7 Terrifying Episodes Hidden In Unscary TV Shows

3. Joker's Favor - Batman: The Animated Series

Really, this entire list could be Batman: the Animated Series. Harvey Dent goes full Jekyll and Hyde, an invisible monster stalks a child, Matt Hagen f*cking melts. This was a cartoon! For kids!

When it comes to compelling horror straight from the best of comic books, however, no one tops Mark Hamill’s Joker. Funnier than Ledger, scarier than Nicholson, Hamill’s Joker may be the finest take to date on Batman’s eternal foe.

Joker’s Favor is about what it’s like when Joker happens to you.

Charlie Collins is an ordinary man with an ordinary life, up to the precise moment he directs a bit of road rage at the worst person alive.

As punishment, Joker takes Charlie’s driver’s license, granting him his life for a favor to be named later.

Charlie flees. Plot ensues. Things end in a dark alley, because Batman. Batman is elsewhere. Is Joker menacing poor, put-upon Charlie Collins?

Not bloody likely. Charlie is threatening Joker.

Cackling, sweating, pushed beyond sanity, Charlie has picked up one of Joker’s own explosives, intending to detonate them both. This man has a wife, a child, a life, and he no longer cares. Killing the person he hates is enough. That’s what happens when the Joker gets in your head. Terrified Joker screaming for Batman’s help is gratifying in a good-guys-win sort of way, but Charlie reminds us that, at the end of the day, the Joker is right. Any of us can snap. Anyone can choose evil. That there? That’s scary.