IIRC correctly the Batmobile was built by a subsidiary of Waynecorps as a prototype military vehicle that was waaaay too expensive to be financially viable.
Bruce shut down the subsidiary on both financial and ethical grounds as he didn’t want to supply military equipment to anyone.
He then told Lucius Fox (I believe he’s the sort of CEO type that runs the day to day business of Wayne Corps while Bruce is playboying about) to keep the prototype in a warehouse as a keepsake of the failed venture.
Bruce and Alfred then went back and “stole” the car and modified it into the Batmobile.
I think this is in the #0 issue of Batman or maybe #0 Shadow of the Bat.
I presume the Batwing came about in a similar manner.
How many electical appliances does Batman have down there, anyway? Some shop lights, a PC, a machine shop . . . He wouldn’t need a/c in the Batcave–it’s a cave–58°F, day in, day out. Maybe he could go to Home Depot and run some cables down from Stately Wayne Manor.
If Batman wishes to type something like “marijuana growing faq” into his Batsearchengine, he can read many online discussions of a similar issue.
Back when I had fantasies of writing for DC, I wrote a couple of spec scripts where I fleshed out a number of unknown ideas about Batman: where the giant penny and dinosaur came from, where the first Bat-signal came from, a week in the life of Alfred Pennyworth, etc. One idea was about the creation of the Batcave.
Basically I decided that the principle equipment obviously came from WayneTech or its suppliers, but that Bruce Wayne used illegal Mexican laborers to build the Batcave’s infrastructure and to install the equipment. He had Alfred deal with some corrupt INS officials in Gotham to profile certain aliens, then bring the men he needed to the cave. Wayne then assumed the persona of an aloof Spanish aristocrat pretending to work for someone even more powerful than he. Speaking in perfect Castillain Spanish, he gives the men a promise to lend his vast legal resources to assure their American citizenship and a $50, 000 pay incentive to complete the construction plans, under the conditions that they sleep, eat and do not attempt to leave the cave. They initially are told they are building a nuclear survival bunker – but as more specialized equipment arrives in the cave, and they hear filtered accounts about the Batman via radio news, the men grow suspicious that they are working for a latter-day Don Diego (Zorro) and argue about his intentions. When Batman saves a few of the men from an onsite accident, the men gather over around a Bible in a candlelit ceremony and pledge to keep his secret until their deaths. I wrote the story from the POV of one of the laborers, who tells the story on his deathbed. At his funeral, others from the Batcave work crew come to pay their respects. The final visitor is a mysterious aloof Spanish aristocrat, who says nothing to no one, pays his respects and leaves.
I still think it’s a fun story. It gave me an excuse to delve deeper into Mexican culture for music, food and pop cultural references, as well as solidifying the link between Batman and Zorro and providing some ethnocentric bragging. As my deathbed confessor tells it: “Mexican skills built the place they call the Batcave… but… Zorro was still first.”
The main Batcave was something he’d found as a child. Tricking it out with generators and computer gear… Well, I always suspected Hal Jordan owed him a favor or two back in the day.
There was actually a second Batcave, under his downtown apartment building. It was an abandoned subway station, and the building had an unused elevator shaft. Gotham was built by some sloppy architects.
The Batcave, inlcuding the entrance that allows for the Batmobile to enter and exit, is a natural formation under Wayne Manor. Bruce discovered it while playing as a little kid, and rediscovered it later on when looking for an identity to use when stalking criminals (Year One).
There’s really no need for some secret grand conspiracy. You have your multi-billion dollar multinational corporation build it for you. You’re an eccentric millionaire playboy who wants a fort with lots of expensive toys built into his cave–use that secret identity to throw off suspicion.
Keep in mind that, in general, outside of the superhero community, nobody knows that there is a Batcave, so nobody would have reason to connect Bruce’s playhouse with a Batcave they have no reason to suspect exists.
Alternately, have the corporation build it, but keep the construction so segmented that only a handful of people are ever involved in any part of it, none ever knowing about any of the others. Have all of those involved sign confidentiality agreements, all the while dropping hints that it’s something entirely different, such as some quasi-legal money-making operation. Make sure each of the subcontractors gets a different hint as to what’s going on, so that if they do meet, they won’t be wondering what they built down there, they’ll be arguing about whether it’s a lab for disecting aliens recovered from spaceships or for reverse engineering stolen LexCorp technology, or for engineering and producing high tech drugs for his playboy friends.
With enough money and power, secrecy can be bought. Do you know what the inside of Fort Knox looks like? Hundreds of people must, yet it’s hardly common knowledge, and those what know ain’t telling. People can’t even find out how many games Ken Jennings won on Jeopardy, and thats a public event that happened in front of several hundred witnesses.
I like it. I don’t know what a comic book audience would have felt about Bruce contracting illegal aliens and getting them citizenship and such (Rush Limbaugh would’ve been all over his ass), but it sounds like a good story for sure. The ‘week in the life of Alfred’ sounds like a lot of fun, too.
The key would be to make the actions and bigoted attitudes of the corrupt INS agents I mentioned earlier seem far more exploitive by comparison.
The week in the life featured Alfred dealing with Batman and Robin, a Kobra kidnapping plot accidentally intersecting with an kidnapping Intergang plot, a home decorating cable TV show taping at Wayne Manor gone awry, a running joke of repeatedly trespassing snoopy teenagers (and Alfred’s revenge on them) – all leading up to Alfred’s date with an old flame. Batman would be depicted as being frequently inconsiderate, brusque and totally taking Alfred for granted all that week but redeeming himself in the end by anonymously mastermining a few saving graces to keep Alfred’s date going smoothly. When Alfred tries to thank him later, Batman naturally denies he had anything to do with it.
I am fairly certain that the penny came from an encounter with Two-Face. He had Batman tied to one side and flipped the the giant coin, but Batman was able to use one of Two-Faces own mangled dollar coins to cut the binds and escape in mid flip.
