YMMV / Batman: The Brave and the Bold

• Adaptation Displacement:
  • Hands up everyone who only heard of the second Blue Beetle after Nite Owl II.
  • Or expected Catman to be voiced by Adam West?
  • Or, for that matter, expected Space Ghost to be voiced by George Lowe?
• Alternative Character Interpretation: The line "Green Arrow has heroic traits—that is when he's shooting straight" line from the song "Birds of Prey". Different fans take it to mean that Catwoman is saying Ollie is bi with a lean towards men, he suffers from Speed Sex problems, or that he's an unfaithful flirt.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: In "Mitefall!", when Bat-Mite is trying to make the show more toyetic in an effort to get it canceled, he gives Batman a talking hoversled with flame decals and matching outfit. There actually was a toy like this (it didn't talk, though), from Batman: The Animated Series, of all places.
• Awesome Art: The designs for the gaseous forms of the Gas Gang of "Clash of the Metal Men"
• Bizarro Episode: "Bat-Mite Presents: Batman's Strangest Cases!" It features Scooby-Doo dancing the polka... and that's one of the more sane moments.
  • "Chill of the Night!" in the context of how it is much darker and more serious than the rest of the series, being more like Batman: The Animated Series in tone. Despite (or maybe because of) this, it's considered one of the series' best episodes.
• Broken Base:
  • The Lighter and Softer tone and Denser and Wackier humor is the show's most divisive aspect and is either considered by some to be refreshing to see after the more serious Batman adaptations in the past, with many finding the jokes to be hilarious, while others despise the lighthearted tone for not fitting with the idea that Batman should be dark and serious, on top of finding the humor to be obnoxious and annoying.
  • The self-referential moments in "Mitefall!" are either a perfect representations of what fans felt the show did right, or undeserved self-aggrandising.
• Cant Unhear It: You no doubt can hear Bat-Mite's words as Paul Reubens now thanks to this series. The same thing for Diedrich Bader for Batman.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Critical Backlash: Due to being a Lighter and Softer Batman show inspired by the Silver Age, the show has gotten quite the divisive aura from the DC fanbase over the years. However, for all the complaints it gets for having a portrayal of Batman that clashes with his normal, darker characterization, its art direction, and its overall silly and kiddy feel, the show has and maintains a rather noticeable following. Many fans state that if you overlook the immature premise, one finds the show rather enjoyable as it pays homage to many obscure elements of the DC mythos, is willing to embrace Camp to be mindlessly awesome, and is very creative and unrestrained, especially in comparison to many of DC's recent Darker and Edgier works. Many people who watch clips of the show online even end up admitting that they wound up liking the show after giving it a second chance or wasn't cheap, kid-centric program they initially thought it was, especially with episodes like "Chill of the Night". In fact, many who revisit this show even express sentiment about how this show was one of the better (if not the best) attempts at portraying the DC universe in a more light-hearted tone in modern times and wish that DC would make more work with its genuine Rule of Fun approach.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Mrs. Manface's appearance is simultaneously unutterably horrifying and side-splittingly funny.
  • Batman being crushed with a giant hammer and his soul drifting to heaven replete with harp, angel wings, and cowl, corny; him being melted in a vat of acid to the bone, horrifying; everything afterwards is just plain funny.
  • The episode "The Battle Of The Superheroes" crosses it a good dozen times, since it's a homage to Superdickery. A notable highlight is Superman picking up Kandor in it's bottle than shaking it while cheerfully shouting "EAAAAARRRRTHQUAKE!!". They even worked in a close approximation to the Super Pope Hat!
• Designated Hero:
  • Wong Fei from Return of the Fearsome Fangs. For a martial arts expert, he's quite an arrogant, rude jerk who always insults his pupils no matter if they do well or bad and orders them to kneel to him essentially every time he wants, just to show off his status of mentor. No surprise that only ONE of FIVE students completed his training, and just because the plot demanded it.
  • Captain Atom, as portrayed in "Powerless", is such a Smug Super that Eric Rodriguez gave him the very apt nickname "Captain Asshole." He is excessively condescending to people without superpowers, refusing to even acknowledge Batman's not-unimpressive track record as a Badass Normal (and, while he may be right when he says that Batman would easily get curb-stomped by the major-league villains if he didn't have any backup or prep time, the fact still remains that Batman, single-handedly or not, has repeatedly saved the world from threats that no mere human would stand a chance against.) When Captain Atom is Brought Down to Normal by Major Force, he spends more time moping about and feeling sorry for himself than he does actually being a hero. He then decides to buck up and make a stand against Major Force, superpowers or no... but Captain Atom gets his powers back anyway and concludes that he was right all along in his belief that humans are weak and worthless.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Has its own page.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • Several fans would like to disregard the teaser from “Joker: The Vile and the Villainous” as a non-canon spoof to emphasize the Joker A Day in the Limelight theme. This is due to the scene making events from previous episodes feel like a Shoot the Shaggy Dog story, Joker seemingly dying when he turns up alive later on, and Kamandi still appearing in the opening credits montage when B’wana Beast stopped appearing in that montage after dying^note  Red Tornado keeps appearing after being destroyed in his last scene, but he is a robot who can be rebuilt.
