Despite its record-breaking opening weekend, Joker is almost certainly the darkest superhero ever made. Its closest competition is, of course, James Gunn’s Super, a pitch black comedy in which Rainn Wilson plays a tortured nobody who tries to become a makeshift crime-fighter but mostly winds up beating the heads of people who cut in movie lines in with a pipe wrench. There aren’t many jokes in Joker — just the sight of a sad, poor, no-longer-medicated man losing his mind and going beyond Bernie Goetz.
Luckily the chuckleheads of the internet have been making jokes for it. That’s right: Joker has become a meme farm. There are a number of them going around, such as replacing the trailer’s soundtrack with the theme from Evangelion. One of the more popular involves taking that shrieky cackle Joaquin Phoenix created for his antihero Arthur Fleck and dubbing in a laugh from another famous person. Like, let’s say Seth Rogen.
the joker but he laughs like seth rogen pic.twitter.com/KbvMt5Ij7b
— ryan (@ryanhzr) October 8, 2019
Or Bill Hader.
https://twitter.com/LaughBill/status/1181558258923950083
Or Samuel L. Jackson.
https://twitter.com/NE0SMATRIX/status/1181625309969420288
Or Clippers player Kawhi Leonard.
https://twitter.com/kazmalone_/status/1181635394019852288
Or Peter Griffin.
The joker but he laughs like Peter Griffin pic.twitter.com/dyX5RvaEEb
— Radja Afif (@RadjaAfifKedah) October 8, 2019
What about Nicki Minaj?
https://twitter.com/chalameche/status/1181619392934744064
Or perhaps Phoenix’s fellow comic book movie star Tobey Maguire?
https://twitter.com/MilkyJohnWick/status/1181612726445117443
Harry Styles?
https://twitter.com/styleshozier/status/1181624269538758662
You know who has a chortle that really destroys the ear drums? Ricky Gervais.
https://twitter.com/JimmyTweetboy/status/1181643391647588352
There are fewer more iconic chuckles than that Return of the Jedi sidekick.
The Joker but he laughs like Salacious B. Crumb… pic.twitter.com/DKK99ASfo2
— John Maffeo 🍔 (@MaffManJones) October 8, 2019
This being the internet, the meme was bound to come full circle.
the joker but he laughs like the joker https://t.co/Foc0U0JU2h pic.twitter.com/wYayIB46tJ
— Corey Holland (@CoreyHolland) October 8, 2019
As always, good job, internet.