The deck is rigged, Aces are high, and The Joker’s too wild!
Joker: “Uh-uh-uh, don’t touch that remote! I know it’s heartbreaking to have your favorite shows pre-empted. But look what you’re getting instead: me! And a whole truckload of mindless violence and wanton property damage! Everything that makes TV great! So stay tuned, you won’t believe your eyes…”
Justice League “Wild Cards’ (Season 2, Episode 21)
Anyone who knows anything about Batman knows The Joker. He’s killed scores of people, crippled Batgirl (voiced in Batman: The Killing Joke by Tara Strong) and even killed Jason Todd, the second Robin (voiced by Jensen Ackles in Batman: Under The Red Hood). Since Joker is going to be a major character in Suicide Squad and Batman: The Killing Joke, let’s take a look at some of his crazier schemes.
Table of contents
#10 Christmas With The Joker
Joker: “Crashing through the roof, in a one-horse open tree, busting out I go, laughing all the wheeeeeee! Ha ha ha ha!”
Batman: the Animated Series “Christmas with The Joker” (Season 1, Episode 2)
Joker opens this episode singing the famous “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” song before escaping Arkham in a rocket-powered Christmas tree. Hang on, boys and girls, it’s only gonna get crazier from here.
Joker kidnaps Commissioner Gordon (Bob Hastings voiced him here, and Ben Mckenzie plays him in TV’s Gotham) and Harvey Bullock (Donel Logue, also from Gotham) and lures Batman through several Christmas-themed traps. He even convinces Batman to open a present that hits him in the face with a pie.
#9 The Laughing Bat
Batman: “The costume party is over, Joker.”
The Batman “The Laughing Bat” (Season 2, Episode 4)
Joker:”Joker? Didn’t you hear? The Clown Prince of Crime has checked out. He just couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t take the Batman. Always there to foil his greatest schemes, and it’s starting to drive him mad. (Batman grabs Joker) Then, the Joker thought, if he couldn’t beat the Bat, he’d be the Bat.”
Joker decides he’s done losing to Batman and becomes Batman. However, every Batman needs a Joker, so he uses Joker Gas in an attempt to turn Batman into the Joker. Batman manages to cure himself, but not before we see Joker attempting to be a superhero.
#8 Joker’s Parade
Joker: “And now, folks, it’s time for “Who do you trust!” Hubba, hubba, hubba! Money, money, money! Who do you trust? Me? I’m giving away free money. And where is the Batman? He’s at home, washin’ his tights!”
Batman (1989)
After spending most of the movie killing people with his poisonous “Smilex”, Joker invites Gotham City’s citizens to a nighttime parade where he will give away $20 million. Morons and greedy people go to the parade where he throws them the money and then attacks them with Smilex. They’re only saved when Batman swoops in flying the Batwing and breaks up the parade.
#7 Why So Serious?
Batman: “What were you trying to prove? That deep down, everyone’s as ugly as you?! You’re alone!
The Dark Knight
For its fourth of fifth climax, The Dark Knight features Joker wiring two ships to explode, one full of people escaping Gotham City and the other filled with prisoners. He hides detonators for each ship on the other and tells the passengers to decide which one explodes. The catch? he’ll blow up both ships if they take too long.
Unfortunately for the crazy clown, one of the prisoners throws away his ship’s detonator, the Gotham refugees decide not to blow up the prisoners, and Batman stops him from blowing up anything.
#6 Joker’s Last Laugh
Batman: “Do you want to know something funny? Even after everything you’ve done, I would have saved you.”
Batman Arkham City
Joker: [last words]“That actually is… pretty funny…”
Slowly dying from an overdose of a combat drug called Titan, Joker infects the blood supply in multiple hospitals with his own poisoned blood. He also infects Batman. With the assistance of Talia al Ghul (Ra’s daughter, voiced by Stana Katic) Batman obtains a cure and drinks part of it before debating whether he should cure his enemy.
The clown attacks Batman to get the cure, inadvertently destroying it. Batman reveals he would have saved him, and the two old foes share a joke as Joker passes away.
#5 Vampire Joker
Joker: “You’re the second Batman I’ve met tonight, and you’re both a pain in the neck.”
The Batman vs. Dracula
It’s an average night in Gotham. The Joker’s escaped yet again and Batman is after him. But there’s a snag when maniacal madcap falls into a river while his amped-up joy-buzzer is on, seemingly electrocuting him. He survives, of course, and follows The Penguin into a graveyard.
There he meets Penguin’s new lord and master, Count Dracula, who decides to feed off of this annoying interloper. The result? A motherloving vampire Joker! Where’s Buffy when you really need her?
