The Joker is Batman's greatest villain and one of the best bad guys in comic book history.
He's willing to anything, no matter how psychotic, to convince Batman that morality and order
are just a fantasy.
Here are the most terrible things he's done to make that point.
Of all the atrocities he's ever committed, the Joker is probably best known for paralyzing
Barbara Gordon.
The grisly act occurs in Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's infamous graphic novel, Batman:
The Killing Joke.
In an effort to prove that everyone is only one bad day away from being just like him,
the Joker does his best and worst to drive the Dark Knight's most trusted ally, Commissioner
Jim Gordon, to becoming a blubbering heap of his former self.
So how does he plan on destroying Batman's best friend?
He simply knocks on Barbara Gordon's door, and when the commissioner's daughter says
hello, the Joker shoots her.
The bullet shatters her spine, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down, and, while
the Joker didn't know it at the time, putting an end to her crime-fighting career as Batgirl.
Then, adding insult to injury, the Joker takes photos of his truly horrific violation, projecting
them onto screens and forcing the Commissioner to look at them while he puts him through
a carnival funhouse that's been twisted into a psychological torture chamber.
The story is both hugely controversial and genuinely disturbing, and is still considered
to be the worst thing he's ever done over 30 years after it was first published.
In the aftermath of The Killing Joke, it's easy to think that the Gordon family had suffered
enough.
In December of 1999, however, the Joker decided to take another brutal shot at his least-favorite
law enforcing family.
This time, the target was Sarah Essen-Gordon, who went from being Jim Gordon's partner on
the police force to the commissioner's second wife.
Despite Gordon's dedication to keeping the peace in America's most crime-ridden city,
he and Sarah are happy together even through the worst of times… until the Clown Prince
of Crime shows up.
"...Wait'll they get a load of me.”
In the finale of the epic, year-long Batman storyline No Man's Land, in which Gotham City
was devastated by an earthquake and left to fend for itself with no support from outside,
the Joker enacted one of his most terrifying plans.
He kidnapped every baby that had been born in Gotham during the year that the city was
isolated off the grid, holding them captive in the basement of the Gotham Police Department.
Sarah was the first to arrive on the scene, but she stumbled straight into the madman's
trap.
The Joker tosses a baby at Sarah, and as she tries to catch the child, he shoots her in
the head.
With his work done, the Joker dropped his weapon, walked outside and immediately surrendered
to the police, defying Jim Gordon to ditch his "by the book" moral code and shoot him
and even Batman told Gordon that he wouldn't stop him if he wanted to take the shot.
Instead, the Commissioner settled for unloading his handgun into the Joker's kneecap instead,
prompting the villain to break out into laughter at the fact that he might never walk again…
just like Barbara.
Once Dick Grayson grew up and graduated from the role of Robin into being a hero on his
own as Nightwing, the job of Batman's sidekick was taken over by Jason Todd.
Unlike Grayson, however, Jason was portrayed as an edgier character than his predecessor,
whose rough upbringing in an orphanage had left him prone to crossing lines that Batman
never would.
That came to a head in A Death in the Family, a storyline where Jason ditched the Dark Knight
and went looking for his long-lost mother.
Unfortunately for Jason, he found the Joker, who delighted in beating the Boy Wonder's
head in with a crowbar and then blowing up the body for good measure.
It was the most brutal thing he'd ever done in comics up to that point, and the loss of
Robin haunted Batman for years to come.
You can't blame this one entirely on the Joker, though.
Death in the Family had a gimmick, allowing fans to call in and vote on whether Jason
would live or die.
When the votes were tallied, it came out to 5,271 voting for Robin to live… and 5,343
calling for his death.
With a margin of just 72 votes, Jason was toast, and the Joker racked up his most famous
kill.
Everyone remembers A Death in the Family for the scene when the Joker beats Robin to death
with a crowbar, and for good reason.
