Western Animation / Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham

"Your homecoming has set certain things in motion Bruce Wayne…Before Gotham can be saved, it must be burned to the ground." - Jason Blood

"When I close my eyes, I hear it calling from the ice. It tells me it's coming. It tells me, I have come home."

- Oswald Cobblepot

A 2023 movie in the DC Universe Animated Original Movies line, Batman: The Doom That Came To Gotham is an Animated Adaptation of the similarly titled comic miniseries by Mike Mignola, Richard Pace, Troy Nixey, and Dennis Janke.

As a child, Bruce Wayne (David Giuntoli) witnessed the brutal murder of his parents that sent him on a journey across the world for twenty years in search for answers behind the criminal mind. However that all changes when an important figure from his hometown of Gotham City, Oswald Cobblepot (William Salyers), disappears during an expedition in the Antarctic. What Bruce finds there is a mystery that stretches back to the founding of Gotham and hints to a larger, darker, stranger universe than his mind could have imagined.

Accompanied by his young charges Dick (Jason Marsden), Kai Li (Tati Gabrielle), and Sanjay (Karan Brar) along with his ever faithful butler Alfred (Brian George), Bruce returns to his city to find it riddled with crime on the eve of a mayoral election. Against the backdrop of The Roaring '20s, Bruce will delve into the city's dark past and its link to an Ancient Conspiracy whose goal seems to be nothing less than The End of the World as We Know It.

Voice talent also included Christopher Gorham as Green Arrow, John DiMaggio as Commissioner Gordon, Patrick Fabian as Two-Face, David Dastmalchian as Grendon, Navid Negahban as Ra's al Ghul, Emily O'Brien as Talia al Ghul and Martha Wayne, Tim Russ as Lucius Fox, Matthew Waterson as Etrigan, Jeffrey Combs as Kirk Langstrom, Gideon Adlon as Barbara Gordon, and Darin De Paul as Thomas Wayne.

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This film provides examples of:

