Directed by Eagle Egilsson
Written by Bruno Heller & Megan Mostyn Brown
While Gordon, Bruce and Lucius remain trapped at Indian Hill, the city of Gotham will be met with a new threat as Hugo Strange's inmates seek to escape their captivity. For Strange himself, the consequences of crossing Gotham's police and underworld - or of disappointing his own superiors - come home to roost.
- Adaptational Comic Relief: Clayface is more of a Cloudcuckoolander, comical villain who acts bizarre around everyone as opposed to the Knight of Cerebus he's always been.
- Adaptational Wimp: Clayface's acting skills are atrocious compared to his professional skills as a Master of Disguise.
- A God Am I: Strange briefly indulges in this while interrogating a drugged Gordon.
- All Men Are Perverts: Clayface doesn't hesitate to check out dozens of women while posing as Jim.
- Back from the Dead: It's easy to miss, but during the scene where the monsters are freed into the city, you get a very brief glimpse of what appears to be Jerome from the back, accompanied by the sound of his signature psychotic laughter. Also counts as an instance of The Bus Came Back (and a literal version too, since he does indeed emerge from a bus).
- Bad "Bad Acting": Clayface does a completely horrible job at pretending to be Jim Gordon, but the police are holding the Idiot Ball in this case.
- Beam-O-War: Flamethrower vs freeze gun!
- Bomb Disposal: Gordon and Lucius - neither of them bomb experts - wind up having to disarm an explosive set by Strange that threatens much of the city. Played with when a half-conscious Peabody's cry of "Water!" provides the means by which they successfully short out the device ... but she was only asking for water to drink, not suggesting a solution.
- Break the Haughty: Hugo Strange breaks down crying by the end of the episode.
- The Brute: Freeze continues acting in this capacity for Strange.
- Call-Back: When Penguin gasps in shock as he comes face-to-face with Fish Mooney, she responds with the same "Tsk tsk!" Finger Wag that she did back in Season 1.
- Cover Identity Anomaly: Basil knows basically nothing about Jim Gordon, but the detail that really traps him is his callous attitude toward Lee. In a poignant irony it's Barbara who figures it out.
- Creepy Child: The clone Bruce Wayne.
- Dead Guy on Display: Penguin has decapitated his stepmother's corpse, and when we first see him this episode, he has the head mounted on a stand and is trying to find a good place to put it, with Barbara's help.
- Dumbass Has a Point: Barbara of all characters has to point out that Jim is being impersonated by Clayface.
- Elemental Rivalry: Freeze and Firefly go at each other with their respective elemental weapons and Strange gets injured in the crossfire.
- Enemy Civil War: A small scale example, but Selina manages to turn Firefly and Freeze against each other by playing the role of scared sidekick to Firefly.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Strange may have turned his patients into monsters, but even he doesn't want to see them loose on Gotham.
- Eviler than Thou: Fish completely overshadows Strange as a serious villain in this episode.
- Facial Horror: Clayface's face after Barbara smacks him.
- Girls Love Chocolate: Selina's advice to Gordon when he decides to go after Lee.
- Idiot Ball: Despite him acting way out of character, nobody at Gotham PD can figure out that Jim Gordon has been replaced by an impostor.
- Bullock shuts the raid into Arkham even without retrieving Fox and Bruce, even though it had been Alfred the one who told him of Lucius and Bruce being in Arkham.
- Bullock seems to know something is up, but it's not clear if he thinks it's an impostor or if Gordon's been "Strange-ed".
- Fish not trying to put Strange under her control
- Strange letting Selina walk around, even to the storage room where Gordon, Fox and Bruce are being held captive.
- Strange thinking it was a bright idea to run in between a man armed with a freeze gun and a woman packing a flamethrower.
- Strange using a bomb with a voice system that alerts how much time it has left.
- Firefly and Freeze stand around and do nothing after Strange is incapacitated.
- It Has Been an Honor: The words aren't spoken, but when Bruce and Lucius think that they're about to die, they just silently shake hands.
- Karma Houdini:
- Mr. Freeze and Firefly disappear without facing punishment for any of their villainous actions.
- Fish escapes into the city after scaring the Penguin.
- Made of Iron: Hugo Strange should be seriously injured by Firefly's fire and Mr. Freeze's freeze ray after running into their crossfire, but instead it seems like a minor inconvenience for him.
- Mythology Gag: Basil must have taken his acting lessons from the version of him in The Batman.
- Never My Fault: When Strange confesses to Gordon that he set a bomb off to destroy Indian Hill and everything around it in a quarter mile radius, he pleads that his hand was forced. He also uses the same excuse when Ms. Peabody questions him about relocating the prisoners, going so far as to point out the ramifications if even one of their monstrosities managed to escape.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The promo for the episode makes it look as if Penguin is going to confront (and possibly kill) Strange. In the actual episode, he finds the Arkham bus and yells for Strange like in the promo, but Strange isn't there. Instead, he ends up face-to-face with Fish Mooney.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: A passing woman who hears the cries of people trapped in the crashed Arkham bus goes to help them out...and ends up releasing a group of monsters who will become legendary in terrorizing Gotham.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Strange's attempts to discover what Gordon and Bruce know about his employers just lets them know that the conspiracy stretches far beyond Wayne Enterprises.
