Characters / Gotham - The Valeska Twins

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Jerome Valeska

"You ain't seen nothing yet!"

^{Click here to see Jerome pre-scars}

^{Click here to see Jerome with his face stapled on}

Played By: Cameron Monaghan

"You’re all prisoners. What you call sanity, it’s just a prison in your minds that stops you from seeing that you’re just tiny little cogs in a giant absurd machine. Wake up! Why be a cog? Be free like us. Just remember, smile."

A male teenager who lives in the circus and is responsible for his mother's death. He seems innocent, kind, and timid... until he starts laughing. Following a breakout with other inmates by Theo Galavan, Jerome became the leader of The Maniax, was betrayed and killed by Galavan only to return and create more chaos upon the city of Gotham.

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Tropes A-K

• Ambition Is Evil: After Galavan recruits him and gives him a taste of the spotlight, Jerome is put on a neverending quest to be "the star" and have all eyes in Gotham on him.
• Arc Villain: Due to the fact the character was regularly Commuting on a Bus due to Cameron Monaghan's other commitments, this meant that Jerome tended to be this, showing up as the main villain of a 3-4 episode arc from season 2 onward before making way for other villains like Theo Galavan, the Court of Owls or (by his own design) his brother Jeremiah.
• Arch-Enemy: Not surprisingly, considering whom he's based on, he ends up as this to Bruce Wayne, trying to kill him in season 2 as part of Galavan's plan, then becoming obsessed with finishing the job once he comes Back from the Dead in season 3. Tellingly, he's the one that solidifies Bruce's Thou Shalt Not Kill rule after Bruce almost goes too far in giving the clownish psycho a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. After his death he ensures the role passes to his brother Jeremiah, who takes the trope in a different direction through his warped obsession with Bruce as his best friend.
• As Long as There Is Evil: Before he dies, he claims that he will live on "in the shadows of Gotham's discontent".
• Asshole Victim: His constant vile deeds can make it difficult to sympathize with him when others abuse him even when he didn't provoke it (Galavan's betrayal and murder of him, his uncle torturing him with scalding soup, etc.).
• Attention Whore: He loves gaining Gotham's attention and only holds back on killing Bruce Wayne because Bruce makes him realise he needs an audience to watch him kill Gotham's innocent son. Tellingly in that instance, he admits he knows Bruce is stalling for time for Gordon to come rescue him - but goes with his suggestion anyway because of his compulsive need to show off.
• Ax-Crazy: The show's outstanding example - not many other villains display such a lack of scruples or brutal penchant for killing on a whim. He even used one during the murder of his mother.
• Back from the Dead: Perhaps not surprisingly, he comes back in Season 3 after being killed at the start of Season 2.
• Bad Boss: After gaining a literal cult following, Jerome doesn't hesitate to casually kill his loyalists for a cheap laugh. In season 4 he straight-up kills one for the sole purpose of making him feel better after one of his schemes goes to pot.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Sports a natty white ensemble for his final appearances in the latter half of season 4.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In season 4, while his plan to gas the whole city fell through, his backup plan to infect his brother and create a successor seemingly worked like a charm.
• Bait-and-Switch: His psychosis, mannerisms and background indicate he will become the Joker. But then he died on-screen in his fourth appearance making it look he wasn't the Joker after all ...until he comes back from the dead. He manages to make a good run of it before he dies for good a second time - but thanks to him his twin brother Jeremiah inherits the role!
• Bastard Bastard: He was conceived when Lila the snake dancer had an affair with Paul the blind soothsayer. He ends up becoming a vicious homicidal maniac.
• Beard of Evil: He wears a menacing beard as part of his disguise while attacking a charity ball during "The Last Laugh".
• Berserk Button: Anything to do with his mother or father will quickly make his Faux Affably Evil act give way to genuine anger.
  • Also, never step on his punch line or interrupt him. He will shoot you immediately.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He's constantly making jokes and pulling silly poses. He's still one of the most dangerous men in Gotham's history.
• Big Bad: Upon revival, he's the lead villain in the final episodes of Mad City in Season 3, replacing the Mad Hatter, as well as the latter half of Dark Knight in Season 4 when he creates the Legion of Horribles - although he dies before season's end, he ensures that Jeremiah will become a Superior Successor.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When we first meet him, he seems like an innocent young boy mourning the recent death of his mother. However, once it's revealed that he killed his mother and that Paul Cicero is his father, he reveals his true nature as a sociopathic maniac.
• Blatant Lies: When chasing Bruce through his twisted carnival, he promises that he won't hurt Bruce... while holding a gun and having just tried to fire a cannonball into Bruce two minutes ago.
• Body Horror: His face becomes a huge deformity after getting it slashed off by Dwight. Now Jerome has to work hard at making sure his face doesn't fall off.
• Boring, but Practical: He'd probably flip out if described as this, but it's worth noting that to plunge Gotham into madness the Court of Owls have to recruit Hugo Strange, steal Alice Tetch's body and build a bomb to infect hundreds (if not thousands) of people with a weaponised form of her insanity-causing blood. Jerome is able to cause equal, if not greater, chaos earlier in the season simply by going on TV and appealing to people to unleash their inner craziness and kill whoever they want.
• Boring Insult: When he and Oswald both end up in Arkham, Jerome finds Oswald much less fun than expected, even calling Oswald's reasons staying in the asylum boring. This leads to Jerome tormenting Oswald remorselessly in order to get him to "lighten up".
• Breakout Character: Originally intended as a one-off Joker Red Herring, Cameron Monaghan's charisma combined with his popularity in the fanbase rocketed Jerome to a recurring Arc Villain in his own right for multiple seasons.
• The Bully: When he and Oswald are both locked in Arkham, Jerome uses his control over the guards and other inmates to torment Oswald ceaselessly. He also may have been this to Jeremiah when they were children, but Jeremiah's paranoia and tendency to lie as a child makes it uncertain.
• Cain and Abel: Jerome wants to kill his brother, though not before driving him insane. While the former never comes to pass, the latter does, leaving Jeremiah as a worse threat to the city than his brother ever was. Given the pre-planned circumstances of unleashing Jeremiah's insanity, with recording and everything, it's also possible Jerome never actually wanted to kill Jeremiah.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Jerome doesn't kill Jeremiah when he has his brother at his mercy. At the time it looks to be so he can follow through on his threat of driving Jeremiah mad before killing him - but later episodes show that as he wasn't planning on surviving, he had something much worse in mind...
• Card-Carrying Villain: Jerome is very open about how all he wants to do is "paint the town crazy", and sneers at the suggestion that he must have some humanity in him. He also names his Villain Team-Up "the Legion of Horribles".
• Chaos Is Evil: He loves the idea of his actions causing normal people to free themselves from the shackles of humanity, and is directly opposed to Gordon, the biggest believer in order in the series. Most prominently seen in his police massacre speech (his page quote) in season 2, and the anarchy he inspires following his resurrection in season 3. In season 4 he plans to help the process along a bit with the first Joker Gas.
  Bruce: Is there a plan for all this madness?
  Jerome: These people don't want a plan. They want an excuse. A mother who dreams of strangling her child. A husband who wants to stab his wife. All they want is someone to tell them, "Do it. Kill them. It doesn't matter." It doesn't.
• The Chessmaster: While he tends to be more sporadic and chaotic, in Season 4 he's able to perfectly manipulate the rest of the cast to exactly where he wants them for his big final scheme, with none of them realizing until it's nearly too late.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: If you work with or for Jerome, odds are he will stab you in the back sooner or later, possibly literally.
  • After he and Paul Cicero work together to hide Lila's body, as soon as they're found out Jerome turns on Paul and later is happy to kill him.
  • While he played the role of Richard Sionis's loyal underling in Arkham, when Tabitha kills Sionis all Jerome does is laugh.
  • While he and Greenwood are supposed to be working together, Jerome murders Greenwood simply for stepping on his line.
  • He pretends to forgive Dwight for cutting off his face while he was still dead, only to tie him to him to explosives and leave him to get blown up while he saying that he doesn't forgive Dwight for the face.
  • After Jerome gains a cult, he frequently maims or kills members no matter how loyal they have been in the past. The reasons for this range from "being too loud when Jerome was trying to talk" to "just for the hell of it".
  • When Bruce saves Jerome from torture and probable death by his Uncle Zack, how does Jerome repay him? By sitting back and laughing while Zack's henchman attacks Bruce. Although he only does this after Bruce yells at him to not kill the henchman.
  • In more of a double-double-cross, or a mutual double-cross, when Jerome forms the Legion of Horribles he anticipates Penguin betraying him, which Penguin does indeed do, so he preemptively tells the other members to gang up on Penguin when the time comes.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: While he usually moves around too fast to take the time for this, killing his victims quickly, he definitely still appreciates it. He has his minions set up a carnival full of games that torture random civilians, and he later relishes physically and psychologically assaulting Oswald when they're both in Arkham.
