No, no, the men refused to leave the building as it burned, it was entirely on them! Well, except for the one he was supposed to murder, that guy would've been fucked either way.
@@Raul_Menendez You know, you joke, but there's no better way to describe each reboot universe's Batman than an even more incompetent version of the last one. Golden Age Batman retired, became Commissioner, married Catwoman and had a daughter who grew up to be the Huntress alongside an adult Dick Grayson Robin. Earth-1 Batman was Batman until the moment his universe was erased. New Earth Batman is the one that barely has killed, and he's also the one for whom things got the most extreme. And N52/Rebirth Batman failed to seal the deal on marrying Catwoman, which makes him directly an incompetent version in comparison.
@@PosthumanHeresy right after crisis happened, Bruce & Jason talk about Bruce killing criminals with Bruce saying that it was in self defense. Also he kills a guy in Batman #444 when the criminal melts into a puddle after Batman refusing his plead that he’ll die if he said anything
I remember my girlfriend was watching me play at one point, "I thought Batman didn't kill people?" "He doesn't" He just flew from a building at Super speed and kicked that dude in the chest. He's dead." I giggled at that.
"I mean, I don't HAVE to kill them, but if I put them in a dangerous situation and they just so happen to die, it's no skin off my back!"- Batman probably
"The Code is more like what you'd call guidelines, rather than the actual rules." And, haha, that other one from the same speech: "You have to be the super in order for the Code to apply to you." I can totally see a superhero satire with Batman lifting those "Pirates o.t.C." lines for the occasion.
God I feel embarrassed... When you first mentioned Batman killing nazis I was thinking "so he went back in time to fight them?" And then I remembered how OLD the comics were.
To be fair, they rebooted the entire universe in Crisis on Infinite Earths in the 1980s and then Year One happened . So that Batman started his career in the 80s
@@hyperion3145 Do copyright laws apply to Batman the way they apply to any other character who's over 100 years old? I mean by becoming royalty free after the time passes
Key Spirits That’s a good question. I would think not, Disney still has copyrights on things like Snow White which is why they keep getting reboots. I would believe Superman and Batman would carry on like normal unless DC does something odd like hand the rights to public domain or something.
To be fair, if you read the comics, those men were experimented on by the evil scientist in order to make them giant and strong. If I remember correctly, I think he was referring to the fact that the men had become monsters and wouldn't want to live life as some Frankenstein-esque creature.
You missed all the Nolan movie kills.... the worst offender being when he refuses to kill that one guy, then burns down the whole building saving only Ra's.
And there was Harvey Dent. Both in Forever and TDK. I don't think he kills anyone in Batman And Robin though. Just a funny note that the one movie from both the Burton/Schumacher and the Nolan series which doesn't depict Batman as a killer is Batman And Robin.
@@Jotari Well, he was the Joker's ace in the hole. If Harvey didn't die, the story would've fell on it's face. It was supposed to be tragic because he spared the Joker, but couldn't save Dent.
"They're rubber, Dick" *proceeds to use rubber rocket to obliterate concrete barricade to a 5-story parking lot, drives up ramp, launches the batmobile into the air, leaves robin who frantically attempts to take hold of the steering wheel, ejects himself directly at an enemy helicopter, knocks out the henchman, jumps out of the helicopter, and watches the helicopter crash into the bay and explode*
@@StarkeRealm If we start including multiverse Batmen, where do we stop? Because they dropped a lot of bodies even before the Dark Multiverse was a thing, and now there's Batmen who have killed billions. Plus there's ASBAR Batman, for whom the people he kills are the lucky ones. And if we really push it, there's The Fixer in Holy Terror since he was gonna be Batman until DC refused to publish.
oh yeah, it was a " thing". Vampires became very popular in the 70s, than back again in the 90s and in the beginning of the 00s. Now it's not so on the nose, but back then DC ( and Marvel to be fair) tried to follow every popular trend. If fidget spinners had been popular back then, Batman would have fought against The Fidgeter with his Bat-spinner™, no doubt about it.
Kingfisher's Brother just think of how horrified he would be if he ever met Lestat who was a vampire that was the lead singer of a rock band for a little bit.
The early Batman was a pulp-noir hero like The Spirit, Phantom, The Shadow etc... He had a dark side and used guns sometimes and killed villains. Tim Burton's Batman is closer to early this pulp era Batman.
He was the BEST. His covers and artwork are seared into my mind, so damn cool. Shadow of the Bat... Knightfall... these were the first comics I ever bought.
Damn! I didn't know that he died. R.I.P. Norm, he was "my" Batman artist to as he was on the title at the peak of my collecting and comic book reading. 😔💙
Even more main continuity kills: Batman killed "Muertos" in ´Tec 395 in 1970. It´s kinda famous for being the first "dark" issue of the mainline books since the mid-40s. He burned Ra´s with a laser in the 80s and the shown issue at the car dump (i think) has another kill as Batman uses a thug as a shield to block gunfire. Bats accidentally killed the Penny Plunderer in a 90s Chuck Dixon issue. He mortally shot Darkside and forced Joe Chill to commit suicide under Morrison. He killed all sort of zombies and Parademons (they are very much alive and are either New Gods or other conquered human-like being) since the N52. Dr. Death also died gruesomely during Zero Year via a miscalculation by Bats. And who even knows if Bats knew that KGBest was tracked by another team when King´s Batman left the crippled man to die in the tundra. Dick and pre-Red Hood Jason also killed multiple people. Long story short. Late 80s and early Golden Age superfan Zack Snyder knows his stuff and Batman & Robin is the sole life action Batman film with zero kills (unless you count Suicide Squad). Even Adam West was a killer! Lol. PS: He once castrated a man with his own gun in the Jekyll and Hyde mini! Did he live? Who knows...
Darkseid lived beyond the gunshot though, although Final Crisis is so weird and confusing until you've read all the backstory and tie-in stuff and learned about the metastory.
@@ndo533 Oh. Sorry, cause I agree with you that I am a big Snyder fan and in my honesty opinion, Zack Snyder Is my favorite director and he is the best director in my opinion since Ridley Scott and Stanley Kubrick
Me: is peacefully scrolling through TH-cam recommended TH-cam thumbnail: hey wanna see a video of Batman gunning down people with a ww1 era machine gun?
Awesome video, but a couple of questions and things I consider kills: - The Dark Knight Returns. Doesn't he kill the henchmen holding the little girl hostage? The "I believe you" scene? - In Batman Forever, he throws the coins to Two-Face, knowing he would likely fall to his death from it. - Despite their lip service to no killing, he kills someone in each of the Nolan films: - In Batman Begins, he lets Ra's die and gives some bullshit "Haha I am not TECHNICALLY killing you if I don't save you, even though I was the one who sabotaged the controls and planned for the bridge to be blown up" one-liner to explain the contradiction. - Arguably, he is responsible for all the League of Shadows deaths (including the man he refused to decapitate!) when he caught the monastery on fire. - In The Dark Knight, he tackles Two-Face to his death to save Gordon's son (Batman Murders Two-Face #2!). This is pretty justified in the circumstances, but it still killed him. - In The Dark Knight Rises, he shoots Talia's truck with The Bat and she dies. Perhaps the most blatant of the Nolan Bat-kills. Overall, this is a great video, but if you can include the Burton and Snyder videos, there are a lot more movie moments that could be included LOL.
Eric Johnson I believe in The Dark Knight Returns he shoots that henchman holding the little girl in his shoulder. It’s bloody and he likely lost the use of that arm, but it’s non lethal.
