Characters / Gotham - Oswald Cobblepot

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Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin

"Foolish arrogance led me astray. But I learned my lessons. I'll be back, stronger and smarter than ever."

Played By: Robin Lord Taylor

"A year ago, I held Fish Mooney's umbrella. Now she's dead by my hand, along with Maroni. Falcone is in hiding, and all of their businesses are mine. They all underestimated me. I suggest you not make the same mistake."

A former flunky in Fish Mooney's employ, he betrayed her to the police and his death was ordered, to be carried out by Detective James Gordon. Gordon couldn't go through with it though, and Oswald joined the opposite side of the mob war as a lieutenant of the Maroni Family. However, his only true allegiance is to himself, manipulating and betraying anyone he can to further his position in Gotham's underworld. Often called "Penguin" due to his mannerisms and appearance, he initially hates the nickname but later decides to embrace it.

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Tropes, A-E

• Adaptational Attractiveness: Cobblepot is considerably more attractive than his older, shorter Fat Bastard self in the comics (except for a very beaky nose, bad teeth, and black, oily hair). His height, however, is 5'6", just like the first live-action Penguin, Burgess Meredith, and the character still has a fondness for alcohol and various snacks (tuna sandwiches in particular). There are hints throughout the series of a much rounder future which eventually comes to pass in the Grand Finale.
• Adaptational Badass: While the Penguin has always been one of the most formidable villains, many recent comics depict him in a more comedic manner, or as someone for Batman to beat up for information. This Penguin is substantially more serious and dangerous than other recent incarnations, alongside his Adaptational Villainy.
• Adaptational Context Change: In the comics, his "Penguin" nickname came from how he was short, obese, and had a beak-like nose as a child. Here, the nickname comes from his limp, which makes him "waddle" as he walks.
• Adaptational Heroism: For all the awful things he does, the amount of time the show spends with Oswald makes sure to show his decent aspects - notably his genuine attempts at friendship with Jim in season 1 and his genuine love for certain characters, like his mother and Ed. His actor has suggested that the kind and gentle Penguin we see after Hugo Strange's "therapy" is the person Oswald could have been if he hadn't been mistreated and abused by so many people before the events of season 1.
  • Shown most prominently in "They Did What?", when he realizes he can't abandon Gotham after everything he's been through with it, and makes a conscious decision to stay and help Gordon save it. He even manages to talk Ed into doing the same thing, and permanently damages an eye pushing him out the way of grenade shrapnel during Bane's attack.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Most versions of the Penguin we see are established in the Gotham underworld already, so while they're evil to the core, they take care not to get their hands dirty. Here, we see him working his way up to mob kingpin, and everything he'll do to get there; consequently, most of his worst traits - his sadistic side, violent temper and lack of empathy for anyone in his way - are emphasized. While his character does have a lot of sympathetic edges (see the Adaptational Heroism entry), the things he does in pursuit of power place him squarely among the darkest versions of the Penguin yet seen. He's personally murdered dozens of people over the course of the series.
• Adaptational Nationality: Along with some adaptational socioeconomic class. While the Penguin is usually an Impoverished Patrician of British or American origin, this version is Hungarian on his mother's side and has been raised by her his whole life in relative poverty. He is still presumably American on his father's side, however, as he is the product of a poor immigrant cook and the heir to a wealthy and reclusive Gothamite family.
• Adaptational Sexuality: Played with. Most versions of the Penguin surrounds himself with scantily clad women, but this Penguin had hints of possessing feelings towards Jim Gordon. In season 3 it's revealed that his chumminess with Edward Nygma is no mere homoerotic subtext, but he actually is in love with Ed. Penguin also has ambiguous feelings towards Sofia Falcone.
• Aesop Amnesia: At the end of season 3 he concluded that Love Is a Weakness, but come season 4 he is charmed by Sophia Falcone, who could not be more blatantly manipulating him. It is later revealed that he does suspect her, but after letting his feelings for Ed cloud his better judgement and paying for it you'd think he would have learned.
• Age Lift: While the Penguin is generally depicted as older than Batman, he is now apparently around Gordon's age, which makes the age difference somewhat larger.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When faced with danger, his usual reaction is to beg and cry. That said, as he steadily gets ever higher on the Gotham foodchain, this becomes rarer and rarer.
• All for Nothing: Is forced to try and keep his mother safe by doing Galavan's dirty work... only for her to be killed anyway. Penguin reacts exactly as you'd expect.
• Almighty Janitor: He started off as Fish Mooney's personal serving boy, and then ends up as a kitchen hand in one of Maroni's restaurants. All the while nobody realizes he's a Manipulative Bastard who has been responsible for almost all of the events in Season 1, and eventually works his way up in the criminal hierarchy until he's King of Gotham.
  Fish Mooney: You're a servant. An umbrella boy. You're a nobody.
  Penguin: This nobody still outfoxed you at every turn.
• Ambiguously Bi: Although Cobblepot makes his attraction to Ed Nygma explicit, his actor (who is openly gay himself) has suggested that if a woman had treated him with the decency and support that Ed showed him following the deaths of Oswald's parents, he would have likely fallen for her as well. Supporting the bisexuality theory, Oswald seems to develop a crush towards Sophia Falcone when she shows him the same kindness Ed once did and seems heartbroken to find out that she's cavorting with Jim Gordon behind his back even though Oswald and Sophia aren't officially together.
• Ambiguously Jewish: In that his mother is a stereotypical yenta who goes by a non-Anglicized name. Set Decorator Andrew Baseman stated that "We think she's a Middle Eastern descendant of great wealth that fell on hard times." Carol Kane is also Jewish and her grandparents emigrated from Russia. The fact that Gertrude mentions turning in someone to the secret police means her family most likely came from Russia or Germany. The episode "The Blade's Path" reveals that she was Hungarian, since Sofia Falcone went to great lengths to locate her goulash recipe to win him over.
• Animal Motifs: Take a wild guess. Actually, it's pretty downplayed. But he still has a creepily overprotective mother (common among birds), a distinctive waddle-limp, and the typical "formal wear".
• Anti-Hero: Robin Lord Taylor has stated "My goal is, I want him to be an anti-hero, I want people to root for him, no matter what he’s doing." A writer for The Atlantic argued that Gotham should be renamed The Penguin Show. The Telegraph called him TV's darkest anti-hero." Of course, his chief claim to heroism is simply that he's better than most of the villains he goes up against.
• Appropriated Appellation:
  • Starts off absolutely hating being called "Penguin", or that he sort of looks like a penguin - to the point that this is his Berserk Button, and he will angrily insist that goons twice his size stop calling him that (and once, outright slashed the throat of a drunken preppy who said it). By the fifth episode, when Don Maroni asks what his real identity is, he explains that people call him "Penguin" but he can't stand that, and would prefer his real name, Oswald Cobblepot. Maroni paternally advises that instead, he should really claim "Penguin" as his own.
  • As of "Rogue's Gallery", he's really taken to attempting to using the name in a manner akin to The Dreaded, and while it doesn't work at first, after his killing Mooney at the end of season 1 it sticks as his Red Baron in subsequent seasons. He even insists on being called THE Penguin.
• Arch-Enemy: He's variously had this relationship with Fish Mooney, Salvatore Maroni, Theo Galavan, Tabitha Galavan, Edward Nygma, and Sofia Falcone (though the one with Edward cools off by mid season 4).
• Ax-Crazy: Even before his Berserk Button gets pushed, he's a very violent and unpredictable guy.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Considering how impeccably dressed Oswald usually is, this comes naturally to him once he takes a few levels in badass.
• Bad Boss: He always slips into this when stressed, with frequent helpings of You Have Failed Me, a course of action that usually inspires his underlings to betray him - his mistreatment of Butch and Ivy is particularly glaring in this regard, while Gabe tells him his lackeys in seasons 1-2 only followed him because they were scared of him. He's still at it in season 5 when he's happy to let his underlings starve when making his ammunition while he trades with Barbara for steak for himself - not surprisingly, they all abandon him a few episodes later.
  Harvey Bullock: You might want to change your management style, pal.
• The Bad Guy Wins: A trait of his in the season finales.
  • He becomes the new kingpin of Gotham City as of the first season finale.
  • In season 2 he kills Theo Galavan twice (though in both cases he's definitely A Lighter Shade of Black to Galavan, for differing reasons each time).
  • Ends season 3 finally outwitting Ed and having him frozen.
  • The season 4 finale has him exact revenge for his mother's murder by killing Butch after Tabitha had fallen in love with him, just so she could know what it felt like to lose a loved one, and taking over City Hall as Gotham falls into chaos.
