Penguin

A wealthy Gotham couple, horrified by their deformed newborn, dump him in a stream that runs into the sewers. Oswald is raised by penguins in an abandoned zoo and, as an adult, leads the Red Triangle Gang, a band of former circus performers.

At Christmas he comes out of hiding and blackmails corrupt tycoon Max Shreck with proof of his crimes. Shreck helps him become a hero through a staged rescue, and the Penguin gets access to the city's birth records, claiming he's looking for his parents. What he really wants is a list of Gotham's firstborn sons. Shreck then runs him for mayor, and the Penguin teams up with Catwoman to frame Batman.

The Penguin kills the Ice Princess from the Christmas ceremony and pins it on Batman. His gang rigs the Batmobile so he can drive it by remote. But Batman records the Penguin's insults against Gotham's people and plays them at a rally. The campaign ends right there.

Humiliated, he fully embraces his animal side and sends the gang to kidnap Gotham's firstborn sons. Batman stops it. So the Penguin unleashes an army of penguins with rockets strapped to their backs, but the signal is hijacked and the rockets fly back to his lair. After falling into toxic water, he dies, and his penguins carry his body into the water.

In Matt Reeves's universe, Oz Cobb runs the Iceberg Lounge, a club where Gotham's elite mix with the mob, and is crime boss Carmine Falcone's right-hand man. He hates the Penguin nickname, which he got because of the way he walks.

Batman questions him about the mayor's murder and later chases him down the highway in the rain. Oz ends up caught, but he isn't the informant the Riddler is after. By the end, with Falcone dead and the city flooded, Oz has no boss.

A week after the flood, Oz kills Carmine's son, Alberto Falcone, in a fit of rage. Victor Aguilar, a homeless kid caught trying to steal his car's rims, ends up helping dump the body, and Oz hires him as his driver. To cover the murder, he plays the Falcone and Maroni families against each other.

Alberto's sister, Sofia Falcone, gets out of Arkham, where she spent years locked up as the killer known as The Hangman. She suspects Oz from the start. The two team up to sell the drug Bliss, but Salvatore Maroni captures them and Victor rescues Oz.

Sofia learns what Oz did to her brother and turns on him. She changes the family name to Gigante, kills most of the Falcones and teams up with Maroni. Oz hands out Bliss for free in poor neighborhoods to win people over and sets up a base in abandoned subway tunnels.

A flashback reveals that, as a boy, Oz left his brothers, Jack and Benny, trapped in a sewer tunnel as it filled with water. His mother, Francis, always knew. Sofia kidnaps Francis, Maroni dies fighting Oz, and a bomb wipes out his base and crew.

In the final episode, Francis tells Sofia her son's secret and has a stroke that leaves her in a vegetative state. Oz wins the war and uses his police contacts to send Sofia back to Arkham.

Victor tells Oz he's his family, and Oz strangles him, saying family makes you weak. In the last scene, he dances with Eve Karlo, dressed as his mother, in a luxury apartment. Outside, the Bat-Signal lights up the sky.

Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot was created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane and debuted in Detective Comics #58 in 1941. Kane said he was inspired by the top-hatted penguin mascot of Kool cigarettes. In the comics he wears a top hat and monocle, carries weaponized umbrellas and runs the Iceberg Lounge. In the 1960s TV series the Penguin was Burgess Meredith, who nearly cameoed in Batman Returns.