The Penguin (Danny DeVito)

"You're just jealous because I'm a genuine freak and you have to wear a mask!"

- The Penguin to Batman

The Penguin was the alias of Oswald Cobblepot.

Origin and Early Life
Around Christmas time in Gotham City, the aristocratic Cobblepots gave birth to a baby boy. Because the child was deformed, they locked him in a black box, where he showed his first sign of homicidal tendencies when he killed the family cat. There was a rubber Duck hanging on the outside of the box. They dropped their vicious baby in the sewers. Eventual the Cobbelpot baby washes up onto the shore of the Arctic World exhibit/ show at the Gotham City Zoo.

Not much is known of his early life from this tell he basically runs off to join the Red Triangle Circus. Then when the circus returns to a town for two weeks which featured newly added to their freak-show: The Poodle Lady, The worlds Fattest Man, and an Aquatic Bird Boy (Some believe that this is the Cobblepot baby). The circus's two week stay was put to an end early because while guests where at the circus their children went missing. One of the freak-show performer vanished before he could be questioned, some say that it was the Aquatic Bird Boy who would have by this time have been nicknamed The Penguin by his fellow freaks.

The Penguin then retreats to the now Abandoned Gotham City Zoo in order to hide from the police. This is where his nickname is put to use rather literally, he goes back to the Arctic World exhibit. Some how he was able to track down fellow members of the circus and they formed the Red Triangle Gang. The Penguin runs around the Gotham City sewers because there is an accesses way from the Arctic World exhibit (the same way he floated in when he was 1 years old). Either Penguin found the Duck vehicle from the Zoo, or it was brought over from the Red Triangle Circus, but this is how he got around the sewers easily. This brings us to Christmas in Gotham City, when The Penguin is 33 years of age.

-this is all based/ taken from the news articles Bruce Wayne had on the computer in the batcave from Batman Returns with a little bit of stuff from the comics thrown in to add to his early years.

Revenge on Gotham City
"I played this stinking city like a harp from Hell!"

33 years later, a man named Max Shreck is kidnapped by the Red Triangles and is brought to their leader, a short, deformed man known as "The Penguin." Penguin blackmails Shreck with incriminating evidence of his more dubious activities, such as the toxic waste from his clean textile plant and the his ex partner Fred Friedburg's hand, Max told everyone that he was on paid vacation. Prompting Shreck to agree to help Penguin run for Mayor of Gotham. Shreck arranges for the Penguin to "rescue" the mayor's infant child from his own gang members. The plan works, and Penguin becomes a hero to all, with the exception of a suspicious Bruce Wayne (Batman's alter ego). After finding out his original birthname of Oswald Cobblepot, (as well as many other names, which are for unknown purposes) Penguin eventually wins the approval of citizens of Gotham and, after being persuaded by Shreck to do so, intends to run for Mayor.

When the subsequent plan is put into action, Batman is framed for kidnapping and murder and finds himself trapped in the Batmobile under Penguin's control. Catwoman and Penguin's alliance falls apart when she rebuffs a sexual advance from him, and Penguin tries to kill Catwoman himself. However, she succesfully escapes with the use of his air bound umbrella before accidentaly letting go, falling into a greenhouse but she once again miraculously survives the attempt, counting as her third of nine lives. The Penguin's campaign to oust the current mayor is quickly destroyed when Bruce Wayne plays selected comments he made insulting the people of Gotham while controlling the Batmobile at one of Penguin's speeches, the most prominent phrase being, "You've got to admit, I played this stinking city like a harp from hell!" The people of Gotham get angry, forcing Penguin to defend himself with his gun umbrella. The police chase after him, but Penguin flees into the sewers, and reveals his original plan: to kidnap and kill the first born children of Gotham's most prominent families in revenge (comparable Pharoah killing the Hebrews in the Book of Exodus in the Bible).

Bruce meets Selina at a ball hosted by Shreck, where she reveals to him her intentions to kill Shreck. While dancing, the two subsequently discover the other's secret identity, but before they can leave to discuss this development, Penguin storms the hall with a shout of "You didn't invite me, so I crashed!" and tries to take Max's beloved son, Chip. Max successfully pleads with Penguin to take him instead. Batman attacks Penguin's Red Triangle Circus goons and puts a stop to the kidnappings. Penguin then dispatches an army of rocket-armed Penguins to bomb all of Gotham. Batman manages to jam the birds' control signals and turn them around so that they attack Penguin's base instead, apparently killing the Penguin and what is left of his gang inside. a flock of bats is alarmed by the rockets and then proceed to attack the Penguin, causing him to lose balance and fall through the glass window, straight into the poisoned water in his base.

