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• Alas, Poor Villain: You have to admit, although the Joker pretty much had his death coming, it's hard not to pity him during his final moments.
  • Even Harley goes silent. Harley.
• And the Fandom Rejoiced: Arkham City will be on the Wii U. For Nintendo fans, at least.
  • Catwoman being a playable character in the Story Mode.
  • Robin announced as a playable character for Challenge Maps.
    • And the later announcement that Nightwing will also be playable in Challenge Maps.
  • The Reveal that Batman Beyond, 70's Batman, The Dark Knight Returns Batman, DCAU Batman and Earth One Batman are as alternate skins.
  • Arkham City keeps Asylum's Game Over screens.
  • "Harley Quinn's Revenge", the post-game DLC additional quest, where Batman and Robin deal with Harley following the ending (see above) of the game proper.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Hugo Strange, Deadshot, Victor Zsasz, Bane, The Riddler
  • In fairness, Bane was fought in the last game, and Deadshot, Zsasz, and Riddler are all side missions. No excuse for Strange though.
  • Strange is a Non-Action Big Bad in the comics for the most part. He is a very muscular man due to genetic engineering and exercise, but he does this to emulate Batman but is incapable of bringing himself to fight people head-on due to both fear and pride in his manipulative skills. It appears to be the same in this game, so if he doesn't know how to fight, then there is no way Strange could take on Batman in a straight-on fight.
• Awesome Music: The first gameplay trailer uses The Heavy's "Short Change Hero" as the soundtrack. It's appropriate, awesome, and will stuck in your head for hours after watching it:
  This ain't no place for a hero... this ain't no place for no better man...
  • Lykke Li's "Get Some" for the Catwoman also qualifies. The really Nolanesque theme from the Hugo Strange trailer does, too. Heck, if you watched any trailer for this game with the sound on, it was awesome for your ears.
  • "Mercenary" by Panic! At The Disco on the official soundtrack is the perfect song to play the combat challenge maps to.
  • The main theme perfectly captures the awesome feeling of Batman and also feels like it's been mixed with the music from the Nolan films.
  • This Court Is Now In Session aka Two-Face's Boss Theme.
  • The piece of music that plays while Batman is paying his respects to his parents in Crime Alley.
• Award Snub: Spike's Video Games nominated Arkham City (and by extent, Rocksteady) for many things, notably Mark Hamill for best male voice-over. In the end it lost several awards to Skyrim, Bastion or Portal 2. Most frustratingly, Mark Hamill and Tara Strong lost to GLaDOS and Stephen Merchant (the two did not complain that they lost, rather that the awards ceremony was rather shabby).
  • To be fair, the game still won Best Xbox360 Game, Best Action-Adventure Game, Best Adapted Game and the Joker received the Best Character award.
• Best Boss Ever: Mr. Freeze, for some.
• Broken Base: The reactions towards Arleen Sorkin being replaced by Tara Strong as the voice of Harley.
  • For some Scarecrow not making the cut into the game despite being one of the most popular members of Batman's rogue's gallery. Even with the ending scene in Arkham Asylum confirming his survival and his segments possibly being the most memorable aspects of the first game.
    • The ending scene of Asylum doesn't unambiguously confirm Scarecrow's survival. One of three villains reaches their hand out of the water to grab the box of Titan; which one is selected at random. Not to mention that Scarecrow ''is'' in the game; he simply doesn't figure as part of the storyline.
  • To access the Catwoman segments one has to input a code that comes with the instruction manual and only works once, which means anyone who has bought the game used has to pay for content that some people think should have been part of the game. Regardless of the fact that the game is still several dozen hours worth of content without it.
  • Now there's the Riddler putting innocent people into deathtraps that Batman must rescue, prompting cries of "They turned the Riddler into Jigsaw!"
    • Riddler's been doing that since the 1940s.
    • A good villain needs to establish a credible threat. There's not much menace to a guy dressed in question marks who just leaves a bunch of riddles lying around for no apparent reason.
