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Secret headquarters of the fictional DC Comics superhero Batman

The Batcave is a subterranean location appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. It is the headquarters of the superhero Batman, whose secret identity is Bruce Wayne and his partners, consisting of caves beneath his personal residence, Wayne Manor. The Batcave appears in the 1960s Batman television series and in films Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), Batman Forever (1995), Batman and Robin (1997), in The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005–2012), in the DC Extended Universe (2016–2023) and The Batman (2022).

Originally, there was only a secret tunnel that ran underground between Wayne Manor and a dusty old barn where the Batmobile was kept. Later, in Batman #12 (August–September 1942), Bill Finger mentioned "secret underground hangars". In 1943, the writers of the first Batman film serial, titled Batman, gave Batman a complete underground crime lab and introduced it in the second chapter entitled "The Bat's Cave". The entrance was via a secret passage through a grandfather clock and included bats flying around. Bob Kane, who was on the film set, mentioned this to Bill Finger who was going to be the initial scripter on the Batman daily newspaper strip. Finger included with his script a clipping from Popular Mechanics that featured a detailed cross section of underground hangars. Kane used this clipping as a guide, adding a study, crime lab, workshop, hangar and garage. This illustration appeared in the Batman "dailies" on October 29, 1943, in a strip entitled "The Bat Cave!" In this early version the cave itself was described as Batman's underground study and, like the other rooms, was just a small alcove with a desk and filing cabinets. Like in the film serial, Batman's symbol was carved into the rock behind the desk and had a candle in the middle of it. The entrance was via a bookcase which led to a secret elevator. The Batcave made its comic book debut in Detective Comics #83 in January 1944. Over the decades, the cave has expanded along with its owner's popularity to include a vast trophy room, supercomputer, The 18th century frontier hero Tomahawk once discovered a gargantuan bat belonging to Morgaine le Fey inside what can be assumed would become the Batcave. Wayne himself rediscovered the caves as a boy when he fell through a dilapidated well on his estate, but did not consider it as a potential base of operations until returning to Gotham to become Batman. In addition to a base, the Batcave serves as a place of privacy and tranquility, much like Superman's Fortress of Solitude. In earlier versions of the story, Bruce Wayne discovered the cave as an adult. In "The Origin of the Batcave" in Detective Comics #205 (March 1954), Batman tells Robin he had no idea the cave existed when he purchased the house they live in. He discovered the cave by accident when, while he was testing the floor of an old barn on the rear of the property, the floor gave way. This story also established that a frontiersman named Jeremy Coe used the cave as a headquarters 300 years earlier. Bruce Wayne discovering the cave as an adult remained the case at least through Who's Who #2 in 1985. Upon his initial foray into crime fighting, Wayne used the caves as a sanctum and to store his then minimal equipment. As time went on, Wayne found the place ideal to create a stronghold for his war against crime, and has incorporated a plethora of equipment as well as expanding the cave for specific uses.

The cave is accessible in several ways. It can be reached through a secret door in Wayne Manor itself, which is almost always depicted as in the main study, often behind a grandfather clock which unlocks when the hands are set to the time that Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered, 10:48 pm. In the 1960s Batman TV show, the cave entrance is behind a bookcase which was opened when Bruce Wayne activated a control switch hidden in a bust of William Shakespeare. An entrance under Bruce Wayne's chair in his office in Wayne Enterprises, as shown in Batman Forever, connects to a mile long tunnel that Bruce travels through in a high speed personal transportation capsule. In Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises, the cave is accessible through a secret door disguised as part of a large display case and is unlocked by pressing a sequence of keys on the nearby grand piano. Another secret entrance, covered by a waterfall, pond, hologram, or a camouflaged door, allows access to a service road for the Batmobile. Another alternate entrance is the dry well where Bruce originally discovered the Batcave, highlighted especially during the Knightfall comic book storyline. At one point, Dick Grayson and Tim Drake use the dry well to get into the cave, which they had been locked out of by Azrael during his time as Batman, and Bruce Wayne used it to infiltrate the cave and confront the insane Valley in the final battle between the two men for the title of the Batman. Lured into the narrow tunnel, Valley was forced to remove the massive Bat armor he had developed, thus allowing Wayne to force Valley to remit his claim to the title. The location of the cave is known not only to Batman but to several of his allies. In addition to the so called "Batman Family", members of the Justice League and the original Outsiders are aware of the cave's location. Essentially, anyone who is aware of Batman's secret identity also knows the location of the Batcave, much like how people who have knowledge of Robin's identity have knowledge of Batman's; these, unfortunately, include such villains as Ra's al Ghul, who makes occasional visits to the Batcave to confront his long time nemesis, and David Cain, who infiltrated the cave during the Bruce Wayne: Fugitive comic book storyline when he framed Bruce Wayne for murder. During Batman: Dark Victory, Two Face, the Joker, Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy discovered the Batcave while fleeing through the sewers to escape the attacks of the surviving mobsters, but they had lost their way and were never able to find the cave again after being defeated, with Batman reflecting that he would seal that entrance to prevent such a thing happening again. When the powerful Bedlam took over the world and transferred all adults to a duplicate Earth, Robin attempted to assess the situation from the Batcave with Superboy and Impulse, but it would appear that he avoided revealing the cave's exact location to them, suggesting that he accessed it via an external passage or a teleporter. Although Wayne Manor was repossessed and converted into the new Arkham Asylum following the events of Batman Eternal, Batman maintains the original cave after sealing off the entrance to Wayne Manor, musing that it is a good opportunity to keep his foes contained. After the manor was gifted back to Bruce by Geri Powers, Alfred kept the location of the Batcave a secret from Bruce who had lost his memory of being Batman in his last battle with The Joker. While the manor was being renovated and all the Arkham inmates were removed Bruce and Alfred until then remained in a Brownstone in Gotham itself. Even after Bruce loses all memory of his life as Batman, the cave was still used by other members of the Bat Family; Alfred took the de powered Clark Kent to the cave to explain what had happened to Bruce, and Dick Grayson and the various Robins used it as a base of operations while opposing the schemes of the ruthless "Mother" in Batman and Robin Eternal. When new villain Mr. Bloom launches a massive attack on Gotham, Alfred is forced to allow Bruce into the Batcave to access an apparently disregarded program designed to upload Bruce's memories to a series of Batman clones to maintain his legacy, Bruce overcoming the original project's limitation of being unable to upload the memories to a fresh body by having Alfred take him to the point of brain death and then download the data onto his blank brain.

