NOTE: This page is only about the original film incarnation of the Joker as his novel incarnation was not voted Pure Evil, and thus only the original film incarnation of the Joker's info should be put here. |
“ | Do you wanna know how I got these scars? My father was a drinker and a fiend. And one night, he goes off crazier than usual. Mommy gets the kitchen knife to defend herself. He doesn't like that. Not. One. Bit. So, me watching, he takes the knife to her, laughing while he does it. He turns to me, and he says, "Why so serious?" He comes at me with the knife. "Why so SERIOUS?!" He sticks the blade in my mouth—"Let's put a smile on that face!" Aaaand... why so serious? | „ |
~ The Joker telling his supposed backstory to Gambol before killing him - his most famous quote. |
“ | Don't talk like one of them, you're not! Even if you'd like to be. To them, you're just a freak, like me. They need you right now. But when they don't, they'll cast you out, like a leper. See, their morals, their code... it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you, when the chips are down, these... these civilized people? They'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve. | „ |
~ Joker explaining his worldview to Batman during his interrogation. |
The Joker is the main antagonist of The Dark Knight, the second installment of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy.
He is a psychotic anarchist and notorious criminal mastermind who, describing himself as an "agent of chaos," rose to power in organized crime by thrusting Gotham City into turmoil and drawing Batman ever closer to crossing the fine line between heroism and vigilantism.
He was famously portrayed by the late Heath Ledger.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
In General[]
- Like most versions of the Joker, despite being clearly insane, he still possesses moral agency and is aware of his actions, given how he shows incredible intelligence when committing his crimes and the amount of sadism he takes in his actions.
- While his sense of humor is still prominent in this version, it is far less detracting than most due to being more realistic and less cartoonish in his traits of black comedy, not to mention that he has real weaponry, making him incredibly dark, broody, maniacal, and most of all, disturbing.
- He lives to incite chaos, disorder, mayhem, and confusion throughout Gotham, attempting to create a city where there were no rules, laws, or morals because of his misanthropic and hypocritical hatred and disdain for order and society itself.
- However, this doesn’t ever excuse any of his actions, as they went far past it, but it can help us understand why he does, the things he does and he would continuously battle with Batman in order to make the city more entertaining for him since he has become desensitized to all his surroundings and an unfeeling monster that is ugly and crooked on the inside who has come to view life, nature, and morality as a joke, which is why he wants to break Batman’s moral code to prove he can become just like him.
- Despite claiming that his scars are a result of his abusive childhood, as he was tortured by his drunk father, he later claimed that he deliberately did them on himself to show his wife that he was happy before she left him, so both stories are made up. His rough childhood might be somewhat true due to his once madly claiming hating his father, thus implying that he had a poor relationship with him, but he is still far past it with his heinous actions.
- He is a hypocrite, since he believes every human is secretly a mass murderer and selfish to the very end, and that these traits will be on the surface as soon as the chips are down, when the one whose soul works that way is actually him.
Batman Begins[]
- Shortly after Batman stops Ra's al Ghul, the Scarecrow, and the League of Shadows, James Gordon tells Batman that Joker committed an armed robbery, committing homicide on two people.
The Dark Knight[]
- When robbing the bank, he ordered his men to kill one another to reduce the number of shares. He himself kills the bus driver goon and puts a smoke grenade in the bank manager's mouth.
- He performed a magic trick with a pencil so that he could kill one of Gambol's men by jamming his head into it.
- Threatened to blow up Gambol and his men with grenades if they attempted to attack him.
- He killed Gambol by cutting his mouth with a knife after telling him about his "childhood".
- After killing Gambol, he had “tryouts” by having Gambol’s men stab each other to death with pool cues to determine who would join his gang, under threat of death for all if they refused. It is unknown who, if any, won.
- Videotaped and tortured a police officer named Brian Douglass, who had dressed up as Batman, later hanging him from a large building.
- He killed a person for every day that Batman did not turn himself in. Among them are Commissioner Loeb via poison and Judge Janet Surillo via blowing up her car with her inside it. He would've killed Harvey Dent too, had Bruce not incapacitated him and hidden him somewhere safe.
- Attempting to kill the guests of Bruce Wayne's fundraiser when they couldn't tell him where Harvey Dent was.
- He tried to throw Rachel off the building to her death while telling Batman he should take his mask off.
- Killed two other police officers, Richard Dent and Patrick Harvey.
- He tried to kill the mayor of Gotham during Commissioner Loeb's funeral and would have done it had Gordon pushed him out of the way and taken the bullet instead. Thankfully, Gordon was wearing a bullet-proof vest.
- Chased the vehicle holding Harvey Dent in order to try and destroy it. It was a hectic chase that also led to more kills from him and the mob members alongside him.
- He told Batman the wrong address so that he would rescue Dent, toying with his emotions, killing Rachel, and orchestrating Dent's downfall while also causing permanent damage to half of his face.
