Major story spoilers forBatman: Arkham Shadowahead.
Batman’s Arkhamverse is a continuity that is superbly rich and intricate with beautiful treatments of DC mythology characters. That’s not to say the Arkhamverse has always been airtight in its lore across installments, however, withSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leagueleaving a lot to be desiredas it largely abandons what happens inArkhamgames and spontaneously scrounges a Task Force X and a Justice League together out of thin air. Thankfully,Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leaguefollows through on the final frames ofBatman: Arkham Knightprofoundly by explaining and exploring the Demon Bat concept.
Part of the intrigue of prequel entries in the Arkhamverse, such asBatman: Arkham Shadow, is that they are beholden to everything that comes afterward; actions cannot be undone that were concretely laid in stone, for instance, and the way must be paved for established events to eventually occur.Batman: Arkham Shadowisn’t the earliest entry in the franchise’s chronological timeline, but it does have the responsibility of laying brickwork for a handful of characters. Now, coincidentally or not, it seems as though a boss fight against Batman’s “shadow” is meant to herald a similarly demonic visage of his later on.
Batman: Arkham Knightbehaved fully as if it would be the lastArkhamgame ever conceived, and as such it attempted to shut as many doors as possible. The most obvious and damning of these attempts wasstaging Bruce Wayne’s death at Wayne Manor and having a fear toxin-induced demonic figure stalk criminalsinstead.
It had been left intentionally unclear precisely what this figure was untilSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, where Rocksteady decided to explain that Bruce indulged in a brief stint as the Demon Bat until conveniently electing to join the Justice League with his Batman and Bruce Wayne identities still known to the public, as if becoming the Demon Bat at all was pointless. Either way,Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leaguewas able to exploit the Demon Bat for Batman’s boss fight.
Batman: Arkham Shadow’s Shadow Batman May Be a Purposeful Precursor to the Demon Bat
In an interesting turn of events,Batman: Arkham Shadow’s Shadow Batman boss fightessentially mimicsSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s Demon Bat boss fight (minus all of the latter’s frantic gunplay and mobility, that is). The parallels are plain between them in such close proximity and it’s sensible that they’d both be manifestations of Batman’s “shadow,” wielded as a tool to inflict horror.
A neat gimmick sees the gigantic Shadow Batman exploit the game’s singular chest insignia batarang by literally tearing a bat-shaped projectile from its chest like flesh and hurling it at players, with players retaliating byhurling their own batarang from Batman’s chest.
Because Batman’s implementation of the Demon Bat at the end ofBatman: Arkham Knightand duringSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leaguewas via fear toxin in the same way that Dr. Jonathan Crane manifests the Shadow Batman inBatman: Arkham Shadow, a connection between the Shadow Batman and the Demon Bat is not only logical but perhaps purposeful. Otherwise, both boss fights at least mirror one another as players stand on a platform in the middle of nothingness and go toe-to-toe with a massive, demonic Batman in the distance.
The latter takes a fiery, orange form with swarms of bats engulfing it while the former spews black bile and has a purple hue (nearly akin to Crane’s toxin-induced perception of Batman inBatman Begins). Nonetheless, they seem to represent the same side of Batman that he’s constantly repressing when apprehending criminals and stopping himself at merely breaking their bones, electrifying them with shock gloves, or having them swallow their teeth.
