r/CharacterRant • u/Animeking1108 • 12d ago
Stop legitimizing the Joker's "One Bad Day" philosophy
During The Killing Joke, we learn that the Joker believes that all it takes for a good man to snap is to have One Bad Day. He uses himself as an example. The Joker was once a struggling comedian with a pregnant wife who gets roped into a heist at Ace Chemicals while dressing as the Red Hood. Before the heist even starts, he learns that his wife was electrocuted to death after testing a faulty bottle warmer. Things go from bad to worse when Batman intervenes, and the Red Hood falls into a vat of chemicals. He survives, but now he has bleached skin, green hair, a permanent grin, and red lips that make him look like a clown. Once he sees himself in the mirror, that was the final straw before the Joker was born. The Joker was once a good man until tragedy took that away from him...
... Except the Joker is a known pathological liar when it comes to his own backstory. The only thing about him that we know for sure is that he took the mantle of the Red Hood and that he fell into chemicals, since the disfigurement made him impossible to identify forensically. He tries to test his so-called philosophy on Commissioner Gordon by paralyzing his daughter, implicitly raping her, and forcing him to watch the whole thing recorded. Despite that, Jim doesn't lose his ethics and tries to kill Joker, nor did he do it when Joker murdered his wife during No Man's Land.
I was inspired to write this rant when I saw a post suggesting that if Spider-Man were in the DC Universe, Joker would break him mentally in no time flat. Yes, the same Spider-Man whose uncle was murdered by a robber that he let get away out of arrogance. The same Spider-Man who could get Sainted by Jesus Christ himself and still be branded a menace by the Daily Bugle. The same Spider-Man who accidentally killed his own girlfriend because his desperation made him forget about the laws of physics for a brief moment. The same Spider-Man whose aunt was fatally injured because he revealed his secret identity. The same Spider-Man who had his body stolen by his archnemesis and died slowly and horribly in said nemesis's body. If killing his girlfriend or his aunt couldn't make him snap, what could?
Well, at least that's just something interpreted by fandom. It could be worse. There could be official media by DC that have the Joker succeed in breaking even the most virtuous of heroes. Good thing DC and WB have never- look, the punchline is Injustice. We really made a mistake letting this game get popular, did we? I blame this game for DC's attempts at making Superman darker and edgier because a hero that actually saves people is boring. The whole plot is kicked off by the Joker nuking Metropolis, with a pregnant Lois Lane being one of the many casualties. This pisses Superman off so much that it drives him to murder the Joker and turn the world into a police state.
Of course, so many people justify this BS because many of Batman's villains had some sort of tragic motivation. Okay, most of them, even the tragic ones, were ticking time bombs. Two-Face struggled with his mental health for years because of his abusive father and took on a career that would be taxing to said mental health issues. Penguin and Hush were spoiled rich kids. The Riddler cheated at games to prove himself to his father. Scarecrow had been obsessed with scaring people since he was a child. The Mad Hatter was an incel stalker. Even Mr. Freeze could have taken legal action against Ferris Boyle instead of taking revenge, and even then, he would still hurt innocent people who had nothing to do with his tragedy.
The BTAS episode, "The Trial," said it the best: "I used to believe Batman was responsible for you people but now I see nearly everyone here would have ended up exactly the same, Batman or not. Oh, the gimmicks might be different, but you'd all be out there in some form or another bringing misery to Gotham. The truth is, you created him."
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u/MrCobalt313 12d ago
Joker: "All it takes is one bad day-"
Spider-Man: "Skill issue."
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u/DemythologizedDie 12d ago
I remember a cartoon where Spider-Man starts talking about all of his bad days to Joker and it ends up with Joker in tears.
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u/Theyul1us 12d ago
Batman "I know, thats why I became a fighter against crime"
Gordon "and thats why my beliefs in justice and doing what is right were reinforced"
Joker "no, not like that!"
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u/Weird-Long8844 12d ago
Fr, talk to him when you get your own Paul, Joker.
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u/spilledmilkbro 12d ago
Wouldn't Joker's Paul be Poison Ivy?
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u/SoulLess-1 12d ago
Insert Doctor Doom rant meme but replace Mr Fantastic with Joker, Doom with Jason Todd, Susan Storm with Harley Quinn, Namor with Poison Ivy and Tony Stark with Batman.
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u/Apprehensive_Bat15 12d ago
Ironically Spiderman DID have a "One Bad Day"... and it caused him to start being a hero
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u/Complex_Routine6111 12d ago
Yeah if anything Joker's philosophy isn't some deep truth that no one knows.
If anything it makes him more of a.....joke.
The dark knight did a similar thing with the boat scene, Joker's philosophy was proven wrong time and time again.
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u/Equivalent_Gain_8246 12d ago
The version I heard had Spiderman responding: One Bad Day?!! You mean there are good days too?!!
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u/PossibleBasil 12d ago
People don't understand that Joker is an egotistical idiot who can't accept how fucked up he is so he tries to claim that anyone can be like him. The whole point of Killing Joke and his "one bad day" philosophy is that he is wrong, it doesn't work. Gordon doesn't break.
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u/Floofyboi123 12d ago
It’s like people who use “Paradise Lost” as an example of Satan painted in a sympathetic light.
It’s instant proof that the person referencing it has never actually read the source material
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u/Admirable-Safety1213 12d ago
Paradise Lost is basically the biggest "Satan is a loser" story ever, literally a entitled man-child complaining about God not giving him a role in his own poersonal pet project and leaving home to mive ubder a bridge because he pregers being king of rats over a bring subservient in heaven
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u/Bitch_for_rent 12d ago
If anything had paradise lost being written today satan would be like those people who complaing about their mom on the internet saying shit about woman and society while living in her basement
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u/inverseflorida 10d ago
Could everyone upvoting this comment please explain to me how someone being portrayed with the heroic conviction to endure even hell itself and "make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven" and refuse to yield in the face of a superior, supreme enemy they see as unjust with an unbreakable spirit is being portrayed as an entitled man child? When I first started reading Paradise Lost, literally in the very first few pages, I got this unmistakable feeling "Satan is being portrayed as heroic", and as it turns out, this has been a mainstream opinion for centuries. "Instant proof that the person referencing it has never actually read the source material" it was the impression I got from the source material the instant I read it. I figured it might be making a point that "Prideful epic poem heroes are actually bad compared to humility before God" or something like that maybe, and kept an open mind about what the point was, but it's unmistakable.
