A Vietnamese architecture student and diehard fan of The Dark Knight spent six months building his very own Batpod with the help of a team of friends.

Born in 1998, Nguyen Dac Chung was just a child when Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight hit cinemas, but the movie made such a big impact on him that he grew up dreaming of one day driving his own Batmobile and Batpod on the streets of his native Hanoi. He fulfilled half of that dream in 2020, when he built a functional replica of the Tumbler, Batman’s impressive Batmobile from the Dark Knight series, and earlier this month he completed his goal by unveiling a cool DIY Batpod as well.

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The Covid-19 pandemic is a problem that even Batman would have a tough time solving, but this Mexican version of the caped crusader is doing his best to help.

Authorities in the Mexican city of Monterrey have received assistance from a very unlikely source in their efforts to keep people in their homes as part of a social distancing plan to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. A real-life Batman wearing the iconic costume of DC’s superhero and driving a custom version of the Batmobile has been patrolling the city streets and asking people to stay at home. The unidentified man has been spending his days blasting a pre-recorded message from his Batmobile, encouraging people to minimize physical interaction.

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If you’re a Dark Knight fan with money to burn, you may be interested in this cool-looking Batmobile on sale in Russia for just 55,000,000 rubles, or about $850,000.

Batmobile replicas are not that uncommon nowadays, but the one currently being sold on Russian online marketplace Auto.ru, stands out in terms of looks, performance and price. First of all this is  very modern take on the iconic Batmobile, I’d say even more so than the Tumbler featured in the dark Knight trilogy. It has a very aggressive look, complemented by a menacing machine gun that actually comes with realistic sound effects, and measures 4 meters wide, which means you won’t be able to drive it everywhere. Powered by a 5-liter engine, this rear-wheel drive Batmobile has a top speed of 100km/h, and features a bunch of cool accessories – such as bulletproof windows, thermal imaging with 255x zoom, and a night vision camera – designed to make you feel like a real-life Batman.

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A wannabe ‘killer clown’ who dressed like popular Batman villain The Joker was recently jailed for terrorizing the people of Nottinghamshire, in England, for three months.

29-year-old Damien Hammond, a homeless and jobless man who styled himself like Heath Ledger’s character in the hit movie The Dark Knight Rises, has been jailed for 22 weeks and banned from Nottingham for three years, after going on a three-month crime spree just a few miles from the real-life Gotham village. Hammond, who is well known around Nottingham for his obsession with The Joker, reportedly pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct towards staff in various retail stores, waving a gun-shaped cigarette lighter while standing in traffic, and striking a police officer, among other charges. After hearing his sentence, the accused, who showed up to court with bright green hair, said “Send me to prison, I don’t care”. Typical Joker…

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Meet Somchai Nitimongkolchai, Bangkok’s biggest Batman fan. The 43-year-old has been investing in Batman memorabilia for the past decade – his vast collection now consists of a whopping 50,000 pieces, including a LEGO Gotham City. And it’s all on display at his very own ‘Batcat Museum & Toys Thailand’.

Somchai, a self-confessed superhero geek, became obsessed with the Dark Knight ever since the 2005 film Batman Begins. He was blown away by Christian Bale’s performance as Batman. “I saw Batman Begins and was really impressed by how smart and brave Bruce Wayne was,” he said. He felt like Batman was an ‘approachable hero’ for the real world. “Anyone could just put on a mask and be Batman.”

Somchai, who ran an event-organising company at the time, had never collected anything until then. But the film inspired him to purchase his first collectible – a ceramic Batman piggy bank – for his office desk. Since then, he has combed every flea market and garage sale in Bangkok, looking for stuff related to his favorite superhero. “I started shopping on eBay and then learned more about how collectibles are marketed,” he said.

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Jackson Gordon, a student of industrial design at Philadelphia University, has pooled everything he’s learned at school so far to build an awesome version of Batman’s batsuit! And we’re not talking about just another replica. This one is designed to withstand punches, kicks, stabs or baseball bat blows!

“I’ve always been a Batman fan,” the 21-year-old from Wayne, Philadelphia told Buzzfeed news. He started making prototypes for the suit last September, using over $1,000 raised on Kickstarter. “Before making the real suit, I did at least 10 prototypes of different parts for the suit to test out materials and sewing patterns,” he revealed. “Once I was happy with those, I started making the real suit using the patterns I had decided on from the prototypes. I cut out the internal lining fabric, then added the foam padding, then a layer of kevlar, then the top grey fabric.”

