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** Selina's first major art exhibition is called "Seduction of the Innocent", after Frederic Wertham's book of the same name that inspired UsefulNotes/TheComicsCode (Wertham himself got a reference in the very first post, which mentioned the findings of the Wertham Commission regarding the Wayne murders), and its centerpiece is a Warhol-esque pointilist rendition of the iconic cover to ''ComicBook/ActionComicsNumber1''.
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** Selina's first major art exhibition is called "Seduction of the Innocent", after Frederic Wertham's book of the same name that inspired UsefulNotes/TheComicsCode MediaNotes/TheComicsCode (Wertham himself got a reference in the very first post, which mentioned the findings of the Wertham Commission regarding the Wayne murders), and its centerpiece is a Warhol-esque pointilist rendition of the iconic cover to ''ComicBook/ActionComicsNumber1''.
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* AdaptationalVillainy: In the comics, Gilda Dent was Two-Face's heartbroken ex-wife who was almost as spotless as her Apollo, implication that she might be the [[ComicBook/TheLongHalloween Holiday Killer]] notwithstanding. Here, [[spoiler:she's an aspiring criminal mastermind who attempted to have Harvey killed ''twice'', slept with DA Hamilton Hill to get herself more connections, and is TheUnapologetic for all of it]]. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Oh, and]] [[AdaptationalDyeJob she's blonde instead of dark-haired]].
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* FacialHorror: [[spoiler:What little we can see of the Joker isn't pretty: hair reduced to long, stringy patches, pallid skin, and of course, a CheshireCatGrin with a few too many teeth in it.]]
to:
* FacialHorror: FaceRevealingTurn: [[spoiler:Harvey, now Two-Face]], gives his would-be killer one of these before shooting her, along with a PreMortemOneLiner:
-->''Oh. I'm sorry, [[spoiler:Gilda]]. I truly am. But the thing is... '''[[spoiler:[[SplitPersonality Harvey isn't here right now.]]]]'''''
* FacialHorror:
** [[spoiler:What little we can see of the Joker isn't pretty: hair reduced to long, stringy patches, pallid skin, and of course, a CheshireCatGrin with a few too many teeth in it.]]
** [[spoiler:Harvey's once-handsome mug, after a bullet to the face and a reconstructive surgery turned assassination attempt, is none too pretty, with burned flesh all down his right side and the flesh around that side of his mouth ragged and torn, revealing a lipless snarl.]]
-->''Oh. I'm sorry, [[spoiler:Gilda]]. I truly am. But the thing is... '''[[spoiler:[[SplitPersonality Harvey isn't here right now.]]]]'''''
* FacialHorror:
** [[spoiler:What little we can see of the Joker isn't pretty: hair reduced to long, stringy patches, pallid skin, and of course, a CheshireCatGrin with a few too many teeth in it.]]
** [[spoiler:Harvey's once-handsome mug, after a bullet to the face and a reconstructive surgery turned assassination attempt, is none too pretty, with burned flesh all down his right side and the flesh around that side of his mouth ragged and torn, revealing a lipless snarl.]]
* MistakenForCheating: One of the insults [[spoiler:Gilda throws at Harvey]] is accusing him of an affair with Barbara Gordon, but it's implied that all the late nights they were out together was just them meeting with [[TheCowl a friend]].
* MotiveRant: Plenty of them, but special mention has to go to the unlikeliest candidate yet: [[spoiler:[[AdaptationalVillainy Gilda Dent]]]].
* NumerologicalMotif: [[spoiler:Two-Face indulges in this as usual: his post is the 20th installment in the series with 20 images, the story itself is a two-parter, and in-universe, Harvey went to ground before Gilda could try to kill him a third time, saying it would have "thrown the balance off". When [[HeadsOrTails his coin comes up on the scarred side]], he even shoots her twice!]]
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* TemptingFate: {{Lampshaded}} in Riddler's lore:
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* TemptingFate: TemptingFate:
** {{Lampshaded}} in Riddler's lore:
** {{Lampshaded}} in Riddler's lore:
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** [[spoiler:Gilda tells Harvey he has no proof she tried to have him killed, and taunts him by asking what he'll do about it. Unfortunately for her, [[Recap/BatmanTheAnimatedSeriesE10TwoFacePart1 she's talking to the wrong Harvey]]...]]
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* AdaptationalHeroism: Roxy Rocket is no longer a bank robber who gets off on putting herself InHarmsWay, but an adrenaline junkie stuntwoman who has a tendency to endanger civilians while putting on death-defying public stunts.
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* AdaptationalNationality: Roxy Rocket goes from American to Australian, with ([[CensoredForComedy we are told]]) a [[SirSwearsALot foul mouth]] to match.
* AdaptationalSexuality: In her debut in ''WesternAnimation/TheNewBatmanAdventures'', Roxy Rocket was a textbook case of VillainessesWantHeroes, having a ''[[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything very]]'' intense crush on Batman. That's still the case here to a lesser extent, but she also mentions that there are plenty of denizens of Hollywood -- men, women, and otherwise -- who she's had dalliances with.
* AdaptationalSexuality: In her debut in ''WesternAnimation/TheNewBatmanAdventures'', Roxy Rocket was a textbook case of VillainessesWantHeroes, having a ''[[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything very]]'' intense crush on Batman. That's still the case here to a lesser extent, but she also mentions that there are plenty of denizens of Hollywood -- men, women, and otherwise -- who she's had dalliances with.
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* HeelRealization: [[spoiler:Roxy Rocket undergoes one of these when Batman finally shows up in time to put a stop to her latest stunt, with his genuine concern for her life shattering the assumptions she'd made about him.]]
-->'''Roxy Rocket:''' And suddenly, just for a second, I knew him. This complete stranger, in a crazy costume, who runs around rooftops getting into fights all night, this guy who should be just a complete thrill junkie like me? He wasn’t interested in any of that. [[spoiler:He was concerned about me. In that second, my life was the most important thing in his world.]]
-->'''Roxy Rocket:''' And suddenly, just for a second, I knew him. This complete stranger, in a crazy costume, who runs around rooftops getting into fights all night, this guy who should be just a complete thrill junkie like me? He wasn’t interested in any of that. [[spoiler:He was concerned about me. In that second, my life was the most important thing in his world.]]
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** Roxy Rocket mentions in her interview that she once doubled for [[ComicBook/JusticeSocietyOfAmerica Jennie-Lynn Hayden]]. She also mentions a Gotham landmark called [[WesternAnimation/BatmanMaskOfThePhantasm the Beaumont Building]], and at the close of her interview, [[spoiler:she says she's considering moving to Metropolis after having her HeelRealization; her DCAU counterpart did just that when Batman disappeared in "[[Recap/SupermanTheAnimatedSeriesS3E2KnightTime Knight Time]]"]].
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* PsychologicalProjection: Roxy Rocket initially assumed the Batman did what he did for the same reason she did what she did: boredom. [[spoiler:Her first proper meeting with him disabused her of that notion, though.]]
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-> ''An activist[[labelnote:*]](and bodyguard)[[/labelnote]].\\
A healer.\\
A gunman.\\
A slaying.\\
An orphan.\\
A vow.\\
'''A crusader.'''''
''Legends of the Caped Crusader'' is a ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' fan-project by [[https://www.reddit.com/user/DoctorEnn DoctorEnn]] on Website/{{Reddit}}, specifically the subreddit for [[https://www.heroforge.com/ Hero Forge]], an online tabletop miniature creator. The project, inspired by the similar ''[[https://www.reddit.com/r/HeroForgeMinis/comments/twd3fc/introducing_children_of_gotham_a_collaborative/ Children of Gotham]]'', uses Hero Forge to create [[AlternateContinuity reimagined versions]] of the Dark Knight's rogues gallery and supporting cast, which are then posted to the subreddit, along with comments from the good Doctor themself detailing the character's backstory.
The project has inspired a number of {{Recursive Fanfiction}}s, all of which form a [[LooseCanon loosely-connected]] SharedUniverse known as [[https://www.reddit.com/r/HeroForgeMinis/comments/187ybv6/a_guide_to_the_legendsverse_a_shared_universe_of/ the Legendsverse]].
!!''Legends of the Caped Crusader'' contains examples of the following tropes:
* AdaptationNameChange:
** Like [[Film/{{Joker}} other modern]] [[Film/TheBatman2022 interpretations]], Arkham Asylum gets a name change, this time to the Arkham Rehabilitation Center for the Criminally Disturbed.
** Professor Hugo Strange becomes Dr. Hugo Strang, with Strange being an unflattering nickname he's called behind his back.
** Gillian '''G.''' Loeb gets a MysteriousMiddleInitial as a nod to one of his inspirations, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Gordon_Liddy G. Gordon Liddy]].
** Condiment King here takes his name from the two separate incarnations of the character: '''Buddy''' Standler from ''BTAS'' and Rebirth, and Mitchell '''Mayo''' from the New 52.
** Selina Kyle's costumed identity is known simply as "the Cat", rather than Catwoman (though this isn't without precedent; see MythologyGag below).
* AdaptationRelationshipOverhaul: In most continuities, Bruce and Selina meet as adults once they've already started their costumed careers. Here, they were ChildhoodFriends during the few months Bruce stayed in an orphanage after Thomas and Martha were killed. When Bruce left, the loss of him as an anchor sent Selina down the path to [[{{Delinquents}} delinquency]].
* AdaptationalAttractiveness: On Earth-0, Jonathan Crane is a gangling stringbean of a man often dressed in shabby clothing -- it's how he got his AppropriatedAppelation. Here, however, he's a SharpDressedMan with cheekbones and a goatee that are just as sharp.
* AdaptationalBadass: Oswald Cobblepot goes from a mid-level mobster [[IndispensableScoundrel Batman can't seem to get rid of]] to TheChessmaster feared and respected by everyone with power in Gotham City.
* AdaptationalCurves: Sofia Falcone isn't the [[AmazonianBeauty wall of muscle]] she's usually depicted as, being more slim and conventionally-sized.
* AdaptationalDiversity: Garfield Lynns becomes Lynn Garfield, former firefighter turned vengeful arsonist after the murder of her wife.
* AdaptationalDyeJob: Nora Fries, typically depicted as a blonde, is rendered as dark-haired, as are the women Victor kidnaps [[MistakenIdentity thinking they're her]].
* AdaptationalEarlyAppearance: Poison Ivy, who didn't appear in the comics until 27 years after Batman's debut, is here depicted as modern Gotham's first supervillain.
* AdaptationalIntelligence:
** Instead of a brutish sewer-dweller, Killer Croc here is depicted as a ''mob boss'', with enough business acumen to run Club Tropicana (a renamed Iceberg Lounge) and remain a major player in the Gotham underworld.
** Condiment King goes from a comedian turned mind-controlled Silver Age throwback to a remarkably savvy crook adapting to [[SuperheroPrevalenceStages the changing times]] by affecting the appearance of a supervillain.
* AdaptationalJobChange: Hamilton Hill goes from a crooked mayor working for the mob to an AmoralAttorney ''also'' working for the mob.
* AdaptationalWimp:
** Poison Ivy is no longer the superhuman PlantPerson she is in canon, instead "[[BroughtDownToBadass merely]]" being a CEO turned crazed cult leader with a brilliant grasp of chemistry.
** In ''ComicBook/BatmanTheCult'', Deacon Blackfire captured, tortured, and almost completely ''broke'' Batman, and was only defeated when both Bats and Robin stormed his lair with tranquilizer machine guns. Here, a lone Batman [[spoiler:pointedly ''refuses'' to break in his encounter with the cult, and Blackfire himself is DraggedOffToHell by his "benefactor" [[YouHaveFailedMe after his defeat]].]]
* AgeLift: [[spoiler:Dick Grayson goes from young enough to be Bruce's first ward to old enough to have been a mentor to him before he even started out as a vigilante.]]
