After a sting operation to take down a drug lord goes wrong, the three cops involved (Detective Harvey Bullock, Officer Renee Montoya, and rookie cop Wilkes) are grilled by
Internal Affairs. Each tells his or her version of the story, but inconsistencies between them lead to all three being suspended. On the way home, Montoya puts the pieces together and realizes where the mob hideout is — and good thing too, because Batman, who was believed to have perished during the operation, is found captured there.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Acrofatic: Bullock is a surprisingly good fighter, despite his girth.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Batman and Montoya work together in the climax.
- Blame Game: Bullock, a plainclothes detective, and the two uniformed officers each blame the other for the operation's failure.
Bullock: [to Hackle] Why don't you ask them [Montoya and Wilkes] why they were late?
Wilkes: But we weren't late!
- Blatant Lies: Bullock's version of the story is full of these, as revealed by the flashbacks that play while he tells it. Not only did he go into the warehouse early, he was caught by the safecrackers and forced Batman to waste time rescuing him after the warehouse caught fire—none of which he mentions to Gordon or Hackle.
- Da Chief: Commissioner Gordon plays the opposite of this despite his rank, standing up for his officers, while it's the IAD investigator that plays the role straight.
- A Day in the Limelight: This is pretty much the only episode where Montoya is the major focus.
- Description Cut: When Montoya is explaining to Wilkes that this sting "is going to be a hot one", they turn a corner and see their destination is on fire.
- Dirty Cop: When the planned police sting goes awry, with the intended target getting away and taking the bait money, the Internal Affairs investigator looking into the event suspects that the three officers involved are "on the take".
- Disney Death: Batman is buried under a pile of flaming debris when the warehouse starts to collapse. Montoya, who saw the incident, assumes he was killed and says as much to Gordon and Hackle after the fact. However, when she later enters the warehouse where the gang is hiding out, she finds Batman tied up, alive and apparently none the worse for wear.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Officer Wilkes hears one of the captured criminals refer to "Doc", and Officer Montoya hears another criminal refer to "Hathcock". It is only when Montoya is taking the train home later that she makes the realization that "Doc" is "Dock", and she goes to the Hathcock warehouse at Gotham Harbor.
- The Faceless: The gang leader's face is always in the shadows, with his monocle visible from the dark. We get a glimpse of his face before getting caught.
- Father to His Men: Commissioner Gordon clearly disapproves of Hackle's constant hounding of the three officers and frequently steps in to talk him down. When Hackle continues to badger his fellow officers even after they clear their names by bringing the gang in, he loses patience and lets Hackle have it.
- Forklift Fu: A mook tries to run down Batman with a forklift. It doesn't work; Batman commandeers the forklift and drives it off the edge of the dock, where it punctures a hole in the bad guys' fleeing ship.
- Funny Background Event: While the gang debates what to do with the captured Batman at the dockside warehouse, one thug toys with his utility belt. Mid-conversation, he pokes a screwdriver into the wrong place and gets sprayed with a cloud of something that stains his face bright pink.
- Generic Doomsday Villain: Unlike other gangsters on the show, the gang leader in this episode is given no characterization or backstory. He never speaks, is not named onscreen, and doesn’t appear in any other episode. Even his face is mostly obscured.
- Giant Mook: Driller stands nearly 7 feet tall and sends the tough-talking Bullock running by taking a swing at him. He's also more persistent than the other thugs against Batman.
- Hate Sink: Internal Affairs Detective Hackle is a far worse Jerkass cop than Harvey Bullock. Fortunately at the end of the episode, Commissioner Gordon calls out Hackle, when he acts as an Ungrateful Bastard towards Montoya after suspending her along with Bullock and Wilkes for one of them being a Dirty Cop.
- High-Class Glass: The gang leader wears a monocle, which is the only thing we see on his Face Framed in Shadow.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: A mook opens fire with a tommy gun on Batman and Montoya, but uses up the entire clip seemingly just to shoot an outline around them! Which, of course, means only that the predictable happens—he lost control of the bucking gun and literally overshot the mark. Full-auto fire is seriously inaccurate in real life, too.
- Internal Affairs: The episode revolves around an Internal Affairs investigation into a failed sting where the intended target, a Gotham drug lord, escaped and took the $2 million in seed money that the police had laid in as bait.
- Interrogation Flashback: The story is told this way. After they botch the capture of a criminal, Lieutenant Hackle chews out three police officers, until Commissioner Gordon convinces Hackle to let the 3 tell their side of the story. And so, the experienced Renee Montoya, the new recruit Wilkes, and the Jerkass Harvey Bullock each tell of the frightful events that happened that night.
- Jerkass:
- Hackle, the Internal Affairs guy. He's clearly more interested in finding someone to blame for the mess than figuring out what really happened. During the interrogation, he repeatedly dismisses any suggestion that the sting might have failed due to events outside the officers' control and harshly picks apart their stories. Even after the gang is captured and the money recovered, Hackle is more angry at Montoya than grateful to her for tracking them down.
- Bullock's Leeroy Jenkins antics are what ruined the sting in the first place. On top of this, when confronted by Hackle, he outright lies about what happened, throwing both his fellow officers and Batman under the bus to save his own skin.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Hackle has good reason to be suspicious of Bullock, since he entered the warehouse early and gives a flimsy reason for doing so. He also isn't wrong when he points out that three cops telling two different stories between them means someone has to be lying. He's just wrong about why—Bullock is lying to hide the fact that he entered the warehouse early and accidentally ruined the sting, not that he's a Dirty Cop.