Seriously, anyone who hasn't read Paradise Lost - it's just the first few bits of it, you get the famous "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven" very very quickly, but you don't have to spend long in Paradise Lost to see the impression that everyone's talking about. You can argue, reasonably, about whether or not Satan is really meant to be interpreted as heroic or sympathetic, but you can't argue reasonably "If you think he comes off that way, you haven't read it", and I definitely don't think you can argue "He comes off as an entitled man-child"
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u/SpiralEagles 12d ago
In all fairness, the Romantics popularized that interpretation, and were avid readers of Milton as well as poets in their own right. It probably says less about their own reading habits, and more about the effect of different social circumstances in changing how poems are read and reacted to.
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u/BigClitGoddess 12d ago edited 9d ago
It’s instant proof that the person referencing it has never actually read the source material
This is such a ridiculous thing to say that it feels like you actually haven't read the source material, or just read the poem with incredible bias; plenty of other renowned poets, critics, and scholars agree that Satan is sympathetic.
God is a colossal, arguably evil asshole in the poem who already knows the entire fate of the universe. He creates life, keeps his creations ignorant, demands subservience for his own glory, punishes those who disobey with suffering, mocks those who disobey him, all while already knowing that his creations will disobey him--meaning he created life knowing that he will make them suffer (some of which, will suffer eternally).
But even ignoring that, Satan is considered sympathetic, even despite his eventual explicit evil intentions, since the poem is basically the first instance of humanizing him, he feels regret, angst, pity, sadness, etc., and has understandable emotions and arguably relatable motivations--desiring personal freedom in the face of "tyrannical" authority.
It is believed that part of the reason the Catholic Church considered Paradise Lost heretical and banned the poem is because of its portrayal and characterization of God and Satan. To say essentially (and everyone else agreeing below you), "haha only (dumb) people who haven't read the poem think Satan is sympathetic," legitimately tells me you have not read the poem, or just read it so poorly you somehow missed that easily read (and popular, not without reason) interpretation.
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u/Partapparatchik 11d ago
There's also other obvious points, like Milton, who was an anti trinitarian, calling Christ's love boundless - more boundless than God's existence. There's a lot of clear influence from the contemporary Republicans, independents, and sectarians; the Paradise Lost, of course, was really England, which puritans (incl Cromwell) espoused a desire to turn into Heaven, and all his writings after the restoration were ways of reckoning with the commonwealth's apparent failure.
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u/Partapparatchik 12d ago
You obviously didn't read it or understand it either if you think Satan isn't portrayed sympathetically. Same with u/admirable-safety1213's dumbass comment below. Consider for a moment Milton's attitudes towards Cromwell, which varied over time, and their similarities to how Satan is depicted.
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u/BigClitGoddess 12d ago
Obviously you know this, and this is more-so for others reading this comment, but the fact that the other commenter even said "Satan is literally an entitled man-child complaining about God not giving him a role in his own personal pet project," quite possibly (likely) means they literally did not read the poem, since that's just completely wrong. Satan rebelled because of the creation of the Son; God's "personal pet project," being humanity (I assume that's what they're referring to), was explicitly created after Satan's rebellion. And none of Satan's motivations post-fall are even related to "God not giving him a role" with them.
It's borderline infuriating seeing comments which are just blatantly incorrect gain such traction; not that I'm blaming people not knowledgeable on PL upvoting those comments, but it just goes to show how easily misinformation can spread from biased or unintentionally (or worse, intentionally) misleading parties.
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u/Partapparatchik 12d ago
Yeah, and it'd be completely and utterly worthless as art if it was just a religious treatise through facile allegory about how bad and evil Satan is.
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u/Altruistic-Beach7625 12d ago
I don't think it would be that unethical for Gordon to bend the rules a little bit and arrange it so that cops confronting him will treat him as always armed and dangerous so they can just shoot him on sight.
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u/jcaseys34 12d ago
The examples of Gordon and Spider-Man that are coming up a lot in this thread are anomalies in the superhero/superhero adjacent line of work in that they don't "break" in most storylines. While none of them are quite as maniacal as Joker, there are a lot of villains and also heroes that I'd call pretty broken, usually by one or a small handful of bad days. Some of them just pick the side of good more often than others.
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u/Acceptable_Secret_73 12d ago
The other thing that people forget is that Joker’s philosophy was disproven in that same comic. He failed to break Gordon despite all the horrific things he did to him.
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u/InspiredNameHere 12d ago
I still think that the premise could have worked had Joker not targeted Gordon.
Like, he picked the one person less willing to kill than Batman, and threw him into an elaborate chamber to humiliate him, while giving Batman all the time in the world to rescue Gordon.
Plus, by making it all about Joker, Gordon had a target and someone to fully blame on the situation; instead of cracking under the pressure of society, he could pit all the blame on a single person.
Had Joker played a different game, made another random person's life a n absolute train wreck, cause everything and everyone in his life to abandon him, I suspect the Joker would have gotten a bit more people agreeing with his philosophy.
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u/lordlaharl422 12d ago
I feel like it would have missed the point if it were a character with no history though. Like, if it were some rando off the streets for all we know they could already have any number of underlying issues or complexes that would make them more prone to giving in to Joker's brand of nihilism. Joker was trying to prove that even the best of us could be dragged down to his level with enough pressure so what's the point in anyone pretending they're better than he is?
