The Joker (Batman: Arkham Origins)

"I present to you: the death of the Batman!"

- The Joker An insanely homicidal super-villain, the Joker's white skin, green hair, and ruby-red lips belie the chaotic nature underlying his colorful appearance. Seemingly appearing from nowhere, the Joker has no known name or backstory and simply wishes to upset social order and balance. Making his presence known in Gotham on Christmas Eve, the Joker institutes a night of chaos, death, and destruction, as he begins to seize complete control of the criminal underworld and establish himself as Gotham's most iconic villain and Batman's greatest enemy.

Seeking nothing but pure destruction and anarchy, Joker uses Black Mask's likeness, gang, and resources to send out a massive crime wave throughout Gotham while hiring eight of the world's most deadly assassins to take out the Dark Knight himself, holding a particular vendetta against the hero. With connections all over Gotham's institutions and infrastructure, the Joker begins a deadly and sick game of cat and mouse with Batman as he begins to realize that the Dark Knight is similar to himself and might just be the perfect rival he needs to complement his sadistic appetites.

Batman's Profile of The Joker
''I prepared for muggers, killers, thieves. Criminals, increasingly extreme in their methods and personality. But I never imagined someone like "The Joker". There is no information on him in any criminal database. As far as records go, it's as if he stepped out of thin air. He appears to be a highly resourceful psychopath with a sadistic intelligence, who delights in causing chaos, destruction and human suffering. Skilled with explosives and firearms. He displays personality traits consistent with criminal insanity, though his mental instability did not hinder his ability to infiltrate and take over Black Mask's criminal organization. His capacity for wanton destruction makes him a threat to the entire city. He must be stopped.''

Batman: Arkham Origins
During a particularly snowy winter, near the holiday of Christmas, a man who no one has ever seen or heard of emerged in Gotham with plans of destruction and chaos for the city simply for the sake of it. A man known simply as The Joker, a villain driven by a lust to create social disorder and desired nothing but anarchy to feed his sadistic appetites and morbid, dark sense of humor. With a particular hatred for the Dark Knight himself, having blamed the hero for making him who he is today, and a hunger for revenge against him, the Joker begins to make his schemes to destroy Gotham and make Batman suffer in the process.

Seeking to establish himself as one of Gotham's most iconic figures and carve a name for himself in the Gotham criminal underworld, the Joker begins to target Roman Sionis, also known as Black Mask, the city's most powerful and sadistic crime lord. With Black Mask having unlimited wealth, resources, men, power, and complete control over the criminal underworld as he consolidates his power and eliminates his opposition, Joker sees his criminal empire as the perfect means to gain control of the city and form his own gang for his agenda of chaos. Gathering several followers of his own, Joker starts his plans by stealing chemicals from Sionis' mill to manufacture explosives, enticing the crime lord to have the villain followed to learn what he is planning.

Joker is already one step ahead however, and begins to stalk Roman's girlfriend, Tiffany Ambrose, as he keeps tabs over her boyfriend's criminal activities. This understandably spooks Tiffany, who is then placed within a safe house at Lacey Towers by Roman, until he could track the Joker down and neutralize him. Unfortunately for Black Mask and his lover, the Joker uses his own connections to learn of Tiffany's whereabouts, breaks into the safe house, and waits for her to come home. When Tiffany does so after holiday shopping, Joker violently smashes her head into the counter, knocking her out, and ties the defenseless woman up to the chandelier in the living room.

Black Mask soon begins to suspect that something is wrong and has one of his men disguised as himself enter the safe house as a diversion while he sneaks in the back to gain the upper hand on the Joker. When the decoy arrives through the front door, Joker is gleefully waiting in a chair and immediately shoots the man through the chest, instantly killing, knowing that he is not his true target. The real Black Mask then sneaks up behind Joker and attacks him, but the Joker proves to be an exceptionally competent fighter and overpowers and beats Black Mask, tying up his hands in the process.

To eliminate any evidence of him being at the safe house, Joker uses a cocktail incendiary device to set the room ablaze. As Tiffany struggles from the heat of the fire below her, Joker then cruelly and sadistically makes Roman hold his gun and shoot Tiffany through the heart, immediately killing her, as Joker drags the struggling Roman out with him. Joker holds Black Mask captive at a hidden location and tortures him over the course of several days, forcing him to reveal every detail about himself and his operations. Using these details to his advantage, Joker takes Roman's black mask and disguises himself as the crime lord, taking complete control of his gang, resources, and power. Joker then plots to first destroy all of Black Mask's power and standing in the city and take his place and institute his own brand of anarchy and social disorder.

