the way to take the really bizarre and out-there Batman villains and ground them in a “realistic” Batman universe isn’t to change the villains at all. it’s to have Jim Gordon stand on a rooftop and hit his vape hard enough to dampen power from a three block radius and tell Batman “you were the only one we could think to call. there’s some lunatic running around calling himself Condiment King” and Batman just stands there silently on the rooftop taking that in until Jim adds “he put ten people in the hospital with a ketchup gun……somehow” and then hits the vape again. Batman realizes that the GCPD’s unofficial position on this is that the Bat should take out the Condiment King because crazy cancels out crazy, and they’re not entirely wrong. he agrees to help out and Jim brandishes his vape at the Gotham skyline and mumbles something about this being fucking crazy, and that’s it. that’s all you need to do to ground the storyline. every single villain, just like that.
