For all its faults, Justice League definitely made an effort to celebrate the long history of DC adaptations to date. Danny Elfman’s score, for instance, featured musical cues from 1978’s Superman and 1989’s Batman, while costume choices contained nods to movies such as Watchmen. It turns out that the team-up film sports another easter egg though, one which pays tribute to an iconic DC TV show we never thought the once ultra-serious DCEU would reference: the classic campy Batman series from the 1960s.
As discovered by Redditor @officialjfftv, when the prison guard who meets Barry Allen sends a signal to Bruce Wayne to let him know that he’s spotted the speedster, the symbol on his phone appears as a red old-fashioned telephone. Old-school Bat-fans will recognize this as a nod to the Bat-Phone featured in the show, which starred the late, great Adam West.
Check it out in the gallery down below, along with some recently released BTS shots from the film:
For those young whippersnappers amongst you who’ve never seen the 1960s series, the show dispensed with the Bat-signal and had Commissioner Gordon contact Batman via a special bright red phone in his office. This would then connect to an identical phone in Bruce Wayne’s study at Wayne Manor. It’s a neat 21st century update that the Bat-Phone is now an app on a cellphone.
With this find, the scene now becomes a double-easter egg. That’s because the guard who presses the Bat-Phone symbol is actually Marc McClure, who played Jimmy Olsen opposite Christopher Reeve in the original four Superman movies (not to mention the oft-forgotten Supergirl spinoff). As briefly glimpsed in the first trailer, McClure played a different role in Zack Snyder’s initial cut of Justice League, so it seems this scene – and therefore the Bat-Phone easter egg, as well – was the work of replacement director Joss Whedon.
Though their portrayals of the Caped Crusader couldn’t be more different, Adam West and Ben Affleck each had a great deal of respect for each other’s version of Batman. Before his death in 2017, West praised Affleck’s acting chops and called the backlash against his casting “ridiculous.” Likewise, after the actor’s passing, the DCEU star took to Twitter to say that West was “kind, funny and an all around great guy.”
Justice League is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray and can be purchased here.