• Combat Pragmatist: He'll pretend to fight fair while concealing a hidden weapon, and he won't hesitate to run away if he needs to.
• Combat Sadomasochist:
  • He takes it to a gross degree with Sarah Essen in season 2, when she spits in his face/mouth and he says that it was “strangely pleasant” and asks her to do it again. He also seems pretty excited when she headbutts him and he starts bleeding.
  • He enjoys it a little too much when Bruce beats him up and prepares to kill him.
  Jerome: That's it! Let it out!
  • He's delighted when Penguin's "joke" in Arkham results in Oswald giving him a pretty severe beatdown, describing it later as "the laugh of the century".
  • Describes the smell of soup his uncle made by shoving his hand in a boiling pot of chicken stock as "mouth-watering".
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Cameron Monaghan seems to be channeling Mark Hamill for all his portrayals of Jerome, with the voice getting similar to Heath Ledger due to Jerome's wound in the throat.
• The Comically Serious: Even when he's being serious, his delivery can't help but make him come across as this.
  Jerome: ^note  berating an Arkham inmate for serving the future Rogues' Gallery with the wrong cutlery. USE THE TONGS, CARL!
• Commuting on a Bus: Due to the fact Cameron Monaghan was juggling his appearances on Gotham with his role on Shameless (US) at the same time, Jerome tended to get this a lot. He's put in Arkham after his only season 1 appearance, killed after his appearances in early season 2, caught and put in Arkham again after his season 3 resurrection and only appears in the latter half of season 4 after escaping Arkham once more.
• Composite Character: He shares traits and elements with different portrayals of the Joker in past media, such as Jack Nicholson, Mark Hamill and Heath Ledger. His actor has described the character as a tribute to past Jokers.
  • Like Nicholson's Joker, Jerome describes himself as an artist, plays a role in forming Bruce into Batman (albeit a much less direct role), and dies in a fall from a building, leaving a staring corpse with big smile.
  • Like Hamill's Joker, Jerome has different laughs for different moods, inspires a gang of evil clowns after his death, and takes over said clown gang after he comes back to life.
  • Like Ledger's Joker, Jerome ends up with scars that form a smile pattern on his face, is a Psycho Knife Nut and Mad Bomber, broadcasts threatening video messages to the city, pontificates about a nihilistic worldview where humans are inherently violent killers, and laughs while plummeting to his death.
• Cop Killer: He becomes this as of "Knock, Knock," partaking in the massacre at GCPD headquarters and killing Essen. Kills many, many more over the following seasons.
• The Corrupter: During both of his lives, he influenced many people into evil and madness, most notably his brother Jeremiah, who gets a face full of Joker gas that brings his own insanity to the forefront and turns him into a bleach-skinned maniac who eventually ends up becoming The Joker.
• Create Your Own Hero: His attacks on Bruce turn out to play a vital role in shaping Bruce into the hero he's destined to be.
• Creepy High-Pitched Voice: His voice tends to squeak when he's particularly animated, but it doesn't make him any less menacing.
• Crocodile Tears: Season 1.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: He specializes in these. Trapping people in torturous carnival games, attempting to blast someone in the face with a cannon, tampering with shock treatment to render someone brain-dead... and of course his infamous Laughing Toxin.
• Cult of Personality: After the Maniax burn out, an underground movement starts that idolizes them, especially Jerome. Bruce once visits a club themed around them. By season 3, a cult has formed across the city that is dedicated solely to Jerome and is devoted to bringing him back.
• The Cynic: Behind his wide grin lies a depressed doomsayer.
• Dark Messiah: Downplayed. According to his father's last vision, he will influence Gotham with evil and madness, eventually creating the worst curse upon Gotham. Played straight in Mad City. He even goes so far as referring to himself as one to his followers. He finally unleashes said worse curse... by turning his brother Jeremiah into a Superior Successor - a bleach-skinned maniac with all of Jerome's insanity and (according to Jeremiah) more intelligence and potential for destruction.
  Jerome: Tonight, Gotham, in the darkness, there are no rules. So Gotham, tonight, do what you want. Kill who you want. And when morning comes, you too shall be reborn.
• Darker and Edgier: He was already an unrepentant mass murderer before dying, but after coming back to life he somehow becomes even darker. His pretty boy looks have been marred by Body Horror, his destruction is now city-wide, his admired mentor (Theo Galavan) is dead after betrayal, he has become a full Dark Messiah to a cult, and he embraces a nihilistic philosophy that goes deeper than the mere twisted sense of fun that motivated him before.
• Deadpan Snarker: When he's not being a Large Ham, he's making sarcastic asides.
  Gordon: "You son of a bitch!"
  Jerome: "True, but not the point."
• Decomposite Character: As the show isn't allowed to use the Joker name (at least initially), this is how the show handled the Clown Prince.
  • Jerome is the one who first establishes the Evil Laugh, the sick sense of humor, the theatricality and need for an audience, cheating death, the permanent smile, and the laughing gas. Despite this, he never actually becomes the Joker.
  • When Jeremiah gets his brother's Joker gas in the face he brings in the rest of the major traits: the bleached skin and green hair (thought the latter is very downplayed), purple suit, the Evil Genius tendencies, master planner abilities, obsession with Bruce as his opposite and the relationship with Ecco doubling for Harley.
• Determinator: When Jerome wants to do something, he will do it no matter how much he has to physically endure. Beat him within an inch of his life? He'll just laugh. Torture him? He'll grab the first opportunity to turn the tables. Cut off his face? He'll just staple it right back up and move on.
• Devilish Hair Horns: It's subtle, but in many of his more violent scenes, the tips of his red hair are sticking up, making him look even more like the devil incarnate.
• Didn't See That Coming: It never occurred to him that Galavan would dispose of him eventually.
• Dies Wide Open: Both times that he dies, his eyes remain creepily visible.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Of the second half of Season 4. He breaks out of Arkham Asylum and plans to drive Gotham insane with laughing gas, but once this plan fails, he willingly falls to his death and posthumously gives Jeremiah, his brother, special laughing gas that transforms him into something far, far worse than he ever was.
• Disney Villain Death: His self-inflicted second death.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Well, he is based on the Joker after all. He's killed members of his own gang several times for jumping on his line, offed his mother for nagging him to do the dishes and killed one of the Legion of Horribles for serving food with the wrong implements.
• Doing It for the Art: In-universe. The more distant he becomes from his old life, the less he cares about conventional criminal goals like wealth or power. He describes himself as an artist who simply wants to "paint the town crazy".
• The Dreaded: His Fortune Teller father's final prophecy describes him as this, with most of Gotham fearing him. It comes to pass, with Gordon listing Jerome as being on the same level as Fish Mooney in terms of "staying power" in regards to being remembered by Gotham's citizens. At one point his identical brother Jeremiah walking into the GCPD HQ with Gordon is enough to render everyone in the building totally silent.
  • Amusingly subverted when he meets his brother's assistant Ecco: he's visibly baffled she isn't scared of him, shortly before she beats the crap out of him.
• Drives Like Crazy: He cares little about running over civilians when he's on the road.
• Due to the Dead: After Jerome is buried, his followers perform some sort of twisted ritual over his grave - as it turns out, at the behest of his brother.
• Establishing Character Moment: Two in different seasons.
  • The Reveal of him being his mother's killer, with him suddenly displaying the Laughing Mad tendencies and evil grin that instantly established him as a fan-favourite choice for the future-Joker.
  • The Russian roulette scene in season 2, where he demonstrates Nerves of Steel in taking three tries in a row with the one-bullet gun, intimidating his rival Greenwood into backing away from leadership of the Maniax - establishing that underneath the boyish exterior he's way more than just another garden-variety psycho and actually has the Villainous Virtues he claims he does.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He thinks Bruce's relationship with Alfred is weird, questioning how a master and servant can be so close.
• Evil Counterpart: To Bruce Wayne. Both were orphaned late into their lives, both were associated with shady organizations, and both are on opposing sides of the law. While Bruce's parents were gunned down by a hired thug, traumatizing him, Jerome happily murdered his parents with no ill effect on him. Contrasting Bruce's great working relationship with Gordon, Jerome has tried to kill him on several occasions. Taken to larger levels after Jerome's resurrection, and their eventual confrontation. While Jerome has a vast cult at his beck and call, Bruce only has Alfred and Gordon at that point to rely on. In the funhouse of mirrors, Jerome uses a gun and some underhanded tactics such as a Blade Below the Shoulder while Bruce uses Good Old Fisticuffs. Before said confrontation, Jerome had given Bruce a rough "sad clown" design on his face, while Jerome's face remained ever-grinning due to the way his face was, reflecting their ideologies of order (Bruce) and anarchy (Jerome). After the whole ordeal, Bruce began to adopt his iconic Thou Shalt Not Kill way of thinking while Jerome remains a murderous sociopath.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: While he's quick with clever one-liners, he also laughs at things that are violent and deadly simply because they're violent and deadly.