My memory of the details are hazy but I don't think The Dark Knight would have made sense if Batman killed the henchman. The Joker frames Batman by breaking his own neck which sets the whole Superman thing in motion, but if he was already killing people why'd he need to be framed in the first place? The art really does make it seem like he deleted the dude though, dunno why Miller went with that.
henqification In The Dark Knight Returns the scene where Joker dies can be interpreted as Batman actually killing him. Joker's dialogue after Batman breaks his neck is coloured as the same grey that is used to denote Batman's internal monologue. So what could be going on here is that Batman has broken his code, he's finally gone over the edge, but his mind is defending itself by creating the fantasy that he only paralysed Joker. On a similar note, It has been argued (by Grant Morrison) that at the end of The Killing Joke Batman is strangling the Joker, which is why the laughter cuts out, as the police are arriving, leaving us with just the sound of the rain. I'm not sure I agree with that one, though I enjoy the ambiguity.
@@likeasonntagmorgen Yeah, I considered mentioning The Killing Joke but interesting though it is, it really is just Morrison's head canon idea, where as something like Batman killing Talia in TDKRi is a lot more blatant of a missed Bat-kill.
Speaking of vampires, Batman actually killed Dracula himself in Batman Vs Dracula with stored solar energy before kicking his corpse into dust. It was pretty awesome.
Batman's no kill rule has never applied to things that are not alive anymore. He straight up tells this to Spawn after they worked together for a bit but he had enough of him murdering criminals in front of his eyes left and right. When Spawn goes "we are not so different!" he gets a batarang into his skull and a promise Bruce will end him next time he sees him. Same also goes for robots. He blew up Brainiac a few times. And then there was H.A.R.D.A.C.
Does the Detective Vision actually say they are dead? That's how the game seems to get away with saying people you've run down with the tank aren't actually dead, the vision says they are alive!
Course we know that, but there was many times in Knight where I ran over people and bodies with the tank, there's no way that wouldn't have killed some of them.
EarthboundX and also in the Arkham games how is Batman not killing people when he's literally punching them in the air and they're hitting their head on the concrete I know Batman pulls his punches against street thugs but isn't that a little too much.
11:33 Hey, I had that issue! Also, notice in the movie, he kills the henchman in the bell tower via his patented leg throw off the high place technique--very appropriate to include that, since he's killed three or four people like that!
Exactly! I can't believe how many people stick to the Nolan version as the standard... even though batman kills multiple times in those movies also lol. Thank u sir
I found it very stranger that Snyder (and many others) cite Frank Miller as introducing a Batman who kills, when I alway had the opposite impression. In old timey comics, Batman usually didn't kill because the Comics Code kept all supers from killing. But it wasn't a rule or anything. The Dark Knight Returns was the first time I read a story where Batman really struggles with a moral dillema about killing. He directly talks about not wanting to cross the line into being a killer and how his refusal to outright kill his enemies, such as the Joker and Two Face, and to try and help them rehabilitate instead has led to countless other deaths. That now familiar Batman trope that he doesn't kill was started by Miller, or at least popularized by him. Not the other way around. At least, it was for me.
Two Face in Batman Forever? Also can't forget the "I won't kill you but don't have to save you" scene in Batman Begins. Technicality, yes. But if we are trying to be comprehensive...
In Batman Forever. Batman: Don't kill Two Face because if you do the pain will just get worse and you'll keep looking for people to get revenge on until your whole life is revenge. Also Batman. Kills Two Face by throwing some coins into the air causing him to fall to his death while trying to find his coin.
5:06 - "As best as I can tell, Batman takes quite a hiatus from killing at this point...." [1943-1969] Comics were coming under greater scrutiny in post-war America. First, the industry offered to self-regulate, to mixed effect, and introduced the the ACMP Publishers Code of 1948. This was followed by the "United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency" in 1953 (*so* 50s), the 1954 comic book hearings, and the formation of the CCA. You can see the CCA logo for the first time on the upper right corner of the cover for The Brave and the Bold 84 at timestamp 5:06. The campy Adam West TV series ran from 1966-1968, but prior to that, DC and CBS had been trying to get a fun Batman TV show going since the early 60s. By the end of the 60s, there were several incidents of comic creators chafing under the code and it's not surprising Batman gets a little more free with the killing again. In 1971, recognizing times have changed, the code was updated to become more permissive, though still far more restrictive than you'd see in today's comics. Many of the trends in comics are widespread, and Batman as a high profile character certainly wasn't immune to things like engaging in patriotic killing in WWII, reigning in the violence some under the watchful eye of the CCA, or the British invasion of the 80s (Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, Peter Milligan, Alan Moore, *and* Grant Morrison have all written Batman stories). I haven't made a serious study of it, but I think if you want to get a fuller perspective why Batman changes over time, you've got to look at the context provided by the authors and editors, the industry and efforts to restrict comics' contents by the government over the decades.
Doesn't Batman Kill most of the League of Assassins in Batman Begins? Also, he kills Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, and Talia Al-Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises
The "no kill" rule came for most of them later, largely due to external reasons, and then it stuck. Similarly to the "comics pretend to give two shits about physics and logic, we sooo much different from pulp", singular (pseudo)continuity, and "Batman is dark and brooding and still sufers from severe loss trauma" tropes.
About two years after Batman's apperance, in the issue Batman no.4, Batman reminds Robin "we never kill with weapons of any kind" But as we see in the video... nope. It's also funny how Batman doesn't shoot anybody, but will continue to mount guns to his vehicles.
I'm sorry I'm doing this... I hate to be "that guy." You were close visually at least, I'll give you that... but it's not a maxim... it's a Browning M1917, totally different operating system than a maxim... okay I'll shut up now...
I get the temptation in making batman even more of a badass by making him kill. And of course there are early or alternative version where he does kill his enemies. But the character just works so much better with the no kill rule.
"Oh hi, you caught me in the middle of hypocritical murder. Speaking of murder in spite of conflicts with internal philosophy, let's talk about every time Batman has murdered someone."
One of my favorites is when he crashes a mob boss' funeral and shoots the body just to make sure he was dead. Detective #600 he gets a hold of tech that allows him to control people's body. He was severely injured at the time so his girlfriend's brother volunteers to be Batman's puppet. The brother's foot gets stuck in a subway track and ends up getting hit by a train.
I don't get why we're allowed to kill vampires if we don't normally kill humans. They're just as intelligent and morally capable as humans. If you have to leave a maniac like Joker alive, surely Dracula can live?
HeyMykee Well obviously it depends on the universe, but usually vampires have some capacity for good without feeding on innocents the more modern you get. Vampires as mindless devouring abominations just hasn't been as popular for a long time.
Wade Spencer Well that's what I meant when I said sparkly vampires. Modern monsters have lost their whole point - like fast zombies. The classic George Romero style zombies were perfect because they represent the fear of old age, death, and disease - they look a hell of a lot like elderly people and evoke that primal fear of losing your vitality and strength, while at the same time being decayed and rotting. And the shuffling slowness adds to that effect - people approaching death move like that. It takes a tone-deaf idiot to think they'd be 'scarier' if they were really fast and strong. But then that's pretty much the kind of people making today's movies.
