Headscratchers / Batman: The Animated Series

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"Pretty Poison"

• How is it in "Pretty Poison" that Harvey Dent passes out 30 seconds after he's poisoned, yet Batman can 1. Survive it, but 2. survive it in the middle of a fire, and 3. survive it while jumping around, which would increase his heartbeat and spread the poison faster.
  • Because Batman's more badass than Harvey Dent.
    • This is a perfectly good explanation. He's healthier, more focused, more trained, and has almost certainly done his best to build up a resistance to various toxins. Any one of those things would make him last longer, add all of them up and it's not remarkable at all.
  • Harvey and Ivy were smooching for a very long time, so he might've taken a larger dose than Batman. Not only did Batman and Ivy not kiss for as long, but Batman also started spitting afterward. So he might not have as much in his system as Harvey did.
    • It's pretty obvious that Harvey got a much bigger dose. Harvey didn't know the danger and let Ivy kiss him as long and deeply as she liked; Batman was aware that Ivy was trying to poison him and did his best to resist.
    • Who's to say that was the ONLY dose Harvey got? This may have simply been the last of multiple doses.
    • It is odd how quick Bats & Ivy's smooch was compared to her earlier one with Harvey. You'd think Ivy would want to savor it as much as possible/make sure he ingests enough poison. Guess we can chalk it up to sheer hubris on her part, just like her allowing Batman to sniff the antidote.
    • She wasn't trying to pretend to anyone else in public that she was Batman's loving and devoted girlfriend who was passionately crazy about him when she planted one on Batman. She just wanted Batman dead at that point, and so kissed him long enough to give him a fatal dose. If anything, it's the opposite of hubris or Bond Villain Stupidity (or as much as you can get when your choice of murder weapon is poisoned lipstick rather than a gun, at least), since she's not wasting time on pointless indulgences, she's just trying to kill Batman and uses the quickest means to do so. And even then, it's not exactly a chaste peck on the cheek; she's clearly still taking the opportunity to enjoy herself at Batman's expense when she smooches him.
    • It seems like with Harvey it was both to keep up appearances and to ensure the poison took. Kill two birds with one stone. Still feel like she should've lingered into her kiss with Batman. He'd have likely passed out rather than pull a Playing Possum maneuver to escape. Also, she's already engaged in a few "pointless indulgences" such as throwing on her costume. Her lingering into their smooch a little longer, ensuring Batman gets the same amount Harvey did, feels more necessary.
• Another problem with the same episode is Ivy's entire mission is to punish Harvey because he was responsible for creating the prison whose construction made the Wild Thorny Rose go (almost) extinct. Wouldn't an environmental review of the building site has turned up the fact that there was an endangered species there, and subsequently forced a move to another building location?
  • It's possible that the Wild Thorny Rose was considered to be extinct by whatever authorities mattered in Gotham. As far as we know that one plant (that Ivy did save) is the last of it anywhere on earth.
    • But there's a scene showing a digger uprooting one of the roses.
    • It could be that you have to be an expert botanist to distinguish the Wild Thorny Rose from, say, an ordinary domestic rose that was leftover from somebody's now-abandoned garden. To the construction workers on-site, it was just another weed.
  • Gotham City is known for its corruption. There was more profit to be made if the Wild Thorny Rose was not mentioned in the environmental review, therefore it wasn't.
  • Also early seasons work on a weird early-twentieth-century vibe where people didn't care about things like that nearly as much. Even if it did, there's still a perfectly good possible explanation... Ivy's psycho, the rose isn't particularly endangered (it might only be "extinct" in Gotham... in that field), and her righteous cause is all in her head. As long as there are seeds, a plant is not "extinct". If you were a Mad Scientist that can mutate a plant into a Vagina Dentata monster, couldn't you clone a rose? Ivy crimes are always about control and sadism, the environmental thing is only a great excuse.
    • We don't just have Ivy's word for it — Alfred tells Bruce that the Wild Thorny Rose is extinct when they're researching the poison used on Harvey Dent. Ivy did save the one remaining specimen. That said, her preference for revenge rather than constructive action to resurrect the species is a reflection of her insanity.
    • If it's extinct, even nearly so, then why is the last living specimen something Ivy's allowed to keep in her prison cell, especially since it's been used as a murder weapon, instead of being replanted somewhere?
    • Rule of Drama in this case (it allows the writers to end the episode on a bit of a cliffhanger / dramatic sting note). But for all we know, the main plant has indeed been confiscated for research / evidence purposes, but Ivy covertly kept managed to keep ahold of a cutting or something that she has been secretly nurturing in her prison cell. Or, alternatively, it's just an ordinary rose and she's just using it as a general substitute for the exotic one which is no longer available to her because, well, all them crimes she did.
• Another puzzler: why wait 5 years to enact her plan?
  • Because it presumably took around five years to get all the pieces together to pull it off. If nothing else, she's got to discover and extract the toxin from the Wild Thorny Rose, produce enough of it to be able to administer a lethal dose of poison to her target, plus enough backup to deal with anyone else she might need to get rid of, and produce an antidote which she can use to protect herself from the toxin on top of the toxin itself, all while making sure she preserves what is the last surviving specimen of the plant in the process (or, if possible, reproducing enough plants to be able to generate sufficient toxin while still keeping at least one plant alive and unharmed). She's also got to set herself up in Gotham society as someone who can eventually cross paths with and seduce the District Attorney, and presumably that Venus Flytrap Monster Thing she's got in her greenhouse took some time to cook up as well. And presumably she's doing this all on the side of her day job, since at this point she's not a Professional Super-Villain. Adding in time to cook up the plan to begin with, that's not something that can be done over a weekend. She almost certainly wasn't 'waiting', she was just taking as long as it took to put the plan into action.

The Batman's voice

• Batman uses his Batman voice rather than his Bruce Wayne voice whenever he's alone with Robin and/or Alfred. This implies that either he's more comfortable in his invented superhero persona than his real self or that this is his real voice (i.e. he sees Bruce Wayne as a disguise for Batman, not the other way round). Either way, he seems to be a messed-up person.
  • Secret-Identity Identity is made explicit in Batman Beyond. Also: Batman being messed up is the point.
  • In the DVD commentary the writers directly state that Batman is his true personality while Bruce Wayne is a persona he adopts.
  • This is also true in the comics. At one point in the Batman and Son arc, Alfred points out that Batman's voice has been gravelly even when he's talking to Alfred and Robin, and later spends a few panels coaching him on how to do the Bruce Wayne voice again.
  • Also, it doesn't necessarily imply just either of those things; if he is in character whenever he is wearing the Batman costume, even when alone or just with people who know who he is, he is less likely to make slip-ups accidentally because the habit will be with him.
  • If you check carefully some episodes, like the one with the Gray Ghost, you'll notice that he speaks with the Batman's voice even without the suit when he's alone with Alfred. To me, that's his real voice and is the Bruce Wayne voice the one that he's faking.
  • He also uses the Batman Voice in Night of the Ninja once Summer Gleason is not watching and he wasn't in the Batman suit, I think is a psychological thing: he uses the voice when he's in his Batman persona, disregarding the suit.

Why not let Harley go?

• In "Harley's Holiday", why didn't Batman just let Harley skip town? He'd have one less villain to worry about. Instead, back to Arkham with you, where the one guy who made you turn to crime is waiting.
  • Been a while since I've seen that episode but I can tell you that Batman is (a) a control freak, who would want his enemies where he can see them, and (b) the kind of fellow who would consider it unethical to let someone as dangerous as her be someone else's problem in another town. He's obsessive and unyielding.
  • That episode is pretty clear that Bats honestly wants Harley cured. Add to it the episode about Arkham becoming more prison-like:
  Lock-up: "I was working WITH you, Batman! You apprehended the scum of the earth, and I kept 'em locked away!"
  Batman: "I've seen how you treat your prisoners: forgotten and scared, without hope or compassion."
  Lock-up: "Can it be you care for those creatures? You're just as crazy as they are!"
  • Also Batman stuck with her to protect from an Angry Cop, a vengeful Mob Boss, and the world's most over protective Dad.
  • In this case, Batman knows and understands full well that Harley is merely the victim of circumstance and is trying to help her from everyone else who's after her; it's only when she finally snaps under the pressure and decides to begin throwing bombs around that he has to intervene to return her to Arkham. If he'd managed to get things under control before then he'd have probably just let her go.
  • Also consider that by letting her skip town, he wouldn't have been doing her any favors. She had assaulted people, taken a hostage, caused several traffic accidents in a stolen car... hell, she was committing crimes I don't know the name for (What do you call it when someone sics a pair of hyenas on a security guard?). Getting outside the city limits wouldn't have voided the arrest warrant that was surely pending, it would have just gotten her outside Batman's jurisdiction. Better to capture her himself as gently as possible than let her remain at large as a fugitive, and get gunned down by a SWAT team two towns over.
    • I know that a dog can be considered a deadly weapon which makes the charge Assault With A Deadly Weapon so they'd probably treat the hyenas the same way.
  • It's usually heavily implied that the police either can't or don't capture super-criminals. Considering that none of the major criminals serve their entire sentence, they break out and in Joker's case have mundane problems like not having the money to afford bullets. Had Harley skipped town even with those crimes (which let's face it are fairly minor in Batman, it's not like she gassed an entire city or attempted to get fear toxin into the entire city or attempted to nuke the city or. . .I'm gonna stop now.) the police would probably have taken the same hands-off approach they seem to take in general. If Harley is holed up in some house not hurting anybody it's safer, in general, to leave her be than it is to try to take her into custody.
    • Except both in the cartoons and the comics, we do see the police trying to catch supervillains because it is their job. Just because it's hard doesn't mean that Gordon is just going to let criminals walk free. And they may be minor crimes compared to other supervillains, but that doesn't mean anything in Gotham, why should it mean anything outside of it? And again, Batman does want Harley to get better, her being on the run is not going to help with that.
  • In an example of All There in the Manual, there is Laughter After Midnight, a story by Paul Dini at The Batman Adventures Annual #1. It begins with the Joker falling out of a police blimp after a climactic fight with Batman. After a night of buying donuts and a paper and killing Gotham City midnight denizens, he asks Harley to pick him up, but her room is full of detectives trying to find The Joker. Then a Red Shirt patrolman tries to arrest him while acting very scared (because, you know, he is The Joker) The Joker defeats him and steals his patrol car with his midnight snack.
  The Joker: Yes! Downed by a donut! I love Gotham Cops!
• Just one more thing: Harley kidnaps Veronica (if unintentionally), so they have to at least make she's ok. That said, considering Harley planned all along to release her unharmed, I don't get why upon encountering General Vreeland in a tank (and thus being forced to stop momentarily) Harley didn't just let Veronica get out and then drive away.
  • Because Harley is panicking, and even when she's calm she is not exactly known for her clear-minded good judgment.
  • And also, because General Vreeland is at that moment charging towards them in a tank. Most people, if finding themselves in such a position, would also be likely to try and put as much distance between themselves and the tank as possible. The "flight" part of "fight or flight" kicked in, basically; I imagine Harley would simply rather allow Veronica to go on her merry way at a point when there's not a crazed Patton-Esque maniac in an armored vehicle bearing down on her.

What happened to the mooks?

• In "The Forgotten" Batman saves the fat villain from the massive explosion, what happened to all the mooks he just knocked out?
  • They probably died. To be fair, he couldn't have known chubs was going to drop an oil lamp on a crate of explosives.
    • And what else was Batman going to do? "Damn, no time to save every single person from the explosion the bad guy caused. Oh well, may as well stand here, save absolutely nobody, and die myself as penance."
  • They're fine- they were wearing helmets.

The opening

• You know, those two guys in the opening didn't really do anything. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time; they're surprised when the bank blows, and proceed to run away rather than, say, rob the bank in the confusion.
  • He was chasing them because they had stolen the Green Lantern Ring Wayne Enterprises had gotten its hands-on for study and planned to use it to destroy Metropolis for Doctor Poison, who the daily planet was writing an expose on because he was using ground nth metal to power a furnace to burn J'onn J'onzz, who the Flash was trying to free.
  • On closer inspection, it is strange that two men would blow up the bank after robbing it. However, if they were innocent, they probably wouldn't have run from the police, climbed up a fire escape, and tried to kill Batman on sight.
  • They were just the lookouts. There was a guy (or guys) inside wiring up the safe to blow it open. Unfortunately, either the explosives the robber(s) inside had were just a bit too powerful, and/or the robber wiring them up wasn't as good as he thought he was, blowing him and a large portion of the bank up sky high in the process. The two lookouts, seeing that the plan had gone south in a hurry, decided to cut their losses and leg it, unaware that the Batman was already on their tail.
  • Complaining about plot holes in the opening?! Did anyone consider that the chase was just passing the bank? We don't need to know what the criminals Batman is chasing in the opening did; we just need to know that he's chasing criminals!
    • A bit of fun, dude, it's just a bit of fun.
    • Knowing Batman he probably had already pieced together the clues about what these two were planning. He just arrived a little too later to stop them is all. Plus they pulled guns on him first. Bad move. Batman had to defend himself.
  • Maybe they blew up the bank as an insurance scam?
    • I believe that counts as "doing something."
  • Since the purpose of the opening credits is basically to introduce the essentials of Batman without any words in about thirty seconds, and since one of those essentials is that Batman hunts down criminals, and since the two guys in question are a couple of shifty-looking fellows lurking around a bank at a time when no one who isn't up to anything at least a little bit suspicious has any reason to be lurking around banks, and since the bank blows up immediately after they're seen lurking shiftily around it, and since they later draw guns on Batman and try to fight him instead of trying to explain that they have nothing to do with what happened, it can be safely surmised that the gentlemen in question are, in some way or another, Up To No Good. You just have to take it on faith that there's an explanation that we're not privy to.

Batman sabotaging Clayface

• What the hell was with Batman removing Clayface's one chance at being human? Earlier in that episode, he said he had people willing to help with his problems and by the time he got to Stella's place, he could see that Hagen was becoming more defined feature-wise, meaning that the process was working. so WTF? I would pay an arm and a leg to see the audio commentary explaining that.
  • At the end of the first Clayface story, Batman offered Hagen a chance to turn himself in and get a possible cure; instead, Hagen fakes his death so he can keep his powers and his freedom. It's stated early in "Mudslide" that the MP-40 will not remove Hagen's powers, but rather will enhance them so that he can shapeshift and hold any form indefinitely. When Batman does interrupt the experiment, he tells Hagen to come with him for a cure, just as he did the first time; Hagen chooses to fight for his freedom, despite being a wanted criminal, rather than face the music and get his cure a little later. Remember, it's not the interrupted treatment alone that kills him, it's the fact that he fell into the water while trying to kill Batman for daring to suggest that he needs to go into custody for his crimes that does it. From Batman's perspective, and based on the plot itself, no one is "removing Clayface's one chance at becoming human;" he's just insisting that Clayface get his cure under conditions that don't let the superpowered, willing-to-murder narcissist get away scot-free and able to keep exploiting his abilities to break the law for his own advantage.
  • Maybe he didn't trust Stella not to have made a scientific error that might damage Hagen. Still, he should have foreseen that engaging Clayface in a fight was the absolute worse thing he could do, considering the instability that was already present in his structure.
  • Well, the safe containing the MP-40 he stole from Wayne Biomedical was marked DANGER. It could have been one of those cures that work at first but then slowly kills you or give you even worse side effects. Bruce Wayne could have known MP-40 was not safe as a long-term cure, which is why he chose to interrupt and have professionals help Hagen later ("the lab boys can take it from here"). He didn't plan on Stella freaking out and tackling him or for Clayface to engage him in a battle outside in the rain and melt.
  • It might have been Batman being paranoid. At the end of his first episode, Clayface fakes his death- complete with electricity and involuntary shapeshifting and final words. Maybe Batman just figured it would be best to play it safe, and it spun out of control, as mentioned above.
  • Also Batman was pursuing Clayface for his previous crimes too, which include but are not limited to attempted murder. Had he come quietly they might have allowed him and Stella to continue the treatments. Not to mention that Clayface didn't give a damn about Stella and was using her to keep himself alive and maybe find a cure. This is apparent when he simply parrots a line from one of his movies in an attempt to keep her. Remember that even before his transformation Matt Hagen was an egotistical jerk, which lead to his accident in the first place.
    • He did yell her name mournfully as he "died", that's got to count for something. Yes, he was extremely temperamental around her, but he was dying, anyone would be in a bad mood. The thing about repeating a line from the film could be an indicator not of fault in him, but in her, as it could mean that she's more in love with his characters than him, and thus he felt he had to answer as a character rather than as the real Hagen. Also, what evidence is there of him being an egotistical jerk before his transformation?
    • He could also have been screaming her name in rage and desperation, as in "(DAMMIT, HELP ME) STELLA!" Also, it was implied in his first appearance that his jackassery as Matt Hagen is what led to the car accident that disfigured him in the first place. His only friend was his stunt double (I think), and from the way they talk about him, no one else seemed to be able to stand the guy. As Linkara points out in the Time Force installment of his History of Power Rangers there is a difference between having a sympathetic back story and ''actually' being a sympathetic character. Clayface has a sympathetic backstory that makes us feel sorry for him, but there is no hard evidence whatsoever that he's an actual sympathetic character. I'm sorry about everything that's happened to you Matt, but you're still an asshole and a criminal.
    • He may be an unlikeable asshole who was a jackass to Teddy, but that's no reason to assume he was doing the same to Stella without evidence. At no point does the episode imply that he's just using her. Had that been the case, the writers would have made it clear, given the show's lack of subtlety.
    • The detail about the "cure" not actually removing Clayface's powers is the most important thing in addressing the original question. Had that being the case, then yeah; Batman would be a total idiot for not simply waiting on Hagen's treatment to finish and then slapping the cuffs on him. That it's a very easy detail to miss on the first viewing seems to be where the misunderstanding comes from.
    • "That's got to count for something" — not really. He's an actor, and that's basic emotional manipulation.