* TheAlcoholic:
** [=KGBeast=]'s faulty memory is mentioned to be the result of [[LaserGuidedAmnesia more than just his fondness for vodka]].
** One of Edward Nashton's pictures has him with a bottle in his hand, which is implied to be one of the reasons his girlfriend left him.
* AmbiguousSituation:
** The official story is that Joe Chill was just a LoonyFan, but there are enough weird inconsistencies (inexplicable gaps in security that Chill exploited, alleged ties between him and Gotham's underworld) that some people -- including Bruce Wayne -- aren't convinced.
** Killer Croc's exact origins are left a mystery. Is he a human with a rare genetic condition? An actual crocodile [[ToxicWasteCanDoAnything mutated by toxic waste]]? A refugee from an AlternateUniverse where the dinosaurs never died out? Not even Croc himself knows, but he's here and he runs one of Gotham's biggest clubs, so we might as well roll with it.
** [=KGBeast=] may or may not be the answer to the question "WhoShotJFK"
** Which of the Red Hood Collective was the one who became "[[ComicBook/TheJoker the Survivor]]" after the Batman's raid on Axis Chemicals? [[MultipleChoicePast Good luck figuring that one out.]]
* AnimalMotifs: The Scarecrow [[spoiler:from the perspective of a fear-gassed Batman has a number of insectoid features. Plenty of insects are poisonous, and there's also the old myth about earwigs crawling inside people's ears while they sleep, much like how Crane [[IKnowWhatYouFear gets inside the heads of his victims]].]]
* AnthropomorphicPersonification: Hugo Strang believes that the Batman is one of these, describing him as a "[[BilingualBonus babau]]" (the east Mediterranean term for a boogeyman) born from the insanity afflicting Gotham City, acting as a carrier for it.
* ArcWords: The lore for Blackfire and his cult details the various evils they've committed over the years, but adds each time that it all went uninvestigated because "[[WretchedHive it's Gotham]]". [[spoiler:It's subverted, though, when Batman comes along and [[CurbStompBattle wrecks the cult]], "because it's Gotham. ''[[BadassBoast His]]'' [[BadassBoast Gotham]]."]]
* AsTheGoodBookSays: Or in this case, the Bad Book. The lore for Blackfire and his cult opens with a set of passages from the Bible of Crime espousing their SocialDarwinist philosophy and condemning Batman for defying it by being a HopeBringer for the citizens of Gotham.
* BeneathNotice: Condiment King thinks (or hopes) that he's this for the Batman, who spends most of his time taking down big-time supervillains and mob bosses, and less of it dealing with a bank robber with a gimmick. Time will tell if he's right...
* BerserkButton: If you value your life, ''do not'' call Oswald Cobblepot "Penguin". The last guy who made that mistake got fished out of the Sprang River a month later and labeled a SuicideBySea. [[BreakThemByTalking It might have been, too.]]
* BlandNameProduct: Poison Ivy's introduction has her giving a [[{{Pun}} PLANTalk]] (rather than a [[Website/{{Ted}} TEDTalk]]) in Metropolis.
* BlasphemousBoast: The StartOfDarkness that led to Pamela Isley becoming a supervillain began with a declaration that her company would find a way to [[ElixirOfLife cure death]]. Unfortunately, her search for that cure led to an encounter with [[SentientCosmicForce the Green]] and the birth of Poison Ivy.
* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Scarecrow's personal philosophy is that fear is what keeps people safe from rape, murder, [[EldritchAbomination or worse]], and thus superheroes are a danger to the natural order, since they give people hope; he reserves special ire for the Batman, since not only does he operate in Gotham City, [[WretchedHive the most fear-ridden place on Earth]], but he does so while appearing to be only human.
* BodyHorror:
** One image in "File #005" shows a former member of [[{{Cult}} Hedera]] wandering the streets of Gotham, emaciated, strung out, and with a ''massive'' tangle of plant matter clinging to her left arm that the caption describes as an "infection" which eventually had to be [[AmputationStopsSpread amputated]].
** From the neck up, Mr. Freeze is a withered, inhumanly pallid corpse. From the neck down, he has a gnarled-looking body permanently crusted with ice.
** Kirk's Man-Bat transformation is depicted as clearly painful, the doctor's face contorting in pain to show off his sharpening teeth as his hands grow fur and claws and wings burst from his back.
* BrickJoke: Attached to Selina's message to Bruce is a note from Alfred reassuring him that he checked the Manor for anything missing after she left. At the end of the message itself, Selina adds a PPS:
-->'''Selina:''' Tell Alfred to stop checking the silverware closet. Please, darling, I have some standards.
* BystanderSyndrome: What kept Deacon Blackfire and his cult from being discovered for so long. Who really cares if the odd [[DisposableVagrant hobo]] or [[DisposableSexWorker streetwalker]] never comes out of that old church, or that you can hear creepy chanting from nowhere if you're out late, or that corpses will sometimes wash up around the area that look like they've been drained of their blood? [[WretchedHive It's Gotham.]] [[spoiler:Until one costumed Gothamite comes along and decides to look a little deeper...]]
* CompositeCharacter: [[WordOfGod DoctorEnn freely admits]] that many of the character concepts draw on various other continuities. Administrivia/TropesAreTools, though, and the reimagined characters are more than capable of standing on their own.%%And again, there are too many to be fun listing, so I'm delegating.
** Many of Deacon Blackfire's [[RedAndBlackAndEvilAllOver aesthetic]] [[InTheHood affectations]] are references to classic Bat-foe the Mad Monk; the Mother Superior of his cult, Dala, is herself a henchman of the Monk in the mainline DC universe.%%Except this one, this was too central to ignore.
** This universe's Deadshot is combined with ComicBook/{{Deathstroke}}, since [[WordOfGod DoctorEnn kept getting the two mixed up]]. Even their names are combined: '''Floyd''' Lawton and Slade '''Wilson''' become '''Floyd Wilson'''.%%As was this.
** Stephanie Brown did briefly have a career as the Spoiler as in the comics, but once Batman took down her father, he took her on as this universe's Oracle.%%And this.
* CoolAunt: Bruce's aunt Harriet served as his guardian after his parents were killed, and though she wasn't exactly privy to his vigilante ambitions, she did provide some useful help to young Bruce: plenty of time to himself to study up on whatever he might need to know, an impromptu crash course in the kind of acting and showmanship necessary for a secret identity, and a good foundation for a reputation as a billionaire playboy.
* CosmicHorrorReveal: [[ImpliedTrope Maybe]]. Scarecrow's references to {{Eldritch Abomination}}s that he believes fear protects against, his calling Batman "the Pawn of the Devourer of Fear", and [[spoiler:his fear toxin hallucination of a monstrous Batman being labeled as "Barbatos"]] all imply that [[spoiler:[[ComicBook/BatmanGrantMorrison Simon Hurt's]] "[[GodOfEvil bat-god]]" may very well exist in this universe]].
* TheCracker: After getting fired from Question, the newly-minted Riddler uses a backdoor he installed on the servers during his time there to sneak past the increasingly large and baffled cybersecurity team and steal their stolen data for his {{Revenge}} scheme (see RiddleMeThis below).
* CrypticConversation: One of Joe Chill's only statements made during his trial was a remark of "You'll just have to figure it out, won't you?" in response to a crowd of reporters shouting questions about his motive for killing the Waynes.
* {{Cult}}:
** Hedera, Pamela Isley's company, becomes one after her vision of the Green.
** Deacon Blackfire, true to form, is the head of one of these.
* DarkIsEvil: Invoked by the Acolytes of the Blackfire, who [[BadIsGoodAndGoodIsBad couldn't be happier about it]], and are quite miffed by the fact that the Batman invokes [[DarkIsNotEvil the opposite]].
* DeadlyGame: The Riddler's plan comes to a climax when he [[DoNotAdjustYourSet hijacks the airwaves]] to broadcast ''The Riddle Factory'', a game show featuring old grudges from his past and challenging them to [[ComicBook/BatmanZeroYear get smart -- or die]]! It's actually implied that at least some of the riddles were actually IntentionallyUnwinnable, since the narration from Riddler's perspective refers to Batman saving his ex as helping her "cheat her way out of death".
* DecompositeCharacter:
** Calendar Man's usual identity of Julian Gregory Day is here divided across two brothers: Julian Day, the Calendar Man, and Gregory Day, Gotham City police captain [[spoiler:who uses his murderous brother to assassinate key witnesses to the GCPD's corruption]].
** Penguin's role in the comics as "mobster club owner with an animal gimmick" gets given to Killer Croc, while Penguin becomes a KnowledgeBroker and "[[DeadlyEuphemism problem solver]]" that readers have likened to [[Characters/MarvelComicsTheKingpin the Kingpin]].
** Jim and Barbara Gordon both get different aspects of Jim's usual role as Batman's FriendOnTheForce: Jim as the police higher-up who holds the GCPD back from going too hard after Batman, and Barbara as the beat cop who helps with his investigations.
* DeducingTheSecretIdentity: Considering how well they know each other, it wasn't hard for [[spoiler:Selina Kyle]] to figure out who was under the Batman's cowl. Of course, the World's Greatest Detective had already done the same for [[spoiler:her]].
* DespairEventHorizon: Lynn Garfield crosses it ''hard'' after her wife's "[[HeKnowsTooMuch tragic death]]", becoming the supervillain Firefly to take revenge on the FDGC and Daggett Industries.
* DisabledInTheAdaptation:
** Carmine Falcone here is an old man -- well, old''er'' -- confined to a wheelchair.
** Commissioner Gordon is also wheelchair-bound after getting shot in the spine.
* DramaticIrony: "File #017" has [[spoiler:Harleen Quinzel]] saying that clearly the Batman is the greatest threat facing Gotham... over a shot of the Joker, [[spoiler:her future puddin']], hard at work in a chemical lab.
* EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas: Penguin's mother is the only person in the world he cares about, and the only one who genuinely cares about him. He works to keep her LockedOutOfTheLoop when it comes to his criminal empire, but it's hinted she might have caught on...
* EvilHasABadSenseOfHumor: [[spoiler:When Batman's fear gas hallucinations turn into a flashback to his parents' murder, Scarecrow quips that they've found his "trigger point"... as the camera focuses on the barrel of Joe Chill's gun.]]
* FacialHorror: [[spoiler:What little we can see of the Joker isn't pretty: hair reduced to long, stringy patches, pallid skin, and of course, a CheshireCatGrin with a few too many teeth in it.]]
* FanDisservice: "File #010: Deacon Blackfire" has a shot of a topless Julie Madison... covered in occult scrawlings, sobbing in terror, and with a knife to her throat.
* FemmeFatale:
** Poison Ivy {{zigzags}} this: her main method of "seduction" is using her hallucinogens to brainwash people, but the picture of her in Arkham has her posed as if to properly seduce an unseen interviewer.
* GangBangers: King Tut's ''oeuvre'', controlling most of the gangs across Gotham's East Side.
* GiftedlyBad: {{Downplayed}} with King Tut: there are a few songs on his self-produced albums that aren't half bad, but overall he's firmly middling, though being that he's a ruthless gang leader, no one really wants to tell him that.
* GirlbossFeminist: Pamela Isley was this to a T before her supervillain career got started, with [=DoctorEnn=] citing [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes Elizabeth Holmes]] as an inspiration.
* TheGhost:
** Batman himself is almost never shown on panel in any of the files; some have him conveniently off-screen, Bruce Wayne out of costume features in a couple, and we get to see [[spoiler:Scarecrow's fear toxin-induced vision of "Barbatos"]], but the cape and cowl itself is only seen in "File #017" and the ChristmasEpisode, and only the latter shows it in any real detail.
** Jervis Tetch, the Mad Hatter, has been mentioned a time or two (Scarecrow cites him as one of the inspirations behind his fear toxin, and a message from Oracle in "File #016: The Bat Cloud" mentions an Alice going missing), but hasn't yet appeared in the flesh.
