Cozmoz

Because, I'm sorry, but Jeremiah is just such an underdeveloped and, frankly, boring character compared to Jerome. I hated when that happened.

Jerome had all the build-up with Bruce and in comes Jeremiah subsisting on like two episodes of forced "friendship" and suddenly Gotham thinks they recreated the tragedy of "The Killing Joke".

No, Gotham! Bad!

It’s interesting.  While a lot of Jerome’s rage and resentment and pain over the years has come from Jeremiah’s perceived abandonment of him - something else that obviously really rankled was that Jeremiah was seen as ‘the clever one’, worthy of a fancy education, while he wasn’t.

We get hints that they think alike in many ways: the scale of their schemes, their ability to misdirect attention to get what they actually want.  Jerome might seem chaotic, but he’s instinctively as methodical as Jeremiah, planning ahead, creating pre-emptive solutions to likely problems.

But Jerome was right.  Do you know, he anticipated your betrayal?

Jim, as an engineer, you expect things to fail.  So you build in redundancies.

The contrast of their likely childhoods is just really eye-catching: Jeremiah at school, having his intelligence nurtured and shaped, all the while likely maintaining a scrupulous distance from his schoolmates, carefully concealing his past, probably consciously copying speech and movement patterns; Jerome at the circus, intelligence overlooked, suffering abuse, brimming with rage and pain and resentment.

I’d say they’re even fairly evenly-matched as adults - 

Jeremiah has had the benefit of formal schooling, but he seems to have kept a distance from people, and hidden himself away: he’s not quite as shrewd when it comes to how people work. 

Jerome, on the other hand, would have quickly become adept at reading moods and behaviour and reactions to try to avoid abuse when he could - as well as reading customers, what will draw them in, catch their eye.  Look at how he plays Jeremiah with the ‘gift’ from Wayne Enterprises.

Jeremiah/Jerome

Gordon says that Jerome is 18, but after Jeremiah says that they were at the circus together when they were ten, Jerome says he's been waiting to confront him for 15 years.

So, where is Gordon getting that information? Obviously not Lila and I doubt she kept any documents. Jerome obviously wouldn't say anything trustworthy and the other circus performers wouldn't be reliable. So that leaves Cicero.

He's a bad father, we know this, but he does care for J in his own weird way. What if he lied about Jerome's age to make him younger in the hopes of getting him a lighter sentence or to at least keep him out of Blackgate and get sent to Arkham instead?

Jerome doesn't display signs of pure insanity or anything I would say a professional would put him there for. Sure he's unhinged and definitely shows signs of an antisocial disorder, but I have a hard time believing that they couldn't deal with that in Blackgate.

However, if they thought he was 18 they might have thought by catching it while he was still young they could treat him and rehabilitate him. And this is what Cicero was betting on.

Even though Cicero was a shitty father, he still tried to help J when he murdered Lila, so I think it's entirely possible he would lie to try and get him help in Arkham.

He also knew that Lila abused J, so he could've lied to avoid him getting too harsh a sentence since even he can't deny she deserved what she got.

Story time !

A lot like a lot of people didn’t and don’t like Jeremiah because he’s “organised and calm and he isn’t loud and chaotic”. The thing is....The Joker isn’t some monkey that just ate a ton of cocaine going wild in a cage like an idiot. The Joker is alarmingly intelligent that’s why he’s paired so well against Batman and why he rivals so well against the Riddler. The thing is Joker doesn’t flaunt his intelligence like Ed does, he doesn’t see the point in that because that’s boring.

But if you look there are so many works that showcase a side of the Joker that is a more calm methodical and terrifying being. If you look at Killing Joke or what little we see of the Joker in Suicide Squad 2016 and Justice League Snyder Cut then you see that side of the character where he can do these well thought out intelligent plans. The man in countless stories manipulated Dr. Quinn until she thought he loved her so that she would break him out of Arkham. If he was just a ball of loud chaos like Jerome then that never would have happened.

If you look at Jerome’s time in Arkham when he’s talking to Barbara he mostly annoys her. When he’s in there with Oswald he manages to mostly just set out to terrify and traumatise him. Which I have my own theory about.

Both twins perfectly showcase aspects of the Joker’s personality and when Jeremiah comes back 10 years later he’s complete, he’s both parts of that finally stitched together. He’s chaotic but intelligent and clever.