Joker: Every Easter Egg & Reference We Spotted

6. Psycho

The relationship between Arthur and his mother Penny draws a number of comparisons to that of Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) and his mother Norma in Alfred Hitchcock's suspense classic Psycho.

Though Arthur has little interest in dressing up as his mother, he has like Norman inherited her crushing mental illness, and after learning that she failed to prevent him being abused as a child, he murders her, just as Norman did to his own mother.

Thankfully Joker takes a decidedly more hands-off approach to the precise trigger for Arthur's violent rampages - while Hitchcock's film gives us an infamously overdone third act exposition dump - even if the similarities between the characters are undeniable.