Jerome Valeska, or later known as The Joker, was one of the three central antagonists of the Gotham Trilogy, along with Oswald Cobblepot aka The Penguin and Edward Nygma aka The Riddler.
He appeared as a minor-turned-major antagonist in Gotham, the main antagonist of Gotham: Legend of the Dark Knight and serves as a posthumous overarching antagonist in Gotham: Beyond the Dark Knight.
He was a deranged and psychotic anarchist whose depravity and ruthlesness outshine even the most calculating and untouchable criminals of Gotham City. The Joker followed no rules, no morals, he wasn't particularly interested in money or power, his main goal was simply to spread terror and madness acorss Gotham, serving as the moral opposite of Batman, the heroic symbol of justice, order and heroism.
Personality[]
"You will be a curse upon Gotham! Children will wake from sleep, screaming at the thought of you! Your legacy will be death and madness!" - Paul Cicero to his son before his demise.
Jerome Valeska was shown to be a manipulative, highly intelligent, unpredictable, ruthless, sadistic and very humorous and exuberant man. He was cheerful and charismatic, but also even more vicious whenever he felt like. He proved to have a theatricality to his madness and incredible showmanship abilities as noted by Theo Galavan, something he has shown across all of his appearances, such as before killing Fred Mitchells, one of the earliests being when he sneaked up above the ceiling paneling and right after he dropped in front of him or when he tried to kill Bruce Wayne in front of an audience during the earlier days of their rivalry. Eventually Jerome began to lose his need for an audience, as he realized that it is a huge weakness which his enemies can use against him.
Unlike most of Gotham's criminals, Jerome wasn't entirely interested in money, power or gaining political influence at all. Although, he did build up as vast criminal empire (which used prostitution, sexual slavery, drug dealing and trafficking, human trafficking, arms dealing and trafficking, organ trafficking ect.) for himself which he managed to control effectively almost without any problems, eventually becoming the sole kingpin of half of Gotham's criminal underworld, Jerome’s main interest lied within personal enjoyment of chaos, anarchy and mayhem. Personally, he viewed money as useless to him, but he did understand the value of it from the view of other people, using it for more pragmatic reasons such as financing his operations and/or paying his henchmen. Many have theorized that he built this criminal empire so he could bring about the corruption of society and eventually destroy all order within Gotham by bringing down and corrupting it's citizens to become the most deplorable and evil versions of themselves, by luring them in with money, drugs, sex, power or anything else they have desired. Most of the individuals who worked with Jerome have claimed that the only way they could rise through the ranks is by presenting Jerome with a heinous crime which could be literally anything such as theft or even rape, the only way they could be promoted is by making Valeska laugh with these crimes. This just shows how truly deplorable Valeska was and that he would've done anything heinous just for a chuckle.
One of the key aspects of his personality is his ego and narcissim. He refused to obey anyone else, but himself, even when did so, he had ulterior motives and goals to betray them later. A great example of this is the way he managed to work within Theo Galavan's criminal organization and eventually betray him, taking calculated detours from objectives he sent to do like when he began to work together with one of Galavan's blackmailers in secret just so he could annoy Galavan for his own self-amusment. These are great indicators which prove that despite his psychopathy and obvious-yet-questionable insanity, Jerome was able to come up with calculating long-term goals. His plans were usually intricate and needlessly complex, sometimes finding the challenge of them becoming a fruition or a failure entertaining nonetheless if they succeeded or otherwise and usually showcased his cunning and ingenuity in his designs. According to his own words, he doesn't want to be the product of his enviroment, he wants his enviroment to be a product of himself. This was perfectly reflected with the numerous serial killers, cannibals, rapists and other depraved people who surrounded him in his cult, however this statement is ironic, considering that Jerome himself can be stated to be a product of his abusive enviroment.
