8 Comic Book Characters Who Broke The Joker

7. Terry McGinnis - Batman Beyond: Return Of The Joker

Batman Return of the Joker
Warner Bros. Animation

Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker may just be the best Batman film ever made - or at least in consideration for that award alongside Mask of the Phantasm and The Dark Knight. It was dark, gripping, and - as was the case with all the DCAU shows - wonderfully atmospheric.

Ultimately, though, it was just a fine continuation of the Batman Beyond animated series, which had taken the Dark Knight from the now familiar setting of an art-deco Gotham City, into a cyberpunk infused Neo-Gotham. It was a major breath of fresh air, and while Batman Beyond excelled at introducing new villains for the teen Batman Terry McGinnis to take on, the spectre of Bruce Wayne's old enemies lingered - none more so than the Clown Prince of Crime.

The Joker was never mentioned in the series, but that only added to the mystery of what had happened to the character. As the film reveals, Joker's last battle with Batman resulted in his own death, as a tortured and Joker-fied Robin turned a gun on his captor. But the clown leaves behind a parting gift - a microchip, that leaves behind his own personality on Tim Drake, the Robin who he'd tortured.

And thus Joker returns to the future, and while Bruce is aware of the threat posed, Terry is more complacent. He sees him as a bit of a joke, and while this works against the neo-Batman to begin with, McGinnis finds success in his final duel against Joker by mocking him. As he says, the "real" Batman never really talked to him, and with that in mind, McGinnis makes Joker lose his mask by insulting his talents as a comedian, completing the insult by laughing at him.

Will Friedle and Mark Hamill are tremendous in this sequence as Batman and Joker respectively, and the latter really sells how gotten to he is by the new Caped Crusader's insults.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.