Batman V Superman: What's the Dark Knight Doing With A Gun?

As most comic book fans know, Batman has an extensive arsenal of "wonderful toys" at his disposal, but there's one particular kind of weapon he's loathe to use: guns.

His parents were shot to death in a random mugging when he was young, and at some point in his publishing history, it was established that Batman doesn't use guns. That characteristic was in fact a sticking point for many fans who grumbled when Bruce Wayne showed up in Batman Begins, packing heat at the trial of Joe Chill.

So why is it that he's carrying what looks like a large rifle in the trailer for Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice? And why hasn't this stoked Man of Steel levels of social media outrage yet?

Well, probably because of The Dark Knight Returns.

In that seminal '80s minseries, the success of which contributed significantly to Tim Burton deciding to make 1989's Batman and the now 25 years of nonstop dominance that the character has had in non-comics media, featured a memorable sequence where Batman is watching Two Face with a rifle and a giant scope. While it seems if you glance quickly at it he's preparing to use the rifle to snipe an enemy, instead when he deploys it, it fires a high-powered grappling line.

The fact that so much of the movie is drawn from The Dark Knight Returns nearly guarantees that a Batman standing high above the city and brandishing a rifle rather than a handgun is using it for this purpose. That it doesn't look stylized or high tech in the manner of most of Batman's eccentric accessories likely speaks more to the filmmakers' desire to draw on The Dark Knight Returns' aesthetic more than anything about the plot.