Batman: Arkham Asylum - 10 Coolest Easter Eggs, Secrets And References Explained

2. Scarecrow's Two Most Famous Portrayals

Batman Arkham Asylum Scarecrow
Rocksteady

Scarecrow is one of Batman's most infamous and fearsome villains, and nowhere is he more creepy than in the Arkham games.

Portrayed by Dino Andrade in Arkham Asylum, Rocksteady decided to give their version of Jonathan Crane a makeover fit for a horror film, outfitting the good doctor with Freddy Krueger-like syringe fingers and also an in-built gas mask to go underneath his mask.

It's an unsettling image, and Andrade does the role real justice for the brief amount of time he's in the game. Of course, he wasn't the first to play Scarecrow outside of the comics, and Rocksteady acknowledge that in Arkham Asylum by paying reference to two other actors who did - Jeffrey Combs and Cillian Murphy.

Combs played Scarecrow in The New Batman Adventures, while Murphy himself was the first to portray the character in live action starting with 2005's Batman Begins. (Well... technically at least - so long as we ignore Coolio's cameo as the character in Batman & Robin which... maybe... we... shouldn't? Hmm.)

Well, anyway, both Combs and Murphy are referenced in one of Scarecrow's interview tapes. Both actors are now doctors, and both are unfortunately victims of the villain's experiments with fear.

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Content Producer/Presenter

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.