  • Downplayed in season 5, since after his release from Blackgate his criminal empire is in ruins but he still commands respect amongst the criminal underworld of Gotham and he ends the season escaping custody with and renewing his friendship with The Riddler. His future seems pretty grim though since he seems set to begin his historic feud with Batman.
• Batman Gambit: Ironically, he's as good at these as the Trope Namer.
  • He plots with Falcone to fake his death in order to give Falcone the advantage against Maroni, successfully predicting Gordon would do exactly what he did in order to return incognito and worm his way into Maroni's organisation.
  • He comes clean to Maroni (despite the dangers) about how he's still alive because he's absolutely sure that the incorruptible and honest Gordon will tell the truth about why he didn't shoot him. He's right, and Maroni lets them both go when their stories match.
  • Phrases his request for Fish to spare Falcone in the first season finale very specifically, prodding Maroni's ego into sexist ranting about Fish just being an underboss - prompting her to shoot him in the head, allowing Oswald to escape in the ensuing chaos.
  • Knows full well that Gordon's attempt to collect his money from Ogden will end in Ogden flipping out, forcing Gordon to kill him - ridding him of a problem and giving him future leverage over Gordon at the same time.
  • Plays Riddler like a fiddle at the end of season 3, allowing him to think he'd escaped his handcuffs using a found pin (actually Penguin's own), then prodding Ed's ego in order to be taken to the pier where Riddler thought he'd killed him the first time - just so he could reveal Riddler's appropriated gun (taken from Penguin) had no bullets and that he'd already called Ivy and Freeze as backup.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: All he's ever wanted was to be the king of Gotham's criminal underworld and he finally gained it at the end of season 1. Among other things that happen to him after this as a direct result; his mother is killed by Theo Galavan For the Evulz, he's committed to Arkham and thoroughly mentally broken by Hugo Strange, finds his father only to see him killed too, falls in love with Ed only to see him ruin his mayorship (admittedly he deserved that one), has Sofia Falcone usurp his empire and get committed to Arkham AGAIN. A lesser man would have given up, but full credit to him, Oswald just keeps bouncing back.
• Berserk Button:
  • He really doesn't like being called "Penguin". Or being compared to one for that matter. However, that changes soon after Maroni encourages him to embrace it.
  • A heckler at his night club learns the hard way that you should never insult the mama of a Mama's Boy.
  • Don't harm his best friend (and love interest) Edward Nygma. He knocked out Butch with a glass bottle when Butch was strangling Edward. When Tommy Bones called saying that he kidnapped Edward, Penguin was furious to the point that he said he will tear the city brick by brick if he have to do. He gets over it after their falling out.
  • Nygma points out in "They Did What?" Gordon will always see him as nothing more than Fish Mooney's umbrella boy, pissing him off so much the two vow to take what they want from whomever they please.
• Best Served Cold: Killing his step-family was a highlight, but after spending a season becoming partners with them, Oswald coldly killing Butch just after he became human again and crippling Tabby just to gain his revenge against the both of them for killing his mom. And after letting her live for a few more months following Butch's death, Oswald finally kills Tabitha as well. And then there was his taking this trope at its most literal, having Freeze turn Ed into an icicle at the end of season 3.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He's almost constantly underestimated, even after his rise to power, with his enemies seeing him as a strange, easily-manipulated little man with a limp. Anyone who's familiar with the Batman mythos, however, knows that you take Oswald Cobblepot for granted at your own peril, and by the series' end he's outlived - and in many cases personally murdered - virtually everyone who underestimated him.
• Big Bad: Cobblepot effectively serves as the central antagonist of Season 1, actively causing chaos in Gotham's underworld to further his own ambitions for power. This fully reaches its scale at the end of the season when he instigates an all-out mob war, which ends with Maroni and Fish dead, Falcone fled and him as the king of Gotham.
  • Big Bad Wannabe: Zigzagged after this. The problem for Cobblepot after his season 1 victory is that as powerful, vicious and dangerous as he is from season 2 onward, he's often forced to play second fiddle to more dangerous villains like Galavan and Jerome (both of whom he ends up helping Gordon take down). When he does consolidate his power (becoming mayor in season 3, enabling the Pax Penguina in season 4) it's only so he can take a much larger fall later (Riddler ruins his mayorship, Sofia Falcone steals his empire). While he always works his way back around to being a major threat, by season 5 he's squarely part of the show's Big Bad Ensemble rather than the pre-eminent threat.
• Boisterous Weakling: Cobblepot would love to be a tough guy like his associates, but he just doesn't seem to have much to work with for most of the first episode. Even when Fish pushes his Berserk Button by calling him "Penguin", the result is not an Unstoppable Rage but Cobblepot getting his ass handed to him once again. Oddly enough the level in badass he takes after Gordon throws him in the river largely consists of his realization that he'll never be a traditional tough guy and that he's better off sticking to schemes and manipulation.
• Break the Haughty: Tends to happen to him during his various falls from grace, most notably when he realizes Ed's been behind all his misfortunes in season 3 and when Sofia Falcone uses Martin to oust him from power in season 4.
• Breakout Character: Has proven to be one of the most popular characters in the series, and one of the most well received depictions of the character.
• Bullying a Dragon: Unfortunately for nearly everyone who has crossed him so far, they find out too late that this limping weirdo is actually a ruthless bloodthirsty sociopath, and a particularly hard one to kill at that. Only a few have survived so far, if only because circumstances means that Cobblepot hasn't found a way to get to them yet. Grace van Dahl and her children paid an especially high price for abusing Cobblepot, while his mother's killers didn't fare much better.
• Butt-Monkey: Despite being one of the biggest villains on the show, Cobblepot spends a large quantity of his screen time getting beat up, disrespected and almost dying. In fact, every time Cobblepot moves a step further into Gotham's criminal underground, something disastrous usually comes along that eventually knocks him several rungs down the crime ladder. Though given his propensity of bouncing back from even the most severe humiliations, he may qualify as Iron Butt Monkey.
• The Caligula: Becomes this in Season 5 after assuming control over one of Gotham's largest territories. His narcissism is exaggerated and he has his followers worship him like a great leader to the point where they sing songs about him every morning. He also treats him subordinates far worse, frequently punishing them for imagined slights, starving them and forcing them to work non stop in his bullet factories.
• The Chains of Commanding: Upon ascending to the head of Gotham's underworld, it's implied that he assumed that he'd get the respect that gangsters like Falcone, Maroni and even Fish had by default, and seems genuinely bewildered at times when he continues to get verbally abused by just about everyone. Seen most prominently when Harvey rips him a new one for being nothing but Fish's old umbrella boy early in season 2 and he genuinely seems to have no idea how to respond, just seething quietly the whole time.
• Character Tic: When angry, he will lean forward and put his arms down the sides of his torso with his wrists bent outwards, causing him to resemble an angry penguin.
• The Chessmaster: He manipulates the conflict between Gotham's crime families in order to establish his own power base - particularly notable in the final few episodes where he turns the crime families against each other. The "Game of Cobblepot" featurette on the season 1 DVD explicitly uses the chess analogy to describe his actions.
• Chewing the Scenery: After pushing Fish into a watery grave, he shouts out loud for all of Gotham to hear, "I'M THE KING OF GOTHAM!"
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Nobody in Gotham embodies this trope quite like Oswald. His ruthless ambition is matched only by his lack of power after he gets cast out of Fish' gang, so he seizes absolutely any opportunity to remove his rivals and gain influence via well-timed betrayal and murder — a process which leaves him King of Gotham by the end of season 1. Actually has the opportunity to stab Riddler in the back in late season 5, but doesn't take it out of a sense of brotherhood - luckily for him, as Ed had the exact same thought process.
  Riddler: You are opportunistic. Your loyalty is... shaky, at best. And you will hurt anyone - anyone! - to get what you want.
• Combat Pragmatist: He's physically unimpressive, but he'll do anything and use anything to come out on top in a fight. Once stabbed someone to death with a garden trowel, for God's sake...
• The Consigliere: To both Maroni and Falcone. Falcone tells Maroni in Season 1 Episode 15 that Penguin is "clever enough to know that a freakish little man like him is never going to be the boss." He's dead wrong. Later, after his ascent to power, Butch, Gabe, Ed and Mr. Penn all act as this to him.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Kills Ed's girlfriend Isabella out of jealousy, leading to the deterioration of their friendship.
• Cynicism Catalyst: He's back to his old violent self again beginning in "Into the Woods". The reason? His stepfamily killed his father.
• Deadpan Snarker: He's good at this when dealing with people he isn't trying to cozy up to, particularly Bullock.