- Meaningful Echo: Montoya's one departure from a straightforward delivery of the facts while sharing her side of the story is one of these, in a jab at Bullock's obviously falsified version of events.
Montoya: I guess Batman must have gotten a second wind after Detective Bullock "dragged him out," because he was in rare form.
- Mythology Gag: The crooks drilling a safe is similar to the scene with Jack Napier and his gang in Tim Burton's Batman (1989).
- Never My Fault: Bullock blames Batman for ruining the whole operation, and accuses Montoya and Wilkes of being late (when in fact he went in without waiting for backup).
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Well, not exactly a "hero", but if Bullock had told the truth, he wouldn't have gotten himself, Wilkes and Montoya suspended.
- No Name Given: We never learn the gang leader's name.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Hackle cares more about trying to finger Montoya, Bullock, and Wilkes as Dirty Cops than about figuring out what really happened and how to get back the lost $2 million. After the criminals were apprehended, Hackle only came to tell Montoya she was suspended and shouldn't have been interfering.
- Poor Communication Kills: All three officers would have been spared a lot of grief if Bullock had been more honest in his version of events. Gordon lampshades this, pointing out that the inconsistencies between their stories are likely the result of simple miscommunication.
- "Rashomon"-Style: Bullock, Wilkes, and Montoya tell three different stories in voiceover, while the viewers see what really happened in each case. Bullock is trying to make himself look like a hero with Batman being the bungler, in contrast with what's actually shown. Wilkes is being honest in his retelling, but as a rookie who didn't really get a good look at what was happening and his only beforehand knowledge of Batman coming from exaggerated urban legends, he pictured the Caped Crusader as some kind of metahuman with magical abilities, when Batman was really using his normal tools and weapons. Montoya's account is truthful, albeit stripped down to only the most important details, and she erroneously believes Batman was killed.
- Rookie Male, Experienced Female: Wilkes is a young officer who has never worked on a sting operation before. Montoya is an experienced cop. This shows in how they handle the incident and the Internal Affairs interrogation that follows. Wilkes is nervous and jittery as he and Montoya approach the warehouse and later exaggerates Batman's gadgets into full-blown supernatural abilities while telling his part of the story, due to having never encountered Batman before and his view of him being colored by the urban legends he has heard about him. Montoya, by contrast, remains collected and aware of her surroundings during the incident, limits her story to truthful and important details (save for her mistaken belief that Batman was killed), and later puts together clues gleaned from the interrogation to track down the gang and bring them in.
- Self-Serving Memory: Combined with "Rashomon"-Style. Harvey Bullock's account of events paints him as a brave hero and Batman as a menace, while the animation shows him bumbling around and Batman doing most of the work (though Bullock does take on several thugs singlehandedly). In a slight twist to this, Wilkes, the rookie cop, unintentionally does the same, depicting Batman as some almost supernatural creature; for example, he claims Bats took down a fleeing crook just by pointing at him, apparently having missed the batarang in his hand in the darkness.
- Skewed Priorities: Hackle. Despite the fact Montoya helped Batman get the whole mob arrested and recovered the missing money, he had the gall to say it didn't count because he suspended her. Commissioner Gordon finally had it with the condescending prick and knocks him down, calling his "investigation" a farce before taking back the suspended officers' badges.
- Stealing the Credit: Inverted. When all is said and done, Montoya generously shares the credit for capturing the gang and recovering the stolen money with both Wilkes (who, while well-intentioned, didn't contribute much besides some useful information) and Bullock (who bungled the sting and lied about it, which got the three of them suspended in the first place).
- This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: When Montoya figures out the criminals are at Gotham harbor, she is about to call for backup, but remembers she's suspended and has to go on her own. Fortunately, Batman is there too.
- Turn in Your Badge: Bullock, Wilkes and Montoya are suspended when their stories don't line up and have to turn theirs in until the investigation is over.
- Ungrateful Bastard:
- Even fresh from being pulled out of a burning warehouse by Batman, Bullock has nothing but contempt for the hero. He even tries to throw Batman under the bus when he's being questioned by Hackle after the incident. Subverted at the end of the episode, when Bullock gives Montoya a Grudging "Thank You" for bringing in the gang and getting his badge back.
- At the end of the episode, the gang is captured, the stolen bait money has been recovered...and Hackle is furious, because he suspended Montoya earlier and she shouldn't have been doing any sort of police work.
- Unreliable Voiceover: There are three separate flashbacks, each narrated by a member of a sting operation that had gone wrong and each telling their experiences in the lead-up and aftermath of the sting. Officer Wilkes is honest in his story, but misunderstood much of what he saw, so his description of Batman resembles a magical creature instead of a costumed crimefighter. Bullock knows what happened, but is deliberately falsifying his statement to cover his own mistakes and blame Batman for them. Officer Montoya tells a mostly accurate story, but mistakenly believes that Batman was killed. In all cases, the on-screen flashbacks show what really happened, along with where the narration differs from the actual events.
- With My Hands Tied: Once Batman learns the bad guy boss is at the warehouse, he cuts himself down from the rope he's hanging from and fights off a handful of mooks with his hands still tied.
