Gotham City

• 1. Introduction

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  Gotham City was first named as Batman's hometown in Batman #4, published in December 1940, and it has been his stage ever since. Yet nobody can say for certain where it sits. In one animated episode, prison inmates stamp out license plates reading "Gotham: The Dark Deco State", as though the city were a state of its own. Writer Bill Finger and artist Bob Kane created it, and in most versions it ranks among the most crime-ridden cities in the world. Every team of artists, directors and designers that touches it rebuilds it from scratch. Where did its name come from? Which real cities have stood in for it, and what did its designers want those streets to feel like? And what happens to a city that is struck by plague, earthquake and isolation, and then asked to carry on?

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• 2. A Borrowed Name

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  Bill Finger told the historian Jim Steranko that his first choices were Civic City, then Capital City, then Coast City. None of them stuck, so he flipped through the New York City phone book and spotted the name Gotham Jewelers. He knew at once that he had his answer. He explained why he avoided New York itself in his own words: "We didn't call it New York because we wanted anybody in any city to identify with it."

  Washington Irving had hung the word on New York long before. It appeared in the edition of the periodical Salmagundi dated the 11th of November 1807, a publication that lampooned the city's culture and politics. Irving took it from an English village called Gotham, in Nottinghamshire. That village was known for the legend of the Wise Men of Gotham. In the tale, the villagers pretended to be fools so that John, King of England, would not visit. The nickname became popular for New York during the 19th century, and a phone book entry carried it into a comic book. The city it named would never keep a fixed address.

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• 3. Shifting Addresses

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  New Jersey is where the comics have traditionally placed Gotham City, although depictions have varied over the decades. Gotham and Metropolis are sometimes drawn as twin cities facing each other across Delaware Bay, with Gotham on the New Jersey side and Metropolis in Delaware.

  The DC Extended Universe films made the New Jersey address official, down to the county. Paperwork in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice names Gotham County. Amanda Waller's files on Deadshot and Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad place the city in New Jersey. Director Zack Snyder confirmed that Metropolis and Gotham City sit close together, and The Boston Globe compared the pair to Jersey City and Manhattan. A Turkish Airlines television ad shown during the 2016 Super Bowl even had Bruce Wayne, played by Ben Affleck, promoting Gotham as a tourist destination.

  Elsewhere the address drifts. The animated series Young Justice hints at Connecticut, near Bridgeport. Batman: The Animated Series scatters contradictory clues. In the episode Joker's Favor, a driver's license lists a hometown of Gotham Estates, NY. In Avatar, a map places the city where Long Island meets the Hudson River, and a police file in Fire from Olympus gives a New York address. The episode Harlequinade puts the population at roughly 10 million. A computer screen in the 1998 film Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero lists Barbara Gordon's location as Gotham City, NY, beside the Manhattan area code 212. Joker: Folie à Deux, from 2024, states outright that Gotham lies in New York State.

  A city seal in Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders shows a founding date of 1820. Tim Burton's Batman celebrates a 200th anniversary for the city. Either detail would make Maine the likeliest home. In Batman & Robin, the targeting screen on Mr. Freeze's giant laser also locates Gotham on the New England shoreline, possibly as far north as Maine.

  Some maps do not even try to be accurate. In several episodes of the 1960s live-action Batman television series, Batman studies a transparent map of Gotham that is really an inverted map of St. Louis. In The Flash episode Marathon, a map shows Gotham City standing where Chicago should be.

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• 4. Founding Legends

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  In 1635, according to one account, a Norwegian mercenary named Jon Logerquist founded Gotham before the English took it over. The story deliberately mirrors New York, which began as the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam before England conquered it and renamed it.

  Rick Veitch's Swamp Thing #85, featuring the character Tomahawk, makes Gotham the site of a major battle between American and British forces in the Revolutionary War. That is a nod to the real Battle of Long Island. The same comic hints that the city was also rumored to host occult rites.

  The 2011 series Batman: Gates of Gotham offers a different founding. Alan Wayne, an ancestor of Bruce Wayne, Theodore Cobblepot, an ancestor of Oswald Cobblepot, and Edward Elliot, an ancestor of Thomas Elliot, are treated as the city's founding fathers. In 1881 they built three bridges, the Gates of Gotham, each carrying one of their surnames. Edward Elliot grew jealous of the Waynes' popularity and wealth. That jealousy passed down to his great-great-grandson Thomas Elliot, who becomes the villain Hush.

