Carmine Falcone's jibe at The Batman's demeanor cuts deep because it harkens back to the night when Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered. Even though The Batman keeps many elements of Bruce Wayne's origins a mystery, it sticks to the Caped Crusader's original mythos by establishing that Thomas and Martha Wayne were murdered when he was a child. With this as a cue, Matt Reeves' The Batman also adds John Turturro's Carmine Falcone to the mix by revealing that Thomas had hired him to keep the secrets of Martha's mental illnesses away from the public eye.
Unfortunately, things went downhill for the Waynes as soon as Falcone killed a reporter who threatened the family's reputation, when a mysterious assassin took down Thomas and Martha. Towards the end of The Batman, Falcone's misdeeds come to light, and Robert Pattinson's Vengeance captures him and hands him over to the GCPD. Before Paul Dano's Riddler kills Falcone moments later, the mobster drops a crucial reference to The Dark Knight's traditional origins by calling Robert Pattinson's Batman "Zorro."
Why Falcone's Insult Works In The Batman
Falcone's insult is excruciatingly personal because, according to Batman's traditional backstory, his parents were killed the same night they watched The Mark of Zorro at a movie theater. Since The Mark of Zorro premiered in 1940 in classic Batman lore, it would not make sense for Robert Pattinson's contemporary Bruce to watch it with his parents and that, too, in a movie theater. However, it is possible that he watched The Mask of Zorro, released in 1998, on the traumatic night of Thomas and Martha's assassination.
The fact that Zorro was among the primary inspirations behind Batman makes this easter egg all the more interesting. Influenced by the original The Mark of Zorro, which came out in 1920, Batman's creators, Bill Finger and Bob Kane, poured many elements of the pulp swashbuckler's personality and vigilante endeavors into The Dark Knight's Gotham adventures. As an homage to Zorro and his impact on their comic book character, they also intentionally added The Mark of Zorro to Batman's original lore to affirm that the black-masked acrobatic hero inspired Bruce to don a cape and fight Gotham's crime.
The Batman's Wayne Murders Is Still A Mystery
If Robert Pattinson's Bruce Wayne did actually watch one of the iterations of the Zorro movies moments before Martha and Thomas' murder, it is possible that Falcone was either directly involved with the killings or was working behind the scenes to simulate them. How else would he possibly know such grave details about the crime? However, since The Batman does not deal with the real events of the unfortunate night that forever changed Bruce's life, the Wayne murders still remain a mystery in Matt Reeve's Bat-verse.
Considering the significance of the murders in triggering Bruce Wayne's hunt for vengeance in The Batman, the mysteries behind them could become primary plot points in the franchise's future installments. By delving deeper into the impact of the murders, Matt Reeves' could highlight the night's aftermath and tie the murders in with the harrowing blood feud between the Falcones and the Maronis in a spin-off. In addition, in The Batman's sequel, Reeves could borrow another fascinating arc from the original comic books where the Joker uses Bruce's history with Zorro as a ploy to wreak havoc on Gotham.
