Justice League (animation)/Headscratchers

New questions go at the bottom, please.

• Injustice For All:
  • This has always bugged me immensely... In Injustice For All, when the assortment of villians capture Batman, why don't they take off his mask? Seriously, it makes no sense whatsover that Lex Luthor and the Joker (and a bunch of other supervillians) wouldn't want to know his identity. (Granted, the Joker wouldn't, but he enters the story much later then when they capture Batman, so there is plenty of time for them to do it before the Joker intrudes.) This goes as far as the Cheetah making out with him. Wouldn't she want to know who exactly she is kissing? I haven't watched it in a while, but did I miss some kind of explanation for this?
    • She knows exactly who she's kissing: Batman. Seriously, though, one of the first things Luthor tries to do is open up his Utility Belt, and you saw the defenses it has on that. He probably thinks the mask is similar. That said, for the record the Joker didn't come after they captured Bats. In fact, he's the one who helps them capture him.
      • I stand corrected on the Joker part. The Cheetah part is a moot point. But still, the cowl is shown no properties of defense. And, why wasn't that the first thing they tried instead of bothering with the belt? As soon as he crashed down on the table, any one of them would have tried to unmask him, using Grundy as bait.
        • I saw recently in some episode that it does have some sort of defense, spraying someone with a gas when he tried to unmask the Bat. I mean, this is Batman we're talking about.
        • So why didn't he even try it? And sure, the gas would knock out the guy pulling off the mask, but they could just try again, with gas masks. This is Lex Luthor and the Ultra-Humanite we're talking about, I'm sure if that if they didn't have a gas mask they could build one fairly quickly. Even if they couldn't obtain gas masks, they could still try again, as the cowl doesn't have an unlimited supply of it.
        • You make it sound like the whole thing was done to unmask Batman, they had a plan and were plenty busy enough with it. Besides, everyone knows what happens when his identity is leaked, brain wipes for everyone!
        • When has the JLA ever brainwashed people who know their identities? Also, while it may not have done just to get Batman, did none of them think, "Well, gee, know would be a great time to learn an extremely valuable secret about one of our greatest foes, a secret that could very well be used against him magnificently in the future?"
          • What you are actually saying is that you have no memory of any time that a group of people who have access to highly advanced technology, mental powers, and magic and have demonstrated a willingness to go beyond legal constraints have chosen to mess with someone's memory. If you think about it, I'm sure you will see the potential problem with your reasoning.
            • In that case, it bugs me that they also destroyed the episode footage containing those incidents. Especially since there was that one Superman episode where the guy figured out at the literal last second who Clark Kent was, and that episode went unscathed.
          • They did it in the comics. Not that it's relevant here.
    • The answer is simple, none of the villains care who he is. They're there to kill the League, not blackmail them or pursue an ongoing vendetta, aside from Joker who top priority is killing him. Batman was to die right after the Watchtower blew up, if anyone cared they could look once he was dead.
      • • And I think the MST3K Mantra can apply here as well
        • Not unmasking the hero when you've got him captured is one of the big red polka dots on the Villain Ball.
    • The best answer to your question can be found in ANOTHER JL EPISODE. Luthor swaps bodies with the Flash, and immediately rushes to the mirror to pull off his mask and learn Flash's secret identity! He triumphantly, silently stares at the reflection of Wally West for a minute ... and then says, "I have no idea who this guy is."
    • Except that happens afterward, so Luthor couldn't use that as an excuse, and Bruce Wayne is a world famous person, that Luthor has met and dealt with personally for an extended period of time in the past.
    • "The Great Brain Robbery" happening later actually makes it a better excuse; Luthor realized after the fact that he had missed an opportunity (what with the whole "Busy trying to kill Superman" and "Busy trying to kludge a way to keep my cancer from killing me" business distracting him), and resolved not to pass up a similar chance when he got it in the future. The point that Luthor would have recognized Bruce Wayne is irrelevant; he wasn't expecting Bruce Wayne to be Batman. None of the Injustice Gang had any reason to suspect they would recognize the guy behind the mask, or even care who Batman really was except Joker, who chose not to care. And finally, Batman is known as the DCU's resident Determinator and all around frightening bastard. Would they expect to be able to blackmail him, or would they expect the crazed loner with the privately owned stealth fighter might do something extreme to silence anyone who knows his secret?
    • As said, primary plan: Destroy league. Remove cowl and you lose at least one ally. Let's say that defense mechanism has multiple uses, or your villain group begins arguing over who is #2 if it does have a second defense mechanism. Let's say there isn't, and while #1 is knocked out for who knows how long the League comes. You are down one person. All the villains present could be said to fall into three groups: Those who are prioritizing the primary mission over discovering who Batman really is (secondary goal that would be pointless if first goal works), those who see Batman as a person who hides by taking off the mask (prefer not to know), and those who are just apathetic.
• After Hawkgirl's very first appearance ("Secret Origins, Part II"), Batman remarks, "Hawkgirl? What's she doing here?" Did those two meet at some prior point in the DCAU, or are we to assume that Batman just knows about all the world's superheroes as part of his crazy preparedness?
  • He's Batman. He can breathe in space. And while he was breathing in space he met her.
  • They met before in a very unremarkable incident.
  • Superheroes tend to be high profile in their exploits. Did you think Batman never picked up a paper once in awhile?
  • Superman and Green Lantern are on a first-name basis too (Superman calls him "John") even though the episode of Superman: The Animated Series with Green Lantern had Kyle Rayner instead. So, yeah, the assumption is it happened sometime offscreen.
  • Assuming that Batman is Crazy Prepared is a very, very safe bet.
  • Also, she has wings. And an unsubltle demeanor. I'd say the better questions were: why didn't they all know who she was, and how was she such a competent spy?
  • Forget Hawkgirl -- what about Wonder Woman? "Who's the rookie with the tiara?" is GL's reaction to her -- not that anybody ever answers him. J'onn says that he telepathically summoned every hero he could find -- but Diana didn't exist as a hero yet -- she hadn't "stolen her armor" (Hippolyta's words) until this time, it seemed. Was her origin ever explained in any fashion at all?
    • The timeline isn't exactly clear. She started getting suited up not long after the invasion. In any case, J'onn, who is in no way familiar with the planet, probably just scanned for a specific thought pattern (the wavelength for "do-gooder", as it were) and told everyone like that to come to their location.
  • Although it isn't specifically the case with this example, some of the DCAU comics "count" for continuity and some don't. So, for example, witness Batman knowing and working with Jason Blood before in TNBA - which had only happened in a Batman Adventures annual (co-plotted by series creators Bruce Timm and Glenn Murikami) at that point. Of course, Batman also first met * Superman* in a comic... but this was the mid-90s mullet-sporting Superman, complete with red-headed Lex Luthor II as an adversary. Best not to think too much about this type of stuff.
    • You are ignoring a little thing called "World's Finest". Bats and Supes first met on a cruise ship pursuing a diamond thief. They tangled over Lois, and there was some bad reasoning to get Bats to do anything of importance. Forgettable, but the first meeting, none-the-less.
      • Eh? The "World's Finest" episode I remember - from Superman: The Animated Series - was a rather excellent first meeting between Bats and Supes centred on the Joker offering to kill Superman for a tidy sum from Lex Luthor.
      • The reference is to the comic book, "World's Finest," which was the Superman/Batman of the day. The story about the cruise ship was from Superman #76 titled "The Mightiest Team in the World." A different version of this story was done in Superman/Batman Annual #1.
  • Why in the name of every world in the Multiverse would you assume that Batman wouldn't either know or know of nearly every single superhero on the planet Earth?
  • In Universe, it's still an incredibly random, and small, assortment of heroes that answered the call. Especially when someone others (such as Vigilante) claimed to be active offscreen during the Thanagarian invasion, at least.
    • Its probably assumed that all the heroes that could actually travel fast enough to heed the call were occupied in some way. Because even if Vigilante was active, unless he was within 100 miles of the military base, he wouldn't have made it in time on that motocycle.
      • Still, Supergirl was already established as active in the DCAU via the Superman series. Even if she had been "occupied" during the initial invasion/conquest bit, you'd think she'd have cleared her schedule a bit when her "cousin"/big-brother figure Superman was captured. Not to mention you'd have to be a REALLY busy hero to not drop what you were doing and intervene there...you'd think an alien attempt to destroy the planet would be one of those events that even most VILLAINS would be opposed to(like they were to Darkseid's attempt at the same during the finale). Also, Superman and Supergirl are both faster than Wonder Woman. Considering she managed to get to the battle site clear from Themyscera, I doubt getting there in time would have been an issue for Supergirl either.
• How exactly did Flash punching the Brainiac out of Luthor work? I guess you have to assume that, rather than "truly becoming one", all that happened was Luthor was wearing Brainiac like a suit...except that would mean that Brainiac used the Dark Heart to pull himself out of Luthor's innards and restore them to exactly the way they were prior to "becoming one", which is rather the opposite of what "becoming one" means, I would think. I still really can't think of any reason besides Rule of Cool--which must suffice at times--that just running around the planet and punching a dude would be enough to separate them, given how completely. There are a lot of things that bug me about that particular revelation, but that's the biggest one; the other thing is, how far are we supposed to take Brainiac's "subtly manipulating events until we arrived at this point"? I'm assuming that he was just overstating things, and all he did was suggest "Hey, wouldn't it be neat to find some way to transfer yourself into a nigh-invulnerable body?" Really, I can't think of anything that Luthor did that needed the explanation that Brainiac was pulling his strings.
  • Everyone knows that in DCU going in circles really quickly lets you break physics. No, really.
    • Speed force.
  • Watch the scene again. The Flash's World Punch (patent pending) just causes massive damage and incapacitates Luthor/Brainiac. Brainiac was actually removed through some vibrating fist type of thing. This troper always assumed that he somehow vibrated Brainiac out of Luthor's cells. Slightly less implausible.
    • Only slightly. That Flash is able to control his ability to the effect that only parts of Brainiac were destroyed, leaving Lex unharmed then that suggests he should have great deal of control over his ability. The Great Brain Robbery has confirmed that Flash's vibrations create "an unstable resonance" - which is why Flash doesn't actually use that trick a great deal. That suggests that he knows he doesn't have too much control over his vibration. Unless of course, he just chooses not to use it?
    • All the running really fast previous to where he jammed his vibrating hands into Luthor (Wow, that sounds dirty.) let him tap into the Speed Force and he was suddenly, briefly, really good at control. Hand Wave and so forth.
      • Well, that and the fact that being hyper-accelerated probably gave him an increased awareness of what his abilities were doing to Luthor. He might have been moving so fast that, from his perspective, any damage he caused to Luthor's body was so slow to develop that he could fix it the very femtosecond after he caused it.
      • Exactly. remember that right after this incident, Flash nearly vanished into the Speed Force altogether. This Troper just assumed that he tapped into so much of the Speed Force that he had nearly perfect control of what he was doing.
      • I always assumed that Flash was sifting the Brainiac-particles out of the Luthor-particles to separate the two of them, and just didn't bother to preserve Brainiac's structure and/or neglected to do so in favor of making sure Lex didn't die horribly from the experience.
  • Also, When Things Spin, Science Happens. When said spinning involves circling the globe several times in less than a minute, a whole friggin lot of science happens.
  • The only other I could think of would be to have Flash (or someone else) beat BrainiLex to death. On Cartoon Network. You think that's going to happen?
  • Isn't the real problem here that the Flash ran all the way around the world to punch Luthor rather than just double back?
    • He was expecting a punch from the front. He thinks Flash is running away like a coward and goes back to building the doomsday weapon. Remember?
    • Maybe it is when you consider how many people might have died when their streets inexplicably went from paved to pothole in a second. In terms of what he was trying to do, however, it makes sense. He builds up more energy by circling the globe, and thus hits that much harder by the time he gets back. A second or two wasted is well worth the extra power.
  • As for Braniac's 'subtly manipulating Luthor' thing, this troper thinks there's some sense in there. Brainiac was actually INSIDE Luthor for quite a while in nanotech form, waiting for him make something Brainiac could use as a body. Lex supposedly got Kryptonite-cancer from his little stash of Kryptonite, but that potentially marks the point where Brainiac decides waiting isn't productive and starts to reconfigure Lex into a working body. (After all, he's acting like a cancer and he's from Krypton, so Brainiac could probably fake it.) Brainiac probably was hoping for Cadmus to whip up something suitable for him to download into; going for the Dark Heart seems to have been an emergency backup plan. Otherwise, the whole Cadmus thing ends up being nothing more than an overly-complicated and very petty revenge plot on the heroes by Luthor.
  • I realize Cartoon Physics are in effect here, but Flash, other than his speed, is an ordinary man (if a very strong one). Wouldn't punching Luthor (or anything, really) at that speed shatter his arm into a million bloody pieces?
    • At that point he had tapped into the full power of the Speed Force. In the comics, the Speed Force actually protects Flash from things like that...not too far fetched, relatively speaking, to assume it was doing the same here.
• Martha Kent's Homemade Sweater From Hell bugs me, primarily because it was too big. For J'onn freaking J'onzz. I could understand this if the sweater was intended for superchested Clark Kent, but Martha clearly states that the sweater was an extra from a community service knitting group effort. Is there anybody else on the planet besides her adoptive son that could have worn that thing comfortably? Good thing J'onn's a shapeshifter.
  • I hate to say it, but you really underestimate America.
  • Also due to the nature of the art style Superman and Martian Manhunter share very similar builds anyway. Even the Flash is stacked like a bodybuilder.
  • Also, it's an extra from a knitting group. It's possible, maybe even likely, that it's an "extra" because the person who knitted it screwed up, and made it too big.
  • How do you think "superchested Clark Kent" managed to blend in with the rest of Smallville in the first place?
  • Either that, or whoever made the sweater used the wrong needle size when she made her sweater. Depending on her pattern, she could have easily grabbed the wrong type of needles (too big) and accidently created a larger sweater. Given this hypothesis, it's probable that they're (guys can knit too) one of two things: A n00b (possibly a grandchild of one of Mrs. Kent's friends), or someone who has a hard time reading small print, and grabs the wrong size needles.
  • Let's not forget that this is a somewhat rural farming community too. Big chested men would not seem out of place.
• How did the US government in this dimension get the video about Justice Lord Superman killing President Luthor in the other dimension?
  • This one is addressed in an earlier episode. The Justice League had to do the US government several favours in order to get Lex Luthor a pardon. One of those "favours" was to give them information on the world of the Justice Lords. So presumably the Justice League gave them a tape they had found in the world of the Justice Lords.
  • It wasn't a video tape. It was a computer simulation based on the information the League gave them.
    • My assumption (and I think there's Word of God to this effect) is that Huntress only assumed that video was one of the computer simulations, when it was in fact the actual recording. Which is why it bothered Superman so much when she brought it up.
• How the hell did Joker waltz into a (presumably) highly-guarded government center and march off with five metahumans? And I was just about to praise the DCAU for not making its characters constantly jobbing to the Joker, too...
  • What? He killed them. All of them. With his Joker Venom. That was implied. Remember the first appearances of Joker in Batman: The Animated Series, his venom was non-lethal, then by Mask of the Phantasm, he could kill people with it.
  • Allow me to elaborate: the metahuman-containment center was implied to belong to Cadmus, y'know, that ridiculously large and well-funded government center? At the very least, this troper would expect stuff like fingerprint-scanning pads, retina scanners, Mooks posted at every door... In addition, the place was holding five highly-dangerous metahumans, which meant that it should have at least double the security that most government centers should have. I can swallow the Joker regularly giving guys like Batman (who have trained all their life) trouble; I can swallow him getting sent to Arkham time and time again instead of getting the chair. What I cannot swallow is him screwing around with the entire US government as if they were five-year olds.
    • I think you vastly underestimate the US government's (or any government's) potential for rank incompetence.
    • Not to mention: if he can give (two varieties of) Batman a decent fight, how hard are some government mooks and some security systems?
