Top 20 Worst Things Batman Has Ever Done

We know Batman detests guns, but what if guns were all he cared about? You’d basically get Punisher Batman! In this alternate earth, Bruce Wayne struck Joe Chill down with Chill’s gun. This action sent him down a very different path. As the Grim Knight, this Bruce kept Gotham City under a very tight watch and had eliminated crime through extreme force. He even put a bomb in his butler’s neck. When Alfred finally had enough of this Bruce’s extreme ways, he decided to leave. The butler knew Bruce could detonate the bomb he implanted into his neck and he still walked away, risking death. It’s wild that Batman would do that to his own father figure.

After Victor Sage, better known as the Question, was beaten and dumped into the river, it looked certain that he was dead! Through a convoluted explanation that ultimately screamed “because the plot needs it” the beaten vigilante actually survived. And while the injured Vic is resting, Batman pays him a visit. The Dark Knight lays into him and basically says he needs to get serious about crime fighting. We don’t understand why he couldn’t wait until after Vic was out of the hospital to berate him. If there’s an HR union for superheroes, we’d recommend Question talk to them about this hospital meeting.

During the “On the Outside” story arc of “Detective Comics”, a new villain named Karma arrived looking for revenge against Batman and his allies. Originally a self-proclaimed Markovian freedom fighter named Fleet Delmar, the villain committed several heinous attacks. At one point, he was intercepted by Batman. But Batman didn’t just beat him! He exposed Fleet to fear gas and summoned bats to attack him. The attack was alleged to be so bad that the bats permanently damaged the villain’s eyes! We’re not siding with Karma or anything, but we can see why he has it out for Batman. After all, Bruce knows exactly how scary bats can be.

Batman gives villains the boot on the regular. But this incident was a little more literal. Originally a measly thug working for Terminus, Bootface picked a fight with Batman and lost horribly. When the dark knight kicked the villain right in the face, it happened to be just as the antagonist was trying to smoke Batman with a flamethrower! This unfortunate timing caused Bootface’s skin to be scarred with a now permanent bootprint on his face. It’s not Batman’s fault that Bootface chose to operate a flamethrower at the time of the incident. However, the villain might be a lot less angry if the dark knight didn’t go for the face.

This particular offense takes place in a world in which Superman became a brutal tyrant following the death of Lois Lane. While Batman continues to maintain that some lines should not be crossed, what he did to Cyborg was apparently fair game. The dark knight reveals that he infected his technically enhanced ally, Cyborg, with a virus the very week they met. This gave Bruce an emergency on/off switch in case he ever needed to incapacitate the powerful hero. Even Killer Croc, who witnesses the reveal, can’t help but call out the move. When that villain is calling you out for being brutal, you know you’ve crossed a line.

The Golden Age of comics was the launching point for many iconic superheroes. But it was also an era with some of the most ludicrous stories imaginable. In the out of continuity issue 153 of “The World’s Finest”, Batman thinks Superman is responsible for the murder of his father. Robin correctly points out how absurd that is and is rewarded with a slap for his troubles. Oh and yes, it’s that iconic slap that all of the memes are from. This extremely unreasonable Batman then hypnotizes Robin to forget he knew him. To follow up, the dark knight returns his sidekick to the orphanage he got him from. It’s no wonder Dick has issues with Batman later on in life.

This interrogation quickly went south for the Penguin. During “Batman: The Dark Knight”, the hero went to Penguin for information on Dawn Golden’s whereabouts. And when he wasn’t satisfied, he turned to violence! Batman is no stranger to beating information out of people. If anything it’s one of his hallmarks. But this was a beatdown that got far too extreme. He started breaking Penguin’s limbs. Although the villain begs and pleads, the dark knight doesn’t stop. It took Killer Croc knocking Batman out cold in order to finally put a stop to this brutality. We never thought we’d say this, but thanks Croc!

Frank Miller has hit a lot of home runs when it comes to Batman, but this was not one of those times. The extremely divisive “All Star Batman & Robin” revealed some horrible information in regards to Dick Grayson. Upon taking him in, Batman placed him inside of the Batcave as part of an insane training regiment. Robin was told to eat rats to survive! Look if you don’t want to feed him with a silver spoon, that’s fine. But we think a billionaire crime fighter could physically and emotionally afford to order a pizza for his sidekick.

Mad Hatter may’ve been due for a beating, but this was more like an execution. After Jervis Tetch killed Batman’s lover Natalya Trusevich, he sought revenge. Bruce was consumed by his rage and even smiled once he tracked Tetch down knowing full well what he was planning to do. He pummeled away at Mad Hatter so much that Alfred actually begs for Batman to stop. The Dark Knight ends his assault by tossing the villain into a lake. While Batman’s grief was more than understandable, this was an especially brutal beatdown for the relatively low tier Mad Hatter.

What happens when you add a dark knight and the Flash together? One gigantic mess! After losing all his Robins, the Dark Multiverse Batman of Earth Negative 52 decided to enter the Speed Force. He thought he could utilize superspeed to finally eradicate crime. In order to get there, he used the weapons of the Flash’s rogues against the speedy hero. Batman then strapped the scarlet speedster to the hood of his batmobile. Through some pure comic book shenanigans, Bruce and Barry became fused together into the Red Death. If you thought Batman wasn’t scary enough, him now having super speed and a killer instinct meant game over for everyone!

