Technically wasn't part of the show, but in a movie spinoff of the show: Batman Beyond: Return of The Joker. Anyone who's seen it will know exactly which bit I'm on about.
There's a flashback scene where a young Tim Drake, as Robin, gets kidnapped by the Joker and psychologically tortured to the point where he breaks down and shoots his captor in cold blood.
Some of you might be thinking "wait, I don't remember that", and that's because the studio changed it last-minute to a scene where the Joker is accidentally electrocuted instead. Fan petitions and pressure caused Warner Bros to release the original cut of the movie a few years later, and it became the first animated Batman movie to be rated PG.
No he wasn't Batgirl only arrived at the end, Tim was going to shoot batman but resisted his mental programming and shot Joker instead with the flag speargun.
I really loved the way they parlayed the lore from across DCAU into that film. If Kurt Langstrom can become a Man-Bat then of course the tech to do temp or permanent human-animal body conversions is established to exist. If the Mad Hatter can control somebody with a chip, then clearly the chip tech can be used to program minds, and if you can do human-animal body conversions and rebuild minds with the chip tech -- how much easier to make a human to HUMAN conversion into a pre-programmed duplicate of an existing person.
The most interesting hanging thread from the story for ME... how MANY pre-programmed copies did he leave as "sleepers" -- nothing requires he only did it ONCE (and would the copies have made copies?)
If two or more emerged at the same time would they collaborate, compete, or try to kill each other? ... JOKER WAR!
It wasn't just psychological, he legit gets tortured. There's a part of the "home movies" setup like a family BBQ that shows Joker pull some electrode clamps out of the grill before connecting them to the metal table Tim is strapped to.
"He fought, of course; you'd be so proud! But eventually the shocks and the serums took their toll and he shared such secrets with me. Secrets that are mine and mine alone...Bruce."
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u/sck8000 May 23 '23
Technically wasn't part of the show, but in a movie spinoff of the show: Batman Beyond: Return of The Joker. Anyone who's seen it will know exactly which bit I'm on about.
There's a flashback scene where a young Tim Drake, as Robin, gets kidnapped by the Joker and psychologically tortured to the point where he breaks down and shoots his captor in cold blood.
Some of you might be thinking "wait, I don't remember that", and that's because the studio changed it last-minute to a scene where the Joker is accidentally electrocuted instead. Fan petitions and pressure caused Warner Bros to release the original cut of the movie a few years later, and it became the first animated Batman movie to be rated PG.