The Dark Knight Saga/Batman Begins/Headscratchers

As I recall, in the main continuity at least, Arkham Asylum started out as a private residence and estate. The same's probably true here.
 * Why did Rachel turn Bruce down at the end of Batman Begins? She claims that she used to love him, but before he joined the League of Shadows, he's...well...a whiny little brat. Yes, watching his parents die must have been horrible, but he's obsessed over it even years later. He's only thinking of himself while other people suffer much worse, something she even points out. Then he goes away, comes back wiser, older, ready to start doing the right thing, bringing down mob bosses she couldn't bring down after months of work...and this is somehow a turn off? Does she only go for irresponsible, self absorbed guys?
 * And before anyone takes the "maybe she doesn't want to be with a man constantly in danger" excuse, remember this is Gotham. According to the first film, people get mugged every day of the week. Out of everyone, Bruce is probably the safest man in Gotham, with his martial arts training and his full body armour. Not to mention in The Dark Knight, Rachel jumps right into bed with Harvey, a man in just as much danger, being the D.A, and much less capable of defending himself.
 * Rachel's stated reason for not hooking up with Bruce at the end of the first movie is that she won't take second place to his obsession for saving Gotham, with the unspoken undertone that while she thinks his quest is in many ways admirable its also not entirely sane. A year later, the lonely Rachel meets Harvey Dent, who appears to have many of the same heroic qualities that attracted her to Bruce in the first place, but he loves her more than he loves Gotham and not vice versa, and he's also not doing wacky things like dressing in a giant bat-suit and beating people to a pulp every night. Of course Harvey turned out to be more nuts on the inside than Bruce ever was, but its not like Rachel's a mind reader, and her death was the catalyst for most of Harvey's insanity anyway.
 * Hehe. Harvey Dent had more nuts than Bruce Wayne.
 * There's also the fact that Rachel has to watch out for herself and what Bruce is doing is illegal. There's a certain undertone in the first movie- and all but explicitly stated in the second- that sooner or later Batman will be caught and unmasked- or alternatively turn himself in, something that was already subverted in TDK. As an ADA, Rachel has to be able to maintain plausible deniability-something that will be much harder to do if she's his girlfriend/wife.
 * Well a high risk of being mugged is different from running head first into criminal activities and giving them a good reason to shoot him. It's a difference between when my boyfriend goes out at night will he get in trouble and how much trouble will my boyfriend get into tonight. Also Harvey was a little unhinged but he didn't go crazy til' Rachael died.
 * She pulls the Loving a Shadow schtick. "I love BRUCE, not 'Batman'. You're not REALLY back." So on and so forth. And since this guy is out every night fighting crime for revenge, she kinda has a point. What romance would there be, exactly? Him sneaking out every night, skipping dates, forgetting special occasions, him showing up beaten half to death...
 * Bear in mind the Loving a Shadow schtick is actally entirely consistent with the Batman's major theme of Bruce Wayne being Batman's mask rather than the other way round. It was probably to play that aspect up.
 * Why did Falcone tell Bruce his father begged like a dog the night he was shot? Bruce was there when it happened, it's completely ineffective as a taunt.
 * Falcone was probably aware of this, but he might have felt that Wayne was such a bratty daddy's boy that the taunt would still be effective.
 * That conversation was right after Chill's day in court, when he expressed remorse. Even though his apology didn't console Bruce, the truth that it wasn't even sincere makes it worse.
 * Gotham's entire water supply had been laced with Crane's poison for weeks. Fortunately nobody has felt the effects because the compound has to be absorbed through the lungs. Guess people in Gotham don't take nice hot steamy showers, then?
 * Or boil a pot of water for cooking, or use the hot water to wash dishes, etc.
 * Fridge Brilliance! The denizens of Gotham have been getting low-level doses of hallucinogens for months, and that's one reason the city's so messed up. After all, criminals are fearful, etc.
 * Makes a kind of sense. Even after being blasted all over the place most of the citzens are less messed up than Bats was after one dose. Clearly the stuff in the pipes is much less concentrated than Crane's personal weapon.
 * In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne chooses to defy the League of Shadows by refusing to kill a farmer accused of murder. He supposedly does this because he feels this is not the right way to deal with the farmer's crime, and he doesn't want blood on his hands. Instead, he decides to escape the League entirely, and in the process, he blows up the entire headquarters. Surely the farmer died in the explosion, along with a bunch of other innocent League members. If I were that farmer and I had to choose between getting my head cut off and burning to death, I'd definitely go with the former. So how does Bruce Wayne's attempt to escape show that he stands for justice?
