10 Hidden Details You Never Noticed In Famous Movie Posters

2. A Taste For The Theatrical (The Dark Knight)

Joker Why So Serious The Dark Knight
Warner Bros. Pictures

The marketing campaign for The Dark Knight was incredibly in-depth, with Warner Bros even going as far as sending "Dentmobile" vans - which showed support for Harvey Dent's in-movie political campaign - to various American cities.

The marketing team really pushed the boat out, so it would actually be shocking if they didn't do something as relatively simple as hiding a detail in a poster.

The Dark Knight has many iconic posters, one of them being this "Why So Serious?" one-sheet, which shows Heath Ledger's Joker painting a bloody smile onto the hazy glass surface in front of him. Listed at the bottom of this poster is the movie's title, release date, and website, but below those three bits of information, a more unusual line of text can be seen, one that's coloured in red.

The Dark Knight movie poster
Warner Bros. Pictures

This text is almost unnoticeable when the poster is displayed in its full portrait glory, and while it looks like nothing more than an incoherent jumble of symbols, it's actually a hidden message.

If these symbols are flipped upright and then rearranged, they spell out the phrase "A Taste For The Theatrical". This was intended to send fans to a now-defunct marketing website, yet another element of the movie's extensive promotional run.

In addition, "A Taste For The Theatrical" is also a famous phrase within The Dark Knight Trilogy itself. It's spoken by Jim Gordon at the end of Batman Begins, when he and Batman are discussing the Joker's card.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!