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blackbatpurplecat · 7 years ago

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My Thoughts on “Batmobile: Arkham Tank”

Some also call it Batman: Arkham Knight, the big finale to the Arkham series that had clearly peaked two games ago.

Holy moly, what a rollercoaster ride from FABULOUS over FRUSTRATING to FANTASTIC to FUCK THIS SHIT.

Yup, I know. I’m super late to the party but please remember, the (complete) game’s price started at 90 bucks AND it was absolutely unplayable on PC for the longest time.

It’s also the first game I’ve ever ragequit and then watched the ending on YouTube because fuck. that. game.

Warning: SPOILERS ahead!

Strap in, kittybats, this is gonna be a looong one.

So if you either haven’t played it yet or if you need to refresh your memory, what’s the story?

Scarecrow is back! He didn’t do a great job at reconstructing his face but a fantastic job at perfecting his fear gas (and stealing Hugo Strange’s voice). He threatens to release the gas in Gotham which leads to people evacuating the city. The remaining cops of the GCPD are being terrorized by thugs and goons working for Scarecrow, Two-Face, Penguin, Harley Quinn, and a newly introduced villain: The Arkham Knight.

With the help of Oracle, who’s situated at the Gotham Clock Tower, Batman traces Scarecrow to ACE Chemicals. Crane has turned the entire factory into a gigantic fear gas bomb and is able to flee before Bats can take him down. The bomb can’t be defused, however, Bats is able to reduce its radius of impact so it’s mostly him who gets exposed to it.

We find out that even though Batman had drunk the cure for Joker’s disease at the end of Arkham City, he’s still infected for... some... reason that’s never explained. Fear gas and infected Joker blood is a dangerous cocktail so a life-like hallucination of the Joker materializes in front of Batman and keeps reappearing now and then to torment Bats with jokes and comments while Bats is running around the city.

There are also four more people who are still infected and locked up at one of the Batfamily’s hideouts where Robin’s working on a permanent cure. So far, only three of those infected are slowly turning into Joker while the 4th guy seems immune, giving Bats hope he might be the key to the cure.

Apparently, the Arkham Knight knows Batman really well and tips Crane off to kidnap Barbara since she’s working for Bruce. This forces Bats to confess to Gordon that his daughter’s been involved with vigilantism under Batsy’s care for years. An enraged Gordon breaks off their friendship and rushes off to find Babs himself. Yeah sure, good luck with that, Jim...

Back to the fear gas investigation, Batman and Nightwing interrogate Penguin and find out that Scarecrow had been working with a businessman named Stagg who tried to fuck Crane over and keep their invention, a dispersal device called Cloudburst, to himself. Of course, that didn’t end well. Bats tracks down Crane in an airship but gets gassed again while Scarecrow flees again.

The fear gas gives Joker control over Batman’s body for a short amount of time and adds another layer of urgency: If Bats can’t find a cure for the infection, Joker might take over his mind and body the same way he’s been taking over those other three innocent Gothamites.

Bats is able to find Barbara locked up at Crane’s hideout but she also got gassed. Her fear of Batman drives her to commit suicide. While mourning, Alfred informs Bruce that Crane now plans to release the fear gas via Cloudburst. There’s only one person who could help now - Poison Ivy. Batsy gets her out of prison and is able to recruit her for his plan. He finds an ancient and one-of-a-kind tree in Gotham that’s able to neutralize the gas so Ivy steps inside it to reactivate its strength.

More bad news are on the way when Bats finds out that Harley has broken into their hideout (because the Batfamily’s security system sucks, yeah that makes sense) and released the “Jokers.” Batman and Robin are able to recapture them all, even Harley. However, in a seriously well set up twist, the ONE dude who seemed immune to Joker’s blood is even more infected than the others and kills them. When he recognizes Joker in Batman’s eyes he also shoots himself, saying Batman will be the perfect Joker once the transformation is complete.

Robin’s quite concerned to find out about Batsy’s state and asks him to lock himself up until the game’s over but Bruce says NOPE and locks Tim up instead. Bruce couldn’t stand losing another Robin so he wants to spare Tim a similar fate that Jason Todd had to endure. You all know that story. Gee, I wonder why they bring it up all of the sudden...

So FINALLY the freaking Cloudburst is activated and douses the entire city in heavy fear gas. It’s too much for Ivy and the one-of-a-kind tree but thank God for deus ex machinas, there’s another tree, making them two-of-a-kind trees, that could help fight the gas. Batsy finds it, Ivy wakes it, the trees spread some kind of pretty pollen and the gas is neutralized. Unfortunately, it was too much for Ivy and she dies (and decomposes) in Batman’s arms.

