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| “ | You will bring death to all who follow you. | „ |
| ~ The Scarecrow's famous line. |
| “ | How many more bones will you crush? How many lives will you destroy in the pursuit of what you call justice? You are the product of everything you fear: violence, darkness, helplessness. All that remains is for you to watch, as I drag your beloved Gotham into oblivion. | „ |
| ~ The Scarecrow. |
Dr. Jonathan Crane, better known as the Scarecrow, is the secondary antagonist of the Batman: Arkham franchise.
He is a former psychologist and sadistic criminal who is determined to break the minds of Batman and every citizen of Gotham City. Crane was obsessed with human fear and realized he could gain power if he could control it. He then invented a fear-inducing chemical that douses his victims with crippling anxiety before becoming the professional criminal known as the Scarecrow.
In Arkham Asylum, he was voiced by Dino Andrade. In Arkham Knight, he was voiced by John Noble, who also voiced Unicron in Transformers: Prime. In Assault on Arkham, he was voiced by Christian Lanz. In Arkham Shadow, he was voiced by Elijah Wood, who also voices Sigma in Red Vs. Blue.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
In General[]
- Him being bullied in his childhood and mistreated by his great-grandmother barely even comes close to justifying his actions, and he's not motivated by it at all, only being motivated by curiosity about others fears and wanting to hold power over others through fear.
- His therapist concluded that he is not insane, just evil, proving that he is fully aware of how wrong his actions are and therefore has no moral agency issues.
- Even though Killer Croc was the one who mutilated him, the Scarecrow solely blames Batman for his near-death experience and never takes into consideration that he willingly yet ignorantly went into Croc's lair in the first place, thus making him a deluded hypocrite.
- He also more than deserved it for all his actions, considering he was about to unleash his fear toxin to plunge Gotham to an age of fear that will last centuries.
Background/Batman: Arkham Shadow[]
- He fed his great-grandmother to crows and then tortured his school bullies out of revenge. Though, this is somewhat justified since they were all abusing Crane, they still didn’t deserve to die.
- Even before being a doctor in Blackgate, he was already demented enough to bring a gun to a classroom in University and firing live rounds up the ceiling just to prove his point about fear.
- During his time at Blackgate, he experimented on several of the inmates with his fear toxin, an incredibly dangerous chemical that lets people see their worst fears and then eventually kills them from the sheer anxiety they experience. It's even implied that he killed his boss, who rightfully fired him.
- He shows no care or empathy to Irving Malone (actually Batman in disguise) when he shared that his parents were gunned down in front of him when he was a child, simply just being disgusted when Dr. Harleen Quinzel does nothing more than offer her condolences.
- He rudely confiscated Arnold Wesker’s doll from him, showing no care of the emotional attachment Wesker had to it.
- He fired Dr. Harleen Quinzel when she discovered his experiments, making him partially responsible for her path to becoming the Joker's right-hand known as Harley Quinn.
- He attempted to attack Irving Malone with a drug, which led to Malone trying to defend himself and accidentally throwing it on Harvey Dent's face, burning half of his face off, which makes Scarecrow directly responsible for Harvey becoming Two-Face. While this was an accident, Scarecrow showed no remorse for it either, as he proceeded to blame Malone for it to save his reputation. In fact, if the player doesn't counter him, he intentionally throws the drug on Harvey's face before Malone could even react, showing Scarecrow may have intended for this outcome.
- He decided to spend his life psychologically torturing his victims with his complete fear toxin.
- To make it worse, he, Owens, Simon Stagg, and Batman were the only people who were affected by the toxin to even survive, while everyone who was dosed with it eventually died from its effects.
- He was one of the villains that the Joker invited over to help torture the unfortunate Jason Todd in an abandoned wing of Arkham Asylum for over a year.
- The way he helped was by psychologically torturing and breaking Jason's mind, which makes the Scarecrow play a part in Jason's descent into villainy as the Arkham Knight.
- He helped Calendar Man release a pack of mad dogs into the streets of Gotham with his fear toxin on the Feast Day of St. Roch.
- He was the one who informed the Joker of Dr. Young’s TITAN Experiments, giving the Joker the idea to create a TITAN Army to destroy Gotham City and later led to him getting severely ill and dying from using TITAN on himself.
- The Joker would later infect Henry Adams, Johnny Charisma, Christina Bell, and Albert King with his TITAN infected blood, meaning the Scarecrow is indirectly to blame for this.
Batman: Arkham Asylum[]
- In his first scene, he gases a room full of doctors and a lunatic with fear toxin, killing them.
- During the events of Arkham Asylum, he tries to drive Batman insane with fear toxin.
- In his first encounter, he makes Batman think he failed to save Commissioner Gordon by killing a guard, then has him see hallucinations of his parents in body bags.
- In his second encounter, he forces Batman to relive the deaths of his parents, almost destroying him psychologically.
- In his third and final encounter, he makes Batman think the Joker and the other villains took over the entire asylum and imprisoned all of his allies.
- He indirectly caused Penelope Young's death since his encounter with Batman in the Arkham Mansion prevented him from stopping Victor Zsasz from holding her hostage in Quincy Sharp's office, the room that she died in.