With Black Mask's connections now his own, Joker has access to nearly every level of Gotham's infrastructure through his inside agents, as well as having the entire Gotham City Police Department under his complete control to do his bidding as a secondary gang. Joker's ultimate desire is to make Gotham his own by sunrise and leave the city in a state of ruin for his own personal amusement. Knowing that Batman is the only one who can stop his plans, as well as having a hunger for revenge against the hero, Joker places a $50 million bounty on the dark knight's head and hires eight of the world's most deadly assassins to take him down.

Knowing that Commissioner Loeb, the corrupt leader of the police force, was planning a press conference at Blackgate Penitentiary and would also needed to be taken care of if the police force would take his more chaotic orders, Joker then hands down the order to Black Mask's men to abduct Warden Joseph from Blackgate and bring him to "My Alibi", a night club that serves as a meeting ground for the criminal underworld and was previously under the control of Black Mask. When Joseph is brought to Joker at the club, he tortures him with a lit cigarette, burning out one of his eyes, and threatens to slaughter his entire family if he does not lower his security at the prison. Warden Joseph reluctantly agrees and has the security for a portion of his prison become more lax in an effort to protect his family.

As the assassins arrive in Gotham, including Bane, Deathstroke, Deadshot, Copperhead, Killer Croc, Firefly, Lady Shiva, and the Electrocutioner, with their respective gangs and many of them armed with weaponry provided by the Joker's agents, the city's body count and crime rate skyrockets as the assassins create wanton destruction throughout old and new Gotham to lure Batman into the crossfires. Joker then stages an attack on Blackgate Penitentiary disguised as Black Mask, with several dozen of his men and one of his assassins, Killer Croc, a cannibalistic killer with a rare condition that makes him appear more and more reptilian as the years pass by. Murdering dozens of guards and leaving a path of bloodshed and destruction behind him, the Joker takes Commissioner Loeb hostage; the commissioner being present at the prison to oversee the execution of Julian Day, also known as Calendar Man, to gather massive support from Gotham citizens and City Hall.

Joker has Calendar Man released from the execution chamber and lets him loose, believing that his love for torture and murder on holidays is the perfect setup for Christmas Eve, leading to several deaths at Day's hands. Joker then has Loeb forcibly placed within the chamber under the pretense that the commissioner is no longer serving his best interests with so many of his men imprisoned and wants to start off with "a clean slate". The reality of the situation is, however, that Joker seeks to take complete control of Black Mask's criminal activities and eliminate anything that could be used as a benefit for the fallen crime lord. Loeb's murder would also prompt chaos throughout the criminal underworld and institute a power vacuum throughout the police department; chaos that would feed the Joker's love for anarchy.

Loeb is then gassed in the chamber and dies in mere seconds as Joker continues through the prison with Black Mask's men and Killer Croc, killing all who stand in his way. While in route to the roof, Joker discovers that he is being monitored by one of the Penguin's drones and orders Killer Croc to destroy it and grab the memory card. Though Croc merely smashes the device to the ground without obtaining the card, much to Joker's anger, Croc assures Joker that it was completly destroyed as well. Batman however, who arrived at the prison just minutes prior, obtains the memory card from the remains of the device to be analyzed later at the Batcave. Arriving on the roof to find a set of helicopters ready to make a quick escape, Joker leaves Killer Croc to deal with Batman as he boards one of the copters with several of his men and escapes arrest. While Killer Croc is aided by some of Black Mask's men, Batman is ultimately able to defeat them all and learns from Croc about the enlistment of the seven other assassins. Batman subdues Croc and makes a quick getaway himself in his Batwing, leaving the cannibal killer for Gordon and his forces.

As Joker consolidates several of the escaped convicts into his expanding gang, much of the honest straight portion of the police force would be containing the situation at Blackgate, serving as the perfect diversion to keep the rest of Gotham under even more lax security than usual. Gotham itself begins to descend into further chaos as Joker continues to control Black Mask's operations, including drug trafficking, sending out hundreds of his men to murder, steal, and wipe out all opposition, and striking deals with corrupt Gotham police officers, particularly SWAT team leader Branden and his squadron, obtaining weapons and equipment from evidence lockup and promising them all the $50 million bounty if they succeed in subduing Batman. With Braden instructing his squad to deglect their other responsibilities in light of collecting the bounty, this also ensures that a majority of the police department would be too distracted with finding and killing Batman to prevent any of Joker's plans from coming to fruition.