The reason why Jerome's insanity can be questioned is the very fact that he is shown to be perfectly aware of his actions and the fact they are both morally and legally wrong. Despite this awareness, he still shows no remorse or guilt for any of his actions, but rather takes sadistic delight in them, even recording them for his own amusement or when he smiled at the notion when his father prophecized him being the ultimate curse upon Gotham. He also appears to have deeply nihilistic views on the world, viewing things like religion, love, life and morals as meaningless. He is largely defined by his belief that deep-down human beings are purely evil like himself, they just need an excuse, like one bad day, to unleash it. Despite his nihilistic beliefs, he shown to deeply care about his reputation and legacy, as he was obsessed with the idea of him being remembered as Gotham's most notorious crime lord, which points out his hypocritical egomania. Another pointer at his narcissim is the fact he simply killed one of his fellow Maniax member, Robert Greenwood for simply stealing his line. He has also developed a personal hobby of randomly breaking into the homes of ordinary citizens and killin them, or just to cause trouble in his daily life for his own amusement. A good example of this is when he simply urged a kid to urinate into the gas tank of his own father, a police officer, then called the GCPD to arrest the boy. He also liked to try out his new weapons and gadgets by shooting at random people in the street or taking one of his personal prisoners for a ride in his car, running over and shooting people.
Despite his psychopathy, Jerome was very much charming and charismatic, which really helps his manipulative attitude as well. He was perfectly able to read people almost without an effort, making him able to manipulate them to his own ends. This charisma mixed with his reckless behavior, earned him the respect and fanatical obsession of thousands within the city, and even the romantic lust of certain individuals such as Harleen Quinzel. He is also all too delighted to forge alliances to his benefit, especially if he is able to manipulate those joining him, as he appears to do with Oswald Cobblepot after he landed in prison. That said, because he knew that Oswald would likely turn on him because of his methods, he had some of his men keep an eye on him. This shows that Jerome is cunning enough to have a back-up plan even against those he barely knows.
His mere presence was corrupting thanks to his reckless, cruel, manipulative, unpredictable and charismatic personality. He had the sheer ability to corrupt even the meekerst of men, turning them into killers and eventually psychotic criminals like most of his followers such as Charlie Collins. Not only that, but many of the other equally heinous villains in Gotham became just as despicable like him after Jerome giving them words of "advice", such as the case with Jonathan Crane (who was quite bad already, but not without few redeeming qualities) who changed into a possibly more heinous version of himself after Jerome advised him to get rid of his love interest. Some of his sick psychological torture methods had turned criminals like Victor Zsasz (before the torture, he was just a regular, highly-skilled yet detached assassin) and Edward Nygma into far more darker and mentally unstable versions of themselves (making Victor into a delusional psychotic serial killer like in the comics for example).
One of his most noticeable traits was his disturbed sense of humor which was accompanied with a never-ending, manic giggling and outright laughter towards everything which fit right within Jerome's own beliefs on what was funny. He was sadomasochistic, merciless and destructive, so he found immense joy in the idea of pain and death towards others, he smiled broadly when Richard Sionis was strangled to death and shot an injured police officer who interrupted his broadcast from the GCPD, claiming he had "no manners." Jerome demonstrated a fondness for sarcasm, using it in a sick sense such as telling his father, who was blind "long time, no see" after breaking into his house. He enjoyed his own pain as well, making him suicidal as demonstrated while playing Russian Roulette, shot himself three times in a calm manner and how he found Commissioner Essen spitting at him and headbutting him as "strangely pleasant" and laughing crazily, respectively. Even while being stabbed and killed he died with a bloody smile on his face. Post-revival and Post-Ace Chemicals, he has proven himself to be an even more certifiable and overall darker character who wants to see himself on a much larger stage and bring out the insanity he knows so well that exists in his fellow Gotham citizens.
Regarding his parentage, Jerome absolutely hated his mother and father. Though he finally discovered that Paul Cicero was his birth father, Jerome initially seemed to have a low opinion of him, claiming he was "pathetic" and a "creep." Even after learning that Cicero was his birth father, Jerome merely stated "I'll be damned" in an easygoing and nonchalant manner, only shortly afterwards realizing the humor in the revelation. Cicero was also somewhat unsympathetic and insensitive towards his son and admits he was a bad father but loved him nevertheless and constantly gave him shelter and a home, even helping Jerome cover up his matricide for that reason alone. Whilst meeting with him after breaking into his house, Jerome mockingly called him "pops", "daddy" and "dad" all before killing him. His mother was his first ever victim. She was stated to be cold, abusive, defamatory and vituperative to her son and highly promiscuous and alcoholic, but Jerome claims that the only reason he killed her was because she asked him to do the dishes while having sex with a clown, which pushed him over the edge once too far.
