History Headscratchers / BatmanTheAnimatedSeries

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** It doesn't seem like the thugs was aiming at Matthew, he was only earlier threatened that the deal to reinstate his license would be off. Crime lord or not, Rupert's brotherly manner of speaking with Matthew even during an outburst showed he never considered him someone to be disposed of.

** Because he doesn't want to. He wants what he wants in reality, not just a computer simulation of what he wants to be generated by his mind. He dumps Batman in there just to get him out of the way because Batman tends to prevent Mad Hatter from taking what he wants in reality. This is the essential irony/hypocrisy of Jervis Tetch; he could have a version of everything he's ever wanted if he were willing to use his technology on himself, but instead, he's willing to force others to live in fantasy dreamworlds that he devises for them if it will get him what he wants in the real world.

*** There seems to be a bit of a tendency in the above to assume that B: TAS is set within a specific year in the past. The date of the setting is deliberately kept vague because it's not supposed to be set within a specific year but is supposed to be set within a kind of timeless retro-futuristic present that doesn't correspond to any given year or period. Hence why there are ' the 30s-'40s fashions alongside '70s-'90s computing technologies, blimps flying around alongside helicopters and propeller-driven cross-country passenger planes, '50s-ish cars with car phones, and so forth. In short, it could be any year that Ra's finally uncovers Arkady. And as for whether or not Arkady is one of the oldest people alive by the time Ra's finds him, remember that Ra's is the person with access to life-extending and age-slowing powers and resources; it's entirely likely that Arkady has simply aged slower than most people.

** Also, it doesn't necessarily imply just either of those things; if he is in character whenever he is wearing the Batman costume, even when alone or just with people who know who he is, he is less likely to make slip-ups accidentally because the habit will be with him.

** It may also have been at least partially to bring the cartoon more in line with the comics being published at that time, in which Batman had TookALevelInJerkass; many of the storylines and arcs of the period emphasised Batman's distrustful, manipulative, paranoid, ruthless and isolated tendencies. The original cartoon, however, had drawn more on Batman's persona in the Bronze Age, in which he was a bit more light-hearted.

*** Though if there is a problem, it's arguably that these people view nature not as something worth protecting for the sake of the planet and everything on it, or even as something beautiful worth protecting for its own sake, but as a mere resource that they can greedily over-consume for nothing but their enrichment. Which might not necessarily be evil, but certainly is at least rather selfish and

* How is it in "Pretty Poison" that Harvey Dent passes out 30 seconds after he's poisoned, yet Batman is able to 1. Survive it, but 2. survive it in the middle of a fire and 3. survive it while jumping around, which would increase his heartbeat and spread the poison faster.

*** This is actually a perfectly good explanation. He's healthier, more focused, more trained, and has almost certainly done his best to build up a resistance to various toxins. Any one of those things would make him last longer, add all of them up and it's not remarkable at all.
** Harvey and Ivy were smooching for a very long time, so he might've taken a larger dose than Batman. Not only did Batman and Ivy not kiss for as long, Batman also started spitting afterwards. So he might not have as much in his system as Harvey did.

* Another problem with the same episode is Ivy's entire mission is to punish Harvey because he was reponsible for creating the prison whose construction made the Wild Thorny Rose go (almost) extinct. Wouldn't an environmental review of the building site have turned up the fact that there was an endangered species there, and subsequently forced a move to another building location?
** It's possible that the Wild Thorny Rose was considered to be extinct by whatever authorities actually mattered in Gotham. As far as we know that one plant (that Ivy did save) is the last of it anywhere on earth.

*** It could be that you have to be an expert botanist to distinguish the Wild Thorny Rose from, say, an ordinary domestic rose that was left over from somebody's now-abandoned garden. To the construction workers on-site, it was just another weed.

*** We don't just have Ivy's word for it -- Alfred tells Bruce that the Wild Thorny Rose is extinct when they're researching the poison used on Harvey Dent. Apparently, Ivy did save the one remaining specimen. That said, her preference for revenge rather than constructive action to resurrect the species is a reflection of her insanity.

[[folder: The Batman voice]]
* Batman uses his Batman voice rather than his Bruce Wayne voice whenever he's alone with Robin and/or Alfred. This implies that either he's more comfortable in his invented superhero persona than his real lself or that ''this is in fact his real voice'' (i.e. he sees Bruce Wayne as a disguise for Batman, not the other way round). Either way, he seems to be a messed up person.

** In the DVD commentary the writers directly state the Batman is his true personality while Bruce Wayne is a persona he adopts.

** Also, it doesn't necessarily imply just either of those things; if he is in-character whenever he is wearing the Batman costume, even when alone or just with people who know who he is, he is less likely to make slip-ups accidentely because the habit will be with him.
** If you check carefully some episodes, like the one with the [[Creator/AdamWest Gray Ghost]], you'll notice that he speaks with the Batman voice even without the suit when he's alone with Alfred. To me that's his real voice and is the Bruce Wayne voice the one that he's faking.

** Been a while since I've seen that episode but I can definitely tell you that Batman is (a) a control freak, who would want his enemies where he can see them, and (b) the kind of fellow who would consider it unethical to let someone as dangerous as her be someone else's problem in another town. He's obsessive and unyielding.

-->Lock-up: "I was working WITH you Batman! You apprehended the scum of the earth, and I kept 'em locked away!"

-->Lock-up: "Can it be you [[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments actually care for those creatures?]] You're just as crazy as they are!"

** Also consider that by letting her skip town, he wouldn't have been doing her any favors. She had assaulted people, taken a hostage, caused several traffic accidents in a stolen car... hell, she was committing crimes I don't know the name for (What do you call it when someone sics a pair of hyenas on a security guard?). Getting outside the city limits wouldn't have voided the arrest warrant that was surely pending, it would have just gotten her outside Batman's jurisdiction. Better to capture her himself as gently as possible than let her remain at large as a fugitve, and get gunned down by a SWAT team two towns over.

** It's usually heavily implied that the police either can't or don't capture super criminals. Considering that none of the major criminals serve their entire sentence, they break out and in Joker's case have mundane problems like not having the money to afford bullets. Had Harley skipped town even with those crimes (which lets face it are fairly minor in Batman, its not like she gased an entire city or attempted to get fear toxin into the entire city or attempted to nuke the city or. . .I'm gonna stop now.) the police would probably have taken the same hands off approach they seem to take in general. Basically if Harley is holed up in some house not hurting anybody it's safer in general to leave her be than it is to try to take her into custody.
*** Except both in the cartoons and in the comics, we do see the police trying to catch supervillians because it is their job. Just because it's hard doesn't mean that Gordon is just going to let criminals walk free. And they may be minor crimes compared to other supervillians, but that doesn't mean anything in Gotham, why should it mean anything outside of it? And again, Batman does want Harley to get better, her being on the run is not going to help with that.

* Just one more thing: Harley kidnaps Veronica (if unintentionally), so they have to at least make she's ok. That said, considering Harley planned all along to release her unharmed, I don't get why, upon encounter General Vreeland in a ''tank'' (and thus being forced to stop momentarily) Harley didn't just let Veronica get out and then drive away.

** And also, ''because'' General Vreeland is at that moment ''charging towards them in a tank''. Most people, if finding themselves in such a position, would also be likely to try and put as much distance between themselves and the tank as possible. The "flight" part of "fight or flight" kicked in, basically; I imagine Harley would simply rather allow Veronica to go on her merry way at a point when there's ''not'' a crazed Patton-esque maniac in an armored vehicle bearing down on her.

* You know, those two guys in the opening didn't really ''do'' anything. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time; they're clearly surprised when the bank blows, and proceed to run away rather than, say, rob the bank in the confusion.
** He was chasing them because they had stolen the GreenLanternRing Wayne Enterprises had gotten it's hands on for study, and planned to use it to destroy Metropolis for Doctor Poison, who the daily planet was writing an expose on because he was using ground nth metal to power a furnace to burn J'onn J'onzz, who the Flash was trying to free.
** On closer inspection, it is strange that two men would blow up the bank ''after'' robbing it. However, if they were innocent, they probably wouldn't have run from the police, climbed all the way up a fire escape, and tried to kill Batman on sight.
** They were just the lookouts. There was a guy (or guys) inside wiring up the safe to blow it open. Unfortunately, either the explosives the robber(s) inside had were just a bit too powerful and/or the robber wiring them up wasn't as good as he thought he was, blowing him and a large portion of the bank up sky high in the process. The two lookouts, seeing that the plan had gone south in a hurry, decided to cut their losses and leg it, unaware that the Batman was already on their tail.

*** Knowing Batman he probably had already pieced together the clues about what these two were planning in advance. He just arrived a little too later to stop them is all. Plus they pulled guns on him first. Bad move. Batman had to defend himself.

* What the hell was with Batman removing Clayface's one chance at being human? Earlier in that episode he said he had people wiling to help with his problems and by the time he got to Stella's place, he could clearly see that Hagen was becoming more defined feature wise, meaning that the process was working. so WTF? I would pay an arm and a leg to see the audio commentary explaining that.

** Maybe he didn't trust Stella not to have made a scientific error that might damage Hagen. Still, he should have foreseen that engaging Clayface in a fight was the absolute worse thing he could possibly do, considering the instability that was already present in his structure.
** Well, the safe containing the MP-40 he stole from Wayne Biomedical was clearly marked DANGER. It could have been one of those cures that works at first but then slowly kills you or gives you even worse side-effects. Bruce Wayne could have known MP-40 was not safe as a long-term cure, which is why he chose to interrupt and have professionals help Hagen later ("the lab boys can take it from here"). He didn't plan on Stella freaking out and tackling him or for Clayface to engage him in a battle outside in the rain and melt.

** Also Batman was pursing Clayface for his previous crimes too, which include but are not limited to attempted murder. Had he come quietly they might have allowed him and Stella to continue the treatments. Not to mention that Clayface actually didn't give a damn about Stella and was using her to keep himself alive and maybe find a cure. This is apparent when he simply parrots a line from one of his movies in an attempt to keep her. Remember that even before his transformation Matt Hagen was an egotistical jerk, which lead to his accident in the first place.

*** He could also have been screaming her name in rage and desperation, as in "(DAMMIT, HELP ME) STELLA!" Also it was implied in his first appearence that his jackassery as Matt Hagen is what led to the car accident that disfigured him in the first place. His only friend was his stunt double (I think), and from the way they talk about him no one else seemed to be able to stand the guy. As [[WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall Linkara]] points out in in the [[Series/PowerRangersTimeForce Time Force]] installment of his ''WebVideo/HistoryOfPowerRangers'' there is a difference between having a sympathetic back story and ''actually' being a sympathetic character. Clayface has a sympathetic backstory that makes us feel sorry for him, but there is no hard evidence whatsoever that he's an actual sympathetic character. I'm sorry about everything that's happened to you Matt, but you're still an asshole and a criminal.
*** He may be an unlikable asshole who was a jackass to Teddy, but that's no reason to assume he was doing the same to Stella without evidence. At no point does the episode imply that he's just using her. Had that been the case, the writers would have made it clear, given the show's lack of subtlety.
*** The detail about the "cure" not actually ''removing'' Clayface's powers is really the most important thing in addressing the original question. Had ''that'' been the case, then yeah; Batman would be a total idiot for not simply waiting on Hagen's treatment to finish and then slapping the cuffs on him. That it's a very easy detail to miss on the first viewing seems to be where the misunderstanding comes from.

* Poison Ivy is depicted as a strict vegan. Why would anyone who is willing to kill people over plants eat only plants? People who love animals and fight for their rights as sentient beings don't eat animals all the time to express their love. They abstain from meat. Shouldn't Ivy be a carnivore?

*** For one, it doesn't provide enough energy for sustained movement, and for another, she only gained this ability relatively late in the series' run. In fact, to my memory, only in the DCAU comic books that are set after the series proper had ended. In her appearances during the earlier B:TAS seasons, she is a normal human with artificial immunity to poisons. Only her later experimentations with plant DNA change this, [[spoiler:or actually allow her to make a plant-clone of herself and retire]].

*** Venus flytraps, pitcher plants, bladderwort and assumedly the giant man eating plants Ivy is fond of.
** If she's willing to cut up flowers to make poisons she'd be willing to eat fruits and vegtables, most of which exist to be eaten by animals anyway.
*** Not from where she is standing. Poison Ivy's whole shtick is her obsessive care for plants above any and all other life. She is willing to murder people to protect some flowers. It's so pathological that she even seems to be forgetting the vital role that animals have in plant reproduction. Yet still she is willing to personally partake of the plants she so obsessively protects. Perhaps she believes that the plants are giving her permission to take parts they don't need in order to continue her struggle?
*** But a flower has yet to reproduce, and picking it prevents it from wilting and producing seeds. I think Ivy gets angry not because they're killing the flower but because they're interfering with the plant reproduction. As for the poisons, presumably you could make them from a single petal, which would not necessarily cause the death of the flower.
** Human beings (which is essentially what she still is) cannot live on a carnivorous diet. As for her being a total ''vegan'', though...I don't know, snobbery of animals so severe that she can't stomach eating them? Or something?
*** Actually human beings CAN live on a carnivorous diet. Inuits do so, as fresh fruits and vegetables are pretty scarce on the Arctic tundra. Just look up "No-carbohydrate diet" on Wiki/TheOtherWiki. The real question is: Where does Ivy get her vitamin B12 if she's a vegan?

** As mentioned above, she's insane. My guess is that it's an attempt to work the plant theme further into her lifestyle just for the purpose of show. I wouldn't put it past the character. She's kind of an uppity bitch like that.

** It's actually simple; she after large crimes against nature. She would have no problem with growing plants for food, but destroying the last pockets where a rare rose grows or clearing a large forest to produce cardboard will make her come after you.
** Ivy doing anything but eating vegan would be insane, actually. Where do you think animals get their energy? It's basic ecology; there's a 10% transfer of energy (approximate) from one trophic level to the next. By eating plants herself, Ivy is preserving 90% of the pants that would be eaten by the animals she would be eating if she were strictly carnivorous. It's a net-gain for the plants.
** It's entirely possible that Ivy's plant body can't process meat. We don't know what she is, biologically; there are no real life plant people to compare her to. Since she's willing to wear flowers as decoration and leaves and vines as clothing in many of her comic book incarnations, and since she's obviously willing to use plants in the name of science, we have to assume that she's pragmatic enough to accept small-scale damage to her babies for what she considers a good cause.
*** Again, as stated above, you are confusing comics book Ivy with the animated series Ivy, in the series she is a normal human, her only difference is a unnatural immunity to poison.
** You know? A lot of animal rights activists do eat meat. The idea that people in favor of animal rights are strict Vegans is a Hollywood stereotype, most people are against animal cruelty and are not Vegetarian, and there are also many people inside the animal rights movement in general that do consider ethically acceptable to kill animals if is for things like food and essential medical experiments, as far as even in those cases is done in a humane way. There are many different positions regarding animal rights, some more moderate than others. So, in a parallelism, disregarding the fact that she is crazy, she can be a plant rights activist and still acknowledge that eating plants is necessary for the health, while is not the same as extinguish an entire plant species for a building (something that even normal people can find questionable).

