As we move through the re-novelization of Batman and Robin, I thought it’d be good to add some extra context where needed.
When it comes to nipples on Batman’s suit, extra context is needed.
Because why? Why would the Batsuit (and Robinsuit) have nipples?
There have been many, many explanations as to why, so let’s look at them from least to most credible.
I can’t fucking believe we’re about to spend this much energy on Batman’s nipples. I wish the production team had thought about this as much as I’m about to…
The Realism Excuse
Reddit user okayIfUSaySo:
The suit has nipples because Batman is a human and humans have nipples, and they wanted him to look like a human and meet human aesthetic ideals.
The Batsuit doesn’t really look like a human body in any way. Cape? Pointy ears? Shiny bat insignia on the chest? Gauntlets?
Is this anyone’s human ideal?
I mean, probably. There are enough kinks out there, someone must be like, “You know what I’m REALLY into? Forearms with these little blades that could really cut the shit out of me.”
Although it’s 2024 and we’re all trying to be very open to everyone and everything, I feel pretty safe drawing the line and saying that a huge shiny cape is not something average humans, applying contemporary community standards, consider to be within the realm of “human aesthetic ideals.”
If you’re into Batsuits, it’s not because they are so human-like, right?
Plus, I don’t think there’s really any lore or other idea about the Batsuit that says we really wanted Batman to look human. The whole idea behind the look was to scare criminals, right? To create this sort of mythological, crimefighting beast?
Which does go out the window pretty consistently in Batman and Robin. I can’t really picture crooks shitting themselves after they see Batman using a Bat Credit Card to buy a plant woman at some sort of bachelorette auction (although I do give a few points for the “Forever” good thru date).
So let’s put this terrible “nipples added to a rubber suit make us human” theory to bed and move on.
The Joel Schumacher Explanation:
Well [the suit] was made by Jose Fernandez, who was our brilliant lead sculpture. If you look at Batman and Batman Returns, it was the genius Bob Ringwood that created those suits, so by the time we got to Batman Forever, the rubber and techniques had gotten so sophisticated. If you look at when Michael Keaton appears in the first suit, you'll notice how large it is. It was brilliant but the best they could do at the time. By the time Batman Forever came around, rubber molding had become so much more advanced. So I said, let's make it anatomical and gave photos of those greek status and those incredible anatomical drawings you see in medical books. He did the nipples and when I looked at them, I thought, that's cool.
Ah, the classic:
I DO buy this. If there’s one thing I can say about Batman and Robin, it’s that the movie was not likely to hold back on spectacle. “Isn’t that a bit much” was probably not a phrase that held much weight on that production.
And there’s probably some truth to the fact that a movie that included a motorcycle race through a blacklight-infested building, Batman and Robin on ice skates, and Arnold Schwarzenegger in a glowing, chromed-out super suit—there’s probably an element of little aesthetic oversteps here and there getting lost in that very powerful sauce.
In other words, Batnipples would have stood out pretty hard in the brutalist version of Batman in The Dark Knight, but trying to see those Batnipples in Batman and Robin was like trying to identify one cracked mirror on a spinning, lit up disco ball.
Costume Designer Jose Fernandez’s Explanation and the Evolution
For years, there had been talk about doing a blue Batman, like in the comics, but for Batman & Robin, they committed to a blue-black suit, which sometimes appeared purple onscreen because of the lighting. Another big difference was that the nipples were more, um, showcased, if you will.
…With Val Kilmer’s suit in Batman Forever, the nipples were one of those things that I added. It wasn’t fetish to me, it was more informed by Roman armor — like Centurions. And, in the comic books, the characters always looked like they were naked with spray paint on them — it was all about anatomy, and I like to push anatomy. I don’t know exactly where my head was at back in the day, but that’s what I remember. And so, I added the nipples. I had no idea there was going to end up being all this buzz about it.
I looked into this, and there is a type of armor called a “muscle cuirass” that does have nipples sometimes, and in a lot of depictions of old gods, the gods wear armor with muscles and nipples and so on.
I guess I can buy the idea of a more “organic” or human looking armor than we saw in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, in which the Batsuit is more mechanical looking, more machine-like.
This quote appears all over the web, directly from the costumer designer himself, so it seems like the most reasonable and consistent explanation for the nipples.
I get it, everyone wants to create their iconic design, they’re take on Batman.
Why Were These Such a Problem In Batman and Robin, Even Though They First Appeared in Batman Forever?
Jose Fernandez:
…in the first one, they were just a little blob of clay. It was subtle — it was a blip. But for Batman & Robin, Joel Schumacher loved the nipples, so he said, “Let’s showcase them.” Schumacher wanted them sharpened, like, with points. They were also circled, both outer and inner — it was all made into a feature of the batsuit. I didn’t want to do it, but he’s the boss, so we sharpened them, circled them and it all became kind of ridiculous.
So, I mean, the nipples were there before, and it seems like by the second movie, the direction was, “Let’s highlight those bad boys.” Which means it’s not totally unreasonable to dislike the nipples in Forever but still hate them more in Batman and Robin.
