History Headscratchers / BatmanReturns

* Deformed as he is, Penguin is still human in this, right? But then why does he have black&green blood?

* Just where, exactly, is the Batmobile's engine? When it becomes the Batmissile, the wheels retract into where the turbine is supposed to go, and the shields also take up space.

** This point falls into [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllThereInTheScript All There in the Script]] and [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdultsAreUseless#:~:text=In%20some%20shows%20that%20revolve%20around%20teenagers%2C%20preteens,care%2C%20or%20are%20either%20over-%20or%20under-%20protective Adults Are Useless]] territory as the shooting script includes a scene of the children of Gotham being rounded up by the Red Triangle Gang and one instance has the Organ Grinder snatch a kid from under the nose of his nanny, who can be heard in the other room oblivious to what is going on.

** Also falls under [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllThereInTheScript All There in the Script]] as the shooting script had Penguin turn to Max as the crowd was turning against him and confidently suggest they find a way to spin the recording with the help of Josh and Jen at the costume party, but Max isn't having it ("I think you'd feel out of place at my party. You see, it's for winners"). This would also have lent greater weight to Max's later appeal to Penguin to take him in Chip's stead for having betrayed him - as in the film proper all we see is a half-hearted shrug before he scrams.

** (Looks at [[UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump who's]] in the White House right now.) Well, this is HarsherInHindsight.

** Presumably the water the penguins were swimming in is clean, while the water he plans to drown the kids and Shreck in is polluted by Shreck's own toxins.

** Right. Being as, like several other fictional superwealthy villains around this time (the late 80s/early 90s) such as King Koopa in ''Film/SuperMarioBros'', he's intended as a satirical TakeThat to Donald Trump, and Trump is known as a NeatFreak... there you go.

** They're being led by the Penguin, who is a childlike monster who is essentially working through his anger at his parents by punishing dozens of other children, and treating them to the same thing. It's Penguin's plot all along, after all - his plan in Gotham is merely to use Shreck to gain access to places like the Gotham Hall of Records, take notes on that year's newborn children, and dump them in the sewer when the time came. He restarts this plan when his mayoral run gets derailed.
** I doubt it was a dry run for the Penguin's ultimate plan. Given how the circus members seem to have reacted (I assume the fat clown was simply the only one brave enough to speak up), they were unaware up 'till then of exactly what the Penguin intended to do with those lists of children. My theory is that the screenwriter(s) were conflating some stereotypes about carnies/circus folk/traveling gypsies/other insular nomadic subcultures wherein it was said (however grotesquely inaccurately) that they would steal children. The usual stated purpose was that they adopted them and raised them to add to their own numbers. While the circus members are never explicitly stated to ''be'' in any way like that particular stereotype of traveling performers as child-snatchers, it does seem like this was intended as part of their backstory.

* Wouldn't the giant magnifying glasses mounted to the roof of Wayne Manor that catch the light of the Bat-Signal tip people off about Bruce Wayne being Batman?

** Or maybe he just lets people think he's a bit of a Batman ''spotter'', innocently keeping track of the mysterious vigilante's appearances from the sidelines. It'd be a bit odd for the son of murder victims ''not'' to at least '''notice''' reports that there's some weirdo in a costume beating up criminals in his home town.

** It's (Tim Burton's) Gotham. He likely ''wouldn't'' have gotten caught, and even if he had he'd be able to charm and/or bribe his way out of the whole mess. Notice how the only things running up to help Selina were cats, no humans.
** It must have ''very'' late at night or early in the morning given that Shreck would have had to have that talk with the Penguin and return to his office, and the latter likewise for Selina (who notes that she had to go "all the way back"), so it could easily be way past midnight, when very few people would be up and about in the financial district.
** Plus, we see lots of garbage cans around her after her fall. So, she probably was pushed from a rear window into a filthy and deserted courtyard, nobody saw her falling, and people would only have found the body on the next morning, while taking the trash out.
** The novelisation has his son Chip walk in on it almost instantly afterwards. Max starts stammering about how she fell and he tried to help her, and then Chip simply smiles and says, "she probably jumped." Max is then described as feeling incredibly proud of his son. Then they go home together, and expect somebody to find Selina tomorrow.