  • I interpreted that he organized a jailbreak with the Royal Flush Gang helping from the inside. Ace's God Mode powers must've helped immeasurably. Also, we know that Joker had insiders at Cadmus based on "Epilogue" and "Return of the Joker."
• What bugs me is the fact that the Justice League was evidently content to not only allow but actively perpetuate a civil war on Apokolips. Did they have a plan to deal with it eventually, or were they just going to let everyone fight until they were all dead? And if it's the latter, wouldn't a more humane course be to just blow up the planet or something?
  • The JL's focus is on protecting Earth. If the civil war had threatened Earth, they would have acted, but until that time it served their goals - namely, tying up Apokolips for a while and letting them deal with more immediate threats like the Thanagarian invasion.
  • That and blowing up Apokolips would be quite the undertaking. It's not like the League keeps planet-cracking bombs on hand, and assuming they had a hero who could pull off the job, they'd have to do it quickly and quietly. So much as a soul notices and you have a planet of pissed-off people with superpowers and advanced alien technology with no obligation to follow the treaty Darkseid had with Highfather. As proved in "Destroyer", the League would probably have won, but that's not a gamble you want to make. It's a lot easier to let these people waste their resources killing one-another then dealing with whatever fool came out on top.
• Alright, someone spell it out for me like the child I am. How was Linda Park's Getting Crap Past the Radar moment a Getting Crap Past the Radar moment?
  • I suppose it was meant that her comment to Flash being like "the entire track team at once" was a reference to multiple-partner sex.
• The whole defeat of Chronos. Passing by the whole "sympathetic Anti-Villain one episode irredeemably psychotic monster the next" thing, which has always bugged me about Chronos, Bats reversed Chronos' changed by trapping him in a time loop with his wife. So... wait. How? Is his wife is stuck in there with him? How does time keep going on if part of it is replaying every few seconds; shouldn't everyone still be replaying everything in the next few seconds? Or is it only effecting Chronos... which raises more questions. Is the anomaly restricted only to his home? Does the fact that time is still going on mean that he eventually gets out? As a final point, that seems extraordinarily cruel, especially for Batman, who, despite appearances, isn't generally that heartless. It's a fate much, much worse than death, after all. I've always disliked the whole "superhero opting not to kill the villain but instead intentionally doing something worse" type of ending, and that coming from Batman (who is a strong believer in not taking punishment into one's own hands) of all people is kind of annoying.
  • What happened to Chronos is as follows: Batman set his belt to loop him back to a few seconds before the moment he came to the Watchtower. Implicitly, he has trapped Chronos in a self-rewinding (remember, the belt has shown the power to fastforward or rewind time in a localized area when Chronos melted the safe) time loop of those few moments. From Chronos' perspective, he's just doing what he did at the start, and has no memory of anything after. From an observer's perspective, he's just plain gone, and never coming back. When he hits that button, he ceases to exist from then on. As for the What the Hell, Hero? on Batman's part, what else could you expect him to do? Chronos had are royally fucked up time itself, and the only way to stop it was to undo the triggering event. Chronos' fate, while bad, really can't be said to be excessive when he destroyed time.
  • Perhaps, depending on what you think on the metaphysics of it all, the nature of Free Will is still up in the air in the DCAU, so that perhaps what Batman reprogrammed the belt so that "Chronos" would never exist. Perhaps until David Clinton can reassert himself in front of his wife and tell her why his inventions are good and thus allow for him to grow into a better person.
• Not really something that gets on my nerves a great deal, but...in "Fury", how come the allergen affects J'onn? I mean, I know it's targeted at males, but he's an alien. For that matter, so's Superman. Though since it was never really explained how it works, it could work on even alien males, and I'm probably mildly confused for nothing. Ah, well.
  • Given that Aresia made it using Earth-based germ warfare knowledge, it should just be targeting the Y chromosome. Since both Kryptonians and Martians are two-gender species, it stands to reason they might have similar genetic structures, at least where Hollywood Science is concerned.
    • Of course most two-gendered species on planet Earth don't have X-Y chromosome distinction, either...AWizardDidIt.
  • Also, the fact that one of the ingredients is apparently gemstone dust suggests there may be a magical element involved.
    • Maybe the magical element of it curses anyone who identifies themselves with the male gender? Of course, this includes females who identify with being male, but "any female who identifies with the male mindset is an abnormality that must be remedied".
    • If you're crazy enough to try and kill every man on the planet, yes, identify-as-male-females need to go too.
      • You guys are all over-thinking this. The scientific definition of a male refers to organisms with the physiological sex which produces sperm. The scientific definition of a female refers to the physiological sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, which produces non-mobile ova (egg cells). We know that Kryptonians and Martians reproduce in a similar way to humans - its a very simple definition a magical virus would be able to make.
• A Better World:
• The Concept depends on Superman and the Justice League being willing to jump straight over to the Dark side just because Flash was murdered; I get that there was a nuclear war on the brink as well but it seems farfetched. And how did they take over the world? They were seven of them and the whole military.
  • It wasn't just that Flash was murdered and there was a nuclear war on the brink--it's also that Lex Luthor murdered Flash and was elected president, so he got away with it. Those things, particularly the American people electing Luthor, were enough to show the Justice League that "Hey, these people just can't handle democracy and their freedoms."
    As for how? They have Superman, who's invulnerable, and fast enough to dodge anything that can hurt him, especially when he's not holding back. The Martian Manhunter, who's all that and psychic and can become intangible. Wonder Woman, who's just a step below that. Green Lantern, who wields what's acknowledged, in universe, as the most powerful weapon in the universe. And Batman, who has near limitless resources and who, through Wayne Tech, probably has a considerable amount of pull with the US government.
    When they take the gloves off, there isn't a damn thing the US military could've done to stop them.
  • Regarding "A Better World": The episode ends with all the Justice Lords except Batman depowered by Luthor's ray, then sent back to their own world. With six of their greatest heroes powerless, does this mean that their Earth is completely screwed as soon as the Thanagarian invasion arrives? Or is Lord Hawkgirl's alternate costume (her helmet is identical to the one that League-Hawkgirl wore in the Thanagarian military) a signal that the invasion already happened or won't happen at all?
    • Judging by the series' tone, I'm guessing that the Justice Lords offered the Thanagarians a dual ultimatutm and offer of alliance: their enemies' heads on a plate, or their own.
    • They still had Batman. The Thanagarians wouldn't have stood a chance.
    • Their timeline seemed to be set several years later, so they probably went through the invasion already. Now on the other hand, when the next planet-threatening crisis happens, that Earth is fairly screwed.
      • I thought the Justice Lords were imprisoned on this earth after being stripped of their powers. I may have to rewatch the end to make sure though.
    • Remember that Justice Lords Earth apparently has no war anymore (its probably best not to think about how that happened) but they still have plenty of police and tanks on hand to deal with disturbances in Arkham Asylum... plus mass-produced Superman robots. Lord Batman could easily whip up robot duplicates of his allies to keep things under control while uniting the worlds military and police enough to combat any other invasion that comes in. Plus... mass-produced Superman robots.
      • Those Superman robots were worthless. They had decent physical strength but their endurance was pathetic; the Justice League were ripping the things apart with an absurd amount of minimal effort. They weren't bright either; demonstrating no strategy and even showing one of them thanking the League for a beating as it's disembodied head flew through the air. The Thanagarians would have literally laughed their asses off when confronted by these things.
  • Something else about "A Better World": The power-stripping gun Lex Luthor built and used on the Justice Lords. If it worked so well, why was it never used on any of the other supervillains the Justice League faced in the rest of the series? Why didn't Lex ever build another one? Given his photographic memory, it's not as if he couldn't remember how! Why didn't the superhero-paranoid government ask him to build them one?
    • Word of God on the issue is that since Lex turned the gun over to the League, they'd be ready with a countermeasure next time. Which is kind of a handwave, but hey. As for why they never used it again...the only thing I can think of is that it'd be too similar to lobotomizing all their enemies (since more Word of God states that it works by generating some sort of neurological interference, which is the only reason it works on so many different powers--particularly the reason it was able to affect GL).
      • Why not just have Luthor try to build a better gun? We the viewers know in-story that they went the Frankenstein route so that their creations (Doomsday, the Ultimen, Galatea) could turn on them and prove the league was right all along but mechanical countermeasures can't think for themselves and escape your control unlike biological ones.
        • There's always the possibility that Lex is perfectly willing to lie and cheat, but when he makes an actual DEAL with someone, he upholds it. When he didn't use the gun on the real League at the end of the episode he does mention "A deal's a deal" and hands the gun over rather than taking the opportunity to defeat the real League once and for all. I know I'm stretching, but I have seen a character in some game or something I once played who would lie, double cross, etc, but if he actually swore an oath to do(or not do) something, he would uphold it no matter how much he disliked the idea.
          • The trope for this one is Pragmatic Villainy. Remember, the animated version of Lex is/was a billionaire CEO in addition to being a mad scientist. He needs to develop a reputation for living up to his end of a contract once it's signed, regardless of how ruthless a shark he might be otherwise. Without the reasonable expectation that the other dude is actually going to pay up when it's his turn, no sane person will do business with him. Which isn't to say that Lex probably doesn't shave every corner he possibly can, but there's a difference between creative financing and outright default.
      • BRAINIAC
        • Also, organic beings have greater ingenuity and initaitve than machines and can adapt; they can be hacked as well
  • What the hell happened to the Guardians in the alternate universe? Didn't Sinestro try to do almost the exact same thing on his homeworld as John Stewart was participating in with the Justice Lords?
    • Remember it's a parallel universe and not a divergent one (they've always called themselves the Justice LORDS for example, something one can infer from Batman showing his teammates the viewer and going 'but they call themselves the Justice LEAGUE) therefor the personalities of the Guardians in that universe don't have to be identical to the one from the 'main' Earth. So Justice Lords GL might actually have Sinestro as the Role Model of GL behavior rather than a reviled traitor. One has more reason to consider the general acceptance by everyone else to Superman killing Luthor (of whom plenty of non-lethal methods were available, heck with the way Lex was taunting him wasting time Superman could have easily heat vision vaporized the control button and/or Lex's hand and arm to stop him), clearly everyone was darker and less heroic in that universe. Ironically enough you have Hawkgirl being the one showing concern for their methods and John, a black man who in theory shouldn't be behind such oppression instead supporting it wholeheartedly and missing the fact that people still live in terror only now it's of him and his teammates.
    • Let's not forget Thanagar. Shayera's still their inside man and they'd still have to build that hyperspace bypass.
• Something that has bugged me about "The Savage Time" is this: All Earth, post-WWII, has been completely changed, so it makes sense that Batman is radically changed and the Flash doesn't exist. Perhaps Wonder Woman never left Themiscyra. But what about other heroes who span worlds? Perhaps J'onn was never revived by astronauts, so maybe the Imperium never invaded, but what about Hawkgirl, who would have been sent to Earth anyway (Earthly politics aside, the Gordanians would still be fighting the Thanagarians), Superman (since Krypton would still have been destroyed), and Green Lantern (it might not be Jon Stewart, but Earth would still fall under the Guardian's protection - they would have sent a Green Lantern of some sort in). Also, what about the villains? Grundy should still have existed in this timeline, as his origin took place before WWII, and Etrigan and Morgan Le Fay should still have been fighting it out. Brainiac should have still come to Earth in search of assimilating all knowledge and then destroying it, and Aquaman should have still been in his palace in Atlantis. Gorilla City should have been encountered in its hiding place in Africa, and Icthulthu should have tried to overrun the Earth with its monsters. Basically, I really like the episode "The Savage Time", but this has always bugged me.
  • Earth really wasn't too aware of the Green Lantern Corps until Hal Jordan became a "public" GL; in the DCAU/this timeline, it's possible GL simply never went public on Earth. With no League, Hawkgirl could simply never have become a superhero and just played the role of a spy. The last place Jor-El would want to send baby Kal is Savage's Earth, and the villains...well, they don't appear in every episode, so it could be as simple as "the ones who exist just failed to make an appearance in this episode."
    • Two more possibilities for Hawk Girl. 1. Since Savage (ha ha ha) Earth appears to have a higher standard tech level than Earth, it may of been possible the Thangarians called it off as soon as they learned Earth wouldn't be as easy pickings. By the present, Darkseid had tried to take over Earth only was stopped by Superman. If the people of Earth could hold back a God, the Thangarians may never of made the plan to begin with. 2. Hawkgirl was found and... well... if you know what the Nazi's did to the Jews, just think what would of happened if they got there hands on an ALIEN.
  • Touché. That does make sense, and considering how powerful Savage's tech was (being able to give the League a run for their money in WWII, and undoubtedly advancing since then) it seems at least plausible that he could have fought off the various alien invasions.
  • Regarding the villians (or at least the ones from Earth), it's simply possible that they didn't show up because they weren't alive in this universe. The only reason they lived in the normal timeline was because the Justice League simply threw them back in jail every time. Considering how compassionate the Nazi system of justice was, it's likely that any criminal that caused any public disturbance would be killed on the spot (feasible since what's in this universe 60 year old technology could contend with the Justice League) and anyone associated or even close to them would be quickly and thoroughly vaporized.
• A much simpler question: how in the flying blue hell did they get forward in time?
• Another one from the same episode: if Savage thought the best way to dominate the world was rising to power during WWII, why did he choose the side that lost the war? I mean, a coup in the USSR seems just as feasible as one in Nazi Germany, and even without altering history they already controlles half of europe by the end of the war. And even if it had to be the Nazis, why did it have to be at the worst possible moment in the war? Is time travel so expensive that sending a laptop to 1940 was so harder than sending one to 1944?
  • Because he needed to be on a side that was trying for world domination, and that he could successfully take over. The leadership of the US and England at that time was more or less beyond reproach, so he couldn't have just had himself elected, while Hitler was the subject of several assassination and coup attempts. Also, even if he had gotten control of the US or England, he probably wasn't going to be able to convince either country to go ahead with the world domination thing. As to it popping out in 1944, maybe that's as far back as Savage could go with the time machine at that point.
    • Again, why not the USSR? They won the war too, after all. And it wouldn't be too hard to imagine a coup against Stalin succeeding right after the first German victories.
    • One, the Nazi ideology is much more in line with Savage's inclinations than the Communist. Two, Stalin was more paranoid than Hitler, and less easy to manipulate.
    • Three, Savage knows the USSR was destined to eventually collapse due to the inherent economic fallacies of Marxist Communism. Taking over the USSR would mean dramatically reforming their economic model to prevent that from happening, and presumably Savage wasn't interested in that.
      • Also, Savage needed to pick the side that was losing the war so they'd accept the help from "the man from the future" and not just laugh/lock him in an asylum.
      • The USSR was not destroyed by "the inherent economic fallacies of Marxist Communism" had it been that the USSR would have collapsed long before when it did, it was brought down through a mixture of political upheaval in the eastern bloc not helped by Gorbachev's botched reforms to allow more open political expression and economic turmoil caused by their massive investment of manpower and resources into arming themselves and their invasion of Afghanistan going tits up and costing massive amounts of money. All of these seem like things Savage could have prevented since they where mostly caused by poor leadership.
      • My guess is that Savage was on the side of the Nazi's already, most likely control over the Nazi's technology development, but wasn't in the position to take over power (he is immortal, and he may of been smart, but he just didn't have the tech to work with). That was, until his future self sent him the laptop containing all the tech, all the future knowledge of invasions/military movements, and where the enemy would be the weakest), that is the bargaining chip he needed to take power.