Batman beats Jokepire and synthesizes a cure from his blood. It’s a good thing too. With vampire powers, he’d probably be unstoppable.
#4 Emperor Joker
Joker: “I can’t believe it. He’s… he’s actually gone. Let’s take a moment to reflect on the passing of a man who was more than just another do-gooder in tights. He was the best arch-nemesis a sociopath could ask for. Okay, let’s do it again!”
Batman: the Brave and the Bold “Emperor Joker” (Season 2, Episode 19)
Joker has always been a master of manipulation, so it’s not too surprising that he could trick the reality warping Mr Mxyzptlk. But it is surprising when he tricks Mxyzptlk (voiced by Gilbert Gottfried) into giving him God-like power. The mad god used his newfound power to reshape reality to his will.
He kills Batman over and over again, defeats some of the most powerful people in his world, and even tries destroying the universe. Superman stops Emperor Joker, but not before he broke Batman enough that Bats begged Superman to kill the monster.
The comic was adapted into an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold with a few alterations. Superman and Mxyzptlk were cut and replaced with Bat-Mite, (Paul Reubens voiced him) a Batman fanboy from the fifth dimension.
#3 Joker Kills Metropolis
Joker: [having just shot Jimmy Olson] “Ew. I got some Jimmy on my shoe.” –
Injustice: Gods Among Us
It’s a good night for Superman. He’s just learned that Lois Lane is pregnant and is asking Batman to be the godfather while they’re working together. Meanwhile, Lois and Jimmy are investigating a story until Jimmy is killed by Joker, who then kidnaps Lois. Superman panics and calls in the entire Justice League. They are found in a submarine while Superman is confronted by Doomsday (Robin Atkin Downes in Batman v. Superman).
Supes drags Doomsday into space, unaware that he is also being affected by Scarecrow’s Fear Toxin. He shakes off the gas’s effects and sees that it was really Lois that he had killed. Even worse, a jury-rigged nuke in Metropolis was linked to a pacemaker in Lois. So when her heart stopped beating? Boom.
An enraged Superman tore his way into the Gotham City PD and shoved his arm through Joker’s chest. But the genocidal jester had the last laugh as his murder started Superman’s fall from grace.
#2 A Death in the Family
Joker: “The first Boy Blunder had some manners. I suppose I’m going to have to teach you a lesson so you can better follow in his footsteps. [beat] Nah, I’m just gonna keep beating you with this crowbar.”
-Batman: Under the Red Hood
While most people know the first Robin, Dick Grayson, and a lot of them know about Tim Drake, the third Robin, many forget the second. Jason Todd was a brash, violent departure from Dick Grayson, so it’s fitting that he got a brash and violent death from, well, I think you know who. After finding his long-lost mother, she betrayed him to the clown, who beat the living hell out of him with a crowbar.
Jason was left battered and semiconscious in a factory. Jason tried escaping from the building, but saw a time bomb with only a few seconds left on the timer. Batman arrived as the building exploded and found Jason dead. Why did Robin die? The publisher polled readers, and they narrowly chose to kill him.
Furious, Batman hinted the clown, only to learn that he had become an Iranian diplomat after meeting with Ayatollah Khomeini. I couldn’t make this up if I tried. The true missing moment of this story is that Commissioner Gordon never got to channel Leathal Weapon II and tell the new diplomat his immunity has “just been revoked.”
#1 The Killing Joke
Joker: “All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That’s how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once. Am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day, and everything changed.”
Batman: the Killing Joke
The iconic Joker story. Batman visits Arkham Asylum to see if they can iron things out with his nemesis. He worries that one day they’ll kill each other and wants to try and stop it before they do. Unfortunately, the clown had escaped earlier and left someone in his place.
Meanwhile, Joker plans his penultimate crime as the story flashes back to his past. He remembers being a struggling comedian with a pregnant wife who was dragged into a heist at his old workplace. As they are planning the heist, his wife and child die in an accident and the comedian, who just wants out, is forced to continue.
Disguised as a villain called Red Hood, they attempt the robbery. The crooks are killed and Red Hood jumps into a vat of chemicals to escape Batman. The chemicals are what created his ghastly appearance.
In the present, Joker shoots Barbara Gordon, alias Batgirl, crippling her for life. He also kidnaps Commissioner Gordon, attempting to drive him insane while giving a lecture about madness and how all it takes is one bad day.
Batman arrives to stop the crazy clown and after the battle offers him the same choice from earlier. Batman offers to help rehabilitate his most hated foe. He considers the offer, but bitterly decides that he’s already gone too far. Chuckling, he tells Batman the titular Killing Joke, and the two of the laugh uproariously as the story ends.
Jared Bounacos has written for Movie Rewind since 2016.
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