* GoodBadGirl: Fittingly for a character inspired by Music/StevieNicks, Harriet Kane was one of these in her younger days (though with significantly less of a cocaine habit).
* HarmfulToMinors: Selina Kyle's DarkAndTroubledPast got started when she found her dad dead in his chair from [[AteHisGun a self-inflicted gunshot]].
* HeKnowsTooMuch: Lynn Garfield's wife, Dr. Theodora Carson, started noticing some odd irregularities with the design of the FIREFLY suit, ones that could make the suit incredibly dangerous to use. Not long after, she died in a blaze that FDGC officers were strangely slow to put out...
* HeroicWillpower: [[spoiler:Just when it seems that Batman's broken down under the strain of Crane's fear toxin, a vision of his younger self in the moment he made his HeroicVow gives him the encouragement he needs to power through and turn the tide.]]
* HiddenDepths: Condiment King's eponymous arsenal is actually homemade. Apparently Buddy's parents managed to teach him some things about sauce-making in between [[DomesticAbuse making each other's lives miserable]] or [[AbusiveParents making his life miserable]].
* HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs: Pamela Isley's first brush with the Green comes courtesy of a mixture of coke, mescaline, and some comic book super-science chemicals of her own design.
* HotterAndSexier:
** ''[[CListFodder Maxie Zeus]]'', of all people, gets this, being changed from a history professor turned mobster with a gimmick to the son of Greek immigrants who made a killing in the ''porno business''. One of his pictures has him flanked by an "Aphrodite" with a tommy gun, a dress bordering on NavelDeepNeckline, and a ''very'' tight adherence to the BuxomBeautyStandard.
-->'''[=DoctorEnn=]:''' 'Maxie Zeus' doesn't just accidentally sound like a porn name in this universe, let's put it that way.
** {{Inverted}}/{{zigzagged}} with Poison Ivy, whose primary appearance goes from a [[MsFanservice scantily clad]] PlantPerson to a bedraggled cult leader dressed like a cross between a druid and a mad scientist, but her classic look appears in a Green-induced hallucination as a MythologyGag.
* HumanSacrifice:
** Poison Ivy's cult appears to practice this. It's not made entirely clear why, but the caption implies it has to do with Pamela's search for an ElixirOfLife.
-->''"To Heal, The Dead Rot Must Be Cut Away. (All Hail The Green.)"''
** The Acolytes of the Blackfire definitely practice this, and for them, it's [[HollywoodSatanism very]] [[OurVampiresAreDifferent clear]] what the purpose is.
* ImAHumanitarian: {{Implied}}, but the fact that one member of [[MadArtist the Red Hood Collective]] is called "the Chef" does not bode well.
* InSpiteOfANail: Black Mask is largely the same here as in DC canon.
-->'''[=DoctorEnn=]:''' If it ain't broke.
* InsufferableGenius: Riddler is this as always, but his StartOfDarkness sees it bite him firmly in the ass: given how deeply unlikable he was, [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome no one comes to his defense when Danny Mockenridge muscles him out of his own company]].
* IOwnThisTown: The Penguin's influence is ''everywhere'' in Gotham City; there's no one he doesn't have files on and no one whose life he can't destroy if they cross one of his clients -- except, of course, for Bruce Wayne.
-->''"His skill is knowing things. His job is getting things done. And his power is absolute."''
* ItIsBeyondSaving: Firefly sees Gotham this way, specifically comparing it to a controlled burn in a forest: clearing away the rot and undergrowth so the plants can grow back healthy. Of course, her burns are anything ''but'' "controlled"...
* JumpScare: Executed with surprising effectiveness in [[spoiler:"File #011: The Scarecrow". The POV shot of Scarecrow dosing Batman with fear gas initially seems to be a still image that's a bit bigger than normal, but look for too long and you'll get a flash of Scarecrow's hallucinatory monstrous form.]]
* JustLikeRobinHood: Every time the Cat robs someone, some struggling social program or other always gets an injection of untraceable cash from a mysterious source (after Selina herself has deducted a little finder's fee, of course).
* KickedUpstairs: In this continuity, Jim Gordon's had an AdaptationalJobChange to "Head of the Office of Community Relations", an essentially useless position meant to keep him from making trouble for the GCPD's more corrupt elements -- but it's still high enough upstairs that he can keep in contact with a certain masked vigilante, as well as keep the press and the cops off his cape to an extent.
* KillItWithFire: Both ways with Firefly: her wife died in a fire as a result of her employers bribing the fire department to let her burn, so now she uses the FIREFLY suit to pay them and Daggett Industries back.
* KnewItAllAlong:
** {{Subverted}} with Poison Ivy, who it initially seems [[spoiler:knows Batman's secret identity, but it's revealed that Bruce is just hallucinating her calling him by name since he knew Pamela before her turn to supervillainy; the real Ivy doesn't know who it is under the mask]].
** A possible case with Jim Gordon; like some other continuities, it's implied he may have already figured out who the Batman is, but either way, he's not telling.
-->'''Hallucinatory!Ivy:''' ''Join me, Bruce...''\\
'''Real!Ivy:''' Join us in the Green, [[spoiler:Batman]].
* LastOfHisKind: Anatoly Knyazev, AKA [=KGBeast=], is described as one of the few members of [[TheMafiya the old-school Russian Bratva]] left after an internal conflict. The cybernetic arm and CharlesAtlasSuperpower probably helped with that.
* LaughingMad: [[spoiler:Who else but the Clown Prince of Crime? After seeing [[FacialHorror his new appearance]], the last survivor of the Red Hood Collective starts laughing... and doesn't stop, even as he butchers the doctors who gave him his face-lift.]]
* LetsGetDangerous: Killer Croc is a lot more genteel here than he usually is, but he's still a towering crocodile man with a DarkAndTroubledPast and a ''lot'' of SuppressedRage. Cross him, and he'll tear you apart.
* LockedIntoStrangeness: Jonathan Crane's hair goes prematurely gray after [[spoiler:getting dosed [[DiseaseBleach with his own fear toxin]]]].
* LockedOutOfTheLoop: {{Downplayed}} with Harper Row, here working as Bruce's PA, who doesn't exactly ''know'' her boss is secretly the Batman, but has enough of an idea to do her job effectively and maintain plausible deniability about his identity.
* LoonyFan: Joe Chill is here reinterpreted as one of these in the vein of Mark David Chapman or John Hinckley Jr., described as having both "idolised and resented" Martha Wayne.
* MadArtist:
** The Red Hood Collective. [[BlueAndOrangeMorality Their thinking goes]]: art is meant to challenge societal conventions; societal conventions tell us that "ThouShaltNotKill"; ergo, killing people for our art makes us the ultimate artists. Their membership includes [[ConductingTheCarnage the Conductor]], [[DanceBattler the Dancer]], [[CouldntFindAPen the Painter]], [[NightmareFetishist the Photographer]], [[MadBomber the Sculptor]], [[WritingAboutYourCrime the Writer]], [[TheButcher the Chef]], and [[BrotherSisterTeam the Actors]].
** Selina Kyle in this universe is a {{downplayed}} example. In her civilian identity, she's an acclaimed postmodern artist; as the Cat, she leaves art pieces at the scenes of her thefts. Some in rather... ''unique'' mediums.
-->''"There are those who consider the loss of "Black Mood" one of the great artistic tragedies of the day, but to be totally fair, the man who it was painted on had to shower eventually."''
* MadnessMantra: Riddler's lore post has him supremely confident about his plot to take {{Revenge}} on his former colleagues, sure that there's no one smart enough to find the set of ''The Riddle Factory''...
-->Until someone cracks the connection.\\
''Who is the Batman?''\\
And traces the signal.\\
''Who is the Batman?''\\
And hacks the Riddler.\\
''Who is the Batman?''\\
And helps that lying, cheating bitch Quinn cheat her way out of death.\\
'''''Who is the Batman?!'''''\\
And ruins everything.\\
'''''[[VillainousBreakdown WHO IS THE BATMAN?!?!]]'''''
* ManOfWealthAndTaste: Plenty of examples, but the Penguin's black-and-purple fur-lined coat and Killer Croc's [[VillainInAWhiteSuit swanky white suit]] take the cake.
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane:
** Maxie Zeus' belief that he's the Greek god of thunder incarnate is almost certainly bunk, but there are still plenty of instances of Maxie having some truly insane luck that make the idea hard to rule out completely.
** Firefly's madness is described as seeming like the fire is "calling to her", and the picture of her recovering in hospital has her exposed eye ''glowing'' a vivid orange, but as far as is known, she's just a relatively ordinary supervillain.
* MentorArchetype: A young Selina Kyle finds one in, of all people, [[spoiler:Richard Swift]], who helps turn her from an average street punk to a brilliant artist and an even more brilliant thief.
* MistakenIdentity: The GCPD initially mistake the Man-Bat for the Batman, and send a hit squad after him expecting to take down a dangerous vigilante. Unfortunately for them, that wasn't what they were up against.
* MoreThanMindControl: The members of Hedera were lured like the victims of a siren by Poison Ivy's hallucinations, and it was ''incredibly'' potent; in her lore, one former member is still questioning how much of his will is his own months or possibly ''years'' later.
-->''"She got into his head and under his skin, and after it all, after the madness and the withdrawal and the clawing himself back, the thing that frightens him the most, even now, is this: he can’t be sure she’s not still there."''
* MythologyGag:
** The names of the showrunners on the [[Characters/SupermanLexLuthor LexFlix]] docuseries about Pamela Isley's fall from grace are given as Charlotte Halstead and Roger Hayden. Halstead is a {{Gender Flip}}ped version of the Golden Age Psycho-Pirate, while Hayden is the modern age one made famous by ''ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths''.
** The final line of the Red Hood Collective's manifesto is the vow they make all members swear by: "[[Film/Batman1989 I will make art until someone dies.]]" Similarly, Ace Chemicals is renamed to Axis Chemicals, and [[spoiler:the Joker's introduction is based heavily on the equivalent scene in ''Batman '89'' -- only his RageAgainstTheReflection [[BloodbathVillainOrigin goes a lot further]]...]]
** The Red Hood Collective themselves are a tweaked version of the Red Hood Gang from ''ComicBook/BatmanZeroYear''. Both share similar outlooks on morality, but while the Gang were {{Straw Nihilist}}s in it ForTheEvulz, the Collective believes that [[MadArtist murder is the ultimate form of transgressive art]].
** The captions for Man-Bat's first appearance initially wonder [[Franchise/{{Superman}} if he's a bird or perhaps a plane]], before being swiftly corrected with a JumpScare.
** The Acolytes of the Blackfire despise Batman for using his TerrorHero schtick to give hope to the downtrodden, going against their SocialDarwinist philosophy. You could say that [[Film/TheDarkKnightRises he merely adopted the dark; they were born in it, molded by it!]]
** The lore entry for Deacon Blackfire opens with a reading from the Bible of Crime, which was introduced in ''ComicBook/FiftyTwo'' in use by Intergang.
** "File #011: The Scarecrow" is heavily inspired by [[spoiler:the Scarecrow sections from ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamAsylum'', as well as Batman's final confrontation with him in ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamKnight'': Bats is dosed with fear gas, forcing him to confront his trauma over the death of his parents, before breaking out of the hallucination through sheer HeroicWillpower and giving the villain [[HoistByYourOwnPetard a taste of his own medicine]].]] Crane even paraphrases his Arkhamverse counterpart:
-->'''''Arkham Asylum'':''' Poor little bat. You're in my world now!
-->'''''Caped Crusader'':''' You're in my world now, little bat.
** Another part of the file references [[spoiler:Bruce's nightmare from the ''[[WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries BTAS]]'' episode "[[Recap/BatmanTheAnimatedSeriesE11TwoFacePart2 Two-Face: Part 2]]"]]: "Why didn't you save us, son?"