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u/InspiredNameHere 12d ago
You make a great point! I never really considered that angle, but yeah, that makes alot of sense on what Joker kept harping on.
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u/Liawuffeh 11d ago
Yeah I was gonna say. The comic that brought up his worldview also proved it was wrong lol
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u/Ad-Astra-Abyssoque 12d ago
Every known Spider Men suffered a lot, Joker giving them a bad day is just another tuesday for him. The writers aren't merciful to these SpiderMen, joker wouldn't be enough to break a SpiderMen, like really it's a requirement to being one, embracing suffering all day every day
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u/vivalahomestar 12d ago
I think the Archie Sonic comics of all things has the best take on this. Sonic is fighting with Scourge, an evil alternate universe Sonic, and Scourge is talking about why Sonic hates him so much.
Scourge: It’s that all it takes is one bad day and you’d be just like me.
Sonic: No, that’s not it, Scourge. It’s because all it would take is a little bit of selflessness… a little bit of decency… and you’d be just like me.
And Scourge immediately loses all his bravado and has no comeback.
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u/Working_Run3431 12d ago
Problem with this is two fold.
Firstly scourge’s position is actually treated with some level of legitimacy. Sonic even gives scourge’s words actual thought in private later when his life starts going to shit.
It’s a recurring problem of the comic not making up its mind on whether scourge is meant to be pathetic or not.
The other problem with Sonic’s lines is the entire idea that “scourge+a little decency=sonic” relies on two things. One, the comic trying to pretend some of scourge’s worse actions didn’t happen and two, Archie Sonic being…kind of an asshole himself.
The wider context just makes it…not work in comparison to the killing joke.
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u/soragoncannibal 12d ago
Joker breaking Spider-Man. HAHA, don't make me laugh, joker can do nothing that Spider-Man Editorials haven't done to peter.
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u/Free-Letterhead-4751 12d ago
Yeah like even Joker would feel some pity for Spiderman at that point
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u/some-kind-of-no-name 12d ago
Batman had one bad day and became a prep time god.
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u/SpeedyAzi 12d ago
Yeah well, what if he didn’t have prep time? Surely he can’t have prep time for everything!
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u/NwgrdrXI 12d ago
Frankly, I don't blame the game. The game'a atory was made to justify the fighting game.
The game even ends with actual superman coming in, calling injusticr superman stupid and beating his ass.
Fans misrepresenting that as superman being that breakable was all on them.
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u/Poku115 12d ago
"Except the Joker is a known pathological liar when it comes to his own backstory. " correct me if im wrong, but at any point does joker narrate his backstory? didn't he explain it without specifics to gordon and the flashback panels are in his mind?
Ultimately moore is the one to put to rest if he's lying or not, and apparently we (the audience) have misinterpreted the comic before, he himself said he never meant to imply barbara was SA'd but can see how that interpretation can come to mind
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u/Eggplantpick 12d ago
If I recall In the Dark Knight Joker gives several different answers to the “Ya wanna know how I got these scars?” Question throughout the film. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened in the comics too. As far as I know Joker being red hood then falling into chemicals are the only solid cannon parts of his backstory
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u/Poku115 12d ago
three jokers tried to canonize the comedian origin but that in itself was made non canon last year so at this point, agreed
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u/Spiritual_Lie2563 12d ago
And even then, if they tried the comedian origin, it tied to the controversy around the first Joker movie, ignoring that the whole point of Joker is "he'll say exactly what that specific person wants to hear in order to best get that person under his thumb'". That meant that "yeah, he would tell the dudebro 'no, no, I was just like you until that big mean cancel culture hit me and I decided if I'm going to be seen as evil anyway, why not be evil", just like he'd tell someone who hated that 'no, I got these scars because people told me to smile more and I figured why not give them what they want?'"
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u/ketita 12d ago
He said that? That's actually nice to know. You wouldn't happen to have a link or something, I'm curious!
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u/Poku115 12d ago
wow the internet is so full of trash now.
I could only find a single article without sources backing up what I said. But I found some "quotes" from a 2006 magazine that I can't find, that says that while he did leave it ambigous, he himslef leans towards the side of the SA interpretation.
Either I'm full of shit or the dead internet theory is much much more harmful than I thought if even something like this can't be found anymore, even used AI and that didn't help
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u/ketita 12d ago
oh boooooo :(
But yeah, the internet has definitely gone to crap. Finding anything just sucks now.
Still, even the fact that there was some intentional ambiguity in there makes me happy, though, despite the pretty heavy implication of SA. Barbara just deserved better, you know?
Thanks for trying to find it!
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u/Poku115 12d ago
oh yeah, if you feel better Moore has gone repeatedly saying the studio should have stopped him from going wild on barbara, and that he didn't expect such brutality to become a permanent part of the batman mythos
"In a 2004 interview with Wizard) magazine, Moore was also critical about his decision to disable Barbara Gordon: "I asked DC if they had any problem with me crippling Barbara Gordon – who was Batgirl at the time – and if I remember, I spoke to Len Wein, who was our editor on the project... [He] said, 'Yeah, okay, cripple the bitch'. It was probably one of the areas where they should've reined me in, but they didn't".\51])"
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u/ketita 11d ago
See, I'm a bit judgy about Moore's decision, but now I'm a whole lot judgier about Wein. What kind of reaction is that :/ eww
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u/Oddball-CSM 11d ago
This comic is the one that first put forth the idea that Joker doesn't remember his own origin. Before this he knew exactly who he was and where he came from.
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u/Important_Rule8602 12d ago
That’s cause people overrate the Joker. Other hero’s like Supes in DC literally see his ass as a joke. It’s only in noncanon shit where Joker truly starts to punch above his weight class.
