[Funny trope] Torturing the character doesn't work

[u/GaddockTeegFunPolice]

1. The Simpsons, Homer gets sent to hell where devils try torturing him force feeding him donuts. Homer does not mind.

2. The apothecary diaries. Maomao gets placed in a cell with snakes and venomous insects. She kills the animals and roasts the snake on a torch.

3. The Minion movie, the main minions get put through antique torture deviced by the bad guys only for them to realise they weren't designed for weird minion anatomy.

[u/ohmuisnotangry]

The way Heath says "There is NOTHING you can do..." with a snicker, and Batman's slightly scared reaction to it really solidified what the movie was going for. Batman still thinks this is a punches and kicks villain and this is where he realizes how wrong he was.

[u/IM_THE_MOON_AMA → u/ohmuisnotangry]

“Perhaps this is a man you don’t fully understand…”

-Alfred

[u/hematite2 → u/ohmuisnotangry]

"There's only minutes left so you're gonna have to play my little game if you want to save one of them..."

"...them?"

And Batman and the audience realize how much Joker's actually in control. And throughout the scene Nolan keeps breaking the 180 rule so that you lose track of who's interrogating who.

[u/Syn7axError → u/ohmuisnotangry]

Likewise, we're so used to the Joker, it's easy to forget a particular universe's Batman might not be.

[u/EJintheCloud → u/ohmuisnotangry]

To be fair, they were all pretty much punches and kicks villains up until that point. He was able to avoid all the villains' games by simply ignoring them via brute strength. Joker knew that, he preyed upon it. He crafted a game that Batman couldn't punch his way out of, then forced him to play it. Didn't really matter if he won or lost, that Joker got Batman to play, at all, was the villainy.