 * there's very little else he could have done. at least he got his point of "i don't condone your actions" across really well this way. and though the chance may be very small at least this way the farmer may have gotten out.
 * "Innocent League members"? Considering that the only way to enter the League appears to be killing someone, I doubt the "innocence" of any League agent.
 * Despite the fact that Bruce's actions led to a lot of people dying, I suppose there's a difference for Bruce between putting people in deadly situations and personally killing them. Alas, this is the same Moral Dissonance that seems to prevent him from saving Ra's...
 * We didn't see anyone die (or I didn't, anyway) except for, who brought himself down by not minding his surroundings and therefore placing himself in a lethal position. Remember who these guys are. They're too well trained to be likely to die because of a relatively (for them) simple threat like a burning building. As for the criminal, I don't think we know what happened to him and we shouldn't just assume.
 * As for not saving Ra's, there's just no escaping that he will keep trying to destroy Gotham until he's dead, coupled with the fact that he would already be dead if not for Bruce's earlier action. He did save the similarly-destructive Joker, but by then he's built his code a little more, Joker dared him to kill him, he never saved Joker before, and, well, Joker Immunity.
 * Of course, Bruce ACTIVELY TOSSED JOKER OUT A WINDOW.
 * This was before Batman got his strict code of honor, maybe it was the event that gave him that code of honor. But in either case, he probably didn't have any problem with killing if he felt it would help the greater good, and the League is obviously evil.
 * Isn't he told that after he kills the farmer he will lead the League of Shadows against Gotham? I always thought that was the main reason for the ensuing kaboom. The fact that he was asked to kill a man without "due process" was almost exclusively to segue into the destruction, under his leadership, of the city he had promised himself he would save.
 * It's very brief, but this troper knows there's a quick shot of Bruce shoving the prisoner out of the way after he knocks out Ducard. In the next clip we VERY briefly see the prisoner run for stage-right.
 * I always suspected that Bruce thought the execution was a test, and that saying "no" was what Ducard really wanted. It was only later that he decided that was really the right answer.
 * Someone in the Fridge Brilliance section offered an interesting hypothesis: Batman doesn't kill. Bruce Wayne, at least up until that battle, potentially could. After all, they do chuck him into solitary to protect the rest of the Chinese prison...
 * I'm getting the feeling I'm the only one who sees it, but I can swear you can see jump off the train in the climax of batman begins. something I think batman would have foreseen as he knew  physical abilities very well.
 * No, you're seeing things.
 * That said, you don't see him die either, but man would that ever be an epically over-the-top case of No One Could Survive That.
 * Where did Crane get a Horse?!?
 * Mounted police. I believe you see a few of them before everything goes to hell.
 * You've made my sister very happy. Although she's now asking why we bother with mounted police and I don't think you should be compelled to answer that.
 * Because sometimes cops need to be faster than they can run, but get through terrain that you couldn't get a car or a motorcycle through. The former are big, and the latter need straight, even stretches of terrain to be useful, while a horse has a brain that can adjust its footing over uneven terrain and even get you around obstacles. Plus, a cop on a horse is more intimidating.
 * Also, Mounted Police are often used for riot control because of the height advantage and PR. (Hey, lots of people like horses.) Just like Bicycle Police there's a reason for everything they do.
 * Of course, that still leaves the question of how on Earth Crane was able to control a panicking horse (God only knows what happened to its owner). This problem has led to Wild Mass Guessing.
 * You can actually see him dragging the dead body of the policeman behind the horse. You got me on how he controlled the horse, though.
 * The toxin only affects humans? It's an artificial drug after all.
 * I believe there was a throw-away line about Crane growing up on a farm? Anyway, it is likely that horse would not be affected the same way as a human by the drug. Being "artificial" has nothing to do with the biological barrier tropes. No, sir, the Fridge Logic sets in when you consider that the horse is in the middle of an urban district full of PEOPLE GOING COMPLETELY BATSHIT INSANE. That poor animal is terrified whether or not the drug affects it.
 * Scarecrow's in-comics backstory had him growing up on a farm, so it's not implausible, heck, it's even probable that he had learned to ride. Pluse, this doubles as one of the few mythology gags that continuity-hating Chris Nolan would allow, I suppose.
 * The last thing Scarecrow says before he's tased is "I'm here to help." What is he talking about?
