Headscratchers / Dark Nights: Death Metal

• The whole concept of the Dark Multiverse existing as a realm of nightmares made flesh should mean that there is no way they can ever lose. After all, every hero who defeats a villain, especially a hero like Batman, must fear that villain coming back more powerful than they can handle and defeating them. So where's the even worse version of The Batman Who Laughs who really does 'always win'?
• How does the Dark Multiverse have events like Crisis on infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis existing as different Earths? Those events were on the scale of the entire Multiverse, so are they just small multiverses inside the one universe?
  • The light Multiverse, sure. But remember that the Dark Multiverse is a separate entity from the Multiverse we are used to and as such follows different rules. And for all the inhabitants of these dark universes know, their world is the "prime" version, thus explaining the appearance of different versions of alternate-universe counterparts. In other words, everything's contingent on choice; even if it seems like one universe, the deviation created by the characters' choices creates at least two universes, one where they made the choice, and others where they did not.
    • Sorry but I don’t think this actually answers my question, so did the Crisis events in the Dark Multiverse just affect the Earths closest to the main one, because the concept just seems confusing when you bring the Crisis events into alternate events in the Dark Multiverse.
    • The idea only really works if you accept the idea of multiple multiverses, some of which are apparently infinite in scale (unless Crisis on Infinite Earths was a hyperbole). So there's an offshoot of the prime multiverse where each Crisis is lost, meaning most universes of that branch are destroyed. Yes, it's very confusing.
• How does the corpse of the Batman Who Laughs reanimated by Batman's Black Lantern Ring still have his personality? Wasn't his brain removed and used to create the Darkest Knight?
  • Doom Patrol's tie-in to Blackest Night had the team besieged by former, deceased members. Cliff, in particular, faced off against his own reanimated body, which notably had the top of his head removed to show that his brain (the only human part of Cliff in the Robotman body) was gone, yet the body still had a "personality" to taunt him.
    • This is because the Black Lantern Rings are more or less piloting the corpse, using it as a puppet to the ends of who or whatever controls them, rather than bringing them back.
• The main page says there is a cameo by savage dragon. Is that really him or is it Dino-cop from Mutiversity?
• Why is Robin King so overpowered? Both the mainstream Batman and his other versions across the multiverse at least have an excuse for being badass, since they spent years and years travelling around the world to learn various skills that would allow them to...well...become Batmen. But Robin King didn’t. He’s no older than 10 years old (which would make him even younger than Damian Wayne), yet he somehow managed to kill every single hero on his world. Where did he even acquire the necessary skills to pull off something like that? And yet, despite all logic saying that he shouldn’t be able to do half the things he does in the story, he somehow manages to do them anyway. Basically, where Batman had to sweat and work hard to earn his skills, Robin King already had them from the get-go and no explanation is ever given as to why.
  • It should be noted that this is the point, as the Dark Multiverse is meant to be a multiverse of worlds where logic is foreign and they simply exist as a realm where "bad ideas" manifest. However, this aspect is somewhat poorly advertised, and/or is just seen as an excuse to not bother trying to make sense.
  • Yes, and you can see what the authors were going for; whilst a lot of the other Dark Batmen are themed around other heroes or around specific parts of the real Bruce's personality, the Robin King is supposed to show just how terrifying Batman's 'crazy prepared' nature is all on its own, with nothing else to back it up. The idea that he has something in his utility belt to deal with any situation, no matter how outlandish, and in particular that he has specialised ways to kill/incapacitate every hero. That he can just pull out a knife forged by the Lord of Hell and it's acceptable because 'He's Batman'. This doesn't explain why all of the heroes stand around and let him and don't K.O him the second he appears, but again, it's playing on how bad and plot-defusing the Crazy-Prepared stuff can get if taken to the extreme. As noted, whether it being a satire of a bad idea saves it from still being a bad idea...
    • Perhaps they let him win because they underestimated him? Even with his repertoire of weaponry and his creepy costume, he is still outwardly non-threatening on account of being a 10-year-old boy. Both Barry and Jay didn't seem to take him seriously when he first showed up, so maybe his past opponents had a similar reaction.
• On a related note, why are some of the Dark Batmen... not smart? B-Rex in particular seems to be dumb as rocks. I know he's a 'joke character', but every single one of these people was supposed to be a twisted Bruce Wayne, and literally the only thing identifying that for most of them is the goddamned pointy ears.
  • None of them are particularly smart, especially since they all willingly follow the Batman Who Laughs, an Obviously Evil Bruce Wayne whose resemblance to the Joker should be an immediate turn-off for any other Batman (even an evil one) to trust him (after all, would you trust a man who looks and behaves like your freaking Arch-Enemy?!).
• The Darkest Knight advertises his Last 52 Multiverse as the absolute darkest realities but... many of them are no worse than anything in the Dark Multiverse or even the normal 52 for that matter. Hell, many of them are tamer than what their fellow Multiverses have to offer. The one where Arkham turns inmates into cybernetically-enhanced abominations is sunshine and lollipops compared to Earth -22 (Laughs' home Earth), Earth-3 (the one where good is literally an aberration), Earth-10 (where Nazis rule the world), Earth-15 (the dead Earth), the Injustice Earth, the DCeased Earth, etc.