** The process hadn't yet been made permanent. That's why they could turn the trees back into people. Presumably, Ivy wanted to keep them far from civilization until the effects did become permanent, and possibly transplant them afterwards to somewhere more suitable.

*** Exactly. It's first and foremost intended as punishment -- restoring the rainforests ''without'' getting rid of at least some of the people responsible for destroying them in the first place isn't enough for her. (And given that quite a few of them would probably just look at the new forests and go "cool, ''more'' free resources for us!", [[StrawmanHasAPoint she may actually have a bit of a point there]].)

*** Though if there is a problem, it's arguably that these people view nature not as something worth protecting for the sake of the planet and everything on it, or even as something beautiful worth protecting for its own sake, but as a mere resource that they can greedily over-consume for nothing but their own enrichment. Which might not necessarily be evil, but certainly is at least rather selfish and

** Clock hands, as in little straight lines in close proximity to one's eyes. Yeah, real hard to see past...

* Two-face: Why do the doctor and nurse recoil so dramatically at the sight of Harvey's scars? Didn't they see him when he ''first came in'', when the sight would have been much nastier? Besides, this is a freakin' ''Gotham City hospital'' - surely they see worse on a regular basis.

*** No, we might be on to something. Besides Fries, this is the same town with chemicals that turned Jack Napier into the eclectically-colored Joker and made Clayface all but invincible. In fact, that's not a bad explanation -- they might have seen Harvey even more messed-up beforehand, but they weren't expecting him to be ''blue''.

** They might have expected his face to heal, and were shocked when it not only didn't, but possibly got worse.

*** True, but those who work in the burn ward are specifically trained to ''not'' show any negative reaction. The patients have already been through enough without their Doctors looking at them like freaks or monsters. A Nurse or Doctor reacting like they did in the show would never work with burn victims again! Of course, dramatic effect trumps all.
*** Remember, this is the pseudo 1940s. Doctor training was quite a bit different back then.

** RuleOfDrama. The audience is expected to realise at that very moment that something very very horrible has happened to Harvey Dent and that his looks have been horrifically disfigured to build suspense, thus increasing the horror they would feel when they can see exactly what has happened for themselves. This is an effect which would not be efficiently conveyed by the doctor and nurse calmly discussing Harvey's injuries in a completely professional and neutral manner and downplaying his injuries in recognition of his fragile mental state. Hence, the doctor and nurse react with horror when they see how terribly Harvey has been scarred. It might not be how things would happen in real life, but the point of fiction is to tell a story, which doesn't always work by reflecting everything that happens in real life to the minutest detail with the pristine accuracy of a flawless mirror.

** The [=DCU=] as a whole doesn't really have a New York City, so maybe the statue is a Gotham landmark in the ''DCAU''.
*** Isn't Metropolis meant to be the New York analogue? As for the presence of the statue, perhaps it's the doing of some sort of space-time warping supervillain or something.

*** Actually, it's Metropolis in Delaware, and Gotham in New Jersey.

** That's the Lady Gotham statue. In the 40s, Gotham decided they needed more tourism, and decided to just rip off the design of the Statue of Liberty with a few minor adjustments and call it their own landmark.
*** This is absolutely true in the [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]] comics, where it's called "The Sentinel of Liberty" and carries a lantern rather than a torch. It even showed up in ''Batman Forever''.
** France has a much smaller model of the Statue of Liberty on an island in the Seine River. Gotham could have its own imitation, for whatever reason.

** Since (IIRC) New York City is never mentioned in the series and, discussion above aside, the ''DCAU'' is clearly distinct from the rest of DC Comics continuity, it's likely that Gotham City is simply the ''DCAU'''s equivalent of New York City.

* In ''See No Evil'', Ventrix seems to have studied the jewelry shop he robs in order to make his getaway, judging by how easily he finds that a door leads right to an alleyway. So why did he fail to acknowledge that said alleyway is under construction,which includes the pouring of wet cement that would detect his footprints and slow him down should something go wrong?

*** The hypothetical spectator could give the information to supervillains, Like Strange tried to do.

*** If confronted he could say that that's exactly what was done. After all, Alfred being Batman's butler isn't exactly common knowledge isn't it?
** The ClockKing episode is a deconstruction of the WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries. It seems like Batman was careless, but the first time he left Bruce Wayne's limo he was in a BlindAlley. The second time he left her was in an AbandonedWarehouseDistrict. He could assume no one was looking at him. When we see the limo from a passerby perspective, it seems to have tinted windows, so none could see Alfred or Batman inside of it. We are not show how he get to the Bank where the DeathTrap awaits him, or how he traveled to Gotham's ClockTower.

* Perhaps more importantly, how did the Clock King survive a ClockTower crumbling around him? Discounting JokerImmunity, did he just dodge falling gears and other debris [[BadassNormal in midair]] to get to the ground floor unscathed? Did he [[CrazyPrepared fully plan for this to happen and create an escape route ahead of time somehow]]? Is he just an immortal [[Series/DoctorWho Time Lord]] of some sort? Given his maniacal cackle when telling Batman "there's always a way", he clearly knew he'd make it out alive. So, it could be any or all of the above, but still...HOW?!
** My guess is that he's worked everything thing out so precisely that he knows, in the event of a catastrophic collapse of the inner-workings of the clock tower, precisely where to stand in order to avoid any falling debris while simultaneously surviving a fall to the bottom of the tower. Which admittedly perhaps implausible, if not impossible, but he's also a cartoon super-villain who's weaponised ControlFreak planning, [[WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief so.]]

* Two questions about "Mask of the Phantasm", more precisely the "Batman vs GCPD" scene: First, how does Bruce survive that fall towards the end? Second, how come that no one in the GCPD is able to recognize Bruce Freakin' Wayne after he has lost his cape and cowl? For that matter, couldn't he have used smoke bombs or something to hide himself at least? Reminds me of Batman 701 [[spoiler:where Bruce is shown to have a spare cowl in his utility belt]]. Then again, Grant Morrison being Grant Morrison, Bats might have been in a Batgod moment...
** He was a good distance away, they mostly only saw him from behind and emotions were high. The cops were probably too focused on catching up to him to really notice and absorb his face. It's not a very desired charateristic of a police officer, but it probably happens a lot in the real line of duty when the situation has a high level of excitement; even police officers are still only human, after all.
** It's never really established how well known Bruce actually is in universe and we mostly see him associating with other rich people who are part of his social circle. He's certainly not so famous that people recognize him with minimal disguises. Like Matt Damon dying his hair white and letting some stubble grow out wouldn't be enough to really fool someone right on top of him. In ''The Forgotten'' nobody recognizes him and the reality is that if the mob boss had suspected for a single second that he had Bruce Wayne he would likely done one of a few things. Either tried to ransom him back, dump him back where he found him or shoot him and dump him. Bruce Wayne is important, people are looking for him. He's not forgotten at all! OR at least it would be stupid to assume that he was.

* The Robin suit...how the heck from TAS to TNA, how does Dick's old Robin suit totally get a new look yet some HOW be a perfect fit for little Tim Drake! Tim was like a young teenager in that series! When Dick left he was in college! The size and height difference! It just doesn't add up!

*** Except that's entirely non-canon. While it's likely that Tim wears an entirely different suit "Over the Edge" is a Scarecrow-induced nightmare and might not accurately portray anything to be honest.
** Regardless, the suit Tim wears has to be one of Dick's old ones that just happens to fit Tim. When Tim comes in during The New Adventures, he's not recruited by Batman, he puts on a Robin costume on his own initiative and follows Batman and Batgirl to fight Two Face. Even Alfred wouldn't have been able to fabricate an entirely new costume in the time it takes for Tim to follow them (he got there halfway through the fight, so unless the delivery truck he hitched a ride on was faster than the Batmobile, he had to have left soon after Barbara and Bruce).

* How come Paul Dini gets credit that belongs to Alan Burnett? I am constantly at a loss as to why Alan Burnett is left out when talking about the DCAU. This is not a knock on the amazingly talented Paul Dini, but Paul and many other writers worked FOR Alan, who was the driving creative force behind most all of the DCAU on the writing side, just as Bruce was on the art and production side.

** Not the original poster, but this is an issue that definitely makes me [[Headscratchers/HomePage scratch my head]] as well. By and large, when people discuss the DCAU they seem to always credit it as a Bruce Timm/Paul Dini production, to the point where it's often referred to as the [[FanNickname "Timmverse" or "Diniverse"]]. What's strange about this is that Timm's partner and the head of the B:TAS writing staff was in fact Dini's ''boss'', Alan Burnett. Paul Dini is, of course, a fantastic writer, but there is absolutely no logical reason why Burnett should get passed up for the credit he is due. If you take a look at the original B:TAS series bible, it's clear that in its early stages the show was shaping up to be a decent but unspectacular action cartoon; it's Burnett who was most responsible for making it into something truly special. [[DudeWheresMyRespect So dude, where's his respect?]]

*** Perhaps also worth noting that, according to Website/IMDb at least, Burnett simply has less official writing credits on the show than Dini (11 to 26). Burnett's contributions appear to have been more of the 'uncredited' or behind-the-scenes nature and, fairly or otherwise, people tend to notice the person who's actually credited with writing the episodes more.

* The ''Showdown'' episode's main story is Ra's Al Ghul's narrative of Jonah Hex foiling his plan to conquer America in 1883, and capturing his son and second-in-command, Arkady Duvall, who subsequently served 50 years of hard labour before wandering away, his mind shattered by the hardships he'd suffered. The old man Ra's kidnapped from the Gotham retirement home at the beginning of the episode is revealed to be a seemingly vegeative Arkady. How could Ra's, with all his intellect and resources (this is the man who deduced Batman's identity based on a worldwide survey of goods that could be used as Batman's equipment) have taken ''60 years'' (assuming this is 1994-1995) to find his son, let alone lose track of him? And how did Arkady end up in a retirement home in Gotham having (presumably) spent years as a near-mindless homeless derelict?
** Your assumption is wrong. Look at the cars people are driving, the clothing they are wearing and the weapons they use. Look at the planes as well and the World's Fair in Mask of the Phantasm is clearly the 1939 World's Fair. 50 years after 1883 would have been 1933, crazy old Arkady had probably been wandering around for less than a decade. He certainly hadn't been wandering around in that condition for nearly sixty years.
*** The show does have a retro look, but the time period is never specified, and remember, they have things like home computers and internet, so it wasn’t the 40s, even when it looks like it.
*** The thing with the computers seems to be a case of schizo tech that many cartoons get away with on a regular basis. Note they still seem to primarily have black and white televisions and photography. The criminals often use Tommy Guns which were in vogue during Prohibition but for various reasons including laws were phased out later. There is also the fact that Arkady is still alive. Let's be super generous and claim Arkady was only 20 when his encounter with Jonah happens even though he was probably at least double that. That would make him 100 years old come 1960 any later than that and he'd be getting line for oldest person on the planet.
*** Considering the fact that Ra is 600 years old and we see a thousand year-old Egyptian queen still alive in episode ''Avatar'', Arkady is still not close to be the oldest.

*** The meta reason for the time gap is simple: at first they were making what is obviously a stand-alone Batman serial partially based on Tim Burton's movies (you can see that the Penguin even has flipper-like hands) totally independent from the rest of the DCU (as Burton's movies are). That's why the show is a little bit more granted in reality and no other superhero is ever mentioned. Even Zatanna's apparition in the series shows her a just a very talented illusionist but with no real magical powers. Then the show was successful and obviously new shows were made with other properties most notably Superman and the Justice League. So, apart from the difference in animation, the original B:TAS is probably not connected to the rest of the DCAU or never was intended to be. What seems connected is the rebooted show ''The New Batman Adventures'' a.k.a. Batman's "season four" not only in animation style but also in the appearance of superhumans. So you can argue that TNBA, S:TAS, JL, JLI and BB are all part of the same SharedUniverse and not include B:TAS and Mask of the Phantasm as they represent their own continuity, or you can mixed all together but then taking the retro look in B:TAS and [=MotP=] as just that, retro look and not the time period otherwise the time gap between series becomes a problem. Take your pick, there's probably not a straight answer and I think there's no official confirmation either way.
*** Alternatively, it's just a simple retcon. B:TAS is almost certainly supposed to be canon to the the rest of the DCAU, as backstory at least, but the ArtShift in TNBA simply retconned things to place Gotham and the characters in more of a "modern day" setting rather than the AnachronismStew setting of the earlier series, and there's an unspoken assumption that within the world of TNBA-onwards it's always been thus. Of course, if any viewer wishes to treat B:TAS as its own separate thing they're more than welcome to do so (TBH this troper kind of prefers to keep them separate) but that's more of a personal choice; officially, all of the DCAU shows are pretty clearly supposed to be set within the same reality.
*** There seems to be a bit of a tendency in the above to assume that B:TAS is set within a specific year in the past. In fact, the date of the setting is deliberately kept vague because it's not supposed to be set within a specific year, but is in fact supposed to be set within a kind of timeless retro-futuristic present which doesn't correspond to any given year or period. Hence why there's '30s-'40s fashions alongside '70s-'90s computing technologies, blimps flying around alongside helicopters and propellor-driven cross-country passenger planes, '50s-ish cars with car phones, and so forth. In short, it could be any year that Ra's finally uncovers Arkady. And as for whether or not Arkady is one of the oldest people alive by the time Ra's finds him, remember that Ra's is the person with access to life-extending and age-slowering powers and resources; it's entirely likely that Arkady has simply aged slower than most people.

