10 Most Shocking Things The Joker Has Done The Joker is arguably the most iconic comic
book villain in history and his notoriety is undoubtedly right up there with other villains
from fiction like Darth Vader, Freddy Krueger, The Master and Professor Moriarty.
But the Clown Prince of Gotham is probably the most depraved of them all.??Given his
name and some of his depictions - Cesar Romero, we're looking at you - it's easy to think
of him as an almost benevolent villain whose aim is to cause harmless mischief and have
fun doing it.
Well, the latter part about the fun is certainly true, but there's nothing harmless about The
Joker - he's truly wicked and some of his actions over the years across various media
have been nothing short of brutal.
That's what we're going to look at in this video - even though it's pretty difficult
to narrow them down to just ten!
Here are the ten most shocking things The Joker has ever done.
Kidnapping Alfred and The Bat-Family The Joker loves to torment Batman - it's an
obsession of his - and a sure-fire way to do this is by targeting the people the Dark
Knight cares about.
A prime example of the villain doing this came in 2012's Death of the Family arc, when
he kidnapped the entire Bat-family - essentially everyone Batman had come to rely on.??This
included his butler and father-figure Alfred, various incarnations of Robin, Batgirl, Catwoman
and Commissioner Gordon.
Worse still, Batman was knocked out and woke up at a table, where his kidapped allies were
sitting with bandages on their faces.
Joker informed him that the place was coated in gasoline and flints had been placed under
Batman's chair - if Batman moved, everyone would be set on fire.
Then, Joker summoned a brainwashed Alfred, whom he prompted to serve the Bat-family their
own severed faces for dinner.
Raining Down Shards of Poisonous Glass on Gotham
Although it isn't considered canon and goes against most of what we know about The Joker's
established origins, 2008's Lovers and Madmen arc was nonetheless an interesting and enjoyable
read.
It predominantly featured the villain in his pre-Joker days, as a career-criminal named
Jack, wanting to draw out Batman to give himself a challenge.??In contrast to his usual deeds,
which tend to have a personal touch to them, this version of the character was unprejudiced
in selecting his victims - and one particular crime was truly despicable.
He unleashed a blimp above Gotham and caused it to explode, making poisonous shards of
glass to rain down on Gotham City.
The place was littered with men, women and children who had been sliced open and infected
- many of whom died.
It should be noted that he had also slashed Batman's lovers stomach in the same story,
but this version of The Joker generally targeted whoever he could.
Poisoning Kids and Breaking His Own Neck 1986's The Dark Knight Returns is arguably
the greatest Batman story ever told and was deservedly turned into a two-part animated
movie in 2012 and 2013.
It sees the Caped Crusader returning to action years after retiring, which also results in
the reawakening of The Joker, who had spent that time in a catatonic state in Arkham Asylum
- and his reawakening brings out the worst in him.??Prior to the villain's final confrontation
with his long-time scourge, he despicably poisons a group of innocent children with
tainted cotton candy, which kills them - although it should be noted that the movie didn't depict
this.
Then, such is the unfathomably twisted nature of the character, when the final confrontation
does eventually come, The Joker is mortally injured - but even then he has the last laugh.
The Clown Prince of Crime uses his remaining strength to snap his own neck, making it look
like Batman did it and framing him for his murder.
Kidnapping and Brainwashing Tim Drake 2000's Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker
movie might have been a spin-off of a television show for children - the brilliant Batman Beyond
- but that didn't stop it from being rated PG-13 and going to some pretty dark places.??It
saw Terry McGInnis and his mentor - a retired Bruce Wayne - going up against a supposedly
resurrected Joker, resulting in the uncovering of a dark secret from Wayne's past.
Flashback sequences show scenes from decades earlier in which, having kidnapped Tim Drake
- the man formerly known as Robin - The Joker and Harley Quinn brutally tortured and brainwashed
him, transforming him into their puppet.
Wayne had overseen his rehabilitation after the incident, and he was supposedly living
happily as a communications engineer, but little did Wayne know that Drake had been
implanted with a chip containing the now-deceased Joker's consciousness - meaning the version
of "The Joker" that McGinnis and Wayne were being forced to fight was actually Wayne's
old partner.
Beating and Killing Jason Todd Batman: A Death in the Family was a story
arc from 1988 and 1989 that saw Jason Todd - the second incarnation of Robin - searching
for his birth mother.
He found her, but a complicated series of events led to her dealing with The Joker,
as she was forced into giving him third-world medical supplies that he subsequently sold
on the black market.
