GAME · 2011
Batman: Arkham City
- Developer
- Rocksteady Studios, WB Games Montréal, Feral Interactive
- Publisher
- Warner Bros. Games
- Platforms
- PlayStation 3, Wii U, macOS, Microsoft Windows
- Original title
- Batman: Arkham City (The Movie)
87 archived facts 6 topics 2 sources Last reviewed Sep 2026
44 Interesting Facts About Batman: Arkham City
- #001
Contains a major spoiler — show
After the launch of this game, Mark Hamill announced his retirement from voicing the Joker. He said, however, that he would return to the role if an adaptation of the comic book "Batman: The Killing Joke" were released. Batman: Arkham Knight (2015) served as a return to the event, and Hamill came back as the Joker for it.
- #002
Contains a major spoiler — show
In the downloadable content (DLC) for this game, "Harley Quinn's Revenge" (2012), it is revealed that the hint in the main story that she was pregnant was either a false positive or that she lost her baby in a miscarriage. The game's writer, Paul Dini, was not consulted about this decision and claimed he did not even know a story-changing DLC was in the works until he saw its trailer on the television in his home. Reportedly this angered him so much that he quit writing the games. Batman: Arkham Origins (2013), unaware of Dini's vision for the third installment of the series, was written as an origin story rather than a sequel. In the end Dini was persuaded to return, but production on Origins had already begun. Dini claims the DLC ruined his sequel plans, although some of his plans were salvaged for Batman: Arkham Knight (2015).
- #003
Contains a major spoiler — show
Before realizing he is a fake Joker, you can hear Harley Quinn say something along the lines of "Oh Mistah J you look perfect! Oh wait it isn't you is it?" The Joker replies, "Be quiet Harley!" This foreshadows that Clayface will later impersonate the Joker.
- #007
Rocksteady decided not to use the Batmobile in this game because of Arkham City's rough terrain and narrow environments.
- #009
Contains a major spoiler — show
At the start of the game, when you are told to line up, a prisoner says, "Bruce Wayne. You're on my list. Bang!" This is Deadshot without his costume. Later in the game you track a sniper assassin through Arkham City and learn that he is Deadshot and that he has "a list of targets," one of whom is Bruce Wayne.
- #010
Contains a major spoiler — show
In the Joker boss fight that takes place a few minutes before Protocol 10, if you enter detective mode while fighting him, you can see that, unlike the thugs and the lieutenant, he has no skeleton. This is one of the many hints given throughout the main story that the Joker is being impersonated by Basil Karlo/Clayface.
- #011
Contains a major spoiler — show
Find a balcony or a billboard and spam freeze grenades. You will begin to glide through the air. If you get high enough, the TYGER guards protecting the wall at the edge of Arkham City will not notice you, and you are free to roam around Gotham City.
- #012
This is the first known project in which Tara Strong voices Harley Quinn, a role predominantly voiced by Arleen Sorkin, a friend of creator Paul Dini. Strong is better known in the Batman animated universe for the role of Barbara Gordon, also known as Batgirl, and in this game as Oracle.
- #013
Contains a major spoiler — show
At the end of the third Catwoman DLC mission, the player is given a choice: leave Arkham City with the loot, or leave it in the vault but rescue Batman, who is trapped in the Steel Mill. A green arrow on the ground marks where the "better" option (rescue Batman) is, and likewise a red arrow indicates the "lesser" option (leave Arkham City).
- #015
In one of the unlockable interview sessions between Hugo Strange and the Joker, Strange tries to draw out the Joker's origins and his relationship with Batman. The Joker goes on to tell Strange how he was a failed stand-up comedian, got mixed up with the mob, and was forced to enter the Ace Chemicals factory, where he himself had worked under the "Red Hood" mask, which led to his encounter with Batman and his being thrown into a vat of chemicals that transformed him. Strange then states that the Joker is lying about the whole story, to which the Joker replies, "If you have to have an origin story, you're better off making it multiple choice." Both the story and the quotes are taken almost directly from Alan Moore's hugely popular comic book "The Killing Joke."
