Rupert Thorne (DCAU)
From Pop-Cult Guides
| DC animated Universe: Chronology |
| Batman: The Animated Series | Superman: The Animated Series | Batman Beyond | The Zeta Project | Static Shock | Justice League | Movies |
|
| Characters: Heroes and Supporting · Villains · Minor · Organizations | Places and Props |
| Episodes | Movies | Web animation | Comics | Video games | Cast and crew | Broadcasting | Awards | Internet sites | DVD releases |
| Rupert Thorne
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Characteristics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Created by | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Steve Englehart Walter Simonson |
Rupert Thorne, a DC Comics villain and enemy of Batman, consistently appeared in Batman: The Animated Series, and several of the related series created by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini, played by John Vernon.
Outside of the traditional "Rogues Gallery" of super criminals, Thorne is the main villain in the series, appearing in 9 episodes and one movie. His role is closer to that of Carmine Falcone in the comics, having issues with Distric Attourney Harvey Dent instead of characters like mayor Hamilton Hill or Professor Hugo Strange. In the comics Thorne is a mobster disguised as a councilman, syndicate boss and a millonaire businessman surounded by politicians and the high society of Gotham City, while in the series, he is publically acknowledged as a mob boss (Two-face, part I, It's Never Too Late). However he still uses several business as facade, is extremely rich and uses his wealth as his main weapon against Batman. At several points throughout the series he appears to control the largest portion Gotham's criminal underworld as the most powerful mafiosi boss.
Contents |
[edit] Appearances
- Two-face, part I
- Two-face, part II
- It's Never Too Late
- Vendetta
- The Man Who Killed Batman
- Paging the Crime Doctor
- Shadow of the Bat: Part I
- Second Chance
- Bane
[edit] Movies
[edit] DC animated universe biography
Thorne makes his first appearance in the two part episode "Two-Face", in which Harvey Dent is taking down several of his business (as he does to Falcone in the comics), and Thorne blackmailes him threatening to reveal the press his psychological expedients, which diagnoses multiple personality disorder, unless he stopps prosecuting his henchmen and busting his operations. In this story, Thorne replaces "Boss" Moroni as the mechanism for Dent's disfigurement and transformation into a criminal.
The thread however, causes Dent to switch into his alternate, violent persona and starts a fight that end with him chasing thorne Thorne through his chemical processing plant, where an explosion permanently disfigured half of Dent's face, who eventually becomes a Two-face, a criminal who puts in control either of his two personas by flipping a coin and whose main goal is to destroy Thorne's business.
In Two-face, part II, Candace, Thorne's assistant, passes herself as a detective and tricks Dent's ex-fiance into meeting him in a place where Thorne plans to murder him. Both Two-face and Thorne are stopped by Batman and Two-face is apprehended.
At the time Gotham Citys underworld was controled by two leading mobs, one is Thorner's and the otheris lead by Arnold Stromwell, an older boss whose family is separated and whose son is on drugs. In It's Never Too Late, Thorne plots to get rid of Stromwell by killing him. After Batman saves Stromwell, he convinces him to help destroying his own organization and ends up confesing to police commisioner James Gordon. Which also ends up acomplishing Thorne's goal by taking stromwell out of the way and making him the definitive underworld leader.
One of the aspects of Thorne from the comics respected in the series is his ugly history with detective Harvey Bullock. In both version although innocent in fact, Bullock is suspected to take bribes from Thorne.
In The Man Who Killed Batman he is willing to promote Sidney "Sid the Squid" Debris to a made man afte he seemingly kills the Batman, but after he confesess it was all an accident and that he wants to escape, enraged, he tries to kill him, but he is stoped by Batman, who is alive and now know all what he needed about Thorne's link to the robbery Sid was hired for.
In the series, Rupert is the older brother of the Crime Doctor, whose named Matthew in this version. Matthew loses his license time ago after failing to file a police report on a gunshot wound he treats, in order to cover his brother, so he becomes a surgeon for the mafia. In Paging the Crime Doctor, after Rupert has a stroke, he has to force his former friend, Leslie Thompkins to aid him to surgically remove a benign tumor from his brother's heart, on the promise that Rupert would use his connections to reinstate Matthew's medical license and she would be let go free. After the procedure, Thorne's henchmen are ordered to eliminate Leslie, but when Matthew realises it he tries to save her. They both escape with the aid of Batman. In the comics, the Crime Doctor's name is Bradford and he has no relation to Rupert, until it was recently retconed after the series.