• Abled in the Adaptation: Downplayed by Barbara Gordon, who is paraplegic rather than quadriplegic and capable of some movement.
• Adaptational Badass: Oliver Queen, who is The Chosen Wannabe in the comic and gets killed by Poison Ivy quickly, instead goes toe-to-toe with her, ultimately killing her, though at the cost of his own life.
• Adaptational Personality Change: Oliver Queen was much more serious in the comic. He’s a wisecracking functional alcoholic here, closer to his mainstream incarnation.
• Adaptational Wimp: As with the comic, Bruce's young assistants are all based on Batman's sidekicks (in the comic, all three Robins at the time, and in the movie one of them is instead a girl akin to one of the Batgirls), yet they're just ordinary people and only Bruce has a secret identity and skills as Batman. This goes double for Kai Li Cain due to taking on Tim Drake's role in the comic yet being based on Cassandra Cain, as an expert martial artist she is not.
• Adapted Out: Tim Drake, replaced by Kai Li Cain. In practice, sort of a Gender Flip via a Composite Character of them, see below.
• All of Them: Kai Li is surprised when she gets a radio transmission from Bruce Wayne telling her to ready the explosives on the Argo, as he's determined that the Sealed Evil in a Can has to stay that way (at the time Bruce assumes it's a virus, preserved in the prehistoric creature he saw frozen in the ice).
  Kai Li: Uh, did you say explosives? I mean, sure Mr. Wayne. How many?
  Bruce: All of them.
• Ascended Extra: Tali has a few additional scenes. Thomas Wayne also takes on Professor Munford’s role.
• Bad Moon Rising: The moon turns crimson and bathes Gotham in red light when the door is opened to let Iou-Sotha enter our world.
• Bifauxnen: Kai Li is dressed like her surrogate brothers, though with a buttoned-up collar and jewel choker.
• The Cameo: In the final scene, the group of reporters includes a man, a woman, and a younger red-haired man who resemble Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen in their Golden Age designs.
• Clark Kenting: Averted; Oliver recognises Bruce despite him being dressed up as Batman. Talia and Etrigan also know in advance that Bruce intends to become The Bat, either due to their magic powers or his prior investigations into the Cult of Ghul.
• Composite Character:
  • Oswald, rather than Munford, is the fourth of the early Gothamites alongside Langstrom, Wayne, and Queen.
  • Kai Li Cain replaces Tim Drake from the comic. She's physically Cassandra Cain, with her name reminiscent of Carrie Kelly, but acting like Tim from the comic instead of being a badass martial artist like Cass is, so she's less of a direct analogue to her and more of an original character blending these various Bat-sidekicks into one.
• Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Bruce fires off a Flare Gun to drive away The Swarm of mutant birds attacking him inside the ice cave.
• Dead Guy on Display: Bruce returns to his family home after 20 years away, only to find Langstrom's body has been left there for him to find. He later realises that Talia did this to get him to investigate Langstrom and find the hidden Tome of Eldritch Lore she needs.
• Deadly Dodging: While fighting the demon in the tower, Batman gets it to punch each wall in turn, then burns a hole in the floor with acid to escape while the roof comes down on its head. This doesn't stop it long.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Being set during the time of Prohibition, the police are shown to take possession of alcohol very seriously. Cops are shown emptying barrels of contraband liquor into the gutter when Bruce and his party finally return to Gotham, and Gordon gives Oliver Queen a hard time for his drinking.
• Demoted to Extra: Prof. Munford. His role in helping Bruce from beyond the grave is transferred to Thomas Wayne.
• Dieselpunk: The Batmobile.
  Alfred: If time is of the essence, may I suggest you take...(throws Big Electric Switch) The car.
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: Including Grendon as the Doomsayer telling our heroes about said doom.
• Dying as Yourself: Bruce stabbing the undead Oliver Queen with one of the arrows of St. Sebastian apparently has this effect, as he says afterwards (while disintegrating);
  "Thank God. Kick their arse, Bruce!"
• Eye Scream: Anyone who looks upon an Eldritch Abomination is Driven to Madness, so in order to serve Iog-Sotha, Grendon has removed his eyes so he can still act (somewhat) rationally.
• Failed a Spot Check: As he's busy trying to fend off mutant birds, Bruce fails to see the supposedly frozen creature reach out its tentacles and deposit the 'seed' inside Grendon's mouth. Thus he takes Grendon back to Gotham in the belief that his condition is merely medical and psychological.
• Fluorescent Footprints: Batman shines a UV light on the ground that his monocular picks up as this, showing where Langstrom has hidden his Last Will and Testament.
• Glamor Failure: Bruce is startled when Blood walks past a mirror and momentarily appears as a demon.
• Heroic BSoD: Bruce appears to have gone mad after two of his wards die and the full scale of what he's up against sinks in. Lucius wants to get him treated at Akham Aslyum, and Kai Li finds Bruce dressed in a bat costume and demanding answers from Langstrom's corpse. Fortunately her news that Oliver Queen—who also seems to have gone mad—knows something about what's coming, is enough to put Bruce back on the case.
• Hollywood Acid: Bruce uses 'concentrated chlorine' to destroy Talia's monster and burn a hole in the floor to escape another.
• Humanoid Abomination:
  • Several characters get this treatment as a result of their origins being tied into Lovecraft Lite setting. Mister Freeze becomes an undead Ice Person who spreads frost and ice around him with the several days he spends in Gotham Harbor causing icebergs to form. Ra's al Ghul has spent the last 4000 years dead and later when he successfully summons Iou-Sotha, he transforms into a humanoid version of his master.
