Ranking Every Joker Origin Worst To Best

5. Mad Love

Mad Love Joker Origin
DC Comics/Bruce Timm

Batman: Mad Love is one of the all-time great Batman stories.

Told in the Animated Series style by Bruce Timm and co-written by fellow BTAS alum Paul Dini, Mad Love chronicles the origin of Harley Quinn and details her abusive relationship with the Joker in explicit detail. It reveals how, while working as a psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum, she was manipulated by the Joker to the extent that she fell in love with him, assumed the Harley Quinn identity and broke him out of the Asylum, believing Batman to be the true villain in the pair's near constant cycle of violence.

During their therapy sessions, and in a bid to charm Quinn, Joker recounts a story from his childhood. He claims his father was abusive, and that the only time he ever saw his dad happy was when they went to the circus and observed a clown performing a classic routine. The next night, eager to win his father's affections, the childhood Joker greeted him with his dad's pants on, reenacted the skit, and tore a hole in them, only to have his nose broken for his troubles.

Later, while tied up and at the mercy of Quinn, Batman reveals that it was all a lie, claiming that it was just another tall-tale in the Clown Prince's list of tall-tales.

Batman Mad Love Joker Origin
DC Comics/Bruce Timm

He recounts the story about his abusive father, one about his alcoholic mom and another about him being a runaway orphan. All are said to be a ruse, but they go some way in speaking to the best Joker origin of all - the one that doesn't exist.

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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.