In The Dark Knight, Joker’s scars are definitely his most recognizable trait, but his story about them keeps changing, and there’s a theory as to why that is. From his first appearance in Christopher Nolan’s film, the horrifying visage that Heath Ledger’s Joker sports was nothing short of memorable. Audiences have seen many grisly iterations of the all-but-permanent smile on the Clown Prince of Crime’s face, but never had it been carved on. It was impossible to keep one’s eyes off Ledger’s Joker, even more than Jack Nicholson’s iconic turn as the villain.
To add to the curiosity, the Joker gives two different stories about how he got his scars. A third origin is narrated mid-fight until interrupted by Batman. The broad variation in his stories only further deepens the mystery of the villain. First, the Joker tells a fellow criminal by the name of Gambol that he got his scars from his alcoholic and abusive father on a particularly fiendish evening. His second story is told to Rachel Dawes, Harvey Dent’s girlfriend, about his wife who suffered a horrible injury at the hands of some gambling sharks. The Joker, being a loving husband, maimed his face to match, in order to empathize with her and make her feel better.
The Joker’s true reason for telling different stories is to empathize; not with his wife, but to relate to whichever victim was about to get his blade in their cheek. He sizes them up, tells them a story he could see them in, and then gives them scars to match his own. The point is for the Joker to show that anyone can become him. That any person, given the right circumstances on the wrong day, could become a forever smiling Joker. The punchline of each scar story is “Why so serious?” as if it’s foolish to take the Joker at face value when he’s presenting the supposedly “true” story of his scars. That’s why the version of his story changes according to who he’s pointing his knife at.
Why Leaving The Origin Of The Joker’s Scars Ambiguous Is Better
The Joker amplifies his chaotic nature by making up new stories based on who is under his knife. He taunts his victims with pseudo stories of trauma in order to ramp up the tension before he inevitably gets his laugh by maiming or killing someone. The origin of his scars remains a mystery because the Joker doesn’t care about how he got them anymore; he merely cares for the effect they have invoking fear in people. The Joker’s scars are more than a smile, they’re a manifestation of his cruel intentions. Everything the Joker does and says in The Dark Knight is to crush the soul of Gotham through chaos.
Therefore, the story constantly changes because the setup to a joke can be whatever he wants if the punchline is good. The Joker creating chaos through acts of violence is his favorite kind of punchline. The stories never actually matter. What does matter is what he’s doing during their telling. He’s not upset when Batman interrupts his final story setup in the climax of The Dark Knight; in fact, the Joker starts laughing because he believes he got Batman to break his no-kill rule, an even better joke. It’s as Alfred says, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