Ivy eating plants

• Poison Ivy is depicted as a strict vegan. Why would anyone be willing to kill people over plants that eat only plants? People who love animals and fight for their rights as sentient beings don't eat animals all the time to express their love. They abstain from meat. Shouldn't Ivy be a carnivore?
  • Ivy's insane. Logic doesn't enter into it.
  • You don't have to kill a plant to gain nourishment.
    • But doesn't that make it worse?
    • Not really, fruits are sweet because they're meant to be eaten. That's how they spread their seeds; animal eats fruit, poops undigested seeds, new plants grow from poop.
  • One wonders why she can't just absorb sunlight through the chlorophyll in her skin.
    • For one, it doesn't provide enough energy for sustained movement, and for another, she only gained this ability relatively late in the series' run. In fact, to my memory, only in the DCAU comic books that are set after the series proper had ended. In her appearances during the earlier B: TAS seasons, she is a normal human with artificial immunity to poisons. Only her later experimentations with plant DNA change this, or allow her to make a plant-clone of herself and retire.
  • Think about mulch; it's made of plants, therefore plants use the remains of other plants as a food source. How many plants do you know that eat meat?
    • Venus flytraps, pitcher plants, bladderwort and assumedly the giant man-eating plants Ivy is fond of.
  • If she's willing to cut up flowers to make poisons she'd be willing to eat fruits and vegetables, most of which exist to be eaten by animals anyway.
    • Not from where she is standing. Poison Ivy's whole shtick is her obsessive care for plants above all other life. She is willing to murder people to protect some flowers. It's so pathological that she even seems to be forgetting the vital role that animals have in plant reproduction. Yet still, she is willing to personally partake of the plants she so obsessively protects. Perhaps she believes that the plants are giving her permission to take parts they don't need to continue her struggle?
    • But a flower has yet to reproduce, and picking it prevents it from wilting and producing seeds. I think Ivy gets angry not because they're killing the flower but because they're interfering with the plant reproduction. As for the poisons, presumably, you could make them from a single petal, which would not necessarily cause the death of the flower.
  • Human beings (which is essentially what she still is) cannot live on a carnivorous diet. As for her being a total vegan, though...I don't know, the snobbery of animals so severe that she can't stomach eating them? Or something?
    • human beings CAN live on a carnivorous diet. Inuits do so, as fresh fruits and vegetables are pretty scarce on the Arctic tundra. Just look up "No-carbohydrate diet" on The Other Wiki. The real question is: Where does Ivy get her vitamin B12 if she's a vegan?
    • Supplements? I have no idea when vitamin pills were invented so I don't know if that would be an anachronism.
    • According to, again, The Other Wiki, vitamin B12 is naturally produced by bacteria — neither animals nor plants can synthesize it in and of themselves. Ivy being something of a mad biologist in her own right, it's not implausible that she could have come up with her own 'acceptable' source. Or, as suggested just above, she may just pop a supplement pill every so often.
  • As mentioned above, she's insane. I guess that it's an attempt to work the plant theme further into her lifestyle just for the show. I wouldn't put it past the character. She's kind of an uppity bitch like that.
    • Maybe she became a vegan because Vegans are just better than normal people.
  • It's simple; she after large crimes against nature. She would have no problem with growing plants for food, but destroying the last pockets where a rare rose grows or clearing a large forest to produce cardboard will make her come after you.
  • Ivy doing anything but eating vegan would be insane. Where do you think animals get their energy? It's basic ecology; there's a 10% transfer of energy (approximate) from one trophic level to the next. By eating plants herself, Ivy is preserving 90% of the pants that would be eaten by the animals she would be eating if she were strictly carnivorous. It's a net gain for the plants.
  • It's entirely possible that Ivy's plant body can't process meat. We don't know what she is, biologically; there are no real-life plant people to compare her to. Since she's willing to wear flowers as decoration and leaves and vines as clothing in many of her comic book incarnations, and since she's willing to use plants in the name of science, we have to assume that she's pragmatic enough to accept small-scale damage to her babies for what she considers a good cause.
    • Again, as stated above, you are confusing the comic book Ivy with the animated series Ivy, in the series, she is a normal human, her only difference is an unnatural immunity to poison.
  • You know? A lot of animal rights activists do eat meat. The idea that people in favor of animal rights are strict Vegans is a Hollywood stereotype, most people are against animal cruelty and are not Vegetarian, and there are also many people inside the animal rights movement in general that do consider it ethically acceptable to kill animals if is for things like food and essential medical experiments, as far as even in those cases is done humanely. There are many different positions regarding animal rights, some more moderate than others. So, in parallelism, disregarding the fact that she is crazy, she can be a plant rights activist and still acknowledge that eating plants is necessary for the health, while is not the same as extinguishing an entire plant species for a building (something that even normal people can find questionable).
  • This Ivy is an eco-terrorist fanatic. Possibly she only eats the produce of fields where endangered wild plants were plowed over for cultivation, figuring that any crop plants grown in such fields are "traitors to the cause".

Why not rebuild the forest?

• Here's what's been bugging me. In the episode, "Eternal Youth", Poison Ivy develops a serum that's powerful enough to grow entire forests in minutes. She wants to get revenge on industrialists who destroyed rain forests and other plant life. So she...turns them into trees? Small, human-sized trees? Isn't that thinking kind of small when you have the power to grow a whole new forest? And even if she was fixated on the whole revenge thing, she could have grown them over factories or businesses or something.
  • The process hadn't yet been made permanent. That's why they could turn the trees back into people. Presumably, Ivy wanted to keep them far from civilization until the effects did become permanent, and possibly transplant them afterward to somewhere more suitable.
    • Yes, but why bother using it on humans at all? Who cares if the process isn't permanent on humans if she can restore forests? I think the only good answer for that comes back to "She's insane". There isn't enough murder in the "Single-handedly restore the rain forest" plan.
    • This one falls squarely under Laser-Guided Karma combined with a Green Aesop from Ivy's point of view. She's not trying to recreate the rainforest just with them, she's delivering an ironic form of punishment unto them for what she views as their sins. They destroy rainforests for greed, so she exploits their greed for longer life to transform them into part of the rainforests they so callously destroyed.
    • Exactly. It's first and foremost intended as punishment — restoring the rainforests without getting rid of at least some of the people responsible for destroying them in the first place isn't enough for her. (And given that quite a few of them would probably just look at the new forests and go "cool, more free resources for us!", she may have a bit of a point there.)
    • So, if the resources could be instantly and largely effortlessly replenished again and again... what's so evil about people wanting to make use of them, again...?
    • Nothing, necessarily, but the whole point of Poison Ivy is that she is completely insane.
    • Though if there is a problem, it's arguably that these people view nature not as something worth protecting for the sake of the planet and everything on it, or even as something beautiful worth protecting for its own sake, but as a mere resource that they can greedily over-consume for nothing but their own enrichment. Which might not necessarily be evil, but certainly is at least rather selfish and avaricious of them, and might be enough for Ivy to get at least a little shirty with them over the subject.
  • Poison Ivy is a hypocrite. She claims to defend nature, but those are excuses to hide her need to control and torment others.
  • Ivy views every single individual plant as a life that she prioritizes the same way we might prioritize the life of a human child. So, in her eyes, to ask, "What's so evil about people wanting to make use of plants if they can just be quickly replaced?" is akin to asking, "What's so evil about wanting to kill children if they can be easily replaced?".

Freeze's immortality

• How can Mr. Freeze be both functionally immortal and unable to survive outside of sub-zero temperatures?
  • "Functionally immortal" means that you're immortal until something that can kill you does. In other words, you can't die of "natural causes", but you can die of anything else that's capable of killing you.
    • Most people would consider room temperature to fall under "natural causes" however. In his case though they were referring to him being ageless, not unkillable. There is nothing in any of the stories to suggest that a bullet wouldn't do the job just fine.
    • To be fair, I think the previous troper was using "natural causes" to mean "general old-age and infirmity". Changes in room temperature would fall under "anything else that's capable of killing you" in Freeze's case. A significant enough change in temperature can kill anyone, after all (it just so happens that Freeze requires a much less drastic change over a much shorter time period), but depending on the situation that's not exactly considered a natural cause.

Clock glasses

• The Clock King has little clock hands on his glasses. How does he see properly?
  • A wizard did it.
  • What? You've never seen sunglasses with patterned lenses before?
    • No.
    • So...then you've never seen a pair of sunglasses?
  • Clock hands, as in little straight lines close to one's eyes. Yeah, real hard to see past...
  • I have personally worn sunglasses&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&start=0 these before and could see just fine.
  • There are no “clock hands” in his glasses, Rule of Symbolism makes an optical effect on his glasses to show he has Four Eyes, Zero Soul after his Start of Darkness.
  • He doesn't, his ridiculously stupid power just lets him schedule every movement he's going to make ahead of time before he puts them on.
    • Even when this last theory was mockingly proposed, it could be true, because the Clock King is a Cosmic Plaything, so this could be Fridge Brilliance!
  • All glasses have areas where they block one's view ... he simply learned how to filter it at a subconscious level.
  • They could kind of like the perforated advertising decals you often get on public transport; they have the image printed on one side in little circles so it appears transparent on the other side, allowing the passengers inside the vehicle to see out the window and light to come in while anyone outside the vehicle can see the advert.

Candy cane gags

• "Christmas with the Joker": How do you gag somebody by sticking a candy cane in their mouth? * loses sleep thinking about these things*
  • It tastes too good to spit out.
  • Stick it in sideways, or too far back.
  • Who says it's a normal candy cane?
    • That would do it, but he doesn't.
  • "If you spit this candy cane out, I'll shoot you in the face. Enjoy!"
    • But they react to them like they're gags. They try to yell through them and such. When he puts them in their mouths mid-sentence, they keep trying to talk for a couple of seconds but don't open their mouths and drop them in the process.
    • The Joker just put that in your mouth, Mr. Hostage. If you drop it and break it what else is he gonna put in there next!? Sounds like maybe you ought to be careful not to drop it then.
    • I always thought that the candy canes are coated with some kind of special glue. It's strong enough to stick on the lips and not be able to spat out, but weak enough to allow for a strong enough tug to tear away.
    • Adding to the above: presumably, the mysterious substance coating the candy canes reacted with saliva to form an adhesive. The Joker might even have rubbed a bit of something on his hands that counteract the effects.

Unprofessional doctors in "Two-Face"

• Two-face: Why do the doctor and nurse recoil so dramatically at the sight of Harvey's scars? Didn't they see him when he first came in, when the sight would have been much nastier? Besides, this is a freakin' Gotham City hospital - surely they see worse regularly.
  • Also, since when are burn scars sky blue?
    • Gotham chemicals. Just look at what chemicals did to Mr. Freeze; Dent's injury is tame by comparison.
    • If that's the case, we might as well just say A Wizard Did It.
    • No, we might be on to something. Besides Fries, this is the same town with chemicals that turned Jack Napier into the eclectically-colored Joker and made Clayface all but invincible. That's not a bad explanation — they might have seen Harvey even more messed-up beforehand, but they weren't expecting him to be blue.
    • Different Doctor and Nurse? Hospitals have more than one of each.
  • They might have expected his face to heal and were shocked when it not only didn't but possibly got worse.
    • LOOK at his face, it looks like it's partially melted, I know that the art style of the cartoon might not make it scary looking to you, but in real life that would be pretty horrifying.
    • True, but those who work in the burn ward are specifically trained to not show any negative reaction. The patients have already been through enough without their Doctors looking at them like freaks or monsters. A Nurse or Doctor reacting as they did in the show would never work with burn victims again! Of course, dramatic effect trumps all.
    • Remember, this is the pseudo-1940s. Doctor training was quite a bit different back then.
    • Remember also that even trained medical professionals are not robots who are 100% completely composed professionals every single second of every single day; it might be unprofessional, but then sometimes even doctors and nurses act unprofessionally.
  • Rule of Drama. The audience is expected to realize at that very moment that something very very horrible has happened to Harvey Dent and that his looks have been horrifically disfigured to build suspense, thus increasing the horror they would feel when they can see exactly what has happened for themselves. This is an effect that would not be efficiently conveyed by the doctor and nurse calmly discussing Harvey's injuries in a completely professional and neutral manner and downplaying his injuries in recognition of his fragile mental state. Hence, the doctor and nurse react with horror when they see how Harvey has been scarred. It might not be how things would happen in real life, but the point of fiction is to tell a story, which doesn't always work by reflecting everything that happens in real life to the minutest detail with the pristine accuracy of a flawless mirror.

Misplaced monuments

• What's the Statue of Liberty doing in Gotham city in "Off Balance"?
  • The DCU as a whole doesn't have a New York City, so maybe the statue is a Gotham landmark in the DCAU.
    • Isn't Metropolis meant to be the New York analog? As for the presence of the statue, perhaps it's the doing of some sort of space-time warping supervillain or something.
    • DCU logic often says that both Gotham and Metropolis are NYC, albeit below and above 125th Street, respectively. A one-time Atlas of the DCU placed Metropolis in NJ, with Gotham in Delaware. Take That!! Wayne's World.
    • Actually, it's Metropolis in Delaware and Gotham in New Jersey.
    • New York exists in the DCU and several heroes have been based there at some point, from Kyle Rayner to Wally West. It's just not as crowded as its Marvel counterpart.
    • I always thought Metropolis was New York during the day and Gotham was New York at night.
    • Frank Miller once said something similar. Batman writer and editor Dennis O'Neil once said, "Batman's Gotham City is Manhattan below Fourteenth Street at eleven minutes past midnight on the coldest night in November."
  • That's the Lady Gotham statue. In the 40s, Gotham decided they needed more tourism, and decided to just rip off the design of the Statue of Liberty with a few minor adjustments and call it their landmark.
    • This is true in the Golden Age comics, where it's called "The Sentinel of Liberty" and carries a lantern rather than a torch. It even showed up in Batman Forever.
  • France has a much smaller model of the Statue of Liberty on an island in the Seine River. Gotham could have its imitation, for whatever reason.
  • New York City exists in the DCU; Metropolis and Gotham are based on it thematically, but they aren't meant to be its fictional-universe counterparts.
  • I always get Boston impressions from Gotham that and Arkham Asylum.
  • Since (IIRC) New York City is never mentioned in the series and, the discussion above aside, the DCAU is distinct from the rest of DC Comics continuity, it's likely that Gotham City is simply the DCAU's equivalent of New York City.

Baby Doll and dynamite

• How did Baby Doll plan to continue her fantasy if she blew her whole cast to death with that dynamite?
  • She was just going to kill Spunky, who, as you know, was just a Cousin Oliver. With his death, the cast would be back to its original members, and her plan would proceed from there.
  • She probably had not thought it through. She's delusional.
  • My understanding was that she meant for everyone there, including herself, to die. She wanted to die with the only "family" she'd ever known.

Pointless animation

• This is just a nitpick, but in "Birds of a Feather", right after Veronica and the Penguin almost get mugged, watch out for this bit of poorly-staged and pointless animation: Veronica takes the Penguin's hat off and hands it to him, only from him to immediately put it back on.

Walking in the cement

• In See No Evil, Ventrix seems to have studied the jewelry shop he robs to make his getaway, judging by how easily he finds that a door leads right to an alleyway. So why did he fail to acknowledge that said alleyway is under construction, which includes the pouring of wet cement that would detect his footprints and slow him down should something go wrong?
  • The construction started after he cased the place. Poured cement dries within hours.
    • Yeah, but drilling the old pavement away to lay the cement takes a few days.
    • So he assumed he'd make it out before the new cement was poured or after it dried. What's the problem here?
    • He also wasn't anticipating that Batman would be there and ready to pursue him; he might have had an alternative exit in mind or a way of getting around the cement without leaving prints, but Batman changed the game-plan a bit.

The episode "The Clock King"

• In the episode The Clock King, Batman drives around the city with Alfred as his chauffeur in broad daylight, and even makes a few stops in which he gets out of the car. What if someone had seen him and taken the license plate number?
  • And do what with it? He can't take his story to the papers because they'd just dismiss him as a kook ("Oh really, you were stalking Bruce Wayne's car and saw Batman burst out of it? Really? Security! Who let this nutjob into my office?"). And he certainly wouldn't get anywhere trying to blackmail Batman.
    • The hypothetical spectator could give the information to supervillains Like Strange tried to do.
    • And why would they believe some random dude who claims he saw Batman appear out of Bruce Wayne's car?
    • Why couldn't Batman commandeer a helpful civilian's car, anyway?
    • If confronted he could say that that's exactly what was done. After all, Alfred being Batman's butler isn't exactly common knowledge, isn't it?
  • The Clock King episode is a deconstruction of the Batman: The Animated Series. It seems like Batman was careless, but the first time he left Bruce Wayne's limo he was in a Blind Alley. The second time he left her was in an Abandoned Warehouse District. He could assume no one was looking at him. When we see the limo from a passerby perspective, it seems to have tinted windows, so none could see Alfred or Batman inside of it. We are not shown how he gets to the Bank where the Death Trap awaits him, or how he traveled to Gotham's Clock Tower.
• Another one from this episode. How is the Clock King, an older dude with greying hair, able to fend off and drive back the goddamn Batman, who, as the Clock King himself claims, throws punches in a 20th of a second (Batman also claims he can throw a kick in a 30th of a second), simply by watching videos of him in action? Is this guy the Taskmaster or something?
  • The only explanation for that Crowning Moment of Awesome is that Clock King is a Cosmic Plaything. As long as he has planned something, that something will work. Notice that Batman could not defeat him, it was Clock King throwing his sword into the Clock Tower that destroyed the place.
• Perhaps more importantly, how did the Clock King survive a Clock Tower crumbling around him? Discounting Joker Immunity, did he just dodge falling gears and other debris in midair to get to the ground floor unscathed? Did he fully plan for this to happen and create an escape route ahead of time somehow? Is he just an immortal Time Lord of some sort? Given his maniacal cackle when telling Batman "there's always a way", he knew he'd make it out alive. So, it could be any or all of the above, but still...HOW?!
  • I guess that he's worked everything thing out so precisely that he knows, in the event of a catastrophic collapse of the inner workings of the clock tower, precisely where to stand to avoid any falling debris while simultaneously surviving a fall to the bottom of the tower. Which admittedly perhaps implausible, if not impossible, but he's also a cartoon super-villain who's weaponized Control Freak planning, so.
• The Clock King wanted revenge on Hamilton Hill. But why did he not go after the plaintiff who sued his firm or especially the judge who ruled against him? Those two held more responsibility than Hill but They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot.
  • Because, like many Batman villains, the Clock King is also a psychiatrically disturbed monomaniac with a questionable relationship with reality, who fixates on one cause (and murderous solution) to his problems rather than face up to the more complex reality.

"Mask of the Phantasm"

• Two questions about "Mask of the Phantasm", more precisely the "Batman vs GCPD" scene: First, how does Bruce survive that fall towards the end? Second, how come that no one in the GCPD can recognize Bruce Freakin' Wayne after he has lost his cape and cowl? For that matter, couldn't he have used smoke bombs or something to hide at least? Reminds me of Batman 701 where Bruce is shown to have a spare cowl in his utility belt. Then again, Grant Morrison being Grant Morrison, Bats might have been in a Batgod moment...
  • He was a good distance away, they mostly only saw him from behind and emotions were high. The cops were probably too focused on catching up to him to notice and absorb his face. It's not a very desired characteristic of a police officer, but it probably happens a lot in the real line of duty when the situation has a high level of excitement; even police officers are still only human, after all.
  • It's never really established how well-known Bruce actually is in the universe and we mostly see him associating with other rich people who are part of his social circle. He's certainly not so famous that people recognize him with minimal disguises. Like Matt Damon dying his hair white and letting some stubble grow out wouldn't be enough to fool someone right on top of him. In The Forgotten nobody recognizes him and the reality is that if the mob boss had suspected for a single second that he had Bruce Wayne he would likely do one of a few things. Either tried to ransom him back, dump him back where he found him, or shoot him and dump him. Bruce Wayne is important, people are looking for him. He's not forgotten at all! OR at least it would be stupid to assume that he was.

Tim's Robin suit

• The Robin suit...how the heck from TAS to TNA, how does Dick's old Robin suit get a new look yet some HOW to be a perfect fit for little Tim Drake! Tim was like a young teenager in that series! When Dick left he was in college! The size and height difference! It just doesn't add up!
  • A planned, but never animated, scene from "Robin's Reckoning" would've shown Dick when he first became Robin as a much younger child right. Tim probably found a costume from that point in his career.
  • Four words: Alfred. Scissors. Sewing machine.
  • I'm pretty sure Tim wears an entirely different suit from Dick's old suit. because in Over the Edge when the police are chasing Bruce and Tim through the Batcave, Dick's old Robin suit is knocked over.
    • Except that's entirely non-canon. While it's likely that Tim wears an entirely different suit "Over the Edge" is a Scarecrow-induced nightmare and might not accurately portray anything, to be honest.
  • Regardless, the suit Tim wears has to be one of Dick's old ones that just happens to fit Tim. When Tim comes in during The New Adventures, he's not recruited by Batman, he puts on a Robin costume on his initiative and follows Batman and Batgirl to fight Two-Face. Even Alfred wouldn't have been able to fabricate an entirely new costume in the time it takes for Tim to follow them (he got there halfway through the fight, so unless the delivery truck he hitched a ride on was faster than the Batmobile, he had to have left soon after Barbara and Bruce).