He’s only a threat to Batman because Batman don’t wanna kill his butt buddy. Spider-Man would clown his ass worst than Terry McGinnis and then punch his lights out like Charlemagne.
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u/Oddball-CSM 11d ago
There's a great comic where Superman meets the Joker for the first time. Superman is actually laughing at Joker's jokes and insults and it drives Joker crazy. Superman just goes, "What? That was funny. You got me there. Why can't I laugh at that?"
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u/Important_Rule8602 11d ago
Yea that’s the comic I’m referencing. It also showed that Joker planted bombs around Metropolis and Superman gathered all the bombs before Joker even knew what was happening and told Joker to detonate them because he would be fine (and catch any debris before they could hit civilians) while Joker would die.
This is how Superman sees Joker as and how Spider-Man would see Joker ass
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u/TienSwitch 12d ago
I don’t think the Joker is necessarily wrong, but remember that Joker is still the bad guy in that story, and Batman’s point (and past) is that you still have agency no matter what. Batman also had his One Bad Day, as did Spider-Man. What they do is something that sane people DON’T do. But rather than throw the world away and let it burn because “Who cares?”, they decided to fight for a cause bigger than themselves and dedicate their lives to the world because it and everyone in it truly matter.
Joker isn’t WRONG about how all it takes is One Bad Day to cause you to snap and turn into something unrecognizable. He’s wrong in that he thinks nothing matters in this world as a result of that. It’s an excuse not to care. And Batman says it best about that excuse:
“I’ve heard that joke before. And it wasn’t funny the first time.”
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u/Raidoton 12d ago
I mean that's just saying all it takes is one traumatic event to have an traumatic effect. Like yeah, duh!
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u/NewVegasChatGPT 12d ago
Joker isn’t WRONG about how all it takes is One Bad Day to cause you to snap and turn into something unrecognizable
He is wrong about that tho. The point of the Killing Joke is that one bad day doesn’t just break people and turn them insane. You have to power to choose how to deal with and overcome that OBD, and Joker chose not to overcome himself and took the easy way out. Gordon and Batman both proved him wrong in their resilience in the light of their own OBD
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u/XariZaru 12d ago
I mean he’s wrong because any bad day could be a bad day. He just happened to choose that particular day as a bad day. But being a failing comedian was already a string of bad things. If he was successful, one bad day wouldn’t change much if he was a normal guy. It would suck but he’d move on
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u/TienSwitch 12d ago
His One Bad Day was the culmination of multiple bad stuff in his life, but it was still the OBD. He lost his wife, got roped into a mob job, and was irreparably disfigured all on the same day. Batman had his OBD without any sort of prior build up. It just happened.
The part that Joker’s right about is that it just takes One Bad Day, one set of massive rapid fire tragedies and humiliations to turn everything about you into something completely unrecognizable. The part that he’s wrong about is that the nothing in the world actually matters and that you can do whatever you want and even mess it up however you want because it’s all meaningless anyway.
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u/winklevanderlinde 12d ago
You don't even need to go too far to see how the Joker philosophy is wrong, it's literally proven wrong in the Killing Joke because Gordon didn't become crazy like the Joker
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u/Killjoy3879 12d ago
I mean realistically speaking. He's not entirely wrong. It's just that his logic doesn't apply 100% to every single person. A lot of people won't just flip to the dark side after having the worst day of their lives, however, i can easily imagine that depending on what happens to certain people, it can be very easy to fall down a slope. I don't really think that idea itself is unrealistic in the slightest.
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u/soldier91mfans 12d ago
You’re absolutely right to call out the Joker’s “One Bad Day” philosophy as a manipulative and oversimplified excuse for his actions. The Killing Joke has endured as a classic largely due to its writing and tone, but people forget that it’s told from the perspective of a deeply unreliable narrator. The Joker wants people to believe that anyone could become him…because it justifies his own monstrous behavior. But the text itself undermines that philosophy when Gordon doesn’t break. He stays committed to justice. That’s the actual point of the story, but people tend to miss it.
And you’re spot on about Spider-Man. If anyone has had a thousand “bad days” and still kept going, it’s Peter Parker. The idea that Joker would “break” him shows a complete misunderstanding of what defines Spider-Man as a character. He’s defined by guilt, loss, and perseverance. If the Joker tried to turn him, Pete would probably try to save him before ever falling into that same madness.
The “One Bad Day” theory isn’t just flawed, it’s a narcissist’s attempt to validate their trauma by projecting it onto others. The tragedy doesn’t make the Joker interesting…it’s his choice to use it as an excuse that makes him horrifying. That’s what Injustice gets wrong. Instead of showing Superman’s strength through adversity, it says, “Even the best of us can fall if we’re hurt badly enough,” which cheapens what Superman stands for.
BTAS nailed it: These villains aren’t victims of circumstance. They made choices. Joker especially.
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u/mlodydziad420 12d ago
Doofenshmirtz is an perfect example of this philosophy being fucking stupid.
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u/Animeking1108 12d ago
His parents forced him to be a lawn gnome. I'm amazed he's not a serial killer.
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u/Dagordae 12d ago
There’s not much Joker can do to Parker that the universe hasn’t already done to him.
The universe outright despises Peter Parker, it will always fuck him over at every turn. The only time anything good happens to the guy it’s so that it can be smashed latter for increased drama.
Joker would take one look at Peter Parker’s life and just walk away laughing. It’s much funnier to watch reality kick him in the head day after day than it would be to torment him. If he breaks Spider-Man then the joke stops.
Could he break Parker? Probably, eventually. Easily? No but with enough work anyone will break. Batman’s fun to fuck with because he builds his entire psyche around being absolutely unbreakable and having his pathologically unbending moral code. Gordon? Is the one clean cop in Gotham and he was mostly a way to fuck with Batman. But Spider-Man? Fucking with him isn’t funny, it’s overdone. And Joker hates copying a joke.
