Among the many Easter eggs in DC’s Joker was a very subtle, but brilliant, reference to Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie. In terms of story and character, the Oscar-winning Joker was very far removed from the established Batman universe. Joaquin Phoenix’s version of the Clown Prince of Crime was vastly different to the character seen in the comics or elsewhere, while the story had only minimal connections to Batman, and didn’t neatly fit into how fans know Bruce Wayne’s traditional story. Coming out of Joker, it wasn’t even clear how much of the movie was real, or whether Arthur Fleck was really the Joker after all.

While Joker might’ve been self-contained for the most part, it more than made up for its standalone story by including all manner of Easter eggs and nods to Batman’s past. Bruce Wayne going down the pole called back to Adam West’s Caped Crusader, the Murray Franklin show used a font nabbed from Batman: The Animated Series, and the opening shot of Joker, when paused correctly, makes the perfect outline of Batman’s familiar cowl. Easter eggs such as these add an extra layer of detail to an already visually rich movie, and serve as payment for the general rewrite Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix gave the character.

One Easter egg many viewers might’ve understandably missed (via googsmaster24 on Reddit) connects Joker to Jack Nicholson’s version of the same character from the 1989 Batman movie that kick-started modern superhero cinema. In the older film, Joker is prancing through the halls of the Fluegelheim Museum to the sweet sounds of Prince, trashing paintings and sculptures as he goes, including The Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough while on a flight of stairs. A print of this very same painting can be seen on the wall inside the apartment Arthur Fleck shares with his mother in Joker.

Todd Phillips has teased plenty of Easter eggs in Joker that fans haven’t yet found, but with the film now out on home media, small details like this that would’ve been near-impossible to pick up in theaters will surely now be uncovered. This particular reference is a fantastic nod to Jack Nicholson’s Joker - incredibly subtle but highly unlikely to be a coincidence. Arthur Fleck bears very little resemblance to Jack Napier in terms of his persona, but details like this help anchor the new version of Joker with the old guard, especially since Nicholson played a big part in making the Batman villain a big screen icon.

Having said that, it’s curious that Joker would include this painting in particular, since so many artworks are trashed by Napier during Batman’s museum scene. There is, however, a Francis Bacon picture that Nicholson’s Joker deliberately avoids defacing because he takes a liking to it, and this perhaps would’ve made more sense as an Easter egg in Fleck’s apartment, since it suggests Fleck and Napier have the same taste in art. Regardless of the reason for its selection, it’s testament to Joker’s excellent set design and cinematography that fans are still finding links to previous Batman movies, TV shows and comics months after the film’s release.

More: The Batman Costume Reveal Is the Same As Joker

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