Batman Returns opens with The Penguin being abandoned by his parents Tucker (Paul Reubens) and Esther (Diane Salinger), but did the villain later kill them in revenge? Batman 1989 was a landmark blockbuster that helped set the template for comic book movies to come. Tim Burton's rich, gothic vision of Gotham City hit a nerve with audiences, as did Michael Keaton's portrayal of the titular superhero. Given that the movie was a runaway success, a sequel was inevitable, and it featured Batman squaring off with Danny DeVito's The Penguin and Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman.
Surprisingly, Burton wasn't initially eager to take the director's seat for what became Batman Returns. He had an incredibly stressful time making the original, but Warner Bros' considered him so key to Batman 1989's success, they gave him free rein creatively. This may explain why the sequel is just so dark and unique. Despite being a mainstream blockbuster aimed at family audiences, the film's menacing tone and sexuality angered some parents and critics at the time. The movie also grossed less than Batman 1989, which led to Burton being replaced on Batman Forever by Joel Schumacher.
Despite this early controversy, Batman Returns is fondly remembered by fans now. That's another reason viewers are very much looking forward to the return of Michael Keaton's Bruce Wayne/Batman for The Flash. Batman Returns sets out its grim tone early when Paul Reuben's Tucker and Diane Salinger's Esther Cobblepot decide to lock their "monstrous" infant son Oswald in a box and toss him into Gotham's sewers. Oswald survives and is later raised in a circus, and eventually becomes the villain known as "The Penguin." While he later makes a show of laying flowers at his parents' graves to the press and saying he forgives them, he might have murdered them years before Batman Returns begins.
Batman Returns shows The Penguin to be incredibly bitter and spiteful, and it's clear he already knew who his parents were despite pretending he didn't. His final plot in the sequel is to murder all the firstborn in Gotham as revenge for his cruel abandonment, so he likely had very dark feelings towards Tucker and Esther. The Penguin's father Tucker was a District Attorney in Gotham and the Cobblepot's were a wealthy family, so they likely felt Oswald could never fit in with their upper-class world. Tucker and Esther died at some point between the opening and Penguin's re-emergence from the sewers, but the movie's novelization mentions they died under "mysterious conditions," suggesting Penguin may have had a hand in it.
The Penguin got to know Gotham City and its population quite well through his years in the sewers, as he displays to Max Shreck when he kidnapped him. It would have been easy for Batman Returns' Penguin to engineer some kind of accident or tragedy for his parents, and while Oswald lays flowers at the grave, one subtle detail that's easy to miss is that the flowers are dead. Sort-of Christmas movie Batman Returns doesn't underline or even infer Penguin had a hand in Tucker and Esther's deaths, but the details are there for viewers to pull their own conclusions.