Scarecrow (DC Comics)

The Scarecrow is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer Bill Finger and artist Bob Kane, the character debuted in World's Finest Comics #3 (September 1941). He has become one of the superhero Batman's most enduring enemies belonging to the collective of adversaries that make up his rogues gallery.

In his comic book appearances, the Scarecrow is the alias of Dr. Jonathan Crane, a brilliant professor of psychology turned criminal mastermind. Abused and bullied in his youth, he develops an obsession with fear and uses a specially designed hallucinogenic drug–dubbed "fear toxin"–to exploit the phobias of the people of Gotham City and its protector, Batman. As the self-proclaimed "Master of Fear", the Scarecrow's crimes do not stem from a common desire for wealth or power, but from a cruel pleasure in terrorizing others to further his sadistic experiments on the manipulation of fear. An outfit symbolic of his namesake with a stitched burlap mask serves as the Scarecrow's visual motif.

The Scarecrow has been adapted in various media incarnations, having been portrayed in film by Cillian Murphy in The Dark Knight Trilogy, and in television by Charlie Tahan and David W. Thompson in the Fox series Gotham, and Vincent Kartheiser in the HBO Max streaming series Titans. Henry Polic II, Jeffrey Combs, Dino Andrade, John Noble, Robert Englund, and others have provided the character's voice in animation and video games.