New details have begun to spill out regarding the upcoming Arkham Knight video game. Aside from nifty gameplay tweaks like the ability to throw batarangs in mid-air, special “fear takedowns” which will probably relate to Scarecrow’s presence in the game (using fear gas on enemies? Too rad!) and the inclusion of Oracle’s Watchtower, the first images of the title character, The Arkham Knight, have been released.
Honestly, he’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect from an “Anti-Batman” character. Guns, a giant face mask concealing his identity, assumedly an anti-authoritarian attitude. Allegedly, Arkham Knight is an original character, created in collaboration with DC and someone who Bruce has never encountered before. Essentially everyone is calling BS on this considering how weird it’d be for the finale to a multi-million dollar franchise ending with some unknown. Some sites like ComicsAlliance are insisting that it’s a previously established character like Hush. Even though we’re used to the idea of the Arkham franchise lying to its fans in order to preserve the twists in their stories *cough*JokerInArkhamOriginscough*, they may still be telling the truth here.
We may not have seen the Arkham Knight before. But we’ve seen his prototype: Michael Washington Lane AKA Azrael.
That’s right, not only are we still insisting that Doctor Hurt is going to be in Arkham Origins, (you might want to check out that article before reading the rest of this theory) but he’ll be behind the creation of The Arkham Knight: one of the new Three Ghosts of Batman
I touched on this briefly in the last crackpot theory article, but in the comics Michael Lane was part of a program started by Doctor Hurt to create a new Batman. This led to The Three Ghosts of Batman: Bat-Devil aka Michael Lane pictured above who incidentally Arkham Knight looks like a New 52 version of, a Venom-addicted corrupt cop named Bat-Bane, and Bat-Cop who showed up for two seconds just to shoot The Joker in the face. (Seriously, you need to check out Morrison’s Batman run. Stuff is wild). Azrael’s bio in City confirms that some version of this program is canon in this particular universe and two out of three of these experiments sound like they’d be a perfect match for the game. Lane’s already present as Azrael, ranting about a prophecy where Gotham will burn in flames from the ashes of Arkham (The Arkham Knight?), Bat-Bane is ready-made for the Arkham series’s love of Venom-addled bad guys. That leaves Bat-Cop who was literally just a guy in a Batman suit with guns.
Wait, what did The Arkham Knight look like again?
*boom*
Are we reaching for a lot here? Probably, yeah, but there’s enough substance in the Arkham universe to make this theory feel at least sort of tangible. Having Doctor Hurt show up as the creator of The Arkham Knight (possibly creating him in the abandoned Arkham building, giving The Knight his namesake and the game an excellent final boss fight location) would not be the craziest thing to ever happen in the Arkham series (lookin’ at you, Clayface.)
Even if this all turns out to be hot air on our part, Arkham Knight still looks to be a fun game. In order to prevent yourself from running over criminals, The Batmobile will have tasers on its outside to knock pedestrians out of the way. That’s exactly the type of Batman video game the world needs and deserves right now. We can’t wait to play Arkham Knight when it comes out this October 14, nor can we wait to find out if our theory is even remotely correct.