The Batcave serves as Batman's secret headquarters and the command center, where he monitors all crisis points in Gotham City, as well as the rest of the world. The cave's centerpiece is a supercomputer whose specs are on par with any of those used by leading national security agencies; it permits global surveillance and also connects to a massive information network as well as storing vast amounts of information. A series of satellite link ups allows easy access to Batman's information network anywhere around the globe. The systems are protected against unauthorized access, and any attempt to breach their security immediately sends an alert to Batman or Oracle. Despite the power of Batman's computers, the Justice League Watchtower is known to have more powerful computers, and Batman does occasionally use them if he feels his computers are not up to the task; on occasion, he also consults Oracle for assistance. Additionally, the cave features state of the art facilities such as a crime lab, various specialized laboratories, mechanized workshops, personal gymnasium, parking, docking and hangar space for his vehicles as well as separate exits for each type, memorabilia of past campaigns, a vast library, a large bat colony, and a Justice League teleporter. It also has medical facilities as well as various areas used in training exercises for Batman and his allies. The cave houses Batman's vast array of specialized vehicles, foremost being the Batmobile in all its incarnations. Other vehicles within the complex include various motorcycles, air and watercraft such as the Batplane, a single occupant supersonic jet, and the Subway Rocket. The cave is sometimes depicted as being powered by a nuclear reactor, but most often by a hydroelectric generator made possible by an underground river. During the Cataclysm storyline, the cave was seriously damaged in an earthquake, with the Bat family relocating most of the trophies and equipment in the cave to offsite storage to conceal Batman's identity. During the later reconstruction, the new Wayne Manor incorporates additional safeguards against future quakes and even a potential nuclear catastrophe, outfitting the cave as a virtual bomb shelter or an enhanced panic room. The city's earthquake redesigned the caverns of the Batcave, with eight new levels now making up Batman's secret refuge of high tech laboratory, library, training areas, storage areas, and vehicle accesses. It also includes an "island" computer platform (built on the spot where the Batmobiles' hydraulic turntable once was) with seven linked Cray T932 mainframes and a state of the art hologram projector. There's also a selection of retractable glass maps within the computer platform. Kevlar shieldings are prepared to protect the cave's computer systems from seismic activity. With the cave's various facilities spread amid limestone stalactites and stalagmites, However, it was later revealed that Batman built another containment facility within the cave for a variety of forms of Kryptonite. What is allegedly the world's last Lazarus Pit was constructed inside the cave, although this has been contradicted by events in the pages of Batgirl and the Black Adam miniseries.

The Batcave is rigged with a sophisticated security system to prevent all measure of infiltration. The security measures include motion sensors, silent alarms, steel and lead mechanical doors which could lock a person in or out, and a security mode which is specifically designed to stop if not eliminate all Justice League members in the event that any of them go rogue. After Bruce Wayne's 'death' during the Final Crisis, Two Face managed to infiltrate the cave with the aid of a psychic analyzing a batarang to 'sense' where it was forged and then hiring Warp to teleport him into it, something that Two Face had never been able to do before as Batman used various spells and equipment to shield the cave which his allies either never knew about or had discontinued as they no longer used the cave themselves following Bruce's death. Despite Two Face successfully breaking into the cave, Dick Grayson, acting as the new Batman, is able to convince Dent that he is the same man and has just adopted new methods, preserving Batman's secrets as Dent is rendered unconscious before he can find the location of the cave.