Thorne's issues with Two-face are brought back in Shadow of the Bat: Part I, in which after Thorne is finally apprehended, Two-face frames Gordon for destroying evidence and then frames Thorne for breaking Gordon out of prison. The idea is to aid an asociate of his to become the new police commisioner in orther to control the Gotham City Police Department.
Thorne is also notable in the series for introducing Bane into Batman's life. In the episode Bane, Thorne uses his resources to hired him to assassinate the Dark Knight. Unbeknownst to Thorne, however, his moll, Candace, was conspiring with Bane to kill him and take control of his business after getting rid of Batman. After Batman barely manages to defeat Bane, he shows up with the beaten and shrunken mercenary at Thorne's offices and plays him an audio recording Robin made of Bane's treasonous conversations with Candace.
Rupert Thorne also appears in the video game The Adventures of Batman & Robin for the Sega CD, in which Clayface takes on Thorne's shape while the real Thorne is on vacation, using the gangster's money to hire other supervillains in a plot to kill Batman. In the scenes where Clayface took on Thorne's form, Vernon reprises his role.
When Batman: The Animated Series was revamped as The New Batman Adventures, Rupert Thorne is notably absent and his role is taken by the Penguin, but he eventually shows up again asociated with him along with fellow mafiosi boss Carlton Duquesne, in the direct-to-video animated movie, Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman, in which they are all in an arms deal together with Kasnia. He somehow agrees to hire again Bane to enforce the deal againt Batman and Batwoman who has been sabotaging their operations for a while. The three end up in jail.
[edit] Batman Adventures spin-off biography
[edit] Design
Rupert Thorne looks pretty much as he does in the comics, always with his distinctive overweight and white hair and his signature ring.
[edit] Gang
Thorne's gang in the series is very large and has many branches. Evey episode Thone relies on a different one, however, his assistant Candance and a goon named Frankie seem to be among his most reliable henchmen.
[edit] Candice
[edit] Franky
[edit] Mathew Thorne
[edit] Bane
[edit] Eddie
Eddie is the man who hires Sid the Squid to aid him in a robbery and celebrates him after thinking he actually killed Batman.
[edit] Sidney "Sid the Squid" Debris
[edit] See also
| Batman: The Animated Series characters | |
|---|---|
| Heroes: | Batman | Alfred | Robin / Dick Grayson | Batgirl | Robin / Tim Drake |
| Villains: | The Joker | Harley Quinn | The Penguin | Catwoman | Two-face | Poison Ivy | Rupert Thorne | The Scarecrow | Ra's Al Ghul | Talia | The Mad Hatter | The Ventriloquist and Scarface | Clayface | Killer Croc | Mr. Freeze | The Riddler | The Phantasm | Bane | Man-bat | Firefly | The Ninja | The Clock King | Baby Doll | Roxy Rocket | Hugo Strange | Doctor Milo | Maxie Zeus | The Terrible Trio | Calendar Girl | H.A.R.D.A.C. | Red Claw | Roland Daggett |
| Supporting Characters: | James Gordon | Harvey Bullock | Summer Gleeson | Leslie Thompkins | Lucius Fox | Renee Montoya | Earl Cooper | Hamilton Hill | Andrea Beaumont | Carl Beaumont | Matthew Thorne | Thomas and Martha Wayne |
| Other heroes: | The Creeper | Etrigan the Demon | Jonah Hex | Zatanna | Supergirl | Batwoman | The Gray Ghost |
[edit] External links
- The World's Finest, a site with a complete guide to the DC animated universe. It's the source of a great deal of the related images in Pop-Cult Guides.
- DCAUResource.com a site with very well documented fictional biographies.
- The Animated Batman, an Unofficial Guide, a site with a complete guide to Bruce Timm's Batman. It's the source of a great deal of the related images in Pop-Cult Guides.