• Another question from that episode: Savage's time machine can't take you back to a time when you already existed. Martian Manhunter is almost a thousand years old, according to Secret Origins. How did he go back in time with the others?
  • And Diana! Even if her origin has her in Themyscira until the 90's or whenever, she was still around back then.
  • Perhaps they meant that you can't travel to a place where you were at that point in the past. For example, he couldn't have traveled back in time to Mars but since he wasn't on earth during WWII it wouldn't cause problems.
  • Maybe I missed it but when was that rule actually stated in the episode?
    • It was stated in "Hereafter Pt. 2" with the future Savage explaining why he can't go back in time with Superman. Since the machine was built After the End, it might not have been as advanced as the one he used in "Savage Time".
• Why was so much of Cadmus' efforts centred around creating more metahumans to counter the Justice League? Why create more superpowered beings that you might not be able to control? What if, say, Galatea went rogue? And we all know what happened with Doomsday. Surely it should have concentrated on upgrading conventional weaponry to give normal human militaries and police forces an edge against metahuman threats? Granted, there were some things like the Kryptonite-tipped nuclear missile that had the capability to kill both Superman and Doomsday, it didn't seem enough compared to the disproportionate resources allocated to creating more metahumans. It's all the more galling given how damn near everything is Immune to Bullets.
  • It's a matter of effectiveness. Take Kryptonite bullets. This would down heavy-hitters like Superman and Supergirl (and they did make them in small quantities), but not other heavy-hitters like the Martian Manhunter. They'd have to make weapons for each and every hero, or something universally effective. Other metahumans in their employ is good for that purpose. Lex's insta-depowered ray would also be good, but too easy from a story-telling point of view.
    • Incindenary Kryptonite bullets in yellowed painted shells there I just came up with a weapon good for taking out three League Members. As for the others it's just a matter of figuring out how to hit them with normal bullets.
    • Assuming you mean, in order, the Manhunter, Superman, and the Green Lantern, that would work in the comics. In this show, Jonn is never explicitly shown to have any sort of fire phobia, nor are the Green Lanterns explicitly shown to be weak against yellow. While yellow things have gotten past their barriers on a few occasions, Sinestro's yellow attacks are never shown to be immune. Thus, three just became one again. Back to the point, assuming all three worked, you made a triple-effective weapon when you're facing an organization which, in a rough estimate, has a good fifty super-heroes of various flavors in its ranks. It's nearly impossible to have meta-human kill teams roaming around with a feasible way of killing any metahuman imaginable.
    • In fact, this Manhunter has specifically been shown to not be weak to fire. In The Savage Time, he removed a jet's engine while the afterburner was blasting him in the face.
  • Judging from that metahuman team that Cadmus made sure were known publically as heroes, the idea wasn't just to eliminate the Justice League, it was to eliminate and replace. A natural concern of getting rid of superheroes is that all the stuff they're fighting against will run wild with nothing to stop them, so Cadmus was attempting to provide controllable alternatives to keeping around a group of vigilantes. Sending their metahumans after the Justice League would've been a way to prove their superiority and/or highlight design flaws to be eliminated in the next generation model.
• This is just a little thing, but... Does anyone actually know how old Wally West's Flash is in this?
  • This troper always assumed he was at least twenty years old, as that would explain why he was so childish compared to the other League members and why he's also less disillusioned with being a superhero.
    • He can't possibly be twenty. He's at least twenty-five. He's a forensic scientist for the police department. That takes a degree and stuff, and he's shown to be really good at his job, so he probably has some experience. And anyway, since when is 'twenty-five' a reason to be any more mature than he acts? Twenty-five is really young.
      • Or he's at least twenty-five by JLU when he's shown to have a job as a forensic scientist at the police department. Before that could've been a college graduate, in grad school or still looking for a good job. We don't know how much time passed between JL and JLU but it would be reasonable to say he started off in his early twenties and was in his mid-twenties by the end of the series. Then again it's just as reasonable to assume he was in his mid-twenties in the beginning. Honestly the only thing we can say for sure is he's the youngest member of the team and under thirty.
• Okay, so at the end of "Divided We Fall", when Shayera is pulling The Flash out of the Speed Force, how does she know his name? Yes, the JL admitted who they were at the end of "Starcrossed", but Shayera wasn't there, so... How does she know that the Flash is "Wally"?
  • She knew who Batman was without him ever reveaing it to her, you think Flash would have been hard to figure out? Basically heroes have secret identities from each other because they just don't bother looking into each other.
  • Besides, she's been back on the team for fourteen episodes by then, and the show made a point of how well they got along. Who's to say he didn't just tell her?
  • At the end of part three of "Starcrossed," Shayera is having tea in Wayne Manor. Clearly, the secret identities thing was already dealt with.
  • As is mentioned above, she found out Batman's identity without him knowing. Batman! She outplayed Batman. She was a spy specifically sent in to find and undermine the heroes. Finding out their identities would've been a natural part of that.
  • Also, her once and future man (GL) just so happens to be one of the Flash's best friends.
• In Flashpoint, just after Question Authority, Superman and J'onn have this argument about whether they can now brig down Cadmus, but they can't because they have no solid evidence. What? Cadmus held Question without due process, they tortured him, and the Justice League is not going to say anything? If nothing else, they could take the story to the media, and the public's outrage at a secret branch of the government torturing a US citizen would be more than enough to bring down Cadmus.
  • Yeah, the same way that, in real life, all those high-ranking U.S. military and CIA officials were taken down after it became public that they were indefinitely detaining and torturing people without trial in connection the War on Terror. Oh, wait... and the JL had a LOT less evidence to prove that the Question was tortured, mostly just eyewitness accounts that boiled down to the JL's word vs. Cadmus'.
  • But that might not work once Cadmus let out evidence that The Question is, basically, a really good spy, and they are goverment-based (correct me if I'm wrong) so they would, legally, be able to deal with him. Torture him? Probably not, considering this 'verse isn't a Crapsack one, but how many people are going to worry about a guy who's in the Justice League, who are alternatively hated with a mob-like passion and (some of them) shown to come back from the dead? Either they'll say 'oh, they were just doing their job' or 'he's fine, he's one of those powered folks, couldn't have hurt one of them too much'.
  • Also, any legal proceedings would likely require the use of Question's real name. Which I don't think he would be forthcoming with.
  • They may know all these things, but how many of them can they prove in a court of law?
• Something that really bugs me about the series as a whole is how many plot threads were Left Hanging at the end: The fate of the Justice Lords, of Galatea, of the original Ultimen, of the hulked-out General Eiling. The nature of J'onn's relationship with that woman. The Green Lantern/Vixen/Hawkman/Hawkgirl Love Dodecahedron. It's really irritating. I want to know what happened next!
  • The Justice Lords were depowered and imprisoned. Galatea was killed. The original Ultimen degenerated and died. All three of those were either explicitly said or heavily implied. I'll give you Eiling, though; I sorta wanted to see him show up in the finale.
    • I was wondering more about why Captain Marvel didn't show up at the finale to notice...
    • None of those are ever actually shown, though. And Galatea is still twitching at the end, and it seems like it would take more than a jolt of electricity to kill a Kryptonian.
    • The Justice Lords are shown being depowered by Luthor's device, and the last you see is them being led away in handcuffs; Galatea wasn't hit with 'a jolt of electricity' so much as she had all of the Watchtower's power jammed into her chest. Massive amounts of electricity have been shown to harm even Superman in the past; also, dead bodies twitch sometimes. As for the Ultimen, what did you want them to do, show them melting into puddles? Their episode was over, and we were told explicitly they didn't have long. Sure, there's the whole Show, Don't Tell thing, but you really don't need to be explicitly shown every little detail.
    • Plus, some people like stories that end with "And the Adventure Continues......"
  • They forgot about Amazo! (Everyone forgot about Amazo)
    • Well, the producers did consider putting in a brief shot of him in "Destroyer" sitting on an asteroid wondering if it's safe to return. They just didn't get a chance to.
    • Actually, it's not that they didn't get a chance to, it's that, uh, they forgot too.
  • Yeah, the fate of Eiling bugs me too, as does whatever happened to Circe. When you think about it, neither of them actually got beaten; they just chose to stop winning. Two massively powerful villains, each with a grudge against one of the big seven, and they're never heard from after their first appearances?
    • Eiling was forced to face that he had become the very threat he was fighting against and would be viewed that way by the public at large. On a basic level he did genuinely wish to help the people and if the whole public was arrayed against him than there wasn't a point. He had a Villainous BSOD only without the angst.
      • It is possible that Eiling was fighting "off screen". Hell, as far as Cadmus people go I imagine Amanda Waller and that Colonel who lead Task Force X woulda been out there shooting too. But they only had 22 minutes, so even with their efforts, we didn't see EVERYONE who would likely be fighting. I mean we didn't acually SEE all the League members fighting. Gypsy, Sandman, Crimson Avenger, the mentioned as being in the League but never once shown on screen Plastic Man...we didn't see them doing anything either, so I assume they were just fighting offscreen as well. Or Aquaman and his Atlantean army for that matter, unless I missed it. I mean, I imagine the military and police(and armed citizens) of all nations would be out fighting in that kinda situation, and we didn't really see that either. Sure, woulda been cool if they coulda shown Eiling(and any other villains who were established in universe that weren't on Luthor's spaceship when it went into space, Deadshot or Captain Boomerang for example) in the fight as well but their time was limited.
• In "Only A Dream", why was Wonder Woman the only one not present? I know that, in the majority of the episodes, one or two members of the league are missing from action, but Dr. Destiny held a grudge against all of the League members because he was captured by them when they were investigating one of Luthor's schemes and was arrested for harboring weapons. He even stated to Batman that he had a problem with the others because their powers gave them such a huge advantage over those without them and that they ruin the lives of normal people without realizing it, so you'd think he'd definitely target her as well. Hell, when Batman was attempting to contact the others at the end of the first part, he made no attempt to contact Wonder Woman... So... Was she just not there when Dr. Destiny got caught and therefore he didn't think of her or what? Did he simply forget about her? Was she protected by the gods? I'm not all to familiar with Wonder Woman's story outside the JL/JLU, so, correct me if I'm wrong, but she has no reason to leave Earth or enter a different dimension, does she?
  • Maybe he tried to attack her but failed becaue she has no primal fear like the rest of them. Or maybe she was immune to his power because it was a lie and she had latent truth powers?
  • Or maybe, since her lasso/braclets/etc give her her powers, and this has been shown in-verse, he just didn't think to grab her, because she's relatively non-powered with her stuff?
    • She's still a Flying Brick without them though, right?
      • Yes, WW can fly and possesses super strength at a level just a bit below Superman, lasso and bracelets or not.
        • Her endurance (in this continuity) is nowhere near his though. I do remember an early episode of JLU where Superman is trapped in the Fortress of Solitude in a catatonic state thanks to some kind of parasitic plant sent by Mongul. His only hope to defend him from the advancing Mongul were Batman and Wonder Woman - and she gets possibly one of her worst beatings of the series; she couldn't even stand up under her own strength. Superman, once freed by Batman, had a ridiculously better fight than she did.
    • Batman's completely non-powered without his stuff, and Destiny went after him. Maybe it's just that her magical nature granted her resistance to the technologically-granted dream-invasion powers. Or Amazon training includes psychic defense techniques.
• Another thing that bugs me about "Only A Dream" is that Dr. Destiny was able to locate the league members rather easily while J'onn experienced some serious problems in the two part episode just before. Did Dr. Destiny just develop much better psychic abilities than J'onn?
  • Wasn't that the point? Dr. Destiny explicitly said "You're good...but I'm better!"
  • Think of it more as Physic Rock, Paper, Scissors. Destiny trumps J'onn, who trumps everyone else.
  • That is true, but while does seem that Dr. Destiny is more powerful than J'onn, the fact is that J'onn is a lot more experienced. Someone like Morgan Le Fey trumping him is fair enough, as she not only has vast magical abilities, but centuries of experience (and even then, he was able to overcome it), but some rube who's just got his hands on his powers? Unlikely!
  • Destiny's powers are not the same as J'onn's. J'onn has traditional telepathy. Destiny's specific power is to invade people's dreams while they sleep. So really it's impossible to say which of the two is the more powerful psychic because their powers are fundamentally different.
    • Also recall that Destiny wasn't trying to find out where they were, physically. He didn't need to. Furthermore, remember that the ESP machine gave him some degree of remote perception or something the first time on-screen that he was under it. It's not implausible that he had that ability as well.
• In Blackest Night:
  • The whole, "if a lawyer will lose the case, he will share his client's fate” thing. Why? Why somebody has to suffer or be killed for trying to make sure that innocent person will not be punished for somebody's else crime? I just don't get it, I don't see any reason for this law to exist.
    • I think it was a dark joke about how lawyers are viewed as corrupt and willing to represent anyone for the right price. It's been awhile since I've seen it but don't the judges say they fixed their lawyer problem? Getting killed with your client would prevent most lawyers from trying to profit since the risk would be so high.
    • I guess the logic is that no one would ever choose to defend a guilty person because they wouldn't want to risk sharing their client's fate. Ideally this means that guilty people are more likely to get convicted because they won't have a lawyer to help them exploit legal loopholes and technicalities. To the judges' minds this equals a fair justice system. To anyone else, not so much. In real-life this would mean that anyone who wasn't able to get legal representation would be instantly perceived as guilty and anyone who could get representation would be instantly perceived as innocent. You could be innocent as a newborn babe but get shafted because you couldn't afford a lawyer, or be guilty as sin and get off scott free because you were blind stinking rich and you offered enough money to tempt even the most craven attorney into defending you.
    • It wasn't just a joke on the cynicism of lawyers in general but also lawyers who represent clients charged with high-profile crimes like terrorism or mass-murder: the idea being that most defendants charged with such crimes are guilty, therefore any attorney who takes their case must be especially amoral and rely on underhanded tactics and dirty tricks to get their client off.
  • "In Blackest Night" had a much, much bigger problem than Adjuris 5's legal system. The villains trick everyone into thinking that Green Lantern accidentally destroyed Adjuris 4 by projecting a holographic illusion of a rubble field over the planet's location. We are told that three billion sentient beings were on Adjuris 4 when it was "destroyed." Did no one think to search for survivors? Did no one try to call one of these three billion sentient beings on the radio, to see if they survived? Did none of the these three billion sentient beings try to call anybody on Adjuris 5 to ask "Hey, what's this big hologram doing in our sky?" Even if the inhabitants of Adjuris 4 were blissfully unaware of the ruse being perpetrated upon them, did none of them have friends or family or business associates on Adjuris 5 that they called on a regular basis, or have an off-planet vacation trip scheduled?
    • Another problem is the fact that the first two people who noticed that there is something wrong with the whole scenario due to the fact that the moon of Adjuris 4 continued to revolve in its current orbit is Superman and Martian Manhunter. While it does made both of them look smart it raises an important question. Are there no physicist in space or did the people have no concept of gravity despite being a space-faring civilization that no one noticed anything wrong with that prior to the Justice League investigating it?
  • A real problem was the Green Lanterns, John included. First they act as though he's Sinestro due to an accident that occurs during his duties. Then they, with the exception of Kilowog, bad mouth him for doing his job! And here's where John comes in, when he's found innocent he's angry with them for not supporting him when he himself thought he was guilty! Not a lot loyalty in the ranks.
  • I think the idea there was that John realized how much the League went through to prove that he was innocent; it kind of woke him up and helped him see who his real friends were and who didn't have his back. So accordingly, he was angry with the Green Lanterns for abandoning him; whereas even while he was down on himself, the League never stopped trusting in him.