When the individual pieces were completed, Gordon sewed them together to form the suit. He made the external armored plates from quarter-inch-thick ABS sheets, cut using a scroll saw. “These plates were then power sanded, and heated up with a heat gun to make them pliable,” he explained. “The chest and ab plating was then mounted to the suit, while the other armor remains removable.”

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While most Batman fans are content with collecting Batmobile action figures, 29-year-old Zac Mihajlovic from Camden, New South Wales, decided to build a real one for himself. He spent the past two years modelling a street legal version of the iconic batman car from the 1989 film starring Michael Keaton.

Zac is now the proud owner of Australia’s only working and registered replica of the 1989 Batmobile that can be legally driven on public roads. And although he has been offered a lot of money for it (a six figure sum, he says), the Batman fan plans to keep it and use it to make sick children happy. “It’s my absolute pride and joy,” he remarked. “I feel like if I do nothing else for the rest of my life, I’ll die happy.”

Zac was only five years old when he first watched Batman and his obsession began. “At the time, being a five-year-old kid, it scared me but I never forgot it. I just love Batman because he’s one of the only superheroes that don’t have powers so being able to connect to him on a human level is great.”

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The city of Chiba, in Japan, is home to a real-life superhero who looks almost exactly like the famous Dark Knight of Gotham city. He even wears Batman’s iconic suit and travels on a custom-made Batpod, but his mission is rather different – to bring happiness to the people of Japan.

‘Chibatman’, as our superhero has come to be known, prefers to keep his identity a secret. But we do know that he’s a 41-year-old local welder who likes to fight crime – or in this case, unhappiness – in his spare time. While his costume is store-bought, he built the three-wheeled ‘Chibatpod’ himself, with imported parts worth around $5,700.

Photographs of the caped crusader have been doing the rounds on Twitter for the past three years now. Everytime the citizens of Chiba catch a glimpse of their very own Chibatman, they immediately post a photograph or video of him on various social networks.

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International racing crew, Team Galag, have recently unveiled one of their unique cars for the 2013 Gumball 3000 race. It’s an exact replica of the awesome Tumbler driven by Batman in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy.

The Gumball 3000 is not a race in the traditional sense of the word. There’s no official timekeeping and no prizes for the fastest contestants. It’s more like a glamorous road trip adventure where the rich and famous drive across Europe in the world’s most exotic cars. Inspired by classic films like The Cannonball Run and The Gumball Rally, this event used to feature both expensive and unusual vehicles like police cars and camper vans, but in recent years it’s become mostly a gathering of brands like Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Rolls Royce and Bentley. The anonymous members of Team Galag decided to bring back the original theme of the Gumball 3000 and commissioned Florida-based Parker Brothers Concepts to create a street legal replica of the Batman Tumbler that can keep up with the other sports cars and complete the 3,000-mile rally. The crew, aged between 21 and 34, hailing from the UK, Germany, USA and Saudi Arabia, reportedly invested around £1 million ($1.6 million) into this one-of-a-kind ride.

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38-year-old Chris Weir is so fascinated with Batman that he spent around $100,000 transforming his large basement into a veritable Batcave, complete with a custom home-theater, a secret entrance and even a life-size Batman suit used by the Dark Knight in the latest trilogy directed by Christopher Nolan.

Chris’ fascination with the caped crusader started at age three, when he and his uncle played Batman and Robin in the yard. Like many other young boys, he spent his childhood years playing with action figures from the Batman universe, and at 14 he bough his first comic book “The Legends of The Dark Knight”, and continued paying for a monthly subscription with his pocket money. Nothing unusual for a young boy, but Weir never really grew out of it. Even as an adult, he kept buying comics, action figures and posters of his favorite superhero, only at one point it just wasn’t enough anymore. He wanted to take his passion for everything Batman to a new level, and when he and his wife decided to look for a new house, Chris got the opportunity he had been waiting for. Weir wanted his very one Batcave so bad that when shopping for houses the deciding factor was always whether their future home would have enough basement space for his dream. In the end, he gave his wife Joanna two options to choose from, one of which happens to be their current home.

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If you’ve seen any of the Batman movies from the latest trilogy, you know how cool his motorcycle looks, and probably understand why this Vietnamese bike enthusiast couldn’t resist the thought of owning his very own Batpod, even if that meant having to build it himself.