• Evil Is Petty: He likes to make fun of people as much as to hurt and kill them.
• Evil Laugh: Well, look who he's based on. His actor has mentioned in interviews he's subscribed to the Hamill method of having different laughs for Jerome's different moods - just look at the results.
  Theo Galavan: The laugh is fabulous. Use that.
• Evil Makes You Ugly: Over the course of the series, his monstrous actions lead to his face being cut off and deformed, leaving him with discolored skin and nasty scars by the time of his death.
• Evil Plan: He normally leans more towards chaos for chaos's sake, but in season 4 he concocts a complex scheme to infect the entire city with laughing gas. Which will then give him chaos for chaos's sake.
• Evil Redhead: A natural redhead, and one of the show's most out-and-out evil characters.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: Justified. Galavan kills Jerome by stabbing him in the throat, so naturally when Jerome comes back to life his voice has more of a raspy element from the damage.
• Evil Twin: Played with to an extent. Jerome is certainly evil, but if Jeremiah's post-transformation belief that he was always as dangerous and murderous as he proves in the last few episodes of season 4 is true, and it seems true as he deliberately made a plan to hurt his brother as a child by telling lies, along with the show's theme of "you can't bring out something that's not already there", it's likely there have never been a good twin in this relationship.
• Evil Versus Evil: He tells Bruce that there are no such things as heroes in Gotham City and mocks him for trying to act above everyone else. He argues that deep down, everyone's as ugly as he is.
• Explosive Leash: In Season 4 he abducts several city officials and straps exploding collars around their necks, so he can make their heads explode if his demand aren't met.
• Face Death with Dignity: Dignity might be the wrong word, but when he finally dies for good there's no pleading or begging as he willingly lets himself plummet to his death, as he's come around to the idea of what he represents as a symbol to the downtrodden and insane of Gotham. There's also the fact he knows his backup plan to turn his brother into something worse than he ever was is in motion regardless...
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Looks like a handsome, innocent young boy, but is actually a psychotic madman who commits horrific crimes just for a laugh. Subverted in Season 3 onward, where he's just as ugly on the outside as he is on the inside, thanks to having his face cut off and stitched back on.
• Facial Horror: After one of his followers, Dwight, fails to resurrect him from the dead, he decides to slice his face off and wear it like a mask to morbidly symbolize Jerome's legacy living on through the maniacs he inspired. When it turns out that the resurrection was a success, Jerome not only gets his face back, he staples it back on^note in reference to the New 52 Joker, especially during Death of the Family. Needless to say, the results aren't pretty◊. Even less so when Gordon actually punches it off.
• Failed a Spot Check: Doesn't twig until too late that his uncle has set out three bowls of soup for just the two of them. Cue Lunkhead the Strongman beating him to a pulp.
• Faux Affably Evil: He can act quite chummy sometimes, as with his "chat" with Essen in series 2 - but it's clear the murderous sociopath is never far from the surface.
• For the Evulz: While Jerome might claim some petty reasons for some of his murders, for the most part he's shown killing people without any needed excuses at all, and cackling madly while doing so.
• Foreshadowing: Shortly before he kills a Defiant to the End Commissioner Essen, she tells him he'll be dead soon and that no-one will remember his name. The former comes to pass an episode later at the hands of Theo Galavan (though it doesn't stick), while by the finale the latter also happens by his own design, in favour of a far worse monster - his twin brother Jeremiah,aka the Joker.
• Freudian Excuse: He had a heavily abusive childhood, being frequently beaten by his mother and her various lovers as well as his uncle, who once shoved Jerome's hand in a deep fat fryer - and that was before Jeremiah managed to turn the rest of his family against him, as Jeremiah was only sent away when the twins were ten, and Jerome reminisces about their mother and her lovers beating him on his ninth birthday. Though, it has to be noted that the age Jeremiah gave is either another lie or a writing mistake, as it contradicts with their ages (season 2 establishes there's at least 5 year gap between them and Bruce, who just turns 18 at the end of season 4, making Jeremiah around 23, and Jerome says he waited 15 years for their reunion) and what Jerome said in their confrontation about how their mother gave up on him only AFTER she hid Jeremiah away. If this is not a continuity error, then given Jeremiah's tendency to lie about his twin, he was probably sent away before their ninth birthday. The series plays with but does not make it clear whether he was always off his rocker or not: in fact, it becomes a mystery once comes the last-minute deceptive twin brother. Before that, Jerome just had an abusive alcoholic mother and a bad father who sparked his nihilistic attitude with "the world doesn't care about you or anyone else" line. According to Jerome in his conversation with Cicero, that was the turning point. He also angrily remarks how it's "too late" for Cicero to be a good father, perhaps acknowledging that things could've been different. Simply put, nothing really suggested he was always crazy. Season 4 Jerome heavily implies Jeremiah lying and turning everyone Jerome has ever loved against him was his "one bad day". And even during the twin plot, we still get a story about the brothers seemingly being normal kids, playing and daring each other to steal sweets from uncle, and Jerome describing his childhood as helpless. Any evil details we hear come from Jeremiah, who is hinted to not be a fully reliable source. In contrast, Jerome's side of the story is usually either confirmed by other characters (Cicero, Jeremiah) or at least not denied (uncle Zack). Admittedly, there isn't anyone left to confirm or deny Jeremiah's words, except Jerome, but even in his own story their mother didn't believe him at first when he tried to convince her that Jerome has issues.
• Glasgow Grin: The surgery performed to re-attach his face leaves him with a long rent on each side of his mouth.
• Giggling Villain: He's a frequent laugher, ranging from creepy giggles to full-on Evil Laugh.
• Gross-Up Close-Up: There are a number of times where we're treated to a grisly close-up of Jerome's deformed face, and an even more disturbing one when Gordon nails him with a right cross that actually tears his stapled face clean off.
• The Heavy: Of the opening three episodes of Season 2. He personally carries out the first part of Theo Galavan's evil plan.
• Humans Are Bastards: He thoroughly believes this, and couldn't be happier about it.
• "I Can't Look!" Gesture: During his magic show, when he's about to shoot an apple off of an audience member's head, he pretends to get scared and cover his eyes while he himself is shooting the gun. Fortunately for the victim, it's a water pistol.
• I Control My Minions Through...:
  • In the case of his cult, Fanatical Loyalty mixed with Power, specifically Sadism (when they take over the city, Jerome has his minions build a twisted carnival where they can torture and kill civilians to their heart's desire).
  • Material Benefits/Power, in the case of the various criminal members of the Legion of Horribles. Jerome promises them that they can do whatever they want with Gotham city after he's done gassing it.
• I Lied: He tells Dwight that, because Dwight brought him back to life, the little matter of cutting off Jerome's face when he was still dead is water under the bridge. Shortly after, Jerome abandons Dwight to get killed by the bombs they rigged up, saying on his way out that he actually didn't forgive Dwight for the face thing.
• I Was Quite the Looker: Before his death and subsequent resurrection, Jerome was rather boyishly handsome, despite being quite evil. Then he died, was resurrected, and a cult member removed Jerome's face, which Jerome himself later stapled back on. The results aren't pretty. He even lampshades that he used to be the handsome one when he meets Jeremiah again.
• Insane Equals Violent: He is frequently described as both.
• Institutional Apparel: He, along with the other Maniax, wear their striped Arkham uniforms when they're out committing terroism.
  • Shortly after his resurrection in Season 3, he dons a white jumpsuit that's reminiscent of a straightjacked with just a hint of bondage.
• Interim Villain: Unlike the other Big Bads of season 3 Jerome is the only one to not use the Tetch virus for his crimes. He appears right in the middle of the season after the GCPD finally arrest Jervis Tetch and cure the city of his virus but before the Court of Owls use said virus for their own nefarious plans. Justified, as the anarchy and chaos he unleashes is what convinces the Court to use the virus to destroy Gotham.
• It Amused Me: If he's not doing it for revenge or attention, than he's doing it solely for his own (usually twisted) amusement.
• It's All About Me: After his debut episode, where he's exposed as a murderer and villain, he fully embraces it and develops a constant desire to the center of attention.
• Jabba Table Manners: He has a tendency to talk with his mouth full and wipe his hands off on other people's clothes.
• Jerkass: He screws around with pretty much everybody he comes across, no matter how pointless it is, just because he thinks it's fun.
• Joker Immunity: In this universe, thanks to Hugo Strange, Death Is Cheap. Guess who's back...? Doesn't stick the second time though.
• Kick the Dog: He's unnecessarily and relentlessly cruel to his favorite victims, particularly Bruce and Penguin.
• Kubrick Stare: Once the jig is up, gone is the timid, innocent look of a sad teenager and in is the cold, bitter stare of a maniac.