• Another thing from "The Once and Future Thing". Batman and Lantern are the only two that remember what happens. Let me repeat...Batman KNOWS that he is going to have a successor. Yeah I know he never saw Terry without the mask, and Old!Bruce didn't call him by name in front of the others...but I guess, personally it bugs me, because I'd like to think Batman knew he could trust Terry with his legacy because of what Terry said to Bruce in Rebirth Pt. 2, as well as Terry proving he can handle it. Instead, from that moment I bet Batman deduced that when Terry stole his Beyond Suit, that THAT was the same person he met in the future. I dunno, someone got an explanation that still doesn't take away from Bruce putting his faith in Terry-even with the before-hand knowledge?
  • On the other hand, Batman didn't know what would happen in between those times, such as the Joker kidnapping Robin (Tim Drake) and made him to a Joker Jr. in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. Or when Batman was forced to pull out a gun on a thug in the pilot episode of Batman Beyond. To paraphrase Terry: something happened, and it's not just that Batman got old.

• Okay, we all remember Superman's World of Cardboard Speech, and yes it was awesome. But there, he claims to be going all out against Darkseid for the first time. Then why didn't he mop the floor with Darkseid in "Twilight"? It was obvious he was going to kill Darkseid if Batman hadn't interfered, so why didn't he use his true power there?
  • Because he didn't think he needed it. Darkseid in the final episode was, as he mentioned, more powerful than he had been before, and previous to Twilight, Superman had already beaten him in a one-on-one fight (See his own series finale), so it stands to reason Supes would've believed he could still beat him at 'normal' in Twilight. So the progression goes: Legacy [Superman fighting at normal to beat Darkseid]--> Twilight [Superman fighting at normal, perhaps a bit above, to kill Darkseid]--> Destroyer [Superman going all out]
  • However, the Legacy fight gave the impression that Supes was going all out and was barely holding his own until he figured out how to turn the Omega Beams back on Darkseid. Maybe Supes just absorbed more yellow sunlight and got more powerful himself (I honestly have no idea if that works out, but it was the first thing that sprang to mind)?
  • Actually, the yellow sunlight thing makes sense. In the episode with Dr. Destiny, in his nightmare Superman remarks about how he started out with no power and how he keeps getting more and more. This would seem to imply that the longer he stays under a yellow sun the more powerful he becomes. So there could indeed be a significant power differential in Superman's levels between the two fights.
• In the episode "Ultimatium", where the Justice League meets the Captain Ersatz Superfriends, Aquaman gets a Crowning Moment of Awesome when the "Wonder Twin" Downpour hits him with a few thousand gallons of water at full force. Aquaman shrugs and says: "King of the Seas, remember?". So how does Aquaman get the "super-sticky feet" power required to get hit with that much water and remain standing? I understand that he can understand a lot of water pressure on his body, but this was a force lateral to his center of gravity. If I were to smack Queen Elizabeth II with a lintel piece from Stonehenge, would she shrug it off saying: "Queen of England, remember?"? Or is it just Rule of Cool?
  • Aquaman has aquakinesis powers. He probably diverted the vast majority of the water pressure around himself.
  • His body is designed to be strong enough to swim against high-pressure tides and such, so a burst of water from an aquakinetic can't phase him any more than the crashing waves of the sea.