Dubbed the “Vietnamese Dark Knight”, the young man behind this impressive scrap-part motorcycle has been identified as Tùng Lâm, from Vietnam’s Lang Son province. About a month ago, the builder posted a YouTube video of himself riding a prototype of the home-made Batpod which went viral receiving about 370,000 views in just 10 days. Although it was obvious the replica was not yet finished, the video still managed to draw a lot of attention and left many viewers curious to know if he had built it himself, what parts he used or how long it took him. There were some trolls commentators who said it was a poor effort that looked almost nothing like the Batpod in the Dark Knight films, but overall the reaction to the video was positive. Yesterday, almost a month from the first video, another one was posted, this time of the completed bike.

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Batman is in the news again, this time from Slovakia. Unlike his Brazilian counterpart, the Slovak Batman hasn’t been hired by the police, he’s self-appointed. 26-year-old Zoltan Kohari, from the southern Slovak town of Dunajska Streda, has donned a leather Batman suit that he’s stitched together himself, in an attempt to help the people of the town. He goes around cleaning the streets, helping the old, and calling the police when he spots something suspicious.

Incidentally, Kohari was a petty criminal prior to his superhero-avatar; he had spent eight months in jail last year and also attempted suicide just after his release. This was before he realized that he had a larger mission – to make life in his community better. “I have decided to do good for the people. I take care of order and help clean up the environment so we can keep living on this planet,” he says. Since Kohari doesn’t really have a full time job, he’s moved into an abandoned apartment in a dilapidated building on the edge of town. He has no electricity or water supply, but the place serves the purpose of a Batcave perfectly, to conduct his town patrols from.

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Batman fans in Brazil now have a reason to rejoice,  as this is probably the closest they will ever get to their favorite super hero. Inspired by the role played by Batman in the protection of Gotham city, officials of Taubate, Brazil have gotten a real-life Batman for their protection too. Except, this one has no batmobile.

The Brazilian superhero is actually a  former soldier, Andre Luiz Pinheiro, who has been hired to patrol the streets of Taubate. Oh, and he sports a Batman costume while he’s at it, just for kicks I suppose. The details are still being worked out, so it’s not exactly clear yet if there will be other things from the comic-strip like a bat-signal for when he’s needed on duty. Thankfully, cops don’t really expect the faux-Batman to seriously combat crimes such as drug trafficking and murder. Instead, he will play a more indirect role in the fight between good and evil. A social and educational crime prevention project is being planned, which targets children from the city.

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As Robin would  say: “Jeepers Batman, look, a 1985 Porsche 944 Batmobile!”

I’ll be the first to admit Porsche makes some really good sport cars, although they aren’t the most affordable. But as cool as they are, Porsche roadsters will never be as awesome as any Batmobile, and this old Porsche 94s is a prime example.

In an attempt to copy the Batmobile from Tim Burton’s Batman, the owner of this 1985 Porsche 944 fitted it with two .223 machine-gun replicas that light up, for effect, some batwings for the rear wheels, pipes that come out of the car’s doors, as well as a big Batman logo on the hood, and some smaller ones on the rims.

On the inside, he opted for a yellow-black color theme, the Batman logo on the steering-wheel, and Batman rubber mats. Since he didn’t manage to change the original 2.5 liter engine of the Porsche, he added a NOS Sniper pack, to at least give you a chance at catching fleeing baddies.

It’s definitely not the most impressive Batmobile I’ve featured on Oddity Central, and that’s probably why he practically gave it away for only $6.500.

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That’s right fans of the Dark Knight, your favorite superhero is finally settling down with the love of his life, none other than Wonder Woman. Surrounded by their superhero friends, the lovely couple said “I do” in front of Joker, who played master of ceremonies.

46-year-old Neil Vaughan, and 40-year-old Sharon are not the most traditional people in England, so they decided to get married as their favorite superheroes, and asked their attending friends to follow their example. Neil wanted to be Batman ever since he was a child, and his wife said she always dreamed of being Wonder Woman. They spent under 300 pounds on costumes, to finally fulfill their dreams.

Robin, Batman’s faithful sidekick, was his best man on the big day, while the adorable Powerpuff Girls were bridesmaids. The cast of superheroes at this incredible wedding included The Hulk, Spiderman, Superman, Ironman, Captain America, Wolverine and many others.

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