** Also, please consider what's known as Waitress Syndrome: a woman adopts a higher pitch in order to come off as nonthreatening and placating (y'know, like a waitress; note that as a "lowly assistant/secretary" Selina's not exactly going to earn points for adopting a stronger tone). Though of a lot of women get stuck speaking this way, it's quite common for arousal, anger or some other emotion or scenario to result in a switch to a lower pitch that comes from the diaphragm instead of higher up. It stands to reason that post-FreakOut Selina isn't exactly in the mood for maintaining an ingratiating tone.
** Is the obvious answer of "she's not trying blow her secret identity" not obvious enough?

*** That actually serves two purposes: first, it hits her in the head, knocking her out, making it easier for the Circus Gang to kidnap her. Secondly, the head wound gets her blood on the Batarang, making it easier to implicate Batman in the crime.

** Considering what a CrapsackWorld this is, I'm honestly not surprised; maybe the staff were ordered to euthanise the animals but couldn't bring themselves to do it.
** I wrote a fanfic once that explained what happened after the Gotham police rounded up the child-kidnappers at the Red Triangle Circus (which occurred several years before the events of the movie). The Penguin and what few of his henchpeople were able to escape fled to Canada, where they lived for a time in the Northwest Territories and honed their cold-weather survival skills (which explains why they were able to comfortably inhabit the Arctic World exhibit). After a few years, they came back across the border and bounced around from one American city to another until Penguin had decided that the kidnapping furor had blown over and it was safe to return to Gotham City. According to my {{Fanon}}, then, it's possible that they stole some penguins from another zoo somewhere and brought them to Gotham with them.

** He's lived underground most of his life, despite occasional trips to the surface and has been exposed to chemicals and deprived of proper nutrition. Him looking much older than he is is no surprise.

** While some of what she went through might have been survivable she also clearly has superhuman powers of some kind. Between the falls, the electricity and the gunshot wounds she should be a broken, bloody, fried, twitching mess. But instead she's intact, barely injured and walking it all off. Too much happens to her for it all to just be luck and we have confirmation of metahumans in later movies.

** One of Creator/TimBurton's biographers theorises that Shreck intended to "corner the market" on electricity (in Gotham, anyway) and sell it to the people at artificially high rates (since the stockpiling would enable him to claim that some of the power was unaccounted for).

** This is ''precisely'' what Enron did. However, the actual "power draining" portion of the plan is not, as far as I'm aware, illegal, but their accounting practices were. So, as long as he buried the terms of what the plant would actually do in {{Technobabble}} double talk, he'd have no reason to worry about it, making his attempted murder of Selina a bit unusual.

** Because after the Ice Princess was kidnapped, Batman's batarang was found at the scene and a news reporter was pressing Commissioner Gordon on the possibility of Batman being the culprit. Given this, and the fact that Bruce notices a headline reading "BATMAN BLOWS IT" earlier in the movie, it's pretty clear the public was already beginning to lose trust in Batman (what little trust they even had). Seeing the Ice Princess herself fall from a building with Batman visible on the roof just so happened to fuel their already-seeded suspicions.

** I always thought that he was just going to hypnotise the kids with the umbrella.

* After the events of this movie, why is everyone completely okay with Batman again by the beginning of ''Forever?'' The only person who could have spoken for him being innocent to his kidnap and murder charge was the Ice Princess, who was unfortunately said murder victim.

** There's also Selina. It's possible that she could have approached the police and insisted that Batman was innocent, purely out of remorse. Of course, one would wonder how she could clear Batman without revealing that she was Catwoman and was in on the Ice Princess's kidnapping in the first place, but then again she could have just explained the logic in the "Batman's-a-recluse" rationalisation above - and that, coupled with the Red Triangle Gang's confessions, would be more than enough to exonerate Batman.
** Peter David's novelisation of ''Forever'' features a flashback scene where Batman meets Harvey Dent for the first time. Dent suggests Batman turn himself in for the events of ''Returns'', and Batman comments "If you're referring to that business with The Penguin, his gang can tell you everything you need to know." before telling Dent where to find them. So, at least in the book, it was addressed.