 * That was only the start of his next sentence. We can't be sure what he was saying in full, because before he finished he took a taser to the face.
 * He was probably just being sarcastic and menacing.
 * Also, possibly, reveling in the irony. The guy's a doctor.
 * On a police horse.
 * So, presumably, Bruce walks up to Mr. Earl's Secretary, tells her his name, and promptly pulls a golf club and ball out of his suit pocket.
 * Considering Mr. Earl is pretty much your standard Corrupt Corporate Executive, I bet he'd have handy Golf Club set stored away near his office.
 * And even if he's not, this is Batman we're talking about. If anyone could conceal a golf club, it's him.
 * Mr. Earl's golf bag is clearly visible behind the secretary when Bruce walks in.
 * "I'm Batman." * Looks at homeless man* "Nice coat." * Flies away* Uh....Since he really doesn't appear to have the grapple gun wrapped around his body, did Bats just shoot up into the air due to awesome overload?
 * It was a hidden zipline. It's supposed to look like he literally flies straight up into the sky. It's like in this clip from the Tim Burton movie. At about 1:34 it looks like Batman levitates down out of nowhere, and at 3:00 it looks like Batman steps off the edge of a building and then vanishes. We can't see a zipline or a grapple either time, but it's implied that that's what Batman was using.
 * Later on in the movie, when Batman escapes from his first encounter with Dr. Crane, you can see him shoot the grappling gun then attach it to his waist before he lets it carry him up. Presumably, he did the same earlier.
 * The reason all of those tricks are used are because they're meant to play into Batman's tactics: appear as if you're doing something physically impossible and you scare the crap out of someone watching you do it. Theatricality and misdirection, as Ra's might say.
 * So is Henri Ducard a false identity all along? Or did he just inherit the position after the original Ra's (as played by Ken Watanabe) died? The movie itself doesn't seem to point definitely to either option.
 * The clear implication--or so it seems to me--is that in keeping with Nolan's semi-realistic depiction of the Batmanverse, there are no Lazarus pits or anything and "Ra's al-Ghul" is nothing in the first place but a centuries-long Scooby Doo hoax. If there ever was a real, original Ra's, he died a very long time ago. But the League keeps the legend of his immortality, power, and continued leadership going, always having a new guy, looking the same as the previous ones and the same age, posing as the same leader from the beginning, while The Dragon is always the real leader, and in that sense insofar as there is a real Ra's al-Ghul it is him. And this generation that secret leader was Henri Ducard.
 * But to answer your question, yes, it's implied that "Henri Ducard" was the real Ra's al-Ghul all along.
 * One thing that bugged me about Crane was his outfit. The mask is damn creepy, but when the rest of your outfit consists of a suit and tie, it really doesn't work that well. I understand that he couldn't just change in the middle of a battle, but if he was anticipating using the mask and he wasn't in the hospital, like when he was burning down that apartment, he could have dressed in something that would fit.
 * I think the idea is that, instead of having to take the time to make a quick change, this guy could turn into The Scarecrow at any moment. It just takes two seconds to whip on a mask. Not much time to prepare for a sneak attack, especially if he gets you off your guard in the first place, as he did Batman.
 * Plus you get a nice Badass in a Nice Suit thing going on. Makes him quirkier, I guess.
 * On top of that, Crane is a psychiatrist and his toxin causes a form of fear-related insanity. So it makes some sense that his outfit (scarecrow mask plus business suit) is weird and irrational.
 * How is it that Bruce could receive all the training he did from the League of Shadows and hear absolutely nothing about their true intentions? Seems like part of his training would at the very least involve a bit of indoctrination in their philosophy. (To be fair, Ducard did mention the farmer he tried to have Bruce execute would face "justice" in a casual manner just reeking of "eye for an eye," and this also leads to Fridge Brilliance as to the renaming of the League of Assassins. Still, though, what he was being asked to do really shouldn't have come as such a surprise to Bruce.)
 * As for your question, I wonder myself. But as to the name of the league, I'm pretty sure that in the comics the League of Assassains is a division of the League of Shadows.
 * Bruce is being indoctrinated into their beliefs, he just didn't realize how much they diverged from his own until they asked him to execute the criminal (and destroy Gotham, for that matter). Perhaps he may have even been willing to kill until he was confronted with the opportunity and realized it wasn't his way.
 * Ducard alludes to the dark side of his philosophy when he says that criminals must be fought "without pity", and he heavily implies that he killed his wife's murderer. So maybe he just assumed Bruce was on the same page.