HeyMykee Monsters change with cultural fears. The fast zombies of 25 Days Later, if you can even call them zombies, are a very different sort of being from the Romero zombies and represent different fears. They are untamed aggression and swift changing. In an instant, you can be set charging at everybody you cared about, screaming and spitting blood. They are also a transient thread; the zombies cannot live for long and are confined to a specific area. Ramero's zombies, by the logic of the first movie, are also transient, but more due to their inability to stand up to human cooperation. In the same way, other monsters change as their context changes. Vampires are very vulnerable to softening, as sexuality became a component of their mythos around the time of Dracula. And let's face it, humans are a SUCKER for sex appeal. This has lead to them having an element of the sexual predator, rarer in older fiction, and, yes, as love interests with barely any monstrous traits remaining. Some monsters have fallen out of favor entirely. It's been a long time since vampires have been taken seriously, most likely because their particular symbology is less effective these days. Sparkling doesn't even bug me about Twilight, it's that they have no weaknesses at all.
Wade Spencer I would add that the Dracula style vampires also represent the decadent Old European Aristocracy, which has a powerful appeal to us today even though they were pretty repugnantly corrupt. But that's hardly Archetypal, as it doesn't really play to our most deep-seated fears. I would say the main thing the fast zombies represent (and you're right of course, they're not really zombies usually, but too similar I think) is modern action movie high-speed cutting techniques, created by materialistic directors to pull in simplistic audiences who wouldn't even get the subtler underlying ideas anyway. But we're getting pretty far off topic.
In Batman Begins Bruce kills EVERYONE in the League of Shadows HQ, assassins and prisoners alike. He kills Ra's Al Ghuls henchmen by tossing them off the skyscraper scaffolding. He causes a train to crash and explode whileRa's is trapped aboard. He kills Harvey in TDK. He kills numerous henchmen AND Talia in TDKR.
7:28 Basically this. In the old days it was about having something to fall back on in a deadline crunch. “I’ll just dust off the Riddler!” Now it’s about adding to the IP library for potential cartoons and movie adaptations down the line.
In the trade paperback collection Second Chances (explains the post crisis origin of Jason Todd) one of the first story arcs has Batman explain to Robin that he has killed people, but he only does it in self defense. The story in question was from the 1980s when Batman was trying to locate an imposter Batman (cop that went nuts) that was murdering any criminal he came across
10:58 a lot of animals are sentient. Sentience is the ability to subjectively reflect on one’s conditions and/or environment. Wearing clothes isn’t sentience. You seem to be using the word in the same way Star Trek does, which seems to just be a way of saying that a being acts like a humanoid.
You missed the big one: Batman murders Darkseid. edit: And since we're counting movies, he also kills Johnny Quick of the Crime Syndicate in _Crisis on Two Earths._ edit #2: And you forgot the "I believe you" scene from Miller's _Dark Knight Returns_ which Snyder cribbed for _Batman v. Superman._
Batman shot Darkseid, but the bullet didn't kill him. And in the "I believe you" scene, Batman didn't kill anyone there, either, as Lana Lang states later in the story that "Batman hasn't killed anyone," & Batman killing the thug there would make the whole Batman killing Joker thing later pointless.
6 ปีที่แล้ว +2
Also Paul Dini's Beatiful People, and In The Dark Places.
+Wesley Wiggins Batman certainly _intended_ to murder Darkseid. And in some senses he did. It's only the fact that Darkseid is an unremovable part of reality itself which means he can't be permanently killed which prevented the act from being an unarguable homicide. Darkseid was reborn after being killed. Whether that makes the original killing murder is a matter for debate.
Also in Batman (1989), while attempting to shot the Joker for his bat-jet thingy he fires a huge amount of bullets into a huge open crowd! There is no way someone did not get hit!
I'd argue the films don't count but yeah, Batman kills. Also in Batman #1 he evades a knife attack by the Joker and watches him die with Robin. The Joker survives but at this point it was assumed he was dead^^
I know this is a pretty old video, but I just wanted to add my two cents. Wouldn't the advent of the Comics Code Authority have forced Batman to stop killing for the most part? You can sort of see the divide in the examples that you have pre CCA and post CCA and then once comics gave up the CCA. Before, it's a lot more obvious and gratuitous death (especially with that one caption, wow) whereas after the CCA, the deaths are more implied than shown (except for the vampire, who isn't human and I think is allowed to be killed). Once the comics start to ignore the CCA, the deaths get a lot more gorey and obvious.
"Batman doesn't kill" Multiple instances where Batman's killed. "That doesn't count because it was the golden age, it was in a movie, he wasn't Batman then, they retconned that, war doesn't count, he didn't do it on purpose, vampires don't count, setting up someone's demise and leaving them to die doesn't count, it was from a different continuity, it was an alternate history, aliens don't count, we didn't actually see the truck driver die when the truck he was driving exploded..." It's well past time to ditch the notion he doesn't kill. Also, if he doesn't want to kill, he shouldn't be out getting into fights. It only takes one person fatally hitting their head to make him a killer.
LOL...I was waiting for you to cover this...I had a discussion with a friend about Batman's use of deadly force recently and I only mentioned the stories from the 40's. Had no idea his bloodlust ran this deep... :-D
Damn, Detective Comics Batman was a cool dude. I think the fixation on Batman’s no kill rule in modern comics is this idea that he either kills none of his opponents or kills every last one of them, and he’s able to kill every last one of them because he’s this immortal god creature that had a plan for every occasion. Like, guys, it’s not one or the other.
Also in Batman Begins he pulls his favorite "leave them to die in a fiery crash" move by letting Raj Al Ghoul ride the monorail to the end of the line. He also kills's Harvey Dent in the Dark Knight and well it was a literal war zone by the time Dark Knight Rises. But honestly, I am SO glad I got to know Bats through the movies and Animated Series of the 90s. The comics, he was a f***ing psycho!
I think that daredevil seems to be the only super hero that (at least in frank miller´s age) takes the "no killing" serious. Damm, when someone dies because of him he is truly upset about it. The only time that i have seen him willingly triying to kill someone is when he let bullseye fall to his dead (he doesnt die but he was triying to kill him). And even that puts him on the edge.
This just goes to show that u can't treat comic book characters like literary characters. They are adaptable and malleable. Every major character has gone through a myriad of transformations. So u can't say Batman Doesn't Kill! Because u can always point to this era in the comics and say "yeah, he does. Look!" U can't say "Batman Doesn't Smile!" Cuz u can look at the comics of the Silver Age comics and say "hey look here, hes smiling with Superman." Ultimately, there's technically a version of Bats for really anybody. Lol
Mike Barr seems to like the idea of Batman killing. There was one issue from around the time of Crisis, an annual or something, that had four stories (one of which was drawn by Dan Jurgens, but I don't recall who the other artists were) written by Barr. In one of those stories, Batman tricks two groups of terrorists into shooting each other by setting off a firecracker. Plus, I was quite surprised to read a Legends of the Dark Knight arc by Dwayne McDuffie and Val Semekis in which Batman also uses a goon as a human shield! The guy gets riddled with bullets. Though, to be fair, the assassin from LOTD #1 did survive. I guess it's one of those things. The Batman we see in (most of) his solo stories, who would risk his life to save a serial killer and the Batman we see in JLA, who's ruthless, who's constantly going on and on about how he's willing to do "whatever it takes" to save the world and who would kill Superman on the spot if he turned evil are technically the same character. And then you add all these stories mentioned in the video where I guess the creators were unaware of Batman's vow or simply chose to ignore it. It's not exactly easy to reconcile these versions of the character.
It's been a while since I read it but I seem to remember all the killing in The cult being a drug induced hallucination? Well, apart from the batrockets. Sometimes you gotta break a few eggs, you know?
Great video! I had no idea how ruthless Batman was in the early comics. I know I'm in the minority but I don't care if Batman kills. I understand that he should represent the ideal but sometimes bad guys need to die. I think Batman keeping the Joker alive for so many years makes him partially culpable for all the Joker's mayhem. Batman should be allowed to kill but as an absolute last resort.