** The last thing we see in the movie is the Bat-Signal, so Gordon clearly still trust Batman.

** Agreed. Batman is allies with the city and it's not necessarily a revelation of his identity to register the Batmobile with the city. I'm sure the 1966 Adam West Batman would have done so.
** It's been ages since I read the film's novelisation, but I do recall that there was a brief explanation for it. Basically, the Penguin got the blueprints from Max Schreck. As how Max got them, he simply found which company built the Batmobile and then bribed one of the designers.
** An early script had the initial attack on Gotham Plaza a lot more elaborate, with the thugs invading before the tree-lighting ceremony begins and infiltrating Max Shreck's penthouse office, taking Max, Chip, the Mayor, and Selina hostage. Batman has to fight his way up to the penthouse level to save them, in the process leaving the Batmobile behind in an alley - but forgetting to put the shields up on the car. Even more of the Penguin's thugs then approach the exposed automobile and take photographs of it (thus providing an explanation as to how The Penguin got the blueprints to the Batmobile). The novelisation indicates the Penguin got the plans from a disgruntled engineer who helped design it.
** As for punching through the floor: Batman must have known about the one weak spot or stress point in the floorboards, perhaps caused by damage inflicted in a previous conflict that he maybe patched up but never got around to properly fix...
** You trying to tell me that Bruce ''didn't'' design and build the Batmobile himself? Even putting aside the obvious security issues (which the movie even points out when Alfred says they can't bring it to the local mechanic), it's not like Bruce ''couldn't'' build a car himself, considering that he's a tech genius and mechanical engineer. The Batcave, I'm still trying to figure out, though...
** Presumably Batman, in most of his depictions, has to have conducted business involving contractors for R&D, cave excavators etc literally wearing his suit for anonymity, rather than through intermediaries who could be traced back to Bruce (or god forbid, as Bruce himself). And he just pays them handsomely, with lucrative and recurring contracts, to help minimise the risk of them selling him out down the line. Maybe part of that "trust" involves transporting them with blindfolds to the location, so they can't tie it to Wayne Manor or anything related to it. And yes, doing a lot of the work himself where he can actually devote the hours of the day to honing such skillsets and not having other matters to attend to.
* How did Batman find out about the rocket-armed penguins? The Penguin sends them out, then Alfred tells Batman, "the penguins are converging on Gotham Square," which as far as I can tell is the first either of them even know about them!

* Penguin scolds Gotham's elite for leaving their children unprotected. Excuse me? These are people who could well afford a babysitter if not a full time nanny. The very wealthiest of them may even have a security team. It's very unlikely they'd leave their children completely unprotected.

** What point (if any) that the Penguin makes is that they're not there when their children need them. He's just taunting them. He's revealed that their sons are all going to be taken, and now he's rubbing it in to increase their pain and misery.

** The Penguin is twisting the knife to make the richers feel extra guilty for abandoning their kids during a time where dangerous lunatics dressed up like clowns are terrorising the city.

** There's a few reasons for this, one of them being that attempted murder is actually pretty horrifying. While it's easy to be desensitised to such things in movies, the average person generally flips out at the realisation that there's someone nearby who has motivation to kill them and isn't afraid to do it, and that coupled with the extreme stress and trauma of being pushed out a window and almost dying is enough to cause histrionics in certain kinds of people. In addition to that, Selina was already established as being a little... off. She stumbles and stutters through her life in a bit of a daze, reacts to everything as if she's suppressing her bitter and unhappy emotions, electrically shocks an unconscious mook for giggles, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and has an apartment smeared with pink and sugary stuffed animals.]] She was already on the breaking point, and this incident is just what drove her over the edge. "Happy to be alive", "confident", and "cooperates with the police" are not phrases in her vocabulary.