- Not So Stoic: Strange's Sanity Slippage is complete in this episode. His preternatural calm dissolves in the face of Fish Mooney's mutiny and everything else.
- Nothing Is Scarier: We never actually see Batman's future rogues gallery of super powered villains, but we're treated to a blurred visual of all of them escaping and wandering out into Gotham.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Penguin, when confronted by a very much alive Fish Mooney.
- Earlier, Strange, when realizing that Fish has taken over his employees.
- Butch and a team of Mooks that were with Penguin and were helping him attempt to track down Dr. Strange turn tail and run as fast as they can when Fish Mooney shows up.
- Out-of-Character Alert: While Clayface!Jim's aloof and whimsical nature is surprisingly overlooked by everyone, Barbara gets suspicious when he starts flirting with her (the last time they met, he hated her guts) and is alerted when he dismisses Lee as a "hoe".
- Perfect Disguise, Terrible Acting: Basil may look like Gordon, but he's a terrible actor, so even viewers who missed the previous episode's transformation scene ought to quickly catch on that he's an impostor.
- Pet the Dog:
- Dr. Strange helps Jim Gordon get past his guilt over his dad's death.
- Evil Twin Clone Bruce Wayne thanks the old homeless lady for releasing him.
- You expect Strange's monstrosities to kill the old lady after they are freed, but they don't pay any attention to her. A youth who appears to be the future Owlman even goes out of his way to thank her.
- Plot Armor: Exaggerated with Hugo Strange. He literally runs into the crossfire of Firefly and Mr. Freeze, getting burnt and frozen at the same time, only to completely shrug it off as if it were nothing.
- He didn't just shrug it off; he was literally out cold for quite a few minutes. Gordon had to wait for him to thaw out and slap him multiple times to wake him up.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
- When Butch and his Mooks see Fish, they're freaked out enough to get the hell out of there.
- Dr. Strange tries to flee when he finds out Fish Mooney has his Assistant Ms. Peabody and quite a few orderlies under her control. He initiates a Self-Destruct Mechanism but is foiled in his escape by Ms. Peabody and James Gordon. Strangely enough, creating two opposing elemental supervillains bites him in the ass when they fight each other, because one is loyal and the other isn't.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Strange has all of his deranged Arkham experiments locked up in a bus, which an old lady accidentally releases.
- Small Role, Big Impact: If the kindly passerby had walked down a different street that night, the bus full of supervillains would never have been unleashed upon Gotham.
- Spot the Imposter: Barbara is the one to figure out that Basil is disguised as Gordon, since he flirts with her, when the real Gordon has made it clear he's over her.
- This Cannot Be!: Penguin's reactions upon seeing Fish alive.
- Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Selina tells Gordon that all girls find chocolate romantic.
- Too Dumb to Live: Hugo Strange literally tries to run in between Mr. Freeze and Firefly's crossfire to escape, only to get burnt and frozen at the same time. Somehow, this doesn't kill him.
- Truth Serums: Strange uses a drug on Gordon that makes him unable to lie to Strange or himself.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The old woman who stumbled upon the Arkham bus thought it was a car wreck and its poor passengers were trapped inside. She unwittingly unleashes the greatest threat Gotham has seen yet.
- Villain Team-Up: Barbara is working with Penguin now.
- Villainous Breakdown: Strange has an epic one when his monstrosities are on the verge of escaping into the city.
- Wham Shot: The last of the monsters that escape the bus is...another Bruce Wayne?
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- Ed is apparently still locked in a cell in the bowels of Arkham at the end of the episode.
- We don't know if Clayface was arrested in the GCPD or if he made a break for it when the jig was up.
- Firefly and Mr. Freeze disappear after Jim wakes up Hugo Strange and runs off to disarm the bomb.
- Fish wanders off into Gotham after escaping the Penguin's attack.
- We don't find out if Barnes and Tabitha survived their injuries from a few episodes ago as they have not been seen since, leaving their fates unknown until next season.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Played for Laughs. Bullock hollers at Gordon for carjacking him in the closing minutes.
- You Are Number 6: Ms. Peabody makes a point of referring to Fish as "Subject 13".
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: As soon as Nygma has done his part in interrogating Bruce and Lucius, Strange has him locked back up. Gordon and Lucius later do the same after using him to disable the security Strange had placed around the asylum. It seems he can never catch a break ever since he had been rumbled a few episodes before.
- Your Mom: After the You Are Number 6 moment above:Fish: Your mama might be number 13, but my name is Fish Mooney.
