Batman (film)/Trivia


 * Actor Allusion: The infamous "let's get nuts" scene seems to be put in just to allude to Michael Keaton's role as a psychiatric patient in the comedy The Dream Team. His voice during that sequence is reminiscent of another crazy Keaton character.
 * Jack Nicholson, playing a character sharing his first name who is driven insane by circumstances and famously goes Axe Crazy. And in his first appearance, Nicholson is sitting in a meeting shuffling a deck of cards.
 * Billing Displacement: Jack Nicholson is the top billed actor, not Michael Keaton.
 * And with danged good reason.
 * Creator Backlash: A couple of months after the movie's release, Burton said that he felt the film as a whole was "mainly boring" and referred to it as "more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie".
 * Screenwriter Sam Hamm, one of the many writers who worked on the script, has also absolved himself from the sequence where Alfred leads Vicki to the Batcave, a move that didn't sit well with a lot of fans. Hamm said the scene didn't come from him and that the day Alfred let someone in the Batcave would be his last day of employment. It gets a Call Back in Batman Returns.
 * The Danza: Jack Nicholson as (pre-Jokerization) Jack Napier.
 * Enforced Method Acting: Keaton hated the Batsuit because he suffered from claustrophobia. Elfman and Keaton both decided that it would enhance his performance. And it did.
 * Executive Meddling: This was a big reason the Schumacher films turned out the way they did, but again, Burton's films weren't immune.
 * Playing Against Type: Comedian Michael Keaton as the Batman. Keaton himself lampshaded this in interviews with the observation that Bruce Wayne should be the person who looks least likely to be Batman.
 * Prop Recycling: The doctor's tools were originally Orin Scrivello's dentist tools, and then perverse gynecological equipment.
 * Throw It In: When exploring Wayne Manor with Vicki, Knox (Robert Wuhl) ad-libbed the jokes aimed at Bruce's decorative collection of odd-looking armor.
 * After the Board to Death meeting when the Joker tells Bob to tail Knox, Jack Nicholson ad-libbed his Grisson impression (complete with Jack Palance's breathy voice).
 * Michael Keaton came up with the famous "I'm Batman" line - in the script it was "I am the (K)night".
 * What Could Have Been: Sean Young was originally going to play Vicki Vale before Kim Basinger. Young had to bow out at practically the last minute after breaking her collarbone in a horseback riding accident.