The villain also manages to take over an old fun fair on the outskirts of the city, murdering the owner in the process, steals a massive amount of carnival equipment, and begins manufacturing excessive amounts of a poisonous gas known as Joker Toxin, which leaves victims violently laughing themselves to death. Meanwhile, the murder of Loeb also prompts the hand of many second-rate gangs and mobs to overtake territory and begin wars with the other fractions for ultimate control while other gangs break off their previous deals with the corrupt police force, no longer trusting them with Loeb gone, and retaliate against their efforts to resume their deals. Additionally, more outlandish criminals begin to surface and take advantage of the rising destruction to further their own designs, causing chaos throughout all of Gotham just as the Joker had planned.

Joker also hires the services of Edward Nigma, a master hacker who works as the head of the GCPD's Cyber Crime division, who uses his resources and access privileges to take complete control of all the radio towers throughout Gotham in order to block Batman's auto-navigation trackers used for his Batwing. Enigma further adds to the chaos by collecting incriminating information on countless political individuals in Gotham, placing them all within extortion files hidden around the city, and blackmailing the individuals for money and power. Regardless of their actions however, Enigma intends to release the data to the press, resulting in resignations and murders and utter chaos throughout the streets as he works on his plans to eliminate all the corrupt and the unintelligent.

To further aid in his mission and plans, Enigma, using the extensive funding coming from Joker, hires a wide variety of street thugs, muggers, and killers in collecting information and storing them in extortion files, hiding the files for eventual pickup, and guarding the radio towers. Riddler would also set up close to a hundred relays throughout Gotham to prevent his own network from being hacked and keep tabs over all of Gotham, while also rigging the security controls of the radio towers to blow if anyone tries to interfere, leading to the death of a GCP worker. These modifications were done with the help of a third party, a low level thug named John F. Baker, hired by Enigma, who later killed him to further cover up his tracks.

As Batman is hunted down from all fronts and continues to fight against the assassins, he learns of the Joker's existence when he investigates what police believe to be Black Mask and Tiffany Ambrose's murder at Lacey Towers. The hero concludes however that it was not Black Mask, but simply a decoy; he breaks into the Gotham City Police Department in order to gain access to the criminal database to learn more about the crime scene. At the same time, Joker sends scores of Black Mask's men to infiltrate and take control of the sewer systems through a secret passageway from the Sionis Steel Mill.

Once there, Joker's men set up shop and place hundreds of demolition explosives underneath the foundations of at least seventeen buildings, including the city's Water Treatment Facility, the Gotham Fire Station, Train Station, and Police Headquarters, along with Lacy Towers, the Royal Hotel, the Elleworth Building, Gotham City Works, Rail Station, and several others, to leave Gotham in a state of ruin by sunrise. While Batman is able to subdue Joker's men, prevents them from putting automatic timers on the explosives, and gains access to the criminal database, he is ultimately unable to deactivate the bombs as they are also being remotely controlled and are too sensitive and elaborate to disarm himself.

After looking through the GCPD's files, Batman learns that Roman Sionis owns and has complete control over the Gotham Merchants Bank, which he uses as a front to launder much of ill-gotten gains. Batman soon realizes that Joker has taken Black Mask hostage after forcing him to kill Tiffany and intends to use him to gain access to the Merchants Bank, which has security measures that only Roman can deactivate. When Batman asks Alfred to check any records that could be related to the Joker, Alfred finds nothing in the Gotham criminal database or any other that could shed light on this new criminal, making it seem as if the Joker had simply appeared out of nowhere. With nothing to go on other than the implication that the Joker is heading next to the Merchants Bank, Batman leaves for the bank in old Gotham to meet his new enemy just as the clock strikes midnight and the Christmas holiday officially falls down over Gotham.

True to Batman's detective work, the Joker explosively arrives at the bank in a stolen ambulance and murders over two dozen of the bank's employees, sadistically torturing and slaughtering many of them with the use of the bank's Christmas decorations. Joker then takes the female bank manager hostage and forces her and Roman to open up the vault containing much of Roman's laundered money. Joker then has his men steal billions worth of money and load it up onto the ambulance while Roman is tied and gagged as Joker doses the manager with a lethal dose of his newly created Joker toxin, causing her to gradually laugh more and more uncontrollably. When Batman arrives on the scene by crashing through the roof, the Joker finally reveals himself to be the impostor Black Mask after viciously beating Roman into unconsciousness for not 'playing along' (as the latter, while Joker tried to deny any knowledge of the Joker, spoiled the charade by threatening to kill him for trying to steal his laundered money).

