Characters / Joker (2019)

Due to the nature of the film, all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Character sheet for Joker and Joker: Folie à Deux.

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Arthur Fleck / Joker

Arthur Fleck / Joker

"When I was a little boy and told people I was gonna be a comedian, everyone laughed at me. Well, nobody's laughing now!"

"I killed those guys because they were awful. Everybody's awful these days. It's enough to make anyone crazy!"

Played by: Joaquin Phoenix

Dubbed by: Boris Rehlinger (European French), Mauricio Pérez (Latin American Spanish), Adriano Giannini (Italian), Hiroaki Hirata (Japanese)

Appears In: Joker | Titans (archive audio) | Joker: Folie à Deux

"I used to think that my life was a tragedy. But now I realize... it's a fucking comedy."

Arthur Fleck is a mentally ill, impoverished clown-for-hire and aspiring stand-up comedian living in Gotham City in 1981. He means well with a wish to "bring laughter and joy to the world", but gets discarded, ridiculed and mocked by Gotham society; his wretched and increasingly chaotic environment battering him almost every step of the way. And as if this wasn't enough, he also has the burden of taking care of his delusional elderly mother, whose abuse and neglect of him throughout childhood contributed to him becoming the man he is.

On one particularly bad day, after being bullied and mocked too many times and losing both his job and his access to medication, he snaps, going down an increasingly dark path made of delusion, twisted self-discovery and myopic "justice". He ends up embracing a whole new persona in the process, and his life (and the world) will never be the same.