** Ra's didn't spend 60 years looking for his son; he only came for him when he was dying. Maybe you watched a completely different episode than the rest of us, but during the flashback Ra's was disgusted by Arkady's behavior and seemed to respect the bounty hunter far more than he respected his son. Ra's came to get Arkady because he was on his deathbed, but he was otherwise uninterested in his son.
** Also, Jonah Hex says something like "for what you did to that girl", so is imply that Arkady was guilty of rape, something that probably would disgust Ra's and would be considered dishonorable for him, a case of EvenEvilHasStandards and RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil.
* Here's a question. Why is Arkady still alive? While we have no idea at all how old Arkady actually was from what we see in Batman the Animated Series and it's sequel Batman Beyond the Pits don't grant immortality by making you immune to aging. They instead knock of 'x' amount of years and without regular access to a Pit old age and the associated organ failure will still catch up to you at a fairly regular pace.
** Ra's ''has'' been using them for 600 years. That has to have had some kind of effect on his DNA, and consequently the DNA he passes on to his children. Perhaps exposure to the Lazarus Pits mean that Ra's and his children just age slower?
** After rewatching the episode, Ra did openly said that Arkady use the Lazarus pit several times before his imprisonment as an explanation of why he's so old and how no one expected him to survive his sentence of 50 years hard labor. An exchange to this effect takes place towards the end:

* Watch 'Heart of Ice'. Watch the heart breaking scene when Batman sees Fries getting jumped by the big rich guy, and turned into Mr. Freeze. Now, really, that's one hell of a security camera, idn't it? Cutting to different angles that a security camera wouldn't show, going back and forth between faces for dialogue, conveniently being RIGHT there for incriminating action shots...that security camera is fucking amazing.

*** I'm pretty sure it exists as a trope already, actually.

* "Mask of the Phantasm". Pre-Batman Bruce Wayne fights some thugs but gets distracted with Andrea and is defeated. Makes sense. However, afterwards he makes a rather drastic conclusion out of this that he should give up the relationship alltogether, since he "cannot be on the line with somebody waiting for him at home". Wait, isn't this the exact way ''every single soldier/policeman/firefighter/rescuer in the world'' operates? They are on the line, their relatives are back home worried sick. Obviously she's not supposed to be on the front line, but what makes him so different that he suddenly cannot combine dangerous work with family life?

*** Besides, not everyone have [[ItsNotYouItsMyEnemies killer]] [[ComicBook/TheJoker clowns]] hating their guts
*** Check the divorce rates between civilians and military and police personell. It's a fair statement to say that not MANY people can handle it. Bruce is just humble enough that he refuses to ruin another life, and potentially children's lives, by trying.
*** Also, soldiers, police, firefighters and rescue workers generally have ''backup'' eager to come rescue '''them''' if they get in over their heads, as well as the expectation that if they die in the line of duty, their families will be well supported by pensions, death benefits, counselors, and the respectful accolades of the public. But because ''Mask'' takes place well before he starts recruiting sidekicks, Batman is all alone out there, and if he were to die on the streets he'd either just vanish without any explanation (if his killers hide the body) or else leave his loved ones to cope with a ''huge'' scandal, if Bruce Wayne's vigilante exploits (which are illegal, controversial, and most likely would be grounds for a ''lot'' of lawsuits) are posthumously exposed.
** It's also good to remember that Bruce is not a policemen, a soldier, or any wholesome part of society. He's an emotionally damaged, obsessive vigilante who has poured every ounce of his passion into a crazy pursuit (just look where he ends up in WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond). I think it's wholly in keeping with his character for him to realize that there is no place in his life for a family. The fact that he takes on apprentices complicates this, but he always was a pretty disfunctional father figure.

* In Baby Doll's second appearance, why was she acting all kiddy-like when she was at home with Crocky? It made sense for her to act like that when they were committing crimes, since that's her schtick, but why act that way at home when she wants to have a relationship with him?

*** But she does act like a normal person in her first episode, when she wants to. Which leads us right back to the question. Is it possible, that Killer Croc is a pedophile and enjoys her acting like this? You know what, let's just drop this question.

** Dahl's particular brand of delusion is a fixation on the role she played ''as Babydoll''. As such, she's only ever happy when she's being Babydoll. You'll notice that whenever she acts as a mature, relatively sane and lucid person, she seems dull and sullen, not happy. So when she decides that being with Croc will make her happy, she acts happy in the only way she really knows how--as Babydoll. She's playing house with him, and he knows it and is annoyed by it, but puts up with it because they work well together.

*** To be fair, considering that Baby Doll is a psychologically and emotionally screwed up and conflicted lunatic whose madness centres around fixating on a twisted version of childhood, 'stop acting like a child if you don't want to be treated like one' isn't exactly the most useful advice to give her. If she could do it that easily she, y'know, would.

** Speaking of Killer Croc. Wasn't he about to receive the death penalty in that episode? When Batman got him back to prison, how did Croc escape capital punishment? Also, why was he the only super villain to receive it?
*** Because Croc is one of the few ''actually'' successful murderers in the series (Albeit before we actually get to see him) who is also not insane.
*** Yup, Croc usually doesn't manage an insanity plea... the few times he winds up in Arkham seem to be because writers get stuck in the mindset of "Arkham is where Batman's villains go" rather than thinking it through. And he probably wasn't put right back in the chair because, well, now they've gotta go through the process of revising his sentence to include his escape attempt. Which sounds ridiculous but our justice system can work like that sometimes. Thus he didn't walk right back into the execution chamber, thus he had time to escape again later.

*** There was actually an episode that dealt with Croc and Arkham--specifically, "Sideshow", where he was being transferred from the Asylum to prison. Based on some commentary by a few reporters riding along ("Croc's finally being found responsible for his actions, huh?"), it's assumed that briefly after his first appearance the insanity defense worked, but eventually the courts changed their mind.

* In "Perchance to Dream" Batman figures out, that he's dreaming, when he tries to read the newspaper and can only see nonsense. He says, that it's because only one part of a brain is active in a dream and suchlike. At least in my experience it's entirely possible to read in dreams - books, labels, messageboards were major parts of it. Now, it's possible to guess it's a dream, when you understand, that you're not "reading" as much, as "get the meaning instantly", but he never alluded to that. Furthermore, if it's not controlled by the Hatter, only a "very good dream", it should be, well, a dream. Dreams rarely have a coherent structure and oftentimes jump from event to event, from location to location, with little transition in-between. Look at some of David Firth's stuff, to see a really good portrayal of dreams.
** Personal experience has taught me that you can get a sort of "feeling" about the dream environment, depending on what your mind is trying to relay to you. For example, your dream can create a totally original person you've never met, but have the feeling it's someone you've known your whole life. It can feel like years have passed when it's been mere moments. Heck, maybe the transitions and cutaways were the same for Bruce as they were for us. What's more, Hatter's machine obviously had some control, as evidenced by A) Tetch saying he couldn't/wasn't supposed to wake, and B) the fact that his dreams were all positive, alluring and inviting. One could argue that while the device could not implant dream ideas into Batman's mind, it could "guide" his unconscious thoughts into a dream world so pleasant he'd never want to sacrifice it for the waking world.

*** What the troper was tryin to say, is that it's entirely possible to read in dreams. It's just a common urban legend, that you can't.

*** Nah; he actually says "its impossibility to read in a dream", and says its because dream and reading are controlled by two different sides of the brain.
** I have had many dreams that felt like normal days, sometimes to the point of being unable to keep track of which day it is. Also, even though the Hatter isn't controlling the dream directly, he is influencing it. We know he somehow made sure that in the dream Batman would get everything he wanted. If he can do that then he should be able to prevent the place/time jumping that happens in a lot of dreams.
** The original post made a point about the episode cannot be a dream because ''dreams rarely have a coherent structure and oftentimes jump from event to event, from location to location, with little transition in-between''. I think that Bruce’s dream really didn’t have a coherent structure, because it is impossible to construct a ''dream life'', your own Wonderland: Batman, like everyone else, has conflicting desires, and Bruce Wayne’s mind is playing a XanatosSpeedChess game with itself trying to accept his new ''reality'' because BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Bruce Wayne gets his TragicDream and his parents are alive, AndThenWhat That means that Alfred is not a ParentalSubstitute but a [[BritishStuffiness reserved employee]]. Selina Kyle is not a criminal but her fiancé! AndThenWhat she is the [[BettyAndVeronicaSwitch reliable Betty and not the exciting Veronica]]. If Bruce never had the need to become Batman, AndThenWhat That means Bruce Wayne’s beloved Gotham City would be an even worse WretchedHive. DeusExMachina: WesternAnimation/TheBatman is patrolling the city again! and Bruce Wayne could be happy living his IdleRich life after seeking therapy with Leslie Thompkins… everything is forced to Bruce, nothing makes sense, everything advances the plot to a direction… and if you want to be really picky, the ''dream'' takes more than one day, but Bruce only ''lives'' less than 26 minutes from event to event, from location to location, with little transition in-between the episode show us. (it's because he is a cartoon, of course)

* In The Underdwellers, why does Bruce "guns are a coward's weapon" Wayne have a room filled with them?
** They're for display, probably inhereted from his family.
** You've also got to have guns to work with to learn how to defend yourself against them. He'd need to know how to take one away from someone (without getting himself shot or setting it off), how to take it to pieces, how to disable it, etc. He'd need guns to prepare himself to deal with guns. It's also entirely possible that some pragmatic corner of his mind lets him know that there may come a time where his life or the life of someone he loves could depend on a "coward's weapon" and he'd rather have one and feel bad about using it in such a situation than not have it. (This is kinda-sorta borne out in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond''... Bruce's refusal to pick up a gun does not extent to letting himself get beaten to death.)
** Batman does his own ballistics testing sometimes. The gun collection may serve as a control group for purposes of comparison.

** Two things. First I'm not certain that Batman/Bruce Wayne really did much raising of Dick Grayson. For starters he was already an accomplished acrobat, not to mention he tracks down Zucco which means that Dick was already pretty mature and probably didn't need a whole lot of raising but more to the point Alfred probably did all of the real parenting duties for Dick just as he had with Bruce. Bruce was likely primarily responsible for honing him into a crime fighter. The second point is that child in the Underdwellers was a child who'd been brutally beaten and abused for a long time. Dick and Bruce both came from happy families and both were taken in within days if not hours of the tragedy that robbed them of a normal life. Those kids were damaged in away that neither Bruce nor Alfred were adequately equipped to deal with.
*** Which would be relevant, if the abuse was actually addressed, but it was clear from Bruce's: Feed him, bathe him, put him to bed ideas about child rearing, that is not the issue. They're implying that they've never had a kid in the manor before and know absolutely nothing about children (Alfred even says as much). Alfred's bumbling attempts to take care of Frog can be excused by all the child has been through, for I'll agree he is very different from Dick, but it doesn't explain why they're both acting like this is all entirely new territory.

*** I will give you RuleofFunny for Alfred's inepitude. I can accept that, however what really bothered me is when Alfred says he knows nothing about children. He has raised two of them! I think he would know a little something at this point. And as for Dick being well behaved, he's a young, energetic child with incredible acrobatic skill. I think he probably got in his fair share of shenanigans when he was young.
*** Well, Alfred claiming he knows nothing about children could be FridgeBrilliance: One of the kids he raised was Dick Grayson and there was nothing wrong with him... but the other was Bruce Wayne... WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond shows how him turned out, and isn't pretty... Alfred at Film/TheDarkKnightTrilogy continually angsts about his young master destiny.
*** It's possible that this all happened before Bruce adopted Dick. The Underdwellers episode is pretty much completely isolated from context, so there's no way of knowing how far along Batman's career the events occurred.
*** Probably a case of EarlyInstallmentWeirdness, the meta reason is that they didn't seem interested in having Robin at all in the series at this point. Robin was introduced as a character much later on and then retconned. The best in-universe explanation is as above said that this episode is chronoligically before they adopted Dick.

*** Correct, as the above troper says, that can't be it; in episode ''Robin's Reckoning'' you can see in flashbacks when Robin's parents die and he goes to live with Bruce: Gordon has brown hair, Bullock is in uniform and Bruce looks younger, whilst in the episode of the Sewer King Gordon has white hair, etc. The best explanation nevertheless is in the same ''Robin's Reckoning'' episode; if you check Dick Grayson is aroung 11-12 when he goes to live with Bruce an is already a well behave kid that gives near to nothing problems to Alfred or Bruce other than a little escape at night once. To the point that both Alfred and Bruce seem happy to adopt him. Bruce was 10 when his parent died and, disregarding the fact that Alfred already spent years living with him, he also doesn't seem to be a problem child. Frog on the other hand seems to be much younger (6-8 maybe?) and comes from an abusive background, is not the same to raise a 12 year old who comes from a loving family than a very young kid raised by a psychopath in the sewers. But Alfred phrase of "know nothing about children" could be, in context, understood as know nothing about '''little children''' which is probably true as Bruce and Dick were almost teens when he starts caring for them.
*** To the second to last troper: yes your’re right, I forgot the Xmas episode. To the last troper, yes that’s probably the answer. Dick seems already pretty self-sufficient in that episode most likely due to his circus upraising, and Bruce probably wasn’t as independent but was likely to be self-sufficient enough and probably very mature for his age (he’s a genius after all). Other than emotional support neither of both really needed caring. Frog is effectively a very young kid probably no more than 8 and in need of all sorts of cares.
*** Dick couldn't have been more than 8 or 9 when his parents died, and Bruce was around the same age. Robin's Reckoning makes that pretty clear.They were both traumatized kids and would have needed a lot of care and attention. Bruce and Alfred's utter ineptitude and unfamiliarity with the situation is very, very strange, no matter how different Frog's personality and situation is. No matter how you look at it, neither of these men have ever dealt with a kid before. Their past history with child rearing is never even mentioned. In this context, the episode makes no sense.

** I have no issue that their unfamiliar with this kid in particular, but that they both clearly say they have no experience with kids period. Definitely a writing error in what is already considered one of the show's weaker episodes.

** Entirely possible Thorne has some connection to the number two. Doesn't have to be an insane obsession like Harvey's though... maybe two's just his lucky number, or [[EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas his mom]] was born on February 2nd, or something like that.

* In the episode where the kids were telling stories about Batman, um, why were three kids (four counting the Joel Shumacher kid) wandering the streets of Gotham at night. They have parents because the mention them, but the parents sort of suck in that case. Gotham is the worst place to be alone, DURING THE DAY. At night, it's suicide. And there's an arsonist on the loose.
** There are ALWAYS arsonists and such running around Gotham. It's not like they're particularly more safe inside. This is Gotham we're talking about, and these are Gotham kids. they know the score.
** Plus, as we all know, it's utterly impossible for kids to sneak out and do stuff at night without telling their parents.

** Just for the record, ComicBook/TheBatmanAdventures issue # 16, ''"The Killing book"'', deals with ComicBook/TheJoker finding some cherubic children at midnight who recognize him as ''"that guy the Batman is always beating"'', prompting The Joker becoming a MoralGuardian who kidnaps the comic writer and artist that is corrupting those childrens with lies. He also steals the children's candy.
** Gotham is not more dangerous that many real life cities (hard to believe, but is true) and kids still go out at night on those cities.

* In Judgement Day how is Two Face able to get into costume without anyone seeing overpower the guards, all within a few seconds (the penguin turns as Harvey leaves, goes to the vault places loot in and the Judge is standing there.)
** Insanity lends strength, maybe it lends speed too. Or Harvey actually practiced quick-changing the costume while he was the Judge. And it's not like they're both elaborate, skin-tight getups, he basically just had to pull the Judge costume on over his own clothes.

