WMG / Gotham

Season 1 Theories

Selina Kyle will teach Bruce how to roof-hop around Gotham.

She's seen watching Bruce skirt the edge of Wayne Manor's roof after apparently seeking him out. Considering how the adult Batman and Catwoman seem to be among the most mobile and knowledgeable of navigating Gotham's skyline, he probably convinces her to train him since she already has those skills.

• It looks like it'll be on-the-job training in Episode 10.

Cobblepot will Out Gambit Fish Mooney and take her place in the underworld.

An original character in charge of Smug Snake the Penguin? She's villain fodder.

• Better yet, some plot will backfire hard and Penguin will leave her to die.
• What do penguins eat? Fish.
• In the pilot, Mooney figured out Penguin tried to and had him killed (but doesn't know Gordon let him live). So this might still happen.
• Confirmed: in episode 12 Falcone rumbles Fish on a tip from Cobblepot, and gets rewarded with her club.

The Waynes' murder was an orchestrated hit.

Either Carmine Falcone or Lew Moxon wanted the Waynes out of the way for some nefarious purpose. Also, a conspiracy that creates Batman would be a strong Myth Arc for the series.

• Alternatively: Their murder was never even intended. It was the result of something Gone Horribly Wrong. The Waynes may have a big secret.
• Gordon quickly concludes that it was not a random mugging since the gun and ammo were too expensive for something a street mugger would use. Falcone denies that he had anything to do with the murders. Given what we have seen of the mob boss, the murders would not be his style. If he wanted the Waynes dead, he would not have done it in such a publicity generating way.
  • I think what Alternatively is suggesting is that the Waynes were up to something illegal and someone found out, knocked them off to... hide it? Protect their image? Something like that?
    • Something like that.
  • Well, so far their company has had a hand in renovating Arkham Asylum (we all know how that turns out, but probably not their fault) and creating Venom. Doesn't prove what the Waynes were involved, but Wayne Industries is definitely up to some messed up stuff.
    • What we know about the Waynes is they might have been killed when Thomas refused to compromise with the dirty work his family company is involved in.w
• Apparently confirmed in Season 2, although Malone doesn't say anything about the circumstances of his hiring and could have just taken credit for the Waynes to goad Bruce into shooting him.

Bruce and Selina will display strong signs of Puppy Love.

They're both too young for Dating Catwoman just yet, and the two are almost bound to become companions over being orphans in Gotham.

• Selina witnessed the murder, and she knows where he lives.
• They get a bunch of shippy moments after Selina temporarily moves in during "Harvey Dent" and, after going through a rough patch in the next episode, Selina gives Bruce his First Kiss at the end, so confirmed (at least for now). In line with the above WMG, maybe her idea of a second "date" would be to take Bruce roof hopping across Gotham (and possibly check in on those orphans from the second episode), with a chaste kiss at the end. It's too bad that "Lovecraft" was the fall finale; that would've made for a perfect Christmas Episode.

The Dollmaker will turn out to be the Ventriloquist.

He's a villain with a doll theme, and Ventriloquist isn't exactly young in main Batman continuity. Gotham hasn't exactly been subtle with introducing future villains so far, and the doll connection makes the Dollmaker a good possibility for the Ventriloquist, which will be revealed with a dramatic reveal of Scarface, who, fitting with the show's tone, will have his body made from the body parts of dead homeless children.

• Gotham is darker than many Batman depictions, but it ain't that dark.
  • Not gonna lie, that last part was just me trying to figure out what the kids were good for, and isn't likely to be true.
• Considering they already hinted (albeit wrongly so far as we know) that the kidnapped youth were being eaten: yes, they might just go that dark.
• They could go darker. The New 52 Dollmaker surgically alters people into grotesque shapes. One, for example, was a copy of those creepy monkey toys with the cymbals. If this is the reference, those kids will wish they were being kidnapped to be eaten.
  • Uh... Confirmed, possibly. The Dollmaker's organization is harvesting organs, and it seems probable that children were used for this purpose... but the Doctor himself engages in little... experiments.

The Court of Owls poem will be used, and the Court's existence hinted at.

The Court is one of the first "cases" investigated by Bruce, and the haunting motive of owls throughout the city could add great atmosphere to the show.

• Too cool to actually happen.
• May be connected to the above theory of the Wayne murders being connected to the Waynes having a big secret.
• It's possible the Court is the one who hired Copperhead in "Lovecraft."
• The Goat, Gerold Crane, and Dr. Dulmacher are all members of (or catspaws of) the Court, which makes use of their research into psychology and biochemistry to create Venom, fear gas, and laughing gas.
• The Board of Directors in Wayne Enterprise is the Court of Owls.

A Halloween episode will feature the Spectre.

And it will be (terrifyingly) awesome.

• The strange things that happen when he's around will be Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane.
  • Personally, if we're going to do that kind of Halloween episode I'd rather it be Solomon Grundy.
  • My pick would be The Phantom Stranger.
• Maybe their Halloween episode will include the scene when Bruce falls into the cave full of bats. (Granted, that's usually assumed to have happened while his parents were still alive, but how could the writers possibly resist using it?)

Tommy Elliot will be featured as Bruce's best friend, and he won't like Selina.

Hey, Hush has to start somewhere.

• There is a Tommy Elliot at Bruce's school. They are not friends.
  • If they were, they're not anymore.

Carmine Falcone will be the first true Big Bad of the series.

As Gotham's eventual crime boss, Carmine "The Roman" Falcone will end up controlling the mayor, the police, and almost all criminal activities in the city. Seeing his rise to power allows for characters to either ascend with him (the Penguin) or fall before him (Fish Mooney.)

• He and Lew Moxon will be the Big Bad Ensemble. And a Mob War will occur in the season finale.
• "Selina, I Am Your Father!"
• Jossed: Falcone already controls Gotham, but is getting old enough that young up-and-comers like Fish are plotting to slice out chunks of his territory for themselves.
• As of "Penguin's Umbrella" this looks to be very plausible. Although Falcone was already in control, he worked with Penguin to tighten his control of Gotham.

This series will be in-canon with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Because... Because damn it, Gotham needs to be established in-universe before that thing comes out.

• Well, they did confirm that Krypton is a prequel to Man of Steel, so there's that.

This series will show the origins of Wrath.

His backstory is connected to Gordon.

• His criminal parents were gunned down by corrupt cops on the same night as the Waynes.

Pre-Transformation Joker will appear, but in only one episode.

In one episode, Gordon will befriend a young comedian named Jack, while at the same time trying to catch the Red Hood. In the end, Jack will leave Gotham, and will be revealed as the Red Hood to the viewer, but not to Gordon. They might even establish Red Hood as a shared identity, so that Gordon can catch a different Red Hood later in the series.

• Alternatively, multiple candidates will become recurring characters throughout the series, none confirmed as the Joker, but all featuring some of his aliases, like Sonny, Jack, and Joe. All will be affiliated with the Red Hood gang, and the gang itself will act as the main Joker tease.
  • What's more, each of these candidates could embody a different incarnation of the Joker. For example: a seemingly (but not in any way) harmless prankster with a mustache, a narcissistic gangster-type and Mad Artist, an energetic martial artist with a crazy hairstyle who complains that his shoes are too tight, a cynical anarchist with messy hair and noticeable scars, a Large Ham who likes to make bad puns and mentions having a girlfriend, I can go on all day.
  • Confirmed: The creators plan on doing this. The pilot features an upcoming comedian named Jack Napier.
    • Double confirmed, as many of the Joker candidates are based on various versions of the Joker. Comedian guy is the Killing Joke Joker, Circus Kid uses the menace and the laugh of Animated Series Joker, and the Red Hood (no matter who he is) takes a few cues from Jack Nicholson.
  • In the next episode, Gordon and Bullock will mistake a possible candidate, a nod to the Tim Burton movie where the pre-Joker Jack Napier killed the Waynes.
  • Other possible confirmation: episode 18 is titled The Red Hood.
• Or he could show up in the bar the cops all drink at and get booed off the stage.
• "The Last Laugh" ends with potential Jokers laughing at Jerome's (last) performance shown on the news.

The Poison Ivy in this show will not have super powers.

The other villains starting off in the show - Penguin, Catwoman, and Riddler — are all powerless and grounded in reality. Ivy is the odd one out since in the comics she had plant-based abilities. In this series, she'll be reimagined as a serial killer with a plant theme.

• Or she'll just be a run of the mill eco-terrorist.
• Or she'll use plant-based poisons.
  • She uses a fungus-derived sedative on some thugs in Season 2.
• Or all-of-the-above, plus she'll be insane enough to hallucinate that plants are moving and attacking people at her command, even as she's actually poisoning them herself. And the audience will witness the first of these attacks through her eyes, making it look like she is a super initially.
• In "Better to Reign in Hell...", Ivy nearly got the life sucked out of her by Marv right before she fell into the possibly contaminated water. Both circumstances will likely give her her superpowers.

Young Bruce Wayne is going to have a reason to remember the reveal of Edward Nygma's wrongdoing

Nygma is being shown as a black-haired young guy with a dorky grin, big round glasses and a secret. Bruce Wayne is going to see the reveal and remember it. Then years later, when he meets Clark Kent, a black-haired young guy with a dorky grin, big round glasses and a secret, he'll instinctively look twice...

The Monk will be the Big Bad in the second (or later) season.

Gotham is a Town with a Dark Secret.

There's so many:

• The Court Of Owls
• Cyrus Pinkney
• The Gates of Gotham
• Amadeus Arkham
  • Building off of this, Bullock's partner was all too right, and the Goat was merely an agent of whatever dark conspiracy is going on. Possibly also the Dollmaker, and, because of his similarity of MO to the Goat, the senior Dr. Crane.

Fox will cancel the show during or right after Season 1.

Face it. People are gonna be complaining that the show does not have Batman in costume. Even if it does turn out to be a good show, Fox is known for canceling good shows if they have low viewership.

• Or because it's a good show. Face it: anything that actually takes work to make gets cancelled.
• Jossed: It's been renewed for a second season.
  • We'll know soon if it'll get another.
  • Season 3 seems to be confirmed

Alternatively, the show will continue until Bruce is a young adult.

The Grand Finale will be about Bruce leaving on his journey to train to become the Batman.

Slam Bradley will appear.

He's one of the original detectives in DC's ranks and was a mainstay of Catwoman's book for a few years. He's a prime candidate for the noir setting of the show, and maybe he can be Bruce's initial tutor in detective work before he heads to France.

Fish Mooney is a cannibal.

She did want Gordon and Bullock chopped up, and her Dragon mentioned that Mooney had particular tastes. Granted, it's really early to tell, but Gotham is a very screwed up city.

• In the second episode she said she was going to kill Falcone with her bare hands and teeth.
• And in another episode, she stabs Cobblepot in the hand and licks his blood off the weapon.

Roman Sionis killed the Waynes.

Bruce used the words "black mask" to describe what the murderer was wearing. This could be Sionis, maybe even before he becomes a crime boss in his own right.

• "Joe Chill" will be his alias.

The comedian in the pilot is The Joker.

According to Word of God, there will be red herrings throughout the show. Not sure if they will ever reveal the identity of The Joker, but might as well guess this.

• He might end up making Mooney mad at some point, and have him beaten up and scarred (and maybe have his pregnant girlfriend/wife killed too). But this still won't be enough to be certain if he does become the Joker.
• Maybe he'll make a joke about two guys escaping an insane asylum.

Selina Kyle will follow Bruce Wayne in most episodes, if not every episode.

As dumb as it is, it looks like they might be heading in this direction.

• It appears that way, since Selina knows where he lives.

The antagonism between Montoya and Gordon will end over time.

At first glance it seems like Montoya and Allen are written more as jerks than in Gotham Central. However it could be more of a side effect of assuming Gordon is a corrupt cop, especially depending on how much of the history between Harvey and Montoya they keep in. As they get more fleshed out and get to know Gordon better, they will develop a better working relationship.

• The fact that Renee sleeps with Barbara behind Gordon's back makes this extremely unlikely.
  • Until the episode after, Renee realized it was a mistake.

Edward Nygma will not be the Riddler, but he will be a suspect

Someone with a grudge against Nygma (maybe an old friend who was convicted based on Nygma's forensics work) will commit crimes and leave riddles behind, and at the same time will manipulate Nygma into acting suspiciously, making him the main suspect. The real Riddler's name will probably be Nashton.

• Jossed; Nygma's dark side is the Riddler.

A future season will deal with the Holiday Killer, with Alfred as one of the suspects.

Gordon will fail to connect the Wayne murders to organised crime, but Alfred will be convinced that there is a connection. When someone starts killing people involved in organised crime, some will believe that Alfred is taking revenge. Other possible suspects might be Cobblepot and Bullock.

Selina will eventually become Gordon's ally.

She will become a character similar to the Baker Street Irregulars.

• Possibly confirmed at the end of the second episode.
  • Apparently subverted, as she escapes from him in the third. But they do seem to bump into each other more than usual for a big city.

At least one of the seeming future villains is actually a Red Herring.

• Similar to how the creators have said that there will be several potential Jokers hinted at throughout the series, so too will there be other red herrings. The most likely candidate is Ivy Pepper, due to the Adaptation Name Change.

Fish Mooney will die.

• She's an original character. The others already exist in the canon, so the writers made an original character that they can later kill for drama.
• Oswald will undoubtedly be either directly or indirectly responsible. (But either way, it'll be totally intentional)
• Jada Pinkett Smith will not be returning for Season 2, so it's more than likely that Fish will bite the bullet.
• Confirmed

Bruce will be the Robin to Gordon's Batman, in the Student Mentor Capacity.

Gordon will be the one to teach Bruce how to do investigations of crime scenes, of course not realizing that he will cause the boy to become a detective in his own right.

• He might even take on the Robin identity, like in the Pre-Crisis comics during his training. His costume will resemble Damian Wayne's, including a hood.

The Zataras will appear in one episode.

With John performing and his wife Cindy the lovely assistant (who's wearing fishnets). Zatanna becomes friends with Bruce, and start crushing on each other. In one scene, she tries to do a card trick with Bruce, who picks one, and Zatanna assumes it was a "two of hearts", but Bruce got a "Joker". Zatanna angrily throws the cards, saying "it was a dumb trick, anyway". Bruce also gives her a nickname "Zanna", which she hates.

Harvey Bullock will undergo a Character Development.

Eventually going from corrupt cop to honest not-so-by-the-books cop like in the comics and the DC Animated Universe. Much like he was in the pre-Crisis comics, where he started out as a corrupt cop until an injured Gordon caused Bullock to turn over a new leaf.

• He certainly has undergone development. He got a backstory in Spirit of the Goat that showed him as a former Knight in Shining Armor, now Knight in Sour Armor. Penguin's Umbrella shows him willing to die with Jim tilting at windmills, and Rogue's Gallery had him so overjoyed to see Jim after the latter was Reassigned to Antarctica that he dashes across the room to give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Harvey Bullock is being firmly developed as his Post-Crisis character: dinged up but honest, and unflinchingly loyal to James Gordon.

Oswald will show some major Sanity Slippage when Fish Mooney inevitably dies.

Bonus points if he does his signature squawk-laugh for the first time.

• And if it's the first time he kills someone with an umbrella.
• More or less confirmed. He certainly cheers and boasts himself after killing her.

The flashlight joke will be a baton passed from each Joker candidate to the next.

To elaborate, the joke from The Killing Joke about the two guys escaping the asylum will be shared among every possible Joker or Red Herring. For example, it's told by Jack Napier while Fish Mooney is talking to an Expy of the Jack Nicholson Joker. Later, he'll tell it to, say, and expy of the Heath Ledger Joker, who will tell it to an expy of Rasta-Joker^note who this Troper always thought was very underrated and so on. So any of them could potentially become the clown prince of crime. Of course, it will usually be an Orphaned Punchline, so the audience won't have to hear it over and over.

• And at least one of them will say he's heard the joke before.

The Question will appear.

It will be Gordon's first time working with a costumed vigilante, foreshadowing his relationship with Batman. The Question will also work with Renee, foreshadowing her becoming the Question herself.

