The Dark Knight Trilogy: 18 Cool Behind-The-Scenes Details You Didn't Know

14. The Tumbler's Design Came From Smashing Two Toys Together

The Dark Knight
Warner Bros.

After deciding that the Batmobile would appear in Batman Begins, Nolan and David S. Goyer (who worked on the stories for the entire trilogy) strongly believed that it should be "function over form", as opposed to the "form over function" seen in earlier Batman movies.

To that end, Nolan told production designer Nathan Crowley that the Batmobile should be an "assault vehicle", resembling a Humvee and a Lamborghini mixed together.

But rather than simply imagining what such a vehicle might look like - and rather than simply drawing a few sketches - Crowley chose to get a bit more hands-on.

He went to a toy store and bought a Humvee, then went to a model store and bought a Lamborghini. From here, Crowley "smashed" the two toys together, and even though the end result apparently looked "awful", this is where the basic idea for the Tumbler's design came from.

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Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.