| NOTE: This page only focuses on the mainline version of the Joker from the Batman: Arkham games, as his Elseworlds variant from Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was not voted Pure Evil, thus only information pertaining to the main Joker should be added. |
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"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | I just wanted to bring down your grim facade and for once, let you see the world as I see it, giggling in a corner and bleeding. | „ |
| ~ The Joker to Batman. |
| “ | Joker: Come on! I killed your girlfriend, poisoned Gotham, and hell... it's not even breakfast. But so what? We all know you'll save me. Batman: Every decision you've ever made ends with death and misery. People die. I stop you. You'll just break out and do it again. Joker: (laughs) Think of it as running gag! |
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| ~ The Joker taunting Batman before stabbing him. |
The Joker is the main antagonist of Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham franchise, which is based on the DC Comics superhero Batman.
He is the most nefarious, insane criminal mastermind in all of Gotham City and the arch-nemesis and most hated enemy of Batman and the Bat Family.
In Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham City, and Batman: Arkham Knight, he was voiced by Mark Hamill, who also played him in the DC Animated Universe, the Trickster in the 1990 The Flash show and the 2014 The Flash show, the alternate Hobgoblin in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Malefor in The Legend of Spyro, Colonel Muska in Castle in the Sky, Ozai in Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Maltruant in Ben 10: Omniverse.
In Batman: Arkham Origins, Arkham Origins Blackgate, Batman: Assault on Arkham, and Batman: Arkham Shadow, he was voiced by Troy Baker, who also voiced him in the Tomorrowverse, Shinnok in Mortal Kombat, Loki in Lego Marvel Super Heroes, Gul'dan in World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor and Legion, Kul Teska in Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes, Van Kleiss in Generator Rex, and Hoi in Dragon Ball Z: Wrath of the Dragon.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
In General[]
- Though it's stated in his report that he was a broken family man and failed comedian who was kidnapped and forced by the Falcone family into robbing a playing card factory and ended up getting disfigured by some dangerous chemicals after a confrontation with Batman, it is ambiguous if this is true as according to his character bio in Arkham Asylum and Professor Strange, the Joker has told numerous other fake stories about his past.
- Even if it was, he severely surpassed that tragedy long ago.
- Throughout the entire series, he has tried to make Batman break his code in many ways multiple times. Knowing Batman will not kill, he takes advantage of his code to play his sadistic games with him by spreading mindless death and destruction out of pure sadism.
- He routinely murders, tortures, and experiments on his henchmen, along with threatening their family members for their failures or just because it amuses him.
- He physically and emotionally abuses Harley Quinn, at one point even admitting that he considers abusing her a personal hobby much to Batman's disgust. He does all this in spite of Harley's loyalty to him.
- Although he has a massive amount of comedic moments, none of them detract from his depravity, and all of them are connected to his gruesome crimes.
Arkham Origins[]
- After hijacking Black Mask’s organization, he used it to torture and murder innocent people, as well of Black Mask's loyal henchmen.
- He even forced Black Mask to kill his own girlfriend, which is played for sympathy despite Black Mask being a sadistic crime lord, with Batman calling the Joker a monster out loud for his actions despite having not even met him yet.
- He abducted numerous people and horrifically tested his Joker Toxin on them until he obtained the desired effect before disposing of their bodies within barrels of chemicals.
- When one of his henchmen was severely wounded by a blast and begged him for help, Joker grabbed a burning piece of rubble that was filled with nails and beat the man to death with it.
- Tortured Warden Joseph, burning his eye out with a cigar, which left him permanently blind in one eye in order to gain access to Blackgate, threatening to murder his entire family if he didn't comply.
- He instigated a riot in Blackgate, murdering dozens of guards in the process before taking Commissioner Loeb hostage.
- Freed Calendar Man and saved him from execution so that he would owe him.
- Calendar Man would then go on to murder Judge Harkness and a street-corner Santa Claus, meaning the Joker enabled him to do so.
- He killed Commissioner Loeb much to Batman's anger.
- As Black Mask, he sends eight assassins to go after Batman and kill him, using Black Mask's resources to hire them for 50 million dollars, leading to some of them causing rampages, most notably Firefly, who was willing to blow up an entire bridge full of police and hostages just to kill Batman.
- He hired Edward Nashton, who was Enigma at the time, to stall Batman’s progress by hacking the GCR radio towers to prevent Batman from using the Batwing to quickly travel to other parts of Gotham City, holding Joker responsible for Enigma murdering David Shannon.
- He infected the Gotham Merchants Bank owner with his Joker Toxin before killing her with an explosion.