- #017
Contains a major spoiler — show
The number of times Batman is knocked out: 7.
- #018
Contains a major spoiler — show
Among the four Batman: Arkhamverse games, this is the only one in which Commissioner James Gordon is ultimately not voiced and also not captured.
- #020
Deadshot, without his equipment, stands in front of Bruce Wayne in the opening scene.
- #021
Contains a major spoiler — show
The painting "Cain and Abel: The Duality of Man" at the start of Catwoman's DLC foreshadows the ending in which Batman carries the Joker's body out of Arkham City.
- #022
Troy Baker, who plays Tim Drake/Robin, also portrays Bruce Wayne/Batman in games such as Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham (2014), Batman: The Telltale Series (2016) and Batman: The Enemy Within (2017).
- #023
Hush, without his trench coat, is in one of the beds on the west side of the church on your first visit. When the radio mentions Bruce Wayne's name, he visibly stirs in his sleep.
- #026
Contains a major spoiler — show
Just before your first encounter with the Joker, you can find the Scarecrow's mask on a haystack near the steel mill on the roof of a nearby building. This shows that he was not killed by Killer Croc. It foreshadows his return in Batman: Arkham Knight (2015).
- #027
Gray Delisle did not know she was the voice of Catwoman until she came in to record. Initially an unnamed actress was supposed to play Catwoman on camera. For unknown reasons, Gray Delisle was called in by Collette Sunderman to take a role in an unknown project and was not made aware that she was Catwoman until she entered the recording studio.
- #028
The in-game super-prison "Arkham City" bears a strong resemblance to the prison in John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981), in which the island of Manhattan is walled off to serve as a giant prison.
- #029
It was planned to be released in the US on the same day as Batman: Year One (2011).
- #030
The memory card Catwoman steals from Two-Face and inserts into her smartphone-like device shows a map of Park Row, also known as Crime Alley, the place where Bruce Wayne's family was killed. When Batman visits this place in the game, Strange has left him a soundtrack to listen to.
- #031
The music played while Batman pays his respects to his parents is "A Rose for Respect". This music foreshadows what will happen in the finale, since it takes on an entirely new meaning in the end title sequence of Harley Quinn's Revenge.
- #032
The front of the ice cream truck Harley uses to crash into the church reads "Mind the child". This is the first clue in the game that Harley may (or may not) be pregnant. Harley Quinn's Revenge also comes into play. Near the beginning, Commissioner Gordon interrupts his interview with Vicki Vale during a radio broadcast when she asks why no one is allowed to see the Joker's body. In a flashback, when Batman is about to infiltrate the steel mill, talking to Gordon reveals that after the hostage situation is resolved, Batman needs his help with "that other problem," which is ominously left unexplained (this subject is dealt with in more detail in the Endgame comic). Also, as soon as you enter, you see Mechanical Guardians posed around Harley's hideout. At the end of the DLC she releases a bunch of active guardians on you.
- #033
In one of the game's ending screens, Hugo Strange says, "So, you failed to live up to his expectations. How predictable." Who "his" refers to is not explained, but it seems likely he is talking about Quincy Sharp, who believed Batman was a valuable successor to his work. In fact, he is talking about Ra's Al Ghul.
- #035
Contains a major spoiler — show
If you monitor the Joker's heartbeat in the finale, it becomes agitated when Batman is beaten by Clayface and calms when Batman gains the upper hand.
- #037
Contains a major spoiler — show
If you do not jump out of the church when the Joker announces he has rigged it with bombs, he gives a few hints about the film's ending. Joker: Sometimes I wonder if all of this will end with one of us looking at the other's corpse and trying to think about what to do next. The only question is: whose corpse will that be? When a new game is started, the first thing seen is the painting of Cain and Abel, the duality of man. Of course, in the final cutscene Batman and the Joker imitate exactly this painting.