  Other writers dug deeper into the dark. Peter Milligan's 1990 story arc "Dark Knight, Dark City" shows some of the Founding Fathers of the United States summoning a bat-demon. The demon becomes trapped beneath old "Gotham Town" and its influence spreads as the city grows. In 2005, Bill Willingham's Shadowpact #5 describes a being that has slept for 40,000 years beneath the ground where Gotham was built. Its servant, Strega, says the city's "dark and often cursed character" was shaped by that being, who now calls itself "Doctor Gotham".

  Frank Tieri's Gotham Underground #2 adds a gangland version. Tobias Whale claims that 19th-century Gotham was run by five rival gangs until the first "masks" appeared and formed a gang of their own. The comic never says whether those masked figures were vigilantes or costumed criminals.

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• 5. Disasters and Mayors

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  A debilitating virus called the Clench began the worst run of troubles in Gotham's history. Ra's al Ghul released it during the "Contagion" storyline. The city had only started to recover when an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale struck in the 1998 "Cataclysm" storyline.

  In the 1999 storyline "No Man's Land", the federal government cut Gotham off from the rest of the United States. The remaining residents were forced into gang warfare, either fighting or paying for protection from groups that ranged from the Gotham City Police Department to the Penguin. Eventually the city was rebuilt and returned to the country as part of a campaign led by Lex Luthor. He used the positive publicity to win a bid for President of the United States.

  The city's elected leaders have fared no better. The first mayor shown in the comics appeared in Detective Comics #68, dated October 1942. Theodore Cobblepot, great-grandfather of the Penguin, held the office in the late 19th century. Mayor Aubrey James served in the time of Thomas Wayne and was stabbed to death.

  Hamilton Hill won office with the backing of crime boss Rupert Thorne, was eventually ousted, and was replaced by George Skowcroft. Marion Grange later became mayor with Bruce Wayne's support. She was assassinated while trying to secure federal aid after the earthquake. Sebastian Hady was a corrupt mayor who was eventually killed by the League of Shadows. Michael Akins, a former police commissioner, was appointed mayor and later replaced by a man named Atkins. After the storyline "The Joker War", the anti-vigilante candidate Christopher Nakano won election in a landslide.

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• 6. Designing the Mood

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  Dennis O'Neil, a Batman writer and editor, once described Gotham in figurative terms as "Manhattan below 14th Street at eleven minutes past midnight on the coldest night in November". Artist Neal Adams has long argued for Chicago instead. In his words: "one of the things about Chicago is Chicago has alleys (which are virtually nonexistent in New York). Back alleys, that's where Batman fights all the bad guys." A third line, "Metropolis is New York by day; Gotham City is New York by night", is variously credited to Frank Miller and John Byrne.

  The real inspirations stretch further. The look of the city drew from New York first, and over the years from Chicago and London as well. The designs of the architect Hugh Ferriss shaped its look and emotional feel, especially in later depictions. Former Batman editor Paul Levitz summed up the process: "Each guy adds their own vision. That's the fun of comics, rebuilding a city each time".

  When Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski designed Batman: The Animated Series, they copied the "otherworldly timelessness" of the Tim Burton films. They used black-and-white title cards, a vintage color scheme and film noir flourishes. They also added police airships. No such craft existed, but Timm found that they suited the show's style. Writer and director Paul Dini offered his own picture: "In my mind, it was sort of like what if the 1939 World's Fair had gone on another 60 years or so". The airships have since turned up in the Batman comic books and recur in Gotham.

  Architecture can carry plot too. In Batman: Gothic, the villain Mr. Whisper builds Gotham Cathedral, and it plays a central role in the story. A 1992 storyline features a man obsessed with the architect Pinkney, who destroys several Gotham buildings to reveal the Pinkney structures hidden behind them. The editorial purpose was practical: to make the comic city look like the one in the 1989 Batman film.

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• 7. Gotham on Film

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  Tim Burton wanted a timeless alternative to New York for his 1989 Batman, and he described the result as "hell burst through the pavement and grew". Production designer Anton Furst won an Oscar for supervising the art department. He said the city was "definitely based in many ways on the worst aspects of New York City", and he drew on Andreas Feininger's photographs of 1940s New York. His draftsman Nigel Phelps produced many charcoal drawings of buildings and interior sets.

  Furst died before the sequel, so Burton chose Bo Welch to design Batman Returns in 1992. Burton felt that "Batman didn't feel big to me" and wanted the city reimagined. Welch moved away from European influences toward American Art Deco and World's Fair elements. He asked himself, "How can I create a visual expression of corruption and greed?" His answer was the oppressive architecture of world's fairs and Third Reich art. He built a tall, "oppressively overbuilt" cityscape that blocked out the light.