- Killed Electrocutioner for failing to kill Batman and simply looking at his phone during the meeting.
- Had parts of Gotham wired with explosives and blew up one building right in front of Batman, although he revealed that the building was simply a construction site that was blocking his view.
- He then attempted to blow up another building that was populated and intended to detonate these bombs to leave the city in a state of ruin and despair for his own amusement.
- He tried to kill Bane when he was escaping rather than finishing the job.
- Before getting arrested, he killed two of his henchmen for no reason. While he does state they were horrible people, he was just trying to prove a point to Batman rather than actually showcasing standards.
- Manipulated Dr. Harleen Quinzel to be his hen-wench.
- Started a riot at Blackgate Prison in an attempt to escape, telling Batman he should not have let him live as he has killed "a lot of people".
- In order to make Batman break his no-killing rule, he strapped a heart rate monitor to Bane's chest so that every time his heart beats, the electric chair Joker is sitting in charge until it kills him. In addition to this, he rigs the heart rate monitor to explode if Batman tries removing it.
- Once Gordon interfered, the Joker placed an electrode on his head in the hopes of killing him too. He then tried to shoot Warden Joseph after Batman put Bane under cardiac arrest, only failing when Gordon jumped in the way.
- He was excited over the fact that Batman had seemingly killed Bane, and when Batman revealed Bane was still alive, he immediately changed his mood, saying that "that's not funny" and tried to kill him.
Batman: Arkham Shadow[]
- While Joker didn't do anything at all in this game, he would continuously annoy and be obnoxious towards Batman when he saw through his disguise of Irving "Matches" Malone.
Between Arkham Shadow and A Matter of Family[]
- The Gotham City Story "The Fall" reveals that the Joker kidnapped and slaughtered an entire kindergarten class to provoke Jason Todd.
- He then mutilated the children, sewed their corpses back together at random, and sent them back to the crime scene as crude parodies of themselves before mocking the mourning and distraught parents and singing nursery rhymes over a PA system as they struggled to identify their children. This was the act of crime that made Jason finally decide that the Joker had to die.
- Afterward, Joker captured Jason and horribly tortured him for an entire year, manipulating him into thinking that Batman abandoned him for another protégé while inviting other villains to aid him with the torture. He ultimately broke down Jason so badly that he grew to hate Batman and was even ready to reveal his secret identity to him. He then shot and seemingly killed him right as he was about to tell him Batman was Bruce Wayne. He filmed all of this and then sent it to Batman to hurt him on the most personal level possible.
- To make this worse, Joker didn't put Jason out of his misery with the gunshot, he worsened his torture even more before eventually handing him off to Harley Quinn to continue the torture for him. This eventually culminated in Jason becoming the Arkham Knight and Bruce growing very hesitant over getting his partners involved in his crusade.
- He then mutilated the children, sewed their corpses back together at random, and sent them back to the crime scene as crude parodies of themselves before mocking the mourning and distraught parents and singing nursery rhymes over a PA system as they struggled to identify their children. This was the act of crime that made Jason finally decide that the Joker had to die.
A Matter of Family[]
- He killed one of his henchmen by shooting him and then throwing him in the ocean for debatable reasons (making a pass at Harley, talking about Batman to Joker, etc.).
- Kidnapped Commissioner Gordon and threatened to kill him on the spot if Batman arrived, forcing both Batgirl (aka Barbara Gordon) and Robin (aka Tim Drake) to go after him.
- He also took some hostages and placed explosives around the oil rig where he was holding the Commissioner and the other hostages.
- He and Harley Quinn pretended to be kind businessman and then had Edward Burke's 5-year-old daughter Katie experimented on, sending her into the care of Dr. Penelope Young and thus dooming her to a painful, horrific death via TITAN. After prescribing pills to Edward that made him painfully laugh to death (after he was promised they'd kill him quickly), Joker and Harley took over his carnival.
- He tried to kill Batgirl and Robin with a rocket launcher to cause Batman more emotional trauma, not caring that his own henchmen would’ve been caught in the blast radius.
- Showed no empathy at all when he threatened to kill Harley Quinn if the police arrested him.
Between A Matter of Family and Arkham Asylum[]
- He came to Barbara Gordon's house and shot her through the spine, paralyzing her from the waist down while laughing about it.
- He would later psychologically torture her father, Jim Gordon, by forcing him to watch a slideshow of him shooting her. This also forced her to quit being Batgirl and become Oracle.