His most and probably the only definable relationship he has, was with his archnemesis, Bruce Wayne. In the beginning, Jerome utterly despised the boy, simply for his naive behaivor and wanted to kill him out of pure spite, making fun of the death of his parents on some occasions. Things drastically changed during their encounter after Jerome's resurrection. They argued about whether Gotham's citizens are corrupt and vile as Jerome believed, or they can be changed for the better as Bruce believed. These exchanges and later their fight in the House of Mirrors changed Jerome's opinion of Bruce, as he began to view him as a kindred spirit: a boy who had suffered a tragic trauma connected to his family. Jerome began to show a twisted brotherly affection torwards Bruce, trying to make him embrace the hidden insanity caused by the loss of his parents. This twisted goal and obsession has carried on throughout both of their lives as Jerome became Bruce's worst enemy as the Batman, trying to break Bruce's mind and molding him into a ruthless and sadistic monster very much like Jerome himself.
His Evil ranking[]
In General[]
- Made two attempts at killing Bruce Wayne and later made even more and horrifying attempts at driving Bruce into insanity and molding him into a sadistic murderer like himself through antagonizing him by torturing and sometimes even killing his loved ones.
- Although Gotham has many villains, he stands as THE worst. For the most part, he kills, rapes, tortures and corrupts people simply out of sadistic amusement. He has killed, enough people, including children, to fill entire graveyards.
- He often encourages avarege and troubled citizens to commit heinous crimes, he either kills them later out of fun or just calls the cops on them.
- He causes everyday trouble for many people with annoying yet harmful antics just for perosnal amusement.
- Although he has comedic moments which can make the audience laugh, none of those excuse his actions, nor does it dilute his evil as he is taken deadly-serious in-universe and these moments only show deranged and rotten to the core he is.
- Regularly abuses Harley Quinn both psychologically and physically, despite her being the only woman who loves him romantically.
- Kills and tortures his henchmen on a daily basis, for various reasons.
- Although he is insane and deranged, he is perfectly aware of his actions and the gravity of his actions, even willing to repeat them untill the day he finally dies.
- He is responsible for numerous criminal activities across the city (including cannibalism, rape, vandalism, arson, ect.).
- He is also responsible for creating many Near Pure Evil and Pure Evil villains across the trilogy.
- Although he has a past of being abused by his own family across his childhood, which would normally make him sympathetic and tragic, his ruthless methods of killing those he used to love and other crimes make him a monster devoid of any sympathy or humane traits.
- Furthermore, when Bruce shows sympathy to Jerome after learning more about his past, offers him help through rehabilitation and a chance to redeem himself, Jerome just laughs it off and refuses the offer which resulted him in falling into a vat of acid in Ace Chemicals which finally completes his transformation into the Joker.
- He even put the blame on Batman (Bruce) numerous times which later turned out to be either a hypocritical manipulation tactic or the delusions of the Joker.
- Despite these in the end, it was clear that he is repsonsible for his own misery and ruined his own life by rejecting all chances of redemption, chosing to chase after his own selfish goals instead of reconsidering his life.
- Though he claims to have a "brotherly love" torwards Bruce, it is merely out of a twisted obsession andd when Bruce refuses to join him, Jerome becomes hell-bent on tormenting Bruce for his entire life.
- Almost every single character is either disgusted or terrified of him.
Gotham[]
- He murdered his mother (who kind of deserved it) and once confronted by Leslie and Gordon, he laughed about it.
- Acted as a ruthless enforcer for the Galavan Crime Family, admitting that he took pleasure in killing people.
- He kills Andrea Beaumount's father even though he still paid his debts to Theo Galavan, even though Galavan ordered him not to kill him. This event caused Andrea to become a villain known as the Phantasm in the future.
