11 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn't Know About Batman: Arkham
10. Mad Hatter Was Originally Meant To Appear In Arkham Asylum
Rocksteady
It wouldn't be until Arkham City where Mad Hatter would make his triple-A debut, but he quickly became a staple of the franchise, following up his side mission with further challenges in Arkham Origins and in the Season of Infamy DLC in Arkham Knight.
Originally, though, Mad Hatter was meant to appear in the first Arkham game. Take Batman to the Botanical Garden and you'll be able to scan a riddle referencing the character (a tea-set placed in one of the locale's stealth sections), and it turns out that he was going to actually have a section dedicated to himself.
Early on in development, Rocksteady planned for the Hatter to take control of a maze designed to entertain children visiting the island, only with the intent of trapping Batman within it. The reason why it was cut was because writer Paul Dini reportedly couldn't find an organic way for the encounter to work in the story, leaving Batman's Lewis Carroll fanatic to bide his time until the sequel.
Still, a maze level along the lines of BTAS' If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich? would've been brilliant. Here's hoping a maze makes its way to Arkham in the future.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