• Epilogue:
  • The idea that Batman is a matter of being In the Blood goes against the very core of Batman's mythos: Batman is a self-made hero, an ordinary man whose life did not bestow upon him any special powers or other fantastical elements that would differentiate him from others. Instead, he chose to be a hero, and uses human training, detective smarts and high-tech weaponry to facilitate his war on crime. The idea that a reasonably-intelligent individual such as Amanda Waller (especially considering how much she'd have to know about genetics from her involvement with Cadmus) would think that Lamarck Was Right is rather mind-boggling. And let's not even touch how Terry was expected to become Batman without ever meeting Bruce Wayne.
    • Waller was trying to recreate Batman in all ways, and being extremely Genre Savvy about it. Bruce Wayne's phenotype clearly helped; she knew there was nothing in his genes preventing the physical development of Batman, and what was there worked well for a strong, agile, durable man. Also, remember that Bruce has a habit of taking in youngsters whose parents are killed right in front of them, and Terry's father worked for Wayne-Powers, which gives him that connection. Waller may have expected/intended for Wayne to take on Terry as a ward, as he did for Tim and Dick before, and let it run its natural course. If history has shown us anything in comics, it's that if you are a young man in the Wayne household for any stretch of time, you will accidentally find the Batcave and find yourself wearing a super suit in short order.
      • But Waller never anticipated the two of them meeting each-other and even if she did, it's still a major Xanatos Roulette that discounts the possibility of just walking up to Bruce and suggesting that he train a replacement.
    • I'm pretty sure that Terry's parents were selected to be personality/behavior matches for Bruce's parents. She did not just pick a random couple and hope for the best; so she had nature and nurture pretty much covered.
    • I doubt that Waller's plan was as simple as 1. Screw with DNA, 2. Murder Parents, 3. ??? 4. BATMAN!. Given how much effort she'd put into it, and was willing to put into it, it's probably safe to say there were steps in the plan post parent-murder to nudge/guide/shove him toward being Batman. But since the plan was derailed at that second step and then abandoned, Waller just didn't bother to tell Terry what the rest of her plan was because it was irrelevant. If step 2 of your plan is where it fell apart, no sense in summing up steps 3-10.
      As to why not just talking to Bruce? He's just not the sort of guy you can talk into things like that. He's stubborn. Plus, after the thing with Drake, he would be understandably opposed to training another kid like that.
    • It's not Lamarck Was Right, Bruce Wayne was obviously well suited from a genetic standpoint to be Batman. Look at his height, physical build, good looks, and intelligence; these are all things that are determined in large part before you are even born. They are like base stats; sure, you can get some bonuses by training, but you are not gonna be able to completely remake your body and mind as if they are made out of legos.
  • Bruce Wayne's heart problems suggest his genes are inferior. Men who work out and exercise generally experience far less age-related physical decline than their peers. Given the sheer amount of effort and training he put into being Batman, he should have been in better shape even in his 50's and 60's than men half his age, unless there were other factors predisposing him to a weak heart.
    • Bruce Wayne didn't just "work out and exercise", he overexerted himself almost constantly for the majority of his adult life. It has little, if anything, to do with genes, and more to do with burning himself out doing constant all-nighters, and keeping up with literal superhumans, and getting knocked around, quite frequently, by same. Batman or not, he's only human.
      • But he's still--Batman! You don't maintain your Charles Atlas Superpower figure by neglecting little things like your long term health and Batman being Crazy Prepared would keep up with regular checkups to ensure he was not chipping away at his own wellness. Granted, the events of ROTJ might have contributed to a long-downward spiral on his overall spiritual fortitude and Batman-ness but still; it's strange that he dismisses his heart problems as an absolute obstacle rather than just another challenge to overcome.
    • I'm sure he had checkups and such, but a lifestyle like Bruce's is going to be "chipping away at his own wellness" no matter what he does. He's still human. He still ages. It's not like his heart just gave out when he was in his prime; look at the first scene in Rebirth, Part 1. Bruce is at least 20 years older than he was in his own series or Justice League (the woman he's rescuing is the full grown daughter of the woman he dated through a lot of his series), and he's still pushing himself as hard as he did while he was in his prime. That's going to wear on you; plus I believe he said the suit itself put strain on his heart.
    • For years Batman was fighting the Joker, the Scarecrow and Poison Ivy to name just some of the most prominent enemies that used chemicals. Think about what kind of hazardous gases and liquids he must have been exposed to at least once a month by them. Then there's the many hits from opponents who range from human levels of strength to near-Superman. On top of that is his tendency to not wait till he's fully healed before he gets into combat. Combine that with the incredible amount of stress he must be experiencing on a daily basis. The fact that he managed to survive long enough to retire and still help in Batman Beyond is a minor miracle.
    • He wasn't talking about the normal Batsuit there, but about the Powered Armor one, but his health was not the entire reason for his quitting. The Problem was, that it forced him to use a gun to threaten a bad guy. Even if he had been fully healed the next day he would not have taken up the cape and cowl again, because he had violated his one rule, which made him unfit to be Batman in his own eyes.
• The Money

