on, the Founders district (their home base) is accessible to the Paladin Car before midnight, and Mercury's abysmal leadership once the Knight is gone drives them into the ground.

** Ilia gets a massive upgrade in importance from the show, with her own dedicated character arc showing her coming to relate to plantlife over humans and Faunus only to come to their aid once more against Scarecrow.

** Yang happened to foil Watts's first death trap by complete accident because she happened to be the one to investigate it. Watts is so incensed by the idea of an "irrelevant bimbo" like her outsmarting her that he then dedicates the rest of his supervillain career to spiting her specifically, including arranging Blake's kidnapping within an hour or so just to draw Yang out.

* PragmaticHero: Ozpin puts Ruby, Weiss, Yang, Pyrrha, and Ren in charge of dealing with Scarecrow because the Arkham Knight is targeting them and has already proven himself capable of attacking an army head on, meaning that the only alternative, putting them on the wall with the other Huntsmen, puts the entire defense of the Kingdom in danger. He fully admits to them that he's basically throwing them to the wolves, but all of them admit that it's the least worst option he has.

** When the Cloudburst goes off, the Grimm Dragon awakes. Ozpin only has Weiss, Ren, Pyrrha, and the remaining Atlas forces on hand and has to make a choice - if the Grimm Dragon makes it to the wall, then it will deposit Grimm right in the middle of the city, but if the gas cloud stays up, then people will continue to die and raise the negative emotions until nothing is left. In the end, he's forced to TakeAThirdOption and split the teams to conquer both goals at once.