'The Batman' finally released last week and has been a success both critically and at the box office.
Now, as the dust settles, we move into the territory of what we may have missed in the film or even hints of what's to come..
Fair warning from here on in - There are a LOT of spoilers below for 'The Batman', so don't say we didn't warn you!
There are plenty of nods to the comics within Matt Reeve's film, being heavily based on series like 'Ego', 'Year One' and 'The Long Halloween'. But there are also some very curiously placed hints as to potential directions the franchise could take. Or maybe, it's just a simple case of world-building. But, hey, it's fun to speculate! Let's take a look at a few potential sequel hints.
1. Bane's Venom
During the final act inside Gotham Square Garden (A clear nod to New York's Madison Square Garden) Batman is in a pretty bad way until he injects a curiously green serum into his leg. It could be written off that the serum was merely adrenaline but, its colour suggests that there may be more to it than first thought.
Within the comics, Bane (Who was last seen on in a live action movie played by Tom Hardy) uses a green substance called Venom to increase his strength. So it could be a nod to a story further down the line involving the big guy.
2. Hush
Here's a small Easter Egg that could be easily missed if you don't know who the character is. During the movie, The Riddler focuses on the death of journalist Edward Elliot, who was investigating the Wayne's secrets, specifically Martha Wayne's time spent in Arkham.
The word 'HUSH' flashes up during a video showing that Thomas Wayne hired Carmine Falcone to threaten Elliot.
Surely it's not coincidental that one of Batman's foes in the comics is called Hush and his named just happens to be Thomas Elliot. In the comics, Elliot is a childhood friend of Bruce Wayne's and is seen as almost a dark twin, who tries to kill his family in order to gain their fortune.
Elliot eventually becomes consumed by his greed and commits to trying to take down Bruce under the moniker Hush, complete with a bandaged disguise.
Now, the hint in the movie could be just an innocent nod to a comic book villain or it could spawn a story in one of the upcoming sequels. Who knows?
3. Two Face Twins
You might think the two twins that guard the Iceberg Lounge and keep getting outsmarted and beaten up by batman are merely comic relief. But knowing the detail Matt Reeves has put behind this film, there's always some sort of hidden message.
The twins are very similar to a set of twins in the comics called Min and Max. Oh, and they just so happen to be the henchmen for Two-Face, one of batman's biggest foes.
Where this all gets really interesting is how this could all be linked to the brief message after The Batman's end credits. A website flashes up on screen - rataalada.com - which leads us to some riddles.
All the riddles have been solved by online sleuths and most are innocuous dates of Catwoman's and Jokers's first introduction in the comics. However, the final riddle gives us the answer of October 1974, which saw the release of Batman #258, featuring Two-Face breaking out of Arkham. Very curious indeed.
Seeing as the twins may no longer be needed at the Iceberg Lounge as Penguin goes off in search of bigger fish (no pun intended) and with Falcone out of the picture, they may be looking for a new boss...
4. The Joker
OK, this is probably the most obvious one on the list if you've seen the film. We all knew that Barry Keoghan was involved in 'The Batman' somehow, but he was cast under a different character name. In fact, he was supposedly playing policeman Stanley Merkel and there were a load of dummy shoots made to keep his role quiet.
According to Reeves, there was also another scene shot which was pulled from the movie involving Keoghan. It involved Batman meeting with an obscured-faced Joker in Arkham to try and get to the bottom of how the Riddler worked.
But in the final cut, Keoghan only appears for one of the final scenes, where he becomes friends with his next door neighbour, The Riddler, in Arkham Asylum.
"One day you're on top of the world and the next you're a clown." We're very eager to see how Keoghan's Joker, who is apparently still in his villain infancy, fits into all of this.
5. Bludhaven
In the final scene of 'The Batman', Selena Kyle and her caped friend part ways. Kyle mentions that she might go to Bludhaven.
That may well have perked some comics fans ears up as Bludhaven is actually the city near Gotham where Nightwing uses as a base of operations and becomes its first hero.
Nightwing is the alter-ego taken up by Dick Grayson after he leaves his Robin persona. Obviously the timelines don't really add up here as Robin isn't even around yet in Matt Reeves' version of Gotham, but it could hint that an incarnation of him may be seen throughout the sequels.
Robin is a contentious character in the live-action Batman films of the last few decades. The version played by Chris O'Donnell in 'Batman & Robin' went down like a lead balloon and has never really worked seriously on screen. In Christopher Nolan's trilogy, it was heavily implied that Joseph Gordan Levitt's character John Blake would go on to take up the mantle of Robin, after inheriting Batman's Batcave.
