The Joker has had various possible origin stories during his decades of appearances.
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The Joker has had various possible origin stories during his decades of appearances.
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The antithesis of Batman in personality and appearance, the Joker is considered by critics to be his perfect adversary.
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The Joker possesses no superhuman abilities, instead using his expertise in chemical engineering to develop poisonous or lethal concoctions and thematic weaponry, including razor-tipped playing cards, deadly joy buzzers, and acid-spraying lapel flowers.
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One of the most iconic characters in popular culture, the Joker has been listed among the greatest comic book villains and fictional characters ever created.
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The Joker has been adapted in live-action, animated, and video game incarnations, including the 1960s Batman television series played by Cesar Romero and in films by Jack Nicholson in Batman, Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, Jared Leto in the DC Extended Universe, and Joaquin Phoenix in Joker ; Ledger and Phoenix each earned an Academy Award for their portrayals.
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The Joker wanted an exotic, enduring character as an ongoing source of conflict for Batman, designing a diabolically sinister, but clownish, villain.
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The Joker brought in a playing card, which we used for a couple of issues for him [the Joker] to use as his playing card.
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The Joker can be credited and Bob himself, we all played a role in it.
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The Joker wrote the script of that, so he really was co-creator, and Bob and I did the visuals, so Bob was.
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The Joker initially appeared as a remorseless serial killer and jewel thief, modeled after a joker playing card with a mirthless grin, who killed his victims with "Joker venom, " a toxin that left their faces smiling grotesquely.
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The Joker went on to appear in nine of Batmans first 12 issues.
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In 1973, after a four-year disappearance, the Joker was revived by writer Dennis O'Neil and artist Neal Adams.
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The late 1980s saw the Joker exert a significant impact on Batman and his supporting cast.
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Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's 1988 graphic novel The Killing Joke expands on the Joker's origins, describing the character as a failed comedian who adopts the identity of the Red Hood to support his pregnant wife.
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The Joker's face was restored in Snyder's and Capullo's "Endgame", the concluding chapter to "Death of the Family".
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The reasons why the Joker was disguised as the Red Hood and his identity before his transformation have changed over time.
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The Joker commits crimes ranging from whimsical to brutal, for reasons that, in Batman's words, "make sense to him alone".
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The Joker's resulting disfigurement drove him insane and led him to adopt the name "Joker", from the playing card figure he came to resemble.
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Batman: The Killing Joke built on the Joker's 1951 origin story, portraying him as a failed comedian who participates in a robbery as the Red Hood to support his pregnant wife.
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The Joker's disfigurement, combined with the trauma of his wife's earlier accidental death, drives him insane, and results in the birth of the Joker.
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The Joker is arrested, and then-Robin Damian Wayne beats him with a crowbar, paralleling Todd's murder.
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The story implies that the Joker is immortal—having existed for centuries in Gotham as a cause of tragedy after exposure to a substance the Joker terms "dionesium"—and is able to regenerate from mortal injuries.
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The Joker falls into a vat of chemical waste when his heist is thwarted by Batman, emerging with bleached white skin, red lips, green hair and a permanent grin.
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The Joker has his fateful first meeting with Batman, which results in his disfigurement.
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Snyder's "Zero Year" suggests that the pre-disfigured The Joker was a criminal mastermind leading a gang of Red Hoods.
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The Joker has claimed a number of origins, including being the child of an abusive father who broke his nose, and the long-lived jester of an Egyptian pharaoh.
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Still others describe distant futures in which the Joker is a computer virus or a hero trying to defeat the era's tyrannical Batman.
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The Joker is typically seen in a purple suit with a long-tailed, padded-shoulder jacket, a string tie, gloves, striped pants and spats on pointed-toe shoes.
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In "The Clown at Midnight", the Joker enters a meditative state where he evaluates his previous selves to consciously create a new personality, effectively modifying himself for his needs.
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The Joker tries to prove that anyone can become like him after one bad day by torturing Commissioner Gordon, physically and psychologically.
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The Joker is often depicted as defining his existence through his conflict with Batman.
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Since the Joker is simply "the Joker", he believes that Batman is "Batman" and has no interest in what is behind Batman's mask, ignoring opportunities to learn Batman's secret identity.
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The Joker commits crimes with a variety of weaponized thematic props such as a deck of razor-tipped playing cards, rolling marbles, jack-in-the-boxes with unpleasant surprises and exploding cigars capable of leveling a building.
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The Joker has used venom since his debut; only he knows the formula, and is shown to be gifted enough to manufacture the toxin from ordinary household chemicals.
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The Joker is talented with firearms, although even his guns are theatrical; his long-barreled revolver often releases a flag reading "Bang", and a second trigger-pull launches the flag to skewer its target.
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The Joker is sometimes shown to keep spotted hyenas as pets; this trait was introduced in the 1977 animated series The New Adventures of Batman.
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The story is notable for the Joker taking on a god and the ease with which Superman defeats him—it took only 17 pages.
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Since the Bronze Age of Comics, the Joker has been interpreted as an archetypal trickster, displaying talents for cunning intelligence, social engineering, pranks, theatricality, and idiomatic humor.
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The Joker is amoral and not driven by ethical considerations, but by a shameless and insatiable nature, and although his actions are condemned as evil, he is necessary for cultural robustness.
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The Joker possesses abnormal body imagery, reflecting an inversion of order.
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The Joker represents the master, who creates rules and defines them, who judges others without needing approval, and for whom something is good because it benefits him.
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The Joker creates his own morality and is bound only by his own rules without aspiring to something higher than himself, unlike Batman, the slave, who makes a distinction between good and evil, and is bound to rules outside of himself in his quest for justice.
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The Joker has no defined origin story that requires him to question how he came to be, as like the Superman he does not regret or assess the past and only moves forward.
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When Harley successfully defeats Batman in Mad Love, the Joker, emasculated by his own failure, severely injures her out of fear of what the other villains will think of him; however, while Harley recovers, the Joker sends her flowers, which she accepts, reasserting his control over her.
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Harley's co-creator, Paul Dini, describes their relationship as Harley being someone who makes the Joker feel better about himself, and who can do the work that he does not want to do himself.
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The Joker is considered one of the most recognizable and iconic fictional characters in popular culture, one of the best comic villains, and one of the greatest villains of all time.
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The Joker's popularity has involved the character in most Batman-related media, from television to video games.
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The Joker is one of the few comic book supervillains to be represented on children's merchandise and toys, appearing on items including action figures, trading cards, board games, money boxes, pajamas, socks, and shoes.
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The Joker has appeared in a variety of media, including television series, animated and live-action films.
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Hamill's Joker is considered a defining portrayal, and he voiced the character in spin-off films, video games, related series, action figures, toys and amusement-park voiceovers.
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The Joker has featured in a number of animated projects, such as 2009's Batman: The Brave and the Bold and 2011's Young Justice.
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The 2019 film Joker focuses on the origins of the Joker as portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix.
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