Tropes L-Z

• Lack of Empathy: Where to begin? Perhaps the carnival he had his followers construct based around torturing and killing people. Or how he stabs one of his own followers for little reason and then says to "Shut up, ya big baby". Or the fact that he sits back and laughs as Bruce is about to be killed right after Bruce had saved Jerome himself from being tortured.
• Large Ham: As per the character he's based on, Jerome tends to dominate any scene he's in.
• Laughably Evil: He cracks jokes all the time, usually while doing something terrible.
• Laughing Mad: After The Reveal that he killed his mother, Jerome laughs maniacally.
• Legacy Character: Even after his death, his horrific actions have still left quite a mark on Gotham City. All the chaos and death that he spread had turned several citizens into laughing homicidal maniacs, who eventually band together to form an entire cult worshiping their Dark Messiah. Even if he doesn't end up being the Clown Prince of Crime, there's no doubt that he's at least responsible for creating him. Confirmed: Post-humously, he turns his own twin brother, Jeremiah, into his legacy - a far, far worse monster who ends up destroying half the city and turning it into No Man's Land.
  Cicero: You will be a curse upon Gotham. Children will wake from sleep, screaming at the thought of you. Your legacy will be death and madness.
• Light Is Not Good: His general aesthetic is based around colorful carnivals, smiles, and laughter. Of course, he makes all these things seem horrific.
• Mad Artist: By his own admission in "Mandatory Brunch Meeting". He describes himself as an artist who "wants to paint the town crazy."
• Mad Bomber: After he comes back from the dead, one of his first actions is to blow up Gotham's power plant. Later, he is waaaaay too excited at the idea of blowing up the city officials that he's kidnapped, even getting impatient and exploding one's head before his deadline.
• The Mad Hatter: Say that he's crazy, and he'll cheerfully agree (except in season 2 when he denies being crazy). Even more so than the character actually inspired by the Mad Hatter.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: At the end of "The Last Laugh" after Jerome's death, several people across Gotham start to become as maniacal and homicidal as he was. Is his spirit affecting people? Did Cicero actually cast a curse instead of prophesying one? Or did something in these people just snap upon seeing Jerome's horrific acts on television?
• Mask of Sanity: He pretends to be a quiet, normal boy in his debut episode while trying to escape blame for the murder of his mother. Once Jim accuses him, though, Jerome cheerfully throws the mask away and never looks back.
• Master Actor: Very good at pretending to be innocent in his first appearance, despite being extremely unhinged. He not only fools Gordon with his act for most of the episode, but no one else in the circus even thinks of him as a suspect in his mother's murder, despite the fact that later episodes make clear that at least some of them witnessed the abuse his mother and uncle put him through, but did nothing to prevent it. This indicates that he might have put up a front around them, as well.
• Matricide: Murdered his mother after her physical abuse and nagging went a bit too far.
• Meaningful Name:
  • His name is just a "K" shy of having the word Joker hidden in it. His surname, Valeska, is a couple letters off from Valestra.
  • "Valeska" is Slavic for "Glorious Ruler". Fitting, isn't it?
• Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: As Penguin discovers in season 4, he's got almost total control over the prisoner population of Arkham, as well as many of the guards.
• Monster Clown: Invoked fully during his circus torment of Bruce in season 3.
• Mood-Swinger: His demeanor can go from delightedly cheerful to murderously angry in a second.
• My Death Is Only The Beginning: He tells Jim that, even after plunging to his death, he will "live on in the shadows of Gotham's discontent".
• Mythology Gag: According to his actor, his whole portrayal is a "love letter" to the character of The Joker over the years. While he channels other Joker actors - namely Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger - Monaghan says he was especially inspired by Mark Hamill. As a result, tonnes of jokes he makes reference the Joker:
  • After his delivery of "My father," just try not to mentally add "was a drinker and a fiend."
  • During the attack on the GCPD, Jerome makes a disturbing video very similar to one the Joker made in The Dark Knight.
  • The cult of psychos that worship Jerome in Season 3 sport white face paint and red lips, a clear reference to the Joker's iconic look.
  • The Season 3 episode "Smile Like You Mean It" opens with Jerome's cult breaking into a warehouse to retrieve their "savior's" body, killing a security guard (who was playing cards during his shift) in the process. The camera then zooms in on the guard's deck to reveal a Joker card.
  • Jerome inspires a future gang of clown anarchists exactly like the Jokerz.
  • Jerome gets his face hacked off and after getting it back he crudely attempts to reattach it while doing all he can to prevent it from falling off entirely, exactly like the New 52 Joker, especially during Death of the Family.
  • And a rather odd and subtle one in a completely different direction; Jerome was a young boy in a traveling circus until the death of his parents, after which he was taken in and trained by a wealthy but brooding and shadowy man who has a vision of improving Gotham City... have we heard this before?
  • Even his identical twin brother can be an obscure Joker reference: in Batman: Arkham City, the Joker, who was sick, had Clayface act as his body double. As of Episode 18 of Season 4, Jerome is dead, but Jeremiah might be keeping his legacy alive after all...
  • Jerome's death is almost a mirror image of the scene Heath Ledger's Joker went through, falling off a building while cackling madly. The only difference is, unlike Christian Bale, Jim Gordon didn't have a grappling hook gadget to pull the psychopath back up and keep him from falling to his death. And much like Jack Nicholson's Joker, the camera focuses on Jerome's corpse afterwards, mainly his lifeless smiling face.
  • When he and his cronies take over a concert, the riff they play while waiting for Gordon to arrive is suspiciously similar to the Adam West TV show theme.
• Narcissist: It's no secret that he wants to have an audience at all times. He thinks of himself so highly that when he discovers a cult has grown up around his legend, he takes it completely in stride and acts as if he's been a Dark Messiah all his life.
• Nerves of Steel: Displays them in season 2's Russian roulette scene, deliberately taking three tries in a row with the gun to intimidate Greenwood into dropping his claim to leadership of the Maniax, despite the risk of blowing his own head off. He doesn't even flinch as he pulls the trigger each time.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: His rivalry with Bruce plays a large part in forming Bruce's identity and code of ethics as Batman.
• Nightmare Face: After getting it cut off, Jerome goes to disturbing lengths to reattach his skinned face, resulting in a gruesome appearance.
• Nightmare Fetishist: He loves killing people and laughs whenever it happens.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Especially when he admitted to murdering his mother.
• No Sense of Personal Space: He is very touchy-feely which, given the rest of his behavior, his cast in a decidedly creepy light.
• Not Afraid to Die: One of the things that makes him so dangerous is how willing he is to risk his life to get what eh wants. First showcased when he asserts dominance to the other Maniax by playing Russian Roulette and pulling the trigger four times in a row. He also cares more about corrupting his enemies than his own survival, as seen by his eagerness for Bruce and later Jim to kill him in cold blood. When Jim doesn't take the bait, Jerome lets himself fall to his death with a laugh, knowing that his plans will come to fruition even with him gone.
• Obfuscating Insanity: He's clearly a lot smarter than his Laughably Evil tendencies would suggest, as shown when he engineers the Arkham breakout in season 4.
• Off with His Head!: This is the method of his offscreen takedown of Wayne Tower's security.
  Jerome (calling after fleeing receptionist): Don't bother going to security, they're all-
  Receptionst screams from the next room.
  Jerome: ...headless. (Shrugs and moves on.)
• Patricide: When he's recruited into the Maniax, one of his missions is to kill his father. He does it partly to help the Maniax by framing his father, and partly because he just really wants to.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: He kills Robert Greenwood for stepping on his line. Considering that Greenwood was a cannibal who had murdered dozens of women, it's hard to feel any sympathy for him. Also ends up killing his abusive uncle in season 4.
• Pet the Dog: Played with. When Bruce saves him from being killed by his uncle, he actually looks set to save Bruce's life in turn by shooting his uncle's strongman henchman as he throttles Bruce. But Bruce is obviously against it, and he complies and decides it'd be funnier if the guy Bruce saved him from ends up killing Bruce. Jerome then just sits back and gleefully watches as Bruce struggles for his life.
• Polar Opposite Twins: His identical brother Jeremiah is a soft-spoken, reclusive architectural genius, Jerome is a nihilistic Large Ham psycho. Even as villains Jerome is mostly chaotic even when following his plans, with a penchant for theatricality. Jeremiah is a No-Nonsense Nemesis - methodical and precise even when destroying half the city.
• Pop-Cultured Badass: He's shown to be familiar with classic entertainers like Fred Astaire.
• Practically Joker: A very deliberate example due to it being done by a DC-sanctioned take on Batman, so the show was constrained by Warner Brothers' insistence that the Joker be used specifically in their DCU films. Jerome ends up being the Joker in all but name, having his characterization derived from several different versions of the Joker and being explicitly said to be a tribute to the Clown Prince of Crime. Though originally created as a one-off possible identity of the Joker^note alongside the Red Hood gang and a morbid comedian working for Fish. However, Monaghan's performance proved so popular that Jerome was promoted to this, becoming essentially the show's take on the Joker for the first four seasons and, as mentioned in the Decomposite Character section, taking on many of the iconic Joker traits. Fittingly, he's was responsible for giving rise to the real Joker of Gotham.
• Predecessor Villain: If he isn't the Joker, then he definitely had a hand in inspiring him. Confirmed in Season 4, where he transforms his twin brother Jeremiah into the show's take on the Joker.
• Psycho for Hire: Being recruited into the Maniax means that Theo Galavan rewards Jerome for what he loves to do anyway: hurting people and causing chaos.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He practically bounces around like a hyper little kid and frequently makes corny jokes and silly faces. Not that this every lessens his appetite for destruction and death.
• Psychotic Smirk: Whenever he's about to do something heinous, if he's not laughing, he's smirking.
• Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter": Often laughs at all the pain and death that he causes, special mention going to his hysterics while driving away from a school bus full of teenagers that he just tried to burn.
• Rage Breaking Point: He claimed that his mom kept "pushing" and that he killed her because she told him to do the dishes.