** Selina's message to Bruce has her reminiscing about a time in their youth where they snuck out of the orphanage, ran down to [[ComicBook/BatmanYearOne Lake Mazzucchelli]], then came back like it was no big deal, much to the surprise of [[Creator/FrankMiller Old Man Miller]]. In the same message, she mentions a statue of Hippolyta in Gotham made by Julia Kapatelis, a supporting character in the ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' mythos.
** Selina's first major art exhibition is called "Seduction of the Innocent", after Frederic Wertham's book of the same name that inspired UsefulNotes/TheComicsCode (Wertham himself got a reference in the very first post, which mentioned the findings of the Wertham Commission regarding the Wayne murders), and its centerpiece is a Warhol-esque pointilist rendition of the iconic cover to ''ComicBook/ActionComicsNumber1''.
** Catwoman being called simply "the Cat" is a throwback to her earliest appearances in the Golden Age, when that was her ''nom de crime''.
** Bruce and Selina's nicknames for each other, "B" and "C", echoes Creator/TomKing's habit of having them call each other "Bat" and "Cat" as pet names (here, the "C" comes from a young Bruce thinking Selina's name started with that).
** This time around, it's ''James'' Gordon who [[ComicBook/TheKillingJoke takes a bullet in the spine]]! (Speaking of Gordon, his image in "File #016: The Bat Cloud" has him holding a [[Series/Batman1966 red phone]].)
** Aunt Harriet's entry in "File #016: The Bat Cloud" notes that her predilection for getting into {{Love Triangle}}s once led to [[Characters/BatmanClayface Basil Karlo]] and [[https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Dexter_Myles_(New_Earth) Dexter Myles]] getting into a fistfight at an Academy Awards ceremony.
** Lynn Garfield's wife, Theodora Carson, is named after the New 52 Firefly, ''[[GenderFlip Ted]]'' Carson, who was himself an ex-firefighter.
* ANaziByAnyOtherName: "Police Commissioner Gillian G. Loeb. Dislikes: [[RedScare bleeding-heart pinkos]]. Likes: [[BalconySpeech listening to recordings of Hitler's speeches]]."
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: The project makes extensive use of this, but Administrivia/TropesAreTools, as the celebrities in question are just used as inspiration to add verisimilitude instead of just making the characters straight-up {{Expies}}.%%And it does this way too many times to count, so if someone not me wants to list them off, have at it.
* NotSoHarmlessVillain: Condiment King's [[EdibleAmmunition gimmick]] usually gets him relegated to CListFodder or made DarkerAndEdgier somehow, but this iteration of the character is a ''lot'' [[SmarterThanYouLook Smarter Than He Looks]]. To begin with, the main purpose of his kit is [[VictoryThroughIntimidation intimidation]]: the people of Gotham are a lot more afraid of supervillains than regular crooks, and any bank teller is gonna think twice about disobeying when one of them says not to call the cops. Then there's the condiments themselves, which are ''technically'' harmless unless you have an allergy, but a shot of mustard or hot sauce right in the eyes still hurts without getting Buddy a murder charge -- and even then, what judge could call it assault with a deadly weapon when the weapon is ''condiments''?
-->''"Yeah, he's got all the angles covered. Because Buddy Mayo ain't crazy. And Buddy Mayo ain't stupid either."''
* OffWithHisHead: A number of the firefighters killed by Firefly are on the receiving end of this, courtesy of a fire axe.
* OneLastJob: A variant in Batman's first encounter with Mr. Freeze, which comes about because Freeze finally finds a way to cure Nora's disease, and returns to Gotham to raid Ferris Industries for what he needed to create the cure (and take revenge on Ferris Boyle while he's at it).
* OutOfFocus: Some entries, such as "File #009: Man-Bat" or "File #013: Deadshot", are notably sparser on lore than others. {{Justified|Trope}}, as ''Caped Crusader'' is a one-man project, and [=DoctorEnn=] is, by his own admission, not always sufficiently motivated or possessed of enough time to write up more comprehensive stories for certain characters.
* PaintingTheMedium: Firefly's MotiveRant completely lacks punctuation and randomly vacillates between lower-case and upper-case, giving the whole thing the air of being written by a [[SanitySlippage deranged terrorist]], which... yeah, sounds about right.
* PoweredArmor:
** Mr. Freeze's suit is rendered as this, similar to the ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamSeries''.
** Firefly wears one of these originally designed for fighting fires. Turns out it's also very good at ''setting'' them, and swinging an axe hard enough to decapitate someone as well.
* PrecisionFStrike: "File #012: Condiment King" has two: Buddy's story about a bank employee telling a gang of bank robbers from out of town to "fuck off", and him declaring that "Gotham is, to put not too fine a point on it, utterly fucked in the head."
* PretenderDiss: The Blackfire cult's scripture contains one of these PlayedForDrama, directed at Batman, who they decry as twisting the darkness they hold sacred to his own ends.
* PurpleProse: Scarecrow's lore entry is framed as a MotiveRant written by Crane himself. Appropriately for a character inspired by Creator/HPLovecraft, the prose is positively amaranthine.
* PyrrhicVictory: Riddler manages to escape both the Batman and the various powerful people he pissed off with Riddleaks, but he's stuck in the Corto Maltese Embassy for the foreseeable future (the caption for this image places him on Day ''467'' of his exile), and even with his focus set on besting Batman, the confinement is starting to get more than a little claustrophobic.
-->''"(What is the ability to have a good walk around the block in the fresh air worth?)"''
* RaceLift:
** King Tut, who originated in ''Series/Batman1966'' as a white guy, is here reimagined as a Black supremacist convinced he's descended from Ramesses II himself.
** Kirk Langstrom is rendered as AmbiguouslyBrown rather than the usual Caucasian.
** Leslie Thompkins and Slam Bradley are both rendered as Black, and Harvey Dent has a noticeably tan skintone similar to his [[WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries animated counterpart]], who, per WordOfGod, was meant to be Sicilian.
* RiddleMeThis: After stealing enough data from his former company, the Riddler creates an app called Riddleaks that can give people access to data mined by Question's algorithms if they can answer the riddles protecting it. The real riddle, however, is in the nature of the data itself: some extremely important and sensitive stuff is easy as sin to decrypt, all of which pertains to certain figures from Eddie's past who soon become guests on ''[[DeadlyGame The Riddle Factory]]''.
* RoguesGalleryTransplant: {{Downplayed}}, since the two never meet, but [[spoiler:the Shade is generally a Flash villain, whereas here he serves as a mentor to a young Selina Kyle, who, of course, would go on to become a part of the gallery proper.]]
* SanitySlippage: Losing her wife turned Lynn Garfield from a model firefighter lauded for her bravery many times over to an unhinged pyromaniac hell-bent on taking {{Revenge}} on the people who killed Theodora, no matter who gets in her way.
* ScatterbrainedSenior: PlayedForDrama and [[PlayedForHorror Horror]] in the case of Mr. Freeze. As some other adaptations have hinted, he essentially has CompleteImmortality [[CursedWithAwesome thanks to the accident that altered his physiology]]. The problem is, TheFogOfAges is in full effect, and Victor's been alive and marinating in his own trauma for seventy years. He's left with what's effectively an extremely advanced case of dementia, which means that he's unable to realize that the women he abducts aren't Nora, that there are multiple Noras dotted throughout his lair, or that [[spoiler:the real Nora has been dead the whole time]].
* ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules: Daggett Industries' attempts to bribe Theodora Carson with cash or cushy positions fell on deaf ears. Unfortunately, once they realized that, they resorted to... [[HeKnowsTooMuch more]] [[KillItWithFire drastic measures]].
* SerialKiller:
** The Calendar Man is in fine form here. [[spoiler:Except he's closer to a PsychoForHire, being used as a blunt instrument by his brother to eliminate anyone who could blow the whistle on some of the GCPD's less savory activities. He does end up dipping into this when he starts killing people Greg didn't ask him to, though...]]
** "File #017" reveals that [[spoiler:Victor Zsasz is active in this version of Gotham]].
* ShoutOut:
** The [[SuccessionCrisis dynamic]] between Sofia and Alfredo Falcone is described as "''Series/{{Succession}}'' with guns".
** Lynn Garfield's introductory portrait has her wearing a yellow-and-red medal that the caption calls the "[[ComicBook/IronMan Stark Medal]]". Fittingly, she later becomes the pilot of a suit of PoweredArmor, though she isn't exactly on the side of the angels.
* TheSocialDarwinist: Mixed with a healthy dose of BadIsGoodAndGoodIsBad when it comes to the Acolytes of the Blackfire. In their mind, the world belongs to [[{{Satan}} the Beast]], so evil is the order of the day, and anyone strong and evil enough to trample over the weak in their path can do whatever they want.
* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Most depictions of Batman's origin story have Bruce taken under Alfred's wing immediately after his parents' murder, but here he goes into the care of the state while his relatives and Wayne Enterprises work out who'll get guardianship (and, of course, who'll control the Wayne family fortune).
* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: The caption for Bruce Wayne's image in "File #016: The Bat Cloud" refers to him as a "generally useless billionaire who probably shouldn't be on this list".
* TechnologicallyBlindElders: Slam Bradley apparently has a habit of delivering massive boxes of paper files to Bruce and co. which Oracle then has to digitize all by her lonesome, and by a comment from Stephanie, Alfred's cast in the same mold.
* TemptingFate: {{Lampshaded}} in Riddler's lore:
-->Years pass. Billions roll in. The little web-platform that could grows even more. To be honest, it gradually gets worse, but it brings in billions so who cares. They're unstoppable. The sky’s the limit.\\
''What is tempting fate?''
* TheEndOrIsIt: Quoted word-for-word by "File #009: Man-Bat", as the ending shows [[spoiler:Frankie Langstrom transformed into She-Bat]].
* TheRealHeroes: Grimly {{subverted}} in Firefly's lore: the FIREFLY suit was ''supposed'' to be a way to put Gotham's firefighters on par with the city's supervillains, but the project itself was essentially a money-making scheme on the part of Daggett Industries, the suit itself was horrifically unsafe (for ''fighting'' fires, anyway), and most of the FDGC were bribed into endorsing the thing. When one of the project's designers, Dr. Theodora Carson, started to look a little too deep into it, Daggett Industries had her killed -- [[CreateYourOwnVillain which wound up turning her grief-stricken wife into a murderous supervillain out for revenge against them]].
* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: Done in "File #011: The Scarecrow" from the perspectives of both [[spoiler:Batman as he's dosed with fear gas and Crane when he's HoistByHisOwnPetard]].
* TragicVillain:
** Mr. Freeze somehow manages to be this ''[[ExaggeratedTrope even harder]]'', since his backstory is much the same as in "[[Recap/BatmanTheAnimatedSeriesE14HeartOfIce Heart of Ice]]" -- only it happened ''decades ago'', leaving Victor as an immortal quasi-corpse frozen in a single horrible moment, reduced to abducting and freezing women that look like his wife [[spoiler:who died ''just minutes before his accident'']]. The worst part? [[spoiler:Even if Nora had survived, [[AllForNothing they found a treatment for her condition twenty years before the story starts]].]]
** Firefly goes from a {{Pyromaniac}} with no real motivation for his crimes other than [[ForTheEvulz the sheer joy of it]] to a prime example of this. [[GenderFlip Lynn Garfield]] was a decorated firefighter who lost her wife in a fire that her fellow officers were bribed to let take her (and worse, she was on the scene before anyone else, so she had to ''hear'' her dying in pain), and, driven insane from the grief, stole an experimental suit of PoweredArmor, modifying it into a weapon against the FDGC and the corporation that ordered her wife's death, Daggett Industries. The tragedy really comes through in her first lore entry: while most entries from the perspective of a villain are grandiose {{Motive Rant}}s or self-aggrandizing accounts of their backstories, Lynn's is a rambling, barely coherent threat against Batman that just ''bleeds'' SurvivorsGuilt.
