When Joker says Grissom has a great singing voice, he isn't being nutty, he's being metaphorical. It's a figurative way to call someone a rat, because they "sang" to the police to betray you.
He could also be referring to the way Grissom screamed when the Joker shot him.
It could both, knowing the Joker.
Joker's remark about he and Vicky being "Beauty and the Beast" is somewhat accurate, just for the wrong people. Vicky is beauty, but Joker's not the Beast (not that he would own up to it anyway). Rather, the metaphorical Beast is Batman. After all, it is a "tale as old as time" about a woman uncovering a prince of a man from a horrifying animal visage. He even lives in an isolated castle (that is Wayne Manor). And just try to tell any Batman fan that Alfred isn't "magical".
Also, Bruce is often referred to as the "Prince of Gotham".
Even though this movie precedes the Disney version, Joker is somewhat like a Gaston stand-in. He may not be handsome, but he does possess a narcissism that tells him otherwise. Like the Beast and Gaston, it's him versus the Batman, and only one of them can come out alive with the girl.
Jack Nicholson's Joker actually isn't insane. He was always a clinical sociopath. The only thing that changed with his change to the Joker was that he became The Unfettered due to the realization his boss was never going to let him inherit control of Gotham City. Really, all of the clown stuff was just window dressing to the fact he (ironically) looked like a clown.
Which is why he acts so sane in private... having conversations with corpses.
One essay noted: "Early in Batman, before he becomes the Joker, Nicholson's Jack Napier preens in front of a mirror. You look fine, says a glamorous woman admiringly, as she places a hand on his shoulder. I didn't ask, snarls Napier, shrugging off her hand. A man so vain would be completely undone by losing his looks. He would feel as if he'd died, which the Joker does indeed."
It brings Jack's next scene with a mirror to a sharper view. Looking in the mirror, now we know why The Joker says "Jack is dead, my friend." The laughter? Jack now resembles the Joker card from his lucky deck.
Although fans were initially dismayed by the idea of Michael Keaton being cast as Batman, it actually makes a lot of sense. After all, if you didn't think a man like Keaton could be Batman, then isn't that precisely the kind of reaction Bruce Wayne would be attempting to invoke about himself to preserve his secret identity?
This was, in fact, Keaton's reasoning. He said in an interview that the actor doesn't have to play Batman as much as he has to play Bruce Wayne, or something similar.
I always wondered why Alfred would slip up and tell Vicki that he and Bruce are going to be there for a while. Alfred is always very quick to catch on to what Master Bruce is doing and would surely have known what day it was...until I realized he did it on purpose! He obviously thought Vicki was good for Bruce and did his best throughout the film to make sure they stayed together, including letting her in the Bat Cave.
On their date, Vicki notes to Bruce that this house "doesn't seem like him", to which Bruce replies "Some of it is very MUCH me, some of it isn't". The part of the house that truly represents him is the Batcave.
Why did Vicki have almost no reaction to the revelation that Bruce Wayne is Batman upon entering the Batcave (as noted by Ebert and other critics)? Because she already figured it out before hand when she saw the newspaper clipping.
Also, when she was riding with Batman, she noticed the look on his face, which was the same look she saw Bruce made after visiting the spot where his parents died, and on the newspaper clipping as a kid. Also, she tells Alfred she knows, which is why Alfred let her in the Batcave.
Watching him resemble a bat perching upside down while he exercises probably put her over the edge.
In addition, she discussed it with Alfred already. He escorted her there, so she already had the full story. She's still nervous, you may notice, but because she's worried about Bruce's reaction.
The news bulletin after the one where the newscaster dies shows both presenters scruffy, puffy and laden with zits because people can't trust their cosmetics - or even basic soap - not to be laced with Smilex.
As noted on the main page, the Joker's getting rid of Vicki's high heels initially just seems to be because they are slowing her (and consequently, his escape) down. However, combined with his later removal of her coat and the fact that the items are left for Batman to find as he ascends the tower after them, it seems Joker was in fact baiting Batman by making him think Vicki was being subjected to a Shameful Strip.
When Eckhart mutters, "Where have you been spending your nights?", it becomes obvious who ratted out Napier's affair with Alicia to Grissom.