** Guy ''is'' a well-established supervillain who has tangoed with Batman more than once at this point. Presumably he has, at very least, hit the gym at some point. Granted, Killer Croc is more of a stretch, but if Batman can hold his own, then presumably Two-Face can to. Ultimately, he's a supervillain, it's a superhero cartoon, you just gotta roll with it on this one.

* Ok, so when Harley and Ivy kidnap Bruce Wayne in "Holiday Knights", how did all of the clerks in the "Bergduff's" department store completely fail to react to the two super villains on a shopping spree? It's not like they were out on parole; it had been established earlier in the episode that they were both fugitives, and trying to lay low to avoid the cops' attention. They were wearing their costumes and everything. The store employees just didn't care that a pair of notorious, wanted criminals were there as long as their money was good? Also, they had a billionaire mind-controlled, and they made him buy them jewelry and clothes? They could have used the zombifying lipstick to enslave the cashier and walked out with anything in the store they wanted; why didn't they make Bruce Wayne transfer a couple million to a numbered Swiss bank account or an offshore holding corporation? I always assumed that Ivy and Harley were supposed to be smart, but this particular caper was pretty dumb.
** You're right, they're recognized supervillains. People are going to know what they can do--it's likely that the standard procedure for Gotham citizens, when faced with a supervillain, is "Just leave them alone until Batman shows up." Honestly, it's probably safer than the alternative of either confronting them, or risking them seeing you call the cops.

* In "Night of the Ninja", Bruce is losing to Kyodai Ken on purpose because Summer Gleason can't be allowed to see him beat the ninja... why? When he does get serious, he doesn't win by throwing gas grenades or Batarangs, he just does karate on him. Summer had already been told that they studied at the same Dojo, and Bruce is quite visibly larger than Kyodai. Would it really have looked so suspicious if Bruce beat a (he could claim) slightly more skilled opponent by virtue of being in a higher weight division?

*** Furthermore, that same episode stressed that fighting styles are like fingerprints. Even if Gleason didn't get suspicious that Bruce Wayne could defeat an experienced ninja, all it would take is for her, or someone else, to find footage of Batman in action and comparing his moves to those of Wayne's, and his cover is blown.
*** That's something else that's always bugged me. I really don't buy this idea that every person's fighting style is so distinct that you can instantly recognize them decades later just by fighting them again. It sounds like one of those cheesy martial arts myths, like the Death Touch.
*** It's true when you think about it; people do have their own little tells and postures and quirks that you could recognize them from. If you took any two fighters trained in the same martial art, put them side by side and examined everything about them you would notice that even using the same fighting style they don't move and fight exactly the same. If you spent enough time practicing with a person you'd be able to spot out all the little unique things about their stance, the same way you'd be able to tell someone's tells in Poker if you spent enough time playing against them. It's not "you fight them once and instantly remember everything," it's "I've been doing this with you for so long I can recognize all those little details nobody else would notice."
*** It is common for trained martial artists to have a "preferred" fighting style that they default to use; however, most experienced fighters are definitely capable of adapting and altering their style to suit the situation, and Batman is one of the greatest martial artists on the planet- so yeah, he may indeed have had "tells", but it is highly unlikely that he was totally unaware of them and unable to change his approach. Besides, Kyodai is a ninja and has seen both Batman and Bruce in action; most people, unless they have the knowledge and the experience, won't be able to deduce Batmans' identity just from watching him and Bruce Wayne fight (of course, there are a dozen ways to deduce Bruce is Batman without ever meeting either man just with a bit of detective work- Ra's al Ghul did just that- but that's another issue). Lastly, fingerprints being unique is a myth- there is a finite number of patterns to the human fingerprint, and false arrests have occurred because people believe that myth.
** That's kind of the point of a tell, though; it's something that gives you away because it's so instinctive and natural to you that you do it without thinking. Batman's a brilliant martial artist, detective, etc., true, but he's also a human being, and he does some things unconsciously like any human being does. He's probably aware of some of his tells and works to address them, but there are probably others that he's less aware of. As for fingerprints, while they might be finite it's still probably quite rare to find two different people in the same relatively small span of space that have the exact same fingerprints right down to the minutest details.

** He was never exactly the nicest guy to begin with. His jerkass behavior leading to the accident that disfigured him in the first place.

** And the first episode also shows that he can’t control his aspect long, he needs concentration. While acting, with different shots and other distraction, he can turn into the monster at any time. That will be a career killing.
** Consider also Hagan's ego: his whole story gets started when he suffers an accident to his face. He's an Old School Hollywood actor: his stock and trade is on his LOOKS. Yeah, he can assume any form he wants, but how long before directors start telling him "No, we don't want you to look like Matt Hagan, we want you to do Humphrey Bogart." He wouldn't be making his name off of HIS face, only the faces of others.

* In Never Fear, how long was Scarecrow supposed to be unconscious for after Batman strangled him. He blacks out on the train and seems to still be out when Batman and Robin are walking down the street. The train scene takes place at night while the street scene the sun seems to at least be rising. How did Crane not get permanent brain damage?
** ...Because it's a cartoon. If you're going to bring real-world science into this, Batman should have dislocated his shoulder a thousand times by now just from swinging around on those grappel lines.

* The ending of "Bane". Batman delivers the beaten Bane to Thorne's office and...leaves him there. Uhm...what? Why isn't he taking Bane to prison? Then he plays a recording of Thorne's assistant conspiring with Bane to eliminate Thorne, ''while said assistant is in the same room''. Uhm...WHAT?! Doesn't Batman realise that he's just sentenced her (and likely Bane as well) to death? I'd probably understand if he'd used the recording to make her testify against Thorne or cooperate with him in another way, but that was just pointlessly cruel! Hell, ethical considerations aside, wasn't dissent in enemy ranks working to his advantage?
** He might figure Thorne is too smart to just outright kill her... after all, Batman's got a copy of the tape, too. She disappears, Batman drops the tape with the police, Thorne's gotta spend a lot of time and money in court. Also you don't know that thirty seconds after he walked out, a bunch of cops Batman called earlier didn't sweep into the room and find Thorne there with Bane and go "Hey, proof you're working together, you're under arrest!"
** In addition to the very real likelihood that Batman is on his way to the cops with a copy of the tape or has already notified them and that they're just behind him, and in addition to the fact that at that point Bane clearly isn't going anywhere under his own volition, we should also remember that Thorne's assistant isn't exactly a virtuous innocent in this situation. A central part of her whole plan to double-cross Thorne in the first place was ''the death or critical injuring of Batman himself'', which is not something that's likely to put her very high in his 'people to give a shit about' list. She decided to take the gamble and put herself in that situation, and the chips didn't land her way, so as far as Batman's concerned she can deal with the consequences.

** If the comics are to be considered canon (Batman & Robin Adventures #12 picks up where the episode leaves off,) apparently Batman really did leave them both to be murdered. As soon as Batman leaves, Thorne orders his men to take Bane to the waterfront and kill him slowly. He makes a comment that Candice is to pretty to kill, but will be forced to watch Bane be beaten to death. Candice, however, seems to enjoy watching the mooks beat Bane. The mooks only leave when they believe Bane has been beaten to death. Bane survived and returned to take revenge on Thorne and Candice, but was stopped by Batman. So... yeah. Batman totally did leave both Candice and Bane's fates in the hand of Thorne, knowing it was likely they'd be killed, with no cops to stop any of it, and without even keeping an eye on them himself.
*** Should be notice that Batman is not a criminal's babysitter. He made a commitment to save innocent people from criminals, not to save criminals from criminals.
*** This is the same Batman who saved the Joker when he tripped and almost felt to his death in The Last Laugh. So he can't allow a sadistic mass murderer to die by his own hand, but setting up Bane and Candice to get killed by their boss is perfectly acceptable for him?
*** The answer to that is in the episode "The Terrible Trio" when he says; "they are worst than the Joker, at least he is crazy". There's a similar line in the Sewer King episode. On the other hand episodes like ""Birds of a Feather" (with the Penguin), "Harley's Holiday" (Harley), "Home and Garden" (Ivy) and "Second Chance" (Two-Face) show that he honestly want the crazy criminals to be cured. He seems to honesty think that the mentally ill criminals like the Joker or Two Face or Ivy can't be blamed for their actions and, if cured, should be allowed second chances. But on the other hand he is truly outrage for the sane criminals who harm innocent people just out of pure sadism, fun or profit. He probably act harsher with these criminals, which is the case of Candice and Bane (particularly Bane, an assassin who probably already killed who know how many and just for profit). Let's be honest; letting Thorn kill a mass murderer isn't exactly something bad.
** Doesn't this make him a hypocrite? Batman doesn't kill (not even those scum he considered worse than Joker, mind you), but he's ok with condemning people to death, which he has all reasons to expect will be particularly brutal or painful? This isn't an "I don't have to save you" situation - it's not like Thorne got wind of Candice's betrayal otherways, she came running to Batman pleading to save her, and he whispered "... no". It's not even like he came to her and told her something like: "Thorne will receive the tape in an hour. I suggest you start running." By all means this was a premediated, well, maybe not murder, but putting one in potentially lethal situation (is that a legal thing?).
*** Maybe, but to be entirely fair to Batman as noted above we don't know what happened seconds after he left the room (excluding the comic example mentioned above). For all we know the police were right on his tail and got there before Candice was harmed. Also, we're kind of overstating the nature of the 'lethal' peril that Batman's left her in just a little bit here, aren't we? She's not in a death trap or has a knife to her throat or anything, she's in a rather spacious office facing a fairly overweight and out-of-shape late-middle-aged man, she's a fairly healthy young woman more or less capable of holding her own against Robin earlier in the episode, and I doubt Thorne's got better moves than Robin does. There's nothing to prevent Candice from getting out of Thorne's grip, finding something in the office to defend herself with, or even just kicking him in the balls and running out the door. It kind of ''is'' an "I don't have to save you" situation, and if anything she's got much better chances than Ra's was left with in ''Batman Begins'', since she's not in a partially destroyed out-of-control runaway railcar that's seconds from crashing from which she has no way of extricating herself. While it's absolutely a bit of a dick move on Batman's part to leave Candice alone with Thorne at that particular point (although it's hard to argue that she didn't have it coming either), it's also not like he's turning his back when she's literally seconds from death either. And FWIW Batman refusing to help Candice if she comes to Batman explicitly begging for help would be much worse than what he does in this episode IMO.
*** Yup, and same goes for Bane, even defeated he's more than capable to defend himself from Thorne, what he truly did was making them have to fight for their lives which, after the ordeal they make him pass recently, is quite deserved.

*** They're still not in immediately lethal peril, though, since Thorne isn't actually holding a gun when Batman is present. Unless he has lighting fast reflexes (unlikely) then Candice at least still has a chance to get out of the way, unless she considerately stands still while he arms himself, and being his moll she's likely to have some idea of where he keeps his gun(s) so can possibly even arm herself first. The situation isn't completely safe for Candice and Bane, but neither are the they in the immediate life-or-death straits that some in this thread seem to be painting them as being in.
*** And another thing: there's not much else he can do. He can't send them to jail because Robin was the victim of the kidnap and therefore they would have to testify, Bane is probably in the Interpol's list but knowing Gotham is much more likely that he can bribe his way out or just escape. So, what's he going to do? keep them under his care in the Batcave? Granted, was a cruel move to tell Thorne about it but is also a very clever way to keep Bane out of Gotham from now on (although it didn't work), Candace was a side product of that but is not like if she has to escape Gotham and never get back someone is going to miss one less sociopath around.

* "Baby Doll". If the girl couldn't age, how could she speak in an adult voice? Sure, she an actress, but should her vocal cords allow that?

* The same episode. Why would those thugs, including one quite competent martial artist, work for her? She's a hapless and unemployed actress, how сould she afford their services and even if she could, what exactly prevented the thugs from just taking whatever money she had by force?
** One could ask the same thing about most of Batman's rogues gallery. Where ''does'' the Joker keep finding A) minions crazy enough to work for him, and B) enough money to pay them?

*** The Joker is shown in several episodes accumulating large amounts of Money, he clearly is a competent crime boss, even crazy. Besides, working for The Joker (or Two Face or any of the big super villains) probably is a badge of honor in the criminal world that gives you immediate respect and influence.
*** Baby Doll is an adult too, even if she doesn't look like one. And she can adopt an adult voice and act like a grownup when she chooses, so it's not like she always looks, acts, and sounds like a toddler. On top of that, we saw in "Love is a Croc" that her child-like appearance can apparently be pretty useful for a criminal enterprise.
** There are always plenty of people desperate/lazy/stupid enough to work for the ''promise'' of easy money through crime. Especially in Gotham. Basically the city has a large enough criminal element that any goofball with a gimmick can round up a gang by calling around and saying "We'll knock over a few banks, you in?" and at least four or five guys will say "Beats flipping burgers!"
*** The problem in this case is that the thugs accepted to work for her in keeping hostage half a dozen people indefinitely with no noticeably source of money in the near future.
*** The episode never establishes that she's broke, only that she's typecast and failed in finding other jobs as actress. She might have a lot of money from her days of glory and/or receive royalties for her character.

*** Yeah, "Big Bad Harv" was just a moniker that either Harvey's therapist or Thorne slapped on the personality. Or that Harvey himself used to refer to it. Once the personality is itself in charge it decides to take a name more fitting to the trauma that allowed it control in the first place.
*** Big Bad Harv and regular Harvey were merged following the trauma of the explosion, psychologically - with the surface scars representing that duality. That's what the coin is for, and it's why Harvey isn't a totally violent monster when he becomes Two-Face. Remember that at the end of 'Two-Face Part Two', he basically breaks down in front of Grace. So regular Harvey and Big Bad Harv were merged, and the silver dollar Big Bad Harv merely used to flip as a trademark to show him in control became his manner of dealing with the duality in his mind.

* In the climax of ''Zatanna'', Batman and the nominative guest-star spend the episodes climax dangling from the cargo-hold, and then clambering around the outside of the villain of the weeks plane while it's in flight. During all of this, how do Zatanna's high heels stay on?

** Superhero costumes get a pass, else these pages would be filled with nothing but. Batman's cape probably should have caused his death a few dozen times over at least, but doesn't because he looks much neater with it than without it.

* Out of all the people Mr. Freeze could have attacked in his "destroy your hope" vendetta, why did it have to be Bruce Wayne? As Bruce points out, Wayne Enterprises is directly responsible for Nora's recovery, and we know from the tie-in comics that he still loves her even after his {{Despair Event Horizon}}. So why Bruce Wayne? (Aside from the fact that he's a protagonist). There are plenty of important and well known socialites that he could have made a point by targeting, ones that have done nothing for him. Why did he target someone who'd actually (financially at least) made his life marginally less miserable? In addition, isn't Ferris Boyle still alive? Why didn't he attack ''him''? Even if the man's in jail, Victor was clearly out for blood earlier.

