How Many People The Joker Personally Kills In The Dark Knight
Joker #Joker
As both Batman’s arch-nemesis and one of DC’s most notorious criminals, it is unsurprising that Heath Ledger’s iteration of The Joker has a considerable body count in The Dark Knight. Like Batman, The Joker lacks superpowers, but is a brilliant tactician and leader who orchestrates horrific crimes with a nihilistic sense of humor. While The Dark Knight’s Joker kills numerous people indirectly, the number he is shown personally killing throughout the film remains chillingly high.
While Christopher Nolan and Heath Ledger’s version of The Joker is a unique reimagining of the Clown Prince of Crime, he does adhere to the comic source material, for the most part. Ledger’s Joker lacks his signature Joker venom in The Dark Knight (though it does make an appearance in the film’s novelization) but he maintains his comic counterpart’s ideology of settling a score with society and attempting to bring out the worst in people, especially Batman himself. As a criminal mastermind with no regard for human life, The Dark Knight’s Joker, like the comic iteration, amasses a significant body count, killing most of his victims personally.
The Joker Kills 23 People In The Dark Knight 
The Joker is explicitly shown killing 23 people in The Dark Knight, but the number exceeds 30 if the kills made on his orders or due to his manipulations are also counted. The Joker lacks his comic counterpart’s comedic weaponry (such as acid-spraying flowers or lethal electrical joy buzzers) in The Dark Knight, but with conventional knives, firearms, and explosives, he murders 3 of his henchmen (one inadvertently), 3 mob enforcers, 2 rival criminal leaders, 9 cops, and 6 innocent citizens. Taking inspiration from Ed Brubaker’s Batman: The Man Who Laughs, Ledger’s Joker often faces away from his victims as he kills them, chillingly demonstrating his callousness.
The Clown Prince kills one of Gambol’s men with a pencil through the eye, and later overpowers two of his enforcers. Joker kills Gambol himself with a knife only moments later and, towards the end of the film, lights Lau on fire. The Joker also kills three Gotham police officers during the tunnel chase, four at the police station, and two more in Gotham General Hospital. As for his own henchmen, Joker kills one during the bank heist, his truck driver while pursuing Harvey Dent, and detonates another with an implanted bomb. All six of The Joker’s innocent victims are meant to provoke Batman to either unmask or kill him.
How The Joker’s Kill Count Compares To Other Dark Knight Trilogy Villains 
Fascinatingly, The Joker has the highest onscreen body count of all the Dark Knight Trilogy’s villains. Carmine Falcone, Scarecrow, Ra’s al Ghul, and Talia al Ghul, while likely having killed people offscreen, are not shown killing anybody personally onscreen, though they have orchestrated or ordered numerous deaths. Two-Face is shown killing two people in The Dark Knight, but he is revealed to have killed five people by the time he dies. Selina Kyle kills four people in The Dark Knight Rises, and Bane (one of her victims) is shown killing twelve. As Batman’s most dangerous enemy, it is fitting that The Joker has the highest body count in Nolan’s films.
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