Despite being surrounded by darkness for much of his life,Batmanhas managed to become a beacon of hope in Gotham City. Rather than allowing his trauma to ruin his life, the DC legend became a hero who wanted to make sure no one ever went through the same trauma as him. There is no denying the hero’s noble goal, but sadly, not every Batman in the DC multiverse came out on the same track.
After all, some of the worst villains in comics carry the most traumatic backstories, and there’s no denying Batman absolutely fits that bill.Bruce Wayne went through one of the worst traumasany child could suffer with his parents' murder, but he managed to come out of it as a hero. Still, with such a massive multiverse on hand, not every version of Batman turned out the same way. Some were driven insane by their trauma while others were turned into villains down the line. The DC multiverse is full of truly twisted versions of Batman, and we have found some of the absolute worst on record:
10Zombie Batman Was A Horrifying Look For The Hero
Blackest Night#5 by Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert, Joe Prado, Alex Sinclair, and Nick J. Napolitano
Blackest Nightwas one of the darkest stories that DC Comics ever told. The entire story revolves around Nekron,the leader of the Black Lanterns, arriving on Earth and attempting to wipe out all life in the universe. To make this happen, he had an army of zombies at his command, which he sent after the Justice League. The zombies were revived DC heroes and villains who were all forced to wear Black Lantern rings. This dirty trick made all the easier to annihilate threats as Nekron’s minion had an emotional connection to toy with.
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With most of the Justice League having been good friends with Batman, Nekron correctly deduced that reviving Batman as a zombie would be just what was needed to catch the team off guard. Thanks to this move, Nekron was able to transform Superman, Kid Flash, Superboy, Wonder Woman, and even Green Arrow into zombies.While this version of Batman didn’t have any real dialogue, he was still a horrifying sight. The only reason he doesn’t rank higher on our list is the fact he wasn’treallyBatman; Instead, the zombie was a clone made by Darkseid.
9Thomas Wayne Took Batman In A Dark Direction
Flashpoint#1 by Geoff Johns, Andy Kubert, Sandra Hope, Alex Sinclair, and Nick J. Napolitano
In most universes, it is Bruce Wayne who becomes Batman after the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne, but that’s not always the case. After theFlash created the Flashpoint Paradox, he changed the histories of everyone in the DC Universe. Instead of Bruce’s parents being killed in that alleyway, it was Bruce himself who died. This death drove Martha insane, leaving her to become the Joker, but that’s not all. Bruce’s deathresulted in Thomas taking up his own brutal mission against criminals, becoming a vicious version of Batman.
While Bruce was traumatized by guns after witnessing his parents' deaths, the wasn’t the same for Thomas. Instead of becoming scared of guns, he simply transformed a gun-toting maniac, using their power to his advantage. Thomas prowled the streets of Gotham City, murdering any criminals that he came across under his mantle of Batman. This darkness became so all-consuming for him that when he learned Bruce was Batman in the main universe, he decided to go and beat his son into submission. The loss of Thomas' son changed the man forever, and it sullied the Batman mantle.
8The Grim Knight Was A Batman With No Limits
The Batman Who Laughs#1 by Scott Snyder, Jock, David Baron, and Sal Cipriano
One of the most iconic traits of Batman is that he doesn’t kill, and the hero doesn’t use guns. Of course, this decisions comes from the deep trauma that Batman suffered when he witnessed the death of his parentsl. Because of this incident,Batman swore to never use guns, no matter what. However, that backstory played out differently in another univerwse, one where Joe Chill was scared by a bat and dropped his handgun, leaving it to fall into the hands of a young Bruce Wayne.
It was this moment that changed everything for Bruce. Instead of being permanently traumatized about guns,Bruce picked the gun up and shot Joe Chill, killing him instantly. It was this moment that caused Bruce to become the Grim Knight instead of Batman. The Grim Knight was the brutal protector of Gotham City, someone who hunted down criminals and murdered them in cold blood. If anyone got in his way, like the GCPD under James Gordon’s command, he had no issue murdering them as well. So really, perhaps it is for the best that Batman grew to abhor guns.
7Failsafe Was A Batman Without Humanity
Batman#125 by Chip Zdarsky, Jorge Jimenez, Tomeu Morey, and Clayton Cowles.
For better or worse,Batman is infamous for having contingency plans.With Batman being one of the most dangerous men on Earth, it is not a surprise he felt threatened by his own power.Batman’s subconscious felt he needed a contingency plan against himself, and that’s why Failsafe was created. The brutal android was created in order to take Batman down if necessary, but its technology had a rather deadly fault.
After all, Failsafe is just a machine. The android had no heart or humanity; All he wanted was to fulfill his motivation to kill Batman. Failsafe was designed to kill Batman if Batman ever went over the line and started killing criminals, and so the bot was activated afterthe Penguin faked his death and blamed Batman for it. The ultimate failure of Failsafe is the fact he couldn’t think for himself. All the android cares about is his mission and nothing else, making him a rather poor contingency plan in Batman’s place.
6Zur-En-Arrh Was A Batman Without Empathy
Batman#129 by Chip Zdarsky, Jorge Jimenez, Tomeu Morey, and Clayton Cowles.