  Harvey: You sure about this, Penguin? You're telling me this is where Loeb keeps twenty years of dirty secrets? Doesn't feel right.
  Jim: Well, maybe that's the point. No one would suspect it.
  Penguin: What would you prefer, Detective Bullock? A sign saying "Super-secret blackmail hoard"?
  • Bizarrely, the spectral doppelganger Ed hallucinates in season 3 after (supposedly) killing him is as well.
    Ed: I want you to know that our friendship meant something to me. I cared about you, and I miss you.
    Hallucination Penguin: Gee. Almost makes up for being dead.
• Determinator: Hoo boy. Virtually every major character in the show has tried to arrest him, kill him or overthrow him at one stage or another. He's lost his mother, his father, his position at the top of the Gotham mobs several times, his job as mayor, got stuck in the Court of Owls' prison and been landed in Arkham. Twice. And yet, through a combination of cunning, tenacity and a sheer-bloody minded refusal to stay down he always bounces back, often as a significantly more dangerous threat than before.
• Devilish Hair Horns: Whenever he's in power, his hairdo is noticeably spiked to excess - which is telling as this tends to overlap with when he's at his most terrible (most notably as Gotham's criminal overlord in season 4, and as gang boss with delusions of grandeur in season 5).
• Deuteragonist: Of the antagonistic variety. If it wasn't for Jim Gordon and Bruce Wayne, he could almost be the main character, as the series focuses so heavily on his character and his rise and fall from power. By the time of Rise of the Villains, he becomes even more prominent as the second most important character, where the war against Theo Galavan is fought from two points of view, from the police's and from Penguin's mob.
• Dirty Coward: At first, he's a very strong example of Ain't Too Proud to Beg. Any time his life is in danger, he begins pleading and begging for mercy, trying anything he can to survive. Though, as the story progresses, he sheds this tendency and becomes much more formidable.
• Disabled in the Adaptation:
  • This version of Oswald walks with a limp after Fish shatters his leg with a baseball bat when his treachery is exposed.
  • He received permanant damage to an eye during Bane's assault on Gotham.
• The Dog Bites Back: Has a habit of doing those when he gets the upper hand on those who genuinely mistreated and abused him before, whether it was ruining Fish's plans to overthrow Falcone and later throwing her off a bridge, offing his loathsome stepfamily for killing his father after being used as little more than a servant by them, or managing to give Jerome a well-deserved thrashing after being treated as a hapless jester by the clown and his Arkham flunkies.
• Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: He switches sides between Falcone and Maroni several times, tells each of them secrets about the other, and then betrays them for his own gains or betrays them to the police. In the end, Cobblepot is loyal only to himself, but pretends to be loyal to whomever will believe him. He lampshades in "Penguin's Umbrella" that he has a gift for this sort of manipulation and spying.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Aside from losing his submarine and treasure to the escaping Nyssa al Ghul, he's furious his (for once sincere) heroism in helping save Gotham will be completely overshadowed by Gordon's efforts.
• Embarrassing Nickname: He really hates being called Penguin. However, Maroni tells him he should embrace the nickname. Sure enough he does, and by season 3 he's actually insisting on being called it.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Has worked with Asian thieves, Chinese triads, lesbian gangsters and had Headhunter (a black man) as his principle assassin for a while. As long as you're helping him achieve his goals and not pissing him off too much you'll be fine - until he snaps and stabs you in the throat.
• Establishing Character Moment: His brutal beating of Fish's debtee when Butch lets him have a turn with her baseball bat, laughing wildly all the while. It foreshadows not only how different he is from Butch and the other mooks - who have to tell him when to stop - but exactly what he becomes when he gets any actual power.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas:
  • While fully aware of her overbearing nature, Cobblepot does seem to genuinely love and care about his mother. He even gives her the very same gift that Fish rejected earlier, much to her delight. Later, he shows one heckler that you do not mess with her. He also doesn't take it well when Maroni exposes his true colors to her, and in season 2 he becomes an emotional wreck when the Galavans kidnapped (and later murdered) his mother to make him do their dirty work.
  • When he found out his father's identity, the two instantly bonded. Which is what causes him to snap again when he finds out that his step-family murdered his father for the inheritance.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His mother, most obviously, as well as Ed and Martin, but the series shows his one great love will always be Gotham itself, with "They Did What?" showing him following his heart to help Jim save Gotham from Bane and Nyssa al Ghul, because he can't stomach the thought of abandoning it after everything he's been through.
  • Developed great, genuine affection for his father in their short time together. And his vengeance against his father's killers was a terror to behold.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • He's ruthless, vicious and has the show's highest body count - but he kills people because they're in his way (or admittedly some in the occasional fit of temper), not for giggles like Jerome. It's definitely Pragmatic Villainy - he wants to rule the city after all, not see it reduced to ashes - but there's still a sense that he has lines he won't cross, as seen by the Legion of Horribles being too much, even for him, in Season 4.
  • He also objects to mass victimization as a rule. He doesn't decline Galavan's offer to join his plan until he sees the model for Galavan's "Urban Renovation" program, which, while it would give Gotham several very nice skyscrapers, would replace Gotham's main residential district, leaving thousands homeless. In "That's Entertainment", he is legitimately horrified by Jerome's plan to drive all of Gotham insane using the Joker Gas, to the point of taking an active role in helping Jim stop Jerome by commandeering the zeppelin carrying the gas.
    Oswald: Steer a blimp?! Are you out of your mind, Jim? I don't even drive my own car!
    Jim: If you don't, thousands will die. Maybe worse.
    Oswald: What's worse than that?
  • He's genuinely shell-shocked by the bombing of Haven and the deaths of so many refugees, and lends his support, men and ammunition to Jim to find the killer.
  • Overlapping with Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil, it is impossible to get a license for rape under Pax Penguina.
• Evil Counterpart: To Gordon. They're both newcomers that recognize a great conflict is brewing, but while Gordon is trying to fight back against it and clean up Gotham at risk to his own life and reputation, Cobblepot manipulates the conflict to benefit him and is a self-interested coward. While Gordon's stubbornness is making him enemies by the day, Penguin kisses up to authority figures until he can betray and usurp them.
• Evil Cripple: He has a limp that makes him look like a penguin as he moves.
• The Evil Genius: He tries to be this, but his attempts at being so in the pilot backfire spectacularly. As of "Penguin's Umbrella", it turns out he really has earned the trope after all.
• Evil Gloating: A major character flaw; he has a tendency to gloat to his enemies when he has them helpless, which leads him into trouble if they escape.
  Oswald: There are so few moments of pure joy in one's life, I feel compelled to savor this one.
  Riddler: You mean gloat?
  Oswald: ...yes, I do.
• Evil Is Hammy: Penguin is a mob boss with a Hair-Trigger Temper who is prone to Suddenly Shouting (and homicidal rage) when things don't go his way
• Evil Is Petty: When he loses his temper he tends to murder anyone within arm's reach, regardless of whether they have anything to do with his reasons for being angry.
• Evil Mentor:
  • Nygma regarded him as such to the extent that after he'd betrayed and tried to kill Penguin the subsequent void left by Oswald's departure left the future Riddler in a severe identity crisis.
  • He's also got an alarming habit of gifting children the type of advice that could turn them into future criminals - be it advising one lonely boy to shove his classmates down stairs if they don't play with him during Penguin's time as mayor, or teaching Martin the correct way to fatally stab someone.
• Expy: Pretty clearly one of Bernie Bernbaum from Miller's Crossing. Ambiguously Jewish, Ambiguously Gay (though Bernbaum's Jewishness and gayness aren't nearly as ambiguous), looks like him, acts like him, sounds like him, begs for his life and is spared by his would-be killer after betraying his gangster boss, and is given an order to remain in exile. Like Bernie, he has no intention of keeping his word and later turns up in the apartment of the man who let him go.
• Extremely Protective Child: He’s fiercely protective of his beloved mother, and from the start it’s clear that he’s her caretaker and provider. He keeps her sheltered from his criminal life, and if any harm should come to her, he'll happily beat the culprit to death with a baseball bat and then shove an umbrella down his throat. When he reconnects with his long-lost father, Oswald becomes similarly protective of him, enough that the woman who poisoned him got fed her own children and then stabbed in the neck.
• Eye Scream: Getting hit by grenade shrapnel during Bane's assault on the barricades results in his right eye becoming permanently dilated when it heals.

Tropes, F-N

• False Friend: He will politely befriend someone who can be of use to him, be it Gordon, a criminal mob boss, or some guys that he hitchhikes with, but secretly plot their downfall once they outlive their usefulness. Gordon actually seems to be the one person he genuinely averted this trope for, but their differing philosophies mean that by season 4 they have a glaring mutual mistrust.