  • Robin being available as a Challenge Map character probably counts.
    • The fact that this Robin is Tim Drake, and his entire costume. This has probably been rectified by the announcement of Dick Grayson as Nightwing, though.
  • The reveal of the new skins is bringing this, particular the Batman Beyond and Batman The Animated Series skins. The complaints about the Beyond skin focus around the fact that it portrays Batman as being bulkier than he was in the show, despite the fact that its Bruce Wayne wearing the suit, not Terry McGinnis. The complaints about the TAS skin focus around its deliberately cartoony design and how it doesn't fit into the realistic game design, ignoring the fact that the 70s Batsuit is essentially a realistic rendering of the TAS suit. And they've even managed to combine them both with "Why couldn't they make the Beyond skin cartoony like the TAS skin?"
• Complete Monster: This game is brimming with them!
  • The Joker kills multiple people, sets Bane up to be tortured, freely talks about being physically abusive to Harley Quinn, covers all the usual Bad Boss bases, tries to turn Jim Gordon into a 'roided-up monstrosity, kidnaps Nora Fries to force Mr. Freeze into helping him, blackmails Batman into helping by sending his poisoned blood to hospitals in the Gotham area, etc.
  • The Penguin gives the Joker a run for his money in this game. He does (arguably) appear to show contempt for Zsasz for killing women and children, in his voiceover for one of the museum exhibits, though.
    • However, don't forget the fact that he imprisoned Mr. Freeze inside a museum exhibit with a beach theme to it. Considering that the only reason Penguin captured Freeze was to prevent him from helping out the Joker (i.e. strictly business, not personal), it'd take one sick son-of-a-bitch to imprison him specifically in the most ironic cell available!
  • The Riddler. While it was hinted at in the last game, this game he shows just how sadistic he truly is with the horrific death traps he puts people in fully expecting Batman to fail in saving them.
  • Enemy Chatter and scripted events reveal many Mooks to be this as well. Especially the two Joker goons who nearly boil a Two-Face mook.
  • Hush. Dear God, just Hush. He murders several people and cuts off their faces in order to surgically graft selected pieces of them to his own. Worse, Batman notes that he removes the faces pre-mortem.
  • Would you actually believe that Rocksteady made Calendar Man one of these? Seriously, go visit him during holidays and he'll recount how he spent each holiday....killing people and staging horrific incidents based on the holiday. In fact, murder seems to be the thing he loves the most and holds no guilt for the ones he committed. The guy even murdered his mother and father in terrible and gross manners on their respective holidays and clearly shows glee in doing so. Also, his recounting stories are certainly Nightmare Fuel.
  • Hugo Strange. He tortures Bruce Wayne with electrical shocks and has him thrown into the prison where he would soon become a target and, theoretically, be quickly killed by the various gangs. His master plan is also the entire destruction of Arkham City and its citzens so he could present himself as the new Gotham 's "hero".
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Mad Hatter is this to many players as his only scene in the game is one of the most memorable portions of the game. Like Scarecrow from the previous game, many found his side mission to be Nightmare Fuel and he tries to take control of Batman and the mask he puts on him.
  • Mister Freeze also counts as he's not even really a villian and is seen in a very sympathetic light by many players.
• Even Better Sequel: Many of the reviews posted agree that Arkham City is much better than Arkham Asylum. And considering the reviews for that game...
• Fake Difficulty: Not much, but it subtly exists when fighting against max-difficulty thugs such as in the bonus mission at the end of the main story (the one where Catwoman confronts Two-Face). Communication between them becomes instant; as soon as one (conscious) mook knows where you are, they all do, even before the thug that spotted you speaks.
  • The Augmented Reality training also counts. The controls are much too sensitive and the precision required much too high in order to get one of the best, quickest ways to move around the city and an absolute requirement in order to meet the "get to the phone" parts of Zsasz's side mission.