Zur-En-Arrh is a complicated character. Originally appearing inBatman#677 by Grant Morrison and Tony S. Daniel. Zur-En-Arrh was a backup personality created inside of Batman to protect his mind in case Bruce was ever attacked. If Batman’s mind broke down and his original personality was no longer available,Zur-En-Arrh would take over and allow Batmanto continue functioning. However, the new personality is more than a bit of a feral.
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In DC’s updated take on the personality, Zur-En-Arrh is presented as an actual personality that lives inside of Batman’s head. The personality is the ultimate distillation of Batman himself, one that only cares for the mission, nothing else. To Zur-En-Arrh, family is nothing more than a distraction from the mission. And whileZur won’t go as far as killing, he has no issues with stuffing criminals in prisons and brainwashing them.Zur-En-Arrh is the worst parts of Batman’s personality all fused together, truly.
5Owlman Is The Opposite Of Everything Batman Should Be
JLA: Earth-2by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, Laura Martin, Wildstorm FX, and Ken Lopez
The Multiverse is a big place, and there are a lot of different universes with a lot of different rules. One such world, often called Earth-3, is a world where all alignments are reversed. All villains are heroes, and all heroes are villains. For instance, Superman becomes Ultraman, one of the most brutal dictators in the world. Likewise, theBatman of Earth-3 is known as Owlman, and Owlman has the opposite values of everything Batman believes in.
There have been a lot of different versions of Owlman over the years, andeach one is a differently twisted reflection of Batman.The first version of the character witnessed the death of his parents, just like Batman did. Owlman grew up wanting to eradicate crime, but instead of fighting it like Batman, he tried to use his vast wealth to control crime directly. Other versions of the character have gone darker as one Owlman even killed his own parents with the help of his butler. Yikes, huh?
4This Batman Was A Literal Creature Of The Night
Batman and Dracula: Red Rainby Doug Moench, Kelley Jones, Malcolm Jones III, Les Dorscheid, and Todd Klein
Batman has been compared to a vampire a lot over the years. Some criminals even think that he might be a vampire. After all, he almost exclusively appears at night and seems to be able to disappear into the darkness at will. The comparisons are obvious, and these similaries were taken to an extreme when Batman ended up being bitten by a vampire.ThoughBatman tried to fight his bloodlust at first, he succumbed to his urges and became a monster.
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After tasting human blood for the first time, Batman went on a rampage. The hero slaughtered every villain in Gotham City in a brutal fashion to get a fix. His bloodlust was so powerful that he even ended up killing Dick Grayson’s parents in a dark alley, right in front of them, recreating a trauma that originally created himself.
3The Darkest Knights Were Batman’s Worst Nightmares
Dark Days: The Castingby Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Jim Lee, Andy Kubert, John Romita Jr, Scott Williams, Klaus Janson, Danny miki, Alex Sinclair, Jeremiah Skipper, and Steve Wands
Batman is a deeply paranoid man. He has a lot of fears about the world:Alfred dying,Superman turning evil, and so much more.Batman has a lot of worst-case scenarios in mind, and that’s exactly what populated the Dark Multiverse. Every awful thought and nightmareBatman ever had found life in the Dark Multiverse. This included things like Batman having to transform himself into Doomsday to kill a genocidal Superman. There was also the time Batman tried to create an AI version of Alfred after the real man died, which ended up possessing him.
These dark and twisted versions of Batman ended up invading Earth and trying to pull it down into the nightmares they were born from.There are so many horrific versions of Batman from the Dark Multiverse, literally hundreds of them. Even though Batman and the Justice League were able to defeat the Darkest Knights, they still exist as a horrific reminder of how many different ways Batman could ended up.
2Robin King Was Batman At His Most Broken
Dark Nights: Death Metal#2 by Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion, FCO Plascencia, and Tom Napolitano
Most versions of Batman characters who turn evil do so because of some change in their tragedy. For example, the Grim Knight was only born because Joe Chill dropped his gun in the alleyway. However, that wasn’t the case for Robin King.This version of Bruce Wayne was simply born broken. It’s not exactly clear why, but Bruce was simply born a monster in this continuity. After all, it was Bruce who murdered his own parents, and when people found out what he had done, Bruce simply kept killing people under the name Robin King.
Despite being so young, Robin King killed just about every hero on the planet. The Robin King has items in his belt to kill anyone he comes up against, all the items he had used back on his own planet. Some of these include the Bind of Veils, Bottled Mister Mxyzptlk, Neron-forged knife, and Smallvillain, and even a ring containing every possible color of kryptonite.
1The Batman Who Laughs Is The Darkest Knight
Batman and the Joker are sworn enemies. They are extremes of one another, and that is why it was so horrifying when they were melded together. The issue began when the Joker launched a brutal attack on Gotham City that forced Batman to break an important rule.Batman ends up murdering the Joker, and the villain infects Batman with a toxin before going out. This toxin slowly turnedBatman into the Batman Who Laughs, someone with Batman’s physical skills with the Joker’s cruelty and insanity.
The Batman of Laughs goes on to brutally murder every hero on his planet before attacking the multiverse several times, nearly succeeding in destroying it. He even gained the power of a god at one point which is wild.The Batman Who Laughsis one of the most dangerous villains DC has ever introduced, and they are absolutely the most twisted version of Batman in the entire multiverse.
