When a media franchise gets popular to ridiculous lengths, even its own fans begin questioning stuff that doesn’t make sense. The poster child for DC Universe is a guy in a red cape who protects the Earth while not even being from Earth, with his best friend being a guy who wears a tight black costume and likes to play with bats, so you can see what we’re dealing with here.
The memes on this list poke fun on DC’s invoked tropes, as if these are seen from the eyes of someone who isn’t familiar with its universe, these people will find the stuff found in this franchise to be too funny for words.
Updated January 8th, 2020: Since the release of Joker, there has been a new perspective added for fans in the larger Batman universe. With this in mind, there are a few more memes in this list that bring further context.
No One Will Ever Notice
After the less-than-positive reception to the Joker we saw in Suicide Squad, DC had to go back to the drawing board and come up with a more faithful take on the character. And while Joaquin Phoenix’s version was awesome, he really wasn’t all that original, was he?
It appears that DC’s solution toward making Joker great again was taking a step further back into The Dark Knight and use the template set by that Joker for the most recent incarnation. Oh well, it did work like a charm.
Not Exactly What We Wanted
Fans are still critical of the DC Extended Universe to some extent even after the positive reception for the most recent films, as the trailers for Birds of Prey have left us feeling rather empty. The problem is that, like with Suicide Squad, most of the stuff seen has been filler.
The teaser trailer in particular had a lukewarm reception for this reason, as it indicated nothing toward what we’d see in the movie and was more fluff thrown in together to create short-term hype. Let’s hope DC gets better with its trailers going forward.
Batman Needs To Rethink Some Stuff
You have to give full credit to the presentation of the character that even ardent fans consider Batman first and foremost as a loner, despite the fact that he’s far from one. Batman keeps saying how he works alone, but just take a look at that back-up he’s got.
Not only did he have multiple Robins, those men eventually morphed into superheroes in their own right. Along with that, Batman has also been notorious for frequently seeking the help of guys like Him Gordon and Oracle, meaning he never was a loner to begin with.
Well He Did Accomplish Something
Maybe we spoke too soon when we said that the Joker before Joaquin Phoenix’s version wasn’t great because he did do a pretty darn great job at hurting a movie. Not many can claim to be so polarizing that they end up ruining a franchise before it’s started, so this Joker does deserve credit there.
Going to the meme, the point the creator is making here is that the Joker’s “really, really bad” line was one of the reasons the movie tanked, as the director sought to make this Joker out to be an internet darling more than a great character. Using meme logic is never going to work, and this Joker proved it.
Finally Got The Wheel
The best part of Birds of Prey has been the exclusion of the Joker, since this has allowed Harley Quinn to finally show us what she’s made of. Another scene fans found laughable in Suicide Squad had been the one where Joker and Harley had been speeding in a car for seemingly no reason.
Harley seemed to have a plan in mind by yelling “do it!” to Joker, but the scene went nowhere. For this reason, this meme celebrates how Harley is finally the one steering the wheel of her character without being shackled to the Joker.
That’s How You Save Money
The Christopher Nolan Batman series is the most well-received superhero franchise of all time. The only criticism that we can find about these movies, though, is why the heck Batman chose to growl when he could have easily installed a voice manipulator.
The Arrow TV series fixes this by having the main character make use of a device that alters his voice, and people claim Nolan probably never even thought of this little problem. But we think Bruce Wayne might have been onto something here, and chose to growl in order to save some money off the Batman budget.
The Third Option
Batman’s popularity has taken off after The Dark Knight trilogy made him a must-see superhero, which has had the effect of fans placing him in the same breath as Superman in terms of power.
There were many rival arguments in the lead up to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice over which character would walk away with the win, but the Dragon Ball Z fans weren’t going to back away quietly. In case you don’t know, there’s an age old argument over whether Superman or Goku is the more powerful character, and here it seems Donkey might secretly be a Goku fanboy.
Disguising Done Right
Hipsters these days don glasses in order to make their Instagram pictures look different than usual, but it were the DC Universe heroes who first started this trend by shoving glasses onto their faces in the hopes of blending in.
The most obvious example is Clark Kent, whom nobody has been able to figure out as Superman despite Clark having the job of a reporter that places him in situations of notoriety. The same way, several other superheroes have figured that putting glasses on will give them the same level of anonymity that Superman has enjoyed.
Gordon Is Not Happy
Only those aware of Batman’s plan in Justice League will understand what’s going on in this meme. In said movie, Batman had a suicidal plan of heading for Steppenwolf’s tower to sacrifice himself and allow the other League members to penetrate through the walls.
Unfortunately (or actually fortunately), the rest of the team arrived to save him and went in together; however, Gordon is quick to point out to Batman of his failure to get the Batmobile to the destination in time. To this end, Gordon’s channeling his inner Whiplash to scream at Batman whether he was “rushing or dragging” because of which he couldn’t be on his time at the tower.
That’s Pretty Much It
The reason why Justice League didn’t work out was because most of the team hadn’t had the required characterization to make them appealing. This meme perfectly illustrates what the audience was thinking upon the film’s release.
Batman was easily the most recognizable to anyone and so didn’t need any explanation; Wonder Woman had had her well received film by then; the other three only had one or two character traits that people could identify with - you can’t expect to make a blockbuster movie out of a formula like this. At least the success of Aquaman has made that character a star in his own right.
Change Of Pace
Around the release of Aquaman, DC finally understood what it had to do to make its universe a success, and that was to appeal to different demographics based on its characters. Now, you won’t find needless grit in films that are clearly not that type, and Shazam! is a wonderful film to illustrate this point.
Kids were delighted in watching this film, which gave us rounded humor that could appeal to children who only wanted to see the fun part of being a hero rather than excessively dark and traumatic experiences that didn’t flow very well.
Loophole
The rule of Batman not using a gun is pretty wonky, since the superhero has used a variety of other weapons instead; this sums up about the same as using a gun, so we’re not clear on why that particular weapon is off limits for him.
In this scene, you can see him carrying an enormous Battle Ax, whose hit would be way deadlier and brutal than a simple gun. In general circumstances, the way Batman doles out punishment is accepted by criminals to be a fate worse than death. Compared to all this, a gun really doesn’t seem so bad, does it?
Think Of The Dress Code
You can give us all the rants you want about how empowering Wonder Woman’s dress sense is, but the fact of the matter is it’s not acceptable to wear in normal life. Even more so, women these days riding high on the whole empowerment thing might get the sense they could get away with dressing up as a superhero; let his meme be your warning.
Of course, nobody’s stupid enough to actually show up to the office as Wonder Woman, but wouldn’t that be the best? Although, we do wonder if any employee in the DC Universe might be up for a disciplinary hearing over their dressing choice, considering an actual person does dress up like that in their world.
Nice Guy Villain
Scratch that part about what we said where people don’t have criticisms for The Dark Knight trilogy, because The Dark Knight Rises was riddled with plot holes galore. Seriously, why would a guy like Bane leave Batman in such a well mannered prison?
He was not only left with a doctor, but everybody in that prison was super supportive; he also had access to the TV and was never malnourished. Even after Bruce escaped, he somehow found a way into Gotham despite being stranded in what was implied to be China. Did Bane also give him free tickets back to USA?
It’s about time
Not only does Superman wear his underwear on the outside, he chooses to wear it in a completely different shade than his leggings, putting more focus on his weird fashion choice. Thankfully, DC came to their sense by Man of Steel, and the current Superman looks so much cooler than his other counterparts.
However, since people consider DC to be one entity rather than the machinations of different people across different generations, the idea in everyone’s minds is that it has taken Superman so very long to finally understand that you wear your underwear on the inside.
