Where is Gotham City located? While widely believed to be somewhere on the eastern seaboard of the United States, the exact state that Batman’s hometown is in has remained a matter of debate over the years through its various and often conflicting depictions in DC Comics, movies, TV shows, and video games.
“Gotham” was a nickname coined by author Washington Irving in 1807 to refer to New York City. Batman co-creator Bill Finger (not Bob Kane) is the one who named Batman’s base of operations Gotham City in Batman #4 (1940), with Gotham City said to have been inspired by New York City, gangland Chicago, and even London.
Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy used locations in Chicago, New York City and Pittsburgh for its Gotham City, while other Batman movie shooting locations over the years have included Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Liverpool and Glasgow. The 1960s Batman TV show was shot in the sunny Greater Los Angeles area, while the Joker movies starring Joaquin Phoenix were filmed in New York and New Jersey. (The more fantastical Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher’s Batman films largely shot their Gotham scenes on soundstages.) All of these filming locations contributed to the varied and ever-changing look of Gotham City on screen, which only added to the ambiguity of the fictional city’s exact real-world location.
For a long time in the comics, Gotham City was believed to be in the state of New Jersey. Comics author Mark Gruenwald theorized that it was in the Garden State, while various comics over the years have also placed it or at least suggested that Gotham City is in New Jersey. That’s also where the Gotham City of the Snyderverse is located.
While the new HBO series The Penguin has shown driver’s licenses that simply list “Gotham City, US” without identifying which of the fifty states it’s in, the upcoming sequel Joker: Folie à Deux definitively reveals where at least the Gotham that Arthur Fleck calls home is situated.
In the Todd Phillips-directed movie, Arthur Fleck is on trial for the murders he committed in the original 2019 movie. As prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Harvey Dent, the case is called The State of New York vs. Arthur Fleck. License plates and other documentation depicted in the film also identify Gotham as being in New York State.
IGN was able to get Phillips to comment on this choice of setting: “Well, Gotham is often said to be in New Jersey. It was discussed. Not with anyone at DC, it was discussed amongst ourselves,” Phillips wrote to me this week. “We just kinda went with the ‘who are we kidding’ idea. Also cause it sounded weird ‘the state of New Jersey vs Arthur Fleck.’”
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For more coverage on the residents of Gotham City, discover what Arthur Fleck would think of Batman and what Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga told IGN about Joker: Folie à Deux. And be sure to read our The Penguin: Episode 2 review and oral history of the TV series Gotham.
