False Facts About The Joker You Always Believed

Most people think they know the Joker's origin: that he was a gangster called the Red Hood who one day ran afoul of Batman. Supposedly, this perp then slipped into a vat of toxic green gunk, and though he survived, the chemicals dyed his skin chalk white and stretched his mouth into a hideous, permanent grin. The classic narrative was enhanced by Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, which added such tragic details as a pregnant wife and a failed comedy career.

However, this entire origin story might have been fabricated by the Joker himself.

The Joker often tells contradictory stories of his past. This personality trait was adapted in The Dark Knight, where Ledger's character tells different people different stories about how he got his scars, either playing on their sympathy or trying to scare them. So while Joker has told the Red Hood tale to a few people, he's also told a different story to others, like claiming his white skin was caused by his abusive Aunt Eunice scrubbing him with bleach as a boy. Another story purports that his trademark smile has nothing to do with chemicals but was actually the result of Batman's batarang slicing his lips open. All these origin stories might be complete lies, and that's the point. As Polygon explains, the Joker is like a force of nature, so giving him a confirmed origin story would rob the character of his potency.

The Joker commits a lot of bizarre, horrible actions, but to write him off as being "crazy" not only doesn't fit the character, but also trivializes real mental health issues, as noted by Today. Now, is the Joker narcissistic? Certainly. Dangerous? Yes. Emotionally unhealthy? Oh yeah. Sociopathic? Yeah, you certainly don't want to invite this guy to a dinner party. But in the comic book Arkham Asylum, by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean, Joker's own psychiatrist elaborates on the villain's condition, explaining that she doesn't believe he could necessarily even be classified as "insane." As reprinted in Dazed, the Joker is diagnosed with "some kind of super-sanity," wherein he has no control over the barrage of sensory perceptions surrounding him. Basically, he can't choose what he experiences: He experiences everything at all times. Unable to sort through the chaos, he instead copes by "going with the flow," meaning that every day, he recreates his entire personality based on his surroundings — sometimes as a "mischievous clown, others a psychopathic killer."

Even if the Joker isn't "crazy," he's still an immoral (and detestable) mass murderer. But he's responsible for his own horrific actions, and he fully understands the fact that he hurts people. According to How Stuff Works, the only reason Joker uses the insanity plea is because it allows him to skirt the death penalty.

Batman definitely hates the Joker. How could he not? Not only is the so-called "Clown Prince of Crime" the antithesis of everything Batman stands for, but he's also made a habit of killing Bruce Wayne's loved ones. However, what makes their rivalry so interesting is that the Joker absolutely loves everything about Batman — or at least, the idea of Batman — arguably to a romantic degree. For example, How Stuff Works cites Batman #663, in which Joker says, "I could never kill you. Where would the act be without my straight man?"

In Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, Batman hangs up his cape for a decade, and Joker is so depressed by the retirement of his "partner" that he falls into a nearly catatonic state. When Batman returns, Joker's life is given purpose again, and he goes on a new streak of mass murders. Notice the creepy thing, here? Joker's murders aren't done despite Batman's interference, but because he wants Batman's attention.

Joker's sexuality has often been a point of debate. Between his obsession with Batman and his seeming lack of sexual interest in Harley Quinn, Bleeding Cool points out that writers and artists have been hinting about Joker's sexuality and gender identity for decades. Also, as pointed out by The Root, the spoof movie Lego Batman turned this subtext into a major plot point.

2016's Suicide Squad earned a lot of negative attention, including an abysmally low Rotten Tomatoes score. One of the most criticized aspects of the movie — both by fans and non-fans alike — was the uncomfortably romantic portrayal of the Joker/Harley Quinn relationship. As written by Samantha Rullo on Bustle, "to associate the word 'love' with the dynamic between Harley and Joker is to legitimize a toxic, abusive relationship founded on manipulation, shock therapy, and brain-altering chemicals."

The Joker doesn't care about Harley Quinn, which is part of what makes Harley's adoration for him so tragic. For one, Joker never shows any true romantic interest for anyone but Batman. Two, as depicted in the comics and the cartoons, the Joker is an abusive boyfriend who uses or ignores Harley for his own sick reasons. He's certainly possessive over her, particularly when she leaves him for Poison Ivy, but that's about control, not love. Furthermore, Joker has actively tried to murder Harley on numerous occasions, from trapping her in a rocket to handing her a bouquet of flowers stuffed with TNT. It's not a romantic relationship by any stretch of the imagination.

Like two warlords feuding over the same turf, the conflict between Batman and the Joker is mostly a battle of competing philosophies. Neither of them seems to care much about their former "human" identities, since both have now become "more than just a man," as Ra's al Ghul might say. However, don't be fooled. Joker might not invade Wayne Manor every week, but he knows many secrets about the man behind the mask.

