So clearly it's well established that Batman has a strict "no killing" rule that he's put his foot down on upholding...

But what if Batman was the accidental cause of someone's death, or critically injured some thug? Like, if he gave a guy a heart attack or if another paranoid thug shot somebody he mistook for Batman hiding in the shadows? How does he avoid mistakes like that? Does he have a contingency plan if something like that does go wrong?

And if he was pushing his limits, how brutal would he allow himself to get at his worst without breaking his own rule?

I think the answer really depends on who is writing it, and their interpretation of Batman, as well as how far we extend the universe we're looking at (like the Nolan-verse and Arkham games). In the comics, I would say as a rule, his limit is no hesitation breaking bones, but would avoid paralysis, maiming, or permanent brain damage. Possibly with maiming being the limit he is pushed to in the most extreme cases. However, I don't think this would extend to things like non-intelligent aliens, or even entities as deadly as someone like Darkseid. He may well kill when confronted with those.

If we extend the universe we're talking about, I think if you consider the Arkham games, he'd be pretty non-chalant about dealing out maimings and brain damage. Hard to say, though, as obviously these things are largely contingent on the player and how they play the game (for example, if you do an inverted take down to a thug, he would be fine, more or less. If you choose to cut the rope with a batarang, many of the heights would kill, or at least shatter the neck and spine of the person). All things considered, we'd probably ignore that universe.

In the Nolan-verse, he arguably killed Two-face. So there's that...

In terms of avoiding the mistakes, I cannot think of solid examples, but I'm sure such things have happened. Hell, in the New 52, Batman and Robin touched upon that as they are targeted by a group of thugs who all have lingering injuries or conditions due to fighting Batman, and he shows seemingly no remorse for his actions. At the end of the day, if I were personally to come up with a ruling looking at the big picture, I'd vote his line is literally "No direct killing of a human/humanoid being" with all other levels being permissible based on circumstance.

@serpent222 said:

In terms of avoiding the mistakes, I cannot think of solid examples, but I'm sure such things have happened. Hell, in the New 52, Batman and Robin touched upon that as they are targeted by a group of thugs who all have lingering injuries or conditions due to fighting Batman, and he shows seemingly no remorse for his actions. At the end of the day, if I were personally to come up with a ruling looking at the big picture, I'd vote his line is literally "No direct killing of a human/humanoid being" with all other levels being permissible based on circumstance.

Exactly the way i would word it. If Batman is caught in a pinch with 10 thugs ready to kill him, he will go as savage as necessary to survive without actually using a "kill shot".

If, however, he were to cause internal bleeding or something similar while escaping i can't see him being regretful for more than a page.

Likewise, if said thugs are armed and shooting at him at close range, he will try to manipulate the situation by disarming them or at least getting above so they are shooting away from themselves. But if none of this is possible and one of them takes a stray bullet it's more likely that he will complain about how untrained they are rather than blame himself.

his strong xenophobia limits him greatly from inflicting harm to humans

he's not peak human, if you put all his displays together he will be peak street-level

Read the 4 issue JLA: Tower of Babel story (loosely adapted into the animated Justice League: Doom).

Batman has a plan not only for his enemies, but his friends as well. His strategies surgically, and sometimes quite cruelly, removed his teammates from play.

Red Kryptonite turned Superman's skin transparent, flooding him with yellow sun energy and painfully crippling him.

The Flash experienced seizured at superspeed for a period that felt like weeks to him.

Wonder Woman was stuck in a simulated battle that pushed her into a near heart attack.

Well, I see it as because of his no killing rule, he never went along and prevented all of Ra's Al Ghul's plans of severely exterminating most humans, and denied becoming head of the league of shadows, so really he could easily help kill off most humans.

@BlueArrow said:

Well, I see it as because of his no killing rule, he never went along and prevented all of Ra's Al Ghul's plans of severely exterminating most humans, and denied becoming head of the league of shadows, so really he could easily help kill off most humans.

I never really thought of it that way, but that's a good point. If we want to look at how potentially dangerous Batman could be, if he wanted, he's been in a position more than once to wipe out a lot of people.

well in Nolan's movies he straight up killed Ra's Al Ghul and Two Face. He's more guilty of Ra's, because he was actually saving someone when he takes out Harvey.

I like the manner which Nolan portrays the Batman no-kill rule. It basically stops short of blatant murder, but if you die in the scuffle or if you've inconveniently left yourself with no exit strategy, then you're SOL. It's not Batman's problem.

This doesn't go as far as Bob Kane's Batman (who frequently killed). But it also doesn't create these ridiculous stories which we have seen in comics where Batman is standing between the Joker dying and say someone like Huntress. These situations just make Bruce look like a hypocritical boy scout.

He's either a badass who's committed to cleaning up the streets of Gotham, or he's a boy scout. Watching writers yo-yo this aspect of his character is annoying.

