Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for Batman: Gotham Nights #6.
The Joker just played his greatest prank ever, paying the medical bills of Gotham City's most desperate citizens. While this may sound like the set-up for a dastardly double-cross, the Clown Prince of Crime was decidedly honest about this act of charity, yet still managed to bring his own special brand of chaos to Gotham City in the process of doing a good deed.
Despite his reputation as evil incarnate, The Joker does have a softer side which occasionally finds its way to the surface and lines that even he will not cross. He once organized a party for a lonely boy on his birthday, though there was no reason for him to do so other than it amused him. The Joker also once joined forces with Captain America and Batman to fight the Red Skull, proclaiming "I may be a criminal lunatic, but I'm an American criminal lunatic!" It is no surprise then that Batman: Gotham Nights #6 should see the Mogul of Mountebanks taking a stand against one of the few things eviler than him; medical insurance providers.
As Batman: Gotham Nights #6 opens, Batman was celebrating his most successful year yet as a crime-fighter, having captured so many criminals that the jails in Gotham City were all expanding to handle the influx of petty offenders. Unfortunately, this resulted in the city government paying for the jail expansion by cutting the funding for the city's hospitals and the fund that helps working families pay for health insurance. Thankfully, The Joker was ready to step in and offer a helping hand (sans electrified joy-buzzer or poisoned tack) and fully pay the medical bills of five needy citizens a week. All people had to do to apply for what he dubbed "Jokeraid" was film a video of themselves saying the word "Balyushka" and post it to Joker's account on the social media site Lexema.
This resulted in utter chaos breaking out in Gotham City, as Batman and the police suddenly had their hands full trying to maintain order in the face of the second coming of Jackass. Among the more memorable stunts were an animal caretaker in need of a liver transplant releasing all the herbivores from Gotham Zoo and a man in a SCUBA suit attempting to jump off of a roof and through an open manhole into the sewer. Batman also ran himself ragged trying to find the meaning of the word "balyushka," not knowing it was a nonsense word that The Joker had made up because it sounded silly yet had no actual meaning.
The ultimate punchline of this prank was that The Joker hadn't done anything illegal once Batman finally caught up with him. The Joker couldn't even be accused of inciting a riot, as he never told anyone to break the law - just "to make your video something you think I'd like." When Batman was left with nothing save the fact that the police could hold The Joker for psychiatric evaluation and that he couldn't pay for anyone's bills from behind bars, Joker revealed that his Jokeraid website was now self-sufficient thanks to all the advertising revenue and it was set-up to keep paying out to five random people a week, even without The Joker's supervision. Worst of all, The Dark Knight was forced to admit that he was responsible for having caused this health-care crisis that prompted all this madness, thanks to his focus on going after low-level criminals over crime-bosses.