- "There's a point far out there, when the structures fail you. When the rules aren't weapons anymore, they're shackles, letting the bad guy get ahead. One day, you may face such a moment of crisis. And in that moment, I hope you have a friend like I did! To plunge their hands into the filth, so that you can keep yours clean!"
- ―James Gordon to John Blake
James Worthington "Jim" Gordon Sr. was a police officer who worked in Gotham City and later became the commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department.
A stern and moral officer, Gordon initially loses hope of protecting Gotham when he sees just how corrupt it is with a majority of the police department answering to the mob. He finds newfound hope though in the appearance of Batman, who he soon begins to work with to finally clean up the streets of Gotham and give it the peace that it was overdue to have for decades. Throughout their partnership, Gordon and Batman not only face organized crime and random violence, but a variety of new threats to Gotham with the emergence of several villains with their own designs for the city.
Biography[]
Batman Begins[]
- "I'm no rat! In a town this bent, who's there to rat to anyway?"
- ―James Gordon
The film partly concerns Gordon's rise from beat cop to Sergeant and, by the end of the film, Lieutenant. As a young police officer, Gordon was freshly transferred from the Chicago Police Department to help the Gotham Police Department secure their city from an economic depression. After the depression came to an end with the making of a monorail system designed by billionaire Thomas Wayne, Gordon was on duty when Thomas and his wife, Martha, were mugged and killed outside an opera by a criminal named Joe Chill, and responded to the situation. He did his best to comfort the couple's eight-year-old son Bruce after the murder, and Bruce later recognizes him as one of the few honest police officers in the city and would always remember his kindness as it gave Bruce the strength he needed after his parents' death.
About twenty years later, after being promoted as a detective-sergeant on the force, while working late in his office, a man wearing body armor and a ski-mask visited Gordon's office to ask Gordon about Carmine Falcone's criminal operation and the police inability to stop the notorious crime lord. When the man threatens Gordon with a common office stapler, which was thought to be a pistol, he suggested that they form an alliance.
While Gordon simply believes the man to be "just some nut", he later starts to take him seriously when he arrives on the scene of Carmine Falcone's capture at one of his drug shipment locations. Carmine's body, strapped to a spotlight, forms a symbol of a bat in the sky, enticing Gordon to realize that the man he met several nights earlier was serious about his intentions to bring down Falcone and his crime empire, and looked up with the other cops to see the man for the first time: a bat-masked figure with a cape flapping behind him, who was dubbed "Batman" by the press.
As news breaks of this new vigilante, Commissioner Loeb is infuriated that someone in his city has taken the law into their own hands and is being glorified for it. While Gordon stands up for Batman by stating that he finally took down Falcone, Loeb refuses to allow a vigilante handle their jobs and orders for a massive law force to track him down. Gordon finally meets Batman face to face outside his home one night while he is taking out the garbage. Batman informs Gordon of an ongoing conspiracy in Gotham that concerns Falcone and Dr. Jonathan Crane, a corrupt psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum.
Batman goes on to explain that they were splitting the shipment of Falcone's drugs into two where only one went to the dealers. The dark hero believes that Gordon's corrupt police partner, Arnold Flass, knows more and leaves when he hears Gordon voice his reluctant belief that Batman is truly trying to help. Batman would eventually learn that the shipments of drugs contain chemicals that are transferred to Crane for him to develop into his fear gas, which he experiments with on his patients at [[Arkham.
Following his childhood friend, Rachel Dawes, to Arkham to meet with Crane, Batman watches as Crane induces her with his toxin and rescues her and apprehends Crane after learning that he is dumping his fear toxin into the water mains. Gordon helps Batman get Rachel to his vehicle for safety while he investigates the Asylum for clues as to who is behind everything. It would later be revealed that Crane was being used by Ra's al Ghul, who is planning on dispersing the fear gas with a microwave emitter stolen from Wayne Enterprises and watch Gotham tear itself apart through fear.
Ra's' men then orchestrate a massive breakout at Arkham Asylum, forcing Gordon to raise the bridges once all the riot police are on the island with him and attempts to apprehend the convicts. Rachel eventually meets with Gordon on the island and gives him the antidote for the fear toxin, given to her by Batman after saving her. Gordon then gets a patrol man to escort her to safety, but Ra's then begins to vaporize the water supply in the narrows, incapacitating everyone with fear. Gordon uses the antidote on himself and handcuffs Flass to a water valve after he attempts to murder two civilians while under the influence of the fear gas.
Gordon eventually proves pivotal in Batman's defeat of Ra's al Ghul by driving the Batmobile to destroy the Gotham monorail tracks and prevent the madman from driving the train in Wayne Tower and causing a chain reaction that would vaporize the entire city's water supply. James Gordon's involvement in saving Gotham results in his promotion to the rank of lieutenant. He developed the Bat Signal with the department's spare searchlight to summon Batman in times of need. Gordon called the Batman to announce his promotion on the force, his appreciation and full trust to the Dark Knight, and to also discuss a criminal whose identity is a mystery. The criminal has committed an armed robbery and double homicide, with an apparent taste for theatrics, leaving a calling card: a Joker playing card.