As Joker reveals that most of Black Mask's men are now loyally working for him due to the benefits they reap as a result, his men then don new Joker masks while the villain shoots Batman several times and throws the laughing bank manager at him. Detonating bombs that were rigged in the vault, Joker drives away with both the money and Roman in the stolen ambulance, laughing insanely. Batman grabs the manager and barely manages to lunge away from the massive explosion, but the manager unfortunately succumbs to Joker's toxin and dies with a smile on her face. Anticipating that Batman might still be alive, Joker sends in a handful of his men to check the bank, which leads to confirmation that Batman is indeed still alive.

Amazed that Batman could survive both his gunshot wounds and the explosion, Joker nevertheless remains in cheerful spirits as he embarks on the next phase of his plans. Batman subdues all of Joker's men, leaving one for interrogation, who informs the Dark Knight that Joker murdered over a quarter of Black Mask's men who would not turn and has taken complete control of all of Roman's operations at the Sionis Steel Mill, which contains a secret entrance to a massive drug manufacturing facility and torture chamber, where Black Mask receives shipments of drugs to be sold onto the streets.

Arriving at the mill, Batman learns that Joker has been using the mill to manufacture explosive chemicals and had his men take Sionis down to his old torture chamber to brutalize and murder him, as well as continue manufacturing and sending out shipments of chemicals and drugs to add to Gotham's descent into anarchy. Batman is able to subdue Joker's crew and rescue Sionis, who has nothing but raw hatred for both Batman and Joker, intending to kill them both. Batman begins to brutally interrogate Roman for Joker's location until Copperhead arrives, intending to collect Joker's bounty, and poisons Batman, allowing Roman to escape at the same time. As Batman begins to hallucinate and sees his worst fears come to life, he scans the poison and sends an analysis of it to Alfred in order to manufacture a cure and drop it off to him.

As Batman arrives at ground level, he is forced to fight Copperhead until Alfred sends him the cure via the Batwing, which cures Batman and allows him to finally subdue Copperhead. Locking up the assassin in the back of one of Sionis's trucks, he learns that Joker has called a meeting with the remaining assassins. Tracking down the electronic signals from one of the assassins, the Electrocutioner, Batman learns that Joker has taken control of the Gotham Royal Hotel, murdered over a hundred of its employees, taken the guests hostage, and has begun to reconstruct the hotel into a hellish funhouse with stolen carnival items to torture and slaughter the guests, rigging the foundations of the hotel with explosives and laughing gas.

Joker also continues to send out his men to commit crimes and wipe out the last pockets of oppositions, allowing them to keep all the ill-gotten gains, much to their delight, as long as they create chaos and destruction. As his men take complete control of Old Gotham, Joker converts the Royal Hotel's penthouse into his secondary base of operations and, still disguised as Black Mask, has Braden and his SWAT team form a perimeter around the hotel to look out for Batman and keep Captain Gordon and the media away. As Gordon is kept busy with the murder of a amusement park worker, most likely the same one Joker killed for the stolen carnival items, Batman infiltrates the hotel after fighting past scores of Joker's men and Braden's SWAT team. Inside, Batman navigates through a river of mutilated corpses and makeshift carnival attractions.

At the same time, Joker reveals himself to all of the assassins, including Bane, Firefly, Deadshot, Lady Shiva, and Electrocutioner (Copperhead being unable to make it due to being trapped by Batman earlier). Disappointed and annoyed in particular at Electrocutioner's attitude and inability to kill Batman (having been knocked out cold by a single kick from Batman several hours earlier), Joker, after threatening Electrocutioner with shooting him, kicks the assassin and his swivelchair from the penthouse and to his death, having deduced that Electrocutioner had nothing else to contribute, instructing the rest of the assassins to go out and find Batman while Bane stays, knowing that Batman is coming for Joker. Batman is able to take Electrocutioner's gloves from his corpse and makes his way further up the hotel. As Batman continues through Joker's sadistic traps and Bane's mercenaries, he grows increasingly disturbed at the psychotic nature of the Joker as he sees more and more corpses, some of them being Joker's own men, attached to decorations and crude carnival games. After Batman managed to get through the rigged, newly developed amusement park traps and exit, Joker ended up taking his fury out by executing the chief architect for incompetence regarding Batman being able to escape the otherwise inescapable death trap alive.

Batman later uncovers a plot by the Joker to detonate a large part of the Gotham Royal Hotel at midnight of December 31st, and attempts to disarm the "Snowman Bombs" with his cryptographic sequencer. However, Batman, to Joker's amusement, was unable to disarm the bombs and instead only succeeded in significantly reducing the time of detonation to within a few seconds, forcing the Dark Knight to bail from a nearby window and grapple onto a news chopper to get to the roof before the bombs exploded.

