During a Five Star Movement event in October 2019, Italian comedian and politician Beppe Grillo gave a speech wearing the Joker's makeup.[240] Yusuke Kawai, the governor of Chiba Prefecture, appeared on NHK with a Joker costume in 2021.[241] References to the character were also found in anti-government protests worldwide.[242][243] During the 17 October Revolution, a group of graffiti artists called Ashekm painted a mural of the Joker holding a Molotov cocktail and it was also reported that there was a Joker facepaint station at the protests in Beirut.[242] In Los Ángeles, Chile, during the 2019–2022 Chilean protests, the phrase "We are all clowns", which is adopted by Gotham City protesters in the movie, was written at the foot of a statue.[242][243] In Hong Kong, protesters challenged an emergency decree prohibiting the wearing of masks by wearing those of fictional characters such as the Joker.[242] In France, during the Yellow Vest Protests, firefighters donned Joker makeup holding placards.[244] In 2020, during the George Floyd protests, Argentine president Alberto Fernández compared the pictures of the protests to those seen in the film.[245]
One of the locations seen in the film, a set of stairs in the Bronx, New York City, has been dubbed the Joker Stairs. The stairs have become a tourist destination and the subject of internet memes, with visitors often reenacting the scene from the film in which Fleck dances down the stairs in his Joker attire.[246][247] Ukrainian boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk wore a suit resembling that of Joker in a pre-fight press conference leading up to his fight with Anthony Joshua.[248]
In 2020, Deadline listed it as one of the "21 Most Influential Films Of The 21st Century, So Far," with Pete Hammond describing it as a film "that emerged from a comic book to become a frightening comment on our own dark times, proving the genre from which it came is capable of being taken very seriously indeed."[249] It also ranked 39 on Empire's list of the "100 Greatest Movies of the 21st Century," saying that "it represented another mature evolution for the comic book movie – and proved that DC adaptations could thrive outside the Marvel-style universe structure."[250]