• Red Herring: Though his character was pretty heavily based on the Joker, it turns out he wasn't "Joker before he was Joker" in keeping with the general theme of the series, rather someone who will later inspire the Joker in-universe. Hilariously for a red herring, he has red hair. A possibly Subverted Trope, once he got resurrected. Losing his face and trying to stick it back on further solidifies the possibility.
  • The show just LOVES to play with his fans. He's dead for real this time... Luckily for him, he had a twin brother to inherit his villainous legacy!
• Repulsive Ringmaster: In season 3, he dresses up like a ringmaster for the execution of Bruce Wayne, which is staged like a circus stunt.
• The Reveal: He was the one who murdered his mother after all.
• Sadist: Oh yes. So much so that he had his cult set up a carnival filled with games and rides based around torturing and killing innocent victims, and proceeded to have the time of his life in it.
• Self-Made Orphan: We meet him after he kills his mother. A ways into season two, he kills his father.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: When he bbreaks out of Arkham in series 4, one of the first things he does is trade out his prison uniform for a snazzy white suit.
• Shipper on Deck: Insanely, is one for Gordon and Lee: upon his resurrection he enquires about the state of their relationship and seems genuinely disappointed it didn't work out, telling Lee "I really liked you guys."
• Shout-Out: In "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies", Jerome wears a white straitjacket and pants with a hat that makes him look a lot like Alex DeLarge.
• Sibling Rivalry: While the details are unclear, it seems that Jerome and Jeremiah had a troubled relationship as children.
• Sinister Sweet Tooth: He professes a love of Chunky Monkey ice cream.
• Slashed Throat: How he dies. It doesn't last. The first time, anyway.
• Slasher Smile: Jerome's got a nasty one.
• Sliding Scale of Villain Threat: Jerome is a City Threat. His plots revolve around driving Gotham City into madness.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Even though he met his demise, his chaotic crimes influence many others to follow in his footsteps. And then he returns from the dead, still making him a prime candidate for being the Joker after all... Only to die again, but not before leaving a little gift for his twin brother...
• Snarky Villain, Earnest Hero: He jokes around far more than any of the heroes he comes up against, especially Bruce.
• The Sociopath: He shows shades of being one, including no empathy, highly impulsive and erratic behaviour, excessive risk taking and manipulating others.
• Son of a Whore: Jerome told Jim Gordon that his mother had many "lovers". After the reveal that he killed her, he said she was "nagging, drunken whore".
• Spanner in the Works: His season 3 return and subsequent rampage are this for the Court of Owls, as his nearly killing Bruce appears to be what goads at least some of them into deciding Gotham has fallen ill and trying to destroy it with the Tetch virus.
• Straw Nihilist: His general philosophy is that it doesn't matter who you hurt or kill, so you should go ahead and do all the hurting and killing you want. The seed of this seems to have been planted by his father.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: When he finally reveals his true nature, by God it's disturbing.
• Technician Versus Performer: The performer to his brother's technician. Intensely theatrical and showy, he's highly intelligent, but prefers to see chaos and anarchy spin out of the acts he commits rather than follow a master plan.
• Teens Are Monsters: He's so monstrous that Gordon has no qualms about beating him into unconsciousness.
• Theme Twin Naming: Jerome and Jeremiah.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Claims that he embraced this as a result of Jeremiah telling lies to make him look unstable as a child.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: A very creepy version. Jerome looked like a normal everyday young man, working the circus with his mother. His confession of his murder of her makes it all the more nightmarish.
  • Somewhat subverted by Season Two, where Jerome has visibly embraced his madness, and has wilder hair and paler skin.
  • By Season 3, he most certainly does not look normal anymore; losing your face then stapling it back on will do that to you. By season 4 the surgery to reattach his face his left him with a permanent Glasgow grin and scarring round the outline of the cuts, making him look even more nightmarish.
• To Create a Playground for Evil: Post-resurrection (and no longer working for Galavan), whatever he's currently doing, his ultimate goal is to completely demolish Gotham's society and reduce everyone in it to murderous animals.
• Tom the Dark Lord: As opposed to his main inspiration, as well as most other big Gotham villains, Jerome only goes by his normal-sounding real name, despite being the most feared monster in Gotham.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Tends to break into gleeful laughter every time he manages to make someone snap enough to give him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. Seems to go hand in hand with his need to corrupt people to prove that anyone can become as insane as him if they have one bad day.
• Took a Level in Badass: Hugely; when he's first banged up he's Richard Sionis' lackey, and as much carnage as he subsequently causes with the Maniax, he's an Unwitting Pawn in Theo Galavan's grand scheme. Fast forward a few years and he practically runs Arkham when he's in, and makes even psychopaths like the Penguin and Riddler pale in comparison when he isn't, to the point virtually every other villain's arc is sidelined during his final spree in season 4. The only villain in the show's five year run who could be considered worse? His twin brother Jeremiah, the future Joker.
• Trailers Always Lie: With the mass advertising for the show, you'd think that he was the real Joker. Unfortunately he's not, as evidenced by his death, but then he comes back. This further supports the idea that he might become the Joker after all. And then he dies again, permanently this time, but posthumously transforms his twin brother Jeremiah into the true Clown Prince Of Crime.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The trailers for his debut episode made absolutely no secret of the fact he was the villain of the episode, or that he had some sort of connection to the Joker.
• Troll: If he runs across somebody which he either can't or won't assault, he'll just make fun of them and screw around with their heads instead.
• The Unfavorite: His mother definitely favored his identical twin brother Jeremiah.
• The Unfettered: Being very impulsive and spontaneous, Jerome will generally do whatever comes to his mind unless he has a really strong reason to hold off on it.
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • He naturally "thanks" Dwight for bringing him Back from the Dead by killing him in an enormous explosion. To be totally fair, it's made clear he was pretty pissed at Dwight for cutting off his face and wearing it.
  • After Bruce saves his life from Lunkhead the strongman, Jerome seemingly changes his mind about shooting the thug to return the favor after Bruce shouts "no!" and proceeds to let him struggle for his life with the thug - because letting the man who saved his life get killed by the guy who would have killed him otherwise is more funny.
• The Unsmile: Even before his cheeks get scarred to look like he's always grinning, he's no strange to the mocking smirks or the Slasher Smile.
• Villainous Crush: Shades of one with Lee. During a moment of forgetfulness, he asks if he and Lee ever slept together, and is disappointed when she says no.
  Jerome: Redheads not your type?
• Villainous Friendship: He seems to genuinely get along with Jervis Tetch and Jonathan Crane, despite the occasional squabbling, inasmuch as he can get along with anyone. Even after Jervis says that they will no doubt all stab each other in the back later, they never actually do. This has even led fans to dub them the "J-Squad".
• Villainous Legacy:
  • It's he who transforms Jeremiah into first a monster who almost destroys the city - with Jeremiah's descent into evil eventually turning him into the Joker.
  • In season 2 he also hits on the idea of using Russian Roulette to prove himself worthy of Maniax leadership - something Jeremiah later uses to see who gets into his cult, meaning Jerome is indirectly responsible for Ecco becoming the warped Harley Quinn figure we see in season 5 after she tries it.
• Villainous Virtues: Claims in his "pitch" to originally lead the Maniax to have vision, ambition and brains - all of which prove to be true over the following episodes and seasons.
• Villain Song: After he hijacks a concert, he sings about how he can't wait to kill somebody, very briefly and very badly (although at least one audience member seems to be getting into it).
• Visionary Villain: By the end of season 4 he's grasped it doesn't matter whether he lives on or dies. What he represents - the chaos, anarchy and disregard for life's rules - will live on in the shadows and discontent of Gotham. Particularly if he has a brilliant twin brother he can "corrupt" into helping things along...
• Walking Spoiler: Jerome's practically taken care of by Galavan after the third episode of the second season, but it is his lasting repercussions AND him being resurrected in mid-season 3 where he becomes this trope. And there's really no getting round the fact that his death in the fourth season leads to the creation of the real Joker in his brother Jeremiah.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Invoked by Bruce. When Jerome finds him at Wayne manor, Jerome is about to just stab him, when Bruce exploits Jerome's need to have an audience and manipulates Jerome into taking him someplace else to be publicly executed, buying himself more time. Interestingly enough, Jerome knows that Bruce is just stalling time to escape, but his cimpulsion for attention is so strong that he goes along with it anyway.
• Would Hit a Girl: He has zero reluctance to fight women, as Ecco will attest. And then there's stuff like happily trying to burn a bus full of cheerleaders alive...
• Would Hurt a Child: Immediately after coming back from the dead, Jerome's first order of business is to murder Bruce Wayne, mainly because that was his mission given to him by Galavan beforehand, and Jerome wants to see the job done (with his usual theatrical flair).
• Xanatos Gambit: His final plan. Either he drives the city insane with a blimp full of Joker gas and simultaneously gets revenge on Bruce and Jeremiah, or his parting gift drives his brother mad and ensures his legacy will carry on even after his death.
• You Cannot Kill An Idea: Before his second death, he uses his last words to declare this of himself. As for how true this is, see all of the above tropes.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: His employer kills him when he's no longer required for his future plans for Gotham. Unlike most deaths, it doesn't stick for more than a year.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: A rare villain example. Jerome tries to hold his brother Jeremiah at hostage to get Gordon to back off. But Gordon calls his bluff, knowing Jerome wouldn't kill Jeremiah as if he wanted to he would have done so already. Jerome admits Gordon is right, then turns the gun back on Gordon before fleeing.
• Your Head A-Splode: After he kidnaps the mayor and other city bigwigs, he fits them with exploding collars that he will activate if Gordon and others don't give him what he wants. He actually kills two of them this way before getting thwarted.
• You're Insane!: Jeremiah says this to him, and his response is a casual "Yeah".