  • The same can be said for the Predator challanges, which come in two flavors: Normal and Extreme. The Extreme difficulty variations of maps equip all thugs with thermal googles *
    (allows them to see an un-upgraded player hiding on gargoyles and renders smoke from grenades and broken fire extinguishers useless)
    , ludicrous weapons *
    (full health upgrades will let you survive a maximum of 3-5 shots from any weapon at any distance all round, thugs will hit you every time, even across the room with a shotgun whilst Batman is grappling at high speed)
    , and the ability to alert others instantly. To make things even more unfair, there will always be a thug with a detective vision jammer thrown in, who always either a)has an incredibly awkward route that overlaps with other mooks and/or goes to a difficult to reach area; or b) must be taken down last for all level medals.
• Game Breaker: While there aren't really any for the main game, Bat Swarm is extremely handy in Combat Challenges; it gets everyone off of you, can get you a few thousand points if your combo is high enough, and makes the Liuetenants a piece of cake (do the move close to them, pummel them to get your combo gold again, then do it again as they start to recover).
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Clayface can come off as one if you're not familiar with him from the comics or cartoons. One of the Arkham City Stories does do a bit to foreshadow it, though.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Remember how the Joker mockingly aimed the Titan Shot at his head to make it look like a suicide shot back in Arkham Asylum? After the end of this game and what the Titan wound up doing to him, that moment takes on a much darker tone....
  • "Twinkle twinkle, little Bat. Watch me kill your favorite cat."
  • In Batman: The Brave and the Bold, in "The Knights of Tomorrow!", the Joker is sick and dying, with what seems to be like short time to live, all while he acknowledges his own Joker Immunity ("I'm the Joker! I always survive!"). Come this game, where the plot similarities are, at most, almost uncanny.
• He's Just Hiding: In the epilogue, various mooks can't accept that Joker's dead. Several fans believe the same, coming up with theories where he could still be alive.
  • His body could conceivably find its way into one of those Lazarus Pits some day.
  • Thanks to two easter eggs; his mask ironically being found perched as a crow's nest and the contents of his Nightmare Fuel boat, many fans are convinced that this is exactly what Scarecrow is doing at the moment.
• Like You Would Really Do It: A real-world example: before the game was released, several news outlets spoiled the plot point that Batman finds The Joker lying dead while Harley cries over him, in the first two hours of the game. Most of the outlets expressed shock and near-indignation that something this shocking could have happened that early in the game, and there was an immediate backlash from fans who thought the plot was completely spoiled. Then it turned out that everyone fell for the "oldest trick in the book" - as soon as Batman finds his "dead" body and turns his back, Clayface posing as a seemingly rejuvenated Joker pops up behind him and shoves a stun gun into his neck while the real Joker continues to play dead until Batman is completely knocked out.
  • Joker's sick? He might die? Yeah, right. This was even lampshaded in the enemy chatter at one point. Only, they really do. Joker dies at the end.
  • Takes on a meta-plot thing, as the twist is that The Joker gives Batman a hint early on the game that there is actually an impostor standing in for him. The leak takes on a whole new meaning, seeing as though it led fans to think that the Jokester will make it out of this one alive.
  • Then in the bonus mission Catwoman is caught in an explosion, but she survives it.
• Luck-Based Mission: The Augmented Reality Training sequences. The tiniest slip up, a light touch, will veer you off course and screw up the challenge.
  • Helpful hint for some of the Advanced AR Challenges: After you start a power dive, first mash the directional stick to down, then take your finger off the dive button. You will still be traveling straight down at high speed, but now you can pull out of the dive at a controllable rate by gradually easing back on the stick instead of automatically returning to level flight instantly as soon as you release the dive button. It's the only thing that made the Advanced AR Challenges #1 and #2 possible for me. (Note: In order to have enough speed built up for the downward run, do not release the dive button until after you're about to pass through the second horizontal ring on your way down.)
