Stories do not happen in a vacuum. A story’s setting can be as much of a character as the actual characters inhabiting it, reflecting both them and the thematic elements of the plot. This is true of games, books, and movies—in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, for instance, a great and mighty evil renders the land of Mordor into, quite literally, a festering, pulsating, and decaying wasteland that is inhabited by orcs and other beings who personify the very evil that corrupts the once bucolic realm of Mordor.

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“ Batman is the personification of one man’s fears, anger, and inner-turmoil, and he’s consumed the man who created him—Bruce Wayne.

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“ Gotham is in chaos—yet, the chaos is structured.

There’s perhaps no better representation of this than Batman: Arkham Knight Batman: Arkham Knight was sold on the conceit of Batman’s past choices coming back to haunt him, his innermost fears and regrets given manifest into his reality. By the time Arkham Knight begins, Batman is deep within the throes of the Joker toxin that found its way into his veins at the end of Arkham City. Slowly but surely, he is turning into the Joker. Much like the city itself, his mental walls are fraught with cracks and decay. Batman is the personification of one man’s fears, anger, and inner-turmoil, and he’s consumed the man who created him—Bruce Wayne. Bruce’s humanity has been lost to time, as his masked vigilante alter ego takes over and manifest as a violent obsession to wage war on corruption incarnate. Bruce, the human, is not unlike a cracked concrete gargoyle lost in the shadow of the newest hotel in Gotham. Batman is that powerful new layer, parked in the mind’s-eye of Bruce Wayne, snuffing out what was once a man. Bruce the man has transformed into his obsession and the antagonist to Batman’s compulsory nature to restore order (through violence, usually). The Joker has taken refuge in the internal monologue and psyche of the Batman. The Joker might technically be dead in a physical sense, but the Joker Toxin allows the clown prince of crime to live on by burrowing his mad-cap psychosis into Batman’s mind—another layer on the already fractured, dense, and burdened Bruce Wayne. Batman’s reality is now as shaky as the derelict tunnels and train systems that web their way through the nebulous dark deep under Gotham. A hue of green has washed over him—The Joker infects his internal monologue and his reality all the same. He is there one moment, leaning against a rusted pipe and ranting about how he cannot wait to be in full control of Batman’s body, and vanished a second later. But the rusted pipe, with its moaning creaks and buckled bolts, still remains.Similarly, the city of Gotham will never be able to allow its past to shine through. It is too haunted, and damned beyond saving. Or is it? The Wayne Corporation seems to think so and, with Bruce Wayne’s company being able to front so much money, nothing will stop the forward progress and modernization of Gotham, its infrastructure, and its architecture. Old structures will stand, rain will soak them day in and day out, and one day they will cease to be—becoming nothing more than broken down concrete in the back of a dump truck, or buried deep within an overflowing dumpster that has been forgotten in the tides of the monstrous and ever-changing ocean of time. And then, one day in the far off future where the events of the Arkham trilogy are reduced to tales told in hushed tones around the water cooler, Batman will be nothing more than a myth or a bronze statue in a sleek new mall deep within the modernized and forever-changed heart of Gotham City.

Cole Henry is a media theory student teetering on the precipice of adult life and grad school. He also considers Diddy Kong Racing as the only cart racer to ever exist. Follow him on Twitter at @colehenry19