10 DCEU Characters That Are Nothing Like The Comics

10. The Joker

The Joker is without question the most iconic villain in all of DC media, be they comics or movies, and time has certainly proven how many distinct and divergent iterations of the Clown Prince of Crime will be embraced by fans.

Yet fans almost immediately balked at the first glimpses of Jared Leto's Joker in Suicide Squad, deterred by the character's Edgy-with-a-capital-E design above all else.

The tatted-up, grill-wearing "Hot Topic Gangsta" couldn't be much further from his traditional comic book aesthetic, lacking the iconic purple coat and better resembling a contemporary mobster with a few distinctive Joker-y flourishes.

But honestly, fans probably would've dealt with this fine enough if the characterisation felt even remotely consistent with what was expected.

Leto certainly tried to convey the character's frayed sanity with the scarce screen time he had, but strip away the eccentric design and his character is mostly just a money-hungry gangster like you'd see in any garden variety crime thriller.

Furthermore, his oddly earnest affection for Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) rings mostly false given the knowingly toxic nature of their relationship in prior animated and comic book iterations.

It's fair to say that Leto's Joker does borrow superficial elements from various comic books - the tattoos being very Frank Miller, for instance - but in trying to reinvent the character in a post-Dark Knight world, Leto and writer-director David Ayer may have strayed too far from his roots.