Crediting

• How come Paul Dini gets the credit that belongs to Alan Burnett? I am constantly at a loss as to why Alan Burnett is left out when talking about the DCAU. This is not a knock on the amazingly talented Paul Dini, but Paul and many other writers worked FOR Alan, who was the driving creative force behind most all of the DCAU on the writing side, just as Bruce was on the art and production side.
  • Could you be more clear about what bothers you?
  • Not the original poster, but this is an issue that makes me scratch my head as well. By and large, when people discuss the DCAU they seem to always credit it as a Bruce Timm/Paul Dini production, to the point where it's often referred to as the "Timmverse" or "Diniverse". What's strange about this is that Timm's partner and the head of the B: TAS writing staff was Dini's boss, Alan Burnett. Paul Dini is, of course, a fantastic writer, but there is absolutely no logical reason why Burnett should get passed up for the credit he is due. If you take a look at the original B: TAS series bible, it's clear that in its early stages the show was shaping up to be a decent but unspectacular action cartoon; it's Burnett who was most responsible for making it into something truly special. So dude, where's his respect?
    • Presumably waiting for him to step up and ask for it. Bruce Timm and Paul Dini probably get more credit because they were visible in working on the show and making it known they were working on it. Burnett either may not care or just may not be good at self-promotion.
    • Perhaps also worth noting that, according to IMDb at least, Burnett simply has fewer official writing credits on the show than Dini (11 to 26). Burnett's contributions appear to have been more of the 'uncredited' or behind-the-scenes nature and, fairly or otherwise, people tend to notice the person who's credited with writing the episodes more.

Ra's losing his son

• The Showdown episode's main story is Ra's Al Ghul's narrative of Jonah Hex foiling his plan to conquer America in 1883, and capturing his son and second-in-command, Arkady Duvall, who subsequently served 50 years of hard labor before wandering away, his mind shattered by the hardships he'd suffered. The old man Ra's kidnapped from the Gotham retirement home at the beginning of the episode is revealed to be a seemingly vegetative Arkady. How could Ra's, with all his intellect and resources (this is the man who deduced Batman's identity based on a worldwide survey of goods that could be used as Batman's equipment) have taken 60 years (assuming this is 1994-1995) to find his son, let alone lose track of him? And how did Arkady end up in a retirement home in Gotham having (presumably) spent years as a near-mindless homeless derelict?
  • Your assumption is wrong. Look at the cars people are driving, the clothing they are wearing, and the weapons they use. Look at the planes as well and the World's Fair in Mask of the Phantasm is the 1939 World's Fair. 50 years after 1883 would have been 1933, crazy old Arkady had probably been wandering around for less than a decade. He certainly hadn't been wandering around in that condition for nearly sixty years.
    • The show does have a retro look, but the period is never specified, and remember, they have things like home computers and internet, so it wasn’t the 40s, even when it looks like it.
    • The thing with the computers seems to be a case of schizo tech that many cartoons get away with regularly. Note they still seem to primarily have black and white televisions and photography. The criminals often use Tommy Guns which were in vogue during Prohibition but for various reasons including laws that were phased out later. There is also the fact that Arkady is still alive. Let's be super generous and claim Arkady was only 20 when his encounter with Jonah happens even though he was probably at least double that. That would make him 100 years old come 1960 any later than that and he'd be getting line for the oldest person on the planet.
    • Because Ra's is 600 years old and we see a thousand-year-old Egyptian queen still alive in the episode Avatar, Arkady is still not close to being the oldest.
    • But then that causes a new plothole; if the show effectively is set around 1960 then how is Batman still young in Justice League and still alive in Batman Beyond?
    • The meta reason for the time gap is simple: at first they were making what is a stand-alone Batman serial partially based on Tim Burton's movies (you can see that the Penguin even has flipper-like hands) independent from the rest of the DCU (as Burton's movies are). That's why the show is a little bit more granted in reality and no other superhero is ever mentioned. Even Zatanna's apparition in the series shows her a just a very talented illusionist but with no real magical powers. Then the show was successful and obviously, new shows were made with other properties most notably Superman and the Justice League. So, apart from the difference in animation, the original B: TAS is probably not connected to the rest of the DCAU or never was intended to be. What seems connected is the rebooted show The New Batman Adventures a.k.a. Batman's "season four" not only in animation style but also in the appearance of superhumans. So you can argue that TNBA, S: TAS, JL, JLI, and BB are all part of the same Shared Universe and not include B: TAS and Mask of the Phantasm as they represent their continuity or you can mix all together but then take the retro look in B: TAS and MotP as just that, retro look and not the period otherwise the time gap between series becomes a problem. Take your pick, there's probably not a straight answer and I think there's no official confirmation either way.
    • Alternatively, it's just a simple retcon. B: TAS is almost certainly supposed to be canon to the rest of the DCAU, as backstory at least, but the Art Shift in TNBA simply retconned things to place Gotham and the characters in more of a "modern-day" setting rather than the Anachronism Stew setting of the earlier series, and there's an unspoken assumption that within the world of TNBA-onwards it's always been thus. Of course, if any viewer wishes to treat B: TAS as its own separate thing they're more than welcome to do so (TBH this troper kind of prefers to keep them separate) but that's more of a personal choice; officially, all of the DCAU shows are pretty clearly supposed to be set within the same reality.
    • There seems to be a bit of a tendency in the above to assume that B: TAS is set within a specific year in the past. The date of the setting is deliberately kept vague because it's not supposed to be set within a specific year but is supposed to be set within a kind of timeless retro-futuristic present that doesn't correspond to any given year or period. Hence why there are ' the 30s-'40s fashions alongside '70s-'90s computing technologies, blimps flying around alongside helicopters and propeller-driven cross-country passenger planes, '50s-ish cars with car phones, black-and-white movies and TV shows co-existing with VHS technology and even the occasional CD-ROM, and so forth. In short, it could be any year that Ra's finally uncovers Arkady. And as for whether or not Arkady is one of the oldest people alive by the time Ra's finds him, remember that Ra's is the person with access to life-extending and age-slowing powers and resources; it's entirely likely that Arkady has simply aged slower than most people.
  • Well, remember that Arkady got captured partly because Ra's abandoned him, feeling he was unfit as an heir. He probably didn't keep track of him in prison because he had no more use for the boy. He may have a lot of resources, but he's not omniscient; he's still human, after all. Later on, he probably assumed he had died in the interim, or he was too busy with other plots to bother looking for a disowned son that he had no interest in, and who he probably didn't want trying to usurp him. Ra's then got some information on him much later and decided to go see his son.
  • Ra's didn't spend 60 years looking for his son; he only came for him when he was dying. Maybe you watched a completely different episode than the rest of us, but during the flashback, Ra's was disgusted by Arkady's behavior and seemed to respect the bounty hunter far more than he respected his son. Ra's came to get Arkady because he was on his deathbed, but he was otherwise uninterested in his son.
  • Also, Jonah Hex says something like "for what you did to that girl", so it implies that Arkady was guilty of rape, something that probably would disgust Ra's and would be considered dishonorable for him, a case of Even Evil Has Standards and Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil.
• Here's a question. Why is Arkady still alive? While we have no idea at all how old Arkady was from what we see in Batman the Animated Series and its sequel Batman Beyond the Pits don't grant immortality by making you immune to aging. They instead knock of 'x' amount of years and without regular access to a Pit old age and the associated organ failure will still catch up to you at a fairly regular pace.
  • Ra's has been using them for 600 years. That has to have had some kind of effect on his DNA, and consequently the DNA he passes on to his children. Perhaps the exposure to the Lazarus Pits means that Ra's and his children just age slower?
  • After rewatching the episode, Ra did openly say that Arkady use the Lazarus pit several times before his imprisonment as an explanation of why he's so old and how no one expected him to survive his sentence of 50 years of hard labor. An exchange to this effect takes place towards the end:
  Ra's: Nobody expected him to live out his sentence. Nobody, except for me.
  Batman: The Lazarus Pit.
  Ra's: Once, when he was very young. But he is beyond even the pit's restorative powers now.
  • In short, Arkady almost certainly had access to some kind of age-retarding power or technology due to his connections with Ra's.

When Matt's becoming Clayface

• When the goons are giving Matt Hagen an overdose of the chemical that turns him into Clayface, are they pouring it down his throat or just over his face? It's shown in silhouette, so it's hard to tell.
  • Down his throat.
  • To expand, they were trying to kill him.

The magic camera

• Watch 'Heart of Ice'. Watch the heartbreaking scene when Batman sees Fries getting jumped by the big rich guy, and turned into Mr. Freeze. Now, that's one hell of a security camera, isn't it? Cutting to different angles that a security camera wouldn't show, going back and forth between faces for dialogue, conveniently being RIGHT there for incriminating action shots...that security camera is fucking amazing.
  • Yeah, the creators pretty much went on record to say this doesn't make any sense, but they did it for dramatic purposes.
  • This is incredibly common I'm going to suggest it as a new trope.
    • I'm pretty sure it exists as a trope already.
    • Indeed.
  • This troper thought the camera was just a Framing Device. To Batman, it would only show the scene from the angle Victor placed the camera at. Only the audience got to see the more dramatized version, and the scene coloration was just a visual cue that this was a flashback of sorts.

Bruce and Andrea

• "Mask of the Phantasm". Pre-Batman Bruce Wayne fights some thugs but gets distracted with Andrea and is defeated. Makes sense. However, afterward, he makes a rather drastic conclusion out of this that he should give up the relationship altogether, since he "cannot be on the line with somebody waiting for him at home". Wait, isn't this the exact way every single soldier/policeman/firefighter/rescuer in the world operates? They are on the line, their relatives are back home worried sick. She's not supposed to be on the front line, but what makes him so different that he suddenly cannot combine dangerous work with family life?
  • Bruce isn't saying that nobody can handle it. He's saying he, personally can't handle it. He gives more or less the same reasons to Wonder Woman when she comes onto him in JLU.
    • Besides, not everyone has killer clowns hating their guts
    • Check the divorce rates between civilians and military and police personnel. It's a fair statement to say that not MANY people can handle it. Bruce is just humble enough that he refuses to ruin another life, and potentially children's lives, by trying.
    • Also, soldiers, police, firefighters, and rescue workers generally have backup eager to come to rescue them if they get in over their heads, as well as the expectation that if they die in the line of duty, their families will be well supported by pensions, death benefits, counselors, and the respectful accolades of the public. But because Mask takes place well before he starts recruiting sidekicks, Batman is all alone out there, and if he were to die on the streets he'd either just vanish without any explanation (if his killers hide the body) or else leave his loved ones to cope with a huge scandal if Bruce Wayne's vigilante exploits (which are illegal, controversial, and most likely would be grounds for a lot of lawsuits) are posthumously exposed.
  • It's also good to remember that Bruce is not a policeman, a soldier, or any wholesome part of society. He's an emotionally damaged, obsessive vigilante who has poured every ounce of his passion into a crazy pursuit (just look where he ends up in Batman Beyond). I think it's wholly in keeping with his character for him to realize that there is no place in his life for a family. The fact that he takes on apprentices complicates this, but he always was a pretty dysfunctional father figure.

Baby Doll and Croc

• In Baby Doll's second appearance, why was she acting all kiddy-like when she was at home with Crocky? It made sense for her to act like that when they were committing crimes since that's her schtick, but why act that way at home when she wants to have a relationship with him?
  • She's nuts. How did you miss that part from her first episode?
    • But she does act like a normal person in her first episode when she wants to. This leads us right back to the question. Is it possible, that Killer Croc is a pedophile and enjoys her acting like this? You know what, let's just drop this question.
    • Being nuts doesn't preclude occasional lapses into lucidity. As for Croc, you forget that he spent all his free time hanging out with bar floozies. If he was a pedophile he would have stayed home with Babydoll. It's quite apparent he sees her as a slightly annoying partner in crime, nothing more.
  • Dahl's particular brand of delusion is a fixation on the role she played as Babydoll. As such, she's only ever happy when she's being Babydoll. You'll notice that whenever she acts as a mature, relatively sane, and lucid person, she seems dull and sullen, not happy. So when she decides that being with Croc will make her happy, she acts happy in the only way she knows how—as Babydoll. She's playing house with him, and he knows it and is annoyed by it, but puts up with it because they work well together.
    • This is my least favorite episode of the entire series for several reasons, among them Baby Doll's behavior ("I'm not a baby! I'm not a child!" Really Mary? Then stop acting like one!), but your explanation is brilliant.
    • To be fair, considering that Baby Doll is a psychologically and emotionally screwed up and conflicted lunatic whose madness centers around fixating on a twisted version of childhood, 'stop acting like a child if you don't want to be treated like one isn't exactly the most useful advice to give her. If she could do it that easily she, y'know, would.
    • Especially when a primary part of her backstory and reason for insanity is that she tried to act her age (literally, by starring in Macbeth) and it didn't work because of her condition.
  • Speaking of Killer Croc. Wasn't he about to receive the death penalty in that episode? When Batman got him back to prison, how did Croc escape capital punishment? Also, why was he the only supervillain to receive it?
    • Because Croc is one of the few actually successful murderers in the series (Albeit before we get to see him) who is also not insane.
    • Yup, Croc usually doesn't manage an insanity plea... the few times he winds up in Arkham seem to be because writers get stuck in the mindset of "Arkham is where Batman's villains go" rather than thinking it through. And he probably wasn't put right back in the chair because, well, now they've gotta go through the process of revising his sentence to include his escape attempt. This sounds ridiculous but our justice system can work like that sometimes. Thus he didn't walk right back into the execution chamber, thus he had time to escape again later.
    • It should also be noted that sometimes, criminals who are not deemed insane but have either special needs (like Mr. Freeze) or are not containable by normal prisons are put in Arkham. Croc was shown to be able to bite through chains without any trouble. I'd say it'd be tough to keep him in a normal prison.
    • There was an episode that dealt with Croc and Arkham—specifically, "Sideshow", where he was being transferred from the Asylum to prison. Based on some commentary by a few reporters riding along ("Croc's finally being found responsible for his actions, huh?"), it's assumed that briefly after his first appearance the insanity defense worked, but eventually, the courts changed their mind.

Reading in both brain sides

• In "Perchance to Dream" Batman figures out, that he's dreaming, when he tries to read the newspaper and can only see nonsense. He says, that it's because only one part of a brain is active in a dream and suchlike. At least in my experience, it's entirely possible to read in dreams - books, labels, message boards were major parts of it. Now, it's possible to guess it's a dream, when you understand, that you're not "reading" as much, as "get the meaning instantly", but he never alluded to that. Furthermore, if it's not controlled by the Hatter, only a "very good dream", it should be, well, a dream. Dreams rarely have a coherent structure and oftentimes jump from event to event, from location to location, with little transition in-between. Look at some of David Firth's stuff, to see a really good portrayal of dreams.
  • Personal experience has taught me that you can get a sort of "feeling" about the dream environment, depending on what your mind is trying to relay to you. For example, your dream can create an original person you've never met but have the feeling it's someone you've known your whole life. It can feel like years have passed when it's been mere moments. Heck, maybe the transitions and cutaways were the same for Bruce as they were for us. What's more, Hatter's machine had some control, as evidenced by A) Tetch saying he couldn't/wasn't supposed to wake, and B) the fact that his dreams were all positive, alluring, and inviting. One could argue that while the device could not implant dream ideas into Batman's mind, it could "guide" his unconscious thoughts into a dream world so pleasant he'd never want to sacrifice it for the waking world.
  • The mere fact that all writing appears as nonsense to him is an immediate tip-off that what he's seeing is not real. The newspaper shouldn't be gibberish, it should be perfectly legible. This combined with the fact that the last thing he remembers before waking up as Bruce Wayne is some contraption swooping down on his head while he was chasing the Mad Hatter, yeah, it's pretty logical he would conclude it was all a dream.
  • As implied above, the important thing is that Batman knows he can't read in his dreams.
    • What the troper was trying to say, is that it's entirely possible to read in dreams. It's just a common urban legend, that you can't.
    • Thanks to this episode it's become a running gag whenever I read something in a dream to immediately remark "screw you Batman I CAN read in my dreams!"
    • I've read that the 'tell' that alerts you you're in a dream is very subjective, for some people it's reading, for some it's time telling. We can assume that Batman's 'tell' is reading, and being Crazy Prepared, he's probably experimented with lucid dreaming to find this out in advance.
    • Nah; he says "its impossibility to read in a dream", and says it's because dream and reading are controlled by two different sides of the brain.
  • I have had many dreams that felt like normal days, sometimes to the point of being unable to keep track of which day it is. Also, even though Hatter isn't controlling the dream directly, he is influencing it. We know he somehow made sure that in the dream Batman would get everything he wanted. If he can do that then he should be able to prevent the place/time jumping that happens in a lot of dreams.
  • The original post made a point about the episode cannot be a dream because dreams rarely have a coherent structure and oftentimes jump from event to event, from location to location, with little transition in-between. I think that Bruce’s dream didn’t have a coherent structure, because it is impossible to construct a dream life, your Wonderland: Batman, like everyone else, has conflicting desires, and Bruce Wayne’s mind is playing a Xanatos Speed Chess game with itself trying to accept his new reality because Be Careful What You Wish For: Bruce Wayne gets his Tragic Dream and his parents are alive, And Then What? That means that Alfred is not a Parental Substitute but a reserved employee. Selina Kyle is not a criminal but her fiancé! And Then What? she is the reliable Betty and not the exciting Veronica. If Bruce never needed to become Batman, And Then What? That means Bruce Wayne’s beloved Gotham City would be an even worse Wretched Hive. Deus ex Machina: The Batman is patrolling the city again! and Bruce Wayne could be happy living his Idle Rich life after seeking therapy with Leslie Thompkins… everything is forced on Bruce, nothing makes sense, everything advances the plot to a direction… and if you want to be picky, the dream takes more than one day, but Bruce only lives less than 26 minutes from event to event, from location to location, with little transition in-between the episode shows us. (it's because he is a cartoon, of course)

Barbara and Bruce

• The whole implied relationship between Barbara and Bruce. It just grosses me out. Yeah, I realize that they aren't that far apart in age, but Babs is Bruce's surrogate son's ex, and the idea that they might go out (or that their personalities begat a realistic adult relationship) just doesn't jive. Also, what narrative purpose does it serve, besides being put in the revamp of the show for shits and giggles?
  • Well their relationship did fall completely to pieces, for what it's worth. And I think that was supposed to be the point. It was never a serious adult relationship. Barbara was still flying on her schoolgirl crush. And Bruce...I doubt Bruce ever really connected with her at all, which was probably why they broke up in the first place. Once Barbara came to her senses she realized that without her hormones pushing her forward there was nothing between them. It's supposed to demonstrate how emotionally detached Bruce is and how much Barbara has grown as a person when we finally see her again in Batman Beyond.
  • The producers even stated that they ''wanted'' it to feel wrong. The relationship takes place during or immediately after Gotham Knights, which is a point in the series where the writers were trying to demonstrate Bruce's flaws more than they had previously done.
  • You're not the only one, it's even gross for characters in-series as it's implied that Bruce's relationship with Barbara was the final nail in the coffin and the reason Nightwing no longer associates with either of them.