• Fan of Underdog: In a very serious, often horrifying way.
  • He really starts taking an interest in Ed once he finds out that Ed's heavily neglected and often bullied in the GCPD, and acts as an Evil Mentor to him, informing much of his later descent into being the Riddler.
  • In both his mayoral campaign and his interactions with Martin he starts taking an interest once he realizes the child is isolated and bullied - though his encouraging both to physically abuse and manipulate their tormentors is this trope at its most Ax-Crazy.
• Fatal Flaw: Oswald is normally The Chess Master, but whenever his loved ones are threatened or otherwise used against him he quickly loses all his composure and starts making rushed decisions. Best seen when Galavan kidnaps his mother, kills her and Penguin's subsequent retribution ends up killing Galavan but ruining the empire he'd built for himself in season 1. Also seen with his dealings with Ed in season 3 and Sofia Falcone in season 4.
• Faux Affably Evil: He comes across as friendly, polite, and somewhat goofy and therefore not much of a threat at first glance. But under the surface, he is an Ax-Crazy Starscream with a lust for power and a fondness for knives.
• A Fistful of Rehashes: A villainous example. He's willing to use the Falcone-Maroni conflicts to bring both down and rise to the top of Gotham's underworld.
• Foil: To Bruce Wayne. Their Animal Motifs are the flying mammal and the flightless bird. They are both orphans whose parents were murdered and are traumatized by it, but Bruce shows mercy while Oswald swears revenge (and gets it, in brutal fashion). Oswald was the son of a poor Hungarian immigrant, and Bruce was raised in extreme wealth, but they both understand isolation all too well, and people tend to underestimate them. Oswald puts on a servile mask to hide his proud and ambitious nature, while Bruce puts on a cocky demeanor to disguise his kind and humble nature. Both of them are somewhat lonely, but have a select few people they care about deeply. By the end of the series, they’ve both overcome the odds and risen to power.
• Formerly Fit: Oswald’s Big Eater habits and limp eventually come back to bite him after an extended stay in prison after the Time Skip. He nearly doubles in size due to his inactivity and it’s implied that he ate his feelings while incarcerated, which is hilariously highlighted as he attempts to wear his old overcoat as he leaves prison... except it strains against his gigantic belly as he waddles out of the joint.
• For the Evulz: A variant. Although he doesn't constantly run around doing crimes for the hell of it, he has a sadistic streak and holds grudges, as well as an explosive temper if you press his Berserk Button. As a result, not only can he erupt in murderous outbursts at the slightest provocation, if you cross him, he's capable of truly sadistic retribution. A key example is the episode in which he helps Gordon and Bullock track down Commissioner Loeb's dirty secret, and he winds up being threatened by a couple of gun-wielding old people. At the episode's end, he offers to help them escape from retribution by Falcone, but claims he only has one ticket; although the husband refuses, the wife immediately turns on her husband and brutally murders him. He then reveals he was lying and blows her away with her own shotgun from before; he just didn't want to waste the money and buy another shell for it to kill them both.
• Friendly Enemy: He seems to genuinely consider Gordon a friend and treats him as such when they talk. It's very one-sided on his part, though, and he's largely grown out of it by the start of season 5. By the end of season 5, it's irrevocably gone.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Starts off as a low-level mook working for Fish, and his main jobs consist of holding Fish's umbrella and giving her foot-rubs. By season's end he's manipulated and murdered his way to the top, becoming King of Gotham. No matter what life throws at him after that, he's well and truly The Penguin after this, becoming the city's evil mayor in season 3, Gotham's undisputed crime lord in season 4 and one of the major gang leaders in season 5.
• Gayngster: He was revealed in Season 3 to be in love with Ed.
• Godzilla Threshold: He'd previously mocked the brain-damaged Ed and vowed never to speak the name of his alter-ego again after all the Riddler had done to him the season prior - but when Sofia Falcone takes his empire out from under him and gets him committed to Arkham, he has zero options and ends up manipulating the now-shakily sane Ed to come back to Arkham, so he can release the Riddler personality to help him.
• Good Hair, Evil Hair: If you want a clue as to how evil Penguin is at any given time, look to the hairstyle. His season 1 hairstyle◊ (described by Barbara as "disco vampire" at one point) tends to recur any time he's building himself back up as a villain or is semi-sympathetic. It tends to get more exaggeratedly gelled up and spiky whenever he's managed to get into real power, most notably in season 4 where he sports an exaggerated quiff that at points looks to add several inches to his height.
  • Played deadly straight when he finds out his step-family killed his father, snapping him back from Hugo Strange's therapy. He specifically calls notice to his having changed his hairstyle from the somewhat normal look he sported after Hugo's Strange's therapy back to his normal villain look shortly before brutally killing his stepmother.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Though the Penguin is never actually shown smoking in the show, a dream version of him is shown using his trademark cigarette holder during Bruce's hallucination in "A Beautiful Darkness." The real Penguin is shown with a cigarette holder in his coat pocket during "The Beginning," implying that he took up smoking during the 10 year Time Skip, but he never uses it onscreen.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Has a long, long history of wigging out when one of his Berserk Buttons is pushed. It's often fatal for anyone who happens to be near him at the time...
  To Ivy, while burying Gabe after stabbing him to death with a garden trowel in a fit of rage
  Penguin: I might have lost my temper there, a bit. Sorry about that.
• Handicapped Badass: Surprisingly, he becomes this after Fish breaks his leg and cripples him. He displays surprising speed, when he sneaks up on, and kills an old fisherman. Later, he shows an impressive endurance and tolerance for pain that is demonstrated while he's hitchhiking on the side of the road, commenting when he's finally picked up that he was doing it for hours. He then kills one of the people who picked him up with a broken beer bottle and takes the other one hostage. How he managed to tie him up and get him into the closet of a trailer that he managed to rent from a guy for $100 a month is anybody's guess.
  • The Season 1 Finale proved that Cobblepot can fight just fine with his limp; in his fight with Fish, he gets the upperhand for a moment and whacks her a few times with a lead pipe before getting placed on the ropes again and nearly thrown off the building. After Butch shoots both him and Fish, he bounces back up to knock Butch out with a wooden plank and pushes Fish off the building, finally claiming his title as King of Gotham.
  • In season 5, he corrects his limp with a leg brace... only for Gordon to shoot him in the knee and re-cripple him.
• The Heavy: Cobblepot's actions and plots are the main catalysts for the Falcone-Maroni war that serves as the main plotline of Season 1.
• Heel–Face Turn: As a result of Dr. Strange's "therapy", Cobblepot is conditioned to act docile and friendly and regrets his violent past. He encourages Nygma to turn good and tries to make peace with Gilzean. Even when Tabitha brings up tormenting his mother, ordinarily his Berserk Button, he warmly laughs it off. This being Gotham however, it's doomed not to last, and thanks to his step-family offing his long-lost father and reawakening his dark side, he was back to being his usual psycho self by season's end.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: When his sincere contributions to saving Gotham are overlooked (as well as having Nyssa al Ghul steal his treasure), he furiously vows the city will be his.
• Hidden Depths: One season 1 episode showed he's actually quite a good pianist. He also makes an efficient restaurant manager, showing that he had possible alternatives other than a criminal career but he chose to be one to gain power.
• Hidden Weapons: He's very, very fond of knifes, shown as early as the first episode when he slashes open a fisherman's throat with one. His preference seems to stem from how easy it is to conceal one on his person, particularly when he starts to use a cane and has one hidden in the handle.
• High-Class Glass: After the 10-year Time Skip in the finale, the Penguin is finally shown wearing his signature monocle from the comics in order to correct his vision after suffering a grenade explosion back in No Man's Land. Robin Lord Taylor was actually very insistent on being able to wear the monocle on-screen.
  "The monocle in particular I loved because, again, it's iconic to the Penguin. I got to collaborate with them, John Perkins, our makeup guy head, and I talked about it. One thing I love about this iteration of the Penguin is that all of those characteristics, quirks that make up who he is, such as the limp and the monocle, are actual injuries that he has received from other people. He's been damaged by others, rightfully so in some circumstances. [...] So it was just this little piece of who he is and classic iconography of the Penguin."
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Beautifully subverted: Tabitha holds him at gunpoint in revenge for Butch's death, using a bullet he himself supplied as part of a trade for food, and shoots him in the chest - except the bullet is a dud, because Penguin's failure to feed his underlings results in them producing shoddy ammo. He immediately stabs her to death.
• Horrible Judge of Character: He's generally excellent at reading people, but by his own admission he's an optimist that tends to see the best in people even when he really shouldn't - thus leading to a long string of people he trusted betraying him. It's telling he learns from the below examples (eventually in some cases) leading to his being Properly Paranoid by later seasons.