• Oh please for the love of anything no. Renee in this series (or even the original) shows she is nowhere near worthy to be The Question.
  • Maybe she gets a lot of character development first?

This show is a prequel to the Adam West series.

Gordon's attempts to clean up the city will be more successful than expected, leading to Gotham being much more optimistic by the time Batman shows up.

• Gordon with no glasses or mustache, ever-expanding Narm list... Yeah, I can see that.

If the series lasts long enough, finding Batman's identity will become the main arc of a future season.

However, it will be left ambiguous whether Gordon finds it or not.

Victor Fries will make an appearance.

We see Fries working on some experiments in a cryogenic lab somewhere and either his wife is with him or is in cryostasis.

• Confirmed. He's a major antagonist in Season 2.

Harley Quinn will appear.

We see a young blonde-haired girl looking to apply for Arkham as an intern.

• So you're saying she was old enough to get a job when Ivy was just a kid?
• Maybe they'll simply have Harleen as the similarly aged daughter of a psychiatric worker at Arkham instead. (It's Gotham. I would not put the prospect of a Bring Your Child to Work Day at the asylum past the city.) That way, whenever she encounters and strikes up a close friendship with Ivy (possibly a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship) as a nod to their on and off relationship in the comics proper, the age gap won't make things uncomfortable. And with Gordon now working at Arkham, this will allow him to interact with a young Harleen as well.
• Isn't she a New Yorker?
  • Actually, she's (usually) a Jersey girl.

Bane will make an appearance.

In an island prison located in South America, we see a muscled up little boy holding his teddy bear while reading books any normal child would have trouble reading, let alone understanding.

• A second theory: the inmate in "Rogues' Gallery" who is seen petting a teddy bear before lunging at Gordon is Bane. Bane is a big guy (so is this inmate), and according to canon, Bane's only friend in prison was a teddy bear named Osito.

Scarecrow will make an appearance.

We see a young Jonathan Crane reading and studying up on psychology.

• Alternatively, we see a psychology professor infamous for being completely hardassed and able to smell the fear of students.
• Or he'll be Bruce's psychologist once the latter allows himself to be counseled. And in group therapy Bruce will meet up with a troublesome child named Thomas Elliot...
  • Uh... maybe confirmed? "Spirit of the Goat" has a therapist and killers in scarecrow masks, and they're both connected, but there's no explicit connection to Jonathan Crane.
    • Maybe the therapist in Spirit Of The Goat is a professional contact or mentor of Crane's? (Depending on how old this version is, she might even be a student of his.)
• Confirmed; he's a young man whose father is trying to find the cure for fear.

Dr. Hugo Strange will make an appearance.

We see a bald, bespectacled man conducting experiments in a lab somewhere.

• Confirmed, he's the Big Bad of the rest of season 2 (though not bespectacled).

Two-Face will make an appearance.

During a courthouse scene, we see a dashing young man win a case and we see him flip a coin as part of his victory.

• My guess is that Harvey Dent is one of Bruce Wayne's classmates. Some versions have the two of them being friends from "way back" after all.
• Looks like a case of the former more than the latter since Harvey Dent has just been cast.
• Looks like he's fit to become another secondary character. He's already DA and seems to have his trademark mood swings.

Killer Croc will make an appearance.

We hear reports of a reptilian-humanoid creature either being detained or hiding out in the sewers.

Ra's al Ghul will make an appearance.

Somewhere in Arabia, we will see a man emerging from a green pool and after he dries up and gets dressed, he sits upon his throne room.

• Likely not anytime soon, since he's already showing up in Arrow.
  • Possibly now that he died in that show.
• Confirmed. He's set to be played by Alexander Siddig.

Clayface will appear.

We see a poster for a horror movie starring Basil Karlo or hear reports of a man going by the name Clayface going on a murder spree.

• If the latter, his name would be Matt Hagen who's a fan of the Clayface movie(s).
• Confirmed. Basil Karlo appears in "A Legion of Horribles" as one of Hugo Strange's latest experiments.

Victor Zsasz will appear.

We see a young man looking at Gotham from a tall building with a glass of martini in his hand.

• The title at least is confirmed. Zsasz will be in an upcoming episode.
• Confirmed in full. Zsasz is based on his Dark Knight Trilogy incarnation, a Psycho for Hire for the mob.

Barbara Gordon makes an appearance.

We see James bring in a little red-headed girl and show her the ropes of his job.

• Alternatively, Barbara Kean becomes pregnant and has a baby girl.
  • Though it could still be possible, in some works she is actually his niece that he adopted.

Alfred will teach Bruce some rudimentary CQC.

Seeing as Alfred is a rough-and-tumble butler in this interpretation, he'll teach Bruce how to fight.

• Confirmed, though so far Alfred's training seems limited to formal boxing.

A major storyline in the series (perhaps Season 1 finale -> Season 2) will see Gordon being forced to kill Harvey Bullock and having to cover it up to colleagues and loved ones.

Bullock's clearly being set up as a Cynical Mentor, and at some point Gordon's going to have to stand on his own two feet as a detective, right? (Or alternately, he'll grow Older and Wiser and be due for a protege of his own.) So either Bullock shapes up and dies a much more honorable death in the line of duty — not likely given where this show seems to sit on the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism — or Gordon will be forced to kill him himself and take his more 'senior' position, to boot.

If and when Edward Nygma becomes the Riddler during the series, his portrayal of the character will be much Darker and Edgier.

Simple reasoning: he's portrayed as a coroner with the GCPD. If you take a guy with the knowledge of a myriad of ways that someone can possibly be killed, and combine it with a lack of conscience, well...

• This Troper always thought nobody gave Riddler enough Awesomeness by Analysis ability.
  • Confirmed, His first slippage into the dark side is murdering Miss Kringle's abusive boyfriend by stabbing him multiple times. His slip is completed once he accidentally strangles Kringle herself, chops up her body, and buries her in the woods. He also kills a hunter who stumbled onto the nefarious activity.
  • Even better, his first scheme works. He actually manages to get Jim Gordon framed as killing one of his fellow cops, who Nygma made responsible for the anonymous tip about Gordon killing Galavan. Unfortunately, since this is Gordon, he escapes and proves his innocence. Still, we can look forward to great things from this guy in the future.
    • And in Season 3 he's been released from Arkham. Yay!

Selina's goggles do have a purpose.

Selina’s go-to maneuver when in a fight is to go for the eyes; viciously enough to actually claw them all the way out. So she wears the goggles to protect her own eyes in case someone tries the same thing on her.

• If her use of a whip as an adult tells us anything, it's that she's prepared for someone trying to use her own tactics against her.

Renee and Barbara's relationship/friendship ended badly.

Barbara was bisexual, but Renee wanted them to be an official couple, until Barbara first met James Gordon. Another reason why Renee hates Gordon.

• From their dialog it sounds like to Barbara it was just a fling where Renee took it a lot more seriously.
• Now it looks like they're back together again.
  • For now, anyway. One gets the feeling this Barbara just selfishly uses Gordon and Montoya at her convenience to escape from her problems, but hopefully she'll grow out of it.
    • Nope, she goes completely axe crazy.

Falcone will get the same scratch marks from Selina that he has in the comics

I said it first.

Gordon will discover Bullock's Cynicism Catalyst.

...and it will lead to him and Bullock fully transitioning into True Companions, and lead to. Bullock cleaning up his act (a little).

• Confirmed! Kind of. Episode 6 shows that Bullock did indeed have a Cynicism Catalyst; he was unable to stop the Goat killings and his enthusiasm led him to go in without backup and almost killed his partner. It remains to be seen whether he will clean up his act.

Oswald cut out his first hostage's eyes.

He said he would, and he's holding a knife the last we see him.

• Or maybe he picked up the knife to cut off one of his captive's fingers and mail it to the guy's family, so his mom would have to believe the next ransom demand was for real.

Anarky will appear.

Falcone's idea of order is one that allows organized crime and exploitation. Anarky will appear to challenge that, and Gordon will have to wrestle with the question of whether a flawed system deserves to be protected.

• Anarky is a teenager when Batman is an adult, it's possible that Anarky isn't even alive yet. That said, if Anarky was a Legacy Character in this incarnation, it could work, and given he's already somewhat of an Expy of V, that sounds like the most logical way to justify his appearance.

Killer Moth will appear.

This one is actually pretty likely because the Moth is a fairly low-consequence villain who won't change Batman's status quo if he appears early on, and because he's pretty easy to make into a creepy villain with a little effort. With his moth obsession he's an easy fix for a Buffalo Bill Expy.

None of the obvious Joker candidates are going to become the Joker.

Instead, it'll be a minor character that didn't get much screen time.

The person who ordered the deaths of the Waynes is the same person who ordered the assassinations of the Councilmen in 1.04.

It never made sense for the same assassin to kill two public figures with opposing votes, and then go after the Mayor. The throwaway comment about him being an 'independent contractor' is a Red Herring to hide that. Whoever wanted Thomas and Martha Wayne dead also wants to start a war between Falcone and Maroni, with the ultimate goal of owning the city when both sides have been decimated.

The assassin's weapon in "Arkham" will be a Chekhov's Gun as Penguin's first trick umbrella.

Season 1 will end with Bruce Wayne making his vow to dedicate his life to "warring against all criminals."

While he may be a decade or so (at least) away from donning the cape and cowl, Bruce Wayne's is already showing signs of the accelerated ageing we've long been told he experienced immediately after his parents' murders. He's already showing signs of becoming an amateur detective, by trying to investigate his parents' murders and the potential Mob connection. He's also been doing some digging regarding the "Arkham" deal. And it's clear the Balloonman affair has inspired him on some level, even if he believes that the Balloonman was a criminal because he was a killer. Bruce's plot will no doubt continue to develop along these lines as he increasingly becomes exposed to more of Gotham's dark side, and its (not-so-hidden) crime and corruption. He'll learn more about the control men like Falcone and Maroni exert over every aspect of the city's functioning, and the crime that orphaned him is just the tip of the iceberg. Maybe he befriends Selina Kyle, who gives him some added perspective of how bad the life of an average citizen is in this Crapsack World. And so, by the end of the season, we have a scene where Bruce kneels at the graves of his parents and makes his iconic vow. And subsequent seasons will be about Bruce taking steps (however small) towards that vision.

Fish Mooney will be the Joker.

A middle management criminal who laughs her head off at terrible jokes, plays all angles to take over the business from Falcone, and is a shameless Large Ham? If she was a man, she would absolutely be suspect number one. So what if that's exactly what the writers are counting on to throw off suspicion? If we can have a female Watson...

• Perhaps as a reference to the famous Laughing Fish?
• Maybe she's the Bianca Steeplechase version.
  • I believe it.
  • Or maybe the show's version the J-Man, and her fellow escapees become a gang like the Jokerz.

The people involved with the Arkham deal will be keeping an eye on Bruce.

The lady Bruce was talking to at the charity in "Viper" feels he's getting nosy, so she lets her superiors know about it. Though they won't take him seriously since he's just a kid.

• Jossed: They become concern when Bruce spoke to the board of directors on their unethical businesses.

Penguin will kill Maroni and take over his gang.

In "Viper", Maroni beats and threatens him after learning he used to work for Fish, and will continue to do so whenever Maroni is in a bad mood and takes it out on Penguin. Penguin will kill Maroni in revenge.

• The first half is definitely Jossed, as Fish ended up getting that honor after he refused to treat her as a true partner (including some idiotically sexist comments) in their short-lived "alliance". The second half looks to be confirmed, though, as Penguin subsequently (appeared to) kill Mooney in a one-on-one fight.

Mooney will have Bullock kill Gordon.

Bullock owes Mooney a favor. When Mooney finds out that Penguin is alive, she decides to punish Gordon by having his own partner kill him.

As the season progresses, Bruce will see more crime and action first hand, further building up to him being Batman.

He might even get a little confrontational. Bonus points if on the off chance he's in the same room with Falcone, he will confront Falcone with the knowledge of the cover up of his parents' murders. Whether or not Falcone fesses up what he knows to a kid, it will still be a reminder of the man Bruce will become.

Gladwell's Knives

Gladwell doesn't seem to have a comic book counterpart, and at first glance he seems to be just an interesting assassin. There's nothing noticeable about him, except as Nygma notes, his masterfully crafted knives. Which is nothing more than a gimmick. The reason he was introduced into the series is to have someone smart enough yet knife crazy enough to introduce his specialty knives as the basis for the equally knife crazy Penguin's patented 'stab-you-to-death-with-my-umbrella' technology.

• Dude, I already said that.

Solomon Grundy will make an appearance.

Reports have been made of a man named Cyrus Gold who has been killed in Slaughter Swamp.

• One of the street names referenced in passing was called "Grundy", so he's already rated a Shout-Out.

Calendar Man will make an appearance.

Gordon and Bullock investigate killings that occur on certain holidays. Come Thanksgiving, Christmas, Veteran's Day, Hanukkah, etc., they are on the look out for any suspicious activity.

• But not New Year's, because that would entail admitting what year it is. The producers want to keep that ambiguous, hence the car models don't match the computer tech, etc.

Mad Hatter will make an appearance.

A rather short man is working on science experiments while reading through Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, much to the annoyance of his colleagues.

• The episode he'll appear in will end with him quoting from the book, "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Bat", as the screen then focuses on Bruce.
• Confirmed, he shows up in Season 3 as a stage hypnotist who uses his abilities to control people's minds.

That bully at Bruce's school is the Joker.

He did a very distinctive looking smile during the scene on the stairs and later got his mouth smashed up quite badly. Plus, Alfred dropped a lot of foreshadowing about Bruce meeting him and fighting him again.

• Nope. It's future Hush.

Harvey Harris will make an appearance.

He'll be an old colleague of Alfred, who he introduces to Bruce to teach him detective skills. He used to be in the GCPD until he quit or was fired because of the corruption. He'll have a different first name, since there's already two Harveys.

The doctor friend of Montoya's is Leslie Thompkins.

She's amazingly gifted at performing difficult surgeries (like removing two bullets from a badly-wounded Gordon) in a makeshift (rat) lab… Perhaps preparation for her future low-income clinic to help the people in Park Row?

• Jossed. Dr. Leslie Thompkins will appear in the next half of the season, played by Morena Baccarin.
• Although she was mistakenly listed as Leslie Thompkins at first, according to credits listings and our very own Characters sheet, the doctor is a Canon Foreigner(?) named Dr. Thawson.

Jim Gordon and Sarah Essen will hook up.

Just like in Batman: Year One, they will have an affair. Only this time, Essen is married, and Gordon is engaged instead of married. But Barbara is pregnant and this causes even more trauma, especially if she's pregnant with the future Batgirl...

• Jossed, since Sarah Essen is dead.

Ivy will use a garden as a Replacement Goldfish for her family.

And as she slips further into insanity, she'll get a little too overprotective...

Bullock's new partner will be Arnold Flass.

Jossed by Gordon arresting Flass.

Gordon will probably meet Dr. Leslie Thompkins during his stint in Arkham.

It's possible if she was working there during that time.

• Although I suspect any romantic subplot between them would be brief, but they might form a strong bond of friendship.
  • Barbara might come back to him and see them in a Not What It Looks Like position.
• Confirmed on both accounts. Dr. Thompkins will be working at Arkham Asylum and apparently get close to Gordon during his time there.

Fish Mooney and Alfred will have a relationship.

There seemed to be an attraction between the two of them in their brief scene together in "Lovecraft." Perhaps Fish will gradually begin falling in love with Alfred and, in a case of Love Redeems, will slowly abandon her attempts to take out Falcone in favor of pursuing a relationship with him. Unfortunately, it'll be at that moment that Cobblepot exposes her to Falcone...

The mayor (with help from the mob) will continue to make things miserable for Gordon until he accepts the corruption.

With Cobblepot secretly helping him.

Fish Mooney will get an action sequence/fight scene.

Fish Mooney is Joe Chill's half-sister.

She's been hiding him since the Pilot.

Jack Gruber is really Hugo Strange.

