After the death of actor Matthew Perry, popular for his portrayal of Chandler Bing on Friends television show, grieving fans have now come up with a theory that Perry's final social media posts -- which featured a series of cryptic photos and captions including several Batman references and bat-signal images -- were a cry for help.
In Batman's universe, the bat-signal is a distress signal used to summon the superhero.
In the first of these posts, eleven days before he died, a camera panned around what appears to be a bedroom, with large flat screens on three walls, each showing the logo of the 2022 The Batman movie, and on the ceiling, among stars, the bat signal silhouette. “No need to worry everybody,” Perry wrote, “I've got the streets tonight.”
The second, two days later, showed the bat signal, in red lights, appearing to hover off the edge of a building, city lights in the distance behind. Perry’s message: “Sleep well everybody. I've got the city tonight—Mattman.” "Mattman" being a combination of his first name, Matthew, and Batman.
Three days after that, he posted an electronic signboard with the message BATMAN PLAYS PICKLEBALL, and “Rest easy. I'm on a tall building.”
He also uploaded a photo of a Halloween-ready pumpkin with a Batman-logo-shaped hole. “Do you know what I mean?” he captioned it. Another video uploaded by him showed a half-moon in the sky, something half-seen flickering in the foreground, with the words “Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?--I'm Mattman."
The last, and perhaps the most disturbing, was his last post on Instagram was a picture of Matthew Perry, wearing headphones and chilling in one corner of a pool with the city and the same half-moon behind him. “Oh, so warm water swirling around makes you feel good?” he wrote. “I'm Mattman.”
Hours later, Matthew Perry was found dead in the hot tub. He had allegedly drowned. Despite the posts suiting the spookiness of the Halloween season, fans believe that Perry was sending out bat-signals as a distress call. Some pointed out that it was unusual for the actor to not post anything for a long time and then post regularly on only Batman.
"Anyone else find this concerning? He rarely posts. Then posts near daily, but only about Batman with cryptic captions? Then he’s dead in a really strange way? I’m not sure I’m following," a user commented on Instagram.
Another fan claimed that Perry wrote in his memoir that if he was ever in trouble, he would send out a bat-signal.
But despite these theories, Matthew Perry was a self-proclaimed Batman fan and often called himself by the name.
Journalist Christ Heath of GQ remembers having met the Friends actor for an interview and how Batman came up minutes into the meeting.
"We met to discuss his memoir but, as the original article noted, he brought up this other topic within three minutes of us first sitting down," Heath wrote, noting why it was natural for fans to feel tempted to look for messages, or auguries, or even declarations in Perry's Batman-related posts.
Interestingly, the last three words of the memoir’s prologue were: “Also, I’m Batman.”
Read more: How Matthew Perry from 'Friends' beat death at 49 after his heart stopped beating
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