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Serial Killers
The Balloonman
The Balloonman/Davis Lamond
Click here to see the Balloonman unmasked
Played By: Dan Bakkedahl
A masked killer vigilante who gains the sympathy of the Gotham public. Named after his method of cuffing his victims to weather balloons and letting them float up until it pops.
Has absolutely nothing to do with an identically-named DC villain associated with the Metal Men.
- Adaptational Wimp: Rather than a metahuman with balloon-like powers including flight and size alteration, here he's just a normal guy who uses balloons to murder people.
- Anti-Villain: A murderer with noble intentions.
- Asshole Victim: His prey are more or less notorious for their misdeeds: a Corrupt Corporate Executive, a Dirty Cop and a Pedophile Priest.
- Cop Killer: The Balloonman has no qualms about murdering a corrupt police officer, or attempting to shoot the officer who tries to apprehend him.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: His method of killing involves clipping people to weather balloons and letting them float until they die.
- Folk Hero: Very quickly becomes one to Gotham. After he's arrested, a reporter even says: "Now that the Balloonman is gone, who will defend the people of Gotham?" Bruce, who is watching the news, ponders...
- He Who Fights Monsters: As Bruce notes, by murdering lawbreakers, the Balloonman himself became a criminal.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: When Gordon and Bullock come to arrest him, Bullock cuffs him to his own balloon during a scuffle and he floats off. Bullock invokes the actual phrase. But Gordon grabs onto him, and Bullock is forced to shoot the balloon down before they get too far away. The Balloonman survives, however.
- It Has Only Just Begun: As he's taken into custody, he says to Gordon that other vigilantes will follow his lead.
- Mythology Gag: In his first appearance, he wears a toy pig mask, reminiscent of Batman villain Professor Pyg. But it's only part of his disguise as a vendor of party favors, complete with a toy balloon cart.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: Like many characters on the show, he's just a normal guy with no powers and uses a gimmick (balloons) to commit his crimes, rather than having balloon themed superpowers.
- Red Herring: Thought to be an employee of a weather balloon factory who stole some balloons (which are expensive), but it turns out that guy sold them on the black market and the real Balloonman acquired them.
- Shout-Out: A reference to The Shadow, one of the inspirations for Batman. The Dirty Cop the Balloonman confronts is named Cranston, and his real name is Lamond. The Shadow's real name is Lamont Cranston. Plus, he also wears a similar getup to the Shadow in that scene: a fedora, a scarf to hide his face, and a long coat.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Just a Villain of the Week, but he was the one who inspired Bruce to become a vigilante himself.
- Vigilante Man: Who in fact helps inspire Bruce to become you know who.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: When Lt. Cranston knocks the Balloonman down during a murder attempt, the Balloonman manages to take advantage of the former being distracted to chain him by his feet to a weather balloon.
- You Don't Look Like You: The Balloon Man
in the comics is a pre-crisis enemy of the Metal Men with the abilities of flight, size-changing, and expelling clouds of smoke. He was also a literal living gasbag. This show's Balloonman is a mundane Vigilante Man who murders corrupt authority figures by strapping them to weather balloons. - Well-Intentioned Extremist: Believes the cops are too corrupt to clean up Gotham, despite the rare honest one like Gordon, so he becomes a vigilante.
Dr. Marks/The Goat
Played By: Susan Misner
"Deep down, we all want to Eat the Rich."
A therapist for the wealthy elite of Gotham, she takes it upon herself to enforce extreme therapy on her clients to rid them of their apathy for the downtrodden by using hypnotism to compel victims to become the 'Spirit of the Goat', a masked menace who kills the firstborn children of the rich.- Brainwashed and Crazy: The two men who she hypnotized to actually carry out the murders.
- Collective Identity: While she's the brains behind the Goat, she uses hypnotised proxies who take up the 'Spirit of the Goat' name to carry out her dirty work.
- Eat the Rich: She uses hypnotism to kill children of rich people.
- The Man Behind the Man: She was the one creating the killers who believed themselves possessed by the Spirit of the Goat.