Aside from the fact that they look really similar, it fits Strange's MO of electroshock therapy and his association with the Asylum. Plus, why waste an actor like Christopher Heyerdahl on a throwaway villain no one's ever heard of?

By the end of the season, Barbara will be revealed to be pregnant with Jim's child.

This will force Jim to end his relationship with Dr. Thompkins, and go back to Barbara. It would also set up the future Batgirl.

The Wayne Killer is The Joker pre-transformation

Considering that the killer shot Thomas and Martha anyway, and only spared Bruce because he was in a rush. The killer probably knew who the Waynes are, and killing them would eventually bring chaos across the city like a certain version of him. Double points if it's a Red Herring like it was Joe Chill all along.

This version of The Joker will be naturally Axe-Crazy, and he won't have his bad day.

The Episode 16 Promo, which will give him his own Story Arc, shows that, despite being slightly older than Bruce, he voluntarily has a Slasher Smile, he is Laughing Mad, and he has already started his comedy routine.

• Possibly true, since they seem to be setting up multiple Joker candidates. It depends which one you think is more likely to be him.

The Wayne Killer is Reginald Payne.

• The character is introduced in "Red Hood" as an old war buddy of Alfred's, but it's clear there's something somewhat off about him. Later on, it's revealed he was hired by executives at Wayne Corp to steal Bruce's information on them, and to kill or heavily injure Alfred. Once again, one line he seems unwilling to cross is to harm Bruce, and it would be rather fitting if the same person who killed Thomas and Martha Wayne later nearly succeeds at killing Alfred. This would also imply that in fact it was Wayne Enterprises who ordered a hit out on the Waynes to begin with, assuming they simply used the same assassin in each case. Finally, there's his name: "Payne" is very similar to "Wayne" but with the first letter changed to make it sound like a different word in English.
  • Still conceivable, but very unlikely now that Selina's pushed Reggie out a window to his death. Having Bruce keep striving to confront his parents' killer and not even realize he'd missed his chance would be dramatically unsatisfying in the extreme.
    • This would be similar to Post-Zero Hour: Crisis in Time!/Pre-Infinite Crisis continuity where Batman never found his parents' killer.

Season One will have a Big Bad Ensemble: The Wayne Enterprises board members and The Dollmaker

• From "Red Hood", both of these appear to be sinister arc villains who will not simply be dispatched in a single episode, and have already been responsible for a number of horrible things that have happened in the series thus far. Colm Feore is set to finally appear as The Dollmaker in "Everyone Has A Cobblepot", and the promos hype what is coming as "a new breed of evil."

Ivy Pepper is Pamela Isley.

• As she is the daughter of Mario Pepper, she is a witness to his arrest and may be used in the trial of 'Joe Chill' AKA the Wayne parents' killer.
• She is put into witness protection with a new family and name, 'Pamela Isley'.

Lucius Fox will appear.

• Confirmed. He will be played by Chris Chalk. He is described as a young "tech wiz" who works for Wayne Enterprises.

The Dollmaker's facility is on the future Blackgate Isle.

• We've seen that Arkham is on the mainland, so the island might be the future site of Blackgate Penitentiary. Bonus points if it starts out that way and then Arkham Asylum gets moved there instead.

Oswald's mother will die.

• It's clear that Oswald genuinely loves his mother, and by killing her off, his sanity will sink even further. Besides, she IS dead in the comics...
  • Possibly confirmed. In the promo for "Beasts of Prey", Oswald can be seen holding a woman with grey hair in his arms, tearfully saying "I swear, you will pay for this!" to an unknown assailant. It's more than obvious who the victim is...
  • As it turns out, she wasn't dead, she was merely shaken up after Maroni harassed her.
  • Tragically confirmed in season 2; she's killed by Tabitha in "Mommy's Little Monster".

Sid Bunderslaw is Sid the Squid.

Thomas Wayne was the first Batman.

• Alternately, either he or Bruce's grandfather was the Gotham-Verse's version of The Shadow.

Barbara

ends up in Arkham.

• Assuming she survived that beatdown from Leslie, this seems a likely starting point for her character in season two.
  • And, if this becomes the case, maybe Barbara then comes under the care of a "Dr. Hugo" (assisted by a medical student named "Jervis Tetch".

Season 2 Theories

Simon Hurt will be a major antagonist next season.

And with the reveal of the Batcave at the end of this season, it will go back to him and will further reveal a connection to Hurt, his true identity as one of Bruce's ancestors and connection to Barbatos.

Fish Mooney will return...with a different face

.Her death scene had a very "Never Found the Body" vibe to it. Plus, Fish has already proven to be very hard to kill, and she left the Dollmaker alive. Perhaps she will be picked up by his forces and taken back to the island. With the confimation that Jada Pinkett-Smith will not return for season two, the Dollmaker may give Fish a new face, to pass unnoticed.

• Jossed (probably), as Mooney's corpse is seen in a laboratory at the end of "Worse Than A Crime".
• Confirmed! She is brought back to life as a result of Hugo Strange's experiments in reanimation, and is the first subject to retain her full memory. The experiment also left her with the ability to control people by touch, so she's more dangerous than ever.

Season 2 will focus on the rise of the Riddler, as Season 1 did with the rise of the Penguin.

The Season 1 finale ends with the Penguin becoming Gotham's lone crime boss, while Edward ends up going completely insane. Naturally, Season 2 will switch gears and spotlight Edward's transformation into the riddle-obsessed rogue that we know today.

• If this becomes the case, perhaps every season will contain a major story arc that focuses on the rise of a particular Batman villain.

The show will make more changes from the Batman mythos. Notably involving characters.

With the season finale having Maroni's death and Falcone's retirement, both characters still active in the comics, the show will often kill off or dispose of several other characters to make itself it's own canon.

• The Dollmaker, seeing as he isn't dead yet, and there is more then one Dollmaker in comic canon, Francis Daulmacher being none of them.
• Jerome and other obvious of Joker Red Herrings will be killed off while on their journey to become the clown prince. Think of it as a running gag.
  • Alternatively, Jerome will appear to be killed off early to throw viewers off, but since he's such a fantastic Joker, just before it seems someone else is going to be the Clown Prince, Jerome comes back from the dead, in true Joker immortality fashion, and steals the title completely after all other candidates have been erased.
    • Confirmed. At least, his return is.
• Barbara, as a Take That, Scrappy! or Alas, Poor Scrappy.
• Or Leslie, to put Barbara back on track for being potentially Batgirl's mother

Season 2 will focus on the rise of the costumed villains.

Let's see: most of the mob bosses are dead (and Falcone retired), leaving only the Penguin to take their place and Zsaz with noone to control him; Nygma is slowly but surely Jumping Off the Slippery Slope; and apparently one arc will be the rise of the Clown Prince of Crime himself. In the end, all the costumed freaks will show up and turn the city into a living hell, leading Bruce to make a life-changing choice...

Also, this will provide a satisfying solution to the Superhero Paradox: in this show, it wasn't Batman who drew the villains to Gotham, but the villains who lead to the creation of Batman.

• Confirmed. With the mob families taken care of, Season 2 will see the rise of the crazier costumed rogues of Gotham. The season is even titled "Rise of the Villains".
  • Confirmed even MORE with azrael making his appearance as a full fledged costume villain

Bruce will fight Jerome in Season 2

Bruce has been training with Alfred and we know Jerome is going to run loose in Season 2. It only makes sense for them to run into one another during Season 2 and brawl it out.

• Seemingly Jossed as Jerome is killed off in episode three; although Jerome does threaten Bruce and briefly take him hostage, they don't fight.
• Confirmed, not for Season 2 but Season 3.

The blonde girl Bruce is with in the promo is Julie Madison.

Julie is Bruce's first love interest in the comics. And Bruce and Selina might have a falling out due to Selina working for Penguin.

• Jossed. The girl happens to be Silver St. Cloud.

Penguin will be forced to declare a truce with some of the rising "crazies" at the end of the season

We all know that Penguin doesn't like to share power, but at the same time, Penguin is the "sane" one among Batman's A-list rogues. And he knows that after what he pulled last year with Maroni, Falcone and Fish, the last thing he wants is to start a gang war he can't win. So depending on if there's 1 or many, or just an unpredictable looney he has to straighten things out with, his climatic arc this season is going to be realizing that Gotham can never have a true king anymore. And culminating with a handshake with is opponent saying, "We're good for now, but if you ever interfere with my work again, you'll feel the wrath of the penguin.

Cobblepot's Embarrassing Nickname is going to become The Dreaded this season

Cobblepot's been working on it all last season to embrace the name and make it something respectable. Since he's been ruling as Gotham's king for a year now, there will be a scene where an ordinary thug actually shows that the name Penguin is now something criminals fear. Kinda like a dark reflection of what Batman will become.

The fall of the Penguin and the rise of Zsasz

Penguin is going to have is organization toppled, and Zsasz in turn will fully snap, strike out on his own, and become the tallied solo serial killer we all know. Bonus points if it's in part because of something Penguin did like in the Arkham video game series.

Theo Galavan is Ra's Al Ghul

We're all thinking it. He talks about being a savior, has some pretty questionable methods, he's allied with Tigress... come on. If he's not, then he's at least with the League of Assassins.

• Just to be contrary: as an alternative theory, he's with the Order of St. Dumas, not the League of Assassins. And he's an early Azrael.
  • Possibly confirmed as it's revealed Galavan is a descendant of the Dumas family, and his ancestor Caleb was sent to a religious sect after his exile. Also, it's confirmed Azrael will appear.
  • Definitely confirmed. Set photos◊ show Galavan in full Azrael armor.
• Or maybe he's a member of The Court Of Owls, and Tabitha is a Talon.
  • He doesn't square up with the Owls' MO. He seems to want to become Gotham's savior, but the Owls already rule Gotham and wouldn't profit much from being in the public eye as often as Theo is.
  • It's likely the Owls were the ones who betrayed Theo's family.

Theo Galavan will become Solomon Grundy

As Dr. Strange said: "Death is only a new beginning."

• Jossed, he becomes Azrael instead.
  • And now it looks like it's Butch who'll become Grundy.

Jerome will overthrow Galavan and subsequently become the Big Bad of Season 2

• Jossed in episode three of Season 2 where Galavan kills him before he gets the chance. All in a publicity stunt to sell himself off as a hero.

Theo and Tabitha are not actually siblings

• Tabitha is possibly just posing as Theo's sister for their plan.
  • Resurrected-Galavan keeps hollering for "Sister!", which implies he really does think of her as one. Which doesn't preclude her being adopted or a half-sister.

Jerome won't stay dead.

• For one, the adverts played him up real big as a more major character, unless they were straight up trolling this may not be the last time we see the character. Especially because the Batman universe has a certain type of chemical that can raise people from the dead, and the main overarching villain this season is heavily implied to Rhas Al Ghul, who's pretty much synonymous with the Lazarus Pit. My theory is that Theo will take Jerome's corpse (he should have rather easy access to it) and he'll say something along the lines of "He'll be useful for a...little experiment of mine" where he'll use the Lazarus pit or some variant of it on Jerome. This'll bring him back alive and he'll briefly lose his mind. This, in turn, would trigger extra madness inside him, further turning him into the Joker. And if he dies again, he'll get revived again along with other dying mooks which would only increase his madness further since using the lazarus pit too many times can be dangerous for your mental health.
  • Confirmed, although it's not the Lazarus Pit but Dwight who brings him back.

Tabitha is Theo's adopted sister...

...and her birth name is "Artemis Crock."

Somewhere along the line, Theo's plans will go to hell

Whether it's from Gordon, Penguin or even Bruce screwing his plans up, he will have a Villainous Breakdown and all pretenses of goodness go out the window as he becomes a full on villain making the city worse than the Falcone/Maroni war at the end of season 1 did.

Theo Galavan is a descendant of the founder of Gotham.

He said it himself his family built Gotham until they were betrayed. The founder may very well be Jon Logerquist, who in the comics was a Noregwien mercenary and a captain who founded Gotham in 1635.

• Confirmed and Jossed: Galavan is a descendant of the Dumas family, who did have a part in founding the city before being stripped of all properties and ran out of town when Celestine Wayne accused her lover Caleb Dumas had raped her.

Theo Galavan is the one who had the Waynes killed

Galavan wants to level the residential area of Gotham and converted into futuristic high-rises as part of his plans to bring Gotham into the future and to etch his family's name onto the city. However, he would have never been able to put his industrial project forward so long as Thomas and Martha Wayne were alive, because they wouldn't allow thousands of Gotham's citizens to be displaced from their homes. As a result, in order to clear the way, Theo Galavan had a random thug kill the Waynes (and he may have even killed that man after he was done)...If he was not the one who pulled the trigger himself.

• Additionally, the mugger was supposed to shoot Bruce too, but he couldn't go through with it. Theo killed him for his failure to do so.
  • This would explain why he burns the folder supposedly containing the identity of the Wayne's killer. They implicate him and he was planning on killing Bruce after telling him anyway.
  • Another reason why Bruce was spared, if Theo wants Wayne Enterprises, far easier to gain the trust of the 12-13 year old Bruce and get him to sign over the controlling interest of the company. Backed up in a way in 'Lovecraft' when Lovecraft stated to Gordon that somebody was trying to manipulate the Wayne Enterprise stock before the murders. First attempt by Theo, which failed leading to plan 'B' of killing Thomas and Martha.

The Season 2 finale will be called ...Damned If You Don't

It'd be one hell of a way to Bookend the season.

• Sadly Jossed, it's simply called "Transference".

The Kane family will appear and bring in the Court of Owls.

"Scarification" named the Kanes and the Crowns as sharing the prestige of founding Gotham alongside the Waynes, Elliots, and Dumas. The Crowns are directly tied to the Court, while the Kanes had a hinted at connection in the comics as well. Perhaps with the disappearance of Sid Bunderslaw, Phillip Kane, Bruce's uncle, will arrive to help oversee Wayne Enterprises. Then something like the following events will happen:

• Phillip will reveal himself to be personally a good man, but also a member of the Court of Owls.
• The Galavans, or more accurately, the Dumas family will release their agent Azrael against their enemies in Gotham.
• The Court, seeing the Galavans as a threat to both themselves as a conspiracy and the last member of a founding family of Gotham (Bruce), will deploy a Talon.
• We will see a fight between a Talon and an Azrael.

Gordon will rescue Mayor James, who will still be an ass towards him.

• Confirmed in "The Son of Gotham". He isn't a total ass once he's rescued; the worst thing he does is allow Galavan to go free during his trial by lying about his kidnapping (assumingly because Galavan forced him to).

Selina will end up with Tabitha's whip.

It is Catwoman's weapon, after all. And Selina is definitely being set up as an opponent to the Galavans as they draw Bruce into their clutches. So, perhaps during the season's Final Battle, she get ahold of the whip somehow, and finds that she has a natural affinity for it.

Selina will kill Silver

We know how Selina feels about Bruce, and Silver was stupid enough to out herself as a threat to him. What else can Selina do? Warn Alfred, who's unlikely to believe her?

• Jossed (for now, at least). Silver gets a Heel–Face Turn in "Worse Than a Crime", so she no longer poses a threat for Bruce (although she and Selina are probably still on pretty bad terms).

Barbara will die in "Tonight's the Night".

Barbara looks like the star of the upcoming episode - just like how in "The Last Laugh" Jerome was the star and then was killed off - and Gotham has been killing off all its Season One characters as of late. Barbara is getting interesting and fun to watch (again, like Jerome), so of course they're going to kill her off. Barbara and Jim are in a wedding chapel at some point in the upcoming episode, and frankly it's hard to think of a way to top that kind of dramatic setting for their story. The only question is, who is going to kill her? Will it be Jim, Leslie, Bullock, Barbara herself, or someone else?

• Jossed. Barbara is Not Quite Dead after that episode, so there's still more time for her to do things.

Lee and Jim will break up during Season 2.