Where do we even begin with this one? Maybe with the fact that Batman could have righted this error earlier had he not ignored the warnings of his old colleague and friend, Blue Beetle. The bug themed hero instead gets killed for Bruce’s mistakes. But we’ve gotten ahead of ourselves. Taking his contingency planning to new heights, Batman once built a secret satellite called Brother Eye to monitor superheroes. Sure enough, it got compromised, and a villain used it to try to kill all metahumans. It only got worse though, as Brother Eye later became sentient and tried to conquer and homogenize the world. Everyone would’ve been better off without this surveillance too.

A master tactician who always plans for the worst, Batman’s got contingencies in place for seemingly every possibility, including his superfriends turning on him. The issue is… much like his peers, Batman himself is also not infallible. In stories like JLA: Tower of Babel and “Justice League “Doom” those plans aren’t nearly as safe as he would have you believe. Both stories see supervillains get their hands on the contingencies and twist them so they become fatal. These altered plans nearly succeeded in ripping apart multiple versions of the Justice League. Next time Batman, maybe just keep mental notes instead.

It always seemed pretty obvious that should the day come that Bruce Wayne needed to retire as Batman, Dick Grayson, his first Robin, would take over. And everyone assumed that would happen when Bruce Wayne was taken out of commission by the devious and powerful Bane. However, we were all proven wrong. After dismissing Tim Drake’s suggestion of contacting Nightwing, Bruce instead passes his identity onto a new vigilante in town named Jean-Paul Valley. This particular candidate had a known history of instability and difficulties controlling his extremely violent impulses. But no… you’re right Bruce, Dick is too busy! Best to go with the complete wild card.

In “Batman: The Widening Gyre”, serial bachelor and playboy Bruce Wayne finally meets his match, or rather, reconnects with her, in the shape of former flame Silver St. Cloud. The story sees the two lovers reunited, and soon enough, they’re on the fast-track to marriage. Being Batman, however, the happier Bruce is, the more conflicted and paranoid he becomes. Almost immediately after becoming engaged, he runs her off the road. Batman also roughly goes after her hair to make sure she’s not a robot. Although Silver soon forgives him, it’s still hard to look at the dark knight the same way after this.

When you take a teenage sidekick under your wing, it comes with a certain level of responsibility. Not only to keep them alive but to set a good example. And Batman played this all wrong. When Tim Drake quits as Robin, Batman rebounds by hiring Tim’s girlfriend, Stephanie Brown. This was despite the fact that the dark knight previously expressed his doubts about her abilities. After a single mistake, he promptly fires her and forbids her from fighting crime - a move that has made many fans suspect that he was simply trying to make Tim Drake jealous. It’s the fallout of Batman’s actions that really hurt though. Stephanie’s attempts to prove herself eventually culminate in her apparent death. Great job, Batman.

Courtesy of Frank Miller, the much-maligned All-Star Batman and Robin is basically the worst and most offensive take on Batman you’ll ever read. In this particular issue, Batman yells nonsensically aggressive banter at a group of armed thieves. He uses the bleach they’ve stolen to make a molotov cocktail and set them all on fire. All the while, Black Canary is watching him work. She gets so hot and bothered about all the carnage that she decides to start an intimate encounter with Batman right at the scene of the crime. The combination of sex and death here was way too much for most fans to handle.

In issue #4 of Batman, the Caped Crusader can be seen telling Robin that they “never kill with weapons of any kind” - a philosophy that would evolve into a strict no killing rule over the years. But it would seem that, decades later, Batman was still willing to toy with the definition of “killing”. In 1988’s Batman #420, realizing that he is incapable of besting the KGBeast, Batman locks the man in a sewer and walks away in a panel that strongly insinuates that he was leaving him to die. It was retconned by a later writer. However, if you look at it in terms of how it originally went down, the dark knight gave someone a slow and painful death sentence.

Once upon a time, Batman was a character without clear editorial guidelines, and by extension, he was a hero without consistent moral guidelines. Back in the e arly days, the Caped Crusader was what you might call… kill crazy. After having made a name for himself in the pages of Detective Comics, the Dark Knight got his very own eponymous title. To celebrate, he went on a killing spree! First, he dispatched of Hugo Strange by punching him out a window to his apparent demise and then proceeds to deal with Strange’s henchmen. Despite them being asylum patients, the dark knight dispatches them with machine gun fire. We thought Batman was about justice, not vengeance.

The dark knight has played a little fast and loose with his definition of “killing” in the past. There was a time where Batman faced off against the obscure relic from ‘60s comics, “Lord Death Man”. The dark knight once again creatively works his way around his own no killing rule by condemning this villain to “a fate worse than death”. Seriously… those are words from Batman’s own mouth! Knowing that this villain frequently fakes his own death and is actually immortal, Batman opts to lock him in a safe. The “hero” then sentences the villain to exile in space to live eternally in confinement. While Batman seems rather cavalier about the whole thing, it’s super messed up.

In a reality where Batman loses his cool and kills the Joker, he also inhaled a toxin from the clown that warps his mind. From that point on, Bruce goes on to commit a series of horrible crimes. He infects his own son with Joker venom, kills members of the Justice League, and makes Superman and his son get into a fight to the death. And that’s just the crimes he committed in his home universe! Now known as the Batman who Laughs, this twisted Bruce journeyed into the multiverse to wreak more havoc. It’s hard to quantify how much death and destruction he spread. The Darkest Knight’s rise would’ve never occurred if he had just let the Joker live.


What’s a moment that you think put the ‘dark’ in the Dark Knight? Shine a Batsignal towards it in the comments below!