10 Worst Things The Joker Has Ever Done On-Screen

"Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?"

For most folks, this rather abstract question gets an obvious "no" in response. Why does Joker say it to his victims? Because he thinks it sounds cool. Not everything needs a grand, complicated reason behind it.

It's this oddball remark that helps Michael Keaton's Bruce realise that Joker was the fiend who gunned his parents down. We see a younger actor whose face is almost as demonic as Jack Nicholson's do the line and the crime. A stark (and controversial) departure from the Joe Chill story of the comics, Joker whacking the Waynes allowed Tim Burton to tell a story in which Batman and Joker inadvertently created one another.

Mugging Martha Wayne of her precious pearl necklace, Jack Napier opens fire on her husband and then herself. He lingers on young Bruce for a spell, contemplating whether or not to kill the youngster while he's at it. Thankfully, he opts to disappear into the darkness.

The fact he smiles gleefully throughout the crime reminds us that he was a brutal sadist long before he fell in the chemicals. To kill two people over pearls he doesn't even pick up is something else entirely. Atrociously cruel, this was one crime Joker eventually paid for.