We find out Gordon’s been kidnapped because DUH so Batsy tracks him down in the Arkham Knight’s hideout underground. The Knight takes off his mask to reveal a “““““tWiSt””””” everyone knew was coming after watching the first trailer of the game - he’s Jason fucking Todd who’s pissed at Bruce for not knowing he’s been alive all those years and just replacing him with Tim, and now wants to kill him. Bruce however wants to welcome Jason back with open arms which is too much feels for the ruthless assassin so Jason flees. Wow. How anticlimactic. Bats frees Gordon and they go to face Scarecrow at the top of a building.

Crane reveals in yet another twist you absolutely saw coming that Babs is still alive (so Babs killing herself was a result of Bats getting gassed - but how did Scarecrow know what Bats was seeing when he was under the influence???) and Gordon had made a deal with Crane to keep her that way. Jim shoots Bats in the armored chest, Scarecrow throws Babs OVER THE EDGE, Bats saves her and takes her to the GCPD.

After making sure that Jason’s goons don’t destroy the Bat servers, Bats is informed that not only Gordon but also Robin’s been now kidnapped by Crane. A kidnapped Robin, what a shocker... To save their lives, Batman drives to the ruins of Arkham Asylum where Crane, his hostages, and a camera are waiting. Crane tells Gordon to remove Batman’s mask in front of the camera which is broadcasting live on TV. Bats is okay with being unmasked and the big reveal BRUCE WAYNE IS BATMAN sends news reporters into a frenzy.

Crane injects more fear toxin into Bruce which brings out the Joker in him. Another dose, however, brings forth Joker’s worst fear: being forgotten. Batman’s mind and Joker’s mind begin fighting. Of course, Batman’s is stronger than Joker’s; Bats locks Joker up in his subconscious and regains control over his body. Bats gives Scarecrow a taste of his own toxin and takes a frightened Crane back to GCPD.

With the Batman’s identity uncovered, BATMAN IS DEAD as the intro of the game had promised. Ehm yeah, if you say so... Bats activates the Knightfall Protocol. He says goodbye to Selina, Dick, and Jim while finishing a few more side quests. Then he flies home where reporters are already waiting. Alfred welcomes him back, they close the front door, and Wayne Manor blows up.

If you had enough patience to collect >240 Riddler trophies, you’ll get the TRUE ENDING of the game:

Time has passed. Gotham is safer now, Gordon’s mayor, Babs and Tim (WTF?!?!?!) are getting married, and somewhere in Gotham, two thugs who are trying to rob a family in a back alley are being scared shitless by a huge nightmarish Batman figure.

THE END

What the actual huh?!

That was it?! THAT was the grand finale to the Arkham series?! I mean we all knew he wouldn’t die because people rarely have the balls to actually kill Batman off. You can say “This is how The Batman died” dozens of times but you’ll never convince me that you’ll actually kill him. Killing his name, his reputation, his identity, his secret, that’s just a cheap cop-out! And I realized how the game would end wayyy too early.

You built up a story so complex that you didn’t even see the plot holes anymore, you had three twist of which only ONE was good and it wasn’t even the last one, and fans didn’t even understand the true ending, yet you decided that THAT would be your huge finale and goodbye?! Lame, Rocksteady, seriously. I had expected much more.

Speaking of which:

Before the game came out, Rocksteady had proudly announced to have come up with an original character, a new piece on Gotham’s chessboard. A young man in a reddish suit who has a past with Batman, knows his identity and how he operates, and keeps calling him ‘old man.’ GEEEE, I WONDER WHO THAT IS!!!!! Yeah, it’s Jason. Woah, what a shocker. I had really hoped for something good, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt but NOPE, it’s the same old spiel. They didn’t even try to make his identity subtle, you know it’s Jason after his first line. And what a letdown their confrontation was. Wow, a stealth mission. And then Jason just runs away. He only shows up one last time to help Bruce at the end. Why?! You really want to tell me that after years of hating Bruce with an undying passion, recruiting hundreds of men, building dozens of tanks, and building a huge-ass drill (where the fuck did Jason get the money for all that?!), all Bruce had to do was say “sorry bro” and everything was forgotten?! That was how you resolve the conflict with one of the 2 main villains in the game?! Wow. Just... just wow.

So Knight is about Batman trying to find a cure for a Joker poison in his blood while a villain who knows Bats’ identity plans to take down a city that has only thugs in it? Is it just me or does that sound AWFULLY familiar...?! Rocksteady, you’re SO cReAtIvE.

Also the ending SUCKS!!! So Bruce makes the world believe that he and Batman are dead now. Do you even know what that means? That means Bruce and Alfred will spend the rest of their days in a Batcave without any connection to the outside world. Their family think they’re dead. So Bruce dooms Alfred to a life of isolation (cruel!!!) and gives up the “normal” half of his life to be Batman full-time. Something even the comics have established before as a fucking stupid idea!!! Bruce is NOT only Batman! Why can’t those damn fanboys pull their heads out of their asses and accept that Bruce is both Bruce Wayne AND Batman! He can’t be only one or the other; each side needs the other to exist! It’s just so fucking dumb!

