Danny DeVito was strictly forbidden from describing his grotesque makeup for the villainous Penguin in Batman Returns to anyone, including his own family, under threat of massive legal action from the studio.

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Danny DeVito was strictly forbidden from describing his grotesque makeup for the villainous Penguin in Batman Returns to anyone, including his own family, under threat of massive legal action from the studio. Warner Brothers was so intensely paranoid about ruining the dark aesthetic of the Tim Burton sequel that they forced a legendary comedic actor to treat a fake pointy nose and some pale foundation like classified nuclear launch codes. He spent countless hours a day marinating in black saliva and prosthetic flab, only to go home and aggressively refuse to tell his wife why he smelled like raw fish and spirit gum. It is the absolute peak of corporate Hollywood delusion to believe that the visual design of an angry, umbrella-wielding sewer orphan required the exact same level of informational security as an active military intelligence operation during the height of the Cold War