Batman (1989) Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
49 free Batman (1989) trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Tim Burton's Batman arrived in June 1989 on a wave of Batmania, broke the opening-weekend record and turned a bat logo into the symbol of a summer. This quiz covers the whole story of the film: the decade it spent in development, the flood of protest letters when Michael Keaton was cast, the deal that made the Joker's actor one of the best-paid men in Hollywood history, the horse-riding accident that handed Vicki Vale to Kim Basinger, the chart-topping soundtrack, the orchestral score and the English backlot where the production designer built the ugliest city imaginable. Easy questions ask who played the Joker, what the Joker's poison was called and which chemical company he fell into; the hard end gets into the Batmobile's chassis, the cathedral finale that was rewritten without telling the director, who was nearly cast as Robin and which earlier film's sets were recycled for the villain's lair. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the film, the soundtrack and the Batmobile, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed the 1989 Batman film?
Tim Burton
Tim Burton was hired by Warner Bros. after Pee-wee's Big Adventure, but the studio only greenlit Batman once Beetlejuice became a hit in 1988.
Q 02Who plays the Joker in Batman (1989)?
Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson. He had been the studio's first choice for the Joker since 1980, and a producer began courting him on the set of The Witches of Eastwick, three years before the film opened.
Q 03Why did fans protest when Michael Keaton was cast as Batman?
He did comedies
He did comedies. Fans who pictured the star of Mr. Mom and Beetlejuice in the cowl feared the film would be as camp as the 1960s television series.
Q 04Which producer suggested Michael Keaton after seeing his dramatic turn in Clean and Sober?
Jon Peters
Jon Peters. He argued that Keaton had the right "edgy, tormented quality" for Bruce Wayne, and the director, who had just made Beetlejuice with him, agreed.
Q 05In Batman (1989), the Joker declares that 'this town needs' what?
An enema
An enema. He is ranting about Batman at the time, asking what kind of world it is when a man dressed as a bat gets all his press.
Q 06Who was originally cast as Batman's female lead before a horse-riding accident forced her out?
Sean Young
Sean Young. She was hurt in a fall from a horse, and the role was recast in a hurry with an actress who could join the production straight away.
Q 07Which actor talked Batman's director out of casting him as the Joker, then regretted it?
John Lithgow
John Lithgow. He spent the meeting arguing that he was wrong for the Joker, and later owned up to the mistake: "I didn't realize it was such a big deal."
Q 08The Joker's actor cut his $10m fee to $6m in return for what?
A share of takings and merchandise
A share of takings and merchandise. The gamble paid off many times over: his cut is put at anywhere from $50 million to $90 million, and he insisted on top billing as well.
Q 09Which fictional chemical company's vat turns Jack Napier into the Joker?
Axis Chemicals
Axis Chemicals. It is one of the mob's front companies, and Napier is sent there to remove incriminating files when the real plan is for the police to shoot him.
Q 10What is the name of the Joker's poison, which makes victims die laughing?
Smylex
Smylex is the Joker's toxin, hidden in cosmetics so that certain product combinations kill with a rictus grin; Batman passes his analysis to the press so the city can be warned.
Q 11Which mob boss sets Napier up on the chemical-plant break-in over an affair with his mistress?
Carl Grissom
Carl Grissom, played by Jack Palance, runs Gotham's rackets and sends Napier into a police trap after learning of the affair; the Joker later shoots him dead.
Q 12Which supermodel played Alicia Hunt, the mob boss's mistress?
Jerry Hall
Jerry Hall, then Mick Jagger's partner. Her Alicia is disfigured by the Joker, who shows her off as a piece of his art and later announces, quite unmoved, that she threw herself out of a window.
Q 13Which museum does the Joker lure the photojournalist to and have his henchmen vandalise?
The Flugelheim
Q 21What does the Joker do to his henchman Bob after Batman steals the parade balloons?
Shoots him with his own gun
Shoots him with his own gun. He says only 'Bob. Gun.' and fires; Bob was played by Tracey Walter, cast at the urging of his real-life friend, the film's Joker.
Q 22Where was Batman filmed from October 1988 to early 1989?