After bashing the story, let’s get to bashing the gameplay:

Do Rocksteady hate their fans? Was Knight their revenge on every single fan who had said “I wish we could drive the Batmobile” in the past? Because that would explain a lot. While designing the game, they were probably thinking “Oh you complain that you don’t have the Batmobile? We’ll give you the Batmobile! Here you have the Batmobile!” That ugly tank no one’s able to handle because of the sluggish controls is just a huge FUCK YOU to gamers.

They completely overdid it. Way too many tank missions, way too many racing quests, WAY TOO MANY!!! The Batmobile missions always stopped the flow of the game, only felt tedious and turned into a boring chore. And if you weren’t tanking around, you had to solve lever puzzles to get your tank from point A to point B.

And as if the side quests weren’t average enough (the boss fights were kind of a letdown in general, especially after having played Origins), the fucking tank spoiled them even more. Remember the epic Firefly fight in Origins? In Knight, you have to race after him a few times. Done. Remember the epic Deathstroke fight in Origins? In Knight, you have to blow up his tanks (racing), take down militia towers (sometimes tank), and defuse bombs (tank), and then Batsy takes him out with one punch in a cutscene. Done. Also more tanks in the Freeze mission. And don’t get me started on ALL THE TANK MISSIONS in the main story!!!

One of the worst filler missions was “follow Gordon to the Clock Tower”: After driving 5 meters, there are more tanks, and once those are defeated, Gordon enters the Batmobile. Why the flying fuck couldn’t Gordon get in right at the start?!

The biggest joke was the Riddler mission. The puzzles were fine but WHYYY the race tracks??? How is a race track a riddle?! Nothing could be further related to Riddler than racing! What the fuck, seriously, what the fuck???

The constant forced use of the Batmobile made it hard for me to get the feeling that I was playing a Batman game. If I want a racing game, I buy a racing game. I did NOT want Need For Speed in my Batman game! Whoever decided to put THAT much Batmobile shit into the game deserves to be slapped in the face with a Joker fish. And the tank fight against Jason towards the end was the reason I quit. FUCK! THAT! FIGHT! FUCK! IT! HARD!

And the obligatory PC complaint: You sell a fucking expensive piece of shit that doesn’t run on PCs, you release patches that don’t help, and then you just say “oops sorry” before never working on improving the game again. Thanks. Also a huge thanks for fucking up the keyboard optimization. In City, we only had to tap one key for special moves, in Knight, it’s several keys we surely have the attention for in an engaging fight. And why did you change the order of the Bat gadgets?!

Alright, after such a long rant, I don’t want to leave out what I genuinely liked about the game:

For the most part, the voice-acting was perfect. There were tiny duds here and there but I don’t blame the voice-actors for those but the directors and/or the people who decided to use those takes for the game.

Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill are simply THE best team out there. There’ll be no one else ever ever who’ll be able to capture Batman and Joker so perfectly like they do. And while I love Mark to death and I think the Arkham Joker is the best Joker period, I still think “yeah, how do you bring the best actor and the best villain back after killing him off? oh I know! make him a hallucination! cop-out!” Joker showing up again and again was absolutely not necessary and didn’t add anything story-wise but I’m happy they did it because it’s Mark and he was THE BEST PART of the game.

Some side quests were fascinating! The level design for the last Mad Hatter stage was beautiful (Origins was better though). The entire case for Professor Pyg was bone-chilling! At first, I was like “what’s with the buildup? I know it’s Hush, just get on with it” but then Hush had another side quest and I began to wonder where the first case was going. Its ending was so dark, so fucked up, so creepy, I absolutely fucking LOVED it!!!

The one quest everyone will forever remember is the one featuring Mr. Freeze! Oh boy, that was perfect writing right there! It was nice to see that Freeze hadn’t forgotten that Batsy helped him in City and asked him again to find his kidnapped wife. What I 110% had not expected was that they would bring Nora back to life! I sat there, transfixed and so happy that after all those years, they finally gave Nora a voice and more character. She stepped out of the position of a MacGuffin and became real. The ending to that quest... The dialogue, the music, the visuals. I almost cried. You can’t write a better ending to their sad and bitter-sweet love story.

The relationship between Batman and Catwoman was also written very well. You immediately notice that he talks to her in a very different way. To everyone else, friends and foes alike, he’s serious, tight-lipped, monosyllabic. With Selina however he actually engages in chit-chat. And when Selina worried about him going after Scarecrow, her soft voice made my heart sing. At the end of the stupid Riddler quest, we finally got a hot BatCat kiss. Okay, it all ended with Bruce saying farewell and them never seeing each other ever again but that’s due to the dumb finale. (One question though: If you finish the quest before the end of the game, how does Selina know that Batman is Bruce?!)