-->''"do not talk to me about innocent casualties"''\\
''"they are not innocent SHE WAS INNOCENT AND SHE DIED"''\\
''"[[DespairEventHorizon and there is nothing good left]]"''\\
''"they are rotten the whole system is rotten the whole city is rotten [[ItIsBeyondSaving and i will burn it down so we can start over]]"''\\
''"that's why the fire SPARED me don't you GET IT i should be dead with her but i'm not"''
* TyopOnTheCover:
** The caption for Stephanie Brown misnames her as "Samantha".
** [[spoiler:Dick Grayson's surname is misspelled as "Greyson" in his introduction.]]
* UncertainDoom: Invoked with the Blackfire cult's abduction of Julie Madison; [[WordOfGod in response to a commenter]] wondering whether or not they [[HumanSacrifice sacrificed her]] before Batman stepped in, [=DoctorEnn=] declared that, after a change of plans, they were leaving it up to interpretation whether Batman saved or avenged Julie.
* UnderestimatingBadassery: The Calendar Man attempts to kill Renee Montoya [[spoiler:as a birthday gift to his brother]]. Unfortunately for him, she's... well, ''Renee Montoya''. When the cops arrive, Renee is bloodied up a bit, but Day's the one kneeling on the floor with cuffs on his wrists and a gun to his head.
* VictoryThroughIntimidation: This is Condiment King's ''modus operandi'': if you walk into a bank in Gotham dressed like a ''VideoGame/Payday2'' character and carrying an AK, you'll get ignored. If you walk into a bank in Gotham in a primary-colored jumpsuit with some futuristic-looking tech, ''that's'' what'll make people take you seriously.
* VillainousBreakdown:
** Riddler, SmugSnake that he is, does not take it well when [[TheCowl some guy in a flying rat costume]] outsmarts him and saves his ex from his death trap.
** Blackfire and his cult are utterly shocked that no matter what, [[spoiler:Batman [[TheDeterminator just won't give up against them]]]]. Dala is reduced to furious flailing and screaming, and Blackfire's face when [[spoiler:Batman gets to him]] is nothing short of aghast.
-->'''Sister Dala:''' Break, damn you, [[spoiler:Pretender]]! ''Break! BREAK!''
* WhamEpisode:
** "File #014: A Patient". [[spoiler:ComicBook/TheJoker is here, and he's ready to paint the town red...]]
** "File #016: The Bat Cloud". [[spoiler:There's a ComicBook/{{Robin}} operating independently of the Batman... and it's ''[[NotHisSled not]]'' Dick Grayson, who's had a ''major'' AgeLift that makes him old enough to have been one of Bruce's teachers during his training to become Batman.]]
** "File #017: Dr. Strange Has A Theory (And A Guest)". [[spoiler:A certain self-scarring serial killer is on the loose in Gotham, Harvey Dent is beginning to lose his grip on sanity, some of the clay in the city's soil is starting to come alive, the Joker is hard at work preparing to make his grand debut, and that guest? It's [[ComicBook/HarleyQuinn Harleen Quinzel]] starting her tenure at Arkham.]]
* WhamLine: From "File #017": "Let me be the first to welcome you to Arkham... [[spoiler:[[ComicBook/HarleyQuinn Dr. Quinzel]]]]."
* WickedCultured: Both [[spoiler:the Shade]] and his student Selina Kyle, "because one does not simply learn the ways of thievery from [[spoiler:Richard Swift]]; one gains an education in the arts and the higher cultures that rivals the Sorbonne."
* YoungerAndHipper: Mustachioed game company owner Dan Mockridge becomes billionaire tech bro [[AdaptationNameChange Danny Mockenridge]].
----
A healer.\\
A gunman.\\
A slaying.\\
An orphan.\\
A vow.\\
'''A crusader.'''''
''Legends of the Caped Crusader'' is a ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' fan-project by [[https://www.reddit.com/user/DoctorEnn DoctorEnn]] on Website/{{Reddit}}, specifically the subreddit for [[https://www.heroforge.com/ Hero Forge]], an online tabletop miniature creator. The project, inspired by the similar ''[[https://www.reddit.com/r/HeroForgeMinis/comments/twd3fc/introducing_children_of_gotham_a_collaborative/ Children of Gotham]]'', uses Hero Forge to create [[AlternateContinuity reimagined versions]] of the Dark Knight's rogues gallery and supporting cast, which are then posted to the subreddit, along with comments from the good Doctor themself detailing the character's backstory.
The project has inspired a number of {{Recursive Fanfiction}}s, all of which form a [[LooseCanon loosely-connected]] SharedUniverse known as [[https://www.reddit.com/r/HeroForgeMinis/comments/187ybv6/a_guide_to_the_legendsverse_a_shared_universe_of/ the Legendsverse]].
!!''Legends of the Caped Crusader'' contains examples of the following tropes:
* AdaptationNameChange:
** Like [[Film/{{Joker}} other modern]] [[Film/TheBatman2022 interpretations]], Arkham Asylum gets a name change, this time to the Arkham Rehabilitation Center for the Criminally Disturbed.
** Professor Hugo Strange becomes Dr. Hugo Strang, with Strange being an unflattering nickname he's called behind his back.
** Gillian '''G.''' Loeb gets a MysteriousMiddleInitial as a nod to one of his inspirations, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Gordon_Liddy G. Gordon Liddy]].
** Condiment King here takes his name from the two separate incarnations of the character: '''Buddy''' Standler from ''BTAS'' and Rebirth, and Mitchell '''Mayo''' from the New 52.
** Selina Kyle's costumed identity is known simply as "the Cat", rather than Catwoman (though this isn't without precedent; see MythologyGag below).
* AdaptationRelationshipOverhaul: In most continuities, Bruce and Selina meet as adults once they've already started their costumed careers. Here, they were ChildhoodFriends during the few months Bruce stayed in an orphanage after Thomas and Martha were killed. When Bruce left, the loss of him as an anchor sent Selina down the path to [[{{Delinquents}} delinquency]].
* AdaptationalAttractiveness: On Earth-0, Jonathan Crane is a gangling stringbean of a man often dressed in shabby clothing -- it's how he got his AppropriatedAppelation. Here, however, he's a SharpDressedMan with cheekbones and a goatee that are just as sharp.
* AdaptationalBadass: Oswald Cobblepot goes from a mid-level mobster [[IndispensableScoundrel Batman can't seem to get rid of]] to TheChessmaster feared and respected by everyone with power in Gotham City.
* AdaptationalCurves: Sofia Falcone isn't the [[AmazonianBeauty wall of muscle]] she's usually depicted as, being more slim and conventionally-sized.
* AdaptationalDiversity: Garfield Lynns becomes Lynn Garfield, former firefighter turned vengeful arsonist after the murder of her wife.
* AdaptationalDyeJob: Nora Fries, typically depicted as a blonde, is rendered as dark-haired, as are the women Victor kidnaps [[MistakenIdentity thinking they're her]].
* AdaptationalEarlyAppearance: Poison Ivy, who didn't appear in the comics until 27 years after Batman's debut, is here depicted as modern Gotham's first supervillain.
* AdaptationalIntelligence:
** Instead of a brutish sewer-dweller, Killer Croc here is depicted as a ''mob boss'', with enough business acumen to run Club Tropicana (a renamed Iceberg Lounge) and remain a major player in the Gotham underworld.
** Condiment King goes from a comedian turned mind-controlled Silver Age throwback to a remarkably savvy crook adapting to [[SuperheroPrevalenceStages the changing times]] by affecting the appearance of a supervillain.
* AdaptationalJobChange: Hamilton Hill goes from a crooked mayor working for the mob to an AmoralAttorney ''also'' working for the mob.
* AdaptationalWimp:
** Poison Ivy is no longer the superhuman PlantPerson she is in canon, instead "[[BroughtDownToBadass merely]]" being a CEO turned crazed cult leader with a brilliant grasp of chemistry.
** In ''ComicBook/BatmanTheCult'', Deacon Blackfire captured, tortured, and almost completely ''broke'' Batman, and was only defeated when both Bats and Robin stormed his lair with tranquilizer machine guns. Here, a lone Batman [[spoiler:pointedly ''refuses'' to break in his encounter with the cult, and Blackfire himself is DraggedOffToHell by his "benefactor" [[YouHaveFailedMe after his defeat]].]]
* AgeLift: [[spoiler:Dick Grayson goes from young enough to be Bruce's first ward to old enough to have been a mentor to him before he even started out as a vigilante.]]
* TheAlcoholic:
** [=KGBeast=]'s faulty memory is mentioned to be the result of [[LaserGuidedAmnesia more than just his fondness for vodka]].
** One of Edward Nashton's pictures has him with a bottle in his hand, which is implied to be one of the reasons his girlfriend left him.
* AmbiguousSituation:
** The official story is that Joe Chill was just a LoonyFan, but there are enough weird inconsistencies (inexplicable gaps in security that Chill exploited, alleged ties between him and Gotham's underworld) that some people -- including Bruce Wayne -- aren't convinced.
** Killer Croc's exact origins are left a mystery. Is he a human with a rare genetic condition? An actual crocodile [[ToxicWasteCanDoAnything mutated by toxic waste]]? A refugee from an AlternateUniverse where the dinosaurs never died out? Not even Croc himself knows, but he's here and he runs one of Gotham's biggest clubs, so we might as well roll with it.
** [=KGBeast=] may or may not be the answer to the question "WhoShotJFK"
** Which of the Red Hood Collective was the one who became "[[ComicBook/TheJoker the Survivor]]" after the Batman's raid on Axis Chemicals? [[MultipleChoicePast Good luck figuring that one out.]]
* AnimalMotifs: The Scarecrow [[spoiler:from the perspective of a fear-gassed Batman has a number of insectoid features. Plenty of insects are poisonous, and there's also the old myth about earwigs crawling inside people's ears while they sleep, much like how Crane [[IKnowWhatYouFear gets inside the heads of his victims]].]]
* AnthropomorphicPersonification: Hugo Strang believes that the Batman is one of these, describing him as a "[[BilingualBonus babau]]" (the east Mediterranean term for a boogeyman) born from the insanity afflicting Gotham City, acting as a carrier for it.
* ArcWords: The lore for Blackfire and his cult details the various evils they've committed over the years, but adds each time that it all went uninvestigated because "[[WretchedHive it's Gotham]]". [[spoiler:It's subverted, though, when Batman comes along and [[CurbStompBattle wrecks the cult]], "because it's Gotham. ''[[BadassBoast His]]'' [[BadassBoast Gotham]]."]]
* AsTheGoodBookSays: Or in this case, the Bad Book. The lore for Blackfire and his cult opens with a set of passages from the Bible of Crime espousing their SocialDarwinist philosophy and condemning Batman for defying it by being a HopeBringer for the citizens of Gotham.
* BeneathNotice: Condiment King thinks (or hopes) that he's this for the Batman, who spends most of his time taking down big-time supervillains and mob bosses, and less of it dealing with a bank robber with a gimmick. Time will tell if he's right...
* BerserkButton: If you value your life, ''do not'' call Oswald Cobblepot "Penguin". The last guy who made that mistake got fished out of the Sprang River a month later and labeled a SuicideBySea. [[BreakThemByTalking It might have been, too.]]
* BlandNameProduct: Poison Ivy's introduction has her giving a [[{{Pun}} PLANTalk]] (rather than a [[Website/{{Ted}} TEDTalk]]) in Metropolis.
* BlasphemousBoast: The StartOfDarkness that led to Pamela Isley becoming a supervillain began with a declaration that her company would find a way to [[ElixirOfLife cure death]]. Unfortunately, her search for that cure led to an encounter with [[SentientCosmicForce the Green]] and the birth of Poison Ivy.
* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Scarecrow's personal philosophy is that fear is what keeps people safe from rape, murder, [[EldritchAbomination or worse]], and thus superheroes are a danger to the natural order, since they give people hope; he reserves special ire for the Batman, since not only does he operate in Gotham City, [[WretchedHive the most fear-ridden place on Earth]], but he does so while appearing to be only human.