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• Accidental Hero:
  • Inverted (or played straight depending on perspective). He becomes an icon and inadvertently begins an Eat the Rich movement in Gotham when news hits of a guy in clown getup murdering three Wayne Enterprises employees. Arthur killed them (mostly) in self-defense, and has no real personal investment in Gotham politics, but the notion of a clown murdering the powerful and the wealthy inspires others to don clown masks and makeup during protests against the ruthless elite (although the clown aspect is also due to Thomas Wayne insulting them by calling all the poor "clowns"). After his murder of Murray Franklin on live television, those same protesters incite riots in the streets wearing clown masks, and when they find him they hail him as the icon of their movement.
  • However, it's played straight in that one of his laughing fits ends up saving a woman from being harassed on the subway by those men who turn their attention to him instead. Said woman even joins the clown mask rioters later.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • His suit is red in this instead of purple, like Cesar Romero's.
  • His makeup also sports more color than usual Joker's simple bleached faces and red lips, with this Joker being more clown-like with blue eye-shadow and a red nose.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • The Joker's real name is traditionally unknown. While some adaptations do give him a civilian name, no previous version of the Joker has ever been named Arthur Fleck. It's potentially downplayed by his adoption papers (which are possibly faked) stating that his birth name is unknown.
  • As another downplayed example, the Joker is always referred to as just Joker — never the Joker.
• Adaptation Origin Connection: His starting of numerous riots across Gotham leads to the death of the Waynes.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: While not to the same degree as Jared Leto's rendition of the character in the DC Extended Universe, Arthur is one of the few Jokers to escape Facial Horror altogether; even Leto's Joker still had the famous bath in a vat of chemicals. Arthur doesn't even have a Glasgow Grin like Heath Ledger's Joker.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: This version of the Joker takes some cues from The Killing Joke.
  • Here, the Joker wasn't a struggling comedian per sé, but a struggling clown and aspiring comedian. This version wasn't that great at it either.
  • Killing Joke Joker also turned to crime and then went insane after losing his family. Arthur already had a long history of mental illness and had already killed several people before becoming the Joker. Though by this point, he had "lost" his mother and may have known that his girlfriend was an imagined or hallucinated relationship.
  • There's nothing in this Joker's backstory about a chemical bath that bleached his face. He instead wears makeup for his clown face.
• Adaptational Dumbass: Even when Joker is genuinely insane in other stories, he is still cunning and a great chemist who comes up with death traps and cool machines. Arthur, while he shows a lot of cunning on the train whilst escaping the cops, is no criminal mastermind: he doesn't have a great education (outside of what appears to be a taste for old movies), relies on luck more than anything, misspells a lot of words similar to real life mentally ill mass murderers, and may have suffered some brain damage as a kid from his mom's abusive boyfriend. While most Jokers have great plans for destroying Gotham, Arthur is a man who is lashing out at mistreatment with no real plan. Even the following he gets is entirely accidental on his part.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Most Joker stories have him start his career after Batman starts his. Here, not only does he become Joker while Bruce Wayne is still a child, he indirectly causes the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne, and, by extension, accidentally creates Batman (as opposed to the other way around).
• Adaptational Nice Guy: With a good mix of Adaptational Heroism. Arthur is not the monstrous, purely evil clown that most Joker incarnations make him out to be, or at least did not begin that way. He starts off a troubled, but highly well-meaning and imaginative man who just ended up in precisely the wrongest environment possible, it being so damaging that it ends up having him sink into madness. Even after he does though, he still spares a scant few because they were nice to him, like Gary and Sophie for example; any other Joker would have shot them in the face For the Evulz.
• Adaptational Personality Change: Joker is often portrayed as a horrific Sadist and Faux Affably Evil Monster Clown without any sympathetic qualities who kills and causes destruction simply for his own amusement. Here, he's portrayed as more of an angry, vengeful man who wants revenge on people who have mistreated him (which is the majority of Gotham).
• Adaptational Sympathy: The titular character is the Monster Clown, a self-described agent of chaos, and an unrepentant psychopath who's responsible for killing Jason Todd, crippling Barbara Gordon, tricking Superman into killing his wife and unborn child while simultaneously reducing Metropolis to a nuclear wasteland, and the occasional bout of littering. This film goes out of its way to show Joker (here, named Arthur Fleck) was just a man who wanted to make people laugh, but was constantly put down by society (including his own mother and his possible father Thomas Wayne) for having a mental illness, was beaten within an inch of his life several times, and never once given a moment of happiness. As a result, he decides to make Gotham City smile...whether they want to or not.
• Adaptational Wimp: He's not yet the Evil Genius, Manipulative Bastard, brilliant engineer and chemist, or Diabolical Mastermind that most incarnations of the character are. One of his earliest scenes is getting robbed and beaten-up by a group of teenagers.
• Age Lift: He's usually a lot closer to Batman's age, albeit sometimes slightly older. Here, the age gap is much bigger as Arthur is already a grown man when Bruce is a kid, similar to the Tim Burton film.
• All for Nothing:
  • At the end of the day, despite everything Arthur ends up accomplishing, and the mark he makes upon Gotham and its citizens, he is unable to get anybody to really care about him, the one thing he truly ever wanted. In the end, the rioters only see him as the Joker — not as Arthur Fleck. It's implied that his realization of this is what finally drives him to give in to the Joker persona.
  • Another aspect of Arthur's stated goal was to use his comedy to make Gotham a better place. After becoming Joker, he tries to accomplish this by giving those he believed to be at fault "what they deserve". Ultimately, both Murray and Wayne were just symptoms and figureheads of Gotham's corruption, not the source. Their deaths did nothing to cure the underlying disease within Gotham. In fact, Arthur has now come to embody it as the Joker.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Arthur only wants to be a comedian and make people laugh, but he constantly gets mistreated by others for no other reason than that he’s different. He eventually gets back at the society that abandoned him and treated him like trash.
• The Anti-Nihilist: A very dark version. Arthur experiences a crippling amount of trauma over the course of the film, and plans to kill himself on national television as a result. But when given the opportunity, he ends up choosing to shoot Murray, and after the fact he decides to fully embrace his new lease on life as Joker. Because if his life is just a comedy, it's better to just go along with the joke. Him Waxing Lyrical with Frank Sinatra's "That's Life" at the end of the film cements this.
• Anti-Villain: He's a Sympathetic Murderer for two-thirds of the Wall Street Three kills. The first two were killed in self-defense, which was justified, and the third of which he killed to eliminate a witness, which is less so. Subverted as by the time he kills Penny, he's become a Villain Protagonist.
• Appropriated Appellation: Arthur gets the idea for the name "Joker" from Murray making fun of him on his show, with him at one point saying, "Check out this joker."
• Atrocious Alias: Right before killing his mother, he lets her know that he absolutely resents the nickname that she gave him — "Happy" — since, in his mind, he's never been happy throughout his entire life.
• Ax-Crazy: After becoming the Joker, he transforms from a nice and gentle person into a dangerous and unstable madman who will brutally murder anyone who has wronged him. Though he has been shown to have signs bordering on this where he tends to bottle up his emotions and will act out in a rage but still would restrain himself from snapping on someone who bullies him.
• Bad Liar: He tries to pass his gun as a prop for his clown act, which his boss and the cops don't buy.
• Bastard Bastard: If he is indeed Thomas Wayne's bastard son, then he unequivocally qualifies by the time he embraces his Joker persona.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: Arthur starts off as just another nameless face in Gotham; a perpetually depressed, anxious, and above all else lonely individual, who can only truly ever be happy whenever he makes others laugh. Despite this, he's generally a Nice Guy, a hard worker, and somehow surprisingly optimistic, given his circumstances. As he becomes more detached from reality and suffers more abuse from the worst of Gotham's citizens, Arthur gives in to his darker urges and becomes a destructive sociopath who only finds pleasure in the suffering of those who wronged him... While at the same time becoming more self-confident, bombastic, and audacious. He even manages to gain recognition among the oppressed of Gotham, as a clown who stands up against the powerful and wealthy, even though Arthur personally has beef with pretty much society as a whole.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: The film is about how Arthur's misfortunes by others turned him into the Joker.
• Believing Their Own Lies: He spent so much time imagining he's in a relationship with Sophie that, until breaking into her apartment, he seemed convinced they really were dating. Her not knowing his name at first broke the illusion.
• Berserk Button:
  • A trait shared with several previous Jokers, despite being nothing like the narcissist most versions are, Arthur still really does not like being laughed at or being made fun of by other people as he encourages them to laugh with him not at him.
  • His mother being called "crazy" also sets him off, until he realizes that perhaps there's some truth to the claim.
  • Being lectured on his crimes, least of all by people he sees as being little better. When Murray Franklin shoots down his rant about his life and the conditions in Gotham, Arthur responds with barely concealed rage, pointing out how Murray, for all his pontificating, brought Arthur on solely to make fun of him and is no better than anyone else.
  • Betrayal, real or perceived, is another major one for Arthur as evidenced by his brutal murder of Randall for getting him fired and Murray for mocking him after Arthur idolized him.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: His life of continuously being mistreated merely because he is odd leads to his eventual killing spree of people he doesn’t like.
• Big Bad Slippage: The film details his arc from a nameless nobody with ideals of bringing laughter and joy to the man who will bring anarchy and death to Gotham as its most notorious criminal.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Arthur eventually comes to believe that everyone responsible for hurting him is completely deserving of death, regardless of their reasons or whether or not there was any malicious intent at all.
• Bloodbath Villain Origin: His Start of Darkness involves him killing three Wayne Enterprises employees. He kills the first two in self-defense, but deliberately pursues the last man and finishes him off. He later dons the clown makeup and suit after smothering his mother with a Vorpal Pillow and killing his False Friend ex-coworker, Randall. Finally, he accepts a new identity as "Joker" before proceeding to murder Murray Franklin on live television, and fully embraces this role after rioters ravage the streets in his name.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • Arthur feels that society deciding what's to be considered good and evil is every bit as egregious as society deciding what's funny and not funny.
  • He tries to justify his murders of the Wall Street Three by claiming they were awful. However, he also claims that everyone is awful, and his criteria for what makes someone "awful" becomes more distorted as the film goes on. He kills Randall for getting him fired from his job and kills Murray Franklin for mocking him on TV. He also expresses joy that he is somewhat responsible for the death of a random person on the subway. At the end of the film, it's implied he killed a random Arkham psychiatrist for no real reason, marking the point where he kills people just because he feels like it.
• Body Horror: Arthur's poor lifestyle made him a very skinny man, with his ribcage visible through his torso whenever his shirt is off. invokedPhoenix did not enjoy having to shed over fifty pounds for the role.
• Bright Is Not Good: This version is the most colourful version of the Joker yet, and by far one of the most mentally disturbed incarnations as well. In addition to the green hair, red smile and white face, he has blue paint around the eyes, red eyebrows, an orange and red suit, and a red nose.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • He's a fan of Murray Franklin. Less so once he ends up becoming Murray's punchline one evening.
  • He is also devoted to his mother, until he learns from her psychiatric files that she lied about his paternity and indirectly caused his laughing condition by facilitating his abuse as a child.
• Broken Smile: Arthur's bloodied smile at the end of the movie is either one of sheer joy at finally being noticed, or one of supreme exhaustion and resignation to his new role as Joker.
• Butt-Monkey: He's had it bad, to say the least. Everyone around him pummels, insults, and manipulates him constantly without a second thought, even belittling his pseudobulbar condition regardless of whether or not they are aware of it. It turns out that he's had a rough childhood too if Penny and her boyfriend's actions are to signify anything. It's not even played for laughs.
• The Cameo: His voice is briefly heard in Titans (2018) along with two other versions of himself.
• Cain and Abel: Maybe. If Penny is correct about Thomas Wayne being his father, then he is destined to become the homicidal Cain to Bruce Wayne's heroic Abel.
• Can't Take Criticism: Arthur's response to Murray insulting his comedy (admittedly in front of a live audience) is to murder him.
• Camp Straight: Is attracted to his female next door neighbor but as Joker is flamboyant and elegant in his mannerisms.
• Card-Carrying Villain: By the end, he's aware of all the death and suffering his actions have caused, and is openly proud of it.
• Cerebus Retcon: His trademark laugh is the result of a neurological condition which compels him to laugh at inappropriate times, which causes him no end of grief by an unsympathetic populace. Though there's multiple possible explanations for Arthur's condition, none of which do him any favors.
• Cheerful Child: He wasn't, but his mentally-ill/lobotomized mother interpreted him as this after he started having his laughing fits (hence her pet name for him, "Happy")^*Which, according to an earlier draft of the script, was also a less-than-affectionate nickname given to him by school bullies for the same reason. Note that this was because her boyfriends beat him into unconsciousness and she did absolutely nothing to stop it.
• Childhood Brain Damage: It's implied his mother's abuse of him as a baby is largely responsible for his many mental instabilities, and when Arthur learns of this, he smothers his mother with a Vorpal Pillow, finally donning the clown getup and face paint soon after.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Except his eccentricities and unpredictable nature are taken into such extremely dark lengths due to his psychological trauma.
• Composite Character:
  • Incorporates elements of Oswald Cobblepot in Gotham, being another nebbish man who lives with his mother and becomes a proto-supervillain.
  • Calling back to previous iterations of the character:
    • He has long hair and dons makeup and hair dye (instead of being chemically altered) like the Nolanverse version. He even gives himself a smile in his own blood which heavily resembles Ledger's Glasgow grin, save for the facial mutilation. Intially, his mouth's appears to be a cross between John Wayne Gacey's makeup and that of Cesar Romero.
    • He wears a reddish suit instead of the classic purple like Cesar Romero (with orange and green on the inside like Batman: The Animated Series Joker).
    • He goes to a talk show and kills the host unexpectedly like the Dark Knight Returns Joker.
    • He is in some way responsible for the deaths or Bruce Wayne's parents like Tim Burton's version.
    • Attributes like being a nobody, failed comedian who had "a bad day" and being an Unreliable Narrator when it comes to telling his story bring to mind Alan Moore's Joker.
    • Additionally, Suicide Squad's Joker exhibits attributes that stem from punch-drunk syndrome, a damaged brain condition. Arthur is also clearly brain-damaged.
    • The Manchild with some Loners Are Freaks tendencies but relatively well adjusted that appreciates old comedy and uses it as a rejection of Gotham’s ugly reality that we saw in the first part of the movie reminds about the Joseph Kerr persona the Joker develops after he believes (wrongly) that he at last had killed Batman in the comic Going Sane.
    • Arthur's gradual transition from well-meaning if not volatile mentally ill person to a homicidal rampaging murderer brings to mind his incarnation from Batman: The Telltale Series, John Doe.
  • Arthur surprisingly shares a lot with Selina Kyle in Batman Returns, both being mentally ill outcasts tormented by those around them, having grown up with traumatic childhoods, having mommy issues, who experience one bad day too many and respond by wearing a costume and wreaking havoc against those they claim to have wrong them, one of which is a corrupt wealthy man involved in politics who've helped created them.
  • As a possible older brother to Bruce Wayne who was sent to an asylum, Arthur has some parallels with Thomas Willowood aka the Boomerang Killer
• Create Your Own Hero: Although indirectly, his actions caused one of the clown rioters to shoot and kill the parents of a boy who in a few years will be Gotham's hope and his eternal nemesis, Batman.
• Crowd Pleaser: While he starts out as just another one of Gotham's stragglers, he dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian who can make others happy with his jokes while soaking up their laughter and appreciation in return, and in his fantasies, he's often surrounded by an adoring, sympathetic audience. He finally gets a receptive crowd to please after he's rescued from the police by clown rioters, but he has to fully become the Joker to do it.
• Cry Laughing: Arthur is visibly frustrated at himself whenever his condition causes him to laugh involuntarily in public, and it eventually gets to the point where you can't tell whether he's laughing or sobbing.
• Cult of Personality: Arthur's time as Joker clearly has a lasting effect on certain members of society as a whole, to the point where some of the protesters railing against Thomas Wayne are shown wearing clown masks. In fact, one of those people wearing clown masks is inspired by Arthur to shoot Thomas Wayne.
• Dance of Despair: Arthur does multiple slow dances by himself throughout the movie, and most of them are performed in his moments of sadness. His dances get noticeably more upbeat and lively scored when he embraces his Joker persona.
• Dark Messiah: Following his first murders, Arthur indirectly started a movement of the poor to fight against the rich. After admitting to his crimes on TV, an all-out riot occurs throughout the city and the people even save him from the police. Foreshadowed with his dance moves, where he often spreads his arms out and keeps his legs together similar to a crucifix pose.
• Deadpan Snarker: Is occasionally prone to this, such as when he exclaims "[gasp] Oh, no! I forgot to punch out!" before punching a clock off a wall, then crossing out "Forget To" from the sign saying "Don't Forget To Smile." Then there's "You know who's not a good dancer? Him!" and of course "They couldn't hold a tune to save their lives."
• Death Glare: He gives one to Murray while calling him out for making fun of his Pogo's video while on the air.
• Death Seeker:
  • At one point, he tries to lock himself in his refrigerator until he suffocates before backing out of it.
  • He initially plans on killing himself live on air after being invited on Murray's show, but ultimately changes his mind and kills Murray instead.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • Arthur deconstructs the Joker and Practically Joker. In contrast to a charismatic, larger than life Supervillain, this movie realistically shows what would happen in real life if a mentally unhinged man dressed up as a clown and committed crimes and it would be nothing like how we see in the comics or most movies and be more akin to a real life shooter tragedy. The movie shows how horrible and miserable one's life would have to be for them to become The Joker; lacking the resources, intelligence, or skills to be a supervillain level threat. Their poor mental health meant rather than be an Evil Genius they were limited to impulsively lashing out at those they think wronged him, not even because he feels like it, only achieving supervillain level influence because of what society saw him as and enabled as opposed to anything he had agency over. This Joker is portrayed more as a sad tragic man who just simply needed proper care and treatment.
  • Arthur is easily one of the crudest, bitterest deconstructions ever portrayed of what it means to be the Butt-Monkey and The Chew Toy. From the aggressors' perspective, it can be very funny, but seeing the context from the opposing side can be quite a invoked Tear Jerker perspective. Bullies generally believe they get away with humiliating and mistreating more vulnerable, passive, and shy people than themselves. The point is, this is not the case. Arthur demonstrates that dealing with physical and psychological abuse on a regular and consistent basis will bring inevitable and negative repercussions.
  • Arthur is also a deconstruction of Insane Equals Violent. Insane people fall to violence not because they are inherently evil, but because their mental illness is compelling them to perform impulsive actions. When the society alienates, mocks, and starts abusing Arthur's physically, Arthur impulsively reacts against the violence he received with violence, causing the public to perceive him as an insane and violent man, perpetuating the violence even more.
• Despair Event Horizon: The point where Arthur spirals out of control is when he finds his medical files, which tell him that he was not Thomas Wayne's son (as he'd been led to believe by his mother) and was abused for years (which he had no memory of due to the severity of the abuse he faced). At that point, he spirals down into increasingly violent behavior and actively commits murder, before planning to kill himself live on television. It's only after killing Murray Franklin instead that he has a new lease on life — as the Joker. It's best exemplified in what Arthur says right before he decides to kill Franklin:
  Arthur: I've got nothing left to lose. Nothing can hurt me anymore. My life is nothing but a comedy.
• Didn't Think This Through: It's heavily implied that his shooting of Murray Franklin at the end of the film was a result of his Rage Breaking Point clouding his judgment. Arthur actually physically rears back after having shot the closest thing he had to a father-figure, and his eyes are noticeably watery with horror at what he'd just done... but he ends up laughing it off, and fires another round into the man's corpse.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: Depending on the Writer, the Joker in the comics is really just Obfuscating Insanity to get out of more fitting punishments for his crimes. Here, Arthur is shown with legitimate issues, including pseudobulbar affect, and has hallucinations. However, while he does suffer from brain damage and depression, it is debatable if he really suffers from PBA, some other condition or he was really lying to himself about having a dark sense of humor for most of the movie.
• Disproportionate Retribution: His grudge toward Murray is that he made fun of his botched stand up (in the same way the comedians of World's Dumbest... would if they kept to more tame jibes) and plans to get back at him by committing suicide on his show; he later decides to kill him instead.