Almost finished, here are just some more additional thoughts on the game in general:

The feature of switching from character A to character B during a fight sequence was awesome, I loved that! As well as the ability to use your surroundings in a fight. Why not put that in more?!

The “recreate a crime scene” moments were cool and I would have loved more of them because, well.... Batman is A FUCKING DETECTIVE, NOT A NASCAR DRIVER!

The DLCs were nice but rather short. The Red Hood DLC completely spoiled who the Arkham Knight was though. And Jason handling guns made me ask myself why he was still using his fists.

The Batgirl mission was good! It was great to see Harley in her original outfit, Babs and Tim worked well together even though he wanted to have her out of harm’s way too often. And the backstory of the park which you could learn about via recordings was wonderfully dark. SO dark.

Writing Babs and Tim as a couple was idiotic. Why was that change made? You had Dick in the game, why didn’t you just use the canon couple?! Changing Dick to Tim had no influence on the story so why do it?!

Seeing Bats and Babs interact without any forced sexual shit was beautiful!

THOSE MOTHERFUCKING MAN-BAT JUMP SCARES!!!!!! WHY???? My heart almost exploded!!!!!!!!!!

Giving Scarecrow Hugo Strange’s voice was cheap. Whenever he made an announcement, I felt like I was back in City. Don’t remind me of a better game I could be playing instead, Knight...

Catwoman’s purple suit from the 90s was a skin you could use!!! I LOVE HER SO MUCH!!! SHE’S SO BEAUTIFUL!!! Yeah, I know, it was a modified Batgirl skin but SHE WAS STILL SO BEAUTIFUL!

After the buildup in City, Azrael and his Order were another letdown.

After the buildup in City, Hush was another letdown (even though the reveal was pretty cool and Conroy’s voice-acting was SO AWESOME!). You have a villain that looks like your hero in a story about how the hero is revealed to be a vigilante. Why not USE the villain for something, ANYTHING?! And if you finish the mission AFTER the game’s end, how come Hush doesn’t know who Batman is?!

Why put a normal firefighter into one cell with Gotham’s worst criminal scum?!

Stop trying to convince us that Bruce loved an insane maniac who wants to kill millions of people.

The Ra’s al Ghul mission was intriguing however! I did not know who was killing his followers until the reveal and the decision at the end of the quest was a great dilemma! It had no influence on the game but I liked how it made the player think.

You made me feel pity for Killer Croc! How dare you! Plus there was a moment, when you’re in a duct underneath a freaking HUGE Killer Croc and the game told you to take him down. I was just looking at that gigantic monster and thought NOPE, CAN I PLEASE LEAVE?!

I still prefer the less realistic designs of the characters from the first games. Their expressions were less stoic and their eyes were less dead.

The goons’ conversations were a riot again!

JOKER’S SONG NUMBER!!! HOLY SHIT YES!!!

The designs of the race tracks were fantastic! While I think Rocksteady dropped the ball with gameplay and story, the level designs were marvelous!

The photo mode was a really cool feature!!!

I highly appreciate the creators’ love for detail. There’s an entire video about the easter eggs in Arkham Knight and it’s TWO FREAKING HOURS long! That’s a level of dedication I respect!

To close this up, I doubt I’ll return to this game very soon, if ever. I loved Asylum, I can play City in my sleep, I enjoyed Origins and do not understand the hate it gets, but Knight? Nah.

It’s the Batmobile that breaks this game’s back. Rocksteady simply didn’t know when to stop or how to work it in well. The tanks and racing quests kill the Batman-y atmosphere every single time and get old extremely quick. Those parts become monotonous and repetitive, and the worst crime is that fighting tanks and drones side-lines the actual villains you’d much rather fight.

I can forgive lame boss battles, I can forgive plot holes, but if the gameplay isn’t fun, I will not replay the story, no matter how well it’s written. A game’s supposed to entertain me, not frustrate me into leaving it for days (which happened twice before I quit).

Do I recommend Arkham Knight? If you like car races and shooting games, yes. If not, watch a playthrough on YouTube. It pains me to say that this Batman game, the big finale to an amazing series, only goes downhill after the opening cutscene.

#review #batman arkham knight #batman

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teecupangel · 2 years ago

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… A lot of things happened in Valhalla but sorta(?)-kinda(?)-i can see why, yes (it’s a Sage thing), yes very shippable, oh god yeah that wasn’t really handled all that well. And I have no idea if there are helmet-eating pigs but if it’s a glitch yeah I’ll believe it’s there. One of the main DLC was set in Paris (Siege of Paris) and it’s the most stealth-heavy AC Valhalla is gonna be. Nothing much happens that affects the main story though.

I honestly mostly just think Forsaken is set in Haytham’s POV and it’s the unreliable narrator at play on Haytham's side. Except for the parts that contradict the game. That’s just… Oliver Bowden doing his own thing.

