Michael Murphy is probably best known for playing the mayor in Batman Returns, but that's
not the only time he played an authority figure in a superhero movie.
Nor is it the only time that Paul Reubens has played the father of a certain villain.
We'd be willing to wager most folks already know what Michael Keaton looks like today,
as he still appears in movies and TV shows on a regular basis, even though he turned
70 in 2021.
He had lead roles in back-to-back Best Picture Oscar winners, 2014's Birdman and 2015's Spotlight.
A few years later, he then had a small pivotal part in the Aaron Sorkin-directed The Trial
of the Chicago 7.
He then showed up on the Hulu miniseries Dopesick, for which he won a Screen Actors Guild award
for Outstanding Male Actor in a TV Movie or Miniseries.
Keaton focuses a tad more on dramatic roles these days, but if you thought he was done
with superheroes after he passed on 1995's Batman Forever, you'd be highly mistaken.
In an ironic nod to his time as the Dark Knight, he played the Vulture, another winged comic
book icon, in 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming.
And he's even reportedly slated to reclaim the cape and cowl and become Batman once again
in 2022's The Flash and HBO Max's Batgirl.
Michelle Pfeiffer's A-lister status has hardly diminished since the early 90s.
Her notable recent projects include the 2017 horror parable mother!, as well as the ensemble
crime caper Murder on the Orient Express, also released in 2017.
And then her performance in 2020's French Exit garnered her a Golden Globe nomination.
And as is the case with Michael Keaton, as well as so many other actors working today,
Pfeiffer is no stranger to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
She made her first appearance as Janet Van Dyne, the original Wasp, in 2019's Ant-Man
and the Wasp, and she's been confirmed to reprise the role in 2023's Ant-Man and the
Wasp: Quantumania.
And while several other actors have played Selina Kyle in various projects over the years,
none have managed to convey anything like the righteous mania of Pfeiffer's version.
"Three lives down!
You got enough in there to finish me off?"
These days, Danny DeVito is most widely recognized for playing a nihilistic crime lord with megalomaniacal
ambitions.
We're speaking, of course, about disgraced businessman Frank Reynolds on the long-running
sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Like the version of the Penguin that DeVito played in Batman Returns, Frank has virtually
zero capacity for ethics and morals.
He's a pathological liar, a lech, a manipulator, an embezzler, and an irresponsible gun owner.
However, Frank also has something resembling a heart that occasionally guides him towards
altruism.
Nothing we see in Batman Returns, however, leads us to believe that Oswald Cobblepot
is capable of any empathy at all.
Then again, DeVito's Penguin never gets to run a bar with his lovable slimeball buddies.
If Oswald had the same second chance that Frank has enjoyed, he'd probably still be
evil, but somewhat less evil.
DeVito's career includes plenty of other highlights in addition to those iconic characters.
He was a regular on the 70s sitcom Taxi, and he's starred in such varied movies as The
Jewel of the Nile, L.A. Confidential, and Jumanji: The Next Level.
He's also an accomplished behind-the-scenes operator, having directed 1992's Hoffa and
2002's criminally underrated Death to Smoochy.
Following his performance as diabolical capitalist Max Shreck in Batman Returns, Christopher
Walken contributed his acting prowess to 1993's True Romance and 1994's Pulp Fiction.
He'll turn 80 in 2023, so it's perhaps unrealistic to expect him to continue to crank out classics
at the same clip that he used to.
Regardless, his schedule doesn't seem to have slowed down all that much.
In 2022 alone, he co-stars in the BBC One series The Outlaws, as well as the Apple TV+
thriller Severance.
Walken has also shown up in a few clunkers that predated this recent shift to TV, including
the 2020 family comedy The War with Grandpa, as well as 2019's The Jesus Rolls, which featured
John Turturro's return to his minor character from The Big Lebowski.
On the positive side, Walken received considerable praise for his performance as a humble farmer
in 2020's Percy Vs. Goliath, a considerable turn against type, considering how closely
he's been associated with villainous roles throughout his career.
"Bruce Wayne, why are you dressed up like Batman?"
Thanks to Pee-wee's Big Adventure in 1985 and owning Saturday morning kids TV from 1986
to 1990 with Pee-wee's Playhouse, Paul Reubens was already a certified household name by
the time of Batman Returns' release in 1992.
Decades later, he brought his alter ego back for one more go-round in 2016's Pee-wee's
Big Holiday.
But besides that, this comedy legend has revisited his signature character relatively infrequently
since the 80s.
"Pee-wee!"
"That's my name, don't wear it out."
Nowadays, Reubens tends to show up here and there in various films and TV shows, having
lately contributed cameos to the ABC game show To Tell the Truth and the FX vampire
mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows.
Astoundingly enough, Reubens' performance as the Penguin's criminally negligent father
in Batman Returns is much smaller than his other Batman-related roles, at least in terms
of minutes onscreen.
He provided the voice of Bat-Mite in multiple episodes of the 2009 animated series Batman:
The Brave and the Bold, and he played a much more sympathetic version of the Penguin's
dad for an arc on Fox's Batman prequel series Gotham.
Casting Diane Salinger and Paul Reubens as the Penguin's parents was a clear tribute
to Tim Burton's directorial debut, Pee-wee's Big Adventure.
In that earlier feature, Salinger played Simone, an adventurous woman who's trapped in a loveless
marriage and a dead-end waitressing job.
While Salinger's hardly the biggest name from Batman Returns, she has enjoyed a consistent
and interesting presence in film and TV since the mid-80s.
This has included stints on HBO's mid-2000s Dust Bowl apocalypse drama Carnivàle and
2000's Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue, for which she provided the voice of Queen Bansheera.