• Driven to Villainy: Played with. Arthur repeatedly frames his transformation into Joker as this. While there are multiple reasons as to why Arthur falls into villainy, it should never be forgotten Arthur is personally responsible for a number of choices that compel him to further give in to his darker traits. He pursues the last Wayne employee on the subway and brutally guns him down when he should have let him go. He indulges his ego when protestors use his clown schtick as a symbol of rebellion against the upper class. The atrocities he commits in the latter half of the film are under the influence of no one and he revels in the damage he causes because it just feels so good to get back at the society that hurt him.
• The Dog Bites Back: Gets beaten by the Wall Street Three and responds by killing all of them.
• Eat the Rich: Arthur comes into conflict with multiple wealthy and powerful people throughout the film, but his enmity is focused moreso on the whole of Gotham, and perhaps society, itself. Nonetheless, the poor and oppressed of Gotham come to view Arthur as an icon, and tout him as such especially after he murders Murray Franklin.
• Elemental Motifs: Fire. As Joker he dresses in red and orange-yellow (with a small bit of greenish blue), constantly smokes and his actions lead to Gotham being set on fire, both figuratively and in a lot of locations literally. Very fitting element for a character known for spreading uncontrollable chaos and destruction.
• Endearingly Dorky: In the beginning, he's an endearing Manchild who just wants to entertain people and make a name for himself. Too bad it won't last.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Subverted. Arthur clearly loves his mother and defends her even as Alfred and Thomas both separately insult her. That changes, however, when he realizes that she lied to him about everything and let him get abused, and he kills her for it.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Unlike most versions of The Joker, Arthur doesn't kill random people for kicks. He only targets the people who have hurt him in some fashion. However, while it's played straight at first, this later on becomes subverted since many of his victims, except for the three rich subway guys, had minor sympathetic qualities. For example, Penny was clearly mentally ill and senile, making it possible she had no idea Arthur was abused although she very well could have. Randall, as much of a dick he was for getting Arthur fired, did not deserve such a brutal death, and did give Arthur the gun for protection, only lying (or telling partial truths) to save his own job when things went bad. Murray, aside from mocking Arthur a couple of times, seemed like a genuinely nice person who treated Arthur with nothing but respect when they actually met, and was disgusted by Arthur's behavior on the show (bragging about his crime), and his actions that led to so much chaos. Arthur also ends up getting a man killed by the subway riot he started, getting two detectives gravely injured in the process, and possibly murdering his therapist at the end of the film.
  • Despite cruelly killing Randall, Arthur doesn't kill Gary since he was the only one at his job who didn't betray or mock him, plus despite laughing at a joke about Gary's height, the expression Arthur has on his face suggests that he only laughed to fit in or due to his condition. He also spares Sophie as well. So it's still played straight at points.
  • Arthur is nothing but kind to children in this film, while other Jokers would've maimed, killed, or kidnapped them.
  • Arthur is initially shocked when he kills Murray, but he breaks into laughter, either out of joy or because he realized he screwed up, but doesn't care, and then proceeds to shoot Murray again for fun. However, he stops himself from shooting Murray a third time, expressing some shame or feeling he's done enough.
• Evil Feels Good:
  • When Murray scolds him for his murders and the chaos he caused, his response is to laugh and reply with a sinister and satisfied "I know."
  • When he's being taken away by the police, he calls the riot he inadvertently instigated in downtown Gotham beautiful.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: On his big appearance with Murray Franklin, Joker makes several uncomfortable and misanthropic jokes that leave the audience confused before things take a turn for the worse. His "subjectivity of comedy" speech carries the heavy implication that he never had Pseudobulbar Affect at all, just a twisted sense of humor that the rest of society doesn't understand or appreciate.
• Evil Laugh: Comes with the character, though most of his laughing fits are due to his condition. By the time he confesses to murdering the three men on the subway, his laughter becomes a lot more malicious. However, it's stated by the people involved that the purest example of this comes at the very end, after he becomes the Joker, when he absolutely cackles at the thought of delivering the perfect punchline to tell the now-orphaned Bruce Wayne.
• Expy: Arthur Fleck is basically Rupert Pupkin transplanted to Gotham City with a dash of Travis Bickle.
• Fan Disservice: Arthur has quite a number of shirtless scenes through the movie, but they lack any appeal or fanservice since he is horribly malnourished and near skeletal. While he dons a nice suit as Joker, he also puts on his clown makeup that makes him look like the Monster Clown he has become, and it only worsens when he paints the sides of his mouth with his own blood.
• Finger-Forced Smile: His first scene in the movie has him doing it to himself, in a clear display of the sadness he tries to hide. He repeats this gesture throughout the movie and also does the same to a young Bruce Wayne when he visits the manor.
• For Happiness: Aside from money to support himself and his mother, Arthur's motivation to enter the comedy business is that he always wanted to make people laugh and be happy. He genuinely enjoyed his clown job and had high hopes to do stand-up comedy.
• For the Evulz: By the end of the film, he's completely abandoned any sense of morality and now commits murder and carnage solely for his own enjoyment.
• Forceful Kiss: To display his newfound confidence, Arthur catches Dr. Ruth off-guard by kissing her in the mouth when appearing on Murray Franklin's show. It's a noticeably uncomfortable moment for the doctor, with Franklin concerned if she's okay. While perhaps not forceful but rather sudden and unexpected, he does it to Sophie in one of his hallucinations about their relationship.
• Friend to All Children: Throughout the film, it's clear that Arthur has a soft spot for children, to making funny faces for an infant to entertaining sick kids in the hospital. He doesn't even hold anything against the teenagers that stole his sign and beat him up, simply stating that they were just kids. It makes the fact that he's indirectly responsible for the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne more ironic.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Arthur Fleck — the Butt-Monkey, The Chew Toy, the Cosmic Plaything, the No-Respect Guy — winds up becoming the most dangerous and feared man in all of Gotham, as well as one of the greatest arch-enemies for the Dark Knight, if not the absolute greatest.
• Giftedly Bad: He's a good clown if his act at the children hospital is anything to go by, but he fancies himself a rising star stand-up comedian. His first real stint at the Pogo's club is a disaster; his unfunny material would have sunk it in the first place, but Arthur's failure is largely due to his uncontrollable laughing fits, and utter failure to say anything after that. People end up laughing at his stand-up, but for the wrong reasons...
• Glasgow Grin: Not surprising since it's the Joker but, in this version, he doesn't get his mouth sliced. Rather, he uses his own blood from the police car crash at the end to paint the sides of his mouth and make it look like a grin.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Learning the truth about Penny is the final straw to complete his Sanity Slippage.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: As both timid, innocent Arthur Fleck and as the malevolent Joker, he smokes like if a chimney and Ayn Rand had a baby^note which might explain the great mystery of his parenthood.
• Grew a Spine: A very dark example. By the end of the movie, Arthur is done getting screwed over by circumstances and he takes matters into his own hands.
• Happy Dance: After embracing his new identity of Joker, Arthur's dances become more upbeat and lively, making it clear that they come from a feeling of confidence and happiness. Of particular note, he performs some moves to mock detectives Garrity and Burke as they are being beaten by the clown rioters.
• Helpless with Laughter: Afflicted with a disorder that causes random laughing fits and he is helpless to stop them until, they pass on their own.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Granted, "hero" is stretching it, but his murder of the Wall Street three was done mostly out of self-defense than any political motive and also, his action ended up saving a woman that was being harassed by the trio. Yet this doesn't stop the media from portraying it as an act of rebellion against the rich done by a clown-themed spree killer. Unfortunately, Arthur ends up embracing the image of himself that has been created in the city, thus becoming the very thing he was portrayed as.
• High Hopes, Zero Talent: He aspires to be a stand-up comedian, but his one performance at a local comedy club is absolutely terrible - people laugh at him, not at his material. Lampshaded by his mother:
  Penny: Don't you have to be funny to be a comedian?
• Hidden Depths: Arthur is quite taken with dancing, as seen with his various moves and performances on the movie. Also, he wishes to be appreciated for his dancing as much as for his job a clown, as suggested when he dances by himself in his living room: he imagines a partner who compliments him by saying he dances well, which to be fair, he does.
• The Hyena: A deconstructed example. The Joker's Laughing Mad tendencies have been reinvented as a neurological condition that forces him to burst into laughter at random, often inopportune times. Then Penny's file reveals that he doesn't have the pseudobulbar affect condition at all, and it was the result of the repeated abuse at the hands of her ex-boyfriends giving him brain damage.
• Hypocrite: Arthur launches a massive Motive Rant late in the film, openly rebuking the citizens of Gotham for their mistreatment of him, as well as their inability to know what it's like "to be the other guy." At this point, however, Arthur has become largely unsympathetic to anyone other than himself, and is driven by an unhealthy desire to get back at everyone who wronged him, consequences be damned.
• I Am What I Am: Gives one during his appearance on Murray Franklin's show, revealing he had killed the three guys in the subway, leading to him embracing what he was becoming.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Arthur desperately wants to find love and validation from others, which is why he's so quick to smile when he's around Sophie. Or rather, his hallucinations of her.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Played for Drama. Arthur is in truth a modest man who isn't concerned with upping his standing in society. He really does just want to become a comedian, and make people laugh. But when his efforts are disregarded and people just keep heaping abuse upon him, he clings to whatever form of validation is available... namely that of violent protestors who ape the clown gimmick and seek a massive upheaval throughout Gotham's society.
  Arthur: For my whole life, I didn’t know if I even really existed. But I do, and people are starting to notice.
• Icon of Rebellion: His murder of the Wall Street three is what kickstarts the city wide protests throughout the movie, and the rioters all wear clown masks explicitly because of the clown makeup Arthur was wearing when he committed that crime (and also for having been called "clowns" by Thomas Wayne). At the end of the movie, Arthur is broken out out the police car he was held up in and praised by a crowd of such rioters.
• Implied Death Threat: After admitting that he killed The Wall Street Three for being "awful," he later remarks, "You're awful, Murray," with the obvious implication that Murray is the kind of person he'd be willing to kill. Before long, he kills Murray, too.
• Insane Equals Violent:
  • A subversion. Arthur is a peaceful man who is trying to do good and only wants to make people happy. However, he is also living with mental illness, which is only exacerbated by the casual mistreatment and abuse he takes from random people in his daily life; this is actually true of most insane people in real life, who are often more susceptible to being physically harmed by others. The constant abuse is what pushes Arthur towards violence, not his mental problems.
  • It's also shown that Arthur has been actively seeking help for his psychiatric problems, taking medication regularly and seeing a psychiatrist for weekly counseling. However, as those familiar with the source material realize, Arkham doesn't have the best track record in treating the mental health of its patients, and this version is no exception. His psychiatrist also tells him that their current session shown will be their last due to the city cutting funding for therapy and medicine to those in need. It's likely that the lack of resources and access to help — and the frustration towards this — only worsens Arthur's state of mind and pushes him more and more towards antisocial behavior.
• Ironic Name: Arthur's name brings to mind the legend of King Arthur, who was a royal bastard who eventually came to rule Britain. Arthur later discovers he may be the bastard child of Thomas Wayne and Penny, but it is later established that Penny was/is very delusional and imagined the whole affair in her head. Probably. Arthur does become a kingly figure by the end of the film, however, lording over a whole mob of rioters who see him as a symbol of their suffering at the hands of the upper-class. His name can also be labelled as "A. Fleck", referencing how he was once a fleck to Gotham's civilization before his uprising.
• Irony: Ironically, Arthur's jokes are made of this.
• It Gets Easier: Arthur's first murders were an accident and arguably self-defense, but as his insanity worsens, he has no problem killing others as well.
• It's All About Me: Arthur becomes increasingly self-absorbed throughout the course of the film, and comes to use his personal suffering as a means to ignore or even justify the terrible things he does to others. In the end, violent protesters cause massive riots all over Gotham in Arthur's name, and Arthur couldn't give less of a crap about any innocents, nor does he care about the grievances of the protesters — he's just happy that, for once in his life, his actions have an effect on those around him.
  Cop: Stop laughing. The whole fucking city's on fire because of what you did.
  Joker: I know. Isn't it beautiful?
• I've Come Too Far:
  • Earlier, after killing two of the three yuppies who were beating him on the subway, he eventually decides to chase down the fleeing survivor before he can get help and shoot him dead while he's helpless, which sets him on the path to becoming the Joker.
  • Shooting Murray Franklin causes a brief flash of horror and sadness upon Arthur's face, as it's heavily implied he shot him in the heat of the moment. But by this point he really doesn't have anything else to lose, and after Arthur lets out a genuine laugh at just everything that's happened, he shoots Murray's corpse again and embraces the fact that the person he used to be is no more.
• Joker Immunity: Being the Trope Namer himself, the Joker survives a rather gruesome car accident when a member of the angry mob drives an ambulance into the police cruiser he is riding in. The driver doesn't survive, but the Joker, despite his injuries, is still capable of standing.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Starts off the film as a down-on-his-luck regular schmo who wants to make people laugh, and his first murders are only people who kind of had it coming, but eventually as he's beaten down, he turns into an Ax-Crazy spree killer who isn't afraid to kill people who have just slighted him, or possibly even not at all, and openly revels in the chaos that he has ignited around the city.
• Kick the Dog: Downplayed since he doesn't mean any real harm nor are these actions truly that cruel, but kissing Dr. Ruth and making her uncomfortable was a rather pointless move. Arthur did it as a display of his newfound confidence as Joker but it doesn't earn him sympathy. Also, after his incredibly brutal murder of Randall, which shocks Gary, Arthur takes the time to do a Jump Scare on the already frightened dwarf for no other reason other than he found it funny. Still, he lets Gary go and even kisses him in the forehead in a sincere display of gratitude.
• Killing in Self-Defense: Subverted. Arthur's first of three kills of the Wall Street Three would definitely qualify, as they were assaulting him without provocation. The second is ambiguous, as the guy seems to have stopped attacking, yet Arthur shoots him anyway. By the time of the third, however, Arthur is tracking the guy down and unleashes the rest of his gun into the guy as he weakly attempts to escape. Every other kill Arthur commits from that point on is cold-blooded murder.
• King of the Homeless: Arthur's actions as Joker turn him into an icon representing the suffering endured by the lower/middle class of Gotham. Though Arthur personally cares little for Gotham politics, he embraces the role because it's the only way for people to truly notice him.
• Lack of Empathy: He tells a clerk at Arkham State Hospital that he did something — killing three men on the subway — that he thought would bother him, but it didn't. Later, he boasts about it on live television.
• Large Ham: Thanks to his mental illnesses, Arthur can't help but stand out in a crowd, even when he's trying not to draw attention to himself. When he fully becomes Joker, though, he pretty much embraces and embodies the ham.
• Laugh Themselves Sick: Aside from being involuntary, Arthur's laughing fits bring no benefits to himself and actually nauseates him more than once. He is shown sometimes to try to catch his breath after an episode.
• Laughing at Your Own Jokes: What kills his attempt at stand-up comedy are his uncontrollable laughing fits even before he tells his joke. As the movie progresses, Arthur starts laughing at his own morbid comments, and it's clear that only he finds any humor in them.
• Laughing Mad: As he experiences more trauma, Arthur comes to use his laughing fits as a means of getting all his stress out. The last scene of the film show him cackling like a loon, totally consumed by his insanity.
• Lean and Mean: He is uncomfortably gaunt due to his rough life. As far as the "mean" part, he comes around to this by the end of the film.
• Loners Are Freaks: Arthur describes himself as a mentally ill loner which is justified because he never really had any friends or even loved ones. Even his own mother no longer means anything to him after finding that he was the adopted son that she neglected to take care of him.
• Loser Protagonist: Arthur is constantly beaten, lied to, ignored, mocked or thrown under the bus by pretty much every single person in his life.
• Loss of Identity: Arthur has a case of this after learning the Awful Truth about his adoptive mother abusing him, leading to him deciding that he needs to go by a different name. To him, "Joker" is as good a name as any.
• Loving a Shadow: What he falls victim to. In the end, the Gotham rioters don't admire Arthur, they love Joker, and what he represents.
• Made of Iron: After experiencing heavy physical abuse virtually his entire life, Arthur's body has become incredibly resilient in spite of what his wiry frame would suggest, and he bounces back from physical trauma very quickly. While running from a couple of detectives, he's hit hard enough by a taxi to smash the windshield yet gets right back up and keeps on running, and later in the same day he's in a major wreck when a police cruiser he's riding in is t-boned by a speeding ambulance, on the side of the car that Arthur is riding in, only to be knocked unconscious and wake up a minute later fully able to stand and move around, only coughing up a little blood to show for it. He also frequently rams his head into things with serious force and doesn't even seem fazed, which connects to the fact that the most severe trauma he experienced as a child was head trauma.
• Madden Into Misanthropy: A series of several bad days, coupled with Arthur no longer being able to afford his medication, result in an insane lunatic who thinks that everybody is awful and deserving of death.
• Manchild: Arthur doesn't start off necessarily immature but does have an overly optimistic and childlike view of his possible future as a comedian, and frequently imagines or fantasizes about gaining the recognition or love of others (mainly his unwitting father figure Murray Franklin, and his neighbor Sophie). Over time, he does become more immature and self-centered and comes to justify a lot of his later actions as his victims pretty much getting what they deserved, leading to his becoming a Psychopathic Manchild.
• Matricide: Once he learns his mother was abusive, he gives her the Vorpal Pillow medical treatment.
• Meaningful Name: Arthur Fleck, or rather, A. Fleck. Which is to say that the character who will become the Joker is just "a fleck" to a society that's rejected and shunned him, until he learns of the healing power of laughter, and it becomes an Ironic Name. Arthur mentions that he always hated the name.
• Meaningful Rename: He requests that Murray Franklin address him as "Joker" before his appearance on the talk show begins, signifying his transformation into that persona. The name comes Franklin calling him such whilst making fun of him.
• The Mentally Ill: But of course. What separates Arthur from other incarnations of the character, however, lies in how the film frames his mental illnesses and disorders. He's cripplingly socially awkward, perpetually depressed and anxious, and desperate for human contact. Most importantly, he is far more likely to become the victim of violence and abuse from others, rather than being a perpetrator, which is very Truth in Television.
• Messy Hair: Arthur sports an untamed head of lank hair, which gets even messier when it rains in some key and significant scenes. However, he does try to tidy it up for his imaginary dates with Sophie.
• Momma's Boy: Arthur is a man in his late thirties or early forties who takes care of his ailing mother, going so far as to give her baths, and even dances with her in an over the top, weirdly intimate way just to make her laugh. Not surprising, given that she's likely one of the only people who has actually treated him with decency. Subverted when he realizes that she's not his real mother, but that she adopted him, and has been abusing him for years, at which point he decides to smother her to death.
• Monster Clown: Par for the course for anything having to do with the Joker, although he actually starts as a Non-Ironic Clown and Sad Clown in contrast to other versions of the character.
• Motive Decay: For the first half of the film, Arthur's main motivation is to bring laughter and joy unto others, but as the Trauma Conga Line he goes through goes From Bad to Worse, he ends up wanting to just be noticed by somebody, while ruthlessly seeking vengeance on the people who wronged him. To this end he even plans to shoot himself on Live! With Murray Franklin out of spite, but in his Rage Breaking Point he instead kills Murray Franklin himself with a Boom, Headshot!.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Despite looking skeletally thin, Arthur is capable of overpowering no less than three individuals who are all obviously bigger and healthier than him (Alfred, The Hospital Clerk and Randal); although somewhat downplayed as all three times Arthur caught them completely off guard with a surprise burst of manic energy.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Very downplayed when compared to the comic Joker, but still present. He is either an unnamed abandoned baby adopted by Penny Fleck, or he is the offspring of Thomas Wayne born after an affair which he covered up by fabricating documents of both Penny and Arthur.
• My Beloved Smother: Downplayed. He still lives with his mother but they have a rather harmonic relationship.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Immediately after murdering two of the Wall Street employees, Arthur for just an instant puts the gun to his own head from the stress of it all and performs a Dance of Despair after killing the third man. Later on, his murder of Murray Franklin has Arthur actually rearing back in shock at what he'd just done, but by that point he's too far gone for it to even matter.
• Named by the Adaptation: The Joker does not have a canonical name in the comic books, although multiple aliases — such as Melvin White, Jack Napier, and Joseph Kerr — have appeared. Here, his real name is Arthur Fleck, though as is revealed later on, that was the name his adopted mother gave him. His birth name remains unknown.
• Nice Guy: Starts off as this. Despite his issues, Arthur seems to genuinely enjoy his job as a clown, especially when entertaining children. He is emotionally mature enough to recognize that the teenagers who assaulted him were simply acting out of adolescent mischief, not true malice or evil. He does his very best to support his mother in spite of all his disabilities and remains optimistic that things could start looking up for him any day now. However, being wronged one too many times along with a lack of medical treatment slowly begins his transformation into the terrifying Joker.