  • Plenty of fans would like to ignore the Bat-Mite episodes, or at least the second and third ones, due to how out of genre, nonsensical, and self-parodying the plots of those episodes are.
• Fashion-Victim Villain:
  • The Gas Gang's "new look", carried over directly from the comics. It was silly even in The Silver Age of Comic Books.
  • Joker's Emperor costume, compared to its comic counterpart. It has a whoopee cushion in the crown.
  • Killer Moth has his comicbook costume (unfortunately) and was the first villain Batgirl fought, but still uses giant moths like his Teen Titans (2003) counterpart.
  • Similarly, Firefly's sole depiction here has him sporting his garish Silver Age costume, instead of his sleeker modern look.
  • Mr. Freeze's first appearance on the show had him sporting his Silver-age costume: a yellow-green suit with hot pink highlights, accompanied by a spherical glass helmet and a freeze gun that looks more like a tea kettle than anything else. Fortunately, future appearances gave him a sleeker and... well, cooler Raygun Gothic-esque design that largely resembles the Freeze suit George Sanders wore in the old Batman series.
• Fridge Horror: Huntress flirts with Batman like a bad 1940's Hollywood Floozy stereotype. When you realize that this version of Batman is mostly modelled on the Silver Age Earth 2 Batman, (Robin's pre-Nightwing "adult" costume proves this), the fridge horror kicks in; Huntress in that continuity was Helena WAYNE, aka Batman and Catwoman's DAUGHTER. Ick Factor 11.
• Genius Bonus:
  • In "Mayhem of the Music Meister," the titular villain at one point flees from Batman along five telephone wires arranged like a musical notation staff... and his quarter-note-shaped vehicle jumps from line to line to follow Neil Patrick Harris' singing.
  • In the cold open for "Night of the Batmen!" Vigilante's fingerings and strumming are accurate to the music he's producing.
  • In "Emperor Joker!", Mister J's four henchmen are based upon famous silent-movie comedians: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle, and Harold Lloyd. The henchman based on Lloyd has a metal right hand. This is a sly reference to the real-life Lloyd having maimed his hand during a photo shoot gone wrong. In short — Lloyd, during a publicity shoot for one of his movies, was goofing around with what he thought was an inert prop Cartoon Bomb and lit the fuse with his cigarette. The explosion resulted in Lloyd losing the thumb and index fingers. For the rest of his life, even in stunt-heavy films like Safety Last!, he wore a prosthetic glove with a fake thumb and index finger.
• Harsher in Hindsight:.
  • There's a short gag about Sportsmaster out with his family on a roadtrip. Come Young Justice (2010), and his character is a prime example of an Abusive Parent.
  • At the end of Mitefall, the execs ultimately feel a Darker and Edgier show will do better and cancel Brave and the Bold. This did not turn out to be case in real life - the ratings for Beware the Batman ended up nowhere as good as Brave and the Bold's, leading to Cartoon Network to eventually abruptly pull it from the schedule, keep it off the air for months, and then burn off all the remaining episodes at once, before cancelling the show and deeming it a 'financial failure'.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • In "Mayhem of the Music Meister," Batman gently turns down Black Canary when she hits on him. We find out later it's because she's the daughter of one of his dead friends, the first Black Canary. Bruce in this incarnation wouldn't date someone young enough to be his daughter.
  • "Mitefall!" features Batman telling the audience that he'll meet them again someday, even as the series is over. Come 2018, Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold comes out, which features this series' incarnation of Batman.
• He Really Can Act: "Chill of the Night" proves that Diedrich Bader's Batman can have a wider range than the Comically Serious.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The very first episode has Blue Beetle arguing that Batman would always beat Superman in a fight because "Batman always has kryptonite". The third season kicks off with Batman actually fighting Superman...and he doesn't have kryptonite. And gets flattened.
