The Joker is Batman's greatest enemy, and no other villain has ever done so much to hurt the Caped Crusader. Over the years, the Clown Prince of Crime has killed Jason Todd, paralyzed Batgirl, and unleashed widespread suffering on everyone even tangentially connected to Batman.

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Their fight is one of law and order versus unbridled chaos, of hope versus nihilism. Batman values every single life he saves, while Joker considers murder to be absolutely hilarious. But the one way Joker has learned he can hurt Batman the most is to be right about something where others are wrong. Whether it's knowing secret truths or understanding moral issues (and their failures), Joker has proven that he is just smart enough to continually have the last laugh.

10 Bruce Wayne’s Identity

Bruce Wayne. Joker. Amnseia

A recurring theme in several recent Batman comics has been that Joker was right in guessing that Bruce Wayne is really Batman.

This is first canonically confirmed in Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman: Endgame, but that story ends with both Bruce and Joker losing their memories (and reality itself is rewritten shortly thereafter). More recently, the stories Joker War and Three Jokers have made this central to their plot.

9 One Bad Day

Batman The Killing Joke Insane Joker

In Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore, Joker comes up with a crazy hypothesis: all it takes is one really bad day to drive a perfectly sane person to madness.

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While Joker puts Commissioner Gordon through a series of hellish tortures (and tortures Gordon’s daughter even worse just to make the commissioner watch), the man manages to stay sane, if just barely, because Batman intervenes in time. However, for many people, a single bad day is enough to drive them to insanity. After all, after Bruce Wayne had a bad day as a kid, he grew up and decided to dress as a bat.

8 Wayne Manor

wayne-manor-batman

Batman lives in his family’s ancestral home way out on the outskirts of Gotham, beyond the city proper. He has his very own butler (or did until recently) and is equipped with every convenience a billionaire playboy could want, not to mention every overpriced gadget that he can cram into the Batcave beneath the manor.

But living in such splendor outside the city, Bruce has no idea what Gotham is really like. In the climax of Joker War, the Clown Prince gleefully points out that by living outside the city, Batman has no idea what the city needs and therefore can never really help it.

7 Wayne Enterprises

10. Batman - Bat-Resources - Wayne Enterprises logo

Most major corporations are distrusted by the public. There are numerous reasons for this from unethical business practices to corruption to their role in growing economic inequality, but people across all political beliefs just don't trust major corporations to be ethical.

Wayne Enterprises was supposed to be the exception. It helped the community and its CEO, Bruce Wayne, was a charismatic and affable guy. But for all the marketing and PR that Wayne Enterprises had making it look good, when the truth came out that the company spent billions designing paramilitary weapons for Batman while the people of Gotham suffered, there was no way to save the company's reputation. Of course, it was Joker who exposed this truth when he used all those Wayne-built Bat-weapons to attack Gotham City.

6 Police Militarization

Joker War Harvey Bullock Quits

There are numerous dialogues going on across the globe and particularly throughout the US about the role of police in modern society. Like most contemporary issues, these have spilled over into the comics and different writers have taken different stances when telling stories in the DC Universe.

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Gotham has always been notorious for its police corruption and excessive police brutality. Batman militarized the police with many of his own personal brands of weaponry. When Joker took over Gotham in Joker War, he had the police working alongside him to brutalize people. And when the war was over, those cops kept brutalizing people as they always have--but now the citizens of Gotham knew where the cops got their weapons.

5 Batman vs. Twitter

Batman and Jack Napier/Joker on the cover of White Knight #8

This next example comes from the groundbreaking story Batman: White Knight written and drawn by Sean Murphy. Set in its own alternate reality, the story has the creative freedom to deconstruct numerous issues about how Batman operates. It does this by having the Joker become sane after ingesting experimental drugs--drugs Batman forced down his throat.

During Joker's many critiques of Batman, he made use of public digital outlets to speak about these issues to the public. As one character pointed out: it's not exactly like Batman could Tweet back at him.

4 The Truth About Nazis

Joker Red Skull

There are many kinds of evil and villainy out there. The Joker is sadistic and cruel, but he is random in his attacks, an agent of primordial chaos in human form. This nihilistic malice is terrifying, but it is still less pernicious than the concentrated directed methodical hate of an ideology like Nazism--something even Joker is quick to insist when he encounters the Red Skull during the DC-Marvel crossover event.

For all of his cruelty, Joker has always been incredibly accepting of different beliefs, races, creeds, genders, and sexualities. To him, the only person who matters is Batman, so everyone else is equal. Even a madman like Joker understands the logical, ethical, and existential problems with Nazism.

3 Madness of the World

The Joker Restrained At Arkham Asylum

In Grant Morrison's graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth, it is revealed that Joker might actually be possessed of a form of super sanity. However, every day he wakes up into a mad world and the only way to cope is to go mad himself.

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This is why he assumes different personas, sometimes being a silly circus jackanape, other times assuming the identity of a sociopath. There are few people who would deny that the world is mad. That Joker responds by becoming even crazier does not help, but then he is not interested in making things better.

2 Killing Alfred

Bane kills Alfred

In the Batman story "City of Bane," the villain Bane takes over Gotham City. He hires the villains to replace the cops and takes up residence in Wayne Manor, taking Bruce Wayne's former butler Alfred as a hostage. When Batman's son Damien enters Gotham, Bane snaps the butler's neck in front of the boy.

Later, Joker angrily berates Bane for this--not because he objects to killing Alfred, but because Bane wasted the kill by not doing it in front of Batman. Alfred was Batman's father figure.  There are only two ways to truly hurt Batman--going after his father and his children--and according to Joker, Bane messed up his opportunity.

1 How to Hurt Batman

Three Jokers

Joker has hurt Batman in a way no one else can, because Joker understands Batman. He tortured Jason Todd to death. In fact, he has tortured all of Batman's adoptive children in one way or another.

After Alfred was killed, Joker animatronically manipulated the butler's corpse to taunt Batman. In their most recent encounter during the Three Jokers story, the Clown Prince even had Batman save and then forgive Joe Chill, the man who killed Bruce Wayne's parents. Having made peace with his greatest tragedy, Bruce is not psychologically unburdened, meaning that Joker will now be able to do even more damage to him than even Joe Chill did.

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