7 Pieces Of Evidence That May Confirm The Joker Used To Be Robin

7. There's Precedent For It In The Comic Books

The Dark Knight Returns has been hailed as a masterpiece, but both the prequel and sequels have been panned by fans and critics alike. That might just have something to do with the way Dick Grayson/Robin is handled in them. In All-Star Batman, the Caped Crusader essentially kidnaps the youngster after the murder of his parents, immediately berates him ("What, are you dense? Are you retarded or something? Who the hell do you think I am? I'm the Goddamn Batman!"), and dumps him in the Batcave, forcing the boy to catch and eat rats and bats when he's hungry. It's no wonder then that his relationship with Batman eventually breaks down, and an already unhinged Robin goes though a cellular regeneration procedure which near enough makes him immortal and drives him totally insane. After murdering a number of retired heroes, he sets his sights on his old mentor as the new Joker in The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Both of those stories play out as terribly as they sound, but with Zack Snyder taking inspiration from The Dark Knight Returns for Batman v Superman, it's highly likely that he may have borrowed elements from Frank Miller's other work when creating the DC Extended Universe's Clown Prince of Crime. Batman has been operating in Gotham City for twenty years in this reality, and it's very possible that the original Joker died years ago just as he did in the pages of the graphic novel which Snyder has already borrowed so much from. Had Robin never become The Joker in the comics, this theory would feel a lot more random and hard to believe. However, it's impossible to ignore the fact that there's precedent for it not just in the source material, but specifically in the work related to the book that Batman v Superman's director has already borrowed a number of elements from. That alone has to make this a very real possibility.