---
title: 'CLAYFACE MOVIE BREAKDOWN! Easter Eggs & Details You Missed!'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=5unjkPeSKBI'
video_id: '5unjkPeSKBI'
date: 2026-10-24
duration_sec: 2388
channel: 'New Rockstars'
---

# CLAYFACE MOVIE BREAKDOWN! Easter Eggs & Details You Missed!

> Source: [CLAYFACE MOVIE BREAKDOWN! Easter Eggs & Details You Missed!](https://youtube.com/watch?v=5unjkPeSKBI)

## Summary

This video provides a comprehensive breakdown of the new DC Studios movie 'Clayface', hosted by a passionate DC fan. It dives deep into the origins of the character, compares the film to its animated series and comic book inspirations, and uncovers numerous hidden Easter eggs and references. The analysis connects the movie's events to the broader DC universe and upcoming storylines.

### Key Points

- **Setting the Stage: Coast City and Gotham** [00:55] — The movie is set in Coast City and Gotham, with playful nods to the DC universe. The protagonist, Matt Hagen, is introduced and the video promises a deep dive into his story and the universe's future.
- **The Core Inspiration: Batman: The Animated Series** [02:51] — The film is inspired by the Batman: The Animated Series episode 'Clayface', focusing on Matt Hagen's transformation and the character's emotional ties to his powers. This establishes the core narrative structure.
- **Matt's Backstory and the Actor's Dream** [04:42] — Matt Hagen is a successful actor who gets disfigured, leading to his use of a regenerative gel. The gel, tied to his emotions, enables him to shape-shift but also causes a loss of identity.
- **Hidden Easter Eggs and DC References** [08:44] — Numerous Easter eggs are identified, including references to Zatanna, the Gotham crime family Zabo, the film 'No Man's Land', and various Gotham locations like the Narrows.
- **Matt's Fall: From Stardom to the Narrows** [13:51] — Matt loses his court case against the mob boss Zabo, loses money, and is forced to move to the Narrows, marking his descent into rock bottom.
- **The Nano-Cell Treatment and Its Consequences** [18:37] — Caitlin Kaur tests her innovative nano-cell treatment on Matt. The treatment works, but with dangerous side effects, linking his emotions to his body's transformations.
- **Escalation: Betrayal and Unhinged Power** [27:37] — Matt's powers escalate after he discovers his best friend Corey betrayed him. He kills multiple enemies and loses his grip on reality, culminating in a chaotic confrontation at the club.
- **The Final Act: Complete Loss of Identity** [38:14] — The movie ends with Matt, now a fully transformed Clayface, creating a fantasy relationship with a fake Caitlyn, highlighting his complete mental breakdown.

## Transcript

DC Studios Playbanks may be the most gorgeous movie I've ever seen, and I don't think I will ever have Play-Doh again. Let's run it back. I'm Jessica Swimmin' with you, Rockstars, and this is a breakdown of DC Studios Playbanks. In this video, I'm going to break down all the Easter eggs and comic references,
and what the heck's going on in this bloody tale, and how it contributes to the overall DC universe going forward. I'll also maybe find some details that you might have missed. This movie is so filthy that I gotta remind you we have non-filthy shirts over at NerdRide.shop.
Find the latest and greatest in you, Rockstars, merch over there. And hey, for you horror heads, you can just get some horror merch. You can get horror merch, DC merch, or you can get the Direction City merch. We also have Vision Quest merch, and it feels like all of these shows randomly fit together.
So, go get merch for each one, take a picture of yourself in it, and then we'll share it here, because we like talking about it. Alright, now let's get into this breakdown. And just so you know, I'm going to be spoiling the movie Clay's Face, so if you haven't seen it yet, or you don't mind spoilers, maybe go see it, and then watch this breakdown.
Or, if you just, again, don't mind spoilers, just watch this breakdown. The film begins with an overshot view of sunny Los Angeles, wrong, we're actually in Coast City. Coast City is basically Los Angeles, and is most famous for being the home of Green Lantern's Hal Jordan.
The movie jumps between Coast City and Gotham a lot, and we'll come across other locations, counties, boroughs in the movie as well, so our DCU is only getting bigger and bigger with every movie. Over the overshot, we see the text Clayface in the bottom left corner.
It's not quite the same font as the logo, the one that we found on the clapstick shown in set photos, which matched the font used in Batman One Day that calls Clayface returning to LA to fulfill his dream of being an actor again, but it's fairly close. It feels like
this version has more of a 70s vibe to it. Being Joker descent is our soon-to-be Clayface Matt Hagen, played by Tom Rhys-Harris, the Welsh actor who has had many roles in British television and movies, including a 2024 episode of Doctor Who, Dot and Bubble. This Clayface movie is the third
feature film in the DC Studios slate. It's directed by James Watkins, who did The Woman in Black, Speak No Evil, and Eden Lake, if you've seen that horrific movie. Both were written by Mike Flanagan, and the man behind the Haunted Hill House, follows the house of Usher in the new Carrie series.
Rewrites, however, were also done by Hasan Amini, who co-created the TV series McMafia with James Watkins. The film was originally announced a while back, a little over a year after James Gunn announced Chapter 1 being Dods and Monsters of the DC Universe.
He confirmed then that the Green Lake Clayface project would be part of the main DCU rather than Elseworlds, like the Penguin and the Batman. Technically, Clayface has already been introduced in this James Gunn DCU before in the animated Creature Commandos, and he's voiced by Alan Tudyk.
Again, I love any time Alan Tudyk gets to play Clayface. It's always fun for me. There he was impersonating a college professor to make Tax Force M think that Cersei's vision of the princess' evil plans was bogus. We thought he was killed with electrical wires, but on Blue Sky, James Gunn says reports of Clayface's death have been greatly exaggerated.