  • While he initially reads Gordon correctly in that he won't kill him for Fish Mooney, thereafter he seems to genuinely believe Gordon will reciprocate his attempts at being his Big Bad Friend, despite Gordon being the one cop on the force with morals so unshakable it'll inevitably put them on a collision course. Even after seasons of their relationship steadily deteriorating, his actor has suggested one of the reasons he's so furious at Jim for being locked away in Blackgate for a decade is that he thought that he and Gordon had achieved some sort of understanding standing together for Gotham against Bane.
  • He's seemingly OK with the blatantly Ax-Crazy Barbara being one of his underbosses in season 3, despite Butch warning him several times she can't be trusted - not to mention the fact she hangs around with his mother's murderer. Needless to say, she betrays him with Ed's help not long after.
  • Speaking of Ed: Oswald really seems to think Ed will fall for him as soon as Isabella's out the way. Ed, being the show's resident Evil Genius, eventually pieces it all together and goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against him.
  • And then there was Sofia Falcone. While he was always suspicious of her, her Bitch in Sheep's Clothing act allays it enough he doesn't cotton on to her power play until she's ready to move against him.
• Hypocrite:
  • He'll go to extreme lengths to kill anyone responsible for hurting his loved ones (witness his seasons-long revenge against everyone involved in his mother's death) but routinely fails to understand the effects hurting other people's loved ones will have on them. His killing Ed's girlfriend Isabella so he can have Ed all to himself results in Ed eventually turning on him, ruining his mayorship and nearly killing him. In season 5 he casually asks Barbara if they can move past his stabbing Tabitha, her best friend and sometime lover, to death - needless to say, she's now out for blood.
  • There's also his bemoaning how the new generation of Gotham's criminals, like Barbara and Riddler, have no sense of honour or respect compared to the old gangsters like Falcone and Maroni - seemingly oblivious to the fact it was his actions in season 1 that led to that old order falling apart.
• I Just Want to Be Special: The season 1 DVD extras indicate that he's determined to forge his own destiny and be out from under the thumbs of Fish, Maroni, Falcone and anyone else who's mistreated him.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: He admits to Ed in season 5 that he had Hugo Strange bring him back to life because he couldn't stand the thought of losing his Only Friend. Given how much the two had done to each other by that point, it's a fairly damning indictment of just how alone his quest to rule Gotham has left him.
• I Owe You My Life: He sees Jim as his friend after the latter spared his life. He both shows up to save him from Montoya and Allen's accusations that Gordon murdered him, and is later revealed to have made sure Falcone didn't have him killed.
• I Shall Return: Cobblepot will come back to Gotham.
  Cobblepot: It was my own fault. Foolish arrogance led me astray. But I learned my lessons. I'll be back, stronger and smarter than ever.
• I'm a Humanitarian:
  • After his step-family killed his father, he killed his step-siblings and ate them, along with also feeding them to his stepmother.
  • In Season 4's "Let Them Eat Pie", when Pyg threatens to kill Martin unless Penguin and the rest of Gotham's elite eat meat pies made from people, Penguin is the first to do so, staring Pyg down the entire time.
• Improvised Weapon: When he's angered, which happens quite frequently, he often uses a nearby object as a weapon to murder the poor schmuck: a broken beer bottle, a fire poker, a trowel...
• Ignored Epiphany: Encouraged by Fish, the end of season 3 sees him embrace his place among Gotham's freaks - then the following season sees him go right back to his usual delusions of grandeur, treating Ivy poorly and ignoring his promise to help Freeze cure his condition.
• Incompatible Orientation: "Follow the White Rabbit" seems to imply this with Nygma.
• In Love with Your Carnage: Cobblepot seems to have this view of Gotham. When he first comes back, he sees a drug deal going down, a corrupt cop accepting a bribe, and a woman getting robbed. After seeing all of this, he is as happy as can be to be back in Gotham.
• Irony: The Penguin is played by an actor named Robin.
• It's Personal:
  • God help anyone involved in his mother's death. He beat Galavan (the instigator) halfway to death with a baseball bat, later blew him to pieces with a rocket launcher when he came back as Azrael, and killed Butch (who betrayed her) just to show Tabitha (her actual murderer) what it was like to lose a loved one - then knifed her to death at the start of season 5.
  • His rivalry with Ed towards the end of season 3 also falls into this category, though it cools off by season 5.
  • His determination to pin the Haven bombing on Zsasz seems to be motivated by this, given Zsasz betrayed him for Sofia Falcone the season prior and left him to rot in Arkham.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • One of his stated reasons for offing Isabella is that he was trying to protect Ed from the pain of killing her when he inevitably snapped again. He may be desperately trying to save his own skin at that point, but given that Riddler ends the following season trying to kill Lee Thompkins for not reciprocating his feelings the way he wanted, it's got a grain of truth to it.
  • On that note, he was dead right that Riddler was a fool for trusting Lee, given she ends the season stabbing him.
• Jerkass Realization: Has happened a few times, first when he realizes how selfish he was not putting Ed's happiness with Isabella over his own desire for a relationship with him, then again when Mr.Penn makes realise how incredibly awful he was to everyone around him. They never seem to stick though.
• Joker Immunity: As far as the show goes, you could rename the trope "Penguin Immunity". No matter in how much trouble he is, you can always count on him to somehow weasel out of it.
• Karma Houdini: Subverted: it's implied he gets a pardon for all his crimes after helping save Gotham from Bane. However, seeing Gordon get all the adulation (as well as having Nyssa steal his riches), kills any remaining trace of decency in him and leads him back to crime - leading Gordon to arrest him and put him in Blackgate prison for 10 years.
• Karmic Death: After killing Isabella in order to gain Edward all to himself, Edward Nygma avenges her death and his loss of happiness by shooting Oswald dead and dumping him in the exact bay where Gordon was forced to kill and dump him in back in the pilot. Subverted, as he survives this.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Oswald loves dishing these out to show that there are worse criminals in Gotham than him.
  • Killing Fish and her entire gang.
  • In his gang war with Galavan, he non-lethally slashes his throat in an escape.
  • In the mid-season finale of Season 2, he beats Galavan repeatedly before Gordon kills Galavan and much later, gets Butch to blow up the resurrected Galavan with a rocket launcher.
  • Deceiving the Riddler (who had gotten much crueler following his own Kick The Son Of A Bitch moment toward Oswald) and having him frozen in the Season 3 finale.
  • Coldly kills Butch for his involvement in his mother's death, after feigning him having "gotten over" it.
  • And in the Season 5 premiere he finally kills Tabitha, the woman who killed his innocent mother, by stabbing her directly in the heart.
• Klingon Promotion: How he ends up King of Gotham: by season's end he gets Maroni killed by Fish after prodding his ego into mouthing off, kills Fish himself by throwing her off a bridge and directly precipitates Carmine Falcone's retirement by turning on him.
• Knee Capping: Was on the receiving end from Fish, giving him a distinct waddling limp that makes him look more like a penguin. He finally gets it somewhat fixed with a new leg brace at the start of season 5, then has this happen AGAIN when Jim shoots him in the leg.
• Knowledge Broker: After the fall of Fish, Gordon starts to go to him for information on cases where all other avenues are closed to him; Penguin proves to know a surprising amount about not only the inner workings of Falcone, Maroni and the underworld, but other useful areas like the location of Loeb's secrets. Part of it is Gordon owing him favours he can turn to his advantage, but he also seems to be genuinely trying to impress Gordon by proving his usefulness.
• Lack of Empathy: Doesn't matter what you've done for him - employed him, given him a ride, jeopardized your life by sparing his own, he will not think twice about turning on you. Hell, he won't think once.
• Laser-Guided Karma: A tip from him caused Falcone to rumble Fish, and two episodes later, a tip from Fish caused Maroni to rumble him. Also his murder of Isabella in season 3 comes back to bite him in the ass when Ed works out what he'd done.
• Lean and Mean: This incarnation is rail thin in contrast to the Fat Bastard he's usually portrayed as in the comics. He actually stays this way throughout nearly the entire show, but by the Grand Finale (set ten years after No Man's Land), he's gained the comics-appropriate rounder look.
• Legalized Evil: This is the central plot of "Pax Penguina", where Penguin’s solution to restoring order to Gotham is to reduce crime by legalizing it. This “Pax Penguina” system dictates that criminals who carried a Licence of Misconduct, were able to commit crimes and be exempt from being investigated or arrested by the GCPD.