** Wait...he tried to kill her and bullied and belittled her during her entire time under his employment and you can't understand why she tried to kill him? Add to the fact that she CLEARLY had a mental breakdown from her near death experience and years of psychological abuse and likeness that she's been pushed around all her life by men like Shreck.
** To say "it's not like Max raped Selina" is a little callous. While rape and attempted murder are two very different crimes that can have varying psychological effects on different victims, it's not a stretch to imagine that the trauma they cause can also be processed similarly. Just as if Max had raped Selina, in the scene he overpowered her both emotionally and physically. He made her feel small and dehumanised her (in a kind of ultimate sense- her life was so insignificant that he had no qualms ending it.) Worst of all, just as if she had been raped, she has to live with the memory of such a horrifying event forever.
** What makes you think the police would automatically take Selina's word for it, much less launch a full investigation of Shreck? Remember that the Mayor introduced him to the crowd at the tree-lighting early in the film as "Gotham's own Santa Claus", and Shreck himself threatens both the Mayor and Bruce Wayne over his power plant plans. Both the Mayor and Wayne should logically have a lot of power and influence in Gotham, and the fact that Shreck is comfortable taking them on shows that ''he'' has just as much influence, if not more so. Shreck could easily call in a few favours and have the investigation quashed... and then push Selina out of a higher window, figuratively speaking.

** The whole idea is that several of Catwoman's 'deaths' don't look so deadly - she seems to have survived through pure luck, leaving us in a "well, is this really supernatural?" state. Then at the end when Shreck shoots her, and she fries them both with the generator, it's Creator/TimBurton finally confirming that yes, Catwoman did gain supernatural abilities.

*** Harley Quinn combined majoring in psychiatry with acrobatic training, why couldn't Selina? In fact, the novelisation explicitly explains that her mother pressured her into taking kick-boxing classes.

** Depends on character interpretation, but it's possible that with the only person she loved her enemy and unreachable dream, no future, nothing to work for, and a severely damaged sense of personal identity, Catwoman was intentionally goading him into killing her. Or maybe she wanted to see if she actually ''was'' immortal. She's clearly not stable by this point.
* Where the Hell do you get mind controlling rocket launching backpacks for your penguin army?
** Well, his Red Triangle Gang friends were able to figure out how to hack into the Batmobile using blue prints they supposedly constructed from photographs of said vehicle, at least that's how it was in an earlier script if I'm not wrong. I wouldn't be surprised that they were able to create rocket launchers for Penguins. Especially using the money that Oswald probably got during his run for Mayor.

** On one hand, it seems a little dumb considering what Max had already seen Batman do in the scene before unmasking and how bad Bruce played his rich idiot act around Max earlier, but on the other, it's the Bruce Wayne persona doing its job: He's so air-headed and distracted, people have a hard time registering that he's Batman even when they catch him red-handed.
** I always assumed he was intentionally playing dumb in order to try and cause some sort of distraction. Especially at the way he says "was." If he wasn't, then wow.
* How does Penguin not get sued or arrested for biting the guy's nose? You think that would hurt his chances of running for mayor.

** For that matter, did it ever occur to them what was in store for them if Cobblepot had actually been elected mayor? Shreck would have gotten his power plant, and Cobblepot would have access to all the fame and riches and women he could ever want... but what would his gang get out of it? Since the Cobblepot campaign was solely on an anti-crime platform, ''at best'' they'd all be arrested and locked up for years or even decades. Or Cobblepot might even decide to have them executed in a "Night of the Long Knives" reenactment. On the other hand, if they got lucky, Cobblepot would seize dictatorial powers and make them his personal death squad - and, let's be honest, that just wouldn't work. What chance would a band of carny sandinistas with ''some'' military-grade weapons have against the National Guard? Or the U.S. Army? Or even a U.N. peacekeeping force, if it had to come to that? Unless the Penguin has been running a secret terrorist cell somewhere, his reign of terror would be a very short one.