- In the Iceberg Lounge, he killed a waitress by pouring acid on her just because she accidentally spilled some drinks on him. Even the Penguin was angered by this act and banned him from entering his lounge.
- He disguised himself as a birthday clown, scratching Aaron Cash's son with a rusty nail that contained a disease. Cash's son soon died in the hospital, and his corpse was maneuvered to look like he was smiling.
- On Halloween, he led a horrific unmasking prank at a party.
- He replaced Gotham Church's holy water to baptize newborn children with hydrochloric acid.
Arkham Asylum[]
- Faking his surrender, he usurped Warden Quincy Sharp and took control over Arkham Asylum, freeing many prisoners to do his bidding (such as Killer Croc, Scarecrow, Bane, and Victor Zsasz).
- He sets Bane up to be tortured by informing Dr. Penelope Young of the TITAN formula and having her use him as a test subject.
- When Dr. Young wanted to back out of the TITAN Formula, Joker threatened her family and showed her a picture of a dead baby, highlighting how heartless and sadistic Joker is.
- Staged a hostile breakout in Arkham Asylum, resulting in the deaths of many Arkham guards.
- Betrayed and murdered Officer Frank Boles when he felt he was no longer useful and simply because Batman was following his alcohol trail to locate Gordon. However Boles did deserve it.
- If Batman does not turn off the electric water before heading into the botanical gardens, Joker will throw a guard into electric water.
- Kills Penelope Young by rigging Warden Sharp's safe to explode after attempting to help Batman stop Joker's plot.
- Beforehand, he attempted to goad Victor Zsasz into killing Dr. Young while she was being held hostage by him.
- Unleashes the psychotic lunatics upon Arkham Asylum, which results in many of his henchmen being killed by the crazed lunatics.
- Uninvites Harley Quinn to the "party" out of spite when she failed to kill Batman.
- Plotted to create a TITAN army so he could unleash them on Gotham and kill thousands.
- He tested the TITAN Formula on two of his henchmen, not caring what would happen to them. While Batman was busy fighting them, the Joker murdered the two hostages Batman had previously rescued.
- Attempted to pump TITAN waste into the Gotham River, which would mutate a lot of civilians into TITAN monsters, but Batman managed to stop it.
- When a henchman finishes setting up a bomb on a vantage point, Joker detonates it despite the henchman still being near it.
- Attempts to turn Jim Gordon into a TITAN monster, which would have resulted in his death in the long term, forced Batman to take the hit and forced him to use the cure he made on himself in order to survive.
- At his "party," he captures and tortures Gordon by strapping him into a electric chair, and shocking him, while fighting Batman.
- Even after his defeat, his rampage lead to over hundreds of the staff losing their lives.
Arkham City[]
- In the audio files, he continuously kills various doctors Hugo Strange sends to treat his fatal disease and always gets him to send in more in exchange for talking about his past.
- When Strange deduces that the "past" he shared with him might've been fake, along with various others that he's told, Joker threatens to expose him should he dig in too deep, although Strange admittedly deserves this.
- Poisoned thousands of civilians across Gotham with his TITAN-infected blood, including Batman, to force the latter to find the cure as quick as possible. This act would later infect 4 people with aspects of his blood, driving them to insanity and leading to their eventual deaths.
- Teamed up with Clayface to kill Batman so that Clayface can steal Batman's life once he dies.
- Tried to kill Catwoman with a sniper rifle just to spite Batman.
- Captured Mister Freeze's wife, Nora Fries, to use force him to make a cure, leaving her at the mercy of his henchmen, who wanted to rape her. Joker also stole some of Freeze’s equipment and locked it up in the boiler room.
- He murdered hundreds of Penguin's men and coerced the survivors into joining him.
- Tried to kill Vicki Vale by shooting down her helicopter with a bazooka.
- Immediately after Wonder Tower explodes, Protocol 10 ends, and both Ra's al Ghul and Hugo Strange die, the Joker has Clayface hold Talia al Ghul hostage and threaten to kill her if Batman doesn't show up to the Monarch Theatre in time.
- Murdered Talia al Ghul in front of Batman to get his cure and later gloats over her death.
- Tried to use the Lazarus Pit to become immortal, but failed when Batman destroyed it.
- In a last-ditch effort to retrieve his cure, he tries to kill Batman by stabbing him in the shoulder, ironically causing his own demise due to Batman dropping the vial with the antidote inside.
- While his death was played tragically with sad music playing as Batman carried his body, it's only tragic in the sense he decided to be an unrepentant monster and because Batman failed to save him from his own vile actions.
