Arkham City included a hidden scene in which it is revealed that the Joker will return. Now fans know how, as the villain officially returns from the dead. (Warning: spoilers for Batman #135!)

By killing off Joker, the Arkham series has done what few Batman movies have dared to do. However, the clown prince of crime is back in the canon after his death in Arkham City.

Lately, Batman has been battling the evil Darwin Halliday – a sane version of the Joker who goes by the name Red Mask as a supervillain.

Darwin is obsessed with the multiverse and the idea of the Joker. He feels he has to become the Joker. To rectify this, he builds a machine that allows him to look across the multiverse and see the exact moment the character goes mad. Darwin hopes it will break his mind in precisely the same way. But the revelation instead is that it is not his destiny to become the Joker. It is to create him. Darwin sets out across the multiverse, developing, empowering, or reviving the Joker in every universe he visits, including the Arkham game series. Batman #135 is penned by Chip Zdarsky, Mike Hawthorne, Jorge Jimenez, Mikel Janin, Adriano Di Benedetto, Tomeu Morey and Romulo Fajardo.

Batman: Arkham Knight begins with the Joker’s body being cremated after he dies in Arkham City. Fans of the game who have played it several times will know that there is a secret scene. When the player starts New Game+, the opening scene of Joker’s cremation changes. Instead of staying dead, he actually pops up alive and starts laughing hysterically as he is consumed by fire. While this initially seemed like a funny jump scare scene, the new context for Batman #135 reveals that Batman isn’t the only one who survived Arkham Knight. Darwin Halliday resurrected the series’ clown, as this moment foreshadowed.

The Arkham series is known for its surprising Easter eggs, from the Calendar Man, who correctly claims to be present at Bruce Wayne’s “death”, to the secret room in Batman: Arkham Asylum that reveals the game plans for the sequel.

However, Joker’s resurrection must be the central prediction of a future event. This moment was probably just for the fans’ benefit at the time. (The character does return in the game, albeit as a hallucination.) But whether it was a deliberate reference or a morbid easter egg, what was hinted at at the time eventually happened.

Source: League of Comic Geeks