6. Ditto For Man-Bat
Yet another bad guy they were considering for Batman Triumphant took things in an even more radical direction than The Scarecrow, Harley, or even the Hatter. Things had already moved away from the grounded pretty quickly with Danny de Vito's Penguin in Batman Returns and the big blue Mr Freeze in Batman & Robin, but introducing Dr Kirk Langstrom would've been a whole different ball game. A sort of Jekyll And Hyde-style anti-hero, Man-Bat is kind of exactly what he sounds like. Batman is a human who dresses as a bat; Man-Bat is what happens when Langstrom knocks back an experimental cocktail of chemicals that transforms him into a half-human, half-bat, with fur and wings and a piercing shriek and all. Usually he's an out-of-control menace like the Hulk rather than openly evil. So if Man-Bat did appear in Batman Triumphant it would've probably not have been as the main villain. The rumours at the time had Mark Linn-Baker down as the first choice to play Man-Bat, possibly because he too had a hyphen in his name. Seriously, he's apparently famous for a sitcom called Perfect Strangers. What even is that.
Tom Baker
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Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
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