* Just how can one leather coat can make an entire costume for Catwoman?
** If it's big enough it'd work. Or she might have had one than one piece of black leather clothing to finish up. With the way it's all cut up and stitched together it'd be impossible to tell.

** Because she's insane, irrational and projecting her own issues on others.
** She saw the woman as her old self when she was being taken advantage of by everybody and demeaned by Max. I guess her criticism/scolding of the woman would be that she should stand up for herself and not rely on men to bail her out. I mean there’s a reason why Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman became a feminist icon because she was very fierce, believed in independence, and ending the male dominance of Gotham.
** Did you mean, not rely on other women to bail her out? Or on men? Or, on men ''or'' women?

** Right. Being as, like several other fictional superwealthy villains around this time (late 80s/early 90s) such as King Koopa in ''Film/SuperMarioBros'', he's intended as a satirical TakeThat to Donald Trump, and Trump is known as a NeatFreak... there you go.
** It's also winter, and usually we see him either leaving or entering rather than having been inside for awhile. His suits are also pretty extravagant and retro (note the spats on his shoes), so the gloves make a nice accessory.
* Something that's been bugging me a lot. It's said that Max Shreck was really supposed to be Harvey Dent from the last film, and that Catwoman was supposed to scar him into Two-Face. I understand that, but having watched the last film, are we really supposed to believe that Dent was to build a power-sucking power plant, and then push someone out a window for finding that out?

** The whole "Max Shreck was originally Harvey Dent" thing is just a rumour anyway. I've yet to see any evidence that it's true.

* Why did Bruce unmask himself in front of Shreck? It's not like prison will stop him from telling people Bruce's secret. Did Bruce forget he was there?
** He wasn't thinking straight. He was trying to reach out to Selina by showing her his face to soften her before she killed Shreck. He seemed to really care about her, and in that moment, pulling a ''Dark Knight Rises'' and quitting Batman to disappear be with her might have seemed like a viable option. No matter who knows he's Batman, he's rich enough to protect himself, Alfred, and Selina as long as they get out of town.

** In ''Film/BatmanForever'', he tried to talk Dick Grayson out of killing Two-Face for killing his family because it would only make the "pain grow". Presumably talking from experience, as killing the Joker didn't seem to brought any peace for him. So he's trying to save Selina from living that life. Although he ''did'' strap a bomb on the strongman, assuming it actually killed him or just injured him.
* Just where, exactly, is the Batmobile's engine? When it becomes the Batmissile, the wheels retract in to where the turbine is supposed to go, and the shields also take up space.

** In ''Film/BatmanForever'', he tried to talk Dick Grayson out of killing Two-Face for killing his family because it would only make the "pain grow". Presumably talking from experience, as killing the Joker didn't seem to brought any peace for him. So he's trying to save Selina from living that life. Although he ''did'' strap a bomb on the strongman, assuming it actually killed him or just injured him.

** Presumably the water the Penguins were swimming in is clean, while the water he plans to drown the kids and Shreck in is polluted by Shreck's own toxins.

* Is pushing Selina Kyle into the street the best idea? Other people could see her falling out the window. Is he that cocky about his ability to not get caught?

** The novelization has his son Chip walk in on it almost instantly afterwards. Max starts stammering about how she fell and he tried to help her, and then Chip simply smiles and says, "She probably jumped." Max is then described as feeling incredibly proud of his son. Then they go home together, and expect somebody to find Selina tomorrow.

** Also, please consider what's known as Waitress Syndrome: a woman adopts a higher pitch in order to come off as nonthreatening and placating (y'know, like a waitress; note that as a "lowly assistant/secretary" Selena's not exactly going to earn points for adopting a stronger tone). Though of a lot of women get stuck speaking this way, it's quite common for arousal, anger or some other emotion or scenario to result in a switch to a lower pitch that comes from the diaphragm instead of higher up. It stands to reason that post-FreakOut Selena isn't exactly in the mood for maintaining an ingratiating tone.
** Is the obvious answer of "She's not trying blow her secret identity" not obvious enough?

