A new promotional video released by Fox shows us some clips from a special two-episode event on Gotham featuring the boy that eventually grows up and becomes Scarecrow.
It seems that the next episode of Gotham introduces the father of that boy, Gerald Crane, a biology-teacher-turned-murderer who harvests the organs of his victims. His victims are patients suffering from severe phobias. His son, Jonathan, though, also puts in an appearance, and according to this clip, we see the first iteration of one of Batman's greatest enemies: Scarecrow.
But who exactly is Jonathan Crane? And how and why did he become a super villain?
In the Batman DC Comics, Scarecrow is Dr. Jonathan Crane, a psychologist who uses psychotropic drugs, as well as his knowledge of the human psyche, to use people's fears against them.
As a child, Crane was no stranger to bullying, and that, in part, made him the psycho he eventually becomes. He also fears bats, which explains his hatred for the Dark Knight. After the school bully humiliates him and a cheerleader spurns him, he takes on the mantle of Scarecrow and gets revenge during prom with a gun in the school's parking lot, resulting in the deaths of several classmates.
Eventually, Crane becomes a psychiatrist and takes a position at Arkham Asylum, which proves a healthy breeding ground for his experiments in inducing fear. He also teaches psychology at Gotham University, but after shooting a gun inside a classroom (accidentally wounding a student), he gets the boot. After that, he goes nuts, kills some professors and becomes Scarecrow full-time.
In the Christopher Nolan films, Cillian Murphy portrays Scarecrow as much the same. In Batman Begins, Crane is the lead psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum, and as in the comics, experiments on the patients there. After being blackmailed by mob boss Carmine Falcone, Crane becomes Scarecrow and gases the man, leaving him insane.
Crane eventually ends up in Arkham as a patient, but Ra's al Ghul frees him and uses his fear gas on Gotham. Crane escapes justice again. In The Dark Knight, Crane is selling his gases on the black market, but Batman eventually catches him and he goes back to Arkham.
However, in The Dark Knight Rises, Crane and other prisoners get released when Bane starts taking down the city. Although Scarecrow puts in a small appearance in this film, without a mask, his fate is left unknown at the end of that movie.
Scarecrow also puts in an appearance in the video game Batman: Arkham Asylum. In the game, he keeps hypodermic needles strapped to his fingers, ready to inject his fear toxin at any time. At the beginning of the game, he holds Commissioner Gordon hostage, eventually killing him. Before Batman can save the man, he starts having hallucinations created by Scarecrow. These hallucinations happen often in gameplay, even going so far as to fooling players into thinking the game itself malfunctions later on.
In the video game Batman: Arkham Knight, Scarecrow has a new fear toxin that he's threatening the city of Gotham with, resulting in the city's evacuation. This leaves only criminals in Gotham, who torment Batman throughout the course of the game. Scarecrow plays his share of mind games with Batman during gameplay, going so far as to altering his mind and creating dream sequence levels during the game.
Of course, on Gotham, Crane is still just a boy, but we expect that the series will show the man that Crane will eventually become. It seems that the TV series focuses more on Crane's father and how that affects the boy, so Scarecrow's origin story there could be slightly different from what we've seen before.
