What Is The Green Halloween Mask At The Beginning Of The Batman?
Now that "The Batman" is out, fans are puzzling over its myriad details and clues, many of them courtesy of The Riddler, a stalwart of Batman's rogues' gallery who specializes in, well, details and clues. But one of the more puzzling aspects of the film has nothing at all to do with any of the Riddler's schemes or plots, and it involves a distinctive bit of headgear worn by one of Gotham City's up-to-no-good lowlifes at the beginning of the film.
The story of "The Batman" starts on Halloween; this is a night of particular significance in the Batman mythos, one that's obvious if you're familiar with the "Long Halloween" storyline that's inspired multiple Batman movies, including "The Batman" itself. However, the person in a mask that looks kind of like a big green onion doesn't appear to be trick-or-treating. Instead, the unusual mask is actually part of the mythology of "The Batman" that's unique to the film and doesn't originate from any comic book source.
The mask symbolizes Drops, the narcotic that's plaguing Gotham City in the movie
In the world of "The Batman," the hottest drug in the underworld is an addictive and dangerous substance known as Drops. Being a fictional drug, we can't know exactly how it affects users, although one particularly dedicated fan has taken to Reddit with a pretty detailed theory about the nature of Drops. According to this theory, it might be inspired by the real-life Tropicamide, an eyedrop solution that's currently popular on the Russian and Italian black market. That would explain how "Drops" gets its name, and also shed some light (so to speak) on some of its possible effects, including "hallucinations" and "euphoric symptoms."
Drops has not appeared in any other Batman media (yet), and it has a distinctive symbol or logo that's in keeping with the creepy, sinister aesthetic of the film. It's that very symbol that appears to have inspired the Halloween mask in question.
It's unusual for an illegal drug to have an official logo, and we don't know who designed it or why. We don't even know whether those questions will ever come up in any future "Batman" adventures. But we do know that at least two established Batman villains have MOs that involve dangerous drugs that could be similar to Drops (think Joker Venom or the Scarecrow's Fear Toxin), a connection that could pay narrative dividends later on.
For now, we do know that at least one masked outlaw, the one featured so prominently in that early Bat-Signal montage of "The Batman," is evidently a big enough Drops fan to wear a mask depicting the drug's logo -– that's called brand loyalty, kids.