Last night was the end of the CFB count­down, as two live video feeds were posted to the Cit­i­zens for Bat­man web­site and crowds gath­ered at the two loca­tions in New York and Chicago. Fans that turned up for the event received Gotham Times news­pa­pers and a col­lec­tion of CFB good­ies, includ­ing T-shirts.

Par­tic­i­pants were given Domino’s pizza boxes that con­tained code words and clues to a locked box in a secret loca­tion. At this box more clues were uncov­ered, lead­ing to a 2-way radio, with which direc­tions were given to a spe­cific spot for the per­fect view of The Dark Knight bat sig­nal, pro­jected onto the Wool­worth build­ing and Sears tower.

NYC:

Chicago:

/Film have also posted their report, relay­ing some off the bad feel­ings and hin­drances that sur­rounded the poorly exe­cuted Chicago event.

Fic­tional CFB forum mem­ber, BriDog72 has posted a video pro­mot­ing Cit­i­zens for Bat­man onto YouTube,

“I believe in Bat­man” — “I am a cit­i­zen for Bat­man“
July 8th.

Thanks Pierre.

A new mes­sage was posted to the mains and pub­lic forums of Cit­i­zens for Bat­man today,

Poster: BriDog72 — Thurs­day, July 3rd, 2008 at 00:12
Seems there’s been a bit of a slipup with the project me and Batfan73 have been work­ing on. BatFan’s in jail and I need everyone’s help. He left me a voice­mail, it was kinda gar­bled, but he said he was picked up by the cops for tres­pass­ing, so he needs some help get­ting every­thing acti­vated. He’s not sure when he’s going to be able to extract him­self from his sit­u­a­tion.
He said he needs some­one to get some sort of key off of an invoice, num­ber 38272899 (geez, I hope I copied that down right), but he got cut off before he could tell me what this invoice is or even where to find it. We need this key to acti­vate every­thing.
Can any­one fig­ure this out? We’re going to need to fix this or the whole thing’s ruined! Anyone?

In an email to Glenn Barhyte, Jim Gor­don made ref­er­ence to Maroni Imports, lead­ing us to a new viral site, www​.maroni​im​ports​.com

With the invoice num­ber from the forums post and the sruname “Cras­ton”, which appeared in a small news update to the Gotham City Rail website:

ALERT: The STCS will undergo ini­tial fine-tuning of its soft­ware on the evening of July 8th. This rou­tine main­te­nance may result in tem­po­rary inter­mit­tent sys­tem delays. We apol­o­gize for any incon­ve­nience this may cause. — C. Cras­ton, Sr. Elec. Engi­neer, GCR

With this infor­ma­tion the afore­men­tioned invoice can be down­loaded, at the bot­tom of it there is a key for a sig­nal booster, Key: 5D45C08AA6C3638D7829C0D5183FDB14B0CDBF1DCB12. With this key, the sig­nal booster was acti­vated and CFB was updated to show two sets of co-ordinates in New York and Chicago. Hence the two loca­tions for the big event this July 8th are now known:

New York and Chicago

CFB has since been updated to include a new mis­sion statement:

Some­times, you have to take a stand. You have to fight for respect. You have to let the entire world know you’re here.
On July 8th, nobody will be able to ignore us. Gather at the above coor­di­nates at the appointed time, and help us take a stand in sup­port of Bat­man!
If you can’t join us on the ground, we’ll be pro­vid­ing a way for you to watch what goes down, live on this web­site.
Defend Gotham! Defend Bat­man!
Key: 5D45C08AA6C3638D7829C0D5183FDB14B0CDBF1DCB12
Sig­nal Booster sta­tus: ON

Thanks Pierre!

Read the rest of this entry »

Why So Seri­ous have updated their front page for the first time in what seems an age — it now cov­ers the entire Viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign com­plete with Joker check­list on tasks, a list of Gotham city web pages and assorted items that can all be clicked for part of the viral adven­ture. For exam­ple, bowl­ing shoes, a per­son­al­ity quiz, the trailer clip­pings, let­ters from a ran­som note, etc.

Three future tasks have yet to be ticked off:

12. Be good to my guests
13. Gather all my fans
14. Leave a big mark

Reports

Some of the viral links on WSS con­tain reports on the viral event, with date, a list of occur­rences, the end result, pic­tures and the after­math — pro­vid­ing a suc­cinct review of how we’ve got this far:

Cit­i­zens for Batman

Where a page orig­i­nally stood we now find a count­down, head­ing omi­nously towards July 8th. CFB have also been send­ing out their pro­pa­ganda to lucky Gotham citizens,

Includ­ing the letter:

Cit­i­zens for Batman!