The cave stores unique memorabilia items collected from the various cases Batman has worked on over the years. Originally, these were stored in a room designed just for them; it was explained that Batman and Robin took one memento from each case. Later, the trophies were shown to be in the large main area of the cave, residing among the rest of the Batcave's furnishings. The most regularly featured trophies are a full size animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex, a giant replica of a Lincoln penny, and an oversized Joker playing card. The T. Rex comes from an adventure on "Dinosaur Island" (Batman #35 1946); the penny was originally a trophy from Batman's encounter with a penny obsessed villain named the Penny Plunderer (World's Finest Comics #30 1947), but was later retconned into being from an encounter with Two Face. Other "keepsakes" in the cave come from "The Thousand and One Trophies of Batman!" (Detective Comics #158, 1950). These three stories were reprinted in Batman #256. Modern retellings of the items' origins can be found in Batman Chronicles stories in issue #8 ("Secrets of the Batcave: Dinosaur Island") and issue #19 ("The Penny Plunderers"). A story in Batman #81 featured Two Face tying Batman and Robin to a giant replica of his silver dollar coin. This story was the basis for an episode of Batman: The Animated Series wherein Batman gains the giant coin from that encounter; this has caused widespread confusion as to the actual origin of the coin trophy. Other pieces often shown in the Batcave are Two Face's original coin, Deathstroke's sword, the shroud of the vampiric Monk, and oversized ten pins. There is also a glass case display of Jason Todd's Robin costume as a memorial to him, with the epitaph "A Good Soldier", which remains even after Todd's resurrection. Barbara Gordon's Batgirl costume also remains on display. In the Dark Horse two part crossover, Grendel/Batman II, Hunter Rose's skull is also put on display in the memorabilia room. After the Flashpoint comic book storyline, a letter written by a Thomas Wayne from an alternate timeline addressed to Bruce Wayne has lain in a display case, as a reminder of Thomas Wayne's love for his son and encouraging him to move on from his tragic past. However, this letter was destroyed by the reborn Eobard Thawne as a way to hurt Bruce for Thomas's attempt to kill him before Flashpoint ended.

In the 31st century, the Batcave has been long abandoned, although Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad briefly infiltrate the cave while looking for evidence that Krypton existed to counter the xenophobic claims of the Justice League of Earth that Superman was a human given powers to fight against aliens.

In a possible future, Bruce Wayne has used a machine to download his memories and training into a series of clones of himself, each one aged to a point where they can act as Batman for around twenty five years before they need to activate the new clone. By the time that the tenth generation clone is created, the Batcave has become a vast workshop, including a flying Batmobile, a robotic shark as a trophy, and costumes in glass cases, but the older Batman informs the new one that the contents of the cave will be burned upon his death so that the new Batman can make room for his own things while using the recorded memories to keep track of anything important from the past.

In the comic book continuation of the television series Smallville, Batman has a safe house in the form of a cargo ship, known as "Leviathan", docked at a hub in Metropolis. It is registered to a shell corporation in the Caribbean, thus protecting Bruce Wayne's secret. However, it is compromised by the Intergang, Prankster, and Mister Freeze. Lex Luthor is also aware of Leviathan's location due to his tracking of Superman's radiation signature with his satellites. Wayne is later shown in the Batcave itself with Alfred when the Martian Manhunter infiltrates it to talk with Batman.

In the comic book series Batman Beyond 2.0, Terry no longer uses the Batcave following an argument with Bruce. He now uses Dick Grayson's apartment as his base of operations. When Terry is seriously injured in a battle with Rewire, he wakes up in the Batcave where Bruce has treated his injuries and left information regarding Rewire himself. He arrived there due to a built in subroutine in the suit that if the user is seriously injured or falls unconscious, the suit becomes automated and returns the user to the Batcave. After arriving in the universe controlled by the Justice Lords Terry encounters a version of himself who is a member of the Jokerz known as " T ". Both McGinnis's arrive at Wayne Manor to find that it had been destroyed by the Justice Lords. A gang of Jokerz then proceed to attack them with T giving Terry enough time to make his way to the badly damaged Batcave. After exploring the cave he finds a number of damaged display cases which contain an unknown Batgirl suit, Justice Lord Batman suit and a Red Robin suit. He then discovers an armored and more powerful version of his own Batsuit which is powered by synthetic Kryptonite. After defeating the Jokerz gang he is confronted by Justice Lord Superman. Following the defeat of Lord Superman, T and Dick Grayson of the Justice Lords universe begin repairs to the Batcave and to the suit Terry found with the intention of T taking over as the new Batman and Dick becoming his mentor. They later help send Terry back to his own universe.

The Batcave first became part of the Batman mythos in the 1943 15 chapter movie serial Batman starring Lewis Wilson. In this version, as later in the comics, it was a small cave with a desk and rock walls lit up by candles. Behind the desk is a large black bat symbol. The cave is connected to a crime lab. Bats were depicted as flying around the cave, although only their shadows were visible. Batman uses these bats as a scare tactic to make an apprehended enemy reveal information. To prevent the enemy from escaping, an iron door covers the exit. The Batcave was also featured and expanded on in the 1949 serial Batman and Robin starring Robert Lowery. In this serial, there are filing cabinets and the cave now has a crime lab built in. The cave also contains the first incarnation of a batphone. In both serials, the cave is accessed by walking through a grandfather clock.