History Videogame / BatmanArkhamAsylum

** Scarecrow's Patient Interview Tape refers to an incident with [[BatmanBegins Dr. Murphy]].

** Scarecrow's Patient Interview Tape refers to an incident with [[BatmanBegins]] Dr. Murphy.

** [[spoiler: Batman's scarecrow induced hallucination]] features a few of these, as it is the game's introduction with the roles reversed.

* DarkReprise [[spoiler: Batman's scarecrow induced hallucination]] serves as this for the game's introduction

*** Then again, this is Batman we're talking about, one of the only regular humans on Earth capable of fighting against ''[[PhysicalGod Superman]]''. Extreme or over the top attacks are well within his capability.

*** Then again, this is Batman we're talking about, one of the only regular humans on Earth capable of fighting against Superman. Extreme or over the top attacks are well within his capability.

A sequel - ''[[BatmanArkhamCity Batman: Arkham City]]'' - was released in 2011.

* FiveBadBand
** BigBad: [[TheChessmaster Joker]]
** TheDragon: [[DarkMistress Harley Quinn]]
** [[EvilGenius The Evil Genius]]: [[PsychoPsychologist Scarecrow]]
** TheBrute: [[LizardFolk Croc]]
** [[DarkChick The Dark Chick]]: [[WarmupBoss Zsasz]]
** SixthRanger: [[spoiler: Bane / Poison Ivy]]

* EverybodysDeadDave: Early in the game, you can find holdouts of Arkham Security or medical staff all over the island. Batman saves them from whatever peril and tells them to stay put where it's safe. This almost never works, Batman finds them dead on his next trip through the area. By the end of the game [[spoiler: Gordon, Cash, Sharp, Batman]] and a handful of guards and doctors look to be the only survivors of the nights' events. [[spoiler: Not even poor Dr. Young survives.]]

* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: Sure the game's DarkerAndEdgier, but [[spoiler: Dr Young's]] death is jarring just the same. Scant moments after playing the [[TheAtoner atoner]] card, a booby-trapped wall-safe explodes. In her face. At point blank range. When the cutscene returns to normal gameplay, all you see is a charred corpse on the floor.

* MadnessMantra: "...[[KnifeNut cutting]] and [[AxCrazy cutting]] and [[CompleteMonster cutting]] and [[SerialKiller cutting]]..."

* FakeDifficulty: There are about four of these through the game and they all share the same general circumstances and they're all [[YourMileageMayVary more or less boss fights.]] The two that are truly guilty of this are the boss fight against Poison Ivy and [[spoiler: the two Titan monsters right before Joker.]] What makes the difficulty fake is that you're not only dealing with their attacks, but a big {{Mook}} army so numerous they're [[{{Irony}} upgraded to]] [[GoddamnedBats Goddamned]] [[IncrediblyLamePun Bats]]. They attack you to the point you can't finish anyone off without the combo takedown and even that's near impossible with the bosses attacking you as well. Gold medal goes to [[spoiler: the two Titan monsters before Joker]] because in the later stages of the fight we're talking anywhere from ten to fifteen of them at once.

* HellIsThatNoise: {{Batman}} causes this in the thugs sent to stop him, especially as their numbers dwindle lower and lower by a seemingly invisible assailant.
* HelloNurse: Harley Quinn, who takes the trope quite literally by actually dressing in a nurses outfit. And yes, Poison Ivy's being a hot green-skinned redhead wearing only a prison shirt and leaf underwear definitely counts.

** Even being his Hispanic. It seems that Bane is a product of a project to create the [[ZeroPunctuation world's greatest luchador]].

* MookHorrorShow: Those poor bastards.

* ThatsGottaHurt: Batman's only rule is not to kill his enemies, but that rule says nothing about their physical state after he's done with them. Nearly every move in your arsenal evokes this trope. Drive a guy's face into your knee? Check. Pull an enemy over to you with a claw on a rope and roundhouse him across the face? Check. Land on a prone guy's body and megatonpunch him in the groin? Double check. Then there's the instant takedown moves, which usually involve actions like ramming a stun baton into a guy's solar plexus or breaking his limbs in a variety of ways. Ouch.
* TheCorruption: [[spoiler: Titan formula. Mooks get transformed into dumb monsters, Batman resists the effect while Joker and Ivy go OneWingedAngel. ]]
* TheGuardsMustBeCrazy: The Gun wielding mooks, in more ways than one. In the stealth parts of the game, they can be incredibly idiotic. It seems likely that Arkham's shock therapy programs have an unavoidable side effect of making the patients partially deaf and blind, as Batman can break open grates and choke hold mooks at arm's reach of the other guards without being detected.
** The Arkham Guard Staff themselves are incredibly lousy. Not only did they utterly fail to hold off against any of Joker's unarmed goons, even after managing to reform after his initial breakout, but the security system of the entire ''island'' was completely compromised by Joker with the help of just two insiders, both of which appeared to be relatively incompetent. What makes it even more frustrating is that a lot of the higher ups knew Joker was up to something, and Warden Sharp had already suspected that Harley was conspiring with him.
** How about the most basic mistake of cuffing the Joker with his hands in ''front'' of him? Cops don't do that to perps arrested for a traffic violation, much less mass insane mass-murderers. TheJoker ends up demonstrating why cuffing him with his hands in front is a terrible idea when preparing to escape.
* TheManyDeathsOfYou: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XClEPRnynR8 And how!]] Some of them double as NightmareFuelUnleaded.

