Hugo Strange (Gotham)

Professor Hugo Strange is a psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum who oversaw experiments at the Indian Hill facility of the Court of Owls.

History

Professor Hugo Strange is the Chief of Psychiatry^[1] at Arkham Asylum who became the asylum's director^[2] sometime after the death of former director Gerry Lang.^[3] Strange is obsessed with understanding and manipulating the human mind. Strange often uses mental patients, involuntarily, for his psychological experiments. Many of these experiments involve altering a patient's mind and releasing them from the asylum to see how they function in the outside world. Some of his experiments were carried out in an attempt to improve the human mind.^[4]

Strange also oversees Indian Hill, an underground division of Wayne Enterprises that performs medical and scientific experiments, many of which are inhumane and are done on unwilling people with unusual characteristics.^[5] These experiments included the creation of enhanced beings for military use. Many of Strange's experiments at Indian Hill focus on reanimating the dead.^[6] Hugo Strange's experiments at Indian Hill are funded by Strange's direct superior, the White Haired Woman, who is a member of a secret council known as the Court of Owls that wants Strange to find the means of resurrecting the dead, with the memories of the former corpse still intact.^[7] Strange's earlier successes in the field of resurrection had resulted in amnesia in the once deceased subjects.

Pinewood Farms

Hugo Strange was an old friend of wealthy businessman Thomas Wayne. The two worked together to create Pinewood Farms, a testing facility meant to cure humanity's greatest ailments on the genetic level. The facility would officially experiment only on volunteers, some of which were prisoners of Blackgate Penitentiary. Unbeknownst to Thomas Wayne, Strange and the researchers at Pinewood Farms had begun to conduct illegal genetic experiments on human beings. When Wayne discovered this, he bitterly exited the program as the subjects upon whom Strange experimented continued to die. After a number of causalities, Pinewood Farms was forced to shut down. Hugo Strange and the corrupt Wayne Enterprises would go on to secretly continue the experiments at the Indian Hill facility beneath Arkham Asylum. Strange became Arkham Asylum's director after former director Gerry Lang was murdered by an inmate.

Strange contracted Patrick Malone to kill both Thomas Wayne and his wife, Martha. The late couple were survived by their only son, Bruce.^[2][8]

Wrath of the Villains

When Nora Fries was transferred to the medical wing at Arkham Asylum, Professor Strange anticipated that her husband, cryogenist Victor Fries, would break into the asylum in order to free her. When his predictions came true, Strange offered Victor aid in escaping the asylum and fleeing the police in exchange for a vile of Victor's cryogenics formula. Victor agreed and managed to escape Arkham with Nora. Soon after, police discovered Nora's corpse, along with Victor's frozen body. Strange had Victor publicly declared dead. Secretly, Victor had survived, albeit confined to a refrigerated suit because of his newfound inability to survive outside of subzero temperatures. Due to Victor's expertise, Strange offered him a role as a scientist in an Indian Hill project.^[6]

After being apprehended by the GCPD for the murder of Theo Galavan, former criminal kingpin Oswald Cobblepot was declared insane and was sent to Arkham Asylum under the care of Hugo Strange.^[9] After several intensive treatments, Cobblepot's violent nature was cured and Strange declared him to be sane. Strange released Cobblepot to the public as part of a larger experiment.^[10] Cobblepot's violent tendencies returned after he witnessed the murder of his father.^[11]

Barbara Kean, incarcerated in Arkham Asylum after suffering a mental breakdown, killing her parents and attempting to murder several other people, awoke from a coma at the asylum. Upon awaking from the coma, Kean's sanity had seemingly returned, though a staff member at Arkham had suspicions that Kean was merely pretending to be sane. Curious of what would happen, Strange deemed Kean sane and released her from Arkham Asylum to the public.^[11]