*** When was it his hat? In his debut episode, he was out for revenge against a man who ruined his life. In ''Deep Freeze'', he was trying to restore Nora. In a Christmas special for the tie-in comic, he was trying to honor Nora's memory. And in the''Subzero'' movie he was trying to keep Nora from dying. Attacking people for helping him, or targeting people that have never wronged him when it gained him nothing only showed up in and after ''Cold Comfort''. ...As for Boyle, I suppose we'll have to assume Victor killed him offscreen and we just didn't hear about it because nobody cared.

* I want to be clear: Harley Quinn is one of the best characters in all the series and I love her, but I think her fans see her as DracoInLeatherPants. I mean, she’s a victim of MadLove that only feels attracted to TheSociopath who treates her like dirt, being ComicBook/TheJoker or Poison Ivy, but I think she is not TheWoobie: She is a PsychoSupporter with no problems killing anyone The Joker or Poison Ivy told her, and she does that not ForTheEvulz but she is JustFollowingOrders. And when we see her at ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyondReturnOfTheJoker'' she shows us that she WouldHurtAChild. I think the very tragedy of her character is that she must be alone to be sane, and the notion she is TheWoobie doesn't interpret her character rightly.
** Another thing I am intrigued is that some people have wrote that she is a BumblingSidekick that commits mistakes that foil The Joker or Poison Ivy plans. I don’t remember all her episodes, but I would say that Harley didn’t do any mistakes, instead of that, The Joker or Poison Ivy blamed her because they are sociopaths and it’s [[NeverMyFault Never Their Fault]].
** I don't remember exactly every thing she does in the series, so, aside from the WouldHurtAChild thing (which is a fair point but much further along in her development as a villain), correct me if anything invalidates this, but I think you're mistaking the Harley from the comics with the Harley from the show. They're not the same person. Harley is almost always playing a subservient role to Joker in his schemes, and except for dealing with Catwoman (and Batman, obviously), she never directly hurts anyone in anything other than self defense. When acting alone she is very willing to let people go and be reasonable about it, such as her dealing with Veronica Vreeland. TheWoobie aspect of her character is that she, a good person deep under all the denial and mania, is coerced into committing criminal behaviors in the first place just to get attention from the people she loves, both of whom are verbally and physically abusive to her. I hope I'm making sense here. She can be a morally gray character and still have people want to give her a hug, basically. And she's too bubbly and cheerful to really qualify as a JerkassWoobie.
** Besides which, just because fans who see her as a Woobie interpret her differently from you doesn't mean they're interpreting her wrong. We each bring our own perspective to fiction, and it can have multiple valid interpretations.

So Mad Hatter has an unconscious, I repeat UNCONSCIOUS Batman in his hands, and instead of taking the mask off, what does he do? he hooks Batman up to a machine to make him dream a perfect life. Beyond a few technical flaws with this(how does Batman obtain nourishment or excrete waste while hooked up to this?) the obvious question would be WHY didn't he rip Batman's mask off? Or why didn't he just sell Batman to some other criminal for a pile of money?
* He answers this in the episode. He was willing to give Batman his perfect life just so he'd stay away from him. Why not take off the mask? It's best answered in Justice League Unlimited and the Great Brain Robbery. Lex and Flash switched bodies and Lex did unmask flash and had no clue who he was. Which isn't that unusual, we don't really have any clue how famous Bruce Wayne actually is. We know he's rich and famous but most people couldn't identify the top ten richest people in the world by sight. It's also a universal rule amongst super villains not to unmask the heroes, they just don't it's in the rules. Probably in part due to self preservation even against heroes who don't normally kill they seem to quickly develope cases of "I don't have to save you" when someone learns their ID. Finally as for your technical flaws we really have no way of knowing how long Batman was under. It's possible it was the exact twenty minutes we saw. Don't tell me you've never had a dream where you just seemed to stop being someplace and then were someplace else?
** For the last one, Hatter's motivation obviously was to keep Batman in the LotusEaterMachine for a long time, potentially indefinitely. The question is not how Batman ate and pooped in those twenty minutes, but how was Jarvis planning to arrange for those needs later. The answer to the first question is not an answer at all, because, as usual in those cases, it's not about whether or not it would work - it's about not trying. It would've cost Jarvis nothing to take the mask off, and even if he doesn't recognise the man, who cares? At the very least he could be on the lookout for Batman in normal life, leak his identity into the criminal underworld and so on, should his plan fail. Knowledge is power. As for compunctions against unmasking Batman, only Joker ever showed them.
*** In plenty of stories Batman's mask is booby trapped and if he doesn't recognize him he doesn't recognize him. He can't leak his ID because (without a picture) he wouldn't be able to describe him well enough for other people to figure him out. He could very potentially gain absolutely no knowledge except that Batman is six foot whatever, muscular build, dark eyes, dark hair, square jaw. Even with all that information Ras had to use several other hints to piece it together and he's magnitudes smarter than Hatter. And to the how did Hatter plan to deal with Batman's physical needs? Why bother? If bats says in the LotusEaterMachine until he dies of starvation that'll keep him out of the way indefinitely. Hatter appears to have genuinely believed he was doing Batman the biggest favor he could manage which might also explain why he didn't remove the mask. He wanted to do right (in his own twisted way) by Batman.
*** Though it doesn't necessarily trump the argument of the Mad Hatter's motive, it's worth mentioning that Jervis probably ''would'' recognize Wayne. Tetch was an employee of Wayne Enterprises who met Bruce face to face in the former's origin story episode.

* And about the last questions ''WHY didn't he rip Batman's mask off? Or why didn't he just sell Batman to some other criminal for a pile of money?'', Mad Hatter was never interested in money nor revenge, before his MotiveDecay at "The Worry Men", he is a DoggedNiceGuy [[IJustWantToBeLoved Who Just Wants To Be Loved]]. That's exactly the pathetic and scary part about him.
** He went at Batman with an axe at their very first encounter. That's not very nice.
** Let's not get pedantic; despite the name, the trope is about a "nice" guy (i.e. usually rather meek and unassuming) who's in love with a woman that apparently doesn't return his affections, which sums up this version of Jervis Tetch to a tee. He just happens to be a darker version who turns into a Batman villain.

In "the Laughing Fish", why do all the fish infected with Joker venom have teeth? Most fish don't have teeth, let alone sets that are so squared and human-like.

** Actually, fish do have teeth, they're pretty small, made of a hardened cartilage (I'm guessing, since a lot of fish skeletons don't really have the teeth), and tend to be located more towards the throat (as can be seen [[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fVFIhtcUiIw/SFRyWBezb9I/AAAAAAAAAnw/kDPDpseSmvg/s1600/Goldfish%2BTeeth.jpg here]]). In terms of the ones with human-reminiscent teeth, those might be [=US=] are the sheephead fish, which can be found of the coast of [=NY=] (assuming Gotham is in New York, as I can't remember) but they're uncommon. Of course, Joker venom might be some weird mutagen.

* The Joker is one of the few Batman villains in this series who would really deserve the treatment Lock-up was giving to the other Rogues, so he's probably absent to avoid making the KickTheDog's into KickTheSonOfABitch or venturing into StrawmanHasAPoint.
** You can hear his laughter running through Arkham when Bolton is brought in as an inmate at the very end. My personal headcanon is that he was TooKinkyToTorture, and after the first few sessions, he whispered stuff into Bolton's ear that made Bolton leave his cell [[EvenEvilHasStandards the hell alone]] and start pushing the less-hardened rogues.

Why not try to convince them to join the army? Scarecrow's fear gas could frighten the enemies, causing them to kill each other. Bane's venom can create super soldiers. Croc can be a one man army with his tough skin. Poison Ivy's plant powers can be useful in the jungle. Even if they say no, they could pay Scarecrow and Bane a LOT of money for their chemicals.

* For some of this there is probably some kind of legal parameter that prevents any country from developing these as weapons. Even when you ignore things like Venom which is apparently addicting, Croc being a mutant that may not be reproducible (a surprising amount of Comic Science is one time only BS) and Scarecrow uses Chemical Weapons which are outlawed IRL and with good reason.
* This question was answered at the ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' episode "Task Force X": Amanda Waller recruits Clock King, Deadshot, Plastique and Captain Boomerang as a Black Ops team. Notice that they all are sociopaths, not psychopaths, and they can be controlled because they only think about themselves. Also, Waller has to do this as a Black Ops operation because there is not way this will be approved by the public, so both of the above objections are justified.

I can't tell if it's the same car in Batman: TAS with a redesign or a totally different car.
* It appears to be a different car. It's shorter, particularly on it's back half, has spikes on the front, differences in its front grill, and--while it might be a matter of coloring--the old car was dark blue, and the new car is black.

* From "Joker's Millions", did Bruce seriously plan to find out it was a body double working for Joker by bringing up some random incident from a month ago? I don't care if it actually worked, he's the freaking Joker! He throws rich guys off of buildings all the damn time!

[[folder: Is Riddler really that smart or sympathetic?]]
* Riddle me this, riddle me that; In his debut episode "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?", while it's clear were supposed to have some sympathy for Nygma when his boss smugly tells him off and fires him, him trying to sue his boss, while still on the job, for royalties of a game he knowingly made on a work-for-hire contract comes off as either [[BullyingADragon exceptionally stupid, or extremely arrogant on his part.]] While his boss was acting like a dick to him, Edward comes off as very egotistical, self righteous and naive about business, so was there any reason for his boss to put up with his blatantly unprofessional behavior and overinflated ego? And, as his boss basically retorted, if he wanted the dough for his board game, why did he sign a contract that basically gave it and the money it would earn away to the company in the first place?
** That's the point. Riddler is smart, but not ''wise''. Also, the "ego" part is a very important detail; later in the episode, Nygma flat out says he doesn't care about the money Mockridge is making off of his game--he's purely out for revenge on Mockridge because he called Nygma a worthless ancilliary to his company, and an idiot on top of that. [[EvilIsPetty It was all about gratifying his bruised ego.]]
** Perhaps it's meant to be that Nygma was tricked somehow or even that the "work for hire" contract was fake. The fact that he was actually able to sue him in the first place suggests that his lawyer at least thought he had a case, and firing Nygma for suing him is pretty legally and ethically shady. It's a little unusual that Nygma has an office if he is only "work for hire" and the game was created, and it's possible that the terms of the contract state that he IS entitled to a cut of the profits "so long as he works for the company"- basically, it sounds more like he COULD have gained royalties but forgot that his contract allowed his employers to fire him at any time (and of course, he didn't think they would fire someone as "brilliant" as him).

* You ever notice most of the technology, powers, and gadgets in Gotham are invented (and used) by psychotic maniacs and Batman? I always find it funny that technology that could help man-kind are always in the hands of super criminals and heroes. Are you telling me a normal sane Gotham scientist can't invent a freeze gun, invisible cloak, super soldier formula, gas, and use them to help the world?

** Most of the examples you listed were stolen corporate science projects. The Venom drug was a failed military experiment which was scrapped because of its addictive properties, the invisibility cloak was stolen by one of the scientists, and the Scarecrows gas and fear toxin doesn't really have any practical applications outside domestic terrorism. Its less than useless for military purposes because biological weapons are supposed to KILL the enemy and leave other resources intact, not cause mass chaos and anarchy.

** The simple answer to this is that if such potentially dangerous technology only ever stayed in the hands of calm, stable and sane persons who would never dream of using it for crime, chaos and mayhem, there wouldn't be a story to tell about them (or at least, not the kind of story that would likely make for an exciting superhero cartoon or comic). If you want to tell the story of, say, a freeze ray being used to commit crimes and cause mayhem that Batman has to stop, then the freeze ray has to either start in or eventually make its way into the hands of someone who is the kind of person who would use it to commit crimes and cause mayhem. AnthropicPrinciple, basically; without it, there's no story. For all we know, there's plenty of cool stuff being developed by non-psychotic maniacs and criminal masterminds and which end up having nothing but positive effects on the world -- but they aren't the kind of people or kind of things that Batman would need to combat, so we don't see them.

* If the doctors are trying cure the villains, why do they sometimes let them keep their costumes and accessories? I can see Two-face flipping his coin and Ivy hugging her plants in their cells. If that's not bad enough, they give Arnold Wesker a KNIFE to carve DUMMIES.

** This is fairly simple. Either you let Poison Ivy have a couple potted plants in her cell to keep her happy or he next time she breaks out she turns your front lawn into bunch of giant man-eating plants that devour your family. Either you let Two-Face have his coin or he either becomes completely unresponsive, in which case you can't treat him, or he violently assaults everyone he gets his hands on until he gets his coin back. These aren't just normal criminals, they're called super villains for a reason, it's best to indulge them at least a little in order to avoid personal grudges from forming against you, especially since everyone knows Arkham prisoners escape fairly regularly.
** This is brought up in the episode ''Dreams in Darkness'', where a fear-toxin-crazed Batman is briefly held in Arkham. A doctor protests the removal of his mask, because it may strip him of his last shred of comfort and sense of identity, and make his psychological state worse. It's not too much of a stretch to assume this is the same logic that permits other patients their own indulgence in their obsessions. As for Wesker using a knife, perhaps after psychological examination, he was considered much less of a threat without Scarface as an outlet. He could have been deemed a low-risk patient who can be permitted certain freedoms the more violent inmates wouldn't be allowed, especially if artistic expression such as wood-carving was part of his therapy.
** That’s how normal therapy really works. You don’t take away something that a person with OCD needs immediately, for example. Unless you want to have them catatonic.

*** The way I kind of took it was that Arkham is probably underfunded or, at the least, understaffed (as one might expect with state/city run hospitals), in which case, they're trying to manage all of the ones there but some slip through. Likewise, having stayed in a psychward (different than a mental home for the criminally insane but still), it's usually the higher-functioning patients that tend to be considered "low-risk" and a lot of the ones interred at Arkham are what one might call "high functioning", in which case, they can just simply get more privileges if they behave well enough to not need micromanaging/close supervision.

** The thugs might not know who Matthew is. Even if they do know, they might assume (perhaps correctly, perhaps not, but they didn't really have time to worry about it right then) that Rupert would accept shooting him as collateral damage after he got in the way of carrying out the order to kill Leslie.
** It doesn't seem like the thugs were aiming at Matthew, he was only earlier threatened that the deal to reinstate his license would be off. Crime lord or not, Rupert's brotherly manner of speaking with Matthew even during an outburst showed he never considered him someone to be disposed of.

