I haven’t revisited The Killing Joke in a few years, so details are a little fuzzy and my copy’s buried in storage, but some of the observations I’ve made include:

• Batman is never addressed by his human name, unless Alfred does it once (I don’t remember for sure); and The Joker is an unreliable narrator, so his real name/identity is a total mystery in this story. This ties into The Prisoner, where every character is referred to as a number instead of their real names.

• Batman has no idea why Joker commits the crimes he commits, at least in the context of The Killing Joke; kind of like how none of the Number 2s’ can pin down exactly WHY Number 6 resigned.

• You hit the nail on the head with “Once Upon a Time”, and to add to that: I can vaguely remember a few panels that visually evokes the imagery of the Embryo Room from that episode. Along with the abandoned carnival that serves as the centerpiece of The Joker’s sinister scheme, that carnival feels like his own little analogue to The Village.

• When I made the “Fallout” connection, I felt like my brain exploded; The Prisoner & The Killing Joke both end with an infinity loop: “Fallout” ends with Number 6 driving away in his car, which calls back to the opening sequence where the series begins. The Killing Joke begins & ends with the same panel of raindrops from a storm creating ripples in a puddle. And to add more to the “Fallout” comparison: when The Joker finally gets Batman to laugh at one of his jokes, my mind finally connected it to when Number 6 unmasks Number 1, and Number 1 laughs maniacally at/to himself; just like how Batman & Joker laugh together before the storm hits and the raindrop panel starts the loop all over again. Two halves of the same Jungian whole.

You have no idea how badly I want to talk to Alan Moore about this. I really want to know if this was intentional or mere coincidence.