- Shows no honor for the Galavans, going as far as double-crossing them for his own benefit: one time, he's hired by Theo Galavan and tasked to find his blackmailer. He succeeds in doing so, but allies with the extortionist (later revealed as the lover of Galavan's wife) so he could later manipulate Galavan into packing the money, supposedly for the ransom. After the deed is done, Jerome incapacitates the blackmailer and orchestrates a shootout to make it look like he's the culprit, ultimately getting killed by the cops in the process.
- He kills his uncle by setting him and his returant on fire (although Zach kind of deserved it).
- He brutally murders his father (who despite being a bad father, he didn't deserve his demise), but not before smiling when his father foretold him to become a curse upon Gotham leaving a legacy of terror and madness behind.
- Throughout his entire time with Galavan, he planned to kill him and usurp him.
- He manipulates Theo Galavan into breaking out some of the most dangerous criminals of Arkham Asylum, form a gang called the Maniax with Jerome's leadership and allow them to wreak havoc across Gotham.
- He and the Maniax kidnapped and murdered a group of innocent people by throwing them off a skyscraper.
- Set fire a bus full of cheerleaders.
- He and his cronies sneaked into the GCPD and slaughtered almost everyone in the building, only leaving Leslie Thompkins, Kristen Kringle and Edward Nygma alive. He even killed Sarah Essen, one of the very few morally just Commissioners of the GCPD.
- After gaining a cult following thanks to televising and broadcasting his crimes, he betrays the Galavans and begins to wreak havoc across the city with his cult.
- Took those in attendance at a children's charity hostage, killing the deputy mayor of Gotham.
- Tormented a 14-year-old Bruce Wayne by threatening to kill Alfred Pennyworth and Leslie Thompkins, taking him hostage and slowly slitting his throat, intending to kill him.
- Right after his resurrection, he kills a police officer, an innocent civilian and gags Leslie Thompkins.
- He kidnaps Dwight Pollard, the man who resurrected him, and after reattaching his cut off face with a stapler, has Dwight help him build a bomb at the power plant of the city. He then proceeds to tie Dwight to the chair and blows him up along with the power plant.
- Before he blows up the power plant and cuts out all electric power in the city, he broadcasts a speech to his folllowers and other citizens in Gotham, inspiring them to whatever heinous deed they wish to do so.
- Tormented Bruce by sending his goons to kill Alfred, showinghim various sick and twisted games where people got hurt and killed before trying to kill him again.
- He tried to provoke and goad Bruce into killing him in order to corrupt the boy and prove his twisted worldview to him.
- Took over Arkham Asylum and produced an insanity-inducing serum, having Jonathan Crane use it on a business man, graphically killing him.
- Bashed in the head of a singer with a microphone stand.
- Kidnapped a family man, brainwashed him and had the Dollmaker preform a surgery on the man, making him look exactly like himself. Jerome used the doppleganger to fake his own death.
- The man pleaded Jerome to spare his family, to which Jerome said that he will do so, instead he murdered the entire family for kicks.
- Kidnapped Bruce and many other people, strapping bombs to all of their necks (with the exception of Bruce), threatening to blow their heads up. He had his minions kill the police officers in the area as well. Once his plan was foiled, he planned to blow up the heads of the hostages anyways.
- Wanted to provoke Bruce into killing him on the stage, however, when Bruce refused, Jerome wasted no time in beating him up and humiliating him in front of the crowd.
- Unleashed the laughing gas on the city, killing hundreds of people.
- Captured Alfred and had him tortured, using a drill to injure one of his knees permanently, causing Alfred to use a cane to walk for the rest of his life.
- Kidnapped several people from Bruce's life and brainwashed them to act as servants and/or relatives of Jerome and Bruce, even attempting to brainwash Bruce as well, so Jerome could act as the boy's "big brother."
- Captured two individuals who bare resemblence to Thomas and Martha Wayne, having them hypnotized by Jervis Tetch to be his pawns. He attempted to recreate the night on which Bruce lost his parents to satiate his obsession with Bruce. He later murders the two individuals before attempting to murder James Gordon and Leslie Thompkins who were also put under Jervis Tetch's hypnosis.
- During his 10 year time pretending to be braindead, he sent secret instructions to his followers across Gotham City, so he could have "one big surprise party" for Bruce Wayne's return.
