Batman and Joker at the 2020 George Floyd Protests: What Happened

First published June 4, 2020.

On the last weekend of May 2020, as protests over the killing of George Floyd spread across the United States, two comic-book figures turned up in the crowds. In Philadelphia, someone in a film-quality Batman suit walked calmly through the smoke of a downtown demonstration. In Minneapolis, a local man dressed as Joaquin Phoenix's Joker danced near the spot where Floyd had been arrested, holding a sign that read "Justice for George." Clips of both went viral within hours.

Neither appearance changed the course of the protests, and neither was a stunt by a film studio. They were private individuals in costume. Yet the images travelled further than most news footage that week, and the reactions they drew say a lot about how people process a frightening moment through familiar stories. Here is what is known about each sighting, what people said online, and why costumes like these keep appearing at protests around the world.

The background: why people were in the streets

George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, died on 25 May 2020 after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes during an arrest. Bystander video of his death spread quickly, and demonstrations began in Minneapolis the next day before spreading to hundreds of cities. The central demands were an end to police brutality and to racism in policing.

Philadelphia's protests started peacefully at City Hall on Saturday 30 May. By the evening, police vehicles had been set alight, shops in Center City were looted and a large fire broke out at 17th and Walnut Streets. Thirteen officers were hurt, more than 200 people were arrested, and Mayor Jim Kenney imposed an 8 p.m. curfew. The next day the Pennsylvania National Guard was called in and the curfew was brought forward to 6 p.m. On 1 June police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at marchers on Interstate 676, a response city leaders later apologised for after video contradicted the official account.

That is the setting in which a man in a cape strolled through the crowd. It was not a light-hearted week, which is part of why the clip stood out.

Batman on the streets of Philadelphia

The Philadelphia video, posted on 31 May, shows a person in a detailed suit modelled on the armour from Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises. He walks slowly through a street filled with haze while people around him stop, cheer and pull out their phones. There is no speech and no obvious message; the effect comes from how cinematic the scene looks.

Batman has arrived at a protest in Philadelphia looking for corrupt police officers pic.twitter.com/LCxbTMlrCI

— Excommunicado (@JudgementDay89) May 31, 2020

The wearer has never been publicly identified with certainty. Some social media users later said they had spoken to him and claimed he mainly wanted a striking video and did not share the protesters' views, but those claims were never verified by any news outlet. The honest answer is that we do not know who he was or what he intended.

How people reacted online

Replies to the clip ranged from political commentary to pure jokes. One user framed the masked figure as stepping into a leadership vacuum, a pointed reference to the president's response to the unrest:

With no real leadership from @POTUS we needed someone to step up

— $defundthepolice$ (@cantgetnoaol) May 31, 2020

Others leaned on the obvious Gotham references, or simply enjoyed the idea of a fan who had finally found an occasion for an expensive costume:

Someone needs to clean up the streets of Gotham

— David Wanda (@worly05) June 1, 2020

(This post is no longer available on X.)

🤣🤣🤣 he has been waiting his entire life to break that costume out!!!!

— Courtney Carter (@CP42_888) May 31, 2020

Some humour reflected the other crisis of that spring. With the COVID-19 pandemic still surging, public-health officials worried that mass gatherings could spread the virus, and one user turned the old association between bats and the coronavirus into a one-line joke:

Bats carry Corona.

— FineVeritas (@TheFineTruth) May 31, 2020

(This post is no longer available on X.)

A more thoughtful thread asked which side the character would really take. In Nolan's 2012 film, Batman fights a populist uprising led by Bane, and several commenters pointed out that the fictional hero is a billionaire who works alongside the police. Using him as a symbol of protest, they argued, was at least an odd fit:

The funny thing is that people don't realize that if this film were true, would Batman fight the police and the common people or would he face Bane and the "Antifa" to overthrow the Quarantine imposed by Gotham?

— Contemplativo 🐍🚬 (@aquelecara) June 3, 2020

That debate is a good reminder that pop-culture characters are flexible. People project onto them whatever meaning suits the moment, and the same figure can stand for vigilante justice, law and order, or rebellion depending on who is holding the camera.

