11 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn't Know About Batman: Arkham

6. Arkham Asylum's Joker Almost Looked Completely Different

Batman Arkham Joker Concept
Warner Bros./Carlos D'Anda

Although Rocksteady themselves should be praised for building the visual foundations of the Arkhamverse, another name that seemingly gets overlooked is Carlos D'Anda. D'Anda's art is all over Arkham Asylum, with the game having used his concept art in the various character bios present, and it's perhaps unsurprising that the artist went through various designs before settling on the ones seen in the finished product.

Take Harley Quinn for instance. Originally her design was based on a BDSM theme, before writer Paul Dini suggested Rocksteady lead with a nurse design instead. With that in mind, D'Anda also conceptualised a version of Joker dressed out in a lab coat, almost along the lines of the version seen in Batman R.I.P., which coincidentally released during Arkham Asylum's development.

By far the biggest visual departure from the final product, however, was D'Anda's vision of Titan Joker. Love or hate Asylum's finale, there's no denying the muscle-bound, hulking version of the Clown Prince was both terrifying and imposing. Originally though, he could've been much scarier.

As detailed in D'Anda's art above, the original Titan Joker was far more skeletal than his final design. He would've also had his gums showing, making him look more like an apparition of Scarecrow's doing than one who'd been hopped up on a more extreme version of Bane's Venom.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.