 * It's also possible that Ducard intentionally kept the darker stuff secret during Bruce's training. Perhaps that's just the way they do things. Or perhaps Ducard sensed that Bruce might quit if he learned about the execution stuff too early, so he figured they'd finish the training first, so that way Bruce would feel like "there is no turning back" by the time the darker stuff was revealed.
 * Remember, Bruce did told Ducard he was perfectly willing to kill Joe Chill if he did get the chance when he was 22. So it's safe to assume Bruce was fine with it until actually confronted with the opportunity to dirty his own hands... and realized it was wrong. What Bruce refused to do should be an even bigger surprise to the League.
 * Spotlights like the Bat-Signal get quite hot when they're operating, right? Wouldn't Falcone suffer burns after being tied to the light like that?
 * It takes time for them to get that hot, and even then, it's not hot enough to, say, steam up water when rain hits it. We don't know just how long Falcone was stuck on it.
 * Also, his layers of clothes would have insulated him from the worst of the heat for a while.
 * Also, Batman is probably willing to give Falcone a few burns, so long as they're not fatal. He is a crime lord, after all.
 * Why is it that the "Complete Monster" entry for Ra's al Ghul keeps getting deleted?
 * Because Ra's is arguably a Well-Intentioned Extremist, though I think of him more along the lines of Knight Templar; in any case, he's given a Freudian Excuse, (granted, arguably insufficient one) and he does try to justify what he does, if not genuinely believe it to be the right thing.
 * To contrast with the character tropes in the point above, a Complete Monster will kill\torture people because it feels good, or for direct personal gain, whereas Ra's is trying to improve the world and doesn't even seem to be particularly lustful for power (again, at least not the kind used for direct personal gain). He'll kill innocent children, but at least he'll treat them as collateral damage without actively trying to kill them.
 * I think the better question would be "Why does someone keep calling him a Complete Monster?"
 * When Bruce Wayne came back to Gotham via plane, Alfred said he had Bruce declared dead beforehand. This brings up the question; did Bruce REALLY need to tell Gotham he was still alive? If he kept that a secret between himself and Alfred, wouldn't he have been able to take on the Batman identity WITHOUT having to live a double life?
 * Alfred didn't; the board controlling Wayne Enterprises did. And he was clearly planning to use all of Wayne Enterprises's resources in his fight against crime. That sort of thing is a little easier if you have access to it.
 * Couldn't Lucius still have given him access to it without having to publicly declare him to be alive though? Ok, that would make it a secret between Bruce, Alfred, and Lucius, but still...
 * Bruce only even meets Lucius after he comes back. He and Alfred wouldn't have even considered it, because they weren't acquainted with him. Plus, if Bruce isn't publicly around, that just makes it harder for him to get access to the company assets. The part-owner diverting funds here and there is one thing, but if Bruce isn't "alive" then someone's going to notice.
 * Even if Alfred could arrange the two to meet and Lucius was willing to play along, he could only order all those fancy toys under Bruce Wayne's name, which would be tough if Bruce were dead.
 * In addition to all of the above, Bruce needs to maintain some connection to the rest of the human race. Alfred probably insisted on it if nothing else.
 * Don't forget, this is Wayne Enterprises...his father's legacy. He tells everyone his mission is to rid Gotham of crime, but really it's to make sure no one suffers what he had to. By the end of the film, he's gotten over his brief emotional phase and is hanging onto his name and place in the world o honor and remember his father.
 * Bruce Wayne has access to all those Wonderful Toys, and the means to design and manufacture them, yet instead of mass-producing them using CNC or laser cutting, he's cutting and grinding batarangs by hand?
 * He's a man who parades around dressed up like a bat who beats up criminals. You're asking him to be perfectly rational here? Not to mention that Batman does what he does for personal reasons; it would make sense if he wanted to personally cut and sharpen his batarangs.
 * Also this is when he's just starting out. He may have been working on the design at that point and testing one of his prototypes. You need proper balance for a throwing weapon, so it'd make sense if he wanted to work the first few, at the least, by hand to get a feel for them.
 * They go to lengths showing that it would take two seperate, large orders to put Batman's cowl together - I imagine ordering about ten thousand pieces of metal shaped pre-cut to be shaped like a bat, of all things, would look rather suspicious when Batman gets known by the public.
 * Is anyone else bothered by the fact that the opera house seemed to be located in the slums?
