The Joker menaces Vicki Vale in a key scene in 1989’s Batman, but the movie doesn’t make it clear whether or not he killed everyone else in Gotham’s Flugelheim Museum. Played by Jack Nicholson, The Joker brought a chaotic brand of menace to the Tim Burton film, contributing to the film’s becoming a pop culture sensation. Nicholson’s Joker depicted his comic counterpart’s senseless cruelty and violence, but he may not have used lethal force on a room full of innocents for a particular reason in Batman.

Taking inspiration from Alan Moore’s graphic novel, The Killing Joke, Burton gives his version of The Joker a clear origin story (a rarity for the character), with high-ranking mobster Jack Napier having his skin bleached and his face contorted into a gruesome grin following an encounter with Batman and the Gotham Police. Reinventing himself as The Joker, Napier consolidates Gotham’s criminal element under his control and begins a nonsensical reign of terror, killing countless citizens with his “Smylex” toxin.

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The Joker also becomes infatuated with photojournalist Vicki Vale and confronts her at the Flugelheim Museum. After having a gas mask delivered to Vale, Joker’s men flood the museum with gas, seemingly killing everybody. While murdering an entire room full of people for the sake of alone time with Vale would be in-character for both the film and comic version of Joker, the Batman novel reveals he used a non-lethal gas to sedate everyone in the museum, a strange choice that makes sense in context and that the Batman 1989 movie itself supports.

The Joker’s signature method of murdering people in Batman 1989 was through his Smylex poison, which, like its comic inspiration, caused its victims to laugh hysterically before dying with horrific grins. None of the museum-goers laughed or collapsed with grins on, confirming that the novel and the film both had Joker spare the museum patrons. But this also raises a question: Why would Joker, someone who murders for amusement, choose not to use his lethal Smylex on the museum?

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The most obvious reason for Joker’s restraint is that he didn’t want to risk killing Vicki Vale in case she didn’t put on her mask in time. More interestingly, The Joker seems to have spared the museum-goers to pull off one of his cruel and tasteless jokes. When The Joker and his enforcers enter the museum, they deface nearly all its artwork. This implies he intended to simply ruin the museum patrons’ experience and needlessly destroy priceless art. When The Joker and his men leave, the museum-goers will wake to see that all of the art they’d been admiring has been vandalized.

While this feels oddly tame for a villain like The Joker, this level of pettiness is completely natural to his character too, especially the 1989 film version. Towards the end of Batman, The Joker murders Bob, who is easily his most loyal and competent goon, out of frustration when Batman steals his Smylex balloons. With this in mind, The Joker’s decision to spare the museum-goers for the sake of a breathtakingly cruel prank in 1989’s Batman makes sense – at least by his logic.

Key Release Dates
  • The Batman (2022)Release date: Mar 04, 2022
  • DC League of Super-Pets (2022)Release date: Jul 29, 2022
  • Black Adam (2022)Release date: Oct 21, 2022
  • The Flash (2023)Release date: Jun 23, 2023
  • Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)Release date: Mar 17, 2023
  • Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2022)Release date: Dec 16, 2022
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David Miller
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David Miller is a staff writer for Screen Rant, indie comic writer, and life-long lover of all things Star Wars, Marvel, and DC. He was born and raised in New York and has a degree in English from Rider University. He relates to Peter Parker maybe a little too much.

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