Where does it all come from? I know Bruce funded the original watch tower, sneaking away millions if not billions of dollars some how. But the new one? And enough Javelins to constitute an armada? Not to mention the staffing, maintenance and the wages necessary for something that brings in NO money at all!

• • WAIT I got it; the cafeteria is really expensive.
  • Batman isn't the only one with huge monetary resources assuming Green Arrow is owner of Queen Industries in the DCAU. Add to that, 50+ superheroes make appearances as part of the post Thanagarian Invasion Justice League either as secondary characters or via cameos. Some of them are extraterrestrial in origin and thus have access to alien technology and there is more than one super scientist among them. The Justice League could have used these various technologies in the Watchtower's construction. They could be making money off some the less dangerous and more replicable of their members' inventions and/or alien technology they may have brought back from off earth missions. It also helps to have guys who can lift several tons and reach escape velocity unaided, they don't have to pay for a shuttle to get the components in orbit. The Justice League works all across the globe and they've helped multiple governments with natural and man made disasters and lets not forget them saving the world on multiple occasions. Some governments or wealthy civilians may sometimes show thanks by donating to the League.
    • Arrow is definitely rich. In one episode he mentions something about "Just selling a company for 3 billion dollars" then points out "After taxes and legal fees, it really only comes out to 1.5 billion".

• The Future Justice League

In the Batman Beyond episode "The Call", JLU episode "The Once and Future Thing", and the Static Shock episode "Future Shock" the Justice League is shown to apparently only consist of less than a dozen members. While its understandable that some members would have left for their own reasons over time or simply grown too old for super heroics such as the original Batman, other younger heroes should of come to replace the old ones. Some of them don't even age or have very long life spans, example: Wonder Woman and the Martian Manhunter, and shouldn't have any problems with still being active in the Batman Beyond Era. It seems like there is the implication that at some point the extended League disbanded. It really bugs me there wasn't any explanation given for this.

• • Well, "The Call" was made before the JL series, so it was before the idea of having an expanded League in the first place. As for "The Once and Future Thing," it's mentioned in that episode that Chronos had been exterminating League members and those were the only ones left. I haven't seen "Future Shock," so I can't offer much explanation.
  • The bit about "The Call" makes sense, and after rewatching "The Once and Future Thing" J'onn J'onzz and Wonder Woman were mentioned having been killed when the future Watchtower was destroyed, so they're still part of the future League. In JLU episode "Epilogue" Terry has an Imagine Spot about quitting the League under the belief he's been manipulated into being Batman. Kai-Ro, Aquagirl and Warhawk are only JL members shown, though that may just be because they're the ones Terry is most familiar with. Perhaps the League members in "The Call" are simply the only ones stationed in Metropolis with Superman at the time the episode takes place. What seems weird is that in all the appearances of the future League only the members from "The Call", Static, and Gear are ever shown on screen. Only one thing I still can't think of an explanation for, in "Future Shock" Terry states the reason he needs Past Static's help in rescuing Future Static is that no one else is available, mentioning "the League is off near Alpha Centauri and Gear is on the other side of the world". It seems odd, if the future extended League is anywhere near the size of the present one, all of them would be off on the same mission while only leaving three League members to watch over the Earth.
• Destroyer:

There's a huge war against the forces of Darkseid. Where are Mr. Miracle, Big Barda, and Orion? They've appeared previously on JLU, why not here?

• I would assume they were off-planet at the time and didn't know about Darkseid's invasion of Earth. The battle seemed to take place over a short enough time that the New Gods may not have found out about it until it was already over.
  • Orion is present, much to the chagrin of the producers. At the end of Alive, when Luthor arrives and mentions that they have a problem Orion is standing right behind Superman in plain view...and then he disappears from the exact same shot and scene in Destroyer. DVD commentary clears it up: The writers knew that if Orion had been present it would have had to come down to a fight between him and Darkseid. Their conflict has been one of the driving forces of the New Gods story going back to S:TAS, if he had been here there would have been no excuse to not have him be at least the warm-up fight, and the writers didn't want that. Their goal was for this episode, and particular those scenes, to be about the primary League members and, especially, Superman vs Darkseid. They made this realization after making Alive (Where Orion appeared) so they just had him vanish from the scene in Destroyer. As for the absence of Big Barda and Mr. Miracle, technically they were never in the League at all. Flimsy, I know, especially since we got a scene of Hawkman and he was also never in the League, but for that I don't know of any Word of God.
    • Point of fact, Hawkman may not have been a full member, but he was an auxilliary member, as mentioned in one of his spotlight episodes.
      • Actually, no he wasn't. He was an independent hero who sometimes crossed paths with the League. This was made fairly clear in the second episode he appears in, he shows up pursuing Gentleman Ghost who Lantern was also pursuing(and fighting him alone, initially), then aids Lantern(who was not expecting his aid), then departs separately once the fight is over while telling GL to "Tell Shayera I said hello". GL then complains to Shayera on the Watchtower that "I ran into your boyfriend again". Then if you notice in Destroyer, every JL member who was shown on earth is shown suiting up, then being teleported to the battle sites, including flyers like Fire, Stargirl and Stripe. Yet when it shows Hawkman, it shows him gearing up then flying off under his own power(with no battle visible outside the window he left from), and never being picked up via teleporter. I assume he was shown either because one of the creative team was a Hawkman fan and wanted to get him into the episode, or because it was a deliberate effort on their part to show that even NON-League heroes(Hawkman and Huntress being 2 we see in universe) were fighting as well.
• Grudge Match:

So Roulette, apparently with Lex Luthor's help, uses mind control devices in the JL communicators to get the girl heroes to fight each other in cage matches and charge admission/have people place bets on the outcome. Ok, understandably villainous/profitable thing to do, but why, why, WHY, if you could control even a few of the members of the Justice League, wouldn't you instead:

• • Use them to take over the world

• • Have them commit crimes for you and ruin their image

• • If you can only control some of them, make them kill the other members or themselves

