The need for family and acceptance are most tragically found, though, in Danny DeVito’s turn as The Penguin. Born into the same 1% as Wayne, but cast out by his parents at an impossibly young age, The Penguin (Oswald Cobblepot) yearns for the life he could and should have had. They literally cast him out—throwing his bassinet into the river near Old Gotham Zoo, after his deformities and conduct repulse them. Most sympathetically, Oswald just desires to be accepted among the citizens of Gotham. But his own baser instincts and inadvisable alliances drive Gotham away.

Seeking polite society’s acceptance is what ultimately undoes the goodwill Burton’s characters work hard to build up. Burton singularly has an affinity for the outcasts, the freaks and the spurned in the world. Every conflict in Batman Returns spurs from a loss of that security.

With The Penguin, it’s he and Max Shreck’s mayoral recall and image campaign that first builds up Cobblepot beyond even his own aspirations. His eventual fall feels even lower than he thought himself, when a sound bite turns the city against him. Gotham’s hard-earned acceptance turning to cruel rejection leave The Penguin feeling hopeless, again cast out into the harsh cold of winter.

Without love, without Shreck’s false friendship, and with no further to fall, Penguin’s desperation to feel secure turns violently outward: he decides to go biblical. Old Testament, to be specific— blitzing every family in Gotham, killing their children with an army of rocket-armed penguins from the Old Gotham Zoo. Cobblepot aims to cause the same fear, pain and anguish he wishes his own parents had when they coldly sent him floating like baby Moses down the river.