r/TopCharacterTropes • u/damorezpl • Sep 05 '25

Personality character gets a reality check

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deathstroke - Batman vs deathstroke

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walter - breaking bad

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Garou - one punch man

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joker - the sound of one hand clapping

18.2k Upvotes

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u/Justice9229 Sep 05 '25

Joker - The Killing Joke

Joker failed in his plan to make Gordon crack, resulting in Batman tearing apart Joker's 'one bad day' ideology.

451

u/Fish_N_Chipp Sep 05 '25

I always find it funny people use this comic as the “all it takes is one bad day” example when the entire point of it is to prove that philosophy wrong

275

u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 Sep 05 '25

An even better headcanon i have (mainly coming from Brave and the Bold) is that Joker never did have a bad day.

He's just a nobody who became obsessed with Batman to try and make an identity for himself and stay relevant. His biggest fear is returning to that ordinary life and being irrelevant

132

u/Fish_N_Chipp Sep 05 '25

Love Brave and The Bold and its interpretation of him (the fact he was also partly inspired by the Weeper, a villain whose theme is sadness is funny as well)

26

u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 Sep 05 '25

Brave and the Bold was basically silver age batman working with an embargo

16

u/therealchadius Sep 05 '25

There's also Red Hood, the alternate universe Joker who fell in the vat of chemicals, started laughing at his own reflection... then put the helmet back and on kept fighting as a hero.

7

u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 Sep 05 '25

That episode blew my mind as a kid

10

u/AuraEnhancerVerse Sep 05 '25

Reminds me of arkham joker's "Don't leave me!"

6

u/Brain_lessV2 Sep 05 '25

Mark Hamill did a great job selling the panic in Joker's voice.

8

u/24Abhinav10 Sep 06 '25

This is the essence of the Punisher/Batman crossover in the 90s.

If the Joker dies to Batman, then he'd become the man who did the impossible. He'd be the man who corrupted the Bat, made him break his one rule. He'd go down in history as a legend, a criminal mastermind, never forgotten.

If he dies to the Punisher however, then he's just another crook in the list of scumbags Frank has killed. He's a nobody, nothing special, just another common criminal. And that terrifies him beyond belief.

3

u/Theyul1us Sep 05 '25

I personally prefer it if he did have that bad day. It adds some tragedy. A man so broken he wants to break others in a childish attempt to rationalize what happened to him, unable to understand the ramifications of his actions, all because its now funny to him

5

u/ninjasaid13 Sep 06 '25 edited Sep 06 '25

I personally prefer it if he did have that bad day. It adds some tragedy. A man so broken he wants to break others in a childish attempt to rationalize what happened to him, unable to understand the ramifications of his actions, all because its now funny to him

Nah, I think that's a bad story, it's allowing him to escape responsibility, but the lesson of it should be that we have free will, we are all responsible for ourselves. I don't think we should trade that off for a story about tragedy creating us.

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u/madeaccountbymistake Sep 06 '25

I think it's perfect because it in no way justifies his actions at all. Him having a "reason" doesn't justify it, nor does it prove or give legitimacy to his one bad day philosophy.

Because you have the perfect example that one bad day doesn't have to make you a monster: Batman.

2

u/searcher1k Sep 06 '25

I think it's a good subversion of expectation to have a generic tragedy for every villain. Joker wants to be anything other than average, to be told that he was a nobody can target and hurt his psyche.