When Batman finally arrives at the penthouse, Bane brutally grabs him and throws him through the hallway, finally throwing him into Joker's quarters. As Bane attempts to kill the hero, Joker forces Bane to leave under the threat of blowing up both the hotel and themselves. As Bane reluctantly leaves, giving him one minute, Joker, while claiming that his family let him open "one present each Christmas Eve", reveals that he has placed a series of explosives all throughout Gotham and detonates one, causing the entire top of the Elleworth building directly in front of the hotel to explode, causing the Joker to laugh maniacally at the destruction and sing "and a Partridge in a pear tree!".

Batman grabs the villain, infuriated, asking him how many people he just murdered. Joker, after denying that there were any people in the building (at least, none that he was aware of), gleefully reveals that the building was merely a construction site, a demonstration of the real carnage soon to descend onto Gotham. Batman slams his enemy into the adjacent table and flings him across it as several of the detonation devices falls on the floor next to Joker. Grabbing one of the devices, Joker reveals that the detonation device he is holding will not be as friendly, laughing sadistically.

Having been pushed to his limit, Batman grabs the device, break it, and smashes it into Joker's face. As Batman punches the villain, Joker simply laughs as Bane reappears and punches Batman off his new nemesis. Bane grabs Batman's face, intending to kill him to achieve his peace of mind through dominance of the hero and his city, and flings him through the window. Falling through a ceiling window, Batman prepares himself for a brutal battle with Bane as Joker gleefully watches.

While Batman is able to hold his own during the fight, Bane reveals his trump card; a storage tank attached to his body that pumps a deadly chemical known as Venom through his body, giving him enhanced strength and adrenaline. The brutal fight then continues on the snowy balcony overlooking the destroyed construction building with Joker commentating from above as Alfred calls the police in an effort to save his adoptive son. However, Batman is able to fight off Bane long enough for police helicopters to arrive on the scene. Unshaken by this, Joker, laughing and calling it a "party," takes out a machine gun and begins to fire wildly at the choppers, ordering his men to do the same.

The police retaliate and open fire on the Joker's crew, killing them all, while Bane is merely grazed. Realizing that the tides have turned, Bane decides to make an escape as his men in their own stolen choppers arrive and fire at the police choppers, causing them to both collide and explode upon impact, killing all passengers. As Bane jumps into one of his choppers, Batman throws a tracking device on him to locate him later. Joker is annoyed that Bane is attempting to escape rather than finish the job and begins firing on him as well. Bane responds with a rocket from a launcher, which misses the Joker, who remains completely unshaken and continues smiling as the explosion from behind him flings him off the balcony.

As the Joker laughs insanely towards his impending death, Batman jumps to save the mass murdering psychopath, who begins to fight Batman as he tries to rescue him, due to believing that Batman was "coming back for more." Batman attempts to grapple them both to safety, but the amount of debris falling from the explosion causes the line to break, resulting in the pair falling through the glass ceiling of the hotel lobby. Violently crashing down onto the floor, Batman is surrounded by two of Joker's men as the villain composes himself and aims his gun at Batman.

Joker is shocked that Batman would actually risk his own life to save his, even after killing so many people in just one night. Instead of shooting Batman however, Joker simply shoots both of his henchmen dead, telling Batman that they were very bad men who performed such horrendous actions that they are unspeakable, just like his own actions. Laughing, Joker then aims the gun at himself until Batman knocks it away and punches the villain to the ground, cuffing him afterwards.

Braden and his SWAT team then arrive, still intent on collecting the bounty on Batman's head. The hero however calls his Batwing and escapes as Gordon and Bullock arrive, taking the Joker into custody. While locking the Joker in the back of his police vehicle, Bullock assumes Batman is working with the Joker, wondering why he would bother saving him from a deadly drop if he wasn't. Joker laughs at the notion and wonders the same exact thought himself, realizing that Batman is unlike anyone he has ever met before.

Joker is sent to Blackgate Penitentiary, where he undergoes a psychological examination by the intern of one Hugo Strange, Harleen Quinzel. Having sympathy on the Joker, Harleen allows the villain tell her his view on the world and how the brutality of life made him who he is today. At the same time, Joker remembers his past (at least how he remembers it at the current moment) as a failed stand-up comedian and being strongarmed into becoming a criminal known as the Red Hood, as well as his first encounter with Batman at the ACE chemicals factory, which led to Joker falling into a tank of experimental chemicals, revealing the reason for Joker's initial hatred of the hero. However, he now sees a new purpose in life with the emergence of the Dark Knight, who he has met through what he believes is fate, after he saves his life and proves to be much more complex and interesting than initially perceived.

