10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn't Know About Batman: The Animated Series

10. Paul Dini Came Close To Making A Sandman Crossover Episode

Dark Nights Metal Batman Sandman
DC Comics

If Batman: The Animated Series was the best superhero effort of the nineties, then Vertigo Comics was the best comics-thing-in-general about that decade.

An imprint of DC, Vertigo was the publisher's mature readers line and featured a whole host of great properties, including Hellblazer - a book focusing on John Constantine that span-out of Swamp-Thing - and Sandman, a Neil Gaiman-fronted comic that revolved around Dream of the Endless, the ruler of the dream world.

Although Vertigo was a DC imprint, it would be years until their characters would develop a certain kind of link to the main DCU. It's with that in mind that it should be surprising to learn that BTAS writer Paul Dini approached Gaiman about including Morpheus - a character from the comic - in an episode of the show. Gaiman was reportedly enthused by the prospect, but the show's producers were supposedly put off by the idea of including a character intended for mature audiences in their animated children's show.

Tragically, there were plenty of other seriously brilliant sounding episodes that never ended up seeing the light of day. The show's writers had planned a Catwoman and Black Canary team-up, only for it to be shelved by Fox, who demanded Robin appear in every episode; Alan Burnett had also optioned an episode called 'The Gun Story', which would've followed the life of a firearm from it being built all the way up to it being used in a crime in Gotham. Bruce Timm even had a plan to make an episode where Batman would've been turned into a vampire, and while he did get to live out that concept in the criminally overlooked Justice League: Gods and Monsters, Fox ended up passing on the pitch for BTAS.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.