With Harley and Ivy being unable to get Frank's location out of Bruce Wayne, they ask Doctor Psycho for help.
Tropes:
- Accomplice by Inaction: Alfred, usually the Only Sane Man when Batman goes overboard, doesn't seem to do or say anything when Bruce commits to his plan to revive his parents.
- An Arm and a Leg: Harley manages to chop off Joe Chill's arm when simply knocking away his gun doesn't work, but the arm just grows back, gun and all.
- Batman Grabs a Gun: Mental World Joe Chill turns out to be Bruce's guilt over feeling responsible for his parents' death. He has no problem with shooting Harley since he's been killing his parents for years.Bruce: I mean, the real me is against it, but the mind me is flexible.
- Black Bug Room: It turns out that Bruce Wayne suffers from "Reverse Repressed Memory." His Mental World is initially just him reliving the moment his parents were murdered ad infinitum, with Harley and the gang unable to access anything else.
- Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Defied. Harley makes an attempt to dismantle Bruce's trauma from inside his mind, but said mind is a fantastically twisted Self-Inflicted Hell that is actively dangerous to Harley even when Bruce wants her to help. Harley has to ask Bruce to let her leave because she has a better chance to fix him from the outside than the inside.
- Broken Record: To emphasize the repetition of the Waynes' deaths once the crew begins to see what's going on, the audio beats not only start repeating but begin to overlap to eerie effect.
- Bruce Wayne Held Hostage: Naturally the plot of the episode, with the twist that when the Batfamily comes to rescue him, Ivy merely thinks Bruce hired them, calling them sellouts.
- The Bus Came Back: Doctor Psycho, who was absent from the majority of Season 3, makes his return here. Ivy and Harley weren't eager to reunite with him after his backstab in Season 2, but they need him to explore the mind of an uncooperative Bruce. He agrees to help on the condition that Harley guest stars on his podcast later.
- Call-Back:
- The experience of entering someone's mind from "Being Harley Quinn" is repeated, including the butt-clenches. Psycho even notes that the rules have stayed "remarkably consistent".
- Harley's familiarity of a certain sitcom was mentioned back in "L.O.D.R.S.V.P."
- The Heath Ledger-style Joker from "All the Best Inmates Have Daddy Issues" appears in Batman's memories.
- Came Back Wrong: From what was shown of Bruce's efforts, Thomas and Martha are certainly reanimated but don't actually look restored to how they were when last alive.
- The Cameo: The Penguin, dead since Harley killed him early in Season 2, is glimpsed in one of Bruce's memories.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Ivy threatens to kill Bruce when torture fails to work, but he defiantly notes she can't kill him if she wants to find Frank.
- Continuity Nod:
- Thanks to Joker becoming mayor back in "Joker: The Killing Vote", he transformed Arkham Asylum to Arkham Community Center thanks to his "Passions, Not Prisons" reform program.
- Bane calls Doctor Psycho for advice about his anger and if he should just let it go and buy another pasta maker.
- Didn't Think This Through: A downplayed example. While Harley is trying to coax child Bruce, he says he doesn't trust clowns with secrets. She explains that she is barely clown-themed anymore and just wears the outfit to show off her looks. She does this mostly by showing Bruce how good her booty shorts make her ass look, even giving it a little pat... and then when she sees the weird look on his face, she remembers she's effectively talking to an eight year old at the moment.
- Double Entendre: Harley Quinn calls the manifestation of Joe Chill "an asshole in a city of assholes" who wears a (ski) mask because he's afraid to show his face. This has the unfortunate mishap of framing Bruce Wayne (who is the true man under the ski mask) as also fitting that description. Think about it: an "asshole in a city of assholes" who's afraid to show his face. Either way, Harley unwittingly hits the nail on the head.
- Emotional Regression: Bruce in his mental world is locked as his eight-year-old self. For a moment, he manifests as an adult Batman, but when Joe Chill shows up, he suddenly transforms into a kid in an outsized cowl. Then it turns out that this is simply one aspect of Bruce, and Joe Chill is also him, a manifestation of his Guilt Complex.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Psycho initially objects to probing Bruce Wayne's memories because he's part of the "0.1 percent" and they're a bunch of freaks.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Harley discovers that for "Batman", his trauma "Begins" over and over and over again in his psyche "Forever".
