DCAU Fan Theories?

[JonnyQuest037]

I've heard Bruce Timm's reservations before about having Darkseid and Brainiac in "Twilight," but I think it was the right choice. After woefully underrepresenting the Man of Steel in Season One, we needed a strong Superman episode, and "Twilight" delivered in spades.

Yeah, IIRC, BT's main objection to having both Darkseid & Brainiac in the same two-parter was that it burned through two of their A-List villains in one story. It's tough finding DC villains powerful enough to challenge the entire Justice League!

 

[Yojimbo]

Yeah, IIRC, BT's main objection to having both Darkseid & Brainiac in the same two-parter was that it burned through two of their A-List villains in one story. It's tough finding DC villains powerful enough to challenge the entire Justice League!

Yeah, in the Modern Masters Vol. 3, Timm gets into it on page 77. Both he and James Tucker were reluctant at first for that reason, not just Timm.

...and just in case we got a pick-up for a second season, Warner Bros. paid Rich Fogel to come up with a couple of episode ideas. So he came up with a couple, and we had talked about bringing Darkseid back anyway, so one of the premises he came up with was "Twilight." Initially, myself and James Ticker both were kind of reluctant on his pitch, just because we didn't think pairing Darkseid up with Brainiac was necessarily a great idea. There aren't that many DC villains who are, on their own, big and strong enough to take on the entire Justice League, so we thought it was using up two big villains all at once when we should have one Darkseid story and one Brainiac story; Brainiac could have easily have had his own Justice League episode. We told Rich our misgivings about it and he said, "Let me work on it. I think I can make it work."

 

[JonnyQuest037]

This video by Steve Shives inspired a brand new bit of headcanon for me: The Joker first developed his "Laughing Fish" formula while he was trying to crack the problem of getting piranhas to smile in the leadup to "Mad Love":



Steve's done lots of other cool videos about Batman in general and BTAS in particular, BTW. His channel is worth checking out.

 

[#TeamMike]

This video by Steve Shives inspired a brand new bit of headcanon for me: The Joker first developed his "Laughing Fish" formula while he was trying to crack the problem of getting piranhas to smile in the leadup to "Mad Love":



Steve's done lots of other cool videos about Batman in general and BTAS in particular, BTW. His channel is worth checking out.

Rolled my eyes when he was dunking on TNBA at the end for its "stinker" episodes.

The worst episode of TNBA (which is probably Love is a Croc for me simply because Bab-Doll should have remained a one-off character and the pairing with Croc is bizarre), is still miles better than the worst episodes of B:TAS, which are objectively bad and incompetently written/animated.

 

[Yojimbo]

There was a scientist employed by Alva on Static Shock. He had a speaking role on Trouble Squared. I always thought he was Curtis Metcalf and maybe would become Hardware on the show, but nope. Always credited as "Scientist".

Then years later on one of his forums, the late Dwayne McDuffie revealed they did toy with using other Milestone heroes including Hardware on the show but the network wanted them to be teenagers so they dropped it.

 

[ABrown]

In Epilogue, Bruce says "Kent called". In my mind I've always felt that he wasn't talking about Clark. It's either a child that Clark and Lois had, or it's the rumored child conceived by Clark and Lashina in Legacy.

 

[Ed Nygma]

Rolled my eyes when he was dunking on TNBA at the end for its "stinker" episodes.

The worst episode of TNBA (which is probably Love is a Croc for me simply because Bab-Doll should have remained a one-off character and the pairing with Croc is bizarre), is still miles better than the worst episodes of B:TAS, which are objectively bad and incompetently written/animated.

Agree to disagree on this one- I loved the Mad Love comic, but the TNBA episode adapting it with the new designs is positively ghastly. Ruined the pacing by blasting through everything, and even the dialogue was somehow off. It also didn't help that Kids Wb held it over to air the same week Batman Beyond premiered in order to "trick" kids into continuing to watch Batman; had it aired in 1998 I think it would've been less offensive, but it in no way should've been the series finale when the story had already been told. One of those eps I think would've been much better on Fox Kids, with the whole nourish mood and atmosphere that Two Face part 1 had.

But I do agree that Baby Doll should've remained a one-off character; one of those villains like Roxy Rocket that Dini and Timm inexplicably liked, and kept forcing on the audience in some form again, and again, and again...

 

[BigFatHairyDeal]

I still don't like the scene in the JLU finale when Darkseid tells Batman nobody's ever dodged his Omega beams before. However, considering that he missed Superman in "Twilight" and he claims that he won that fight with Superman, I'm just going to draw the conclusion that Darkseid is just one big, fat liar and he's actually missed countlessly many times.

 

[Revelator]

Agree to disagree on this one- I loved the Mad Love comic, but the TNBA episode adapting it with the new designs is positively ghastly. Ruined the pacing by blasting through everything, and even the dialogue was somehow off. It also didn't help that Kids Wb held it over to air the same week Batman Beyond premiered in order to "trick" kids into continuing to watch Batman; had it aired in 1998 I think it would've been less offensive, but it in no way should've been the series finale when the story had already been told. One of those eps I think would've been much better on Fox Kids, with the whole nourish mood and atmosphere that Two Face part 1 had.

