(This isn’t really a spoiler:) The Dark Knight has a useless, throw-away scene where Batman extracts a brick from a wall with a bullet-hole in it, takes it back to his Bat Lab and does a bunch of ridiculous CSI bullshit where he re-assembles the shattered bullet with computer imagery so he can glean a fingerprint from when the shooter pushed the round into the clip.
This is a stupid waste of time, of course, but then I thought about it and realized that it is one of the few things in any of the Batman movies that establishes Batman as “The World’s Greatest Detective.” ‘Cuz mostly he just punches people.
It got me wondering, though, if Batman had any serious competitors for World’s Greatest Detective nowadays. So I went on Google and came up with a list:
- Sherlock Holmes (of course, although he might be disqualified by being dead).
- Batman
- L from Death Note
Those three win pretty handily in the Google estimation. There are some other contenders for the title:
- Inspector Clouseau (surely this is debatable).
- Hercule Poirot
- Daryl Zero
- Detective Conan
- Elvis Cole
- Dick Tracy
- Sherlock Hemlock :D
- Shamrock Bones
- Herlock Sholmes (although Ellen says Arsene Lupin was a pretty good detective himself…)
- Nero Wolf
- Supersleuth®
- Big Max
- Jay J Armes
…and I could go on…