“Every day, I come by your house and I pick you up.

[Polident]

Nothing about the first movie really lines up with Batman “lore” as it is. Spoilers for the first Joker, there’s the whole dreamy unreliable narrator part of it. If that follows here, there’s the idea of whose narrative they’re telling. Aspects of the trailer read like Arthur isn’t the Joker people think he is. That’s who Harley is into and these are her fantasies. She’s goading him into being that guy. But he’s a sad dude in an asylum, and unfortunately for her, having a clown girlfriend makes him happy?

First movie had parts here and there from Batman comics to tell its own thing. Knowing Todd Phillips already borrowed big moments from Dark Knight Returns, maybe Joker being in this catatonic state is pulling from there again. The movie ends with Joker in his late 40s fighting a 14-year-old Bruce Wayne.