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• Alas, Poor Villain: Essentially the reaction most people have to Penny Young. Sure, fundamentally a lot of this whole mess is her fault, but good lord she didn't deserve the fate she ended up getting. At the very least she didn't have to be burned to death.
  • If it makes you feel any better, she was killed instantly by the explosion, not by being burned to death.
• And the Fandom Rejoiced:
  • Written by Paul Dini, and starring Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill and Arleen Sorkin? We're sold! The Riddler at his most insufferable!
  • What's that? We're getting a video game based on Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth? Sign us up! *
    Ok, it's only a loose adaptation. But still...
  • Mark Hamill had made a statement that Batman: Arkham Asylum would be his final work as the Joker. When he was told the planned plotline for the sequel, he changed his mind And the Fandom Rejoiced.
    • He never said that, but that the first game would be hard to top.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Depending on the player, can include Killer Croc (if it works for you, Croc's lair is a tense slog through a Nightmare Fuel factory; if it doesn't, it's just tedious), Harley Quinn (when Batman confronts her, it's cutscene time), Bane (he's basically the same as any other Titan Henchman — though it should be noted he's the first true fight with one) and Titan-powered Joker.
• Badass Decay: Poor Aaron Cash. In Living Hell, the man was the hero of the comic and a total badass. He could take down anyone in the asylum, including (at the very end) Killer Croc, and with the help of Etrigan, he saved the prison staff from a demonic sacrificial ritual. In the game? Well, he's still got his attitude, that counts for something.
  • To be fair, his attitude alone still makes him quite badass; he's the only one not afraid of any of the thugs and the Joker, and one gets the feeling they're only so cocky around him because they outnumber him and have managed to get the drop on him. As for why Cash isn't saving the day, it's still a Batman game, not a Warden Cash game.
• Big Lipped Alligator Moment: In the same room as Clayface is a prisoner who doesn't seem to be any recognizable Batman villain, and appears to have only one arm. His model is too detailed to just be a random NPC. It's the winner of the "Appear in the game!" contest's appearance. And he's not actually one-handed; look in detective mode and he just has the other hand behind his back.
• Breather Boss: Combined with Anti-Climax Boss. The very first boss encounter (with a random mook who was exposed to a prototype version of Titan) seems like it'll be a fair challenge... but he suddenly dies from heart failure after a fairly brief amount of time, no defeat necessary.
• Captain Obvious: Dr. Young commenting that she thought the Joker was insane. Seeing as how he's a patient in an asylum, yeah Doc, he just might be.
• Complete Monster: A majority of the supervillains. Special prize goes to Scarecrow and Joker, for getting the doctors to believe that they aren't crazy at all, "just Evil".
  • The Spirit of Arkham. As you find more and more of his Chronicles, you get to hear him fondly reminensce the various horrific crimes against humanity he committed in life and his future crimes after death, via Shrape.
• Counterpart Comparison: A lot of people who have played the game a few years after its release have noticed a coincidental resemblance◊ between Arkham Asylum's high-security henchmen and Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Inverted, as the incarnation of Bane in The Dark Knight Rises is the more recognizable of the two despite making his first appearance a few years later.
• Demonic Spiders: Gun-armed mooks, knife mooks. And especially the mutant spore plants.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: The Scarecrow parts are some of the most-loved parts of the game.
• Evil Is Sexy: Harley and Ivy flaunt their hotness fairly openly. The few non-villainous female characters in the game (most notably Dr. Young) are far more button-down and conservative.
• Fetish Retardant: Harley may suddenly become a lot less appealing when you remember that she's "been with" The Joker...
• Follow the Leader: The Captain America: Super Soldier game copies this game's basic fighting engine (though not quite as well), with a counter, dodge, stun, and attack button. It also tries to copy the Metroidvania style layout, but to less success. Still, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...
• Fountain of Youth: While he doesn't actually get younger, Batman appearing as a young Bruce Wayne in one of the Fear Toxin hallucinations resembles this.
• Genius Bonus: The last health upgrade is that the Batsuit is dipped into a "secret formula" to get the final boost. While the lack of a description makes it seem like a stock upgrade, it actually sounds a lot like a dialtant, or Shear Thickening Fluid.
• Goddamned Bats: You're playing as the Goddamn Bats, but he's not the only one around:
  • The mooks with stun batons that appear about a quarter of the way into the game. If you don't deal with them promptly and correctly, their batons can quickly whittle your health down to half on the intermediate to higher difficulties.
  • The mooks in general, when you're fighting any of the bosses. Contrary to what the developers have said, combat with mooks is generally a static affair, and usually the easiest way to die against a boss is to stay still.
  • Arkham Inmates in the DLC map Totally Insane. Remember those crazies who you dispatched with one counter and a ground takedown? Yeah, they show up here alongside lots of thugs. Except now you barely have time to do a ground takedown on any of them. Which means that they keep coming. And coming. And coming. And COMING. And that's not the worst part. Said crazies cannot be dispatched by any of the special takedown maneuvers and will simply leap over Batman. The worst part is that doing so will break your combo and leave you open to thugs, or even worse, more crazies.