 * All of Gotham is the slums. Some parts are just slummier than others.
 * Front of the opera house may have been really nice; the Waynes were leaving through a back door so as not to make so much commotion leaving. Also, if Thomas' thinking is similar to that of the comics, the alley way was a shortcut home.
 * It wasn't necessarily a slum when the Gotham Opera House was built. Neighborhoods change.
 * It always bothered me that Bruce seems to have named himself "Batman" during the Falcone fight. Especially since there's a perfect scene late in the film where Crane appears to coin the term, calling him "The Bat-Man" to his mooks. They could just have easily left out the name drop until this scene to show the last piece of the puzzle falling into place, so to speak.
 * Well, as implied by Bruce's conversation with other wealthy socialites at the hotel restaurant, (ie. the lady who said "I think the Batman deserves a medal") the name "Batman" had probably been spread by the media and/or by word of mouth. So the name "Batman" came into prominent use long before Crane had used it, whether it originated from Batman's own words to Falcone or not.
 * And it's arguably better that Batman names himself, rather than being named by one of his lesser-known villains.
 * Why would a vial of the antidote be useful for mass production? (As opposed to a chemical/amino acid structure or even better, detailed instructions for synthesis). Solving the structure of a compound isn't exactly trivial and neither is developing a synthesis from scratch. The only way a vial of something could be useful is if it were a starter culture of bacteria (or other cells) that would product the protein, but that would similarly require a purification method (again not trivial especially when one doesn't know what the antitoxin is. Plus, it's unlikely that cells would have survived in good condition for that long).
 * Yeah...I'm chalking this one up to Viewers are Morons. Procedural cop shows like CSI have tricked lots of people into thinking that you can take one tiny sample of something, run it through a spectro-whatcha-machine in a lab somewhere, and fart out a complete chemical analysis. That said, I don't think Batman expected a mass produced antidote overnight. There probably would be a long stretch of time when Batman has to work to keep the Narrows from exploding into violent chaos while the antidote is being manufactured. And the end of the movie implies there's been a timeskip.
 * Doesn't Lucius state he did the legwork in making the antidote? Bruce also asks him to make more of it, after Lucius explains part of the process in making the antidote after Bruce is gassed by Crane. From that angle, Fox already understands what makes up the League/Crane's drug, and just has to make more antidote, which comes in conveniently handy at the film's end.
 * I may be wrong, but I thought Lucius made the antidote from SCRATCH once Bruce had been gassed. Based on the substances in his blood. For all we know it just limits the violent reaction to the toxins while it runs its course.
 * Why do the League of Shadows care about a target as small as Gotham City? I know their mandate is to bring down places consumed by decadence and corruption, but Gotham is one city in the middle of a vast nation of nearly 300 million people. Are they just going to keep destroying every corrupt city on Earth one at a time until the only ones left are the good ones?
 * Actually, Gotham City is supposed to be pretty big--comparable to NYC in our real world. Effectively destroying such a large target would definitely send a message to the world.
 * Similar idea to Death Note, where crime slows down after criminals start dying. Ra's plan isn't quite as precise, but you work with what you have, and what Ra's has is a city with so many criminals it's nearly illogical.
 * Ra's spells out the plan in one of his monologues, and it's exactly the above. He wants to make an example out of Gotham City, a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah that's destroyed in such a nightmarish way that everyone else gets terrified into reform. And knowing him, he probably does have backup plans in place for other cities, just in case destroying Gotham alone doesn't get the point across.
 * ^^^ That only makes sense if the entire world knows the reason Gotham City was destroyed. If Ra's plan had worked the general public would never have known the League of Shadows did it. It would have looked like Gotham destroyed itself. Not much of a message.
 * I don't think it's exactly a state secret that Gotham is a corrupt craphole, especially before Batman arrives. The public doesn't need to know Gotham was destroyed by the League of Shadows as a lesson to everyone else, they just need to know Gotham burned to the ground because the corrupt politicians and cops let the criminals run rampant.
 * ^^ That's why the League didn't want to destroy Gotham by nuking her. With economics or the Fear Toxin it would look like Gotham destroyed herself, slow and painful.
 * Why does Arkham Asylum look nothing like an asylum? There's a grand staircase in the foyer and a spiral staircase. Sure, Batman runs through a hallway past several cell doors with some crazies inside, but what about the rest?
 * So from seeing one room, you're saying it looks "nothing like an asylum"?