Jim and Lee agreed in 2.09 that there will be "no secrets" between them. IIRC Jim and Barbara made a similar promise to each other shortly before their breakup. In both relationships, Jim shows increasingly more obsession with his job - just like with Barbara, it could lead to alienating Lee. Also, with actress Morena Baccarin's pregnancy (by Ben McKenzie no less!) she might need to take maternity leave, and what better cover than a breakup (or Lee's character being hospitalized for some reason)?

Lee will be pregnant with Batgirl (or possibly James Gordon Jr.) during Season 2.

Alternative to the above theory, Jim will get Lee pregnant, corresponding with Morena Baccarin's real life pregnancy by Ben McKenzie.

• Confirmed in Episode 11. Jim proposes to her as a result.

Tabitha will betray Theo for caring more about the mission than Barbara.

• In Episode 11, she does betray him, but primarily because he's going to kill Silver.

Alfred was the one who sent Selina to convince Bruce of Silver's sinister nature at the end of episode nine.

He's just as much against Bruce being with her as Selina is and, though he's begrudging to admit it, he realizes that Bruce will continuously try to talk to Silver. To make sure this doesn't happen, he and Selina make a temporary truce and plan to have Bruce see the truth.

• As of Episode 10 On its way to be Jossed as it appeared that Alfred had no idea what Bruce and Selina were up to and went to Theo's penthouse gun drawn looking for him
• Then again he did say this to Tabitha, an obviously dangerous person who's related to a dangerous man. Perhaps he lied in order to not jeopardize the plan. Or alternatively, he sent Selina to convince Bruce but only planned that far and therefore he didn't know that this would lead to Bruce's Batman Gambit.

Bruce will ignore Selina (again) as he gets closer to Silver.

Now that Silver is revealed to be genuinely in love with Bruce, he will return her affections again and ignore Selina and his other allies, Foreshadowing the future Batman's tendency to ignore his allies in favor of the criminals in his Rogues Gallery, and his other tendency of Dating Catwoman, even though he'll be ignoring the future Catwoman to do so.

Mr. Freeze (or anyone, really) will make an ice pun in Wrath of the Villains.

And it'll get lukewarm response from the other characters. Would double as a Mythology Gag and a Take That!.

This Mr. Freeze is Dr. Schimmell/Schivel.

It'll be revealed that he had a student named Victor Fries.

• Jossed. This Mr. Freeze is indeed Victor Fries.

St. Dumas will continue to go after Bruce and also hunt for Tabitha and Silver for their betrayal.

• Jossed, but Theo did stabbed Tabitha after she reminded him of who he is. He tried to kill Bruce again, and likely would have gone after Silver as well, until he's Killed Off for Real this time.

Fish Mooney, Galavan, and possibly Jerome will return.

The ending of "Worse Than a Crime" makes it clear that Hugo Strange is the mastermind running the experiments at Indian Hill. Presumably, he's taking in bodies (dead or alive) and transforming them into something sinister (Supervillains? Genetically-enhanced soldiers?), and now he has Galavan and Fish under his posession (maybe Jerome too, since he's getting bodies straight from the morgue). The three will somehow get resurrected and forced to do Strange's bidding (Galavan especially, since Strange apparently has high hopes for him...)

• Fish has been confirmed to return for "Wrath of the Villains", and Galavan will return as Azrael. Whether Jerome returns or not remains unknown.
• The ending for "A Dead Man Feels No Cold" 100% confirms this. Strange has collected the bodies of Fish, Galavan, and Jerome. Assumingly with the help of Mr. Freeze's cryogenic formula, his plan to resurrect them can finally come to fruition.
• Not quite the word of god, but Mooney's actress confirmed that she would be returning later on (although not necessarily this season) in an interview, so at least Fish is probably going to come back.
• Jerome doesn't return until Season 3.

Butch cannot say 'no' to Tabitha.

When Tabitha straddles Butch and forces down his hand- er, drill bit, part of why she is able to do this is because she has some amount of mind-control over him. When she was breaking Victor Zsasz's training out of Butch's mind, who's to say she didn't add some of her own?

• Jossed; she wants to kill Cobblepot when he shows up to speak to Butch, but Butch sympathizes with how Strange has mucked with Penguin's head and opts to spare his life after some token humiliation/punishment.

There's something in Strange's tea.

There are a few too many close-ups of the tea in Strange's office, and Penguin unwisely helps himself to some of it. What if there are psychotropics in it, or what if Strange is working with the Mad Hatter and putting some sort of mind-control formula in the tea he gives his patients?

Butch will become Clayface.

He's a big man with an almost rubbery face, somewhat of an actor (though he didn't fool Theo), and he's now free of Penguin's control. He's already had tampering with his brain, lost a hand... he's less than whole. And he can put anything where his hand used to be - a fake hand, a mallet, a tiny chain saw or a knife... The real Clayface often shape-shifts his limbs into weapons. Maybe Butch will be joining Bridget in Indian Hill sometime down the line...

• Jossed as of "A Legion of Horribles". Basil Karlo appears, and he does indeed become Clayface.
  • Also, in "Heavydirtysoul", his real name turns out to be Cyrus Gold, so he'll instead likely become Solomon Grundy.

Nathaniel Barnes will be killed.

As a result of underestimating Gotham's crazies. In his dying breath, he'll tell Gordon he's right that black-and-white mentality doesn't cut it in Gotham and that you must do what you gotta do.

• Adding to this, Gordon will be the one who kills him, whether it be on purpose, accidentally, or just a consequence of something Gordon did.
• He was stabbed by Azrael/Theo, but he recovered. Mostly, as he appears to be in occasional pain as a result, the stress from dealing with Hugo Strange's experiments, Gordon's meddling, and Cobblepot running for mayor aren't helping his recovery. It may lead to his death, if no one kills him first.
• He may be killed in "All Will Be Judged" by Gordon.

Bruce really did have a plan of escape.

After Silver begged for Bruce not to be killed, Bruce was planning to "accidentally let slip" that he got Silver pregnant. Aside from Silver carrying Bruce's child, it would also mean that Bruce himself would no longer be considered the "last son" in the ritual, which would cause further complications. It's the type of plan that relies on being so absurd, it just might feasibly work.

Hugo Strange will have some role in creating the Joker.

After his therapy session with Hugo Strange, Nigel's creepy laughter and voice sounds a great deal like the Joker from Batman: The Animated Series. Plus he was cutting out comics, and his face looked very pale (except for the bloody eye sockets). Maybe not Nigel himself, but what's to say that Hugo Strange doesn't wind up playing with the future Joker's mind in a similar way, causing a sort of sanity slippage, or possibly even his unhinged laughter?

• No verdict yet on the Joker, but "Azrael" strongly hints that he's to blame for the Mad Hatter.

Leslie Thompkins is carrying James Gordon, Jr.

Instead of Batgirl, Dr. Thompkins is mother to the sociopathic James Gordon, Jr. It would make for a helluva shocker to hear Gordon say, "It's a boy..." Even more so if Leslie leaves Gordon for a while and comes back with a son already displaying subtle signs of who he might later become.

Nathaniel Barnes will cross the Moral Event Horizon

He displays a remarkable temper, and it would be both sad and ironic in a way to see him do something wrong that requires Gordon and Bullock to either bring him in or put him down.

• A drop of Alice's blood fell on him...
  • ...and finally crossed it in "Blood Rush".

Dr. Strange managed to save or revive Nora, and he will use her against Mr. Freeze.

Because Mr. Freeze left Dr. Strange with a sample of his formula, Dr. Strange was able to study and modify it. He is very interested in reanimation, and it is teased that he'll resurrect some of the earlier villains. In spite of Nora's body beginning to crack, Dr. Strange is able to reanimate her as well, and he'll use either the promise or the threat of it to control Mr. Freeze into doing his bidding, if Mr. Freeze begins to object for any reason.

Jerome will meet Jeri.

Dr. Strange's plan will succeed, and we'll be treated to a resurrected!Jerome, who'll go pay a visit to Celestial Gardens and meet a certain Jeri. The two will enjoy each others' styles and form a partnership of some kind, at least until Jerome dies again.

• Jerome's had his only death. At least until Tim Drake Kills him. Anyway, maybe she's his aunt?

Bruce will be the one to solve the case of the Riddler and clear Gordon's name

Bruce is still trying to figure out just how he would be able to help out Gotham. He's currently too young and too early in his training to be of much use as a physical fighter. He has, however, been shown to be quite the detective. Being able to solve Edward Nygma's riddles could easily steer the young future Batman toward becoming the world's greatest detective. In addition, Nygma's in the right position and has the perfect skill set to cover his tracks and ensure no forensic evidence gets left behind. Regular police work such as eye-witness testimonies, DNA testing, and paper trail tracing would be rendered completely moot, making solving the riddles the only possible way left to catch him. This would make it very plausible for a Kid Detective like Bruce to solve the case before the actual police can.

• Jossed; Riddler's crime is exposed by Gordon in "Into The Woods".

Lee did not miscarry

.Leslie only told everyone she miscarried so that she could have an excuse to run away and have as little contact with Jim's friends as possible. She figured that Jim would probably have enemies who would come gunning for her and their child. She had the baby in secret and gave him/her away to be adopted with no knowledge of their true heritage. Bonus points if it's a girl and the foster parents decide to name her Barbara...

Killer Croc will be an experiment from Pinewood Farms.

• Not confirmed explicitly, but a very large man with scales is among the freaks held at Indian Hill (Pinewood Farms' successor-operation). He's listed in the credits as "Scale Skin Man", not Killer Croc, for whatever that's worth.

Penguin will come face-to-face with Azrael.

And upon discovering that he's Theo Galavan, he'll seize the opportunity to kill him himself this time.

• As of "Azrael", Cobblepot knows that Galavan is back, so will certainly be trying to make this WMG come true.
  • Confirmed in "Unleashed", except that he has Butch do the deed for him.

Azrael becomes Batman's inspiration.

Jerome is Mad Hatter.

We've already seen Jerome's body at Indian Hill, and while looking for other stories, Hugo Strange was reading "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". Hatter and Joker are very similar in some ways, and so Joker is an easy false lead for a future Hatter.

• Adding to this, producer John Stephens revealed that Mad Hatter and Clayface would both feature in Season 2 ^note This announcement was made a year ago, however, so plans could have changed. An actor has since been confirmed for Clayface but not for Hatter, and the season has only two episodes left as of this writing. It seems likely that Hatter will be someone we've already seen, and at this point there are very few candidates.
• Also consider: if you abbreviate "Jerome Valeska" the right way, you can almost spell "Jervis".
• Jossed. The real Jervis Tetch appears in Season 3 as a primary villain.

Hugo Strange will die.

Just a hunch, since the show likes to play around with Death by Adaptation / Not His Sled moments. Maybe he'll get killed by the Court of Owls?

Tabitha will leave Butch.

For helping Penguin kill Theo. Despite being stabbed for her betrayal, he's still his brother.

• Possibly, in Season 3, two months have passed and we see they're no longer together.
  • However in "Anything for You", she seem to still care for him. But she tells him he owes her something.

There is a lazarus pit beneath the Van Dahl mansion .

lazarus pits cause increased longevity, and insanity. exposure would explain Elijah's hardiness against the illnesses that has plagued him, the evil behavior of his wife & step-children & reverse Strange's brainwashing of Oswald Cobblepot.

Nygma testified as a character witness in James Gordon's trial

Just to keep on his good side.

Oswald did not cook Charles and Sasha into meals

He just pretended to further terrify Grace.

Season 3 Theories

The identity of the Bruce Wayne lookalike.

• Thomas Wayne, Jr., he could be a Long Lost Twin.
  • Possibly, since the Court of Owls took him in "New Day Rising", and they were the ones who had him "created". When (and if) he returns, his name will change to "Lincoln March".
• Tommy Elliot, having gotten plastic surgery to resemble Bruce.
• The person who'll become Wrath.
• The real Bruce Wayne, abducted and replaced with an implanted-personality doppelganger after he and Lucius passed out from the gas. The long hair was a wig applied to obscure his appearance while he was smuggled out of Indian Hill as a prisoner.
• The real Batman. He's already got the inherent creepiness and fighting ability. It will end up being the show's greatest divergence from canon: make Bruce Wayne and Batman two different people entirely.
  • All Josssed; he was a clone created at Indian Hill to be a temporary stand-in for Bruce, allowing the Shaman to abduct and train/brainwash the real one. Even Hugo Strange was unable to give the clone-Bruce a normal lifespan, suggesting he'll be long dead before Batman, Wrath, Hush, or any other candidate mentioned above rises to prominence.

When Jerome was resurrected by Strange, he gained a Healing Factor

Just like Basil's shapeshifting, Fish's persuasion abilities, etc. It's how he gets his trademark Joker Immunity as an adult.

The memory loss that comes with most of Strange's resurrections is the reason for Jerome's Multiple-Choice Past

And since he won't have Strange there trying to give him a new identity...

• Jossed; Jerome is revived by a Strange-copycat among his followers, not by Strange himself, and his personality is as (in)consistent as it ever was.

The story arc of Fish Mooney's return will run its course by the conclusion of Season 3, and then...

Fish will end permanently dead (not being a legacy character, you know) and her corpse buried in a field, which just happens to be used as a garden by Ivy Pepper. The plants that grow off from Fish's remains cause Ivy to gain Fish's superpower, marking the beginning of Ivy Pepper becoming Poison Ivy.

• Also, if Jerome really is back and continues to develop Joker characteristics, then Mooney could discover the hard way that her powers don't work on him at all, just like the Joker is usually featured being unaffected by any kind of mind control.
  • Confirmed that Fish's story arc ends with her apparent final death at the end of Season 3, but Jossed that she would have any such interactions with Jerome or Ivy. Jerome never meets Fish, and Ivy develops her mind-control perfume herself.

Selina will meet at least one of her parents

After Penguin meeting Elijah Van Dahl, it was a dramatic sting. Made me wanna expect this as well. Then again, Selina always believed her mother is still alive.

• Confirmed as of episode 3x11 "Beware the Green-Eyed Monster." Selina's mother shows up at the end of the episode.

Gordon will be a policeman again.

Likely before the end of this season.

• Confirmed: He's back on the force in "Red Queen".

Hugo Strange will be back in Arkham.

As a patient. With the Court of Owls in control of Gotham, they'll likely send him there as punishment for his failure to contain the situation.

• Confirmed that Strange reappears under the Court's control, but Jossed that he's in Arkham or being punished; his skills being too valuable to squander on mere payback, they've set up in a secret lab, working to weaponize the Tetch virus.

Nygma will be playing caged-Hannibal-Lecter to Bullock's Starling.

• With Gordon no longer working with Bullock and Strange and his colleagues either uncooperative or "disappeared" by the Court of Owls, Bullock won't have many other sources of insight into where the Indian Hill escapees might be hiding. Nygma had been an accomplice of Strange's, at least for a little while, and had spent time in the company of many Arkham and Indian Hill inmates. Bullock has known Nygma a long time and Ed has no strong personal grudge against him, so Harvey may be dropping by during visiting hours to get Nygma's advice.
  
  Naturally, this will give the Riddler the chance to slyly manipulate Bullock and the GCPD, with the aim of breaking out and/or causing more trouble for Jim Gordon. Here's hoping Harvey's not too ready to believe anything Ed says.
  • Jossed, as Penguin has him released from Arkham in the third episode.

The man Gordon saw Leslie with was a relative.

They didn't kiss on the lips. She only stayed with him to get over the trauma she suffered. Now that she's coming back, things will be more difficult for Gordon.

• Jossed; he's her fiance, Dr. Mario Falcone.

Ivy and Selina will become enemies.

• Ivy blames Selina for nearly getting killed and almost drowned. And she scolds Selina for never being a good friend to her, thinks that she only hung with her out of pity, and thinks Ivy is weird like everyone else does. And this what will drive her to complete misanthropy.
  • Jossed for now in "The Executioner". But Selina is angry at her for her stupid mistakes.
  • In "The Fear Reaper", Ivy appears to be upset when Selina just stood there while Tabitha lets her to get out.
  • They no longer friends as of "Reunion". Furious at Selina for her betrayal, Ivy threatens to kill her if they ever meet again.

Barbara's dreams are premonitions.