He is quite mushy, though. And I mean, as we've seen, and as we'll see later, electricity really can't kill our guys. James also did say that Clayface, the movie, is set before Superman, and that it's the first movie in the DCU set out of chronological order.
But I think we can also look at this as just a prequel story to the Clayface that we meet in Creature Commandos. The movie originally pitched by Mike Flanagan was inspired by Batman, the animated series two-part episode, Seat of Clay. That revolved around famous successful actor Matt Hagen, who was also known as the Man of a Million Faces,
because he could transform into any character he played. After a disfiguring accident, Matt becomes addicted to a special facial cream formula created by Roland Daggett, an evil businessman who essentially runs a cosmetics company. Daggett exploits Matt's addiction, always demanding favors, until his goons eventually
force a massive overdose on him by pouring the chemicals over his face and down his throat. This transforms Matt into Clayface. Matt then struggles to maintain his transformations. When he loses concentration, his disguises just give way. In the end, to defeat him, Batman exploits his sole weakness, mental illness.
Buh buh buh buh! We all have it. By showing Matt pictures of all his different acting roles across multiple screens, it just overwhelms him, causing him a huge mental breakdown until he loses control of his shape. He tosses himself into the monitors, electrocuting himself. With most believing he's now dead,
Batman reveals that the electricity actually didn't kill him, it just urges him to shift more. So he faked his death and in the end he just wanders the streets with a different face that just is crazy. And that's exactly how this movie ends too. And moments like Matt's shape-shifting,
being tied to his emotions and mental state along with the overdose, pushing his abilities to unforeseen limits, all feel directly inspired by Batman the Animated Series. And no shade, but unlike Supergirl, this movie takes a lot of Clayface's lore, which feels right,
seeing as he's the man of a million faces, in a way, he's also the man of a million adaptations. So there's a lot of different versions of Clayface inspiring this one, from the OG Basil Carlo to Alan Tudyk's take, and there's a lot of different lore and imagery to get into in all this,
and I'll dive into it as soon as those details kind of pop up. In the van, Matt keeps reciting his lines while looking out the window, repeating them over and over again, I love you, Beth, and he's having a hard time conveying it or even understanding it. It's not really showcased that Matt is unloved,
you adore by everyone around him, but there are small moments like this, or when he says, you hear that, mom? We did it. Where you get a sense that there's a bigger picture here that didn't get so unraveled yet, which isn't bad, because, you know, it makes my job fun, theorizing.
But the notion that Matt has a hard time conveying or understanding this part of his role could speak to a larger struggle with just understanding love as an emotion and knowing how to connect it with himself. Maybe that's them from his relationship with his mother, which we never get into,
or we never see, or from his identity as an actor, someone who can always be anyone for anybody, but struggles to be himself. The car drives them to the Warner Brothers lot, in this overshot that resembles the golden Warner Brothers logo that opens every movie,
and this lost water tower to Imperial Pictures instead of Warner Brothers. This was the film studio located in Gotham, where Matt Hagen in the Batman animated series also worked out of, and even then it resembled Warner Brothers Studios. Now going through hair and makeup,
we meet his childhood best friend Corey Bowery, played by Joshua James. I doubt Corey's last name is connected to the neighborhood in Gotham, The Bowery, which was inspired by The Bowery in Manhattan, but to the little detail that I want to point out. You can tell Matt's anxious today, and he is, because today is also the day the Oscar nominations come out,
and he's in the running for Best Actor. Well, he doesn't know that yet. As he gets to set, the announcement goes out that the actor's nominated for Best Actor. They're huddled around this television monitor with his agent, his business manager, and his best friend, and everyone on set. The nominees are Kurt Crawford for No Man's Land, which is also a Batman comic,
Sidney Whitaker for Sagon, Grant Cooperman for A Bad Day, And One Bad Day is the Clayface special comic that is very much featured in this movie. Frederick Tandino for Before the Flood. And then, of course, Matt Hagen is nominated. After being nominated, we cue the press and party tour, and Corey and him take a private jet back to Gotham.
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It's completely free, so you can try it with zero risk. If you're watching on TV or PC, scan the QR code. If you're on your phone, use my link in the description or pin the comment. First off is the Vic Chisler Show. The host is Rob Bryan, beloved Welsh actor, comedian, and impressionist.
Hmm, something's there. Nick Chisler is a very Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno, Craig Ferguson type of late night host. On the show, he's wearing this specific tee. You'll see him constantly wearing this graphic tee, sometimes under a blazer.
This is the cool vibe that I'm getting from James Gunn's DCU immediately, because Supergirl was rocking like a blondie shirt under a trench coat. He got clay face, rocking a fictional band, a corpse retriever under a blazer. They're all just too cool for school in this universe.
You can actually buy his shirt in the DC shop, but the fun part for actually on the back of the t-shirt is their tour dates, which stretch across the DC Universe. We've seen a lot of these places, or at least heard of a lot of them. Metropolis, we saw in Superman.
Capital City first appeared in the All-American Comics issue number 16. This is where Green Lantern's Alan Stott is. Coast City, we've seen this in this movie, but also this is where Hal Jordan comes from in HBO Lantern. Stockholm, we'll also see in this movie, but everyone knows Stockholm for Batman.