Jeremiah Valeska/The Joker

"My brother once said, All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy."

^{Click here to see Jeremiah pre-transformation}

^{Click here to see Jeremiah after falling into the vat of chemicals}

Played By: Cameron Monaghan

"Why don't you understand? You need me! I'm the answer to your life's question! Without me, you're just a joke... without a punchline!"

The reclusive genius identical twin brother of Jerome Valeska. He seems to be a stable, serious young man until he opens a jack-in-the-box left posthumously by his maniacal sibling. From then on he serves as the show's take on The Joker, albeit without use of the name (Word of God indicates that Warner Brothers reserves the name for film incarnations of the Clown Prince of Crime), with a growing obsession with Bruce.

---

Tropes A-I

• Actually Pretty Funny: A warped variant, both times:
  • He can't stop giggling in "Pena Dura" when Alfred threatens to bite his face off if he hurts Bruce, having to visibly compose himself into seriousness before he resumes explaining his plans to the butler.
  • His response to getting a Batarang through the hand in the finale is to laugh hysterically until another one knocks him out. He even points at Batman while laughing as to say "good one!".
• Adaptational Dye-Job: Initially: he retains his natural red hair even after getting the pale skin and reddish lips from Jerome's gas. It's gone the traditional green (albeit so dark it appears black in most lighting) by the end of season 4.
• Adaptational Personality Change: He's noticeably more calm and reserved than other versions of the Joker. At first anyway. He's considerably more unhinged in season 5.
• Adaptational Ugliness: His final Joker form may very well be one of the scariest, most grotesque looking versions of the Clown Prince in any live action adaptation. His face is riddled with permanent chemical burns, and his hair's been reduced to long, stringy patches on his head. This is a deconstructed take on the Joker's typical origin; falling into a vat of chemicals will take a heavy toll on your skin and physical appearance.
• Adaptation Expansion: His full transformation into the Joker has essentially been split into two separate events in this continuity.
  • First, he gets his bleached skin and Sanity Slippage from a special laughing gas given to him by Jerome, turning him into the series' pre-eminent threat in the last few episodes of season 4.
  • A season later, he falls into the Ace Chemicals vat just like in the comics, and not only emerges physically deformed and closer to the traditional Joker look (specifically with the large pointed chin that's commonly associated with the character), but with what's left of his Jeremiah identity permanently shattered, ready to become something entirely new.
• Ambiguously Evil: A retroactive example: it's left up to anyone's guess whether his exposure to the Joker Gas turned him evil, or if he was always this way and the gas just changed his appearance.
• Arch-Enemy: He's this by default to Bruce after crippling Selina and blowing up half the city, but Jeremiah actively seeks this relationship with Bruce in season 5. He's realised he and Bruce will never be the "best friends" he wants them to be, so he settles for getting Bruce's attention another way - bonding them as this via recreating the deaths of Bruce's parents with Jim and Leslie.
• Arc Villain:
  • After Jerome dies but ensures that Jeremiah will unleash his inner craziness, Jeremiah becomes the final villain of season 4, trying to destroy the city both solo and as part of a Big Bad Duumvirate with Ra's al Ghul.
  • He's this again for Bruce's arc in season 5, launching a concerted attempt to recreate the Wayne murders in hopes of bonding Bruce to him as an eternal enemy.
• Attention Whore: Unlike his brother, he's this to Bruce and Bruce only. His entire reasoning behind recreating the Wayne murders - with him as the killer this time - is that he can't stand the thought of some random gunman having a bigger impact on Bruce's life than him.
  Jeremiah: I wanna be the star of the show!
• Ax-Crazy: Beneath his cool demeanor, he's just as insane as his brother was.
• Backup Twin: A particularly dark variation of this. Jerome ends up dead and never actually becomes the Joker, but fortunately for him, he has an identical twin brother who could do the job for him whether he wants to or not!
• Bad Boss: Not surprisingly given who he's based on - turn on him (his brother's cult), question him (his series 5 tunnelling foreman) or just stop being useful (Ecco) and he'll kill you without a second thought.
• The Bad Guy Wins: One way of looking at "Ace Chemicals": his main goal is to bond Bruce to him forever as a blood rival if he can't be his brother - and the finale indicates he succeeded when Bruce thwarts his plans as Batman.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Unlike his brother, he's always seen in a variety of sharp suits, both pre- and post-transformation.
• Berserk Button: Implying that he is in any way inferior to Jerome. Questioning his sanity is also a bad move.
• Big Bad: For Season 4's final few episodes following his brother's demise.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Forms one with Ra's al Ghul in the Season Four finale.
• Big Bad Ensemble: With Nyssa in Season 5 - while she's the bigger threat, he's responsible for the fall of Gotham, holds greater enmity with Bruce, and is the Final Boss in the future Grand Finale.
• Big Bad Friend: He views himself as being this to Bruce - all evidence to the contrary. He forgoes several chances to just kill him and instead tries to first get him to unleash his inner darkness, then attempts to bond them forever as blood enemies by killing his Parental Substitutes Jim and Leslie.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Yells one at his followers when they turn on him, shortly before incinerating them.
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • Oswald, Barbara, Tabitha and Butch - not viewing him as much compared to his late brother - attempt to hijack his plan to destroy the city by extorting it for $50 million by holding one of the crucial henchmen/parts of Jeremiah's plan for ransom. All this does is have him move up his timetable by activating the bombs early, almost getting them and millions of others killed as a result.
  • Is subject to this again in season 5 by Ed Nygma and other Arkham inmates, who physically abuse him while he is pretending to be catatonic, which makes it not so surprising that Jeremiah later targets the Riddler by breaking him out of Arkham, and tricking him into committing a high-profile crime as a distraction for Jeremiah's own plans.
• Cain and Abel: He certainly seems to be the Abel to Jerome's Cain, with his recounting his mother's favouring him and Jerome's subsequent threats and physical abuse. Then again, we learn later he was making at least some of it up, and that the hatred Jerome endured from the rest of his family played a part in his Start of Darkness, so whether any of it was true is up for interpretation.
• Characterisation Marches On: As noted below, Jeremiah started off distinctly different to his more manic brother, carrying himself with an almost bored sense of apathy. As of season 5, as his obsession with Bruce grows, however, he's started to display more manic elements to his personality that seem to be taking him down a path into becoming more like the traditional Joker most are familiar with. And unintentionally on his part, making him more similar to his brother.
• The Chessmaster: In the finale: Bullock, Penguin, Riddler, Gordon - they're all dancing to his tune, and the only reason his plans don't work is ironically the return of the item of his obsession - Bruce, now Batman.
• Cold Ham: Compared to his brother, his way of speaking is much more subdued, though no less dramatic. Getting averted in season 5, where he's beginning to edge into his brother's Large Ham territory.
• Color Motif: Likes purple, the classic Joker color. Notable because his brother, who was a much more obvious candidate for the role of Joker, never really incorporated a lot of purple into his wardrobe.
• Combat Pragmatist: A strong believer in this: he skulks behind Bruce (offering him as a target) when Barbara arrives to confront Ra's at the end of season 4, gets the upper hand on Tabitha by using her own knife in the ensuing fight, and in "Ruin" uses body armor to make Selina think he'd been killed.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: His voice in the finale is heavily reminiscent of Mark Hamill's famed vocal work on the Joker, with some of the softer vocal elements of Heath Ledger's version.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: He's never referred to as the Joker on the show, not even in the Time Skip finale. Word of God indicates that Warner Bros. wanted to save the character for the live action films, and thus, the show isn't allowed to use the Joker name.
• Composite Character:
  • Jeremiah may be the show's Joker as per the finale, but his character also has elements of The Batman Who Laughs who considered himself "an improvement" over the mindlessly chaotic "original" Joker. Jeremiah likewise combined his intellect and methodological mind with Jerome's moral compass and became much more destructive than his brother ever was.
  • His loud, dandyish fashion sense, spit curl, and obsession with Bruce in Season 5 bring him in line with Frank Miller's interpretation of the character.
  • The two-part Series Finale reveals a new look for Jeremiah... a freakish, scarred visage riddled with chemical burns and wisps of stringy, bright green hair that resemble the sickly Joker of the Arkham series wearing a long purple overcoat that blends elements of the 1989 film and Heath Ledger's take on Mister J.
  • He bears several similarities to one of the more obscure versions of the Joker: John Doe from Telltale's Batman games. They were both friends with Bruce before transforming into the Joker (and are thus two of the only versions to explicitly know that Bruce is Batman), are motivated largely by a desire to be noticed and appreciated by Bruce, and instigate a raid on Wayne Enterprises. They also share the same giggly, breathy laugh that gradually becomes more manic, and receive a batarang through the hand in the Ace Chemicals plant where they were reborn. Notably, one of the new names Jeremiah considers upon his awakening is John.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Jerome was manic and unhinged, a pure force of chaos that was random and capricious even when following his plans. Jeremiah is cold and reserved, methodical and precise - a No-Nonsense Nemesis with a destructive vision way beyond his brother's. Even their attires as villains are polar opposites: Jerome's season 4 outfit is a bright white suit, while Jeremiah's evil look is a dark purple ensemble in the mold of his notorious inspiration.