• • • Well, assuming Lex used his power of control over all the female heroes you still have a good load of heroes who would stop them killing each other or robbing banks etc to smear their image. The only ones with power levels to cause real issue are Wonder Woman and Supergirl, Hawkgirl could go on the list too, because while her powers are not immense, she is pretty wiley. The rest of them are either low/specific or gadget based powers that a significant portion of the male Leagu members could easily take down. Factor in that Batman keeps files on how to beat everyone, Superman is strong enough and fast enough to catch them and Captain Marvel/Captain Atom would help out, they wouldn't be a prolonged problem. Take the mind control away and you have a League ready to take Lex Down.
      • Taking over the world would also face similar problems. Say Lex used his tech to control all the members wearing the ear communicator. As far as we have seen, Batman is most often called through his computer and batmobile, I can recall limited instances when the ear one is used (correct me if I am wrong, but I think his communicator is on the utility belt) so that is one of the DCAU's most dangerous heroes loose from Lex's control. Then we are assuming that all Leaguers, no matter what their status, are using the earpiece 24/7. Considering that they have alter-ego's and their own teams, alliances and partnerships, the inactive members who are not on duty could forseeably not have the earpiece on to control them. They could be running interferance while Batman uses Waynetech satalites to kill the control signal, and who's to bet that he has a backdoor on the communication system anyway? So Lex quite sensibly decided to control a few at a time to fight and make him some money, some second stringers who wouldn't be noticed and the big guns on a part time basis. Thus making a tidy profit and chuckling to himself about making the lady Leaguers fight each other.
        • Thing is, if you're shown as having ACCESS to the League commlinks, why not take the links of some of it's more powerful members? Why not tamper with Superman's commlink, or GL or the Flash? I mean, they got Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl(2 of the original 7), so it's not like they can only get low level second stringers. In regards to the above mentioned scenario, say you take over a group of them and send them out to cause havoc, don't you think the other Leaguers will suit up(which includes putting their commlinks on) if it looks like Superman, WW, and a couple other heavy hitters have gone rogue? And once they do, bam, now you got them as well. Sure, there might be a few you miss, but if you can get most of them, especially the more powerful members...you would have a pretty powerful advantage(especially to the mind of smug supervillains, who pretty much always underestimate their foes). Even IF it only works on women(we aren't told either way rather it does or doesn't), which sorta prevents the "world take over" routine(as mentioned, only WW, Supergirl, and possibly Zatanna are really at a high enough level to pose a threat to the other high level Leaguers) you'd think being able to have a Wonder Woman or Supergirl under your control you could at least find a few more potent uses for them outside of cage matches. Even at the most basic simple level, how bout, I dunno, asking Wonder Woman or Hawkgirl "BTW, do you know the real identity of Batman? What about the Flash?"

• So I read there are five seasons on the trope page, but I can only find four seasons of the show on iTunes. Is there a reason, or am I missing something?
  • It was more that the first of the JLU seasons was two half seasons when it aired and are just treated as one afterward.

• The original members knew that Shayera wasn't fully informed about the Thanagarian's true plans for Earth in Starcrossed, and they knew that she helped them in the end. So why isn't this public knowledge? This troper is going to assume that the government knew--which could explain why Shayera wasn't incarcerated--but if Vixen and Vigilante's reactions from Hunters Moon are anything to go by, everyone else doesn't know what really happened. Why? Also, in Doomsday Sanctuary we see Shayera at the meeting in the beginning and yet she's not present when they're deciding Doomsday's fate.
  • Even with all that, she still betrayed the League, and helped with the subjugation of Earth. The invasion wouldn't have happened at all without her being The Mole. Even if she didn't know the true extent of the plans, her actions still directly contributed to putting 7 billion people in danger. As for Vixen and Vigilante, I forget about the former, but Vigilante mentions that he was captured and imprisoned during the invasion, so he's got a personal reason to be pissed at her.
    • OP here and I get all of that, but Vixen and Vigilante's exchange in "Hunter's Moon" makes it apparent that the public doesn't know the whole story in Starcrossed.

Vigilante: I thought she betrayed us?
Vixen: Looks like she betrayed everyone.

• • It's possible they tried to tell everyone the whole story but they weren't able to overcome the wave of anti-Thanagarian hysteria that no doubt gripped the entire Earth after the invasion was thwarted. Most people probably saw it like the above troper described. She may not have known the whole plan, but she was still a willing participant and it never would have happened at all if it hadn't been for her. I mean, just try to imagine that conversation for a moment:

Justice League: Shayera's not a bad person. She didn't mean for it to go down like that. And when push came to shove she stood with us.
General Public: You mean she conveniently switched sides when her people were getting their wings handed to them!
JL: No, I mean...look, that's not the point. She didn't know about the Thanagarians' plan to destroy the Earth, and she wouldn't have supported it if she had.
GP: Oh really? Do you honestly expect us to believe the top spy and personal consort of the supreme leader of the Thanagarian invasion force didn't even know what she was spying on us for? Really? What evidence is there for that, apart from her word?

JL: Well...none I guess. But she still stood with us and helped us take down the Thanagarians when it was clear they were planning to destroy the Earth. The point is, when she saw things were going too far she stood up for what's right.

GP: Yeah? And what about all the stuff they did before that? Martial law? Imprisonment of dissidents? Enslaving humans to build their machines? And, oh yeah, spying for an alien government?! Was that not "too far" enough for her?

• • And hell, even if they did explain the decision, I could still see people in an uproar that she gets off without punishment. YMMV, but watching the shows from B:tAS all throughout JLU, you can probably pick out a dozen instances of people committing far less serious crimes with far greater mitigating circumstances, and receiving zero leniency. To the man on the street, the sheer magnitude of Hawkgirl's transgresson contrasted with the lack of any penalty must seem like a travesty.
    • Hawkgirl is guilty of espionage and serving as an enemy officer during a war. The latter isn't even a crime (unless actual war crimes are committed, but Hawkgirl never did any of those and acted to stop those that her comrades were committing) and while the former is one, defectors are traditionally given immunity from prosecution for it. Given that there's any number of KGB types who came across and got a free pardon in return for providing much less, and that Hawkgirl's defection was part and parcel of why human life on Earth did not cease to exist, its hardly unsurprising that she got a free pass.

• From the episode Flash and Substance: when Flash is facing the Mirror Master's hologram in the abandoned disco, he uses a disc from a blown-up machine to sever the wires holding up the disco ball that's firing lasers at him. There are other lights that have been activated in the disco, but Flash didn't sever any of them - yet, as he's walking out of the disco afterwards, one of those lights (not the disco ball, which has already fallen and been smashed) drops to the ground. So...why exactly did the light fall, since Flash didn't tamper with it and there was no damage done to any of the lights?
  • Sometimes a structural failure is just a structural failure.
  • Yeah, the place is clearly old and abandoned. It's no surprise things start falling down once a superhero fight starts up inside.

• In the episode The enemy below why are Superman and Wonderwoman affected by a drowning trap-thing when they were clearly fine with breathing underwater earlier. The two Johns need to concentrate to use their powers (although if this included breathing any martian would be in a bit of a pickle if he couldn't concentrate while on mars) but I didn't think the others did.
  • Superman needs to breath as much as anyone else. Why do you think he always puts on a space suit when he's flying around outside the atmosphere? Ditto Wonder Woman.
  • Tell you the truth, I think the better question is, why does a society of people who breathe water have an execution device that kills by drowning? It's... completely non-lethal to any of their kind. Do they really execute that many surface dwellers?

• How does hawk girl get those sweatshirts on?
  • ...you know, I've been watching this show regularly for something like five years now and I never considered that. Forget the shirts, which she could theoretically have brought from Thanagar or had specifically tailored, what about that dress she wore? She doesn't have the time to get somebody to produce a tailor-made dress that could fit around her wings on the short-notice of her date with Carter Hall, she just has it. Sure, she looks great in it, but where did it come from?
    • Actually the dress isn't a headscratcher at all. It's an ordinary dress with a back low enough that her wings aren't a problem. She can simply step into it and pull the straps up. Her original top wasn't a problem for this either. But think about her trying to put on those pull over sweatshirts with two huge wings in the way.
• Why isn't Booster Gold involved in any of the episodes dealing with time travel?

• In the episode "Dead Reckoning", Grodd uses genetic tech to transform human DNA into ape DNA. Normally, science tomfoolery aside, I could accept this. My only problem with it is that it also transformed Superman. You know, the alien who is not from this planet and isn't human?
  • "Species" is generally defined by individuals' resemblance to one another and their ability to interbreed. While I'm pretty sure the current comics' stand is that you can't mix humans and Kryptonians, some out of continuity one-shots from Alan Moore and John Byrne have showed Lois and Clark producing viable offspring, as did "Superman Returns". I just assume that the Diniverse works that way; Kryptonians and homo sapiens have similar enough DNA to interbreed, Kryptonians went through a simian evolutionary stage, and Grodd's gizmo acted on that DNA to create "Super Monkey".

• Vandal Savage's explanation of why he couldn't travel back in time to fix his own mistakes felt half-done. Okay, he can't travel back to anytime that he exists in, and he's existed since the Stone Age. But there was some point in pre-history when the caveman who would become Vandal Savage hadn't been born yet. What's stopping him from traveling back then, and taking The Slow Path back to the modern day? Depending on the way causality works in the DCAU, he can either stop his young self from becoming immortal, or let it happen and give his younger self strict warnings about causing apocalypses. Heck, he can even take over the primitive world if he hasn't outgrown that obsession.
  • While he certainly could do that, I figure he just pegged it as not a fruitful plan since, after 25,000 years living through the same events all over again, he'd be too insane to really be able to stop Vandal Savage in the present. Of course, he could go back and kill himself (Or just prevent himself from becoming immortal), since he'd only need to live through something like twenty years to get to that point, and I can't think of why he wouldn't try that.
  • Initial troper here. Just realized that Savage could have reused the plan than that he almost won WWII with. He just has to send a message back to Savage about not playing with the force of gravity. I love that episode to bits, but I can't get the Fridge Logic out of my head.
    • Its possible he tried that and Past-Savage didn't listen to the message, or decided to go ahead with the experiment while taking "precautions", modifying his experiments with safety measures that of course failed.

• There was something else about Hereafter that always bothered me. So Vandal Savage creates a machine that gives him control over gravity. Sure. He uses this machine to kill the Justice League and "disrupts the gravitational balance of the entire solar system". Okay, so that's why we can see what looks like Saturn in the sky that big. Did these gravitational disruptions also somehow age the Sun the several billion years necessary for it to enter the red giant stage? I mean I get that a powerless Superman creates more drama and tension to the story but... what?
  • Actually, yes, since the stage a star is in is directly related to its mass; changing the gravity (Perhaps removing much of a stars mass) will certainly alter its state.