Calvin City was home for the Golden Age, the Adam Alpratt character. Central City is where Barry Allen's Flash resides. Civic City is tied to the Justice Society in the comics, where their headquarters are located. Dakota City, home of Static Shock, baby. Evergreen City,
which I'm pretty sure is supposed to be me. And when I say it's supposed to be me, I mean Washington State, where Peacemaker is. But I think they referred to his town as just like Evergreen. It could also be Evergreen City that first appeared in Green Lantern, but, you know, regardless, both are still Washington State, so it doesn't really matter. Gateway City is linked with
Wonder Woman. It was actually the setting during the 1990s comics. Peacone City is home of the original Flash, Jay Garrick, and later Wally West. Midway City is where Jon Stewart is from and HBO's Lantern, those are connected to Heart Girl and Doom Patrol in the comics. River City is
Odd Man's hometown, Park City is Black Canary Bay, Star City is where Green Arrow's home is, and Vice Roy is linked to Resurrection Man. And there's a lot of places shaping the DC universe, and we'll come across even more specific places in this movie. Set photos reveal the map of Gotham,
and we'll visit or hear mentions of the Narrows, Chinatown, the Fashion District, among a lot of other places later. We learn a little bit about Matt during this interview. He came from the daughter of Gotham's streets and experience the sudden rise to fame. She's specifically from
Lucas Heights on the west side in The Narrows, where he returns to later in the film. The Lucas Heights isn't to be confused with Gotham Heights, where the rich people live. We'll get into it much later when he crosses the ferry into The Narrows, but The Narrows is also a major setting in
Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins. The host talks about what a great actor Matt is and how good he is with accents before asking him to form a famous line from his movie Hollow River. And it's something like, I'll hunt you down, eat you every one of you while hell swallows me. And he'll say
again eventually in the movie It very weird Next up is the club Corey and Max take a taxi to club Vesuvius which we seen in the trailers The taxi license plate is B14 which is a hex color code for a vibrant kind of medium
shade of purple or magenta. And I couldn't help but notice that's the same color of Matt's first dose of NanoCell. Could it virtually link Matt's arrival to the club before his life falls apart to the formula that ultimately turns him into Clayface? I don't know, but it's a fun little
detail that I wanted to flag. The nightclub Club Vesuvius first appeared in Batman Street the dolphin is number one. It's also where Zatanna would perform in Detective Comic 833. And you can also see details of Zatanna's show here in Lego Batman actually. It's very cute.
Inside, Cory and Matt are having the time of their lives. That's when Matt locks eyes with Mia Torres. The music playing is Goldcraft's Ooh La La for all of its suggestive vibes. Cory warns Matt not to get close to her because she's connected to famous
Dolphin City mob boss Marco Zabbo. Zabbo is played by Swedish dance actor David Dempsey. And in this movie, he's the owner of this club. He has his hands in almost everyone's pockets in Gotham. The police, the media, most of the neighborhoods, you name it.
The Zabo crime family has several been featured in the Fox series Gotham. They appear in season four. Regardless, we're still in the early stages of Gotham in the new DCU, so everything's important to Flash. We know from Lanterns that Sheriff Carey is originally from Gotham and was on the run from mobsters that her dad had business back with in 2007.
We don't know how long Zabo has been operating, but we know Gotham has a million crime lords. It's famous for being a hot spot for crime. So while Cher and Kiri may or may not have had run-ins with Zabo's family, we know they want us to see Gotham's gangster underbelly as this shared universe.
Matt at this moment doesn't care who she's connected to. He's young, famous, and drunk. The two talk, she says she's a bit of an actress herself, they do drugs, and dance the night away. We jump post-bang and wake up to Zabo and his groom standing over them.
There's bones, sal, and patches. Zabo immediately clocks how pretty Matt is. He asks Matt where he's from, he says the west side, the Narrows, and he says they know his dad, Jimmy One Ball. Then they make a note of how he preyed on women and children, and what the hell did this man do?
He even gets into how Matt's father used to beat him. This isn't visited ever again in the movie, and I have a lot of questions about it. Their conversation also foreshadows what will happen to them later, only with Matt in the position of power next time. He tells Matt, we're not so different, you and I.
I played a big shot gangster, but when someone disrespects me, I have to do something about it. He even turned on Matt's TV to a cooking channel where sharp knives slide through vegetables and beef like butter. We see where this is going. We see where he is going.
His goons hold Matt down while he carves into his face in very deep lines, one through the mouth, the other under the eye, across the forehead. It's all done with a very sharp straight razor, giving Joker, giving why so serious. We're then taken in an ambulance immediately to
Gotham General Hospital. The hospital first appeared in Batman issue number 65, however, it's also been called different names before, like Gotham City Medical Center. In the DCU, this one specifically is Gotham General Hospital. Matt's completely bandaged in the hospital like
like we've seen in the trailers, and it feels like the scene was inspired in part by the two-part episode in Batman Animated Series after Matt's accident. While still reeling from being attacked, the cops were like, look, witnesses sometimes randomly suffer from amnesia. We're just trying
to get everything under control. Gotham News reports that Mia Torres is claiming that Matt drugged her and slept with her, framing him as more of a monster. Zabo helps push the rumors that he's also a monster. It's here that we get a shot of the 298th precinct for Gotham City Police
department. We saw this precinct in set photos a while ago too. I didn't see any evidence of Gordon being there. There really was no mention of Commissioner Gordon at all, but we later learned like most adaptations of Gotham PD, there are still cookie cops inside. Matt asks his business
manager to take Zabla to court seeking justice for what happened and hoping to keep his reputation from being completely tarnished. His business manager is Frank Fitzgerald, played by Eddie Morrison, the famous English actor you might recognize from The Gentleman, Hancock or Happy Go Lucky. Even though Matt wants justice, everyone knows he can't exactly take down Zabla, a guy
practically owns everything. So Frank is given power of attorney, seeing as Matt is willing to put up his apartment to fund the case while in the hospital. We all know that that's probably a bad move, a really, really stupid idea, but he does it anyway. They use the argument that he's an actor
against him and that actors are known liars. They're paid to perform. They even use people from Matt's past. We're then taken to Gotham City Courthouse, which is actually Liverpool St. George's Hall. This is the same building Matt Reeves and the Batman used as Gotham City Hall.
