10 Mind-Blowing Facts About The Batman (2022) That Will Totally Surprise You!

10 Mind-Blowing Facts About The Batman (2022): Bruce Wayne. The name can instantly be recognized as one of the most well-known superheroes of all time, Batman. The fictional Gotham City philanthropist, billionaire industrial playboy who moonlights as a masked vigilante with a bat as his symbol, quickly rose to popularity after his debut on March 30, 1939, on the pages of Detective Comics #27. The character, since then, has had numerous adaptations on both the big screen and small.

Starting from 1943, he might be one of the most well-known heroes to be adapted on screen, with Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight Trilogy” (2005, 2008, 2012) becoming the most critically acclaimed adaptation to date. Heath Ledger’s last performance as the Joker in “The Dark Knight” (2008) got him a posthumous Best Supporting Actor award at the Oscars.

Batman was one of the heroes that were repeatedly adapted for the DCEU. Matt Reeves’ 2022 blockbuster, “The Batman,” may be the darkest adaptation of caped crusader yet, with a younger Bruce Wayne taking on the serial killer Riddler. The film uses detective story tropes to tell a story about morality, greed, and corruption, which is very effective. The film also shows a side of the dark defender: his exceptional skills in investigation, deduction, and forensic analysis.

With its sequel being in development, there’s no doubt that this brooding take on the Knight of Gotham City will continue its successful run in the future. For now, here are some behind the scene facts about “The Batman” people probably don’t know:

1. The first live-action portrayal of Batman with eye makeup

This portrayal of Batman is the first that directly addresses the black eye makeup of Bruce under the cowl, and that ensures the more gothic vibe of the vigilante. In the previous portrayals, the eye makeup was nowhere to be seen after Batman took his cowl off. Batman goes full emo with his smokey eyes, and as the film’s makeup designer Naomi Donne likes to put it: “I loved that at times it was very smudged and running down his face, and at times it was just a smokey eye. But at all times it was never clean”. Batman becoming a rockstar, eh?

2. One of the signature lines in the film was improvised

During the opening sequence train station fight after the victim is unconscious, and Batman gives the last two punches and screeches, “I’m vengeance!” which was entirely improvised by Robert Pattinson. According to Robert, “I wanted to say it as the guy is losing consciousness, so it goes into his dreams. I really wanted his future to be really, really damaged.“

3. Pattinson auditioned with two of his predecessors’ costumes

When Robert Pattinson stepped up to audition for The Batman (2022), he found himself donning a piece of Bat-history. Instead of a custom suit, Pattinson slipped into Val Kilmer’s iconic Batsuit from Batman Forever (1995), a nod to a long line of caped crusaders. However, there was a snag—the cowl was far too big for Pattinson’s head, giving him more of a bobblehead look than the stoic Dark Knight vibe. To solve this, the team handed him the cowl from the infamous Batman & Robin (1997), where George Clooney took up the mantle.

As fate would have it, this wasn’t the first time Kilmer’s suit got some serious audition time. Christian Bale, the legendary Batman of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, also went through his screen test with Kilmer’s suit and cowl. It’s as if the Bat-suit had its own legacy, testing the might of future Batmen before they could claim the cape.

4. Paul Dano became a comic writer after the movie

Dano, who plays Edward Nashton/The Riddler in the film, started developing his character’s backstory on set and later showed his take on the character to director Matt Reeves during the shoot. Impressed with what he read, Reeves advised Dano to approach the DC Comics team with it. After Dano did so, DC comics executives, already impressed with Dano’s portrayal of Riddler, allowed him to write a bi-monthly six-issue comic titled “The Riddler: Year One” for their DC Black Label imprint, which started with a Batman series itself, called “Batman: Damned.”

5. A real-life serial killer inspired Riddler

In The Batman (2022), Paul Dano’s chilling portrayal of the Riddler reimagines the classic comic villain as a methodical serial killer, targeting Gotham’s corrupt elite and leaving a trail of cryptic riddles at each crime scene. This dark twist on the character draws heavy inspiration from one of America’s most infamous unsolved mysteries—the Zodiac Killer, who terrorized California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Much like the Riddler, the real-life Zodiac was known for taunting the authorities, leaving behind ciphers and coded messages that baffled investigators and newspaper readers alike.