Seeing Batman as a monster like himself, created from a very bad day, Joker feels that Batman is finally someone he can rely on to play his sadistic games. Excited at the prospect of such a person bringing new meaning to his life, Joker makes Harleen believe that he is talking about her while he is, in reality, referring to Batman. Harleen is taken in by the Joker's false charms and is essentially seduced by the psychopath in a matter of mere minutes, gently touching his hand. Joker smiles as he has crafted the perfect pawn to manipulate from within his prison.

Batman, in the meantime, is still incredibly disturbed at the Joker's nature, believing him to be the worst kind of criminal and evil; random, relentless, and unpredictable, the same type of criminality that took the lives of his own parents. Batman uses his tracker to locate Bane's base of operations while Bane's mercenaries seize control over parts of Old Gotham and smuggle in shipments of drugs used in the construction of Venom courtesy of Bird, Bane's right hand man who has connections all over the criminal element in Gotham.

Taking out Bane's mercenaries as they attempt to take over areas of the criminal underworld, Batman enters Bane's hideout to find an experimental chamber. Batman learns that not only has Bane been selling Venom as a drug on the streets to find suitable followers, but he has also been experimenting with the compound to create an even more potent variation of Venom known as TN-1, which would eliminate the need of a storage tank. Having tested it out on numerous followers, many of which horrifically mutate and perish, Bane learns that one of the side effects is severe memory loss.

Despite having made great progress with his research, allowing his followers to assimilate the drug into their body without harmful physical effects, Bane has yet to find a solution to overcome this severe memory loss. Searching his base further, Batman finds a research facility dedicated to himself with various pictures and newspaper clippings of the hero along with a series of complex computers which reveal something horrifying to Batman; Bane has deduced that Bruce Wayne and Batman are one and the same. Horrified and infuriated, Batman destroys the computers and blows the base up, warning Alfred to remain hidden in the Batcave until he can get there.

Before he can however, the destruction occurring in the city reaches a peak again as the remaining assassins are still after the bounty promised to them by Joker with Deadshot destroying a police chopper and holding a civilian hostage in the Merchants Bank to lure Batman out in the open, Lady Shiva and her ninja forces murdering bent cops and criminals as part of their own grand designs, and Firefly destroying portions of the Pioneers Bridge and rigging it to blow, placing several bombs constructed from materials stolen from GothCorp in critical locations throughout the bridge, with the aid of his hired forces. With Joker still destroying Gotham from inside Blackgate with his bounty, Batman has no choice but to take out his remaining assassins before ensuring Alfred's safety from Bane.

Batman is able to subdue Deadshot and his forces at the bank and rescue the hostage and defeat Lady Shiva, who is in Gotham as a part of a much larger scheme at the behest of her master, though she is able to ultimately escape and flee from Gotham; all that was left was Firefly and Bane. Arriving at the Pioneers Bridge, Batman witnesses Firefly set half the bridge on fire as he commands his forces to set the timer on the bombs, and detonate them if the police attempt the breech the area. Unknown to even Firefly's forces, the villain intends to detonate the bombs and completely destroy the bridge along with his own men as soon as Batman is killed so that he can collect the bounty for himself.

With Firefly's men armed with military grade weaponry provided to them through various purchases from the Penguins arm caches, the police are nearly helpless to effectively infiltrate the bridge without detection. Batman uses his Batwing to distract Firefly and sneaks past the police blockade, attempting to reason with Gordon in the process. Gordon still blames Batman for all the criminal escalation throughout the brutal night however, forcing Batman to continue working alone, just as officer Braden and his SWAT team are captured by Firefly and his men. Batman is able to save hostages taken by Firefly's men and disarm three of the bombs while Gordon and his team disarm the last one. After saving and then subduing Braden and the last of his corrupt SWAT team, Batman arrives on top of the bridge just in time to see Firefly blowing up a police chopper, causing it to violently collide into the top portion of a central pillar, and killing everyone within it.

Infuriated, Batman fights past the last of the pyromaniac's forces and faces off against the villain in a final showdown. While the battle destroys most of the bridge and the vehicles on it, Batman destroys Firefly's jetpack and subdues him after the villain realizes that his detonator does not work due to the bombs being disarmed. Leaving the assassin for the police, Gordon finally begins to trust Batman, who tells the police captain that he should listen to him more if they are to truly help Gotham. Gordon agrees and believes that he and Batman made a good team during the situation as Batman leaves.