A lot of the early Batman comics were taking very liberal inspiration from the Shadow who had no compunction about killing villains or letting them come to sticky ends. So his body count is much higher back then.
Oh, good job Chris, good job! Lovely to see the great (Wagner)/Grant/Breyfogle team in this vid, for my money one of the best ever runs and creative teams Bats has ever had.
Not at all surprised by the killings in the 30s (pretty well established he used a gun early on, though the death-by-vehicle-falling-off-a-ledge technique is interesting) but I was shocked that he was still killing people through the Silver Age and even into the 90s. Also, with the Dark Knight (Nolan/Bale), the Joker lays on some pretty thick monologuing about Batman's supposed code but, yeah, allowing Ra's to die a year earlier was pretty blatant (I think we can chalk up henchmen deaths as collateral damage). Also, Batman V Superman should probably be omitted entirely because, despite the names and likenesses, the two characters in that film are not Batman or Superman
Not only does Joker point out his "code," but 15 minutes later Batman straight-up murders Harvey Dent by pushing him off a building. The same thing he did to the Joker, yet, saved the Joker.
RIP Penny Pincher you may have been forgotten but you won't be in my heart. The dude was literally crushed to death by a giant Penny before he put it in the batcave.
"I'm not gonna kill you,but i don't have a reason to save you...from my bullets."
Fucking underrated comment right here
"I'm not going to kill you, my M197 Browning machine gun's .30-06 Springfield cartridges are" - Batman in 1942
"Please keep your bullets on a leash batman! They look hungry!"
No, no, the men refused to leave the building as it burned, it was entirely on them! Well, except for the one he was supposed to murder, that guy would've been fucked either way.
“Oh boy, here I go killing again” -Batman
Rick and Morty
@@JohnStewart223 yeah... That's the joke
People die in the night I am a night - batman
Hello fellow Tristen
"Children, animals, old people, doesn't matter. I just love killin'!"
DC- Batman doesn’t kill
Also DC- There is a sickening snap as the Cossack’s neck breaks under the mighty pressure of the Batman’s foot
DC: Batman doesn't kill
He game ends.
....this hits hard to home now.
That was before batmans no killing rule was established. And it was only his second story.
DC only made that rule in like the 70ies. Batman originally shot criminals with Joe Chill's gun, of all things.
Well, he said it himself: "If I started killing, I wouldn't be able to stop." We know Batman. We know.
The Bloodlust of a Daemon of Khorne hides in him...
"I wouldn't stop"
Golden Age Batman: You're just an incompetent version of myself.
@@Raul_Menendez You know, you joke, but there's no better way to describe each reboot universe's Batman than an even more incompetent version of the last one. Golden Age Batman retired, became Commissioner, married Catwoman and had a daughter who grew up to be the Huntress alongside an adult Dick Grayson Robin. Earth-1 Batman was Batman until the moment his universe was erased. New Earth Batman is the one that barely has killed, and he's also the one for whom things got the most extreme. And N52/Rebirth Batman failed to seal the deal on marrying Catwoman, which makes him directly an incompetent version in comparison.
Who are you to deny that the OG batman killed before reboots.
@@PosthumanHeresy right after crisis happened, Bruce & Jason talk about Bruce killing criminals with Bruce saying that it was in self defense. Also he kills a guy in Batman #444 when the criminal melts into a puddle after Batman refusing his plead that he’ll die if he said anything
I don't care what anyone says, a lot of those thugs in The Arkham games aren't waking up from some of those beatings. I mean, like ever.
I think people underestimate how easy it is to die from getting punched... or hitting your head on concrete after getting punched.
They aren't
You BREAK fuckers in HALF in those games. Lol
I remember my girlfriend was watching me play at one point,
"I thought Batman didn't kill people?"
"He doesn't"
He just flew from a building at Super speed and kicked that dude in the chest. He's dead."
I giggled at that.
Cartoon logic can apply to games too.
I'm starting to think Bruce's no kill rule is more of a gentle suggestion than an actual rule
"I mean, I don't HAVE to kill them, but if I put them in a dangerous situation and they just so happen to die, it's no skin off my back!"- Batman probably
@@Jordan-hs5kf why does this remind me of saw
They are more guidelines lol
"The Code is more like what you'd call guidelines, rather than the actual rules."
And, haha, that other one from the same speech: "You have to be the super in order for the Code to apply to you." I can totally see a superhero satire with Batman lifting those "Pirates o.t.C." lines for the occasion.
Someone who comments on youtube videos apparently a VERY gentle suggestion
God I feel embarrassed... When you first mentioned Batman killing nazis I was thinking "so he went back in time to fight them?" And then I remembered how OLD the comics were.
In about 16 (give or take) years Superman would be 100 years old since he first debuted in the late ‘30s during the Great Depression.
To be fair, they rebooted the entire universe in Crisis on Infinite Earths in the 1980s and then Year One happened . So that Batman started his career in the 80s
@@hyperion3145 Do copyright laws apply to Batman the way they apply to any other character who's over 100 years old? I mean by becoming royalty free after the time passes
Key Spirits
That’s a good question. I would think not, Disney still has copyrights on things like Snow White which is why they keep getting reboots.
I would believe Superman and Batman would carry on like normal unless DC does something odd like hand the rights to public domain or something.
the only batman who'd lose his copyright laws is the detective comics one, without robin or any other aspects of today
“He’s probably better off this way”- Batman talking about a guy literally hanging from a noose
He was hoping it would end this way... probably
To be fair, if you read the comics, those men were experimented on by the evil scientist in order to make them giant and strong. If I remember correctly, I think he was referring to the fact that the men had become monsters and wouldn't want to live life as some Frankenstein-esque creature.
@@TheRossMadness Luckily Batman chose in their stead and killed them. He knows better
@@DXYS95 Batman knows best.
He says it because the Monster-Men were horribly mutated and lost all sentience. He knew they could not be saved and changed back, I guess.
Moral of the story is don't be a vampire and be wary of judo throws
Nice Monochrome pic
Or just don’t cross Batman.
done and done
but he still wouldnt kill VAMPIRE joker. hmmm
@@Robofrog100 The Memorable Gimmick rule
You are clearly mistaken, Chris. They're not dead. They're asleep. Batman is so good at fighting criminals until they're tired. XD
All those guys just went to the farm. That's where his mommy and daddy are (and Dr. Fishy).
Bruce Parker where they’re all over fed.
C Brock And get to chase rabbits all day!
Little guys all tuckered out.
A dirt "nap" is what it's called :)
Batman breaks necks because he knows he could never turn his own..
UNDERRATED COMMENT
Well Michael Keaton Batman couldn't anyway.
You missed all the Nolan movie kills.... the worst offender being when he refuses to kill that one guy, then burns down the whole building saving only Ra's.
There’s also the truck driver he kills in DKR
And there was Harvey Dent. Both in Forever and TDK. I don't think he kills anyone in Batman And Robin though. Just a funny note that the one movie from both the Burton/Schumacher and the Nolan series which doesn't depict Batman as a killer is Batman And Robin.
There was good reasoning behind that scene you fool, or did you just turn your brain off for that just to get some attention.
He doesn't "refuse to save" Two Face, he straight kills him.'
@@Jotari Well, he was the Joker's ace in the hole. If Harvey didn't die, the story would've fell on it's face. It was supposed to be tragic because he spared the Joker, but couldn't save Dent.
Batman: "I have one rule. No killing."
