• Pre-accident Joker: He was already a petty, narcissistic sociopath, but had no criminal record or identification. The ACE Chemicals accident effectively erased his legal identity, leaving only “Joker.”
• Metahuman abilities: The chemicals activated a dormant metagene, giving him:
- A “super sanity” / sixth sense for narrative patterns and the absurdity of everyday life, similar to Stephen King’s Shining ability.
- An extremely powerful liver, making him highly resistant to toxins, drugs, alcohol, not excessively Joker venom.
• His worldview: Because he’s permanently sober and hyper-aware, he doesn’t see the world as meaningless so much as beautiful but fundamentally fake/inauthentic. He’s a “malabsurdist”: he embraces absurdity but rejects the ethical conclusions of normal absurdism. He sees himself as superior to people who choose comforting illusions over “truth.”
• Why Harley fell for him: Joker genuinely wanted someone to talk to at first. Unlike other Arkham inmates, who were mostly gloomy or catatonic, he was energetic, charismatic, and seemingly lucid. Harley wasn’t stupid, Arkham simply didn’t realize that he was burning through their sedatives like water.
• Arkham’s failure: They left a completely conscious, hyper-aware, compulsively predatory metahuman alone with a young psychiatrist who had no idea how dangerous he really was.
• Harley’s vulnerability: Harleen was actually highly intelligent, but academic ambition and hubris blinded her. She discovered evidence of his metahuman biology, but thought of how big of an academic breakthrough it would be to reform someone like him while he was in his most dangerous state, and kept it to herself because she thought she was making extraordinary progress.
• How Joker manipulated her:* *At first, he fed her ego and made her feel uniquely successful. Romantic feelings came much later. Once Joker sensed she was developing feelings, he began deliberately faking vulnerability and telling sympathetic stories to deepen her attachment.