* BodyHorror:
** One image in "File #005" shows a former member of [[{{Cult}} Hedera]] wandering the streets of Gotham, emaciated, strung out, and with a ''massive'' tangle of plant matter clinging to her left arm that the caption describes as an "infection" which eventually had to be [[AmputationStopsSpread amputated]].
** From the neck up, Mr. Freeze is a withered, inhumanly pallid corpse. From the neck down, he has a gnarled-looking body permanently crusted with ice.
** Kirk's Man-Bat transformation is depicted as clearly painful, the doctor's face contorting in pain to show off his sharpening teeth as his hands grow fur and claws and wings burst from his back.
* BrickJoke: Attached to Selina's message to Bruce is a note from Alfred reassuring him that he checked the Manor for anything missing after she left. At the end of the message itself, Selina adds a PPS:
-->'''Selina:''' Tell Alfred to stop checking the silverware closet. Please, darling, I have some standards.
* BystanderSyndrome: What kept Deacon Blackfire and his cult from being discovered for so long. Who really cares if the odd [[DisposableVagrant hobo]] or [[DisposableSexWorker streetwalker]] never comes out of that old church, or that you can hear creepy chanting from nowhere if you're out late, or that corpses will sometimes wash up around the area that look like they've been drained of their blood? [[WretchedHive It's Gotham.]] [[spoiler:Until one costumed Gothamite comes along and decides to look a little deeper...]]
* CompositeCharacter: [[WordOfGod DoctorEnn freely admits]] that many of the character concepts draw on various other continuities. Administrivia/TropesAreTools, though, and the reimagined characters are more than capable of standing on their own.%%And again, there are too many to be fun listing, so I'm delegating.
** Many of Deacon Blackfire's [[RedAndBlackAndEvilAllOver aesthetic]] [[InTheHood affectations]] are references to classic Bat-foe the Mad Monk; the Mother Superior of his cult, Dala, is herself a henchman of the Monk in the mainline DC universe.%%Except this one, this was too central to ignore.
** This universe's Deadshot is combined with ComicBook/{{Deathstroke}}, since [[WordOfGod DoctorEnn kept getting the two mixed up]]. Even their names are combined: '''Floyd''' Lawton and Slade '''Wilson''' become '''Floyd Wilson'''.%%As was this.
** Stephanie Brown did briefly have a career as the Spoiler as in the comics, but once Batman took down her father, he took her on as this universe's Oracle.%%And this.
* CoolAunt: Bruce's aunt Harriet served as his guardian after his parents were killed, and though she wasn't exactly privy to his vigilante ambitions, she did provide some useful help to young Bruce: plenty of time to himself to study up on whatever he might need to know, an impromptu crash course in the kind of acting and showmanship necessary for a secret identity, and a good foundation for a reputation as a billionaire playboy.
* CosmicHorrorReveal: [[ImpliedTrope Maybe]]. Scarecrow's references to {{Eldritch Abomination}}s that he believes fear protects against, his calling Batman "the Pawn of the Devourer of Fear", and [[spoiler:his fear toxin hallucination of a monstrous Batman being labeled as "Barbatos"]] all imply that [[spoiler:[[ComicBook/BatmanGrantMorrison Simon Hurt's]] "[[GodOfEvil bat-god]]" may very well exist in this universe]].
* TheCracker: After getting fired from Question, the newly-minted Riddler uses a backdoor he installed on the servers during his time there to sneak past the increasingly large and baffled cybersecurity team and steal their stolen data for his {{Revenge}} scheme (see RiddleMeThis below).
* CrypticConversation: One of Joe Chill's only statements made during his trial was a remark of "You'll just have to figure it out, won't you?" in response to a crowd of reporters shouting questions about his motive for killing the Waynes.
* {{Cult}}:
** Hedera, Pamela Isley's company, becomes one after her vision of the Green.
** Deacon Blackfire, true to form, is the head of one of these.
* DarkIsEvil: Invoked by the Acolytes of the Blackfire, who [[BadIsGoodAndGoodIsBad couldn't be happier about it]], and are quite miffed by the fact that the Batman invokes [[DarkIsNotEvil the opposite]].
* DeadlyGame: The Riddler's plan comes to a climax when he [[DoNotAdjustYourSet hijacks the airwaves]] to broadcast ''The Riddle Factory'', a game show featuring old grudges from his past and challenging them to [[ComicBook/BatmanZeroYear get smart -- or die]]! It's actually implied that at least some of the riddles were actually IntentionallyUnwinnable, since the narration from Riddler's perspective refers to Batman saving his ex as helping her "cheat her way out of death".
* DecompositeCharacter:
** Calendar Man's usual identity of Julian Gregory Day is here divided across two brothers: Julian Day, the Calendar Man, and Gregory Day, Gotham City police captain [[spoiler:who uses his murderous brother to assassinate key witnesses to the GCPD's corruption]].
** Penguin's role in the comics as "mobster club owner with an animal gimmick" gets given to Killer Croc, while Penguin becomes a KnowledgeBroker and "[[DeadlyEuphemism problem solver]]" that readers have likened to [[Characters/MarvelComicsTheKingpin the Kingpin]].
** Jim and Barbara Gordon both get different aspects of Jim's usual role as Batman's FriendOnTheForce: Jim as the police higher-up who holds the GCPD back from going too hard after Batman, and Barbara as the beat cop who helps with his investigations.
* DeducingTheSecretIdentity: Considering how well they know each other, it wasn't hard for [[spoiler:Selina Kyle]] to figure out who was under the Batman's cowl. Of course, the World's Greatest Detective had already done the same for [[spoiler:her]].
* DespairEventHorizon: Lynn Garfield crosses it ''hard'' after her wife's "[[HeKnowsTooMuch tragic death]]", becoming the supervillain Firefly to take revenge on the FDGC and Daggett Industries.
* DisabledInTheAdaptation:
** Carmine Falcone here is an old man -- well, old''er'' -- confined to a wheelchair.
** Commissioner Gordon is also wheelchair-bound after getting shot in the spine.
* DramaticIrony: "File #017" has [[spoiler:Harleen Quinzel]] saying that clearly the Batman is the greatest threat facing Gotham... over a shot of the Joker, [[spoiler:her future puddin']], hard at work in a chemical lab.
* EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas: Penguin's mother is the only person in the world he cares about, and the only one who genuinely cares about him. He works to keep her LockedOutOfTheLoop when it comes to his criminal empire, but it's hinted she might have caught on...
* EvilHasABadSenseOfHumor: [[spoiler:When Batman's fear gas hallucinations turn into a flashback to his parents' murder, Scarecrow quips that they've found his "trigger point"... as the camera focuses on the barrel of Joe Chill's gun.]]
* FacialHorror: [[spoiler:What little we can see of the Joker isn't pretty: hair reduced to long, stringy patches, pallid skin, and of course, a CheshireCatGrin with a few too many teeth in it.]]
* FanDisservice: "File #010: Deacon Blackfire" has a shot of a topless Julie Madison... covered in occult scrawlings, sobbing in terror, and with a knife to her throat.
* FemmeFatale:
** Poison Ivy {{zigzags}} this: her main method of "seduction" is using her hallucinogens to brainwash people, but the picture of her in Arkham has her posed as if to properly seduce an unseen interviewer.
* GangBangers: King Tut's ''oeuvre'', controlling most of the gangs across Gotham's East Side.
* GiftedlyBad: {{Downplayed}} with King Tut: there are a few songs on his self-produced albums that aren't half bad, but overall he's firmly middling, though being that he's a ruthless gang leader, no one really wants to tell him that.
* GirlbossFeminist: Pamela Isley was this to a T before her supervillain career got started, with [=DoctorEnn=] citing [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes Elizabeth Holmes]] as an inspiration.
* TheGhost:
** Batman himself is almost never shown on panel in any of the files; some have him conveniently off-screen, Bruce Wayne out of costume features in a couple, and we get to see [[spoiler:Scarecrow's fear toxin-induced vision of "Barbatos"]], but the cape and cowl itself is only seen in "File #017" and the ChristmasEpisode, and only the latter shows it in any real detail.
** Jervis Tetch, the Mad Hatter, has been mentioned a time or two (Scarecrow cites him as one of the inspirations behind his fear toxin, and a message from Oracle in "File #016: The Bat Cloud" mentions an Alice going missing), but hasn't yet appeared in the flesh.
* GoodBadGirl: Fittingly for a character inspired by Music/StevieNicks, Harriet Kane was one of these in her younger days (though with significantly less of a cocaine habit).
* HarmfulToMinors: Selina Kyle's DarkAndTroubledPast got started when she found her dad dead in his chair from [[AteHisGun a self-inflicted gunshot]].
* HeKnowsTooMuch: Lynn Garfield's wife, Dr. Theodora Carson, started noticing some odd irregularities with the design of the FIREFLY suit, ones that could make the suit incredibly dangerous to use. Not long after, she died in a blaze that FDGC officers were strangely slow to put out...
* HeroicWillpower: [[spoiler:Just when it seems that Batman's broken down under the strain of Crane's fear toxin, a vision of his younger self in the moment he made his HeroicVow gives him the encouragement he needs to power through and turn the tide.]]
* HiddenDepths: Condiment King's eponymous arsenal is actually homemade. Apparently Buddy's parents managed to teach him some things about sauce-making in between [[DomesticAbuse making each other's lives miserable]] or [[AbusiveParents making his life miserable]].
* HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs: Pamela Isley's first brush with the Green comes courtesy of a mixture of coke, mescaline, and some comic book super-science chemicals of her own design.
* HotterAndSexier:
** ''[[CListFodder Maxie Zeus]]'', of all people, gets this, being changed from a history professor turned mobster with a gimmick to the son of Greek immigrants who made a killing in the ''porno business''. One of his pictures has him flanked by an "Aphrodite" with a tommy gun, a dress bordering on NavelDeepNeckline, and a ''very'' tight adherence to the BuxomBeautyStandard.
-->'''[=DoctorEnn=]:''' 'Maxie Zeus' doesn't just accidentally sound like a porn name in this universe, let's put it that way.
** {{Inverted}}/{{zigzagged}} with Poison Ivy, whose primary appearance goes from a [[MsFanservice scantily clad]] PlantPerson to a bedraggled cult leader dressed like a cross between a druid and a mad scientist, but her classic look appears in a Green-induced hallucination as a MythologyGag.
* HumanSacrifice:
** Poison Ivy's cult appears to practice this. It's not made entirely clear why, but the caption implies it has to do with Pamela's search for an ElixirOfLife.
-->''"To Heal, The Dead Rot Must Be Cut Away. (All Hail The Green.)"''
** The Acolytes of the Blackfire definitely practice this, and for them, it's [[HollywoodSatanism very]] [[OurVampiresAreDifferent clear]] what the purpose is.
* ImAHumanitarian: {{Implied}}, but the fact that one member of [[MadArtist the Red Hood Collective]] is called "the Chef" does not bode well.
* InSpiteOfANail: Black Mask is largely the same here as in DC canon.
-->'''[=DoctorEnn=]:''' If it ain't broke.
* InsufferableGenius: Riddler is this as always, but his StartOfDarkness sees it bite him firmly in the ass: given how deeply unlikable he was, [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome no one comes to his defense when Danny Mockenridge muscles him out of his own company]].
* IOwnThisTown: The Penguin's influence is ''everywhere'' in Gotham City; there's no one he doesn't have files on and no one whose life he can't destroy if they cross one of his clients -- except, of course, for Bruce Wayne.
-->''"His skill is knowing things. His job is getting things done. And his power is absolute."''
* ItIsBeyondSaving: Firefly sees Gotham this way, specifically comparing it to a controlled burn in a forest: clearing away the rot and undergrowth so the plants can grow back healthy. Of course, her burns are anything ''but'' "controlled"...
