There's a handful of subtle references to films, real-world events, and even the silent
art of mime lurking in Joker's grim and gritty Gotham City.
If you're still reeling from the violence and drama of Arthur Fleck's tragic journey,
keep watching to learn about the little things you might've missed.
If you know one piece of trivia about the Joker, it's probably that he was originally
inspired not by the playing card from which he took his name, but by Gwynplaine, the main
character of the 1928 silent film The Man Who Laughs.
In the movie, Gwynplaine, played by German actor Conrad Veidt, is a child in the 17th
century whose father is killed by rival noblemen.
Before they put his father in the Iron Maiden, though, they disfigure his face into a permanent
smile, leaving him unable to ever truly match his face to his emotions.
Also, Gwynplaine's father was betrayed by, wait for it, his jester, whose "jests were
cruel and his smiles were false."
Sound like anyone you know?
Fittingly enough, this cinematic inspiration made its way back to the movies in Joker.
The parallels to Arthur Fleck's medical condition, which causes him to compulsively laugh whenever
he's under stress, are obvious.
It's more than just the subtext, though - one Easter egg is a visual nod to a specific shot
from The Man Who Laughs that recurs several times in Joker.
Throughout the film, Fleck forces a "smile" onto his face by hooking his fingers into
his mouth and pulling upwards.
This is exactly the same thing that the movie's doctor does to demonstrate Gwynplaine's condition.
Perhaps more importantly is the fact that Fleck does this same thing to a young Bruce
Wayne when he's trying to get access to Thomas Wayne - the lines immediately after that shot
in The Man Who Laughs explain that they did it so that Gwynplaine would "laugh forever
at his fool of a father."
Given the dynamic in play between Fleck and the Waynes, there's actually way more to it
than just the supremely creepy act of putting your hands in a child's mouth.
The Man Who Laughs isn't the only silent movie to have its influence felt on Joker.
In most versions of Gotham City, it's difficult to imagine a well-publicized showing of a
famous Charlie Chaplin comedy that seems to be attended solely by billionaires as anything
other than a terrible idea.
Joker, however, takes place before Gotham is overrun with grandstanding, theatrical
criminals who would strike at such at gathering, so it probably seemed like a good idea at
the time.
Still, it raises the question of why Modern Times was chosen for a sequence in the film,
and was featured so prominently that we stop to watch Arthur Fleck as he watches one of
its most famous gags.
There's an obvious level, of course; the scene in question involves Chaplin's character roller-skating
blindfolded, nearly falling over a ledge into a precipitous fall, a pretty on-the-nose reinforcement
of Fleck as a man teetering on the edge of sanity.
If you're familiar with the rest of Modern Times, though, you'll realize that some of
its themes are Easter eggs mirroring the ones we're seeing play out for Gotham City.
This is, after all, a film where Chaplin, as the Tramp, is dealing with a desperate
economic situation, finding himself literally chewed up and spat out by the machinery of
heavy industry.
Even more telling is the scene where he's arrested and sent to jail before being pardoned,
only to argue that he'd rather stay in jail than go back out and face the alternative.
That's a sentiment that's echoed in Joker by Brian Tyree Henry in his role as a file
clerk at Arkham State Hospital, who tells Arthur that some people are better off locked
up there than out on the increasingly dangerous streets of Gotham City.
Saying that director Todd Phillips was inspired by Martin Scorsese in Joker is sort of like
saying that life on Earth is "inspired by" the sun.
There's a very significant amount of Taxi Driver in the DNA of Joker's broader plot
points, from Arthur getting the handgun from his coworker, Thomas Wayne's political ambitions,
and the grimy feel of Gotham City.
It's not the only Scorsese picture in play, though.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, 1983's The King of Comedy had a huge influence on Joker, to the
point where it's worth your time to watch just to catch everything that's going on.
See if you can spot the connections here: Robert De Niro stars as Rupert Pupkin, an
aspiring stand-up comedian obsessed with talk show host Jerry Langford.
Pupkin often has vivid fantasies, which are never clearly delineated for the audience,
of being on Langford's show and even being friends with Langford himself.
"I really appreciate you meeting me for lunch.
I know how busy you are, how tired you are…"
"What are friends for, Jerry?"
Eventually, his obsession leads him to kidnap Langford, holding him for ransom until he's
allowed to be a guest on the show, where he tells a few jokes about his crime, confessing
to the audience in the guise of a stand-up routine.
If you've seen Joker, you should be experiencing a powerful feeling of déjà vu right now,
but the exclamation point on the Easter egg comes in De Niro himself being cast as Murray
Franklin, the talk show host with whom Fleck is obsessed.
Naturally, he winds up being caught up in Fleck's madness, even accidentally giving
him the name "Joker."
The parallels are strong, even if Joker turns out to be significantly more homicidal than
Pupkin was.
The motif of Arthur Fleck dancing recurs throughout Joker, from his halting, Oedipal waltz with
his mother all the way to the final moments of the film.
But there's one moment where it seems different.
After his first trio of kills, when he's collecting himself in a dimly lit bathroom, Fleck's feet
sweep across the floor, leading his whole body into a long routine.
The thing is, it doesn't look like the dancing we see elsewhere in the film.