- More than Mind Control: Dr. Marks is quick to state that she couldn't have forced her pawns to gruesomely kill people if, on some level, they didn't already want to do it.
- Named After Somebody Famous: Her name is obviously a reference to Karl Marx, which appropriate for a serial killer who targets the rich.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Like the Balloonman and Potolsky, Marks wants to battle the corruption and decadence by murdering those who she feels are responsible for the current state of the city.
- Would Hurt a Child: Uses her victims to murder children.
Dr. Gerald Crane
Played By: Julian Sands
- Abusive Parents: Forcing his visibly reluctant son to be complicit in his crimes and using him as a guinea pig for his unsafe science experiments—again, ignoring his visible reluctance and unease—definitely qualifies.
- Adaptational Villainy: In the New Earth comics continuity, he only left his girlfriend Karen Keeny and their unborn son (who is later named Jonathan). Here he scares his victims and kills them to harvest their adrenal gland. Averted Trope for his New 52 counterpart, who is if anything even worse, as he experimented on his son for no reason.
- Badass Boast: "You think I'm afraid of you? Afraid of your guns? I have no fear!"
- Evil Brit: He's British, but he's more of a tragic villain who thinks he's helping people... by extreme means.
- For Science!: He tells his son he was doing it for mankind.
- Gone Horribly Right: His insane theory actually works, completely desensitizing his brain to the specific hormonal cocktail that correlates to "fear". The thing is, without fear, his ability to accurately gauge the danger of his surroundings or actions is hopelessly compromised, leading to a suicidal attack on Gordon and Bullock.
- Mad Scientist: He kills people just to create a serum.
- Morality Pet: He apparently genuinely loves his wife and son.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: He's a doctor of biology and uses his knowledge to perform crimes.
- My Greatest Failure: He failed to save his wife when their house burned down due to being terrified of the fire, setting him on his quest to destroy fear completely.
- Nightmare Fuel: He actually creates a substance In-Universe that can be literally considered Nightmare Fuel. His modus operandi is specifically targeting his victims' fears, terrorizing them to the highest point possible so that he can harvest their adrenal gland when it's flooded with its most potent cocktail of hormones. He then distills this biochemical soup in order to create what can only be called "liquid fear", a mixture that induces intense terror in anyone exposed to it. Why? To create a cure for fear, under the thesis that by carefully inoculating himself with this liquid fear at regular intervals, his body will eventually adjust to the hormone spike, making it impossible for him to feel fear on his own again.
- Predecessor Villain: To The Scarecrow. While he never uses the identity or costume, many of his methods and an aerosolized version of his fear serum will be used by his son Jonathan when he becomes a supervillain.
- Suicide by Cop: Utter fearlessness + armed cops demanding you drop your weapon = quick death. Glad that anti-fear serum worked out so well for you, Gerald!
- Too Dumb to Live: Transforms into this after losing his fear. Turns out Gordon was right. Fear does tell you where the edge is.
- Tragic Villain: He became bad due to the guilt he felt over his wife's unfortunate death. The more so in that all he really accomplishes is to leave his son deprived of either parent, fear-hounded, locked up and fated to become a creator of fear.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He murders and terrifies people in order to create a "cure" for fear, which he blames for causing a host of flaws in human nature.
- You Don't Look Like You: His modus operandi is that of a Batman villain named Cornelius Stirk, though he lacks Stirk's Glamour power and propensity for cannibalism (and what's bizarre is that Stirk himself appeared in a season 2 episode, albeit as a mindless man-eater with no supernatural powers.)
Jason Lennon/Jason Skolimski/The Ogre
Played By: Milo Ventimiglia
A young Serial Killer that seduces lone, pretty women, kidnaps them at his apartment and forces them to play the submissive housewife of The '50s until he grows weary of them and kills them. He also kills the loved ones of cops that investigate his case.
- Arc Villain: The Ogre is practically the last villain of the week before the season finale, and his role becomes a huge threat for Gordon and the GCPD. He also lasts three episodes, longer than any other villain of Season 1 outside the Maroni-Falcone plotline.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He's a Serial Killer who poses as a nice, compassionate guy so he can lure in women and kill them.
