Clayface Sets Up Another Batman Villain in the DC Universe

In the summer of 2025, Clayface was filming in Liverpool. Set photos hinted at a much more famous Batman villain. One showed a wall covered in graffiti, and one of the tags read “The Jokers.” Fans began to speculate about whether the Joker exists in the Gotham of the DC Universe.

Culture Crave shared the graffiti photo on August 30, 2025, crediting @lilyfnrose. The plural “Jokers” sent some people toward a 2020 DC Comics storyline. That story proposed that there are three Jokers instead of one: the clown, the criminal and the comedian. The idea would explain the personality differences between versions of the character over 80 years.

Others guessed it pointed to the Joker gang. The gang is usually portrayed as street criminals who idolize the Joker and dress like him, and versions of it appeared in Batman Begins and The Batman. Some took the graffiti as proof that the Joker himself would show up in Clayface.

I have now seen Clayface, so I can answer those questions. The movie contains many more Joker references.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Clayface.

The Joker is not in Clayface, let alone three of him. The Joker gang does not appear either. There are, however, several references to him.

I’m not sure the graffiti made it into the film at all. The movie never focuses on it. If it appears, it may be hidden in the background at the very end.

The same goes for the other direct Joker reference from the set photos, a paper flyer on a wall reading “Join the Joker.” DC Film News posted that photo on September 9, 2025, crediting @whitewidow616. The flyer may have shown up in the finished movie, but it gets no prominence.

Amusement Mile

One reference definitely made it in. In a moment from the teaser, Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) walks past a giant “Amusement Mile” sign with an enormous clown face on it. Anyone watching will think of the Joker. You don’t even need to know that Amusement Mile is often depicted as a run-down theme park the Joker uses as a hideout.

Two more Joker references stand out.

One Bad Day

The first comes early in the movie. Matt watches TV as the Oscar nominations are announced, hoping to hear his own name. Before they reach him, the announcer mentions One Bad Day as one of another nominee’s films. The title is a Joker reference.

In Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, which many consider the greatest Joker story ever told, the Joker talks to Batman about “one bad day.” He says one bad day is all it takes to make someone as mad as he is. He also guesses, correctly, that Batman had a bad day of his own, and that it explains who he became. It is one of the Joker’s most famous lines. One Bad Day was also the title of a Batman and Joker story in 2022.

“Wanna know how I got these scars?”

The Joker also crossed my mind during a gruesome scene. A mob boss carves up Matt’s face after Matt sleeps with the boss’s girlfriend. The scene is the major turning point for the character of Clayface.

The mob boss puts his blade in Matt’s mouth and cuts outward from the corner of it, leaving an upturned, grin-like wound. He could have cut Matt anywhere on the face. Instead, the cut evokes the Joker’s scarred face, and in particular Heath Ledger’s version in The Dark Knight. I couldn’t help remembering the two tense, contradictory scenes in which that Joker explains how he got his scars.

None of these references confirms that the Joker already exists in the DCU’s Gotham. They could be nods from the writers and set designers that never amount to anything. Still, DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran seem to be thinking seriously about the Joker in the DCU, and they want the audience thinking about him too.

Source: Polygon