The episode "The Underdwellers"

• In The Underdwellers, why does Bruce "guns are a coward's weapon" Wayne has a room filled with them?
  • They're for display, probably inherited from his family.
  • You've also got to have guns to work with to learn how to defend yourself against them. He'd need to know how to take one away from someone (without getting himself shot or setting it off), how to take it to pieces, how to disable it, etc. He'd need guns to prepare himself to deal with guns. It's also entirely possible that some pragmatic corner of his mind lets him know that there may come a time where his life or the life of someone he loves could depend on a "coward's weapon" and he'd rather have one and feel bad about using it in such a situation than not have it. (This is kinda-sorta borne out in Batman Beyond... Bruce's refusal to pick up a gun does not extend to letting himself get beaten to death.)
  • Batman does his ballistics testing sometimes. The gun collection may serve as a control group for purposes of comparison.
• Also in The Underdwellers, why does Batman act like he knows nothing about children? He's already raised Robin for nine years. Alfred also claims that he knows nothing about children, but he's gone through Dick AND Bruce. Why are the creators just pretending that Robin doesn't exist?
  • Two things. First I'm not certain that Batman/Bruce Wayne did much raising of Dick Grayson. For starters, he was already an accomplished acrobat, not to mention the tracks down Zucco which means that Dick was already pretty mature and probably didn't need a whole lot of raising but more to the point Alfred probably did all of the real parenting duties for Dick just as he had with Bruce. Bruce was likely primarily responsible for honing him into a crime fighter. The second point is that child in the Underdwellers was a child who'd been brutally beaten and abused for a long time. Dick and Bruce both came from happy families and both were taken in within days if not hours of the tragedy that robbed them of a normal life. Those kids have been damaged in a way that neither Bruce nor Alfred was adequately equipped to deal with.
    • Which would be relevant, if the abuse was addressed, but it was clear from Bruce's: Feed him, bathe him, put him to bed ideas about child-rearing, that is not the issue. They're implying that they've never had a kid in the manor before and know absolutely nothing about children (Alfred even says as much). Alfred's bumbling attempts to take care of Frog can be excused by all the child has been through, for I'll agree he is very different from Dick, but it doesn't explain why they're both acting like this is all entirely new territory.
    • Frog was mute, wasn't he? Or at least acting the part. Having a mute, resistant, rambunctious kid in the house probably is an entirely different thing than a communicative, cooperative (if rebellious) kid. Bruce's "feed him, bathe him, put him to bed" probably worked fine for Dick. But beyond that, Rule of Funny... they couldn't do those sort of gags with Batman and Alfred being fish out of water re: kids with Dick, so they did it with Frog.
    • I will give you Ruleof Funny for Alfred's ineptitude. I can accept that, however, what bothered me is when Alfred says he knows nothing about children. He has raised two of them! I think he would know a little something at this point. And as for Dick being well behaved, he's a young, energetic child with incredible acrobatic skill. I think he probably got in his fair share of shenanigans when he was young.
    • Well, Alfred claiming he knows nothing about children could be Fridge Brilliance: One of the kids he raised was Dick Grayson and there was nothing wrong with him... but the other was Bruce Wayne... Batman Beyond shows how he turned out and isn't pretty... Alfred at The Dark Knight Trilogy continually angsts about his young master destiny.
    • It's possible that this all happened before Bruce adopted Dick. The Underdwellers episode is pretty much completely isolated from context, so there's no way of knowing how far along with Batman's career the events occurred.
    • Probably a case of Early-Installment Weirdness, the meta reason is that they didn't seem interested in having Robin at all in the series at this point. Robin was introduced as a character much later on and then retconned. The best in-universe explanation is as above said that this episode is chronologically before they adopted Dick.
    • That can't be, Batman isn't in his Year One costume. Besides, Christmas With The Joker was produced before this episode and featured Robin.
    • Correct, as the above troper says, that can't be it; in the episode Robin's Reckoning you can see in flashbacks when Robin's parents die and he goes to live with Bruce: Gordon has brown hair, Bullock is in uniform and Bruce looks younger, whilst in the episode of the Sewer King Gordon has white hair, etc. The best explanation nevertheless is in the same Robin's Reckoning episode; if you check Dick Grayson is around 11-12 when he goes to live with Bruce and is already a well-behaved kid that gives near to nothing problems to Alfred or Bruce other than a little escape at night once. To the point that both Alfred and Bruce seem happy to adopt him. Bruce was 10 when his parent died and, disregarding the fact that Alfred already spent years living with him, he also doesn't seem to be a problem child. Frog on the other hand seems to be much younger (6-8 maybe?) and comes from an abusive background, is not the same to raise a 12-year-old who comes from a loving family than a very young kid raised by a psychopath in the sewers. But Alfred's phrase of "know nothing about children" could be, in context, understood as knowing nothing about little children which is probably true as Bruce and Dick were almost teens when he starts caring for them.
    • To the second to last troper: yes you're right, I forgot the Xmas episode. To the last troper, yes that’s probably the answer. Dick seems already pretty self-sufficient in that episode most likely due to his circus upraising, and Bruce probably wasn’t as independent but was likely to be self-sufficient enough and probably very mature for his age (he’s a genius after all). Other than emotional support neither of both needed caring. Frog is effectively a very young kid probably no more than 8 and in need of all sorts of care.
    • Dick couldn't have been more than 8 or 9 when his parents died, and Bruce was around the same age. Robin's Reckoning makes that pretty clear. They were both traumatized kids and would have needed a lot of care and attention. Bruce and Alfred's utter ineptitude and unfamiliarity with the situation is very, very strange, no matter how different Frog's personality and the situation is. No matter how you look at it, neither of these men have ever dealt with a kid before. Their history with child-rearing is never even mentioned. In this context, the episode makes no sense.
    • While much of this can probably be simply put down to a slight retcon or continuity glitch over the fact that Robin hadn't been introduced in the series by this point, to be entirely fair, neither Bruce nor Alfred probably do have much experience raising and controlling a borderline-feral wild-child who appears to have lived his entire life in a sewer. Dick might have suffered a trauma, but he was otherwise raised in a relatively normal family and so probably didn't act out nearly as much as Frog did.
  • I have no issue that they're unfamiliar with this kid in particular, but that they both clearly say they have no experience with kids period. A writing error in what is already considered one of the show's weaker episodes.

Thorne's two gimmick

• In "Two-Face", Harvey hits several places which all happen to have two-related names. At first, this seems to reflect Two-Face's gimmick, but then you realize that all of these places were owned by Thorne. Why would Thorne use so many "two" places as fronts? Why did Thorne hide his files with E. Doubleday? Does Thorne have a two-obsession himself?
  • Two possibilities. It's either just a contrived coincidence serving as a Red Herring for both Batman and the viewer (though ironically, that red herring would quickly go on to become Two-Face's real gimmick), or Thorne controls so much of Gotham that Harvey could pick and choose targets that are both owned by Thorne and also have thematic names (partly because that's his gimmick, and perhaps also to distract the Gotham PD and Batman from his real target). He certainly did get lucky with "E. Doubleday," though.
  • Entirely possible Thorne has some connection to the number two. Doesn't have to be an insane obsession like Harvey's though... maybe two's just his lucky number, or his mom was born on February 2nd or something like that.

Kids out at night

• In the episode where the kids were telling stories about Batman, um, why were three kids (four counting the Joel Schumacher kid) wandering the streets of Gotham at night. They have parents because they mention them, but the parents sort of suck in that case. Gotham is the worst place to be alone, DURING THE DAY. At night, it's suicide. And there's an arsonist on the loose.
  • There are ALWAYS arsonists and such running around Gotham. It's not like they're particularly safer inside. This is Gotham we're talking about, and these are Gotham kids. they know the score.
  • Plus, as we all know, kids can't sneak out and do stuff at night without telling their parents.
  • Also, Gotham is full of horrible people, some of which could also be terrible parents who don't care what their kids do or where they are.
    • Or hard-working people who are so exhausted from hours of grueling overtime at their jobs that they crash right after dinner, never suspecting their kids might take advantage of them being too zonked out to hear them sneaking out.
  • And it's night like 90% of the time in Gotham, when else would they go outside?
  • Just for the record, The Batman Adventures issue # 16, "The Killing book", deals with The Joker finding some cherubic children at midnight who recognize him as "that guy the Batman is always beating", prompting The Joker becoming a Moral Guardian who kidnaps the comic writer and artist that is corrupting those children with lies. He also steals the children's candy.
  • Gotham is not more dangerous than many real-life cities (hard to believe, but is true) and kids still go out at night in those cities.

Crane as Scarecrow in "Lock-Up"

• In Lock-up, if Crane wasn't going back to crime, why was he in his costume.
  • Simple. He was lying.
  • If you knew Bolton was coming for you wouldn't you suit up and prepare to fight back the moment you could? There is also the fact that a lot of Gotham's criminals are only comfortable in costume.
  • Or his costume was the only outfit he had on hand at the time that wasn't an Arkham uniform.
• Is Crane supposed to be 6 ft tall in this? If he is, how the hell tall is Bolton?
  • Not sure if the information here is canon, but apparently Bolton is 6'4".

Two-Face's costume speed

• In Judgement Day how is Two-Face able to get into a costume without anyone seeing overpower the guards, all within a few seconds (the penguin turns as Harvey leaves, goes to the vault places loot in and the Judge is standing there.)
  • Insanity lends strength, maybe it lends speed too. Or Harvey practiced quick-changing the costume while he was the Judge. And it's not like they're both elaborate, skin-tight getups, he just had to pull the Judge costume on over his clothes.
  • In this very episode, Bruce Wayne gets into the Batman suit in just a split second, so *shrug*.
• So in this episode, Harvey develops a third personality that goes around trying to off criminals. Okay sure, but at what point does he gain agility and combat skills that allow him to scale tall buildings and go toe-to-toe with the likes of Killer Croc and Batman?
  • Guy is a well-established supervillain who has tangoed with Batman more than once at this point. Presumably, he has, at the very least, hit the gym at some point. Granted, Killer Croc is more of a stretch, but if Batman can hold his own, then presumably Two-Face can too. Ultimately, he's a supervillain, it's a superhero cartoon, you just gotta roll with it on this one.

Clerks in a villain shopping spree

• Ok, so when Harley and Ivy kidnap Bruce Wayne in "Holiday Knights", how did all of the clerks in the "Bergduff's" department store completely fail to react to the two supervillains on a shopping spree? It's not like they were out on parole; it had been established earlier in the episode that they were both fugitives, and trying to lay low to avoid the cops' attention. They were wearing their costumes and everything. The store employees just didn't care that a pair of notorious, wanted criminals were there as long as their money was good? Also, they had a billionaire mind-controlled, and they made him buy them jewelry and clothes? They could have used the zombifying lipstick to enslave the cashier and walked out with anything in the store they wanted; why didn't they make Bruce Wayne transfer a couple million to a numbered Swiss bank account or an offshore holding corporation? I always assumed that Ivy and Harley were supposed to be smart, but this particular caper was pretty dumb.
  • You're right, they're recognized supervillains. People are going to know what they can do—it's likely that the standard procedure for Gotham citizens when faced with a supervillain, is "Just leave them alone until Batman shows up." Honestly, it's probably safer than the alternative of either confronting them or risking them seeing you call the cops.
    • I always assumed in Gotham that if you saw a rogue, you ignored the problem until it went away. Confronting them is suicide.
  • And while they certainly could have used the lipstick on the cashier, that's not the point. They're not out to commit any crimes — as such —, they're simply on a grand shopping spree complete with having a rich and famous (and conveniently mind-controlled) 'sugar daddy' along to pay all their bills.
  • This is Bruce Wayne - known crazy/eccentric playboy rich twit. If he wants to dress two fashion models up as supervillainesses and take them shopping who's going to complain? they're not breaking any laws and they're paying for everything.
  • If it's any consolation, the original comic version included a bit where the mall's owner confronted them & Ivy had Bruce tell him everything was fine, her & Quinn were with him and he'd pay for everything.

Bruce faking incompetence

• In "Night of the Ninja", Bruce is losing to Kyodai Ken on purpose because Summer Gleason can't be allowed to see him beat the ninja... why? When he does get serious, he doesn't win by throwing gas grenades or Batarangs, he just does karate on him. Summer had already been told that they studied at the same Dojo, and Bruce is quite visibly larger than Kyodai. Would it have looked so suspicious if Bruce beat a (he could claim) slightly more skilled opponent under being in a higher weight division?
  • Study at the same dojo doesn't necessarily mean, in Gleason's eyes, that Bruce could take a professional ninja. Aloof Billionaire Bruce Wayne knowing some karate because he was bored for a while and decided to go to a dojo is one thing. Aloof Billionaire Bruce Wayne beating a full-time ninja, however, is gonna be suspicious. Also, size isn't necessarily that big of a factor with karate.
    • Furthermore, that same episode stressed that fighting styles are like fingerprints. Even if Gleason didn't get suspicious that Bruce Wayne could defeat an experienced ninja, all it would take is for her, or someone else, to find footage of Batman in action and compare his moves to those of Wayne's, and his cover is blown.
    • That's something else that's always bugged me. I don't buy this idea that every person's fighting style is so distinct that you can instantly recognize them decades later just by fighting them again. It sounds like one of those cheesy martial arts myths, like the Death Touch.
    • It's true when you think about it; people do have their little tells and postures and quirks that you could recognize them from. If you took any two fighters trained in the same martial art, put them side by side, and examined everything about them you would notice that even using the same fighting style they don't move and fight the same. If you spent enough time practicing with a person you'd be able to spot out all the little unique things about their stance, the same way you'd be able to tell someone's tells in Poker if you spent enough time playing against them. It's not "you fight them once and instantly remember everything," it's "I've been doing this with you for so long I can recognize all those little details nobody else would notice."
    • It is common for trained martial artists to have a "preferred" fighting style that they default to use; however, most experienced fighters are capable of adapting and altering their style to suit the situation, and Batman is one of the greatest martial artists on the planet- so yeah, he may indeed have had "tells", but it is highly unlikely that he was unaware of them and unable to change his approach. Besides, Kyodai is a ninja and has seen both Batman and Bruce in action; most people, unless they have the knowledge and the experience, won't be able to deduce Batmans' identity just from watching him and Bruce Wayne fight (of course, there are a dozen ways to deduce Bruce is Batman without ever meeting either man just with a bit of detective work- Ra's al Ghul did just that- but that's another issue). Lastly, fingerprints being unique is a myth- there is a finite number of patterns to the human fingerprint, and false arrests have occurred because people believe that myth.
  • That's kind of the point of a tell, though; it's something that gives you away because it's so instinctive and natural to you that you do it without thinking. Batman's a brilliant martial artist, detective, etc., true, but he's also a human being, and he does some things unconsciously as any human being does. He's probably aware of some of his tells and works to address them, but there are probably others that he's less aware of. As for fingerprints, while they might be finite it's still probably quite rare to find two different people in the same relatively small span of space that has the same fingerprints right down to the minutest details.

Clayface's turn to crime

• Why did Clayface become evil? He just got the ability to take on any face he wanted. He could've become the most highly paid actor on Earth, but instead, he goes into a breakdown about how his career is over. He claimed it was because he couldn't hold a form for too long, but he clearly shows he's able to hold a form at least long enough to get a shot done.
  • "Become evil" is a gross oversimplification and misunderstanding. He was, firstly, out for revenge. Then he was trying to find and make himself a cure. At no point did he decide, "You know, I'll be evil from here on in."
  • He was never exactly the nicest guy, to begin with. His jerkass behavior led to the accident that disfigured him in the first place.
  • Plus, the guy's just become living, unstable mud. If ever a time came where a bit of an irrational breakdown was justified and could be forgiven, surely that's it.
  • And the first episode also shows that he can’t control his aspect long, he needs concentration. While acting, with different shots and other distractions, he can turn into the monster at any time. That will be career-killing.
  • Consider also Hagan's ego: his whole story gets started when he suffers an accident to his face. He's an Old School Hollywood actor: his stock and trade are on his LOOKS. Yeah, he can assume any form he wants, but how long before directors start telling him "No, we don't want you to look like Matt Hagan, we want you to do Humphrey Bogart." He wouldn't be making his name off of HIS face, only the faces of others.

Knockout brain damage

• In Never Fear, how long was Scarecrow supposed to be unconscious after Batman strangled him. He blacks out on the train and seems to still be out when Batman and Robin are walking down the street. The train scene takes place at night while in the street scene the sun seems to at least be rising. How did Crane not get permanent brain damage?
  • ...Because it's a cartoon. If you're going to bring real-world science into this, Batman should have dislocated his shoulder a thousand times by now just from swinging around on those grapple lines.

The Retro Universe

• What happened to the Retro Universe when the series became The New Batman Adventures>
  • It was quietly ignored, and as far as it goes In-Universe, things never changed. Call it a Retcon.