A lot of people wonder how Batman managed to miss the Joker several times with the weaponry on the Batwing. Unlike Luke Skywalker, Batman is no Jedi. Anyone trying to fire at a six foot target in a plane with anti-vehicle guns, especially when he was flying straight at the Joker, is pretty much just hoping for a stray bullet to get blown at its target. Sure the Joker would have to have been nuts to just stand there, but not hitting the Joker was just about as likely as actually hitting him. The Joker, on the other hand... I've got nothing.
The storyboards for that scene, as presented in the film's making-of book, show that the Joker was meant to dance around the bullets. For whatever reason they decided the Joker remaining stationary and unfazed worked better.
Bruce pulled a Batman Gambit in Vicki's apartment. The tray he used as a bulletproof vest was positioned over his chest, where Napier had aimed when he shot Eckhardt and Batman at the chemical plant. (Batman held his arm over his chest to deflect the bullet that came his way.) The only way Bruce could've survived was if the Joker aimed where he did at the chemical plant.
It also helps that the bullet was a .22 Short, judging from the gun. No joke, but relatively underpowered compared to a standard 9mm. Much less likely to pierce the tray.
When Vicki Vale pretends to show affection for the Joker by kissing his shirt in order to distract him from Batman, for a moment she sinks lower and goes offscreen, and from Joker's dazed, incredulous expression it looks like she's almost ready to give the Joker a blowjob just before Batman shows up.
A small one regarding the film's writing, but interesting nonetheless: by the end of the movie, Batman and the Joker have met at least once in all variations of their identities. Jack Napier met Bruce Wayne when he killed his parents; Batman met Jack Napier when he dropped him in the chemicals, creating the Joker; Joker met Bruce Wayne at Vicki Vale's apartment; and finally, Batman met Joker in the finale at the church. Two characters, two identities each, yet they managed to meet each other at least once in each variation of identities. Not only did they create each other, they also looked each other in the face several times without ever realising who they really were.
I take mild issue with that very last point, "never realising who they were". At least at Vicki's apartment; Bruce outright tells Joker "I know who you are" (i.e. Jack Napier), and had known for several scenes by this point. From the point of view of knowing that Jack is the one who killed Bruce's parents, though, the original logic does stand, as Bruce didn't deduce this until that particular scene.
Metajoke: probably Jack Nicholson's most famous protagonist role was a sane criminal pretending to be insane in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. So it's fitting that his most famous antagonistic role would be an insane criminal who never pretends to be sane.
In a way, the Joker is to blame for Vicki and Bruce becoming a thing.
Early in the film, just as the Joker has been created, Bruce and Vicki have a date together, only for Bruce to tell Vicki the next morning that he has to go out of town. We learn soon enough that he's lying to her, but think it through. This could've been a Xanatos Gambit. If Vicki believed him and Alfred said nothing, then Bruce could simply have stopped calling her and vanished forever from her life. Alternatively, if she did ask Alfred and realise he was lying to her, she'd be so disgusted she would cut him out from her life, meaning that no matter what happened, Vicki would steer clear of Bruce Wayne
The thing that causes them to get together is the Joker's mutual interest in Vicki after seeing photographs of her following Bruce Wayne around. He has no idea who she is, or that she's interested in Bruce (until he comes to her apartment), but he wants her for himself. By trying to force himself on her, Joker rather obviously incurs the wrath of Batman, making him intervene and save Vicki, thus inadvertently pushing Batman (or rather, BRUCE WAYNE) closer towards Vicki
So much so that he even tries to tell her that he's Batman, in the aforementioned apartment scene, where he struggles to even say a single word to her about what's really happening. Even then, the Joker turns up and sees that he has competition, while Bruce's only thought is making himself the target to keep Vicki safe
So, by the end of the movie, Vicki has fallen for Bruce Wayne, and vice versa. And it only happened, really, because of the Joker.
And with the Joker gone, Bruce and Vicki's relationship didn't last.