At Indian Hill, Hugo Strange tried many times to reanimate the dead, with each experiment failing after the other. It wasn't until Strange obtained the corpse of Theo Galavan did he finally succeed.^[8] Upon resurrecting Galavan, Strange found that Galavan was unable to reconcile death and rebirth, causing severe amnesia and a loss in identity. Upon researching Galavan's family history, Strange convinced him that he was a caped crusader known as Azrael. Azrael then became Galavan's sole identity, as he was only able to remember flashes of his former self. After seeing the results of turning Galavan into a new persona, Strange decided to do the same with other test subjects. Due to his success in instilling the Azrael identity into Theo Galavan, Strange made plans to instill personas into other test subjects.^[12]

As Strange kept resurrected human beings, each one returned from the dead with amnesia. The White Haired Woman and her associates began to grow tired of these failed attempts. Just as the White Haired Woman was about to shut down Strange's experiments, Strange managed to resurrect Fish Mooney with her memories intact. Pleased with this success, the White Haired Woman ordered Strange to destroy all evidence of Indian Hill and relocate his base of operations to a facility upstate to avoid legal exposure.^[7]

When Bruce Wayne obtained access to one of Thomas Wayne's computer databases, he learned of Pinewood Farms. Bruce Wayne used the information to track down Karen Jennings, one of the only remaining survivors of the experiments. Aware of Bruce's discovery, Strange had Victor Fries murder Jennings to keep her from exposing him. James Gordon, who was investigating the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne, learned that the man who contracted Patrick Malone called himself "the Philosopher". Soon after, Lucius Fox, an ally of Bruce Wayne's who works at Wayne Enterprises, informed them that "the Philosopher" was an old moniker used by Hugo Strange.^[8]

In an attempt to investigate Hugo Strange and his experiments, Bruce Wayne and Lucius Fox met with Strange at Arkham Asylum, while also sneaking James Gordon in the building. Fox and Wayne acted like they were at Arkham Asylum for a tour, but Hugo Strange was able to deduce their true intentions. A former friend of Thomas Wayne, Strange pleaded with Bruce to stop investigating so that he doesn't have to die like his father. Bruce Wayne refused, so Strange had Bruce, Gordon and Fox locked away in the asylum.^[7]

Strange was then ordered by the White Haired Woman to kill Bruce, Gordon, and Fox as he was in the process of rounding up the test subjects of Indian Hill for transfer to the upstate facility. He was also ordered to never again release any of the extra-normal test subjects from confinement. A bomb was set to go off in a matter of hours, in order to destroy both Indian Hill and Arkham Asylum, as well as all evidence of Strange's activities. However, Fish Mooney managed to escape and use her newfound mind control abilities to take control of Strange's security, stealing the prison bus carrying the test subjects. Gordon, Fox and Bruce also escaped from confinement. In fear of what the Court of Owls may do if the test subjects escaped, Strange accelerated the bomb to explode in a matter of minutes. Gordon and Fox managed to defuse the bomb, as Fish Mooney escaped with the subjects. Hugo Strange was arrested by the GCPD for his experiments. Fish Mooney crashed the prison bus somewhere in the city, evading capture from the police while on foot. The monstrous test subjects were then freed to roam the city.^[13]

No Man's Land

Professor Strange was later instrumental in transforming Eduardo Dorrance into Bane. When Dorrance was left fatally injured after a confrontation with Jim Gordon, Nyssa al Ghul ordered Hugo to inject the strength-enhancing Venom drug into the veins of the fallen soldier.^[14]

Powers and Abilities

Abilities

• Medical Science
• Psychiatry

Notes

• This version of the character is exclusive to the continuity of the television series Gotham and is an adaptation of Hugo Strange. The original character was created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger and first appeared in Detective Comics #36.
• Hugo Strange was portrayed by B.D. Wong.
• Hugo Strange was first mentioned in the Gotham episode "Worse Than a Crime".

Related

• 20 Appearances of Hugo Strange (Gotham)
• 3 Images featuring Hugo Strange (Gotham)
• 4 Quotations by or about Hugo Strange (Gotham)
• Character Gallery: Hugo Strange (Gotham)

Footnotes

League of Assassins member This character is or was a member of the League of Assassins, a international organization of the world's greatest killers, operating both for hire and their own agenda, in any of its various incarnations. This template will categorize articles that include it into the "League of Assassins members" category.