10 Best Batman Characters That Didn't Come From The Comics
6. The Gray Ghost
The Gray Ghost is a memorable enough character in his own right, but the fact he’s voiced by Adam West only sweetens the deal. West famously was the first live-action Batman action in the 1960s TV series and returns here to voice a villain in The Animated Series.
There’s more than a little bit of meta in that casting choice, as Gray Ghost was a TV star young Bruce Wayne watched as a boy before becoming Batman. He returns present day as a washed up hack, and while that isn’t exactly true of West, it’s entertaining to see the young Batman idolising the original Caped Crusader.
In his storyline, he initially regrets ever playing Gray Ghost, as it left him typecast and unable to find work. That part is true of West, and the writers admitted they would not have made this parody of his career without his approval.
He sells off memorabilia piece by piece to pay the rent, but it ends up being bought by a dastardly foe who plans to re-enact one of the TV scenes for real. This leads to the Gray Ghost and Batman teaming up to solve the crime, uniting the old and the new.