• Leitmotif: He has a bumbling-yet-dark mandolin tune that usually plays when he's doing his penguin walk, or when he's threatening someone.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: He is definitely a bad guy, make no mistakes. However, the show repeatedly goes out of its way to show that he has some sympathetic and even downright tragic qualities and that there are far worse people in Gotham, usually spotlighted by him going up against these people.
• Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Oswald's apparent infatuations are often towards people who are not good for him, whether by virtue of being in a relationship, like Ed, or using him, like Sofia.
• Looks Like Cesare: His pale skin, dark bag-shrouded eyes and greasy black hair are a classic example of the trope.
• Loose Lips: During "What the Little Bird Told Him", after being shocked by Buchinsky, he accidentally slips up he was meeting Falcone and not his own mother. The Oh, Crap! look afterwards is priceless when Maroni questions him about it.
• Love Is a Weakness: After his falling out with Ed he claims to believe this, and keeps Ed frozen in a block of ice rather than kill him as a reminder to never make the same mistake again. Later, he cares for orphan Martin and faking his death results in his arrest.
  • Oswald himself is more than willing to exploit this trope for his own ends, even lampshading it to one of his rivals when he uses said rival's love of money to turn his own men agaisnt him. Ironic considering his own loved ones are Oswald's Fatal Flaw.
  Penguin: When you know what a man loves, you know what can kill him.
• Made of Iron: In addition to having his leg broken in the first episode, over the course of the series he's been electrocuted, stabbed, shot multiple times, and beaten up plenty of times and he keeps bouncing back. The only injury that seems to cause him any trouble is his leg, which he's seen putting ice on to numb the pain.
• Mama's Boy: He still lives with his mom, who still cleans his clothes, and insists that he can't trust anyone but her. She even bathes him.
• Manipulative Bastard: One of his principal skills. He may not be a match for Ed as far as precision planning goes, but he gets better and better at playing people like fiddles at the series goes on and shows a remarkable talent for improvising his way out of trouble.
  • Best seen at the end of season 3 - he has no idea that Gordon and Bullock will try to trade him to Riddler, or that Barbara and Butch will try to take Tetch of their own accord, but manages to spin the situation to make Riddler think he has the upper hand - even manipulating him into taking him to the same dock he almost killed Penguin at - before using Freeze to take him out of the equation for good.
• Mayor Pain: Announces his intent to run for mayor in "Look Into My Eyes". In "New Day Rising", he wins. That said, his intentions appear far more noble than they were at the last adaptation he ran for that office, and especially in comparison to those of Galavan. He turns out to be quite good at the job, helped by the fact he's still running Gotham's Underground at the same time.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: He never had much respect in Fish's gang and was nothing more than a servant boy to her, despite his obvious criminal talents. Hence why he's so keen to put himself on top.
• Morality Pet: For a time he had one in Martin.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: He solves almost all of his problems by killing the person in his path. Whether the problem is an attempt on his life, moving through the criminal ranks, getting a job, getting a ride, finding a sandwich... he manages to murder his way to his goal.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: He arranged Isabella's death so he could have Nygma all for himself. Needless to say, Edward is not pleased upon discovering this.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In his first scene in the premiere, he's holding an umbrella for his boss Fish, because it's raining outside - a reference to the campy umbrella-gadget weapons of some of his other comics incarnations.
  • His actions as The Rat and being a club manager/owner connect him to at least one of his comics incarnations: a gray-market club owner who is the go-to guy when Batman wants information on what's happening in the criminal world.
  • His short temper, and the messy way he's seen eating a fisherman's sandwich (admittedly, after swimming a freezing cold river, you'd be hungry too) remind one of Danny DeVito's portrayal.
    • In the third season, he even runs for mayor.
  • In Season 3's "How the Riddler Got His Name", he finally dons his comic counterpart's top hat and tuxedo (at least for a brief moment during a hallucination sequence).
• Naturalized Name: The fact that his mother's last name is "Kapelput" implies this.
• Necessarily Evil: How he views himself in season 4, as he views his licencing of crime as far better than the anarchy caused by the Tetch virus previously.
• Near-Death Experience: He tends to be nearly killed a lot, but he manages to always survive.
• Never My Fault: When he lends his support to Jim to find the Haven bomber, he snarks he still blames Jim for stealing his people and causing them to be caught in the blast - conveniently ignoring it was his awful treatment of them that caused them to leave him for Haven in the first place.
  • Similarly, he holds a grudge against Jim in the series finale for having gotten him arrested and locked up for 10 years even after they had joined forces to fight Bane together. This ignores that Jim already secured him and Nygma a pardon after the battle with Bane, which both of them squandered by returning to crime out of petty, vindictive reasons.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Does this to Theo Galavan in "Worse Than a Crime". With a baseball bat.
• No-Respect Guy: A major Berserk Button for him - when his former lackey Gabe (compelled to tell the truth by Ivy) tells him none of his gang ever respected him, but followed him solely out of fear, he wigs out and brutally stabs him to death on the spot.
• No-Sell: Though it's shown to work on both men and women, Oswald is completely unaffected by Ivy's perfume to her confusion.
• Nominal Hero: In the second half of Season 4, where he sides with Gordon in order to prevent Jerome and later Jeremiah from completely destroying the city. His intentions are less than noble though as he seems to be more concerned with keeping his profits from being burned up than saving lives, although he is sincerely disturbed by the WAY in which Jerome plans to snuff those lives out.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Played with: normally he'll stay out of any physicality unless his life is in danger - in which case, expect the nearest sharp object to the throat. But, when the situation calls for it, he'll personally get involved to make sure his enemies are dead - like when he slaughtered Fish's gang with a heavy machine gun.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain:
  • Though he's a malicious murderer when pushed, for the first three episodes Cobblepot didn't seem much more than a thug with an inflated sense of his own ability. Then in "Arkham", he shows the makings of a shrewd Chessmaster taking shape behind the quirky exterior.
  • "Penguin's Umbrella" reveals that everything after the second episode was a Batman Gambit of truly impressive levels.

Tropes, O-Y

• Obviously Evil: His page image, with its psychotic Death Glare? That's him meeting a group of children...
• Odd Friendship: With Victor Zsasz. Both of them are equally psychotic and crazy, and Zsasz is the one underling Oswald is always seen treating with respect regardless of the circumstances (at least until Sofia manipulates Zsasz into turning on him in season 4). He also has what he considers a friendship with Gordon, though that's well and truly broken by series 4.
• Once a Season: The details vary, but the first halves of seasons 2,3 and 4 all deal with him falling from power, while the latter halves have him clawing his way back to prominence by any means necessary.
• Opportunistic Bastard: As skilled as he is at manipulation, he's equally good at this. Both Fish' return/Falcone's wounding in season 1 and Hugo Strange's Indian Hill experiments escaping in season 2 are entirely out of his control, but he takes full advantage of both - in the former case becoming king of Gotham's underworld, in the latter mayor.
• Ordered Apology: To Fish in "Penguin's Umbrella", because respect happens to be a key part of mob life in Gotham.
• Parental Substitute: Despite his efforts to remain distant, Oswald quickly gets attached to Martin. From advising the young boy in subtle ways of getting back at his tormentors, teaching him how to stab people, dressing him in similar clothing to himself, and even commenting that while Oswald's throne-like chair is too big for him now, Martin will grow into it, implying that Oswald sees the boy taking over his empire one day.
• Pet the Dog: In keeping with the series giving him more sympathetic aspects, he gets quite a few of these moments - he shows genuine interest in helping children defend themselves from bullying (albeit in the worst way possible), helps Jim several times when he doesn't have to (most notably taking the rap for Galavan's murder, which gained him nothing) and spares Fish's life on hearing her finally admit she's proud of what he became.
• Plot Armor: Penguin has escaped many dangerous situations due to this - that he'll still be alive and kicking to become one of Batman's major rogues is a Foregone Conclusion.
• The Power of Love: Believes this sets him above the rest of the criminals in Gotham; they only care about money, but he loves Gotham City and only wants it to prosper (if with him in the driver's seat).
  • Presumably not only referring to his love of Gotham City, but also to the love he has for his mother and his desire to make her happy and proud.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: His nickname "Penguin" comes from the way he walks, unlike most versions where his name comes from his appearance.
  • While he does still use an umbrella, he never has the umbrella weapons that he has in other incarnations, possibly to fit the show's realism.
• Pretty Boy: He has got to be the most beautiful Penguin we've ever seen in the history of the character!
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: In Season 2, when his new step-mother accuses him of being the Penguin, a murderer and rapist who has carried out or ordered the deaths of dozens of people, he has a genuine I Take Offense to That Last One / Even Evil Has Standards reaction, not denying the murder part, but accurately pleading, "In all fairness, I've never raped anyone".