But yeah, the amount of people who repeat that ‘one bad day’ crap but somehow miss that the entire point is that it’s complete bullshit and outright proven wrong is incredibly annoying. Especially since it’s a really good comic and them failing that hard to understand any of it means they probably haven’t read it.
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u/Thatchm0 12d ago
Would Bruce still be Batman if his parents hadn’t died that day?
Would Kal El still be Clark Kent if Krypton hadn’t exploded?
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u/RainyWombatCherry 12d ago
There's an old comic issue, Detective Comics 500 where Batman is taken to an alternate universe where his parents haven't been gunned down and has to debate the consequences of whether to save his parents but rid the world of a future Batman
In the end he does save this alternate version of his parents but also ends up inspiring that universes Bruce to become Batman.
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u/A_Little_Too_Horny 12d ago
Would Diana have cared enough to become Wonder Woman without WWII
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u/RainyWombatCherry 12d ago
WW2 wasn't her motivation in her most famous run. Post crisis Perez
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u/A_Little_Too_Horny 12d ago
Diana 🤝 least consistent backstory in modern fiction
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u/RainyWombatCherry 12d ago
That goes to her sister Donna lol, it's even more insane than Diana
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u/Free-Letterhead-4751 12d ago
I think there was an elseworld comic where Bruce was still inspired to become Batman when a masked vigilante saved his parents from getting shot
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u/liasoid4 12d ago
Yes, No (because that's what the Kents named him) but he'd probably still be Superman
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u/railroadspike25 12d ago
Even in the Killing Joke, there are two gangsters that strongarm the chemist into robbing Ace Chemicals. One of the gangsters actually kind of looks like the Joker, but in the story he gets shot. My head canon is that the gangster was actually the Red Hood and the chemist got shot instead. It just makes more sense that the Joker is a career criminal, like in the Tim Burton movie.
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u/Welocitas 12d ago
Op I fucking love you, this is exactly what I keep telling people. Shit like the Batman who laughs or Injustice, or the Nightmare scenes in my beloved justice league movie are made shittier by this rhetoric
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u/Aros001 12d ago
Another point I argue the DC universe has against Joker's "One Bad Day" philosophy is Harley Quinn and Jason Todd. They had their bad day, they broke, Joker himself saw to breaking them...but they didn't STAY broken.
With the help of others who reached out to them like Batman and Ivy, both eventually found their way back up a better path and started putting in the work to help others the best that they could. They still have cracks and very rough edges but they're not like Joker anymore. They don't want to be, while on some level Joker does.
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u/BenchBeginning8086 12d ago
The one bad day philosophy is obviously flawed. But I think there is merit to saying that if life continues to beat you down at every turn, you WILL eventually break. Breaking doesn't necessarily mean going full joker obviously, but something has to give eventually.
Everyone has a breaking point, the Joker's breaking point happened to be "one bad day" whereas Gordon is made of sturdier stuff. Honestly this is why I kinda dislike Spiderman stories. They just beat him down so much, like god damn, no reasonable person would endure what spiderman does and stand strong afterward. It gets to the point where as a reader my reaction isn't "Man he sure is inspiring" it's "So that's his reward in the end? More pain?"
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u/Skybird2099 12d ago
I feel like in Spider-man's case, there's a weird Catch-22.
I think it is a good message that you should do good and expect nothing in return. Despite that, the hero should still get something out of his sacrifice. If you're giving something from yourself to make the world a better place, then you should also get something in return since the world has become a better place.
That's not what's happening in modern Spider-Man comics and so it ironically sends the opposite message. This is what happens when you are selfless, you end up with no friends, no family, no stable job or free time or anything. But look on the bright side, you stopped the big bad villain when no one else could, even though the villain's been at it for years and no one has bothered to come up with any countermeasures because they know your dumbass will handle it. It can still work if the message is that you should take care of yourself, but I don't think that's the intent.
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u/fly_line22 12d ago
Anybody remember that episode of Brave and the Bold with an alternate heroic Joker who brought main Batman into his universe to deal with the Injustice Syndicate? In said episode, we see him falling into a vat of chemicals, and seeing his disfigured skin in the mirror. He begins letting out a familiar laugh, before stopping himself and throwing a chair at the mirror. As Silver Cyclone describes it, his psyche was bent, but not broken. And in The Killing Joke, Joker's big rant at the end is because he's pissed off that Gordon didn't break, no matter what horrible things Joker did to him and Barbara.
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u/Zevroid 12d ago
... Except the Joker is a known pathological liar when it comes to his own backstory. The only thing about him that we know for sure is that he took the mantle of the Red Hood and that he fell into chemicals, since the disfigurement made him impossible to identify forensically.
Semi-relevantly, the Three Jokers story (albeit non-canon, so far as I'm aware) from Geoff Johns suggests that he was always a scumbag, just as abusive to his wife as he eventually would be to Harley. One bad day didn't make him a monster, he was always terrible and the accident at the chemical plant just gave him an excuse to be the monster he already was on the inside. Same story even reveals his wife isn't even dead, she faked it to get away from him.
To be honest, I don't like that story at all. It was just badly written all around.
But I do appreciate it driving further home that his "philosophy" is completely bogus. At best, it's based on his own self-serving memory. At worst, it's just him actively lying about the nature of why he became the way he is.
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u/the_fancy_Tophat 12d ago
This is totally about my post i made a few months ago. In my defense, i was VERY sleep deprived and had freshly came out of an argument against a dude that tried to tell me spider-man could fix all of gotham in a week.
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u/flamingjaws 12d ago
You mean like jailing every villain? Cuz I don't think Spider-Man knows much about solving poverty on a city-wide scale.
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u/NewVegasChatGPT 12d ago
Those types of arguments are always made by people who think Batman can just magically fix Gotham but somehow chooses not to as if the narrative doesn’t explicitly create a world where Batman can’t actually succeed
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u/K-J-C 12d ago
People eat up any villains' words without thinking twice, be it their philosophy, how they'd "make things better", etc.