• Nightmare Face: He inflicts one upon himself, using his own blood, in front of his crowd of followers, completing his transformation into the Joker.
• Non-Ironic Clown: Starts off as this before going off the deep end. Unlike his fellow clowns that he works with, he seems to genuinely enjoy the work.
• No Medication for Me: At the beginning of the film, it's stated that's he taking seven different medications for his mental illness, which only seem to make him depressed, but once Gotham's social work funding is cut, he is forced off his meds. He tells his former coworker Randall that he feels better than ever now that he's not taking any more pills... right before Arthur brutally murders him with a pair of scissors.
• No Sense of Humor: Implied to be the case. He only actually laughs (until the end) due to his condition or when other people are laughing because he thinks it's the appropriate reaction. He's shown writing down the performing comedian's material during the aforementioned scene, and when he tries to write his own jokes for his stand-up routine using his notes, none of them are actually funny to anyone else. Though Murray's ribbing of Arthur's first stand-up was pretty mean-spirited, on the whole he wasn't malicious at all, and could easily have been seen as trying to promote Arthur through inviting him on the show. His stint on Murray's talkshow doesn't actually have him making any funny remarks, just talking about tragic and heinous things that he alone finds hilarious.
• No Social Skills: An isolated lifestyle, coupled with several mental disorders and illnesses, prevent Arthur from properly relating to other people.
• Nothing but Skin and Bones: Without his shirt, he looks horribly malnourished. Ironically this is how the Joker was when he was first introduced in the comics. He's come full circle!
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Arthur wouldn’t be as harmful as he can be if people just stopped underestimating him; they only think of him as nothing more than a mentally ill loner not worth worrying about. The wall-street-three thinks he is just a nut that they can punch for fun... until Arthur suddenly shoots them all dead. Even after he admits the murders at The Murray Show, Franklin continues the interview, not worried in the slightest that Arthur will do him any harm. Then Arthur pulls out his gun and blows Murray’s brains out.
• Oblivious Adoption: He only finds out that Penny is not his biological mother until late into the movie — presuming that those documents weren't faked.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The first sign that shit's about to hit the fan with Murray is when he doesn't accentuate the last syllable of his name in a hushed but genuinely angry tone.
  Joker: ...You're awful, Murray.
• Outside-Context Problem: Arthur, despite being an Adaptational Wimp in comparison to his comics counterpart as well as other live-action renditions of the character, remains a grave threat to Gotham because his actions contrast so strongly with the dour and depressing state of the city. A clown killing three Wall Street employees in the dead of night sounds so ridiculous that it helps kickstart an Eat the Rich movement among the lower class. That same clown admitting to those crimes on live TV, before blowing the host's brains out in front of a studio audience, shocks those same protestors into ravaging the streets in an overblown riot. If some nobody could cause such massive upheaval in the city, with just a gun and some makeup, why couldn't they?
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Deconstructed gradually throughout the film, as Arthur begins falling back on this trope as a rationalization for the terrible things he does. For starters, he, to some degree, believes killing the three Wayne employees was righteous. His hallucinations of Sophie even applaud the clown-killer as a hero, when in reality he was only justified in killing the first two since he did so in self-defense. He doggedly pursued the last man and willingly shot him up multiple times instead of letting him go (not that he didn't deserve it). By the end of the film, he ends up proclaiming that much of his actions are pretty much what you get when you cross "a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash." Murray Franklin later admonishes Arthur for trying to excuse and justify his crimes, but Arthur quickly dismisses his protests because he's come to believe Murray himself is just as bad as the others who abused him, all for making fun of him on his show.
• Pet the Dog: Despite being driven completely insane, Arthur lets Gary go after killing Randall in cold-blood because Gary was the only person who was nice to him back in his old workplace.
• Pragmatic Adaptation:
  • Arthur's Joker isn't a diabolical criminal mastermind who causes mass destruction on a regular basis; he's a spree killer whose effect on Gotham society is more accidental than anything else.
  • This version of Joker never takes a dip in an Ace Chemicals vat, so his Monster Clown look is merely makeup from his clown career. Given the film's gritty, realistic take on the traditional comic book lore, this is a good example of Tropes Are Tools.
  • Design-wise, Joker's suit is not a stylish, groomed Purple Is Powerful outfit with long coattails, but instead resembles a typical formal suit in vibrant colors. In fact, it seems to be more of an accumulation of various outfits Arthur wears in and out of the film: the yellow waistcoat and makeup are inherited from his old 'Carnival' persona, with the latter being slightly updated and the wig replaced with his own hair dyed green. The red suit he wore before in an unfortunately unreleased Deleted Scene, although right before killing Penny he is shown to wear a different red shirt.
  • This incarnation of the Joker also has no novelty gag-themed weapons, so he does not have the acid posy, Electric Joybuzzer or his deadly Joker Venom, exchanging them for a simple handgun (not a "Bang!" Flag Gun mind you), and a deranged journal/"joke book". However, he does wield entertainment items in several scenes, such as a clown horn and a magic wand, and his trademark "Joker card" is instead a card explaining his pseudobulbar condition.
• Precision F-Strike: Arthur doesn't typically swear, but when he does, it's a clear sign that things have gotten way out of control.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: The story is all about Arthur's slow descent into madness and violence.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Degrades into this over the course of the movie. All his innocence gets worn and torn apart by the abuses dealt out onto him by others, and his Motive Rant at the end notably comes off as more self-pitying than anything triumphant or badass.
• Psychotic Smirk: As he becomes more and more unhinged and embracing of his Joker persona, Arthur still smiles, but this time with a clear intent on doing harm to others. At the same time, these are his most genuine expressions throughout the movie, as he finally finds happiness in the evil he becomes.
• Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter": Upon becoming Joker, he repeatedly busts his guts out laughing at generally morbid, horrible things that only bring discomfort to others.
• Rage Breaking Point: His last "joke" to Murray. It's clear that he's letting out ALL of the pent up aggression and sorrow from the whole film.
  "What do you get when you crossed a mentally ill loner with a SOCIETY, THAT ABANDONS HIM AND TREATS HIM LIKE TRASH!? (voice crack) I'll tell you what you get, YOU GET WHAT YOU FUCKIN' DESERVE!"
• Reckless Gun Usage: Due to Arthur having absolutely no idea how to handle a gun properly. After accepting Randall's gun, Arthur has a moment where he's all by himself in his living room and starts dancing while waving it around, and accidentally fires a shot in the wall while miming shooting someone. He also doesn't plan on how to securely conceal it on his person, leading him to unintentionally drop the gun in the middle of a children's hospital.
• Refuge in Audacity: Crosses over with Outside-Context Problem above. Arthur's actions while wearing clown gear inadvertently inspires citizens dissatisfied with the current system to wear clown masks during protests and riots against wealthy politicians like Thomas Wayne. The riots reach their peak when Arthur blows Murray Franklin's brains out on national television. The rioters are so roused by his actions that, when they find him, they regale him as a Dark Messiah Icon of Rebellion.
• Related in the Adaptation: Possibly to Bruce Wayne. The movie has enough clues for it to go either way, but it's entirely possible for this version of the Joker to be Bruce's half-brother whom he abandons and whose existence he covers up. Thomas's actor believes this to be the case, but nothing from Word of God.
• Rule of Symbolism: Arthur has to slowly and wearily walk up a dark set of stairs to get home, as if he's being weighed down by the harsh realities of life. When he finally becomes the Joker, he happily dances down those same stairs in the daytime, as if he's gleefully descending into madness.
• Sad Clown: He starts off as a somewhat optimistic but down-on-his-luck comedian and clown-for-hire, until getting attacked by a bunch of kids then by three yuppies (both times for no reason) and then getting humiliated on TV eventually drives him over the edge. Deep down, he's a Stepford Smiler who's never been truly happy in his entire life, and his uncontrollable laugh comes off as more of a cry from the inside. This is even reflected in his Joker makeup, where the blue diamond over his left eye is is running slightly, resembling a teardrop.
• Sadist: He finds death and destruction hilariously funny, especially if he's the one who does it. This is more of a tragic example as others use this as an excuse to be mean and abuse towards him, and now he gets the chance to exact his vengeance by cackling at the utter annihilation being caused around him and inflicting massive suffering (and death) to those who wronged him.
  Murray: So let me get this straight, you think killing those guys is funny?
  Joker: I do. And I'm tired of pretending it's not.
• Sanity Slippage: Arthur was mentally ill enough to begin with, but the series of terrible events that happen to him throughout the movie definitely doesn't help in any way. But then again it's thanks to this that he became the Joker we all know and feared by all of Gotham (well, almost all).
• Secondary Color Nemesis: In the later part, we see him wear his iconic outfit consisting of a green shirt, an orange waistcoat and a purplish jacket.
• Self-Deprecation: He makes several jabs at himself during his stand-up attempt, such as saying he chose to become a comedian to avoid having to work for a living, and that no one's laughing at him now that he is a comedian (a joke taken directly from Bob Monkhouse). Murray plays these moments on his show and repeats the same punchlines, making the audience go from laughing with Arthur to at him, and emotionally scarring him.
• Shadow Archetype: To Batman. Bruce Wayne is implied to be Arthur's half-brother, but while Bruce was raised in wealth and comfort with parents and a valet who cared for him, Arthur grew up in poverty with a negligent mother, her abusive boyfriend and a network of people who treated him like crap. After one day of trauma, Bruce would resolve to bring justice to Gotham, while a lifetime of misery for Arthur would compel him to take revenge on Gotham. Most iterations of Batman refuse to kill no matter how justified because they fear it becoming an addiction. Arthur's first few kills were justified as he acted in self-defense, but any subsequent murder is done for increasingly petty reasons until by the end of the film his last kill was completely unprovoked.
• A Sinister Clue: Arthur is right-handed, but he starts to switch more to his left hand (and left foot) when his Joker persona begins to emerge. For example he exclusively wields the gun with his left hand.
• Slasher Smile: A more tragic example where he starts to shows off his unstable nature the more his sanity slips. Especially at the end where he shapes his own blood into a psychotic grin on his face after embracing the path of the Joker.
• Smoking Is Cool: Certainly seems to think so as he suavely smokes a cigarette while dancing on the steps, as well as during his Unflinching Walk on the subway station amongst all the chaos.
• Society Is to Blame: Arthur is absolutely the victim of abuse, neglect, and harassment, and he quite understandably develops an intense hatred of the society that abandoned him. As such, when he fights back against the system that's kicked him down all his life, he holds no pity or remorse for the terror he unleashes in his wake.
• The Sociopath: What he's become by the final act of the movie. His capacity for empathy has drained away completely; he not only feels no remorse for any of his murders but actually seems to take pride in them and revels in destruction and chaos. He most likely kills his therapist, the only victim of his who's never wronged him.
• Spell My Name with a "The": Averted. Arthur calls himself and is only referred to as "Joker", never "The Joker".
• Spree Killer: Not yet a supervillain criminal mastermind (if he's even destined to become one in this continuity), this Joker is a simple spree killer. He does have followers but these are merely random rioters adopting his image and admiring him for being the movement's sparkle rather than members of any organization he runs. By the end of the film, he has personally killed six to seven people: the three WayneTech employees, Penny, Randall, and Murray for sure; plus his psychologist.
• Stalker with a Crush: Follows Sophie around town when he becomes interested in her.
• Stepford Smiler: Claims to have never truly ever been happy for even a single minute in his entire life, but throughout the film keeps up a half-smile that gets more and more psychotic as time passes.
• Straw Nihilist: Becomes a violent sociopath who believes Humans Are Bastards, and is so hollowed out from merely existing that he eventually plans on killing himself on live television.
• Stronger Than They Look: Despite his wire-frame physique, Arthur is surprisingly strong, nearly choking Alfred to death, only letting go of the butler's neck after noticing that Bruce was watching. Although perhaps not too surprising, since he is shown making that same squeezing motion on his clown shoes in the locker room multiple times.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: A Played for Drama example. Arthur had absolutely no political intention behind his murder of the Wall Street three and was simply acting out of self-defense against a trio who was beating him up. Yet, he is willing to embrace the reputation that has been built around him of a revolutionary who acts against the corrupt elite of Gotham so it will finally bring him the attention and love he craves.
• Sympathetic Murderer: At first. He killed two of the three Wall Street goons that attacked him purely in self-defense and wounded the other one, but the third was wounded and got away, meaning that when he killed him, it wasn't in self-defense, but out of a sense of self-preservation. Nonetheless, after he realizes that It Gets Easier, Arthur becomes less sympathetic with everyone else that he murders.
• That Man Is Dead: After discovering his mother's deception and the abuse he suffered as a child, Arthur kills both her and one of his former co-workers (though sparing Sophie and Gary) to burn any bridges to his past life as Arthur Fleck. Before he appears on Live! With Murray Franklin, he renames himself "Joker" and requests he be called that from that moment on. He embraces his new self very quickly.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: The constant abuse he had on a daily basis ends up turning him into Gotham's most dangerous criminal. But by the end of the film, it's made perfectly clear that nobody really cares about Arthur, just the Joker. It's likely Arthur's awareness of this fact that compels him to fully and truly become the Monster Clown he was destined to be. This is cemented during the climax of the film. After a tearful outburst, Arthur shoots Murray in the head in cold blood, looking momentarily stunned by his own actions, which quickly changes to a content smile as he accepts that he enjoyed what he did.
• Took a Level in Badass: Look at how shy, uncomfortable and introverted he is as Arthur, in stark contrast with how suave, charismatic and confident he is as the Joker.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: He goes from a somewhat immature but hopeful man to a nihilistic, bitter, and sadistic madman who thinks death and violence are funny.
• Tragic Dream: Before becoming Joker, Arthur wanted to be a stand-up comedian. His instability makes this impossible.
• Tragic Villain: At the end of it all, Arthur Fleck is just somebody who wants to bring joy to the world, to be noticed, and live a life that matters to somebody. The real tragedy is that, by the end of the story, it's clear that nobody cares about Arthur Fleck... just the sick persona that he created.
• Tranquil Fury: Enters a chilling example of this prior to killing Murray:
  Murray: Not everybody, and I'll tell you this, not everybody is awful.
  Joker: ...You're awful, Murray.
  Murray: Me? I'm awful? Oh, yeah, how am I awful?
  Joker: Playing my video. Inviting me on the show. You just wanted to make fun of me. You're just like the rest of them.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: While Arthur being amnesiac is not explicitly confirmed in the film, there is nothing that indicates that Arthur remembered his childhood abuse until he read about it in a file extensively detailing it, which marks the point where he goes off the deep end. Since he was said to be brain-damaged, it's entirely possible that Arthur's amnesia was a mental form of self-defense that was keeping Arthur relatively sane.
• Unreliable Narrator: Partway through the movie, it becomes clear that Arthur's grasp on reality has become so tenuous that it may be confusing which parts of the movie are and aren't taking place in his head.
• The Unsmile: In particularly strenuous situations, Arthur's stepford smiles grow more twisted and gnarled. The first scene in the film depicts him forcing his lips into a smile, with a single tear drooping down his eye.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His actions in the subway unintentionally serve as the catalyst for a city-wide protest movement, a full-blown riot, and the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne.
• Villain Has a Point: Arthur becomes an irredeemable villain by the end of the film, and he justifies his transformation as a result of society's abandonment of him. The worst part is that he's right. Gotham is a Wretched Hive, filled with apathetic citizens, ruthless criminals, or condescending elites who have no clue what life is like for ordinary citizens, and ultimately none of those people really care about people like Arthur, or the suffering they go through every day. Arthur likely would never have descended into the pit of madness that he did, had he never been disregarded or ignored for so long. Him proclaiming that Joker is what Gotham deserves isn't out of left field at all.
  • Arthur's response to Murray that, for all his pontification, he brought Arthur on solely to make fun of him and invite others to do the same and is nowhere near as righteous as he'd like to imagine is also not untrue. And while it doesn't justify murder, he's still absolutely correct that he was dealt a bad hand and to be resentful about it as well as to point out that people like Murray and Thomas Wayne dismiss the suffering of the poor when they have no idea what their lives are like.
• Villain Protagonist: Unsurprising given the Joker the inspiration, Arthur kills six people on screen over the course of the film, including his own mother, only two of whom could be considered anything but murder, is suggested to have killed at least one other, and is certainly responsible for many more deaths of which he's unrepentant.
• Villain Song: When Arthur is incarcerated at the end, he eerily sings a bit of Frank Sinatra's "That's Life", the song that closes the film. The lyrics sum up pretty much everything about his character.
  Arthur: That's life, as funny as it may seem. Some people get their kicks stomping on a dream. But I don't let it, let it get me down. 'Cause this fine old world...
• Villainous Breakdown: Has one while being on Murray’s show when he can no longer hold back his anger and sadness at being torn apart by the man who used to be his idol; it ends with him killing Murray Franklin on live television, causing a city-wide riot to erupt.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Throughout the movie, Arthur goes through this trope and its opposite. The clown rioters still celebrate him as an icon of protest against the corrupt elites who fights for change and improvement of the lower classes even after he, as Joker, has become a sociopathic murderer who kills people for purely personal reasons. Arthur is willing to play the part of a rebel even though he doesn't believe in the cause and only wants to be noticed and loved.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: The only weapon he uses is Smith & Wesson Model 36, a tiny snubnosed revolver chambered in .38 Special. In the film's timeframe it was common as a civilian self-defense weapon and a holdout gun for plainclothes detectives. It emphasizes that Arthur is a small man unused to violence. Notably, other cinematic Jokers famously used big, powerful weapons in their own outings, more fitting for an experienced criminal/terrorist.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: It is shown that Arthur is looking for a father figure in his life for some sort of approval. He imagines a pat on the back from Murray that he is the son he always wanted. He confronts Thomas Wayne, believing him to be his father, and tearfully asks that he acknowledge him, stating that he doesn't want any money from him. He is met with cold rebuttal from both, beginning his descent to evil.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: In-Universe. The state of Gotham is wrapped up in local politics and totally ignorant of the suffering faced by the lower-middle class. When Arthur kills the three Wayne employees in the subway, the dregs of the city treat it as a sign of a coming uprising, while the upper class see it as merely the work of a coward who wants to trigger a movement. Arthur doesn't care about the politics of it all but is willing to play the part because it's how people will notice him.
• What You Are in the Dark: A darker version of this. Arthur Fleck is a good man who works hard, loves his mother, is understanding of those around him, and tries to make the best of his life despite all his disabilities. Arthur's virtues are never acknowledged or even noticed by society because of his poverty and mental illness, all while the privileged elites like Thomas Wayne are lauded as saviors of Gotham. It didn't matter how good of a man Arthur was to the world since no one noticed or cared.
• When He Smiles: Played With. Arthur smiles as much as he can, but it becomes especially clear later on that almost none of his smiles are really genuine. The only times he does genuinely smile, are when he's hallucinating with Sophie, when he's having fun with his mother, or, when he decides to finally become Joker.
• Who's Laughing Now?: Once Arthur fully transitions into the Joker, the Butt-Monkey trope gets flipped on its head. And has its neck snapped in the process. It helps that he is laughing maniacally at the end of the film.
• Will Not Be a Victim: The impetus for Arthur's transformation into the Joker is his refusal to continue letting society step all over him. By the end, however, it's clear he's taken things way too far.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: At his core, Arthur is a troubled man who craves meaningful relationships with others, is desperate for validation, and ultimately just wants to spread happiness to the world and make people laugh. His poor standing in a harsh society is worsened by his degrading mental state, and by the end of all the trauma he endures, he becomes a soulless shell of his former self, who only finds joy and humor in nihilistic destruction.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Arthur may have grown into one of the most notorious villains in Gotham, but he has a soft spot for children and avoids hurting them personally, before and after his Sanity Slippage. In the opening, he avoids fighting back against a group of kids who assault him, and later spares Sophie and her young daughter, despite the fact he could have gotten away with killing them at the time. When he visits Wayne Manor, he nearly kills the adult Alfred, but leaves young Bruce Wayne unharmed. He may not have a problem with, say, orphaning them, but it seems Arthur thinks actually hurting children is going too far.
• Younger Than They Look: Arthur is implied to be somewhere in his 30s (the script says he is, and it's mentioned that Penny worked for Thomas Wayne "over 30 years ago"). Yet Joaquin Phoenix was around 45 at the time the movie was filmed, and looked even older for that role.

