Dr. Gerald Crane was a villainous character from the first season of Gotham. Based on a character from the Batman comic books, he was the father of Jonathan Crane, also known as the Scarecrow, an enemy of Batman's who specialised in using chemical compounds to bring about extreme fear in his victims. In Gotham, Gerald Crane conducts a sinister experiment to cure himself of fear and his actions inevitably lead to his son's descent into villainy. He is portrayed by Julian Sands.
History[]
A former biology professor, Dr. Crane was obsessed with fear and considered it to be a flaw in humanity's evolution. He himself was pyrophobic and this fear prevented him from saving the life of his wife Karen who had died in a house fire years ago. Driven to madness by his obsession, Crane attempted to "cure" himself of fear. Joining a phobia support group, he sought out subjects to aid in his quest. Learning about the fears and phobias of the attendees, he began abducting them and placing them in scenarios where they were exposed to whatever it was that frightened them. At the height of their terror, Crane murdered his victims and harvested their adrenal glands, extracting the cortisol from the glands in order to produce his "cure". Gerald's son Jonathan would also play an unwilling part in his father's crime spree.
Crane's crimes inevitably attracted the attention of the GCPD and he was confronted by Jim Gordon and Harvey Bullock before he could kill Scottie Mullen, the head of the support group he attended. Crane managed to escape and later returned to his old family home where he completed his serum. After injecting himself with the serum, Gerald forced himself to confront his own greatest fear, experiencing hallucinations of his wife wrapped in flames. No longer debilitated by fear, Gerald then injected his son with the serum in order to "cure" him of fear.
Death[]
In the episode "The Scarecrow", Gerald and Jonathan were tracked to their old family home by detectives Gordon and Bullock. Crane wanted to ensure that Jonathan completed the protocol for curing his fear and injected him with a high dose of concentrated cortisol. This caused Jonathan to experience terrifying hallucinations of a demonized scarecrow as he was looking at a scarecrow when the serum took effect. Gerald confronted Gordon and Bullock with a gun, no longer inhibited by fear and his sense of self-preservation clouded. Gordon and Bullock were forced to return fire and shot Gerald dead.