Wayne Bruce: The Real Story of the ‘Bearded, Masked Scotsman’ as the Model for Batman

In the ‘Travel Scotland Goals page’ Facebook page, a picture of a guy with facial hair and a mask was shared. The photo’s uploader, Jake Shearer, said that the bearded guy served as the initial inspiration for the well-known superhero Batman.

It is a little-known truth that the Batman comics were inspired by Scotsman Wayne Bruce, a descendant of Robert the Bruce. This is also the reason Glasgow was selected to represent Gotham in the Batman movie as a tribute to the real genesis story—Wayne, who would don a mask and utilize his fortune to take on criminals in the 1880s,” Shearer said.

An amusing tale was written by someone, “His arch enemy, the Yoker, from…Yoker.” Then there was The Piddler, who was often arrested for taking a dump in public. Catwoman was merely an elderly cat owner.”

“Hearing the old “Batman” theme on bagpipes now,” someone else said, alluding to Scotland’s rich cultural legacy.

The many assertions about the image point to distinct places of genesis. Snopes.com reports that some people say the person seen is a Scottish man called Wayne Bruce, who is purportedly descended from Scottish nobles, while others say the person is a New York City butcher named Bill Smith, who is seen in an 1892 picture.

When trying to locate the photograph’s original source, reverse image searches have turned up several instances of it being shared along with erratic origins. In 2017, the picture was first seen in a Reddit post. Later on, it was discovered on Bandcamp, where Dennis Kelly, among others, had used it as his profile picture. The picture is also accessible on the website of Foto Marvellini, an art and photography studio that was established in 2011 and specializes in vintage image manipulation.

Despite the unfounded rumors that have circulated online, it is evident that the previously described picture has nothing to do with the beginnings of the Batman identity.

Batman was conceived by Bob Kane and his collaborator Bill Finger, so says a well-known comic book legend. Detective Comics published the first appearance of the masked vigilante in 1939. “The Shadow,” a radio show; “The Mark of Zorro,” a film from the 1920s; and “The Bat Whispers,” a 1930 film starring a mobster with a bat symbol on his cape.