Joker On a TV Show, What Will He Do?

Warning: this entry contains major spoilers for 2019 film Joker.

About

Joker on a TV Show, What Will He Do? refers to a series of images in which the 2019 film Joker titular character Joker is edited into various popular talk shows, usually paired with a snowclone caption "Joker on X, What Will He Do?" The format implies that Joker is intending to murder the host of the show akin to one of the final scenes of the film. Joker on a TV Show, What Will He Do? is a subformat of X in the Y, What Will He Do? snowclone.

Origin

On October 4th, 2019, American thriller film Joker premiered.^[1] In one of the final scenes of the film, the titular character Joker, portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, murders the character Murray Franklin, portrayed by Robert De Niro, the host of Live With Murray Franklin show, with a shot to the head.

I'll tell you what you get: you get what you fucking deserve!

On October 6th, 2019, iFunny user Alexios posted an edited still image from a Jimmy Kimmel Live episode showing Joker as a guest on the show (shown below).^[2] The post gained over 4,500 smiles on iFunny in five days, with an Instagram repost gaining 300 likes in the same period.^[3]

Spread

In the following days, the format received significant spread on deep iFunny and Instagram. For example, on October 7th, 2019, iFunny user Mr_VinceMcMahon_V3 posted an image of Joker on Squidward Chat (shown below, left), ^[4] with the post receiving over 2,500 smiles in four days. An October 8th post of Joker on the Ellen Degeneres Show by iFunny user Svet gained over 530 smiles in three days (shown below, right),^[5] with a repost by Instagram user salad.snake receiving over 71,000 likes on the platform.^[6]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References