Eight years after Harvey Dent's (Aaron Eckhart) death, the Dent Act grants the Gotham City Police Department powers which nearly eradicate organized crime. Feeling guilty for covering up Dent's crimes, Police Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman) writes a resignation speech confessing the truth but decides not to use it. Batman has disappeared, and Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has become a recluse. Cat burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) obtains Bruce's fingerprints from his home, kidnaps a congressman, then disappears. Selina hands Bruce's fingerprints to Phillip Stryver (Burn Gorman), an assistant to Bruce's business rival John Daggett (Ben Mendelsohn), in hope of having her criminal record erased. Stryver double-crosses Selina, but she uses the congressman's stolen phone to alert the police to their location. Gordon and the police arrive to find the congressman, and then pursue Stryver's men into the sewers while Selina flees. A masked militant named Bane (Tom Hardy) captures Gordon. Gordon escapes and is found by John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a once-orphaned patrol officer who has deduced Batman's true identity from their similar backgrounds. Gordon promotes Blake to detective, with Blake reporting directly to him.
L'histoire se déroule en 1981, à Gotham City. Arthur Fleck travaille dans une agence de clowns. Méprisé et incompris par ceux qui lui font face, il mène une morne vie en marge de la société et habite dans un immeuble miteux avec sa mère Penny. Un soir, il se fait agresser dans le métro par trois hommes alcoolisés qui le brutalisent, le poussant à les tuer en retour. Son geste inspire à une partie de la population l'idée de s'en prendre eux aussi aux puissants ; Arthur bascule peu à peu dans la folie et finit par devenir le Joker, un dangereux tueur psychopathe victime d'hallucinations.
Gotham City-based vigilante Batman travels to Metropolis to preemptively combat Superman, fearing what would happen if the latter is kept unchecked, while another threat endangers humankind.
Alimenté par sa foi restaurée en l’humanité et inspiré par le sacrifice de Superman, Batman constate l'arrivée d'éclaireurs extraterrestres — appelés "Paradémons" et attirés par la peur de leurs victimes — et comprend que l'attaque majeure prophétisée par Lex Luthor (dans le film Batman v Superman : L'Aube de la justice) est imminente, or Superman est mort et ne peut plus protéger l'humanité. Conscient de ses propres limites, il contacte Diana Prince/Wonder Woman et tente de former avec elle une ligue de super-héros. Il part retrouver Arthur Curry, dit Aquaman, qui habite à Atlantis, tandis que Diana va approcher Victor Stone, footballeur devenu à moitié machine après un accident et capable d'influer sur les technologies, mais les deux hommes refusent de les aider. Barry Allen, jeune homme doté de super-vitesse, accepte avec enthousiasme l'offre de Bruce Wayne.
Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor are both nominated for the Man of the Year award, and Wayne wins. As he is making his speech, the Joker breaks in with the Riddler, Harley Quinn, the Penguin, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, Bane, Catwoman, and steals the award, as well as money and gems. Batman arrives and stops everyone except the Joker, who escapes on his boat, but Robin's helicopter picks up Batman. When the rope holding Batman is broken, he calls in the Batwing and defeats the Joker. Meanwhile, Luthor is running for president, but his poll figures are terrible. He learns that the Joker knows how to produce more Kryptonite, and can make a gas that makes people love him, which will help Luthor win the election and defeat Superman. He breaks the Joker out of Arkham Asylum and promises him the use of Luthor's De-Constructor weapon to defeat Batman by dismantling all his gadgets and vehicles.
In the Lego universe, the wizard Vitruvius attempts to protect a superweapon called the "Kragle" from the evil Lord Business. He fails to do so, but prophesies that a person called "the Special" will find the Piece of Resistance capable of stopping the Kragle.
The mayor of Gotham City orders District Attorney Harvey Dent (Billy Dee Williams) and Police Commissioner James Gordon (Pat Hingle) to increase police activity and combat crime in preparation for the city's bicentennial. Reporter Alexander Knox (Robert Wuhl) and photojournalist Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) begin to investigate reports of a vigilante dubbed "Batman", who is targeting the city's criminals.
As a child, Bruce Wayne falls down a dry well, where he is attacked by a swarm of bats; he subsequently develops chiroptophobia. While watching an opera with his parents, Bruce is frightened by performers masquerading as bats, and asks to leave. Outside, the family is targeted by a mugger, Joe Chill, who murders Bruce's parents, leaving him to be raised by the family butler, Alfred Pennyworth.
In Gotham City, Batman stops a hostage situation in a bank caused by Two-Face, the alter ego of the disfigured former district attorney, Harvey Dent. However, Two-Face escapes. Edward Nygma, a researcher at Wayne Enterprises, develops a device to beam television directly to a person's brain; Bruce Wayne—with whom Nygma is obsessed—rejects the invention, noting that it "raises too many questions", and Nygma angrily resigns from his position after killing his supervisor Fred Stickley, and forging his suicide note and footage. Everybody except Bruce is convinced it was a genuine suicide. During a news report, it shows how Harvey Dent became Two-Face: While he was prosecuting Sal Maroni, Maroni threw acid in Harvey's face; Batman tried to stop him but failed. After meeting Batman-obsessed psychiatrist Dr. Chase Meridian, Bruce invites her to a charity circus event. There, Two-Face and his henchmen storm the event in an attempt to discover Batman's secret identity, and in the process murder The Flying Graysons, a family of acrobats who attempt to stop him. The youngest member, Dick, survives and throws Two-Face's bomb into the river to detonate safely underwater but the rest of the family dies.
Parvenant toujours à sauver Gotham City des attaques des super-vilains, Batman est devenu arrogant pour mieux cacher sa profonde solitude. Vexé, le Joker se laisse enfermer à l’asile d'Arkham. Mais Batman comme Barbara Gordon, la nouvelle commissaire de la ville, soupçonnent un plan caché. Le Joker cherche à rejoindre la zone fantôme pour s'allier avec les pires méchants. Batman en cherchant bien faire qui l'y envoie avec l'aide de Robin. Le Joker parvient à s'échapper de la zone fantôme à la tête d'une armée des pires méchants. Batman devra travailler en équipe pour sauver Gotham.
Tucker and Esther Cobblepot, an aristocratic couple, throw their deformed infant child in a river, feeling that Gotham City's high society would not approve after witnessing their son kill their pet cat. However, a flock of penguins living in an abandoned zoo's arctic exhibit connected to the sewers rescue and raise him. 33 years later, the child becomes The Penguin (Danny DeVito) and the leader of the Red Triangle Circus Gang, who appear in Gotham City during the annual Christmas tree-lighting ceremony and cause a riot. As the police and Batman (Michael Keaton) deal with the riot, one of the guests at the ceremony, a prominent businessman named Max Shreck (Christopher Walken), is kidnapped and taken to the Penguin, who desires to become a citizen of Gotham and blackmails Shreck into helping him by threatening to expose evidence of his corporate crimes.
Batman and Robin fail to stop Mr. Freeze from stealing a cache of diamonds. They learn that Freeze was once a scientist named Victor Fries, who became dependent on a diamond-powered subzero suit following an accident in a cryogenics lab while working to save his wife, Nora, from a terminal illness called MacGregor's Syndrome.
Cela fait cinq ans que tout était génial et les citoyens font face à une nouvelle menace énorme : les Duplo envahissent l'espace, détruisant tout plus vite qu'ils ne peuvent reconstruire.