  • The heroes aren't safe from this treatment either. Oliver, Dick, and Sanjay are raised as undead warriors to fight Bruce during the final battle. Harvey Dent has half his body turned into a festering purple like fungus that leaves him immobile but still alive. Finally Bruce, in order to save the world, accepts his role as The Bat and is transformed into a Man-Bat-like creature.
• I Have Many Names: When he transforms into his One-Winged Angel form, Ra's claims to be, or possibly birthed from, Hastur the Unspeakable and Cthulhu.
• Insistent Terminology: According to Alfred Master Bruce doesn't store his Bat stuff in a "cave", it's the wine cellar.
• Mad Oracle: Averted; Barbara Gordon is an inmate in Arkham Asylum, but that's because of her medical condition—confined to a wheelchair and speaking and breathing through a chest tube and artificial diaphram. She's quite rational, but prefers it there because she doesn't have to put up with her family's pity. "Besides, if you saw as I do, you'd take the insanity within these walls over the true madness out there."
• Multinational Team: The three orphan 'Robins' that Bruce has adopted as his wards, to reflect how he's been Walking the Earth (or rather sailing the Earth) while studying criminology and developing his skills to become The Bat.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The mutated Cobblepot is last seen with a nest of penguins.
    Grendon: Cobblepot is no more. He's something else now. He's become...what he was always meant to be.
  • Barbara Gordon, aka Oracle, really is an oracle.
  • When Barbara muses how easily Batman broke into Arkham Asylum to speak to her, Batman says the staff are more concerned about people breaking out.
  • Talia comments to Batman that in a different world they might have been allies or even friends.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: To a certain extent; while Oliver Queen is the drunken playboy most know him as, he does seem to exaggerate it so that nobody looks at what else he's doing.
• Oh, Crap!: While she doesn't speak, this is Poison Ivy's reaction when the mortally wounded Oliver pulls out a grenade.
• Orphaned Punchline: A drunken Oliver tells the same Noodle Incident joke to Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent, which no-one seems to find funny anyway.
• Outside-Context Problem: Bruce has spent decades preparing to fight crime in Gotham, only to find his studies have made him ill-prepared for the supernatural.
• Perfectly Cromulent Word: When Bruce returns to Gotham and asks Alfred if things are going well, he replies that they're "copacetic", which is a period-accurate neologism thought to be coined by Irving Bacheller meaning "good".
• Race Lift: The Caucasian Jason Todd is Indian here, and appropriately renamed Sanjay “Jay” Tawde. As with the substitution of Tim Drake with Cassandra (Kai Li) Cain, the writers justified it with the globetrotting Bruce does, thus making him pick up young assistants from all over the world.
• Reforged into a Minion: Dick, Jay, and Oliver are resurrected by Ra's to fight Bruce in the sewers.
• Robbing the Dead: Batman comes across a Gotham City detective and a couple of uniforms ignoring a crime scene to search Langstrom's apartment for any money the victim might have stashed away. Unimpressed, Batman comes through the window and wipes the floor with them.
• Sdrawkcab Speech: The audio is reversed for Ra's incantation.
• Shout-Out
  • The opening scene showing the ill-fated Cobblepot expedition invokes At the Mountains of Madness. There are even mutant penguins.
  • Grendon says, "Hark, the lurker is on the threshold", a reference to The Lurker on the Threshold by August Derleth.
  • While Oliver has gathered various holy weapons to fight what's coming, the only one that proves effective is a hand grenade.
  • When Harvey goes to his doctor about his rash the name on the door is Dr. Herbert West.
• Sins of the Father: Oliver knows it was his own father that murdered the Waynes, and carries a lot of guilt over this Dark Secret. Bruce Wayne discovers that Thomas Wayne, along with Cobblepot, Queen and Langstrom were given immortality in a dark rite and became the founders of Gotham, but in doing so doomed the world to destruction.
  Bruce: He died trying to do what was right.
  Kai Li: He died because he thought he owed the world for whatever insanity his dad—
  Bruce: Oliver believed the sins of the father—
  Kai Li: Are heaped upon the son. Yeah, I know what verse. But don't forget Ezekiel 18. "The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son."
• Take Up My Sword: Before leaving for the final act, Batman entrusts the wine cellar to Kai Li. She's later shown to have inherited the Wayne Foundation which is rebuilding Gotham.
• Taking You with Me: Once mortally wounded, Oliver resorts to blowing up Poison Ivy with a grenade.
• That Man Is Dead:
  Grendon: Cobblepot is no more. He's something else now. He's become...what he was always meant to be.
  Bruce: I take it you're Grendon.
  Grendon: Was Grendon...once. Now I'm chosen by him, to be his messenger to the world.
• This Cannot Be!:
  • Bruce's reaction when Talia sets yet another monster on him. He's also Not So Stoic on seeing Blood transform into a fiery demon, though he quickly regains his stoicism after Etrigan jumps out (or rather, through) the window.
  • Bruce's reaction when he finds his own father was involved in these dark events.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Averted; either due to the scale of what Batman is up against, or in the case of those Reforged into a Minion it's a Mercy Kill. Of course Bruce never has a chance to become the crimefighting Bat he was planning to be, so he may never had adopted the rule in the first place.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Bruce's initial response to Blood prophesizing at him is to burst out laughing.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Yib-Nogeroth turned Freeze into a monster so that it could provide a fragment of its essence so that Ra's al Ghul could unleash Iog-Sotha into the world. When Ra's al Ghul takes the essence, Freeze melts into a puddle.

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