- After revealing that he has been faking amnesia and catatonic state for 10 years, he enacts petty revenge on Edward Nygma and Victor Zsasz by putting them through psychological torture in shock therapy, this later caused the two villains to become even more deranged and evil versions of themselves. For example, before this Zsasz was simply a detached assassin, however after this event, he became the deranged serial killer known from the comics.
- He attempted to unleash deadly chemicals upon Gotham to destroy the city further.
- He attempted to destroy everything connected to the Wayne Family as a "welcome home gift" for Bruce.
- Attempts to kill Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Lee and Gordon by throwing her into a pot of boiling chemicals.
- Even if the chemicals wouldn't kill her, she would've been scarred both physically and psychologicall for the rest of her life.
- Freed all of the Arkham inmates and flew over Gotham in a hot air balloon filled with a more lethal version of the laughing gas with the intent to pop the balloon, exposing the citizens to the toxic gas.
Gotham: Legend of the Dark Knight[]
- By the time the series takes place, Joker is confirmed to be in control over half of Gotham's criminal underworld, and his crimes not only include the likes of organized crime and drug trafficking, but also sexual slavery, mass murders, mass poisionings and many more. He also lets his minions go freely during the night and allows them to whatever twisted crime they can think of, rewarding them with money if he finds the crime in question hilarious.
- He intentionally provokes his rivals, Penguin and Black Mask evetnually causing a massive gang war in Gotham during which not only cops and criminals died, but also innocent civilians.
- Kidnaps Catwoman after she saved Batman from one of his traps and tried to have her chopped into mincemeat, plannig to send her remains in a can of catfood, mailing to Batman to gloat about it.
- Taunted the Phantasm, Andrea Beaumount about her father's death and later blew her up, causing massive emotional pain for Bruce as she was his first ever girlfriend. Whether Joker knew about their relationship or not is still debated to this day.
- He manipulated Harleen Quinzel to become his minion, Harley Quinn. Although she truly loves the Joker, he only uses her as a means to an end to fulfill his personal sexual desires.
- After he heard of how struggling defence attorney, Harvey Dent defended the Penguin's right-hand man in court, he all but outright forces Harvey into working for him.
- With Harvey's help, he turns one of his drug dealers into an informant of the GCPD so he could screw with the operations of Black Mask and Penguin.
- He has his men burn down the Iceberg Lounge while still having people inside it.
- Once he needs bail money to bust him out of jail, he sends Harvey to pick it up, sending him on a traumatic journey and almost got killed if it weren't for the help of Gordon and Batman.
- After realizing something went wrong when Harvey went to pick up his money, he enters his house and tries to intimidate him into telling the truth.
- One his compound gets under attack, he uses one of his henchmen as a human shield, resulting in his death.
- Kills every single assassin sent by Penguin after him. Although this was entirely in self defense.
- Tricks Penguin, Batman, Gordon and their allies into thinking he is going straight for Penguin, when instead he goes to Harvey and his wife, Rachel instead.
- Kills Martin Thatcher in front of Harvey and Rachel just for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
- He plans to send Harvey to kill Penguin with him staying with Rachel back in their house, implying that he would've killed her if Harvey didn't convince him to send Rachel instead.
- He sends Rachel Dent to kill the Penguin, however one of Penguin's men accidentally killed her.
- While staying back at the house, Joker burns half of Harvey's face with acid just to make fun of his nickname "Two-Face" and the fact that Harvey was diagnosed with split personality disorder. This and the previously mentioned deed lead to Harvey becoming a villain himself.
- After realizing that his right-hand man, Johnny Frost was the rat within his organization the whole time, he kidnaps his wife, rapes her while recording it and sends the video footage to him as punishment for working with Penguin behind-the-scenes.
- After Johnny confessed to hating Joker with all his heart and committed suicide to prevent a brutal death by the latter, Joker began to pettily shoot his corpse repeatedly out of anger and spite.
- He makes a deal to cause mass murder in Bosnia with Ra's Al Ghul, only to break the deal and kidnap Jason Todd, faking his death.
- After kidnapping Jason, he began to torture him for two and a half years, manipulating him into thinking that Batman has abandoned him.
