The Joker has been around for 75 years now, and in that time he's murdered a lot of people. Until Batman figures how to put a cap on that, the numbers are only going to grow, especially now that's there's a new and extra crazy Joker from Jared Leto in Suicide Squad. Some brave soul has recently counted every single time a movie Joker has killed someone and edited it into a supercut for our amusement. Needless to say, the death tally is really high.
Good thing this video didn't include the comics because then it would be like two hours long. The video comes from YouTuber Mr. Sunday Movies, who has made similar kill count videos for characters like Superman and Batman. (Batman actually has TWO different ones). In fact, Zack Snyder once credited the Batman supercut for the reasoning behind why it was okay for Batman to kill people in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. This Joker kill count may be the highest one yet. Using every appearance of the character in movies - be them live action or animated - Mr. Sunday Movies has concluded that combined the Joker has killed at least 1,028 people.
So how is that at all possible? In the description for the video, Mr. Sunday Movies admits that in some cases the number has to be guesstimated, considering that there's no way to tally up the exact number of people that would die if a building collapsed. Interestingly enough, the movies with the highest number of casualties are animated ones, specifically Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, and The Dark Knight Returns: Part II. Those Jokers each killed over 100 hundred people in maybe one minute, something even Heath Ledger's Joker can't attest too.
In terms of the live action Jokers, Jack Nicholson's version from 1989's Batman has the most kills with a whopping 50 people. Heath Ledger's from The Dark Knight only has 23 in comparison, although there is an argument to be made that most of his kills are decidedly more brutal and twisted than Nicholson's. Also, a lot of Nicholson's kills are reported and happen offscreen. Amazingly this video didn't have any kills from Cesar Romero's Joker from the 1960's Batman: The Movie, but I guess a guy who has groovy surf fights doesn't exactly have the darkness for murder.
The final kills come from the Joker seen in The Killing Joke, which recently premiered to much criticism from fans and critics alike. There's no footage from the latest take on the iconic villain in Suicide Squad, but that's probably just because the editor wasn't able to get his hands on any footage from a film that just hit theaters. There might be an updated version of the video one day, so keep it here at Cinema Blend and we'll keep you informed.
