We Gothamites hear all the jokes. How we must have a death wish to live here. That anybody who would move to the Joker’s hometown willingly is automatically qualified for Arkham. That we get blown up, mutated and tyrannized by mad dictators every other week. And sure, all of that’s a little true. But to us, Gotham fortitude is a mark of pride. We say you’re not a real Gothamite until you’ve personally been held hostage by someone in a costume. And all those terrifying events you hear about on the news? Some of them were a big deal, yeah. But most others? Not even worth writing to Blüdhaven about. In fact, I’m going to take you through some of the most notorious events in Gotham City history—not counting the ones the whole world had to deal with, just Gotham—and I’ll let you know how much they REALLY shook things up around here.
 

The Gotham War: 1/10

I gotta be honest, man. This one was barely a war. It was more like a lovers’ quarrel between Batman and Catwoman. If anything, Gotham was safer during this whole deal, while Catwoman kept all the gangs whipped in line with a lockdown on violent crime. The most dangerous thing to happen was Batman ending it.
 

The Night of the Owls: 2/10

Okay, maybe it was a little scary when our bedtime stories about the Talons coming for your head turned out to be true. But when all those creepy birds started flapping out of the shadows…most of the guys they were targeting kinda had it coming. Dirty politicians, wealthy elites, crooked law enforcement—and sure, maybe one or two relative innocents whose only crime was getting a little too big for their britches. But as long as you weren’t part of the 1%, you really had nothing to worry about.
 

A-Day: 3/10

Is it just me, or did the media make a way bigger deal out of this one than it actually was? The story goes that somebody went and blew up Arkham Asylum, a place where everyone who causes us problems lives anyway, and the result was an eventual police state lockdown we all had to suffer for. Obviously, our hearts go out to the doctors and security guards and personnel there, but the ethics of killing the inmates isn’t even open to debate because, by our math, 100% of them turned out to be fine anyway. Even the well-documented corpse of Bane in the aftermath turned out to be a fake. Just a whole bunch of nothing we kind of suspect in hindsight was drummed up just to keep us scared.
 

Knightfall: 4/10

The notorious night that broke the Bat. A traumatic time if you happen to be the one specific person who’s the protector of Gotham, but for most of us, you have to understand this was really just another night in the city. Bane breaks open Arkham so all the villains come out to do their routines at once? Okay. Mass Arkham breakouts happen all the time. This wasn’t even the first one. As long as you stay away from banks or police stations at night—and why would you be there anyway—these sort of events really aren’t much of a problem. The one guy you really have to watch out for is Firefly, though. He does like to go after residential buildings.
 

Last Laugh, Endgame, Joker War, Etc.: 5/10

The Joker’s got a big reputation for being Batman’s #1 enemy, and his unpredictability makes every encounter with him scarier than Two-Face’s coin mid-flip. You never know if you’re gonna get the funny one, the evil one, or some combination of both. But what usually happens when the Joker goes big is a massive gassing to make the whole town just like him. And that kind of transformation against your will can be scary, and often a lot of people die, but the thing nobody will tell you outside of Gotham is that it’s also kind of cathartic. A Joker attack is a great, consequence-free way to really get all the tension out of your system and work some things out. The only person liable for anything you do is the Joker. Sometimes, after a rough week at the office, you find yourself hoping just a bit that the tap water tastes a little funny.
 

War Games: 6/10

This one was pretty spicy. There was this time in Gotham, not long before Red Hood made it onto the scene, that some bad planning and bruised egos all piled up at once, and every gang in Gotham went to war. When the War Games were on, nowhere was safe. Every block of turf was up for grabs, changing hands like the Gotham Clocktower. At the end of it all, we had a lot of dead gangsters, some dead vigilantes and Black Mask sitting on top of the heap. And trust me, that’s not a guy you ever want to be in charge.
 

Night of the Monster Men: 7/10

Hey, remember that time Hugo Strange engineered a bunch of giant monsters to tear through Gotham and Batman had to rig some buildings to shoot big lasers at them? Yeah, it was super dangerous, but you know what else it was? Sick as hell. Honestly, I feel bad for you if you missed it. That was the kind of thing you usually have to go to Metropolis for.
 

City of Bane, Fear State: 8/10

As fun as the overhead GCPD blimps are, the one thing nobody wants in Gotham City is a Police State. When the bad guys start getting authoritarian, that’s when it’s really a bad time in the city. Bane’s takeover following Batman’s rumored failed wedding to Catwoman and the Scarecrow’s machinations through the high-tech Magistrate in the “Fear State” event are two prime examples of our gothic neo-classical wonderland becoming a strict No Fun Zone, with curfews and mandates dictating our hours until Batman and his cronies can get their act well enough together to get us back to normal. These are the least fun times to be in Gotham, by far. The anarchist villains may want chaos, but nothing is more terrifying than an egomaniacal thug obsessed with order.
 

Zero Year: 9/10

All right, nobody tell him I said this, because we will NEVER hear the end of it, but if we’re talking about villains who really had Gotham on the edge—and this is probably my most nuclear take on this list—nobody had us sweating harder than the Riddler. Hear me out. HEAR ME OUT! I’m talking back when he had those huge monitors all hooked up with that big construction equipment, all those giant crossword puzzles and junk, zoo animals just free roaming the streets, full control of the city. The young ones don’t remember. This is back before anyone knew who Batman even WAS. The thing you gotta understand about all these events is that they all came with the understanding that sure, even if things were bad now, Batman was obviously gonna bail us out before it got too terrible. Well, this was the first time Batman really showed up like that for a city-wide crisis. We thought we were on our own. If you were there, you were either memorizing Jeopardy! episodes or you were counting the days to the end of everything. I mean, the Riddler ain’t squat NOW, but in a Pre-Batman world, any of these guys would shake you up.
 

Contagion, Cataclysm, No Man’s Land: 10/10

And then…there’s the time Batman didn’t show. When we say “NML” in Gotham City, everyone knows what we’re talking about. This trifecta was the Big One, gang. And it wasn’t some supervillain or master plan that made it happen, but a colossal cascade of failures and a city unprepared to do anything about them. First came the Clench, a brutal mutant strain of Ebola virus that spread through the city. Then, an unprecedented 7.6 Richter scale quake that brought nearly every major structure in the city down. To wrap it all up in a bow, all of our institutions shattered and the surviving gangs carved up the remainders of the city like a cake, Uncle Sam declared our city no longer welcome in the union, bombed the bridges, and abandoned us to our hell. To this day, nobody can really tell you how we made it out. But if you survived the NML—if you didn’t wriggle your way out, and were crazy enough to stick it through—nobody can say you’re not true Gotham City.
 

Where does Poison Ivy’s makeover of the city rank in this list? It’s unfolding as we speak, so you’ll have to tell us! Read this week’s Batman: Bad Seeds – Sunset #1 and let us know how bad you think it’s looking for Gotham City in the DC Community on Discord.

Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly "Ask the Question" column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.