One last point. In real life, an officer of the law would be perfectly within reason to drop someone like the Joker or Two-Face...on sight! We shouldn't feel like Batman is somehow on the same level as the Punisher if he lets nature take its course in certain situations. Sure, he's straddling a fine line, but that's one of the things that makes his character so interesting.

@Xanni15 said:

As dangerous as anyone else, as someone else already mentioned, if life in the entire universe was in danger and Batman could prevent it by killing one person he wouldn't do it. :'(

Not necessarily true. Look at Darkseid in Final Crisis. Only thing that makes it hazy is that Darkseid wasn't human.

@Xanni15 said:

@serpent222 said:

@Xanni15 said:

As dangerous as anyone else, as someone else already mentioned, if life in the entire universe was in danger and Batman could prevent it by killing one person he wouldn't do it. :'(

Not necessarily true. Look at Darkseid in Final Crisis. Only thing that makes it hazy is that Darkseid wasn't human.

Well, Batman technically didn't kill him, did he? I get what you're saying though.

Did he? I may very well be wrong, but I thought Darkseid was basically blinked out of existence in that continuity after that.

The only time I really see Bats get upset over this sort of thing is if its a young punk (someone he might have "saved"). Otherwise he doesn't really seem to distinguish much between broken leg and possible brain injury (I think he justifies with a combination of the words vengeance and scum etc etc). Though to be fair, I do notice the most damage moves are used in tight corners/desperation type scenarios (given the choice it's usually something like a batarang to knock the gun away)

Well, an excellence question... consider he owns a Multi-million dollar company and can access to the probably most advanced Tech int he world....

But all those is just a Bonus, the greatest weapon of him is His Brilliant Mind which always be able to plan few moves ahead of his opponent...has a contigency plan over another...

@DarKnightNoir: No no no. Batman in the move, before he jumped out of the train with Ra's, said: "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you" heck, Ra's could've even held on to Batman if he had to.

yeah choosing not to save someone explicitly is the same as killing them.

@PsychoKnights said:

@DarKnightNoir:

You really think so? I'm sure I could save some lives in Africa by donating to those, "Feed the poor," charities, but I don't. Am I a murderer? Are you?

This is actually a fairly clever thought on your part. However, I think we can both see that your "feed the poor" scenario has no actual similarities to the Ra's Al Ghul/Batman scenario depicted in Batman Begins. A more honest comparison might see you walking down the street --having just withdrawn $150 from an ATM-- and seeing a skin and bones man holding a sign that says "haven't eaten in 9 days, anything helps." Nothing about the situation appears to be dishonest or a hoax. The man is tiny, unhealthy looking, and you have $150 in your pocket. In 20 and 5 dollar bills, we'll say. Now, a thought enters your head that goes something like, "I could spare $5..." but you dismiss it and leave. The man dies three hours later.

Alternately, and more extremely/absurdly, you see a man with a gun to his head, and he says, "if you tell me not to I won't." Again, there is no foul play, this is an honest man in a weird situation. If you said nothing, despite knowing that you could have simply said "don't do it," you would absolutely be morally responsible for the man's death.

But reigning it back into Batman... Saving Ra's would have posed no problem to a man like Bruce Wayne. He's a badass. He makes it his business to be a bad ass. If it was any other human being, he would have and could have easily held the persons weight and safely removed them both from the situation. Joe fucking Chill (were he alive in that canon) could have been in that train, and Bruce would have saved him. "Out of sight, out of mind" is a cliche, but for a reason. Psychology really does work that way. So, in short...

You're clever, that was sharp of you. But you're wrong. Batman went out of character and killed someone.

Edit: didn't even respond to that first part of your post... Partially related, but somewhat off topic. There is an episode of the Animated Series where Batman interrogates a man in front of his family (the guy is a crook) and scares the hell out of his kid, and so on. It's a great episode, but anyway. The point is that months later it's discovered that Wayne went out of his way to make sure the man received a job at Wayne's company. He goes out of his way to be nice to the man, and even asks him how his boy's doing. If Batman knowingly caused longterm damage or potential death, he'd probably.. I dunno, pick up the medical bill? and see to it that the victim received the best treatment? Doesn't seem that odd.

"Mercy killing?"

Ra's wasn't in pain, or near death, or suffering... until Batman didn't take him out of that train.

@PsychoKnights:

My girlfriend just got into Batman recently too, haha. Movies, cartoons, comics, whatevs. It's been a lot of fun. The episode I was referring to is from Volume 4 (post-art direction change) and is called "Second Chances" I believe. Aside from Nightwing's mullet, it's real good.

@ULTRAstarkiller said:

@DarKnightNoir: he didn't kill ras he just didn't save him

That was the stupidest line of the whole series. BATMAN jammed the controls. BATMAN arranged for the track to be blown up. Ras would not have died if not for Batman.

Yeah, that's ridiculous.