It’s time to go pub­lic. To really defend Bat­man, we have to show the world how big our move­ment is. So check out the good­ies inside and show your pride in CFB!

And get ready for a MAJOR show of force July 8th. (check out cit​i​zens​for​bat​man​.org for the latest.

Defend Gotham. Defend Batman!

Brian Dou­glass
Founder, Cit­i­zens for Bat­man

Thanks Dioz, Csam and Pierre!

The code has been cracked and the forums found — the Nyc­ti­ceius Under­ground!

The words were:

midnight/Nyctalus/threat/plerotes/history/euderma/fear/myotis/underestimation/

Login with user­name: nyc­ti­ceious, pass­word: mer­ritt

Why We Fight:

I’ve been patrolling my neigh­bor­hood for sev­eral weeks now. I’ve seen crime hap­pen in front of me. It’s obvi­ous City Hall doesn’t care, so why should we? I think that’s an impor­tant ques­tion to answer before we set out to DO SOMETHING about crime in Gotham. The answer might be dif­fer­ent for each of us. For me, I want to fight because I lost my sis­ter to vio­lent crime. She was attacked and bru­tally assaulted when she was leav­ing a group of friends at a restau­rant early one Sun­day night. Some­one was wait­ing for her by her car. She screamed and yelled “fire,” but no one came to help. Unlike many vic­tims, she went to the police, but they didn’t do any­thing. They gave her the runaround for months until she found her own peace. I fight for my sis­ter. I fight so bad things don’t hap­pen again to any­one. I fight because the police won’t. I fight to take back the city I used to be proud to call home.

UPDATE: Puz­zle solved, forum found

Gotham City Pizze­ria has updated for its 16th June spe­cial pro­mo­tion. There is now a map of the US with loca­tions marked out in green and red — green means that there are free piz­zas to be grabbed, red means they’ve all been taken. The “order your free pizza” link takes you to a domi­nos page with a store loca­tor. 245 piz­zas avail­able in total!

Chat here as the game unfolds

The Site

The Pizza boxes

The Pack­ages

Pic­tures thanks to CerealKiller:

The author­i­ties are after us, so we had to be a lit­tle secre­tive about our hide-out. Here is a lit­tle some­thing to point you in the right direction:

/myotis

You need to share this infor­ma­tion with other con­cerned Gotham cit­i­zens like your­self. I’m sure you can fig­ure out how.

When you put the pieces together, join us — and help us fight back against the ene­mies of Gotham City.

Never give up,

Paul
www​.cit​i​zens​for​bat​man​.org

Pic­ture thanks to Pennyworth

This pack­age comes with a dif­fer­ent let­ter and a username.

Words so far

/history
/threat
/myotis
/midnight
/euderma — This is a species of bat
/underestimation
/plerotes

User­names so far

nyc­ti­ceius — species of bat

Pass­words so far

mer­ritt

This URL leads to a blank page: http://​www​.cit​i​zens​for​bat​man​.org/​m​i​d​n​i​g​ht/. Maybe it will have con­tent at midnight?

With guess work I have built up the sec­ond part of the URL by going through var­i­ous species of bat, I hit lucky with Nyc­talus. Then, alter­nat­ing species and nor­mal words I have got this far:

http://​www​.cit​i​zens​for​bat​man​.org/​m​i​d​n​i​g​h​t​/​n​y​c​t​a​l​u​s​/​t​h​r​e​a​t​/​p​l​e​r​o​t​e​s​/​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​/​e​u​d​e​r​ma/

The Joker has sent out this mes­sage to all the active cell phones:

OK clowns, are you ready for some laughs (y/n)?
You put a smile on my face. Hope you’re not superstitious

Super­sti­tion relates to the day — Fri­day 13th June. We already know that’s when “Gotham Tonight” will pre­mier, maybe The Joker has some­thing in store for them?

Other Viral Updates

A new email from Har­vey Dent:

It’s been an incred­i­ble last few weeks. Ever since the vicious smear cam­paign col­lapsed and Har­vey Dent’s remark­able courage at the hostage cri­sis at Rossi’s Deli, our cam­paign has rid­den a wave of sup­port I have never seen in all my polit­i­cal life.

