Yes... The Time has come...
Batmetal is a series of animated shorts by Russian duo ArhyBES
in which Batman performs some metal (specifically Dethklok) with a band composed of Robins (aptly named "Children of Batman"). As of April 1, 2018, three have been released:- Batmetal ("Face Fisted")
- Batmetal Returns ("Murmaider")
- Batmetal Forever ("Awaken")
Aside from that, they also made parody videos for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Overwatch titled Jack Black Mutant Turtles and OVERWHAT, but they're not actual music videos, mind you.
The animations provide examples of:
- Adaptation Personality Change:
- Batman went from the World's Greatest Detective to a guttural simpleton that can barely string sentences together. The Robins are mostly unchanged, save for Jason and Damian becoming more cheerful.
- Ariel, Spongebob and his friends and other cameos went from friendly sea creatures that can't harm flies to murderous individuals willing to torture Aquaman with glee.
- Affectionate Parody: Of Batman (of course) and animated bands. And it's awesome!
- All Drummers Are Animals: Damian Wayne/Robin, the most socially maladjusted member of the Batfamily (in the absence of Cassandra Cain maybe), tears up the drums like there's no tomorrow.
- Ambiguously Bi: Batman is definitely into ladies but he really seems to enjoys the idea of Aquaman kissing his ass.
- Animation Bump: While the videos themselves are impressively animated, the segments where Red Robin does his solo in Batmetal Returns and Batgirl's stripping scene in Batmetal Forever is noticeably smoother.
- Antagonist in Mourning: Inverted in Batmetal Forever. A flashback reveals that Batman presented the body of the Joker to the police... while crying.
- All Men Are Perverts: Can't really help but stare (save for Jim Gordon) when Batgirl is a walking Shameless Fanservice Girl. Red Robin and Batman are more obvious in perving her. Oh and Batman just loves to shove his face into breasts.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In Batmetal Returns, Aquaman was subjected to these tortures: Ariel was bashing his head with Flounder, Plankton was drilling his tongue, Spongebob was lighting a blowtorch up his ass... and Squidward was playing the clarinet right into his ear.
- Ass Shove: Poor, poor Aquaman... He's getting welded from behind courtesy of Spongebob.
- Belly Flop Crushing: Batmetal's take on the Arkham city-style "glide-into-combat" attack.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Batman may be a perpetually duck-faced, occasionally pot-bellied, incomprehensibly guttural simpleton and melodramatic pervert, but he's still a highly dangerous martial artist capable of rapidly beating multiple heavily-muscled men in a fight.
- Bilingual Bonus: The text on a banner in that restaurant where Batman gets his rice in Batmetal Forever is actually Japanese for "Warning: Shit in the Rice".
- Bloodier and Gorier: Batmetal Returns and Forever are more violent and gory than the first one. Although Forever is more Hotter and Sexier, Returns is more gruesome and features Batman and the Robins actually murdering the enemies to bloody pieces.
- Bloody Hilarious: Happens when the Joker explodes into a million pieces and his innards covering the band after he is being revived by Batman.
- Butterface: Played for Laughs whenever there's a closeup on Batman's face, he's depicted like this.
- The Casanova: Batman, with him bedding eight heroines at the same time. His duck lips don't seem to lower his charms with women.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Aquaman was captured and tortured by the Spongebob Gang, led by Ariel of all people. Batman and the Robins had to save him while dismembering every sea creature they see.
- Call-Back: Batmetal Forever reveals that the part from the first Batmetal with Batman in bed with 8 women were filmed by The Joker. In his Hawaiian shirt. Also, he was not only the eyes watching Batman in the tub in Batmetal Returns, but the one who snapped the Batsub anchor chain...
- Creator Cameo:
- Dethklok themselves (with Brandon Small's blessing) appears at the start of Batman Forever looking at Batman rocking on before crushing their fans.
- The two artists also make a quick cameo in BatUpdate.
- Easter Egg: Did you know how Batman figured the passcode for the vault in the Forever video? Turns out the symbols written on the notes are scattered everywhere in the three videos as seen on this.
- Eating the Eye Candy: Played for Laughs as Red Robin can't help but just drool over Batgirl while she's stripping over the stage while Jim Gordon covers his eyes. Later, the Children of Batman is seen staring at her while she's setting up the machine.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: The end of Batmetal Forever has a video game menu where the credits are the second last item - the last item is The Stinger.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: There's not only a fair number of blink-and-you'll-miss shout outs, some of which not yet listed in the subpage, there are various clues left around the videos, including Riddler's Trophies, Joker calling cards, wanted posters for various members of the DC Rogues Gallery and etched-out hearts with J+H. Adding them up would lead to the combination to open up the Joker's personal storage of cryogenically-frozen alternate selves
- Freudian Slip: Batmetal Forever has Batman give this to Batgirl when she comes in."Oh hi Barbara. Good to see your butt—I mean you're back."
- Funetik Aksent: Everyone has this since they're voiced by Russians. Lampshaded in the subtitles in Batman Forever as Robin, Nightwing and Batgirl speak in foreign language sentences.Robin: We can't just get out of the car, right?
Nightwing: Bruce don't get me wrond but... - Funny Background Event: Batmetal Forever. While waiting for Batman to get going, Red Hood and Robin briefly get into a snowball fight.
- Gag Lips: Batman's lips are in a perpetual duck face, even when he's a child at his parents' murder.
