Confused about his stay at the asylum

Note: This went on a bit longer than I anticipated (lol).

At the end of the film where he was talking to the shrink, I actually thought it was going to be that he was telling her "his story," so all that we saw was from his perceptive.

It was almost to the point of me expecting him to reference Killing Joke and when she asked what he was laughing about for him to say: "Well you see sometimes, I remember it one way, sometimes another...if I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! My point is...my point is, I went crazy when I saw what a black awful joke the world was...I went crazy as a coot!"

So if that were the case there is something to be said for a flash forward regardless of the Social Worker asking him if he remembers why he was in Hospital before, which may have been for his brain damage and the card explaining it. Though that is also up for debate in my view as if he had a card that explained why he laughed uncontrollably in the wrong situations or to the wrong thing, then how come the shrink at the end didn't know that (if he had been in before). I mean that card could have been something that Joker had printed out himself, I would have to take another look however I do not believe it had any official looking logos on it, in fact it wouldn't surprise me if Joker was the real person and Arthur was the alter ego he hid behind.

In fact with some of those moments taken in isolation, I have to wonder how many of the scenes where we see Arthur get bullied or harassed are merely delusions of his. Basically what if all the Joker’s insecurities are manifesting as hallucinations and he loves to play the victim, so he often imagines his own suffering to justify his blood lust.

For instance Joker/Arthur probably did really buy that gun from Randall and it was more him playing the victim in his mind, as in Randall didn't just give it to him, he may have lied and said only that Arthur had asked for one (wanted to keep his job so wouldn't say he got it for him). Similarly I do not believe the crowd were celebrating him, I tend to believe it was actually proper ambulance people that pulled him out of the cop car and that was the moment he was caught, his delusions just played out that "fans" had come to rescue him in that ambulance (and deliberately caused the accident).

So I wouldn't be embarrassed in thinking flashforward as the film is written in a way to play with our own thoughts of what we are seeing and others are going to see it in different ways to each other. I would even go as far to say that depending on the mood someone was in when they first go and see the film that they may view it differently to how they might if they were in another mood (say Bad Day at Work/School vs Good Day at Work/School or some such thing).