Ooohhh boy. Well, here’s a GameRants article that explains what happened to Aya (and even Evie). It’s pretty much “women don’t sell” kind of thinking which is bs considering many successful videogames have a female protagonist that’s not just “select your character and they both have the same character development… if they even have one.” kind of deal.

The whole “we’re going to monologue here” is a thing games do when they believe that “hey, listen, this has lore in it but you might not be interested in it so you can skip it” without bothering to do any cinematic cutscenes. It’s just… their in-game model pacing around while they talk.

(Oh man, souls games are such a love-it-or-hate-it kinds of game so I don’t blame you for not finishing Sekiro. I didn’t even get to the first boss of Bloodborne XD). I would say that the amount of text depends on what genre you’re playing. Like, if it’s an RPG set in a whole other world (most common in open-world RPGs), a lot of the background lore that enriches the world (like the history of certain places) but isn’t necessarily part of the current plot is left in books you can find. Shoutout to Skyrim and Kiseki for adding freaking novels in their games though. They didn’t have to but, my god, they definitely did. Sometimes, they change it up by making it audiologs instead like in HZD/HFW and Gotham Knights and, if it’s a game of an existing IP or a sequel, there’s gonna be easter eggs and such added to these little ‘add-ons’. But some games, especially the action-packed ones, don’t necessarily make you read blocks of text. Like Uncharted and Ghost of Tsushima have short flavor text for each treasure or key item you get but it’s not like “this thing is from 300 BC and it’s made of (big block of text)”. FromSoftware games are the best practitioner of “there’s lore, you just have to read a lot” though and some like it, some don’t, but it’s not the standard. (Might be the Souls game standard though, not sure).

I’m going to be honest, I’m unfamiliar with the Chinese dynasties, and most of the things I know come from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms so I’m only a bit informed about that time period but I don’t think they’re necessarily trying to copy Wo Long Fallen Dynasty. From the leaks I saw, it looks more like a mobile version of Odyssey’s gameplay set in China and I honestly feel like it’s greed that made them choose to do that kind of setup. Common open-world rpg mechanic is to have a blank-slate character instead of an already-existing character like Shao Jun. The problem with blank slate characters is that it’s very easy to screw it up if the narrative expects you to act a certain way and you don’t which would break immersion. Eivor is a good example of this. The game expects you to play them as a Viking and a lot of the storyline ends with them acting like a Viking which breaks immersion if you’d been playing Eivor more stealthily. (btw, they seemed to want to tie Jade to Wei Yu maaayybeeee)

I am familiar with Mo Dao Zu Shi and, with the amount of the adaptations and such, it’s a bit intimidating XD A series relying on the unreliable narrator trope sounds awesome though. More like it’s meant to be interpreted however we want and we just make small ‘clans’ with the ones with the same fanon we have. XD

I’m just gonna leave this here:

Irt Shao Jun's Name

Why is it even spelled "Jun"? Even in her first appearance in Assassin's Creed: Embers, Ezio and Sofia pronounce it "Shao Yun."

It's...a mixed bag in Chinese fandom, as far as I've seen. There are no official characters for her name, and without them, we don't know what her name means or even how to correctly pronounce it because there are no tones. Fans usually pick a number of characters to spell out either Shao Jun or Shao Yun, which means her name is usually pronounced differently, with different meanings.

Tbfh, I always favored 绍君 for her name, AKA Shao Jun with "Shao" being a surname to mean "carry on" and "Jun" being a word to describe a gentleman/someone of noble birth and bearing. It bears a lot of power.

In the official AC novels by Yan Leisheng, he uses the 少芸，or Little Yun, which has me taken aback because I've always read Shao Yun as her full name, meaning "Shao" would be a family name, not a prefix. I guess both would work, given that she's a palace concubine. The "yun" he uses means "rue," the flower, which is fitting for a concubine, but doesn't bear the same weight and power as the "jun" I chose for her.

Either way, Ubisoft can't commit to her name. They spell it one way, then pronounce it another. Even the novelization is apparently officially non-canon, meaning once again, the VIBE of this girl is completely up to fanon.

#in the jp version yeah arno is roy mustang XD #his eng va is an actor #i've only seen the trailers for the hallmark movies though #it's not my genre XD #elise is toyoguchi megumi #and the weirdest part?#she plays winry in the og fma anime XD #but not the brotherhood version #hello fellow virgo! XD

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aion-rsa · 6 years ago

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The Many Deaths of the Joker

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There have been many stories to kill off the Clown Prince of Crime, but Batman's greatest enemy isn't so easy to get rid of for good.

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In fictional worlds where heroes and villains who can shrug off bullets like they were nothing, there exists “plot armor” for the more ordinary folks. Plot armor is the reason why the Punisher can mosey through a room with an uzi in each hand and somehow kill every single enemy while somehow never getting shot in any vital area. It’s why Stormtroopers have the worst aim and why the red-shirted Enterprise dudes have all the bad luck.

