Now I know Joker was an extremely popular character long before Ledger was even born but you can't deny the character enjoyed a huge boost in popularity after The Dark Knight. I know people who didn't really care about him one way or another before TDK but after seeing it they're huge fans of him. He's always been a popular character like I said but I feel like before Ledger came along he was closer in popularity to other villains like Magneto or Lex Luthor. He wasn't that far ahead of the other classic Batman villains like Riddler, Penguin and Catwoman but now blows them out of the water in terms of popularity. He was still the most popular but not at the crazy level he is today, Loki is the only villain who's popularity comes close. I think he gave him a nice boost before the movie a lot of people saw him as a silly clown who is more of an annoyance to Batman after it people saw how dangerous and dark he could be.

How much did Ledger and his performance give to Jokers popularity?

Before all the girls were probably all Joker who!!! Now they're all omg I love Joker he's so crazy

Joker's always been the most popular Batman villain and one of the most popular comic book villains ever. But Ledger brought the Joker to the non-comic book readers. So yah, he boosted the popularity a lot but it's not like he wasn't already popular.

Ledger moved joker from comics to the big world wide screen so yea i guess you could say he boosted a popularity that was already high.

10%

Joker was already Batman's most well known baddie. I'm sure many people still remembered Jack Nicholson's Joker from 1989, so it's not as if he was completely unknown by the general public.

To the extent where every-f**king-body dresses up as the Ledger Joker for all comic-cons, Halloween, or any other excuse to dress up, and do TERRIBLE impressions of that Joker laugh...and have actual f**cking arguments with me about the Joker (having never read a comic book in their lives)...AND didn't even know that Jack Nicholson played the Joker...AND do not know who Mark Hamill is.

God I hate that. "I've seen The Dark Knight like, 4 times, I'm clearly an expert on the character!"

Well he was already popular through Romero and Nicholson,but Ledger caused the popularity to skyrocket.

Don't forget Mark Hamil, Joker has always been popular and one of the most popular villains in pop culture but Ledger definitely boosted his popularity to a great level.

The Joker was always a popular character, the films increased his popularity and Ledger and The Dark Knight even more.

It depends on how you look at it... Ledger's acting skills could be said to have elevated the characters a small bit, but Ledger was never recognized as a "good" actor according to most people and his acting ability nor his name actually did anything for the character. The writing for the character is likely partially responsible for it, but simply put, nothing about TDK made joker "more popular"... what made him more popular was when Ledger died. It was like an instant shift that I saw... before he died everyone doubted his ability and made jokes about him and then he died and boom the next day Ledger is gonna be the most awesome joker ever v.v