Pinewood Studios, England
Pinewood Studios, England, hosted the shoot from October 1988 into early 1989; a sprawling Gotham City rose on its backlot, far from the Hollywood press the filmmakers wanted to avoid.
Q 23Which two English stately homes, one a rock-festival venue, doubled for Wayne Manor?
The Flugelheim Museum is where the Joker's gang defaces the art to a blaring boombox; he spares only Francis Bacon's Figure with Meat, saying he kind of likes it.
Q 14Why does the Joker's 'devil in the pale moonlight' line jolt Bruce Wayne?
His parents' killer said it
His parents' killer said it. The film makes the young Jack Napier the gunman, a change from the comics, where the Waynes are shot by a mugger named Joe Chill.
Q 15How does Bruce Wayne survive being shot by the Joker in Vicki's apartment?
A serving tray hidden under his shirt
A serving tray hidden under his shirt stops the bullet. Bruce had come to tell Vicki that he is Batman, and was in mid-sentence when the Joker rang the doorbell.
Q 16The Joker's parade with the promise of free money is held to celebrate what?
Gotham's bicentennial
Gotham's bicentennial, the city's 200th-anniversary festival, is the occasion; the Joker's parade balloons spew poison gas until Batman's Batwing carries them away.
Q 17Which reporter, played by Robert Wuhl, was killed by the Joker's gas in the original script?
Alexander Knox
Alexander Knox. Wuhl says the filmmakers liked the character so much that they let him live, and he returned to the part thirty years on in TV's Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Q 18Which actor played Alfred in Batman (1989) and stayed in the role for three sequels?
Michael Gough
Michael Gough. The director cast him out of fondness for his Hammer horror films, and only he and the actor playing Commissioner Gordon appeared in all four films of the series.
Q 19Which actor played Harvey Dent in Batman (1989), expecting to become Two-Face in a sequel?
Billy Dee Williams
Billy Dee Williams. The director wanted a black-and-white take on Two-Face, but Tommy Lee Jones got the part in Batman Forever; Williams finally voiced the villain in The Lego Batman Movie.
Q 20Confronting the Joker in Vicki's apartment, Bruce Wayne suddenly shouts which challenge?
"Let's get nuts!"
"Let's get nuts!" He has just told the Joker about a mean kid who 'ended up with his lights out', and Keaton barked the same line again when he returned as Batman over thirty years later.
Knebworth House and Hatfield House
Knebworth House and Hatfield House, both in Hertfordshire. Knebworth, the festival site, got its Gothic turrets and domes from the Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who began remodelling the old manor house in 1843.
Q 24Which 1986 film had previously shot at the power station used for the Joker's chemical plant?
Aliens
Aliens. Its alien-nest sets were still standing inside the disused Acton Lane Power Station in London, so Batman's crew redressed them as the chemical plant's interiors.
Q 25Batman (1989) won an Academy Award for its vision of Gotham City, in which category?
Best Art Direction
Best Art Direction. It went to production designer Anton Furst and set decorator Peter Young; a contract Furst then signed with another studio barred him from designing the sequel.
Q 26Which musician wrote and performed the songs for Batman (1989)?
Prince
Prince. The producers first wanted him for the Joker's songs and Michael Jackson for the love songs, with the film's composer blending the two; in the end he wrote and sang them all.
Q 27Who composed Batman's score, his third collaboration with the director after Pee-wee's Big Adventure?
Danny Elfman
Danny Elfman. A producer doubted the Oingo Boingo frontman until he heard the main title theme, which was later reworked to open Batman: The Animated Series.
Q 28The chart-topping single "Batdance" lifts many of its words from where?
The film's dialogue
The film's dialogue. Sampled lines from the cast run all through the track, and the film's popularity helped carry it to number one in the US, its singer's first chart-topper there since 1986.
Q 29Which singer duets on "The Arms of Orion" from Batman's soundtrack album?
Sheena Easton
Sheena Easton. She also wrote the song's lyric at the songwriter's suggestion, and the album's notes present it as a duet between Bruce Wayne and Vicki Vale.
Q 30Which two comics shaped the tone of Batman (1989)?
The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke
The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke. The director, no comics reader, called the second the first comic he ever loved, because he could finally tell which panel to read next.