Adapting Mad Love into a 22 minute episode required various cuts and adjustments that inevitably altered the pace. Those necessary evils still wouldn't have been avoided if the adaptation had taken place during BTAS. I don't have any major problems with the episode's script, atmosphere, or use of TNBA designs. My main objection is that Mark Hammil's performance wasn't on par with Conroy's or Sorkin's--they did some of their best work in that episode, whereas Hammil was surprisingly rote.

 

[#TeamMike]

Adapting Mad Love into a 22 minute episode required various cuts and adjustments that inevitably altered the pace. Those necessary evils still wouldn't have been avoided if the adaptation had taken place during BTAS. I don't have any major problems with the episode's script, atmosphere, or use of TNBA designs. My main objection is that Mark Hammil's performance wasn't on par with Conroy's or Sorkin's--they did some of their best work in that episode, whereas Hammil was surprisingly rote.

To add to this, I kind of like that the episode adaptation (understandably so) also removed this bit, which feels fairly dated.

 

[John Pannozzi]

The events of the Gen 13 animated movie happened in the DCAU. (at least I like to imagine they did).

 

[Karkull]

In "Alive!," Killer Frost went after Toyman during Grodd's mutiny attempt, referring to him as "so annoying!" I didn't think much of it, but I was going over my material on Aglets Are Sinister and I noticed this pic:

Look at how intently she's watching him. Since we know that she's, essentially, a serial killer who specifically likes to murder men by absorbing their heat / freezing them to death, it's my headcanon that Killer Frost had pegged Toyman as her next victim and was looking for an opportunity to kill him.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

It looks more like she's eyeing the Thinker to me.

 

[Yojimbo]

Pretty sure she'd kill almost everyone had she been given the chance. She froze all those villains in Alive! without a second's hesitation. Well, mainly to save her own skin. But still.

 

[Karkull]

In "Fearful Symmetry," Nuvo-Gen -- the genetics company that created Galatea -- was a subsidiary of LexCorp. Not only were they cloning Kryptonians, something Luthor was doing in the Superman episode "Identity Crisis," but their agents had access to a lot of LexCorp tech, such as the flying jetpacks (from "A Little Piece of Home") and hard light hologram technology, like the type Luminus created for LexCorp in "Target" and "Solar Power." Lex Luthor probably created the company to allow Professor Emil Hamilton to continue his research independent of the scrutiny of S.T.A.R. Labs.

 

[Yojimbo]

@jtstrecker posted a theory that Kobra's bomb in "Curse of the Kobra" is salvaged/repurposed tech from the Imperium's invasion in the Justice League's "Secret Origins".

 

[Karkull]

In "Secret Origins," Superman and Batman find J'onn J'onzz imprisoned in a military facility. However, if the Alien Invaders imprisoned him, why didn't they stick him in one of those cocoons that they used during the Martian occupation and with the scientists earlier in the episode? In fact, the army outside that the trio encountered when they were leaving were the Martian Invaders, implying that they themselves just got there.

My theory is that J'onn J'onzz attempted to alert the U.S. authorities when he arrived, but he was imprisoned by Project: Cadmus.

 

[Yojimbo]

In "Secret Origins," Superman and Batman find J'onn J'onzz imprisoned in a military facility. However, if the Alien Invaders imprisoned him, why didn't they stick him in one of those cocoons that they used during the Martian occupation and with the scientists earlier in the episode? In fact, the army outside that the trio encountered when they were leaving were the Martian Invaders, implying that they themselves just got there.

My theory is that J'onn J'onzz attempted to alert the U.S. authorities when he arrived, but he was imprisoned by Project: Cadmus.

10/2: Figured the cocoon couldn't neutralize his powers and co-opted the military tech but some of his telepathy still leaked through to the 6 heroes. Ooo, that being Cadmus tech makes sense. We know from the Volcana STAS episode, they would already been aware of telepaths and likely figured out countermeasures.

10/18: Post-JLvsFF, one new theory that works for me is the criminal Kyle handles in STAS "In Brightest Day..." that seemed to originally be just a visual nod to Guy Gardner really was Guy. Eventually, he turns a new leaf and after the events of JLvsFF, is chosen to become a GL. Well, I suppose there's wiggle room that Guy (and Hal) were GLs before Jessica. Either way.

 

[Karkull]

Okay, this one's a long shot and full of holes, but work with me here.

In my opinion, one of the worst TNBA revamps was the Riddler. Trading in his slick green jacket and tie for a lime green body stocking and elf shoes really irritated me. It was almost like the creative team, driven to anger over how difficult the character was to write, acted on that frustration by making him look ridiculous. But what if there was a reason he did it?

In "Riddler's Reform," a recently-released Edward Nygma signed a deal with Wacko Toys and its CEO, Charles Baxter, to license his Riddler persona and puzzles for the toy market. Unfortunately, that went south when Riddler tried to kill Batman at the Gotham Toy Fair, but what if the licensing deal was still active and Nygma's Riddler persona was still under license to Wacko Toys? Now, I'm sure that a Wile E. Coyote super-genius like Nygma is too smart to get snookered by another contract like he did with Daniel Mockridge, but what if his only recourse was to tank the Riddler identity by destroying it, much like a musician releasing a trash album at the end of a record contract, only to sign with a different company and release a hit album? Or like when Prince became The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, presumably as a way to get back at Warner Bros. over his then-current record deal?

Obviously, Nygma could have tried to kill Charles Baxter like he tried to kill Mockridge, but what it Baxter took precautions? It could have been as easy as, "Hey, Eddie, meet Deadshot. You kill me, he kills you. Capishe?"