  Barbara Ling designed both of Joel Schumacher's films, Batman Forever in 1995 and Batman & Robin in 1997. Her Gotham was luminous and outlandish, a blend of modern Expressionism and Constructivism. Washington Post critic Desson Howe thought it recalled the 1982 film Blade Runner. In her book Bigger, Bolder, Brighter, Ling called it a cross between 1930s Manhattan and the "Neo-Tokyo" of Akira, and "like a World's Fair on ecstasy". In Batman Forever, the chase after Two-Face ends at Lady Gotham, the city's version of the Statue of Liberty. R. Kelly sang a song named after the city for Batman & Robin, later included on international editions of his 1998 double album R.

  Director Christopher Nolan has said that Chicago inspired his Gotham, and most of Batman Begins in 2005 and The Dark Knight in 2008 was filmed there. Even so, he deliberately set the city in New Jersey to honor the comic books. For Batman Begins he wanted a large, modern city that mixed architectural styles, periods and social classes. The team exaggerated New York and added the elevated freeways and monorails of Tokyo. The slum known as The Narrows took its form from the walled city of Kalhoon in Hong Kong.

  For The Dark Knight, key location manager James McAllister said that Chicago offered "visually it's that look like you would see in the comic books". Nolan added that "there's all these different boroughs, with rivers to interconnect", because Gotham is based on New York. The film used Chicago infrastructure such as Navy Pier. The Dark Knight Rises in 2012 left Chicago behind and shot in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, New York City, Newark, London, Glasgow and Toronto.

  Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice built its Gotham from thousands of photographs. The visual effects team ran them through MPC's photogrammetry pipeline to create geometry and textures for sections of real cities. Birds of Prey was shot entirely in Los Angeles. Production had been expected to move to Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia, but a California tax credit changed the plan.

  Matt Reeves's 2022 film The Batman turns to noir storytelling about corruption in the city government and police department. It filmed in London, Glasgow, Liverpool and Chicago, yet was modeled on New York. A skyscraper like the Empire State Building carries the sign "Gotham Empire", and "Gotham Square" resembles Times Square. The finale, filmed at London's O2 Arena, is called "Gotham Square Garden".

  For Joker in 2019, director Todd Phillips pictured a pre-1980s boom New York, not the iconic one. Production designer Mark Friedberg said the city was what "groomed" the title character. The film shot on location in New York City, Jersey City and Newark.

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• 8. Beyond the Page

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  Danny Cannon, an executive producer of the television series Gotham, said that filming in New York City was an important requirement for the creative team. Its mood came from the 1970s New York films of Sidney Lumet and William Friedkin, and signs bearing the area code 212 are one clue. Actor Donal Logue, who played Harvey Bullock, described a blend of roaring twenties touches and a heavy Blade Runner feeling. The 2019 series Batwoman filmed in Chicago, and 2024's The Penguin is also set in the city.

  On the 26th of March 1994, Six Flags Magic Mountain opened the Gotham City Backlot together with the ride Batman: The Ride. Park designer Kevin Barbee created the section, and the launch coincided with the largest expansion the park had undergone in 23 years. Its theming was inspired mainly by the Tim Burton films. Warner Bros. Movie World in Germany had its own Gotham City section housing Batman Adventure - The Ride. The Magic Mountain section closed at the end of the 2010 season and reopened in 2011 as the "DC Universe", with attractions for characters other than Batman.

  Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi has a Gotham City section designed by Thinkwell Group. It has rides themed on Batman, the Riddler and the Scarecrow, plus a walk-through attraction called "The Joker's Funhouse". Costumes for the performers follow The New 52 comic relaunch of 2011. The section neighbors another themed after Metropolis, the home of Superman.

  Video games have given players the streets directly. Gotham appears in Batman Begins, DC Universe Online, Gotham Knights, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, Injustice: Gods Among Us, the Lego Batman series and Rocksteady's Arkham franchise. In Fortnite Battle Royale, a crossover marking Batman's 80th anniversary turned Gotham City into the fourth version of the Tilted Towers area. Players could use the Batglider as long as they stayed within the city. On the 13th of October 2019, the "The End" live event sucked the location into a black hole. Its assets live on in Fortnite Creative as "Dark Tilted".

  The Arkham series built the largest Gothams. In Batman: Arkham City, in 2011, the slums of Old Gotham were walled off as a prison. Inside stand Penguin's Iceberg Lounge, the Ace Chemicals Plant, the Sionis Steel Mill and the Monarch Theatre with the Wayne murder scene in Crime Alley. Batman: Arkham Origins in 2013 added a younger city and a southern island linked by Pioneer's Bridge. Batman: Arkham Knight in 2015 set the story in Central Gotham City, five times larger than Old Gotham. The novelization of Arkham Knight reveals that Crime Alley was renamed Wayne Way months after the "death" of Batman.

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