* Could Joker really sue Cameron Kaiser? If not, shouldn't Kaiser's reputation be tarnished because of the choice of name? It's like if Donald Trump build an Adolf Hitler based amusement park.

** Probably not. Assuming Joker has ever gotten out on terms that would allow him to lawyer up and the implications seems to be that he and the others just escape Arkham not that they don't get lifetime sentences he has to prove Cameron was really basing the park on him. Joker for all the people he's killed is not Adolf Hitler. Joker clearly modeled himself after the playing card jokers. Cameron might be blithe about it but he's not wrong that the association between jokers and card games and gambling predates the Joker by decades or centuries. The Royal Flush Gang would have no standing if a casino (or any other private endeavor) decided to name its product Royal Flush. With cartoons it can often be difficult to tell how similar two things are supposed to look in-universe but the dealers are clearly not generic jokers and are cashing in on the notoriety of The Joker so he probably ''does'' have a leg to stand on.
*** It's clear that Kaiser's casino is modeled on ''The'' Joker rather than the generic concept. The female staff are dressed like Harley Quinn, there's a prominent display of "The Original Jokermobile", and the male staff costumes and makeup are close enough for the real Joker to [[LostInACrowd blend in]] (a supervisor mistakes the Joker for one of the dealers; Bruce takes time to confirm that he's found the real Joker by getting close and [[StealthInsult jerking his chain]]). If he were rational enough to settle the matter legally, the Joker would have a pretty strong case (unless the DCAU has something like the real-world "Son of Sam" laws that would bar him from profiting from his own criminal notoriety).
*** Unless Joker has his name trademarked, I doubt he has any legal standing. Remember, "Joker" is not his real identity, it just happens to be the only identity anyone is aware of, including himself, unless you count Dr Arkham calling him Jack Napier in ''Dreams In Darkness''. It'd be different if Cameron had made, say, a casino based on Maxie Zeus, because Maxie Zeus is his real name and persona. Trademark laws revolving around not using other peoples name and likeness without permission only applies to their REAL name and likeness, not criminal identities. It would be like the Zodiac Killer demanding royalties because a criminal named Zodiac was in one of the Dirty Harry movies.
*** Fictional personas can certainly be protected -- if (for example) somebody else went on TV doing an unmistakable copy of the "Carnac the Magnificent" routine, they'd get a nastygram from ''Series/TheTonightShow'''s lawyers. The complication, as noted above, is that some real-world laws bar criminals from profiting from their own infamy, and that might be true of the DCAU under the LikeRealityUnlessNoted principle.
*** Plus, the Joker's persona is explicitly modelled on the playing card character (and Harley Quinn's is based on the concept of the harlequin, another public domain concept). Kaiser can (and at one point does) argue that he's simply basing his casino off the same thing that the Joker is, and can't help it if both he and a known criminal have taken inspiration from the same source. Granted, hardly anyone who actually sees the casino falls for that, but legally it might be enough to get away with.
** Son Of Sam laws are real life laws set up to prevent criminals from profiting off of the publicity of their crimes. While a lawsuit isn't the same thing as say, selling the rights for a movie, it could be argued that suing Kaiser is an attempt by the Joker to profit off of his own legacy, and given the heinous nature of some of his crimes, a jury may love the excuse to not sympathize with his case.
** Given that Kaiser is clearly based to a degree on Trump, and Trump himself isn't above RefugeInAudacity, this may be part of the point. Controversy gets people interested.

** Maybe Joker, being Batman's antithesis, is actually a bored rich guy who enjoys the game and doesn't want Batman to go away. Then he'd have nothing to do. Remember the Laughing Fish episode? Him and Harley are dismissive and condescending to "wage slaves" and want to fund their hedonistic lifestyle. Joker probably purposely misses Batman because it's more fun to scare him with gunfire.

* This guy could use his tech to take over the minds of world leaders. Why use his tech for petty crimes? Why not think big? The legion of Doom could use a guy like him. He could move to another town/country that doesn't have super heroes and become their king.

** It's arguably not possible for him to think that large. He's mentally ill and suffers from obsessive thoughts to an extreme that would make it hard to focus on a scheme that would require that much planning. It's a miracle his Worry Men scheme got as far as it did without him turning focus back to Batman or Alice, and even that one only got foiled because he decided it needed to be more flamboyant.

* This bugged me as a kid. Why does Salvatore look like he is in his 70s and 80s? The guy even has liver spots and an oxygen tank. Bruce was in his 20s in the flashbacks of MOTP. Salvatore shouldn't be old in the present time. He looked like he's around late 30s to mid 40s in the flashbacks.
** He's portrayed as being a heavy smoker, probably has emphysema because of it. Liver spots can start showing up as early as your late forties, and chronic illness bring them on quote quickly. Smoking, and a chronic illness derived from it, can easily age someone quickly. Remember kids, don't smoke.

** I've seen a guy who was 23 who looked like he was in his 40's. At the time I was five years older and looked much younger because I take care of myself. The guy was a heavy smoker, drinker, and admitted meth and coke abuser. How he afforded to be chubby as well was he was a rich kid that lived at the place I worked as a concierge. He looked horrible for his age. I imagine Salvatore wasn't exactly living a healthy life. You'd be amazed how fast that can age a person. Also he was old in the flashbacks. Like in his early 50's to me. Also back then people aged horribly compared to now. Watch videos of people in their mid thirties in the 60's and 70's. They look way older than people do these days.

* This one is kinda similar to the Riddler headscratcher above. Clock King was an arrogant man before he turned to super villainy. Are we supposed to hate Mayor Hill for telling a guy to lighten up and take a break? What's the moral lesson of the episode? It's okay to be a time obsessed workaholic? Having fun and taking time off will get you fired? Also, it was Clock King's fault for not keeping his papers in a suitcase.
** As in real life, people are not Black and White, they have shades of grey. The greatness of the show was to show multi-dimensional characters and not the typical bad guys/good guys, something pioneering in kid’s show. The fact that we can discuss this that you ask is precisely what made the show cool to begin with.
** I don't think we're supposed to view Clock King as sympathetic at all, or at least not ''very'' sympathetic; he is, after all, an uptight ControlFreak taking out his frustrations and failures on a man who did nothing more than give him what was clearly supposed to just be well-meaning and well-intentioned advice. The point is not that Mayor Hill was wrong to give him that advice, but that even good intentions can sometimes have consequences that were unforeseen and not necessarily good.
** There seems to be a bit of a tendency to use "sympathetic" or "sympathise" on this page for several of Batman's villains (it's come up for Clayface and the Riddler as well) when "understandable" or "empathise" might be better choices of words. We're meant to get a sense of where these people are coming from, and an understanding that they're not just evildoers who like doing evil for the sake of evil because they're evil, that there are compelling motivations and reasons behind why they feel compelled to do what they do. But it's important to also understand that this understanding doesn't mean that we're supposed to like, support or admire them. We're supposed to ''understand'' that Clock King's actions are because he's been driven to extremes by his life falling apart for reasons not entirely within his control -- but that doesn't mean we're supposed to ''sympathise'' with him, because at the end of the day he's still targeting an innocent man for social ruin and death purely out of anger and spite. We're supposed to understand that the Riddler feels screwed over by his boss, and validly so, but that doesn't make it okay to kidnap the man and put him in a death trap. We're supposed to get that Matt Hagen is trapped in a nightmarish existence that we wouldn't wish on our worst enemy, but he's still committed a lot of serious criminal offences that he needs to answer for and doesn't get to just walk away scot-free from them. And so on.

* Why doesn't a single Bat-family member find it weird that Bruce suddenly marries a woman he met like yesterday? He is even ready to quit being Batman - his lifework. Such reckless abandon isn't like him and there are several villains who can manipulate people's minds. And yet no one thinks that 'Hey, what if he is under Mad Hatter's control or that girl bought her lipstick from Poison Ivy or some other mad scientist out there is messing with him?'
** Because those are all things they want to happen. They want Bruce to find happiness and have a family and stop risking his life on a daily basis so when it looks like it's going to happen they roll with it.

** It would depend on the nature of her poison immunity. Early Ivy was entirely science based and later Ivy was a plant clone she'd left behind to play with Harley. So if her poison immunity is just a quirk of her immune system then no, if she did it to herself like she did with Harley then yes.

* Yes, he has to live with a terrible, severe, frightening mental illness. One can't help but feel sympathy for him because of that. But why on Earth are we supposed to want him to succeed in covering up such an illness in order to win a re-election? It's pretty obvious that even before becoming Two-Face, he was already in a bad way with his temper that could have easily compromised his competency as D.A., not to mention the danger of him snapping and physically hurting people. And this is supposed to be Gotham's one honest politician.
** ''Are'' we supposed to want him to do that, though? Certainly, we're encouraged to feel sympathy for him ''personally'', and the other ''characters'' want him to win re-election because he's a pretty good DA and by-and-large they're unaware of the extent of his psychological issues. But it's clearly suggested (IIRC by Harvey's doctor no less) that the stress of his job and his campaign isn't helping matters any, and his desire to cover it up instead of actually admitting and dealing with it ends up leading directly to his downfall. At the very least, the episode makes it pretty clear that for all Harvey's admirable qualities, he's not handling things exactly as well as he could have. Besides which, he's still more or less a decent man, but no one ever said we were supposed to consider him an angel who was perfecter-than-perfect.

[[folder: Super villains and their "secret" hideouts]]
* The super villains of Gotham hide out in the most obvious places. Joker hangs out in old toy factories, candy stores, and abandoned amusement parks. Ivy's lab is in a greenhouse. Two-Face lives in a HALF destroyed building. Penguin hangs out in bird-related factories. It never occurred to Commissioner Gordon and his cops to check those places?
** The villains are very rarely captured in their hideout. They are usually apprehended when carrying out their crimes; maybe the police- heck, maybe even ''Batman''-, simply don't ''know'' that this is where the bad guys keep hiding out. Besides, if one thing this series makes perfectly clear, there are a LOT of abandoned amusement parks in Gotham.
** Also, it's hard and impractical for police and Batman to just enter abandoned buildings in seedy parts of town just on a hunch a villain is there. Also given that Batman and the police primarily use patrol to catch criminals (since that's a great way for you establish a case), they're going to run into each other eventually when they're in the act of committing a crime. There are mundane crimes the Police/Bats are dealing with too. It's a warzone out there as Gordon puts it.

** RuleOfSymbolism. The hideouts aren't meant to be a strictly 100% realistic depiction of life within a criminal organisation, but are meant to thematically reflect the central theme or gimmick of the villain in question. The Joker's whole deal is being a clown, so his hideouts reflect things that tie into clowns (circuses, amusement parks, playing cards, toys and games, etc.). Two-Face's hideouts reflect his central psychosis and obsession with dualities, opposites and order-vs-chaos. Poison Ivy controls and works with plants, so her hideouts have access to biological labs and plants. The Penguin likes birds, so he goes to places with lots of birds around. And so forth.

* Joker blew up buildings, broke into a government facility, abducted 5 powerful teens, and placed bombs in Las Vegas with the help of the same teens. Why aren't the feds going after him? I assume he always return to Arkham Asylum after getting his butt kicked by Batman. Crazy or not, he committed some terrorist acts outside Gotham. Also, I find it odd in "Joker's Millions" that he was walking around freely. Sure he bribed people to have his record wiped clean, but that shouldn't stop fbi from going after him. This episode takes place after the "World's finest" where he DESTROYED HALF OF METROPOLIS.
** Honestly for you to be legally crazy you have to not be able to tell right from wrong. Joker and Harley very clearly recognize what they are doing is wrong. Mad Hatter would be a better candidate for not guilty by reason of insanity since it's quite clear in two of his episodes that he genuinely doesn't seem to think he's doing something wrong. Look how frustrated he was with Batman for rejecting his gift of a perfect life. He genuinely believed he was doing Batman a solid. As for the rest law enforcement is mostly useless in the ''DCAU''. It's not just the FBI failing to pursue Joker. They don't seem to be able to find any of the villains hide outs and most of them don't really hide so much as set up camp. You could find Joker in twenty minutes if you actually cared to.
*** We'll the pair are ''elusive'' so the [=FBI=] are interested in them but they haven't much of, if any, clue as to where to locate those two.

* In the Scarecrow episode of the TNBA era, people are getting injected with a toxin that removes their fear, which results in them doing all kind of reckless to the point of suicidal things such as jumping off the top of a tall building. How does that make any sense? Just because one has no fear it doesn't mean they're brainless. They should still be intelligent enough to realize that jumping off the top of a tall building would kill them.
** I'm not a psychologist, and neither are the writers probably, but having absolutely no sense of fear or avoidance ''might'' totally remove one's survival instinct. They might've just through that swinging around up high or falling a long way might be fun, and had no reason not to do it.
** As a kid I actually would do these things and get hurt. I had no concept of fear at the time. I'd climb trees and the house and jump off them. Granted I was doing this from 2 (yes, 2, hilarity ensued seeing my dad chase a diaper wearing toddler swinging from the trees) to like 6. Food for thought, how many times have you done crazy things on video games because you know you won't suffer any real world consequences? Look at teenagers who think they're invincible, they do all kinds of dangerous and stupid things. Car surfing, anyone?

** This is a case of YMMV because to some he looks like a legit bad ass grandpa.
*** I suppose so. But it's kind of hard to imagine the artists giving that cowlick, protruding chin and square glasses to a character they intended to look serious and badass.
*** It's worth remembering that while the series wobbles a bit and like most shows their tech is ahead of where it should be that it was clearly modeled to be some time in the 30's or 40's. Robots and super computers aside the World's Fair that Bruce attends in Mask of the Phantasm is clearly the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, the use of Tommy Guns instead of anything modern, the style of dress all hint towards it aiming for an older look than many fans believe.
*** AnachronismStew is the word. If you see carefully this happens all the time; episode "Eternal Youth" shows a black and white flat screen television with '''remote control''' in Bruce Wayne's gym for example, and ''Robin's Reckoning'' shows a '''digital phone''' with redial key and those didn't existed in the 60s. Its just a thing of the show.

** Both Joker and Harley seem to have various levels of 4th wall breakers. Joker whistles his own theme song for example and speaks directly to the audience at times. She might not be Deadpool but that wall wobbles for her consistently.

** RuleOfFunny. Also, the ability to break the fourth wall also revolves around supernormal (albeit often subconscious) awareness of one's own dimension and others, so like how Deadpool can know all about other character's storylines, Harley can know what is happening in the episode without being there.

** She is also crazy and she lays out her logic pretty clearly. There comes a point in a woman's life when she wants more. Honestly the truly insane part of her plan (Despite The Dark Knight Returns proving she wasn't wrong) is the idea that Joker would settle down for a nice life of hugs, snuggles and not murdering people if Batman was gone.