The parallels between the two are striking. In the film, the Riddler kicks off his chilling missives with, “This is The Riddler speaking,” a direct nod to the Zodiac’s infamous opener, “This is the Zodiac speaking.” The eerie similarity doesn’t stop there. While the Riddler taunts Gotham’s authorities with riddles and intricate ciphers, the Zodiac similarly sent encoded messages to newspaper offices, daring them to crack his puzzles. In one such letter, the Zodiac wrote, “I like killing people because it is so much fun,” adding a layer of horror to his already terrifying crimes.

In The Batman, Riddler’s use of greeting cards to communicate with Gotham’s authorities mirrors the Zodiac’s penchant for sending greeting cards as part of his twisted game of cat and mouse. These cards weren’t just everyday greetings—they were filled with hidden threats and enigmatic puzzles, much like the Riddler’s cryptic notes to Batman and the GCPD.

Director Matt Reeves has admitted to drawing inspiration from the Zodiac Killer, blending fact with fiction to create a villain whose methods are disturbingly grounded in reality. The result is a portrayal of the Riddler that feels unnervingly close to home—a meticulous, calculating criminal whose motivations are as much about making a statement as they are about causing chaos. The lines between Gotham’s dark underworld and real-life terror blur, making the Riddler one of the most unsettling versions of the character ever to hit the screen.

6. The film has an easter egg for another film that the director watched to consider Pattinson for the role of Batman

At the start of the movie, a convenience store that gets robbed is named “Good Times Groceries,” which is a nod to the 2017 Safdie brothers film “Good Times” and starred Robert Pattinson. When Matt Reeves saw the film, he started developing the script with Pattinson in mind for the role of Batman. It’s a fun throwback to the initial days of development for the film.

7. Jeffrey Wright is the second actor to play both Batman and James Gordon

Wright, who plays the first African-American depiction of Officer James Gordon, previously portrayed Bruce Wayne/Batman in HBO Max’s audio podcast, “Batman: The Audio Adventures” (2021), just a year before the film’s release and quite possibly during the shooting of the film. The only other actor to ever do so is Benjamin McKenzie, who played Bruce Wayne/Batman in 2011’s DC Animated adaptation “Batman: Year One” and later played the live-action young James Gordon in the TV series “Gotham” (2014).

8. Riddler’s video call to Batman took over 200 takes

In the scene where Riddler video calls Batman on District Attorney Gil Colson’s phone, who is strapped to a bomb in the City Hall, Paul Dano improvised most of the dialogue and took almost over 200 takes. At the same time, he tried different variations of Riddler’s mannerisms. Director Matt Reeves said, “He goes, ‘OK, let me try one where I’m off camera, and I stick my head in…Let me try one where I’m already sitting there.’ He’s directing this one-person play on an iPhone. It was the giddiness that really got to me.”

9. Kurt Cobain played a huge influence

Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, whose song “Something In the Way” is heavily featured in the movie, is one of the significant influences for Matt Reeves to give Bruce/Batman his emo-punk look. According to Reeves in his Empire interview: “When I write, I listen to music, and as I was writing the first act, I put on Nirvana’s ‘Something In The Way,’ that’s when it came to me that, rather than make Bruce Wayne the playboy version we’ve seen before, there’s another version who had gone through a great tragedy and became a recluse. So I started making this connection to Gus Van Sant’s Last Days and the idea of this fictionalized version of Kurt Cobain being in this kind of decaying manor.”

10. Barry Keoghan shot fake scenes to keep his role a secret

Keoghan played Joker in a very small scene in the movie where he is imprisoned in Arkham State Hospital along with Riddler, which was almost cut from the final version. In another deleted scene, Batman goes to see his archnemesis for help figuring out the Riddler’s next move. When the film was announced, Barry Keoghan was promulgated as GCPD officer Stanley Merkel and the production team went so far as to shoot fake scenes with Keoghan as Merkel that kept his original casting as secret as possible.

Read More: All Batman Movies (Including The Batman) Ranked, From Worst to Best