Unmasking Batman's Most Badass Sneakers
Holy hyperstrike, Batman! A lot of you have asked us...
What Jordans did Batman wear?
The Caped Crusader has been solving crimes and slapping scumbags across Gotham City for nearly 100 years, which means Batman has put some serious wear and tear on his suit’s footwear.
But for a superhero with as many different style eras as the Dark Knight, he surprisingly hasn’t changed his kicks all that much. Batman tends to stick to a black or blue knee-high boot when he’s on-duty and formal dress wear when he’s in Bruce Wayne mode–at least in the comics.
It’s a different story in the movies, though. Big screen Batman is just that—a little bit Hollywood.
In the Tim Burton classics, 1989’s Batman and 1992’s Batman Returns, Michael Keaton dons the cape and cowl and for the first time ever, makes his feet a focal point. When the studio struck a deal with Nike to develop shoes for the Batsuit, Beaverton’s finest put their best man on the job, Tinker Hatfield.
If he can think up the best basketball player’s sneakers, then why not the World’s Greatest Detective? They both need to be able to fly high, cut on a dime, and run from the paparazzi.
Tinker designed a bat boot using an Air Trainer 3 as the base for the original Batman film in 1989, with the upper extended past the calves and completely blacked out. Tinker met with Michael Keaton at the actor’s home in Hollywood to chat about Batman’s look.
“That’s when we had this substantive conversation about this vision for Batman,” Hatfield said of the bat brainstorm. “He was also speaking for Tim Burton, because Tim Burton was not in the meeting at that time. He said that Tim wants to bring modernity and athleticism to the Batman character.”
Because the film production had tight timelines (and budgets) the team couldn’t afford to ship samples back-and-forth to Asia as they “tinkered” with it. So, Hatfield and his team went back to Oregon after leaving LA and got right to work on Batman’s beaters at a Nike production facility in Portland. They made roughly eight pairs of the kicks for the movie, some sized for Keaton and some for his stuntmen.
“They were really speaking my language about being edgy and athletic, and actually being able to perform stunts in the very product,” Hatfield said of the crime-fighting footwear. “In other words, it wasn’t just a prop. It was also a performance shoe because Michael Keaton had to—and his stunt doubles had to—really do a fair amount of stuff in that actual product.”
A lot happened in the sneaker world between 1989 and 1992, and by the time production on Batman Returns began, Tinker and Keaton were cooking up something crazy for the highly anticipated sequel. Hatfield had just gotten his first championship sneaker, as Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls took the title with MJ rocking the Tinker-designed Air Jordan 6, a silhouette inspired by the superstar’s love of supercars. Well, you know who also loves really expensive sports cars? Bruce Wayne.
Batman Returns sees the Batsuit’s boots upgraded from Air Trainer 3s to Air Jordan 6s, complete with a knee-high armored extension on the shin and a leather sheath on the rear. Now, Batman could ball all day and beat up bad guys all night.
While neither of Tinker’s Batman designs ever got a retail release like his Back to the Future Air Mags, a few of the prop pairs from the films hit the resale market over the years. In 2015, a single right foot Batman Returns AJ6 shoe bagged over $8,000 on eBay.
Warner Brothers sent Tinker a signed pair of the Air Trainer 3-based Batboots complete with an autograph from Batman himself, Michael Keaton. They even included a game-worn movie-worn cowl used in a famous scene from the first movie.
While other brands have made attempts at recreating the luster of Batman’s badass kicks, they just don’t seem like something the elusive Bruce Wayne would ever wear, or endorse.
Thankfully, Nike seems to be getting back into the business of Batman, albeit unofficially. Fall 2025 is set to see two releases from the Swoosh that are going to set the streets of Gotham on fire. One of them is an Air Max 1 that features a grey suede upper draped in a bold yellow leather, harkening back to Batman’s comic book look of yesteryear.
And while Bruce Wayne typically keeps to himself and probably doesn’t hop on too many trends, he may still want to get in line for these Big Bubble AM95s.
Whether you cop one of these Nike releases or have Lucius Fox create some customs for you, just remember: “Sometimes, people deserve to have their faith rewarded.”
Or at least, that’s what I told myself before each raffle I entered this week.
Drew oversees content at Sole Retriever and hates writing in the 3rd person soooo I'm going to stop. I've written for countless blogs and magazines, from Complex to XXL and everywhere in between. Worked for The Hundreds for a long time, running content and working on branded collabs. Even spent some time on the agency side, working for Gary V and doing creative for some of the biggest brands on the planet. Huge product launches, major events, Super Bowl commercials... you name it, my brain stormed it. But now I'm back doing what I love: hanging with the homies, talking sneakers and streetwear.