- The way he tortured Jason Todd proved to be so brutal and horrifying that even Harley Quinn was disgusted by this. The event made her realize that Joker would be a bad father for their accidentally concieved child, so Harley had to disappear for 9 months in order to give birth to Lucy and give her a better life by having her sister raise the child. Joker didn't care and/or realize that Harley has gone missing.
- He shot and paralyzed Barbara Gordon, just to take nude photos of her and torrment James Gordon and Jason Todd with said photos.
- In addition to this, he continually mocked the romance between Jason Todd and Barbara Gordon.
- He psychologically tormented James Gordon, just to prove his delusional philosophy to Batman.
- Kidnapped a 12-year-old Carrie Kelley during Christmas and forced him to watch running over and killing innocent civilians before attempting to kill her.
- In addition, he only did this so Harley could take photos of Carrie and Batman embracing each-other. He later showed these photos to Jason, tricking him into thinking that Batman has truly abandoned him.
- After two and a half years of torturing Jason, he makes a video in which he makes Jason confess to his hatred torwards Batman and then shoot him in the head without a care in the world. He later sent this video to Batman on Christmas Eve, after this event Joker made fun of Batman's failure to find Jason all these years.
- Murdering five of Black Mask's henchmen for no reason other than to intimidate him.
- Betraying Black Mask by gagging him and his henchmen, along with the Red Hood’s henchmen, nearly burning them all alive just to get Red Hood’s attention.
- After realizing that the Red Hood was indeed Jason Todd, he began to mock him and recall the memories of torturing him for so long.
- Prevented Batman from disarming a bomb, intending for Batman to die with him and Jason.
- After he learns about Batman and Catwoman dating each-other, he kills every single one of his henchmen who are known to be married out of sheer anger.
- He reveals a footage of Maria Kyle's suicide, causing emotional suffering for both Batman and Catwoman.
- He tortures Batman using a surgical drill to penetrate his head, suggesting it will render him unable to recognize anybody. After this he planned to kill every single one of Batman's friends and family members, to make sure that no one will distract Batman from "playing" with Joker.
- He attempted to have both Batman and Catwoman killed in the destroyed Ace Chemicals rigged with explosives, holding Selina captive in the building forcing Bond to search for her.
- While Batman was searching for Catwoman, he learned that Joker has kept photos of every single loved one of Bruce who died or got hurt because Joker to haunt and remind him of the fact that as long as Joker lives, Batman will never be happy or have peace in life.
- Following his arrest, he secretly staged an assassination attempt on Bruce and Selina, including bombing the grave of Bruce's parents, and framed Selina for it by making it look like she betrayed Bruce, causing a fallout between the two and severing their relationship for 12 years.
- This also lead to Bruce pushing everbody away he loves because he feared that they will be targeted too if they still remain in a positive relationship with Bruce. The only ones remained at his side was Alfred, Leslie Thompkins and James Gordon.
- This also lead to Seline living a depressing and lonely life in Chicago, eventually struggling to earn enough money legally to financially support herself and her daughter from Bruce.
- He has his gang steal the military technology and the 4 experimental energy generators of Wayne Enterprises, killing many of the security guards and innocent workers within Wayne Tower.
- When Batman visits him in prison, rather than giving him useful information, all he told him was that Selina Kyle had the anwsers he was looking for, he even told him this primarily because he took delight in the irony of the situation since he knew they were estranged from one another. He also happily confessed to arranging the assassination attempt and framing Selina for it, which caused them to become estranged in the first place, all so he could still find a way to give him an empty world as petty payback for Batman giving a bit too much attention to Selina and not Joker. This almost made Batman break his no kill rule, by attacking and strangling the Joker, but not before Nightwing stopped Batman for actually killing him
- While Batman and Nightwing leave, Joker begins to mock him by saying that even Nightwing cares more about the Joker, instead of Catwoman. This statement proved to be so sickening that Nightwing himself loudly admitted that if Batman wasn't there he would've ran back to the cell and kill Joker personally.
- He fakes his own demise, by killing a guy who looks similar to him, burning his corpse to make sure nobody recognizes the body while he escapes.
