Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man Is In The Dark Knight But You Likely Never Noticed Him

Among the rankings of the Spider-Man movies from worst to best, the hair-swooping, tonally twisted "Spider-Man 3" sits near the bottom for a lot of fans, and the less they see of it the better. Imagine their outrage, then, when emo-Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) stumbles into the first few minutes of one of the greatest comic book movies ever made in a franchise that isn't even his. During the debut of Heath Ledger's legendary iteration of the Joker in "The Dark Knight," the same shot features Peter Parker in the black symbiote suit — if only a little out of focus.

Spidey swings into Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" during the iconic opening when the Clown Prince of Crime waits for his ride to rob a bank. As Batman's legendary foe stands still with his back to us, a "Spider-Man 3" poster is just off in the distance to the left. It might be the closest we'll ever get to the two franchises sharing the same movie space. However, this wasn't the only time the two blockbuster properties were intertwined; issues with Spidey's planned fourth outing had a huge impact on Nolan's third Batman installment.

While appearing on the podcast "Happy, Sad, Confused," Anne Hathaway shared her belief that "Spider-Man 4" being cancelled led to her snatching the role of Catwoman in Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises." The Oscar-winner revealed that she got the part of Black Cat, Spidey's duplicitous Catwoman-like frenemy, but since the film never materialized, neither did her take on Felicia Hardy.

"I did not get into costume and did not read a script past the audition sides," Hathaway explained. "I got the part and ... That's probably more the producers' story to tell than mine, should they ever decide to tell it." We have a rough idea of what Sam Rami's "Spider-Man 4" was supposed to look like, but it's a "What If...?" that the Catwoman of Nolan's universe can't help but wonder about. 

According to the star of both "The Dark Knight Rises" and "Interstellar," "If [Spider-Man 4] had gotten made, I don't know if I would've been considered for ['The Dark Knight Rises']. Perhaps [Christopher Nolan] would've said, 'No, she's occupied in another universe.'" It's a possibility, but with stars cropping up in various universes since Marvel dared to wander through the Multiverse and DC bringing more than one Batman to the screen at a time, maybe we could've handled Hathaway being two kind of cats.