It's more fluid, and seems more theatrically performative.
So what's the deal?
You can debate why Arthur chooses this moment for a graceful dance sequence, but in the
real world, the filmmakers could be using the scene to evoke the fluid movements of
legendary French mime Marcel Marceau.
If that sounds like a long shot, that's because it is, but consider this potential Easter
egg: one of Marceau's most famous performances was The Maskmaker, in which he pantomimed
putting on a series of masks, changing his expression to match.
The climax of the piece comes when Marceau finds that a "mask" depicting pure, wide-eyed
joy has become stuck on his face.
He struggles to remove it, trying to peel off what seems like his own skin as his body
contorts with pain and depression, all while his face remains locked in the painted smile
of a clown.
If that doesn't sound like what's going on in Joker, then we don't know what does.
This might be surprising considering that it's a movie about the Joker - you know, the
bad guy from the Batman comic books? - but Joker doesn't really have a lot of specific
references to the comics.
Other than the major characters, there aren't really any superheroes or villains referenced
in the film, unless you count the offhand mention of "super cats" being a deep cut reference
to Streaky.
There's no hint of Harley Quinn, no Ha-Hacienda or Jokermobile, and sadly, Arthur Fleck never
even proclaims that it's time for the Joker's Five-Way Revenge!
There's one major exception, though.
While it's pretty clearly an homage to King of Comedy, it's easy to argue that the entire
climax of the film is an Easter egg referencing one of the most influential Batman comics
of all time: The Dark Knight Returns.
In the third issue of Frank Miller's '80s classic, the Joker appears as a guest on a
talk show.
The scene in Joker isn't a direct homage to the comics, seeing as how the circumstances
of the stories are so different, but there is one clear reference you may have missed.
It's one of the show's other guests, Dr. Sally, whose few lines indicate that she's a sex
therapist, along the lines of the real-life Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
A similar figure also appears in The Dark Knight Returns, as does the theatrical and
incredibly creepy kiss that Joker plants on her as he enters the scene.
Joker marks the fifth time that a live-action Mr. J has been featured on the big screen.
The first four times, 1966, 1989, The Dark Knight, and Suicide Squad if you're keeping
score at home, all featured very different designs, but that all drew from the same source.
You'd never confuse Cesar Romero's Joker with Heath Ledger's, but they've both got green
hair and purple suits, and even Jared Leto's purple snakeskin coat keeps the color scheme
going.
Joker, on the other hand, breaks with tradition.
Rather than the traditional purple, Arthur Fleck's emergence as the Joker comes with
a slightly different look.
The green hair is there, and the traditional three-piece suit, but rather than purple and
green, it's more of a burgundy.
It's a small difference, and the most likely explanation is that Todd Phillips, Joaquin
Phoenix, and costume designer Mark Bridges wanted their take on the character to be visually
distinct from the others, which was probably a good idea given a few strong similarities
to Heath Ledger's look.
But there is one place where you can find this color scheme on a past version of the
Joker, and it probably isn't where you expect.
Back in 1990, the Kenner toy company was riding the wave of the '89 Batman movie when they
released "Sky Escape Joker."
It's not quite the same costume - the vest and shirt colors are switched - but the color
of the jacket is shockingly similar to what wound up in theaters 29 years later.
Does this mean that there was a draft of Joker in which Phoenix flew around on Sky Escape
Joker's backpack helicopter?
Probably not, but hey, you never know.
Release the Sky Escape cut, Warner Bros.!
Joker pulls a big portion of its aesthetic from New York City in the mid-'80s, and not
just because it's evoking the grimy, crime-ridden streets of Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy.
There are real-life incidents forming the background for the events playing out on the
screen, including the massive spike in crime that accompanied the crack epidemic, and a
"garbage strike" that's based on similar sanitation worker strikes in New York, like one that
lasted 17 days in 1981.
The one incident most heavily referenced in the plot of Joker is the 1984 shooting of
four men in a subway car by Bernie Goetz.
Goetz claimed that he was defending himself from a robbery, and was initially dubbed the
"Subway Vigilante" by media before he turned himself in.
He was also referred to as the "Death Wish Vigilante," a reference to the popular revenge
movies starring Charles Bronson.
Many New Yorkers, as well as people following the story from elsewhere, were supportive
of Goetz's actions, viewing them as a justified response to the seemingly unchecked rise of
violent crime.
"A vigilante showing up every now and then would have good, uh, a healthy reminder for
some of the lawbreakers out there."
"You're a lawyer?"
"I'm a lawyer."
Eventually, though, public opinion turned against him, largely because of the view that
Goetz had been racially motivated - all four men shot by Goetz were black, Goetz himself
was not - which was supported by racist statements Goetz had made in the past.
Some of his statements also came off as needlessly violent, and even creepy.
"My problem is I ran out of bullets.
And I was gonna gouge out one of the guy's eyes out with my keys afterwards."
While there were plenty of people willing to indulge in Death Wish-style revenge fantasies,
those are the kind of statements that make them think you might not be all that stable
to begin with.
It's no accident, then, that Arthur's transformation into Joker begins with shooting his assailants
on a subway train, and that he only stops shooting because he runs out of bullets, or
that his actions are sensationalized by the media and approved of by others in Gotham
City.
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