I’m having a hard time coming up with someone with stronger plot armor in comic books than the Joker. Hell, even Frank Castle died at least twice in continuity. The Joker should be dead a million times over, not just due to his injuries, but because with all the lives he’s taken, surely somebody would have murdered him by now. But again, not only does he take vicious beatings, if he isn’t apprehended at the end of a story, he usually falls off a cliff or is at the heart of an explosion or gets hit by a truck.

Then he’s back the next time, no worse for the wear.

While the comics won’t ever truly get rid of him, there are many continuities that have done away with Mr. J. Yet even then, the Joker is never really gone. He tends to haunt and taunt Batman in one way or another via his violent legacy. For someone with such an ill-defined identity, he sure is resilient.

So here's a look at all the times the Joker has died (or apparently died) in comics and on the screen.

Main Comics Continuity

Joker dying in main comics canon is an iffy subject. There have been times when he's been clinically dead, only to be brought back minutes later. Like the time Nightwing beat him within an inch of his life. He's even taken a couple of dips in the Lazarus Pit.

read more: Every DC Comics and Batman Easter Egg in the Joker Movie

But here, let's focus on Joker's second comics appearance. In Detective Comics #64, Joker decides to turn himself in and confess to every one of his crimes. The confused judge sentences him to death. Joker is put in the electric chair and acts like he's got stuff to do so wrap it up, B! Minutes after his death, his goons sneak in, find his body, and inject it with some special kind of serum that awakens the very recently deceased.

Joker pops back up and continues his life of crime. His reasoning? They can't charge him for the stuff he already did! That's double jeopardy!

Tim Burton's Batman

Jack Nicholson’s Joker completely ate it at the end of Tim Burton’s Batman. He fell from a great height while dragged down by a gargoyle. We saw the body. Dude was absolutely dead.

And he stayed that way! After that first movie, the most mention Joker got in that universe was a brief allusion in Batman Forever when Batman told Robin that revenge leads to emptiness.

We almost got a bit more of him, though! Before Batman and Robin ruined the concept of fun and killed that franchise, Joel Schumacher was originally going to do a fifth movie in that universe. Batman Triumphant would have revolved around Scarecrow and Harley Quinn as the new villains. Scarecrow means fear gas and that would have meant Batman getting a hallucination sequence.

What would Batman fear the most? Probably the skin-dyed dirtbag that killed his parents. And so, had the movie existed, we would have had a scene of Jack Nicholson's Joker confronting Batman during a psychological breakdown.

The movie would have been a dumpster fire, but...man, part of me is bummed we never got it.

Similarly, an unused Superman vs. Batman script from the early '00s would have included a plot point where Lex Luthor cloned the Joker to bring him back as part of a scheme to traumatize Bruce Wayne out of retirement and trick him into fighting Superman. Probably the most sensible reason to connect Lex and Joker.

Batman for the NES

Sunsoft made Batman: The Video Game for NES and the story was the general plot of the movie, only with lots and lots of ninjas and robots added because Batman needs something to fight. The ending is roughly the same, though Batman is a bit more cold-blooded. He beats the Joker down, tells him, “You killed my parents,” and then tosses him to his doom. We see Joker’s lifeless corpse and roll credits.

read more: Joker Movie Review

Then a year later, they released Batman: Return of the Joker. The Joker returns with some scheme involving stealing explosive metals and...he’s back. He’s alive again. Somehow. Neither the game nor the manual have any explanation. Just go with it.

Upon further review, both the Genesis and arcade adaptations of the movie make it vague whether or not falling from the top of a cathedral is enough to take out the Joker, so maybe Jack Nicholson's Joker is more resilient than anyone ever realized.

The Dark Knight Strikes Again

Dark Knight Returns features one of the most chilling incarnations of the Joker, who comes out of a catatonic state the moment he finds out Batman is back on the streets. Joker’s killing spree goes farther than the 1980s comic-reading public was used to and Batman ALMOST has it in him to kill the Joker for good. Since killing Joker is neither a horseshoe nor a hand grenade, Joker finishes the job by snapping his own neck and making it look like Batman’s finally gone over the line, thereby making him a prime target of the authorities.

Enduring one massive beating and a fake death (which people regard as “totally beat Superman in a fight” for some reason) later, Batman is fine.

Many years later, Frank Miller made his sequel Dark Knight Strikes Again, otherwise known as, “that mess.” In a story that focuses on Lex Luthor and Brainiac while including lots of DC heroes and Hal Jordan’s dinosaur space penis, the Joker appears a couple of times as a looming threat. He kills the Creeper, Guardian, and even Martian Manhunter while bringing up the mystery of who he could possibly be.

read more: The Secrets of the Joker Movie

Joker II shows up at the end of the comic as a kind of final boss showdown. He is, in fact, Dick Grayson, whose only mention in the original story was not being on speaking terms with Bruce. As the story goes, Batman fired him for being an incompetent whiner once upon a time and rather than celebrate being free of the lunatic that is Miller Batman, Dick instead went a bit mad and allowed Luthor and Brainiac to give him shape-shifting/quick-healing powers.