* JumpScare: Executed with surprising effectiveness in [[spoiler:"File #011: The Scarecrow". The POV shot of Scarecrow dosing Batman with fear gas initially seems to be a still image that's a bit bigger than normal, but look for too long and you'll get a flash of Scarecrow's hallucinatory monstrous form.]]
* JustLikeRobinHood: Every time the Cat robs someone, some struggling social program or other always gets an injection of untraceable cash from a mysterious source (after Selina herself has deducted a little finder's fee, of course).
* KickedUpstairs: In this continuity, Jim Gordon's had an AdaptationalJobChange to "Head of the Office of Community Relations", an essentially useless position meant to keep him from making trouble for the GCPD's more corrupt elements -- but it's still high enough upstairs that he can keep in contact with a certain masked vigilante, as well as keep the press and the cops off his cape to an extent.
* KillItWithFire: Both ways with Firefly: her wife died in a fire as a result of her employers bribing the fire department to let her burn, so now she uses the FIREFLY suit to pay them and Daggett Industries back.
* KnewItAllAlong:
** {{Subverted}} with Poison Ivy, who it initially seems [[spoiler:knows Batman's secret identity, but it's revealed that Bruce is just hallucinating her calling him by name since he knew Pamela before her turn to supervillainy; the real Ivy doesn't know who it is under the mask]].
** A possible case with Jim Gordon; like some other continuities, it's implied he may have already figured out who the Batman is, but either way, he's not telling.
-->'''Hallucinatory!Ivy:''' ''Join me, Bruce...''\\
'''Real!Ivy:''' Join us in the Green, [[spoiler:Batman]].
* LastOfHisKind: Anatoly Knyazev, AKA [=KGBeast=], is described as one of the few members of [[TheMafiya the old-school Russian Bratva]] left after an internal conflict. The cybernetic arm and CharlesAtlasSuperpower probably helped with that.
* LaughingMad: [[spoiler:Who else but the Clown Prince of Crime? After seeing [[FacialHorror his new appearance]], the last survivor of the Red Hood Collective starts laughing... and doesn't stop, even as he butchers the doctors who gave him his face-lift.]]
* LetsGetDangerous: Killer Croc is a lot more genteel here than he usually is, but he's still a towering crocodile man with a DarkAndTroubledPast and a ''lot'' of SuppressedRage. Cross him, and he'll tear you apart.
* LockedIntoStrangeness: Jonathan Crane's hair goes prematurely gray after [[spoiler:getting dosed [[DiseaseBleach with his own fear toxin]]]].
* LockedOutOfTheLoop: {{Downplayed}} with Harper Row, here working as Bruce's PA, who doesn't exactly ''know'' her boss is secretly the Batman, but has enough of an idea to do her job effectively and maintain plausible deniability about his identity.
* LoonyFan: Joe Chill is here reinterpreted as one of these in the vein of Mark David Chapman or John Hinckley Jr., described as having both "idolised and resented" Martha Wayne.
* MadArtist:
** The Red Hood Collective. [[BlueAndOrangeMorality Their thinking goes]]: art is meant to challenge societal conventions; societal conventions tell us that "ThouShaltNotKill"; ergo, killing people for our art makes us the ultimate artists. Their membership includes [[ConductingTheCarnage the Conductor]], [[DanceBattler the Dancer]], [[CouldntFindAPen the Painter]], [[NightmareFetishist the Photographer]], [[MadBomber the Sculptor]], [[WritingAboutYourCrime the Writer]], [[TheButcher the Chef]], and [[BrotherSisterTeam the Actors]].
** Selina Kyle in this universe is a {{downplayed}} example. In her civilian identity, she's an acclaimed postmodern artist; as the Cat, she leaves art pieces at the scenes of her thefts. Some in rather... ''unique'' mediums.
-->''"There are those who consider the loss of "Black Mood" one of the great artistic tragedies of the day, but to be totally fair, the man who it was painted on had to shower eventually."''
* MadnessMantra: Riddler's lore post has him supremely confident about his plot to take {{Revenge}} on his former colleagues, sure that there's no one smart enough to find the set of ''The Riddle Factory''...
-->Until someone cracks the connection.\\
''Who is the Batman?''\\
And traces the signal.\\
''Who is the Batman?''\\
And hacks the Riddler.\\
''Who is the Batman?''\\
And helps that lying, cheating bitch Quinn cheat her way out of death.\\
'''''Who is the Batman?!'''''\\
And ruins everything.\\
'''''[[VillainousBreakdown WHO IS THE BATMAN?!?!]]'''''
* ManOfWealthAndTaste: Plenty of examples, but the Penguin's black-and-purple fur-lined coat and Killer Croc's [[VillainInAWhiteSuit swanky white suit]] take the cake.
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane:
** Maxie Zeus' belief that he's the Greek god of thunder incarnate is almost certainly bunk, but there are still plenty of instances of Maxie having some truly insane luck that make the idea hard to rule out completely.
** Firefly's madness is described as seeming like the fire is "calling to her", and the picture of her recovering in hospital has her exposed eye ''glowing'' a vivid orange, but as far as is known, she's just a relatively ordinary supervillain.
* MentorArchetype: A young Selina Kyle finds one in, of all people, [[spoiler:Richard Swift]], who helps turn her from an average street punk to a brilliant artist and an even more brilliant thief.
* MistakenIdentity: The GCPD initially mistake the Man-Bat for the Batman, and send a hit squad after him expecting to take down a dangerous vigilante. Unfortunately for them, that wasn't what they were up against.
* MoreThanMindControl: The members of Hedera were lured like the victims of a siren by Poison Ivy's hallucinations, and it was ''incredibly'' potent; in her lore, one former member is still questioning how much of his will is his own months or possibly ''years'' later.
-->''"She got into his head and under his skin, and after it all, after the madness and the withdrawal and the clawing himself back, the thing that frightens him the most, even now, is this: he can’t be sure she’s not still there."''
* MythologyGag:
** The names of the showrunners on the [[Characters/SupermanLexLuthor LexFlix]] docuseries about Pamela Isley's fall from grace are given as Charlotte Halstead and Roger Hayden. Halstead is a {{Gender Flip}}ped version of the Golden Age Psycho-Pirate, while Hayden is the modern age one made famous by ''ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths''.
** The final line of the Red Hood Collective's manifesto is the vow they make all members swear by: "[[Film/Batman1989 I will make art until someone dies.]]" Similarly, Ace Chemicals is renamed to Axis Chemicals, and [[spoiler:the Joker's introduction is based heavily on the equivalent scene in ''Batman '89'' -- only his RageAgainstTheReflection [[BloodbathVillainOrigin goes a lot further]]...]]
** The Red Hood Collective themselves are a tweaked version of the Red Hood Gang from ''ComicBook/BatmanZeroYear''. Both share similar outlooks on morality, but while the Gang were {{Straw Nihilist}}s in it ForTheEvulz, the Collective believes that [[MadArtist murder is the ultimate form of transgressive art]].
** The captions for Man-Bat's first appearance initially wonder [[Franchise/{{Superman}} if he's a bird or perhaps a plane]], before being swiftly corrected with a JumpScare.
** The Acolytes of the Blackfire despise Batman for using his TerrorHero schtick to give hope to the downtrodden, going against their SocialDarwinist philosophy. You could say that [[Film/TheDarkKnightRises he merely adopted the dark; they were born in it, molded by it!]]
** The lore entry for Deacon Blackfire opens with a reading from the Bible of Crime, which was introduced in ''ComicBook/FiftyTwo'' in use by Intergang.
** "File #011: The Scarecrow" is heavily inspired by [[spoiler:the Scarecrow sections from ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamAsylum'', as well as Batman's final confrontation with him in ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamKnight'': Bats is dosed with fear gas, forcing him to confront his trauma over the death of his parents, before breaking out of the hallucination through sheer HeroicWillpower and giving the villain [[HoistByYourOwnPetard a taste of his own medicine]].]] Crane even paraphrases his Arkhamverse counterpart:
-->'''''Arkham Asylum'':''' Poor little bat. You're in my world now!
-->'''''Caped Crusader'':''' You're in my world now, little bat.
** Another part of the file references [[spoiler:Bruce's nightmare from the ''[[WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries BTAS]]'' episode "[[Recap/BatmanTheAnimatedSeriesE11TwoFacePart2 Two-Face: Part 2]]"]]: "Why didn't you save us, son?"
** Selina's message to Bruce has her reminiscing about a time in their youth where they snuck out of the orphanage, ran down to [[ComicBook/BatmanYearOne Lake Mazzucchelli]], then came back like it was no big deal, much to the surprise of [[Creator/FrankMiller Old Man Miller]]. In the same message, she mentions a statue of Hippolyta in Gotham made by Julia Kapatelis, a supporting character in the ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' mythos.
** Selina's first major art exhibition is called "Seduction of the Innocent", after Frederic Wertham's book of the same name that inspired UsefulNotes/TheComicsCode (Wertham himself got a reference in the very first post, which mentioned the findings of the Wertham Commission regarding the Wayne murders), and its centerpiece is a Warhol-esque pointilist rendition of the iconic cover to ''ComicBook/ActionComicsNumber1''.
** Catwoman being called simply "the Cat" is a throwback to her earliest appearances in the Golden Age, when that was her ''nom de crime''.
** Bruce and Selina's nicknames for each other, "B" and "C", echoes Creator/TomKing's habit of having them call each other "Bat" and "Cat" as pet names (here, the "C" comes from a young Bruce thinking Selina's name started with that).
** This time around, it's ''James'' Gordon who [[ComicBook/TheKillingJoke takes a bullet in the spine]]! (Speaking of Gordon, his image in "File #016: The Bat Cloud" has him holding a [[Series/Batman1966 red phone]].)
** Aunt Harriet's entry in "File #016: The Bat Cloud" notes that her predilection for getting into {{Love Triangle}}s once led to [[Characters/BatmanClayface Basil Karlo]] and [[https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Dexter_Myles_(New_Earth) Dexter Myles]] getting into a fistfight at an Academy Awards ceremony.
** Lynn Garfield's wife, Theodora Carson, is named after the New 52 Firefly, ''[[GenderFlip Ted]]'' Carson, who was himself an ex-firefighter.
* ANaziByAnyOtherName: "Police Commissioner Gillian G. Loeb. Dislikes: [[RedScare bleeding-heart pinkos]]. Likes: [[BalconySpeech listening to recordings of Hitler's speeches]]."
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: The project makes extensive use of this, but Administrivia/TropesAreTools, as the celebrities in question are just used as inspiration to add verisimilitude instead of just making the characters straight-up {{Expies}}.%%And it does this way too many times to count, so if someone not me wants to list them off, have at it.
* NotSoHarmlessVillain: Condiment King's [[EdibleAmmunition gimmick]] usually gets him relegated to CListFodder or made DarkerAndEdgier somehow, but this iteration of the character is a ''lot'' [[SmarterThanYouLook Smarter Than He Looks]]. To begin with, the main purpose of his kit is [[VictoryThroughIntimidation intimidation]]: the people of Gotham are a lot more afraid of supervillains than regular crooks, and any bank teller is gonna think twice about disobeying when one of them says not to call the cops. Then there's the condiments themselves, which are ''technically'' harmless unless you have an allergy, but a shot of mustard or hot sauce right in the eyes still hurts without getting Buddy a murder charge -- and even then, what judge could call it assault with a deadly weapon when the weapon is ''condiments''?
-->''"Yeah, he's got all the angles covered. Because Buddy Mayo ain't crazy. And Buddy Mayo ain't stupid either."''
* OffWithHisHead: A number of the firefighters killed by Firefly are on the receiving end of this, courtesy of a fire axe.
* OneLastJob: A variant in Batman's first encounter with Mr. Freeze, which comes about because Freeze finally finds a way to cure Nora's disease, and returns to Gotham to raid Ferris Industries for what he needed to create the cure (and take revenge on Ferris Boyle while he's at it).