Robin: "Why do we have so many machine guns and rockets on the Batmobile?"
Batman: "Umm......I am the night".
ChapMeifan uh because I'm batman
"They're rubber, Dick"
*proceeds to use rubber rocket to obliterate concrete barricade to a 5-story parking lot, drives up ramp, launches the batmobile into the air, leaves robin who frantically attempts to take hold of the steering wheel, ejects himself directly at an enemy helicopter, knocks out the henchman, jumps out of the helicopter, and watches the helicopter crash into the bay and explode*
@@RandomizationShow the bullets are the rockets are for tanks
In the arkham game? It's the joker's blood affecting his mind
I was not expecting the term "Vampire" to be used so often
I was expecting it to be used more. Red Rain never came up.
“Where did all these Vampires come from?!” -Francis from Left 4 Dead
@@StarkeRealm If we start including multiverse Batmen, where do we stop? Because they dropped a lot of bodies even before the Dark Multiverse was a thing, and now there's Batmen who have killed billions. Plus there's ASBAR Batman, for whom the people he kills are the lucky ones. And if we really push it, there's The Fixer in Holy Terror since he was gonna be Batman until DC refused to publish.
I wanna see THAT in the next batman movie!
oh yeah, it was a " thing". Vampires became very popular in the 70s, than back again in the 90s and in the beginning of the 00s. Now it's not so on the nose, but back then DC ( and Marvel to be fair) tried to follow every popular trend. If fidget spinners had been popular back then, Batman would have fought against The Fidgeter with his Bat-spinner™, no doubt about it.
Batman doesn’t kill, he just puts people into Kryptonian healing comas.
"This does NOT sate his bloodlust, though...."
I'm always amused by your casual, low-key sarcasm.
"That Batman certainly fixed us. Ricky is dead!" Top notch humour right there! Dwl
Man, Batman hates vampires almost as much as he hates rock and roll!
Kingfisher's Brother just think of how horrified he would be if he ever met Lestat who was a vampire that was the lead singer of a rock band for a little bit.
And ice cream
and sharks
PUNK!!!
Punk is nothing but DEATH and CRIME and THE RAGE OF A BEAST!
Ahhhhh yes. Batman: Fortunate Son miniseries. What a piece of garbage! Just awful.
The early Batman was a pulp-noir hero like The Spirit, Phantom, The Shadow etc... He had a dark side and used guns sometimes and killed villains. Tim Burton's Batman is closer to early this pulp era Batman.
Early Batman and 1969 to present day also sometimes uses guns and kills villains. Duh
How convient for you to ignore literally half this video. I take it you have the attention span of a 1 yr old?
The lesson here is that if you are a vampire, stay away from Batman.
Someone should have told Dracula. And yes, Batman fought Dracula and a vampire Joker.
There can only be one bat themed person in Gotham.
Batman And His Vampire Killing Fettish...
BadlanderOutsider Blade should stay away from Gotham if he ever finds himself in the DC Universe
And if Batman is a vampire, just GTFO of Gotham, because Vampire Batman is way too lethal.
RIP Norm Breyfogle (he drew Detective Comics for awhile during the 1990s)
His was the definitive Batman for me. That insane cape, man. Just awesome.
Didn't know that. Thanks for spreading the word. RIP.
He was the BEST.
His covers and artwork are seared into my mind, so damn cool.
Shadow of the Bat... Knightfall... these were the first comics I ever bought.
My favorite Bats artist
Damn! I didn't know that he died. R.I.P. Norm, he was "my" Batman artist to as he was on the title at the peak of my collecting and comic book reading. 😔💙
Even more main continuity kills: Batman killed "Muertos" in ´Tec 395 in 1970. It´s kinda famous for being the first "dark" issue of the mainline books since the mid-40s. He burned Ra´s with a laser in the 80s and the shown issue at the car dump (i think) has another kill as Batman uses a thug as a shield to block gunfire. Bats accidentally killed the Penny Plunderer in a 90s Chuck Dixon issue. He mortally shot Darkside and forced Joe Chill to commit suicide under Morrison. He killed all sort of zombies and Parademons (they are very much alive and are either New Gods or other conquered human-like being) since the N52. Dr. Death also died gruesomely during Zero Year via a miscalculation by Bats. And who even knows if Bats knew that KGBest was tracked by another team when King´s Batman left the crippled man to die in the tundra.
Dick and pre-Red Hood Jason also killed multiple people.
Long story short. Late 80s and early Golden Age superfan Zack Snyder knows his stuff and Batman & Robin is the sole life action Batman film with zero kills (unless you count Suicide Squad). Even Adam West was a killer! Lol.
PS: He once castrated a man with his own gun in the Jekyll and Hyde mini! Did he live? Who knows...
Darkseid lived beyond the gunshot though, although Final Crisis is so weird and confusing until you've read all the backstory and tie-in stuff and learned about the metastory.
Zack Snyder: "All those henchmen were vampires"
I hope you are not a snyder hater
@@ndo533 And Why would you hate zack snyder?
I hope you don't call him edgelord
@@kartikadewi3270 lol my bad. I misread. Thought it said "snyder fan." Snyder is a filmmaking god
@@ndo533 Oh. Sorry, cause I agree with you that I am a big Snyder fan and in my honesty opinion, Zack Snyder Is my favorite director and he is the best director in my opinion since Ridley Scott and Stanley Kubrick
@@kartikadewi3270 Are you serious?
Me: is peacefully scrolling through TH-cam recommended
TH-cam thumbnail: hey wanna see a video of Batman gunning down people with a ww1 era machine gun?
I too came for the vickers machine gun.
Same here
Awesome video, but a couple of questions and things I consider kills:
- The Dark Knight Returns. Doesn't he kill the henchmen holding the little girl hostage? The "I believe you" scene?
- In Batman Forever, he throws the coins to Two-Face, knowing he would likely fall to his death from it.
- Despite their lip service to no killing, he kills someone in each of the Nolan films:
- In Batman Begins, he lets Ra's die and gives some bullshit "Haha I am not TECHNICALLY killing you if I don't save you, even though I was the one who sabotaged the controls and planned for the bridge to be blown up" one-liner to explain the contradiction.
- Arguably, he is responsible for all the League of Shadows deaths (including the man he refused to decapitate!) when he caught the monastery on fire.
- In The Dark Knight, he tackles Two-Face to his death to save Gordon's son (Batman Murders Two-Face #2!). This is pretty justified in the circumstances, but it still killed him.
- In The Dark Knight Rises, he shoots Talia's truck with The Bat and she dies. Perhaps the most blatant of the Nolan Bat-kills.
Overall, this is a great video, but if you can include the Burton and Snyder videos, there are a lot more movie moments that could be included LOL.
Eric Johnson Couldn’t have said it better myself
Eric Johnson I believe in The Dark Knight Returns he shoots that henchman holding the little girl in his shoulder.
It’s bloody and he likely lost the use of that arm, but it’s non lethal.
My memory of the details are hazy but I don't think The Dark Knight would have made sense if Batman killed the henchman. The Joker frames Batman by breaking his own neck which sets the whole Superman thing in motion, but if he was already killing people why'd he need to be framed in the first place?
The art really does make it seem like he deleted the dude though, dunno why Miller went with that.
henqification In The Dark Knight Returns the scene where Joker dies can be interpreted as Batman actually killing him. Joker's dialogue after Batman breaks his neck is coloured as the same grey that is used to denote Batman's internal monologue. So what could be going on here is that Batman has broken his code, he's finally gone over the edge, but his mind is defending itself by creating the fantasy that he only paralysed Joker.