Barbara's weird dream, in Burn The Witch, was likely about Barbara. Not her, but Gordon's daughter. She talks about a baby carriage which is a reference to kids, and the incident where Gordon lost his legs is about Batgirl becoming Oracle.

• Moreover, Barbara's dream, in Tonight's the Night, was really close to what would happen later in the episode.
  • Plus, she could become Madame Xanadu or her child or Tigress's one.

Valerie Vale will die.

There'll be a funeral for her, with Gordon, Bullock, Lee, Bruce and Alfred attending. Gordon will meet Valerie's brother, his wife, and their daughter Vicki. Valerie's sister-in-law has light skin and blonde hair, traits that Vicki shares. Bruce and Vicki will glance at each other before leaving.

Isabella is a resurrected Kringle

She is maybe really amnesiac or wants revenge against Ed, this last possibility could bond Ed and Oswald together.

Isabella got her face from the cosmetic surgeon Dr. Symon for the sole purpose of attracting Ed to her.

She actually does read the papers and has known about Ed's crimes for a long time, and maybe romanticized what a fatalistic love with a murderer might be like. Only she decided to try to make it a reality. So she hired Dr. Symon to make her a face that looked exactly like Kristen Kringle's, perhaps taking features from several different faces to make a composite one (a la Hush in Batman: Arkham City). Then she set out to romance Ed using his dead lover's face and mannerisms to snare him.

Nathaniel Barnes will become The Judge.

• Or Lock-Up
  • By the end of "The Executioner", it's definitely the Judge.

What will happen in the last episode(s):

• Nygma will find out Isabella is dead and that Oswald caused her death. In anger of his friend's betrayal, Nygma will take it out on Lee for punching him and ruin the wedding.
  • Jossed, but Nygma does find out Penguin killed Isabella. And instead he's going to destroy Penguin's reputation.
• Resulting in Lee getting in trouble with Carmine Falcone who warned her early if she does anything to hurt his son, when he finds out she still has feelings for Gordon.
  • Jossed.
• Barnes will kill Carmine. Losing both his father and fiancé all in one day will lead to Mario into accepting the family business and become the new crime boss, making him the Falcone Batman will encounter in his first year.
  • Jossed, as Mario was shot by Gordon. In retaliation, Carmine will likely come out of retirement and resume control over the criminal underworld.
• Isabella is alive, and an agent of the Court of Owls. She was sent to cause a rift between Nygma and Penguin, in order to destroy Penguin's reputation and remove him from office.
• A catfight between Barbara and the Tetch blood-infected Lee. Barbara will enjoy it.
  • Jossed, Lee is cured by Gordon and Barbara is electrocuted by Tabitha before such a confrontation can take place. Barbara does speculate about confronting Lee, and claims that Lee's death-threat makes her like her a little more.
  • This could still, as Barbara is becoming the new Demon's Head and Lee's become darker as of "The Sinking Ship, the Grand Applause".
• Lee will break up with Jim and leave Gotham for good (but may return when Bruce becomes Batman).
  • Confirmed that Lee leaves both Jim and Gotham again, although she leaves open the possibility she'll take him back if Jim leaves the city behind too.

Selina's mom, Maria Kyle, works for The Court of Owls

That's why she's back in Gotham. The Court of Owls knows that Selina and Bruce Wayne are close, and so called in Maria to keep an eye on Selina and report to them about whether Bruce is using her to go back on their deal or not.

Selina's father will be revealed to be Carmine (Don) Falcone

In the comic book Catwoman: When In Rome, Selina discovered that Carmine Falcone was her father. Gotham will reveal the same thing, especially now that Falcone is back on the show for season 3.

Penguin will become animalistic like the version in Batman Returns.

As a result of the Villainous Breakdown he'll suffer from Nygma's revenge.

Nygma: Now how does it feel to lose everything, Oswald.
Oswald: My name is not Oswald, it's PENGUIN!!

Lee will join the Court of Owls.

• Probably Jossed; Lee injects herself with the Tetch virus at the end of "All Will Be Judged", and it's unlikely the Court will be inclined to trust a virus-maddened person after Barnes turned on Kathryn.
  • Jossed for good when the entire Court is killed by Talons on the Shaman's orders.

Shaman is The Dragon to Ra's Al Ghul.

He's the right hand to Ra's as well as a member of the League of Assassins. Additionally, if he is not The Dragon...

• Confirmed.

Shaman is an older Ra's Al Ghul.

He wants to destroy Gotham City to find the Lazarus Pit, return his youth, secure his immortality, and use Bruce as a new member of the League of Assassins to rebuild the City the way he wants it. Ra's is confirmed to appear later in the season portrayed by Alexander Siddig so it may be his younger self in a flashback or the end of the season where he finds the pit and regains youth.

Lee is Harley Quinn.

After willingly giving herself the virus, she seems very happy about it. Potentially, she will embrace her newfound power and insanity and break out the one man who still makes any more sense in her life - Jerome. Birds of a Feather, right?

The mugger at the end of the season finale is Joe Chill.

Season 4 Theories

Solomon Grundy won't get his name from the nursery rhyme.

Not many people even know there is such a rhyme anymore, but we know that Bullock mentions a "Grundy Street" back in Season One. So when Butch gets reanimated by whatever means this Verse opts to go with, he'll stagger up to and/or be dumped off at the corner of Grundy Street and Solomon Avenue, and adopt a Line-of-Sight Name from the street signs.

• Jossed. He does

Barbara is still alive, but the electricity cured her of her insanity.

• Partially confirmed, she lives. But what effect her mental state is in remains to be seen.
  • However, with Ra's al Ghul's death, she's more or less back to her usual psycho self. Ra's gave her something, which may have got to do with it.

The Reaper will appear.

Relatedly, Bruce's new love interest will be Rachel Caspian.

• She could be combined with Rachel Dawes, if she's revealed to be his Childhood Friend.

Once Riddler is thawed, he'll be like the Ryan Gosling Riddler.

A few members of the Court of Owls survived and will be at war with the League of Assassins.

• After discovering that they were Unwitting Pawns and their leader the Shaman lied to them.

Maggie Kyle will appear.

She will play a role in her sister Selina Kyle story arc.

Bruce won't pick the name 'Batman' rather the press will give it to him.

Even newcomers will notice that bats play little into Bruce's storyline on the show, particularly jarring since his fear of bats is what inspires his hero identity and is typical of his backstory. It's possible that as Bruce develops his suit and includes gadgets, his mask will have a 'bat-ear' like shape thanks to listening devices or some such. Like Mr. Freeze, the media will give Bruce's vigilante identity the moniker "The Batman" (spelled Bat-man much like Man-bat) and Bruce decides to just go with it, playing up the fear it inspires and theatrical nature.

• Or he might be called "The Bat".

Gordon will be forced to kill Nathaniel Barnes.

If Barnes threatens to execute Bruce, just for "breaking the law" by being a vigilante.

Once Riddler is thawed out, he'll become more like his Frank Gorshin version.

Being frozen for who knows how long can likely do things to your head.

• Jossed. If anything, being frozen actually got rid of his Riddler persona for a little while... until it came back.

Barbara's new backer is Ra's Al-Ghul, or at least a member of the League of Assassins.

It would certainly explain how she's still alive.

• Confirmed.

Bruce's activities will turn the people of Gotham back to the side of the GCPD

Penguin's biggest method of control within the criminal underworld has been threats and bribery, most obvious when he essentially bought out the GCPD as part of his licensing of crime. Bruce will present an adversary that Penguin knows nothing about and can't reason with, which in turn will lead to more criminals following suit; unfortunately, though, it will serve to undermine Penguin's authority and the credibility of his licenses.

Following a confrontation similar to Batman: Year One where a costumed Bruce comes after Penguin and lays down the law, Penguin will offer the city and the GCPD a reward, which Gordon will call him out on. He'll point that the GCPD is no longer relevant thanks to Cobblepot, and it's only during the climax of the arc around halfway through the season that the police and the people will turn to Gordon for leadership (which may or not play a role in him becoming Commissioner).

This also explains why Gordon may be forced to hunt Bruce (potentially unwillingly like the comics and films) despite what he does for the city. The city will likely have a strict and unforgiving attitude towards vigilantes and self-policing, or at least city officials will.

• Jossed. It's their role in stopping Pyg's rampage as engineered by Sofia that wins back the crowd for the GCPD.

Nathaniel Barnes will be cured, but he won't return to his original self.

Similar to Deathstroke in Arrow, his hatred of Gordon will remain and won't change anything.

• Then again, as of the Season 5 finale, it took three years without the Mirakuru in his blood to put his mind back together and see things clearly.

Barbara still has feelings for James, and plans to pit him and Ra's al Ghul against each other.

So James could be the new Ra's al Ghul and they can finally be together as she wanted.

• There'll also be a Cat Fight between Sofia and Barbara.
  • Jossed, with Sofia being shot in the head by Lee. Though it only brought her into a coma.

There'll be a Final Battle between Bruce and Ra's al Ghul in the season finale.

It'll end with Ra's hanging above the Lazarus Pit. Despite all the bad things he's done, Bruce was willing to help him up, but Ra's instead decides to fall to his death, just like the ending of "The Demon's Quest, Part 2". The episode will even end with a hand coming out of the Lazarus Pit, followed by an Evil Laugh that punctuates the Gotham title sequence.

• Confirmed that Bruce participates in a final battle in which Ra's is leading the opposition, but Jossed in every other respect: Bruce is being rescued at the time, it's nowhere near a Lazarus Pit, and he's only involved in taking down al Ghul because Barbara grabs Bruce's hand and uses it to hold the knife with which she stabs Ra's. Apparently for keeps this time, because Ra's disintegrates into cinders after a few parting words.

The little girl who was staring at Penguin will do something.

• Jossed, she's just an extra who exists solely for this gag.

Ra's will return

It is far too early in Bruce's lifetime and Ra's has had too few appearances to be Deader than Dead (I mean come on, episode 5?) - he will return somehow (Lazarus Pit perhaps?), but now he will no longer constantly be in pain - he will be much stronger than before. So why did he have Bruce kill him? One reason was to end his agony and suffering in an ages-old body - once his corpse dissolves to nearly a skeleton it will be taken back to the Pit and revived except now he is no longer aged. The other reason was to have him break his no-kill rule ASAP and take a huge step towards becoming his personal pet and assassin. He also left Barbara a trace of his power so that he could be revived, although in what way he plans on doing this remains to be seen.

• Confirmed, he's brought back with Lazarus water and reclaims his loaned power from Barbara.

Jerome of all people will bring Bruce back to his senses

Bruce will be dipping further and further into the selfish billionaire partying playboy attitude until he hears of yet another Gotham breakout, or it may happen right in the middle of one of his parties and Jerome will mock Bruce for becoming what he is now after his impressive showing against Jerome beforehand - he may even be disappointed in the boy he once found a Worthy Opponent in. He'll then do... something we don't know yet that will give Bruce a Heroic Second Wind and pull him back into action against his immortal nemesis.

• Alternately, it's seeing hallucinations of his disappointing parents.
• Jossed. It's actually Ivy who ends up bringing him back.

Jerome will die again, but another character will take up his mantle...

According to a leaked set photo and a recent interview with Morena Baccarin, Cameron Monaghan will be playing two people this season: Jerome and an unnamed character who's apparently his "relative". Ultimately, Jerome will bite the big one (for real this time) and the other person will take his place. And who knows? Perhaps he'll be the one who ends up becoming the canonical Joker. This works in a few ways because 1) Cameron Monaghan will still be around and he'll be confirmed as the Joker after all (albeit as a different character), and 2) this idea actually pays homage to the recent comics, where it was eventually revealed that the Joker wasn't one, but three separate people.

• Confirmed. Jerome dies, but posthumously tricks his twin Jeremiah into exposing himself to Joker Gas.

Jeremiah isn't the Joker and is a patsy for Jerome

It's Gotham, it loves teasing us with The Joker and pulling the rug underneath us. Despite his assertions that he's superior to Jerome, even before his transformation, Jerome had him out-gambitted repeatedly and it just seems weird to me that Jerome would willingly let someone be a superior successor. I'm guessing Jerome won't stay dead again in a world in Comic book Science and Lazarus Pits. At the end of One Bad Day Jeremiah has formed an alliance with Ra's and i'm guessing that Jeremiah will revive Jerome in an attempt at showing him how outclassed he is, then Jerome will pull a Hijacked by Ganon and kill Jeremiah and successfully rebuild Gotham in HIS own image. And in general Jeremiah as the Joker seems to much like a Cold Ham, not as Joker-like as Jerome.

The girl Gordon rescued on the bridge is Cassandra Cain.

She's a young girl of Asian descent, and seemed to not understand the police shouting to evacuate the bridge. Since Cassandra cannot speak or understand language, it'd make sense that she didn't realize that the bridge was in danger. In addition, Lady Shiva (Cassandra's mother), Mother (the character responsible for her origin in the New 52), and Orphan (one of her identities as well as that of her father) are confirmed for the final season. Finally, Cassandra was first introduced in the No Man's Land event, which this episode and presumably the next season are based on.

• Except the cameo appearance by the masked woman and boy are widely thought to be Gotham's versions of Mother and Orphan, and the boy looks younger than the Asian girl from the bridge. If anything, he could be a young David Cain, and will one day train Cassandra who isn't even born yet.

Season 5 Theories

Bruce will base his Batman costume on Man-Bat.

Whereas Man-Bat is usually portrayed as a monster that's mistaken for Batman when he initially starts terrorizing Gotham, this one's cameo in "No Man's Land" suggests he will be featured before the Caped Crusader dons the cowl. If Man-Bat's response to the two thugs' intrusion upon his roost is any example, it won't be long before reports of a giant bat-creature stalking anarchy-beset Gotham's remaining inhabitants will spread, creating superstitious dread among the city's would-be pillagers. Bruce, learning of these rumors while he's scouring the city for leads on Jeremiah, will take full advantage of that pre-existing fear as he resumes his crime-fighting, by emulating Man-Bat's appearance in a themed upgrade of his previous vigilante costume. This will allow him to confuse and terrify the opposition, who'll believe it's a monster, not just some guy in a cape, who's stalking them.

Nathaniel Barnes will return.

Seeing what Gotham as become, Barnes will return to Gotham to "purge" it of all sinners (even the innocent citizens that haven't left Gotham yet). He also still has a score to settle with Gordon.

Sofia will come out of her coma.

Seeing what Gotham has become in her absence, she'll take it out on Gordon. As payback, she'll reveal to the police that Gordon asked the mob's help to take down Penguin's criminal licenses to begin with, to ruin his reputation.

• She'll don the mantle of either the Hangman (like in the comics) or the Holiday killer (like her brother Alberto was in the comics, making her a Composite Character).

Renee Montoya and Crispus Allen will return.

Barbara and Tabitha will be an Official Couple.

Tabitha lost the only other person she loved, and Barbara chose to blames men for ruining her life.

• Jossed, due to Tabitha's death in the first episode.

Edward is going to Come Back Wrong

Interviews during SDCC 2018 revealed that he's starting the season off holed up in a library muttering to himself and walking around naked with riddles written on his body. Either the process that brought him back damaged his mind even worse than being frozen did or Strange experimented on him.

• Cory Michael Smith has said the info (which was revealed by an executive producer) about his character being naked and covered in tattoos is wrong. Edward will have a main hideout in a library and starts the season off trying to figure out why he keeps blacking out and ending up in odd places.

Gordon will offer Bruce a GCPD badge

Bruce will join the police during season 5, but will eventually leave because he isn’t comfortable with carrying a gun.

• Confirm-ish, in "Year Zero", while he didn't get a badge, Gordon tells Bruce he's earn a place with the GCPD.

The Sewer King will appear.

The boy at the end of "Year Zero" was one of many children he's enslaved. In a twist, the Sewer King does end up getting eating by his crocodiles.

• Jossed. The little boy is one of many children enslaved by a minor gang that's making them dig a tunnel that would give them exclusive access to the mainland.

The "witch" that's going to help Selina is Ophelia Powers.