The Joker's knowledge of Batman's secret identity came to light in Scott Snyder's Endgame storyline, though it was hinted at several times before. In an interview with ComicBook.com, Snyder explained that before that point, Joker had always "pulled his punches" on Batman, knowing how easily he could destroy him. In another interview with Newsarama, Snyder elaborated, stating "Joker has decided to look at that thing that he has not wanted to look at, in hopes [that] Bruce would come over and be inhuman with him in some ways." Basically, Joker neither cares about nor wants to engage with Bruce Wayne's life: It's Batman he wants to play with.

Since her debut on Batman: The Animated Series, Harley Quinn has grown into one of DC Comics' most popular characters, and as much a part of Joker's story as Robin is for Batman's. The two characters are downright inextricable, with Harley's ongoing saga being built around her struggle to break free from an abusive relationship taken to supervillain extremes. There's one aspect of the character that's not quite new, though: Harley Quinn isn't the Joker's first sidekick, and she's not the only one he's had by a long shot. 

Most of these "sidekicks" are little more than one-shot henchmen that are only there so the Joker isn't talking out loud to himself all the time, but there are a few who have had bigger roles. Other than Harley, the most notable Joker affiliate is probably Gagsworth A. Gagsworthy, also known as Gaggy. He first appeared back in the '60s as a "refugee from a circus" who was hired by the Joker as a henchman and comic relief, and who helped out in fights with his glass-shattering laughter. For years, he only existed in Batman #186, but returned to comics in the 21st century as an enemy for Harley Quinn, fueled by his anger at being replaced. 

Beyond Gaggy, Harley's other predecessors include Bob the Goon, the leader of the Joker's matching-jacketed henchmen in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie, and, of course, Jackanapes. That, if you don't know, was a super-intelligent gorilla that the Joker kidnapped form the zoo and raised as his own son, in a story from 2013. You might've believed some popular misconceptions about the Joker, but one thing that's always true is that he has some pretty weird interests. 

It's tough to deny that the Joker was a hit from the very beginning. He's one of the few characters who made his first and second appearances in the same comic — Batman #1 features them both, broken up with Catwoman's first appearance. It's even harder to argue that the Joker isn't the most popular Batman villain, and probably the most popular villain in the entire superhero genre today. He's in the canon of the all-time great antagonists, and it's nearly impossible to imagine Batman comics without him. 

With all that in mind, it's easy to think that the Clown Prince of Crime had that same amount of popularity for the 70-odd years in the middle, too. That's not actually the case, though. In fact, there was a time when the Joker's stock had fallen so low that there wasn't a new Joker story in the pages of Batman or Detective Comics for over four years. Today it's pretty rare for four months to go by without getting some kind of Joker appearance. Also, keep in mind back then, comics usually had three complete stories in every issue rather than a single story, built around a single villain, that ran for five or six months at a time.

As for why he was persona non grata for so long, there are a couple reasons. First, the years in question were 1969 to 1973, which coincided with the end of the Batman TV show. While the show had been a huge hit, the die-hard comics audience at the time was eager to get away from campy humor and back to more "serious" adventures. The Joker, as one of the more outlandish Arch-Criminals featured on the show, was closely identified with those goofy adventures.

Of course, there's another reason that has very little to do with the Joker's popularity — at least, among the fans. The Batman books were being edited at the time by Julius Schwartz, who had been brought on to revive the fading titles in 1964, and he just flat-out was not a fan of the character. That would explain both why his appearances were pretty sporadic in the '60s in general — and allegedly only fueled because he was so popular on the show — and why his few appearances between '69 and '73 happened in titles Schwartz was not editing, like Brave and the Bold and Justice League of America. 

Comic book characters live or die by their unique takes on the tropes and traditions of the genre. There are plenty of examples of analogue characters who have filed off the serial numbers of established heroes and villains and found their fame by adding a unique twist, but if you're just doing a story with a guy who's exactly like Spider-Man, you're really just reminding your potential readers that they could be reading about the real Spider-Man instead.

As a result, you'd think DC would be pretty reluctant to stock their universe with other clown-themed supervillains, especially since they once restructured their entire universe over worries that Supergirl and General Zod were diluting the brand of the Last Son of Krypton. It might be shocking to learn that they not only have other wicked clowns loitering around the DCU, but that they're actually canonical, in-universe knockoffs of the Joker. 

Essentially, it was the villainous version of the way that they explored the idea that every country could have its own version of Batman through Batman Incorporated, showing the Joker as being such a purely influential concept that imitators would be attracted to him. In China, there's Alpaca, who showed up in the pages of New Super Man as a student who had been originally been trained by a government-sponsored program to create that country's take on Batman. Jarvis Poker, the British Joker (always referred to by the full title) was a much less deadly version who focused on pranks while fighting the Knight, until he was ultimately murdered by the genuine Joker. There's even a character called the Joker's Daughter who has showed up in multiple versions. She's not the Joker's actual daughter, though. She's Two-Face's daughter. Sometimes. Comics!