The story of Harley Quinn’s creation in BATMAN: THE Animated Series

Fan favorite DC character harley quinn made its big debut in Batman: The Animated Series. He was an original character created specifically for the show and ended up being one of the most popular DC characters ever. She first appeared in episode 22, “The Joker’s Favor”.

For those of you who are curious about the story behind the creation of the character, creator of the series Bruce Tim and writer Paul Dini shared all the details you need to know about Harley Quinn’s conception with Vulture.

The inspiration came from Dini’s college friend, Arleen Sorkinwho was best known at the time for playing Calliope Jones Days of our lives. In one episode of that show, she wore a jester costume. Dini explained that when he was sick one day, he inserted a VHS tape that Arleen had given him her best Days of our lives clip.

He explained, “I had already decided to give the Joker a henchman in the script, and thought Arleen’s nutty character would be a good contrast to the Joker’s dangerous insanity. The story is quite dark, with the Joker spotting an ordinary man and enjoying torturing him, so I needed a few laughs to break the tension. I also liked the idea of ​​putting Harley in some sort of colorful costume, recalling the molls from the 1960s Batman live-action series. Seeing Arleen in the jester costume during that time helped fix that image in my brain.

Bruce Timm shared that Dini wanted to call her Harley Quinn: “Obviously, a destroyed version of Harlequin, and he did a rough design for her, which, frankly, wasn’t very good. It was just weird. She had a 60’s type vibe. It was just weird. Fascinating, but strange. I figured we could make it better, so I quickly started researching traditional harlequin attire and made a simplified super-villain version of it.

Timm’s design is the one that was ultimately used in the series. Arleen Sorkin ended up providing the voice of the character and speaking about how she came up with her voice, she said, “I could give you an awesome answer about how I did the voice, but I don’t have one. I read it and thought that was the best entry for her at the moment. I don’t want to pretend to be this woman with a huge range, so I picked the one I could easily do and it worked. Paul decided to make it Jewish, so I put some Yiddish sound in it. At least we know the Joker isn’t an anti-Semite. It’s the only good quality about him.

Timm went on to explain that Harley Quinn was originally only going to be a one-off character, they never planned to bring her back! But that all changed when they saw the first footage of her. She said, “When we had the first episode where she appeared, when she came back from overseas, and we saw her animated, and the combination of the visual with Arleen Sorkin’s performance, it was almost magical. “.

After that, Dini started planning her return by telling Timm, “So Paul immediately started planning her return, and he was like, ‘I want to bring that Harley Quinn character back in another episode.’ I’d say, ‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea. But she was really beautiful and, yes, she was pretty. OK well.’ So Paul kept bringing her back. I didn’t make too much of a fuss, and then one thing led to another, and she was a really popular character.

The rest is history! It’s amazing how popular this character has become over the years. When the character was first conceived, the creators had no idea of ​​the impact it would have on the DC fandom, or that it would receive the live-action treatment.