Batman giving Thorne Bane's tape

• The ending of "Bane". Batman delivers the beaten Bane to Thorne's office and...leaves him there. Uhm...what? Why isn't he taking Bane to prison? Then he plays a recording of Thorne's assistant conspiring with Bane to eliminate Thorne, while said assistant is in the same room. Uhm...WHAT?! Doesn't Batman realize that he's just sentenced her (and likely Bane as well) to death? I'd probably understand if he'd used the recording to make her testify against Thorne or cooperate with him in another way, but that was just pointlessly cruel! Hell, ethical considerations aside, wasn't dissent in enemy ranks working to his advantage?
  • He might figure Thorne is too smart to just outright kill her... after all, Batman's got a copy of the tape, too. She disappears, Batman drops the tape with the police, Thorne's gotta spend a lot of time and money in court. Also, you don't know that thirty seconds after he walked out, a bunch of cops Batman called earlier didn't sweep into the room and find Thorne there with Bane and go "Hey, proof you're working together, you're under arrest!"
  • In addition to the very real likelihood that Batman is on his way to the cops with a copy of the tape or has already notified them and that they're just behind him, and in addition to the fact that at that point Bane isn't going anywhere under his own volition, we should also remember that Thorne's assistant isn't exactly a virtuous innocent in this situation. A central part of her whole plan to double-cross Thorne in the first place was the death or critical injuring of Batman himself, which is not likely to put her very high in his 'people to give a shit about' list. She decided to take the gamble and put herself in that situation, and the chips didn't land her way, so as far as Batman's concerned she can deal with the consequences.
    • Notice that Candice never appeared again after the Bane episode. That is Fridge Horror right there.
  • If the comics are to be considered canon (Batman & Robin Adventures #12 picks up where the episode leaves off,) Batman did leave them both to be murdered. As soon as Batman leaves, Thorne orders his men to take Bane to the waterfront and kill him slowly. He comments that Candice is too pretty to kill, but will be forced to watch Bane be beaten to death. Candice, however, seems to enjoy watching the mooks beat Bane. The mooks only leave when they believe Bane has been beaten to death. Bane survived and returned to take revenge on Thorne and Candice, but was stopped by Batman. So... yeah. Batman did leave both Candice and Bane's fates in the hand of Thorne, knowing it was likely they'd be killed, with no cops to stop any of it, and without even keeping an eye on them himself.
    • Should be noticed that Batman is not a criminal's babysitter. He committed to saving innocent people from criminals, not to save criminals from criminals.
    • This is the same Batman who saved the Joker when he tripped and almost fell to his death in The Last Laugh. So he can't allow a sadistic mass murderer to die by his hand, but setting up Bane and Candice to get killed by their boss is perfectly acceptable for him?
    • The answer to that is in the episode "The Terrible Trio" when he says; "they are worst than the Joker, at least he is crazy". There's a similar line in the Sewer King episode. On the other hand episodes like "Birds of a Feather" (with the Penguin), "Harley's Holiday" (Harley), "Home and Garden" (Ivy), and "Second Chance" (Two-Face) show that he honestly wants the crazy criminals to be cured. He seems to honestly think that the mentally ill criminals like the Joker or Two-Face or Ivy can't be blamed for their actions and, if cured, should be allowed second chances. But on the other hand, he is truly outraged for the sane criminals who harm innocent people just out of pure sadism, fun, or profit. He probably acts harsher with these criminals, which is the case of Candice and Bane (particularly Bane, an assassin who probably already killed who knows how many and just for profit). Let's be honest; letting Thorn kill a mass murderer isn't exactly something bad.
  • Doesn't this make him a hypocrite? Batman doesn't kill (not even those scum he considered worse than Joker, mind you), but he's ok with condemning people to death, which he has all reasons to expect will be particularly brutal or painful? This isn't an "I don't have to save you" situation - it's not like Thorne got wind of Candice's betrayal otherways, she came running to Batman pleading to save her, and he whispered, "... no". It's not even like he came to her and told her something like: "Thorne will receive the tape in an hour. I suggest you start running." By all means, this was a premeditated, well, maybe not murder, but putting one in a potentially lethal situation (is that a legal thing?).
    • Maybe, but to be entirely fair to Batman as noted above we don't know what happened seconds after he left the room (excluding the comic example mentioned above). For all we know the police were right on his tail and got there before Candice was harmed. Also, we're kind of overstating the nature of the 'lethal' peril that Batman's left her in just a little bit here, aren't we? She's not in a death trap or has a knife to her throat or anything, she's in a rather spacious office facing a fairly overweight and out-of-shape late-middle-aged man, she's a fairly healthy young woman more or less capable of holding her own against Robin earlier in the episode, and I doubt Thorne's got better moves than Robin does. There's nothing to prevent Candice from getting out of Thorne's grip, finding something in the office to defend herself with or even just kicking him in the balls and running out the door. It kind of is an "I don't have to save you" situation, and if anything she's got much better chances than Ra's was left within Batman Begins since she's not in a partially destroyed out-of-control runaway railcar that's seconds from crashing from which she has no way of extricating herself. While it's absolutely a bit of a dick move on Batman's part to leave Candice alone with Thorne at that particular point (although it's hard to argue that she didn't have it coming either), it's also not like he's turning his back when she's seconds from death either. And FWIW Batman refusing to help Candice if she comes to Batman explicitly begging for help would be much worse than what he does in this episode IMO.
    • Yup and the same goes for Bane, even defeated he's more than capable to defend himself from Thorne, what he truly did was make them have to fight for their lives which, after the ordeal they make him pass recently, is quite deserved.
    • Bane looked quite beat up and unable to fight after that overdose, seeing how he showed no resistance when Batman dragged him to Thorne's desk and unmasked him. But regardless, and this applies to the last two paragraphs, what if Thorne just pulls out a gun and shoots them? Unlike Batman and Robin, Bane and Candice don't have batarangs to knock guns out of their opponents' hands.
    • They're still not in immediately lethal peril, though, since Thorne isn't holding a gun when Batman is present. Unless he has lighting fast reflexes (unlikely) then Candice at least still has a chance to get out of the way, unless she considerately stands still while he arms himself, and being his moll she's likely to have some idea of where he keeps his gun(s) so can even arm herself first. The situation isn't completely safe for Candice and Bane, but neither are they in the immediate life-or-death straits that some in this thread seem to be painting them as being in.
    • And another thing: there's not much else he can do. He can't send them to jail because Robin was the victim of the kidnap and therefore they would have to testify, Bane is probably on Interpol's list but knowing Gotham is much more likely that he can bribe his way out or just escape. So, what's he going to do? keep them under his care in the Batcave? Granted, was a cruel move to tell Thorne about it but is also a very clever way to keep Bane out of Gotham from now on (although it didn't work), Candace was a side product of that but it's not like if she has to escape Gotham and never get back someone is going to miss one less sociopath around.

Dahl's voice

• "Baby Doll". If the girl couldn't age, how could she speak in an adult voice? Sure, she is an actress, but should her vocal cords allow that?
  • (My understanding of hypopituitarism is limited so please bear with me.) It's not that she doesn't age, it's that her pituitary gland doesn't produce as much growth hormone as it should. According to The Other Wiki, people with severe growth hormone deficiencies can be as short as 48-58in tall and develop facial features reminiscent of a Kewpie doll, which seems to match Baby Doll's symptoms. However, she still would have gone through puberty eventually (albeit several years delayed) which could account for her adult voice.
  • Accounting for some of this is that Word of God says Mary has "systemic hypoplasia" (while "hypoplasia" is an actual condition, the "systemic" part of that is fictional), so it's more like a good much of her body is underdeveloped, which might explain her voice, as pubescent features in a person with this condition (or similar ones) wouldn't be obvious.
• The same episode. Why would those thugs, including one quite competent martial artist, work for her? She's a hapless and unemployed actress, how с ould she afford their services, and even if she could, what exactly prevented the thugs from just taking whatever money she had by force?
  • One could ask the same thing about most of Batman's rogues' gallery. Where does the Joker keep finding A) minions crazy enough to work for him, and B) enough money to pay them?
    • True, but Joker is an adult, a capable fighter, meaning he can stand for himself, very smart and a hardened criminal, meaning he can devise enrichment schemes to either raise funds by himself (in many heists we see it's just him and Harley) or entice minions, and, last but not least, a scary-as-fuck psycho, who can probably intimidate regular goons into submission. More or less the same can be said about other major villains. Baby Doll seems to lack all of those advantages.
    • The Joker is shown in several episodes accumulating large amounts of money, he is a competent crime boss, even crazy. Besides, working for The Joker (or Two-Face or any of the big supervillains) probably is a badge of honor in the criminal world that gives you immediate respect and influence.
    • Baby Doll is an adult too, even if she doesn't look like one. And she can adopt an adult voice and act like a grownup when she chooses, so it's not like she always looks, acts, and sounds like a toddler. On top of that, we saw in "Love is a Croc" that her child-like appearance can be pretty useful for a criminal enterprise.
  • There are always plenty of people desperate/lazy/stupid enough to work for the promise of easy money through crime. Especially in Gotham. The city has a large enough criminal element that any goofball with a gimmick can round up a gang by calling around and saying "We'll knock over a few banks, you in?" and at least four or five guys will say "Beats flipping burgers!"
    • The problem, in this case, is that the thugs accepted to work for her in keeping hostage half a dozen people indefinitely with no noticeable source of money soon.
    • The episode never establishes that she's broke, only that she's typecast and failed in finding other jobs as an actress. She might have a lot of money from her days of glory and/or receive royalties for her character.
    • In the next episode she's in she's already out of jail (so she has good lawyers) and she owns a hotel, yes she has a lot of money probably out of royalties.
  • Actually, she doesn't own the hotel, she took a job as a manager.
  • An interpretation read on WMG: They are Loony Fans of Mary Dahl.

Big Bad Harv

• What happened to Big Bad Harv? Is he still knocking around Two-Face's head?
  • "Big Bad Harv" is Two-Face.
    • So he changed his name after the explosion?
    • No, Big Bad Harv is just the name for the alternate personality that later took over Harvey's psyche and became Two-Face.
    • Yeah, "Big Bad Harv" was just a moniker that either Harvey's therapist or Thorne slapped on the personality. Or that Harvey himself used to refer to it. Once the personality is itself in charge it decides to make a name more fitting to the trauma that allowed it control in the first place.
    • Big Bad Harv and regular Harvey were merged following the trauma of the explosion, psychologically - with the surface scars representing that duality. That's what the coin is for, and it's why Harvey isn't a violent monster when he becomes Two-Face. Remember that at the end of 'Two-Face Part Two', he breaks down in front of Grace. So regular Harvey and Big Bad Harv were merged, and the silver dollar Big Bad Harv merely used to flip as a trademark to show him in control became his manner of dealing with the duality in his mind.

Selina and zoos

• In "Tyger, Tyger", Selina Kyle goes to the zoo and complains about the tiger being imprisoned. Uh...does she not realize that zoos are at least half about rehabilitation and other reasons the animals would be better off in captivity?
  • Not all zoos are created equal. The Gotham Zoo might be more of an old-timey "shove the animal in the cage and throw it scraps once a day" zoo. Or Selina might just have an irrational view of zoos. We even have a trope for that.
    • The second's more likely than the first. Selina occasionally edged into being as nuts about cats as Poison Ivy was about plants, in this iteration.
    • It is Gotham though. Given how everything else in the city is run I wouldn't be surprised if their zoo is as bad as Arkham.
    • If the zoo was a bad one Selena would have done something about it (even without Catwoman taking things into her own hands Selena was still wealthy enough to make a fuss or outright buy the cats).
  • The Gotham Zoo was high-grade enough to have three expert chiropterologists working at their bat exhibit. Possibly Selina was more concerned about whether that particular tiger seemed dissatisfied with its particular enclosure than about whether keeping big cats in zoos was good or bad overall.

Zatanna's magic costume

• In the climax of Zatanna, Batman and the nominative guest-star spend the episode's climax dangling from the cargo hold, and then clambering around the outside of the villain of the week's plane while it's in flight. During all of this, how do Zatanna's high heels stay on?
  • Well, she is a magician.
  • Skin tone colored straps?
  • Superhero costumes get a pass, else these pages would be filled with nothing but. Batman's cape probably should have caused his death a few dozen times over at least but doesn't because he looks much neater with it than without it.

"Jump in a river" means "Climb a bridge"?

• Why did Mad Hatter's first victims climb up to the top of a bridge first? All he said was for them to go jump in a river.
  • Operative word, jump. Not "stumble down to the edge of the river and then hop into it". Jump into the river. But also because of conservation of detail in a cartoon, and "Go jump in a river" sounds snappier than "Find a bridge of a suitable height that your subsequent plunge into the water will be fatal and jump into the river from there."
    • It's also clear that Tetch's technology uses more than simple voice commands, both here and in other episodes; that's what the red headband is for. Even at the very beginning of the episode, he directs the rats he controls into complex actions without having to narrate every step of their "tea party."
    • Yes, the headband is picking up Tetch's thoughts, translating them into commands, and broadcasting them to the cards. He certainly wouldn't want to verbally tell the muggers to kill themselves with Alice listening, and perhaps didn't even consciously intend to push things that far, but the headband would have picked up on his anger and tailored the instructions accordingly.

Freeze targeting Bruce

• Out of all the people Mr. Freeze could have attacked in his "destroy your hope" vendetta, why did it have to be Bruce Wayne? As Bruce points out, Wayne Enterprises is directly responsible for Nora's recovery, and we know from the tie-in comics that he still loves her even after his Despair Event Horizon. So why Bruce Wayne? (Aside from the fact that he's a protagonist). There are plenty of important and well-known socialites that he could have made a point by targeting, ones that have done nothing for him. Why did he target someone who'd actually (financially at least) made his life marginally less miserable? In addition, isn't Ferris Boyle still alive? Why didn't he attack him? Even if the man's in jail, Victor was out for blood earlier.
  • To attack innocent people who even tried to help him is Mr. Freeze's hat as a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, and about Boyle, I believe the producers wanted to do a storyline where Victor kills him for real, but they didn't have the chance.
    • When was it his hat? In his debut episode, he was out for revenge against a man who ruined his life. In Deep Freeze, he was trying to restore Nora. In a Christmas special for the tie-in comic, he was trying to honor Nora's memory. And in the theSubzero movie he was trying to keep Nora from dying. Attacking people for helping him, or targeting people that have never wronged him when it gained him nothing only showed up in and after Cold Comfort. ...As for Boyle, I suppose we'll have to assume Victor killed him offscreen and we just didn't hear about it because nobody cared.
    • About the hat thing, I have noticed that every villain has a theme (for example, The Mad Hatter is a Dogged Nice Guy)who has maybe two great stories following that theme, but then the writers don't know what to do with him and they use Motive Decay. So poor Mr. Freeze is obliged to cross the Despair Event Horizon every time he appears only because that was his original theme at "Heart of Ice", no matter that, by definition, you only can cross a horizon once.
    • Freeze didn't cross the horizon in "Deep Freeze" or in Batman And Mister Freeze Subzero. So no, becoming violently depressed is not his theme either.
    • To be fair, the OP could be confusing Freeze's depiction in the series with his depiction in the comics, wherein he did develop a bit of a tendency to spitefully go after innocent people who didn't have to live their lives in a refrigerated power-suit.

Does Harley have a Misaimed Fandom?

• I want to be clear: Harley Quinn is one of the best characters in all the series and I love her, but I think her fans see her as Draco in Leather Pants. I mean, she’s a victim of Mad Love that only feels attracted to The Sociopath who treats her like dirt, being The Joker or Poison Ivy, but I think she is not The Woobie: She is a Psycho Supporter with no problems killing anyone The Joker or Poison Ivy told her, and she does that not For the Evulz but she is Just Following Orders. And when we see her at Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker she shows us that she Would Hurt a Child. I think the very tragedy of her character is that she must be alone to be sane, and the notion she is The Woobie doesn't interpret her character rightly.
  • Another thing I am intrigued by is that some people have written that she is a Bumbling Sidekick that commits mistakes that foil The Joker or Poison Ivy plans. I don’t remember all her episodes, but I would say that Harley didn’t do any mistakes, instead of that, The Joker or Poison Ivy blamed her because they are sociopaths and it’s Never Their Fault.
  • I don't remember exactly everything she does in the series, so, aside from the Would Hurt a Child thing (which is a fair point but much further along in her development as a villain), correct me if anything invalidates this, but I think you're mistaking the Harley from the comics with the Harley from the show. They're not the same person. Harley is almost always playing a subservient role to Joker in his schemes, and except for dealing with Catwoman (and Batman, obviously), she never directly hurts anyone in anything other than self-defense. When acting alone she is very willing to let people go and be reasonable about it, such as her dealing with Veronica Vreeland. The The Woobie aspect of her character is that she, a good person deep under all the denial and mania, is coerced into committing criminal behaviors in the first place just to get attention from the people she loves, both of whom are verbally and physically abusive to her. I hope I'm making sense here. She can be a morally gray character and still have people who want to hug her. And she's too bubbly and cheerful to qualify as a Jerkass Woobie.
  • Besides which, just because fans who see her as a Woobie interpret her differently from you doesn't mean they're interpreting her wrong. We each bring our perspective to fiction, and it can have multiple valid interpretations.

Mad Hatter and Batman's identity

So Mad Hatter has an unconscious, I repeat UNCONSCIOUS Batman in his hands, and instead of taking the mask off, what does he do? he hooks Batman up to a machine to make him dream a perfect life. Beyond a few technical flaws with this(how does Batman obtain nourishment or excrete waste while hooked up to this?), the obvious question would be WHY didn't he rip Batman's mask off? Or why didn't he just sell Batman to some other criminal for a pile of money?

• He answers this in the episode. He was willing to give Batman his perfect life just so he'd stay away from him. Why not take off the mask? It's best answered in Justice League Unlimited and the Great Brain Robbery. Lex and Flash switched bodies and Lex did unmask flash and had no clue who he was. Which isn't that unusual, we don't have any clue how famous Bruce Wayne is. We know he's rich and famous but most people couldn't identify the top ten richest people in the world by sight. It's also a universal rule amongst supervillains not to unmask the heroes, they just don't it's in the rules. Probably in part due to self-preservation even against heroes who don't normally kill they seem to quickly develop cases of "I don't have to save you" when someone learns their ID. Finally, as for your technical flaws we have no way of knowing how long Batman was under. It's possible it was the exact twenty minutes we saw. Don't tell me you've never had a dream where you just seemed to stop being someplace and then were someplace else?
  • For the last one, Hatter's motivation was to keep Batman in the Lotus-Eater Machine for a long time, potentially indefinitely. The question is not how Batman ate and pooped in those twenty minutes, but how was Jarvis planning to arrange for those needs later. The answer to the first question is not an answer at all, because, as usual in those cases, it's not about whether or not it would work - it's about not trying. It would've cost Jarvis nothing to take the mask off, and even if he doesn't recognize the man, who cares? At the very least he could be on the lookout for Batman in normal life, leak his identity into the criminal underworld, and so on, should his plan fail. Knowledge is power. As for compunctions against unmasking Batman, only Joker ever showed them.
    • In plenty of stories Batman's mask is booby-trapped and if he doesn't recognize him he doesn't recognize him. He can't leak his ID because (without a picture) he wouldn't be able to describe him well enough for other people to figure him out. He could very potentially gain absolutely no knowledge except that Batman is six foot whatever, muscular build, dark eyes, dark hair, square jaw. Even with all that information, Ras had to use several other hints to piece it together and he's magnitudes smarter than Hatter. And to the how did Hatter plan to deal with Batman's physical needs? Why bother? If bats say in the Lotus-Eater Machine until he dies of starvation that'll keep him out of the way indefinitely. Hatter appears to have genuinely believed he was doing Batman the biggest favor he could manage which might also explain why he didn't remove the mask. He wanted to do right (in his twisted way) by Batman.
    • Though it doesn't necessarily trump the argument of Mad Hatter's motive, it's worth mentioning that Jervis probably would recognize Wayne. Tetch was an employee of Wayne Enterprises who met Bruce face to face in the former's origin story episode.
  • In this episode at least, he doesn't care about knowing Batman's secret identity. He just wants Batman out of his life forever. He doesn't take the mask off because, at this particular moment, he's simply not interested.
• And about the last question WHY didn't he rip Batman's mask off? Or why didn't he just sell Batman to some other criminal for a pile of money?, Mad Hatter was never interested in money nor revenge, before his Motive Decay at "The Worry Men", he is a Dogged Nice Guy Who Just Wants To Be Loved. That's exactly the pathetic and scary part about him.
  • He went at Batman with an ax at their very first encounter. That's not very nice.
  • Let's not get pedantic; despite the name, the trope is about a "nice" guy (i.e. usually rather meek and unassuming) who's in love with a woman that doesn't return his affections, which sums up this version of Jervis Tetch to a tee. He just happens to be a darker version who turns into a Batman villain.

Fish Teeth

In "The Laughing Fish", why do all the fish infected with Joker venom have teeth? Most fish don't have teeth, let alone sets that are so squared and human-like.

• Maybe the seas off Gotham have one heck of a Pacu Problem?
  • Actually, fish do have teeth, they're pretty small, made of hardened cartilage (I'm guessing since a lot of fish skeletons don't have the teeth), and tend to be located more towards the throat (as can be seen here◊). In terms of the ones with human-reminiscent teeth, those might be US are the sheepshead fish, which can be found on the coast of NY (assuming Gotham is in New York, as I can't remember) but they're uncommon. Of course, Joker venom might be some weird mutagen.
  • Fish teeth are made of the same stuff as human teeth, they just get replaced regularly and therefore aren't necessarily rooted all that securely in the bones of the jaw.

Where the heck was Joker during "Lock-up"?

Was he out robbing banks? I wonder if he was scared of Lock-up as well.

