One of Stan Lee's many innovations as editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics set the publisher's superhero stories in the real-life location of New York. That greater sense of reality and interconnectedness in the comics helped create a sense of community among fans (which Lee intentionally cultivated). You can follow the trend of creators and fans try to fit superheroes into the "real world" back into Lee's beautiful New York. Contrast this with the older DC Comics heroes, who had their own adventures in places like Gotham City, Star City, etc. These characters made homes because they were so obviously figures that could never exist in our world; writing a superhero comic is like telling a fairy tale.

Notice how Superman's home, Metropolis, is literally named for the word meaning "big city." But then again, a lot of comic fans really want to know where DC's fabulist cities are, just for internal consistency. That's especially true with the most famous: Batman's Gotham City.

So, canonical answer: Gotham City is in the state of New Jersey. (Maybe there's a reason The Penguin takes so much from The Sopranos.) In The Amazing World of DC Comics #14 (published in 1977), writer Mark Gruenwald writes an encyclopedic history of the Justice League. In the character bio section, Gruenwald explicitly refers to Gotham City as being in New Jersey. (Gruenwald also listed Metropolis as being in Delaware in this issue, which is also accepted as canon.) New Jersey makes enough sense as a Gotham location; it's not New York itself, but close enough. Since then, Gotham is usually, implicitly written to be in New Jersey - but not always.

In the animated Young Justice, a map of the East Coast of the United States shows that Gotham is located in southern Connecticut, around where Bridgeport, CT, is in real life.

Warner Bros. Animation

Like New Jersey, Connecticut is an East Coast state that borders New York, so it fits the Gotham profile should they have. As a born and raised Connecticut native, Batman and co. I obviously liked being a fellow Nutmegger. But that's the point, right? Gotham City should be nowhere and nowhere, like Springfield in The Simpsons, so that everyone can see their hometown in it.

DC countered the assumption that Gotham City was a stand-in for New York City; on real New York has even appeared in several DC comics, so it and Gotham exist simultaneously in the DC universe. But if there's one real city that Gotham allegorizes, it's New York.

"Gotham" is a nickname for New York City coined by writer Washington Irving in the 1800s. When Batman debuted in 1939, DC Comics (then National Comics) was also based in New York, and thus Batman's credited creators, Bill Finger and Bob Kane, lived there. In fact, Detective Comics #33 (the first appearance of Batman's oft-retold origin story) explicitly listed his hometown as Manhattan. It was only a year after publication, in 1940's Batman #4, that Batman was relocated to the fictional Gotham City.

In The History of Steranko Comics by writer Jim Steranko, Bill Finger recounts:

"I was originally going to call Gotham City 'Civic City.' Then I tried Capital City, then Quest City. Then I flipped through the phone book and noticed the name Gotham Jewelers and said "that's it, Gotham City". We didn't call it New York because we wanted someone in any city to identify with it, of course Gotham is another name for New York.

Later Batman writers also based Gotham on New York. In his novel Batman: Knightfall, Dennis O'Neill describes Batman's urban aura as a reflection of our collective fear that cities are filled with evil lurking in the shadows. He concludes that "Batman's Gotham City is Manhattan below Fourteenth Street at eleven minutes past midnight on the coldest night in November."

A quote often attributed to Frank Miller (screenwriter of The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One) suggests that “Metropolis is New York by day; Gotham City is New York at night." Miller talked about how he was robbed while living in New York, where both his Batman comics and his previous Daredevil series (which, as a Marvel series, literally took place in New York) were colored. "(Being robbed) made me, at least briefly, as angry as (Batman) was." Miller told CBR in 2016.

Gotham City may be patterned after an East Coast metropolis, but the 1960s Batman TV series took it West; the show was filmed throughout southern California in the Los Angeles area.

Then director Tim Burton took Batman across the pond. The 1989 Batman film was filmed on sets built at Pinewood Studios in England. The exterior of Wayne Manor was actually Knebworth House, a stately home in the Hertfordshire countryside. However, Burton's sequel, Batman Returns, was filmed at Warner Bros. Studios in California. Director Joel Schumacher filmed part of "Batman Forever" in New York (Wayne Manor's new exterior was actually the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture on Long Island, which was later reused for the 2014 Gotham TV series), but much of the " Forever ” and its sequel “Batman and Robin” were still being filmed on California soundstages.

However, Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman was filmed in Detroit, and the Michigan city represented Gotham and Metropolis. Snyder's film presented Gotham and Metropolis as twin cities, separated by a bay—implicitly pinning them to New Jersey and Delaware, respectively, just like the comics.

Christopher Nolan's goal with his Batman films was to bring the hero into the real world. That meant avoiding the fancy gothic kits used by Burton and Schumacher. Instead, Nolan filmed his "Dark Knight" trilogy in real cities, reinforcing the believability and the idea that this Batman could actually exist in the real world - because we see him moving through it in every scene.

Although Batman Begins was shot mainly in England, Nolan shot city exteriors not only in London, but also in New York and Chicago. Chicago then became the main filming location for The Dark Knight. Nolan spent parts of his childhood in Chicago and felt that he had the right look for his Gotham City: "I think the architecture of the city is really brilliant, fantastic. It gave us an incredible amount of variety that is used as a backdrop for the film."

The Dark Knight Rises moved from Chicago, instead filming in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, New York City and Newark, New Jersey (with some exteriors in London and Glasgow, Scotland). Richard Moskal, then director of the Chicago Film Office, told the Chicago Tribune in 2011 that he believed the filmmakers wanted to stay "fresh" by not using Chicago in the third film. However, since The Dark Knight is the most famous of Nolan's Batman films, Chicago remains synonymous with Gotham for many. One person who approved of the connection was the late "Batman" comic book artist Neal Adams. who said:

"Chicago had a reputation for a certain kind of crime. Batman is in this kind of corrupt city and he's trying to bring it back to a better place. One of the things about Chicago is that Chicago has back alleys (which are virtually non-existent in New York. Back alleys, that's where Batman fights all the bad guys).

Matt Reeves' Batman takes cues from Nolan, grounding the Dark Knight in reality and goes a step further with a truly unbalanced Batman (Robert Pattinson). Similar to Batman Begins, Batman took off and filmed its Gotham City location in the UK. Specifically, "Batman" was primarily filmed in Liverpool, but with additions from London, Glasgow and Chicago. According to "Batman" production designer James Chinlund, the filmmakers chose Liverpool because its naturally Gothic architecture evoked the history they wanted to suggest for Gotham City: an old and "decaying" metropolis, but one that had periods of renewal.

The tower that Batman dives from in his costume to escape the Gotham police? It's actually Liverpool's The Royal Liver Building. Chinlund told the BBC:

"I started exploring that area and it slowly started to reveal how rich that world is and what an amazing city Liverpool is in terms of (how) it follows the story. times over the years, and the patina that existed in the buildings, and obviously the hard weather... it all fit like a glove."

The Penguin spin-off TV series was filmed in New York, but i briefly saw driver's licenses on the show still marks Reeves' Gotham as being in New Jersey. Christine Miliotti (Sofia Falcone) is a native daughter of Jersey, and with Colin Farrell's Oz accent, Gotham couldn't be anywhere else but the City State.