Arkham Asylum - A Few Certain Inclusions...

I thought it was worth posting a quick update to explain which features are already decided for my final Arkham Asylum MOC. These are the components which will definitely be included:

• The asylum will be set on an island - This is something which I have been certain of including since I first considered an Arkham Asylum MOC last year, as I believe it makes the model more interesting as well as allowing me to place some rooms and areas underground without raising the entire model off the ground which would be far too expensive to do for me.

• The legendary 'ARKHAM' sign will be present - As a mainstay of almost every incarnation of the building, this is really an absolute must-have for an Arkham Asylum MOC in my opinion. It will no doubt present a great challenge later on, however some possible solutions have been discussed over on the Brickset Forum which will be of great help.

• Killer Croc will have a lair beneath the asylum - One of the elements in the Batman: Arkham Asylum game which struck me the most was the interesting placement of Killer Croc, who was essentially dumped down in the sewers as a form of incarceration. Therefore, I decided it was something which I would hope to include in my MOC from early on in the process.

• There will be sewers beneath the asylum - I wish to include a reference to Christopher Nolan's fantastic Batman trilogy, which is difficult since Arkham Asylum has only fairly fleeting appearances in the series, almost exclusively in the first of the three, Batman Begins. Therefore, since one particular scene was particularly enjoyable in my opinion, I have decided that I will try to include the sewer junction seen in that film as well as Killer Croc's lair in my model.

• The Scarecrow will be imprisoned in a tower - This idea is purely from my imagination, but is nevertheless something which I feel strongly about. In my mind The Scarecrow should be in some kind of hay loft style area within Arkham Asylum, not just a regular cell, and a tower seems suitable for this.

• A satellite Batcave will be placed in the cliffs - If you have ever played Batman: Arkham Asylum, you may recall that a small Batcave is found on the island which Batman placed there in case of breakouts. This is a fascinating idea in my opinion, and one which I will certainly be including.

• Some of the more 'sane' villains will be incarcerated in Arkham Asylum - While obviously most of Batman's rogues gallery are far too unhinged to be placed in a standard prison, there are a few who are not completely insane, and therefore are usually placed in Blackgate Penitentiary in the comics. However, no Batman MOC of this scale is complete in my opinion without at least including the vast majority of the most famous villains, so characters such as the Penguin or Bane will likely find their way into the model and have their own cells.

• The model will be huge - Perhaps most important of all, while there have been some great Arkham Asylum MOCs in the past, none have been of the scale which I am aiming for. You may have noticed on the layout sketch which was included in my previous post there are some very vague ideas for the dimensions of the model (in Lego studs of course). These are just ideas, but I think that in both width and depth, the island as a whole will be at the very least 100 studs, most likely even more.

In my next article I will move on to discussing one of the most prominent features of my envisaged model, that being the enormous cliffs which will surround the asylum, and how I will go about constructing them.