*** Actually, considering that it's Burton's Batman, it probably murdered the hell out of them.
*** It didn't murder them because those henchmen were seen in later scenes. One got arrested.

** Considering what a CrapsackWorld this is, I'm honestly not surprised; maybe the staff were ordered to euthanize the animals but couldn't bring themselves to do it.
*** I wrote a fanfic once that explained what happened after the Gotham police rounded up the child-kidnappers at the Red Triangle Circus (which occurred several years before the events of the movie). The Penguin and what few of his henchpeople were able to escape fled to Canada, where they lived for a time in the Northwest Territories and honed their cold-weather survival skills (which explains why they were able to comfortably inhabit the Arctic World exhibit). After a few years, they came back across the border and bounced around from one American city to another until Penguin had decided that the kidnapping furor had blown over and it was safe to return to Gotham City. According to my {{Fanon}}, then, it's possible that they stole some penguins from another zoo somewhere and brought them to Gotham with them.

*** Ice may float just fine, but what we see in this scene are ''individual snowflakes'', which would melt into the water.
*** Maybe there was a chemical in the water that pevented it from freezing at the usual temperature? So it was cold enough to maintain snow but couldn't freeze normally. We are told that there's toxic waste being produced an the Peguin ends up with a pool of it.
*** We're also told the toxicity levels are Shreck's fault, and if Oswald's a baby, Shreck can't be old enough to have a job, let alone run a company.
*** Not necessarily. Though rare, it is possible for people to own/run a (big) company at a young age. A recent example would be Facebook which was started by a guy in college.
*** Did you not notice that Chip Shreck wasn't exactly 20 even? Or Shreck's white hair? It's more than possible Shreck lead the company then to; he was certainly old enough.
** I chalked it up to [[SpecialEffectFailure Special Effect Failure]] and it was fake snow they used in the scene. Nobody realized it would float till too late to fix.

** He's lived underground most of his life, despite occasional trips to the surface and been exposed to chemicals and deprived of proper nutrition. Him looking much older than he is is no surprise.
*** That and it adds to the already rampant [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic biblical symbolism]].

*** They were rich, probably well-known people. If Oswald was somehow traced back to them, they would probably be incredibly embarrassed. And when you're a shallow rich asshole character in a movie, embarrassment isn't something you can get over too well.
*** Why only in a movie? Shallow rich assholes don't take kindly being embarrassed in real life too...
*** He had more going for him than just his 'gross deformities'; before they got rid of him, he had bitten the doctor's nose off at his birth and killed the family cat as a toddler. He wasn't just deformed. He was violent.
*** He did not bite the doctor's nose off. The doctor just held the handkerchief up to his nose because he was so disgusted by Penguin's deformities.

** That was the point of her character. She was dead and then resurrected. I think that's pretty much canon

*** While some of what she went through might have been survivable she also clearly has superhuman powers of some kind. Between the falls, the electricity and the gunshot wounds she should be a broken, bloody, fried, twitching mess. But instead she's intact, barely injured and walking it all off. Too much happens to her for it all to just be luck and we have confirmation of metahumans in later movies.

*** One of Creator/TimBurton's biographers theorizes that Shreck intended to "corner the market" on electricity (in Gotham, anyway) and sell it to the people at artificially high rates (since the stockpiling would enable him to claim that some of the power was unaccounted for).
*** Isn't this similar to what Enron would later do in real life?
*** This is ''precisely'' what Enron did. However, the actual "power draining" portion of the plan is not, as far as I'm aware, illegal, but their accounting practices. So, as long as he buried the terms of what the plant would actually do in {{Technobabble}} double talk, he'd have no reason to worry about it, making his attempted murder of Selena a bit unusual.
*** Except that the plans were implied to already be drenched in {{Technobabble}}, but Selena was smart enough to work out the true purpose of the "power plant" anyway, and could therefore explain it to anyone who was interested.
* One plot point that makes no sense at all when FridgeLogic is applied to it is that people would actually believe that Batman would push the Ice Princess off a building. It certainly looked bad....but wasn't it completely out of character for Batman? Yes, he kills - but he only kills [[AssholeVictim people who reasonably deserve it]], and no one can claim that that girl deserved to die by any stretch of the imagination. And even if, by some perverse logic, Batman ''did'' think she deserved to die, why would a guy who's a known recluse and has been known to employ smoke bombs to mask his exit from a crowded area commit such a heinous crime ''in a place where he knew everyone would be able to see him''? Considering all of this, it wouldn't be hard to arrive at the conclusion that Batman was probably framed.

