31 Most Iconic Lines From Batman Movies

20. Bane

The Quote: "When Gotham is ashes, you have my permission to die."

Though he was badly hamstrung by a plot resolution that turned him into a love-struck side-kick, and less so by his reductive mouth piece, Tom Hardy's theatrical delivery of Bane's menace added a strange, jarring aspect to his performance of the hulking monster. And like the best classically trained English villain actors, the style he adopts, even behind the mask, adds hyperbole to his threats that gives them an otherworldly edge and more menace than just cold hard delivery could muster.

19. The Penguin School Of Driving

The Quote: "Don't adjust your sets. Welcome to the Oswald Cobblepot school of driving. Gentlemen, start your screaming!"

This is precisely the kind of line, and the kind of over-blown performance that Joel Schumacher would try - and fail - to emulate in his characters in Batman Forever and Batman And Robin. It's easy to see why, as The Penguin's near-nonsensical boasting is the stuff that truly enduring quotes are made of, but it comes with a strong foundation of insanity. Oswald Cobblepot is a fractured creature, and though he is presented as a tragic figure, the audience gets brief, contradictory punctuations like this where his true capacity and hunger for evil comes out in his relish to hurt things.