http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SelfDemonstrating/TheJoker

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— Shamus Young, Stolen Pixels (who put it quite well, if I do say so myself...) "The Joker is the kind of guy who will come up with a plan to kidnap a scientist and have them create a super-pheromone that will attract little old ladies to a warehouse so Joker can feed them into a woodchipper and use the resulting paste to make counterfeit money so he can buy fuel for his ice rocket that will freeze the entire city which will cause everyone to flock to his beverage vendors who will sell them hot chocolate laced with a mutagen designed to drive everyone insane."

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Well! Finally got my own page, did I? 'bout time! I was created in The '40s, for Pete's sake! I've been around way longer than Superham's cousin! Why'd SHE get her own page first?!note Rhetorical. I know exactly what you're all going to say. Weelll, it's not too bad, I guess... at least I can still gloat to Lexy about getting my own page first... As for that guy with the yellow ring...? He only wishes he was half as scary as me!

Oh, you were looking for information on moi? I'm flattered, really, but, uh... SHOULDN'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM ALREADY?! All right, all right, fine. Here's My Card (from the bottom of the deck of course) and the lowdown...

I am the Monster Clown hiding under your bed!note Eeew, you might need to clean out the dust from under there, chap.

Of course, a true fan would want all the gory details fleshed out, yes? So then. There's me, and there's the Bat, two peas in a pod. I'm the better-looking pea, of course, but that's beside the point. Billy Finger and Bobby Kane, inspired by both the playing card and Conrad Veidt's deliciously chilling title character in the 1920s film The Man Who Laughs, conjured me up in good ol' 1940, back when heroes were allowed to kill, everyone Asian spoke with their R's and L's mixed up, and the art was worse than something drawn by a six-year old with crayons ('course, Jerry Robinson said he had a hand too, but that's not my department)... I gave that flying rodent a good runaround in Batman #1 (I was modest enough to give him the title...), and soon enough, I began carving out my own little niche.

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But, as it turned out, that wasn't enough! No, they planned to whack me in my second appearance! Can you believe that?! But, someone (in this case, Whitney Ellsworth) came through for me, and I lived through a self-inflicted stabbing after all. So, instead of dying painfully, I only had to endure six months of agonizing hospital time! Those were the glory days... I'd show up, make a bit of trouble, kill a couple of people, get foiled by Fatman, and escape at the last minute. Gambling rackets, sniping FBI agents, I've seen (and done) it all. I was even executed once, y'know. 'course, The Grim Reaper couldn't hold me, and I came back... just in time to witness the rising of The Comics Code. (Hoo... and some people thought I was evil and insane... heh heh heh...)

Maybe I should've stayed buried a bit longer, cuz, you all know what happened next. The Dork Knight and that brat Robin were joined by Batwoman, Bat-Girl, Bat-Hound, Bat-Mite (yeesh, what's next? Bat-butler?), and no one was allowed to kill ever again. And we all lived happily ever after... NOT! Then again, I can't say that it was ever boring. I was allowed to play with bigger toys — everything from my own utility belt to giant record players (where the heck does Gotham get all that stuff, anyhow?). I even managed to get all of Gotham City to marvel at my enormous BONER! note By the way, when I said "Boner", I meant "Mistake".

But nothing lasts forever, does it? (Save the memory of Tom and Jerry.)

Come The Bronze Age of Comic Books, I was finally allowed to roam free again, and what a joy it was! Blowing off people's heads with exploding cigars and feeding them to sharks! It seems that finally, the heads at DC Comics got brains - it was here that I got my own series! And it lasted all of... nine issues... And I had to lose most of the time.

*COUGH*

Ah, well, who cares about all that? The '70s might have returned me to life, but it was The '80s that were really my heyday. You might recall an obscure little book called The Killing Joke written by some nobody called Alan Moore. If you haven't... GET OVER THERE AND READ IT, AND DON'T CALL YOURSELF A FAN OF MINE UNTIL YOU'VE MEMORIZED EVERY WORD!

Done? Good. Less than a year afterward, DC made the historical decision of killing off Robin — 'bout time, too. But just a little heads-up, it was Jason Todd, not Dick Grayson. Who was Jason Todd? Who cares? All you need to know is that every reader hated his guts, enough that they voted to have him die. But with an outfit like that, can you really blame them? Heck, at least thirteen of those votes came from yours truly!

Anyhoo, the poll was set up, the calls were made, and I gave poor li'l Jason a spanking he'll never forget. Rest in pieces. Then I got shot. And got trapped on an exploding helicopter. And vanished for all of a few months. And I still made it back in time for the holidays! From there on, my life's been just one giant rollercoaster ride, 'specially since I killed Jimmy Gordon's wife during that earthquake.