Harleen Quinzel / Harley Quinn

Harleen Quinzel / Harley Quinn

"I'm nobody. I haven't done anything with my life like you have."

"I want to see the real you."

Played by: Lady Gaga

Appears In: Joker: Folie à Deux

A fellow Arkham asylum inmate of Arthur, with whom Arthur falls in love.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: Most continuities depict Harleen as being a natural blonde. Here her hair has brown roots, suggesting that she's a brunette who dyed herself blonde.
• Adaptational Job Change: In the comics, Harlenn Quinzel is a psychiatrist when she meets the Joker, while here she is portrayed as one of the mentally disturbed inmates, instead of a doctor.
• Cute and Psycho: Harleen is portrayed as one of the Arkham's inmates, with her own mental issues portrayed by the beautiful Lady Gaga. In one scene from the teaser, she points a gun at Arthur for unknown reasons.
• Dark Mistress: Much like in most adaptations, she is the Joker's Love Interest here too.
• Deuteragonist: She is set up to be second most important character after Arthur, as the movie is set up to explore the destructive romance between the two.
• Likes Older Men: The trailer shows Harley being in love with Arthur, who is visibly much older than her. The age gap between Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga is around eleven years.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: In the teaser, she wears a black and red outfit that invokes the playing card motif.
• Truer to the Text: Her hair in this film has brown roots, suggesting that she dyes her hair blonde. An episode of Batman: The Animated Series, whence the character originated, has her admit she's not a real blonde.

Penny Fleck

Penny Fleck

"I mean, don't you have to be funny to be a comedian?"

Played by: Frances Conroy, Hannah Gross (young)

Dubbed by: Anne Rochant (European French), Roko Takizawa (Japanese)!!!

Appears In: Joker

Arthur's physically (and mentally) weak mother who used to work for Thomas Wayne.

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• Abusive Parents: As it turns out, she physically abused Arthur during his childhood to the point she was incarcerated in Arkham Mental Hospital decades ago. She handcuffed him to a radiator and let her boyfriend abuse him as well. However, as listed under Ambiguously Evil, there are more than enough holes in this narrative to put this into question.
• Affectionate Nickname: Calls her son "Happy".
• Ambiguously Evil: The records at Arkham Asylum say that she's delusional and narcissistic, that she adopted Arthur, who was actually an abandoned child, abused him, and eventually claimed that he was the result of a tryst between herself and her employer, Thomas Wayne. And yet... she never shows any signs of poor mental health outside of a single Imagine Spot from Arthur, as he reads those same records. Arthur doesn't seem to have any memory of the abuse purported to have been inflicted upon him (although he was supposedly very young when it occurred) and no effort appears to have been made in removing him from her and placing him with a more supportive family. Whether Penny truly was the mentally unwell abusive mother the records say and her subsequent, more subdued state is a result of her treatment at Arkham or whether Thomas Wayne used his wealth and influence to falsify the records in order to bury the affair and discredit Penny is left ambiguous. Muddying the waters further, Arthur later picks up an photo of her with a note complimenting her smile scrawled on the back, signed by "T.W."
• Asshole Victim: Downplayed like Randall. Abusing and letting your boyfriend abuse your adopted son is repugnant, but she seems to have also been a victim of abuse, and by the time Arthur kills her, she's a feeble old woman who can't hurt him anymore.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: If Arthur's understanding of events is correct, Penny was a crazy, ill-fitted mother in her youth. While it's vague if she changed by the time of the film (as she appeared to have mellowed), what appears to be her aforementioned flaws directly lead to Arthur's Sanity Slippage into the Joker.
• Brutal Honesty: Flat out tells her son on multiple occasions that his dreams of becoming a comedian will amount to nothing because he simply doesn't have what it takes.
  "Don't you have to be funny to be a comedian?"
• Canon Foreigner: She doesn't exist, along with the Fleck family name, in any previous DC comics or related media.
• Changeling Fantasy: Believes she and Thomas Wayne were lovers and Arthur is their love child. She also refuses to believe she abused her son or let him be beaten. However, it's also theoretically possible that this was all a fake cover story by Thomas Wayne to discredit her.
• Create Your Own Villain: Discovering through her old Arkham files that she had abused and neglected him in his youth, an infuriated Arthur smothers her to death with a pillow, before becoming the biggest menace of Gotham.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Inverted. Arthur loves her before he goes off the deep end (upon learning that she abused and neglected him), and his murder of her marks the point where he goes from being an Anti-Villain to being a Villain Protagonist.
  • Played With insomuch as it is later made apparent that she's not Arthur's actual birth mother.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Her alleged Abusive Parenting was what turned Arthur the way he is.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Considers Thomas Wayne a "great man" and "kind", and maintains that her clearly mentally disturbed and withdrawn son Arthur was always a "happy boy".
• I Was Quite a Looker: A flashback to her being in Arkham for abusing and starving Arthur 30 years ago reveals she was an attractive woman once, even with her black eye and various injuries.
• Lack of Empathy: According to her psychiatric files; in addition to letting her boyfriend handcuff her son to a radiator and beat him, she's not particularly supportive of her son when it comes to job opportunities. When Arthur tells her that he's going to be a standup comedian, her response is "But don't you have to be funny for that?"
• Lonely Funeral: After Arthur kills her in the hospital, he's the only one to show for her funeral days afterward in a deleted scene.
• The Mentally Disturbed: Was a diagnosed narcissist and delusional person.
• My Beloved Smother: She makes her adult son bathe her despite being able-bodied. 'Nuff said. Incidentally, Arthur eventually smothers her to death with a pillow.
• Narcissist: It's stated by her psychiatric file that she has narcissistic personality disorder, but it's not a hundred-percent clear if it's true.
• Stalker with a Crush: She is revealed to have been one to Thomas Wayne, which was the reason she was let go by the Wayne family. She later came up with a delusion that Arthur was her love child with Thomas, and wrote him a letter to that effect with the aim of re-insinuating herself into his life.
• Unreliable Expositor: It's left ambiguous whether she's telling the entire truth about her past with Thomas Wayne, she's really just crazy and abusive, or both.
• Useless Bystander Parent: She did nothing when her boyfriend abused young Arthur.
• Vorpal Pillow: While still in a coma following a stroke, Arthur smothers her with a pillow, blaming her for his insanity.
• Womanchild: It's obvious that she expects Arthur to attend to all of her needs while neglecting any of his, and when he confronts her about her claim that Thomas Wayne is his biological father, she locks herself in the bathroom like a scared little girl and won't come out until he promises not to "get mad".

Murray Franklin

Murray Franklin

"Good night, and always remember: that's life!"

Played by: Robert De Niro

Dubbed by: Jacques Frantz (European French), Akio Nojima (Japanese)

"And finally, in a world where everyone thinks they could do my job, here's a guy who thinks if you just keep laughing, it'll somehow make you funny. Check out this joker."

A talk show host who unwittingly plays a big role in Arthur's downfall.

