YMMV / Batman: The Movie

• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • Shark repellent sprays have existed in one form or another since the Second World War, where the Pacific front required the development of effective countermeasures (developed by an OSS Agent named Julia Child. Really). Real-life sprays, however, normally focus on making the user less 'tasty' or dampens your scent rather than attacking the creature itself.
  • The ridiculous riddles that seem impossible to work out logically yet Robin seems to perfectly answer, i.e. "What sits in a tree, weighs six ounces, and is very dangerous?" ("A sparrow with a machine gun!") and "What has yellow skin and writes?" ("A ballpoint banana!") seem like Bat Deduction. However, these were actually well-known riddles back in the 1960s. Absurd riddles were a huge fad, designed to subvert your expectations with completely ludicrous answers. Banana/fruit jokes, bird jokes, and elephant jokes were popular subsets of these. Bat Deduction states that such a deduction must use a huge mental leap to reach its conclusion, but these riddles weren't any kind of leap to US baby-boomers in the 1960s. Robin would've heard a ton of these riddles, especially if he was in school at the time. The way the characters combine what the answers to the riddles mean together, however are examples of Bat Deduction, as the riddles would be told by students as individual riddles, and not as a set of clues.
• Ass Pull: Everyone's "Deductions" are this. See "Bat Deduction" on the main page for the crowning example of this. The fact that he's right about just about everything, no matter how absurd, makes it all the more hilarious.
  • Also: "Robin! Hand me the Shark Repellent Bat-Spray!"
  • Batman and Robin are magnetically trapped, unable to move, as a torpedo hurtles towards them. Cut to the Dynamic Duo driving away on their boat as they somberly explain how a random porpoise swam in front of the torpedo off screen, saving their lives.
    Batman: It was noble of that animal to hurl himself into the path of that final torpedo. He gave his life for ours.
• Fridge Brilliance: Catwoman has always been shown to be attracted to the Caped Crusader. It's possible that this is why she doesn't fight him during the submarine battle.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Batman can't get rid of a bomb. Funny then. After The Dark Knight Rises...not so much.... or alternatively it becomes even more hilarious. Especially seeing how in both films Batman makes it out alive off-screen.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Joker putting explosives in someone's stomach. I'm sure we'll never see that happen again...
  • Batman's line about how "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!" brings to mind all the fuss surrounding another campy Batman film, and also, for more plot-related reasons, one of the more serious ones...
    Charlie Brooker: The Dark Knight Rises isn't "bad", but behind all the noir shine, it's no more intellectually nourishing than the 1960's, which was camp, and floopy, and fun, and never once mistook itself for Ingmar Bergman's From the Life of the Marionettes.
    Batman: Some days, you just can't rid of a bomb!
    Charlie Brooker: Actually, that is almost identical to the end of The Dark Knight Rises!
    • To add to it, the more serious Batman had a bad knee and was laid out by a single stab wound, whereas the goofier Batman literally walked away from a shark biting his leg in the same area for over a minute.
    • To add even more to it, both films have Batman appear to be blown up by said bomb only to show up completely unharmed afterwards.
    • Between the aforementioned gritty film and this movie, there's also when Batman's actor played a parody of himself to team up with one of the most iconic versions of Batman to solve a chain-bomb-explosive case.
    • According to IMDB, Adam West spent five hours filming the scene. No wonder he couldn't get rid of a bomb!
  • The exploding shark. Jaws: The Revenge.
  • Fighting sharks in a helicopter eerily foreshadows Sharknado.
  • An NSA spy satellite has a logo of an octopus with tentacles reaching around the globe, much like the villains' logo in the movie.
    • Also, the titular crime syndicate in Spectre has an octopus logo and even a signet ring. A giant octopus even appears in that film's opening sequence.
  • After Penguin's goons end up turning into antimatter as a result of being rehydrated with heavy water, Batman comments that they won't be coming back, not in this universe. So...they got sent to another dimension.
  • The lineup of villains in this film, the Joker, the Riddler, Catwoman, and the Penguin, all appear together again 56 years later in The Batman (2022).
• Ho Yay:
  • Robin seemed less embarrassed about listening in on Bruce and Kitka and more irritated/jealous.
  • The Riddler almost sounded like he had a bit of a crush on Batman.
    Riddler: Oh, but I must, I must! Outwitting Batman is my sole delight, my heaven on earth, my very paradise!
• Memetic Mutation: "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb" and "Shark-Repellent Bat Spray", in addition to all the other memes from the show. They later appeared in DC Super Hero Girls and The LEGO Batman Movie, respectively.
• Tear Jerker: Batman's reaction to finding out that Ms. Kitka is actually Catwoman is played surprisingly straight. He just stares off into space, trying to maintain a professional stoic facade as the weight of Catwoman's betrayal of his feelings crushes him. One could even argue this is a Ur-Example of Batman's history with falling for Femme Fatales who would eventually betray him.
• Values Resonance:
  • While turning off the camera was Too Dumb to Live under those circumstances, Robin's discomfort about how his surveillance detail is making him watch Bruce and "Miss Kitka" get intimate on a date feels more relatable in the age of digital surveillance and the surrounding controversies.
  • Batman and Robin's concern about marine life (a porpoise that makes an offscreen Heroic Sacrifice for them and even a shark that is rigged with explosives) feels more relevant today than it did before.

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