Joker: Every Death Ranked

5. Penny Fleck

The film's greatest narrative trick is establishing a story that we all completely believed about Arthur's relationship with Thomas Wayne in the marketing and then playing around with ideas of reality and fantasy so much that while there's an alternative answer at the end, it's not entirely clear if it's real.

The important thing, though, is that Arthur comes to his own definitive answer, believing that his mother is a monster who hid the heinous crimes against Arthur of his youth - all of which shaped him as a man. She's revealed to be profoundly mentally ill but Arthur takes his revenge with great pleasure, suffocating her in her hospital bad while coldly calling her Penny to open the wound further.

It's a grim moment and one that marks the death of Arthur himself in a way, because the decision not to pull away from him as he pushes the pillow onto her face makes you feel almost complicit.