Even though he’s capable of surviving decapitations and the like, Joker II is eventually done in by getting knocked into some lava. Can’t heal if there’s nothing left of you.

Justice League: The Nail

Back in the late-90s, Alan Davis and Mark Farmer put together a three-issue Elseworlds story called The Nail. This “what if” tale shows how the DC Universe would have formed had Superman’s rocket not been discovered by the Kents. Without Superman as a symbol, metahumans aren’t exactly looked upon with love and astonishment. It’s more of an X-Men deal where the public’s mood is, “Thanks for saving the world...I guess.”

As part of the comic’s big villain conspiracy (and I won’t spoil who’s behind everything), the Joker is armed with a pair of gauntlets made from Kryptonian tech. They make him virtually unstoppable and he proceeds to liberate Arkham Asylum and then make the Bat-villains fight each other to the death for his amusement. Batman, Robin, and Batgirl appear and Alan Davis finally answers the question, “What would it take for Batman to murder the Joker?”

The answer: have the Joker use his telekinetic gauntlets to slowly and painfully tear Robin and Batgirl to pieces while forcing Batman to watch. Jesus. Yeah. That’ll do it.

With some assistance from Catwoman, Batman’s able to free himself, damage the gauntlets and snap Joker’s neck. While the public display and selective context makes the Justice League look bad, nobody takes the incident harder than Batman himself. Both the graphic deaths of his sidekicks and the realization that he murdered a man sends him to the brink of sanity. It’s the comfort of Catwoman, who becomes Batwoman, that keeps him from falling apart.

read more: The Actors Who Have Played the Joker

Regardless, once the story is over, Batman gives himself up to the police. He’s acquitted of murder charges, but chooses to leave the Justice League.

Several years later, we get Another Nail, which basically exists to give upbeat closure to a story that had a bunch of downers. Batman continues to fight crime in Gotham, but he starts hearing the Joker’s laughter. Due to the convoluted plot of the miniseries, things are screwy with the afterlife and the Joker is able to escape Hell.

Threatening to kill Batwoman, Joker – who has Carnage-like powers – fights Batman. Batman attempts to sacrifice himself by tackling Joker back to Hell, but the spririts of Robin and Batgirl rescue him. Batman finally decides to get on with his life and rejoin the Justice League.

Kingdom Come

The Joker’s death in Kingdom Come is a major turning point for society. After Joker murders Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and a lot of other people at the Daily Planet, he’s apprehended by the police. We’ll never know how Superman would have instinctively dealt with his loss since new superhero hotness and Cable pastiche Magog stops by to vaporize the handcuffed Joker.

Magog is put on trial, everyone and their mother is pretty okay with the Joker being murdered in any way, and Superman leaves in a huff. This causes a new dawn of “superheroism” where it’s less about heroism and more about people in cool costumes getting into fights with no care for anything but themselves. You know, kind of like a Zack Snyder movie.

While the Joker doesn’t come back from the dead, he does inspire one troublemaker to become the new Joker’s Daughter (otherwise known as Harlequin). Although we never get much on her, as she’s mostly a recurring background character, she represents the chaotic world where the mighty can do what they want while the weak are left deal with the consequences.

read more: How Joaquin Phoenix Became the Joker

It does remind me that one of the most clever moments in the whole comic is when Batman betrays Lex Luthor and admits to only joining up with him in the first place in order to see what Shazam’s deal was. As he puts it, Shazam is a wild card and if there’s anything Batman hates, it’s a wild card.

Love that.

Batman Beyond

Batman: The Animated Series is arguably better than sliced bread and its dark future Batman Beyond wasn’t bad either. Despite taking place years in the future, the writers were stingy on the details of what became of a lot of the old guard. While we got to see what became of Mr. Freeze and Bane, bigger deal characters like Robin and Joker were glazed over.

At most, during the show’s run, we saw that the Joker was replaced with an ever-changing circus-themed gang called the Jokerz. That was cool and all and fits into the nature of this list, but Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker went even further.

read more: The Best Episodes of Batman Beyond

In the dying days of the Animated Series era, the Joker kidnapped and tortured Tim Drake Robin. He warped the poor boy, made him squeal about Batman’s secret identity, and then transformed him into a giggling child version of the Joker. Depending on which version you watch, Tim would get his revenge by either shooting Joker in the chest or electrocuting him to death.