  Don't compare me to that short-sighted psychopath. He just wanted to destroy things. Me? I'm a builder.
• Crazy-Prepared: More showcased in his earlier appearances than in the later ones, when he becomes increasingly unhinged. A notable example includes adding an extra part to his bombs that looks exactly like the one that will disarm them, except for this one will make them detonate. This is despite the fact that he destroyed all his notes, so he didn't think anyone could possibly find his explosives in order to disarm them.
• Creepy Monotone: Post-transformation, he speaks in an icy, calculating voice that contrasts his brother's crazier, wilder growl.
• Curse That Cures: A very mild example given the extent of his transformation into a psychopathic monster - but after his exposure to Jerome's toxin he's never seen using his glasses, implying it somehow fixed his eyesight.
• Deadpan Snarker: After his transformation, he develops a rather dry sense of humor.
  I hope you didn't catch a cold in my brother's grave. I know those things aren't exactly designed for the living.
• Dead Person Impersonation: He might despise everything to do with his brother, but he's capable of pulling off a stunningly accurate impersonation of Jerome after Jerome dies and he gets a face full of Joker gas in order to both manipulate his brother's old followers into doing his dirty work and lure Gordon into position to get killed.
• Decomposite Character: As the show isn't allowed to use the Joker name, this is how the show handled the Clown Prince.
  • Jerome is the one who first establishes the Evil Laugh, the sick sense of humor, the theatricality and need for an audience, cheating death, the permanent smile, and the laughing gas.
  • When Jeremiah gets his brother's Joker gas in the face, he brings in the rest of the major traits: the bleached skin and green hair (thought the latter is very downplayed), purple suit, the Evil Genius tendencies, master planner abilities, obsession with Bruce as his opposite, and the relationship with Ecco doubling for Harley.
• Disc-One Final Boss: In season 5. The show's advertising had him incredibly prominent in the trailers for season 5, with the end of the movie-style trailer even teasing his transformation into the Joker. In the season itself, he's in it for only a few episodes, with the real Big Bad Duumvirate being Bane and Nyssa al Ghul.
• Dissonant Serenity: One of the creepiest things about the character. Unlike his brother, many times he's incredibly calm while killing people.
• The Dreaded: Everybody's terrified of him in the finale, despite his pretending to be catatonic for the past ten years. The Riddler even calls him "a legend," and the GCPD won't even say his name.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He sounded genuinely upset when he mentioned that Jerome killed their mother and he really, really cares about Bruce - albeit in a very warped way - variously referring to him as his best friend and the brother he never had. In the finale, he directly compares Bruce leaving Gotham to losing the only thing he ever loved.
  Jeremiah: This is all for you, Bruce.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Subverted. Any trace of humanity he shows is usually a prelude to something worse.
  • In season 4, he gives the GCPD some time to evacuate Gotham before he plans to demolish it, stating that the people living in Gotham don't have to die for his plan to work, but he clearly knows that six hours isn't nearly enough time to evacuate a major city. Also, after Penguin interrupts his plan, he decides to go back on the already-too-scarce six hours and detonate the bombs as soon as he gets to a safe place.
  • In season 5, he cheerfully tells Bruce to get his butler as he sets Wayne Manor to blow, which seems an unusual act of mercy for him— except he'd already had Alfred hypnotised by Jervis Tetch, leaving him totally incapable of recognizing the danger he was in. If Bruce hadn't been able to appeal to Alfred's most basic Papa Wolf instinct, he might have died anyway.
• Evil Costume Switch: After revealing his true nature, he ditches his red coat for a black and purple one.
• Evil All Along: Ambiguously. Jerome believes he is, and he himself claims to have been like this all along, although whether he's correct or that's just what the toxin makes him believe is unknown.
• Eviler than Thou: He resents being compared to Jerome, considering his dead brother an unstable and shortsighted lunatic with none of his intellect or vision.
• Evil Genius: One of the show's smartest character. A master engineer and technician, with some aptitude for complex planning. His plans all had to do with his engineering and acting skills, and blowing things up, though, so he doesn't display as wide range of intelligence as Riddler or Lucius do. He also almost always needed someone's assistance, and things very often went awry for him.
• Evil Redhead: Like his brother. Even after being exposed to Jerome's Joker gas, he still retains his natural red hair (most notably in the scene where he and Ecco raid Wayne Enterprises)— but by season's end has either started dyeing it green or the toxin is altering it more.
• Evil Versus Evil: At the end of season 4, Oswald, Barbara, Tabitha, and Butch try to threaten him into extorting money from the city using his bombs, and, when that doesn't work, risk their lives trying to prevent him from carrying out his plan to kill thousands of people and cut Gotham off from the outside world. Especially notable, since these other villains are the only ones, besides Bruce and Alfred, who get there on time to fight him.
• Facial Horror: Played with. One dose of the laughing gas toxin, and Jeremiah's mouth stretches into a bloody rictus as his skin bleaches and he laughs uncontrollably. But thereafter, aside from the skin pigmentation changes, he actually looks more normal than Jerome's scarred visage. Neither Gordon or Bruce realize anything is wrong until he wipes the makeup off during The Reveal. This gets worse after he falls into a vat of chemicals, gaining chemical burns all over his face and costing him much of his hair.
• Faking the Dead: He's perfectly happy to let everyone think Selina stabbed him to death so he can advance his plans without interference.
• Faux Affably Evil: Talks to Bruce like a close friend, all the while torturing and trying to kill his loved ones. When he gets Bruce together with a hypnotized Alfred and the people he has imitating Thomas and Martha Wayne, he acts like a genial best friend attending his first dinner with his friend's family, even gently needling Bruce over his childhood favorite food in a voice that sounds almost normal for once.
• Feel No Pain: While faking catatonia, he can take Riddler stabbing him in the leg with a sharpened paintbrush without any visible reaction. Later dialogue from Ed and other prisoners implies this sort of thing happens a lot.
• Final Boss:
  • Fittingly enough, given who he's based on, Jeremiah is the last and most dangerous enemy that Bruce and the GCPD have to face in Season 4, surpassing even his brother's acts of destruction and insanity by a wide margin.
  • Jeremiah serves this role once again in the final episode of Gotham, having come out of his faked coma once Bruce returns to Gotham and manipulating the entire cast in order to see his "old friend" once more.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: After being sprayed by Jerome, he keeps his glasses while pretending to still be sane.
• Friendly Enemy: A one-sided example. Even after his transformation, he still considers Bruce Wayne his best friend. Given that he almost kills Selina and comes close to destroying the city at the end of season 4, Bruce disagrees rather violently.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: While this is true of Penguin and most of the villains on this show, nobody embodies this trope harder than Jeremiah Valeska. Nobody even knew of his existence at the start of season 4 (including the fans)— by its end, he's far surpassed his brother in almost destroying the city and plunging it into total anarchy, becomes Bruce's Arch-Enemy after gunning down Selina, and becomes the Gotham version of the Joker, THE Batman villain. Not bad for someone who only appeared in 5 episodes of season 4...
• Giggling Villain: In Season 5, he's prone to bouts of giggles.
• A God Am I: Has organized a Religion of Evil centered around himself in Season 5 where "pilgrims" play Russian roulette with each other if they wish to join. In practice it's not quite as egomaniacal as it sounds, with "Ruin" showing it's to acquire willing(ish) workers to tunnel under the Gotham River to Wayne Manor.
• Gone Horribly Right: He manipulates virtually everyone, almost blows up Wayne Tower, and holds Barbara Lee hostage in an effort to attract Bruce's attention when he returns, and he gets it— but as Batman, who swiftly defeats him.
• Hijacked by Ganon: In the end it always was going to come down to Joker vs. Bruce.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: He's obsessed with Bruce being his best friend, and makes a point of not killing him when revealing what's happened to him at Jerome's graveside because of it. Takes an even darker turn in season 5, when he rationalises that if they can't be best friends, they'll just have to be bonded for life as enemies instead.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Being Jerome's genetic twin, he's initially a very attractive young man, but after he falls into a vat of chemicals, his face is horribly scarred and most of his hair has been burned off.
• Iconic Outfit: Initially he would wear the same suits that he wore pre-transformation, though with a notable lean towards purple. At the start of season 5 he gets halfway there with a long purple trenchcoat over a dark red shirt with purple gloves— and the Time Skip finale has his final outfit almost directly modeled on Jack Nicholson's costume in the 1989 movie.
• If I Can't Have You…: Given a pretty unique take, in that he's not interested in killing Bruce: he really, really wants him to be his best friend and brother, but by "Ace Chemicals" he's come to the conclusion that if he can't have Bruce as this (and he says the trope word for word when they talk in the alley), they'll just have to be forever bonded as enemies instead.

