Last week reports surfaced that we’d be getting a ton of Joker teases in Fox’s upcoming TV show based in the Batman universe, Gotham. Now we have some official comments from one of the show’s executive producers, Bruno Heller, who took some time at the Television Critics Association to address those rumors.

Heller revealed that the rumors were partially accurate, but that it wouldn’t be a strictly-Joker thing they’ll be doing. The teases of “Is that who I think it is?” will apply to several members of Batman’s rogue gallery.

His comments on how the show will be handling the teases:

“We will be playing with… Not just with Joker. Half the fun with all of these characters is who is going to turn into what and when? Certainly the Joker is a good example. In the pilot, you see there’s a comedian there. People immediately leap… And that’s really letting the audience do our work for us. Because I haven’t said anything about that guy and people go there! […] We’ll play with that down the line. Not over the course of one season, no, because people will still get tired of that. ‘Is that the Joker? Is that the Joker?’ No. In a subtle way, we’ll be doing that and hopefully we’ll fool them in the end.”

So that should address the concerns of some fans who felt like the “Joker-A-Day” rumor would cheapen the show and be too much of a gimmick. It’s all apparently going to be handled much more subtly than that.

And what about this Ivy Pepper character? As those of us who have followed Batman over the years know, Poison Ivy’s real name is Pamela Isely or Lillian Rose- if you go further back. IGN asked Heller why her name was seemingly changed for the show, and they were given an interesting answer:

“It’s really about being able to tell the secret histories of these stories. If you just re-tell stories exactly as they’ve been told before, whilst you’re being true to the created mythology, you’re not really adding anything to it. So you have to find ways of finding more. And in this case, we’ve set up a situation in which Ivy Pepper, her mom is sick, her dad is dead… She’s going to go to the orphanage. And she’s a nice young girl; relatively undamaged. And she will find people to adopt her. And then we will start on the Poison Ivy story that people are familiar with.”

So she could still very well end up Pamela Isley, but they’ve opted to give her origin a twist.

SOURCE: IGN