Gotham’s so-called ‘villains’ are actually just projections of Bruce’s madness onto the city’s activists, anarchists, and freedom fighters. They spend their days trying to fix the severe systemic issues caused by the excessive wealth and myopia of the self-righteous Wayne family, who have gobbled up nearly every other sizeable company in the city while funneling resources into personal skyscrapers, excavation, and bat-themed military equipment.

The Rogue’s Gallery, meanwhile, goes to extreme lengths to redistribute wealth, disrupt Waynecorp galas, rescue and deprogram Robin and Batgirl, and keep Bruce busy with insane shenanigans so that he can’t focus more of his attention on grinding Gotham’s poor into the dirt. The costumes and gimmicks are just Bruce’s mind refusing to see the truth of his own villainy and distorting the world to compensate.

The only ones who on occasion get through to him are his ex-girlfriend, a former Arkham therapist who spent enough time with the Rogues not to buy Bruce’s propaganda, and a completely innocent local botanist that he’s developed a strange obsession with literally just because she grows plants and he’s not sure how that works (his own plants all die in the batcave due to lack of light).