The Dark Knight Rises Mysteries: Joker and Robin

Three more weeks.  Three more painful, mind numbing weeks.  That’s the length of time standing between the great hordes of fandom and the bitter sweet finale of Nolan’s Batman trilogy.

Not to rub it in, or anything.

Well, if you’re still jonesing for your daily The Dark Knight Rises fix, then allow me to introduce some juicy canonical tidbits leaked from a new tie-in book, The Dark Knight Manual. It dives into the Joker‘s mysterious history and also offers a potential spoiler about the origins of John Blake (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt)

Our friends at IGN did some sleuth work to tie the pieces together and here’s their grand speculation:

Comics readers will know that Haly’s Circus was the home to the Flying Graysons, who were killed after Sal Maroni’s associate Tony Zucco sabotaged their ropes in order to send a message to the circus owners that the mob intended on using their trucks to ship drugs. (SPOILER: Speculation that Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s cop character John Blake is a potential Batman successor/would-be Robin will only be fueled by the revelation in The Dark Knight Manual that Blake, like Bruce Wayne, is an orphan who “channeled his anger and pain … into his work serving and protecting the people of Gotham.”)

The GCPD report offers one other theory about the Joker’s identity: “Given the Joker’s access to, and relative comfort with, military-grade technology such as grapple cannons, weaponized gases, explosives, and automatic weapons, it is possible that the man is a former soldier, perhaps suffering from severe PTSD.” The report later suggests “anarchy” as a possible motive for Joker’s crimes, speculating: “The Joker has murdered or attempted to murder various civic officials. It is possible that he is an extremist anti-government agitator or a soldier angry with the government for sending him to war.”

Do you agree? Think they’re full of it? Sound off.

SOURCE: IGN