• Jossed. The "witch" is Ivy.

Or alternatively, the "witch" is Leslie Thompkins...

...Resurrected or "fixed" by Hugo Strange, but with augmented powers. Or possibly Leslie Thompkins is the nurse with the crazy eyebrows and big glasses who told Bruce he needed "the witch" to begin with (wearing a disguise). And/or she was the voice on the radio who says that Gordon has allies on the outside, from across the river.

• Jossed. The "witch" is Ivy.

Secretary Walker is Talia al Ghul

Bane playing second fiddle to a financially powerful female character, initially shown as an ally to the main character, who want to use No Man's Land to destroy Gotham? Hmmm, that sounds familiar.

Secretary Walker is Amanda Waller

Jane Doe's face really is horrible, albeit only to her

.Because the face she reveals when she finally takes her mask off is that of her murdered mother, not her own. Hugo Strange initially tested Jane's shape-shifting powers at Indian Hill by forcing her to touch her mother's dead body, and her mom's face became her new default appearance through repetition.

That's not Venom that Hugo Strange shot Eduardo up with to change him into Bane.

It's the toxic Indian Hill sludge he drained out of Butch's blood vessels when he "de-Grundified" him at Penguin's request. Strange kept Butch/Grundy's toxic "blood" preserved ever since last season, and had been waiting for the perfect opportunity to test it on someone, to see if they'd become an unstoppable zombie like Grundy in turn.

Possible Ending(s)

The series finale will end on a time skip/epilogue.

Showing the aged Gordon, played by Bryan Cranston, meeting with a familiar-looking Batman on a rooftop, allowing the future DC Extended Universe solo Batman film to continue without retelling his origin.

• The closing words of the series finale will be "I shall become a bat."

This is how the series of Gotham will end.

• Yes, yes, yes, yes yes yes yes YES!
• It seems too good to be true, but that would be absolutely amazing if it did happen.
• Yes, please!

The Series Finale will have a creation of Batman's raid of Commission Loeb's dinner party ala Batman: Year One.

At that moment, the crime lords of the city will be shaken to their souls in fear of this bizarre new enemy. However, The Penguin will be the first to recover, and as he takes his top hat and umbrella to leave, his henchmen will shakily say:

Mook: What is that guy?

Penguin: Off hand, I'd say a challenge.

Reunification will never happen

In almost every version of the Batman mythos it’s ambiguous which state Gotham is in, and often the city performs functions normally done by the state like running prisons and issuing license plates. The series finale might finally provide an in-universe explanation for all this by having Gotham remain an independent city instead of reunifying with the mainland and its home state.

Post-Series

Nathaniel Barnes will return to Gotham to fight Batman.

He still considers himself Gotham's hero and want to "punish" Batman for his vigilantism despite being one himself.

Sofia Falcone will recover from her coma

And continue her quest to take over Gotham.

Martin will grow up to be the Penguin's right-hand man

Sharon, Rudy and Norton, Nygma's fellow asylum inmates in "Azarel", will become criminals after their escape or release

Working for Nygma and/or adopting old supervillain personas. Sharon, Rudy and Norton could be the new incarnations of Magpie, the Ventriloquist and Professor Pyg respectively.

Barbara Lee Gordon will grow to be a supervillain

As a Composite Character of her and James Gordon Jr.

Barbara Kean would lapse back into insanity and become a supervillain

Grace Blomdahl will remain Bruce's girlfriend into adulthood

Harvey Dent won't become Two-Face

With Sal Maroni unavailable to gift him with a potent acid-based facial cleanser and Bruce being old friends with Two-Face as a minor plot point, Harvey's handsome face will remain happily unscarred.

The next Two-Face could instead be Emma Hsueh, the least noteworthy of Bruce's schoolfriends, who remains friends with him into adulthood and becomes a DA before the origin story kicks in.

Bonus points she gets into a relationship with or has unrequited love for Grace and/or Emma's disfigurement and Grace's death at the hands of Jeremiah Valeska lead to her going mad, a la The Dark Knight.

Butch will come back as Solomon Grundy

Strange's cure for Butch didn't completely flush out the chemical that created Solomon Grundy, just sent it into recession. While he's been dead for years, the chemical has been slowly reanimating his cells. In another few years with Batman in action, Solomon Grundy will rise again on a new Monday.

Other

Catwoman will be a tragic character.

It is confirmed she will appear as a child in this, so they will give her an origin. This origin will make her a sympathetic future antagonist.

• Isn't she half the time anyway?
• Pretty much confirmed.

Gordon will lose his eyesight.

Thus he will need his iconic glasses.

Maximillian Zeus will be a Strange creation

His entire gimmick is that he believes he is the Greek god Zeus, and Strange in this series is bringing the dead back and giving them personas and gimmicks. He also gave Firefly/Bridget a "Goddess of fire" persona, and tried to give the revived Fish Mooney the persona of "goddess of war".

This Penguin is a Composite Character between the original Penguin and Ignatius Ogilvy

Compare this image of Ogilvy and this◊ image of penguin. While not completely identical, they are both tall handsome sharply dressed men. And they have a similar story of rising through the ranks of the underworld (for Ignatius it was JUST penguins gang) and becoming the "king" of Gotham for a while. Alternatively.....

Ignatius Ogilvy will appear as a child

Ogilvy joined Penguin's ranks at a young age, it's most likely that when penguin gets back in power Ogilvy will show up and be a recurring character

There will be a time skip between seasons.

In the second season, Bruce Wayne will have become Batman, James Gordon will have his iconic mustache and glasses, and all the hinted-at villains will have become the villains we all know and love (if all of that doesn't happen by the time the first season ends).

• Or, Bruce will be a teenager.
• I think we can safely assume either a Time Skip of 1-2 years every season, OR, a BIG Time Skip after a few seasons... say five years or so (which may necessitate a re-casting of Bruce Wayne). The timeskip of the first episode of season 2 is one month after the season 1 finale. So yes, there was a timeskip, but not to the extent as predicted.
• Alternative: We will get a story arc with frequent flash forwards or flashbacks. If the latter, it may even be to Gotham's Old West days, with Jonah Hex and Amadeus Arkham uncovering the secrets of Wayne Manor (I can hope against hope).
• There's going to be a timeskip of at least a few months between the end of season 4 and the beginning of season 5 with the very last episode jumping ahead 10 years.

Each season will end with James Gordon getting a promotion.

Until he becomes commissioner.

• I can see Gordon becoming a lieutenant and being promoted to the Major Crimes Unit (maybe as its head), by the start of Season 2.
• In the season 2 premiere, Gordon is fired from the force and is forced to do some dirty work for Penguin in exchange for getting his job back. Penguin delivers all that...and more. He actually forces Loeb to resign from his post, leaving Essen to take his place from captain to commissioner, allowing her to hand Gordon back his position. Who knows, this may change in the future.
  • Subverted as of Season 3, which starts with Gordon no longer on the force and working as an independent bounty hunter.
• As of the end of season 4, he has the rank of Captain and the Commissioner was killed a few episodes prior and a new one wasn't appointed before the bridges were blown up. It's likely that his work to keep Gotham together when the outside world abandoned the city will secure the Commissioner position for him when everything is sorted out.

Bruce's theme will drop lower as each season goes.

Right now, it's fairly light and optimistic, but it has a recurring motif that's a bit melancholy. It'll drop more and more as he becomes closer to Batman.

One episode in the future will feature a murder investigation at Haly's Circus

But unless the writers really want to go overboard with Age Lift, we won't see Robin or even a pregnant Robin's mother. At most, let's hope for a youngish acrobat named John Grayson.

• It actually is possible, depending on age and continuity. Bruce is around 12, 8 at the very youngest in the comics, when his parents die and will probably age as the series progresses. By the standards of the New 52, there is about an 8-10 year age difference between Dick and Bruce, so he could be featured as a very young child (probably in a later season) or we will see Mary Grayson pregnant, or at least married to John at the circus. It would be great to have some small, small hints at the Court of Owls as well, especially if the Graysons do show up!
• Maybe a poster for Hayley's Circus.
• Gordon and Lee make a date to visit the circus in "The Scarecrow", so that's probably when the Graysons will appear.
• Aaaaaand confirmed as of "The Blind Fortune Teller".

The series is setting up the supervillain versus the criminal.

Look at the way that Falcone does things. Old-fashioned, down to earth and with organization. Fish Mooney is very much what we see of supervillains in DC. Over-the-top and extravagant, with quirks and 'tastes' as her own men say. This troper thinks this is something the series is going for.

• Fish could be responsible for or at least connected to all the future supervillains, the same way Gordon is influencing the city's future vigilantes. She's already hired Jack Napier and Oswald Cobblepot, and her connections to the police force means she could easily meet up with Edward Nygma (she does seem to like young men, after all).

Adam West will play a background character or other form of minor character.

Just for fun. Even the Dark Knight Trilogy used the "Can't Get Rid of The Bomb" joke.

• Jossed
  • He could make a posthumous appearance.

It's only a matter of time before Fish Mooney works her way up to Canon Immigrant.

She seems to have been fairly well received, so we may as well brace ourselves for it, for better or worse.

Oswald Cobblepot is an amalgam of the Penguin and the Joker.

He was laughing a lot when he hit someone with a bat in the first episode, and the woman on the phone in Episode 2 thought that he was joking. In Episode 3, he says that he is the future of Gotham.

• There's actually a theory out there that the Oswald Cobblepot we see will instead become the Joker, no matter how far-fetched it sounds.
  • Copplepot seems to have embraced his "Penguin" identity by the end of Season 3, and doesn't seem to think much of Jerome's destructive antics as a proto-Joker. (No profit in it.)

Bruce and whoever the future Joker turns out to be are going to meet at least once.

Probably in the last episode. The scene will end with them staring at each other while a sound clip of the Joker's laughter echoes in the background.

This version of Selina Kyle will become a Justified Criminal who steals to provide for herself and other street kids.

As opposed to the typical portrayal of Catwoman: A cat burglar who steals either for the money or because she just really wants whatever she's stealing. Already, we've seen her steal a jug of milk, only to give the contents to a stray cat, and she clearly has a Big Sister Instinct towards her fellow street kids, so it wouldn't be much of a stretch to imagine her taking on more complicated thefts in order to provide money, food, etc. for them.

• In most modern incarnations, Selina has typically been a Justified Criminal (though not necessarily for the reasons suggested above). And in the comics, she has a history of philanthropy — for instance, there was a story-arc in the 2000's Ed Brubaker run in which Selina used money she stole from a drug kingpin as Catwoman to fund a community center in the East End.

The Viper drug is the precursor to the Venom Bane uses.

• Confirmed. Furthermore it has a connection to Wayne Enterprises and may possibly be one of the factors in the Wayne Murders Conspiracy.

Barbara dies at some point.

It's not exactly common in our culture to name a child after her mother, and naming her after an ex would also be weird.

• Which makes it likely that in a moment of sanity Barbara's death will end up saving one of our heroes and making such an impression on Gordon that all is forgiven.
  • The idea of Barbara's redemption is Jossed by "Heavydirtysoul", unless Barbara too comes back from the dead.
    • ...Aaaand, she's back.

Penguin is playing a long and dangerous con and Jim Gordon is his most important player.

As of now, Penguin is working for Maroni, but not really since he's working for Carmine Falcone. Curiously enough, he asks that Falcone spare Gordon, when Falcone sees how big of a threat Gordon is. Penguin wants to take over for himself, and he's counting on Jim to be a loose cannon so that he stops Falcone or Maroni at the right moment.

• Oddly enough, Penguin eventually does succeed in his plan to become "King of Gotham." At the tail end of the first season, Falcone, Penguin, Butch, Gordon, and Bullock are captured by Fish Mooney, returned from the Dollmaker's hideout. She cuts a deal with Maroni, but it all goes south when he starts pushing her feminine Berserk Button. With Maroni out of the picture, Penguin goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Fish and fights her on a rooftop, with Butch watching. He pulls he trigger on both of them, but doesn't kill them, allowing Penguin enough time to push her off a ledge and into the waters of Gotham, putting a Bookend to how the season began. In Season 2, Butch remains with Penguin as he takes control of all Mooney had while Falcone had already hightailed it out of Gotham while he still could.

Victor Zsasz will lose everything to The Penguin.

In the comics, Zsasz loses all of his money while gambling in the Iceberg Lounge, run by The Penguin. That, along with the death of his parents in a boating accident, causes him to be so depressed that he attempts suicide. When he is interrupted by a homeless man with a knife, that man becomes his first kill. In this show, he has already killed 28 people according to his tally marks, but maybe he is not yet as psychotic as his comic book counterpart. If anything, Oswald will provoke him into leaving organized crime to kill people at random and "liberate" them of what he perceives as a pointless existence.

• If anything, Zsasz has an increased role in Penguin's new crime society as his personal assassin. It is noteworthy to point out he was rather trigger-happy to kill Loeb, but with a gun instead of his knives, yet Penguin holds him back.
• There's the possibility of this happening now after Zsasz betrayed Oswald for Sophia Falcone, creating some bad blood between them.

Henri Ducard will appear as The Rival to Alfred.

Because Alfred is an ex-Marine here, and giving him a French antagonist would be hilarious.

Building off of the above, Henri Ducard will appear...

...as a leading criminologist who visits Gotham, attracting Bruce's interest, and possibly becoming another mentor to the kid or The Corrupter. Is he connected to the League of Assassins?

Again, building off the above:

A future season will feature Bruce seeking out a series of mentors to learn Batman skills from:

• Already mentioned Ducard
• Wildcat teaches him to box
• Zatara teaches him escape artistry
• Harvey Harris teaches him more street smarts
• A character from the League of Assassins will offer to teach him but killing will be the only test he fails.
  • Confirmed that the League trains him, but it's them that sought him out.

Butch will be the Joker.

I don't know what it is about him but he just seems to find way too much humor in what he does. Always seems to try to make a joke out of the situation.

• Possibly confirmed. The promo for "Lovecraft" shows Butch on the ground with a knife placed in his mouth, much like one of the Joker's versions of how he got his scars in The Dark Knight.
• Not to mention using the nuns as a human wall. That is something the Joker would have done himself.
• Unless Butch pays a visit to the Dollmaker to get a replacement hand grafted on, this theory seems Jossed as of "Scarification".
  • Jossed by "Heavydirtysoul", which gives every indication that Butch - real name "Cyrus Gold" - will be Solomon Grundy.

Lesley-Ann Brandt will play Copperhead.

Even though she wasn't listed as a guest in the synopsis release, Lesley-Ann Brandt will guest star in the episode "Lovecraft". The name of the character is unknown (IMDB lists her as "Larissa Diaz" but who knows how reliable that is). But she posted this photo on her Twitter. She wanted people to guess who she's playing and even gave a hint, saying she's "A DC Villain who's a guy in the comic." Paired with that information, along with the fact she's wearing snake-skin pants, I believe that she is playing Copperhead with a Gender Flip and Race Lift.

• Confirmed. This Copperhead is following the lead of Batman: Arkham Origins, where Copperhead was also a woman instead of a man (though that Copperhead was Latina, making this a twice-over Race Lift).

Harvey Dent already has a split personality.

Pretty obvious, just pointing it out.

There is a reason many characters Don't Look Themselves.

It is because they are not those characters. I bet it turns out this Sarah Essen has a daughter also named Sarah who looks closer to the comics and Gordon falls in love with another woman that also just happens to be named Barbara.

Gotham is a Stealth Prequel to The Dark Knight Trilogy.

Unlike in the comics where Gordon didn't come to Gotham until around the time Batman started, I remember in the first movie Gordon was an officer at the time of Bruce's parents' death and consoled the boy just like he is doing in this series.

• That or the Batman: Arkham Series since he was there too.
• The differences seem way too irreconcilable for this one to be plausible, honestly, especially if you're trying to tie it into the Nolanverse. It might be more workable with the DC Extended Universe, but DC looks to be keeping their theatrical and televised continuities separate. Additionally, with four shows split across three dueling networks, there's little chance of a TV crossover beyond Arrow and The Flash, which is almost the exact opposite direction of where the movies are going.
  • Jossed; Gotham's Bruce meets Ra's al Ghul under very different circumstances from Batman Begins at the end of Season 3.

