Batman, the hero of this summer's most anticipated blockbuster, has a reputation for never using a gun, and never killing the bad guys.

It's a totally a bogus rep!

It turns out Batman is actually a vicious killer; sometimes he does it with glee.

Screenwriter and Forbes blogger Mark Hughes explains on Quora:

Yes, Batman started out in the first comics carrying a gun and regularly killing criminals by shooting them, strangling them, knocking them off buildings, knocking them into vats of acid (not the Joker, but another dude in the first Batman story), pits, etc.



The rule against killing came later.



Batman "kind of" killed the Joker in the 1989 film Batman, stating his intention by saying outright "I'm going to kill you," and then trying the Joker's leg to a statue that yanked him from a helicopter and sent him plummeting to the ground, dead.



In Batman Returns, Batman overtly kills two people: he turns the batmobile around and blasts the jet engine onto one of Penguin's circus freaks, burning the man alive. Later, he sticks a bomb down the pants of a Strong Man and kicks the guy into a hole where the bomb -- and the man -- blow up. Batman grins at this killing, by the way.



There are other gray areas where Batman can be blamed for maybe round-about "causing" a situation that killed someone, but these are the best examples of Batman outright killing people.

Another Quora user, Ariel Williams, collected instances of Batman killing.