On a routine trip returning The Joker to Arkham Asylum, the Batman himself must deal with traps set within its inner sanctums, purposely set by the now escaped Joker, along with the rest of his rogues' gallery that are now free within the premises.
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There's a staff board in the Medical Facility listing past employees, and Hush's name is on it. It's easy to walk straight past, but it quietly ties the villain into the asylum's history well before he ever became a major player in the wider Arkham series.
Just before you go to rescue Commissioner Gordon, keep an eye out for a battered stuffed bear called Osito sitting in the room. It's Bane's childhood toy from the comics, and its presence here is basically Rocksteady tipping you off that he's close by before you ever see him.
Find Ra's al Ghul's body bag in the Arkham Mansion and it's there plain as day. Head back to the Morgue later on, though, and it's simply gone - no cutscene, no explanation, just a quiet little reminder that a man who's cheated death countless times in the comics probably isn't done yet.
Down in Secure Transit, there's a bit of graffiti scratched into the glass that riffs on the old office joke: 'You don't have to be mad to work here... but it certainly helps.' Pretty dark humour for a building full of murderers, but it fits the tone perfectly.
The game pulls a lot of its darker undertones from Grant Morrison and Dave McKean's 1989 graphic novel, right down to references to founder Amadeus Arkham's family tragedy. A decapitated statue found in the asylum grounds is a nod to Martin 'Mad Dog' Hawkins, the very first patient, who murdered Arkham's wife and daughter - the whole grim origin of the place, if you know where to look.
Once Harley drops the elevator in Intensive Treatment, you can find one of Scarecrow's hidden lairs - walls covered in surveillance photos of Batman pinned above a map of the asylum. It turns out he'd been quietly studying his target the entire time, long before the fear-gas nightmare sequences kick in.
Rocksteady didn't just cast any actors for Batman, Joker and Harley - they brought back Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill and Arleen Sorkin from Batman: The Animated Series. For a lot of fans that alone made the game feel like the definitive take on these characters, since it was basically the animated show's cast stepping into a new medium.
Rather than adapting an existing comic or film plot, Warner Bros brought in veteran Batman writer Paul Dini - the man behind so much of The Animated Series - to craft a story specifically for Arkham Asylum. It's part of why the game's dialogue and character writing feels a cut above most licensed titles from that era.
Before Arkham Asylum, Rocksteady wasn't exactly a household name in gaming. Eidos secured the Batman license in 2007 and approached the small British studio after seeing an early prototype they'd put together, and by that September full production was underway. Quite the gamble that ended up paying off massively.
Rocksteady put the game together in roughly twenty-one months, starting with a team of around forty people and growing to sixty by the time it shipped. For a debut effort in a brand new IP, that's a genuinely tight turnaround given how polished the final product felt.