On a similar note, It has been argued (by Grant Morrison) that at the end of The Killing Joke Batman is strangling the Joker, which is why the laughter cuts out, as the police are arriving, leaving us with just the sound of the rain. I'm not sure I agree with that one, though I enjoy the ambiguity.
@@likeasonntagmorgen Yeah, I considered mentioning The Killing Joke but interesting though it is, it really is just Morrison's head canon idea, where as something like Batman killing Talia in TDKRi is a lot more blatant of a missed Bat-kill.
Speaking of vampires, Batman actually killed Dracula himself in Batman Vs Dracula with stored solar energy before kicking his corpse into dust. It was pretty awesome.
Technically, vampires are not alive and cannot be killed. They are the "undead".
Yeah but Vampires can get fucked
@@wk3820 there body have souls so yeah he kills them
@@wk3820plus in this video there counted
Batman's no kill rule has never applied to things that are not alive anymore. He straight up tells this to Spawn after they worked together for a bit but he had enough of him murdering criminals in front of his eyes left and right. When Spawn goes "we are not so different!" he gets a batarang into his skull and a promise Bruce will end him next time he sees him.
Same also goes for robots. He blew up Brainiac a few times. And then there was H.A.R.D.A.C.
Could you imagine someone walking around with the body of that Captain America in the top right?
“Uh Oh, Batman has the bloodlust again” is my new favorite line! Awesome! Please keep these coming!
9:25 Oh! I totally forgot about Reaper; what an awesome villain and possibly a precursor to the Phantasm.
Cameron Scott Mask of the Phantasm was definitely based on Reaper.
I'd add the Arkham games to this list, especially Knight, there's no way in hell he doesn't kill people with that Battank.
Let alone the suit he's using, if your suit lets you punch someone so hard that it makes a shotgun blast noise then that guy is fuckin dead
Does the Detective Vision actually say they are dead? That's how the game seems to get away with saying people you've run down with the tank aren't actually dead, the vision says they are alive!
Even when you're playing as red hood, shoot a man to death? "Unconscious"
Course we know that, but there was many times in Knight where I ran over people and bodies with the tank, there's no way that wouldn't have killed some of them.
EarthboundX and also in the Arkham games how is Batman not killing people when he's literally punching them in the air and they're hitting their head on the concrete I know Batman pulls his punches against street thugs but isn't that a little too much.
11:33 Hey, I had that issue! Also, notice in the movie, he kills the henchman in the bell tower via his patented leg throw off the high place technique--very appropriate to include that, since he's killed three or four people like that!
Exactly! I can't believe how many people stick to the Nolan version as the standard... even though batman kills multiple times in those movies also lol. Thank u sir
Excellent one! amazing research, it was super fun!
I found it very stranger that Snyder (and many others) cite Frank Miller as introducing a Batman who kills, when I alway had the opposite impression. In old timey comics, Batman usually didn't kill because the Comics Code kept all supers from killing. But it wasn't a rule or anything. The Dark Knight Returns was the first time I read a story where Batman really struggles with a moral dillema about killing. He directly talks about not wanting to cross the line into being a killer and how his refusal to outright kill his enemies, such as the Joker and Two Face, and to try and help them rehabilitate instead has led to countless other deaths. That now familiar Batman trope that he doesn't kill was started by Miller, or at least popularized by him. Not the other way around. At least, it was for me.
That's because Zack Snyder doesn't understand Batman, or any of the heroes he's adapted to the screen.
Two Face in Batman Forever?
Also can't forget the "I won't kill you but don't have to save you" scene in Batman Begins. Technicality, yes. But if we are trying to be comprehensive...
In Batman Forever.
Batman: Don't kill Two Face because if you do the pain will just get worse and you'll keep looking for people to get revenge on until your whole life is revenge.
Also Batman.
Kills Two Face by throwing some coins into the air causing him to fall to his death while trying to find his coin.
You don't even have to use technicalities in the Nolan films, he blows up the League monastery and straight up kills Talia
And in TDK he intentionally tackles Harvey Dent off of a building.
Considering the title of the video, I'm surprised he skipped over so many of the easy movie deaths.
5:06 - "As best as I can tell, Batman takes quite a hiatus from killing at this point...." [1943-1969]
Comics were coming under greater scrutiny in post-war America. First, the industry offered to self-regulate, to mixed effect, and introduced the the ACMP Publishers Code of 1948. This was followed by the "United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency" in 1953 (*so* 50s), the 1954 comic book hearings, and the formation of the CCA. You can see the CCA logo for the first time on the upper right corner of the cover for The Brave and the Bold 84 at timestamp 5:06.
The campy Adam West TV series ran from 1966-1968, but prior to that, DC and CBS had been trying to get a fun Batman TV show going since the early 60s. By the end of the 60s, there were several incidents of comic creators chafing under the code and it's not surprising Batman gets a little more free with the killing again. In 1971, recognizing times have changed, the code was updated to become more permissive, though still far more restrictive than you'd see in today's comics.
Many of the trends in comics are widespread, and Batman as a high profile character certainly wasn't immune to things like engaging in patriotic killing in WWII, reigning in the violence some under the watchful eye of the CCA, or the British invasion of the 80s (Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, Peter Milligan, Alan Moore, *and* Grant Morrison have all written Batman stories). I haven't made a serious study of it, but I think if you want to get a fuller perspective why Batman changes over time, you've got to look at the context provided by the authors and editors, the industry and efforts to restrict comics' contents by the government over the decades.
Bane: I'm going to crash this plane...*with no survivors*!
Mr. Wayne: Hold my champagne...
Well done sir
In the 66' movie Batman kills the dehydrated henchmen because they were unstable and pop'd on contact
I like the idea of Batman being really fucking bad at not killing people at the beginning of his career. Like every single one was an accident
If star wars has taught me anything, it's that falling to your death has about 20% mortality rate.
Doesn't Batman Kill most of the League of Assassins in Batman Begins? Also, he kills Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, and Talia Al-Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises
Who did he kill off screen?
He didnt kill them, they just happened to die.
He also killed Dent in Batman Forever. Cinematic Bats sure loves to execute.
Yet this generation claims he doesn't kill and points to the dark knight trilogy....like wtf?
He didn't kill them, he just didn't save them from the lethal situation he put them in
*chuckles* "No kill rule", I thought it was the "No guns rule". Doesn't Superman have a kill count as well?
Ominvus yup, Supes has blood on his hands too.
The "no kill" rule came for most of them later, largely due to external reasons, and then it stuck. Similarly to the "comics pretend to give two shits about physics and logic, we sooo much different from pulp", singular (pseudo)continuity, and "Batman is dark and brooding and still sufers from severe loss trauma" tropes.
About two years after Batman's apperance, in the issue Batman no.4, Batman reminds Robin "we never kill with weapons of any kind"
But as we see in the video... nope.
It's also funny how Batman doesn't shoot anybody, but will continue to mount guns to his vehicles.
@@metawarp7446 "Here Robin, you fire the car's guns. You know I have a rule."
@@AC-gb7do superman kill count Is higher than mine and I'm a serial killer!
That henchmen getting crushed should have cut to him under rubble “oh hi, you’ve caught me getting crushed by a bat mobile- speaking of bat-murder...”
*Everybody gangster until Batman and Robin pull out the maxim machinegun like it’s the Somme*
No one:
Early french uniforms:the thumbnail
I'm sorry I'm doing this... I hate to be "that guy." You were close visually at least, I'll give you that... but it's not a maxim... it's a Browning M1917, totally different operating system than a maxim... okay I'll shut up now...
