I figured out where Gotham City is actually located

Two Batman-less Batman adaptations have recently hit screens, with Joker: Folie à Deux having recently hit theaters and HBO’s The Penguin airing weekly. Both adaptations are set in separate continuities, but they do raise one age-old question: where is Gotham City? Batman’s stomping grounds, alongside many other fictional DC cities, don’t exactly have a firm real world counterpart.

Both The Penguin and Joker: Folie à Deux actually do answer the question of where Gotham City is, but there’s just one problem. Joker: Folie à Deux and The Penguin don’t agree on where Gotham is. So where in the world is Gotham City?

The boring answer of Joker: Folie à Deux

A boring choice in a web of bad choices

Joker: Folie à Deux has released to a myriad of critical lashings, but one of the biggest details flying under the radar from Joker: Folie à Deux is that its version of Gotham City is in New York. Visually, Joker: Folie à Deux’s Gotham is just 1970s New York City. This answer also shines through in where Joker and Joker: Folie à Deux were filmed, as both had much of their principal photography shot in New York City. This answer is also supremely boring.

Joker and Joker: Folie à Deux’s 1970s aesthetic does offer some visual interest, but there is something defaulting about making Gotham City simply just be New York City. So in an otherwise widely disliked movie, there’s possibly the most boring interpretation of Gotham that just happened to skate by unnoticed.

The Batman’s comic accurate answer

The Sopranos jokes might be right

Warner Bros. Pictures

HBO’s The Penguin has established that Matt Reeves’ take on Gotham City is in New Jersey. And this answer comes straight out of the comic books, where Gotham City is traditionally depicted as being in New Jersey. This answer also lends some additional ammo to the myriad of jokes comparing The Penguin to The Sopranos.

However, unlike with Joker: Folie à Deux, the answer to location of The Batman’s Gotham isn’t entirely backed up by filming. The bulk of The Batman’s filming actually took place outside of America, with Gotham coming to life in Liverpool. There were extra bouts of filming done for The Batman elsewhere in the UK, with some taking place stateside in Chicago.

This changed for The Penguin, which was entirely shot in New York City. So while Matt Reeves’ take on Gotham is accurate location wise, there are many different cities that have served as the backdrop for it.

Answers from other adaptations

Gotham can be anywhere, and everywhere

Warner Bros

Of course, Joker: Folie à Deux and The Penguin aren’t the only two Batman adaptations to ever exist. There are tons of Batman movies out there, and each of them have their own unique takes on where Gotham is. More interestingly, they all have different filming locations for Gotham City.

Going all the way back to the Adam West days, Gotham City looks radically different from anything you’d see on screen today. And this is because the 1960s Batman TV series was primarily shot around California. This gives the series’ Gotham a very distinct look compared to all future adaptations, and also gave Batman an excuse to carry shark spray.

Moving a couple of decades forward to the 80’s, Tim Burton was actually the first to film Gotham in the UK. But it wasn’t shot around any particular city like Reeves’ Gotham. Instead, Burton’s Gotham is an enormous set that was built on 51 acre lot. Batman Returns also filmed primarily on sound stages, but in California instead of the UK.

The sound stages used for Batman Returns were also used for its two Joel Schumacher-helmed follow-ups. Interestingly, Schumacher’s Gotham did get some exterior shooting done, mostly in Los Angeles. Though Gotham has never been thought of as being in California, it has been filmed in California pretty often.

Moving forward to the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, there’s actually two very distinct versions of Gotham at play. On the one hand, there’s the Gotham City seen in Batman Begins. It’s sort of a visual in-between for Burton’s Gotham and Nolan’s second version of Gotham. This version of Gotham City was primarily shot in Chicago.

In Nolan’s latter two Batman films, Gotham is portrayed much more like a realistic city. Much of The Dark Knight was still shot in Chicago, but the look of Gotham was wildly different from Batman Begins. Where things get more interesting is with The Dark Knight Rises, which was primarily shot in Pittsburgh.

Though you wouldn’t think this change means anything to the actual cannon location of Nolan’s Gotham, there is one large detail that makes it actually important: Gotham’s football team is the Pittsburgh Steelers. Though they’re called the Gotham Rogues, they were the same colors and were portrayed by the actual Pittsburgh Steelers. Safe to say, Nolan’s Gotham is Pittsburgh or, at the very least, in Pennsylvania.

And of course, there’s also Zack Snyder’s take on Gotham as seen in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. This take on Gotham was primarily captured in Detroit, and was portrayed as being just across the harbor from Metropolis. This itself isn’t too far off from the two cities geographical proximity in the comic books, as Metropolis is supposed to be in Delaware.

And there are so many more adaptations of Gotham City that could be pointed towards, but ultimately, there’s one true answer to where Gotham is: New Jersey. But if you’re focused on adaptations of Gotham, the answer is going to be wherever the creative team behind the adaptation wants Gotham to be. Batman may be whatever Gotham needs him to be, but Gotham is where directors need it to be.