Now, I'm not trying to say that these buildings could be, you know, one and the same since these are two different universes, but also, the clay-faced version has a statue of Lady Justice on top, while the Batman one featured a statue of a man on a horse in the front of City Hall. And inside, we find out that Zabbo gets off scot-free.
After that, to make everything worse, Matt also loses best actor to Grant F***ing Cooperman. I hate Grant Cooperman! We're back at Matt's apartment. From the outside, we learn it's called Disney Tower. When set photos were revealed of this location, the internet clocked the name immediately after Cyrus hit me.
The character comes from DC Comics and Arkham Origins. He's known as the architect who made most of the important landmarks in Gotham. He's partially known for Arkham Asylum, Gotham Cathedral, the Pioneer Bridge, and other places. Inside his apartment, we see his repossessed things, everyone's dropping him, Frank lost all his money,
and Max gotta take the ferry back to his old stomping grounds, the Nero's. We bid adieu to the Gotham City skyline with its endless skyscrapers, something we can only imagine the future Joker lighting up. It's perfectly claustrophobic, very dark no matter what, and now we say hello to the Narrows, an almost industrial fog fever dream ghetto hellscape.
So if we're on our way to the Narrows, this body of water would be considered the Finger River. And the ferry is the Mercy Ferry, which takes you to Seacomb Terminal. In the movie, they covered this bit of text with the Narrows, and there's famously no bridge here at this location.
Remember, this was like shot in Liverpool. This bridge just looks like an altered version of the Golden Gate Bridge, but it could also be the Westward Bridge from the comics. It looks like that. We know from set photos there's also the Frang Bridge, which crosses the Frang River,
connecting the Upper East Side to the Bowery. But I think for now it's just kind of an unnamed bridge. Once we enter the Narrows, let me tell you, it's ghetto, just like it is in the comics. His new apartment is the embodiment of foreshadowing.
The walls are moldy brown stains, almost flesh-colored to his future look, with chipped peeling paint and sealing where the popcorn texture has mostly just fallen away. It's putrid, it's dirty, and when Matt lies down on his bed, a cockroach falls onto his face. The movie isn't
being subtle about Matt hitting rock bottom. He's clearly at the worst part of his life. Still wearing his corpse retriever shirt, he shuffles through a box of unforgotten memories, first a magazine with his once beautiful face on the cover. I will say, his prosthetics in the movie
are insane, and no wonder they cast an actor with such sharp features. They needed the prosthetics layered on top of those features would be just as pronounced. Adrian Rigby and Dixie Gordon were the artists behind this makeup, and Dixie also worked on Friend and Supergirl. The prosthetics
were developed by Legacy Effects, and let me tell you, it's not easy to make flesh look like it's constantly melting. It's a little too convincing at times when it comes to the body mutilation, but the way the prosthetics melded with the CGI really worked for me. The body horror itself
isn't as overwhelming as I expected, but the gore was absolutely enough. Honestly, could have reeled it back. Maybe that's just me. After ripping through the magazine is where we learn about Caitlin Kaur, the famous scientist working on nanocells.
We jump to Kaur Renew, or this is Caitlin's lab, that also sounds like the company in Batman the Animated Series, Renew You. We witness Caitlin shaving a piece of her skin to test her nanocells again, and the song playing is the temptation I'm Gonna Make You Love Me,
and it's more foreshadowing, a classic old track about making your affection irresistible, but given where the story's gonna go, you know, it's more ominous and hopeful. Taylor is played by Naomi Ackie, who you might recognize from Bleak Twice, Mickey 17, and more recently, I Love Boosters.
We'll learn later that Caitlin is a doctor and scientist whose ideas were stolen by her scheming team, but her reason for doing this in the first place is that she lost her brother to Huntington's Disease, a genetic condition that progressively damaged nerve cells in your brain.
Caitlin didn't inherit the disease, but her brother did, and losing him inspired her to dedicate her life to finding the cure for a neurodegenerative disease. In the animated fandom series, there's a character named Stella Bates, not in Clayface's two-part episode, but in season 2 episode 3 mudslide we need her and the wrap originally reported this character's
name as caitlyn bates before her official reveal so it's possible that that was her name in the earlier version of the screenplay before they went with core but regardless both characters do share a very similar storyline there's doctors their love interest and they both are trying to find
a way to cure him the two meet and we learn that matt has gone through six surgeries that all fail he's down to his last hope caitlyn who remarks that they're not approved for human trials She also remarks that her nanocells don't only treat the surface.
Mmm, ominous. Matt, don't do it. She says that she'll think about it, and on his way out, Matt does this, like, solemn bow, which is weird, but we're all supposed to remember it, and we're gonna remember it. We jump to her house later that night is when we meet Caitlyn's fiancé, John Borelli,
played by Max Minghella. John is a detective for Gotham City Police Department, and so far, the only uncrooked one. After dinner, she's watching interviews with Matt and how inspiring and sweet he is, and she decides to do it. She emails him, to which he promptly calls her, and we're off to the races.
The next day, Caitlin explains that these nanocells are made from embryonic stem cells, meaning they can replicate themselves over and over again and develop into any type of cell in the human body. The idea is that they'll replace the damaged tissue and repair it in the process.