• Rags to Riches: Goes from lowly umbrella holder to the King of Gotham in the span of a season. Later on even becomes the city's mayor.
  • Subverted in the last few episodes; Nyssa al Ghul steals his submarine and all his riches to escape Gotham while he's helping save Gotham from Bane, leaving him back as, in his words, a common criminal. The finale reveals that not long after this Gordon arrested him and put him in Blackgate prison for 10 years.
• The Rat: Seems to be a defining trait. To the point that in "Penguin's Umbrella", he openly advertises that this is his best quality, that he's really good at being a traitorous snitch... which is specifically why he argues that Don Falcone should spare his life (tasking good cop Jim Gordon with his execution, as Gordon almost certainly won't go through with it), so he can in turn infiltrate the rival Maroni family, and act as a great snitch for Falcone.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives a particularly chilling one to Carbone right before stabbing him to death in "Penguin's Umbrella", and does so again to the Riddler, pointing out his Complexity Addiction shortly before having him frozen.
• Refuge in Audacity:
  • He tries to invoke this when he comes clean to Maroni about his past with Fish. Maroni thinks he's lying, but before he kills him, he has Gordon confirm the story and lets him win.
  • When he unveils the frozen Riddler as centerpiece of the Iceberg Lounge, he claims with a straight face that Ed was suffering from a terminal illness and asked to be frozen - despite the horrified and pleading pose. When Gordon arrives to call him on this bullshit, he cheerfully claims to have medical records to back it all up.
  • He goes so far as to license crime in the first part of season 4 without expecting serious retaliation, and mostly succeeds.
    Jim: We don't want to legitimize him -
    Harvey: He's been legitimized! He was the freaking mayor!
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: After Montoya and Allen arrest Gordon for his murder, and are about to arrest Bullock, Cobblepot reveals himself to the entire precinct to announce that no, he's not dead.
• Revenge: Doesn't matter whether he's at the height of his power or on the run from his many enemies - cross him and he will take the time and effort to inflict payback, often all out of proportion to the original slight, even if it takes him a while. Selected examples include:
  • Beating Theo Galavan halfway to death with a baseball bat for killing his mother.
  • Blowing Galavan up with a rocket launcher when he came back as Azrael.
  • Murdering his entire step-family for killing his father (including cooking his step-siblings and feeding them to their mother).
  • Turning up to kill Hugo Strange with a minigun after Strange's therapy left him a harmless wreck (though Fish Mooney put a stop to that one).
  • Freezing Ed and putting him on display in the Iceberg Lounge after season 3's betrayals.
  • Killing Butch solely to pay Tabitha back for her part in his mother's death. Then killing her at the start of season 5. He sure knows how to hold a grudge.
• Running Gag: A rather morbid one, people that come to honestly care for Oswald have an unfortunate tendency to die in his arms. Both parents at different points in season 2, Fish Mooney at the end of season 3, and Mr. Penn in the third episode of season 5 though he shows up alive a few episodes later, only to be killed by Nygma.
• Sadistic Choice: Made the old couple that guarded Miriam Loeb choose which one of them would be given a train ticket to flee Gotham and escape Falcone's punishment. Ultimately averted because he had one bullet left in his shotgun and wanted one to kill the other.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • In Season 2 after his mother is kidnapped by Galavan Penguin noticeably starts to lose his cool. When Tabitha kills her, he throws pretty much his entire empire out the window to get his revenge.
  • In Season 5 he becomes The Caligula and actively cultivates a massive cult of personality around himself so that his followers sing songs about him worshiping him as a great leader.
    • In the finale 10 years in Blackgate definitely didn't do him any good, acting more deranged and openly psychotic than before.
• Saved by Canon: Someone tries to kill him at least every other episode, yet he always manages to stay alive because he has to in order to show up as one of Batman's major villains later.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Subverted; one of his major character arcs in season 5 is his belief he's done all he can in Gotham and, after securing a nest egg to set him up in future, seeks to leave by any means necessary. But he ultimately can't go through with it after realising how much Gotham means to him, and ends up going back to help Jim fight Bane.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Highly intelligent, he always speaks in an incredibly formal and well-spoken way that none of the other gangsters on the show (save Falcone) can match. Causes him to be underestimated (particularly when he kills Frankie Carbone). Also a source of irritation when no-one really gets his classical references until Ed comes along.
• Shoot the Messenger:
  • Or, in this case, stab him. After Maroni exposes his true nature to his mother, Penguin offs a delivery man bringing her flowers (also from Maroni, to twist the knife) so she doesn't see them.
  • Beats one of his henchmen almost to death when he brings him news of Barnes' raid on his weapons house right in the middle of a Villainous Breakdown provoked by Galavan kidnapping his mother.
• Signature Headgear: He wears a Dastardly Dapper Derby while carrying out an assassination for Theo in Season 2. He also wears his signature top-hat three times: first in Edward's hallucination in "How the Riddler Got his Name," second during Bruce's hallucination in "A Beautiful Darkness," and the real Penguin is seen with a look accurate to the comics - including the hat, monocle and umbrella - in the final episode.
• Sinister Schnoz: This incarnation retains his beaky nose.
• Sissy Villain: He's prissy, sycophantic, and loves his formal wear...and a manipulative, ruthless killer.
• Smug Snake: As smart and vicious as he is, whenever he has actual power he lords it over those without and generally acts as unpleasantly as possible - which inevitably leads to them betraying him, or worse villains like Jerome stealing his thunder.
• Sociopathic Hero: Robin Lord Taylor stated in an interview that "My goal is, I want him to be an anti-hero, I want people to root for him, no matter what he’s doing." He seems to be a sociopath rather than a psychopath. He possibly has Paranoid Personality Disorder.
• Spanner in the Works: He's the one that tipped the MCU off that Mario Pepper's death was a cover-up, ruining Falcone's otherwise airtight cover-up. The first season has him be this to generally everyone, as his still being alive after the mob thought Gordon had killed him leads to Mooney's scheme to depose Falcone going awry, Falcone and Maroni coming to loggerheads more than once and Gordon and Bullock's partnership nearly going to pot.
• The Starscream: In the space of season 1 alone was this to Fish, Maroni AND Falcone. In season 4 is a rare good variant of this to The Legion of Horribles.
• Supervillain Lair: Has an apartment in Gotham in Season 1 where he has several images pinned against a wall mapping the connections of the powerful. Later, when Fish Mooney is forced to flee Gotham, he takes over her nightclub and names it Oswald's.◊ In Season 2, Penguin as King of Gotham◊ is headquartered in the Falcone mansion. After Season 2 Episode 11 but before Season 2 Episode 12 in Gotham Stories, Penguin selects a slaughterhouse as a lair.◊ It does not last long as Mr. Freeze comes to kill Penguin. Later, after being released from Arkham and he kills his stepmother and her children◊ , he lives in his father's mansion. He returns to the Falcone mansion with Butch in season 4, and once Jeremiah Valeska blows the city bridges he takes over Gotham City Hall for season 5.
• Taking the Bullet: Throws himself between Ed and a grenade with zero hesitation in season 5, injuring his right eye in the process.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: He genuinely sets great stock by Gordon's friendship, but the fact remains Gordon is trying his best to clean up Gotham and Penguin is trying to take over as its undisputed crime lord. Consequently, no matter how many Enemy Mines happen or how many times they save each other's lives, their relationship by season 4 is still characterised by deep mistrust at best, betrayal at worst. Particularly notable when Cobblepot is genuinely trying to inform Gordon of the Legion of Horribles' plans and Gordon will barely hear a word of it.
• Token Evil Teammate: Whenever circumstances ally him with Gordon or the other good characters - he's notably the one that convinces Jim that handing Galavan over to the courts will only end in him escaping justice, leading Jim (already swayed by Theo's Evil Gloating) to kill him after letting Penguin get his retribution for his mother's death.
• Token Good Teammate: To the Legion of Horribles, eventually helping Gordon ruin their plan to infect Gotham with Joker gas.
• Took a Level in Badass: After being utterly humiliated in the pilot, Cobblepot grows more and more dangerous in the subsequent episodes, eventually becoming King of Gotham and a recurring mob kingpin in later seasons.
• Troll:
  • Ruins Barbara's attempt to buy the Kurdish dagger that can permanently kill Ra's al Ghul out of spite, cutting off the auctioneer to sell it to Bruce Wayne instead.
  • In season 5 he's clearly enjoying himself spelling out for Barbara how hard she worked to keep the peace when Jim got shot, only to have to watch him marry Lee Thompkins as soon as he recovered.