* DeadlyGas: Joker's green laughing gas, and red toxins from Ivy's plants flood several areas.

* DownTheDrain: The sewers under Arkham, especially Killer Croc's lair.

* EverybodysDeadDave: Early in the game, you can find holdouts of Arkham Security or medical staff all over the island. Batman saves them from whatever peril and tells them to stay put where it's safe. This almost never works, Batman finds them dead on his next trip through the area. By the end of the game [[spoiler: Gordon, Cash, Sharp, Batman]] and a handful of guards and doctors look to be the only survivors of the nights' events. [[spoiler: Not even poor Dr. Young survives.]]

* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: Sure the game's DarkerAndEdgier, but [[spoiler: Dr Young's]] death is jarring just the same. Scant moments after playing the [[TheAtoner atoner]] card, a booby-trapped wall-safe explodes. In her face. At point blank range. When the cutscene returns to normal gameplay, all you see is a charred corpse on the floor.

* FlunkyBoss: Most of the boss battles are structured like this. The actual bosses only take a handful of ActionCommands to KO but in between each sequence they get hordes of {{Mooks}} to screen for them. Despite being heavily used this works quite well.

* HellIsThatNoise: {{Batman}} causes this in the thugs sent to stop him, especially as their numbers dwindle lower and lower by a seemingly invisible assailant.

* HeWhoFightsMonsters: [[spoiler:Quincy Sharp. After he had spent years amongst the Asylum and their inmates, his mind had slowly turned murderous and insane, developing another secret personality: "The Spirit of Arkham". Before the events of the game, he had tried to kill Joker in his cell (failed badly), and had thought of lobotomizing Harley and burning Ivy alive]].
** Joker keeps trying to invoke this trope on Batman, and gets increasingly angry when Batman refuses to surrender to madness/murderous urges/[[spoiler: actual Titan monster serum]].

* RewardingVandalism: If you want to solve all of the Riddler's riddles, you're going to be destroying a lot of walls and security terminals. In addition, a lot of takedown moves involve breaking through walls, windows, ceilings, and floors. The game's use of this trope is noteworthy because: a) Batman isn't known for arbitrary property damage, and b) There are more conventional boxes and such around, but they are either indestructible or cannot be interacted with.

* [[ScaryScarecrows Scary Scarecrow]]: ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: If Batman visits the patient center after beating the bosses prior to beating Poison Ivy, he'll talk to Batman about his sessions and his current state of mind in a manner similar to a Psychologist/Psychiatrist with Batman being the patient.

** Joker -- again, primarily based on his comic version, but he has [[TheDarkKnight Heath Ledger's suit]], a face that looks a lot like [[{{Film/Batman}} Jack Nicholson]], he [[spoiler:transforms into a muscle-bound hulk]] similar to [[TheBatman Kevin Michael Richardson's Joker]], they used [[BatmanTheAnimatedSeries Mark Hamill's voice]] ''and'' we can count Mark Hamill's voice as [[{{Series/Batman}} a Caesar Romero reference]]. There's a lot of similarity there, especially in the laugh, thus completing the full spectrum of Batman Jokers.

* DatingCatwoman: Catwoman doesn't personally appear in this game, [[WhatCouldHaveBeen more's the pity,]] but Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn both have their flirtatious moments.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Look at all the cells with supervillains in them who ''weren't'' released. There's a few epic boss battles we didn't get to have... Oh well. Maybe in the [[BatmanArkhamCity next game]].

* NoOntologicalInertia: Subverted.:Once you defeat Poison Ivy, the giant vines she sent out will wither and die, thus no longer blocking you from the last Riddler trophies, but they'll still be around. In a more mundane example, if you intend to keep playing after the main storyline to track down riddler trophies and such, you best not forget about the explosives mentioned below in ThatOneLevel. They are still there and are one of the few things that can kill you.