This article is about a character in Persona 2: Innocent Sin. For other uses, see Joker (disambiguation). |
"Pathetic, misguided humans, obey me! Only I can lead you, the ignorant! If you will not obey, then you will DIE!"
The Joker (also called the Master Joker in Eternal Punishment) is a mysterious man known to grant wishes from Persona 2: Innocent Sin.
Appearances[]
- Persona 2: Innocent Sin: Antagonist
- Persona 3: Cameo
- DemiKids Light / Dark Version
Profile[]
Persona 2: Innocent Sin[]
"A masked figure rumored to grant one's dreams. Why he does this, and who he is, is a complete mystery."
The boy that would later become Joker is Jun Kurosu, Tatsuya Suou's childhood friend and a member of a Featherman-roleplaying group called the Masked Circle alongside Eikichi and Ginko. He would often go play there with his friends in order to escape an unhappy family life where his father Akinari Kashihara and his mother Junko Kurosu would fight with each other and make an embarrassment out of him. Eventually Mr. Kashihara committed suicide, and Nyarlathotep began impersonating him and taking his place, having heard Jun's wish of a parent that would not embarrass him and perverting it to extremes. Maya Amano, an older child, later joined the other children after her father died reporting in a warzone. Unfortunately, one day, Maya announced her leave, and not wanting their childhood friend to depart, Eikichi and Ginko locked her in the shrine only for an insane arsonist named Tatsuya Sudou to set the shrine on fire. Suou fended off the arsonist and burnt his eye out after awakening his persona, and Maya, in a similar vein awakened hers and survived the fire, although the incident left her with pyrophobia. However, Nyarlathotep, still impersonating Kashihara at that time, began feeding his "son" lies such as Suou killed Maya by locking her in the shrine and burning her alive, and the Oracle of Maia will lead humanity to enlightenment once fulfilled (something he spread to see humanity destroy itself despite fully knowing it was complete nonsense). The entity successfully drove Jun into madness, and he rechristened himself as Joker to claim punishment from those he deemed guilty for the fire that "killed Maya" years ago and guide humanity to a new golden age.
In the present day, the Joker is a mysterious man active in Sumaru City, where rumors are spread that he can answer wishes submitted to him by calling one's own phone number. However, if the person who summons them doesn't have a wish on their hearts, Joker instead claims the dreams of his victims, and reduces them to shadows of their former selves. Joker's victims remain on the spot soulless and frozen, and they will be erased completely from the cognition of others. He is also the leader of the Masked Circle and is gathering the Ideal Energy from his victims' dreams to awaken the ancient spaceship Xibalba in accordance with the prophecies in In Lak'ech, and anyone granted wishes by him are forced to join the Masked Circle. Some of the people he recruited included the Arsonist that burnt down the Alaya Shrine a decade ago and his mother, the latter which unknowingly came to her son asking for "more beauty" not knowing who the Joker actually is.
Tatsuya, Eikichi and Lisa meets Joker for the first time when they try to enact the Joker summoning rumor out of curiosity. Much to their surprise, he seems to recognize Tatsuya, bearing great hatred against him, implying that this was actually a person Tatsuya used to be acquainted with. He attacks the trio with several demons, who were all defeated. They rush in to use a Fusion Spell against Joker, but to no avail, and Joker easily overwhelms them and was close to killing Tatsuya. However, since Tatsuya has no recollection about him, he decides to leave them alone and leaves the Iris flower for him to remember his past sins.
Joker then proceeds to fulfill each line of the Oracle of Maia for most of the game in quick succession, either directly or ordering a high-level underling to do so. He was seen accompanying Takashi Hanya in reactivating the Seven Sisters High School clock tower, which would fulfill one line of the Oracle of Maia. Unknowingly to the party, they always arrive too late to stop the prophecy from advancing, as they hinged on seemingly harmless events that the party cannot stop from happening, while the events that would obviously cause bodily harm are usually distractions to keep them busy.
When the party finally reaches him at the Caracol, the Fuhrer, his troops and the Shadow Selves of Tatsuya, Lisa and Eikichi can be seen alongside Joker, who collects the five crystal skulls to unleash Xibalba. Maya tells him that dreams shall not be given but attained via one's own power, yet Joker rebukes her as having an overly sugarcoated view, with the Furher agreeing with him, that humanity only wants a ruler to think for them, and Joker announces that he will guide humanity to a golden age. However, when Xibalba emerges from the ground, the Joker displays signs of remorse for unleashing Xibalba and suddenly recollecting that he's actually Jun. He also had a feeling that Tatsuya Suou might not be the arsonist who traumatized Maya. Queen Aquarius sacrifices herself to protect Joker/Jun from one of the Longinus Knights, revealing herself to be actually Jun's mother. Joker tries to fight back with his Persona, Nyarlathotep, but to no avail, and the Furher flees alongside his troops. He then orders Shadow Lisa, Shadow Eikichi and Shadow Tatsuya to leave, before displaying further signs of fully recollecting his true identity. Despite this, Nyarlathotep reaches out to him and tells him that he is Joker and Tatsuya Suou is the arsonist.
After Joker is defeated, he is possessed by Nyarlathotep and is forcibly transformed into Angel Joker. Should the party defeat the Angel Joker as well, he will be freed from Nyarlathotep's manipulations and revert back instantly into Jun Kurosu. As a last ditch attempt to manipulate him, Nyarlathotep (in the form of Kashihara) tries to get him back to his good side, but he refuses, so the entity evicts his Nyarlathotep-persona out from him and declares him to be removed from the Wheel of Fortune before leaving. Jun will join the party permanently in place of Yukino Mayuzumi afterwards.
Persona 2: Eternal Punishment[]
While no longer making a physical presence in Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, Tatsuya Sudou, who Nyarlathotep influenced by telling him the existence of the Other Side (without outright restoring his memories of that dimension), became the next JOKER, with his paper bag mask having a drawn smile with white teeth and red lips, which was also present in the original Joker's design. During the events of the game, Sudou tried to make Jun remember his time as the original Joker from Innocent Sin, but it failed to influence him.
DemiKids Light & Dark[]
An A-Rank BattleNet opponent who can supposedly grant any wish. He has a collection of rare demons, and is said to act unpredictable and have a lot of style. He gives a Scylla after 7 defeats, Clotho at 17 defeats, and Lachesis at 27.
Stats[]
Persona 2: Innocent Sin[]
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Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Joker is meant to be a figure of ambiguous gender in the Japanese script of the game, which explains why Lisa was able to make the incorrect guess that Joker's identity was "Big Sis," a girl. This ambiguity is removed from the English localization, which establishes Joker as male from his first appearance.
- Joker uses gender-neutral speech in the original script as well as the archaic gender-neutral personal pronoun ware (我), in contrast with Jun's more masculine boku (僕).
- During Joker's first appearance in the Japanese version, his voice is composed of multiple male and female voices combined with an echo effect. After his identity is revealed, Joker's voice changes to Jun's regular voice with an echo effect.
- Joker's introduction profile is written in yellow font, while male and female characters use blue and red font, respectively. The only other characters in the game to use yellow font are the Order of the Holy Lance. This was changed in the PSP port as Joker's profile now uses blue text and the Order of the Holy Lance uses regular white text.
- In Persona 3, Joker's mask can be seen alongside with other Featherman masks at the Naganaki Shrine during New Year's Day as a reference to the Masked Circle and its history.
- Story-wise, Joker seemingly fails to recognize Maya on a personal level even in situations where she is directly in front of him and she was the "big sis" that was supposedly killed in the fire set by Sudou and blamed on Tatsuya.