** One of the big points of Harley's character is that, while she can follow Joker's thought process to some degree, she ultimately misses the point. This episode is about her own delusion, that she and Joker could ever be an actual happy stable couple, override her sense.

* Why is it that nearly all of Batman's foes are sent to Arkham? It's an insane asylum, not a prison! Why would they put non-insane villains like Freeze there? I've seen people use the argument that only Arkham has the equipment to keep Freeze alive, or keep the superhuman Killer Croc locked up, to which I say: What. The. Fuck. Why would a psychiatric institution, of all places, be the one place with such equipment!?
** It's worth noting that everybody doesn't get sent to Arkham. Penguin usually ends up in Blackgate, Bane is implied to be dead (along with Candy) until the soft reboot to connect with Superman and as for why Arkham has better equipment the obvious answer is that after genuine super villains start showing up in Gotham they simply decided on one place to house them and spent their budget on that place. After all, what are you going to do with Freeze, Croc, or Clayface if you ever catch them? The better question by the end of the series is why they never open a new facility for the quote unquote regular crazies.

** It's possible, given how lazy, inept, and downright corrupt the justice system is in Gotham and the DCAU at large, that eventually the court realized it's easier to go along with the notion that ''any'' criminal with a preference for a flamboyant costume and catchy alias that commits obsessive or publicly disruptive offenses is mentally unfit to take the stand simply because it gets them shipped away more easily than the process of getting a trial. A judge can secure a 100% chance of sweeping someone under the rug that way as opposed to a 50% of actually being able to convict them.

* What's up with Bruce deciding to marry Susan right after meeting her? He had literally been with her for only a night and hadn't even been romantically involved with her yet. And none of the Batfam points out how rash his decision was!?
** Everybody in the Bat Family is aware that Bruce is insane. He's just functional. They see him doing the only thing many of them (especially Alfred) want to see from him, a happy Bruce, and they don't question it. They don't dare.
** That Bruce is insane is very debatable (not least because being insane yet functional is a bit of a contradiction; someone who is literally insane by definition is not functional, or at very least has significantly impaired or defective functionality). The man definitely has issues up the wazoo, but that's not necessarily the same as actually being insane.
** To address the OP's question, remember that Susan is one of Poison Ivy's creations. She initially used pheromones to attract his attention; while she downplays exactly how much the pheromones were responsible for causing him to fall for her, she's not exactly trustworthy. In any case, we can perhaps assume that the speed of Bruce's ardour might have been chemically assisted, so to speak. As for the other Batfam members, remember that Dick Grayson is pretty suspicious, Alfred just wants Bruce to give up the whole "Batman" thing so isn't going to object too much, and Tim and Barbara know that Bruce is pretty intense about almost anything he puts his mind to.

* In the ''DCAU'', if an Arkham patient [[MaskOfSanity pretends to be normal]] for weeks, would the doctor let him/her out? Why doesn't Joker pretend to be sane? Clearly he's aware he is crazy.

** Joker is sane, or at least generally rational. In Joker's Millions, he proved as much, and just pleads otherwise because he likes Arkham but fears the death penalty. He still needed high-salary lawyer Not-Johnny-Cochran to get him out though, because Arkham may be stupid, but not stupid enough to just let Joker out because he acts normal.
*** Tying into this and the above (about the staff at Arkham not giving two cents), while one can't fake being "sane", one can be high-functioning enough to appear "well" and, from what we've seen out of the Joker, he's good at manipulating people, using that aspect to his advantage, and he's done that enough times that people probably wised up to it (as suggested in later canon). In the case of the to the other inmates, they have probably only been sentenced there for some time and could get a reduced sentence/be let out for "good behavior" (which is how [=RL=] prisons and psychatric wards/homes tend to work).

* It would increase Batman's status as a supernatural being. Normal crooks would be too scared to commit a crime in Gotham after seeing him lift buildings and doing other amazing feats.

** The villains would just adjust their tactics for a higher level threat and Bruce couldn't survive that.

Was it ever explained what caused Bats to become significantly more dour, humorless and distrusting by the time of ''The New Batman Adventures''? It wasn't due to his fallout with Dick, since he was behaving the same way in the flashback before the argument. The latter's quitting probably helped, but it clearly wasn't the cause. Did Timm ever give an answer for this or is it meant to be left up to the viewer's imagination?

** I was mulling this over and thought that, since Leslie Thompkins was absent from the retool, she may have died, and that made Bruce mmore grummpy, distant, etc. However, in return of the Joker, Barbara says that Thompkins helped treat Tim after his brainwashing at the hands of the Joker, so she was still alive at that point.

* The woman DA says to Harley that The Joker snitched her location to the police in exchange for a reduction on his sentence... wait, what? First the Joke doesn't get sentences as he is considered criminally insane thus he's sent to Arkham, second if he ever get a sentence most likely it will be life if he's lucky.
** Neither Arkham nor life without parole are necessarily automatic sentences. Could be the Joker was trying for either a cushier prison and / or a sentence just under life; even if he was given twenty-five years to life, he'd still be eligible for parole after the first twenty-five years. Aternatively, he might have been facing a death sentence at one point.

** Also Freeze can't leave his cell without his suit or he dies, maybe the suit was taken elsewhere for security reasons and/or no villain gave it to him, or he just didn't care as he technically is not crazy, he's there because he needs specialised medical care.
* Why do none of the regular inmates attempt to escape? I get why the supervillians are going to wait for the end of the JokerJury trial against Batman, as they hate him and would want to see him dead before escaping (now that they can join their forces and abilities) otherwise he would capture them again anyway, but the rest? Not even one thought; forget it, I want to go now.
** What makes you think Mister J will allow you to leave his courtroom? Would you want to tell the clown prince of crime you are not having fun? My guess is that Joker would have put smiles on their faces (Joker gas). Another guess is that those normal inmates have a grudge against Batman, and want to see him fry in the chair before escaping.

*** Well that does makes sense as Nygma is one of the smarter villains and he's in Arkham due to his OCD and not for more crippling disorders like the others. Although the meta reason probably is that they couldn't find his voice actor on time as he has no dialogues in that episode.

** 1) Because that kind of story would take far too long to adapt (the recovery would take months and unlike in the comics Bruce didn't have a group of people that could take over while he healed) 2) the show never really cared about Bane. Outside the comics Bane never really caught on as a Batman villain so while they theoretically could have dedicated several episodes into a similar story the viewers didn't want to see it and would rather see the other villains show up instead.

** For what it's worth, ''WesternAnimation/TheBatman'' adapted the Bat-breaking about as closely as anyone can hope for on a Y7 cartoon (the actual spine-snapping is left out, but it's still a CurbstompBattle where Bane leaves Bruce in a body cast for weeks). Aside from that, I think Creator/BruceTimm flat-out admitted neither he nor anyone else on the BTAS crew cared enough about Bane to give him his due (apparently the higher-ups made them use Bane as a tie-in with the comics/action figure lines).

[[folder:Why leave Riddler alive in Judgement Day?]]
* The Judge tries to kill Penguin, Croc, and Two-Face, but leaves Riddler alive.
** He just might not have gotten around to the Riddler or any of the other villains before the events of the episode interrupted his list of villains to kill. IIRC We don't see him try to kill Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, the Clock King or any number of other villains either.
*** Given the list of villains he's shown going after and that list of who he didn't it's plausible that he does view them as the victims in their own way. Aside from Ivy who has to have racked up a kill or two off screen Clock King almost definitely hasn't and Scarecrow may have avoided it in the same plot armor way that Batman has never hit a pedestrian during his high speed chases or even caused one to be hit by the criminals he's in hot pursuit of nor have any of the Mafia guys had bad tickers and had heart attacks.
*** Well, maybe, I guess (although that's kind of getting into WMG-slash-WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief territory a bit), but those were really just random examples used to make the simple point that there's a lot of costumed villains in Gotham City for the Judge to work through and he might just have not gotten around to the Riddler by the time the plot caught up to him. We might as well ask why he hadn't gotten around to any of the ones we didn't see him go after.
*** But the Judge DID get around to the Riddler, but chose to drop a giant book on him and make corny puns. Batman and the police weren't there at the time to stop him. Also, the question wasn't "why he didn't go after the other villains?". The OP asked "why didn't the judge kill Riddler right there on the spot?"

[[folder:Neighbors are okay with Ivy living in their neighborhood?]]

** Chances are, they weren't entirely comfortable. But they might have simply decided to conceal their discomfort and hostility on the (not entirely unreasonable) grounds that getting all up in the face of the woman who spent time in an asylum for the criminally insane and who used to attack people with mutated plants under her direct control would run a greater-than-zero risk of backfiring horribly on them. True, she might not be a perfect neighbour with an ideal history, but every moment she's walking around minding her own business and doing her own thing is a moment she's ''not'' planning and exacting some kind of horrible plant-themed atrocity on you personally for messing with her. So why not just let bygones be bygones instead of risking ending up on an (ex-)super-villain's shit-list?
** Also, how recognizable is she? Yes, she's more or less famous and very attractive but, does that mean automatically everyone is going to know that a redhead in housewife clothes is the supervillian eco-terrorist Poison Ivy?

* Why did Baby Doll have such a hard time finding work? I understand that she couldn't find jobs that fit her "real actress" goals, but after a certain point, wasn't she just looking for pay-the-bills type acting gigs? You would think casting agents would be happy to find someone who can convincingly play a child without having to worry about all those inconvenient child labour laws in Hollywood.
** Baby hates being seen as a child. Imagine being treated as an kid your whole life due to your condition, and not being taken seriously. To her, her child-like appearance is a curse. She wants to be seen and treated as an adult, so it's probably hard to find a job where people won't poke fun of her.
*** If one really thinks about, Mary's (Baby-Doll) situation could be a case of SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome and a deconstruction of the "OlderThanTheyLook" trope, as, knowing what I know about some real life examples, if one looks like a child, it'll be hard to take them seriously because the age and voice clash with their looks (there is a ''Website/NotAlwaysRight'' story about this sort of thing) and, going along with that, her failed career might have come from the fact that people ''only'' saw (and knew) her as "Baby Doll", much like how, for example, when Creator/ShirleyTemple grew up and went to pursue more adult roles, people refused to see her as anything other than the roles she played as a kid, on top of her probably being blacklisted from some companies after her show was cancelled, among other things(cancellations, being difficult to work with, and getting negative reviews don't look good on resumes).

* How come Creeper isn't evil and murderous as the Joker? Sure the chemical pool made him crazy and insane, but he isn't a full blown villain, just an annoyance to Batman (and Harley).

** In the episode, his specific transformation into the Creeper was also due to the exploding cigar that Joker gave him. Real question is how Ryder could be "cured" but the Joker can't.

* In "Beware the Gray Ghost" it's established that Simon Trent is the only one who owns copies of the episodes of the Gray Ghost TV show, because the studio burned down 20 years ago. This leads Batman, after finding Trent's fingerprints on the bombs, to initially suspect him because he's the only one who could have followed the episode's plot in doing the bombings. But it turns out to be the toy collector instead- how did ''he'' know how the episode went? He looks too young to have watched the show on TV as a kid the way Bruce did, and he can't have bought the film from Trent because then Trent wouldn't have had it to give to Batman.
** He could be OlderThanHeLooks. Besides which, Bruce Wayne doesn't seem to be ''that'' much older than him; a handful of years difference either way at most. He could easily have watched the show as a kid on TV and remembered it.

* I can understand Jervis falling for his coworker Alice since she was the only person who was polite to him, but why would he think of her as Alice from the Lewis Carroll book? In the book, Alice was a little girl, and they were platonic friends. I know the comics hinted at him being a pedophile, but wasn't this episode made years before those dark stories?

** Did he, though? I mean, later on when he's dressing her up and mind-controlling her that's clearly because he's taken the full leap into Crazytown, but initially, the whole Mad Hatter thing seemed to be just a combination of him having fun and him trying to find a way for him to come out of his shell around her.

** Leaving aside suggestions of sublimated pedophilia (which, let's be bluntly honest, are an extreme Wild Mass Guess at best regarding this version of the character, who has never been suggested to possess inappropriate feelings or urges towards underage children for perhaps obvious reasons), the most likely explanation is that Tetch views Alice as, well, Alice simply because he views ''everything'' around him through the lens of ''Alice in Wonderland''. As one example, notice how after mind-controlling her he casts his boss -- depicted throughout the episode as a loud, overbearing and bullying female authority figure -- as the Red Queen, a loud, overbearing and bullying female authority figure in the book. He's a lonely, anti-social man fixated on his favourite book and increasingly detached and dissociated from the people and world around him. So naturally, the sweet ingenue he's got a crush on is cast as Alice, the most important person in the book; because she's also the most important person in Tetch's life. She's not an exact match for the actual character because of course she isn't, she's an actual person not a mere storybook character. But that doesn't matter to Tetch because, as the events of the episode clearly demonstrate, he's becoming increasingly delusional, and the more delusional he gets the more he tries to force everything in his life to fit the book.

** I can only assume that the person or persons responsible for arranging them on the DVD simply thought it worked out better that way, or that it was the order that the producers would have preferred the episodes to have aired in. In any case, the episodes are mostly stand-alone so they can be arranged in any particular order without too much damage done to the overall storyline. If [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Batman:_The_Animated_Series_episodes this Wikipedia article]] is to be believed, the episodes were aired way out of order from the production timeline anyway, and it's possible that airing them in production order might have, say, resulted in the different parts of a two-parter being interrupted by several other episodes if they weren't necessarily made strictly in order. Furthermore, looking at that article suggests there's a few points where several episodes featuring the same villain were aired in short succession (there appears to be have been a point in January-February 1993 where a whole bunch of episodes aired featuring the Penguin, for example), so they might have just wanted to mix it up a bit so all the episodes with the same villain weren't all dumped on the same disc or that binge watchers didn't get bored with seeing the same villain over and over again.

** Consider also what happened when he put Batman into the machine; Batman's own mind fought against the illusion of being given everything he ever wanted, ultimately rejected it, leading to the machine crashing and Batman forcing his way out of it. Perhaps the Mad Hatter deep down knew this was likely to happen and so didn't want to face the disappointment himself.
** Because he doesn't want to. He wants what he wants in reality, not just a computer simulation of what he wants generated by his mind. He dumps Batman in there just to get him out of the way, because Batman tends to prevent Mad Hatter from taking what he wants in reality. This is the essential irony/hypocrisy of Jervis Tetch; he could have a version of everything he's ever wanted if he were willing to use his technology on himself, but instead he's willing to force others to live in fantasy dreamworlds that he devises for them if it will get him what he wants in the real world.

