I think the "clowns are actually evil" meme has mostly played itself out (though I acknowledge that they are genuinely creepy to a lot of people in a non-funny non-meme way) in recent years, but there was a time on Civvie11's Youtube game review series where a perfectly delivered joke brought the concept back into style. Contextually, there are two robot jailers that tend to punish Civvie for numerous arbitrary infractions in the prison facility during each video (such as using puns or references that the robots don't approve of) and sometimes Civvie defiantly repeats an infraction just out of spite. So the moment went something like this:

🤖 "Civvie, stop. Or else, suffering. Pain."

"I don't care anymore! I'll do it again!"

🤖 "Civvie... The Clown Room."

"... what's in the Clown Room?"

🤖 "Desolation."