- #038
One side of the courtroom in Two-Face's courthouse looks clean and intact, while the other side looks damaged and destroyed. This reflects Two-Face's duality.
- #039
In the museum you cross the frozen lake to reach, the Penguin's shark swims there. If you use Detective Vision, you will not find any trace of it swimming around. This is because sharks' bodies are made entirely of cartilage and contain no bones, so they have no skeletons.
- #042
It is the first open-world Batman video game.
- #043
While defeating Mr. Freeze, Batman briefly hallucinates Joker's face onto Victor's face, foreshadowing how Joker's blood can infect people and slowly drive them insane. This is an inseparable plot point of Batman: Arkham Knight (2015).
- #044
Batman: Arkham City was remastered for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 as part of the Batman: Return to Arkham (2016) collection. When the remaster first surfaced on 18 May 2016, there was so much outrage over very noticeable graphical downgrades and stylistic changes that the remaster's premiere date was pushed back from 26 July 2016 to 21 October 2016 to fix the issues. The final product did indeed look better than the trailer, but, to fans' horror, most of the stylistic changes remained.
- #046
Mark Hamill had voiced Joker for the last time until Batman: Arkham Knight.
- #047
Contains a major spoiler — show
While "Joker" tells everyone about his favorite show and that he is better now, you hear someone cough behind the camera, one of the many signs that Basil Karlo/Clayface is impersonating Joker.
- #048
In 2016 it was re-released in a remastered version for PS4 and Xbox One together with its predecessor Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) under the title Batman: Return to Arkham (2016).
- #049
When you enter Arkham City as Bruce Wayne, Azrael can be seen watching you from the rooftops. There is also Azrael's grim little speech to Batman, which points to events later in the series.
- #050
Feeling that players relied heavily on it in Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009), Rocksteady considered putting a time limit on Batman's detective vision. The developers scrapped it because they thought Batman would never create a device with such limited capabilities.
- #051
A boat full of screaming men, found in the middle of the flooded city center infested with cockroaches, that must be delivered to Scarecrow. This foreshadows the events of Batman: Arkham Knight (2015). The glass-fronted cockroach boxes reappear in Knight on Stagg's airships.
- #052
Peter MacNicol voices the Mad Hatter, a villain obsessed with collecting Batman's cowls. MacNicol also voices X The Eliminator in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law (2000), a villain obsessed with collecting part of the hero's costume (his emblem).
- #053
Contains a major spoiler — show
When you use the cryptography tool, there are several stations that give seemingly random numbers followed by a ringing sound. This is a system Russia legitimately used during the Cold War. However, if you decrypt them, a major foreshadowing about Batman: Arkham Knight (2015) and Scarecrow's return is revealed.
- #054
In the "Harley's Revenge" DLC you play as both Robin (Tim Drake) and Batman.
- #055
In some promotional posters Batman is shown with a nosebleed. It indicates that Batman has contracted the Joker disease.
- #057
At one point Batman overhears thugs mentioning the rumor that Harley Quinn is a man. She was not; she had actually just been filmed in motion by a man, and a fake promotional trailer was even released to anger her fans about it.
- #058
The giant poster of Solomon Grundy seen in the subway, with fools staring at him, indicates that Penguin keeps him at the Iceberg Lounge.
- #060
Contains a major spoiler — show
Batman: Arkham City (2011) implied that Harley Quinn was pregnant. The downloadable content (DLC) reveals that the pregnancy was either a false positive or that she lost the baby through a miscarriage. The game's writer, Paul Dini, was not consulted about this decision and claimed he did not even know a story-changing DLC was in development until he saw its trailer on the television in his home. This reportedly angered him so much that he quit writing the games. Batman: Arkham Origins (2013), unaware of Dini's vision for the third installment of the series, was written as an origin story rather than a sequel, while new writers developed a story for the sequel Batman: Arkham Knight (2015).
Sources & editorial notes
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