* OutOfFocus: Some entries, such as "File #009: Man-Bat" or "File #013: Deadshot", are notably sparser on lore than others. {{Justified|Trope}}, as ''Caped Crusader'' is a one-man project, and [=DoctorEnn=] is, by his own admission, not always sufficiently motivated or possessed of enough time to write up more comprehensive stories for certain characters.
* PaintingTheMedium: Firefly's MotiveRant completely lacks punctuation and randomly vacillates between lower-case and upper-case, giving the whole thing the air of being written by a [[SanitySlippage deranged terrorist]], which... yeah, sounds about right.
* PoweredArmor:
** Mr. Freeze's suit is rendered as this, similar to the ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamSeries''.
** Firefly wears one of these originally designed for fighting fires. Turns out it's also very good at ''setting'' them, and swinging an axe hard enough to decapitate someone as well.
* PrecisionFStrike: "File #012: Condiment King" has two: Buddy's story about a bank employee telling a gang of bank robbers from out of town to "fuck off", and him declaring that "Gotham is, to put not too fine a point on it, utterly fucked in the head."
* PretenderDiss: The Blackfire cult's scripture contains one of these PlayedForDrama, directed at Batman, who they decry as twisting the darkness they hold sacred to his own ends.
* PurpleProse: Scarecrow's lore entry is framed as a MotiveRant written by Crane himself. Appropriately for a character inspired by Creator/HPLovecraft, the prose is positively amaranthine.
* PyrrhicVictory: Riddler manages to escape both the Batman and the various powerful people he pissed off with Riddleaks, but he's stuck in the Corto Maltese Embassy for the foreseeable future (the caption for this image places him on Day ''467'' of his exile), and even with his focus set on besting Batman, the confinement is starting to get more than a little claustrophobic.
-->''"(What is the ability to have a good walk around the block in the fresh air worth?)"''
* RaceLift:
** King Tut, who originated in ''Series/Batman1966'' as a white guy, is here reimagined as a Black supremacist convinced he's descended from Ramesses II himself.
** Kirk Langstrom is rendered as AmbiguouslyBrown rather than the usual Caucasian.
** Leslie Thompkins and Slam Bradley are both rendered as Black, and Harvey Dent has a noticeably tan skintone similar to his [[WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries animated counterpart]], who, per WordOfGod, was meant to be Sicilian.
* RiddleMeThis: After stealing enough data from his former company, the Riddler creates an app called Riddleaks that can give people access to data mined by Question's algorithms if they can answer the riddles protecting it. The real riddle, however, is in the nature of the data itself: some extremely important and sensitive stuff is easy as sin to decrypt, all of which pertains to certain figures from Eddie's past who soon become guests on ''[[DeadlyGame The Riddle Factory]]''.
* RoguesGalleryTransplant: {{Downplayed}}, since the two never meet, but [[spoiler:the Shade is generally a Flash villain, whereas here he serves as a mentor to a young Selina Kyle, who, of course, would go on to become a part of the gallery proper.]]
* SanitySlippage: Losing her wife turned Lynn Garfield from a model firefighter lauded for her bravery many times over to an unhinged pyromaniac hell-bent on taking {{Revenge}} on the people who killed Theodora, no matter who gets in her way.
* ScatterbrainedSenior: PlayedForDrama and [[PlayedForHorror Horror]] in the case of Mr. Freeze. As some other adaptations have hinted, he essentially has CompleteImmortality [[CursedWithAwesome thanks to the accident that altered his physiology]]. The problem is, TheFogOfAges is in full effect, and Victor's been alive and marinating in his own trauma for seventy years. He's left with what's effectively an extremely advanced case of dementia, which means that he's unable to realize that the women he abducts aren't Nora, that there are multiple Noras dotted throughout his lair, or that [[spoiler:the real Nora has been dead the whole time]].
* ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules: Daggett Industries' attempts to bribe Theodora Carson with cash or cushy positions fell on deaf ears. Unfortunately, once they realized that, they resorted to... [[HeKnowsTooMuch more]] [[KillItWithFire drastic measures]].
* SerialKiller:
** The Calendar Man is in fine form here. [[spoiler:Except he's closer to a PsychoForHire, being used as a blunt instrument by his brother to eliminate anyone who could blow the whistle on some of the GCPD's less savory activities. He does end up dipping into this when he starts killing people Greg didn't ask him to, though...]]
** "File #017" reveals that [[spoiler:Victor Zsasz is active in this version of Gotham]].
* ShoutOut:
** The [[SuccessionCrisis dynamic]] between Sofia and Alfredo Falcone is described as "''Series/{{Succession}}'' with guns".
** Lynn Garfield's introductory portrait has her wearing a yellow-and-red medal that the caption calls the "[[ComicBook/IronMan Stark Medal]]". Fittingly, she later becomes the pilot of a suit of PoweredArmor, though she isn't exactly on the side of the angels.
* TheSocialDarwinist: Mixed with a healthy dose of BadIsGoodAndGoodIsBad when it comes to the Acolytes of the Blackfire. In their mind, the world belongs to [[{{Satan}} the Beast]], so evil is the order of the day, and anyone strong and evil enough to trample over the weak in their path can do whatever they want.
* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Most depictions of Batman's origin story have Bruce taken under Alfred's wing immediately after his parents' murder, but here he goes into the care of the state while his relatives and Wayne Enterprises work out who'll get guardianship (and, of course, who'll control the Wayne family fortune).
* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: The caption for Bruce Wayne's image in "File #016: The Bat Cloud" refers to him as a "generally useless billionaire who probably shouldn't be on this list".
* TechnologicallyBlindElders: Slam Bradley apparently has a habit of delivering massive boxes of paper files to Bruce and co. which Oracle then has to digitize all by her lonesome, and by a comment from Stephanie, Alfred's cast in the same mold.
* TemptingFate: {{Lampshaded}} in Riddler's lore:
-->Years pass. Billions roll in. The little web-platform that could grows even more. To be honest, it gradually gets worse, but it brings in billions so who cares. They're unstoppable. The sky’s the limit.\\
''What is tempting fate?''
* TheEndOrIsIt: Quoted word-for-word by "File #009: Man-Bat", as the ending shows [[spoiler:Frankie Langstrom transformed into She-Bat]].
* TheRealHeroes: Grimly {{subverted}} in Firefly's lore: the FIREFLY suit was ''supposed'' to be a way to put Gotham's firefighters on par with the city's supervillains, but the project itself was essentially a money-making scheme on the part of Daggett Industries, the suit itself was horrifically unsafe (for ''fighting'' fires, anyway), and most of the FDGC were bribed into endorsing the thing. When one of the project's designers, Dr. Theodora Carson, started to look a little too deep into it, Daggett Industries had her killed -- [[CreateYourOwnVillain which wound up turning her grief-stricken wife into a murderous supervillain out for revenge against them]].
* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: Done in "File #011: The Scarecrow" from the perspectives of both [[spoiler:Batman as he's dosed with fear gas and Crane when he's HoistByHisOwnPetard]].
* TragicVillain:
** Mr. Freeze somehow manages to be this ''[[ExaggeratedTrope even harder]]'', since his backstory is much the same as in "[[Recap/BatmanTheAnimatedSeriesE14HeartOfIce Heart of Ice]]" -- only it happened ''decades ago'', leaving Victor as an immortal quasi-corpse frozen in a single horrible moment, reduced to abducting and freezing women that look like his wife [[spoiler:who died ''just minutes before his accident'']]. The worst part? [[spoiler:Even if Nora had survived, [[AllForNothing they found a treatment for her condition twenty years before the story starts]].]]
** Firefly goes from a {{Pyromaniac}} with no real motivation for his crimes other than [[ForTheEvulz the sheer joy of it]] to a prime example of this. [[GenderFlip Lynn Garfield]] was a decorated firefighter who lost her wife in a fire that her fellow officers were bribed to let take her (and worse, she was on the scene before anyone else, so she had to ''hear'' her dying in pain), and, driven insane from the grief, stole an experimental suit of PoweredArmor, modifying it into a weapon against the FDGC and the corporation that ordered her wife's death, Daggett Industries. The tragedy really comes through in her first lore entry: while most entries from the perspective of a villain are grandiose {{Motive Rant}}s or self-aggrandizing accounts of their backstories, Lynn's is a rambling, barely coherent threat against Batman that just ''bleeds'' SurvivorsGuilt.
-->''"do not talk to me about innocent casualties"''\\
''"they are not innocent SHE WAS INNOCENT AND SHE DIED"''\\
''"[[DespairEventHorizon and there is nothing good left]]"''\\
''"they are rotten the whole system is rotten the whole city is rotten [[ItIsBeyondSaving and i will burn it down so we can start over]]"''\\
''"that's why the fire SPARED me don't you GET IT i should be dead with her but i'm not"''
* TyopOnTheCover:
** The caption for Stephanie Brown misnames her as "Samantha".
** [[spoiler:Dick Grayson's surname is misspelled as "Greyson" in his introduction.]]
* UncertainDoom: Invoked with the Blackfire cult's abduction of Julie Madison; [[WordOfGod in response to a commenter]] wondering whether or not they [[HumanSacrifice sacrificed her]] before Batman stepped in, [=DoctorEnn=] declared that, after a change of plans, they were leaving it up to interpretation whether Batman saved or avenged Julie.
* UnderestimatingBadassery: The Calendar Man attempts to kill Renee Montoya [[spoiler:as a birthday gift to his brother]]. Unfortunately for him, she's... well, ''Renee Montoya''. When the cops arrive, Renee is bloodied up a bit, but Day's the one kneeling on the floor with cuffs on his wrists and a gun to his head.
* VictoryThroughIntimidation: This is Condiment King's ''modus operandi'': if you walk into a bank in Gotham dressed like a ''VideoGame/Payday2'' character and carrying an AK, you'll get ignored. If you walk into a bank in Gotham in a primary-colored jumpsuit with some futuristic-looking tech, ''that's'' what'll make people take you seriously.
* VillainousBreakdown:
** Riddler, SmugSnake that he is, does not take it well when [[TheCowl some guy in a flying rat costume]] outsmarts him and saves his ex from his death trap.
** Blackfire and his cult are utterly shocked that no matter what, [[spoiler:Batman [[TheDeterminator just won't give up against them]]]]. Dala is reduced to furious flailing and screaming, and Blackfire's face when [[spoiler:Batman gets to him]] is nothing short of aghast.
-->'''Sister Dala:''' Break, damn you, [[spoiler:Pretender]]! ''Break! BREAK!''
* WhamEpisode:
** "File #014: A Patient". [[spoiler:ComicBook/TheJoker is here, and he's ready to paint the town red...]]
** "File #016: The Bat Cloud". [[spoiler:There's a ComicBook/{{Robin}} operating independently of the Batman... and it's ''[[NotHisSled not]]'' Dick Grayson, who's had a ''major'' AgeLift that makes him old enough to have been one of Bruce's teachers during his training to become Batman.]]
** "File #017: Dr. Strange Has A Theory (And A Guest)". [[spoiler:A certain self-scarring serial killer is on the loose in Gotham, Harvey Dent is beginning to lose his grip on sanity, some of the clay in the city's soil is starting to come alive, the Joker is hard at work preparing to make his grand debut, and that guest? It's [[ComicBook/HarleyQuinn Harleen Quinzel]] starting her tenure at Arkham.]]
* WhamLine: From "File #017": "Let me be the first to welcome you to Arkham... [[spoiler:[[ComicBook/HarleyQuinn Dr. Quinzel]]]]."
* WickedCultured: Both [[spoiler:the Shade]] and his student Selina Kyle, "because one does not simply learn the ways of thievery from [[spoiler:Richard Swift]]; one gains an education in the arts and the higher cultures that rivals the Sorbonne."
* YoungerAndHipper: Mustachioed game company owner Dan Mockridge becomes billionaire tech bro [[AdaptationNameChange Danny Mockenridge]].
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