* Why is his powers a curse to him? Yeah, it stinks to look like a deformed monster, but at least he can live forever. Humans get sick, grow old, and die. He can get anything he wants by pretending to be someone else. He had a girlfriend who loved and cared about him in one episode, so it's not impossible for him to find a soulmate, or new friends.
** Well, "it stinks to look like a deformed monster" for one. For two, presumably Matt Hagen does not find being a slimy lump of living clay a particularly pleasant way to go throughout life. For three, spending ''eternity'' being a slimy lump of living clay presumably multiplies the unpleasantness of point two by infinity. For four, WhoWantsToLiveForever? For five, it's basically completely upended the life of wealth and fame and constant adulation that Hagen craved and was pretty used to. For six, it chafes his ego; yes, he can pretend to be anyone and live his life that way, but that means that the real Matt Hagen is being ignored and unseen -- the friends and lovers aren't really Matt Hagen's, they're those of the person Matt Hagen is pretending to be. For seven, since Matt Hagen is basically a sentient lump of clay now, he is presumably unable to do a lot of the fun stuff -- sex, drinking, drugs, etc -- that people generally like to do with girlfriends and friends and such. For eight, maintaining a single form appears to take a lot of effort and concentration that is hard for Matt to maintain for indefinite periods of time. For nine, if Matt Hagen loses concentration and suddenly turns into a massive lump of clay in front of people, they will likely find it rather gross and may not want to spend time for him. For ten... guy's gone completely loco.

*** Yet in "Growing Pains", Clayface creates the "Annie" personality to go and collect information but Annie is able to stay out and about so long that "she" eventually forgets that she is part of Clayface.

* Well, he's given up ''all the info he has'' on Charlie, for a start. Without that info, how's the Joker supposed to keep tabs on Charlie? At very least, he's going to have to start over from scratch. For another, he now knows that Batman is aware of his connection to Charlie and will likely make Charlie's whereabouts a place to at least keep tabs on in case he decides to show up again. Ultimately though, this is a case of a bully turning into a coward when his victim stands up to him. The Joker messes with Charlie because he's pretty confident Charlie won't fight back, but when Charlie demonstrates that he's through being pushed around, messing with him becomes more of a risk.

* In the [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/BatmanTheAnimatedSeriesE22JokersFavor trivia page for the Joker's Favor episode]] it says the whole reason Harley Quinn was because they thought it would look to silly for the Joker to jump out the cake, and created her for this purpose, only to have to be the Joker who comes out of the cake after all. So why was it changed? I'm guessing maybe someone in charge though that was too suggestive for a kids show (as it's obviously based on the whole [[JumpingOutOfACake "stripper jumps out of a cake"]] thing from real life.)

* So, why exactly ''does'' she attack the guard even though he clearly says she's not in trouble and he's just came to remove the tag? [[PoorCommunicationKills If she just did, none of the ensuing misery would have happened]]

** He might have stolen a robot somewhere, and just given it a bit of relatively simple reprogramming and a new casing.

[[folder: Bat family murdering plant creatures]]
* How come their ThouShaltNotKill rule doesn't apply to the plant creatures Ivy creates? They might not be human, but they are still shown to be sentient autonomous creatures who just start off working for their creator. And Batman has tangled with many non-human peoples before, and even considers a rRobot to have a soul, so why are they giving a pass for the plant creatures, especially with how gruesomely the Batfamily kills them.
** ThouShaltNotKill almost never applies to monstrous non-humans in comics, with Batman and Superman both stating explicitly in comics that their codes to not kill only apply to humans. Look up WhatMeasureIsANonHuman.

** Describing Ivy's plant creatures as "sentient and autonomous" seems to be at least a bit of a stretch. At very least, what sentience or autonomy they ''do'' have for the most part appears to be incredibly uncomplicated, being more or less limited to the kind that would enable them to complete basic tasks like STOMP HERE or PICK UP THING or EAT POINTY-EARED THING on Ivy's orders. There are maybe one or two examples in the entire series which demonstrate any kind of complexity beyond this, and these usually turn out to be mere puppets programmed and controlled by Ivy with no independent thought or will of their own, and which tend to devolve incredibly quickly into STOMP HERE AND EAT POINTY-EARED THING mode as soon as they've served Ivy's purposes. Overall, they're really more "extensions of Ivy's intelligence and will" rather than sentient beings in their own right, and don't seem to have any kind of meaningful intelligence, autonomy or "soul" that would bring them anywhere close to being on the level of almost all complex animal life, let alone human sentience.
** And considering that if left unchecked they'd mostly obey Ivy's orders and stomp around killing as many non-plants as possible if Batman didn't stop them with terminal force, frankly he doesn't really have much choice for the most part. "Bigoted hypocrite" it might make him if we want to get all DracoInLeatherPants about it, but Batman letting every human and animal life form in Gotham City die horribly at the hands of mindless plant-monsters acting unthinkingly under the orders of a murderous sociopathic lunatic because he was too busy wringing his hands over the political correctness of killing glorified weeds that can move about and kill people would arguably be the far more morally reprehensible course of action.

* Why does Batman use hang gliders in the show instead of gliding using his cape like he does in Batman Returns and other media? The latter would certainly do more to strike fear into the hearts of criminals, which Bat fans already know is the whole purpose behind the bat persona and imagery. Using hang gliders, something that pretty much anyone can save up and buy, kind of defeats the purpose, don't you think?
** He typically uses a hang-glider when he needs to glide stealthily over a long distance, not when he's trying to pull a "Surprise! Batman!" move. Presumably his cape by itself can't cover such distances in a practical way. Alternatively, perhaps his cape simply... can't actually do that in this continuity. It's not like it's a plausible move.

* As a RedHerring that the Judge was not, in fact, Two-Face, the Judge appears after Penguin rips off Two-Face and Killer Croc. After sending them out, Penguin puts the money in the safe, and the Judge appears. That means that Two-Face had time to evade Killer Croc, dress up as the Judge, and tie up and gag both of Penguin's BodyguardBabes in a span of about five seconds.

*** Perhaps also worth noting that, according to IMDb at least, Burnett simply has less official writing credits on the show than Dini (11 to 26). Burnett's contributions appear to have been more of the 'uncredited' or behind-the-scenes nature and, fairly or otherwise, people tend to notice the person who's actually credited with writing the episodes more.

** The original post made a point about the episode cannot being a dream because ''dreams rarely have a coherent structure and oftentimes jump from event to event, from location to location, with little transition in-between''. I think that Bruce’s dream really didn’t have a coherent structure, because it is impossible to construct a ''dream life'', your own Wonderland: Batman, like everyone else, has conflicting desires, and Bruce Wayne’s mind is playing a XanatosSpeedChess game with itself trying to accept his new ''reality'' because BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Bruce Wayne gets his TragicDream and his parents are alive, AndThenWhat That means that Alfred is not a SubstituteParent but a [[BritishStuffiness reserved employee]]. Selina Kyle is not a criminal but her fiancé! AndThenWhat she is the [[BettyAndVeronicaSwitch reliable Betty and not the exciting Veronica]]. If Bruce never had the need to become Batman, AndThenWhat That means Bruce Wayne’s beloved Gotham City would be an even worse WretchedHive. DeusExMachina: WesternAnimation/TheBatman is patrolling the city again! and Bruce Wayne could be happy living his IdleRich life after seeking therapy with Leslie Thompkins… everything is forced to Bruce, nothing makes sense, everything advances the plot to a direction… and if you want to be really picky, the ''dream'' takes more than one day, but Bruce only ''lives'' less than 26 minutes from event to event, from location to location, with little transition in-between the episode show us. (it's because he is a cartoon, of course)

* In the episode where the kids were telling stories about Batman, um, why were three kids (four counting the Joel Shumacher kid) wondering the streets of Gotham at night. They have parents because the mention them, but the parents sort of suck in that case. Gotham is the worst place to be alone, DURING THE DAY. At night, it's suicide. And there's an arsonist on the loose.

** Just for the record, TheBatmanAventures issue # 16, ''"The Killing book"'', deals with ComicBook/TheJoker finding some cherubic children at midnight who recognize him as ''"that guy the Batman is always beating"'', prompting The Joker becoming a MoralGuardian who kidnaps the comic writer and artist that is corrupting those childrens with lies. He also steal the children's candy.

** I was mulling this over and thought that, since Leslie Thompkins was absent from the retool, she may have died, and that made Bruce mmore grummpy, distant, etc. However, in return of the Joker, Barbara says that Thompkins helped treat TIm after his brainwashing at the hands of the Joker, so she was still alive at that point.

** Leaving aside suggestions of sublimated pedophilia (which, let's be bluntly honest, are an extreme Wild Mass Guess at best regarding this version of the character, who has never been suggested to possess inappropriate feelings or urges towards underage children for perhaps obvious reasons), the most likely explanation is that Tetch views Alice as, well, Alice simply because he views ''everything'' around him through the lens of ''Alice in Wonderland''. As one example, notice how after mind-controlling her he casts his boss -- depicted throughout the episode as a loud, overbearing and bullying female authority figure -- as the Red Queen, a loud, overbearing and bullying female authority figure in the book. He's a lonely, anti-social man fixated on his favourite book and increasingly detached and dissociated from the people and world around him. So naturally, the sweet ingenue he's got a crush on is cast as Alice, the most important person in the book; because she's also the most important person in Tetch's life. She's not an exact match for the actual character because of course she isn't, but that doesn't matter to Tetch because, as the events of the episode clearly demonstrate, he's becoming increasingly delusional, and the more delusional he gets the more he tries to force everything in his life to fit the book.

** The simple answer to this is that if such potentially dangerous technology only ever stayed in the hands of calm, stable and sane persons who would never dream of using it for crime, chaos and mayhem, there wouldn't be a story to tell about them. If you want to tell the story of a freeze ray being used to commit crimes and cause mayhem that Batman has to stop, then the freeze ray has to either start in or eventually make its way into the hands of someone who is the kind of person who would use it to commit crimes and cause mayhem.

** This is fairly simple. Either you let Poison Ivy have a couple potted plants in her cell to keep her happy or he next time she breaks out she turns your front lawn into bunch of giant man-eating plants that devour your family. Either you let Two-Face have his coin or he either becomes completely unresponsive, in which case you can't treat him, or he violently assaults everyone he gets his hands on until he gets his coin back. These aren't just normal criminals, they're called super villains for a reason, it's best to indulge them at least a little in order to avoid personal grudges from forming against you, especially since everyone knows Arkham prisoners escape fairly regularily.

** The only explanation for that [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome Crowning Moment of]] CrazyAwesome is that ClockKing is a CosmicPlaything. As long as he has planned something, that something will work. Notice that Batman could not defeat him, it was Clock King throwing his sword into the ClockTower that destroyed the place.

** After rewatching the episode, Ra did openly said that Arkady use the Lazarus pit several times before his imprisonment as an explanation of why he's so old and how no one expected him to survive his sentence of 50 years hard labor.
**
Ra's: Nobody expected him to live out his sentence. Nobody, except for me.

Batman: The Lazarus Pit.

Ra's: Once, when he was very young. But he is beyond even the pit's restorative powers now.

Or, an exchange to that effect took place near the end of the episode.

* In his last appearance before "Lock-up" Joker stole an atomic bomb and tried to nuke Gotham, at one point saying "that bomb's going off if I go with it!" with his henchmen in earshot. Chances are he was in federal custody awaiting execution because [[RealityEnsues crazy or not, Joker stole a nuke.]] You can probably rationalize his next appearances in the show and "Mask of the Phantasm" as happening while he's on the run from the feds, with Joker's later appearances happening because the writers likely forgot this happened.

*** If one really thinks about, Mary's (Baby-Doll) situation could be a case of RealityEnsues and a deconstruction of the "OlderThanTheyLook" trope, as, knowing what I know about some real life examples, if one looks like a child, it'll be hard to take them seriously because the age and voice clash with their looks (there is a ''Website/NotAlwaysRight'' story about this sort of thing) and, going along with that, her failed career might have come from the fact that people ''only'' saw (and knew) her as "Baby Doll", much like how, for example, when Creator/ShirleyTemple grew up and went to pursue more adult roles, people refused to see her as anything other than the roles she played as a kid, on top of her probably being blacklisted from some companies after her show was cancelled, among other things(cancellations, being difficult to work with, and getting negative reviews don't look good on resumes).

** Ra's: Nobody expected him to live out his sentence. Nobody, except for me.

*** He may be an unlikable asshole who was a jackass to Matt, but that's no reason to assume he was doing the same to Stella without evidence. At no point does the episode imply that he's just using her. Had that been the case, the writers would have made it clear, given the show's lack of subtlety.

** There is possible Fridge Brilliance here, in one instance at least; after the trial scene, when the other villains are setting up their death trap we quite notably don't seem to see the Riddler among them. It could be that while the others were busy trying to fry Batman, the Riddler took the opportunity to slip away...

** This is fairly simple. Either you let Poison Ivy have a couple potted plants in her cell to keep her happy or he next time she breaks out she urns your front lawn into bunch of giant man-eating plants that devour your family. Either you let Two-Face have his coin or he either becomes completely unresponsive, in which case you can't treat him, or he violently assaults everyone he gets his hands on until he gets his coin back. These aren't just normal criminals, they're called super villains for a reason, it's best to indulge them at least a little in order to avoid personal grudges from forming against you, especially since everyone knows Arkham prisoners escape fairly regularily.

** Consider also Hagan's ego: his whole story gets started when he suffers an accident to his face. He's and Old School Hollywood actor: his stock and trade is on his LOOKS. Yeah, he can assume any form he wants, but how long before directors start telling him "No, we don't want you to look like Matt Hagan, we want you to do Humphrey Bogart." He wouldn't be making his name off of HIS face, only the faces of others.

*** Notice that Candice never appeared again after the Bane episode. That is fridge horror right there.

*** The answer to that is in the episode "The Terrible Trio" when he says; "they are worst than the Joker, at least he is crazy". There's a similar line in the Sewer King episode. On the other hand episodes like ""Birds of a Feather" (with the Penguin), "Harley's Holiday" (Harley), "Home and Garden" (Ivy) and "Second Chance" (Two-Face) show that he honestly want the crazy criminals to be cure. He seems to honesty think that the mentally ill criminals like the Joker or Two Face or Ivy can't be blamed for their actions and, if cured, should be allowed second chances. But on the other hand he is truly outrage for the sane criminals who harm innocent people just out of pure sadism, fun or profit. He probably act harsher with these criminals, which is the case of Candice and Bane (particularly Bane, an assassin who probably already killed who know how many and just for profit). Let's be honest; letting Thorn kill a mass murderer isn't exactly something bad.

** My understanding was that she meant for everyone there, including herself, to die. She wanted to die with the only "family" she'd ever known.