Still, it's kind of weird that nobody really talks about how the first part of that story
is all about the Clown Prince of Crime selling nuclear weapons to terrorists because his
previous heists hadn't gone according to plan.
"Do I really look like a guy with a plan?"
Obviously, this had less of an impact on the comics as the whole "killing Batman's sidekick"
thing, but come on, We all have to agree that arms deals with terrorists are pretty bad
in general, right?
Even stranger, it only happened because he was in desperate need of cash.
Since he had a spare cruise missile complete with a nuclear warhead laying around, he decided
to use it for a quick buck.
Fortunately, the terrorists never got to nuke Tel Aviv as planned, although Batman didn't
stop them.
It turns out that the Joker isn't that great at nuclear engineering, and after taking the
missile apart to smuggle it into the Middle East, he didn't put it back together correctly.
It ended up exploding in the truck when they tried to launch it, without detonating the
nuclear warhead.
While it doesn't get the press of some other well-known Joker stories, "Soft Targets" is
one of the absolute best, and features a truly sinister plot.
It originally ran in 2003 in the pages of Gotham Central, a book that focused on the
Gotham City Police Department and the way ordinary people tried to deal with being cops
in a city dominated by superheroes and villains.
It showed a grittier side of Gotham without sacrificing the idea of a world full of super-powers,
and became a fan favorite thanks to its relatable characters and their very realistic reactions.
As you might expect, when the Joker showed up, those reactions basically amounted to
sheer terror.
It started off with a literal bang.
A sniper took out Gotham City's mayor with a headshot, sparking a series of apparently
random killings that terrorized the city in the weeks before Christmas, even live-streaming
a countdown of his potential targets.
Eventually, the police discovered it was the Batman's arch-nemesis pulling the trigger,
but things took a strange turn — even by Gotham City standards — when the Joker walked
up to the police station three days before Christmas and allowed himself to be arrested.
Then came the twist.
It turned out that the whole thing — the assassination of the mayor, the random killings,
the live-streamed sniper attacks — was just the setup for an even deadlier punchline.
With the Joker in custody, the people who had been scared off the streets by the sniper
attacks scrambled to get their holiday shopping done, which is exactly what the Joker wanted.
He'd set bombs in the stockroom of the city's biggest toy store with plans of explosively
ruining Christmas for Gotham's kids.
Fortunately, the GCPD evacuated the civilians, but when the Joker broke free of the interrogation
room, he managed to rack up a few more gleeful kills before he was stopped.
The animated series Batman Beyond was set decades in the future, after Bruce Wayne retired
and eventually handed the Batman identity down to cool young future teen Terry McGinnis.
With a few exceptions, Terry's adventures avoided using established Batman villains,
instead giving him his own roster of foes that seemed inspired by Spider-Man's classic
rogues gallery.
That makes sense, though, since Terry himself felt like the answer to the question "what
if Peter Parker became Batman instead?"
When the Joker came back, though, he came back hard, and brought two incredibly disturbing
reveals with him.
The first was that before dying, the Joker had implanted his own consciousness into the
second Robin, Tim Drake, so that he could take over his body and re-emerge years later
to continue terrorizing Gotham after death.
The other, more disturbing, reveal was how he pulled it off.
Thirty-five years earlier, he and Harley Quinn had kidnapped Tim, holding him for weeks before
Batman tracked them down.
The Joker and Harley spent that time torturing Robin, breaking him mentally and transforming
him physically into "Joker Junior," complete with the chalk-white skin and permanently
fixed grin.
"You've lost Batman.
Robin is mine.
The last sound you hear will be our laughter."
When the Joker showed off his handiwork to Batman and tried to force his new "son" to
kill the hero, Tim managed to break free just long enough to shoot the Joker instead, killing
him.
The image of Tim's maniacal laughter turning to sobs, with tears streaming down his disfigured
face, is probably the most disturbing thing to ever hit DC's animated properties.