• This is just a small thing, but in "Comfort and Joy" am I the only one who finds it a little weird that Superman apparantly still believes in Santa Claus?
  • By this point in his career, he's seen weirder stuff than that, so why not?
  • I think it's mainly been contained to joke issues and one-shots stories, but hasn't it been confirmed that Santa Claus (Or at least one version of him) does exist in the DCU (I recall reading somewhere on this site that he once gave Darkseid a lump of coal)? I wouldn't be surprised if Superman has actually met Santa.
  • Not just once. He does it every year.
  • Who says he really believes in Santa Claus? Until the day he died my dad insisted that every Christmas gift I was ever given was "from Santa" not from my parents. Even long after I had stopped believing in Santa he still kept it up. I guess he thought it was funny or cute or something. Maybe Clark is doing the same thing?
  • Superman isn't shown as believing in Santa Claus. It's pretty clear in the episode when he "corrects" Pa Kent that he didn't do it cause he didn't KNOW, but that he did it as part of "being in the spirit of the season". Sure, he knows Santa isn't real, but since for him, Santa is a part of Christmas, you play along like he is.

• Kid Stuff
  • Maybe I'm overthinking this, but did anybody else catch the Fridge Horror in this episode? Mordred transported every adult on Earth to another dimension simultaneously. Sure, things were pretty well under control in the theme park where all of the action took place, but the rest of the world? Every car on every road on the planet just wrecked. Every plane in the sky just crashed. Any child receiving an operation in any hospital worldwide could only hope to bleed to death before the anesthetic wore off, and the number of infants dying from the four foot drop when mommy's suddenly teleported out, by itself, had to be in the thousands. Sure, we got shown a happy ending, but logically, every city in the developed world should have been in flames, and at least a quarter of the world's children should have died by misadventure.
    • Do we know how wide Mordred's spell was? Maybe it only affected a small area, and when the government and Justice League realized something was happening, they tried to keep as many people away from the area as possible. Maybe Mordred didn't want those younger than him to die under his reign, so he saved the babies. The truth is, we end up with so little from the story, the fridge horror is still up in the air.
    • Re-watched the episode. Morgaines's exact dialogue was that the spell affected "all adults", which I took to mean all adults on earth. Though I may have taking that too literally.

• A minor one that might even be a nitpick, but in episode 25 of season 1 we briefly see a map of the world (while at Blackhawk Island) that clearly shows a North and South Korea. The problem is that those two nations wouldn't even be created as Soviet and American controlled zones until 1945. Usually it might just be a mistake of using the wrong map but this is an animated show. Someone had to actually choose to put in the words 'N. Korea' and 'S. Korea'.

• In the first three episodes of Justice League the team seems to have no problem melting a large number of alien invaders to death. Admittedly those aliens did seem to plan to wipe out the human race, but this is the same universe where killing Luthor to stop a nuclear war was treated as going too far. Are these people operating under the assumption that someone only deserves to live if they look human? It's even worse considering the number of nonhumans on the team or acquainted with it.
  • It wasn't just killing Luthor that was too far. It was Superman killing him in cold blood when he had other options. And then proceeding to take over the world. The rest of the League has variously had considerably less problem with killing in battle (Wonder Woman in particular); the Thanagarian invasion and when they went back to World War II stand out--and What Measure Is a Non-Human? is hardly unique to this series anyway.
  • It wasn't just that they killed Luthor. Hell, it wasn't even just that Superman killed Luthor. It was the reason Superman killed Luthor that was going too far. Here's the exact conversation that took place (courtesy of Wikiquotes):
    [The Justice League is attacking the White House, with Luthor in the
Oval Office]
Lex Luthor: [to himself] They couldn't see the beauty! No imagination! They'd rather fight!
[Superman bursts into the office]
Superman: Even this wasn't enough for you, was it? You had to have it all. Now we're on the brink
of a war that could destroy the whole planet!
Lex Luthor: ... Could've been so perfect... paradise...
Superman: And I let it get this far because of the law. And the will of the people.
Lex Luthor: [laughing] The people?! This is all their fault! And they're gonna burn for it! Burn!
Superman: You're nothing but a mad dog now, aren't you?
Lex Luthor: Ooh, a threat! But this old dog still has a few teeth!
[Pulls out a drawer with a control box, and poises his finger above a red button. There is a pause.]
Superman: There are at least six different ways I can stop you right now.
Lex Luthor: But they all involve deadly force, don't they? And you don't do that.
[Superman is silent]
Lex Luthor: No. You need me. You wouldn't be much of a hero without a villain, and you do love
being a hero, don't you? The cheering children, the swooning women - you love it so much, it's
made you my most reliable accomplice!
Superman: Accomplice?! What're you--
Lex Luthor: You could have crushed me any time you wanted. And it wasn't the law or the will of
the people that stopped you - it was your ego. Being a hero was too important to you. You're as much
responsible for this as I am! So go ahead, fix it somehow. Put me on trial, lock me up - but
I'll beat it. And then we'll start the whole thing all over again.
Superman: ... I did love being a hero. But if this is where it leads... I'm done with it.
[Superman's eyes begin to glow] As you can see, the dialogue makes it clear that Superman essentially discarded his entire moral code when he decided to kill Luthor. And he wasn't sad that he was forced to kill Luthor, he was HAPPY about it. THAT was the slippery slope moment, not the act of killing itself.

• In episodes 16 and 17 Fury did Star Sapphire and Tsukuri temporarily take leave of their senses? At least Aresia had suffered a great deal, didn't realize just how interconnected the world is and had been apparently brought up on a strong anti-male message, those two had no excuse. Did they not notice the large numbers of planes, cars, trucks and trains crashing in the first few minutes of the plan? Did they not stop to realize that they could reasonably expect a total collapse of society, especially in regions with far fewer women trained in business, politics, engineering, farming, criminal justice and medicine? That's not even getting into the blatantly obvious problem of how exactly humanity was supposed to survive another generation.
  • You got me. Maybe Aresia promised to teach them how to make babies in a more literal fashion the way Hippolyta made Wonder Woman. Assuming Aresia did the research on human interconnectedness, but since Wonder Woman implicitly didn't know exactly what made the continued existence of men so important, she probably didn't either, so if then, SS and Tsuruki have no excuse.
  • Perhaps the "allergen" she released didn't affect frozen sperm, so she was figuring that society could be rebuilt after a generation, with men treated as chattel? Yes, there would surely be incredible suffering even among their own gender, but Aresia is a Knight Templar, and the other two are most likely sociopaths.

• When Darkseid was holding Superman by the neck during their battle in "Destroyer," they were looking each other in the eyes. Why didn't Superman just use his heat vision to melt out Darkseid's eyes? I'd love to see the Tiger-Force of the universe try to vaporize anyone when he can't even see.

• I have two: where did Luthor get the video of alternate universe Superman killing the alternate universe Luthor, and why did the Question think they were in a time loop and that there would be a superhuman arms race when in the alternate universe, the original Justice League just became tyrants? Granted, he is a crazy conspiracy theorist... maybe I'm just overthinking things...
  • He didn't have the video, Cadmus did, the League gave it to them. Waller explains that they had to give the government all the info they had from the alternate reality to secure Luthor's pardon, and they probably brought a copy back with them.
    • What he says is why Luthor knew of his death in another world. And i was under the assumption that Luthor was in bed with Cadmus, literally. So it's no surpise he could get his hands on this piece of info. And no Q is crazy conspiracy theorist, but c'mon Luthor is smart (aside from Forty pies that are cakes) and it would be logical to assume that he would use that information to his advantage. New host body (Amazo model), control over media, recent Justice Lords event (not so recent but still), the whole Orbital laser thing. Faking his death, while claiming that Superman did it out of hatred - and well...

• Why is Aquaman allowed in the Leagues founding members room so casually. I thought you had to be a foudner for that. The only other time I remember non-founders, being allowed in the foudning member room was when Captain Marvel quit, and when Question found out their dirty little secret. Could he have honorary foudners status or something... He did work with them a few times in the original series, and they did consider him as a replacement member when they thought Supes was dead.
  • The Founding Seven walked in one day and he was already sitting in one of the chairs, with his feet on the table and his eyebrows at Maximum Scowl. Somehow they just never got around to asking him to leave.
  • It is also possible that they asked him to replace Hawkgirl, and became a defacto "original" member, before they decided to do the whole "let's try to get as many heroes as possible" thing. It would also make sense, in matters that required a vote, one can never have a tie when an odd number of people are voting on the subject (assuming everybody votes, that is). Or they needed to give him extra powers to convince Aqua-man to take time away from his KINGDOM to be part of the justice league.
    • There's a subtle hint about that in Hereafter. When they're suggesting replacements for the "dead" Superman, not only was he suggested as a replacement, he was actually CHOSEN as a replacement. If you watch later in the episode, when Supers gets to the destroyed Watchtower in the future and brings up the roster screen, it shows the original 6 PLUS Aquaman. So at least in that reality, that Aquaman was the one who replaced Supes after he "died". Sure that reality was prevented, but perhaps sometime before the full expansion of the League he was the first member who joined(perhaps as the above poster mentioned, as a replacement for Hawkgirl) and was then treated as part of the "group".

• Something that came to me recently regarding Legends: everyone focuses on how John Stewart gets that 'you're a credit to your race son' line while missing a really big plot hole. When Stewart intervenes to prevent the theft of that rare violin the bad guy comments on how 'well change your costume but I can still tell it's you Green Guardsman'. Now tell me, it's a 1950s style setting and he can't tell that this obviously BLACK man isn't his obviously WHITE opponent he's fought many times? That the only thing he notices is the difference in costumes? Not that the guy's a young, very black bald man and not a very white middle-aged white-haired man.
  • The Green Lantern rings have frequently been shown to be able to disguise their bearer; changing how they look, including the color of their skin, apparent age, and even gender. I'll admit it's odd that he only comments on the costume and not everything else, but I'll wager he's seen the Guardsman desguise himself before for other purposes, and just assumed it was more ring trickery.
  • Actually he didn't just comment on the costume. The villain's exact words were "Your disguise can't fool me, Green Guardsman!"
• Just been thinking about this and wondered if anyone had a different opinion: Suppose Aresia actually did succeed in wiping out all male life on the planet. Then what? Does she suppose she'll educate all women in her skewed version of Amazon culture? Does she think Hera will bless all females with eternal life, eliminating the need to give birth ever again?
  • Given that she was willing to murder literally half the human race, she's obviously very unhinged. It's entirely possible that she had absolutely no plan for what would happen after all the men were wiped out.
• Flash can breathe in space in this show. WHY?
  • If you're referring to the scene in 'Eclipsed', remember that he's running on a green energy track made for him by Green Lantern. Whose power ring has the ability to let people breathe in space so long as they're within the green energy field.