Batman: Arkham Knight is a massive game. The sandbox is big and detailed, with dozens upon dozens of individually designed buildings. The designers have embraced the opportunity to pack it full of easter eggs referencing Batman comics and the wider DC universe. Now that Rocksteady have finished their trilogy of top shelf Batman games people have speculated about where they might go next. Maybe some of these Easter Eggs could be the launching point…
And there’s spoilers. You are warned.
10. Victor Zsasz
So when you’re reviewing the the surveillance footage outside of the Clock Tower following the abduction of Oracle, wind the footage round back to the very beginning of the tape. Now keep an eye in the bottom corner to see Zsasz lurking about. After taking out Zsasz in Asylum and City I can see why Gotham’s deadliest serial killer didn’t make the line-up of villains again, but the completist in me hates that there’s a bad guy out there Batman didn’t round up! We know he’s active because one of the Riddler trophies is a Zsasz murder site!
This could become a DLC pack, maybe one for Nightwing. Whilst Batman is hunting Scarecrow and everyone else, Nightwing can pitch in by hunting Zsasz. Maybe tie it in with his search for the Penguin arms cache.
9./8. – Constantine and Zatanna
Around the city there are many buildings that belong to people from the DC universe, including Zatanna’s Magic Shop and John Constantine’s Paranormal Investigators. The former is a powerful magic user who doesn’t get enough love by fans, and we’d love to see her with a stand alone adventure. The latter is getting more exposure, and his hunt for demons would look great within the art style of the Arkham games. Why have we paired them up? Because having them cross over would be even more awesome than either of them on their own. They’d have a really interesting dynamic and the worlds of magic and the supernatural could have some cool overlap. Maybe even go to war with other!
7. Calendar Man
At the end of the game, once you’ve activated the Knightfall Protocol, we cut to a crowd of reporters outside of Wayne Manor and amongst them you can catch a glimpse of Julian Day aka Calendar Man from the back. He’s distinguished by having the names of the months tattooed around this bald head. Although Day has been present throughout the series he’s never been an active character (although he is the basis of an exceptionally complicated achievement in Arkham City).
Now we know he’s on the prowl at the end of the Arkham Knight story we could get a DLC with a member of the Bat family (Drake, Grayson, Todd, etc.) taking up the cowl and hunting Calendar Man who is committing date themed murders throughout the city. It’ll disrupt the ambiguous epilogue but still be interesting. Using Todd would be most interesting, adding a bit more to the redemption part of his arc that is only slightly touched on.
6. Birds of Prey
Is it just me, or did female characters get unintentionally sidelined in Arkham Knight? Oracle gets kidnapped and has to be rescued, Catwoman gets kidnapped and has to rescued, Poison Ivy gets captured without a fight and Harley Quinn – listed as a main character of the series – gets taken down by essentially being tripped up for the third game in a row! It isn’t until the Batgirl DLC that Harley finally gets to put up a fight!
Some of the computer screens in Oracle’s Clock Tower do show a Birds of Prey logo…maybe we can get an entirely female centric team headlining a new game? Get the Birds of Prey, lead by Oracle, on their own mission. Players can switch between the team members like Black Canary, Huntress, Lady Blackhawk, and combine them in combat, just like in Arkham Knight. Keeping the neo-noir setting and the combat mechanics of the Arkham series you’ve got an awesome Birds of Prey game.
5. The GCPD
There’s heaps of cool stuff in the GCPD headquarters in Arkham Knight, especially in the evidence lock-up. There’s also a shift list board featuring Montoya, Bullock and John Jones (a reference to Martian Manhunter). We’ve made no secret of being massive fans of the ‘Gotham Central’ comic series, a book about the everyday folk working at Gotham’s Major Crimes unit who are tasked with investigating and bringing in the big name villains of the city.
To really mix things up, it’ll be interesting to get DLC set during the events of Arkham Knight where you play as some of these regular detectives trying to get their city under control. It could even take place between the prologue and main game, when Scarecrow has made his first strike and villains were starting to make moves in the city. Bullock and Montoya investigating Two-Face’s bank robberies would be cool.
4. Swamp Thing
During the later parts of the game you might overhear some enemies talking about a ‘swamp monster’ in Louisiana, and there’s a bench dedicated to Dr. Alec Holland (Swamp Thing’s human identity) in Ivy’s green house. The Swamp Thing is a character who has evolved in different ways over time, and represents some themes that don’t feature much in pop culture at the moment, such as environmentalism, the interconnected nature of the conscious and the mystical history of the region. Along with the Swamp Thing’s ability to inhabit and manipulate flora fauna, we could have an interesting basis for a new game.
3. The Grey Ghost
This is one of the easier spotted easter eggs in the game, but one of the more obscure references. In a few locations, most notably the Clock Tower, is a poster for ‘The Ghost in Grey’, a character who appears in one episode of Batman: The Animated Series. The Grey Ghost is a TV show about a vigilante that inspired Bruce Wayne to create Batman. In the episode a villain is recreating crimes from ‘The Grey Ghost’ and Batman seeks out the original actor (voiced by Adam West) to help solve the crime.
This could be a fantastic bit of DLC – casting the player as The Grey Ghost in a black and white, Art Deco setting using retro gadgets to catch some classic villains and gangsters. It could be framed as a young Bruce Wayne watching the adventure play out on TV. Getting Adam West in to voice the character would be extra awesome!
2. Superman
This has been mentioned by a number of sources already, but it’s pretty prominent. There’s a Lex Corp skyscraper, a number of references to Superman in the enemies audio and, most tellingly, a voice mail message from Lex Luthor on Bruce Wayne’s phone in his office. So clearly this is a universe that Superman exists in.
With Dawn of Justice coming out next year there will obviously be a video game tie-in. With their well thought out approach to Batman, Rocksteady would be a good pick to put try their hand on a Superman game. Could they be the ones to make an actual good Superman game? Is such a thing possible?
1. Green Arrow
But I’m not a big Superman fan…I’m a Green Arrow fan. Rocksteady’s approach to Batman could be perfectly translated to a Green Arrow scenario. There are a number of references to Queen Consolidated in the Arkham City and Knight, including a skyscraper, Catwoman mentioning having stolen from Queen, most interesting, one of the Joker victims kept imprisoned by Batman being an important worker from Queen Consolidated. We’ve got the beginning of the story right there – Oliver Queen has had one of his key workers go missing and sets out to investigate.
And get Stephen Amell to voice him, because that man is delightful.
Swinging around the city, stalking enemies and using a range of trick arrows has massive scope for possibility. Using the bow and ropes to set up ways to traverse areas and solve puzzles would be cool as. If you give me a Rocksteady game where I can shoot people with the boxing glove arrow I will be a happy geek.