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: While looking through Bruce's memories, Harley sees the memory where Bruce declares he'll be a symbol to Gotham:Harley: You know, you grow up to have a real savior complex. Who do you think you are? You don't sound like Bruce Wayne there. You sound like- (gasps) Holy shit. You're...
Kid Bruce: I'm Batman.
(...)
Harley: How could Bruce be Batman?! I mean, sure, he's the richest man in Gotham, so that explains all the vehicles and he's always going missing at big galas when villains show up- Oh. Okay, come to think of it, it's very obvious.
Kid Bruce: Wait till you hear who Superman is. - Failure Is the Only Option: When witnessing the death of the Waynes, Clayface tries to stop one of the Thomases to get his opinion on how to act, only to have him shot every time. Similarly, Harley fighting Joe Chill to stop him leads to her snatching up young Bruce and averting his eyes. Ultimately, Harley is forced to surrender young Bruce to mental Joe Chill and even admits she can’t even fix Bruce from the inside.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Mental Bruce reveals that he learned of Ivy's plan from watching through Catwoman's cameras. Shortly after, the Batfamily breaks in with knockout gas to rescue Bruce and apprehend the gang.
- Forced to Watch: As menacing as Joe Chill is, he's not a direct threat to Bruce, he just wants to force him to watch him kill his parents over and over and will kill anyone that gets in his way.
- Foreshadowing: Joe Chill's true identity as Bruce Wayne himself is hinted at by his ice-blue eyes, which Wayne shares. There are even a few close-ups of Young Bruce's eyes to emphasize the clue.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Along with Bane — calling himself "Rane" and listed as "Anonymous" — the callers to Psycho's podcast listed on his laptop include Bizarro, Maxwell Lord, and Gorilla Grodd.
- Good Feels Good: Harley finds herself having fun fighting with Batman as Robin in his memory, saying she thought being a hero was lame.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Harley falls into the role of Robin in one of Bruce's memories and ends up stuck giving his infamous exclamations, beginning with "Holy sanitized curse word!"
- Hair Reboot: Psycho has his hair slicked back for his podcast, but simply wills it into the normal mess when he agrees to help Harley and Ivy.
- Happy Place: To try and escape Joe Chill, Harley walks the child version of Bruce through a mindfulness method to find his happiest memory. They end up in his memory of the last Christmas Eve the Waynes spent together, but unfortunately it isn't very long before Joe Chill finds his way into there as well.
- Hope Spot: When facing the memory of Joe Chill, Harley tries to assure young Bruce that whoever is under that ski mask is just "another masked asshole in a city full of them" who's too scared to even show his face. It looks like it's going to be a simple case of helping Bruce muster the courage to face the very man who killed his parents. What she doesn't realize is that under Joe Chill's mask is... Bruce Wayne. This leads Harley to realize she has her work cut out for her if Bruce's plethora of issues stems from blaming himself for his parents' deaths.
- Ignored Epiphany: Upon returning to the real world, Harley begs Bruce not to go through with his plan to resurrect Thomas and Martha, warning him that trauma can't be undone. Bruce hesitates for a moment but ultimately goes through with his plan anyway, saying it's the only way to fix his pain.
- I Hate Past Me: When Harley ends up in a memory of when Joker captured Robin, she sees a much earlier version of herself. Naturally, she's disgusted by her obsessive love for Joker, her love of destruction, and how heavy her accent was.
- Implacable Man: The Joe Chill of the mental world cannot be stopped by any means. Even blowing him to pieces just results in the pieces crawling back together to reform. We later learn that "Joe Chill" is actually a representation of Bruce Wayne himself—specifically, the guilt that he feels over his parents' deaths. Since that guilt won't die, Joe Chill can't die, either.
- Internal Reveal: Though the rest of the group is kicked out of Bruce's mind, Harley is allowed to stay and consequently learns his secret identity as Batman. She agrees to keep the secret between them.
- Invincible Boogeyman: Bruce's memory of Joe Chill is unstoppable, healing from any damage inflicted on him and recalling his gun whenever disarmed.