• Underestimating Badassery: He's on the receiving end of this constantly. People see the limp and the scrawniness and dismiss him as harmless, not realizing his explosive temper, resourcefulness or sheer tenacity until the knife or glass is in their throat. Fish, Theo Galavan, Ed, Sofia Falcone and Tabitha have all learned this the hard way.
  • Ends up doing this to Edward after he has Isabella killed, apparently forgetting that the man used to work for the GCPD as a forensic scientist which allowed him to Spot the Thread that her death wasn't an accident. While this initially has Nygma believe that Butch was behind it, when Ed realizes that Oswald was the real culprit he works to mentally torment Oswald and ruin his mayorship before attempting to kill him.
  • Goes the other way in late season 4, thinking that manipulating Jeremiah Valeska into extorting the city for him and his associates will end well, largely because he clearly doesn't think Jeremiah is much compared to his late twin brother Jerome. He's dead wrong, and thanks to failing to anticipate Jeremiah's backup plan, nearly gets the whole city wiped out as a result.
• The Unfettered: The Riddler convinces him that, with the death of his mother at the Galavans' hands, he is now this. Played with: he seems to prove Ed right when his behavior gets considerably worse after killing Theo the second time, but in season 3 falls in love with Ed, which proves a major influence on his actions thereafter.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Doesn't matter what you've done for him in the past, if turning on you will enhance his own power, he'll do it in a heartbeat.
  Fish: So this is it? I spare your life, and you shoot me dead in the woods, like an animal?
  Penguin: Pretty much, yes.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His decision to have Hugo Strange bring back Ed after Lee stabbed him resulted in Strange putting a mind-control chip in Ed's head, leading him to commit numerous atrocities at Bane's behest.
• Villain Ball: Tabitha points out that he should have had her killed immediately instead of making her Butch's Psycho for Hire, especially because she killed his mother. This results in Tabitha helping Butch and Barbara overthrow him. Unluckily for her, he seemed to take the advice, waiting until Butch was cured of his Grundy side the following season before killing him and crippling her, followed up by killing her a few months later.
• Villain Decay: In-universe, in the latter half of season 4: after Sofia Falcone succeeds in taking his empire out from under him he's forced into a series of risky alliances with Gotham's other criminals, none of which go well. Riddler and Lee betray him, Grundy hates him and only works with him to get cured, Jerome's Legion of Horribles is too much, even for him and his alliance with the Sirens sees his attempt to use Jeremiah Valeska to extort the city blow up in his face. Seemingly subverted at the end, as he reveals he was working towards killing Butch to punish Tabitha for his mother's death the whole time.
• Villain Protagonist: How he's portrayed— Gotham's been as much about his rise to prominence as about Gordon or Bruce, and many of the show's major storylines follow him, even diving into his love life at points. As routinely appalling as he is, he always retains some trace of being sympathetic.
• Villain Has a Point: His resentment of Jim is actually pretty justified. He often went out of his way to help Jim and saved his life on multiple ocassions. Jim most likely could have got more out of him if he didn't openly treat him with contempt. While one could argue Oswald deserves to be treated that way it still feels very cruel that Jim abandoned Oswald to prison for Galavan's murder when he knew he didn't do it without any remorse.
• Villain Team-Up: Has teamed with virtually every other major villain on the show at some point. Particularly prominent in the latter half of season 4, where he variously teams up with Grundy, Jerome, Riddler and Lee, and finally the Sirens due to the loss of his power base after the war with Sofia Falcone.
• Villains Want Mercy: He begs for mercy on multiple occasionswhen at somebody else's gunpoint. Subverted with the first episode of season 5, he stares down Tabitha as she prepares to kill him... only for her gun to jam due to her loading her gun with faulty bullets that Oswald traded to the Sirens.
• Villainous Breakdown: Seems to live his life at the edge of one. Though given how many people are trying to arrest, betray or kill him at any given point in the series, it's pretty understandable. His one in "Pena Dura" when he learns that Ed was behind the Haven bombing is pronounced by how out of character it is - no screaming or raving or killing nearby subordinates, just a quiet, sad meltdown.
  Penguin: Oh, Ed, what have you done?
• Villainous Friendship: Has the show's most prominent (and weirdest) one with Ed Nygma/The Riddler. The two have been almost everything to each other - partners-in-murder, best friends, potential love interest, Evil Mentor, distrustful allies, bitter enemies - since their first meeting midway through Season 2. And yet somehow the two always seem to end up circling back to each other. Solidified in season 5 where the two join forces once more, and end up fighting together with Jim to save Gotham from Bane, with Penguin even saving Riddler from a grenade (seriously injuring an eye in the process) - ten years later the two are genuinely delighted to see each other once more when they're free. At one point they share a laugh over how bizarre it all is over the corpse of Mr.Penn/Scarface.
• Villainous Rescue: Through either a pragmatic need for allies or affection for certain characters, he does this a lot.
  • Does a non-action variant in season 1, revealing he was alive at just the right moment to collapse Allen and Montoya's case against Gordon for his own murder. Interestingly his dialogue to his mother makes clear he does it out of genuine gratitude to Gordon for sparing his life, despite it revealing to Fish he was still among the living.
  • Saved Gordon, Bullock, and Falcone from being executed by Fish when he came in shooting the place up with a machine gun so he could kill her himself.
  • Rescues Gordon from Galavan's corrupt cops so they could bring Theo down for good.
  • He and Butch obliterate Azrael (the former Theo Galavan) with a rocket launcher just in time to stop him killing Gordon, Bruce and Alfred.
  • He and Firefly save Gordon from one of the Court of Owls' Talons after he exposes his own nature as The Mole.
  • To the entire city in the aftermath of the Tetch virus - he and his forces returned order to the underworld the hard way, using violence and brutality against criminals on such a scale it cut the crime rate in half.
  • Saves Riddler from being executed by Sofia's men in Season 4.
• Villain with Good Publicity: In Season 3 after rallying the city against Fish Mooney's superhuman gang, public opinion of him is high enough for him to be able to run for Mayor of Gotham despite his previous criminal record. He's able to ride that wave of popularity in a mayorship challenge he wins 100% fairly. Ed and Barbara subsequently ruin that, but he manages it again in season 5 when he aids Jim and guns down the Street Demons threatening Haven to the delight of the refugees there - despite, as Jim lampshades, that being a situation he helped create.
• Weak, but Skilled: Has a penchant for slashing people's throats open with whatever is handy, and with surprising speed, especially because his waddling limp and goofy demeanor disarms those who don't know him.
• Wicked Cultured: Can quote Shakespeare and Plutarch at the drop of a hat, and is also briefly shown to be a fine pianist as well.
• Wild Card: Cobblepot is manipulating both sides of Gotham's mob, as well as the police and Gordon, to further his own power. This makes him truly unpredictable. While this recedes in later seasons when, as city gang boss, he's more part of the status quo, he returns to this whenever he loses power, be it the lengths he goes to in his crusade against Galavan in season 2 or his maneuvering with Riddler against Sofia Falcone in season 4.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: While he has done many horrible things to people, he has had many horrible things happen to him as well, ranging from having his leg permanently damaged by Fish Mooney to having to watch his mother get killed by Theo Galavan. His actor has noted that the "cured" Oswald following his first stay in Arkham is what he could have been if he hadn't been so beaten down by Gotham and its people.
• Would Harm a Child: Played with: he appears to kill Martin with a car bomb to remove Sofia Falcone's leverage over him, but he's faking it, and has Martin sent away for his own protection. When Sofia discovers the ruse and abducts Martin, the threat to his safety is enough to get Penguin to stay in Arkham despite it being a complete hellhole. However, later, when his gangs have taken over Haven, Gordon implores him to think of the kids that will be returned to slavery - but Penguin counters he won't be the one doing it, implying that while he doesn't personally go in for this he doesn't object to others doing it.
• Would Hit a Girl: Tries to kill Fish in the pilot, but Fish turns the tables and cripples him in a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. Played straight in their fight in the finale when he beats her with a lead pipe and pushes her off the rooftop, killing her.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: He's playing it against everyone (particularly Fish and Maroni) in season 1, and while he makes a fair few mistakes, in the end it's enough to emerge from it all as King of Gotham. Resurfaces at points later on, particularly his improvising the Riddler's defeat on the fly at the end of season 3, and his wild maneuvering against Sofia Falcone after she usurps his empire.
• You Have Failed Me: Doesn't have the best tolerance for failure, especially after Gabe's revealing his former lackeys never respected him, only feared him. Seen most notably when he stabs Headhunter almost to death for not anticipating Professor Pyg's trap.
• You Killed My Father: Both his parents have been murdered at different points in the series, and his revenge has been spectacularly brutal on both occasions.

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