When Did Gotham City Become Neo-Gotham City In The DCAU?

[Raider969]

After watching the DCAU shows several times, I have wondered when Gotham City became Neo-Gotham City in the DCAU. As you know, Gotham City in the DCAU during the 1990s and 2000s was a normal city as shown in Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, The New Batman Adventures, Static Shock, Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. But by the time of Batman Beyond, in 2039, Gotham City is a Neo Futuristic city. So Gotham City obviously became Neo-Gotham City between the 2000s and 2039 in the DCAU. According to some people including myself, there are either two places in time when Gotham City could have became Neo-Gotham City.

1. Gotham City could have became Neo-Gotham City in 2009 or a little after due to The Near Apacolypse of 2009, as mentioned in the Batman Beyond episode, "Out of the Past," and the Justice League Unlimited episode, "Epilouge." During that event, most of Gotham City was destroyed and was rebuild after.

2. Gotham City could have became Neo-Gotham City during the early 2020s. As you can see in the beginning of the first Batman Beyond episode, during Bruce Wayne's final time as Batman, which takes place in 2019, Gotham City still looks like a normal city from what we have seen. In the Justice League Unlimited episode, "Epilouge," when Amanda Waller is telling Terry McGinnis the story of how his DNA was overwritten to match Bruce Wayne, Amanda says that she found Warren and Mary McGinnis and called them a Neo-Gotham couple. She says that over a year later after she found them, Terry was born. Since Terry was born in the year 2023, which was over a year later, that would mean that Gotham City became Neo-Gotham City in the early 2020s, sometime after 2019, but before 2023.

So when do you think Gotham City became Neo-Gotham City in the DCAU?

 

[Yojimbo]

There's no set year on when Terry was born. Wherever you found that is conjecture. 2039 is an old marketing anachronism as I said in another thread and another thread before that, the Beyond era is 50 years after the most present event, that is set in stone by Bruce Timm, so it's more in the early 2050s.

The kind of construction and infrastructure and government signing off on permits, it's probably closer to 2025 to 2030 when Neo-Gotham was completed.

 

[Ed Nygma]

Maybe Ra's caused Covid in the DCAU, and it was the near-apocalypse of 2019? Then Gotham had to rebuild! I doubt they gave it this much thought, but it always seemed to me kind of clear (even from the flashback in Rebirth) that it corresponded somewhat to Powers taking over Waynecorp. He seemed to not just be another social millionaire like Bruce, but a Lex Luthor/Bill Gates/Elon Musk who ran an enormous multinational conglomerate and thus had that pull.

I do like to think of it being fixed in 2039 though; I don't like the notion of a floating timeline for the DCAU, but even if so it should be 40 years from now, not 50 or 60; If Bruce was about 30-35 in BTAS, in order for him to be 75-78 by the time of Beyond you can't add that many years or the BTAS/TNBA/JL timeline becomes too compressed, which I always hated. There's only so much you can do in a given year, and it drives me nuts when they extend TNBA more and more with every revival as the entirety of JL already has to happen before Tim's downfall with the Joker, when he's still a kid! And 2 years passed between BTAS and TNBA for Dick to become Nightwing. But anyway I'm digressing.