 * It's certainly not a mass-produced building, that's for sure. It's old, and possibly repurposed. Seems like a perfectly functional asylum to me, and not even the typical Bedlam House it's usually shown as.
 * This. A lot of old hospitals are built with gorgeous architecture and then reused for other purposes.
 * A rather small issue, but Ducard/Ra's claims that the League of Shadows is responsible for the Great Fire of London. The Great Fire hardly qualifies as the fall of a corrupt metropolis. The city rose from its ashes rather quickly, and developed into the most important city in the world over the course of the eighteenth century. And London in the 1660s may have been overpopulated, filthy and a huge pile of kindling, but it wasn't particularly corrupt. Other European capitols were at least as bad. Burning the city of London to the ground just doesn't seem like the sort of thing Ra's ought to be bragging about. It backfired quite spectacularly.
 * I suspect this is a misinterpretation. The League of Shadows don't necessarily want to destroy everything. They want to wipe the slate clean so that something better can arise. Maybe 17th century London's problem, in their eyes, *was* overcrowding? So, a great fire, half the city burns down. . . and then rises to new greater heights. Granted, this opens all kinds of questions as to what, exactly, inspires the League to action. ..
 * During the car chase, when the Tumbler goes into stealth mode, how did the police lose it so easily? You can literally see the Tumbler slow down to get out of the spotlight, but the spotlight never sweeps back.
 * The implication from the "test drive" is that the Tumbler's very maneuverable, which would include sudden speed drops. And possibly the police were relying on FLIR or something like it to track the vehicle, which one presumes the Tumbler's built to defeat when it goes to stealth.
 * Relating to the earlier discussion above about why Ra's al Ghul can't be considered a Complete Monster, consider this Fridge Logic? Ducard confesses that they originally planned to destroy Gotham through "economics," the implication being that it was actually doing quite well beforehand and that they caused the depression that turned Gotham into a craphole. What the hell anti-heroes? It almost seems like they were inventing an excuse to cause another mass murder, thus putting their non Complete Monster status into question.
 * I don't think anybody denies that they're evil. The movie certainly portrays them as such. But the Lo S at least believe that they are doing good, and (assuming Ra's/Ducard was telling the truth) their leader has a definite Freudian Excuse. That disqualifies them from being pure evil "devoid of altruistic qualities", which is what Complete Monster mandates. Evil =/= Complete Monster.
 * I think you're misunderstanding. Ducard isn't saying that Gotham was a nice, well-mannered place, then they caused the depression that made it a hellhole. He's saying that Gotham was already turning into a hellhole, and the League turned up the crank on the crappy economy to turn it into so much more of a hellhole that it would self-destruct.
 * So there's an active microwave emiter that's instantly vaporizing water buried underground, in metal pipes, as it passes. And why does it not instantly kill Batman and all the League Members standing all around it, including directly in front of it, by instantly evaporating all the water in their bodies?
 * The microwave emitter was designed not to vaporize water inside living organisms. Considering how the weapon was produced for desert warfare, specifically only to vaporize the enemy's water supply, the scientists and engineers who created the emitter probably took this into account.
 * That's something of a Handwave. You can't make microwaves that can magically tell the difference between water in living organisms and not. There's also the major issue that metal absorbs microwaves massively (which is why you don't put it in your microwave oven) so any metal near the weapon, such as half of Batman's kit, would probably become red-hot (and might arc) from the amount of radiation that thing must have been chucking out.
 * Iknow it's probably Rule of Cool or something similar, and fairly minor, but why do the bats fly through the windows into the asylum? this would make sense if they were birds (who fly into windows on a regular basis) but bats don't use their eyes to find their way around. They use sound. So they would "see" them and avoid them altogether.
 * How come Gordon's son, while under the effects of the fear toxin, wasn't scared of Batman or Rachel? Everyone else on the fear toxin saw Batman as this demonic flying bat, and there's no reason why it wouldn't make Rachel look freaky to everyone as well. And on that subject, how come Rachel didn't see Batman as a big demonic creature when she was poisoned earlier in the movie?
 * That's not Gordon's son... it was shown that the kid was still hyperventilating after being rescue, so it's possible he was afraid but tried not to show it. And we never saw Rachel's POV of the Batman earlier in the movie.
 * It is Gordon's son. He even mentions how Batman returned when he promised he would the first time he met him. And he wouldn't have the ability to try not to show fear because the toxin turns you irrational. Everyone else under it turned into a shrieking crazy.