*** All it took was one idiot opening his mouth and then mob mentality kicked in.
*** How exactly did they see Batman at the top of that building?

* So, did The Penguin actually think the first-born sons of Gotham would just jump into a pool of raw sewage to their deaths because he was holding a cute umbrella?!

** I always thought that he was just going to hypnotize the kids with the umbrella.

* After the events of this movie, why is everyone completely okay with Batman again by the beginning of ''Forever?'' The only person who could have spoken for him being innocent to his kidnap and murder charge was the Ice Princess, unfortunately said murder victim.

** Plus, when Penguin sent some of the gang members out to kidnap the first-born kids and Batman stopped them, it's implied that he took them to the police, so odds are Batman was able to clear his name.
** There's also Selina. It's possible that she could have approached the police and insisted that Batman was innocent, purely out of remorse. Of course, one would wonder how she could clear Batman without revealing that she was Catwoman and was in on the Ice Princess's kidnapping in the first place, but then again she could have just explained the logic in the "Batman's-a-recluse" rationalization above - and that, coupled with the Red Triangle Gang's confessions, would be more than enough to exonerate Batman.
*** Peter David's novelization of ''Forever'' features a flashback scene where Batman meets Harvey Dent for the first time. Dent suggests Batman turn himself in for the events of ''Returns'', and Batman comments "If you're referring to that business with The Penguin, his gang can tell you everything you need to know." before telling Dent where to find them. So, at least in the book, it was addressed.

*** The last thing we see in the movie is the Bat-Signal, so Gordon clearly still trust Batman.

*** Agreed. Batman is allies with the city and it's not necessarily a revelation of his identity to register the Batmobile with the city. I'm sure the 1966 Adam West Batman would have done so.
** It's been ages since I read the film's novelization, but I do recall that there's was a brief explanation for it. Basically, the Penguin got the blueprints from Max Schreck. As how Max got them, he simply found which company built the Batmobile and then bribed one of the designers.
*** An early script had the initial attack on Gotham Plaza a lot more elaborate, with the thugs invading before the tree-lighting ceremony begins and infiltrating Max Shreck's penthouse office, taking Max, Chip, the Mayor, and Selina hostage. Batman has to fight his way up to the penthouse level to save them, in the process leaving the Batmobile behind in an alley - but forgetting to put the shields up on the car. Even more of the Penguin's thugs then approach the exposed automobile and take photographs of it (thus providing an explanation as to how The Penguin got the blueprints to the Batmobile). The novelization indicates the Penguin got the plans from a disgruntled engineer who helped design it.

** You trying to tell me that Bruce ''didn't'' design and build the Batmobile himself? Even putting aside the obvious security issues (which the movie even points out when Alfred says they can't bring it to the local mechanic), it's not like Bruce ''couldn't'' build a car himself, considering that he's tech genius and mechanical engineer. The Batcave, I'm still trying to figure out, though...

*** He also did open fire on the crowd, kind'a proving armed, dangerous, and definitely now on the run resisting arrest.

*** Which isn't that incorrect. Parents who can afford a full-time sitter or nanny could very well spend all their time out on the town, spending almost no time with their children, especially in [[CrapsackWorld Tim Burton's Gotham City]].