• Magnificent Bastard: Hugo Strange, invoked by Catwoman. And by extension, Ra's Al Ghul.
  • Not really; the plan was all Strange, Ra's just provided the resources and support to see if Strange was "worthy". Plus, Ra's was a little trigger-happy about the whole You Have Failed Me.
  • Riddler almost applies, but he gets out bastarded by Strange and, of course, the man himself.
  • It would be a sin if Joker wasn't on here. It's practically tradition.
• Memetic Mutation: "Two guns, bitch!"
• Most Annoying Sound: "Augmented Reality Training started." "Augmented Reality Training failed." Unless you're crazy skilled or decide to forgo the rest of those missions, you will be hearing this a lot.
  • "This is hardly a surprise. I always knew I was better than you!" "Well, well, so the shaved monkey has failed! How utterly, utterly expected." "What's wrong? Has your primitive brain given up and accepted that I, the Riddler, am better than '''you'''?". Needless to say, the Riddler having only three death quotes for all four characters in Riddler's Revenge soon gets very, very annoying.
  • The Enemy Chatter can be pretty annoying and repetitive at times; particularly if you're busy doing something and a Mook happens to have caught sight of you and keeps yelling challenges at you.
  • The Mad Hatter's high-pitched, whiny crying after you've defeated him. It took me a lot of effort to find the Riddler Riddle in the room before I turned my volume down to stop hearing it.
• Nightmare Fuel: Just watch the Hugo Strange trailer without cringing, you'll find it very difficult.
  • The Joker trailer. Take EXTREME caution if you're afraid of clowns.
  • That Goddamn great white shark.
    • Made all the more amazing when Batman PUNCHES IT IN THE FACE!
  • HUSH's side mission can be this for players...ESPECIALLY if surgery and doctors give you the creeps. Oh learning the fact he cut off his own face and placed pieces of other inmates's faces on his own until he looked like Bruce Wayne and then seeing him look like a horribly injured Bruce will make you cringe. And something about Kevin Conroy speaking in that Batman voice we're all so used to loving as our voice of justice speaking like a clearly deranged and sick individual is very unnerving.
  • The revelation, thanks to a discarded pregnancy test located in Joker's factory office, that Harley is carrying Joker's love child. Find the pregnancy test before beating the game, and you get to hear her sing to the child. The third game: be very afraid.
    • "Hush little baby, don't say a word, mommy's gonna kill for you the whole damn world..." *shudder*
  • Batman's bunny mask in the Mad Hatter side mission. It will make you regret that this game is played in third person instead of first.
  • Scarecrow's secret boat. Walking through a boat in first-person mode infested with cockroaches is pretty bad, but if you stare at the seemingly dead guard long enough he suddenly spasms for a second.
  • Of course there's the Joker's last voicemail during the credits where he sings "Only You". One of the creepiest things ever, and if this is indeed Mark Hamill's last Joker performance, the most appropriate swan song.
  • The end of the Penguin trailer gives us The Reveal of Solomon Grundy. The music that plays afterward makes it even creepier.
  • The Riddler trailer has a serious Saw vibe going on.
• Nintendo Hard: The Augmented Reality Training sequences.
  • Catwoman's final fight against Two-Face. If he spots you, you die. If his mooks spot you, you die. If you make the tiniest mistake, you probably die. If you isolate and take out his goons, Two-Face just calls in more (with no limit). It's extremely difficult to defeat in any "legitimate" way. Most people wait for Two-Face to be isolated, attack him head on, and hope to drain his health before his mooks can show up— most assuredly not what the game designers intended.
  • Your fight with the fake Joker can be this. At first it's just you and him...easy. Then he calls in several dozen or so mooks to help him out...still handleable. Then, without so much as a cutscene, Mr. Hammer joins the fray, followed shortly thereafter by a random Titan thug. To top it all off, you're fighting in the Joker's funhouse, which has trains speed through the area with only a couple of seconds worth of warning, all while you're trying to deal with the Joker, a small army of mooks, and a pair of characters that would count as boss battles by themselves.