Batman then discovers that Catwoman intends to kill Shreck inside Penguin's base. Shreck tries to bribe Batman, but Batman simply rejects the offer, and tries to talk Catwoman out of her planned murder. He promises they could live happily together, but Catwoman refuses to listen, and scratches him on the cheek with her claws. During this argument, Shreck draws a gun he took from a Red Triangle clown and fires it at Batman. Catwoman then starts to approach Shreck, who shoots her four times, knocking off four more lives, leaving Catwoman alive but wounded. Catwoman then exacts her revenge of Shreck by inserting the stolen stun gun into her mouth, activating the spark, and pressing her lips to Shreck's, while also ripping a cable out of Penguin's electrical generator with her free hand, causing a massive electrical surge, causing an explosion follows. As the smoke clears away, Batman finds the charred corpse of Shreck. However, Selina/Catwoman is nowhere to be found. So preoccupied with finding her, he doesn't notice a gravely injured Penguin emerging from the water, ready to kill him. Although heavily bleeding from his nose and mouth, and horribly weakened by the impact of the fall, The Penguin draws an umbrella from his collection, only to find it's a harmless toy ("The Cute One"), and proceeds to drop it. Complaining of the heat, Penguin mentions to Batman that he "Will murder [him] momentarily, just as soon as [he] get a glass of Iced water", which ultimately turn out to be his last words. He then collapses to the concrete and dies from the poisoning, as well as his injuries. At that moment, six Emperor Penguins emerge from the shadows and solemnly drag his remains back into the water. As a result, the Penguin slowly sinks to his final resting place in a cloud of his own blood.

Behind the Scenes

 * Danny DeVito as Oswald Cobblepot / The Penguin: Abandoned at birth due to his hideous appearance by his aristocratic parents, he spends his life living in the sewers of Gotham City. He eventually rises and thickens a plot to take over Gotham as its new Mayor. However, his real intentions are to dispose of every first born son in Gotham City out of vengeance against his parents for abandoning him as child. Director Tim Burton, inspired by the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, re-imagined the character not as an eloquent gentleman of crime, but a physically deformed lunatic with a childhood trauma. While this Penguin retained a number of trademarks, particularly the variety of trick umbrellas and the use of a monocle, he was given a huge visual makeover. His hands were now flippers, with a thumb and index finger, and the remaining three fingers fused together. Where the comic version had varied between a full head of hair and varying degrees of thinning, this Penguin was bald, with his remaining length of hair long and stringy. Instead of a tuxedo, he wore a more gothic, Victorian-style outfit, with a jabot as opposed to a bow tie. Other instances show him in black boots, a bib-like cloth around his neck, and something akin to a child's blanket sleeper, or the old long john-style underwear of the 1800s. Combined with his long dark coat/robe, the full white front of the bodysuit gave him an even more penguin-like appearance. One visual aspect that remained fairly intact in this re-imagining was the familiar top hat. Another new touch was his large yellow duck vehicle, which had the triple functionality of being a boat, a car, and an elevator-like lift. Wesley Strick was solely brought in to come up with a solution with "Penguin's lack of a master plan". The writer claimed he was presented with "the usual boring ideas to do with warming the city, or freezing the city" (the latter ended up in Batman & Robin). Strick pitched an alternative approach, inspired by the Moses parallels of Walter's prologue, in which the infant Oswald Cobblepot is bundled in a basket and thrown in the river where he floats helplessly until he's saved (and subsequently raised) by Gotham's sewer denizens. He came up with Penguin's "master plan" to kill the firstborn sons of Gotham City. Both the studio and Burton were impressed with the idea, though Strick claims the toy manufacturers were worried. Strick went uncredited for his work. Strick also deleted the idea of Schreck turning out to be the Penguin's brother. Universal's Stage 12 housed the Penguin's underground lair, an enormous tank filled with half-a-million gallons of water and a simulated ice floe island. To create Penguin's bird army a combination of techniques were utilized including men in suits, computer-generated imagery, robotic creatures and real life penguins. Everyone involved was required to sign a document guaranteeing that they would not specifically hold interviews with news sources. About midway through filming, however, a few test shots of DeVito in costume found their way into an American entertainment magazine. Warner Brothers hired a group of private investigators to track down the source, though the ploy ultimately failed.
 * In Tom Mankiewicz's script of the first movie, that featured The Penguin, he was described as "a tall, proper-looking, thin man".
 * In Batman Begins, the opera attended by Bruce and his parents feature characters similar to Tim Burton's penguin tugging at the ropes.