And to activate them, they just need a little electric jolt. And they also are powered by AI. And in any case, anything goes wrong, they have their own built-in tool switch. She begins dosing up Matt with a dozen clusters, and then we jump to the GCPD,
where John's now looking into Matt's case, and it's clear that the cops here are on Zabo's side. Mm, go figure. Believe it or not, from the Greatest American Hero plays, which is the second time this week I heard this song when talking about artificial intelligence, which feels kind of weird.
Vision Quest did it, but, you know, maybe this is a really good song. We get a montage of Matt gradually recovering week by week while simultaneously dealing with the treatment side effects. He's restless in his sleep, he's vomiting, but day by day, his scars begin to fade until they seemingly just disappear altogether.
The treatment worked! Katelyn and Matt then decide to go out for slushies to celebrate. He takes this opportunity to tell Katelyn that he's going to reveal his new face at the red carpet for a premiere of The Light Between, a movie he was once locked in to do but after everything he was dropped in that place by Freddy Canzino.
Beggin by now con now plays, it feels fitting for Matt, who's trying to reclaim the life and career he lost after his face was destroyed. We get this overshot of the red carpet like we did in the trailer We see the scotch whiskey ad Dotson Lottery below that It was digitally taken out of the trailer but in the corner it a poster for Sagan Cindy Whitaker movie that he was nominated for
Matt walks into this place like he owns it. He's unstoppable. But the second people recognize his face, it's game over. He starts signing autographs on these flyers for a show he's not even in anymore. He's taking pictures of Freddie and his former co-star, Nicky Claire.
His old manager tries to stop him, insisting it's just business and that they should get back in touch. Matt's response to that? F*** that! And that's when his face starts to droop. He bolts from the red carpet with people still screaming his name as he stumbles into the alley.
Once he reaches the choir spot, he captures the reflection in the neon lights and slightly panics. Before he can even process what's happening, he's hit by a car. This was the biggest jump scare in the movie. Matt calls Caitlin and we pick back up at her lab where she tries to help him manage the pain.
But when she steps away for a quick minute, Matt rolls off the bed, right in pain, and injects himself with the remaining nano cells from the vials. He starts seething in his skin to get into the bubble. and the reaction is absolutely horrifying. He even spits chunks of himself out of his mouth
and then just like that, his body returns to normal and Matt says that he's like never felt any better. I feel great actually. Now, it's not exactly the same, but something similar happens in Batman the Animated Series two-part episode, Cue to Play.
Matt breaks into Daggett's company to steal more of the face cream only to get caught by Daggett's goons who dump an entire beaker of the liquid onto his face. The context, yes, is vastly different, but I'd argue the outcome is pretty similar because the substance triggers a reaction throughout Matt's body
completely beyond his control. Cameron refers to this incident as an OD and keeps monitoring the situation, taking consistent notes. Back when Matt is now playing basketball outside of his apartment, he's repping a Gotham Delilah shirt.
They've been a random sports team throughout DC Comics and shows. They've been a basketball team, a football team, and a hockey team. In this scrimmage, he straight up eats shit and tears up his face on the concrete. However, the cut and the blood heal instantly.
Matt heads back to his apartment to test his theory. He starts by cutting his finger, then moves on to his face, and even though blood spills all from his wounds, we watch as it eventually gets pulled back into his body through the cuts before the skin seals itself back up. The body can literally heal itself.
He immediately shows Caitlin by cutting a chunk of his palm off and watching the skin return to his hand, and she's astonished, but immediately was like, whoa, we can't tell anyone about this, because if they do, they'll take away her license, they'll take away her life, and as for Mark, he'll become a walking experiment. It's here where their heart-to-heart on being proud of
their accomplishments becomes a little too friendly. More so, these are the early stages of them clearly falling for one another, but Caitlin pulls away every time. Matt now with his old new face returns to Coast City to meet up with Corey they meet at the Hotel Aventine.
In Batman Gotham Knights Bad Actors, Batman is solving a murder that happened here at this hotel and it was actually just Quaid face disguised as someone else. It also appeared a couple times in DC Comics. We learn at the beach that Corey is up for a part and it shoots in Gotham and he hadn't
told Matt yet because he was nervous with how he was holding up, but that's some good news for Matt. Now we're with Matt on Ferris Air, and Ferris Aircraft has appeared in Showcase issue number 22. This is a company that leads technology and aviation and was located in Coast City and was featured mainly in, like, the Howl Jordan stories.
While Matt is trying to relax, instead of watching a movie like the rest of us would do on a plane, he's watching the news where Zabo is the center of attention talking about his new casino coming. In the news coverage, you can actually see beside him is Matt's old business manager, Frank.
So he puts two and two together, they're working together! and this causes Matt's eyes and his eyelids to melt, connecting to the bottom of his eye almost like gooey webs, and no better time than during turbulence when instructed to keep your seatbelt
on. Matt immediately gets up and storms past the side attendant to the bathroom, and this is the scene they kept teasing us with in the trailer, where he grabs a pair of scissors and has to cut through the goo connecting his eyes just so he can see. And yes, he actually does it, and I can
barely look at it. I didn't like it. I hate every part of it. After returning to Gotham, Matt heads straight to Caitlin's house to show her the damage, understandably panicking over what's happening to his face. Together, they quickly figure out that his emotions are tied to how the cells respond.
When he's calm, they're calm. When he's angry, they're angry. And this idea is very similar to what happened in the animated series that I spoke about earlier. Also, this happened to him in the comics with different reactions, and his emotions are tied to his shape-shifting. This also makes
sense when you remember that Caitlin warned him that the treatments wouldn't just attack the surface, implying that the cells are responding to what's happening beneath his skin as well. And considering that she was originally studying these cells to treat neurodegenerative diseases, which literally damage the brain's nerve cells,
it's not surprising that their effects might extend to, like, something psychological, too. What I can't figure out, though, is whether the cells are actually trying to repair Matt, or if they're simultaneously driving him mad. Or if he's just driving himself mad, and they're just here for the ride.