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• Actor Allusion: The film draws heavy influence from The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver, both films starring Robert De Niro. This time he plays a talk show host who is obsessed over by a psycho comedian rather than the other way around.
• Ambiguously Evil: Downplayed; It's vague whether he was just a hypocritical jerk who pissed off the wrong person or just a mostly decent guy who had no idea how much he hurt someone with his joke and tried to make things right with the guy he mocked, unaware of how angry and screwed up he is.
• Asshole Victim: Downplayed, as compared to Arthur he doesn't seem all that bad, but his cruel punching-down combined with him continuing to argue with Arthur after he's made it obvious that he's a deranged murderer when anyone else would have run far away from him make it a bit hard to feel sorry for him when he gets a bullet in his brain.
• Berserk Button: Having his own jerkishness thrown in his face seems to be this. Note that Murray was able to keep his temper up until Arthur accused him of only letting him appear on the show so Murray could make some more jokes at his expense, at which point Murray goes from firm but fair to self-important ranting, implying that Arthur's words struck a nerve.
• Boom, Headshot!: How he bites it, courtesy of Arthur.
• Broken Pedestal: Arthur adores him until Murray makes fun of him on his Talk Show.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Before they begin the show, Arthur asks if he could be introduced as "Joker". The reason for this is because Murray called him that during the episode that where he casually poked fun at Arthur's "performance" at Pogo's. Despite Arthur politely (but insistently) alluding to it, Murray really didn't seem to remember doing it.
• Canon Foreigner: Like most characters in the film, he is not from the comics. Though he does resemble the David Letterman-type talk show host David Endocrine from The Dark Knight Returns.
• Cool Old Guy: Zigzagged. His making fun of Arthur and bringing him on solely to do it further was a petty dick move but his behavior backstage indicates that he doesn't have anything against him and thinks of his remarks as simply being good fun. He also shows no fear in dealing with him when Arthur reveals he was the one who killed the Wayne employees and he seems to get on well with his employees.
• Create Your Own Villain: Making fun of Arthur on national television leads to him getting shot on his own show.
• Deadpan Snarker: His brand of comedy is mostly snide deliveries. He has some pretty dry words at Arthur's expense on his talk show:
  Murray Franklin: And finally, to the world where everyone thinks that they can do my job, check out this guy:
  Arthur Fleck (archive footage): When I was a little boy and told people I was gonna be a comedian, everyone laughed at me. Well, nobody's laughing now!
  Murray Franklin: You can say that again, pal.
  • This gets rather harshly deconstructed as it's shown that, funny as such quips can be for audiences, it's less so when you're on the receiving end.
• Everyone Has Standards: He doesn't want people joking about sensitive topics such as death and recent tragedies on his show, and he doesn't allow profanity on the air. He's also understandably horrified and outraged when Joker confesses to his murders.
• Expy:
  • Of Jerry Lewis's character from The King of Comedy (which notably also starred De Niro in a role opposite to Lewis) from which Joker takes a lot of inspiration.
  • In a way he's also this to Batman, being a much-loved local celebrity who puts on a staged personality, possesses a sense of justice and finds himself becoming an ideological opponent to Joker.
• Foil: To Arthur. Both are associated with humor (Arthur is a party clown and stand-up comedian, while Murray is a late-night comedy show host). Murray is a tremendously successful celebrity who is perfectly mentally stable (if a bit of a jerk); meanwhile, Arthur is a deeply mentally disturbed nobody who loses what remaining sanity he has due to his horrible misfortunes.
• Hero Antagonist: Despite mocking Arthur's stand-up comic attempt, he's still a decent and honest person and was in the right to talk down Arthur when he admits to his crimes whilst confronting him.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: His tendency to make fun of others as his style of humour is ultimately what leads to his own demise, especially at the end, when it's strongly implied that Arthur was just about to kill himself as the punchline of a morbid knock-knock joke as he had planned, until Murray makes a snarky remark about how Arthur had to pull out a joke book just to remind himself how to start a "knock knock" joke, at which point Arthur's plan switches from suicide to murder.
• Hypocrite:
  • Tells Arthur that his views on people being all bad are wrong, but he humiliated Arthur on national television, showing the video of Arthur’s standup to his audience for the purpose of laughing at him. It never even seems to occur to him what a mean-spirited thing this was to do to somebody.
  • He also likes to keep his show family-friendly (i.e. no profanity or morbid topics). Apparently publicly humiliating an aspiring entertainer (in other words, bullying) is family-friendly to him.
  • He claims that not everyone is awful and that Arthur's problem with men like Thomas Wayne is unfounded, yet when Arthur screams to the world exactly why he did what he did, Murray's response is to simply brush it all off as "self pity", which essentially proves the very point Arthur was making in the first place; that people like him (or people in general) don't care about Arthur or people like him and are all too quick to brush his suffering aside.
• Hypocrite Has a Point: Although his words to Arthur that not everyone is as bad as he says there are is hypocritical, given how Murray himself embarrassed Arthur on live television, it is still a great point, considering how there are people that Arthur keeps perceiving as horrible but are actually decent or at least not as horrible as Arthur perceives them to be (namely, Thomas Wayne or Murray himself).
• The Idealist: If his rebuttal of "not everybody is awful" to Arthur's rant is any indication. Though the actual circumstances outside of his studio^note the Wall Street Three really were Asshole Victims, the decent people of Gotham are perpetually oppressed by the powerful horrible people, the city's still a decaying hellhole because of said powerful jerks may put him under the category of Wide-Eyed Idealist instead.
• Innocently Insensitive: It's very possible he thought his jokes about Arthur's stand-up routine were just harmless teasing considering that he invited Arthur onto the show and seemed to be rather polite and decent to him when first meeting him in person, not realizing that he emotionally hurt Arthur.
• Ironic Name: His TV show is called Live! With Murray Franklin. By the end of the film, Murray is no longer living.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • While Joker is in the middle of his confession/rant, Murray points out that Arthur's terrible life experience is absolutely no excuse for cold-blooded murder. He also explains that not everyone is as horrible as the Joker says that they are. It doesn't end well for him.
  • For all his rudeness in exposing it (and targeting an obscure comedian), the criticism to Arthur's act is spot-on. Even without the complete onstage breakdown he suffered, the material simply wasn't that funny (and certainly not the way he delivered it — there's a reason Bob Monkhouse only used the "Well they're not laughing now!" line at the start of his routines). Arthur's second (live) appearance on the show is simply him making fun of tragic and heinous situations, which could charitably be called extremely Black Comedy, but the audience find it more unsettling than anything.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He mocks Arthur on TV in a pretty dickish way, never apologizes or even seems to realize how shitty his behavior was and gets undeservedly self-righteous when called out on it but he's overall not a bad guy. He honestly didn't know how much he hurt Arthur prior and even after Arthur reveals his crimes, he tries to retain some level of sympathy and to keep things calm. And he is polite with Arthur backstage and is on good terms with his employees.
• Kick the Dog: Even if Arthur's stand-up material wasn't the best, showing a new comedian's demo reel on national television just to mock their performance is a dick move.
• Laser-Guided Karma: At least from Arthur's perspective. After making fun of someone who is clearly mentally-ill to a society that doesn't care about him, and inviting him onto his show, he deems that violent retribution is exactly what he deserves.
• Mean Character, Nice Actor: In spite of making fun of Arthur on national television, he's shown to be pretty understanding off-camera when he and Arthur finally talk in person. Murray's stage persona isn't even that mean — he is just making snarky remarks. It is then brutally deconstructed as Arthur perceives this as a public humiliation, leading to Murray's death.
  Joker: ...You're awful, Murray.
  Murray: Me? I'm awful? Oh, yeah, how am I awful?
  Joker: Playing my video. Inviting me on the show. You just wanted to make fun of me. You're just like the rest of 'em!
  Murray: You don't know the first thing about me, pal. Look what happened because of what you did. What it led to. There are riots out there. Two policemen are in critical condition— [Joker begins to laugh] And you're laughing. You're laughing. Someone was KILLED today because of what you did.
  Joker: I know! [beat] How 'bout another joke, Mur-raaay?
• My God, You Are Serious!: When Arthur confesses in live television that he was the killer of the Wall Street trio. At first, Murray thinks it's another one of Arthur's tasteless jokes, and questions the validity of his claims.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Johnny Carson, right down to a carbon copy of the curtains from The Tonight Show. A little bit of Jon Stewart is thrown in there for extra measure, as well.
• Obliviously Evil: He didn't know Arthur personally when he made fun of him on his show, so he had no idea how much his comments would emotionally wreck Arthur.
• Only Sane Man: Once he realizes that the Joker is serious when he brags about killing people for increasingly petty slights, Murray calmly yet sternly condemns his attitude, pointing out that no matter how shitty Arthur's life was, he can't play the victim once he starts harming others.
• Parental Substitute: Subverted. One early scene, quickly revealed to be one of Arthur's hallucinations, has Murray inviting him on stage and praising him for being "special", as well as wishing he had a son like him. When Arthur (now as "Joker") goes on his show for real, he displays very little of those traits.
• Pet the Dog: Murray points out that "somebody died today because of what you did". He's very likely talking about the clown protester that was shot by the cops on the train, showing that Murray's at least a little sympathetic to their cause.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: As part of his initial mockery of Arthur Fleck, he snidely remarks "...here's a guy who thinks if you just keep laughing, it'll somehow make you funny", apparently not realizing that Arthur suffers from a mental condition that causes him to laugh uncontrollably.
• Show Within a Show: The host of a Talk Show that Arthur watches.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Attempts one towards Arthur during the latter's Motive Rant, stating that Arthur's miserable life is no excuse for the crimes that he's committed. It ends badly for him.
• Signing-Off Catchphrase: "Good night, and always remember... that's life!"
• Stylistic Suck: Murray's comedy stylings aren't particularly creative. His jokes range from stock-standard comebacks to blatant punching-down. Compare him to the stand-up comic that appeared at Pogo's Club and you can see he lacks the skill needed to make a joke sound fresh and interesting.
• Too Dumb to Live: He continues to antagonize Arthur even after he's revealed that he's killed at least three people, doesn't regret it, and now has nothing to lose. Unsurprisingly, Arthur doesn't take these comments sitting down and blows Murray's brains out. What makes this particularly noteworthy is that Arthur literally warns him that he's being the same thing that got those people killed (being awful), yet Murray doesn't get the hint and hightail out of the studio right then and there.
• Two First Names: Murray and Franklin.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Making fun of Arthur's comedy act on his talk show plays a significant role in his turn to villainy, ensuring his eventual demise and escalating an already-deadly riot.

Sophie Dumond

Sophie Dumond

"This building... it's awful, isn't it?"

Played by: Zazie Beetz

Dubbed by: Fily Keita (European French), Momoko Taneichi (Japanese)

A cynical single mother and neighbor of Arthur, whom he is attracted to.

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• Birds of a Feather: Subverted. A big part of why Arthur fixates on her so much seems to be a belief that she shares his cynical view of the world, as she mimes shooting herself after complaining about the building's crappy elevator, and seems to respond positively to Arthur echoing the act. In reality, she and Arthur do not interact after the elevator, aside from the latter's breaking into her apartment late in the film.
• Canon Foreigner: She's a film exclusive character. However, she has a couple of things in common with Joker's wife from The Killing Joke — such as, the wife may be a hallucination fabricated by Joker's mind, who lived in an abhorrent apartment complex.
• Morality Pet: To Arthur. Until we learn that their relationship was all a daydreaming fantasy.
• Nice Girl: One of the few characters to treat Arthur well and even reciprocate his affections. Though that last part happens only in his head, her actual interactions with him are amiable. Even when fearing for her life when he enters her apartment unannounced, she calmly asks him to leave.
• The Reveal: It turns out that in one of the many cases of Trailers Always Lie, we were led to believe that she'd become his love interest and one of the lynchpins to his madness. The truth is that Sophie and Arthur only had one interaction; the rest of the film is him fantasizing about them having a relationship.
• Satellite Love Interest: In Arthur's imagination, she supports him through thick and thin. The fact that she's a single mother doesn't seem to affect their relationship in any way.
• Stalking is Love: Downplayed, as she simply understands that the obviously mentally ill Arthur meant no harm by following her, and agrees to see his stand-up routine. In reality, she had no idea he was following her.
• Struggling Single Mother: She lives in the same crappy building as the Flecks, takes care of a little girl and tries to make ends meet.
• Uncertain Doom: The last time we see Sophie, she's alone with Arthur and clearly fearing for her life. In the next shot, Arthur is walking out of her apartment with a smile on his face. It doesn't help that when Arthur returns to his apartment, sirens can be heard in the background, and loud shouting can be overheard. Her ultimate fate seems to be up to interpretation, most likely a Gory Discretion Shot. The film's cinematographer, Lawrence Sher, revealed in an interview that she's alive because Arthur is only killing people who've wronged him in a certain way, and she never wronged him.

Randall

Randall

"You gotta protect yourself out there, or else you'll get fucked!"

Played by: Glenn Fleshler

Dubbed by: Pascal Casanova (European French), Volcano Ota (Japanese)

A clown and colleague of Arthur.

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• Alas, Poor Villain: Downplayed, since he's more of a Jerkass than a villain. Despite his bullying of Gary and throwing Arthur under the bus, resulting in the latter losing his job, Gary is still horrified at the sight of his death. Let's be honest, as much of a jerk he is, he did not deserve that death.
• Asshole Victim: Downplayed, he may be a False Friend by getting Arthur fired and bullying Gary but he was nowhere near as terrible as the Wall Street jerks and Arthur's abusive mother.
• Bald of Evil: Which adds to his Fat Bastard characteristic.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Gets scissors jabbed into his neck and then his eye before getting his head slammed against a wall multiple times.
• Didn't Think This Through: He really thinks that going over to Arthur's apartment and have him do a favor for him of turning himself to the authorities after getting Arthur fired for having a gun he gave him would be that easy. The results are predictable as Arthur kills Randall for his betrayal.
• Dirty Coward: He makes Arthur The Scapegoat for owning the gun out of fear of losing his job.
• Dumbass Has a Point: Giving a gun to Arthur was extremely dumb, but it's hard to argue Arthur doesn't need something to protect himself when he's been the target of pointless beatdowns just for dressing as a clown, twice, and street violence seems particularly bad in general in Gotham City.
• Eye Scream: Arthur kills him by planting a pair of scissors in his eye.
• False Friend: Randall, rather understandably given the economic situation in Gotham, is willing to do anything to keep his job. He views Arthur as a colleague, but not one who's worth losing his own job over.
  • Randall says that he's giving a free revolver to Arthur to protect himself with, while subtly implying he expects some kind of "favor" in return. When Arthur's gun is discovered during his hospital performance, Randall then tells their boss that Arthur kept trying to buy a gun off of Randall, which serves as the final straw for Arthur's termination.
  • When he and Gary visit Arthur's apartment to express their condolences for Penny's recent death, Randall reveals that the police have been asking everyone at their workplace about the subway clown murders, and Randall has been telling them about Arthur's recent conduct. This causes Gary to respond with confusion that he wasn't asked, implying that Randall was throwing Arthur under the bus again, this time for the murders, and that he likely actually came over to convince Arthur to surrender himself to the authorities. This would get Randall off the hook from potential accessory charges from initially owning the revolver used in the murders; he used the false pretense of Arthur's mother's death to come over. Randall's totally right for doing so albeit unintentional, since Arthur did kill those three men in the subway, but he has no way of knowing that to be the case. Unfortunately this revelation causes Arthur to abruptly kill Randall mid-conversation.
• Fat Bastard: How appropriate for a guy who threw Arthur under the bus and regularly makes fun of Gary's condition.
• Gun Nut: Gives Arthur a gun for protection and giddily mentions he has connections for more.
• Like a Son to Me: He warmly refers to Arthur as "my boy" in his first scene when he gives Arthur a gun for his safety, and Arthur, who lacks a father figure, takes the comment at face value. Later on, after lying that Arthur wanted to buy the gun from him rather than the other way around, and letting it slip that he's been telling the police about their various conflicts to implicate him in the subway murders, he says the same thing, but this time, since Arthur knows better, it doesn't end nearly as well.
• Only One Name: He's only known as Randall.
• Slimeball: He's a Fat Bastard who acted as a False Friend for Arthur and then sleazily threw him under the bus to keep his job.
• Too Dumb to Live: Asking a friend for a favor after you threw him under the bus isn't exactly a smart move, but it isn't life-endingly stupid. What is life-endingly stupid is asking a favor from a guy who has every reason to hate you for your betrayal and who also is dropping blatant hints through his mannerisms that he's grown dangerously unstable. Unsurprisingly, Arthur brutally and messily kills him with a pair of scissors for it.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Gives Arthur a gun supposedly for 'protection' despite not being allowed to have one as a mental patient.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Causing Arthur to get fired for having a weapon is a major part in the creation of Joker. Arthur kills three men, sparking riots and an Eat the Rich movement.

