Ads by Send feedback Why this ad? Download Your Free Whitepaper Everything You Need to Know about Improving Veterinary Practice Success Penn Foster DOWNLOAD 156,926 ADD NEW PAGE All The Tropes Wiki PAGES WIKI CONTENT TROPING UTILITIES TROPER SOCIAL NETWORKS EXPLORE DISCUSS in: Trope, Pages with broken file links, Narrative Devices, and 5 more SHARE Joker Jury EDIT Quotes • Headscratchers • Playing With • Useful Notes • Analysis • Image Links • Haiku • Laconic File:Joker jury.gif The Trope Namer Scarface: Our prosecutor is ready, likewise our fair and impartial jury-- Mad Hatter: Hang him! Harley Quinn: Shoot 'im! Killer Croc: Hit him with a rock! —Batman the Animated Series, "Trial" What happens if a hero is captured by his foes? Sure, they 20 Members Online could just kill him out of hand, or toss him into a Death Trap, but if the villain has a sense of the theatrical, a quirky sense of humour, or is just flat-out crazy, he might decide to put his nemesis on trial. If so, the hero will find himself facing a Joker General Jury, often overseen by a Hanging Judge. Off Topic The Joker Jury is a mockery of a trial held by a hero's foes, where his enemies make up the judge, the jury, the prosecution Wiki General and even the defense. The charges are usually ridiculous, such as interfering with the villain's crimes, and the verdict is a Writer's Block foregone conclusion. Sometimes, the hero is actually able to defend himself and even win the trial. In that case, the villain Forum Chatroom usually just tries to kill him anyway. Trope Page Workshop The trope title comes from a story in Batman #163 where Batman and Robin are captured by the Joker and put on trial Work Page Workshop with the Joker as judge and members of his gang, all dressed in Joker costumes and make-up, as the prosecutor and jury. MEMBERS ONLINE See also Jury of the Damned. When the heroes are put on trial Cyberchief84 by someone besides the villains, it's often a Trial of the Mystical Free voiceDISBOARD chat from !d | 754,295 se… Jury or a Kangaroo Court. Often involves a Villain Team-Up. Discord Connect DT_Chaos Examples of Joker Jury include: Recent Wiki Activity Covers Always Lie/Playing With Contents Dan0410 • 11 minutes ago 1 Anime and Manga Covers Always Lie/Playing With 2 Comics Dan0410 • 15 minutes ago 3 Films -- Animation R-Rated Opening/Playing With 4 Films -- Live Action Dan0410 • 42 minutes ago 5 Gamebooks R-Rated Opening/Playing With Dan0410 • an hour ago 6 Literature R-Rated Opening/Playing With 7 Live Action TV Dan0410 • an hour ago 8 Music 9 Theater 10 Web Comics 11 Web Original 12 Western Animation 13 Real Life Anime and Manga In One Piece, Enies Lobby technically serves as a courthouse, even though criminals are only brought through there on their way to the underwater prison Impel Down, or to Marine Headquarters, and has an almost absurd pretense of justice. Criminals are judged by the Just Eleven Jurymen, who are pirates who have been sentenced to death and pronounce any criminal guilty to take as many down with them as they can. Judge Baskerville, actually three people who sit together to form a three-headed man, has a strange way of passing sentences: the left head favors punishing criminals, the right side favors leniency, and the center offers the more extreme "compromise" of execution. As such, no criminal has ever been acquitted. Strangely enough, Nico Robin and Franky don't get this treatment when they are taken through Enies Lobby. That's actually justified. Spandam used CP9's authority to override that. In the dub version of Yu-Gi-Oh!!'s Virtual World arc, Johnson, whose Deckmaster and appearance is that of Judge Man, claims he is putting Joey on trial for gambling. Comics This happens to Batman a lot: The above-mentioned Batman story. Also occurs in Dark Victory. Two-Face does it during the "No Man's Land" story arc. In a mild subversion, the "defendant", Commissioner Gordon, got off by naming Harvey Dent as his defense attorney, and turning it more into a battle between the two sides of his personality. Harvey won. Two-Face puts a judge on trial in the Robin: Year One mini-series. In an odd inversion, in a storyline that ran in Batman #291-294, Batman was missing and presumed dead, and villains placed themselves on trial before a court of their fellow villains, attempting to prove themselves guilty of Batman's murder. The pre-made adventure for a Batman RPG from the early 90s had Joker attempting to frame the player characters for murder, then putting them on trial before a "jury of [their] peers" - twelve mannequins