Our Head­quar­ters reopened and thou­sands of vol­un­teers show up here every day, every night, fight­ing for change. Fundrais­ing has reached incred­i­ble heights, with over 100,000 Gotham cit­i­zens con­tribut­ing their hard-earned money in sup­port of Har­vey Dent’s vow to take back Gotham.

We’ve expanded our reach, open­ing branches in neigh­bor­hoods that haven’t seen polit­i­cal cam­paigns take them seri­ously for decades. And we’ve har­nessed the incred­i­ble grass­roots sup­port by send­ing vol­un­teers to knock on doors through­out the city. Amaz­ingly, we will achieve our two mil­lionth door knock some­time in between now and Elec­tion Day.

Har­vey Dent has com­mit­ted him­self to lead the charge to take back our city, face down the crim­i­nal and cor­rupt and restore hope for our future.

Now, we need your help. We need to get out the vote!. And we need you to vote your­self. If you can’t make it to the polls, go to http://​www​.gotham​elec​tion​board​.com and find out how you can vote online. Work­ing together, we will take back Gotham!

Allan Cypes Media Manager

Maiden Avenue Report — Shuts Down, writer sells out

Gotham City Rail:

Gotham City Rail Announces Satel­lite Track­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions System

To bet­ter serve our cus­tomers, GCR has com­pleted its tran­si­tion to a satel­lite track­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem (STCS). Using cut­ting edge ultra high fre­quency tech­nol­ogy, STCS will give GCR the real-time abil­ity to track exact posi­tion­ing of all its trains. This will allow for more accu­rate sched­ul­ing and should increase GCR’s already impres­sive safety record.

Cit­i­zens for Bat­man — Intro­duc­tion updated:

For the first time, we have hope. Bat­man proves we can fight back against the sociopaths, thugs, and scum that have ruled Gotham for too long.
And now, City Hall wants to arrest Batman!

Gotham Police — Annual Policeman’s Ball
Gotham USD — News area updated
Inter­nal Affairs of Gotham Police Depart­ment — Inter­nal Affairs Offi­cers of the Month added
Trust Garcetti — Updates with info about elec­tion
Dana Wor­thing­ton — “Yes for Batman”

And of course you can still vote in the elec­tions.

Thanks Pierre!

Pierre informs us that the viral web­site “Cit­i­zens for Bat­man” has just updated, adding a link to a set of forums on the right hand side, beneath the news col­umn. This is not a forum you can sign up to — rather a forum posted to by cit­i­zens of Gotham city with their Bat­man expe­ri­ences. Wel­come their new acronym, “WWBD” or, “What would Bat­man do?”

Poster Reddy-Steddy has started a topic “I got a pic­ture”, which con­tains a blurry Bat­mo­bile shot taken by him at “5th street”:

And here is an inter­est­ing extract from the topic “Garcetti is wrong”:

I sup­port Bat­man but Garcetti, as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the estab­lished civil author­ity really has to take that posi­tion. Bat­man exists out­side the estab­lished author­ity and is there­fore a threat to it. Think about it, there are over four hun­dred cit­i­zens for every cop, so the sys­tem works only if 1. the police are the only ones to enforce order and 2. most of us fol­low the rules and the police only have to deal with a few peo­ple who deviate.

The alter­na­tive is a world where any­one who has a grudge takes care of it them­selves. That means that a per­son who feels wronged deals directly with his neigh­bor, shoots them if they feel its nec­es­sary. You get feuds and law­less­ness and a sur­vival of the fittest. The strong dom­i­nate the weak. By tak­ing the law into his own hands, Bat­man threat­ens the police monop­oly on main­tain­ing order and could be seen as tak­ing the first step towards that kind of lawlessness.

The prob­lem is that the police are not keep­ing their end of the civil con­tract. We give them power with the under­stand­ing that they will main­tain order. But any­one who lives in Gotham can see that order and safety are break­ing down. We are already in a state of law­less­ness. Bat­man is respond­ing to the increas­ing dis­or­der. And so are we by join­ing Cit­i­zens For Batman.

Pierre has also spot­ted that the name “Larry” posted in the Neigh­bor­hood watch thread refers to Larry Coniglia, enter­ing this name in the record search at St Swith­uns reveals his mar­riage cer­tifi­cate — which we have pre­vi­ously dis­cov­ered by search­ing for Sal­va­tor Maroni (he is the witness)