And THEN, I had a shiny new show opening for Bratgirl, the Dead Hood and all Batsy's little sidekicks! Those brats who make my Bats fat, slow, and weak. Tsk TSK. They found my lack of face... disturbing. HA! And if you thought that was bad, wait 'til you hear about Eric Border-

Hold on, where're you going? D'ya think we're done with my life? Not even close! I've poisoned all the fish on the eastern and western seaboard and tried to patent them! I've become God and brought the whole universe to its knees! I've killed Siskel & Ebert, fer Pete's sake!

But no, you don't care about any of that, do you? I bet you came to this page because you were so impressed by that pencil trick, or my apocryphal shenanigans afterwards. No? The dreadlocked barefoot monkey-man with that sexy, sexy laugh, then? Perhaps you remember the days when I faced off with Adam West - who it looks like I rubbed off on? The pointy-chinned me who's still fighting the Dark Side? The young, handsome version of me with the fiery red hair, currently running amok in Gotham? The meaty ol' me played by Jack Nicholson? The tattooed fella, coming to your nightmares via a quick stop by ol' Jon'zzy's pad? The washed-up comedian turned giggling anarchist who ruled the Roman Empire once upon a time? The Silver Age-esque me, sounding a lot like that jolly good sport who even I'm not crazy enough to address? Or was it God's gift to Gotham, the world, and that Grinchy old bat (delivered on Christmas Eve!, even!)? Kept on giving, too, when, instead of killing the second bird-brain, I tortured him into joining the dark side (just like I did with little Timmy in the Batman Beyond continuity), faking his own death, and becoming an Arkham Knight, years before taking over Arkham Asylum and turning into a twenty-foot tall muscleman! (Although that one didn't end too well. Object lesson on steroid use, kids! Oh yeah, and I still continued to torture the drug-induced Bat-Jerky to the point of insanity from beyond the grave! What FUN! That is, until he managed to lock me away forever in the depths of his subconscious. NO FAIR, BATSY! (How was I supposed to know that the exact moment I took over Batsy's psyche was the moment that Good ol' Doctor Crane was injecting him with enough fear toxin to make the entire eastern seaboard go bonkers and thus I was the one that ended up getting scared, somehow protecting Fatman from psychological harm?)

OOH! Or when I got Birdbrain to bite my shiny metal crowbar? No? The one with all those kid superheroes, who knows his way around a contraction? The old classic model, fresh off that weird island and going up against RoboCop? Or how about those times where I was a woman? Maybe that neat little corner of the multiverse where I've got teeth to die for, coattails longer than my whole body, and managed to accomplish every other escapade on the list? note I even got away clean after helping Batsy save the city from my new clique! Or how I made Super-freak go nuts by tricking him into killing his wife and making Metropolis go BOOM by placing a nuke?

'Course, any version of me is good as long as you don't think I'm that other psychotic, fourth-wall breaking clownnote I resemble that remark! who works for those Marvel guys. I'm not really fond of Mr. Wilson, but I do love friending him on that Facebook thingy and asking him to "do that pencil trick". It just gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling inside. (Oh, and if you value your life, please don't confuse me for those teenage biker punks who swiped my look. I also don't work for the British Library. Nor am I that so called magic anime clown Kefka, who has the gall to steal my infectious laughter!note That talentless hack would be nothing without Ted Woolsey writing his cue cards! Nothing! I'm also not related to that game show with the big slot machine. And I'm definitely not one of those phantom thieves who go around robbing folks who just wanna have a good time, but hey, I do like their funky-fresh moves!note Especially that Panther girl, who looks like she's been taking cues from one of good ol' Batsy's many, many, MANY, lady friends! Though I'm not sure what to say about that Oracle wannabe, she really works better on a seat if you catch my drift. Unless, of course, you don't value it, then by all means!)

And, if after all that I've still managed to leave folks some moral wriggle-room, you can check out my spiffy YMMV page here, not to mention all the other mind-blowing, rib-tickling, heart-melting aspects of ME!

Well, that conversation was certainly uplifting, wouldn't you say? Look at how widely you're grinning. Ooh, and check it out! Your complexion is clearing right up. And that hair...! So rich a shade of green that only your undertaker'll know for sure. And that laugh! Isn't it beautiful?

Ohhhh, don't give me that look. You were the one who took that card from me! Sheesh, how dumb can ya get? Straighten up. It's not the end of the world. Only yours. Annnd... there you go, now you see the joke. The very biggest and bestest smile of them all.

Let's see all the places I've popped up in the media...

The ol' Classic Funny Books

The Big Silver Screen

Live on the tube

Animated as much as I am!

The big stage!

Those Video Games that all the kids these days are playin'

Stories by my adoring fans

And here are some tropes that apply to various versions of ME:

So. You've made it to the end of my little carnival ride. Unfortunately, you're supposed to be dead by now. Will you excuse me while I just go shoot the architect? Oh, never mind. A loser like you isn't worth going after . Some people just can't take a joke!