• No Problem With Licensed Games: Like the first game, Batman: Arkham City has received universal acclaim. Many critics have even stated that to call it the greatest comic book game of all time doesn't do it any justice proclaiming it as one of the finest action/adventure games ever released.
• One-Scene Wonder: The Mad Hatter's bit only lasts for one creepy intro and one fight scene, but damn if it isn't memorable.
  • It's very brief and easy to miss; being accessable ONLY when after you fight Ra's Al Ghul, but players have found Killer Croc's Easter Egg appearance in the game to be very cool and wish he had a bigger role like he did in the previous game.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Calendar Man full stop. Whilst his status as a Scrappy is debatable, there was no doubt he was hardly a respectable villain before this game came out. Once it was, there's little doubt Rocksteady really changed people's perspective on the character when he was made into a Nightmare Fuel story telling Easter Egg that legitimately is terrifying. In fact, the character may now be seeing a receiving a fanbase.
• Strawman Has a Point: Batman became upset when he thought Talia killed the Joker. But as she pointed out, he never would have done it himself and it would have solved their problems. Batman even admits later on that no matter how often he caught the Joker, he'd always escape and cause more misery and death.
• Tethercat Principle: Twice in the game, Batman rescues someone, and tells them to stay put and remain in hiding. They both turn out to still be where he left them, hours later, even if new bad guys have moved into the location.
  • This is lampshaded in the dialogue of one of them, and the other attacks Batman with a lead pipe when he returns, not realizing it was him.
  • This is an improvement for them over Arkham Asylum, where the majority of people you save will be murdered the second you leave the area.
• That One Boss: Mr. Freeze on New Game Plus. To be more precise, Mr. Freeze on a normal playthrough is considered by many to be quite fun. But during a New Game Plus run, he gets controller-breakingly frustrating.
  • First, he's more aggressive than usual and faster.
  • Second, if you keep your Detective Vision on for an extended period of time, he jams it.
  • Third, and this one requires some explaining... There are a total of twelve ways to damage Mr. Freeze. On a normal playthrough, you only need to use five or six of them to defeat him (depending on difficulty level). But on New Game Plus, hits don't do as much damage on bosses, just like the mooks, so you'll need to use almost ALL of the techniques to defeat him.
    • Two-Face can easily be this for Catwoman: like Freeze, it's a predator battle, but he's guarded by numerous armed mooks, damaging him naturally alerts him to your presence and after they figure out you're there, any mooks you take out will be quickly replaced by Two-Face: due to the above and Catwoman's limited number of gadgets and lower health, you're either forced to take potshots at him while he's separated and hope you get away before the reinforcements arrive (which isn't helped by the finickiness of her wall-climbing) or just beat the hell out of him, do your best to disarm any mooks that arrive to help him and hope you can deplete his health before you're overwhelmed. Really, if you could play this battle as Batman, you could finish the battle in a single try by throwing at smoke bomb at him and kicking his ass practically unopposed.
    • Harley's Revenge contains a predator battle much like above, and since Robin has access to grappling hook and smoke bombs as well as having the same amount of health as Batman does, the mission is much easier when it comes to taking Harley down, not to mention the fact that there's much fewer reinforcements. However, to compensate for it, not only do you have to take down all thugs in addition to Harley when Catwoman's predator room ended the second you took down Two-Face, but there's 2 hostages in the room as well.
• That One Sidequest: Augmented Reality Training. Most of them are merely hard. But there are a few in there that are button-destroyingly difficult, requiring not just god-like reflexes but insane amounts of luck to complete. Get used to hearing the Batcomputer's voice.
  • Some of Riddler's gliding/pad puzzles qualify as this. Not because they're hard to figure out, but because there's often no room for error. Forget what he does to the hostages; you are going to want to punch Riddler in the face for having to hear that awful pad-has-been-reset sound over and over and over.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Penguin's redesign is this or Took a Level in Badass.
