10 Best One Time Only Characters In Batman: The Animated Series
Those one-shot characters that helped to enliven Batman's world without you even realizing it.
Even though it saw life as a result of Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns, Batman: The Animated Series was a cultural phenomenon in its own right. With its core messages and highly memorable characters and scenarios, the show still has a multitude of fans of all ages to this day, not just those who watched it after school and on Saturday mornings when it was first aired, but also a new legion of fans who have discovered or been introduced to it in the intervening years.
Whilst it aimed to combine various different interpretations of Batman, appealing both to children and to adults alike in the process, the series was not afraid to take risks. For instance, it introduced the fan favourite Harley Quinn, gave the Gotham City Police Department a female presence in Renee Montoya, and put entirely new spins on several existing characters, most notably Mister Freeze (who had been killed off in the comics prior to his re-emergence in the animated series).
It also tried its luck with several other new characters that, whilst perhaps not as popular as Harley Quinn or the revamped Mister Freeze, still left a lasting impression in this highly detailed and well-loved interpretation of the Dark Knight.
10. Captain Clown
"You killed Captain Clown. You KILLED Captain Clown!"
Who can forget this hilarious outburst from Mark Hamill's The Joker in The Last Laugh?
Captain Clown is perhaps one of the most competent of The Joker's goons, for the perfectly good reason that it is revealed during the episode that Captain Clown is a robot - and a vicious one at that.
The captain is ostensibly meant to pilot a barge-load of trash, which The Joker has treated with his patented laughing toxin to bring Gotham City to a standstill so that he can loot the place silly, but Batman still battles Captain Clown several times. Almost every time, the robot easily bests Batman with its intimidating size and strength, before the Dark Knight finally hurls it into a garbage crusher. This enrages The Joker, who dumps a pale full of garbage on Batman in revenge. However, The Clown Prince of Crime soon forgets his woes and rides the captain's crushed remains on a conveyor belt deep into the bowels of his lair.
The presence of Captain Clown also sets up the presence of robots in Batman: The Animated Series, which would become key plot points in later episodes.