I had a dream that Batman wasn’t real! Here’s what was really going on:

Commissioner Gordon was forced to witness the rape and murder of his wife. After this, he had a lot of trauma around the idea of crime. But he was still a cop. When he went out on the beat, he would encounter criminals, and this would send him into a blind rage during which he would brutally and savagely beat these people. But because of his trauma, he would be all dissociated while this was going on, so he wouldn’t realize that he was savagely beating these people, and instead he imagined that he was standing 20 feet away watching some guy in a bat costume savagely beat these people. He would later tell people that he saw some “Bat Man” while he was out, and that he himself always seemed to arrive on the scene just minutes after the Bat Man was there.

Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne had witnessed the murder of his parents when he was very young, so he also had trauma about crime and vowed to fight a war on crime. So he always attended police fundraisers and helped out in his community and stuff. He became good friends with Commissioner Gordon and was the only person who knew Commissioner Gordon’s secret (including Commissioner Gordon himself).