- To break out of prison and capture Lau, he blows the room up with a bomb that was planted in the stomach of his schizophrenic henchman, who was also captured, killing the other detained henchman as well as the other cell block residents and several cops.
- Threatened to blow up a hospital unless Coleman Reese was dead, resulting in at least two attempts on his life. He later followed through on his threats when the deed wasn't done. Fortunately, everyone was evacuated, the two exceptions being a nurse, whose uniform he stole, and a police officer he shot.
- Drove Harvey Dent to insanity through Rachel's death and visited the hospital, convincing him to become a murderous villain known as Two-Face and take his rage on James Gordon.
- Blew up the hospital after managing to turn Harvey Dent into a villain and kidnapping the TV crew who were reporting on the incident.
- Killed the Chechen, one of his criminal associates and one of the only few who had supported him and his proposition, just because he didn't view him as a worthy criminal. He does so by having the Chechen's own men cut him up and have his remains eaten by his dogs.
- He burns half of the mob's money (while the other half burns as it spreads), with Lau bound and gagged on top of it as well, therefore killing him as well.
- Rigged two ferries with explosives, then gave the triggers to each ferry to the passengers so that they would have to decide which ferry blew up, trying to prove that everyone was the same as him deep down. When neither blows up the other ferry, Joker attempts to do it himself out of frustration rather than accepting that everyone wasn’t as bad as he claimed.
- It's also argued by fans that if one boat used their detonator, it would blow themselves up rather than the other boat, considering how he previously lied about Harvey and Rachel's addresses.
- Given that he also had a detonator of his own in the first place and the Joker's history of lying, it's very plausible that he planned to blow both ferries up anyway, no matter which way his "social experiment" went.
- He disguises hostages as henchmen and gags them so that the police and Batman will mistakenly attack or kill them.
- In his final battle with Batman, Joker sickens the Chechen's dogs on him and later decides to beat both Batman and the dogs when they take too long. When Batman throws the dogs off the ledge to their deaths, the Joker doesn't even bat an eye.
- He has tried to have Batman kill him and break his one rule. The first time he tries to do this is by goading him into running him over. The second time, when Batman throws him off the building (he even laughs maniacally as he is falling, only to be disappointed when he rescues him to prevent that from happening, thereby failing to make him break it).
- To make matters worse, he tried to carve a smile on Batman after crashing the Bat-Pod to avoid killing the former and would've succeeded hadn't Gordon arrived in time to arrest him.
- Shortly after getting defeated in their final battle, he taunts Batman, revealing the extent of Harvey's descent into madness to him.
The Dark Knight Rises[]
- Was the one responsible for the deaths of Harvey Dent, Gordon letting Batman take the fall for Harvey's crimes, and Bruce Wayne not being Batman for 8 years. Additionally, this is what caused Bane, under Talia al Ghul's orders, to start a riot after revealing the truth of what Harvey did, and if Joker was present in Gotham by the time it happened, he would've been more than glad to know he had created another monster like him. The fact that nobody talks about him or hears from him again as if he doesn't even exist after his arrest proves that everyone hates him for his cruelty, and if he remained in prison or Arkham Asylum and never managed to escape, or if he had been executed, he definitely deserved it for what he'd done.
Trivia[]
- Only the original film incarnation of the Joker can be considered Pure Evil, while his novel incarnation isn't due to him being characterized as an extremist, with him even having a Pet the Dog moment that doesn't have a pragmatic reason behind it or is subverted later.
- Heath Ledger's portrayal of the character was so intimidating that WatchMojo.com said it was one of the reasons why The Dark Knight should have received the R rating instead, even making the film #6 for the Top 20 PG-13 Movies That Should Have Been Rated R.
- Even prior to the 2008 release of The Dark Knight, when asked by MTV News in November 2007, two months before his death, if his Joker version had any redeemable characteristics, Ledger stayed silent instead of answering the question.
- In a January 2023 video by GQ, psychiatrist Dr. Eric Bender analyzed and determined that Heath Ledger's Joker doesn't belong to Arkham Asylum but to the Blackgate Penitentiary because he doesn't really have any mental illnesses, rather being an "agent of chaos" who, despite certainly having anti-social personality disorder, is a psychopath who fully knows what he does is wrong but still delights himself in spreading anarchy wherever he goes, as Bender cites that anti-social personality disorder patients rarely are psychopaths.
- According to Kate Ledger and Aaron Eckhart separately, Heath Ledger was willing to reprise the role in The Dark Knight Rises before his death. This never came to pass due to Ledger's passing. If this did occur, it is unknown how it would've affected his Pure Evil status.
External Links[]
- Joker on the Villains Wiki
- Joker on the DC Wiki
- Joker on the Batman Wiki
- Joker on the VS Battles Wiki
- Joker on the Wikipedia
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