10 Best Joker Movie Moments

2. The Magic Trick (The Dark Knight)

Joker Pencil Trick
Warner Bros.

Anyone who wasn't already on-board with Heath Ledger's Joker certainly was after witnessing this - a brutal act of violence, made even more so by the fact that it was darkly humorous and literally came out of nowhere.

There aren't many characters that could just walk in on a meeting between the most dangerous criminal minds in the city and have the stones to murder one of them in such a bizarre and painful manner. By introducing us to the character in this fashion, Ledger made sure that nothing was off the table and everything was a possibility. All bets were off.

Unpredictability was the key to the success of Ledger's performance. If he'd shot or stabbed that goon, the scene would be less effective because that's a pretty normal way to go. A pencil through the eye socket, on the other hand, is probably about as common as being killed by a blimp.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!