Barry Keoghan's Joker has scars with a unique origin that means The Batman director Matt Reeves is breaking new ground on the character.

The Batman's Joker scars go so much further than just being a smile. A now-released deleted scene from DC's The Batman affords audiences a closer look at Barry Keoghan's Joker, and the origin of his scars allows for a never-before-seen twist on the character. After The Joker's presence was teased in The Batman, having met fellow inmate The Riddler in Arkham Asylum, the deleted scene allows viewers to take in more of the new approach to Joker's deformities as Batman seeks a madman's perspective on how The Riddler thinks.

Director Matt Reeves has been surprisingly open about the cause of Joker's scars, what they mean for the character, and how this will impact the franchise moving forward. The inclusion of yet another Clown Prince of Crime might have seemed superfluous – until the explanation landed. Now, audiences have a clear perspective on the latest version of Bruce Wayne's toughest opponent.

Typically, appreciation of the Joker has centred on a few notable things: his "Joker laugh", his costume and how DC Comics inspired his look, and the small matter of Joker's smile. That was amplified by Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight, whose origin was consciously guarded, but focused on how Joker got his scars. For Barry Keoghan's Joker in The Batman, that's not as important a point, but his scars are arguably even more important than Ledger's.

How The Batman's Joker Got His Scars

In this Joker's backstory, he didn't "get" his scars: he's always had them. Reeves has given a pretty direct explanation. "What if this is something that he's been touched by from birth and that he has a congenital disease that refuses to let him stop smiling? And he's had this very dark reaction to it, and he's had to spend a life of people looking at him in a certain way and he knows how to get into your head," Reeves shared in an interview with IGN. "Life has been a cruel joke on him, and this is his response, and he's eventually going to declare himself as a clown, declare himself as the Joker."

The backstory and mystery of Joker's scars have long defined his character. Heath Ledger's Joker made a point of changing his origin story every time he told it. Joaquin Phoenix's Joker doesn't yet have scars as, for most of the movie, he's Arthur Fleck. Prosthetics as good as those used on Keoghan don't come cheap, so the calculation behind the decision is clear. Paul Dano's take on The Riddler is generational, so it's an exciting prospect for fans of The Batman that Reeves is putting his own twist on the iconic villain. Joker's scars have always been a signpost of his relationship to the world. Keoghan is offering a version that has been at war with the entire universe from Day One.

Why The Batman's Joker Scars Go Much Further Than His Smile

The Joker's scarred smile is iconic, but Keoghan and Reeves have created a Joker with scars all over his body. From the first frame of his appearance in the deleted scene, the viewer is shown the scar tissue on the back of his head and his tufts of patchy green hair sprouting between clumps of battered flesh. Even his fingernails are rotting. His soul, too, has been scarred: the condition has shaped his nihilistic worldview that will eventually see him declare himself as The Joker.

Narratively, he got a permanent smile scarred into his face just by being born, which is tragic. But cinematically, the idea came from the 1928 silent movie that inspired the character's creation in the first place, The Man Who Laughs (the link to The Batman Who Laughs is clear). This film follows a character called Gwynplaine who cannot stop smiling. If that sounds familiar, it's because Phoenix's Arthur Fleck also struggled with a condition that set off spontaneous laughter at agonizing moments and isolated him from society. Creatively, the appearance of the scars has its roots in David Lynch's The Elephant Man more than any existing Joker.

The Joker's origin story has always been deliberately and infuriatingly vague. Jokers seem to exist on a sliding scale between "just wanting to watch the world burn" and being forced into a life of insanity by an unavoidable health problem. Keoghan's Joker sits at the latter end of the scale. Pitting a Joker with a definitive and affecting backstory against a younger, more emotional Bruce Wayne will change that power dynamic in ways that could mold The Batman's sequel into an impressive psychological thriller.

More: Did Robert Pattinson’s Batman Already Fight & Defeat The Joker?