Back in the lab, the two test this new condition. Kaelin asks him to remember how his past manager made him feel, and in his rant, he didn't realize that he turned his face into Zabo. After that, Caitlin decides she needs further notes and she needs to do this overnight in a trial so she can monitor him.
So while staying at Matt's apartment that night, he remains restless, tossing and turning in his sleep, and his features begin to dissolve, shifting from his face into Caitlin's face. He starts rolling around on the bed, feeling his way across her body, but it's technically still his body.
It's a very weird scene, but I recognize the beauty that they're trying to make in this. There's something meant to be like romantic about Matt's hand still as his own as he reaches out to hold Caitlin, but like, we all know that's still his body, he's just caressing, so it's hard to not feel a little weird watching this sequence.
Regardless, this doesn't scare her off, she just watches, and then we get a jump scare where he turns into Frank. The next day, Matt calls his old business manager, to no avail again, and he's so angry that he slams his hand on the counter, and we start seeing pieces of his body react.
His hand becomes jagged like rock, but with small rose-like thorns, very Basil Carlo-esque. We're back in Gotham with Frank now, bypassing a sign for the Gotham Docks. That's where Corey will be shooting his movie. Also, it's the Gotham Docks.
Only bad things will happen at the Gotham Docks in the future. We enter the Modoc building, which is a non-disabled Modoc. The co-creator for Matt Hagen's Playface, he also did Pop Girl. When Frank walks into his office, his assistant is nowhere to be found, but Matt is waiting for him.
And the two start a quick conversation that escalates into a heated argument very, very, very quickly. Frank admits that he worked with Zabo, but claims that his friend Corey was also the one who provided the evidence about his past, and apparently, it took no effort to do that.
This sets Matt off, and he lunges at Frank, tackling him, but Matt's hand seems to have a mind of its own, melting into Frank's mouth, as Matt desperately tries to pull himself away and stop what's happening. Meanwhile, his assistant arrives outside the locked office door, hearing the struggle inside, and then Matt pulls what I can only assume is a chunk of Frank's spine straight through his mouth, killing him.
When the assistant finally gets into the office, Matt panics and immediately takes a seat behind Frank's desk. His body, now morphed into Frank's, Matt manages to get away, but not before the assistant catches a glimpse of him, or at least what she thinks is Matt Hagen in the alley next to her job.
Matt has to physically rub his face to help himself shape-shift back to normal, and I'm pretty sure it's more of a psychological comfort thing than actually something he needs to do, because later we'll see him change shape without having to mush his face around like that.
But it's also a nod to Matt Hagen in the Batman animated series. Before the chemicals were completely dumped on him, Hagen couldn't shapeshift so easily or instinctively. He relied on a special cream, which he had to rub into his face to help his features shift back to normal.
Back at the apartment, Matt is still reeling from what he just did. He just killed a guy. And now when he looks in the mirror, he starts involuntarily morphing into Dick Chisler of the late-night hoax. Matt shifts back and forth between Dick and himself, completely spiraling as Dick insists that this is who he really is.
And it reminds me of Clayface shapeshifting in the mirror in One Bad Day, talking to himself as different people who he's killed. But also, this isn't the first time that Clayface stares in the mirror like a crazy person. Matt tries to argue down Vic, but the two continue fighting until Matt smashes his bathroom mirror,
leaving it cracked into countless little fragments that are still somehow connected. And then Vic delivers the line, There's so many of you, echoing what he said in Matt's interview on his own show. It's a creepy callback that makes you wonder just how much of Matt's identity is left in there, or whatever was there in the first place.
Matt now heads down to the set, down at the Dolphin Docks, to visit his dear friend Corey, who's starring in the movie. After talking with Frank, Matt asks Corey if he's helped Zabo with the case, but Corey denies it. That's when Matt notices the call sheet, and near the top of it is Mia Torres.
Remember how she mentioned she was a bit of an actress herself? Well, this is Marcus Zabo's production, and it seems pretty clear that Corey got this role feeding Zabo information. Also, number one on the call sheet is Mark Goodman, who is the head of Department Stagehand.
Good for you, Mark Goodman. You go, Mark Goodman. All of this hits Matt hard. That wasn't just some random guy who betrayed him. It's his best friend. It's his buddy. So Matt pulls Corey into what almost feels like a hug, only to suffocate him as he absorbs Corey into his torso.
And this is something that we've seen him do a lot in the comics and across a lot of adaptations. His final words to Corey are, You broke my heart. And of course, like with Frank, someone has to come retrieve Corey for set. And so Matt disguises himself now as Corey, his best friend.
This same, almost, almost the exactly same sequence happens in One Bad Day, when Clayface kills his friend only to take the part he was turned down for and then ruin the take and fuck everything up. Matt escorted to set where he comes face to face with Mia,
and when the director calls accents, he completely goes off script. Because why wouldn't he? During this scene, he says something like, I'll be whoever you want me to be. Let me be with you, Alice. And Matt says something literally like this to Caitlin by the end of the movie.
You remember how he struggled to convey I love you Beth earlier in the movie? Matt knows how to perform love, how to say the words and become the character someone else needs him to be now. but does he actually understand what love is? I don't know. He doesn't even know who he is.
