Scarecrow

Taunted and bullied in his youth, Jonathan Crane has vowed to overcome his fears through the study of psychology and biochemistry on phobias and the nature of fear. Kicked out of the university he taught at for experimenting on human subjects, Crane adopted the identity of the Scarecrow, and armed himself with a specialized fear-inducing gas that makes a person's deepest phobia become a frightening reality.

Scarecrow's ongoing reign of terror makes him one of Batman's most recurring and psychologically dangerous foes, if not the most dangerous. Scarecrow is, on certain occasions, more of a threat to Batman than the Joker. When The Joker took over Arkham Island, Crane was released to cause as much death and chaos as possible. Using this to his advantage, the Scarecrow tried breaking the mind of Batman again and again, only to fail. When attempting to poison Gotham City's water with his toxin, Crane was brutally mauled by the mutated criminal Killer Croc.

This attack from Croc left Crane with a damaged retina, a permanently broken leg, and the lower portion of his face ruined and shredded. He only survived the attack by grasping onto a loose box of Titan that had become lost in the sewer system. Crane managed to rebuild his face, but heavily mutilated it to look like his original mask.

Seething with rage, Scarecrow exacted revenge on Batman and Gotham with his allies, the mysterious Arkham Knight and former assassin, Deathstroke. However, in the end, Crane's plan to break Batman's will failed, and he was forced to endure a dose of his own improved toxin. Reduced to a harmless shell of himself, Scarecrow was left to suffer visions of his greatest fear, which is ironically swarms of enraged bats, and demons (as evident by his vision of Batman as a demonic entity). In Arkham Asylum, Scarecrow closely followed his over-the-top comic book portrayal: a downright, sadistic villain who took glee in murdering innocent people and/or driving them into insanity, complete with a high-pitched voice with a loud and dramatic tone to it. As evidenced by his Interview Tapes, Scarecrow was extremely intelligent and manipulative, as he managed to convince at least two of his doctors that he wasn't actually insane. This included Dr. Young, who even entertained the possibility that he was innocent. Scarecrow displayed a respect for the concept of fear that bordered on veneration. He believed fear to be the driving force in people's lives, saying that almost every action you took was a byproduct of fear, and wanted to prove his megalomania by using fear to control others. This is further shown in Arkham Knight where after detonating the Cloudburst, drowning Gotham in his toxin he proudly describes it the "city of fear" and "my domain."

Unlike many of Batman's foes, who commit crimes in order to gain money or power, Scarecrow's only motivation seemed to be a compulsive need to cause fear in others. In his interview tapes, Dr. Kellerman stated that the only thing Scarecrow seemed to care about was his "research." This is exemplified by Scarecrow treating their therapy sessions as though HE was the doctor, and Kellerman was his patient. Scarecrow would even create interview tapes of his own while observing his victims, and expressed fascination in understanding the root of their fears while showing no concern for their safety or wellbeing. Even in the middle of being captured by Batman, Scarecrow desperately asked him what he saw while under the effects of his toxin in order to continue to "study" its effects.

In Arkham Knight, two years after Arkham Asylum, Scarecrow was almost a complete inversion of his former self. He possessed an incredibly calm and deep voice and spoke in a soft-spoken monotone. While he was a giggling psychopath in Asylum, Scarecrow was an emotionless mastermind who only laughed twice. He still retained his sadism, his unmatchable brilliance, his religious dedication to fear, and proved himself to be a omnicidal maniac, as he planned to cover the entire Earth in Fear Toxin starting with the Eastern Seaboard.

His bio also mentioned that after years of forcefully being injected with it thanks to Batman, Scarecrow was utterly immune to not only his own Fear Toxin, but fear itself, as not a single concept could arouse him into a fearful state, except bats. That fear may be natural, but could also be caused thanks to Batman. Even when being face-to-face to a wildly angered Batman, Detective Mode proved that Scarecrow was still calm. Scarecrow's only examples of emotion was temporary fury when the Cloudburst was destroyed, and when he was permanently reduced into a terrified, mumbling mess after a colossal dosage of his own Fear Toxin that was injected into him by Batman at the Arkham Mansion.

Scarecrow's psyche was fractured so much after Arkham Asylum, that he didn't care about Batman's true identity as long as he got to destroy him and show the world who was really behind the cowl. He was serious about accomplishing this to such a point that he was even willing to resort to using firearms to get his way (something he normally does not do). Scarecrow's obsession with fear became even more warped, which lead him to desire to coat the world in his Fear Toxin to destroy millions of minds.

