Carmine Falcone

Carmine Falcone is a fictional character, a villainous Mafia don in Gotham City, who made his debut in the four part story Batman: Year One, written by Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli, in 1987. Falcone later appeared in a major role in the Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale mini-series Batman: The Long Halloween.

Carmine Falcone was also featured in the 2005 film Batman Begins, played by Academy Award nominee Tom Wilkinson. Template:Spoiler In the film, Falcone all but controls Gotham City, flooding it with drugs and crime. He is above the law, with most of Gotham's politicians and police on his payroll, including James Gordon's partner, Detective Flass. He has Joe Chill, the man who murdered Bruce Wayne's parents, killed for threatening to testify against him, depriving Wayne of the chance to take his own revenge. Wayne confronts him, but he dismisses the young billionaire as a harmless nuisance, having him beaten up to teach him a lesson.

Years later, Falcone goes into business with The Scarecrow and Ra's al Ghul, smuggling a fear toxin into Gotham inside toy rabbits. As a reward, Scarecrow, who as Dr. Jonathon Crane runs Arkham Asylum, diagnoses Falcone's henchmen as insane when they are arrested so they can avoid prison. Wayne, who by now has become Batman, discovers and foils the plan and knocks Falcone unconscious, leaving him tied to a searchlight for the police to find, which projects a bat-like shape into the sky; this impromptu calling card would later evolve into the Bat-Signal.

While in prison, Falcone tries to force Crane to give him a phony insanity diagnosis. Crane instead gasses him with the fear toxin and puts on the freakish scarecrow mask he uses in his experiments on the asylum's inmates, literally terrifying Falcone out of his mind and leaving him in a permanent state of psychosis. He is then transferred to Arkham.

Falcone is the last old-style crime boss in Gotham City before Batman's familiar Rogues Gallery takes over.