Tropes K-Y

• Large Ham: Graduates to this from his former Cold Ham self in season 5, taking Jerome's theatricality and parading around as Zorro when giving Bruce a Motive Rant - in an actual theater no less.
• Legacy Character: To Jerome as the show's Joker figure. Particularly significant in that Jerome chose him to be his successor, declaring to Jim that he couldn't be killed because he was an idea.
• Master Actor: Much like his brother, he is very good at hiding his true nature underneath a veneer of innocence. In Jeremiah's case, this means successfully hiding a truly spectacular slide into insanity from his best friend in the world, who will one day be considered the world's greatest detective.
• Master of Disguise: Apparently skilled enough at applying make-up that he is able to hide his bleached skin entirely from Bruce for weeks until The Reveal. Also uses his ability to disguise himself to successfully impersonate Jerome, so that he can fake posthumous messages from his brother, which he then uses to manipulate Jerome's followers and Jim Gordon. This talent is possibly a holdover from his time at the circus.
• Meaningful Name: Like his twin brother.
  • His surname, Valeska, is a couple letters off from Valestra.
  • "Valeska" is Slavic for "Glorious Ruler". Fitting, isn't it?
• Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: He's able to arrange and pull off his entire plan in the finale without any problems despite faking catatonia in Arkham the entire time.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The final shot of Jeremiah's transformation is a recreation of the famous panel from The Killing Joke.
  • Post-transformation, he also takes to wearing a fedora hat, similar to the one Joker most famously wore when in The Killing Joke, as well as both Nicholson's Joker and the Animated Joker in Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.
  • Much like another incarnation of the Joker, calling him insane (or implying he is) is a very bad move...
  • His having to wear skin-toned makeup to hide his now-bleached pale face is reminiscent of Jack Nicholson's Joker doing the same in Batman (1989).
  • Several shots from the final confrontation of season 4, with Jeremiah in his black suit◊, bear a striking resemblance to artist Alex Ross' take on the Joker◊. Fan takes show there is quite the likeness.
  • Gets probably the definitive one in "Ace Chemicals", where he takes a tumble into a vat of chemicals in the titular chemical plant, just as with the Joker's classic comics origin.
  • Following his accident, Jeremiah spends a decade faking being in a motionless, catatonic stupor until the return of Bruce brings him back, a likely reference to how the return of Batman brings him out of genuine catatonia in The Dark Knight Returns.
  • Jeremiah's final appearance — hunched-over and elderly-looking, with just a few strands of hair remaining — seems to be heavily inspired by the "degenerate old man" version of the Earth-2 Joker.
  • When trying to come up with a new name for himself, he first considers "Jack", which was the Joker's true name in Batman (1989).
• Named by the Adaptation: Usually it's a mystery (or occasionally Jack Napier) but here his birth name is Jeremiah Valeska.
• Narcissist: Arguably a bigger one than his brother. He sees himself as superior to pretty much everyone except Bruce, turns Jerome's cultists into solders who chant his name, and later creates his own following and names it after himself, "Church of Jeremiah", with posters and everything.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: Contrasting Jerome, Jeremiah is very pragmatic with his approach. Jerome had set up a Cruel and Unusual Death for Bruce, while Jeremiah states that if he wished for Bruce to die then he would simply shoot him in the head.
• Not So Similar: He tells Bruce that the reason he considers him his best friend is because he's at war with his true nature, just like he was before getting gassed by Jerome. Bruce counters this, saying that while they both have a darkness inside them, the key difference is that Bruce knows how to control his. By "Ace Chemicals" even he's beginning to realise this, stating that without him Bruce is little more than a joke without a punchline.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Has shades of this. Despite being introduced as a structural engineer, he seems to be an expert in multiple types of engineering, physics (considering his generators), and chemistry (if he made the chemical weapons he used in season five without Scarecrow's help). May be at least partially justified, because he graduated college by the age of seventeen at the latest, since he was that age when he finished building his underground bunker. Someone who finished college that early in that field is probably a math prodigy, which would make it easier to get degrees in other math-heavy fields, even if it was never mentioned on the show whether he had other degrees.
• Painful Transformation: As in all depictions of the Joker’s creation, his transformation wasn’t pleasant, and he was painfully aware all the while as the gas warped his body and mind.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: He kills the foreman of the workers trying to tunnel out of Gotham for complaining it's hopelessly unrealistic of him to expect it done in such a short time. Said foreman had been established in a prior episode as an unrepentant child slaver.
• Practically Joker: Averted, all the more uniquely given the circumstances surrounding his creation; at first, the series treated him as another possible Joker figure without confirming anything concrete, and Word of God remained ambiguous as to whether he would become the Joker, or be another Red Herring serving as inspiration for the future Clown Prince. Then the Grand Finale rolled around, and while he's never actually called The Joker, the outfit and remarkably Mark Hamill-esque performance from Monaghan made it clear that this was unquestionably the show's final take on Batman's Arch-Enemy.
• Polar Opposite Twins: Jeremiah is straight-laced, academic, serious, and reserved, while Jerome is a psychopathic Large Ham. Even more noticeable as villains - see the Contrasting Sequel Antagonist entry.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Blue Oni to Jerome's Red.
• Rule of Symbolism: There's a bit of significance in the scene where the fake Jerome removes his makeup to reveal that he's Jeremiah. It's as if the role of the Joker is physically transitioning from Jerome to his brother.
• Sanity Slippage: A huge amount over the course of the series. After his initial transformation, he insists he's the face of true sanity, and is very much cold and pragmatic even when carrying out acts of destruction far eclipsing Jerome. Then season 5 rolls around and he's far more Laughing Mad than previously, while also showing signs of a Split Personality. By the finale (after a dunk in a tank full of acidic chemicals) he flatly admits to Barbara he's gone mad.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: After he leaves Bruce in Jerome's grave he's already wearing the telltale Joker colors, sporting a green shirt with a purple tie. Goes into this in full in season 5, sporting a purple longcoat and gloves in addition to a dark red shirt, making him resemble the Joker more than ever before. The finale has him adopt the classic Joker outfit in full.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Occasionally. Tells Ecco "verisimilitude trumps precaution" when referring to how he let Selina stab him once while taking the other shots on body armor (to convince her she'd killed him), and looks quite annoyed when Ecco doesn't seem to get it.
• The Scottish Trope: In the finale, hearing Jim say Jeremiah's name immediately lets Ecco know through a wired accomplice that their cover is blown. They then move onto the next part of Jeremiah's plan, which is escaping Arkham and kidnapping Barbara Lee (presumably to get Bruce's attention). Throughout the entire first part of the episode, Harvey is so afraid of saying Jeremiah's name that he is willing to confess to a murder Jeremiah set him up to take the fall for, presumably because Jeremiah threatened to kill Barbara if he didn't.
• The Sociopath: It's left ambiguous as to whether or not he was one before being sprayed with Jerome's insanity toxin, but after his transformation, he starts displaying a grandiose sense of self-worth, believing himself to be utterly superior to his brother and willing to do anything to prove it. He is also unable to form emotional attachments, which is best shown when his long-time partner in crime Ecco is mortally wounded in the finale, and he simply guns her down and casually remarks how there are more fish in the sea, this is actually more of a common psycopathy traits rather than sociopathy.
• Sole Survivor: Of his family, as by the end of season 4 Jerome had killed their mother, father and uncle.
• Son of a Whore: Safe to say. Their mother was confirmed to be promiscuous by Jerome, and Cicero sitting next to him never disagreed.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Tends to keep a very calm and icy demeanor even when he's brutally murdering people. This is a noticeable contrast from his brother, a maniacal Large Ham.
• Split Personality: In both "One Bad Day" and "Ruin" this is hinted at, as he's seen talking to himself in Jerome's harsh, gravelly tones and answering in his own Creepy Monotone.
• Stalker without a Crush: In contrast to Jerome, Jeremiah establishes the love-hate relationship he has with Bruce Wayne, much like Batman and Joker in the comics. He doesn't want to kill Bruce as he feels Bruce completes him. In the finale he seems to be edging closer to the Miller/Snyder Stalker with a Crush version of the Joker, telling Gordon that Bruce leaving Gotham felt like having the only thing he loved ripped away from him.
• Start of Darkness: In "That's Entertainment" - in the space of a day, Jeremiah has to face his brother Jerome or many people will die. He's psychologically tormented then beaten down when he tries to fight back. Jerome is then killed, and his expression when surveying his brother's body makes clear it's still a bitter blow. Then, as he drowns his sorrows, he gets one last gift from Jerome - a box full of Laughing Mad gas, which abruptly transforms Jeremiah into a monster that almost destroys the city.
• Superior Successor:
  • He believes he's this to Jerome — with his genius-level intelligence, skill at manipulation and warped vision of rendering Gotham his artists' canvas he manages to render the city a No Man's Land by the end of season 4, something Jerome never achieved. Indeed, by the time of the finale Jerome is all but forgotten, while Jeremiah is considered a legend and a figure so terrifying that his name is taboo among members of the GCPD.
  • Interestingly, he also appears to view Bruce as this in regards to Jerome, pointedly declaring him the brother Jerome could never be. This forms a large part of his obsession with Bruce.
• Technician vs. Performer: An engineer, compared to his brother who spent his whole life in the circus. This reflects in their approach to their crimes.
• That Man Is Dead: When Jim calls him by name in the finale, he feigns confusion and tells him there's no Jeremiah any more, and that he's still trying to figure out what to call the thing emerging from the ashes of what he used to be (and even includes a Mythology Gag or two).
  Gordon: What do you want, Jeremiah?
  Jeremiah: [looks around] Is there a Jeremiah here?
  Gordon: So what do I call you?
  Jeremiah: Um, uh... I don't know. Call me... Jack. No, no that's not right. Joseph, John, Jay... I don't know. I just... I feel something new crawling from the primordial ooze that was me. Something... Beautiful.
• Took a Level in Badass: Several, over the course of the series. He is first introduced as a seemingly harmless intellectual, and when Jerome hands him a knife and gives him an opportunity to attack him, he is disarmed almost immediately by his brother. By the time he reveals to Bruce that he's been sprayed with Jerome's insanity gas, which happened after a day or few, he's good enough with a gun to shoot very close to Bruce's feet without hitting him, and in the season 4 finale, is skilled enough in combat that he able to hold his own against Tabitha. By season five, he is a match for Bruce in hand-to-hand combat, despite the fact that Bruce was already a better fighter than Jerome by season three, and in the series finale, he easily defeats Barbara when they fight, even though she was trained personally by Ra's al Ghul.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: Compared to his stoic demeanor in Season 4, he's noticeably livelier and more upbeat in Season 5. Unlike most examples of this trope, this isn't played as a good thing. At all.
• Tragic Villain: Questionable, with him being unreliable narrator and an expert at deceiving. He seems like a good man despite Jerome's belief in his being as insane as him, and forms a one-day friendship with Bruce that sees Jerome's plan to gas the city thwarted. Then he opens a box rigged with laughing gas toxin and unwillingly undergoes his transformation into a Joker-esque nightmare. However Jeremiah himself claims that the toxin changed his appearance and nothing else, so whether the toxin just made him believe that or if he was genuinely Evil All Along remains a mystery. It also should be noted that before the toxin Jeremiah was very eager to stab Jerome with the knife he gave him, and his initial plan of keeping Jerome in a trap room (seemingly equipped with fire mechanism) also raises eyebrows.
• Tranquil Fury: When one of his followers declares Jerome victorious, he coldly shoots him in the throat and asks the rest of his followers if they're being serious.
• Ungrateful Bastard: He kills Ecco the moment she ceases being useful, after over a decade of Undying Loyalty, and casually remarks there are always more fish in the sea.
• Unreliable Narrator: When he meets Jim and Harvey he spins a sob story of Jerome repeatedly physically tormenting him when they were kids (and his expression shows he may even have come to believe it, or he is just as good of an actor as Jerome was in season 1, which interestingly would make both twins' first appearance a facade). Unfortunately, when he meets up with his psychotic twin, Jerome's able to get him to admit at least some of it was a fabrication, if not all.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Extreme paranoia as a child led him to invent stories about his brother Jerome trying to kill him, which led to Jeremiah being sent to a private school, and Jerome being ostracized by his friends and family, which eventually led to Jerome's criminal career, the invention of the Joker Gas, and Jeremiah's transformation into the man most responsible for No Man's Land.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Has one in front of his followers when Gordon humiliates him on TV by revealing himself to be alive and calling him an inferior shadow of Jerome and further when his bombs fail to go off. Noticeably, during his breakdown he starts acting in a more Joker-esque manner when so far he's been a Cold Ham.
  • After spending a whole episode trying to get him and Bruce connected through hatred, he completely snaps when he tells him that he means nothing to him.
• Villainous Legacy: A rare positive one: after demonstrating his power cores could be turned into bombs, Bruce and Lucius use one to stop the army reaching the heart of Gotham, destroying Wayne Enterprises in the process and eventually leading to Bane's defeat.
• Visionary Villain: He claims in the season 4 finale that his previous plans "lacked vision" and that Ra's al Ghul opened his eyes to a greater purpose; namely, turning Bruce into the Dark Knight and preparing the city for his arrival. Which involves shooting Selina Kyle and then blowing the bridges to the mainland and turning Gotham into a lawless hellhole.
• Walking Spoiler: If you're reading his tropes section, there's no getting around the fact he's Jerome's secret twin brother AND the true identity of the show's take on the Joker.
• Wham Shot:
  • His introduction. At first he's only shown in shadow, but once Jim and Harvey meet him face-to-face, he emerges from the darkness to reveal that he looks exactly like Jerome.
  • His transformation as well. After getting a faceful of gas, he struggles uncontrollably before finally falling to his knees; when he gets back up, he has a sickly white face with dark red lips.
  • And finally - the double reveal of his transformation to Jim and Bruce, with "Jerome's" Video Will finishing with his tearing off Jerome's scars to reveal his bleached white skin to Jim, while Bruce sees it in person at Jerome's grave.
• When He Smiles: Inverted. In contrast to Jerome, he doesn't smile much in season 4 - but his genuine smiles (such as when he sees Gotham's bridges blow◊) are nightmare inducing.
• Wild Card: In season 5: where the rest of the villains are obsessed with power and survival in No Man's Land Gotham (and thus inevitably come into conflict with Gordon), Jeremiah's obsession with Bruce means his plans revolve around him almost exclusively, and as such are a lot less predictable.
• Would Hit a Girl: At the end of "One Bad Day", he shoots Selina in the stomach, only failing in crippling her for life thanks to Ivy's potion the following season. Also briefly throttles Ecco when she brings him too few people for his building project.
• Would Hurt a Child: He comes very close to dropping a ten year old Barbara Gordon in the same acid that created him. The combined efforts of Gordon and Batman are ultimately what save the girl's life.
• Yandere: He definitely has shades of being one towards Bruce, (albeit with another creepy subtext since he sees Bruce as a brother). Shooting Selina right after she and Bruce have their Big Damn Kiss has shades of Murder the Hypotenuse and the entire finale is both Jeremiah's fury at Bruce abruptly leaving Gotham and an attempt to recapture his attention, coming off as a spurned lover more than anything else.

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