- He planned to contaminate Gotham's water supply after his initial defeat to spite Batman and threatened him with it, telling Batman that "it will be enough fear toxin to break everyone in Gotham for a hundred years." He would've succeeded had Killer Croc not arrived.
Batman: Arkham City[]
- He killed one of the Joker's men (most likely with his fear toxin) while hiding in Arkham City.
- It is implied that he gave the Riddler a few canisters of fear gas, considering the fact that after rescuing the Riddler's third hostage, you can see some canisters with Scarecrow's face on them.
Batman: Arkham Knight[]
- He united the other villains to kill Batman. When Poison Ivy refused to join him, he had her locked in a room to be tested with his fear toxin, which she was lucky to have been immune to.
- He released a very potent fear toxin in a diner full of people, causing them to rip each other apart and leaving many people dead. A survivor, Officer Owens, was mentally afraid for a long time.
- He threatened to unleash fear gas all over Gotham City unless all the citizens left the city, turning Gotham into a criminal wasteland.
- It is later revealed that he only did so to gain control of Ace Chemicals to build his bomb, not caring if they ran because he knew they wouldn't be able to escape the blast radius.
- He also reveals that after Gotham City is destroyed, he will attempt to spread the fear toxin all over the world, giving him the highest attempted kill count in the series, as no other villain attempted a kill count on this scale. It was also revealed that after Gotham City, he would go after the East Coast, where he would go to deal with and put down the Flash.
- He tried to engulf Gotham City and the entire Eastern Seaboard by triggering an explosion at Ace Chemicals.
- He gassed Batman, which caused him to have hallucinations of the Joker that slowly tried to corrupt him over the course of the game.
- He also traps Batman in the control room and leaves him to die.
- When another gassing leads to Joker taking control of Batman's body for a bit and beating the militia guards to near death, Scarecrow taunts him about it and wants to do more to drive him insane as well.
- He unleashed more fear gas on Batman and made him see Barbara Gordon get gassed and commit suicide.
- Scarecrow can even be heard quietly laughing at her supposed death. This made Batman guilt-ridden and caused both Gordon and Robin to temporarily turn against him.
- He steals a superweapon created by Simon Stagg called the Cloudburst and loads it up inside a tank that he built to envelop Gotham in a huge cloud of fear toxin, causing all of the people who got trapped in it to be mind-raped and eventually die.
- He was responsible for the death of Poison Ivy, who cleared up the fear gas released from the Cloudburst using her chlorokinesis and ended up dying as a result since the plants were affected by the toxin.
- He manipulated Gordon into betraying Batman by using Barbara's life.
- He pushed Barbara off a building when Gordon did not follow his orders while forcing him to watch after he thought Gordon killed Batman by shooting him off the roof.
- After the Arkham Knight cuts ties with him, Scarecrow turns the militia against him, saying that they must bring him in if they find him.
- He has the militia attack the GCPD so the police can't interfere with his plans, completely uncaring that his allies were inside the building.
- He has Gordon and Robin kidnapped and has their lives threatened to lure Batman in. He even makes Batman turn all his weapons in.
- He forces Commissioner Gordon to unmask Batman on live TV in fear of ending Robin's life.
- He then tortures the unmasked Bruce Wayne with his fear toxin, causing the Joker to temporarily take over his body, which would have been permanent if Scarecrow hadn't accidentally saved him by injecting him with another dose of fear toxin.
- He tells Bruce Wayne sadistically that he's going to set him free so he can see Gotham and the people he loves get destroyed right in front of him.
- This action ultimately leads Batman to seemingly kill himself alongside Alfred or fake their deaths to go into hiding after Scarecrow's arrest, leading Scarecrow to be remembered as the man who unmasked the Dark Knight.
- His fate of getting subjected to nightmarish hallucinations due to his own fear toxin being used on him and becoming psychologically broken forever doesn't make him sympathetic for two reasons:
- The narrative treats this as karmic for all the vile actions he did to deserve a fate like this to begin with.
- He was going to inflict the same fate on the rest of the world and already subjected multiple people to it beforehand, making Batman's decision to use his Fear Toxin against him justified.
- He makes it clear that he doesn't intend on fulfilling his end of the deal of offering his supervillain co-conspirators all of Gotham City when he activates the Cloudburst.
- He is indirectly responsible for Batman's death in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League as Scarecrow unmasking Batman led to him becoming a public hero, joining the Justice League and eventually getting brainwashed by Brainiac.
Trivia[]
- This version of Scarecrow is notably more serious and eviller than in other incarnations, at least in Batman: Arkham Knight. He also plays highly sadistic mind games throughout Arkham Knight and actually came close to destroying Gotham City more than any other version has before.
- He is probably the most destructive and dangerous antagonist of the Batman: Arkham series, as his plans of terror were not just for Gotham but also for the whole world. This plot surpasses those of Hugo Strange, the Penguin, Victor Zsasz, and the Joker.
- Considering that he has terrorized hundreds of people, this version of Scarecrow also has the highest kill count of any version of Scarecrow.
External Links[]
- Scarecrow on the Villains Wiki
- Scarecrow on the Arkham Wiki
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 Arkhamverse Pure Evils
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Joker | Scarecrow | Riddler | Calendar Man | Hugo Strange | Simon Stagg | ||
 Pure Evils
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