Contacting Alfred while in route to the Batcave to ensure his safety, Batman is shocked to hear Bane, having infiltrated both Wayne Manor and the Batcave and leaving a path of destruction in his wake. Revealing that he has attacked Alfred and left him at death's door just long enough for a few final words, Bane voices his plans to have Batman become molded into a true rival in battle though his hatred, anger, and sadness over the loss of his most trusted ally; the perfect opponent he needs to defeat in order to finally achieve his desires.

Batman arrives at the destroyed Batcave and finds Alfred barely clinging to life, telling Bruce to not add his death to the burden he carries. Alfred then seemingly dies, leaving Bruce to believe that he is now truly and completely alone, until he realizes that he can use Electrocutioner's gloves to resuscitate him. Batman is able to succeed and saves Alfred's life, with the two finally understanding each other and how they must continue to rely on one another to survive. However, Batman loses hope of protecting his city when seeing just what his very presence has caused to happen in a single night, with his own home and last family member being targeted.

Alfred tells his adoptive son that Gotham always needed a hero like Batman and that the villains and criminals he faces now would've always been out there in some shape or form even if he wasn't in Gotham. Alfred goes on to state that even with all his brawn and gadgets, Bruce must realize that he is still just a man, vulnerable and mortal, and must rely on allies from time to time to protect Gotham City. Turning on the police radio, Batman and Alfred hear that Joker has escaped Blackgate (it is heavily implied that he escaped with the use of security codes given to him from Harleen) and is leading riots that have completely destroyed the prison and killed hundreds.

Batman realizes that Alfred spoke the truth and prepares himself to finally put an end to the Joker's night of destruction once and for all. Arriving to see the prison completely engulfed in flames and destruction, Batman fights through scores of escaped convicts and Bane and Joker's forces. Making his way to the center of the prison, Batman finds Joker holding the warden hostage with Bane at his side. Joker reveals that he understands Batman and his code of ethics and has made it his new mission in life to make the hero give up his one rule by forcing him to take a life.

Revealing that Bane holds a heart monitor that will charge up an electric chair, Joker sits in the chair and tells Batman that either he kills Bane to stop his heart from charging up the monitor and the chair or either Batman dies or Joker will be electrified to death; either way, Batman will be responsible for someone's death. Bane puts on the monitor, telling Batman to use all his hatred and anger from the loss of his ally in battle, as Joker's men strap him to the chair. To ensure that Batman and Bane do indeed battle, Joker has placed a bomb within the facility that will detonate and slaughter everyone if the heart monitor is removed from Bane. As Batman and Bane battle, Gordon arrives and shoots Joker's men who were holding Warden Joseph.

As Joseph and Gordon attempt to get Joker out of the chair, Joker elbows both men, knocking out Joseph and holding Gordon at gunpoint with his own gun, putting the headpiece of the electric chair on Gordon, raising the stakes even higher for Batman. Coming up with the plan to send Bane's heart into cardiac arrest, Batman uses his electric gloves to defeat Bane and stop his heart, making the Joker gleefully laugh. Joker then attempts to shoot Joseph dead when he awakes and stands up to the mass murderer, but Gordon jumps in front of him and takes the bullet instead. Joker continues to laugh and leaves the room to escape from the prison and continue his reign of terror and detonate the bombs he placed across Gotham with his forces and the escaping convicts.

Batman reveals to Gordon, who was not severely injured due to his bulletproof vest, that Bane can still be revived and tells him and the Warden to arrest the Joker before he can escape. As they do so, Batman revives Bane, who is more infuriated than ever and resorts to drastic measures; using a sample of TN-1 on himself to become even more powerful. As Bane does so, he becomes a hulking mass of muscle with an uncontrollable urge to kill Batman. Batman sprays a string of explosive gel in a circle around Bane and detonates it, destroying the floor beneath them and and dropping them into one of the prison corridors.

After one final, grueling battle, Batman is able to finally subdue Bane after strapping him to a pair of electrified pacification devices with his remote batclaw. Batman also realizes that Bane's memory has been left damaged by the extensive use of TN-1 one, securing his identity once again. However, Joker remains on the loose, having shot Warden Joseph via a placed sniper and is nearly out of the prison. Batman and Gordon protect Joseph from Joker's gang, leaving Gordon to protect the warden as Batman faces off against the Joker in the prison's chapel.

Inside the chapel, Batman finds Joker laughing hysterically at all the events throughout the night. Batman grabs the villain, who is thirsty for Batman to take yet another life, but, much to his displeasure, Batman reveals that Bane is still alive. Joker then holds his gun to Batman's head, telling the hero that both he and himself are the same, born from very bad days, and exist because of a broken society and law system. Batman refuses to believe in the Joker's words and kicks him across the room and into several pews. Joker continues to goad Batman into killing him, telling him that there is no hope for him.