• The Joker is one of the few Batman villains in this series who would deserve the treatment Lock-up was giving to the other Rogues, so he's probably absent to avoid making the Kick the Dog's into Pragmatic Villainy or venturing into Strawman Has a Point.
  • You can hear his laughter running through Arkham when Bolton is brought in as an inmate at the very end. My headcanon is that he was Too Kinky to Torture, and after the first few sessions, he whispered stuff into Bolton's ear that made Bolton leave his cell the hell alone and start pushing the less-hardened rogues.
  • Alternatively Joker may be seen as too dangerous to bring out of Arkham as a witness.
  • Bolton is a bully, and bullies pick on the weak. He probably focuses on the less dangerous villains and doesn't mess with really nasty ones like the Joker.
• In his last appearance before "Lock-up" Joker stole an atomic bomb and tried to nuke Gotham, at one point saying "that bomb's going off if I go with it!" with his henchmen in earshot. Chances are he was in federal custody awaiting execution because crazy or not, Joker stole a nuke. You can probably rationalize his next appearances in the show and "Mask of the Phantasm" as happening while he's on the run from the feds, with Joker's later appearances happening because the writers likely forgot this happened.

The army could use the villains' powers

Why not try to convince them to join the army? Scarecrow's fear gas could frighten the enemies, causing them to kill each other. Bane's venom can create super soldiers. Croc can be a one-man army with his tough skin. Poison Ivy's plant powers can be useful in the jungle. Even if they say no, they could pay Scarecrow and Bane a LOT of money for their chemicals.

• Because they're a bunch of unstable, greedy, petty psychopaths who can't be controlled or directed.
• For some of this there is probably some kind of legal parameter that prevents any country from developing these as weapons. Even when you ignore things like Venom which is addicting, Croc being a mutant that may not be reproducible (a surprising amount of Comic Science is one time only BS), and Scarecrow uses Chemical Weapons which are outlawed IRL and with good reason.
• This question was answered at the Justice League episode "Task Force X": Amanda Waller recruits Clock King, Deadshot, Plastique, and Captain Boomerang as a Black Ops team. Notice that they all are sociopaths, not psychopaths, and they can be controlled because they only think about themselves. Also, Waller has to do this as a Black Ops operation because there is no way this will be approved by the public, so both of the above objections are justified.
• For what it's worth, several comics stories (most notably Batman: The Dark Knight Returns) depict Batman as carrying a diluted form of fear gas in his utility belt.

Are the Batman: TAS batmobile and TNBA batmobile one and the same?

I can't tell if it's the same car in Batman: TAS with a redesign or a different car.

• It appears to be a different car. It's shorter, particularly on its back half, has spikes on the front, differences in its front grill, and—while it might be a matter of coloring—the old car was dark blue, and the new car is black.
• In a meta-sense, it's a redesign. In-universe, it's never really specified whether it's supposed to be a wholly new car or whether the Art Shift is a gentle Retcon.

But for the Joker, it was Tuesday

• From "Joker's Millions", did Bruce seriously plan to find out it was a body double working for Joker by bringing up some random incident from a month ago? I don't care if it worked, he's the freaking Joker! He throws rich guys off of buildings all the damn time!
  • Bruce wasn't there on the hunch that Joker had a double. He was there because he thought the real Joker was there, in a nightclub owned by the Penguin. One can see why he'd want to hoover about the place and get a closer look. The double is the one who turned the conversation in the direction that got him caught.

Is Riddler that smart or sympathetic?

• Riddle me this, riddle me that; In his debut episode "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?", while it's clear we're supposed to have some sympathy for Nygma when his boss smugly tells him off and fires him, him trying to sue his boss, while still on the job, for royalties of a game he knowingly made on a work-for-hire contract comes off as either exceptionally stupid, or extremely arrogant on his part. While his boss was acting like a dick to him, Edward comes off as very egotistical, self-righteous, and naive about business, so was there any reason for his boss to put up with his blatantly unprofessional behavior and overinflated ego? And, as his boss retorted if he wanted the dough for his board game, why did he sign a contract that gave it and the money it would earn away to the company in the first place?
  • That's the point. Riddler is smart, but not wise. Also, the "ego" part is a very important detail; later in the episode, Nygma flat out says he doesn't care about the money Mockridge is making off of his game—he's purely out for revenge on Mockridge because he called Nygma a worthless ancillary to his company and an idiot on top of that. It was all about gratifying his bruised ego.
  • Perhaps it's meant to be that Nygma was tricked somehow or even that the "work for hire" contract was fake. The fact that he was able to sue him in the first place suggests that his lawyer at least thought he had a case, and firing Nygma for suing him is pretty legally and ethically shady. It's a little unusual that Nygma has an office if he is only "work for hire" and the game was created, and it's possible that the terms of the contract state that he IS entitled to a cut of the profits "so long as he works for the company" it sounds more like he COULD have gained royalties but forgot that his contract allowed his employers to fire him at any time (and of course, he didn't think they would fire someone as "brilliant" like him).
  • Even if Mockridge's actions were legal, that doesn't necessarily mean they were right. Nygma may have been stupid or desperate or whatever when he started working for Mockridge, but none of that makes it okay for Mockridge to exploit him.

Why stop with the Riddler episode titles?

• The nitpick of all nitpicks to ever grace this planet - it was always incredibly cool that Riddler-centric episodes had titles that were questions. "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?" and "What Is Reality?" in particular. But then the third comes along, titled "Riddler's Reform". Not only does that break the pattern, but... just... It could have had so, so much more oomph to it if it was titled "Riddler's Reform?". Did they think the gimmick was silly (it wasn't)? Did they forget? Did it get edited out? Why? Why? Why.
  • Because it wasn't a "gimmick". They just happened to use questions in the titles, without going for a "gimmick."

Why only the villains and Batman get to have awesome gadgets?

• You ever notice most of the technology, powers, and gadgets in Gotham are invented (and used) by psychotic maniacs and Batman? I always find it funny that technology that could help mankind is always in the hands of super-criminals and heroes. Are you telling me a normal sane Gotham scientist can't invent a freeze gun, invisible cloak, super-soldier formula, gas, and use them to help the world?
  • The usual handwaves for Reed Richards Is Useless and Cut Lex Luthor a Check apply — the supertech might be an irreproducible accident, too difficult or expensive to mass-produce, etc.
  • Most of the examples you listed were stolen corporate science projects. The Venom drug was a failed military experiment that was scrapped because of its addictive properties, the invisibility cloak was stolen by one of the scientists, and the Scarecrows gas and fear toxin doesn't have any practical applications outside domestic terrorism. It's less than useless for military purposes because biological weapons are supposed to KILL the enemy and leave other resources intact, not cause mass chaos and anarchy.
  • The Invisibility Cloak was toxic to its users. It was being scrapped by the scientist and some of it was stolen by the ex-con working for them.
  • The simple answer to this is that if such potentially dangerous technology only ever stayed in the hands of calm, stable, and sane persons who would never dream of using it for crime, chaos, and mayhem, there wouldn't be a story to tell about them (or at least, not the kind of story that would likely make for an exciting superhero cartoon or comic). If you want to tell the story of, say, a freeze ray being used to commit crimes and cause mayhem that Batman has to stop, then the freeze ray has to either start in or eventually make its way into the hands of someone who is the kind of person who would use it to commit crimes and cause mayhem. Anthropic Principle, basically; without it, there's no story. For all we know, there's plenty of cool stuff being developed by non-psychotic maniacs and criminal masterminds and which end up having nothing but positive effects on the world — but they aren't the kind of people or kind of things that Batman would need to combat, so we don't see them.
  • I always assumed Poison Ivy designed & built her wrist mounted crossbow herself. Putting that Chez Gerard money to use.

The staff in Arkham not giving a hoot

• If the doctors are trying to cure the villains, why do they sometimes let them keep their costumes and accessories? I can see Two-face flipping his coin and Ivy hugging her plants in their cells. If that's not bad enough, they give Arnold Wesker a KNIFE to carve DUMMIES.
  • Some of it might be justifiable if the doctors believe (correctly or otherwise) that indulging the prisoner's quirks is a better approach than trying to cut them off cold turkey. Letting a prisoner in a mental institution have a knife is a bit much, though.
  • For what it's worth, Doug Moench, who wrote the Batman comic for a good chunk of the 90s, noted in one of his self-hosted letter columns that in real life, members of the Manson family were permitted to handle knives in jail during dinner cleanup duty.
  • This is fairly simple. Either you let Poison Ivy have a couple of potted plants in her cell to keep her happy or the next time she breaks out she turns your front lawn into a bunch of giant man-eating plants that devour your family. Either you let Two-Face have his coin or he either becomes completely unresponsive, in which case you can't treat him, or he violently assaults everyone he gets his hands on until he gets his coin back. These aren't just normal criminals, they're called supervillains for a reason, it's best to indulge them at least a little to avoid personal grudges from forming against you, especially since everyone knows Arkham prisoners escape fairly regularly.
  • This is brought up in the episode Dreams in Darkness, where a fear-toxin-crazed Batman is briefly held in Arkham. A doctor protests the removal of his mask, because it may strip him of his last shred of comfort and sense of identity, and make his psychological state worse. It's not too much of a stretch to assume this is the same logic that permits other patients their indulgence in their obsessions. As for Wesker using a knife, perhaps after psychological examination, he was considered much less of a threat without Scarface as an outlet. He could have been deemed a low-risk patient who can be permitted certain freedoms the more violent inmates wouldn't be allowed, especially if artistic expression such as wood-carving was part of his therapy.
  • That’s how normal therapy works. You don’t take away something that a person with OCD needs immediately, for example. Unless you want to have them catatonic.
  • In Wesker's case he was in the woodshop so I am sure they are searched before leaving the workshop. He also is a very meek guy, and all evidence shows that the puppet does all the violent stuff. He isn't shown wielding weapons or being aggressive, Scarface is the one who does that.
    • The way I kind of took it was that Arkham is probably underfunded or, at the least, understaffed (as one might expect with state/city-run hospitals), in which case, they're trying to manage all of the ones there but some slip through. Likewise, having stayed in a psych ward (different than a mental home for the criminally insane but still), it's usually the higher-functioning patients that tend to be considered "low-risk" and a lot of the ones interred at Arkham are what one might call "high functioning", in which case, they can just simply get more privileges if they behave well enough to not need micromanaging/close supervision.

Does Rupert Thorne care about his brother?

• Rupert told his goons to kill Dr. Leslie once the surgery is done. What I find strange is that the goons are shooting at both Leslie and Matthew Thorne. How would the thugs explain Matthew's death to Rupert? Their order was to kill Leslie.
  • The thugs might not know who Matthew is. Even if they do know, they might assume (perhaps correctly, perhaps not, but they didn't have time to worry about it right then) that Rupert would accept shooting him as collateral damage after he got in the way of carrying out the order to kill Leslie.
  • It doesn't seem like the thugs were aiming at Matthew, he was only earlier threatened that the deal to reinstate his license would be off. Crime lord or not, Rupert's brotherly manner of speaking with Matthew even during an outburst showed he never considered him as someone to be disposed of.

Having a casino named after a famous killer

• Could Joker sue Cameron Kaiser? If not, shouldn't Kaiser's reputation be tarnished because of the choice of name? It's like if Donald Trump builds an Adolf Hitler-based amusement park.
  • Kaiser came up with the setup because he was in over his head — if he came out of it with a tarnished reputation, so be it. He seems to be the type who wouldn't care about public opinion anyway as long as he gets attention — note that in the opening scene he blithely dismissed the whole issue.
  • Probably not. Assuming Joker has ever gotten out on terms that would allow him to lawyer up and the implications seem to be that he and the others just escape Arkham not that they don't get lifetime sentences he has to prove Cameron was basing the park on him. Joker for all the people he's killed is not Adolf Hitler. Joker modeled himself after the playing card jokers. Cameron might be blithe about it but he's not wrong that the association between jokers and card games and gambling predates the Joker by decades or centuries. The Royal Flush Gang would have no standing if a casino (or any other private endeavor) decided to name its product Royal Flush. With cartoons, it can often be difficult to tell how similar two things are supposed to look in-universe but the dealers are not generic jokers and are cashing in on the notoriety of The Joker so he probably does have a leg to stand on.
    • It's clear that Kaiser's casino is modeled on The Joker rather than the generic concept. The female staff is dressed as Harley Quinn, there's a prominent display of "The Original Jokermobile", and the male staff costumes and makeup are close enough for the real Joker to blend in (a supervisor mistakes the Joker for one of the dealers; Bruce takes time to confirm that he's found the real Joker by getting close and jerking his chain). If he were rational enough to settle the matter legally, the Joker would have a pretty strong case (unless the DCAU has something like the real-world "Son of Sam" laws that would bar him from profiting from his criminal notoriety).
    • Unless Joker has his name trademarked, I doubt he has any legal standing. Remember, "Joker" is not his real identity, it just happens to be the only identity anyone is aware of, including himself, unless you count Dr. Arkham calling him Jack Napier in Dreams In Darkness. It'd be different if Cameron had made, say, a casino based on Maxie Zeus because Maxie Zeus is his real name and persona. Trademark laws revolving around not using other people's names and likeness without permission only apply to their REAL name and likeness, not criminal identities. It would be like the Zodiac Killer demanding royalties because a criminal named Zodiac was in one of the Dirty Harry movies.
    • Fictional personas can certainly be protected — if (for example) somebody else went on TV doing an unmistakable copy of the "Carnac the Magnificent" routine, they'd get a nastygram from The Tonight Show's lawyers. The complication, as noted above, is that some real-world laws bar criminals from profiting from their infamy, and that might be true of the DCAU under the Like Reality, Unless Noted principle.
    • Plus, the Joker's persona is explicitly modeled on the playing card character (and Harley Quinn's is based on the concept of the harlequin, another public domain concept). Kaiser can (and at one point does) argue that he's simply basing his casino off the same thing that the Joker is, and can't help it if both he and a known criminal have taken inspiration from the same source. Granted, hardly anyone who sees the casino falls for that, but legally it might be enough to get away with.
  • Son Of Sam laws are real-life laws set up to prevent criminals from profiting off of the publicity of their crimes. While a lawsuit isn't the same thing as say, selling the rights for a movie, it could be argued that suing Kaiser is an attempt by the Joker to profit off of his legacy, and given the heinous nature of some of his crimes, a jury may love the excuse to not sympathize with his case.
  • Given that Kaiser is based to a degree on Trump, and Trump himself isn't above Refuge in Audacity, this may be part of the point. Controversy gets people interested.
  • It should also be noted that the Joker's threats to sue Kaiser are not serious; he's just venting his spleen. He's the Joker, he was always going to go for the more violent way to solve that particular problem.

Inconsistent Joker

• In "The Man Who Killed Batman", Joker was sad when he thought Batman was gone forever. If Joker needs Batman around, why does he try to kill him episodes later? In "Mad Love", Harley asks Joker why he doesn't just shoot him. He goes into a long speech about how shooting Batman isn't good enough, yet he tries to shoot him in Justice League.
  • Obviously, part of it is the fact that the Joker is crazy, and prone to randomly change his mind (as he did in "Mad Love", first deciding to release Batman from Harley's trap and forget the whole thing, and then deciding to take the opportunity to Just Shoot Him). Also, the reason he was sad (and angry) in "The Man Who Killed Batman" wasn't so much the fact that Batman was (supposedly) dead as the fact that he'd been deprived of the chance to do it himself.
  • Whenever the Joker shoots at Batman, he expects Batman to dodge.
  • Maybe Joker, being Batman's antithesis, is a bored rich guy who enjoys the game and doesn't want Batman to go away. Then he'd have nothing to do. Remember the Laughing Fish episode? He and Harley are dismissive and condescending to "wage slaves" and want to fund their hedonistic lifestyle. Joker probably purposely misses Batman because it's more fun to scare him with gunfire.

Why does Mad Hatter always think small?

• This guy could use his tech to take over the minds of world leaders. Why use his tech for petty crimes? Why not think big? The legion of Doom could use a guy like him. He could move to another town/country that doesn't have superheroes and become their king.
  • Because he doesn't want to.
  • Because deep down he's a bit of a small, petty, insecure man.
  • It's arguably not possible for him to think that large. He's mentally ill and suffers from obsessive thoughts to an extreme that would make it hard to focus on a scheme that would require that much planning. It's a miracle his Worry Men scheme got as far as it did without him turning the focus back to Batman or Alice, and even that one only got foiled because he decided it needed to be more flamboyant.

Salvatore Valestra's age

• This bugged me as a kid. Why does Salvatore look like he is in his 70s and 80s? The guy even has liver spots and an oxygen tank. Bruce was in his 20s in the flashbacks of MOTP. Salvatore shouldn't be old in the present time. He looked like he's in his late 30s to mid-40s in the flashbacks.
  • He's portrayed as being a heavy smoker, probably has emphysema because of it. Liver spots can start showing up as early as your late forties, and chronic illness brings them on quote quickly. Smoking, and a chronic illness derived from it, can easily age someone quickly. Remember kids, don't smoke.
  • Also, being a mob boss is a tough job with no easy way out, perhaps the stress was getting to him.
  • I've seen a guy who was 23 who looked like he was in his 40's. At the time I was five years older and looked much younger because I take care of myself. The guy was a heavy smoker, drinker, and admitted meth and coke abuser. How he afforded to be chubby as well as he was a rich kid that lived at the place I worked as a concierge. He looked horrible for his age. I imagine Salvatore wasn't exactly living a healthy life. You'd be amazed how fast that can age a person. Also, he was old in the flashbacks. Like in his early 50's to me. Also back then people aged compared to now. Watch videos of people in their mid-thirties in the '60s and '70s. They look way older than people do these days.

Is Clock King supposed to be sympathetic?

• This one is kinda similar to the Riddler headscratcher above. Clock King was an arrogant man before he turned to super-villainy. Are we supposed to hate Mayor Hill for telling a guy to lighten up and take a break? What's the moral lesson of the episode? It's okay to be a time-obsessed workaholic? Having fun and taking time off will get you fired? Also, it was Clock King's fault for not keeping his papers in a suitcase.
  • As in real life, people are not Black and White, they have shades of grey. The greatness of the show was to show multi-dimensional characters and not the typical bad guys/good guys, something pioneering in kid’s show. The fact that we can discuss this that you ask is precisely what made the show cool, to begin with.
  • I don't think we're supposed to view Clock King as sympathetic at all, or at least not very sympathetic; he is, after all, an uptight Control Freak taking out his frustrations and failures on a man who did nothing more than give him what was supposed to just be well-meaning and well-intentioned advice. The point is not that Mayor Hill was wrong to give him that advice, but that even good intentions can sometimes have consequences that were unforeseen and not necessarily good.
  • There seems to be a bit of a tendency to use "sympathetic" or "sympathize" on this page for several of Batman's villains (it's come up for Clayface and the Riddler as well) when "understandable" or "empathize" might be better choices of words. We're meant to get a sense of where these people are coming from, and an understanding that they're not just evildoers who like doing evil for the sake of evil because they're evil, that there are compelling motivations and reasons behind why they feel compelled to do what they do. But it's important to also understand that this understanding doesn't mean that we're supposed to like, support, or admire them. We're supposed to understand that Clock King's actions are because he's been driven to extremes by his life falling apart for reasons not entirely within his control — but that doesn't mean we're supposed to sympathize with him, because at the end of the day he's still targeting an innocent man for social ruin and death purely out of anger and spite. We're supposed to understand that the Riddler feels screwed over by his boss, and validly so, but that doesn't make it okay to kidnap the man and put him in a death trap. We're supposed to get that Matt Hagen is trapped in a nightmarish existence that we wouldn't wish on our worst enemy, but he's still committed a lot of serious criminal offenses that he needs to answer for and doesn't get to just walk away scot-free from them. And so on.