- It's All About Me: Clayface inexplicably thinks that they are probing Bruce’s mind to find a memory of Thomas Wayne he can use to get tips for the movie about Thomas that he’s making.
- It's All My Fault: Bruce blames himself for his parents' deaths because he was the one that convinced them to go out to a movie and walk home through Crime Alley. This is why he forces himself to constantly relive their deaths because he believes he deserves it.
- It Was His Sled: In-Universe Parodied; Clayface asks Memory Thomas what his "Rosebud" is. Thomas says it "is also a sle-" and then dies. Despite ample context, Clayface can't figure out what he meant and shakes his corpse furiously before being yanked back into the real world.
- Lazy Alias: Bane calls himself "Rane" in a pathetic attempt to keep himself anonymous.
- Locked Out of the Loop: King Shark gets too stressed out from the situation and leaves with an entourage back to his kingdom. This casual reveal completely nonpluses Doctor Psycho.
- Mad Scientist: Bruce has sunk himself into becoming one to bring his parents back and using Frank to make it possible.
- Mirror Match: In the memory of Joker kidnapping Robin, while Batman fights the Joker, Harley-as-Robin is having a fight with her past self.
- Mythology Gag:
- The title of the episode is a mashup of Batman Begins and Batman Forever, with further allusions to both films' series throughout the episode, such as Bruce quoting his Nolan-verse counterpart verbatim while deciding to become a symbol that's "incorruptible" and "everlasting".
- The episode's opening sequence includes Harley saying the Written Sound Effect from the '66 series.
- Bruce’s mental world is visually inspired by Batman: The Animated Series (where Harley debuted), with its blood-red sky and dark, art-deco buildings. Furthermore, the Harley in Bruce’s memories not only wears the classic jester outfit but also has the thick New Jersey accent of her BTAS incarnation.
- While Harley witnesses Bruce's path to becoming Batman, Danny Elfman's theme from the 1989 film plays.
- We see various parts of Batman's career from the franchise. These range from the Tim Burton films, the Nolan trilogy, and even 60's Batman where he's running around with a Cartoon Bomb. Child Bruce says he had a few "weird" years in his early career.
- A glimpse of Adam West Batman was also called a "weird phase" in The LEGO Batman Movie.
- The memory of Joker has stringy hair and running makeup, like the Heath Ledger Joker.
- After Kid Bruce states that he's Batman, a strike of lighting from outside causes his shadow to reflect Batman's silhouette, a common image in the comics.
- No Sympathy: Ivy declares that she doesn’t feel sorry at all for how Bruce’s mental world is obsessively fixated on the trauma of watching his parents die as a child, because he kidnapped Frank.
- Oh, Crap!: At first, Ivy is certain that Frank's essence would never bring dead humans back to life. But after pondering the possibility for only a second, her expression turns fearful.
- Once a Season: This episode is this season's "Dr. Psycho mind dive" episode.
- Only Sane Man: Harley herself takes on this role in the episode: Bruce's trauma over losing his parents is overpowering his reason, Ivy is too obsessed with finding Frank to focus on anything else, Doctor Psycho is more concerned with his podcast, and Clayface is trying to get into character as Thomas Wayne by observing the memory version of him. It falls to Harley to keep everyone on track and protect Young Bruce from his own pain.
- Opt Out: King Shark opts out of delving into Bruce's mind, claiming to be out of motion sickness pills, and volunteers to watch over the bodies.
- Proud Beauty: Harley claims that she's "barely clown-themed anymore," and only continues to wear her skimpy outfit because she thinks she "looks hot like this".Harley: I mean check out how good these booty shorts make my ass look.
- Pulling Themselves Together: Mental World Joe Chill is blown up by a giant firework, but his pieces just crawl back together.
- Repressed Memories: Inverted with Bruce, whose mindscape is dominated by the night his parents died and nothing else. Instead of repressing a single traumatic memory, he has what Psycho describes as a "reversed repressed memory" in which all other memories are repressed and the most traumatic one reigns.
- The Reveal: Batman kidnapped Frank to stop Ivy's plan, but when he discovered Frank's ability to resurrect deceased plants, he modified the power so it could be used to bring humans back from the dead, so he can revive his dead parents.
