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

Batman Begins Tumbler
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 over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!