No Out-of-character alert in "Chemistry"

• Why doesn't a single Bat-family member find it weird that Bruce suddenly marries a woman he met like yesterday? He is even ready to quit being Batman - his lifework. Such reckless abandon isn't like him and several villains can manipulate people's minds. And yet no one thinks that 'Hey, what if he is under Mad Hatter's control or that girl bought her lipstick from Poison Ivy or some other mad scientist out there is messing with him?'
  • Because those are all things they want to happen. They want Bruce to find happiness and have a family and stop risking his life daily so when it looks like it's going to happen they roll with it.

Is Poison Ivy in the DCAU a metahuman?

• Or is she just a human mad scientist who uses chemicals to control plants? We see her mind control people with a kiss, but she was using some kind of lipstick. The comics make it clear she's no longer human. Here, it's rather ambiguous.
  • It would depend on the nature of her poison immunity. Early Ivy was entirely science-based and later Ivy was a plant clone she'd left behind to play with Harley. So if her poison immunity is just a quirk of her immune system then no, if she did it to herself as she did with Harley then yes.

Would you vote for Harvey Dent?

• Yes, he has to live with a terrible, severe, frightening mental illness. One can't help but feel sympathy for him because of that. But why on Earth are we supposed to want him to succeed in covering up such an illness to win re-election? It's pretty obvious that even before becoming Two-Face, he was already in a bad way with his temper that could have easily compromised his competency as D.A., not to mention the danger of him snapping and physically hurting people. And this is supposed to be Gotham's one honest politician.
  • Are we supposed to want him to do that, though? Certainly, we're encouraged to feel sympathy for him personally, and the other characters want him to win re-election because he's a pretty good DA and by-and-large they're unaware of the extent of his psychological issues. But it's suggested (IIRC by Harvey's doctor no less) that the stress of his job and his campaign isn't helping matters any, and his desire to cover it up instead of admitting and dealing with it ends up leading directly to his downfall. At the very least, the episode makes it pretty clear that for all Harvey's admirable qualities, he's not handling things exactly as well as he could have. Besides which, he's still more or less a decent man, but no one ever said we were supposed to consider him an angel who was perfecter-than-perfect.

Supervillains and their "secret" hideouts

• The supervillains of Gotham hide out in the most obvious places. Joker hangs out in old toy factories, candy stores, and abandoned amusement parks. Ivy's lab is in a greenhouse. Two-Face lives in a HALF-destroyed building. Penguin hangs out in bird-related factories. It never occurred to Commissioner Gordon and his cops to check those places?
  • The villains are very rarely captured in their hideout. They are usually apprehended when carrying out their crimes; maybe the police- heck, maybe even Batman-, simply don't know that this is where the bad guys keep hiding out. Besides, if one thing this series makes clear, there are a LOT of abandoned amusement parks in Gotham.
  • Also, it's hard and impractical for police and Batman to just enter abandoned buildings in seedy parts of town just on a hunch a villain is there. Also given that Batman and the police primarily use patrol to catch criminals (since that's a great way for you to establish a case), they're going to run into each other eventually when they're in the act of committing a crime. There are mundane crimes the Police/Bats are dealing with too. It's a warzone out there as Gordon puts it.
  • Also, they presumably have more than one hideout which they move around between, and there are likely a lot of old factories, empty shop fronts, crumbling tenements, etc. in a city like Gotham — more than may be practical for Batman or the police to search all of them. While, admittedly, some of them may strain some credibility, ultimately they also come down to...
  • Rule of Symbolism. The hideouts aren't meant to be a strictly 100% realistic depiction of life within a criminal organization but are meant to thematically reflect the central theme or gimmick of the villain in question. The Joker's whole deal is being a clown, so his hideouts reflect things that tie into clowns (circuses, amusement parks, playing cards, toys, and games, etc.). Two-Face's hideouts reflect his central psychosis and obsession with dualities, opposites, and order-vs-chaos. Poison Ivy controls and works with plants, so her hideouts have access to biological labs and plants. The Penguin likes birds, so he goes to places with lots of birds around. And so forth.

FBI doesn't seem to be interested in Joker and Harley

• Joker blew up buildings, broke into a government facility, abducted 5 powerful teens, and placed bombs in Las Vegas with the help of the same teens. Why aren't the feds going after him? I assume he always returns to Arkham Asylum after getting his butt kicked by Batman. Crazy or not, he committed some terrorist acts outside Gotham. Also, I find it odd in "Joker's Millions" that he was walking around freely. Sure he bribed people to have his record wiped clean, but that shouldn't stop the FBI from going after him. This episode takes place after the "World's Finest" where he DESTROYED HALF OF METROPOLIS.
  • Honestly for you to be legally crazy you have to not be able to tell right from wrong. Joker and Harley very clearly recognize what they are doing are wrong. Mad Hatter would be a better candidate for not guilty because of insanity since it's quite clear in two of his episodes that he genuinely doesn't seem to think he's doing something wrong. Look how frustrated he was with Batman for rejecting his gift of a perfect life. He genuinely believed he was doing Batman a solid. As for the rest law enforcement is mostly useless in the DCAU. It's not just the FBI failing to pursue Joker. They don't seem to be able to find any of the villains' hideouts and most of them don't hide so much as set up camp. You could find Joker in twenty minutes if you cared to.
    • We'll the pair are elusive so the FBI are interested in them but they haven't much of, if any, a clue as to where to locate those two.

The fear inhibiting toxin

• In the Scarecrow episode of the TNBA era, people are getting injected with a toxin that removes their fear, which results in them doing all kinds of recklessness to the point of suicidal things such as jumping off the top of a tall building. How does that make any sense? Just because one has no fear it doesn't mean they're brainless. They should still be intelligent enough to realize that jumping off the top of a tall building would kill them.
  • I'm not a psychologist, and neither are the writers probably, but having absolutely no sense of fear or avoidance might totally remove one's survival instinct. They might've just thought that swinging around up high or falling a long way might be fun and had no reason not to do it.
  • As a kid I actually would do these things and get hurt. I had no concept of fear at the time. I'd climb trees and the house and jump off them. Granted I was doing this from 2 (yes, 2, hilarity ensued seeing my dad chase a diaper-wearing toddler swinging from the trees) to like 6. Food for thought, how many times have you done crazy things on video games because you know you won't suffer any real-world consequences? Look at teenagers who think they're invincible, they do all kinds of dangerous and stupid things. Car surfing, anyone?

Gordon's character design

• Why did the Commish have such a goofy design in this show? Was he originally supposed to be a comedy relief character?
  • This is a case of YMMV because to some he looks like a legit badass grandpa.
    • I suppose so. But it's kind of hard to imagine the artists giving that cowlick, protruding chin, and square glasses to a character they intended to look serious and badass.
    • It's worth remembering that while the series wobbles a bit and like most shows their tech is ahead of where it should be that it was modeled to be some time in the '30s or '40s. Robots and supercomputers aside the World's Fair that Bruce attends in Mask of the Phantasm is the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, the use of Tommy Guns instead of anything modern, the style of dress all hint towards it aiming for an older look than many fans believe.
    • Anachronism Stew is the word. If you see carefully this happens all the time; episode "Eternal Youth" shows a black and white flat-screen television with remote control in Bruce Wayne's gym for example, and Robin's Reckoning shows a digital phone with redial key and those didn't exist in the 60s. It's just a thing of the show.
  • It's a reference/homage to his look in the comics, especially his "Bronze Age" appearances (roughly late-1960s to mid-1980s), which were a key inspiration for the series.

Can Harley see through walls!?

• In "Girls' Night Out", when Supergirl is scanning the area with her x-ray vision, she sees Harley through a wall, who blows a raspberry at her. How did she know that Supergirl looking at her in that exact instant?
  • Both Joker and Harley seem to have various levels of 4th wall breakers. Joker whistles his theme song for example and speaks directly to the audience at times. She might not be Deadpool but that wall wobbles for her consistently.
    • Pretty sure the Joker examples are cases of Leaning on the Fourth Wall at best. And Harley was Blowing a Raspberry at Supergirl, not the audience, anyway.
  • Rule of Funny. Also, the ability to break the fourth wall revolves around supernormal (albeit often subconscious) awareness of one's dimension and others, so like how Deadpool can know all about other characters' storylines, Harley can know what is happening in the episode without being there.
    • Once again, Leaning on the Fourth Wall / breaking the fourth wall or Medium Awareness.

Harley not knowing the Joker

• In Mad Love, how did Harley not know that the Joker would be enraged at anyone but him offing Batman? She was present when he tried to kill Sid the Squid solely because he "killed" Batman.
  • She is also crazy and she lays out her logic pretty clearly. There comes a point in a woman's life when she wants more. Honestly, the truly insane part of her plan (Despite The Dark Knight Returns proving she wasn't wrong) is the idea that Joker would settle down for a nice life of hugs, snuggles, and not murdering people if Batman was gone.
    • Well, technically The Dark Knight Returns suggests that the Joker would settle down to a life of absolute catatonia if Batman wasn't around for him to play with, which isn't much better from Harley's point of view.
  • One of the big points of Harley's character is that, while she can follow Joker's thought process to some degree, she ultimately misses the point. This episode is about her delusion, that she and Joker could ever be an actual happy stable couple, which overrides her sense.

Everyone being sent to Arkham

• Why is it that nearly all of Batman's foes are sent to Arkham? It's an insane asylum, not a prison! Why would they put non-insane villains like Freeze there? I've seen people use the argument that only Arkham has the equipment to keep Freeze alive or keep the superhuman Killer Croc locked up, to which I say: What. The. Fuck. Why would a psychiatric institution, of all places, be the one place with such equipment!?
  • It's worth noting that everybody doesn't get sent to Arkham. Penguin usually ends up in Blackgate, Bane is implied to be dead (along with Candy) until the soft reboot to connect with Superman and as for why Arkham has better equipment the obvious answer is that after genuine super villains start showing up in Gotham they simply decided on one place to house them and spent their budget on that place. After all, what are you going to do with Freeze, Croc, or Clayface if you ever catch them? The better question by the end of the series is why they never open a new facility for the quote-unquote regular crazies.
    • They probably do have a general asylum for those mentally ill but it's offscreen, as Arkham is, mostly, for the criminally insane.
  • It's possible, given how lazy, inept, and downright corrupt the justice system is in Gotham and the DCAU at large, that eventually, the court realized it's easier to go along with the notion that any criminal with a preference for a flamboyant costume and catchy alias that commits obsessive or publicly disruptive offenses is mentally unfit to take the stand simply because it gets them shipped away more easily than the process of getting a trial. A judge can secure a 100% chance of sweeping someone under the rug that way as opposed to a 50% of actually being able to convict them.

The behavior of Bruce and the Batfam in Chemistry

• What's up with Bruce deciding to marry Susan right after meeting her? He had been with her for only a night and hadn't even been romantically involved with her yet. And none of the Batfam points out how rash his decision was!?
  • Everybody in the Bat-Family is aware that Bruce is insane. He's just functional. They see him doing the only thing many of them (especially Alfred) want to see from him, a happy Bruce, and they don't question it. They don't dare.
  • That Bruce is insane is very debatable (not least because being insane yet functional is a bit of a contradiction; someone who is insane by definition is not functional, or at very least has significantly impaired or defective functionality). The man has issued up the wazoo, but that's not necessarily the same as actually being insane.
  • To address the OP's question, remember that Susan is one of Poison Ivy's creations. She initially used pheromones to attract his attention; while she downplays exactly how much the pheromones were responsible for causing him to fall for her, she's not exactly trustworthy. In any case, we can perhaps assume that the speed of Bruce's ardor might have been chemically assisted, so to speak. As for the other Batfam members, remember that Dick Grayson is pretty suspicious, Alfred just wants Bruce to give up the whole "Batman" thing so isn't going to object too much, and Tim and Barbara know that Bruce is pretty intense about almost anything he puts his mind to.

What happened to Harvey's girlfriend Grace?

• She mysteriously disappeared from the show, never to be mentioned again. Assuming she was still living in Gotham, she would have died if Two-Face had released his deadly gas in "Sins of the Father".
  • If you've watched your boyfriend turn into a psychotic criminal who hinges his every decision on the flip of a coin and whose enemies include not only the other criminals in the city, but the Goddamn Batman, and you DIDN'T turn tail and get as far away as possible from that situation, then your Friday nights are clearly much more interesting than mine.
  • Moreover, after Thorne proved that threatening Grace was an effective way to manipulate Two-Face, Grace surely would have realized that her ex's other crime-lord enemies might try to exploit his love for her in the same way. She's probably living under an assumed name in another city now, safely away from Gotham's mob feuds, although Gordon and/or Batman may have the means to get in touch with her in case Harvey's condition ever shows enough improvement to merit her return.
  • One of the tie-in comics offers an explanation; during one of Harvey's periodic "I'm getting better" Hope Spots, the Joker manipulates him into thinking Grace and Bruce are having an affair just to mess with him. Harvey has a breakdown, kidnaps the two, and tries to kill them. Grace is understandably less-than-thrilled by this and ends it with him for good.

Couldn't the villains in Arkham Asylum fake sanity?

• In the DCAU, if an Arkham patient pretends to be normal for weeks, would the doctor let him/her out? Why doesn't Joker pretend to be sane? He's aware he is crazy.
  • You can't fake sanity.
  • Joker is sane, or at least generally rational. In Joker's Millions, he proved as much and just pleads otherwise because he likes Arkham but fears the death penalty. He still needed a high-salary lawyer Not-Johnny-Cochran to get him out though, because Arkham may be stupid, but not stupid enough to just let Joker out. After all, he acts normal.
    • Tying into this and the above (about the staff at Arkham not giving two cents), while one can't fake being "sane", one can be high-functioning enough to appear "well" and, from what we've seen out of the Joker, he's good at manipulating people, using that aspect to his advantage, and he's done that enough times that people probably wised up to it (as suggested in later canon). In the case of the other inmates, they have probably only been sentenced there for some time and could get a reduced sentence/be let out for "good behavior" (which is how RL prisons and psychiatric wards/homes tend to work).

Why not have Superman pose as Batman more often?

• It would increase Batman's status as a supernatural being. Normal crooks would be too scared to commit a crime in Gotham after seeing him lift buildings and do other amazing feats.
  • Superman is kind of busy with doing his own thing.
  • The villains would just adjust their tactics for a higher-level threat and Bruce couldn't survive that.

Bruce's personality change in The New Batman Adventures

Was it ever explained what caused Bats to become significantly more dour, humorless, and distrusted by the time of The New Batman Adventures? It wasn't due to his fallout with Dick, since he was behaving the same way in the flashback before the argument. The latter's quitting probably helped, but it wasn't the cause. Did Timm ever answer this or is it meant to be left up to the viewer's imagination?

• Flanderization probably.
  • It was explained: the lifestyle combined with Bruce's emotional damage was slowly making him more emotionally distant. The more he distances himself from people the more unpleasant he gets and once you pass certain points the changes become more obvious.
  • I was mulling this over and thought that, since Leslie Thompkins was absent from the retool, she may have died, and that made Bruce more grumpy, distant, etc. However, in Return of the Joker, Barbara says that Thompkins helped treat Tim after his brainwashing at the hands of the Joker, so she was still alive at that point.
  • It may also have been at least partially to bring the cartoon more in line with the comics being published at that time, in which Batman had Took a Level in Jerkass; many of the storylines and arcs of the period emphasised Batman's distrustful, manipulative, paranoid, ruthless and isolated tendencies. The original cartoon, however, had drawn more on Batman's persona in the Bronze Age, in which he was a bit more light-hearted and traditionally heroic.
  • In the original series, Batman was very soft towards Catwoman. He expressed feeling fo romance towards her, and saw her being a criminal as a hinderance to that relationsihp. He wanted her to reform, and Catwoman at least gave it a shot. By the time of The New Batman Adventures, Batman was incredibly distrustful of Catwoman and one episode was centered around him warning Dick/Nightwing to stay away from her because she couldn't be trusted. So, what I think happened is that Batman and Catwoman tried to make it work, but the relationship turned bad and this really affected Bruce's outlook going forward.

Trial

"Trial" brings a lot of questions, first:

• The woman DA says to Harley that The Joker snitched her location to the police in exchange for a reduction on his sentence... wait, what? First, the Joke doesn't get sentences as he is considered criminally insane thus he's sent to Arkham, second, if he ever gets a sentence most likely it will be life if he's lucky.
  • Neither Arkham nor life without parole is a necessarily automatic sentence. Could be the Joker was trying for either a cushier prison and/or a sentence just under life; even if he was given twenty-five years to life, he'd still be eligible for parole after the first twenty-five years. Alternatively, he might have been facing a death sentence at one point.
• Where is Mr. Freeze?
  • Tending to his wife like he always does.
  • Also Freeze can't leave his cell without his suit or he dies, maybe the suit was taken elsewhere for security reasons and/or no villain gave it to him, or he just didn't care as he technically is not crazy, he's there because he needs specialized medical care.
• Why do none of the regular inmates attempt to escape? I get why the supervillains are going to wait for the end of the Joker Jury trial against Batman, as they hate him and would want to see him dead before escaping (now that they can join their forces and abilities) otherwise he would capture them again anyway, but the rest? Not even one thought; forget it, I want to go now.
  • What makes you think Mister J will allow you to leave his courtroom? Would you want to tell the clown prince of crime you are not having fun? I guess that Joker would have put smiles on their faces (Joker gas). Another guess is that those normal inmates have a grudge against Batman, and want to see him fry in the chair before escaping.
  • There is possible Fridge Brilliance here, in one instance at least; after the trial scene, when the other villains are setting up their death trap we quite notably don't seem to see the Riddler among them. It could be that while the others were busy trying to fry Batman, the Riddler took the opportunity to slip away...
    • Well that does make sense as Nygma is one of the smarter villains and he's in Arkham due to his OCD and not for more crippling disorders like the others. Although the meta reason probably is that they couldn't find his voice actor on time as he has no dialogues in that episode.
    • A more likely meta reason is that with so many members of the Rogues Gallery represented in the episode, he was left out to simplify things a little or just got overlooked in the shuffle. Voice actor availability wouldn't require him to be absent, just silent — Scarecrow had no lines because his voice actor was unavailable for medical reasons, but he remained onscreen throughout the Arkham portion of the episode.

No Broken Bat

• Why didn't Bruce Timm have Bane break the Bat? It's one of the most iconic Batman moments in history. Was it because of Fox's censorship at the time?
  • 1) Because that kind of story would take far too long to adapt (the recovery would take months and unlike in the comics Bruce didn't have a group of people that could take over while he healed) 2) the show never really cared about Bane. Outside the comics, Bane never really caught on as a Batman villain so while they theoretically could have dedicated several episodes into a similar story the viewers didn't want to see it and would rather see the other villains show up instead.
  • And even for BtAS, seeing Bruce get his back snapped in half and have to recover (as well as all the Azrael stuff) would have probably been a bit too dark.
  • For what it's worth, The Batman adapted the Bat-breaking about as close as anyone can hope for on a Y7 cartoon (the actual spine-snapping is left out, but it's still a Curbstomp Battle where Bane leaves Bruce in a body cast for weeks). Aside from that, I think Bruce Timm flat-out admitted neither he nor anyone else on the BTAS crew cared enough about Bane to give him his due (apparently the higher-ups made them use Bane as a tie-in with the comics/action figure lines).

Why to leave Riddler alive in Judgement Day?