Batman throws Joker into one of the windows, at which point Joker takes shards of the broken glass and attempts to slit Batman's throat. Batman knocks the pieces of glass off of him and punches Joker dozens of times before smashing him onto the ground. Batman begins to strangle Joker, who continues shouting to kill him, but the hero resists the urge and knocks out the villain once and for all instead. Gordon arrives on the scene and expresses his respect for Batman for not killing the Joker before stating that he still has to take him in. However, as Gordon informs Bullock that the Joker is neutralized, Batman disappears, an action that Gordon later admits to his daughter he partially allowed to happen due to his newfound friendship with the dark knight.

As the police retake control of the prison, Gordon tells his daughter, Barbara, how she was right to think of Batman as a hero and believes that he could indeed be a symbol of hope for the people of Gotham. Joker is left being escorted back to his cell, ultimately accepting his defeat for the time being, but also laughing at Batman's deception. As Harleen smiles at him, Joker states his belief that his future battles with Batman will indeed be "fun".

Later that evening, Quincy Sharp, a political activist, reveals his intentions to reopen Arkham Asylum, partially due to the manipulation of Lady Shiva under Ra's al Ghul's orders, in light of the night's events in an effort to create a more secure facility for Gotham's more dangerous criminals. This essentially reveals that Joker's actions led to the reopening of Arkham Asylum and, thus, started the chain of events that make up the entire Arkham Series.

Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate
3 months after having been captured by Batman, Joker, along with Penguin and Black Mask, took over Blackgate Prison, each of them controlling a section of the facility. Having now perfected his Joker toxin and mass produced large quantities of the poison, Joker unleashes it throughout the facility and leaves countless dead guards in his wake, all strung up and horrifically grinning with a dead smile.

Joker then takes complete control of the administration building and redecorates it into his own image and abducts Warden Joseph again by sneaking into his office through a sewer network connected to his emergency escape hatch. Joker has the Warden tied to a series of explosives that have been rigged in with the prison's security control box wiring systems, leaving the bombs in a fragile condition if tampered with incorrectly.

Joker then rallies dozens of the prisoners to become part of his expanding army and consolidates his hold over the administrative section of the prison, setting up shop in the warden's office. Knowing that Batman will interfere with his plans once again, much to the villain's delight, and eager to resume his cat and mouse game with the hero, Joker also rehires the help of Deadshot (who is also lending his abilities to the other crime lords within the prison to collect triple the amount of money through killing Batman) in ensuring that the Dark Knight is slowed down before dwelling too far into the administration building.

When Batman meets his nemesis once again, Joker sets off a series of bombs that destroys a large portion of the building as Deadshot targets Batman when the hero navigates outside to reach and confront the Joker in the warden's office. After defeating Deadshot, rescuing the Warden, and reaching the Joker in Joseph's office, the psychopath reveals his plans to release his laughing toxin into the air conditioning ducts and poison the entire facility. The villain then gleefully engages his rival in a brutal fight, but is nonetheless defeated by Batman, who then proceeds to stop Joker's operations within the prison.

However, as a failsafe, Joker made a deal with Catwoman (this plot point varies from game to game and is dependent on which boss the player defeats last), who was also in the prison as part of her own designs, and gave her his explosives wrapped up as presents to be placed all throughout the prison. While Catwoman has no intentions of the explosives going off and simply uses them as a diversion to keep Batman busy while she smuggles Bane, her true objective, out of the prison, Batman is forced to disarm them all to save the prison. After stopping all of Joker's explosives, Batman would ensure that both Catwoman and Bane were put back into custody, ending Joker and Catwoman's plans once and for all. However, before Joker can be put back into his cell, he manages to murder two riot officers when they arrive to arrest him and disguises himself as one of them, using the disguise to escape from the prison to wreak further havoc on Gotham.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

 * See: The Joker (Batman: Arkham Asylum)

Batman: Arkham City

 * See: The Joker (Batman: Arkham City)

Batman

 * "Aww, too bad, so sad!"
 * "Oh, I'm sorry. Did I kill your friend? Whoops, my bad!"
 * "Looks like I'm gonna need to find a new playmate. Oh, and we were having so much fun, too!"
 * "Aww, gotta say, I thought you'd have more fight in you! A LOT more fight!"
 * "Ding dong! The bat is dead! Which old bat? The dumb old bat! Ding dong, the dumb old bat is dead!"

Deathstroke

 * "Deathstroke? More like Death-JOKE!"
 * "You may be the world's greatest assassin, kiddo, but Joker always gets the last laugh!"