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

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

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.