Selina knows more about the Wayne murders than she's letting on.

In "Lovecraft", she's visibly terrified of Copperhead despite the fact that she had (as far as the viewers knew) never seen her before and had no reason to think she was anything other than an injured woman who came to the mansion for help. Either Selina had a Gut Feeling that would make Leroy Jethro Gibbs proud, or it wasn't the first time she'd seen Copperhead, which would suggest she has more knowledge about this matter than she's told Gordon.

Ra's and Talia al Ghul will make an appearance in a later season, possibly Season 2 or 3 at the earliest.

Talia is introduced as either a Foreign Exchange Student or a New Transfer Student (under the alias of Miranda Tate), quickly finding a kindred spirit in Bruce. Meanwhile, as we see Bruce and Talia develop a nice little bond, these scenes are interspersed with those of Ra's, himself possibly going by Henri Ducard ^note assuming the real Henri Ducard doesn't exist in the Gotham verse, though Ra's could always steal Ducard's identity here, with the actual character appearing later on, who is in Gotham "on business" with the League of Assassins/League of Shadows, something Talia might cryptically allude to. (Ra's being present in Gotham would serve as the episode's A plot, drawing in the GCPD, with the focus on Bruce/Talia as the B plot.)

At the end of the episode, Ra's personally stops by to pick up his daughter from school and, noticing both Talia's budding relationship with Bruce and the boy's potential and credentials, takes his own interest in Bruce, starting a season-spanning arc where Ra's acts as a mentor to Bruce, hoping to groom him into an adequate successor (and future son-in-law).

Bonus points if Talia does anything along the lines of calling Bruce "beloved" and/or expressing a fondness for the name Damian (which, with Gotham's level of subtlety, could be either just plain silly or oddly sweet), and a 3x multiplier if there's a shot or two of Selina lingering around the school grounds to spy on them. If both women actually meet and show some of degree of hostility toward the other (complete with Bruce having to step in to defuse the situation), well, we've just hit the jackpot.

The biggest hurdle to clear is the fact that Ra's (and Talia's half-sister Nyssa) is in Arrow, so working out a deal to obtain the rights to the characters for Gotham would affect when we first see the Demon's Head and his daughter.

• No sign of Ra's yet (we think), though if you substitute in Theo Galavan and Silver St. Cloud for those two, things seem to be progressing in a similar fashion (Silver was even studying aboard in Geneva for two years), only with Galavan introducing Bruce to Silver at a restaurant before they start attending prep school together. Bruce and Silver's actors have even brought up the possibility of a love triangle.

• Ra's al Ghul appears at the end of Season 3; no sign of Talia yet.

The League of Assassins comes to Gotham: to recruit Jim.

In Batman Begins, Ra's mentions that they'd been to Gotham at least once before to cleanse it. And were convinced to leave. Ra's has been keeping an eye on Gotham for quite some time, and the Wayne murders are the catalyst for him to finally cleanse the city. Jim's involvement in trying to solve the murders, and continuing to try and find the real killer even though everyone is against him, convinces Ra's to stay his hand, but - unfortunately for Gordon - also brings him to the attention of the League.

• Jossed; they do come, but to recruit/brainwash Bruce, not Jim.

At some point there will be a mention of Bruce learning Judo, or we'll see him learning or using it

In the early stories, Batman fought criminals mainly by boxing and Judo, with a smattering of other martial arts (fully detailed here, here and here). Here he's already learning boxing from Alfred, and we actually see him practicing one of his other martial arts (namely fencing)...

Edward Nygma doesn't work for the GCPD

He's a random weirdo who just keeps showing up at the station. No one realizes it because the GCPD is just that poorly run.

• Jossed by "The Fearsome Dr. Crane", as you don't put a random weirdo who just keeps showing up on suspension.

Barbara isn't bisexual and never has been; she's a closeted lesbian

Her relationship with Jim was more out of a desire to fit an image she wanted to present than actual sexual attraction and perhaps on some level to impress her WASP parents. The strain of denying her sexuality accounts for a lot of her personal issues.

• Most likely Jossed as of "Under The Knife", as she seems to have an attraction to The Ogre.
• I think it's the opposite. She is completely straight and only pretended to be a lesbian as a way to rebel against her WASP parents.
• Jossed, she is in a relationship with Tabitha in season 2 . Possibly one with Theo. Also still obsessed romantically over Jim.

Kristen Kringle will lead Edward Nygma into a life of crime

He's dedicated to the job and honest to a fault, in part because of his disorder. She was friends with the corrupt Flass and seems a little duplicitous, changing her attitudes depending on whom she's talking to. Factor in her supervillain-sounding name and it's not hard to see. She starts committing crimes and he doesn't want her to be on her own.

• She could be the equivalent of the Calendar Man or some kind of Christmas-themed villain.
• In "Under the Knife", Nygma does kill Kristen's abusive boyfriend to protect her, so this might very well be confirmed, sort of. Especially since his reaction makes it appear that that was his first kill.
• He kills her in "By Fire" when she freaks out after he tells her of Daugherty's murder.

Alternatively to the above, Kristen Kringle will die, leading to Edward Nygma's Start of Darkness.

She'll be murdered by a corrupt policeman, and none of the police are willing to question their own, leading Edward to deduce who it is himself and kill him, beginning a career similar to Batman, purging the crime out of Gotham... starting with the police department.

• It's starting to look like Edward himself will be the one to kill her, to cover up his murder of Officer Daugherty. If only he hadn't left the clue...
• Confirmed. Edward accidentally kills her after revealing he killed her previous boyfriend and prodding from his other self convinces him to embrace his darkness.

Or as another possibility, Kristen Kringle will become the Riddler's sidekick.

• Taking a page from the 1960s Batman series where the male villains almost always had a female sidekick, add in touch of Harley Quinn, and combine with the look of interest she gives Nygma when she thinks he might be involved in making her abusive boyfriend disappear (not very long after she saw him disposing of a body and giving a pretty lame excuse where it came from), and you have a setup for a supervillain sidekick right there.
  • Jossed what with him killing her and all.

The Wayne killer would never be known or caught

Many versions of Batman had him never discovering who killed his parents, perhaps in this version it would give Bruce the motivation to become Batman so no other child would suffer the same fate as him.

• Jossed; the ultimate instigators of the Wayne murders are the Court of Owls, who succumb to You Have Outlived Your Usefulness by the end of Season 3.

Jim will learn the Wayne Killer's identity but will be unable to reveal it...

Possibly because exposing it will create a big scandal, besmirching the Wayne's memory or otherwise destabilizing the city's order. This will be the final compromise that leaves Jim unwilling to combat corruption and will end the series on a downer note. (If he refuses to tell for Bruce's sake, the irony being that Bruce already knows his parents were clean, then that's bonus downer points.)

The Joker's identity will be kept a mystery even after his origin story is told.

Several characters who could be a potential Joker will be brought together to the chemical factory, and an explosion will utterly annihilate all but one of them. The sole survivor will be flung into a vat of chemicals and emerge so altered by the exposure — memory scrambled, fingerprints damaged, features distorted and blanched, teeth marred, DNA contaminated so badly that it cannot be sequenced — that his original identity is impossible to determine.

• If this was a less realistic and more comic book-logic show, the thing that emerged from the factory could be some kind of chaos magic/chemically combined version of all of the potential Jokers fused into one insane being with all of their memories, which is why he can't remember his own past and why he has Joker Immunity.
  • Given what the Dollmaker is up to in "Everyone Has A Cobblepot", the fusion idea might not be entirely beyond the pale, albeit without the magic.
  • Gonna throw this out there: recent events imply that the Red Hood motif is going to become very popular among Gotham's gangs. Suppose a gang consisting of every Joker candidate gets put together, and they all plan to raid Ace Chemicals...

Fish's Fate

As of "Scarecrow," Fish is trapped in this continuity's version of Pena Duro. She will become pregnant, either voluntarily or not, and will die in childbirth. Her child will grow up a boy without a name, toughest in the prison because he needs to be, until one day he's selected to participate in an experiment with a drug called "Venom..."

• Or she'll be given a new eye that can control people's minds, and even distort their perception. Making her the show's version of Echo and/or Vertigo.
• While she is given a new eye by the Dollmaker, it is Hugo Strange who gives her the ability to control people. By touch.

What kind of name is Fish?

My theory: "fish" is drag queen slang for being genuinely female (derived from a crude anatomical reference). Maybe she spent her youth with drag queens, possibly as part of the drag-house culture, and acquired the name on account of being the only actual cis woman in her social circle, which would be somewhat plausible in a drag house:

drag queens, butch queens, transsexuals—mostly MTF but some FTM, a few non-trans girls and one or two straight guys

"Ball culture" is predominantly black, and her long nails, dyed hair, and impossibly fancy dresses have a bit of a drag queen-influenced vibe. Otherwise, I have no clue what kind of ridiculous name "Fish" is.

• Alternately, she acquired the nickname in high school when she was a champion swimmer, which will come in handy if she needs to escape the Dollmaker's island.

There will be several potential future Joker candidates in the show, and we'll never learn which one actually becomes/became the Joker.

Thus the show will be able to include Batman's most famous villain while still keeping to the mythology of the Joker having multiple possible backstories, with none of them actually confirmed. And people who want him to have a backstory can pick their favorite, while people who prefer that his origins remain ambiguous will also be satisfied.

So far we have:

• The man who actually killed the Waynes
• The comedian in the first episode
• The creepy circus kid
  • Jossed; he's killed by Galavan in season 2's third episode.
  • Un-Jossed, He's Back!.
• Whichever random crook happens to be wearing the red hood during the chemical-plant robbery

People on this page have also guessed:

• Butch
  • Jossed; he's strongly implied to be Solomon Grundy instead.
• Fish Mooney
• Oswald
• Others suggested have been Laszlo, Mooney's boy-toy (who hasn't shown up since his first appearance, so longshot); Clyde the fence, who is eerily cheerful and whose henchmen have a somewhat harlequinnish motif on their jackets) and probably everybody.
  • As of the third episode of season 2, any of the unstable "fans" Jerome won over with his televised rants is also a candidate.
• How about Jeri? If Fish is a candidate, surely another female can be included in the running.
• Sonny Gilzean, the snotty kid running the psilocybin ring that Ivy's part of. He and Bruce take an instant disliking to each other, and Bruce calls him a "ignorant, brutish, cowardly clown".

When Eddie becomes the Riddler (which may or may not happen during the show), he'll still become a crazy obnoxious egomaniac who commits outlandish crimes, but he'll try to avoid killing anyone he worked with that was actually nice to him and respected his intelligence.

Basically, he'll act like a Friendly Enemy to Gordon. The way this show is going, some of the other future villains will probably end up being this too.

• Jossed thanks to the Riddler's paranoia: he engineers Gordon's conviction for murder because he (wrongly) assumes Jim suspects him of Miss Kringle's murder.

Molly Mathis is the wife of the Dollmaker and the mother of his son, Barton Mathis, the New 52 Dollmaker.

The Court Of Owls

is The Man Behind the Man to the Dollmaker and the Wayne Killer.

• I'll one-up you: The Goat was one of theirs (remember Bullock's partner about conspiracies?), they're ultimately responsible for the corruption in Gotham, they might even have tenuous connections to the Mob itself, and Galavan is a Well-Intentioned Extremist trying to wipe them out.
  • Confirmed that they're behind the Wayne killings; no indication that they're connected to the Dollmaker, as they have their own pet Mad Scientist in Hugo Strange.

Jerome will return as a recurring character.

As of "The Blind Fortune Teller", he is the strongest candidate for the Joker (seriously, if his smile doesn't get to you, then his laugh sure will), so it would only make sense if the show gave him a little more screen time. Cameron Monaghan's performance was very well-received by the fans, so there's a good possibility that he may become an Ascended Extra. Besides, how awesome would it be if Bruce and Jerome actually met face-to-face?

• Confirmed. He's back for Season 2. But not for long.
• The Bus Came Back for Season 3.

Something will happen to one of Oswald's eyes, forcing him to wear his signature monocle.

Perhaps it'll be the result of an attack or an injury, like in Batman: Arkham City. If not, his vision in one eye could always deteriorate due to natural causes.

• Possibly confirmed. In interviews leading up to season 5, his actor talked about convincing the director to go in this direction and how it seemed appropriate that the injury would be to his right eye, to go with his right leg being crippled.

Dr. Marks, the evil therapist from "The Spirit of the Goat", will become Harley Quinn - and be responsible for the birth of the Joker.

After a few years in jail, she will be released for good conduct. But she knows that if she resurrected the 'Spirit of the Goat' again, this would point directly to her this time. Thus, her new plan is to get a job at Arkham Asylum under the false name Harleen Quinzel, and indoctrinate one of the inmates. For him, she invents a completely new character, a complete psychopath in clown make up, whose sole purpose in life seems to be terrorizing Gotham For the Evulz. (And the Joker's Multiple-Choice Past is the result of him being hypnotized into genuinely believing several completely fabricated memories of his past.) But Dr.Mark's/Quinzel's last shred of sanity tells her that the monster she created could easily get out of control. In order to always keep an eye on her puppet, she puts on the clown make up herself, from then on playing the role of the Cloudcuckoolander groupie who always stays at the Joker's side...

• Alternately, Dr. Marks has a young daughter from a previous marriage to a Mr. Quinzel, and the girl's name is Harleen. She'll come to the jail regularly to visit her mother, who will have many long private conversations with her little girl...

The Joker will be a combination of most of these WMGs

Jerome will get therapy from Dr. Marks (like the one directly above says), giving him an affinity for blonde haired therapists. But he kills her. Then he goes on to apprentice with Jack Napier, that comedian from the first episode. Said Jack Napier has Joker's Killing Joke origin. Since Joker has a multiple choice past, maybe Jerome eventually kills Jack Napier and takes his name, pretending to be Jack Napier henceforth. Finally, as a teenager looking for money, Jerome / the new Jack Napier joins the Red Hood Gang.

• Jossed; Jerome is dead as of episode 3, although his televised rants as leader of the Maniax have evidently won him a lot of unstable fans.
  • Funnily enough, this troper read that as a reference to his real-life fans before realizing it meant the potentially murderous fans in-universe.

Bruce will, at some point, meet Edward Nygma.

And it will drive Ed nuts when this 12-year-old kid is able to consistently answer his riddles.

• Unlikely following Nygma's arrest, unless it's played a lot differently.

At one point, the Penguin will don his iconic top hat, tuxedo, and monocle.

Once his nightclub (the future Iceberg Lounge) becomes a commercial success amongst Gotham's upper class, he'll become wealthy enough to buy himself some aristocratic wear.

• Maybe he'll even get into the habit of smoking, preferably with a cigarette holder.
• He does wear the outfit at one point but it's during one of Edward's hallucinations in the episode "How the Riddler Got His Name".

Also, Penguin will get his signature laugh from the 60s show.

Probably as a result of choking or nearly gotten poisoned.

• The Penguin quips that maybe he should come up with a suitable laugh after watching Jerome ranting on live TV.

Barbara

will become a supervillain.

• Well, she's already become a Self-Made Orphan. If she survived the beatdown from Leslie, she'll probably escape from wherever they're holding her and become one full-stop.
  • She's broken out of Arkham by Galavan on the basis that she has the potential.
  • Probably jossed as of "Heavydirtysoul", unless the writers still haven't gotten tired of bringing her back from a coma and/or villains back from the dead yet.

To go with the above, Barbara will team up with Zsasz.

• When Jim found her parents' bodies, they were propped up, arms around each other, holding tea cups. In comic continuity, Zsasz habitually leaves his victims in lifelike poses. Perhaps he gets involved somehow with Barbara and gets inspired by this particular trait, especially since he no longer has a boss to work for (since Falcone's left town).
  • Except he's seen working for the Penguin in the season 2 premiere.

Zsasz will become an off-the-leash serial killer.