1982. Batman Annual #8. Bats kills Ra's Al Ghul after he kills a city.
"Batman, please!"
"One more neck, Robin"
"You always say one more neck!"
I love that thing that he has on crashing vehicles. Its like breaking the game in a video game that doesnt allow you to directly kill an npc
@4:08 Holy shit, is that the actual cover?
Batmanception
I like to think Alfred Stryker the guy from Detective Comics 27 who Batman threw into an acid tank became the Joker
Me too
He kills Two-Face in Batman Forever.
He accidentally kills some henchmen in the 60s Adam West movie.
He kills numerous henchmen in the 40s serials.
Great video. I hope you're able to pay tribute to Batman artist, Norm Breyfogle. He recently passed away.
My first ComicTropes video and I can't stop staring at those pictures on the wall behind you.
It's some kind of an inevitable outcome. When you establish a fragile rule in a fiction, its certainly going to be broken at some point.
Dude honestly I couldnt give less of one about most comics but youre such a personality I cant stop watching your videos dude
I get the temptation in making batman even more of a badass by making him kill. And of course there are early or alternative version where he does kill his enemies. But the character just works so much better with the no kill rule.
The best part about those early issues was that the covers seemed kind of light hearted and innocent
He implicitly killed several people during the Dark Knight Trilogy, including explicitly letting Ra's die.
"Oh hi, you caught me in the middle of hypocritical murder. Speaking of murder in spite of conflicts with internal philosophy, let's talk about every time Batman has murdered someone."
One of my favorites is when he crashes a mob boss' funeral and shoots the body just to make sure he was dead.
Detective #600 he gets a hold of tech that allows him to control people's body. He was severely injured at the time so his girlfriend's brother volunteers to be Batman's puppet. The brother's foot gets stuck in a subway track and ends up getting hit by a train.
“I bet green arrow was super jealous” 😂😂😂 love that part
I don't get why we're allowed to kill vampires if we don't normally kill humans. They're just as intelligent and morally capable as humans. If you have to leave a maniac like Joker alive, surely Dracula can live?
Morally capable vampires? Those must be the sparkly kind... ??
HeyMykee Well obviously it depends on the universe, but usually vampires have some capacity for good without feeding on innocents the more modern you get. Vampires as mindless devouring abominations just hasn't been as popular for a long time.
Wade Spencer Well that's what I meant when I said sparkly vampires. Modern monsters have lost their whole point - like fast zombies. The classic George Romero style zombies were perfect because they represent the fear of old age, death, and disease - they look a hell of a lot like elderly people and evoke that primal fear of losing your vitality and strength, while at the same time being decayed and rotting. And the shuffling slowness adds to that effect - people approaching death move like that. It takes a tone-deaf idiot to think they'd be 'scarier' if they were really fast and strong. But then that's pretty much the kind of people making today's movies.
HeyMykee Monsters change with cultural fears. The fast zombies of 25 Days Later, if you can even call them zombies, are a very different sort of being from the Romero zombies and represent different fears. They are untamed aggression and swift changing. In an instant, you can be set charging at everybody you cared about, screaming and spitting blood. They are also a transient thread; the zombies cannot live for long and are confined to a specific area. Ramero's zombies, by the logic of the first movie, are also transient, but more due to their inability to stand up to human cooperation.
In the same way, other monsters change as their context changes. Vampires are very vulnerable to softening, as sexuality became a component of their mythos around the time of Dracula. And let's face it, humans are a SUCKER for sex appeal. This has lead to them having an element of the sexual predator, rarer in older fiction, and, yes, as love interests with barely any monstrous traits remaining.
Some monsters have fallen out of favor entirely. It's been a long time since vampires have been taken seriously, most likely because their particular symbology is less effective these days.
Sparkling doesn't even bug me about Twilight, it's that they have no weaknesses at all.
Wade Spencer I would add that the Dracula style vampires also represent the decadent Old European Aristocracy, which has a powerful appeal to us today even though they were pretty repugnantly corrupt. But that's hardly Archetypal, as it doesn't really play to our most deep-seated fears. I would say the main thing the fast zombies represent (and you're right of course, they're not really zombies usually, but too similar I think) is modern action movie high-speed cutting techniques, created by materialistic directors to pull in simplistic audiences who wouldn't even get the subtler underlying ideas anyway. But we're getting pretty far off topic.
Imagine getting closer to Batman in a fight and he slowly begins to use his famous judo throw
In Batman Begins Bruce kills EVERYONE in the League of Shadows HQ, assassins and prisoners alike.
He kills Ra's Al Ghuls henchmen by tossing them off the skyscraper scaffolding.
He causes a train to crash and explode whileRa's is trapped aboard.
He kills Harvey in TDK.
He kills numerous henchmen AND Talia in TDKR.
And he was going to kill Bane.
7:28 Basically this.
In the old days it was about having something to fall back on in a deadline crunch. “I’ll just dust off the Riddler!”
Now it’s about adding to the IP library for potential cartoons and movie adaptations down the line.
2:20 I love that panel so much
In the trade paperback collection Second Chances (explains the post crisis origin of Jason Todd) one of the first story arcs has Batman explain to Robin that he has killed people, but he only does it in self defense. The story in question was from the 1980s when Batman was trying to locate an imposter Batman (cop that went nuts) that was murdering any criminal he came across
TIM BURTON's BATMAN has a higher kill count than the first WOLVERINE movie.
finally
been waiting for someone to do this comprehensively
10:58 a lot of animals are sentient. Sentience is the ability to subjectively reflect on one’s conditions and/or environment. Wearing clothes isn’t sentience. You seem to be using the word in the same way Star Trek does, which seems to just be a way of saying that a being acts like a humanoid.
Yeah, the word people usually mean is "sapience"
Vampires: the only thing Batman hates more than rock'n roll.
You missed the big one: Batman murders Darkseid.
edit: And since we're counting movies, he also kills Johnny Quick of the Crime Syndicate in _Crisis on Two Earths._
edit #2: And you forgot the "I believe you" scene from Miller's _Dark Knight Returns_ which Snyder cribbed for _Batman v. Superman._
Batman shot Darkseid, but the bullet didn't kill him. And in the "I believe you" scene, Batman didn't kill anyone there, either, as Lana Lang states later in the story that "Batman hasn't killed anyone," & Batman killing the thug there would make the whole Batman killing Joker thing later pointless.
Also Paul Dini's Beatiful People, and In The Dark Places.
+Wesley Wiggins Batman certainly _intended_ to murder Darkseid. And in some senses he did. It's only the fact that Darkseid is an unremovable part of reality itself which means he can't be permanently killed which prevented the act from being an unarguable homicide. Darkseid was reborn after being killed. Whether that makes the original killing murder is a matter for debate.
I don't thinking killing someone like Darkseid could be called "murder." Had someone shot Hitler would you scream "Someone murdered Hitler!"?
He also trick Two Face into falling to his death in Batman Forever
Every time I come back to this video I remember it being longer than 12-13 minutes
Cap’s chest is bigger than his shield.😂
I love how even in the DCAU Batman couldn’t stop himself from killing someone (no I mean literally, Deadman was possessing him)
That was hardly his fault then deadman killed him batman was just his tool
Also in Batman (1989), while attempting to shot the Joker for his bat-jet thingy he fires a huge amount of bullets into a huge open crowd! There is no way someone did not get hit!
Yeah a couple of Goons are seen shot up, one even falls to his death from a balloon.
Batman doesn't kill... except when he totally does.
