Images: Warner Bros. Pictures
Let’s dive into all the easter eggs and references we spotted in The Batman, and all the loose ends future sequels can explore.
The Batman is now in theatres, giving fans a different take on the brooding vigilante separated from the DC Extended Universe. Robert Pattinson plays an inexperienced Batman who has only been active in Gotham City for two years, driven not so much by a desire to bring people peace as he is by the need to strike fear into the heart of the city. Whether they be innocent or evil, Gothamites fear Batman.
Batman’s story draws inspiration from several different comic book storylines and makes a few nods to unseen characters from the larger Batman mythos. Its ending even seems to set up an iconic comic storyline, which we'll get into soon. Here are all the easter eggs and references we spotted in the movie - but be warned: there be spoilers ahead!
The clown prince of crime
Let’s get the biggest and most obvious tease out of the way first: the Joker. In The Batman’s final few minutes, we see Paul Dano’s The Riddler/Edward Nashton (a departure from his comic name, Edward Nygma) locked up in Arkham State Hospital. Batman fans might recall Arkham as the setting of 2009’s excellent Batman: Arkham Asylum game, and in comics, as the place most of Batman’s criminally insane rogues gallery reside. This movie ends with Edward grieving the failure of his plan to assassinate the mayor-elect, while another mysterious prisoner from the cell next door comforts him.
Barry Keoghan (Eternals, Dunkirk) makes an unexpected cameo as this prisoner, who is only referred to as ‘Unseen Arkham Prisoner’ in the film’s credits. We only see a sliver of his pale, seemingly scarred face and eerie grin behind bars, but seeing as he refers to himself as a ‘clown’ and ends the scene by cackling his head off, it’s safe to assume that we’ve just been introduced to this universe (Earth-2)’s version of the Joker. That makes three Jokers in DC films over the last three years alone, after Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker (2019) and Jared Leto’s cameo as the murderous clown in Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
We don’t know for how long this Joker has been stirring up trouble in Gotham City, but he must have done something to end up in Arkham. The gang Batman comes to blows with at the start of the film also wear Joker-looking face paint, which might be a nod to the Joker Gang - a collection of thugs wearing clown makeup who serve as henchmen carrying out the Joker’s whims.
The Joker entering the fray this early is a surprise, considering the villain’s oversaturation in recent years of Batman-related stories. The caped crusader has a wide and varied rogues gallery of interesting villains to fuel many sequels to come, so going back to the Joker seems like a wasted opportunity at first - but let’s be honest, this was inevitable. Bruce Wayne was always going to have to tussle with the Joker at some point, but it might not have to happen right away. Other events in this film set up a storyline that might involve the Joker as a minor villain for the sequel, instead of its big bad.
No Man’s Land
The Batman ends with Riddler’s plan more or less coming to fruition. Using strategically-placed bombs around Gotham, the serial killer manages to flood the city and plunge its citizens - quite literally - into chaos. While Batman and relief workers act quickly to save those in danger, the movie still ends with Gotham flooded and vulnerable, with Bruce’s narration hinting that criminals like the Penguin might see this as an opportunity to kick off a power grab.
The current state of Gotham draws inspiration from the comic storyline No Man’s Land, which saw Gotham City cut off from the rest of the U.S. and in the midst of disaster. Criminals begin to take slices of city territory for their own control, including major villains in Batman’s rogues gallery like Victor Zsasz, Two-Face, Clayface and - wouldn’t you know it - the Joker. The Joker and his own army of psychopaths set up a territory in Gotham called Jokerville, which sounds like the sort of thing Warner Bros. wouldn’t pass up on adapting in the big screen.
While The Batman ends on a hopeful note, it’s important to remember that this massive flood will likely bring all the grime in Gotham’s dark underbelly bubbling up to the surface. Falcone’s death leaves a power vacuum the Penguin intends to fill, and the city’s already high crime rate is sure to skyrocket as people struggle for food and shelter. No Man’s Land seems like the obvious next step in this story, and it includes many villains we have yet to see on the big screen. It also allows the Joker to play a part without being at the center of it all.
Hush
The Batman makes another interesting nod to a villain tied closely with Bruce Wayne’s childhood. As Bruce unravels the history of his father’s relationship with the crime boss Carmine Falcone, he realises that a journalist named Edward Elliot had investigated the Waynes and was murdered for it. The name Elliot has interesting connotations, considering it also belongs to a childhood friend of Bruce’s in the comics: Thomas Elliot. Thomas Elliot would later haunt Batman as the villain Hush, whose real identity was a mystery to Bruce for years.
Hush has shown up in the comics multiple times with the sole mission of making Bruce’s life a living hell. In his first appearance, he worked with the Riddler to turn Batman’s friends against him. Later on, he surgically altered his face to resemble Bruce Wayne’s and masqueraded as the inheritor to the Wayne family fortune. In the comics, Thomas hated Bruce for inheriting the Wayne fortune, whereas he had tried and failed to murder his own parents to accomplish the same result. The Riddler in this movie grew up hating Bruce Wayne for different reasons, but ended up wearing wrappings around his head just like Hush.
Hush and the Riddler are two separate villains in the comics, but they bear quite a few similarities here. Edward Elliot could be a nod to Hush’s comicbook roots, or it could set up a future appearance from the real thing someday. For now, let’s just call it an easter egg.
Tweedledee and Tweedledum
This might be a bit of a reach, but the Iceberg Lounge’s bouncers who constantly get beaten up by Batman seem at least a little inspired by Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Based on characters from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, these cousins (they are cousins who closely resemble each other, not twins) often serve as muscle for Batman’s rogues gallery. Usually, they end up working with The Mad Hatter, another psychopath based on a character from Through the Looking Glass. Here, they’re not so much muscle as they are punching bags.
The Riddler
The Riddler’s real name is eventually revealed to be Edward Nashton, instead of his more popular name in the comics: Edward Nygma (as in E. Nygma). This is actually in line with the comics however, as the Riddler’s real surname was once revealed to be Nashton before it was changed to Nygma. Riddlers in alternate DC universes go by Nashton, too. That's not the only change: instead of having the character don a green suit with a question mark-themed cane, this movie’s version of the Riddler is based on the Zodiac Killer.
The Riddler’s final plans to flood Gotham City also clearly draws inspiration from Batman: Zero Year in the comics, which serves as the caped detective’s current origin story. In Zero Year, Batman goes up against the Riddler - who proves to be a formidable supervillain and the very first one Batman has gone up against. The Riddler succeeds in flooding Gotham during a heavy thunderstorm, causing the villain to rise in power while the city is vulnerable. While we’re not certain that Nashton is The Batman’s first supervillain in this universe, he did end up achieving the same goal in a more roundabout way.
Unlike this movie however, the Riddler and the Joker don’t get along so well in the comics. In a story set a year after Zero Year called The War of Jokes and Riddles, the duo kick off a massive war against one another across Gotham City, while Batman races against time to restore order by saving lives and ending the war. The Batman ends with the Riddler having found a new friend in the Joker, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stay friends forever.