• Now that Falcone has left town, he will begin killing people on his own and his tally count will rise. He will slowly become the deranged, unpredictable serial killer we know today.
  • Jossed for the time being; he's working for the Penguin as of the start of Season 2.

Carmine Falcone is Jim Gordon's uncle.

• As proof, look to their interactions throughout the series, especially s1e22, "All Happy Families Are Alike". Carmine knew Gordon's father, is highly protective of Gordon, and is, at times, quite (dare I say it?) AVUNCULAR towards Jim in his offering of advice.
  • Jossed; we meet Jim's actual uncle in Season 3, and he seems to be Jim's only living relative.

Barbara will become the show's version of Harley Quinn

A blonde, bisexual woman with a habit of screwing up and bad taste in men? Who's likely to be spending some time at Arkham, admittedly on the wrong side of the bars. It could happen.

• Not unless the show's habit of bringing everybody and their dog back from the dead hasn't run its course yet, it can't.
  • Also, the actress who plays Barbara has pointed out that Babs is too much of a control-freak to become as subordinate to, and dependent upon, the Joker as Harley is.
    • Though she was subordinate to Ra's al Ghul when he revived her.
    • True, but look how well that worked out in the end.

Selina Kyle will decide to testify for Bruce in the Wayne Murder trial after all

This seems to be the only way to repair the damage done by her murdering Reggie.

• Jossed; with the assassin and the Court of Owls all dead by the end of Season 3, it seems unlikely that such a trial will ever take place. Although Hugo Strange was involved and survives, the GCPD has a lot of other crimes to bust him for, that would be much easier to send him away for life over.

Jerome is not The Joker

He's Red Hood One. Eventually, he'll bring back the Red Hood gang and blackmail a guy named Jack into working for him. Jack will be inspired by Jerome into becoming an Ax-Crazy murderer. Jossed. He is killed off in Episode 3 and thus is neither The Joker OR Red Hood One.

• Then again, the show did bring him back.
  • Jossed as of season 4 with his brother Jeremiah becoming the Joker.

Bruce got his Batman voice from Alfred

After all, Alfred has that gravelly voice.

Arkham Asylum is where corrupt Wayne Enterprises executives tested chemical weapons on the insane

And this is why the Asylum is relevant to the plot. It's the driving conspiracy that connects all the plot lines. Viper was made there (along with, possibly Smilex); whoever hired Joe Chill (or possibly Joe himself, or whomever) discovered it, connected it erroneously to the Waynes and killed them, feeling disillusioned; the mob is interested in getting the land because of the possible new drugs they might find there; Selina earned the ire of Assassins... in some way connected to it.... somehow. (Little help?)

• Basically confirmed.
  • Although chemical-weapons testing appears to be just the start of what they've been up to.

There will eventually be a Musical Episode.

With the amount of camp in this show, would such an episode really be out of place? They could even work in "A Superstitious, Cowardly Lot" and it'd completely fit the show's tone.

• It'll turn out to be All Just a Dream or hallucination.

Joe Chill will appear as part of the conspiracy

But won't necessarily be the killer. Not His Sled is a good way to keep things fresh.

Jerome will be Batgirl's father.

Not that it would ever in a million years actually happen, but it would be pretty dramatic. Barbara, who is implied to be Batgirl's mother, is currently working with Jerome, and it's even suspected that they could become the Joker and Harley. Even if they don't, some kind of sexual feeling between them could lead to teasing for them being the Joker and Harley...and a kid. Perhaps Barbara reunited with Jim and became sympathetic enough that they spent some time together, and she was originally able to convince him that he was the father. Maybe Jim just felt guilty and took the baby in because her parents were lunatics.

And hey, if it's not from Barbs, who would she get that red hair from? Jossed, considering he's dead and all.

• Un-Jossed, He's Back!.
  • Re-Jossed: Except now Barbara's dead.
  • Re-Un-Jossed: Barbara's back. But now that Jeremiah has been introduced...

Jerome will at one point join the Red Hood Gang

Hey, there's nothing saying he won't get the Hood himself.

• Original poster: Jossed by virtue of Jerome's death.
  • OP yet again: He did come back, so it's possible again.
    • OP for a third time. Jossed with Jeorme's second death and Jeremiah becoming the Joker.

Penguin's dad will resemble the Penguin from Batman Returns.

• Will dead ringer do?

This show is a prequel to the 1960's Batman show.

This show is a prequel to something else...

There's emphasis on Alfred's ass-kicking past, and with the treatment of some of the known villains, they'll be down to all the really obscure ones. It's a prelude to Beware the Batman!

Barbara's psycho behavior isn't actually her own doing.

She was held prisoner by Victor Zsasz, who could've mucked with her head like he did with Butch's. He'd tried to make her into a sleeper-agent for the mob, but the brainwashing went wrong and suppressed her conscience so completely that it made her insane. If both she and Gordon eventually realize this is the case, it's possible that their relationship from the comics could ultimately be rebuilt if the damage to Barbara's psyche can be repaired.

Barbara will die a hero.

Or at the very least heroically most likely in a way that saves some combination of Bruce, Gordon and/or Thompkins. In most cannon's Barbara Gorden is Jim's daughter. It seems unlikely that Gordon would name his daughter after an ex at all, let alone an ex who went crazy and started trying to kill him. In fact logic would suggest he'd avoid that name like the plague moving forward. The easiest answer is that she get a death equals redemption moment that later or quite possibly immediately inspires Jim to name his newborn daughter after Barbara.

Edward Nygma prefers bigger women.

During their last dinner date, Ms. Kringle comments favorably on Ed's mashed potatoes. She then jokes that if he keeps feeding her all this, she'll "eventually get plump". Notably, Nygma does not deny this and in fact says he wants to keep spoiling her.

• Ironically, one episode plays "Closer to the Bone" (a song about how Louis Armstrong prefers thin women) over a Nygma scene. Maybe he's in denial?

Eduardo Flamingo will eventually become The Joker.

He's certainly crazy enough to fit the bill, he's seen as the most out there out of all the assassins, he really loves his job to the point where he doesn't even consider it a job, he deliberately trips over in order to kill a guard, and once Gordon starts beating the shit out of him, the only thing Eduardo does is laugh like a maniac...Could he possibly be the one?

• Eduardo Flamingo's a character from the comics, so it's unlikely, although they were certainly paying homage to The Dark Knight Trilogy with him laughing as Gordon was beating him.

Gordon's slide down The Slippery Slope is completely intentional.

There has been some significant fan backlash against Gordon engaging in far more morally-questionable actions than his comic-book counterpart. This will become a plot point: eventually Gordon will get to the point where Bruce realizes he can't depend on him to do what's right, that the GCPD is so hopelessly corrupt that not even Jim Gordon is immune, so Bruce becomes a vigilante. This, in turn, will catalyze Gordon to start cleaning up Gotham again; he will realize just how far he's fallen and will try to find his way back.

The comedian in the pilot will become a future villain, though not one that is focused on.

My guess is that the comedian is the obscure villain known as the Condiment King. He's not credited by name, but a terrible comedian would be a perfect origin for the zany Mitchell Mayo.

The last season of Gotham will be it's own version of Batman: Year One

The first half of would be the actual events of the comic altered to fit the show's continuity and the second half would be his first run ins with each villain eventually finishing the season with his first time dealing with The Joker thus making way for a new Live-action Batman series

If Fox's DC shows get adopted into the Arrowverse, then this show will cross over with Legends of Tomorrow.

The upcoming crossover between The Flash and Supergirl has made it clear that cross-network crossovers are now on the table for the Arrowverse, even if it's through dimension hopping rather than a full-on shared setting. If Fox agrees to get in on the action, Legends seems like the obvious candidate to visit Gotham, due to the show's use of time travel. Even moreso since the third episode of Legends confirms that a version of Batman exists somewhere in the Arrowverse.

Gotham does take place in the Super-Legends of Flarrowverse, but on Earth-2.

How else do you explain the Anachronism Stew? This would also allow more flexibility, due to the two shows having different showrunners. Plus, going with the above WMG, the same actors could be used (filming locations notwithstanding), even playing different versions of the same characters (Perhaps Silver St. Cloud and Barbara Keane more resemble their comic counterparts on Earth-1?).

Police Chief O'Hara makes a pre-appearance...

...as a uniform who does much of the legwork and is younger and far more athletic than Jim and Harvey together, rather like a proto-Robin.

When GCPD finds out about Eddie's recent behavior...

First, while trying to track him down, Jim and Harvey will learn that Ed's birth name was Nashton, and he had it legally changed in college. So they go to the house Ed grew up in, and meet Eddie's abusive father (who absolutely loses it if anyone refers to Ed as 'smart' rather than just a liar and a cheater) and battered, often-absent mother.

• Jossed for something that happens immediately after he's found out, but it could still happen once Nygma escapes from Arkham and they need to capture him again.

Alfred is in on the conspiracy.

He's constantly trying to get Bruce to stop digging and leave things alone. It's not just simple familial concern: he knows exactly what's going on, and he knows how much Bruce is in over his head.

They're never going to let this kid be Batman.

Much like the other time they did this sort of show, they'll refuse to let Bruce Wayne become Batman, to avoid any confusion with whoever might be Batman in the movies by then.

The Penguin is related to Vandal Savage

His family are called the Van Dahls. Vandals. Knowing comics, this can't be a coincidence.

Silver will eventually grow up to take on the mantle of Azrael.

Azrael's comics counterpart is a more grey character than the one depicted here. By the end of 2A, Silver was also shown to have some greyness (Heh, "Silver," get it?). Might as well keep it in the Dumas family!

How the final scene will go:

Similar to this, Bruce will be inside a now fully-functional, if rather empty, Batcave. The Batsuit could be an updated version of the "First Appearance" suit, complete with darker purple gloves and better shielding. Bruce will then leave the cave, bats quickly flying out of his way as he sneaks across the rooftops until he arrives in an alley, where a group of thugs are trying to break into a house. Lit by the full moon, Bruce will swoop down, his cape spread out, then quickly take down the thugs. Lying on the ground, terrified and injured, one of the thugs will ask who he is. Cue Bruce saying his Catchphrase for the first time, and cut to credits.

The entire series is Doctor Manhattan's failed attempt at recreating the DC Universe from scratch from before he started altering the main DC Earth

After he abandoned it, things got really weird. The future Superman is Clarko Kento, living in Metropolis where he lives with his beat poet uncle while John and Martha host a reality show in London where the future Wonder Woman is a goth college student named living in London with her boyfriend Jonah Hex, who is a recording artist for pop sensation Oliver King, who is engaged to Joan Jones, who is secretly a shapeshifter from Venus.

• Jack Black is the Green Lantern of Earth's sector in space. His best friend is Bart Simpson the owner of a chain of bowling alleys called STAR Lanes.

Jim Gordon will become Batman, and Bruce Wayne will be the first Robin.

All of Bruce's normal villains except one (at the time of this guess) are being introduced as adults, and are being set up to be Jim's enemies instead. Once Jim decides to don the cowl Bruce might become the partner that allows Jim to use the Wayne family resources and the cave.

• Jossed; as of the closing scene of season 3, Bruce has already beaten Jim to it where becoming The Cowl is concerned, although his costume is rudimentary as yet.

Gotham is part of the Arrowverse multiverse.

Exiled from Continuity notwithstanding, Gotham may actually be part of the universe at large. Specifically, the following Earths that haven't been explored yet:

• Earth 27: named after Detective Comics Issue 27.
• Earth 39: for 1939, the year the above issue was released.
• Earth 80, since the show will be ending during the year of Batman's 80th anniversary.

Hopefully, FOX will see how it worked for Supergirl (Earth 38), Constantine (Earth 1), and the original Flash show (Earth unknown).

Gotham will eventually spawn a spin-off via Poorly Disguised Pilot and become the "Gothamverse".

Wonder Woman could be the star of that spin-off, and her costume would be less revealing than Gal Gadot's version. But who would portray her?

Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) will be Jim Gordon's adopted daughter

Considering the way the show is going, it seems increasingly unlikely that either Barbara OR Lee will be her mother, unless of course Barbara gets pregnant by someone else, dies a heroic death like suggested above and asks the one man she knows would be a good father to take care of her. That leaves essentially two options, either Gordon gets a new love interest or he ends up adopting her somehow.

• Or both: he gets a new Love Interest who just happens to have a little girl named Barbara. No reason Batgirl's stepfather can't be the future commissioner.

Ivy Pepper is a Time Lord.

She really did die in the S3 premiere. She just regenerated. After all, Maggie Geha looks nothing like Clare Foley, except for the hair color. It would also explain the drastic personality change.

Lee will dedicate her professional skills towards helping the less fortunate like in the comics.

To atone for her actions as a result of injecting herself with the virus. She is also still ashamed of how she let her anger and despair cloud her judgment. She hopes helping the less fortunate will renew her hope in Gotham City.

• Semi-confirmed. Season four has her treating people in the Narrows and even teaming up with Ed to rob banks and divide the money amongst the residents.

Thomas Elliot's Jerkass friend Brant will become Hush instead.

It looks like Elliot has mellowed out.

There is another Professor Pyg out there.

It turns out that Lazlo Valentin (who in the comics is the identity of Professor Pyg) impersonates other serial killers. Seeing as Valentin is dead, it will turn out there is another Professor Pyg whose gimmick he stole. This Professor Pyg will be similar to the comic book counterpart, such as creating Dolltrons and being part of the Circus of Strange.

• Alternately, Hugo Strange will create the comics' version of Professor Pyg, by "programming" Lazlo Valentin's resurrected corpse to be his new surgical assistant. The surgical programming, Valentin's criminal past, and the "Pyg" role he'd been playing will all blend together and produce the Dolltron-obsessed Freak Show candidate of the comics.

Bruce reminded Jerome of Jeremiah

Like Jerome said during his recent hostage situation, Jeremiah was raised by a rich family in comparison to Bruce, which would explain why Jerome was obsessed with trying to kill him.

Ra's and Jeremiah are, to different degrees, stand-ins for the Unpleasable Fanbase.

Gotham was criticized by certain fans for being a Batman show without Batman, a sentiment still held by some. Both Ra's and Jeremiah embody the fans who prioritize seeing Batman on TV over anything else: Ra's is the more moderate fan who's willing to wait for Bruce to evolve into the Dark Knight as long he gets there eventually while Jeremiah represents the fans who see every other aspect of the show as a waste of time, willing to let every other aspect of Gotham burn if it means seeing Bruce become Batman as quickly as possible.

The Poison Ivy Batman eventually faces will be a literal offshoot of the current one.

With Ivy Pepper becoming more and more plant-like she may become capable of reproducing via parthenogenesis, like some plants. The current Ivy dies but creates or leaves behind a "seed" that becomes a clone "daughter." This daughter grows at a slightly accelerated rate, perhaps hiding in the overgrown remains of Ivy's last hideout before emerging, fully-grown, around the time that Bruce becomes Batman. Being a different person from the original Ivy would explain her lack of familiarity with Bruce/Batman or the rest of the characters the original Ivy interacted with.

It was the Tweeds whom Hugo Strange reprogrammed with ideas from "Alice In Wonderland".

Having been told of her brother's Mad Hatter obsessions by Alice Tetch, Strange wanted to test if he could inculcate similar ideas into his Indian Hill test subjects. As the Tweed cousins looked so much alike and their surname reminded him of this notion, he reprogrammed them to think they were Tweedledee and Tweedledum, because they were the nearest he could get to a "twin study" of whether susceptibility to his techniques was genetically inherited.

Oswald is partially deaf

Having a gun go off right next to your ear in real life can do some pretty serious damage to it and it's fitting that it's his right ear to go with his injured leg. Oswald seems to ask "Excuse me?" or for someone to repeat themselves pretty frequently, playing it off as him asking for clarification when in reality he didn't hear part of what they said. This also explains why he yells so much, he doesn't realize how loud he's being sometimes.

Following the finale of the show, David Mazouz will reprise his role in one of the Arrowverse crossovers

C'mon, you have to admit it'd be pretty awesome; plus, it isn't like Fox would mind, given that the show would be done with by that point.