  • Robin's redesign definitely seems to be evoking this from certain parts of the fandom. In particular since this Robin is Tim Drake.
  • Robin's newly revealed characterization as a brooding, introverted man with a hair-trigger temper who cagefights in his spare time is also evoking this in parts of the fandom. Again, mostly because this Robin is Tim Drake. If this was Jason Todd or Damian Wayne, or hell maybe even Dick Grayson, it would be more in-character.
  • Fret not: Dick Grayson is playable as Nightwing in challenge mode.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: One can't help but feel a little this way with Professor Strange. The trailers and the early game built him up as the Big Bad and he puts on a VERY good show, manipulating Batman, several of his villains and the entire city, seemingly always several steps ahead of anyone who might threaten him. It looked for a while that this game would pull him from obscurity and make him a top-tier Bat-Villain, but then it turns out Ra's Al Ghul was controlling him and you don't even fight Strange directly.
  • If it helps Ghul does make it clear that he only funded Strange (as he wants to see if Strange can be his replacement), everything was Strange's idea.
  • On a related note, one of the Riddler's interview tapes with Strange implies that Strange has a replica of Batman's suit hidden in his office. We never get to see him wearing it and he never tries to replace Batman directly.
    • That's a reference to the Prey story arc that reinvented Hugo Strange. He does the same thing, and displays a lot more open jealousy for Batman than he does in this game.
  • A minor instance of this trope would be the inclusion of Jack Ryder, who throughout the game is only ever seen in his civilian identity instead of his superhero alter ego, The Creeper.
• Uncanny Valley: Joker sometimes looks almost plasticine, possibly due to the fact that many times Clayface is acting as him.
  • The Joker always looks different than your average clown, but in Arkham City his dying, decaying form looks disturbingly realistic somehow and Clayface's version of him is disturbingly...just slightly "off".
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Seriously, just check out the Hugo Strange trailer. It looks almost real! Seriously, it takes you a couple seconds to realize it's animated!
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Like it's predecessor. Yes, it's has the USA rated of Teen, which is the equivalent of the PG-13 rating. Is this game for children? Most definitely not.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: At least some of the fans interpretation of the game.
  • A lot of fans seem to think the game is sexist, mostly because of the large amount of times Catwoman is addressed as "bitch" by thugs. Because you can be a violent, murderous, deranged thug who could easily qualify as a Complete Monster, but if you call a woman a bitch, then that's just misogynistic!
    • As examined here: Sexism in Arkham City.
• The Woobie: Batman when he's reaching Rah's Al Ghul's lair, while suffering from the effects of Titan poisoning. He can't run at all and is constantly coughing, sounding almost like a child. You want to rush to the next checkpoint just to see him get better, any better.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Victor Zsasz. He is a Complete Monster, but with his meek sounding voice, his ferret-like physique and depressing backstory you can't help but feel at least some pity for him.
  • The Mad Hatter, especially in his audio tapes, just sounds so pathetic and unwell. He needs some real medical and psychiatric care, not Hugo Strange. And after you defeat him and return to his hideout, he's openly weeping. When you realize that the little, one-room hovel with a half-dozen formerly mind controlled thugs is his entire base of operations, you see that he wasn't trying to take control of Batman out of spite or hatred: he just wanted a prayer at facing the other villains.
    • Mr. Freeze, of course. Slightly subverted in that he isn't even a villain, just being blackmailed by the Joker. While there is a Puzzle Boss fight with him, it's mainly to calm him down after after he gets the wrong idea. He even helps Batman afterwards.
    • Talia Al Ghul. Despite being badass and sort of evil, she loves Bruce and is used by her father like a simple tool, even trying to stop Batman when he says he's going to kill (the first time, anyway). Made worse when she dies with a gunshot that came out of nowhere.