So how are you going to love someone else if you can't love yourself, Matt? That's RuPaul for you. Learn it. Then he kisses Mia, well beyond the time frame of the director yelling cut, and then he runs to his trailer, which is actually Corey's trailer, where one of Zabo's goons,
Bones, chases after him, reaching the trailer, and there's no Matt, but Corey's dead body is there sitting in the chair. Next thing we know, the cops are now on set, and John confronts Zabo about how suspicious it is that people connected to him just keep on dying. Zobel offers an
alibi claiming that he was having lunch with either the DA or the mayor, he can't remember which one. Now, we don't know who he's referring to just yet, but the mention of Gossam district attorney should immediately bring Harvey Dent to the forefront of your minds as DC fans He Gossam famously known DA and while the movie doesn confirm that who Zabo had lunch with it an interesting possibility to just keep in mind But then when John pokes at his wife sleeping with younger actors all the
time, Zabo threatens John's fiancee, Caitlin, so now Caitlin's on his radar. Back at Matt's apartment, he's more restless than ever in his sleep. The news is playing on the TV, reporting that Corey was found dead in his trailer on the set of The Duelist. They mention his friendship with fellow
famous actor Matt Hagen and show a photo of the two together, including one where they're both wearing a Harley Quinn print shirt. When Matt frantically wakes up, his torso is painted blue and the same Harley Quinn pattern is on his chest. So his body has literally recreated the shirt using
his own skin. Gross! This is something though that I find funny because in Batman the Animated Series, after having Daggett's chemicals poured all over him, Matt could fake shift his clothes too. So I guess we're meant to assume that Matt is just kind of running around naked, transforming his body to
match whatever outfit he needs it to. So gross. And the idea of Crayface being an actor isn't new, but the Harley Quinn sigil for the shirts is a really fun reference. In the animated series, the title cards introducing each episode have custom artwork designed around the episode's story,
and for the two-part key-to-play story, the artwork featured Harley Quinn now. Caitlin's been trying to get a hold of Matt for a while now, but ever since he went after Frank, he's been MIA. He broke his phone that night and hasn't shown up for any of his scheduled appointments. So when she finally gets inside his apartment, she finds him looking like an absolute zombie,
his face and body practically melting away. And it's giving a very classic golden age Basil Carlo Clayface meets Kate Crusader Clayface. There, Caitlyn helps settle Matt's faith by simply just comforting him, and this is when he tells her right now she's the only good thing in his life.
He's off the deep end in love with this woman who is engaged, mind you. She pulls away, knowing that this can't happen, and explains that Zabo has been targeting her ever since Johnny threatened him. And she leaves, but not before Matt notices that Sal, Zabo's goon, is following after her.
This is when we see the scene in the trailer where Caitlyn's walking in front of the sign for a music mile. Anissa Milo is a location in Gotham City inspired by Coney Island where there are carnival games and rides, also known for where, you know, the Joker does shady stuff.
She continues walking with Sal not far behind her, making her way to 112th Avenue Station until she's taught by Sal that it's really Matt instead of Caitlin. He beats the crap out of Sal, repeating his line that he told Vic on the show before turning his hand into a mace and smacking his head over and over again.
This is one of Playface's notable weapons. There's so many ways the spiked hand hammer has been depicted throughout Playface adaptations, but it's always the same kind of mace. Now shapeshifting into Sal, Matt makes his way to the club Vesuvius where all his goons welcome him with absolutely no idea that they're actually dealing with Matt and not Sal.
Eventually, he runs into Jimmy Z, whoever this guy is, and he kills him in the bathroom before continuing on his manic journey through this club. But he probably can reach the penthouse where Zabo's hiding. Matt gets intercepted by a woman and other familiar faces to Sal. Meanwhile, Zabo seems to be spiraling himself, putting out hit after hit after threatened by Johnny investigating him.
That's a ghost haunting his own graveyard. Matt leads through this club's party goers, shifting between Sal and his own fate as he messes with Mia. She eventually clocks what's happening and runs to alert Zabo's goons that Matt is here.
Except when they look over, they find Matt doing the electric slide? Or maybe it's the Cupid shuffle. Honestly, I'm not sure, but he's out there on the dance floor, dancing around with everyone else like a possessed man staring right back at them. Also, they added a day on the shooting just to facilitate the dance sequence.
Why? This entire sequence, though, after the dance is a lot of fun. Zabo's goons rush the dance floor, but Matt keeps switching between different people. At one point, he turns into his dad, Jimmy One-Ball, or whatever. He also turns into Rosie, the woman who won the sweep with Sal.
And at one point, Matt, disguised as Rosie, falls down the stairs, breaks all his bones, but he's Clayface, so he simply just snaps them back into place. Eventually, he's cornered by Bones, and Matt transforms his hand into a set of sharp spikes, slicing off Bones' fingers before killing him.