- He sells off all the stolen military tech to his followers who begin to wreak havoc upon Gotham City.
- He places all 4 of the generators on each of the bridges which connect Gotham to the outer world, blowing them up in order to create No Man's Land, plunging the entire city into chaos and anarchy.
- After hearing news about Catwoman's return to Gotham, Joker concludes that Batman can never belong to him, so he decides to have one final victory over the Dark Knight, by having the youngest and most promising member of the Bat-Family, Tim Drake kidnapped, brutally torturing a young Tim Drake for three weeks, turning him into Joker Jr. He also made a slideshow video about this.
- Showed Batman the slideshow of how Tim became Joker Jr. just to anger him.
- Taunted Batman about his parents' murder, which made Batman snap and try to outright kill him.
- After weakening and injuring Batman properly and tormenting him a little bit, he attempted to make Tim kill Batman with a flag-spear gun.
- Even though his plan failed, in his dying moments, he saw Tim mentally breaking down and the horrified expression of Batman realizing that he finally managed to do something so horrible that it could actually break apart the entire Bat-Family, Joker looked deeply into Batman's eyes, claiming that he is going to hell for letting Joker live for too long and gave one final evil laughter out of pure hatred and gloating.
Gotham: Beyond the Dark Knight[]
- Although he only serves as a posthumous overarching antagonist of the story, he actions in the past still have a great effect on the story
- His final crimes were so destructive, that it took almost 20 years for Gotham City to recover financially and economically, leading to more crime spreading across the city and even though Joker died, his corrupting influence contined to live on as many of his followers continued to commit heinous crimes. These events also lead to Bruce Waye's reptuation being completely tarnished, even being forced to leave the company which his father has created and a live in his mansion for almost the rest of his life. In addition to this, almost everyone within the Bat-Family began to blame him for letting Joker live for so long which lead to him causing harm to Tim Drake, breaking up the entire family for so many years.
- After Joker's demise Bruce also had to live in paranoia and fear of Joker possibly coming back to life to torment him once more, even suffering from horrible nightmares in which Joker continues to haunt him.
- In addition to this, Tim Drake has been suffering from hallucinations in which Joker taunts him and tries to make him kill people, which almost leads to Tim becoming addicted to drugs and alcohol.
Redeeming Qualities?[]
Although one can argue that he has a tragic abusive past which could make him a tragic character, the choices he made and horrible consequences of his actions make it clear that he is a monster without any humane traits.
Inspirations[]
- the original Jerome Valeska from the original Gotham TV show, portrayed by Cameron Monaghan.
- Jeremiah Valeska from the original Gotham TV show, also portrayed by Cameron Monaghan.
- The Joker from the Batman Arkham Video game series, voiced by Mark Hamill and Troy Baker.
- The Joker from the DC Animated Universe, voiced by Mark Hamill
- Lorne Malvo from Fargo, portrayed by Billy Bob Thornton.
- Eduardo "Lalo" Salamanca from Better Call Saul, portrayed by Tony Dalton.
- Hector Salamanca from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, portrayed by Mark Margolis.
- Frank Costello from The Departed, portrayed by Jack Nicholson (who also portrayed the Joker in the 1989 Batman film, whom also served as some inspiration)
- John Milton from The Devil's Advocate, portrayed by Al Pacino.
Facts and trivia:[]
- The in-universe day of his first arrest was on the 25th of April, the same day and month when the Joker character first appeared in Batman #1.
- Even though it's a fan-created version of the Joker, he is the only Joker whom has a fully recorded family history.
- Due to his corrupting nature and near supernatural ability to turn people into vicious criminals and evil people, many people in-universe have theorized that Jerome Valeska might be the Devil in human personification.
- This was inspired by the idea of Lorne Malvo from Fargo being Satan himself as well, judging from the fact that Malvo was a key inspiration in creating this version of the Joker.
- His charming and manipulative personality is inspired by the original Jerome Valeska and Lalo Salamanca. His athletic skills are obvious references to Lalo.
- His desire to make his enviroment a product of himself could be tied back to Frank Costello.
- He is quite possibly one of the most heinous versions of the Joker to date, even if he is just a fan creation.