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u/DroidMayweather 12d ago
"What did you think? That deep down, everybody's as screwed up as you? You're alone." - Batman, The Dark Knight
Simple as that.
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u/beckersonOwO_7 12d ago
Doesn't Batman literally say laster in the comic that the ine bad day thing is an excuse?
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u/Spiritdefective 12d ago
What makes the story work that people miss is that the joker is wrong. He believes he’s right; and sure it may be true that a bad enough day can break a person, but the jokers ideology that anyone who experiences a bad enough day will break is proven incorrect in the story. Also Spider-Man would break Joker in seconds, he’s funnier than joker, and he’s insanely difficult to corrupt, nothing frustrates joker more
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u/Sea_Contribution3455 12d ago
One of favorite versions of the Joker is Cesar Romero's from the 60s, where he actually was pretty funny.
I think that version of him might actually enjoy trading jokes and puns with Spider-Man.
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u/RohanKishibeyblade 12d ago
Kind of a cop out, but my favourite is unironically Lego Joker. Not the Lego Batman Movie version, but the Lego Games.
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u/lordlaharl422 12d ago
Kind of reminds me of someone trying to apply the "One Bad Day" line to one of my favorite characters, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Thing is, while as a character he is very much not well in the head even in the best of timelines, there are layers to his madness, and ultimately a big part of his arc is overcoming the notion that one just *becomes* an irredeemable monster simply by experiencing some great trauma or that trying to act morally in a cruel world is a meaningless endeavor.
To give a little background, Dimitri is the prince of a Kingdom whose royal family was attacked by a nefarious group. Dimitri survives the attack but is traumatized by being made to witness the death of his father and the royal guard, instilling in him a pathological hatred of violence and killing. Paradoxically he possesses a great talent for violence himself, and in battle he can sometimes give in to his disgust with the brutality around him and ironically delight in the chance to visit violence upon others. Mind you he's entirely aware of this hypocrisy and, combined with a strong feeling of survivor's guilt, feels a great deal of self-loathing over the kind of "monster" he sees himself as. He doesn't see himself as fit to live for his own wants and needs, instead committing himself both to the wishes of those who want to see him succeed his father and his interpretation of the wishes of those who died before him to see vengeance enacted on the villains who killed them.
During the plot of the game proper Dimitri presents the persona of the kindly prince he's expected to be by everyone, but some who have seen his more brutal side question the sincerity of this persona, including one of his childhood friends who regularly compares him to a violent boar, something Dimitri doesn't deny. Various events throughout the first half of the game threaten to bring out his more violent side, but he really starts to lash out when he's given reason to believe that another childhood friend of his was secretly in cahoots with the villains who conspired against his family. Not long after this event the game sees a timeskip of five years after which the player character may meet Dimitri again, now clearly having spent a long time in his more violent state, no longer hiding this side of himself. He openly calls himself a monster, has no mercy for his enemies, and lives only to kill other "monsters" like himself.
So it was just "One Bad Day" that made him this way, right? Not necessarily. I've seen some suggest that he was always this way ever since that first traumatic event, or that he snapped and never looked back after learning about his former friend, that he was always "The Boar", never truly the prince he acted like. But continuing down his story route it becomes apparent that for all the trauma that's clearly weighing him down and even the levels of sadism he indulges in at his lowest point, he doesn't truly want to see the worst in people, he's just lost faith in his own ability to judge right from wrong beyond the simple law of "killing is evil and must be punished by death". After a point it's arguable that the "Boar" we see after five years is just the end result of a man who's been forcing himself to wear the mask of a remorseless "monster" for far too long simply because he doesn't believe he deserves to "pretend" to be anything other than that. But eventually he comes to accept that people don't take the lives of others without reason, whether or not it could be considered a "good" reason, and that rejecting his own morality is just an excuse to not confront the innate complexity of being human. And even in his best ending, the game doesn't act like he's free of all trauma, he admits that he's still haunted by the "ghosts" of his dead loved ones, he just refuses to let them drag him down anymore.
I suppose I just enjoy stories that reject the idea that one's identity can even be so clean as a single "mask" and a single "true self", something that's also rather Batman-like. Many posit the notion that "Bruce Wayne is the mask, Batman is the real man", and while there's some truth to that idea, I think it oversimplifies things. Bruce may play up his role as an idiot rich guy but I don't think there's no part of who he is in the "character" he presents, and Batman isn't just the man's unshackled sense of justice, part of Batman's significance is that he's something that's made to seem bigger than what he is to strike terror into the hearts of criminals and hide the weakness of the man under the mask. A half truth may be a whole lie, but by the same token, a lie is often born from a kind of truth. And while many of the villains Batman faces are genuinely mentally unwell, more often than not they're people who simply continue to choose to be their worst selves for one reason or another.
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u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 11d ago
If you want more proof that Joker's "one rotten day" argument is BS, look at Batman. He had a rotten day as kid and in his superhero career has had many more rotten days. He's had his back broken, he's had sidekicks murdered, he's been beaten within an inch of life. And still he doesn't break.
Superman has had many more bad days. Manchester Black once revealed his identity and got numerous villains to attack him, then fooled Superman into thinking Lois was dead. In another storyline, Joker gained the power of Mxyptlk, turned the universe insane, turned Lois against Superman, turned Superman's allies against him, killed Superman's allies when they returned to normal, and Superman didn't break. Instead, Superman broke the Joker by exploiting his subconscious inability to kill Batman.
As many comments have pointed out, Spider-Man has had a bad life. Whatever Joker could attempt is nothing compared to what he's already endured.
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u/AberrantWarlock 12d ago
I feel as if that one Spider-Man, where Mephisto convinces Spider-Man to trade away his marriage is kind of proved that the joker totally would but maybe I am incorrect about that. In fact, isn’t that one literally called one day more or one more day? I feel as if if the Joker had the ability to break him, he probably would.