- Sanity Slippage: In retrospect, this episode illustrates that Bruce has been gradually losing his grip on rationality, all rooted in the night his parents died.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When the stakes get higher after Harley ends up left alone in Bruce's mind, King Shark reaches his breaking point when Ivy snipes at him and elects to return to his undersea kingdom.
- Secret-Keeper: Child Bruce in the mental world asks Harley not to reveal that he's Batman, to which Harley swears doctor-patient confidentiality.
- Seinfeldian Conversation:
- While watching Bruce's memory of his parents dying, the crew misses their actual deaths being distracted by a conversation clarifying Joe Chill from Joe Cool and Joe Camel.
- Harley and the Joe-Chill!Bruce get into a brief one over the Zorro movie that the Wayne family saw on the night Joe Chill killed Thomas and Martha. Harley thinks Bruce is referencing the Antonio Banderas version from the 1990s, and Bruce remarks that it was actually an older version of the film before changing the subject.
- Shout-Out:
- Doctor Psycho is reintroduced now running a podcast where he gives callers psychological advice. This is complete with Doctor Psycho going "I'm listening" and the scene transition being a silhouette of the Gotham City skyline (Bat Signal included). Harley comments that she learned more from the show than her psychology training, and Psycho scat-sings "Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs" with the end credits.
- Talking about Joe Chill leads to a discussion of the similarly named Joe Cool, Snoopy's college persona, and Joe Camel, the old mascot for Camel cigarettes.
- Bruce's plan is revealed to involve scientifically developing a sickly green, glowing liquid to resurrect the dead. Much like that film, it doesn't go quite right.
- In Bruce's happy memory of the last Christmas Eve he spent with his parents, Harley starts snacking on some cookies by the fireplace. Bruce protests "Those are for Santa!," and Harley promises that she'll "take the heat from Tim Allen on this one."
- Skewed Priorities: Once Team Harley enters Bruce's mental world, they discover just how horrifically messed up he is because of his trauma. Ivy doesn't care because she only wants to find Frank, while Clayface is more interested in observing Thomas Wayne to better play him in the biopic he's working on.
- The Stinger: Invoked, but not present in the episode itself. The episode ends on Psycho saying that Bruce's bout of mania is no good… and Clayface is momentarily excited that the rising dead would make a great post-credit scene for his Thomas Wayne biopic.
- Summon to Hand: Harley disarms Joe Chill, only for him to will the gun back into his hand.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: In Bruce's memory of his parents' funeral, Alfred asks him "Why do we fall down, Master Bruce?" and his reaction makes it clear that he wasn't expecting Bruce to answer, "To pick ourselves up."
- Swapped Roles: In most incarnations, Batman is The Stoic and Harley is a Laughing Mad lunatic whose psychological knowledge is an Informed Ability. In this episode, though, Batman is the one who is becoming increasingly unhinged, and Harley is the calm, collected expert on the mind who tries her best to protect him.
- Take That!:
- The crew's complaints about how annoying it is to repeatedly watch Bruce's memories of his parents' murder is an unsubtle nod to complaints of how frequently Batman media feels the need to reiterate his origin story with each new continuity.
- This swipe at Justice League (2017):Clayface: HUZZAH! We've saved the movie! We can CGI the mustache in post!
- According to the Freeze-Frame Bonus, Maxwell Lord wants to "wish his problems away," the premise of Wonder Woman 1984.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Bruce's memory of Joe Chill, spending most of his screen time in a ski mask, climactically unmasks to reveal himself as the mental version of an adult Bruce. He's constantly subjecting himself to the memory of his parents' deaths because he blames himself and never wants to let himself forget.
- Torture Is Ineffective: Naturally, when the victim is secretly Batman. The episode starts with Ivy and Harley giving up on conventional threats of pain and eventual death to an icily calm Bruce (who lampshades that dead men can't say anything), instead going to Psycho so that they can invade his mind.
- Villainous Harlequin: Harley disputes this characterization when Child Bruce refers to her as a clown; she barely qualifies as such now that she's ditched most of the jester theme and only wears the skimpy clown clothing because it accentuates her hotness, her ass in particular.
- Zombie Apocalypse: What the episode ends on, implying this will happen because Frank’s powers resurrected everyone in the Wayne Manor cemetery.