  • In "The Mask of Matches Malone!" an amnesic Batman, in his "Matches Malone" guise, wears the Cursed with Awesome Cloak of Nefertiti (which grants the wearer nine lives), and would often get killed and then brought Back from the Dead in many ways. It is not until he gets killed for the ninth and final time that he is able to take off the cloak upon being brought back by its magic power. Two episodes later, we get "Emperor Joker!", and guess how many times the Dark Knight gets killed and then brought back to life by the Joker in many ways in a Death Montage? That's right, nine freaking times! And just like in "The Mask of Matches Malone!", it is not until his ninth death and resurrection that Batman does something, this time using Reverse Psychology to beg the Joker not to take away his sanity. If you happened to watch both episodes in Australia, it works in context, but in the U.S.? Not so much, since you have to get the Season 3 DVD in order to get the "Matches Malone" episode, as it hasn't aired on TV due to the "Birds of Prey" innuendo song clip that got leaked onto the internet.
  • "Battle of the Superheroes" Features Batman fighting Superman while wearing the mecha-suit from The Dark Knight Returns. Batman attempts to reason with Superman by mentioning "Ma Kent", predating the infamous scene from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice where Superman ends his fight with Batman by begging him to save Martha.
• Iron Woobie: Batman in "Emperor Joker!" He is tackled by the Joker, and it goes From Bad to Worse when Bat-Mite accidentally gives the Joker his powers, turning him into a God-Emperor who uses them to twist the world in his own way. From that time on, the Dark Knight is forced into a Death Montage as he gets killed and then brought back repeatedly, with poor powerless Bat-Mite being Forced to Watch the carnage. It is not until he is revived from the last Death Trap of the electric chair that he uses Reverse Psychology to beg the Joker not to take away his sanity. And through it all, he defends himself and his own mind from the Joker, telling him that they both need each other to survive. The Dark Knight truly needs a hug after all that.
• Magnificent Bastard: See here.
• Memetic Badass: Jenny Jones. This thread◊ (NSFW) takes a bit of Comedic Sociopathy in regards to a comment she made about Red Tornado and shows her as a complete brat that belittles everyone for her own enjoyment. Then it goes on from there to the point that it takes The Power of Love, the combined force of about everything ever, and a second thread◊ to defeat her once and for all.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The pic of AQUAMAN giving Green Arrow a bone-crushing side hug has been a source of many fan-edits.
  • "¡El maravilloso e incomparable Hombre Negativo!"^note The one and only amazing Negative Man!, used mostly in Latin America to describe people who seem to be little more than perpetual complainers.
• Moral Event Horizon: Psycho Pirate basically eats the rage of children, Batman is so disgusted at this, he's enraged; then again, that much should be obvious.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: A Beat 'em Up developed by WayForward Technologies for the Nintendo Wii that plays out over four levels that look like episodes and has the entire voice cast from the show.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The infamous scene in the Bat-Mite episode where Bat-Mite addresses a complaint at a fan convention that a light-hearted interpretation is neither a novel idea nor any less valid than other interpretations. This wouldn't be the last time that a DC Comics cartoon essentially called out its audience for wanting the show to be Darker and Edgier.
  • Tlano's home city being called "Gothtropolis", a combination of Gotham and Metropolis, has a forerunner in the Mash-Up two-parter from Superman/Batman in 2009, only there the city was called "Gothamopolis" and existed in a dream world.
• Questionable Casting: Diedrich Bader as Batman garnered this reaction, as he was best known for playing Oswald. Thing is, it works.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • The JLU brooding badass incarnation of Aquaman helped dispel his Superfriends-inflicted image as a useless deadweight, but it took this show's Fun Personified incarnation to turn him into a bona-fide Ensemble Dark Horse.
  • Black Manta, whose powers amounted to owning a boat in Superfriends, is portrayed here as a cunning badass wearing Powered Armor and packing a kickass Arm Cannon...And Eye Beams. Though unlike Aquaman, that's basically a thematic continuation of his brief appearance (as Expy Devil Ray) in JLU.
  • The Terrible Trio went from rich guys who rob banks to Bloody Roar style kung fu villains in this series.
  • Crazy Quilt has been a joke in comics for decades, but the show is returning him to his roots as Robin's personal archenemy and a legitimate threat.
• Seasonal Rot: It is heavily debated amongst fans, though many find this happens with the third and final season. Batman became more of a Canon Sue and the stories lost a bit of edge in terms of fun and often got more plot holes. Some see the third season as being just as good as the other two seasons though, especially enjoying the appearances from Superman. For a lot it's the earliest episodes that are a bit shaky.
• Squick:
  • Mrs. Manface's eponymous features. Her kissing Babyface only makes it more disgusting.
