10 Times Batman Got It Wrong

This is one of those decisions that seemed small at the time. A criminal trying to evade capture, chase him down; it’s a pretty clear-cut sequence of events.But when you consider the tools Batman had at his disposal, what might have happened if he’d handled things differently? The alias of Red Hood is one that has been used to cover the identities of a few different characters over the decades, the current one of course being the DC Rebirth, Lazarus Pit revived Jason Todd.

But let’s talk for a moment about the original Red Hood. His first appearance knew him as the criminally minded lab employee after $1m. But in Alan Moore’s acclaimed 1988 graphic novel The Killing Joke, we read the story of a poor family man and wannabe comedian coerced into criminality by dangerous mobsters.

Batman chases an already terrified Red Hood over the catwalks of the chemical plant in which he used to work, eventually corning the petrified engineer. With nowhere else to go the desperate man escapes the Dark Knight by jumping into the vats below. Emerging on the other side as the white-skinned, red-lipped, green-haired Joker who has grown to become the greatest adversary of the World’s Greatest Detective.

Had Batman not blindly followed his instincts and perhaps used one of the many incapacitating gadgets in his Utility Belt, the Joker might never have existed.