Suicide Squad: 11 Key Influences You'll See In Jared Leto's Joker

5. Michael Jackson?

Could there be something in the wild speculation that Leto has partly based his Joker creation on the erstwhile King Of Pop? Maybe that description of penile birth pain was an attempt to align himself with Jacko's penchant for abusing his groin on stage? All jokes aside, there is a pretty compelling argument - established by Reddit user Samus1225 - that the pop star's transformation and increasingly eccentric behaviour could have fed into the way the Joker has been put together. The evidence suggested is that Leto's villain has bleached skin, razor-sharp cheekbones and red lips, and of course the fact that he was only wearing one glove in the initial teaser image. Rather more substantially, there's also the fact that director David Ayer called his Joker as charming as he is insane. And there is something compelling about the idea of a supremely charming, creepy persona rather than one that is villainous in more typical beats: after all Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka worked on that front, and there is a sort of naive detachment to the best psychotic performances in movies that would benefit from a sprinkle of Jackson's own brand of personality. Unfortunately, the same Redditor sort of soured his own mythology by then suggesting that Leto's Joker is also a vampire. Seriously.