This was really funny!!! Most of the times its perfectly avoidable kills... Some of the kills are worthy of sociopath serial killers
Well this is the first one of your videos I've seen. Saw the Rob Lieffeld Captain America in the background so I already like you lol!
I'd argue the films don't count but yeah, Batman kills. Also in Batman #1 he evades a knife attack by the Joker and watches him die with Robin. The Joker survives but at this point it was assumed he was dead^^
I need to reread that issue since I remember that they added a page to show paramedics that joker survived the stab
The sound effects are plain awesome. Kaskwulch!
I know this is a pretty old video, but I just wanted to add my two cents. Wouldn't the advent of the Comics Code Authority have forced Batman to stop killing for the most part? You can sort of see the divide in the examples that you have pre CCA and post CCA and then once comics gave up the CCA. Before, it's a lot more obvious and gratuitous death (especially with that one caption, wow) whereas after the CCA, the deaths are more implied than shown (except for the vampire, who isn't human and I think is allowed to be killed). Once the comics start to ignore the CCA, the deaths get a lot more gorey and obvious.
"Batman doesn't kill"
Multiple instances where Batman's killed.
"That doesn't count because it was the golden age, it was in a movie, he wasn't Batman then, they retconned that, war doesn't count, he didn't do it on purpose, vampires don't count, setting up someone's demise and leaving them to die doesn't count, it was from a different continuity, it was an alternate history, aliens don't count, we didn't actually see the truck driver die when the truck he was driving exploded..."
It's well past time to ditch the notion he doesn't kill. Also, if he doesn't want to kill, he shouldn't be out getting into fights. It only takes one person fatally hitting their head to make him a killer.
Some of this are on self defense, so they might be justified.
But a good chunk of these are downright murder. Batman's a psycho.
He’s doing the world a favor though, 99% of these pieces of shit deserved to die or worse.
Buetifull Persun True, true, but can he even claim about his no-killing rule after all he has done?
Are you saying the guy who spends his nights wearing cape and tights and a bat-mask looking for bad guys to beat up isn't mentally sound?
Justifiable homicide, as it's called i court, is still homicide
LOL...I was waiting for you to cover this...I had a discussion with a friend about Batman's use of deadly force recently and I only mentioned the stories from the 40's. Had no idea his bloodlust ran this deep... :-D
Isn’t Brave and The Bold technically on “Earth 2?” After Crisis On Infinite Earths
Probably. But later retcons don't negate original authorial intent or narrative content at the time of publication.
Damn, Detective Comics Batman was a cool dude.
I think the fixation on Batman’s no kill rule in modern comics is this idea that he either kills none of his opponents or kills every last one of them, and he’s able to kill every last one of them because he’s this immortal god creature that had a plan for every occasion.
Like, guys, it’s not one or the other.
Well to be just, a vampire is a UNDEAD, so...
So wait... Does killing a vampire _reduce_ his kill count!?
Also in Batman Begins he pulls his favorite "leave them to die in a fiery crash" move by letting Raj Al Ghoul ride the monorail to the end of the line.
He also kills's Harvey Dent in the Dark Knight and well it was a literal war zone by the time Dark Knight Rises.
But honestly, I am SO glad I got to know Bats through the movies and Animated Series of the 90s. The comics, he was a f***ing psycho!
Batman has more confirmed kills than the Navy SEAL copypasta. In fact, Batman is the OP of the Navy SEAL copypasta!
I think that daredevil seems to be the only super hero that (at least in frank miller´s age) takes the "no killing" serious. Damm, when someone dies because of him he is truly upset about it. The only time that i have seen him willingly triying to kill someone is when he let bullseye fall to his dead (he doesnt die but he was triying to kill him). And even that puts him on the edge.
This just goes to show that u can't treat comic book characters like literary characters. They are adaptable and malleable.
Every major character has gone through a myriad of transformations. So u can't say Batman Doesn't Kill! Because u can always point to this era in the comics and say "yeah, he does. Look!"
U can't say "Batman Doesn't Smile!"
Cuz u can look at the comics of the Silver Age comics and say "hey look here, hes smiling with Superman."
Ultimately, there's technically a version of Bats for really anybody. Lol
Mike Barr seems to like the idea of Batman killing. There was one issue from around the time of Crisis, an annual or something, that had four stories (one of which was drawn by Dan Jurgens, but I don't recall who the other artists were) written by Barr. In one of those stories, Batman tricks two groups of terrorists into shooting each other by setting off a firecracker.
Plus, I was quite surprised to read a Legends of the Dark Knight arc by Dwayne McDuffie and Val Semekis in which Batman also uses a goon as a human shield! The guy gets riddled with bullets.
Though, to be fair, the assassin from LOTD #1 did survive.
I guess it's one of those things. The Batman we see in (most of) his solo stories, who would risk his life to save a serial killer and the Batman we see in JLA, who's ruthless, who's constantly going on and on about how he's willing to do "whatever it takes" to save the world and who would kill Superman on the spot if he turned evil are technically the same character. And then you add all these stories mentioned in the video where I guess the creators were unaware of Batman's vow or simply chose to ignore it. It's not exactly easy to reconcile these versions of the character.
It's been a while since I read it but I seem to remember all the killing in The cult being a drug induced hallucination? Well, apart from the batrockets. Sometimes you gotta break a few eggs, you know?
Bruh I remember when you only had like 20k subs. Congratulations. I’m hoping you get at least 1MiL soon
Great video! I had no idea how ruthless Batman was in the early comics. I know I'm in the minority but I don't care if Batman kills. I understand that he should represent the ideal but sometimes bad guys need to die. I think Batman keeping the Joker alive for so many years makes him partially culpable for all the Joker's mayhem. Batman should be allowed to kill but as an absolute last resort.
I'm with you too. Incarceration doesn't seem as serious after the 99th daring joker escape.
I agree with you
A lot of the early Batman comics were taking very liberal inspiration from the Shadow who had no compunction about killing villains or letting them come to sticky ends. So his body count is much higher back then.
I'd blame the city of Gotham more than any one superhero.
It would be pretty. Darn. Lame if he killed the Joker. That's that! No more stories.
Oh, good job Chris, good job! Lovely to see the great (Wagner)/Grant/Breyfogle team in this vid, for my money one of the best ever runs and creative teams Bats has ever had.
Not at all surprised by the killings in the 30s (pretty well established he used a gun early on, though the death-by-vehicle-falling-off-a-ledge technique is interesting) but I was shocked that he was still killing people through the Silver Age and even into the 90s.
Also, with the Dark Knight (Nolan/Bale), the Joker lays on some pretty thick monologuing about Batman's supposed code but, yeah, allowing Ra's to die a year earlier was pretty blatant (I think we can chalk up henchmen deaths as collateral damage).
Also, Batman V Superman should probably be omitted entirely because, despite the names and likenesses, the two characters in that film are not Batman or Superman
Yes the movie should have been titled crazy murderer man vs captain hypocrite
Not only does Joker point out his "code," but 15 minutes later Batman straight-up murders Harvey Dent by pushing him off a building. The same thing he did to the Joker, yet, saved the Joker.
You know they can't quit each other
@@jasonblauet8838 Batman had to take consequences for his actions tho.
”Are not batman and superman” LOL, must have seen a different movie then xD wtf
RIP Penny Pincher you may have been forgotten but you won't be in my heart. The dude was literally crushed to death by a giant Penny before he put it in the batcave.
That's why I liked Affleck's Batman.
That's why I loved BvS.
I always took it as a "no guns" rule (at least, Silver Age on). Hence the great scene in the Bat Murderer story arc.