** The Penguin is twisting the knife to make the richers feel extra guilty for abandoning their kids during a time where dangerous lunatics dressed up like clowns are terrorizing the city.
** And just for the heck of it, [[MurderArsonAndJaywalking he called them bad dancers]] too.

** There's a few reasons for this, one of them being that attempted murder is actually pretty horrifying. While it's easy to be desensitized to such things in movies, the average person generally flips out at the realization that there's someone nearby who has motivation to kill them and isn't afraid to do it, and that coupled with the extreme stress and trauma of being pushed out a window and almost dying is enough to cause histrionics in certain kinds of people. In addition to that, Selina was already established as being a little...off. She stumbles and stutters through her life in a bit of a daze, reacts to everything as if she's suppressing her bitter and unhappy emotions, electrically shocks an unconscious mook for giggles, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and has an apartment smeared with pink and sugary stuffed animals.]] She was already on the breaking point, and this incident is just what drove her over the edge. "Happy to be alive", "Confident", and "Cooperates with the police" are not phrases in her vocabulary.
** For one, she wants justice and the police won't do anything. I see her more as a vigilante than a straight-out bad guy. She also hated Batman for killing her, so she's likely hate Shreck for the same reasons.

** Wait...he tried to kill her and bullied and belittled her during her entire time under his employment and you can't understand why she tried to kill him? Add to the fact that she CLEARLY had a mental breakdown from her near death experience and years of psychological abuse and likeness that she's been pushed around all her life by men like Shreck,
** To say "it's not like Max raped Selina" is a little callous. While rape and attempted murder are two very different crimes that can have varying psychological effects on different victims, it's not a stretch to imagine that the trauma they cause can also be processed similarly. Just as if Max had raped Selina, in the scene he overpowered her both emotionally and physically. He made her feel small and dehumanized her (in a kind of ultimate sense- her life was so insignificant that he had no qualms ending it.) Worst of all, just as if she had been raped, she has to live with the memory of such a horrifying event forever.
** What makes you think the police would automatically take Selina's word for it, much less launch a full investigation of Shreck? Remember that the Mayor introduced him to the crowd at the tree-lighting early in the film as "Gotham's own Santa Claus", and Shreck himself threatens both the Mayor and Bruce Wayne over his power plant plans. Both the Mayor and Wayne should logically have a lot of power and influence in Gotham, and the fact that Shreck is comfortable taking them on shows that ''he'' has just as much influence, if not moreso. Shreck could easily call in a few favors and have the investigation quashed...and then push Selina out a higher window, figuratively speaking.

** The whole idea is that several of Catwoman's 'deaths' don't look so deadly - she seems to have survived through pure luck, leaving us in a 'Well, is this really supernatural?' state. Then at the end when Shreck shoots her, and she fries them both with the generator, it's Creator/TimBurton finally confirming that yes, Catwoman did gain supernatural abilities.

* Why did Catwoman berate the woman she saved for "allowing" herself to get captured? The woman (like any other) was just walking down the street, and, through no fault of her own, was blind sighted by a would-be rapist.

** The whole "Max Shreck was originally Harvey Dent" thing is just a rumor anyway. I've yet to see any evidence that it's true.

*** But that might not stop Shreck from doing so anyway [[EvilIsPetty out of pettiness]].

** In ''Film/BatmanForever'', he tried to talk Dick Grayson out of killing Two-Face for killing his family because it would only make the "pain grow". Presumably talking from experience, as killing the Joker didn't seem to brought any peace for him. So he's trying to save Selena from living that life. Although he ''did'' strap a bomb on the strongman, assuming it actually killed him or just injured him.

*** He did not bite the doctor´s nose off. The doctor just held the hankerchief up to his nose because he was so disgusted by Penguin´s deformities.

* Why is Batman so averse to the idea of Selina killing Max? This movie's version of Batman has no problem with killing people. Isn't this like extremely hypocritical?

* How exactly did Batman strap a bomb to that guy after punching him multiple times?

** See the headscratcher all the way above that explains more.

* If the sewer water is toxic – then how can Penguin's, well, penguins swim in it?