Joker

**Joker** (voiced by Mark Hamill) is Batman's greatest nemesis and a super-criminal hailing from Gotham City.

## History

Not much is known about how the Joker came to be, there are various origins as who he once was.

In one such origin story, he was a hitman going by the alias of Jack Napier who notably worked with men like Chuckie Sol, Buzz Bronsky, and Sal Valestra. One night, he led a group of his fellow mobsters in a hit on the Ace Chemical plant. During the raid, things went awry when the thugs encountered Batman. A fight broke out between Batman and Napier that ended with the latter falling into a vat of chemicals that disfigured him. The chemicals dyed his skin white, his hair green, and stained his lips a permanent red. The first sight of his new look broke his mind.

A few years after this encounter, Jack quickly made a name for himself as the Joker, and caused enough trouble for Gotham to catch the attention of Batman, who'd pummel the clown black and blue before throwing him into Arkham Asylum.

Undeterred, however, Joker would always find a way to break out of Arkham and wreak all kinds of chaos upon Gotham while pushing Batman's limits, attempting to see how far he can go before the Dark Knight would snap and break his "one rule".

## Personality

The Joker was a vicious killer, even prior to his chemical bath: he harbored little remorse for any murders he committed as a hitman and even intended to start his own criminal organization. He also made it clear that he kills for fun as much as he does money. After falling into a vat of chemicals and becoming the Joker, his insanity increased, making him among one of the most dangerous criminals in Gotham, attempting to commit mass murder and chaos all for the sake of jokes. He even has little regard for his own life or safety, even laughing in instances where his own death was inevitable such as when the fairgrounds were exploding around him alongside Phantasm's preparations to kill him and during a failed evacuation from the doomed LexWing when explosive marbles were rolling towards him. He even deliberately aimed his gun turret on an airplane he was using to try to escape a nuclear bomb he had set to detonate, knowing he will perish just to ensure Batman couldn't disarm it. The Joker also described the killing as "that kind of fun" when Batman came very close to kill him for the torture of Tim Drake, even stating he should have done it years ago. When the Joker returned from the dead and into the future, when he tried to kill Bruce, he admitted he despised and "hated his guts". He was best described by Bruce as a "psychopath, a monster" after Terry questioned him regarding his relationship with The Joker.

Despite his evident insanity, the Joker was also shown to be quite intelligent, which was best demonstrated with the Phantasm murders, where he very quickly deduced the Phantasm's true identity, Andrea Beaumont, just from hearing her name on a secretary's announcement, knowing it could not have been her father as he had personally made sure he was dead from his prior life as a mob hitman. Other demonstrations of his intelligence include his deliberately stealing the Laughing Dragon due to not only deducing Superman's fatal weakness to kryptonite, but also the fact that the infamous heirloom was made out of the material, and when he deliberately chose to forego his usual trademark gimmicks for his crimes and even sent a body double to the Iceberg Lounge while he went to rob the U.S. Mint of cash specifically to avoid having Batman track him down. Also, when the Injustice Gang managed to capture Batman, he repeatedly insisted that they kill Batman when they have the chance due to realizing just how much of a threat he posed to their plans. Even when he was "reborn" via Tim Drake, his intelligence hadn't died down, as evidenced by how he managed to deduce the true identity of the new Batman, as well as anticipating that the new Batman would deduce that Drake was in on his schemes. He also anticipated that Bruce Wayne had "monkey-wired" the new Batman and was monitoring everything they were saying at that point, even implying he was hoping for this in order to expose the truth to his old archnemesis that Drake was literally under the Joker's control via a Cadmus chip.

The only thing equal to the Joker's insanity was his massive ego. He perceives himself as the greatest comedian in the world and the greatest nemesis of the Batman, and will not hesitate to destroy anyone who claims or demonstrates otherwise. One example of this hubris is when he was booted out of a comedy show and got back at the ones responsible by hypnotizing them into becoming supervillains in order to cement himself as the "funniest man in all of Gotham", only to end a laughing stock afterwards. Another blow to his pride is when he was made to believe that he had inherited a massive fortune from a hated rival of his, only to learn that a majority of it was fake and it was a trick to get the last laugh on the Clown Prince of Crime, enraging the Joker beyond words. Another time is when Harley Quinn managed to successfully capture Batman so that she and the Joker can truly live together, but the Joker saw this as an insult to his profession and assaulted Harley, going as far as to push her out of a window to her possible death. Batman then admitted that he tricked Harley into calling the Joker because he knew that his ego would never allow another to kill Batman, further damaging the Joker's pride. This revelation leads up to one of the few times the Joker truly loses his cool.

Bruce Wayne would later reference this character trait of the Joker's when advising the new Batman on how to beat the Joker by referring to him as being "vain" and "loving to talk." Ultimately, it was this arrogance that led to the Joker's demise twice; the first was believing that Tim Drake, having been transformed into Joker Jr., was firmly under his control, only for the boy to resist and end up fatally shooting the Joker in the chest, with the clown using his last breath to remark his disappointment in the following events. The other time was when Terry McGinnis began insulting the Joker's sense of humor and relationship with the original Batman, causing the Joker to become even more dangerously insane and attempt to choke the boy with his bare hands, allowing Terry to destroy the chip on his neck and end his threat once and for all. Ironically, the latter instance came about after the new Batman decided, instead of blocking out Joker's taunts and powering on through (Bruce Wayne's original tactic of dealing with him), to beat Joker at his own taunts due to realizing that the new Batman himself also "liked to talk."

Owing to his more clown-like appearance, he generally uses more comedy-based elements in his crimes and plans. As such, he also tended to use abandoned or otherwise defunct toy/candy factories or warehouses with some sort of comedy/clown theme as hideouts, like Laffco Toy Factory, the defunct World of the Future Fair fairgrounds, Funnibone Shipping, and the Jolly Jack Candy Factory.

## Trivia

* Joker become Thomas and Twilight Sparkle's enemy in *Thomas and Twilight Sparkle's Adventures of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm*.
* Joker came back with his girlfriend, Harley Quinn along with The Penguin to get revenge on Thomas, Twilight and their friends in Thomas and Twilight Sparkle's Adventures Series. He'II also be joined by Batman's other enemies, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, The Riddler and Scarecrow later on.
* Following his reappearance in Batman comics, the Joker returned to his homicidal roots who matches wits with Batman with an increased emphasis on his insanity, which subsequently carried forward into later and more-recent adaptations, such as *Batman: The Animated Series*and *Justice League.*
* As such, with the exception of the Scooby segment of *The Brave and the Bold'*s *Bat-Mite Presents: Batman's Strangest Cases!,* the gang has never encountered the more mainstream murderous version of the Clown Prince of Crime.

## Gallery

Joker in *The New Batman Adventures*Joker in *Justice League*Joker in *Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker*Joker (Super Powers Team)Joker (Under the Red Hood)Joker (Harley Quinn)Joker with Harley QuinnJoker (Scooby Doo)Joker (Batman The Brave and The Bold)The Joker with The Penguin and Two-FaceJoker with Lex LuthorThe Joker's Death