He also replaced the original supplies with laughing gas, which he would set off in the
third-world.??When The Joker was with Todd's mother at a warehouse, the hero turned up
to help her in his Robin costume.
The villain proceeded to beat him to a pulp with a crowbar, before leaving both him and
his mother in said warehouse with a time-bomb ticking.
In trying to protect his mother from the bomb's blast, Todd was killed - and it wasn't enough
to save his mother, who was also mortally wounded in the explosion.
Killing Rachel Dawes In Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy,
Rachel Dawes was an original character created for the big screen.
She was a childhood friend and eventual love interest of Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne,
played by Katie Holmes in 2005's Batman Begins and by Maggie Gyllenhaal in 2008's The Dark
Knight - the latter being the movie in which she met her cruel demise at the hands of Heath
Ledger's Joker.??The psychotic villain took both Dawes and Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent
to two different locations - both rigged with explosives that were set to go off at the
same time - and made Batman choose which one of them to save.
He opted for Rachel, but the Joker had provided him with the wrong information, meaning he
went to the location Dent was being held hostage at.
Consequently, he only managed to save Harvey.
Rachel perished in the explosion before Batman could get to her, which was an incredibly
cruel thing for The Joker to mastermind.
"Killing" Batman and Dumping His Body The 1994 Batman: Going Sane arc looked in
to what would happen if the Joker thought that Batman had gone for good - and the results
were pretty sensational.
The Dark Knight is lured into a trap by his arch-enemy and seemingly dies in a rigged
explosion - but what The Joker does next is most shocking.??Believing that he had finally
done the impossible and killed his long-time foe - the Clown Prince of Gotham simply crudely
dumped his body in a river.
Even more shocking, however, is the fact that a consequence of killing Batman is that he
no longer needed to be the Joker and began to turn sane.
He received plastic surgery to look like a normal member of society, found himself a
job, and fell in love.
Ultimately, it all ended up being in vain, as Batman washed up alive on the riverside
and was nursed back to health by locals in a quiet town, but the fact Joker would so
nonchalantly dispose of someone so obviously important to him was pretty damn shocking.
Killing Bruce Wayne's Parents This one comes from Tim Burton's 1989 Batman
movie - a story that made The Joker directly responsible for Batman's existence, due to
the fact that, in this particular timeline, it was him who killed Bruce Wayne's parents
in that dark Gotham City alley behind a theatre all those years ago.??It happened before the
villain actually became The Joker - when he was still just Jack Napier.
Bruce and his parents were confronted by two mobsters - one of them being Jack - who robbed
his mother of her jewellery before shooting both her and Bruce's father.
Years later, when The Joker asked Batman the question "Have you ever danced with the devil
by the pale moonlight?"
- the same one that he asked young Bruce all those years ago - the Dark Knight came to
realise who had destroyed his life all those years ago.
If there's one particular dastardly deed that truly proves just how sick and twisted a man
The Joker is, and it's his treatment of the Gordon family in 1988's one-shot graphic novel
Batman: The Killing Joke.
The villain intends to prove that "one bad day" can turn even the most stable and controlled
man insane - so he subjects Commissioner Jim Gordon and his daughter, Barbara, to horrific
treatment.??The Joker shoots Barbara through her spine, paralysing her, and kidnaps the
Commissioner, stripping him naked and locking him in the cage of a circus' freak-show, making
him view pictures of Babs injured and naked, prompting Batman into action.
Only the most sadistic man who do that - and you can now see those moments on film in 2016's
animated feature, which is also called Batman: The Killing Joke (it isn't very good, though!).
Torturing and Killing Batman Day After Day 2000's Emperor Joker was a crazy story arc
that saw the Joker stealing 99% of the unlimited reality-warping abilities of Mister Mxyzptlk.
Consequently, the Clown Prince of Gotham possessed godlike abilities and renamed himself "Emperor
Joker".
He went on to redesign the entire universe into a warped caricature of itself, which
reflected his equally warped personality, and everyone in it found themselves stuck
in a twisted loop.??Batman - as you might expect - came out worst in this scenario.
In spite of the fact that The Joker could essentially have done anything with that power,
his main focus was on making the Dark Knight's life a torturous misery.
The hero was forced to live in a loop in which the flesh was torn from his body every day,
while his mouth was sewn shut.
He would then be killed, resurrected, and force to live the same routine again the following
day.
Yikes.
Thanks for watching our video of the ten most shocking things The Joker has ever done.
Did you know the Clown Prince of Gotham was this crazy?
Can you think of any other insane acts committed by Batman's arch-foe?
Leave a comment and let us know!
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