- In an alternate ending where Catwoman leaves Arkham City instead of saving Batman, it is revealed by Barbara Gordon that Joker's force overtook Gotham, and he killed her father, "everyone else," and presumably several other Gotham citizens too.
Arkham City: Endgame[]
- After his death, he had his henchmen rig a radio tower within Arkham City to broadcast a message all over Gotham confirming his death as well as offering a reward of over a million dollars to the person who manages to find his corpse and deliver it to Harley Quinn, as a way to ensure that the entire town would tear itself apart.
Arkham Knight[]
- Throughout the game, he repeatedly taunts Batman over his failures, such as failing to save Jason Todd and Talia, as well as gloating over his own past crimes.
- He also blames Batman for getting him killed, although this is his own fault since he was the one who injected himself with TITAN and then got his cure destroyed in the first place by stabbing him. Not to mention that he deserved this fate for his past actions.
- Tried to drive Batman insane posthumously through hallucinations of him, which are triggered by both Scarecrow's fear toxin and the blood he put into poisoning Batman, so it is actually the Joker trying to drive Batman insane and not the fear toxin.
- He further repeatedly sabotages Batman's efforts to stop Scarecrow and causes Batman to be exposed to fear toxin, weakening Batman's mind and allowing him to slowly take over, which is shown to be evident as he beats Scarecrow's Militia guards to near death. Joker then tried to persuade Batman into killing Scarecrow, which manages to actually scare the psychopath.
- Used his blood to influence the receivers into becoming an aspect of himself, thus corrupting them.
- While Batman was being blackmailed by Scarecrow to give his equipment up so that he could save Robin and Gordon, Joker made Batman undergo a series of hallucinations so that he could slowly take over his body and break free, such as tormenting Bruce by mocking him over his parents' deaths, making him fight multiple Jokers in Crime Alley, and forcing him to snap his own neck as a twisted way of proving he's not above killing.
- In these hallucinations, he convinced Batman that Barbara was dead and it was all his fault, which made him guilt-ridden and caused Gordon and Robin to temporarily turn against him.
- The hallucinations of him also mention that he once superglued razors to a firehouse sliding pool, which undoubtedly resulted in innocent deaths.
- In one of these hallucinations, he takes the role of a Jokerized Batman and went on a killing spree, causing Riddler, Penguin, Two-Face and Killer Croc to team up and put an end to him, but it backfired as they ended up getting murdered by him instead.
- When Penguin begged for his life, Joker shot him regardless.
- He even murdered a police officer that Riddler was holding hostage, with Edward thinking that he still had morals since it was Bruce in his eyes. Even he was shocked by this.
- He shot and killed Two-Face, who was actually Jim Gordon, for attempting to stop him.
- He planned on using Batman's body and equipment to cause mass destruction across Gotham, all while ignoring Alfred's pleas to stop.
- Once Scarecrow revealed Batman's identity to the world and proclaimed his plan to make everyone he loves suffer while breaking him, Joker, having completely taken over by this point, excitedly boasts about it. Even Crane was caught off guard in a moment of shock.
- Although his fear and insecurities of being inevitably forgotten by the world after dying may seem sympathetic, not to mention that his final scene consists of him begging Batman not to seal him away inside his mind while sadly insisting that he "needs [him]," it doesn't hold up given he spent the entire game trying to take over Batman's mind and very much deserved it for his sick mind games in this story and the numerous horrific crimes before his death in Arkham City as well.
Post-Arkham Knight[]
- In the comic Batman #135 (Legacy: #900), when an alternate reality variant of Joker named Darwin Halliday, aka the Red Mask, travels throughout the Multiverse, the Joker is mentioned to have been resurrected from the dead, as well as countless other alternate Joker variants due to Halliday's actions.
- With his second chance at life obtained, he caused mass havoc across Gotham City once more, which prompts Batman to task his mainstream counterpart (who just so happened to be traveling across the Multiverse to stop Halliday) with the job of taking down his Joker once and for all.
- His actions still had a major effect five years later, as in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, he is still remembered for all the pain and misery that he's caused.
Trivia[]
- Adding to his Pure Evil status, Joker's torture of Jason Todd was one of the three reasons as to why Arkham Knight received an M-rating.
External Links[]
- Joker on the Villains Wiki
- Joker on the Arkham Wiki
- Joker on the DC Comics Database Wiki
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 Arkhamverse Pure Evils
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Joker | Scarecrow | Riddler | Calendar Man | Hugo Strange | Simon Stagg See Also | ||
 Pure Evils
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Comics Movies Video Games See Also | ||