  • The episode where Alfred writes a story about Bruce marrying Catwoman and them having a child named Damien. Not only is writing fan fiction about people you actually know already pretty icky, but Alfred writes the story in which Bruce and Selina are murdered and leave Damien a troubled orphan. It starts to get pretty squicky if you actually stop and think about the implications for too long, especially since Alfred is essentially Bruce's adoptive father.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • In "Joker: The Vile and the Villainous!". While Joker and Weeper are obviously only trying to sabotage the Bat-Probe because it would make crime more difficult, the fact that the Bat-Probe operates by summoning the police whenever it detects malicious intent veers dangerously close to prosecution of thoughtcrime.^note Though it does seem to work on a sort of no-harm-no-foul logic - it spares a would-be candy thief when he puts the candy back. Batman acting a lot jerkier than usual doesn't help. Then again, the entire episode was from Joker's point of view, so there's a reason for that.
  • Captain Atom might be a Smug Super in this show, but he does raise a good point: If Batman was caught against Giganta, Despero or Star Sapphire without any time to prepare, he would be mulched pretty casually. This was actually demonstrated in two prior episodes. Batman wouldn't have stood a chance in "The Eyes of Despero!" without a Green Lantern power boost, while "Scorn of the Star Sapphire!" saw Hal do all the real heavy lifting, and in between these two episodes "Requiem For A Scarlet Speedster" showed Batman to be ill matched against the Flash's Rogues, requiring the three speedsters of the episode (Jay Garrick, Barry Allen and Wally West) to intervene.
    • In fairness, the whole point of Batman is that he is usually Crazy-Prepared in the field, which Captain Atom's argument disregards altogether. Not to mention Batman's firm moral code, which is ''WHY'' he doesn't use deadlier gadgets nor tactics unless necessary.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Andy Sturmer's main theme bears a huge, unmistakable similarity to "Tank!" by The Seatbelts, with the opening sequence deliberately homaging Cowboy Bebop to an extent. Most fans would agree that this is not at all a bad thing.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • This version of Joker's on/off girlfriend/henchgirl, Harley Quinn, is portrayed as a Deliberately Monochrome 1920's flapper with a very different personality and demeanor than she usually has. Despite this, flapper Harley only appears in two episodes, Emperor Joker and the final episode hanging off Joker's arm during the wrap-up party.
  • The teaser that introduces the Challengers of the Unknown barely lets them do anything (the first thirty seconds of it is just a mock cartoon intro establishing who they are, and the last thirty or forty seconds are them getting enslaved by Starro without a fight). After that, they only appear as Starro-possessed Mooks and among the gathered characters in the Grand Finale. Given their statuses as uncostumed adventurers who have really shined in works like DC: The New Frontier, it's easy to feel that the Challengers are the most poorly handled of the show's many guest heroes.
  • In Elongated Man's only speaking appearance (a Batman Cold Open sequence), he is presented as an amusing Foil to Plastic Man, but he never reappears to continue that rivalry or demonstrate the detective skills he boasts about having. This can feel especially disappointing, given how closely associated Batman and Elongated Man were in the Silver Age comics the show frequently references.
  • Mr. Miracle only has a few minor appearances, and he and his abusive adoptive father, Darkseid, never meet or even mention each other.
  • Despite the Music Meister's fun personality and awesome skillset, he only makes one proper appearance in the whole series.
  • The Batmen of All Nations only appear in one teaser and lack the personality and costume changes they received in Batman (Grant Morrison), despite how those versions of them are the ones that really became Ensemble Darkhorses.
• Unexpected Character: The series' main idea was giving screentime to characters in the DC Universe who haven't gotten as much widespread exposure to the public, although there are a number of standout examples.
  • Okay, a Scooby-Doo and Batman team up had been done before. But who really saw a Batman and SPACE GHOST teamup? Sure DC made a mini series a while back but...
  • Animal-Vegetable-Mineral-Man, a very minor villain in the Doom Patrol comics, shows up for the first time in animation in "The Last Patrol!".
  • Ambush Bug, who shows up in the series finale. His appearance is a bit of a punchline, as Bat-Mite notes that he's obscure even for this show.
• Values Dissonance: Mrs. Manface's entire shtick is that she's got a gorgeous body coupled with the face of a square-jawed man, complete with five o'clock shadow. The humor is entirely reliant on the shocking contrast with her feminine voice. While originally considered funny and disturbing due to her relationship with Babyface, if such a character debuted today she'd immediately be decried as transphobic due to being a woman who looks like a man.
• Wangst: The Doom Patrol's reason for breaking up and its former members spiraling into depression. Essentially, they were unable to save a hostage from being killed by a villain. It wasn't remotely close to being their fault that she died and no one blamed them for it. While this is an awful thing to have happen, they clearly overreacted.