One Bad Day Syndrome

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One Bad Day Syndrome is a superhero character analysis idea, similar to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, originally stated in Batman: The Killing Joke. In that comic, the Joker states that all it takes for the someone to be just like him is simply one bad day. And not just any bad day, this is a day in which people die, horrors are seen and the subject's very existence is challenged. Such a strain, sometimes coupled with outside trauma, will cause a person's mind to snap and go insane. This system usually includes a broken or shattered dream, or having one's whole world seem to be made irrelevant or turn against him. The victim may also experience an event that gives him/her extreme guilt. Often, but not always, there are outside hardships and traumas slowly straining one's mind until the climax finally snaps it.

In the comic the Joker attempted to make Commissioner Gordon go insane, but in openly causing the torment of Gordon and the shooting of his daughter, he did not realize one of the most important things about this syndrome: it must have some level of irony or spontaneity that scars and impacts the subject in a deep and powerful way. When all the effects are coming from one source, the Joker, this effect is not as easily realized.