• The Judge tries to kill Penguin, Croc, and Two-Face but leaves Riddler alive.
  • He just might not have gotten around to the Riddler or any of the other villains before the events of the episode interrupted his list of villains to kill. IIRC We don't see him try to kill Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, the Clock King, or any number of other villains either.
    • Given the list of villains he's shown going after and that list of who he didn't it's plausible that he does view them as the victims in their way. Aside from Ivy who has to have racked up a kill or two off-screen Clock King almost definitely hasn't and Scarecrow may have avoided it in the same plot armor way that Batman has never hit a pedestrian during his high-speed chases or even caused one to be hit by the criminals he's in hot pursuit of nor have any of the Mafia guys had bad tickers and had heart attacks.
    • Well, maybe, I guess (although that's kind of getting into WMG-slash-Willing Suspension of Disbelief territory a bit), but those were just random examples used to make the simple point that there's a lot of costumed villains in Gotham City for the Judge to work through and he might just have not gotten around to the Riddler by the time the plot caught up to him. We might as well ask why he hadn't gotten around to any of the ones we didn't see him go after.
    • But the Judge DID get around to the Riddler, but chose to drop a giant book on him and make corny puns. Batman and the police weren't there at the time to stop him. Also, the question wasn't "why he didn't go after the other villains?". The OP asked, "why didn't the judge kill Riddler right there on the spot?"
    • The troper above was presumably just misremembering the episode in question (and, to be entirely fair, the OP is slightly vaguely worded). As for why he chooses an overly elaborate and potentially unreliable method of killing rather than going the "just shoot him" method... the dude is a cartoon supervillain. The viewer does have to make some allowances for unnecessary ostentation in his methods. If you want a story about a murderer who kills his victims bluntly and with no unnecessary affectations or delays whatsoever and you've chosen Batman: The Animated Series as the best place to look, frankly you've made a bad choice there.
  • For that matter, is there a particular reason why the Judge should have targeted the Riddler especially? Beyond just his taking out criminals / super-villains generally, that is.
  • The Judge dropped a huge book on the Riddler. He may have thought he had killed him.
    • I just realized that scene was Riddler's last appearance (robotic duplicate in Batman Beyond doesn't count). How do we know he didn't die from that attack?

Neighbors are okay with Ivy living in their neighborhood?

• It's strange how nonchalant some of the civilians are around Pamela in the "House and Garden" episode. There's no sign of hostility from them. She can just walk into stores, and no one bats (pun intended) an eye. Not sure I would feel comfortable living next door to Penguin or Arnold Wesker.
  • Chances are, they weren't entirely comfortable. But they might have simply decided to conceal their discomfort and hostility on the (not entirely unreasonable) grounds that getting all up in the face of the woman who spent time in an asylum for the criminally insane and who used to attack people with mutated plants under her direct control would run a greater-than-zero risk of backfiring horribly on them. True, she might not be a perfect neighbor with an ideal history, but every moment she's walking around minding her own business and doing her own thing is a moment she's not planning and exacting some kind of horrible plant-themed atrocity on you for messing with her. So why not just let bygones be bygones instead of risking ending up on an (ex-)super-villains shit-list?
  • Also, how recognizable is she? Yes, she's more or less famous and very attractive but, does that mean automatically everyone is going to know that a redhead in housewife clothes is the supervillain eco-terrorist Poison Ivy?
  • Another thing we have to consider is that not everyone who recognizes Ivy would, necessarily, be afraid of her. In fact, she might even encounter plenty of admirers too. Just look at Ted Bundy. Women sent him dozens of love letters. I've a feeling there's loads of teenaged boys sneaking a peak at the foxy redhead who just moved in nextdoor. Dangerous reputation? Ain't a repellent. Quite the opposite.

Baby Doll's career

• Why did Baby Doll have such a hard time finding work? I understand that she couldn't find jobs that fit her "real actress" goals, but after a certain point, wasn't she just looking for pay-the-bills type acting gigs? You would think casting agents would be happy to find someone who can convincingly play a child without having to worry about all those inconvenient child labor laws in Hollywood.
  • Baby hates being seen as a child. Imagine being treated as a kid your whole life due to your condition, and not being taken seriously. To her, her child-like appearance is a curse. She wants to be seen and treated as an adult, so it's probably hard to find a job where people won't poke fun of her.
    • If one thinks about, Mary's (Baby-Doll) situation could be a case of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome and a deconstruction of the "Older Than They Look" trope, as, knowing what I know about some real-life examples, if one looks like a child, it'll be hard to take them seriously because they age and voice clash with their looks (there is a Not Always Right story about this sort of thing) and, going along with that, her failed career might have come from the fact that people only saw (and knew) her as "Baby Doll", much like how, for example, when Shirley Temple grew up and went to pursue more adult roles, people refused to see her as anything other than the roles she played as a kid, on top of her probably being blacklisted from some companies after her show was canceled, among other things(cancellations, being difficult to work with, and getting negative reviews don't look good on resumes).

Jack Ryder and the chemical bath

• How come Creeper isn't as evil and murderous as the Joker? Sure the chemical pool made him crazy and insane, but he isn't a full-blown villain, just an annoyance to Batman (and Harley).
  • If we take Mask of the Phantasm as canon, then Joker was a mob hitman before he took his chemical bath. He was already a bad person, the insanity just made that worse. Ryder wasn't evil, so the insanity just made him goofy.
  • In what universe, real or fictional, is insanity obliged to be consistent?
  • In the episode, his specific transformation into the Creeper was also due to the exploding cigar that Joker gave him. The real question is how Ryder could be "cured" but the Joker can't.

How did the bomber see the Gray Ghost episode?

• In "Beware the Gray Ghost" it's established that Simon Trent is the only one who owns copies of the episodes of the Gray Ghost TV show because the studio burned down 20 years ago. This leads Batman, after finding Trent's fingerprints on the bombs, to initially suspect him because he's the only one who could have followed the episode's plot in doing the bombings. But it turns out to be the toy collector instead- how did he know how the episode went? He looks too young to have watched the show on TV as a kid the way Bruce did, and he can't have bought the film from Trent because then Trent wouldn't have had it to give to Batman.
  • He could be Older Than He Looks. Besides this, Bruce Wayne doesn't seem to be that much older than him; a handful of years difference either way at most. He could easily have watched the show as a kid on TV and remembered it.
  • He might have read old copies of the show's script that its writers had kept, or tracked down somebody from the production crew who's got a good memory. Heck, for all we know, he could be the son or nephew of the director.
  • He saw a rerun from before Spectrum went up in smoke.

Mad Hatter's attraction to Alice

• I can understand Jervis falling for his coworker Alice since she was the only person who was polite to him, but why would he think of her as Alice from the Lewis Carroll book? In the book, Alice was a little girl, and they were platonic friends. I know the comics hinted at him being a pedophile but wasn't this episode made years before those dark stories?
  • Short answer? He's crazy. It's hard to fully understand the motivations of most Batman villains due to how messed-up they are. But to be fair, the character of Alice has been re-interpreted many times and played by adults or elder teen women in lots of film adaptations long before the Tim Burton version. Including some ahem... NSFW versions...
  • Did he, though? I mean, later on, when he's dressing her up and mind-controlling her that's clearly because he's taken the full leap into Crazytown, but initially, the whole Mad Hatter thing seemed to be just a combination of him having fun and him trying to find a way for him to come out of his shell around her.
  • Creepy explanation it may be, he very well might have been attracted to her because she reminded him of a child, yet old enough for him to get away with dating her. She was almost definitely younger than him, had a girlish sense of fashion, and being voiced by Kimmy Robertson, had a high-pitched voice.
  • Leaving aside suggestions of sublimated pedophilia (which, let's be bluntly honest, are an extreme Wild Mass Guess at best regarding this version of the character, who has never been suggested to possess inappropriate feelings or urges towards underage children for perhaps obvious reasons), the most likely explanation is that Tetch views Alice as, well, Alice simply because he views everything around him through the lens of Alice in Wonderland. As one example, notice how after mind-controlling her he casts his boss — depicted throughout the episode as a loud, overbearing, and bullying female authority figure — as the Red Queen, a loud, overbearing, and bullying female authority figure in the book. He's a lonely, anti-social man fixated on his favorite book and increasingly detached and dissociated from the people and world around him. So naturally, the sweet ingenue he's got a crush on is cast as Alice, the most important person in the book; because she's also the most important person in Tetch's life. She's not an exact match for the actual character because of course, she isn't, she's an actual person, not a mere storybook character. But that doesn't matter to Tetch because, as the events of the episode demonstrate, he's becoming increasingly delusional, and the more delusional he gets the more he tries to force everything in his life to fit the book.

Episode Numbering

• Why are the episodes arranged out of order on the official DVDs? It's not by either air date or production date, it seems to be completely random.
  • I can only assume that the person or persons responsible for arranging them on the DVD simply thought it worked out better that way, or that it was the order that the producers would have preferred the episodes to have aired in. In any case, the episodes are mostly stand-alone so they can be arranged in any particular order without too much damage done to the overall storyline. If this Wikipedia article is to be believed, the episodes were aired way out of order from the production timeline anyway, and it's possible that airing them in production order might have, say, resulted in the different parts of a two-parter being interrupted by several other episodes if they weren't necessarily made strictly in order. Furthermore, looking at that article suggests there are a few points where several episodes featuring the same villain were aired in short succession (there appears to be have been a point in January-February 1993 where a whole bunch of episodes aired featuring the Penguin, for example), so they might have just wanted to mix it up a bit so all the episodes with the same villain weren't all dumped on the same disc or that binge-watchers didn't get bored with seeing the same villain over and over again.

Why doesn't Mad Hatter use the dream machine on himself?

• Why not create a private wonderland for himself if his life is so miserable? There would be no Batman, and Alice would be his girlfriend.
  • Probably because he'd have known it wasn't real - it would be an admission that he could never truly have what he wanted.
  • Maybe he was intending to use it on himself, and Batman was just a guinea pig to make sure it would work properly?
  • Consider also what happened when he put Batman into the machine; Batman's mind fought against the illusion of being given everything he ever wanted, ultimately rejecting it, leading to the machine crashing and Batman forcing his way out of it. Perhaps the Mad Hatter deep down knew this was likely to happen and so didn't want to face the disappointment himself.
  • Because he doesn't want to. He wants what he wants in reality, not just a computer simulation of what he wants to be generated by his mind. He dumps Batman in there just to get him out of the way because Batman tends to prevent Mad Hatter from taking what he wants in reality. This is the essential irony/hypocrisy of Jervis Tetch; he could have a version of everything he's ever wanted if he were willing to use his technology on himself, but instead, he's willing to trap and force others to live in fantasy dreamworlds that he devises for them against their will if it will get him what he wants in the real world.

Telegrams Do Not Work That Way

• In "Fear of Victory", Crane sends star athletes telegrams that are coated in a phobia-inducing toxin. The notion that he could develop such a toxin is reasonable, but the whole point of a telegram is that you don't have to transport an actual piece of paper to someone: you have your message encoded in one city, transmitted electronically to its destination in another, transcribed onto a fresh piece of paper, and hand-delivered. Telegrams were, in fact, the first high-speed means of transmitting pure information to be marketed commercially. Saying that a physical toxin was sent via telegram is just as unworkable as saying that Crane's powder was sent to the athletes via e-mail!
  • I don't think anyone says the toxins were conveyed via telegram. Just that the toxins were on the paper the telegram was delivered on. Look at how Batman tries to stop him — by waiting at the delivery point. If he somehow thought the toxins were being sent through the telegram, he'd have tried to track down the source, not assumed Scarecrow would be delivering it personally.

Mutant Catwoman's Blonde Fur

If Selina Kyle's blonde hair is a dye job, then why is her fur blonde when she gets mutated into a cat-human hybrid by Dr. Dorian?

• Because it wasn't a dye job yet when that episode was made.
• All members of whatever cat breed or feline species he spliced her with had fur that color, so her formerly-human hair color is inconsequential because the feline DNA overrode that human trait.

Clayface wanting to be human

• Why is his powers a curse to him? Yeah, it stinks to look like a deformed monster, but at least he can live forever. Humans get sick, grow old, and die. He can get anything he wants by pretending to be someone else. He had a girlfriend who loved and cared about him in one episode, so he can find a soulmate or new friends.
  • Well, "it stinks to look like a deformed monster" for one. For two, presumably, Matt Hagen does not find being a slimy lump of living clay a particularly pleasant way to go throughout life. For three, spending eternity being a slimy lump of living clay presumably multiplies the unpleasantness of point two by infinity. For four, Who Wants to Live Forever?? For five, it's completely upended the life of wealth and fame and constant adulation that Hagen craved and was pretty used to. For six, it chafes his ego; yes, he can pretend to be anyone and live his life that way, but that means that the real Matt Hagen is being ignored and unseen — the friends and lovers aren't Matt Hagen's, they're those of the person Matt Hagen is pretending to be. For seven, since Matt Hagen is a sentient lump of clay now, he is presumably unable to do a lot of the fun stuff — sex, drinking, drugs, etc — that people generally like to do with girlfriends and friends and such. For eight, maintaining a single form appears to take a lot of effort and concentration that is hard for Matt to maintain for indefinite periods. For nine, if Matt Hagen loses concentration and suddenly turns into a massive lump of clay in front of people, they will likely find it rather gross and may not want to spend time with him. For ten... the guy's gone completely loco.
  • Hagen says in his debut episode that he can't keep himself morphed indefinitely ("It's like tensing a muscle."); if he wants to look human or even remotely "presentable" he has to put conscious effort into it 24/7. That'd drive anyone nuts.
    • Yet in "Growing Pains", Clayface creates the "Annie" personality to go and collect information but Annie can stay out and about so long that "she" eventually forgets that she is part of Clayface.
    • By which point, "nuts" is a fairly reasonable term to use in describing Matt Hagen.

Why wouldn't Joker just go after Charlie again?

At the end of "Joker's Favor" The Joker is pushed into giving up all the info on Charlie he's collected. But, what's keeping Joker from finishing the job he threatened to do, anyway? He seems like he can very well keep tabs on him (The guy managed to find him despite him moving away from Gotham and changing his name.), and he already has forces loyal to him in the area(or at least, forces he can buy). He was also made aware the bomb was a dud all along, so Joker has no real fear of him anymore, so what's keeping him from making the call to kill his family when he inevitably breaks out again?

• Well, he's given up all the info he has on Charlie, for a start. Without that info, how's the Joker supposed to keep tabs on Charlie? At the very least, he's going to have to start over from scratch. For another, he now knows that Batman is aware of his connection to Charlie and will likely make Charlie's whereabouts a place to at least keep tabs on in case he decides to show up again. Ultimately though, this is a case of a bully turning into a coward when his victim stands up to him. The Joker messes with Charlie because he's pretty confident Charlie won't fight back, but when Charlie demonstrates that he's through being pushed around, messing with him becomes more of a risk.
• The Joker's a pretty big wuss whenever facing a real threat. he was probably too scared to go after Charlie once he knows Batman has him under his protection.

Joker's Wild and the (lack of a) reason for Harley Quinn

• In the trivia page for the Joker's Favor episode it says the whole reason Harley Quinn was because they thought it would look too silly for the Joker to jump out the cake, and created her for this purpose, only to have to be the Joker who comes out of the cake after all. So why was it changed? I'm guessing maybe someone in charge thought that was too suggestive for a kids' show (as it's based on the whole "stripper jumps out of a cake" thing from real life.)
  • If the trivia says that then is wrong, what the creators have said in interviews and DVD commentaries is that they made Harley to push the trolley the cake was on, which would be silly for the Joker to do both.

Harley's Holiday and the alarm scene

• So, why exactly does she attack the guard even though he clearly says she's not in trouble and he's just coming to remove the tag? If she just did, none of the ensuing misery would have happened
  • Because Harley is panicking, not thinking straight, and she doesn't have the best judgment even when she's calm. If your question is, "Why doesn't Harley act like a calm, rational person?" the answer is always going to be: Because she isn't one.

How did the Joker make Captain Clown?

• As far as we know he doesn't have any knowledge of robotics/engineering/programming etc, so, did another villain build it for him or what?
  • He might have stolen a robot somewhere and just given it a bit of relatively simple reprogramming and a new casing.

Bat-family murdering plant creatures

• How come their Thou Shalt Not Kill rule doesn't apply to the plant creatures Ivy creates? They might not be human, but they are still shown to be sentient autonomous creatures who just start off working for their creator. And Batman has tangled with many non-human peoples before, and even considers a robot to have a soul, so why are they giving a pass for the plant creatures, especially with how gruesomely the Batfamily kills them.
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill seldom applies to monstrous non-humans in comics, with Batman and Superman both stating explicitly in comics that their codes to not kill only apply to humans. Look up What Measure Is a Non-Human?.
    • That just makes them seem like bigoted hypocrites.
    • Aren't the plant monsters Always Chaotic Evil? (unlike humans, obviously) If so, killing them might be completely justified.
  • Describing Ivy's plant creatures as "sentient and autonomous" seems to be at least a bit of a stretch. At the very least, what sentience or autonomy they do have for the most part appears to be incredibly uncomplicated, being more or less limited to the kind that would enable them to complete basic tasks like STOMP HERE or PICK UP THING or EAT POINTY-EARED THING on Ivy's orders. There are maybe one or two examples in the entire series which demonstrate any kind of complexity beyond this, and these usually turn out to be mere puppets programmed and controlled by Ivy with no independent thought or will of their own, and which tend to devolve incredibly quickly into STOMP HERE AND EAT POINTY-EARED THING mode as soon as they've served Ivy's purposes. Overall, they're more "extensions of Ivy's intelligence and will" rather than sentient beings in their own right, and don't seem to have any kind of meaningful intelligence, autonomy, or "soul" that would bring them anywhere close to being on the level of almost all complex animal life, let alone human sentience.
  • And considering that if left unchecked they'd mostly obey Ivy's orders and stomp around killing as many non-plants as possible if Batman didn't stop them with terminal force, frankly he doesn't have much choice for the most part. "Bigoted hypocrite" it might make him if we want to get all Draco in Leather Pants about it, but Batman letting every human and animal life form in Gotham City die horribly at the hands of mindless plant-monsters acting unthinkingly under the orders of a murderous sociopathic lunatic because he was too busy wringing his hands over the political correctness of killing glorified weeds that can move about and kill people would arguably be the far more morally reprehensible course of action.
    • If this was the case then Batman is morally rephrensible for refusng to kill Ivy herself who is responsible for all of this (as well as other dangerous lunatics like the Joker).
    • Nope, that's just playing Ron the Death Eater. The only person responsible and morally reprehensible for Ivy's actions is Ivy herself.

Bat hang glider

• Why does Batman use hang gliders in the show instead of gliding using his cape as he does in Batman Returns and other media? The latter would certainly do more to strike fear into the hearts of criminals, which Bat-fans already know is the whole purpose behind the bat persona and imagery. Using hang gliders, something that pretty much anyone can save up and buy, kind of defeats the purpose, don't you think?
  • He typically uses a hang-glider when he needs to glide stealthily over a long distance, not when he's trying to pull a "Surprise! Batman!" move. Presumably, his cape by itself can't cover such distances practically. Alternatively, perhaps his cape simply... can't do that in this continuity. It's not like it's a plausible move.

The fast-acting Judge

• As a Red Herring that the Judge was not, in fact, Two-Face, the Judge appears after Penguin rips off Two-Face and Killer Croc. After sending them out, Penguin puts the money in the safe, and the Judge appears. That means that Two-Face had time to evade Killer Croc, dress up as the Judge, and tie up and gag both of Penguin's Bodyguard Babes in about five seconds.