Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for Legends of Tomorrow season 7, episode 8, "Paranoid Android."
The mid-season premiere of Legends of Tomorrow made a joke out of the voice utilized by Ben Affleck when he played Batman in the DCEU. This joke came in the form of the over-the-top tough-guy voice utilized by actor Nick Zano, who plays Dr. Nathan "Nate" Heywood, a.k.a. Citizen Steel, and was playing a mindless action-hero version of his usual character. This new Citizen Steel was also exaggeratedly buff, which may have been a parody of the muscle-padded armor Batman wears.
Legends of Tomorrow season 7 placed the titular team of time-travelers at the mercy of a mysterious enemy, who blew up their time-ship, the Waverider, and menaced them with robotic assassins. This enemy was eventually unveiled as a corrupted copy of the Waverider's artificial intelligence Gideon, who had been programmed to destroy the Legends. The Legends of Tomorrow midseason finale ended with the revelation that this "evil Gideon" had created a team of Legends robots, who thought that they were the originals, sent to destroy their robot doppelgangers before they destroyed the timeline.
Legends of Tomorrow season 7, episode 8, "Paranoid Android," centered upon this new team of robot Legends, as they started trying to repair the changes the real Legends had made to the timeline over the past few episodes. It soon became apparent that the new Legends were not perfect copies of the originals and that most of them were violent maniacs rather than idealistic misfits. In this, the new Legends parodied the dark grim-and-gritty aesthetic of the DCEU and mocked the idea that the show needed to be more serious. The robot Citizen Steel, however, seemed to be specifically parodying Ben Affleck's Batman, with his dark, gravelly voice.
While it makes sense that a vigilante with a secret identity might try to disguise their voice, the constant exaggerated growl was a common cliché in superhero movies before Ben Affleck was cast as the DCEU Batman. For instance, Ryan Reynolds famously made fun of the trope in the 2011 Green Lantern movie, in the scene in which Hal Jordan talked to Carol Ferris while in uniform for the first time. While Affleck did modulate himself far better in this regard compared to the voices of other Batman actors, his performance still lent itself well to parody. It's even more ridiculous in the case of the Citizen Steel robot, as he didn't wear the masked helm that was part of his star-spangled costume when he first started out as a superhero.
While Zano's mockery of Ben Affleck's Batman voice was the most obvious bit of superhero satire in the Legends's of Tomorrow midseason premiere, it was not the only joking jab at another superhero franchise. Caity Lotz's performance as the robotic White Canary seemed to owe a bit to Scarlett Johansson's cool portrayal of Black Widow. Lotz also wore a more form-fitting variant of her usual costume, which many fans felt Black Widow's white costume ripped off. The episode also ended with a parody of The More You Know public service announcements frequently aired during Saturday morning cartoons on NBC, in which two children mistook Citizen Steel for Peacemaker's John Cena, as he arrived to deliver an anti-bullying message.