In the Beyond era, the Joker appears yet again, making the futuristic Batman Terry McGuiness question the many ways that’s possible. In the end, the Joker turns out to be Tim Drake, unknowingly taken over by a secret implant that transforms him into having the Joker’s DNA and personality. Terry is able to put an end to this Joker by frying the implant with an electric joy buzzer.

Batman: Digital Justice

Speaking of the future, there’s this Elseworlds taking place towards the end of the 21st century. While the Joker presumably died of old age, considering Batman retired, he lives on in the form of a sentient computer virus and...

For God's sake, look at that thing. Actually, better idea, let’s not. Just...next entry.

Batman: Red Rain

Throughout the '90s, Doug Moench and Kelley Jones did a trilogy of Elseworlds stories based on the very simple high concept of Batman being a literal "bat man." In the story Red Rain, Batman gets bitten by a vampire and fights Dracula. It’s pretty rad. Batman wins and Dracula’s dead for good.

A couple of years later, they did a sequel called Bloodstorm, which is based on the very human Joker leading Dracula’s horde for the sake of taking over the criminal underworld. Vampire Batman teams up with Selina Kyle, who also goes literal by being a werecat. Selena’s love is the only thing keeping Batman from going all-you-can-eat-buffet, so once Joker kills her with a crossbow, Batman has nothing left to keep him in check. Although part of him tries to fight it, he still powers through multiple crosses and holy water to snap Joker’s neck and feed on his blood.

Being that Batman is the smartest dude, he knows to shove a stake through Joker’s heart just in case...because Vampire Joker is the last thing we need.

It’s moot, since not only has Batman killed his rival, but he’s given into his vampire instincts. He has his buds Alfred and Commissioner Gordon stake him to prevent any further benders.

read more: Creating a New Joker Origin Story

Those two, unfortunately, never got around to removing his head, so despite being rendered immobile, Batman is still kicking. A few months later, Alfred removes the stake because Alfred is dumb as hell in this world. Not only does Batman have a taste for blood while being driven insane from months of his body rotting, but it’s implied a few times that ingesting Joker’s specific blood makes him even more out-of-control.

Yeah, things do NOT end well for any named character in that final chapter.

Batman 666

During Grant Morrison’s lengthy run on Batman’s comics, he wrote a one-off story in Batman #666 that depicts Damian Wayne as a more ruthless Batman in the future who may or may not have sold his soul to the actual devil. There are two alternate follow-ups to this story. One of which has Damian adopt and raise Terry McGinnis, leading to a take on the Batman Beyond era.

Then there’s a path where everything goes wrong. The Joker has died and while we don’t know the details, we do know that the madman had his own failsafe. In his death, he releases a virus that transforms its victims into Joker-like monsters, like a clown version of 28 Days Later.

Damian Batman finds a baby who appears to be immune to the virus, but his attempts to use the child to create a cure leads to disaster when he discovers that the baby is merely a carrier. Overwhelmed by infected clown people, Damian watches in horror as Gotham is nuked to contain the outbreak.

I think I like the first future better.

The Arkham Games

In the Rocksteady Arkham trilogy, Joker suffers from injecting himself with Titan, an upgraded version of the Venom drug that gives Bane his strength. In the aftermath, he’s dying, so he figures he’ll inject his own poisoned blood into Batman’s veins to push Batman into finding a cure. I’m guessing Joker saw that episode of South Park where Cartman had AIDS and had a moment of inspiration.

Though Batman cures himself, Joker shivs him. Either because he thinks Batman’s going to leave him to die or because shivving seemed like a good idea at the moment. That makes Batman drop the antidote and Joker succumbs to illness and dies, laughing at Batman’s claim that he was totally about to give him the antidote after all.

Then in Arkham Knight, we discover that having Joker blood in your system plus breathing in Scarecrow’s fear toxin transforms you into superhero Fight Club. Joker appears in visions while Batman (and some other soon-to-be-dead saps who also have Joker blood) gradually becomes Joker-like in behavior and appearance.

Batman ultimately wins out by turning the two infections against each other and confronting Joker with his own fear: being dead and forgotten. Batman goes back to normal and gets back to his mission of handing Scarecrow a knuckle sandwich.

Gotham

Batman prequel Gotham features Jerome Valeska, as played by Cameron Monaghan. Jerome is what I’d call the How I Met Your Mother of Jokers. He’s the Joker, but not really. The narrative plays up that he's either the actual Joker, he'll somehow create the Joker, or he's just thematically the Joker.

For all intents and purposes, he’s the Joker. Until he isn't. And then it's revealed that actually his twin brother is the Joker. Don't ask. Gotham is bonkers.

The charismatic psychopath and showman is killed off early in the second season during an attempt on the life of the adolescent Bruce Wayne. He gets stabbed in the neck by Theo Galavan in an act of betrayal, but dies with blood covering his lips as he smiles. Various people watch footage of Jerome on TV and go into giggling fits, including two guys who laughingly murder a homeless person, then turn on each other.