Highlights

  • Ratcatcher makes a significant leap from an Arkhamverse Easter egg to the potential main villain in Batman: Arkham Shadow.
  • The atmospheric teaser of Batman: Arkham Shadow sets the stage for Ratcatcher's possibly terrifying role.
  • The return to a gritty, street-level Gotham City story in Shadow could revitalize the Arkhamverse with a newly intimate focus.

The world-building and lore of Arkham games have always been incredibly rich. That’s why, because of how little it did to honor that legacy or make any meaningful connections to it aside from throwaway canon references, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League largely failed the Arkhamverse. The Arkhamverse is packed with a ton of fully fleshed-out characters and antagonists and while not all have been given as much attention as others, they’re all still impactful and intriguing, even if they’ve only been alluded to in physical villain memorabilia or supplementary stories and bios players can peruse at their leisure.

Many characters are only ever mentioned this way and never appear in Batman: Arkham games otherwise, such as the Ventriloquist, Killer Moth, and Great White Shark, but their inclusions enhance the Arkhamverse nonetheless. Now that Camouflaj’s VR-exclusive Batman: Arkham Shadow has been announced, it’s obvious that one of Batman’s lesser-known villains will finally have their comeuppance and take center stage after only having appeared in Easter egg references beforehand: Ratcatcher.

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If Rocksteady eventually returns to the single-player DC realm it already has breadcrumbs laid out from a throwaway tease in Batman: Arkham Knight.

Ratcatcher Plays a Large Role in Arkhamverse Easter Egg Content

Ratcatcher is certainly one of the more obscure Batman villains and definitely hasn’t been as fearsome or epic as some higher-class antagonists, but Batman: Arkham Shadow is already doing a phenomenal job of teasing the character with a perfect dose of atmosphere in the rain-slicked alleyways of Gotham City. The rats alone are enough to ensure Ratcatcher is at least one villain appearing in Shadow, and the fact that the teaser is wholly focused on Batman’s pursuit of these rats seems to guarantee that they’ll finally be a main villain in the franchise after a lengthy period of appearing exclusively as an Easter egg.

Indeed, rubber gloves and gas masks can be seen multiple times throughout the series, usually as a point of interest players can scan in Detective Mode to solve Riddler’s riddles. Some light backstory details were given in the franchise thus far—enough to firmly establish Ratcatcher in the Arkhamverse, anyhow—and it’ll be interesting to see if Camouflaj decides to adhere to them or rewrite the character as it sees fit.

Regardless, this was always a neat way for the Arkhamverse to feature other characters without them being around or playing a role in the story because, especially depending on where these Easter eggs and references to antagonists are found, it reinforces how profound the Arkham games’ environmental storytelling is.

Mr. Freeze wasn’t in Arkham Asylum and only his icicle-frosted cell was, for instance, while Fries played a massive role in its sequel, Arkham City. So while Ratcatcher was only ever an Easter egg in the Arkhamverse, it’s a special treat to finally see them rewarded with what seems like a main antagonist role in Arkham Shadow.

Batman: Arkham Shadow Drains Ratcatcher Out of the Gutter

Batman: Arkham Shadow could be pulling a bait-and-switch with Ratcatcher; indeed, the Arkham games tend to pedestal one antagonist as its focal point while another actually assumes that role, with that villain being Joker more often than not. That would be a shame in Shadow’s case, though, because the tone of Shadow thus far is precisely what the Arkhamverse needs now: a gritty, dark, street-level Gotham City story that doesn’t have the cataclysmic or multiversal scale of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

The Batman: Arkham games were brilliant for how they reduced the DC mythology scope to Batman alone and made his relationships and interactions with others intimate. If Shadow can take the Arkhamverse back to that atmosphere with Ratcatcher as a villain whom Camouflaj can make truly terrifying it’ll put a tremendous stamp on the franchise and give its next action-adventure entry a lot to live up to—if one does hopefully follow this VR title.