'The Dark Knight Rises' Tie-In Novel Clears Up Joker's Fate (Sort Of)

Fellow moviegoers who have taken in Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises": anybody else notice the one pivotal point in Nolan's "Dark Knight" Legend that goes unmentioned even in passing throughout the entire two-hour-plus trilogy conclusion?

To execute this immaculately without a single significant spoiler, for all that would have never been in Gotham without his chain of actions in "The Dark Knight," there's nary a reference to The Joker. Not one.

That leaves the fate in the intervening eight storyline years of the late Heath Ledger's posthumous Oscar-gathering "agent of chaos" in question to the very end. That is, it was left to ponder until now. As explained by NukeTheFridge.com, Nolan omitted even referencing Ledger's Joker in passing out of respect to Ledger's memory.

As outed by IMDb.com user bwims22, a 415-page tie-in novel by author Greg Cox based upon Jonathan and Christopher Nolan's screenplay clears up what became of The Joker.

Kind of. Sort of. Well, we now know where he was at one point. There's still no telling just exactly where he is as of the timeline of "The Dark Knight Rises." Here's the explanatory passage from the novel, as reprinted on IMDb.com:

"Now that the Dent Act had made it all but impossible for the city's criminals to cop an insanity plea, it (Blackgate Prison) had replaced Arkham Asylum as a preferred location for imprisoning both convicted and suspected felons. The worst of the worst were sent here, except for the Joker, who, rumor had it, was locked away as Arkham's sole remaining inmate. Or perhaps he had escaped. Nobody was really sure. Not even Selina."

"Selina," of course, being Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle ... "Catwoman," to many, though she's never referenced by that name in Nolan's film. In "Rises," it's acknowledged that Kyle did a stretch herself in Blackgate.