There's a City in Turkey Named Batman

In a surprising intersection of pop culture and geography, a Turkish city once took on one of Hollywood's biggest studios. The city of Batman, located in a petroleum-rich region of southeastern Turkey, made international headlines when its mayor announced plans to sue Warner Bros. in 2008. The mayor controversially claimed the film franchise had a negative psychological impact on residents and that the studio profited from their name without permission. The bizarre legal threat captured the world's imagination, but it ultimately faced an insurmountable historical problem.

The case fell apart when considering the timeline. The city's name is derived from the nearby Batman River, a tributary of the Tigris. The origin of the river's name itself is debated, possibly linked to a shortening of the Batı Raman mountain or an ancient unit of measurement. More importantly, the modern city of Batman was only officially given its name in 1957, after it grew rapidly from a small village thanks to the discovery of major oil fields in the 1940s. The caped crusader, by contrast (Review), first appeared in DC Comics in 1939, predating the city's official name by nearly two decades and making any claim of infringement impossible to prove.