10 Most Inappropriate Joker Storylines

To this day, there is one scene in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker that is hugely uncomfortable to watch. Of course, that scene is the reveal of what happened to poor Tim Drake back in the day.

In the Beyond landscape, Tim was never really mentioned in this show which took the world of Batman: The Animated Series and jumped ahead to 2039. Barbara Gordon is now Commissioner of Neo-Gotham, Dick Grayson left Gotham years prior for reasons not disclosed, and Terry McGinnis is this time's Batman under the mentorship of the elderly Bruce Wayne. But Tim? It's only with 2000's Return of the Joker movie where we finally get to see what happened to this one-time Robin.

At the crux of this picture, the mysterious re-emergence of the long-dead Clown Prince of Crime is explained by the Joker having put a microchip in Tim Drake decades prior. Without Tim even realising it, this allowed the Jester of Genocide's conscious to take over Drake's now-adult body and make that vessel a Joker replicate.

Earlier in the film, a flashback shows how Tim was kidnapped and tortured for three weeks by the Joker and Harley Quinn. Infected with the same chemicals that made the Joker, well, the Joker, this Robin is introduced to Batman and Batgirl as "Joker Jr." once our heroes locate him.

Upon being tasked with shooting the World's Greatest Detective, Tim manages to get control of his senses long enough to instead fire at - and seemingly kill - the Joker. From there, the youngster emotionally breaks down in a sequence that was stunningly, heartbreakingly delivered by those behind Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker.