Arkham Asylum.
If Gotham was the mother that bore the Bat-Man's criminally insane enemies,
then Arkham was its womb. Many atrocities happened behind its locked doors,
and not much accountability was held by the staff or the city. Arkham Asylum's warden,
Hugo Strange, was deeply involved and entangled in Gotham's medical and justice institutions.
This allowed him to do almost anything he wanted within the Asylum,
making sure to keep the more horrendous of his experiments out of the public eye.
He put on the appearance of a lawful person, even living out family life during his off time.
He seemed to everyone outside Arkham to be a light for the poor lost souls sent his way.
But the truth was much more sinister.
He tortured his patients both mentally and physically,
encouraging his staff to do the same. This bred a new criminal element within his own staff,
such as Dr. Jonathan Crane and Harleen Quinzel.
Dr. Crane was one of the leading psychologists in 1920s America. He was a part of the team
conducting the "Little Albert" experiments, as he had a fascination with the concept of fear.
The "Little Albert" experiments were a number of tests of conditioning performed on a child,
nine months old, nicknamed "Albert." The experiments conducted involved
conditioning fear responses in the child by associating normal everyday familiarities
with terrifying experiences, sounds, and images. The end goal of these experiments
were to condition a fear response in the child from something as simple as seeing a rabbit.
These experiments were highly controversial and looked upon as unethical by many.
Due to his experience with these experiments, Dr. Jonathan Crane wanted to become the leading expert
on phobias, leaving his professorship to work under Dr. Hugo Strange at Arkham Asylum for the
Criminally Insane. He was not uncomfortable with the "unorthodox" methods applied by the warden,
as he had already been a part of a morally ambiguous experiment, and so he himself began to
conduct some of the most unethical experiments on the inmates, attempting to induce fear.
Through these experiments, he developed a psychoactive drug which,
when breathed in its gaseous form, enhanced the fear and paranoia of an individual. His hunger
for experimentation was not satiated just by testing his drug on Arkham's inmates, however.
After hearing reports of the Bat-Man, he decided to take on a persona of his own.
Donning a burlap mask, Dr. Crane went into Gotham City, finding unsuspecting victims
in its citizens. He would strike quietly and suddenly, dosing his victims with his fear toxin,
and leaving them writhing and shrieking in terror. He had become the Scarecrow.
Eventually, Scarecrow was apprehended, and his witness testimony was a major piece of the puzzle
used to indict Hugo Strange years later.
Jonathan was not, however, the only one corrupted by Arkham's allure. Harleen Quinzel was quiet and
shy for most of her childhood. She lived with her drunken father and stayed below
the radar so as not to incur his wrath. He forced her to take a job as a custodian at
Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane so that he would have money to spend on illegal booze.
Harleen spent most of her days cleaning the vile Asylum from top to bottom,
trying to block out the screams of its inmates and the atrocities that she witnessed.
Those screams followed her, even after she left Arkham for the day,
and they only stopped if her father decided to beat her in one of his drunken rages.
One day, while cleaning on a shift, she met one of Arkham's most notorious inmates: the Joker.
At first she was terrified of him. The Joker was not to be spoken to or interacted with
because of how dangerous he was. Despite this, she continued to speak with him day after day.
She soon began to wonder how anyone could be afraid of this man, one who was so caring,
passionate, and creative. After over a year of forming a secret friendship with the clown,
she began to realize a fascinating and terrifying truth: she was in love.
After that, it didn't take much for the Joker to convince her to help him escape. She obliged, and
the two left Arkham's dreary cells and corridors behind. Their first stop was Harley's home,
where the Joker convinced her to murder her father. There, covered in her father's blood
like a gruesome baptism, she was reborn as Harley Quinn, the Homicidal Princess to the Clown Prince
of Crime. Together they went on a cross-country crime spree that put Bonnie and Clyde to shame.
Many monstrosities were born within Arkham's walls. Through the abuses committed by the staff,
many inmates became so twisted and vile that not even the Asylum's walls could always hold them.
The more famous inmates such as the Joker, or the former district attorney,
Harvey Dent or Two-Face, were among the more notable ones.
However, even the less notorious inmates were still very dangerous.
The Ventriloquist was one such inmate. Arnold Wesker was a quiet, gentle soul. As a child,
he kept to himself mostly, raised by his mother who was a chorus dancer on the Vaudeville circuit.
His mother resented him; she saw him as a constant reminder that she would never
fully achieve her dreams of reaching the big time so long as she had to look after him.
Arnold spent his childhood sitting backstage at low-rent venues,
creating imaginary friends and giving them voice with his gift for ventriloquism.
He longed to showcase his skill, but he lacked the confidence. So, he stayed stifled,
silently enduring the verbal abuses of his mother until he could endure it no longer.
When Arnold turned 15 years of age, he snapped.
The police found the boy next to his mother's lifeless body and covered in her
blood. When asked, Arnold couldn't recall what had happened, simply stating that "Scar" had done it.
It was at this point that Wesker was incarcerated at Arkham. At first, he was a model inmate due
to his quiet nature, though guards reported hearing voices coming from his cell at night.
Hugo Strange took a particular interest in Wesker's case,
holding sessions with the man personally, and soon declared him to be legally sane.
Arnold was released under observation, and once he had his freedom, he took on his dream
of being a ventriloquist. It was not, however, the act he had originally thought it would be.
With the streets of Gotham as his stage, quiet, gentle Arnold Wesker came tearing into the crime
scene. He carried with him a dummy whom he called "Scarface." The puppet wore a
mafioso outfit and was the more vocal of the duo. Arnold soon became subordinate to his new "boss,"
even taking orders from the puppet. Together, they were the Ventriloquist and Scarface, and
they soon formed their own gang. Whether or not he realized, it Arkham had left its mark on Wesker.
Arnold too was eventually apprehended, and his account of his private sessions with Hugo Strange
showed just how depraved the former warden of Arkham truly was.
Arkham's most notorious inmate was the Joker.
No one knows where he came from, only that he was probably the most dangerous man to set foot
in Gotham. With four murders confirmed to have been committed by him, although most likely
many more unconfirmed, Joker was known to be in and out of Arkham more than any other inmate.
Joker's relationship with Arkham Asylum was one of symbiosis.
It was almost as if the very walls reached out to welcome him because of his chaotic nature.
Hugo Strange and the other Arkham employees gave the Joker a wide berth,
as one tended to meet an untimely end if allowed too much time with the clown.
After the Bat-Man's retirement, the Joker escaped once again, vanishing, never to be seen again.
Arkham Asylum did absolutely nothing to aid Harvey Dent in recovery. The doctors and orderlies were
watched very closely by the Bat-Man, as he had a vested interest in his former friend,
but Harvey Dent continued to spiral in the bleak atmosphere presented in the Asylum's walls.
Arkham Asylum truly was an incubator for insane criminals. It fostered many of the worst that
Gotham had to offer. What was supposed to be a house of healing had been perverted
and twisted into a house of horrors. Though it eventually achieved some reform through
the contributions of Bruce Wayne and the help of the Bat-Man, it eventually closed its doors.
Though it is no longer open, Arkham is still whispered about in the streets, having become
a legend and the subject of many ghost stories. It is an ugly scar on the canvas of Gotham's history,
and a constant reminder to its citizens just how deep a person can sink.
We've seen it corrupt its warden, its employees, and most especially its patients.
Monsters were made in Arkham Asylum, and all we can do now is try our best to forget.