  • While they can't hurt you, the gag teeth do show some elements of this, considering how numerous, omnipresent and annoying they are.
    • And that they don't show up on either the main map or the ones Riddler leaves lying around, yet are required to finish off Riddler's challenges.
• Hell Is That Noise: Batman causes this in the thugs sent to stop him, especially as their numbers dwindle lower and lower by a seemingly invisible assailant.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Just before the final boss fight, Joker turns his TITAN gun on himself while talking like he'd been Driven to Suicide "I have nothing to live for." Fast-forward to Batman: Arkham City, and his death by TITAN poisoning.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: During the beginning sequence of the game, Frank Boles insults the Joker, who tells him to keep his mouth shut or it'll get him into trouble. Later on in the game, Boles is revealed to be a double agent working with the Joker, and Batman is able to trace him via a bourbon trail he'd been drinking. The Joker finds out and has Boles killed.
• Les Yay: Harley and Ivy get their usual dose of this despite only having one (very short) scene together. Harley lets Ivy out even though she isn't on the Joker's list, and Ivy blows her a kiss as she leaves.
  Joker: "I could watch those two all day. What a riot!"
• Memetic Mutation: "You heard the boss!"
• Misaimed Fandom: You can't help but feel like wondering why they left some of these villains alive.
• Most Annoying Sound: "Heya, B-Man!" Harley Quinn's voice. This may very well be her superpower.
  • The Joker teeth chattering. Just as annoying as Harley.
  • As awesome as Mark Hamill as the Joker is... hearing the same two or three lines repeated over and over and over again as you try to Gold the challenges can get very annoying.
• Narm: Some of the cheesier lines come off as more than a little amusing when spoken by the always-stoic Kevin Conroy. You have to wonder how in the world Batman can keep a straight face spouting lines like "I eat punks like these for breakfast".
• Nightmare Fuel: Has its own page.
• Paranoia Fuel: You, to the various mooks in the game. Listen to their chatter after you encounter them and then hide in the rafters. "Oh my god! I've lost him! He... he could come from anywhere!"
  • On the player's side of things, there's Killer Croc. You're in his lair, a creepy sewer level with the only sound being his breathing. Waiting for you to slip up and trigger his Spider-Sense. Which you will do. Several times.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Players and critics complained that Detective Mode is just so damn handy, you'll never not want to use it - the downside is that you have to play the entire game in a blueish hue, seeing every character as a translucent skeleton. The loudest complaints came from Rocksteady's own art directors, who were upset that players weren't seeing the game as they intended it to be seen, so they're altering the mechanic for the sequel. No, don't think about why Batman would make one of his best crimefighting tools less effective.
• Smug Snake: Harley. She's quite fond of childishly taunting you about the 'trap' she's put you in and how you'll never get out of it and how you're right where she and Mistah J want you — right before you easily find a way out of it. Batman even lampshades at one point the fact that Harley's really not that smart.
• Special Effects Failure: The Sanatorium is apparently the only place on the island that is experiencing a thunderstorm.
• Squick: During the parts with Scarecrow, Joker asks Batman what his fears are, this would have been fine, but then he just had to say "Me? In a thong!?!". Ugh...
  • Doubles as a Crowning Moment of Funny, as the "Blaaaahahahaha!" that the Joker gives right after indicates that he knows that it'd be more Squick than scary, and that laugh he gives is absolutely hilarious.
• That One Boss: Poison Ivy.
  • She's actually hilariously easy if you just keep dodging and throwing batarangs; even in her shielded form, they damage her a little bit.
  • It's not Poison Ivy herself that's the problem, it's her endless waves of mooks. You can't really combo any of them because you're forced to move away from them to avoid the ground-y snare-y thingies. And even if you DO get a high enough combo for instant takedowns, doing so leaves you in one place long enough for said thingies to get you anyway, putting you right back at square one.
• That One Level: Your return later on to Intensive Treatment, where the gargoyles (the key to your superiority over gun-wielding Mooks) have been set to explode when you climb onto them. It is much harder than it sounds (though you can use the Batclaw on the roof of the control room to just yank mooks off the ledges and severely whittle down their forces.)
  • Killer Croc's lair.
  • For this Troper, at least, the Scarecrow levels. Big Lipped Alligator Moments which are all the more frustrating when you being to wonder what's actually happening in real life. What does he fall off of? Filing cabinets?!
• That One Sidequest: On your way into the Visitor Center to the final boss, there's a short hallway with 20 mooks in it who won't attack you unless you attack them. Though they are unarmed, so many of them in such a tight space is extremely difficult, even with all the upgrades you have at this point.
  • Joker Teeth are the most loathed of the Riddler's challenges. It might have something to do with them not being an actual riddle, tape, or Arkham chronicle. Also, while about 90% of the teeth show up more or less naturally as a result of the story progression, there's that set that hide above the hallway to the warden's office, which happens after the player has basically realized this, and then notice they missed them after the sequence is over.