Batman V Superman’s Zack Snyder Explains How And When Robin Died

One image that has stuck with fans ever since it showed up in the trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is the defaced Robin costume hanging in Bruce Wayne’s Batcave. Now director Zack Snyder has shed some light on the mystery of Robin’s fate.

“In my mind, it was that Robin had died 10 years earlier, during some run-in with a young Joker,” Snyder tells IGN. “So there was a fun backstory there to play with. I felt like the whole idea was that there had been loss and there had been sacrifice. In a weird way, he had sacrificed everything to be Batman. He doesn’t really have a life outside the cave. I thought that including Robin, a dead Robin, was helping us understand that he’s been on quite a little journey.”

While Snyder doesn’t say which Robin it was that died, or reference any other story as influence, it does sound pretty close to how Jason Todd met his fate in the story “A Death in the Family,” with a similar effect on Batman’s state of mind.

Fearing the actions of a god-like Super Hero left unchecked, Gotham City’s own formidable, forceful vigilante takes on Metropolis’s most revered, modern-day savior, while the world wrestles with what sort of hero it really needs. And with Batman and Superman at war with one another, a new threat quickly arises, putting mankind in greater danger than it’s ever known before.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is now playing in theaters.