Film

Killing Jokes And Dark Knights: Every Easter Egg In ‘Joker’

Spot them all?

by Joseph Earp  10 October 2019
Joaquin Phoenix in Joker

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Todd Phillips’ Joker is that increasingly rare thing: a self-contained superhero story.

The film is no secret attempt to build up a Joker expanded universe, and the story — for all of its faults — is decidedly close-ended. It’s the journey of one character, with a precise beginning, middle and end. It makes no deigns to slot him into a broader story. There are no cameos, or coded winks to other members of the rogue’s gallery.

When Arthur Fleck does crash into Batman lore, as with his frequent run-ins with Thomas Wayne, father of you-know-who, it’s an emotional story beat, not a chance for comic book devotees to feel smarter than the crowd around them.

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But that doesn’t mean that the film is without its hat-tips. Like so many comic book films, Joker is a mish-mash of plot details from pre-existing incarnations of the character. These references are not hidden; they’re right there, providing newcomers to the comics with a kind of extended reading list, and an opportunity to dive back into the history of one of the most fascinating figures in contemporary graphic storytelling.

Here then are all of the references that Joker makes to classic comic book lore, and the specific stories that inspired it.

Spoilers for Joker follow.

The Dark Knight Returns

Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns is one of the most iconic, important takes on the Batman mythology. A melancholy tale of an over-the-hill Batman and his attempt to fit back into a Gotham that has largely passed him by, the limited run has inspired countless takes on the character before.

In fact, it’s in some part responsible for the current glut of superhero films. Darren Aronofsky wanted to make a direct adaptation of the comic book in the early two thousands, only to pass on the project, leaving space for Christopher Nolan to come in and craft his own take on the story in the form of Batman Begins.

Anyway, given its iconic status, it’s not so surprising that The Dark Knight Returns features heavily in Joker.

See, a key plotline in The Dark Knight Returns involves the Joker being released from an asylum. As part of his rehabilitation process, he appears on a syndicated talk show, only to murder the host and the live studio audience and make his escape.

And hey, if that sounds familiar, it’s because Joker pulls a very similar trick, with Fleck killing the talk show host he was obsessed with, and inciting rebellion.

The Killing Joke

Alan Moore is a titan of the comic book industry, an idiosyncratic auteur who redefined the limits of graphic storytelling. So of course when the man turned his attention to the Batman mythos with his one-shot The Killing Joke, he completely changed the way that we tell the story of the Joker.

To that end, Moore’s take on the character is all over Joker. Both iterations of the villain are failed stand-up comedians, driven to a life of crime after being spurned by a society that they both desperately want to fit in with. And, more nebulously, both stories are about the fine line between sanity and insanity; between crime and order.

After all, Joker depicts a world that is one trigger-pull away from total collapse — all that it takes for Fleck to inspire a wave of imitators is a few relatively low-profile murders. And the revolution that he comes to lead isn’t one determined to make the world a better place, or even to inspire real change. It’s just about making a mess; about releasing anger. That’s pure Moore.

Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth

Joker contains only one, fleeting reference to Arkham Asylum. But Grant Morrison’s one-shot comic about the legendary institution still imbues every frame of the film.

After all, Morrison’s comic was all about seeing the behaviour of Batman and his rogue’s gallery as symptoms of a pathology. The mind-melting Scottish writer views everyone from Batman to Two Face as operating under the influence of trauma; acting out in ways that require therapy, not dressing up in costumes and carrying out convoluted criminal schemes.

That’s very much the modus operandi of Phillips’ film. In it, Joker’s criminal evolution is one born out of childhood trauma. He’s also actively under the influence of fantasy — at one point, we learn that he has imagined entire relationships.

Of course, Phillips is much less interested in what that actual psychology looks like than Morrison, who investigates The Joker with sympathy and with care. Phillips is happy to chalk up The Joker’s behaviour to a nebulous stereotype of mental illness, complete with a vaguely defined, uncontrolled tic; a spasmodic ‘laugh’.

Still, in terms of the general approach, Morrison is a key forefather.

The Legend of the Batman: Who He is, and How he Came to Be

How to talk about the origins of the Joker without in some way drawing on the very first instalment of the Batman comic, titled The Legend of the Batman: Who He is, and How he Came to Be?

First released in 1940, the issue lays out the foundation of the story we all know so very well — the murder of the Waynes, and Batman’s transformation into caped crusader.

Of course, Joker interacts with that origin story mostly in the way it subverts it. Doing aside with the derring-do and adventure of old school Batman, Phillips layers the thing with grime, horror and vague gestures towards real-world politics.

But, as old mate Jacques Derrida points out, by avoiding something, you replicate some part of it — some trace. And though Phillips’ film might be as far from the innocent, optimistic and sweet world of old school DC, by swerving so far out of its path, he allows it to define him.

Joseph Earp is a staff writer at Junkee and comic book junkie. He Tweets @Joe_O_Earp.