Gary

Gary

"Why would you do that, Arthur?"

Played by: Leigh Gill

Dubbed by: Henry David Cohen (European French), Echigoya Kosuke (Japanese)

A dwarf coworker of Arthur and Randall.

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• Alone with the Psycho: Occurs directly after Arthur savagely murders Randall, with the extra salt in the wound that Gary is too short to actually reach the doorknob on his own. Fortunately Arthur lets him go free, though he terrorizes him a little, while acknowledging he's doing this because Gary was nice to him.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: When Gary and Randall visit Arthur after Penny's death, Arthur brutally murders Randall because Randall threw him under the bus, but lets Gary go because Gary was the only one that didn't treat Arthur badly, even though Gary was a witness to Randall's brutal murder. However, it's also implied that Arthur sympathized with Gary for being ostracized for having an abnormal quality he couldn't control, like him (Gary's height, and Arthur's mental issues).
• Big "WHY?!": As Arthur brutally kills Randall, Gary can only hide in the corner and scream a bunch of these in succession.
• Good Counterpart: Becomes one for Arthur. Both were entertainers for hire who have to deal with setbacks that are beyond their control (Arthur's mental instability and Gary's dwarfism) and Randall's jerkass behavior, but Gary manages to keep it together.
• Height Angst: He's too often mocked for his height.
  • In the apartment, after Arthur brutally kills Randall, Gary tries to get to safety but finds that the door is locked and he can't reach the latch. This leaves poor Gary with no choice but to turn around and ask the highly unstable, blood-splattered clown for help. How's that for Height Angst?
• Never Heard That One Before: Reacts to the mocking short jokes of his coworkers with an angry look on his face, likely due to a lifetime of receiving mockery for his height.
• Nice Guy: He has never done anything dirty or mean to Arthur which ends up saving his life when Arthur spares him after killing Randall.
• Only Friend: Is the only one who treats Arthur with any genuine kindness, especially apparent after the revelations about his mother's abuse and his relationship with Sophie being imaginary. This leads to him being spared.
• Only One Name: Only known as Gary.

Hoyt Vaughn

Hoyt Vaughn

"How the fuck do I know? Why does anybody do anything?"'

Played by: Josh Pais

Dubbed by:

The manager of "Ha-Ha's", the clown agency Arthur works at.

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• Condescending Compassion: He starts off his office meeting with Arthur by asking him how his stand-up career is going, but from his tone, it's clear he doesn't believe he'll make it as a comedian. He also claims to like Arthur before docking his pay and disregarding his claim he was attacked.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: He doesn't believe that some kids stole Arthur's "Everything Must Go!" sign and beat him up because it doesn't make sense why they would do it. In almost the same breath he then accuses Arthur of stealing the sign. When questioned why, Vaughn answers "Why do people do anything?"
• Irony: A man running a clown company is incredibly humorless.
• Jerkass Has a Point: It would be pretty hard to argue that he didn't have a valid reason for firing Arthur (bringing a gun to a children's hospital), even if he was vitriolic while doing it.
• Karma Houdini: He is the only person (besides the kids who mug him in the beginning) who treats Arthur badly that does not suffer any sort of retribution. Then again, the rising stigma surrounding clowns may have hurt his business.
• Mean Boss: He shows no sympathy for Arthur's various issues and does things such as take cuts from his paycheck to outright firing him over any problems, refusing to listen to Arthur's side of the story. His reaction to Arthur bringing an improperly secured gun to a children's hospital is understandable however.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His mistreatment of a struggling man who just wants to entertain people before giving him the boot (albeit this one for understandable reasons) factors into Arthur's eventual breakdown.

Debra Kane

Debra Kane

"Arthur... does it help to have someone to talk to?"

Played by: Sharon Washington

"This is the last time we'll be meeting."

A social worker who treats Arthur.

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• Beleaguered Bureaucrat: She's not that effective at treating Arthur's woes...but she only has so much time to devote to him. She's also unable to stop her office from being closed due to budget cuts, bitterly complaining how the system screws people like her over.
• Hidden Depths: At first she seems like a simple inadequate social worker who just doesn't care about her job or her patients. However, during their last meeting, she has a moment of sincerity where she admits that the system doesn't care about her or people like Arthur, expressing pity for him and clarity on the kind of place Gotham City is.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Telling Arthur society doesn't give a shit about him nor her inspires his speech at the Murray show that fuels the riot. Arthur being apolitical for most of the movie and only planning to kill Murray out of revenge wouldn't have come up without it.
• One-Steve Limit: Canonically, Martha Wayne's maiden name is Kane as well, and she appears in the film, albeit briefly.
• There Are No Therapists: More like "there were therapists, but they got handed pink slips". Arthur does see her early on in the movie, but while her effectiveness is already questionable — she's evidently more of a social worker than a psychologist and thus doesn't seem to be the qualified help Arthur really needed, and given the amount of files in her office, she's already swamped with cases and could only devote so much attention to him — the final nail in the coffin is when the office's funding is cut and she's forced to stop working with him.
• Tuckerization: She's named after Bob Kane, Batman's (and the Joker's) co-creator.
• Two First Names: Debra and Kane.

Thomas Wayne

Thomas Wayne

"Gotham's lost its way."

Played by: Brett Cullen

Dubbed by: Jean-Louis Faure (European French)

"What kind of coward would do something that cold-blooded? Someone who hides behind a mask."

A billionaire running for mayor of Gotham City.

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• Adaptational Job Change: Thomas was a surgeon in the comics but is a businessman and aspiring politician here.
• Adaptational Jerkass: While not an outright villain, this version of Thomas Wayne is presented as being more callous and elitist rather than his usual portrayal of being an upstanding moral citizen in a decaying city. Though in the case of his interaction with Arthur at the movie theater, his behavior is justified seeing as Arthur randomly grabbed his son and tried to strangle Alfred earlier.
• Adaptational Wimp: When the time comes for him and his family to be cornered by a gunman in an alleyway, Thomas begs him to spare them. Compare this to Batman Begins where he keeps his cool, and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice where he straight-up tries to fight his killer.
• Age Lift: This version of Thomas is already past middle-age during his son's childhood (Brett Cullen was sixty-three when the film came out). In the comics he's stated to be much younger, as the Big Bad in Batman (Grant Morrison) was able to pass as Thomas Wayne and the man himself became Batman in Flashpoint. The fact that he's old enough to have possibly fathered someone in their thirties is a major plot point.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: His immediate response to when a stranger points a gun at him (and quite a justifiable one considering his family are with him) is to briefly plead for mercy. This being a film based on the Batman mythos, it doesn't work.
• Ambiguously Evil: Despite the film's unsympathetic portrayal of him and being made out as a Adaptational Jerkass, Thomas is not really an outright villain, while the hints of him being such a Slimeball Upper-Class Twit are only implied. Penny claims that Arthur is his illegitimate son, while he (and Arkham Asylum's records) insists she was delusional; however, whether she was actually mentally unwell or whether this was an attempt by Thomas to use his wealth and influence to bury a tryst with a lower-class woman is never authoritatively stated one way or the other. Muddying the waters further, Arthur later picks up a old photo of his mother, with a note complimenting her smile scrawled on the back, signed by "T.W."
• Asshole Victim: Good intentions or not, his elitism, social myopia, and abrasive personality make it hard to feel TOO bad about him getting shot by one of the very people he looked down on.
• Bullying a Dragon: After he calls the lower class clowns, they rise up in arms and shoot him down.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Subverted. It's assumed that he never writes back to Penny no matter how many letters she sends him because he's very busy, but when pressed about it it turns out he does remember her quite vividly and not in a good way.
• Condescending Compassion: Thomas is an elitist, but he's still making an attempt to improve Gotham City by reducing the crime rate and help the lower class. Unfortunately, he's really bad at communicating with the lower class, contributing to why he becomes increasingly unpopular with them over the course of the story.
  • His claims of wanting to help the downtrodden are shown to be little more than an easy way to score political points after Arthur kills three of his staff. Thomas immediately assumes the three yuppies were completely innocent and that their killer was acting out of jealousy or entitlement, when the reality could not have been more different.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Thomas is an elitist and the head of Wayne Enterprises who is hinted to be this, but it was never clearly confirmed.
• Create Your Own Villain: Him referring Gotham's lower class as "clowns" leads to mass protests around the city, which eventually evolve into riots, during which one of them shoots him and Martha dead.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: The worldly billionaire trope. He isn't some man who's going to use his wealth to save Gotham, but rather a self-absorbed elitist with only a superficial understanding of poverty, and little genuine interest in helping people.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: The Waynes still get shot, but by a clown-mask wearing attacker this time (who may or may not be Joe Chill), and they are not mugged for money and Martha's pearl collar this time around.
• Dramatic Irony: At one point refers to people who "hide behind masks" as cowards. He also tells Arthur "Touch my son again and I'll kill you." Oh Thomas, if you only knew.
• Fatal Flaw: His abrasive and condescending attitude towards the poor. He genuinely wants to improve their lives but his harshly judgemental demeanor and willful ignorance of both their struggles and his own enormous privilege end up seriously undermining his efforts and make them see him as an enemy to the point that he and his wife are gunned down.
• Foregone Conclusion: Anybody who knows Batman lore knows the fate of Thomas and Martha Wayne. The question is simply who pulls the trigger this time, and in this case, it's a clown rioter who got galvanized by Joker's murder of Murray Franklin.
• Good Is Not Nice: Upon getting the Adaptational Jerkass treatment, Thomas may seemingly sincerely want to help the lower class, but he's still an elitist who gives them nothing, but Condescending Compassion and this is what gets him shot dead for it.
• Hero Antagonist: Given who the character is in general in the comics mythos and despite undergoing Adaptational Jerkass, he's automatically this towards Arthur especially in defense of his son Bruce.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: He sincerely wants to help the poor of Gotham but his abrasive demeanor, ignorance of their struggles and willful ignorance of his own privilege seriously undermine his efforts that it eventually ends with him being killed.
• Hypocrite: He frames himself as someone who made something of his life in contrast to the poor who he sees as just wanting an easy way out. He conveniently ignores that he came from an extremely wealthy and privileged background.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Sure, he may have insulted Penny, prompting Arthur to come to her defense, but following The Reveal about her as an Abusive Parent, Thomas may have been telling an Accidental Truth and Right for the Wrong Reasons about her, making his insult turn out to be deserved. Also, he has every reason to go all Papa Wolf on Arthur after learning about his encounter with Bruce and how Arthur had attempted to strangle his butler Alfred Pennyworth at the gate of Wayne Manor- especially considering the city where they live is awash with suspicious, sketchy and even highly dangerous characters.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Even after undergoing Adaptational Jerkass and being implied to be a Slimeball, Thomas still loves his wife Martha and his son Bruce very much, even going so far to go Papa Wolf on Arthur for harassing Bruce at Wayne Manor. Also, he's running for mayor to help Gotham City and give support to the lower class suffering there albeit not in a nice way.
• Luke, I Might Be Your Father: Arthur tells him that he's his illegitimate son from Penny. Thomas claims that she was delusional and Penny adopted Arthur, but Penny's counterclaim is that he falsely institutionalized her and forged the adoption papers to cover up their affair. It's never definitively proven one way or the other.
• Manipulative Bastard: There's the possibility that he's been gaslighting Arthur's mother to avoid taking responsibility for their affair, though there's no outright confirmation on that.
• Mythology Gag: He and Martha are killed in 1981, much like in the DC Extended Universe.
• Nominal Hero: He looks down his nose towards the poor, but he's making an effort to support them with his wealth and high position and genuinely loves his family. Unfortunately he isn't well-liked by the poor because of his treatment.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Despite Thomas having been born and raised in New Jersey, Brett Cullen's natural Texas accent can be heard in a few scenes.
• Papa Wolf: Is shown to be very protective of his son, by punching Arthur for harassing Bruce at their home and promises to kill him if he ever goes near Wayne Manor again.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: He has a pretty classist view of the poor of Gotham, wanting to help but unable to see them as anything but no-hopers who want an easy way out as opposed to people struggling with crippling hardships he's never had to face.
• Poor Communication Kills: If he had simply used wording that wasn't blatantly insulting towards the people he was supposedly trying to help, there's a good chance that many people, including himself and his wife, might still be alive.
  • His HR department probably should have warned Thomas about the track record of the Wall Street thugs before going on TV publicly condemning the murderer, despite the fact at least one female witness should have been able to confirm it was probably self-defense (initially, at least), thereby walking into a lethal political blunder. He even admits in the interview he didn't know anything about the "victims."
• Two First Names: Thomas and Wayne.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Of his own making. Instead of trying to calm Arthur down and explain the situation between him and Penny Fleck, he acts out violently in response to Arthur's laughter and threatens to kill him if he ever touches his son again. This act of violent rejection and callousness was the final straw that reinforces Arthur's descent down the spiraling steps of madness, eventually leading to the city-wide riot and Thomas' death by proxy.
• Upper-Class Twit: Thomas is portrayed as an elitist while also rich. At one point he refers to the lower classes as no-hopers while using himself as an example of someone who accomplished something with their life. Never mind the fact that the Wayne family had generations of wealth to fall back on, so his beliefs are quite myopic.
• Verbal Tic: Has a tendency to call people "pal" when off the camera.

Bruce Wayne

Bruce Wayne

Played by: Dante Pereira Olson

The young son of Thomas and Martha Wayne.