So much so, in fact, that the scene was heavily edited for its original release, giving the
Joker a very different death scene and eliminating the more explicit references to torture.
The uncut version has been available since 2003, however, just in case you want to see
how dark those cartoons can get.
When DC relaunched their line in 2011 as the "New 52," the first thing the Joker did was
arrange to have his own face cut off by a villain called the Dollmaker so that he could
leave it hanging in his cell at Arkham when he escaped.
That might be the single weirdest thing he's ever done, but it wasn't the worst.
When he returned a few years later to cut everyone else's face off, though, that definitely
made the list.
At the climax of the Death Of the Family story arc not to be confused with Death In the Family
Batman was put through a gauntlet of villains as he made his way through Arkham.
In the end, he was overwhelmed and captured, waking up at a long dinner table to find the
Joker waiting for him.
Of course, the Dark Knight isn't the only guest at this particular party.
The Joker had also "invited" Batgirl, along with the current and former Robins, tied up
with their faces heavily bandaged.
In front of each victim, there's a serving platter covered with a sterling silver dome.
Then, in a ghoulish twist, out comes Alfred with a grin stretched from ear to ear, no
doubt caused by the Joker's infamous toxin.
When Alfred then lifts the domes from each plate, the Batman Family members finally see
the evening's gruesome meal: their own faces, looking back at them.
Thankfully, after Batman escapes his confinement, he unwraps the bandages from his family and
realizes it's all been one sick joke.
Everyone's faces are fine.
The Joker just wanted to have a little sadistic fun.
It does leave us with the question, though: if those weren't the Batman Family's faces,
whose were they?
While he's usually found in and around Gotham City, the Joker occasionally shows up in some
pretty unexpected places.
The nine-part Emperor Joker storyline, for example, happened in the Superman comics,
and involved one of the most terrifying premises any comic book reader could imagine.
In that story, Superman's old foe Mister Mxyzptlk, the magical, fifth-dimensional imp who uses
his reality warping powers to mess with Superman every few months, decides to see what would
happen if he handed off those powers to another trickster.
To find out, he gives the Joker just one percent of his magic.
That would be bad enough, but the Joker manages to trick Mxyzptlk into giving him the other
99% to go along with it.
With these incredible powers, he entertains himself by remaking the world in his own twisted
image.
As you might expect, he spends a lot of time on Batman, torturing the Dark Knight to death
every night and then resurrecting him every morning to do it again, which traumatizes
Batman to the point where Superman erases his memories to keep him sane His most disturbing
act, though?
Eating the entire population of China.
Yes, really.
He eats every single person in China, and in true Joker style, he uses a pair of chopsticks.
There's a sick sense of humor, and then there's absolute depravity.
If you ever want to see the Joker at his scariest, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of
The Batman Adventures #3 from 1992, because there's a sequence in that issue that's still
terrifying all these years later.
As he so frequently does, the Joker takes over Gotham City's airwaves with his own broadcast.
His guest is Jim Gordon, kidnapped and tied up in front of the cameras while the Joker
offers up a monologue that a full 16 years before The Dark Knight is devoted to the idea
that law and order are false ideas, and that the only thing that truly exists is "random
destructive chaos."
"Upset the established order and everything becomes chaos.
I’m an agent of chaos."
To illustrate his point, he punctuates his speech by picking up a baseball bat and breaking
Gordon's arms while the horrified citizens of Gotham, and Batman, watch.
It's pretty grim stuff, but here's the best and worst part: The Batman Adventures was
the tie-in book set in the universe of Batman: The Animated Series, and as mature and forward-thinking
as that show was, it was still a cartoon for children.
This was a comic aimed at younger readers that featured the Joker announcing that in
a world that was just, he wouldn't be able to just pick up a bat and start beating on
a beloved heroic police commissioner, and then proved himself correct by doing just
that.
That's a weird thing to learn when you're still trying to get a handle on subtraction.