Then, disguised as Patches, he escorts Mia up to the penthouse and tells the guards to keep the door closed behind them. Once inside, it doesn't take long for the real Patches to show up, and we get a standoff. You know the classic bit where everyone's insisting,
No, I'm the real guy. No, boss, it's me. Remember, I'm your guy. Gobble has no idea which Patches is the real one, so he shoots them both. And what's strange is how affectionate Mia suddenly becomes towards the goon, pointing know that he has a baby on the way? She dives towards Matt's body and begs Zabo to call for
the medic to save him, while the real Patches is just lying there dead in the corner. Eventually, Matt reveals that he's actually himself, but in the struggle to survive, Nia bites him and tears off a piece of his gooey body. Only this time, it doesn't return to Matt. Instead, it starts
suffocating Nia by blocking her mouth and her nose. Zabo turns around, sees what's happening, and quickly shoots Matt and collapses. Then Zabo cradles Nia as she dies, desperately begging her to stay alive. But Matt isn't finished here. His body fits the bullets back out and he manages to
get on top of Zabo. He cuts his own face in the exact same pattern that Zabo carved his into, then lets his face blood pour into every opening on Zabo's face. His eyes, his mouth, his nose, it's absolutely disgusting. It's like buckets of blood. Matt explains that the cells will
eventually return to his body and they'll find a way to get back to him. And that's exactly what happen. Like rats scrambling to find an escape route, the blood cells tear their way out through Zabo's face, killing him instantly before returning to Matt and sealing his wounds shut. While this is
all happening, we catch up with Johnny and Caitlin who are discussing Matt. Johnny is understandably nervous because all these people keep turning up dead, and Matt seems to be the prime suspect alongside Zabo. But instead of agreeing with the fact that her fiancé is laying out, Caitlin insists
that she really knows Matt and that he wouldn't be going around killing people all willy-nilly. John talks through the records of the recent victims before getting a call about a deadly kind of affair at Club Vesuvius. As Caitlin looks through the records, it becomes very clear that she knows Matt is responsible
for this, so she immediately starts clearing out all the evidence she has in her lap. Meanwhile, at the nightclub, John surveys the damage and decides, damn, I gotta pay Matt a visit. And now we're back with Matt soaking in his bathtub in the scene that we've seen
teased in the trailer. And this scene is inspired from one bad day's comic with Clayface. John shows up knocking at his door, and finally these two get to talk without Caitlin there. They both know what's going on, they both know that there's a love triangle happening,
but neither of them can actually call it what it is. Eventually, Matt gives John an alibi, claiming that he was at his apartment during the Club the Cubious massacre, and John just kind of deals with it and leaves. Back at John and Caitlin's house, though, John tells Caitlin that if she's happier
with Matt, he's okay with that. But Caitlin cuts him off and admits that Matt was responsible for all the death. She hands over all the evidence from her research of Matt, proving that he can shapeshift into other people, and she explains that she was afraid to tell Johnny what they were up to because she knew it would end up with her having to pull away from it all.
And that's when she finds out that her fiancé is actually dead in the living room. Of course he is, because Matt is him. Matt disguises himself as Johnny, trying to lie his way back into Caitlyn's arms. Matt is completely unhinged at this point.
He tells Caitlyn that maybe he did all this because he just wanted to see the look on her face when she comes home to her fiancé Johnny. He even tells her, I'll be whoever you want me to be. He even shakes shit back into Johnny right in front of her. He is a psychopath. Caitlyn grabs Johnny's pager and shocks Matt before he can kiss her, and she shoves him out the window into the rain.
As Matt rides and pays outside, Caitlin attempts to activate the NanoCell's kill switch, which warns of an electrical overload. Matt tells her to do it, and she activates the kill switch, and the power slowly ramps up. Meanwhile, Matt starts transforming into the poopy, mucky, monster, bootwrap version of Clayface, towering over her.
And this muddy Clayface reminds me completely of Basil's in One Bad Day. When the kill switch finally reaches 100%, he crumbles onto the pavement, looking like the same flesh-colored, petri dish of skin that we saw Caitlin working on earlier.
His gooey remains then melt into the sewer, giving us the imagery that we've seen before in Batman the Animated Series. It's now a new day. Caitlin gets off the subway. At the sign behind her, it mentions Cherry Hill and Old Gotham and Newtown.
All locations in Gotham, but also featured in the new Gotham Mouth, which is also on her left. And we see the cover of the Gotham Gazette, which first appeared in Batman 8 number 4, announcing that Matt Hagen, the missing star, is feared dead. Caitlin walks through Gotham, packing different people who give her strange looks and ominous glances.
She can't help but wonder if Matt is hiding in plain sight. This guy is one of them. Eventually, an unhoused man approaches her, asking for change. After she gives him some, he offers a small, solemn half-bow. The exact same gesture Matt used to make. It's subtle, but very unsettling.
Even Caitlin seems to recognize that something's too familiar about it. The man turns away and disappears into a tunnel filled with other unhoused people. And the tunnel leads to a small offshoot where the man has made his home. And that's when we discover the truth. The man is actually Matt.
Caitlin has followed him there. And the two share a bittersweet reunion. They talk. They kiss. and for a moment it seems like they somehow found their way back to each other in a weird, forgiven way that I didn't like, except as the camera pulls back, we realize this isn't
actually Caitlyn. Matt now has fully transformed into Clayface and has created a version of her out of his own body. He's so far gone that he's literally asking out an entire fantasy relationship with a fake Caitlyn in the real world.
This isn't new to the comic, Clayface, he just looks very similar at the end of Batman One Bad Day. The final version of Clayface has two faces, and the rest of his body is a giant, goofy mess. Jim Lee, the legendary comic book artist who is also currently the president, publisher, and CCO of DC Comics,
drew this sketch of Clayface during San Diego Comic-Con's panel, and it looks exactly like this. And that's where the movie ends. We don't know where we'll see Clayface next, but we know that we're going to see a lot of Gotham in the future. So where does this leave the DCU slate now?
Where do we go from here? Well, Eric and I actually get into it on this Sunday episode of our new Rockstars podcast, where we'll also be giving this movie a little bit of a review, so you gotta go check it out. Comment down below with your thoughts on Playface. And a special thanks to one of our YouTube members, Patrick Daly, who supports us at the executive producer level.
Big credits and thanks to my best buddy and studio tech, Brian Kim, behind the camera, New Rockstars editors Joshua, Stephen, Hurd, and Abby Striehl, and all the supporting editors for all their work on this video and all the other videos that we do. Follow me at LuzesClemens, subscribe to all the JLN New Rockstars Networks,
we'll break down reviews, cover everything you love. Thanks for watching, I'll see you guys later. Thank you.