Scarecrow

Scarecrow
Father	Gerald Crane
Mother	Karen Keeny
Alias	Scarecrow
Employer	Ra's al Ghul and Carmine Falcone (Batman Begins) Sal Maroni and Chechen (The Dark Knight) Bane (The Dark Knight Rises)
Profession	Psycho-pharmachologist Chief Administrator of Arkham Asylum
Appearances	Batman Begins The Dark Knight (cameo) The Dark Knight Rises (2 cameos)
Played by	Cillian Murphy

Jonathan Crane was a corrupt psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum who becomes involved in activity orchestrated by both the League of Shadows and the mafia in Gotham City, taking up the persona of The Scarecrow, a gass-proof burlap-masked external tormentor portraying himself as a "master of fear", who uses his patients as human guinea pigs for experiments on his trademark fear toxin deprived from an organic compound found found in a blue flower that grows in the League's Himalayan monastery. Notably serving as the secondary antagonist of Batman Begins, the Scarecrow has went on as a supporting antagonist and recurring enemy of Batman throughout the rest of the The Dark Knight Trilogy.

History

Early Life

Jonathan Crane was born in 1973 in Arlen, Georgia, to Gerald Crane, a construction worker, and Karen Keeny, the youngest daughter of a local gentry family. Because his parents weren't married, the senior Crane abandoned the family before Jonathan was even born, forcing his wife to leave their child in the care her mother Marion, a religious fanatic with less than pure intentions for the boy. As a child, Jonathan was exposed to severe emotional and physical torment and torture from his grandmother, the worst of it being locked up in the family's atrium dressed in a suit contaminated with a homemade chemical designed to enrage the crows nesting nearby and force them to attack the source. Because of this, he developed into a thin and lanky frame, spindly legs and a crippling fear of his grandmother. While at school, Crane became the victim of taunts and jeers due to his appearance. The other boys in the neighborhood would throw rocks at him and call him cruel names such, one of such was being called "Ichabod" by the school bully, Billy Dee Walker. His only friends at the time were the girls, and his best friend among them was Louise Carter, who Crane shared many similarities with and dated throughout high school. One day, however, Carter was forced to become involved in a harmless prank on her best friend/boyfriend set up by Walker, and Crane, believing that she just found it much more fun to make fun of him rather than be his friend, thus broke her with her on bad terms.

Following his high school graduation, the stillness of Crane's rural life in Georgia didn't hold enough charm to entice him to stay, so to ensure that his grandmother to no longer inflict his cruelty on him, he decided to run away with a tuition check from the mail and thus traveled to Gotham City by bus. There he enrolled in Gotham University to study psycho-pharmacology under Professor Daniel Pidgeon, the head of the college's psyche department. Pidgeon became interested on Crane's study on fears and phobias and wanted to know what it was about fear the young man found so intriguing. Crane didn't rightly know, but in time began to think it was the affects it had on people, simply bringing the memories of the abuse he go from his grandmother back to haunt him. By then, he began to feel like Pidgeon was filling his head with nonsense to lead him astray to a life of sin, something that his grandmother would agree on. By the time Pidgeon retired after Crane was out of college, Crane applied and was hired to take his place as the psychology professor, understanding that he had to deal with a certain amount of headaches and annoyances from his students meant to compose a prediction of the stupidity he looked forward to. Despite the students finding him scary, one of them, Thomas Stuart, doubted otherwise by going up to Crane to ask for extra credit on his homework. Though Crane didn't offer any of his students such, he reluctantly agreed but made Stuart promise not to tell any of his classmates, since they would find it unfair and would want it as well. Stuart eventually regretted this decision when Crane drugged him with a fear inducing whiskey and tortured him with a rat that got the boy to enjoy its scratches. From then on, Crane started loving his taste of the real, primal fear invoked in others and wanted nothing more but to do again with the entire city.

When rumors about his history at the university and a generous financial settlement on incident with Stuart (which cost Crane his job there) reached the nearby Arkham Asylum, its warden Quincy Sharp saw the potential for what it took to make changes on the nuthouse inmates within Crane and hired him as its chief administrator specializing in psycho-pharmacology. However, the job became more difficult than Crane thought due

Crane managed to develop a substance that caused the subject great fear of everything around them, which he dubbed "fear toxin", for Ra's and his League of Shadows using a rare blue flower that grew on the slopes of the Himalayas near to the League's headquarters, and experimented it on the inmates of Arkham. Using Carmine Falcone, the head of Gotham's organized crime, to smuggle the substance into the city, the doctor in return set up his psychiatric credentials into declare any of Falcone's thugs insane once they were tried in court. He transferred them to his secure wing at the asylum, where they enjoyed more luxurious conditions than in prison.

Batman Begins

While testifying that Victor Zsasz, one of Falcone's men, was insane, Crane was approached by the assistant District Attorney Rachel Dawes, who commented on the high number of Falcone's associates that he had at Arkham and implied that he was corrupt in his assessments. Crane responded by telling Carl Finch, Rachel's boss, to make sure that Dawes knew what accusations the DA office has authorised her to make. He then met with Carmine Falcone to discuss the latest shipment of drugs, and explained that the packets hidden inside toy bears went to the drug dealers, and those in toy rabbits went to the Crane's apartment in The Narrows. Crane also explained that the less Falcone knew, the better. When Falcone was apprehended by new vigilante called Batman, Crane visited him after the gangster cut his wrists hoping for an insanity plea. Falcone threatened him with his unexpected knowledge of Ra's plan and asked to be a part of it. Knowing that Ra's would never trust a criminal like Falcone, Crane donned his mask and unleashed his toxin through a briefcase, driving the mob boss to a derangely terrified and mentally-incapacitated state of mind.