Trivia / Nightwing

• Creator Backlash: In 2021, Devin Grayson admitted regret over the infamous "Tarantula rapes Nightwing" part of the Blockbuster storyline, calling ill-conceived, unforgivable and recognizing that it wasn't integral to the story at all.
• What Could Have Been: According to Wizard magazine, Nightwing was slated to encounter Two-Face and a "reformed" Joker in the aftermath of the Cataclysm arc. This was before No Man's Land was decided upon instead.
  • He also could have been dead had Dan Didio had his way in Infinite Crisis. Geoff Johns outright refused to write it, so while we ended up with the crappy Bruce Jones "One Year Later" story with tentacle monster!Jason Todd, Dick is still amongst the living.
    • In addition, had Dick Grayson died, Jason Todd would've taken up his role as Nightwing, thus explaining why he was impersonating him in the above story (before being turned into a tentacle monster). This would also explain Dick's out of character behavior in Outsiders, as Winick was likely writing under the impression that Jason was Nightwing instead of Dick.
  • At the height of the success of the Batman movie franchise in the 90's, there were plans for a Nightwing Spin-Off starring Chris O'Donnell. The film was scrapped after Batman & Robin underperformed at the box office and got extremely negative reviews.
  • The original version of the final issue of the New 52 series was written by James Tynion IV and drawn by Meghan Hetrick, centring around Dick's fake funeral in the aftermath of his "death" in Forever Evil (2013). The issue got as far as being pencilled and inked before it was scrapped entirely and replaced by a new final issue written by Tim Seeley and Tom King that tied more directly into Grayson. Scans of the pages without colouring or lettering can be found online.
    • As revealed in this Newsarama article, the original version of issue #30 was intended to lead into a new volume of Nightwing to be written by Tynion and drawn by Mikel Janín. It would have featured Dick on the hunt for Owlman (still at large after Forever Evil (2013)) and having taken up the cover identity of police officer John Blake – and meanwhile, another new Nightwing would appear who evidently knew that Dick was alive. The proposal was killed by Executive Meddling: higher-ups at DC wouldn't allow the use of Owlman, denied permission to make the Nightwing suit blue again, kept rejecting proposals for who the mysterious new Nightwing would end up being, and finally demanded that the series pursue a new direction with Dick as a super-spy. Ultimately, Tynion quit and was replaced as writer by Seeley and King; Janín stayed on as the main artist for what ended up becoming Grayson.

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