Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory hid a joke that now looks a lot darker than it did in 2005. The movie’s Smilex-brand toothpaste links Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka remake to Burton’s 1989 Batman, the Michael Keaton film that gave Jack Nicholson’s Joker a poison called Smylex.
The connection matters because the toothpaste in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is not just a throwaway prop. The story says its presence suggests the film’s nearby citizens are being poisoned, which turns a children’s confection into a quiet nod to Burton’s earlier villainy. In Batman, Jack Napier’s chemistry training helps him create Smylex at Axis Chemicals, and the poison leaves victims laughing before death while warping their faces into unnatural grins.
Burton’s 2005 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel was hardly a flop. It drew an 83% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 226 reviews and took in almost $478 million worldwide, evidence that audiences and critics were there for it when it opened. Noah Taylor played Charlie Bucket’s father, who is laid off at the local toothpaste factory at the start of the film, giving the Smilex detail an oddly industrial edge.
That is part of why the reference still sticks in 2026. Many fans of Burton now rank Charlie and the Chocolate Factory among his lesser works, even though it was well liked on release. By contrast, Mel Stuart’s 1971 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory remains the version many viewers remember most clearly, and the article notes that Gene Wilder hated Burton’s remake.
The darker irony is that Burton had already built a visual language for Smylex in Batman. The Joker sneaks it into consumer goods such as makeup, shampoo, and underarm deodorant, Batman discovers it only activates when several products are combined, and Nicholson’s villain later turns it into gas and fills hot air balloons with it in the finale. So when Smilex-brand toothpaste appears in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the joke is not just a wink at another movie. It points to a poisoned world hiding in plain sight, and that is exactly why the callback is hard to miss.