Whereas in Arkham Asylum he treated fear as a religion which governs every actions of every day, given Arkham Knight he has begun to see it as a fundamental factor of life and without it, life itself would be meaningless. This can be attributed to his obsession with laying bare the legend of Batman, proving to the world that he was just a man and nothing more, as witnessing a man who was by all means fearless was an insult, almost blasphemy to Scarecrow's views of life, a prospect of his fear-religious ideals. As a person, who was essentially a man of fear he understood that hope was the catalyst of terror, and has shown multiple times to be against its concepts. As Batman was the embodiment of hope in Gotham by unmasking him Scarecrow would equivalently be taking all which he stood for, placing Gotham in a (literal) reign of fear without his protection.

His life and personality (pre-Scarecrow) is explored in Arkham Shadow, where he is shown as disdainful towards Dr. Quinzel's "talk therapy"-focused treatment philosophy. Crane, at least in his pre-criminal days, put his faith in bio-chemistry alone and held no truck with Quinzel's gentler, sensitive approach, at one point chastising her expression of sympathy towards a patient with "That's it? The subject has no use for your feelings, Doctor. He needs a clinical diagnosis, not a bleeding heart!".

When Lock-Up was unable to command the prison's TYGER guards and Crane was put in charge, he very vocally expressed disinterest in hearing about the specifics of their duties, including their attempts to stop Batman from bypassing prison security. He merely wanted to be left alone to conduct his research, and considered everything else a trifling distraction.

Like most villains in the series, Scarecrow's appearance changed depending on setting, materials and even his psychological condition. The basis for Scarecrow's costume may have been similar to his mainstream DC Comics counterpart, referencing the Headless Horseman trick from Sleepy Hollow and the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz, inspired by his love of reading, and a rather on the nose symbol for the role that he wished to play in his victim's terror. Before the events of Arkham Asylum, Scarecrow used a costume that was slightly similar to his comic appearance, which incorporated an actual scarecrow-like appearance with a burlap mask that showed his eyes and mouth, and was topped off with a hat and a cloak.

After he was captured and released, Crane may have had to scavenge for materials to complete the costume that was seen in the game. Scarecrow was shirtless, and his trousers, cowl, and sleeves appeared to be woven together from various rags, possibly from an Arkham inmate uniform. His mask had been altered into a cowl with the aesthetics of a hood and a noose, and acted as a gas mask. Scarecrow wore a brace over his right hand with syringes that extended over his fingers, which allowed him to simultaneously attack and inject a victim with Fear Toxin if they didn't breath in his gas. Scarecrow was often seen hunched over so that his skin was hardly visible and looked more like a scarecrow.

Scarecrow's appearance was vastly different due to the injuries that he had sustained at the hands of Killer Croc. Scarecrow's right eye became permanently white, implying it had been blinded, however it was his face that received the worst amount of damage from Killer Croc: huge chunks of his face had been removed during his mauling, with his nose and lips being completely gone. Because of how drastic his appearance was now, it was no longer clear how much of his face was a mask or the scar tissue caused by his mauling, however, rumors began spreading that Scarecrow's current appearance was actually the result of reconstructive surgery following Killer Croc's attack, purposefully done to make his face resemble his original mask, with pieces of string surgically grafted onto where his upper and lower lips were to further the resemblance to his burlap sack mask. His left leg may have been permanently broken as it was secured in a leg brace. Even with his broken leg, Scarecrow now stood much taller than in Arkham Asylum due to not hunching over.

Crane's new gas mask also appeared to be surgically grafted to his throat, as it didn't cover his mouth or nose. It was mentioned by random Militia chatter that after Killer Croc's attack on him at Arkham Asylum, Crane underwent surgery to make his face appear as it did in Arkham Knight: he surgically grafted the mask to his face.

Crane may have sustained damage to his windpipe that necessitated a respiratory bypass, which explained why his voice was so much more gravelly than before. Another piece of evidence to support that theory was the presence of two tubes going into the underside of Crane's lower jaw, with one of them being attached to one of his Fear Toxin canisters.

Another possibility was that Scarecrow's voice in Arkham Asylum may have not been his real voice and he altered it to make it more scary. Whether or not Crane took micro doses of his own Fear Toxin to make himself immune to it was unknown.

To better wage his war, Scarecrow wore a trench coat that was modified to hold multiple vials of Fear Toxin, which provided him with a larger supply. Scarecrow's fingertip syringes were upgraded to include claws that were latched to his wrist for combat. Altogether, Scarecrow resembled an undead being.