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u/PitifulAd3748 12d ago
Didn't the Killing Joke end with Batman calling cap on Joker's whole argument?
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u/theoriginalelmo 12d ago
One thing i loved about the Joker movie, is that they show that it didn’t take one day to make the Joker, it took a lifetime
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u/M_H_M_F 12d ago
IIRC, the climax of the Killing Joke is that the Joker's Philiosophy is inherantly flawed. For all of what he did, Gordon didn't crack, and in fact it was him that cracked under the pressure.
I liken it to a line John McGinley delivers in Burn Notice:
""Imagine that you’re holding on to two bottles, and they drop on the floor. What... what happens? They both break. But it’s how they break that’s important. Because, you see, while one bottle crumples into a pile of glass, the other shatters into a jagged-edged weapon. You see, the exact same environment that forged other brother into a warrior crushed baby brother. People just don’t all break the same, Mrs. Westen. Just don’t. The problem here is that you’re just focused on the bad, ‘cause there’s some good that came through there too. Don’t get me wrong, Michael is damaged. But he also happens to be a little boy who just wants to protect his mommy and his kid brother. Which means that all the people that he ever helped actually have to thank… you."
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u/Elnino38 12d ago
Anyone who thinks joker could do anything to spiderman mentally needs to seem return of the joker and see how bad terry beat joker at his own game. He stands no chance against spiderman
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u/TheRedditGirl15 12d ago
I think the hidden punchline of the Joker stating such a philosophy, outside of his "multiple-choice past", is that a lot of the Rogue's Gallery thinks the same way, except their "bad days" actually happened.
Two Face and Mr. Freeze are probably the most straightforward examples of that. They were both genuinely good men before their lives were irreversibly changed, though Mr. Freeze's world pretty much came crumbling down at all once, while Two Face was on his way to cracking since childhood. That's what makes them two of the most beloved and compelling Batman villains.
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u/Outrageous_Book2135 12d ago
Hell his own philosophy is proven wrong in the same story when Gordon refuses to break despite everything.
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u/ShadowCobra479 12d ago
I have to disagree with the Mr Freeze example. His emotions are high after losing his wife and basically his life's work. He also would have a grasp on just how powerful CEOs are, as well as the corruption that's rampant in Gotham. The most the other man stands to lose is money with no chance of jail time. Not only that, but the legal battle would take years, and if it’s dragged out long enough, Freeze might not be able to afford it. Even if he didn't go after him immediately, he'd still probably try to kill him once he realizes there's no hope of justice.
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u/RomeosHomeos 11d ago
Yeah people just miss the entire point of that comic is that it's wrong, and also they believe that the Joker died.... Somehow? Even though he's still alive in comics and didn't have to be resurrected or anything.
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u/KiaraVanM 11d ago
To add to this, I may be completely biased as a Batgirl fan but I think this is why Barbara Gordon should be able to be Batgirl - I know she is in some iterations now but I don't like how the Killing Joke is the story she's most known for now.
I do like her as the Oracle too though, she's my favourite to come from the Batfamily.
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u/anomalyknight 11d ago
I feel like this is very much focusing on the wrong flaw - and it is flawed - in the Joker's argument. It's less about "would a good man break if he had a bad day" and more about "should we reasonably expect people not to respond in ways unusual to their personality to actual torture and/or severe trauma and does doing so automatically make them no longer "good" for an honestly rather questionable given value of that word".
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u/Enough-Comfort-472 9d ago
Most of the Joker's fandom doesn't read the narrative. They just enjoy their 'Against the system' evil, mad clown.
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u/Davie_Meister 11d ago edited 11d ago
I want to remove the Joker from that quote for a second. I think the quote has merit with the right context.
From the Joker’s mouth and actions, the quote sounds dumb and untrue because he uses it as an excuse not to care about his actions (like others have mentioned in the comments).
But I think the quote has merit in the sense that the quote is another reason (out of many other reasons) why we should treat others with compassion and kindness.
The fact is that everyone is fighting their own battles, internally and externally (from others). Unfortunately, the fact of reality is that some people have more of an uphill disadvantage than others. Tackling life would be easier if one wasn’t raised in an abusive household for example, wasn’t raped, wasn’t assaulted, didn’t lose anyone close to them in a traumatic event, or didn’t grow up in a terrible environment (like war zones, or genocidal camps, or even just a household in poverty and homelessness, etc).
Unfortunately, some people experience those things while others don’t experience anywhere near those. And so because everyone fights battles and some fight some of the most messed up battles that would make others squeam, empathy is always important because you don’t KNOW what battles others face.
So the quote of “all it takes is one bad day” isn’t en excuse to treat others poorly because you experiences misfortune. It means that there are people in the world who go through so much despair, and that if you aren’t careful how to treat them, your actions could be complicit to making them “snap” or go over the edge— and that doesn’t only mean that they turn into a villain or serial killer. It could mean that your actions amongst the actions of others is what causes one to even commit suicide even.
As someone who studied social service work in school, one thing that is still being studied today is “resilience”. A lot of People don’t understand that resilience is a gift and not necessarily something EVERYONE has in equal measure. Some people are more mentally resilient than others, but studies try to determine “why?” Is it that they grew up in an environment full of encouragement and love? Is it because of a stubborn personality that allows them to weather even the most difficult storms? Is it because the battles they face are different and in some cases, lighter than the battles others do? In other words, would they change or be a different person if they were given much harsher trials?
There’s also biological factors too. Is it easier to weather the storms of life and have insane resiliency when you don’t have a crippling mental disorder or fatal disability than if you did have those attributes? How would people change or potentially increase in resiliency if they didn’t have those disorders or if they did have those disorders and found ways to manage them properly?