Since being introduced on Batman: The Animated Series, Harley Quinn has made the leap to
comics, movies, and more to become one of DC's most popular characters.
A big part of that popularity comes down to the idea that for a villain, she's always
been incredibly sympathetic.
She's a participant in the Joker's madness and mayhem, but ultimately, he's the one pulling
the strings, manipulating and abusing her into going along with it.
Considering all that he's done to her over the years, it's easy to argue that their entire
relationship be counted as a whole among the worst things the Joker has ever done, but
there's a singular example in the pages of Mad Love, the graphic novel that gave us Harley's
origin.
When she takes it upon herself to capture Batman and "improve" one of his discarded
deathtrap jokes, the Joker flies into a rage.
He backhands her while ranting about how she doesn't get the joke, then knocks her through
a window to a five-story fall.
She survives, of course, but only through chance, and only to find herself going back
to him in the end.
The story was adapted for Batman: The Animated Series in 1999, but it would be another decade
before readers would get to see Harley breaking away from the Joker on the page and the screen.
The Joker has been undeniably successful in the world of thematic villainy, and pretty
much anything he's done for the past couple decades has been more like gilding an increasingly
deadly lily.
He's already Batman's arch-nemesis, he's already the deadliest and most feared criminal in
DC's considerable roster of bad guys, and if you think of villainy as being like a sport,
then there's really nothing else to do.
As a result, you might think that if and when the Joker finally died, he'd be able to look
back on his life, tally up the final body count, and be satisfied that his work was
finally done.
You would be wrong.
Not only has the Joker managed to ensure that his reign of terror will continue past his
own death, he's done it in a truly bizarre way: he booby-trapped his own heart.
According to Batman himself, the Joker somehow laced his cardiovascular system with "a singular
super-toxin" that will be released at the moment of his death, turning whoever finally
gives in and kills him his preference, of course, being Batman into an all-new, all-deadly
Joker.
He even once shot himself to dose Batman, but fortunately, the Dark Knight managed to
hold off the transformation long enough to work up a cure.
That is some buck wild comic book science and some pretty advanced biochemistry for
a dude whose major interests include purple suits and mayhem but it's also a pretty scary
tactic.
Not only will he be inflicting his own madness on someone else, but he'll be ensuring that
it continues indefinitely, ruining countless more lives at the cost of his own.
Of course, that only happens if he dies, but you know things have gotten pretty bad when
the Joker staying alive to keep on doing what he does is actually the best option.
The Joker's most heinous crime might not be any of the ones that have happened in the
comics, or even the movies.
Instead, it's part of the backstory of a video game.
In 2013, the Joker showed up in Injustice: Gods Among Us, a fighting game created by
NetherRealm Studios, the developers of Mortal Kombat.
Perhaps surprisingly, this video game has a backstory that was compelling enough to
be the source material for a comic that ran for a full five years.
To justify the setup of a world where the superheroes were slugging it out to the death,
the game took place in an alternate universe where the Joker pushed Superman well beyond
the breaking point.
First, he steals a nuclear submarine, then he somehow manages to poison the Man of Steel
with Scarecrow's fear toxin.
The poison clouds Superman's mind and makes him think he's fighting Doomsday, the unstoppable
monster that once nearly killed him.
In reality, he was really unleashing his entire strength on a target that the Joker chose
for him instead: Lois Lane.
Even worse, she was pregnant with Superman's child.
As Lois dies, the launch of a nuclear missile wipes Metropolis off the map, leaving Superman's
entire life devastated.
"First Krypton now Metropolis.
People you love tend to blow up, don't they?"
As a result, Superman snaps, shoving his fist through the Joker's chest.
Of all the stories where Superman goes bad, and there are plenty of them, Injustice goes
to the darkest place that the Man of Steel had ever been.
It gave us a world where the Joker won, proving that anybody, even Superman, is capable of
breaking their own rules if pushed far enough.
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