In the DC Animated Universe, Bruce Wayne made a critical mistake that almost sent one Batman: The Animated Series villain down a bad path.
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Batman: The Adventures Continue #17 by Alan Burnett, Paul Dini, Ty Templeton, Sean Parsons, and Josh Reed, on sale now.
Batman is not really a people person. When holidays roll around, he even has a difficult time trying to figure out what to give as gifts to even his closest friends and family. And when he needed to give a gift to someone he wasn’t close to at all in Batman: The Adventures Continue #17, the Dark Knight made an uncharacteristically careless mistake.
In this digital-first sequel to Batman: The Animated Series-the-animated-series, Batman’s inability to give a decent gift almost ruined the Ventriloquist’s recovery and could have killed hundreds of people. It was only through sheer luck that his thoughtless Christmas gift didn’t cause a New Year’s Day disaster.
After the Joker crashed a holiday party Wesker was at with the express intent of reactivating his Scarface persona, Batman gave Arnold the laziest gift a person could get for Christmas: socks. Arnold was understandably disappointed, but it was what he did with the socks next that acted as a gateway to a nightlong crime spree with Scarface and the Joker. Shortly after receiving the socks, Wesker began using one of the socks as a sock puppet, which didn’t bode well for a villain whose whole gimmick revolved around ventriloquism.
By the time Wesker entered his apartment, he had already put the sock on his hand and started calling it “Toesy” But by comparison to his last puppet, Toesy was far more polite and soft spoken, even asking if his presence in Arnold’s home was an imposition. What matters though, is that Toesy’s introduction was a minor relapse on Arnold’s part, making him much more vulnerable to Scarface’s influence. And as bad luck would have it, Scarface was waiting for Arnold inside the apartment. Having already given a bit of control to his new puppet, Arnold was almost helpless before Scarface, who forced him into helping set up explosives beneath the Gotham New Year’s celebration.