Were Matthew Perry's bat signals a cry for help?

Photo Courtesy Google

Originally printed Dec. 13, 2024

By Haley Moreschi

News Editor

Beloved Friends star, Matthew Perry, was found unresponsive in his hot tub on Saturday, Oct 28th from a supposed accidental drowning.

Chandler Bing, one of the six iconic characters in the TV show Friends, has sadly passed. He will forever be known for making the shows’ fans laugh without even trying. Fans all around the world are devastated by the news of his passing, but what if he was actually sending out cries for help weeks before his passing?

Fans of Matthew’s know that he had been struggling with addiction for many years. Upon his death, many fans have been left questioning if it is what the investigators reportedly deem as “foul play,” or much more. Conspiracy theorists are nitpicking every last detail that could go along with this sudden passing. 

 In several of his instagram posts, he playfully compared himself to the fictional DC hero Batman. Matthew Perry made seven references to Batman and the bat signal before his death. He posted images including the bat signal while referencing himself as “Mattman” in some of the captions. He was a known fan of Batman, so much in fact he told Jimmy Kimmel in 2017 that he had his own bat cave in his home. 

In his memoir, Friends, lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, he wrote about how addiction can be devastating to anyone, disregarding their level of fame. He recounts his lifelong struggle with addiction to alcohol and opioids, writing that he had his first drink at the young age of 14, but didn’t recognize the symptoms of addiction until way later at 21. In the last line of this memoir, he wrote, “What would Batman do?” 

Matthew Perry continued in his memoir to tell fans what the deal is with his overwhelming changes of appearance throughout the ten seasons of Friends, saying that his looks serve as dead giveaways to which drugs he was using at the times of filming. 

“You can track the trajectory for my addiction if you gauge my weight from season to season,” Perry said. “When I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills. When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills.” 

Though he struggled, he did try to get clean multiple times in his life. He completed a 28-day program in 1997 for a Vicodin addiction, a drug which contains a combination of acetaminophen and hydrocodone. His addiction began following a jet ski accident in 1997, eventually leading to alcohol abuse. He was hospitalized with pancreatitis due to alcohol abuse in 2000. 

He went through detox 65 times and attended rehab 15 different times. Prior to his death, he was reportedly sober since early 2021. A friend, who visited him one day before his passing, claimed that he was “100% sober.”

Many fans are in a frenzy, convinced Matthew Perry was sending bat signals as a desperate need for a lifeline. Regardless of these conspiracies being true or false, he and Chandler Bing will be missed.