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After Bruce escapes The Pit in The Dark Knight Rises he travels to Gotham City, however The Pit is located in South Africa and Gotham City is located half-way across the world in North America. At this point in the story Bruce is completely broke, and he has no access to any of his remaining resources anyways, so I don't see how he could acquire transportation to Gotham City. He also seems to do this in the span of a few hours, even though it should take roughly 17 hours to travel from South Africa to North America.

How does Bruce manage to travel from The Pit to Gotham City?

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    The Batcard, don't leave home without it.
    – John O
    Commented Jul 23, 2012 at 13:41
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    He was arguably one of the richest men in the world. Surely the government didn't get it all. And once the fraud with Talia is revealed and the Stock Trades reversed due to terrorist action, much of the economic damage would be reversed. (They should have cleared that up somehow...)
    – Thaddeus Howze
    Commented Jul 25, 2012 at 16:01
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    @Thaddeus They had no access to the stock exchange. To compare this to a real world event: 9/11 shocked the economy of the US. People stopped trading for hours while their attention was focused on a horrible event. -Merely hours made the market tank quite a bit. Imagine what it's like for 5 months without access to an economic center of the country/world. Economic damage could not have been reversed so quickly.
    – Denim Vallorosi
    Commented Jul 25, 2012 at 17:41
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    The movie definitely made it seem that at the reading of Bruce's will, that his "official" wealth was very modest. I don't think it was coming back. I do agree with @Thaddeus that Bruce probably had some funds squirreled away somewhere. I think it's required for all rich people to have an account in Zurich or the Grand Cayman's.
    – Ryan
    Commented Jul 26, 2012 at 15:07
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    South Africa? No its Jodhpur (India) in nolan's universe. see my answer for details movies.stackexchange.com/questions/3454/…
    – Ankit Sharma
    Commented Sep 11, 2013 at 22:59

4 Answers 4

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Your time frame is incorrect. Having just watched the movie again (and keeping this question in mind) this is the sequence of events.

  • The special forces reach Gotham and are told that the bomb will go off in 23 days. They are soon after eliminated.
  • Cut back to Morocco, where Bruce Wayne sees the bodies of the special forces on television and attempts to climb out of the pit. A piece of rock breaks and he falls, knocking him unconscious.
  • He awakens hours (or perhaps a day) later. He is told that his only way to succeed is to climb without the safety line, and he succeeds in escaping.
  • Next we cut back to Gotham and it is less than 24 hours before the bomb will go off.

From my perspective he had somewhere between 2-22 days to return back to Gotham. It wasn't in the space of a few hours as your question suggests. I'm guessing is was somewhere around 22 days to make it back to Gotham in time to save it.

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  • It was around this time that I began a life long rivalry with @OghmaOsiris.
    – Jack B Nimble
    Commented Aug 25, 2012 at 15:50
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    It's unusual to change an accept mark on such an old question, but I finally watched this movie again for the second time, and it turns out you're completely right. He escapes with roughly 20 days left, which drastically changes the believability of him getting back to Gotham in time.
    – Wipqozn
    Commented Jun 11, 2020 at 2:40
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I don't believe there are any concrete answers to this question, but assume that one of two things happened:

  1. Bruce used his knowledge from his time spent living as a "criminal" to procure the necessary funds to purchase airfare

  2. Bruce called one of his non-Gotham residing friends (surely he has some) and had money wired to him or borrowed a jet

Either option seems reasonable.

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    If I were Bruce Wayne, I would cultivate a lot of discreet favors. I would pay more than I had to stuff...for the sake of specificity here, we could stipulate that it was the air transport folks he used eight years ago to get Lau out of Hong Kong.
    – Chris B. Behrens
    Commented Jul 23, 2012 at 15:12
  • We don't know how far the Pit is from a city but once in one, he just needs to find a bank and have memorized a Swiss bank account; the banker himself would probably loan him enough money to be in new clothing and the best hotel in, say Kabul (maybe the Pit is not in Afghanistan) a private physician and a plane, maybe with its own medical staff, back to NY in a couple days. Money is just fantastic stuff and it is Batman's superpower, I think he said -- he was not kidding.
    – releseabe
    Commented Dec 29, 2022 at 10:17
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There's actually a simpler answer to this plot point.

The Bat. If you recall, the last he used it before being broken by Bane was when he rescued Selina from the rooftops. After that, he flew it back to the batcave and parked it on the pedestal. He managed to direct the autopilot to his position and flew it back to Gotham. That's why, the next time we see it, it's parked on the roof of a tower (where, uncoincidentally, Bruce and Fox talk specifically about the autopilot). In fact, I'm thinking Bruce contacted Fox directly, given Fox's comment about remembering where he parked.

Recall also: when Bane ordered the reactor core removed, and Dr. Pavel objected and stated the core would decay in a matter of months, Bane said he calculated it would do so in 5. Flash forward to the end of the film, following the aftermath of the battle, and the tech tells Fox the autopilot had been patched 6 months prior.

That explains how Bruce both returned to the US mainland and got back into Gotham.

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  • You would have had a "UFO" flying out & in Gotham. The League of Shadows and the US army where both watching the air space and and the possible routes out of town. Also, the bat would have had to flight quite a journey (to Middle East? and back). Think about fuel.
    – Kreann
    Commented Sep 11, 2014 at 12:04
  • The Bat was a stealth vehicle. I agree, it's not likely it flew all the way to the Pit, but it's plausible that it was at least used for some of the travel once he was in range of it.
    – user31178
    Commented Jan 15, 2015 at 6:30
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The Pit is in Morocco.

In Batman Begins, Bruce traveled the world with no money and passport to understand crime. He ends up in a Bhutan jail, in which Ra's takes him to The League of Shadows Tibetan headquarters. Ra's teaches him to be "invisible", walk on ice, etc.

The first movie also mentions secret "Underground Railroad " tunnels in the Batcave which can connect to Gotham city. The League was inaware of the Batcave and perhaps the tunnels. (Wayne Manor is outside Gotham)

So, here you go. Bruce has experience traveling around the world with no resources (he probably established ones in his previous journey), hence he could easily got back to the US. It's plausible he also got into Gotham through "invisibility" or the Batcave.

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