We're not going to even skirt around the fact that Bruce Wayne is rich enough to splurge on gadgets to become Batman by nightfall. That doesn't mean everybody can, too. Put frankly: you probably can't afford to fight crime in Gotham unless you're making major bank.

The number crunchers over at Centive are back (last time it calculated the Death Star would cost $852 quadrillion bucks to build) and this time its broken down what it would cost to become the Dark Knight.

According to Centive's calculations, if we take into account Wayne's training, private jet, gadgets and vehicles (rough estimate based on real technologies — for example, the price of a Humvee stands in for the Tumbler, etc.), paying Alfred for his services and so forth, the total comes out to $2.8 million.

Those are cost estimates based on the first Batman Begins movie in which Wayne undertakes how to become the caped crusader, which means it factors in all the costs to to be super secretive (such as ordering 10,000 graphite masks to avoid suspicion). If you cut those bulk orders out, the cost to be Batman is even lower, at about $806,000.

Now, there are other factors that weren't accounted for in Centive's tally, such as the fact that Wayne pretty much owns all of the technologies he uses, so he really didn't have to pay for say, the Tumbler, because Lucius Fox just gave it to him.

We're sorry if we ruined any dreams, but it's probably a better idea to quit while you're ahead, knowing being Batman is too expensive, than going into debt taking out loans to scrape together your own Bat gadgets.

Via Centives