Salinger also played a therapist in the 2001 cult comedy Ghost World, which means that
even if she never gets her own Marvel franchise, she's still the only actor on this list who
had a scene with Steve Buscemi in Thora Birch's best movie.
Arguably underutilized in Batman Returns, Michael Murphy's character doesn't even have
an actual name listed on the film's IMDb page.
Instead, he's simply known as "Mayor."
Although, he can at least rest assured that the novelization of the film reportedly does
name this character as "Roscoe Jenkins."
As for Murphy himself, he hasn't slowed down as much as you might expect for someone in
his 80s.
He appears in Netflix's 2019 Bob Dylan documentary Rolling Thunder Revue, and he's provided voiceovers
for episodes of PBS's American Experience as recently as 2020.
Having started his film and TV career in the early 60s, there's a lot more to Murphy than
a medium-sized part in a Caped Crusader flick.
He's known for his several collaborations with director Robert Altman, and Batman Returns
isn't even his only significant superhero movie, as he played Warren Worthington III's
dad in 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand.
Former Saturday Night Live staple Jan Hooks briefly pops up in Batman Returns as Jen,
one of Max Shreck's personal image consultants.
In addition to her SNL tenure from 1986 to 1991, her TV credits include the likes of
Designing Women, 3rd Rock from the Sun, and Primetime Glick.
She passed away in 2014 at the age of 57, and some present-day showbiz movers and shakers
think she was owed a little more applause during her time on Earth.
During Elle's Women in Hollywood Awards in 2014, Tina Fey profanely declared,
"Jan should have had a bigger career.
Jan deserved a big movie career.
Certainly as big as Rob Schneider's f---ing career.
She was a bigger star on SNL."
We're not saying Tina Fey is right all of the time; even though she's plenty smart and
funny, nobody is right 100 percent of the time.
But we can say objectively and definitively that when it comes to Jan Hooks, Tina Fey
is unequivocally correct.
If you ask us, having his nose nearly bitten off by the Penguin during an ill-advised image
consultation session is the zenith of Steve Witting's career.
But it's hardly his only on-screen highlight, as he's been a regular player in the background
of major film and TV endeavors since the mid-80s.
He's certainly been doing pretty okay in the last decade or so, especially when it comes
to movies directed by Martin Scorsese, as he showed up in 2010's Shutter Island, 2013's
The Wolf of Wall Street and 2019's The Irishman.
And he's booked a role in Scorsese's upcoming western Killers of the Flower Moon.
Witting has additionally appeared in a handful of this era's most significant TV shows, including
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Arrested Development, and he also showed up in the
2020 HBO miniseries The Outsider.
And Batman Returns wasn't his only collaboration in 1992 with Danny DeVito, as he showed up
in the DeVito-helmed Hoffa, in which Jack Nicholson plays the infamous labor organizer
who gave the film its name.
Most of the actors on this list don't appear in all four entries of the series that begins
with 1989's Batman and ends with 1997's Batman and Robin.
But the tenacious Michael Gough is Bruce Wayne's loyal butler Alfred Pennyworth throughout
the saga.
The latter two films, Batman and Robin and 1995's Batman Forever, aren't exactly the
most acclaimed entries in the Caped Crusader's onscreen saga.
But even if some of the movies that feature Gough aren't that good, we doubt that Christopher
Nolan would've made sure to hire someone on the level of Michael Caine to play a new Alfred
in 2005's Batman Begins if Gough's portrayal weren't a very tough act to follow.
Gough passed away in 2011 at the age of 94.
His onscreen career began in the 1940s, and he kept acting regularly throughout the 90s,
with a handful of parts after the year 2000.
Despite his appearances in high-profile films like Out of Africa and The Boys from Brazil,
his obituaries understandably tended to focus on his run as Alfred.
"Ready?"
"I think I'll take the stairs."
Commissioner James Gordon didn't have a ton to do during this particular era of Batman
movies.
This version of Gordon, played by veteran character actor Pat Hingle, has much more
in common with the noble bumbler portrayed by Neil Hamilton in the campy 60s Batman TV
show than with the determined everyman channeled by Gary Oldman in Christopher Nolan's Batman
trilogy.
Oddly enough, the timing of Hingle's life and career make us wonder why he wasn't cast
in the 60s Batman.
During that era, he routinely made guest appearances on such iconic series as Mission: Impossible
and The Andy Griffith Show.
IMDb lists the ridiculously prolific Hingle's first credit as a 1951 episode of Suspense
and his final credit as a 2008 film called Undoing Time, with very little downtime in
between.
He died in 2009 at the age of 84.
Despite having played literally dozens of other parts, the headlines of Hingle's obituaries
largely emphasized his Batman-related work.
Ironically, the nameless "Organ Grinder" in Batman Returns is played by one of the most
recognizable actors in the film.
Noted for his unusual facial features, Vincent Schiavelli arrived on plenty of people's radar
with his performance as a mental institution patient in the 1975 classic One Flew Over
The Cuckoo's Nest.
As fate would have it, Cuckoo's Nest also marked a career milestone for fellow future
Batman villains Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito.
After Cuckoo's Nest, Hollywood tapped Schiavelli pretty much whenever a distinctively odd but
non-threatening presence was required.
This included parts in the likes of 1982's Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 1990's Ghost,
and 1997's Tomorrow Never Dies.
Additionally, Schiavelli made guest appearances on so many significant TV series that we don't
even know how to start listing them.
But if we have to pick one, let's go with Lanny the conjoined twin from the 1995 X-Files
episode "Humbug."
Schiavelli passed away in 2005 at the age of 57.
"Get off my train!"
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite movies and TV shows are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.