When it comes to comic supervillains, not many have racked up a body count like the Joker. Joker’s lower down the list of threats though he has had cosmic moments when it comes to individual murders, Joker is one character you do not want to be unlucky to share a story with.
Though the clown prince of crime has not been up on the screen since after Heath Ledger’s turn in The Dark Knight, this year sees his return, with the release of animated Batman: The Killing Joke, again bringing back Mark Hamill as his voice.
Here are 7 characters killed by Joker:
1. MR. FREEZE
The Joker kills innocent people more than supervillains, but he has never had standards. Mr. Freeze, Batman’s most powerful enemies, is a character who has faced death in the hands of the laughing man. The confrontation occurs when the Joker’s goons leave him to work for Mr. Freeze. The clown prince of crime does not take this betrayal seriously, referring to Freeze as a “popsicle” while gunning down the icy supervillain and finishing the non-battle with an electrical shock. However, since this resurrection was not intended and Mr. Freeze dies in the original story, we are going to count this as a confirmed Joker kill.
2. ONE JOKER KILLS ANOTHER JOKER
On a reverse end, the DC Animated Universe that began with Batman: The Animated Series has Joker meet his end at the hands of his own creation: another Joker.
In a flashback, it is revealed that Batman and Joker’s conflict comes to a head when Joker goes as far as to kidnap Tim Drake and proceeds to torture him. Tim is disfigured, transformed into Joker Jr while Batman spends 3 weeks hunting for his missing sidekick.
When Joker reveals what he has done, he orders Joker Jr. to shoot Batman with the Joker’s trademark “BANG!” stick. Instead, Tim Drake breaks from his brainwashing enough to aim his gun at the Joker, impaling the clown with his weapon.
3. LOIS LANE
Superman’s soft spot is not kryptonite but his love for the Lois Lane. When it comes to enraging a being as powerful as the last son of Krypton, you would have to be a total lunatic to take Lois Lane away from him.
In the storyline Injustice: Gods Among Us, Superman is driven mad and taken over Earth and established a new order, and chain of events eventually destroys the DC universe. In another sinister game, Joker uses the Scarecrow’s fear toxin to trick Superman into killing Lois Lane and also syncs Lois’s heartbeat to a nuclear warhead which means that her death results in the entirety of Metropolis being destroyed.
4. BATGIRL
Considering that Batman: The Killing Joke may be the definitive Joker story, it comes as a surprise that the main event of the graphic novel does not involve a murder: rather, it depicts the destruction of an iconic hero.
Wanting to prove to Batman that anyone can be driven insane by “one bad day,” Joker targets Batman’s friend Commissioner James Gordon. To tear Gordon’s psyche apart, Joker shoots his daughter, Barbara and paralyzes her from the waist down.
Though Barbara survives in this story, Joker succeeds in killing Batgirl.
5. HIMSELF
When Batman returns, Joker awakens from a depressed and has felt that without Batman around, he lacked purpose and manipulates his way to a live talk show interview and claims that he has been “cured” of his psychosis. He then murders all the guests at the talk show with gas.
Batman and new Robin, Carrie Kelly, track down the clown to a county fair. After a fight between two of them, the Joker ends their conflict by snapping his own neck, committing suicide and implicating Batman for murder.
6. BATMAN, OVER AND OVER AGAIN
Emperor Joker, the Joker’s most cosmic story is a tale of the infinite havoc that is caused when the Joker gains godlike reality-altering powers. The worst fate is reserved for Batman. Batman is tortured, killed, and resurrected every day.
Superman manages to save the day and reverse the damage that Joker has done and reconstructs reality from the moment Joker started playing with it.
7. ROBIN
In the storyline A Death in the Family, the Joker leads the Boy Wonder to discover his birth mother, Sheila, whom the Joker has been blackmailing. The Joker beats Jason with a crowbar and locks Robin and his mother with a time bomb. Batman is unable to reach them, the bomb goes off, and they die.
Even though Jason Todd is resurrected through Ra’s Al Ghul’s Lazarus Pits, there is no question that this charged murder is the hardest blow. Due to the fact that Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice depicts a battle-damaged, spray-painted Robin costume, it seems likely that we will see this violent encounter on screen.
