10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn't Know About The DC Animated Universe

Batman: The Animated Series was a classic of superhero animation which remains unmatched to this day. But on its own it wasn't yet the basis of a vast shared universe. No, we had to wait for its sister series Superman: The Animated Series to sow the seeds of that, not just in a Batman/Superman crossover, but also through introducing more heroes from the wider DC universe.

The most obvious forerunner of the later Justice League shows is the Superman second season episode Speed Demon in which The Flash shows up in Metropolis for a Fastest Man Alive race. The character there, though, was just "The Flash" and remained masked and without a secret identity.

In fact, that state of affairs continued once the character returned as one of the leads on Justice League. He went through almost the entire run of the show without his real identity ever being revealed. It was not until the finale Starcrossed that the audience learned who The Flash actually was. (Which, had the series not been recommissioned as the expanded Justice League Unlimited, might have ended up the finale of the whole DCAU).

There's a good reason for that, though: the producers hadn't actually decided on who it was beneath the mask!

Rumour has it that Timm and his team wanted classic Silver Age Flash Barry Allen in the role, while Warner Bros. and DC preferred the then-current incumbent speedster Wally West. The compromise was just not to ever unmask him (figuratively but also most of the time literally).

Finally, after 52 episodes, it was settled that it was Wally in the red suit, not that that made too much difference to later episodes.