- Blade Enthusiast: His private dungeon is filled with all kinds of bladed weapons, from full-fledged swords to countless daggers and knives.
- Bondage Is Bad: He keeps a dungeon stocked full of bondage equipment that he uses to imprison and torture his victims in order to compel them into becoming his lover.
- Boom, Headshot!: Gordon shoots him right in the head, just as the Ogre was about to kill Barbara.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: He does this to his victims before killing them.
- Control Freak: His entire modus operandi is wrapped up in this; he wants "unconditional love", which he equates to a woman who literally has no thought or life outside of pleasing his every whim and doing everything he wants. When his latest "bride" can't live up to his insane demands for perfectionism and devotion, he kills them and goes looking for a replacement.
- The Corrupter: Eventually this to Barbara.
- Disproportionate Retribution: His latest victim was killed for overcooking his dinner and babbling apologies over it.
- The Dreaded: To the GCPD, he will kill the family of any cop who investigates him, and he always succeeds. As such the GCPD spent years too afraid to investigate or even reveal his existence to the public.
- Expy: A handsome millionaire with control issues, and a private dungeon stocked full of bondage equipment. Also, a rampaging psychopath who received extensive plastic surgery to cover up childhood deformities, was abused in his youth, starts targeting a main character when news about him is leaked to the press, becomes obsessed with a blond woman who doesn't realize his true nature until the climax, and is taken out by Boom, Headshot! at the end of a hostage situation.
- Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Post-surgery. He's a devilishly handsome man, who is also a deranged Serial Killer.
- Facial Horror: Pre-surgery. See Two-Faced below.
- Faux Affably Evil: Is suave, charming, sophisticated and witty; he will also murder you for simply overcooking his dinner.
- Freudian Excuse: The woman he thought was his mother cruelly rejected him for his disfigurement and told him he would never be loved.
- Ladykiller in Love: A literal example. He's wooed and killed many women, and had intended to kill Barbara as Gordon's punishment for investigating him. However, when he actually does meets her and gets to know her a bit, he thinks he's found exactly the woman he's been searching for.
- A Man of Wealth and Taste: Fancy bars, nice clothing, and a large selection of wines.
- Mr. Fanservice: He appears as a very attractive guy, but he's a very sick person.
- Serial Killer: He's murdered dozens of women.
- Small Role, Big Impact: He's only in a handful of episodes before being killed, but the personal nature of his feud with Gordon is what leads to Gordon losing much of his naivety of how Gotham operates, becoming much more of a Cowboy Cop in subsequent seasons as well as becoming far more cynical. By corrupting Barbara, he is also indirectly responsible for her crimes, many of which drove the plot of the later seasons.
- Tempting Fate: He calls Gordon and pretty much brags about how he'll never get caught, how Gordon's gonna get his loved ones killed and that Gordon is just a fool. Not only is his identity and his victims revealed to the general public after that stunt, but soon after his entire origin is revealed thanks to some amateur sleuthing.
- Two-Faced: Prior to his surgery, half his face was horribly disfigured.
"Mother" and "Orphan"
Mother and Orphan
"Mother" (left) and "Orphan" (right)
Played by: Susannah Rogers and Benjamin Snyder
"Mother" is a serial killer hiding in an abandoned hotel in Gotham's No Man's Land in the Dark Zone. "Orphan" serves as her sidekick and bait for victims.
- Brown Note: Uses flashing strobe lights to disorient their victims before killing them.
- Canon Foreigner: Neither of these characters appeared in the comics. While "Orphan" is one of the aliases of Cassandra Cain, this character is not an adaptation of that version.
- Dirty Coward: Mother flees as soon as her strobe light setup fails and Gordon and Bullock gain the upper hand.
- Karma Houdini: Isn't seen again after fleeing down a secret passage. Justified, in that Gordon and Harvey had more pressing issues to deal with at the time.
- One-Hit KO: Mother is apparently only able to kill her victims after having disoriented them or through ambushes. When she loses the element of surprise, she's subdued with a single punch.
- Social Darwinist: Mother has shades of this, claiming that her murders were done to teach the boy how to survive.
