7 Most Over-Powered Batman Villains Of All Time

While all comic book superheroes have their own rosters of impressive villains, Batman’s might be the most impressive of them all. His foes are not only some of the most iconic in all of comic book history with colorful characters like Riddler, Penguin, Scarecrow, and more, but some of the most powerful as well. There is truly no shortage of challenging villains for Batman and the rest of the Bat Family to face on any given night in Gotham.

But even on a roster that is infamous for its powerful bad guys, there are some whose powers are over the top. They’re the villains that are so mighty that they’re nearly impossible to beat and, in some cases, it feels like they’re designed that way. Here are seven of the most overpowered Batman villains.

7) Failsafe

Batman has a plan for pretty much everything. DC established that with the revelation that the Dark Knight has a plan to even take out his friends and allies in the Justice League if they were to ever go rogue or be compromised so it makes sense that Batman would have his own contingency plan via Zur-En-Arrh. A persona created by Bruce Wayne to prevent his mind from being hijacked, what Bruce didn’t plan for was Zur-En-Arrh ending up being a threat of his own.

Enter Failsafe, an android created by Zur-En-Arrh to neutralize Batman if he ever went rogue, aka killed someone. When the Penguin frames Batman for his murder, Failsafe is activated to destroy Batman and, to make things even more complicated Zur-En-Arrh removed the knowledge of how to stop Failsafe and at some point put himself into Failsafe’s form. It made him a nearly unstoppable foe and, frankly, a pretty ridiculous one, though he certainly served as a cautionary tale for Batman’s paranoia going too far.

6) The Court of Owls

Rather than being one specific villain, the Court of Owls is a secret society rooted in the very social structure of Gotham City, which is what gives them their power and, in turn, makes them overpowered at the same time. No one knows exactly how many members of the Court of Owls there are or specifically even who is a member. This mystery and ambiguity means that quite literally any of the wealthiest people in Gotham City could be part of the society. It also means that understanding their vast network of resources is virtually impossible.

Adding on to the power that mystery and resources give the Court of Owls, there’s also their private army of assassins, Talons, of which there seems to be a never-ending supply, carrying out various political assassinations for the shadowy group. It’s virtually impossible to beat an enemy you can’t really identify which makes the Court of Owls wildly powerful despite Batman supposedly being the World’s Greatest Detective.

5) Joker

The Joker doesn’t necessarily have super powers, but even without them he’s still incredibly powerful — though we can honestly credit the character’s popularity and infamy for a good chunk of why he’s impossible to truly defeat as there have been plenty of times across the decades in comics when the character should have been defeated or even killed.

What makes the Joker so powerful (or even over powerful) is his evil. We’re not calling it madness; the Joker’s not crazy. He’s sadistic and twisted and his reputation precedes him in a way that spreads terror even as he gleefully causes wild amounts of damage and chaos all around him. He’s also incredibly strategic. There’s nothing more terrifying than a brilliant sadist and the Joker definitely fits the bill.

4) Bane

Sure, Bane is smart, but when you really get down to it, he’s really just a very big dude amped up by some crazy steroid called Venom that lets him do outlandish things. What sort of outlandish things? Well, on the pages of comics he’s done things like destroy the Batmobile with his bare hands, thrown other vehicles like they’re toys, and perhaps most notably, he broke Batman’s back in a single move. He is swole and terrifying which alone wouldn’t be over the top.

The problem is that in more recent years he’s also been portrayed as a mastermind. Bane has managed to do what most criminals can’t and figured out that Batman is Bruce Wayne and then schemed and manipulated the other criminals in Gotham until he ended up taking over the city himself. We’re not saying that strength and genius can’t go hand in hand, we’re just saying that making Bane the peak of both seems like a bit much.

3) Ra’s al Ghul

Ra’s al Ghul is kind of the ultimate package of over powered. He’s insanely wealthy. He’s ridiculously intelligent. He’s a master at strategy, has mastered multiple martial arts, has his own army of expert warriors, and he’s also functionally immortal thanks to the Lazarus Pit which, in addition to the whole being able to be resurrected and also healed from any injury also means that he has a vast amount of experience — another powerful advantage. With that combination of attributes, Ra’s is one of the most dangerous threats that Batman or any hero could face.

2) Barbatos

Barbatos is the bat demon that literally cursed Gotham, as the city was built on an underground temple dedicated to him. Barbatos is also the reason Batman exists, as he is the bat that came through the window of Wayne Manor and inspired Bruce Wayne. He’s also a multiverse-level threat, lording over the Dark Multiverse and planning for a long time to use Batman as the doorway through which to gain entry to Prime Earth. Barbatos is even responsible for tapping The Batman Who Laughs as his second in command and had him assemble the Dark Knights — essentially a squad of evil Batmen.

Barbatos is complicated, but his list of powers is pretty much a checklist of every power you could have as a comic book character, including invulnerability, cosmic awareness, immortality, reality alteration, transmutation, illusion casting and more. That’s a lot.

1) The Batman Who Laughs

If you ever wondered what would happen if Batman ended up like the Joker but was also still Batman, then The Batman Who Laughs is the answer to that question. Hailing from Earth -22 in the Dark Multiverse, this twisted take on the Dark Knight was transformed into this strange, Joker-like version of himself when he killed the Joker but was infected by a toxin the villain exhaled upon death. It transformed him, leading him to kill the Justice League (in some cases horribly and brutally), Jokerize Damian, and even driving Alfred insane. When his own world ended, he joined up with Barbatos to go after the Multiverse.

The Batman Who Laughs is stupidly powerful. Not only does he have all of regular Batman’s abilities, but he’s also got some ridiculous ones as well. He gets the powers of Doctor Manhattan in Dark Knights: Death Metal which means he can fly and teleport and is nearly omnipotent. He also gains some of the powers of the goddess Perpetua. There’s almost no powers that this villain doesn’t have but he does have one key weakness: Nth Metal.

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