One theory I saw said that in Batman Forever, the nipples were mostly ignored because that movie still had a somewhat dark tone, and Batman was still more of a warrior than a…I don’t even know what to call him in Batman and Robin…Broadway musical character?
Because Batman Forever’s costume design was ostensibly more of a move towards making Batman like a Greek warrior or god, and because the surrounding movie was still in transition between the darkness of Tim Burton and the campiness of Joel Schumacher in full Schumacher mode, and because it didn’t seem like a joke, it was baffling, but still excusable. It felt more like a misstep than a complete misunderstanding of a character’s appeal.
Personally, I think the deal is that Batman Forever’s worst sin is probably that it’s forgettable. It’s not as good as Batman 1989, and it’s not as bad as Batman and Robin. More than any other Batman movie, it’s just kind of there.
Which means that you can choose to forgive its shortcomings and enjoy it, or you can choose to hate it, but either way, there’s just not a lot to be passionate about with that one. Nobody cites it as their favorite, and nobody calls it their least favorite. Of all the Batman movies, I think Forever is least likely to inspire real hatred, and it’s also least likely to generate “It’s a secret success!” thinkpieces.
I think it’s less about the nipples, more about the fact that there’s just not much (nipple) to sink your teeth into with Batman Forever.
Were The Nipples Actually a Big Deal?
As silly as the controversy sounds 25 years later, the bat nipple debacle was so massive that when Kane died in 1998, his aversion to the bat nipples was mentioned in his obituary.
I mean, yes, they were a big deal. Even though Schumacher claims he had no idea it would be an issue:
"There's no way I can explain it to you other than I had no idea that putting nipples on the bat costume were going to [make] international headlines," Schumacher admitted in one special. "It never occurred to me not to put nipples on the men's suits because I didn't know the male nipple was a controversial body part."
And let’s pause here for a moment, because “the male nipple” is really important here.
As a young lad, seeing this movie for the first time, I was not thrilled as thrilled to see The Nipples Return in Batman and Robin as I was to see Batman Returns.
How’s that for a tortured sentence that I thought was too clever to delete yet not so clever that it was worth making smoother?
However, even though Batman’s nipples didn’t thrill me, the exciting prospect of BatGIRL’s suit having nipples was not something Young Pete was totally immune to. That’s the least grotesque way I can say that I watched the VHS tape of Batman and Robin with disappointment, but was buoyed through by the possibility of Alicia Silverstone nip nips.
Unfortunately, once I got to the Batgirl scenes, I was let down by Batman and Robin. Again.
Apparently, my horniness-clouded brain was not totally off-base to think there might, MIGHT be some redemption for this movie in the form lovingly-depicted boobs, an artistic trick that has been employed in comics throughout the ages.
Because at some point, Jose Fernandez DID sculpt a Batgirl suit with nipples. It wasn’t ALWAYS off the table:
With Alicia Silverstone, they wanted nipples on her too. They said, “If the guys have nipples, the girls should have nipples, too.” After I sculpted it though, everybody realized, maybe not. It was a bit obscene, so we took the nipples off.
And this, my friends, is where we hit the point where all other arguments fall away.
If Schumacher didn’t see why Batnipples would be a big thing, why would he pump the brakes when it came to putting them on the Batgirl suit? Why, if he didn’t think of this as “a thing” on the male suits, would he be like, “Oh, it’s a thing,” on the female suit?
And, if you did come to recognize the issue on the female suit, wouldn’t you be like, “Perhaps I should reevaluate their presence on the men’s suits?”
Let’s also note that the nipples were not the only difference. How about them codpieces? Not only are they sculpted with a noticeable bulge, in the final, toy-line-inspiring suits from the movie’s big showdown, they’re literally highlighted in silver:
Ah, but Batgirl’s crotch is a more demure dark navy. It does have a sort of underwear outline. But it’s A) not nearly being shiny metal, and B) something I need to stop googling because this is humiliating.
[aside: It’s interesting that Batman’s nipples vanish in this costume. It begs a lot of questions in the viewer’s mind: Why would Alfred (who makes the costumes in this movie) put nipples on the regular suit, but then decide they were too disruptive to the logo on this one? Is Alfred really into branding?"]
In Conclusion
I believe that there was an intention to create a classical look to Batman’s armor, which is where the nipples come in. Jut in. Point in hard.
I believe, though less, I’m less firm and erect on the issue, that there were a lot of big, bright, shiny aspects of Batman and Robin that would’ve made the nipples a little less obvious as a THING.
But I do think they’re a big deal.
Not the kind of big deal that has me in my mom’s basement writing angry internet posts. I live in my own place, thank you very much, and I’m not in the basement!
I think the nipples are a deal in a sort of synecdoche situation: the nipples are the stand-in for the whole.
Those lil’ nips make for a pretty good example of the larger issues of a movie filled with bad ideas, over-the-top ideas, and that seems to have been made in a vacuum with no understanding of tone. “They put nipples on the Batsuit” is a pretty good shortcut that’d explain to anyone vaguely familiar with Batman why this movie is so odd. Why it may warrant a complete re-novelization.