The Joker in Minneapolis: Joseph Pudwill

The second costume appeared in Minneapolis, the city where the protests began. A man in green hair, white face paint, a red suit and the exaggerated grin of Arthur Fleck from Todd Phillips' 2019 film Joker danced near Chicago Avenue and 38th Street, the intersection where Floyd was pinned to the ground. He carried a handwritten sign calling for justice for George.

The got Batman and Joker at the protests!!! pic.twitter.com/qlIs5te7j9

— Jenny 𖤐 (@imnotjennyg) May 31, 2020

(This post is no longer available on X.)

Unlike Batman, this protester spoke to reporters. Spanish newspaper El País identified him as Joseph Pudwill, a 36-year-old supermarket worker from the area. Asked why he would choose a famous villain, he said the character "has become a model of social injustice, the recognition of the tragedies that occur," and added that he had fallen in love with the role and believed it helped carry the message.

His choice makes more sense once you remember the film. Phillips' Joker is a struggling man ignored by social services and mocked by the powerful, and the movie ends with a city erupting in riots. Since its release, the clown make-up was widely reported at demonstrations in Lebanon, Chile, Hong Kong and Iraq as shorthand for anger at a system that ignores ordinary people. Pudwill was borrowing a symbol that already had a protest history.

Why costumes keep showing up at protests

Dressing up at demonstrations is not new. Guy Fawkes masks, popularised by the comic and film V for Vendetta, became a symbol of the Occupy and Anonymous movements, and handmaid robes from The Handmaid's Tale have been worn at reproductive-rights rallies in several countries. A costume does a few useful things at once:

• It is instantly readable. A crowd photo needs a caption; a superhero needs none. Viewers bring their own associations about justice, power and chaos.
• It travels well online. Striking visuals are shared far more than long speeches, so a costume can carry a protest into feeds that would never show a rally.
• It can lower tension. Humour and spectacle give exhausted people a moment of relief, which many onlookers in these clips clearly felt.
• It can hide identity. Masks protect wearers from being recognised, which matters to some protesters and worries some police forces. Hacktivists such as Anonymous, who targeted Minneapolis police systems that same week, built a whole identity around it.

Not every eye-catching figure at a 2020 rally was harmless, either: some armed anti-lockdown protesters used spectacle in a far more intimidating way. There is also a broader downside. Several commentators at the time noted that a viral superhero clip can pull attention away from the reason people gathered: a man had died in police custody, and the protests were about systemic racism and policing. Around the country, people were also hurt or killed during the unrest, and many small businesses, often owned by people of colour, were damaged or burned. A playful image is not a substitute for that story.

What happened to the Batman film mentioned at the time

Many early reports linked the Philadelphia clip to the next Batman movie, which was then on hold. Matt Reeves' The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne, began filming in London in January 2020 and was halted by the pandemic about two months later. Production resumed in September 2020, and the film was released in the United States on 4 March 2022, earning about $772 million worldwide. Some articles at the time wrongly credited the project to Christopher Nolan, whose trilogy had ended in 2012 and whose armour design inspired the Philadelphia costume.

What to take from these sightings

The Batman and Joker clips are small footnotes to one of the largest protest movements in American history, but they show how quickly a single image can become part of a much bigger conversation. When you come across viral protest footage, a few habits help:

• Check the date and location; old clips are often recirculated during new events.
• Look for named sources before trusting claims about who someone is or what they believe.
• Remember that one memorable person in a crowd does not represent everyone who was there.
• Keep the underlying story in view: these protests were about George Floyd's death and about policing.

Pudwill, at least, was clear about his reason for showing up. The man in the Batsuit remains anonymous, which may be exactly how a Batman would want it.

Sources: Wikipedia: George Floyd protests in Philadelphia; We Got This Covered: Batman and the Joker spotted at George Floyd protests (1 June 2020); Líbero, citing El País interview with Joseph Pudwill (1 June 2020); Wikipedia: The Batman (film). Philadelphia video by @JudgementDay89; Minneapolis clip originally shared by @imnotjennyg on X.