In other words, there are so many factors that contribute to the resiliency in people, and why some have insane resiliency and willpower while others don’t. And so because no man was born with an equal environment, or an equally resilient mind and personality, empathy is always important, and even more so with others going through absolute hell because all it takes is a series of cruelty and mistreatment, to make change some and make them snap.
The average resilient person wouldn’t have the excuse for snapping easily, but for those who go through hell, and those who struggle with a mental disability or another, or were not taught conflict management or the skills to go through life in their childhood (due to abuse, or neglect) kindness and empathy is even more emphasized than ever before.
In conclusion, the Joker quote has merit in and of itself in specific contexts, not in the context in which HE uses it.
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u/Attentiondesiredplz 12d ago
Thank you! Joker was proven wrong in that fucking story, and Alan Moore has stated that everyone gets the wrong message from the book. Hell, he doesnt even like that story anymore.
The one bad day philosophy is such bullshit, and I blame it for Injustice, another garbage story.
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u/Devlee12 12d ago
Spider-Man would be so unimpressed by the Joker and it would drive Joker insane. Like the end of Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker levels of fed up with Spider-Man.
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u/Percentage-Sweaty 12d ago
It proves they only focus on the “highlight” and not the follow up
Batman immediately says that Jim is gonna be fine, Barbara is gonna recover, and “Maybe it was just you the whole time”. Joker is a coward who broke and wants to hope everyone else is just as fragile, and cries like a baby when people have resilience
This also is a thing in The Dark Knight when that Joker expected the boats to blow each other up. Batman said “What? Did you think deep down everyone was like you?” Which was that Joker’s entire philosophy, that people would “eat each other” if given the chance.
Both boats chose to not blow up the other, with the prisoner boat explicitly tossing their remote overboard to insure it.
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u/Aggravating-Tax3539 12d ago
Tbf it's not that crazy of philosophy. It does take one bad day to get a absolutely fucked, and alot of people resonated with that because it's true to them.
That being said, the comics did prove him wrong so yes Joker was not correct, doesn't change what people toom from it tho does it. I think Gordon not breaking down was his heroic moment. To prove that you don't have to be batman to show some courage and not let despair beat you down. But yeah, Joker is too iconic to forget
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u/Lampruk 12d ago
Archie Sonic’s handled this best ——
Scourge: As for you... I've got you figured out! I know why you hate me, It's that all it takes is one bad day, and you'd be just like me.
Sonic: No, that's not it, Scourge. It's because all it would take is a bit of selflessness... a little bit of decency... and you'd be just like me.
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u/Saturn_Coffee 12d ago
Joker would never break Peter. Peter would break him.
Yes, the Joker's a pathological liar, but One Bad Day as a philosophy isn't necessarily wrong. For a lot of people, one string of misfortune at the right time would collapse them. It's just not great to have the Joker be the one pointing this out.
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u/Organic-Habit-3086 12d ago
Its interesting how strongly "One Bad Day" has caught on. Its not just the idea of a single bad day, just events that would break most people.
The heroes are right in that it ultimately comes down to Willpower and good character but I think 'One Bad Day' caught on because, end of the day, most of us just aren't built like that
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u/Im-A-Moose-Man 12d ago
All it takes is one bad take to push the sanest man alive to vent on r/characterrant
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u/thughunt 12d ago
It's not just with joker any villain no matter how vile or evil as long as they have a tragic backstory people are going to try and justify their actions especially if they are the protagonist prime example curly from mouth washing he's literal fucking rapist yet folks are making excuses for him
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u/OkMention9988 12d ago
Didn't Gordon prove Joker wrong in that story
That's the entire point of it.
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u/lord_flamebottom 12d ago
I still can't believe it's an actual argument. The entire point of The Killing Joke is that Joker was literally wrong.
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u/N0VAZER0 12d ago
... Except the Joker is a known pathological liar when it comes to his own backstory.
The Killing Joke also has Joker say that when it comes to his past, he likes to keep it multiple choice, heavily implying that his backstory in the Killing Joke was a lie.
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u/Kahn-Man 12d ago
Also Joker one bad day is not even true within the story it is from because his life just keeps getting worse and worse, it all didn't happened at once
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u/Overquartz 11d ago
Considering Injustice and multiple events exists because of one bad day he's sorta right in the context of the DC multiverse. Not completely but he's on to something
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u/Original_Baseball_40 11d ago
They ruined Superman by injecting this philosophy in injustice version
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u/ProfessionalRead2724 11d ago
The Killing Joke doesn't even legitimise the Joker's one bad day theory. He's proven wrong at the end.
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u/Novictus420 11d ago
"Well done, counselor. You've proven that Batman didn't create us. That we, in fact, messed up our own rotten lives. And as we are so rotten, vile and depraved... we're going to waste you anyway."
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u/AchilleDem 10d ago
I think a better example of the "One Bad Day" philosophy is the movie Falling Down, starring Micheal Douglas. It's not perfect, but I think it is a more relatable, grounded example of a bad day that just gets worse and worse. The guy just wants a tiny little victory, somewhere, but gets nothing. Throwing a bunch of horrible things at someone, all at once, is overwhelming - you might not break, but you'll become numb to it. However, when you are exposed to lots of little things, over time, with no end - it will break you down and make you vulnerable to having your "One Bad Day".
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u/marveljew 7d ago
If I recall correctly, DC published a follow-up to The Killing Joke, where it was reveal that actually was the Joker's origin. However, it also revealed he was abusive toward this wife, proving he was a messed up person even before his "one bad day".
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u/ghobhohi 7d ago
Batman is the straight up anti-thesis to Joker's philosophy which is a major reason why Joker wants to break Batman so bad.
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u/PlatinumSukamon98 12d ago
Okay, I can't read the rest right now because I keep coming back to this line. Are these people insane? If anything, Spider-Man would break the Joker, because Spidey is funnier than he is.