For The Love of Comics

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The Dark Knight Viral Campaign All About Joker

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Some recent posts on Panels of Awesome, The Unofficial Dark Knight Movie Blog, and several other places reminded me that I haven’t really said much regarding the movie I am most looking forward to for the next year - The Dark Knight!

From what I’ve read, the movie will be drawing from the storylines of both The Long Halloween and The Killing Joke, both of which were superb stories. The main villains are set to be Joker, “Boss” Sal Maroni, and Harvey Dent/Two-Face, which probably indicates to alot of long-time Batman fans what plot points they’re likely to use.

Quite a few viral websites surrounding the world of Batman have sprung up, beginning with I Believe In Harvey Dent and I Believe in Harvey Dent, Too. Originally, the latter site featured a version of the former defaced to make Harvey Dent look like the Joker. The page now appears to feature nothing more than a “page not found” message, but if you highlight the text, you find the joker’s laughter.

Next up was Why So Serious, where The Joker sent us on a scavenger hunt to take photos of particular letters, eventually spelling the message “The Only Sensible Way To Live In This World Is Without Rules.” Under the right corner of this message, you can see what looks like the corner of a photograph. If you click that corner, you hear a sound clip of the Joker and the overlaying message burns away to reveal an image of Heath Ledger as The Joker:

Click on that and you’re taken to Rory’s Death Kiss, a play on the movie’s shooting title of “Rory’s First Kiss”. The Joker had left a message on this page encouraging “clowns” to go out to local landmarks and take photos of themselves in full Joker regalia.

The page now features the results of these instructions. Those who got their pictures accepted by deadline received a copy of The Gotham Times over the previous holiday.

During the same time, more viral websites popped up, including websites for The Gotham City Rail, The Gotham City PD, Gotham National Bank, The Gotham Times (and the corresponding Ha Ha Times from the Joker, both of which feature some of the images from Rory’s Death Kiss), Gotham Cab, Gotham Unified School District, Acme Security Systems, and the tribute to a girl killed in gang violence Remembering Gina.

In the meantime, a personality profile questionnaire popped up on Why So Serious, which eventually led to a “mausoleum” page featuring a safe and the clues necessary to unlock it. The crew at the Unofficial Dark Knight Movie Blog have already gotten in, but I won’t post those details until I work out exactly how they did it. That shouldn’t stop you, though… head on over there to see what else they know.

UPDATE: I finally got it. As the above link says, the bloodied letters are an anagram for “Time for Taffy”. In the Gotham times, the time of death mentioned for Johnny “Taffyface” Linata is 7:38 AM. Reset your clock to this time, and you’re in!

Inside is a note from the Joker congratulating you on thinking outside the box (and promising to have a new job soon), and some evidence:

One last thing, and then you will know everything that I know… Empire, a British film magazine, will feature Heath Ledger as The Joker on their January cover. They had planned on slowly revealing the image on their website over a few days, with the culmination (I believe) coming tomorrow, but someone accessed the image ahead of time and it is now alll over the web. Most people have probably already seen it, but since it is the most clear image I’ve seen of Ledger in the Joker makeup, I’m posting it again:

And that, my friends, is EVERYTHING I know.

tag: Comics, DC, Batman, The Dark Knight, Joker, Heath Ledger, Harvey Dent, Two-Face, Sal Maroni, Empire, Viral Marketing, Why So Serious

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