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• Adaptation Origin Connection: Like Tim Burton's Batman, Joker is responsible for the death of his parents — this time indirectly rather than directly. As such, it seems likely that Joker ended up making the Batman once again.
• Blood-Spattered Innocents: His own mother's blood sprinkles onto his face after she's shot down in the alley.
• Cain and Abel: Assuming that Arthur's mother wasn't lying or deluded (which is unlikely), Arthur is his half-brother, and the city-wide riot in his name gets Bruce's parents killed.
• Children Are Innocent: He doesn't go through the traumatic experience that turned him into the Batman until the very end of the film. Also, Thomas and Martha clearly haven't told him not to talk to strangers.
• Create Your Own Hero: By inspiring his followers to go on a rampage in Gotham, Arthur set the stage for a young Bruce Wayne to become the Batman when his parents are murdered in front of him.
• Creepy Child: Courtesy of the fact that nothing fazes him. Not an obviously mentally ill man sticking his fingers in the kid's mouth, not his butler getting strangled. It's only when his parents are brutally gunned down in front of him that anything can get him to express any emotion whatsoever. He reacts with shock and we can see him kneeling in shock in the alley where their corpses are, though it is minimal. Seems this version of Bruce has always been The Stoic.
• Demoted to Extra: Since this is the Joker's story and not Batman's, Bruce is only a bit player here. We still get to see the major catalyst of his Origin Story, but not until the final act.
• Futureshadowing: It seems that even as a child, Bruce never found Joker particularly funny.
• Limited Wardrobe: He's wearing the exact same clothes (light brown coat over white turtleneck) when he met Arthur and his parents' murder which takes place days after.
• Mythology Gag: The only intentional one in the film according to Word of God; he is introduced sliding down a pole to face the Joker, much like another Bruce Wayne was well-known for doing.
• The Stoic: True to form, nothing seems to faze him. Even the murder of his own parents. He doesn't break down into tears or scream in devastation like in previous versions. He is simply shocked from the inside.
• Two First Names: Bruce and Wayne.
• Young Future Famous People: In his adulthood, he will become a renowned philanthropist among Gothamites by day, and a fearsome vigilante among criminals by night.

Martha Wayne

Martha Wayne, née Kane

Played by: Carrie Louise Putrello

The wife of Thomas Wayne and the mother of Bruce.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: Much like in The Dark Knight Trilogy, she's blonde instead of the usual brunette.
• Ambiguously Evil: It's unclear if she was involved in or aware of her husband's unethical actions. In any case, the Wayne Murderer considered her just as guilty as her husband.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: The Waynes still get shot, but this time the attacker (who may or may not be Joe Chill) wears a clown mask, and they are not mugged for money and her pearl collar this time around.
• Iconic Item: Her pearl necklace, which is obviously present in her death scene.
• Mythology Gag: She and Thomas are killed in 1981, much like in the DC Extended Universe.
• Ripping Off the String of Pearls: Once again, Martha's pearl collar gets broken in slow motion during her murder. Only this time the attacker seems to voluntarily break it, just for the sake of it.
• Satellite Character: Her existence is never acknowledged until moments before her death. She's just the wife and mother of the Wayne family.
• Two First Names: Martha and Wayne, and was previously Martha Kane prior to her marriage.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Probably the version of Martha with the smallest amount of screentime before getting killed. The Waynes get out of the movie theater, enter the alley behind it and get shot, and unlike Thomas, she didn't have any other scene in the film.

Alfred Pennyworth

Alfred Pennyworth

"Please- just go, before you make a fool of yourself."

Played by: Douglas Hodge

The Waynes' butler.

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• Adaptational Wimp: In other versions of the Batman mythos, Alfred is an ex-SAS soldier or a former bodyguard, can handle stressful situations and deal with mentally unstable people, and, at the very least, is talented in basic self-defense. Here, his only real activity is struggling ineffectually with a nearly skeletal man against a gate.
• Age Lift: He's much younger than most typical depictions of him. Justified on the account of Bruce still being a child.
• The Cameo: Only appears for a single scene and isn't identified by name in dialogue, though anyone remotely familiar with the Batman mythos will easily be able to tell who he is.
• Good Is Not Nice: Towards Arthur, but not without reason however.
• Hero Antagonist: Given who the character is in general in the comics mythos and who's destined to mentor one of Gotham's greatest superheroes, he's automatically this towards Arthur especially in defense of Bruce.
• The Jeeves: Once again, the loyal British butler to the Wayne family. However, this time he is clearly not as level-headed as before and is visibly wary of Arthur. Justified, since he's a clearly unwell stranger touching the child Alfred takes care of.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He was perhaps overly harsh with Arthur, but only because he deeply cares for Bruce and doesn't want any harm come to him.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He is immediately confrontational towards Arthur, but is justified as he is a creepy stranger. Also, Alfred could be correct in calling Penny delusional and mentally ill, especially in light of the revelation of her being an Abusive Parent.
• Papa Wolf: He is very protective of Young Master Bruce.

Garrity and Burke

Detective Garrity and Detective Burke

"Mr. Fleck? Sorry to bother you. I'm Detective Garrity. This is my partner, Detective Burke. We have a few questions for you, but you weren't home. So, we spoke with your mother."

Played by: Bill Camp (Garrity) and Shea Whigham (Burke)

Dubbed by: Paul Borne (Garrity) and Bruno Choël (Burke) [European French]

Two GCPD Detectives who investigate the murder of the three Wayne Enterprises businessmen in the subway.

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• Accidental Murder: Burke unintentionally shoots a clown rioter dead while trying to restore order.
• Canon Foreigner: Garrity doesn't exist in the comics or any previous Batman lore adaptation. However, there is a Detective Thomas Burke, who was introduced in Detective Comics #748.
• Expy: The two share many similarities to the common depiction of James Gordon and Harvey Bullock's younger years, so much so that some fans initially thought they were supposed to be them until their names were spoken.
• Fat and Skinny: Garrity (Fat) and Burke (Skinny).
• Hero Antagonist: Two police officers who investigate the subway murders and end up chasing the man who committed them and happens to be the story's Villain Protagonist.
• Innocently Insensitive: When questioning Arthur about the subway murders and why he was fired from Ha-Ha's, Burke asks Arthur if his Pseudobulbar affect is "real, or some sort of 'clown thing'". Arthur understandably takes offense.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: They're on the receiving end of one when Burke accidentally shoots a rioter dead, sparking an entire mob of clowns to pounce them like a pack of wolves. The last time we hear of them, they're said to be in critical condition.
• Police Brutality: Burke shoots one of the rioters accidentally, but taking his gun out in a crowded subway while chasing a suspect with no weapon drawn showcases a certain amount of trigger-happiness.
• Reckless Gun Usage: It varies across the country and municipalities, but the most commonly held mode of thought is that police are allowed to unholster and draw their weapon (which is considered a show of force) if they are in a situation where they have reasonable fear and need to be ready to use force. But in this case, Burke (and only Burke) draws and brandishes his firearm just to quell unrest caused by a fight breaking out between two people; this could be considered a totally unnecessary measure that just exacerbated the situation.
• Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: A mild, but valid example. Neither Burke or Garrity have anything personal against Arthur, and are (for the most part) polite and professional when questioning him; things only go tits up when they chase him into a crowded subway train of clown protesters who are already riled up. At this point it becomes Downplayed for Burke who proceeds to recklessly draw his gun in panic and accidentally kills a rioter.
• Those Two Guys: They're always seen together.

Wall Street Three

The Wall Street Three

"What's so funny, asshole?"

Played by: Carl Lundstedt, Michael Benz, Ben Warheit

Three young Wayne Enterprises businessmen who start mocking and beating Arthur up on board a subway train.

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• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: They're all implied to be drunk and their bullying of Arthur leads them to all be killed.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Arthur cites both their behavior and their bad rendition of “Send in the Clowns” as reasons for killing them.
• Asshole Victims: They all bully and beat Arthur up for being dressed in his clown costume and laughing uncontrollably. Who in turn, ends up killing all of them. They also are aggressive towards a lone woman on the train before Arthur inadvertently draws their attention.
• The Bully: They first harass a female passenger before Arthur's uncontrollable fits of laughing and clown attire attract their attention and cause them to mock and assault him.
• Bullying the Disabled: They beat up Arthur even after he tells them he has a condition.
• Casanova Wannabe: Ryan unsuccessfully hits on a female subway passenger and the other two egg him on. The leader also gripes how he failed to get another woman's phone number in a passing conversation before they decide to pick on Arthur.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: They are businessmen who worked for the corporation Wayne Enterprises whose afterwork activities includes harassing a lone woman and beating up a seemingly defenseless unemployed clown with a condition.
• Create Your Own Villain: Had they not harassed Arthur they would all still be alive.
• Didn't See That Coming: They surely didn't expect Arthur to carry a gun, much less to actually use it against them. The first to be shot doesn't even get the time to realize what's happening.
• Dirty Coward: They gratuitously beat and kick Arthur down while being three against him, and when he pulls out his gun and starts shooting in self-defense, They run away in fear while crying for help. Well, technically, only Ryan does so because the other two didn't get time to react.
• Disproportionate Retribution: They pick on and beat up Arthur just for laughing.
• Entitled to Have You: The way they talk about women has shades of this, especially the way they harass a female passenger who isn't looking for trouble.
• Fat Bastard: Ryan is on the chunky side and isn't less of a jerk than his friends. He is the only one who Arthur didn't kill inside the train, but due to the fact that Arthur already shot him in his ass, he couldn't run far enough to save his life.
• Faux Affably Evil: They approach Arthur in a seemingly playful manner while singing "Send in the Clowns" ... before proceeding to mock and beat him up for laughing uncontrollably in his clown costume.
• Hypocrite: One of them calls Arthur an asshole. Let that sink in for a while.
• Inspirational Martyr: Thomas Wayne sets them up as this after they're killed. Their violent, anti-social behavior is swept under the rug (if it's brought up at all) in order to push the belief that it's the lower classes that are violent and anti-social.
• Jerkass: None of them show any redeeming qualities.
• Karmic Death: Arguably the most unsympathetic victims on Arthur's hit list.
• Kick the Dog: They sexually harass a woman on the subway who just wants to be left alone. Later they antagonistically approach him, Arthur claims to have a condition and tries to take out his card, but they couldn’t care less (one of them saying he can tell anyway) and start beating him up.
• Lack of Empathy: When Arthur tells the men he has a mental condition, they clearly don't give a shit and have no problems giving him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on the spot.
• Laser-Guided Karma: They're terminated by Arthur in the middle of beating him up for no good reason.
• More Hateable Minor Villain: Arthur is one of the most sympathetic portrayals of the Joker, being a mentally-ill loner beaten down by an uncaring society, and even the other antagonistic characters have some nuance to them. Except for these three, who only show up for one scene where they’re presented as rich, drunken, women-harassing scumbags who beat up Arthur for laughs, to keep Arthur likable and sympathetic in comparison when he kills them.
• Mugging the Monster: They don't know that Arthur carries a gun until it's too late, and all end up dead.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: They try to give this to Arthur, but he kills all of them before they could (presumably) beat him to death.
• No Name Given: They're simply credited as "Wall Street Three", however, the last one to be killed is named Ryan.
• Non-Indicative Name: They have nothing to do with Wall Street.
• Oh, Crap!: Their reaction to Arthur pulling a gun on them.
• Only One Name: Ryan is the only one named, but only his first name.
• Psychopathic Manchild: You'd think a group of grown businessmen would be too old and mature to still be behaving like high school bullies. You would be wrong.
• Sadist: They're clearly shown taking much joy in tormenting a helpless Arthur.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Ryan does this during his final moments.
• Shot in the Ass: This apparently happens to Ryan due to a bullet grazing him, but despite what you'd think (due to this trope and being a victim of the Joker), it's not Played for Laughs.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Their harassment of Arthur leads to him killing all three of them, not only beginning his transformation into the Joker but also sparks an uprising of rioters in clown masks.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: They're the first characters to get killed in the movie and it happens in such an abrupt way that nobody would have seen it coming.
• Too Dumb to Live: Three working professionals harassing and then brutalizing an individual dressed in full clown make-up and costume maniacally and uncontrollably laughing to themselves in public who openly states that they have a mental condition in the midst of a city awash in crime, social neglect, and unregistered firearms like the one Randall gave to Arthur does not make them seem very Genre Savvy about Monster Clowns, to say the least, even if they outnumbered their target by 3-to-1.
• Undignified Death: All three are shot to death in a dingy and decrepit subway. Extra points go to Ryan—Arthur non-fatally shoots him once, but Ryan fails to limp away because (judging from the way he holds his rear end) he got shot in one of his buttcheeks. Arthur empties the gun into him as he tries to crawl his way up the stairs.
• Upper-Class Twit: Three yuppies belonging to the upper class of Gotham, and massive jerks at that.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Downplayed, while some characters such as Murray Franklin and Thomas Wayne sympathizes with them, a good chunk of the city only sees them as asshole victims.
• Wicked Cultured: One of them seems to be a fan of Stephen Sondheim, as he sings "Send In The Clowns" to Arthur prior to beating him up.
• Yuppie: All three of them are clearly identifiable as the kind of young, upwardly mobile white collar workers who became so notorious in the '80s (the film is set in 1981), and are still recognizable today.

Clown Rioter

Clown Rioter

Played by: ???

"Hey, Wayne! You get what you fucking deserve!"

A clown-masked rioter who pulls the trigger on the Waynes.

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• Adaptational Personality Change: This version of the Waynes' killer has a significantly different motivation compared to his traditional counterpart, Joe Chill. Instead of being a mugger or a hitman who kills for money, the Rioter kills the Waynes as a vigilante act against their and the rest of the city's elite perceived mistreatment of the city's underclass. He doesn't care about their possessions, but makes a point of ripping Martha's pearl necklace off (without stealing it) to send a message.
• Adaptation Origin Connection: The Eat the Rich riots Joker's murder of Murray Franklin set ablaze galvanized him to murder Thomas and Martha Wayne.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Owing to his lack of character development, it's not clear why he spared Bruce; was it Wouldn't Hurt a Child, pure pragmatism, a belief Bruce was innocent of his parents' misdeeds, a mix of both, or something else?
  • Additionally, is he actually this universe's Joe Chill or just someone else who killed the Waynes?
• Create Your Own Hero: His murder of Bruce Wayne's parents would inspire Bruce to become one of Gotham's most feared vigilantes.
• Eat the Rich: Implied, given the film's climax, which involves a massive riot against Gotham's elite, and the Waynes happen to be part of said elite and go out just that night...
• Expy: If he isn't Joe Chill, he at least inherited his role as the killer of Batman's parents.
• Named by the Adaptation: Inverted. His name should be Joe Chill if source material and most adaptations are taken into account but the film made him a No Name Given character.
• No Name Given: His name is never stated.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: "You get what you fucking deserve!"
• Small Role, Big Impact: The Rioter only has maybe a minute or two of screen time to kill the Waynes and only appears once during that duration, but his action of killing Thomas & Martha ends up becoming way more important in the long run.

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