Some commentators have noted that Batman's "aligning" himself with Commissioner Gordon (as much as he does, anyway) seems unmotivated, as Batman is at this point still a vigilante and wanted by the police. The story originally raised a point during the flashback to the Wayne murders (or possibly contained in the newspaper clipping about same) that showed Gordon, then a beat cop, was one of the first officers on the scene, and is the guy whom little Bruce is shown clinging to. (Other adaptations also tend to give the two a semi-filial relationship.)
When The Joker rages at the media broadcast suggesting Batman might be behind the murder of the crime bosses (stealing his thunder), The Joker unleashes a powerful "punching glove" device that smashes the TV screen. Gotham's DA, Harvey Dent, whose image just happened to be onscreen at the time, is seemingly struck on one side of his face, shattering the TV and giving the illusion that Dent's face was destroyed. Clever Foreshadowing of Dent's eventual transformation into the disfigured criminal mastermind Two-Face.
While Joker's dead on the street there's some monotone laughing coming from the corpse. Gordon pulls out a velvet pouch and opens it to reveal the laughter is coming from a recording. Joker apparently did get the last laugh after all.
The Joker challenges Batman to fight him mano e mano at the Gotham 200th Anniversary Parade without masks or makeup. He claims he's already taken off his makeup and dares Batman to take off his. This is Blatant Lies from the Joker as his "normal" skin is the real makeup hiding his clownish look. And that's when you realize that Joker's prediction came true. They didn't bring any masks or makeup in their final fight; they brought their real faces.
Why is Joker's origin story altered here to Batman being indirectly responsible for Joker suffering an accident in a chemical factory that destroyed Joker's face? So that Joker would have a Bat-related vat-related origin story!
Since Joker, to this day, STILL has no actual name in the comics, it seems kind of strange that, when he became the killer of Bruce's parents, he didn't retain Joe Chill's name in this film... until you realize that anyone who's familiar with the comics would have picked up on the "punchline" early on, so it was necessary for Tim Burton to create a different name so as to keep the reveal hidden.
Meta Example: Jack Nicholson played the Devil in The Witches of Eastwick. We see him dancing with Vicki Vale "in the pale moonlight". Might be seen as confirmation that he does indeed plan to kill Vicki.
Even more so when you realize Jack Nicholson intentionally quoted one of his lines from The Witches of Eastwick after his character killed Grissom.
"Oh, what a day!"
When Grissom tells Pre-Joker Jack, he's his number one guy, he ends up trying to have him killed. Joker later says the same thing to Bob, implying he may have planned on killing Bob long before Batman stole his Balloons.
Joker's televisedBrand X stunt had an entire major city too terrified to clean their bodies, or their clothes, or the buildings... An entire city yanked back to The Dung Ages. Fleas, ticks, lice... Eventually people would start dying of things besides the poison, which would have led to total panic. One good riot under those conditions would kill everyone in the city as Joker contaminated damn near everything needed to treat wounds on that scale. After a few days without maintenance, restoring water and power would be a multi-million dollar effort. A nuclear weapon would do less damage, as at least that would be sterile - a few weeks after a mass organic die-off like that, all the bodies will have been devoured by vermin, resulting in a population explosion that would sweep the Eastern Seaboard, potentially completely depopulating the political, industrial and commercial heart of the country. Look up John Birmingham's Without Warning for an examination of the global effects of America effectively vanishing from the world scene. Batman broke the Joker's "poison code" just in time to prevent millions (perhaps even hundreds of millions or even billions) of deaths - a Class-0 Apocalypse. The original script was more clear about this, but the execs nixed a montage of filthy people fleeing Gotham.
Bruce has a suit of armor that looks like something out of a potential World War III (it's the all-enclosed one with gas-mask parts and rubber tubing coming out of the head). Assuming it's not a commission piece or part of some art installation, then in what deranged conflict did it see use in? Corto Maltese, perhaps?
If the events of The Flash (2023) are considered future canon for this movie, then this Earth is eventually doomed to be terraformed into a new Krypton, making the plot of this and Batman Returns events All for Nothing.
On the other hand, Bruce's explanation about how time travel worked when talking with the two Barrys suggests that his Earth merged with Barry's when Barry ran back to change history, so it's also possible that the original version of this Earth remains intact and safe after Barry prevented his original changes to history.
