Batman: 80 Greatest Ever Moments

64. "I Can't Stop Laughing" - Batman: Arkham Knight

Though he was definitively dead, Rocksteady found a way to bring The Joker back in Arkham Knight as a hallucination that haunts Batman all the way through the game. Rather than being a physical threat, the villain threatens to break Bruce's mind, free to have more fun than ever now that he's not bound to the mortal realm.

Later on in the game, Batman and Robin are challenged with sneaking into a room to defuse a bunch of bombs, while one of Joker's henchmen in the centre holds the detonator.

In Batman's mind, though, all he sees is The Joker, in the middle of the room, singing a little tizzy about how he just can't stop laughing. "Your parents are dead, and I can't stop laughing!", Mark Hamill's Clown Prince of Crime croons down the microphone, as the two mortal enemies turn on a revolving floor, shrouded in the colourful lights above.

[JB]

63. Bat Versus Bane - The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises Bane Batman
Warner Bros.

Okay, so the end of the big face-off between The Dark Knight and Tom Hardy's hulking Bane was somewhat undermined by the Talia twist and him being relegated to a problematic love-sick puppy who gets killed off in ludicrously dumb fashion, but it was good for a while there.

As well as making a hell of a splash with his mid-air plane heist and leaving an even bigger mark with his attack on the Gotham football stadium, Bane did exactly what he was brought in for - he broke the Bat. And in some style.

Making a mockery of Batman's usual approach to heroism (the whole symbolic adoption of darkness) and his tech-influenced "super-powers", Bane basically just beat the snot out of the Dark Knight and it was a wonderful, brutal battle to behold.

[SG]

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