The Dark Knight How many times we were fooled: A brief evolution of the Joker on the internet

[SpiderWill]

With the movie almost upon us and tons of people, myself included, already aware of tons of plot points, I wanted to revisit a time when we knew absolutely nothing. Remember all of the 'first' sightings we had of the Joker a while back. Well if not here is a brief trip down memory lane.

There was the shot of Heath on the back lot:

This one cause quite the stir. I remember people saying they saw the scars and the makeup and basically disecting this picture like it was the Zapruder film.
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This one was called fake pretty quick if I recall.

But it was still pretty good and was showing what a less polished Joker my look like.

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The first 'crow' picture.

Back when the idea of a scarred smile was hitting the web and the camps were being clearly divided, this picture popped up. Since then nearly every picture of the Joker til just recently has been compared to the crow.
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This one turned out to be surprisingly accurate to the final product:

I was actually disappointed when I found out it was fake as I kind of dug it. (still do)
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and we all remember the one that even Al Roker fell for:

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If memory serves this was the first official picture released:

There was talk of whether or not the Joker wore flesh color makup and had wiped it off with the towel seen by his right hand. Perma-white was still expected at this point.
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but then

and all hell broke loose.

A few of these may be out of order, but this is how I remember it.

 

[Keyser Soze]

The last two are out of order, I think. And the one that really cast the "permawhite" idea in serious doubt was the picture of The Joker holding a knife to Rachel.

 

[Nepenthes]

great thread!

yeah you missed The Knife pic, that was huge

also the first shot of Ledger was the back of his head. It was infuriating because we knew he had long hair (!) but still no idea what the face was like. So close but not there.

The Conrad Veidt manip is very special. It set the tone for peoples expectations of a new darker Joker, and for the movie itself, and it was clearly an influence to Nolan and Hemming even. That manip bought alot of hype to the movie from fans and non-fans alike. And the creator still goes unknown, around here at least.