10 Subtle Details That Make Joaquin Phoenix's Joker Incredible

6. The Unreliable Narrator Hints

As Arthur reveals after he's killed the three Wayne employees who assault him on the train, his "fighting back" is a sudden revelation to him that he is real. He tells his therapist Debra that for most of his life he didn't know whether he was real, foreshadowing something the film plays with throughout - the idea of an unreliable narrator and of fantasy versus reality.

That statement is Arthur telling us that sometimes he really isn't real and there are little tics throughout his performance that go to the same idea. First off, the first triple murder scene. Arthur uses a Colt Detective Special .38 revolver, which holds six bullets. However, when he shoots his targets, he fires at least 7 bullets before the gun runs out of ammo. You could say it's a mistake on the film-makers' part but it fits with Arthur's faint grasp on reality. Or at least with the intention to make you question it.

On top of that, at the end, we see Joker remembering the sight of Bruce Wayne standing over his dead parents as he gleefully drinks in the moment. Only, this is an impossible scene - Arthur didn't witness it but we're shown it as if he did. It's no more than a fantasy and who even knows whether it really happened.

And finally, there's another subtle way the film messes with Arthur as a reliable narrator - his make-up. In films like this, you'd expect a continuity team to have Arthur's face appear entirely consistent between scenes, but there are so many small changes to his clown make-up in single scenes that it's almost as if they chose to allow them in order to mess with the audience.