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Spoiler Alert: My Favorite Easter Egg In Batman: Arkham Knight
I can't reiterate this enough: SPOILER alert! The small clip of footage included in this article ruins a big plot twist, as well as the game's craziest fight. Proceed at your own risk.
Odds are, many of you may not have thought twice about the moment of note. It happens in the middle of a fight pitting Batman against an endless sea of Joker hallucinations. Batman's sanity is slipping away, and he isn't pulling his punches anymore. He's using lethal force against his combatants.
In the final moments of this conflict, Batman mimics one of his most feared adversaries: Bane. He raises a downed Joker foe over his head and snaps his spine in two over his knee. This is the same move Bane used in the classic Knightfall comic-book series that knocked Batman out of commission. I may be wrong here, but I believe the back breaker finisher is only used once throughout all of Arkham Knight.
At the moment this move is shown, I thought Rocksteady added it as a visual Easter egg for longtime comic-book fans. After completing the game and seeing all three endings, I now believe the back breaker was foreshadowing. The game's final mission, the "Knightfall Protocol," is intentionally named after the old comic-book series, and speaks to a future in which Bruce Wayne is no longer being Batman. The name Knightfall might also imply Azrael steps in as Batman. The new vision of Batman we see in the third ending could be Azrael.
This is all open for debate, of course. At the very least, Rocksteady developed one hell of an ending for Batman fans to discuss. It doesn't get much better than that.
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