2019’s Joker was a cultural phenomenon. There’s no two ways about it. Whether you loved the film or loathed it, there was something about the chilling origin story that sparked ongoing conversation. Joker grossed over a billion dollars, and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards including Best Picture (a first for a DC Studios) and Best Actor (which Joaquin Phoenix won).
There are a couple reasons why Joker is still so relevant today. One is the aforementioned performance by Phoenix, which received universal praise. Another is writer/director Todd Phillips, who brought a purposefulness and intensity that most viewers didn’t realize he was capable of. Phillips clearly took a layered approach to the storytelling in the film, but there are some things viewers have picked up on that the director has dismissed as being merely accidental.
One of the most notable examples of a pseudo Easter egg was posted on the Reddit thread DC_Cinematic. The Easter egg centers around the opening scene, in which Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) can be seen sitting at a table and applying clown makeup. It’s a powerhouse scene in terms of setting up Fleck’s psychological instability, but one eagle-eyed viewer noted that the shape above the character’s lead looks familiar. When highlighted with a green line, the two lamps and the dark room behind Fleck resemble the cowl of none other than Batman.
It’s a fun discovery, and it does, admittedly, look like Joker’s arch-nemesis. It would be an ingenious way of foreshadowing what Fleck will become, and how Bruce Wayne factors into the rest of his life, but there’s one problem: it’s not foreshadowing. It was a total coincidence that the shapes behind the character lined up the way they did. Phillips has made a point of telling fans that he did not leave easter eggs in Joker, because he didn’t want to take away from the emotional focus of the story.
“I don’t do Easter eggs,” the director told Collider. “Any Easter eggs anybody finds is a mistake. I don’t understand.” The only way an Easter egg made it into the film, he explained, would be “the art department sneaking something in that would make me crazy if I knew about it.” Phoenix echoed Phillips’ sentiment, likening the desire to find Easter eggs in the film to the “Paul is Dead” myth, which is a pop culture conspiracy about Paul McCartney dying in 1967, and clues about his death being hidden in various Beatles albums.
Phillips may have shot down the Batman outline in the opening scene, but there is one Easter egg he admitted to putting in the film. When Fleck meets Bruce Wayne, the latter is shown sliding down the pole of his treehouse. The inclusion of the pole, according to the director, was a nod to the pole used in the Batman TV series from the 1960s.
“I get asked a lot if that’s an Easter egg, and I just don’t like that term Easter egg, but little Bruce there when he slides down the pole, was that an Easter egg to the Batman television series and yes in fact it was,” he told Cinemablend. “It was something we spoke about and thought ‘Oh yeah, why not do it.’ Without being too cute we don’t like to do a ton of that stuff, but it felt appropriate.”
There may not have been other intentional Easter eggs scattered throughout Joker, but that won’t stop viewers from looking. Who knows, maybe there are a few more happy accidents lurking in the background.