- Groin Attack: Hilariously Inverted with Batman using his groin to attack an inmate, which makes the other inmate pretend to be knocked out to avoid it.
- Hard Head: Batman has one, to the point he can bounce down on a staircase on his head in Batmetal.
- Hotter and Sexier: Batmetal Forever, with additional Gainaxing and a striptease courtesy of Barbara Gordon.
- Hypocritical Humor: True to his character, Batman is appropriately mortified when Robin apparently murders Ariel by crushing her head with a rock... after he and the rest of the team just finished brutalizing the rest of Aquaman's kidnappers. Turns out Ariel's not quite dead anyway, and Batman promptly re-smashes her head.
- Is This Thing Still On?: The end of Batmetal Returns has Batman playing in the bath with figurines, having Aquaman's figurine kiss his figurine's ass. Then he realized in horror that the camera was still recording.
- Joker Immunity: Invoked and ultimately subverted. Batman tries to revive his own archnemesis the Joker in Batmetal Forever... and fails. Hard.
- Medium Awareness: The first BatUpdate had Batman noticing the subtitles below him, prodding them and asking Alfred why there are subtitles. The second one has him glitching and can't move except for one arm thanks to not paying the animation team money.
- Mondegreen Gag: While for the most part staying with the lyrics, there are a few moments.
- The first cartoon, at "You're not!", Batman was pointing at Rocket Raccoon and saying "ЕНОТ"note , which means "raccoon" in Russian.
- Batmetal Returns has "Chains, check! Rocks, check!" as "James, check! Lars, check!", as well as "But beware!" changed to "Butt beware!". Also a different kind of "acid" and "Axe" And a couple of the 'Check!"s are referring to poker.
- At one point during the "Rise! Rise!" chorus in Batmetal Forever, there was "Rice! Rice!", with Batman holding a bowl of rice.
- Ms. Fanservice: Every female character is sexualized just like the guys. Batgirl, however, is the most prominent in Batmetal Forever as she strips onstage, much to Commissioner Gordon's disappointment.
- Mythology Gag: The premise of Batmetal Forever involved bringing the Joker back from the dead, and Nightwing bring up what he did to Gotham "and Barbara", which implies that the Arkham games and The Killing Joke are both canon.
- Nipple and Dimed: Averted in Forever. It's only for a few frames, but you can clearly see Batgirl's nipples before it cuts to her stripping her pants off.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Poor, poor Ariel. She and the other kidnappers get brutalized by Batman and crew. But she gets better in Forever thanks to a Lazarus pit.
- Pac-Man Fever: Batmetal Forever. Damian Wayne is first seen playing an 8-bit side-scroller shoot-em-up on a Nintendo Switch. Bruce plays the same game in the credits
- Really Gets Around: The end of the first video had Batman bedding eight comic book characters (including one from Marvel no less).
- Shameless Fanservice Girl: In Batmetal Forever, Batgirl performs a striptease right on stage.
- Shout-Out: Has its own page.
- The Smurfette Principle: Despite roping in quite a bit of the Batfamily (Dick Grayson/Nightwing, Jason Todd/Red Hood, Tim Drake/Red Robin and Damian Wayne/current Robin), it takes until the third installment to bring in one version of Batgirl.
- Sore Loser: Batman attacks a hapless teen in a fit of anger after getting kicked from a Team Fortress pastiche game.
- The Stinger: The bonus scene at the end of Forever shows that Batman figured out the combination to the Joker's vault, which contains frozen Alternate Universe versions of himself, with Bats asking the others which version was their favorite.
- Suddenly Voiced: Forever has Nightwing, Robin, and Batgirl speak for the first time.
- Take That!:
- When Batman seeks out Mercy to resurrect the Joker, she's immediately killed by an arrow, nodding to the fandom's disdain for those who main the only arrow user in the game, Hanzo.
- One of the cryogenically frozen Jokers at the end of Batmetal Forever is Jared Leto!Joker in the often-mocked "Home Alone" pose from publicity stills (intended as a Killing Joke reference).
- Marvel Comics is pointed out in a blackboard by Alfred in Returns while Batman is singing anger. Venom is also written on the board.
- Testosterone Poisoning: So not only was Batman singing death metal, but he also displayed some ridiculous acts of manliness. For example, towards the end of the first cartoon, he was beating one of the thugs with his groin.
- Thou Shall Not Kill: Defied and thrown off the window. Batman and the Children of Batman brutally kill Aquaman's kidnappers into bloody chucks without remorse that would make Nathan Explosion and the Joker proud of the carnage.
- The Unintelligible: Batman when trying to read the Japanese comments, which does make him sound like a gorilla.
- Visual Pun: Part of its humor is it's trying to match up the lyrics with Visual Pun, as seen in the Mondegreen Gag. Returns rely on this more, with the mondegreen lyrics and visuals showing other meanings of the word referred to.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: When Batman's attempts to revive the Joker in Batmetal Forever involve mouth-to-mouth.
- You Don't Look Like You: Damian in the first two videos is wearing Dick Grayson's Robin outfit in the Batman: The Animated Series for some reason. It's not until Forever that he was able to gain his signature hood and robin outfit.
- You No Take Candle: Batman sometimes speaks this way, especially in the BatUpdate and the first Batmetal video.note
- Your Head A-Splode: Just as the attempt to revive the Joker worked, his head exploded just after he woke up, sending blood and brains everywhere.