dressed in Batman's cape and cowl. Happens to Spider-Man in the "Power and Responsibility" arc that kicks off the Clone Saga. In an All Just a Dream example in Action Comics #286, while in the grip of a Red Kryptonite nightmare, Superman dreams that Luthor, Brainiac and other villains put him on 'trial' for his alleged 'crimes' against them, and sentence him to battle Supergirl to the death in a gigantic arena or else stand by helplessly while they blow up the Earth. The Lucky Luke story The Gang of Joss Jamon has him put on trial. Judge, prosecutor and defense attorney are members of the titular gang; the jury is made up of Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Calamity Jane (who's shown as simply a villain rather than the Crazy Awesome Boisterous Bruiser she becomes later on in the series; in the 1991 Animated Adaptation, she's replaced by Ma Dalton) and the Dalton brothers. It's used in a few other albums too, usually with the Dalton brothers as judge, prosecutor and defense attorney. In one case, Luke is able to talk Averell into successfully defending him. Also seen in The Judge, said judge being the historical Roy Bean: he charges Lucky Luke with theft in order to confiscate the cattle herd Luke was in charge of, assigns a deaf-mute as the defense attorney, and packs the jury with cronies. Mordru subjects the Legion of Super-Heroes to one of these in Action Comics #370. Factor 3 did this to the X-Men in issue 37, trying them for treason for preventing their fellow mutants from comitting crimes. Also, Magneto. To Gambit. The Injustice Society of the World subjects the Justice Society of America to one of these in All Star Comics #37. The standard M.O. of the mercenary/vigilante group the Jury in the Marvel Universe. Judge Dredd was once put on trial by the survivors of East Meg One in the New Kremlin. A part inversion, Sov Judge Orlok, who brought Dredd in, both resisted having the trial and ended up giving the most influential defense testimony, making a conviction impossible AND prevented an assassination attempt on Dredd. In an early issue of Daredevil, the Owl kidnapped the judge who had sentenced him to prison and staged a mock trial using members of his gang as the jury. He also kidnapped Matt Murdock to serve as the defence attorney. In Captain America, Cap's girlfriend Diamondback was Popular Pages subjected to one of these by her former teammates in the villainous Serpent Society. Generate your Personalized Jonah Hex is subjected to one in Weird Western Tales TV Recommendations #30. Quentin Turnbull captures him and puts him on 'trail' BingeBot for "treason and other high crimes against the Confederate States of America". The 'jury' consists of "your former comrades in arms, some of them survivors of Taimanin Asagi the very massacre you perpetrated". In The Incredible Hercules comic by Marvel, Zeus is put on trial by Pluto using a jury of assorted deceased villains. Metamorphosis (manga) During Clone Saga Spider-Man is put on one by Judas Traveller, accusing him that his sole existence creates supervillains and ruin people's lives. Judas play the judge, Breast Expansion Ravencloft immates are jury, Kaine is defence attorney and prossecution role is let to Carnage. Spider-Man is of course found guilty and sentence to be killed, but after Kaine almost died to save him Traveller spares them both. He then reveals that if Peter can inspire such noble acts in scum like Kaine, he deserves to live. In one Silver Age Superman story he has a dream where he is put on trial by Luthor, Brainiac, a creature called Electro, and the Legion of Super-Villains. Films -- Animation Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame includes the song "The Court of Miracles", in which the gypsies act in this capacity while functioning as antagonists to the main characters, holding a chirpy trial of Quasimodo and Phoebus. Clopin acts as judge while his hand puppet acts as defense, and the final line runs thus: Clopin: We find you totally innocent... which is the worst crime of all. So you're going to hang! Since the gypsies believe the heroes to be minions of Frollo, the whole thing is intended as a parody of him. The scene in the original novel functions similarly, except that it's the hapless Gringoire being tried. Films -- Live Action Peter Lorre's character in the movie M is captured by criminals and put on trial because his crimes are bringing the police down on the heads of every other criminal in the city. Ironically, this court is actually fairer than the one he could expect in the real legal system.