Jane Doe is a fictional character from DC Comics. She is Batman’s and the Great White Shark’s arch-enemy. She made her initial appearance in Arkham Asylum: Living Hell #1, created by Dan Slott and Ryan Sook.
A nameless person is referred to as a ‘Jane Doe.’ It is the moniker given to someone who has no real identity. Jane Doe in the comics exemplifies this feature because she lacks an identity of her own and must imitate that of others.
Jane Cartwright was her character in the final season of the live-action television series Gotham. Sarah Pidgeon was the actress who played her.
Hugo Strange subjects Jane Cartwright to shapeshifting experiments, transforming her into Jane Doe. However, in the original representation, her character is significantly more dark and creepy.
Jane Doe is a serial murderer who examines her victims and transforms herself into them totally. She is damaged and broken on the inside, which is why she wants to transform into someone in order to live with her existence.
She has been seriously traumatized, but we do not know anything about her childhood, which is something that a lot of admirers want to know.
In this video, we will look at Jane Doe’s psychology, abilities, and, of course, her antics, which solidified her expertise and established her as a monster to dread.
Before we get started with the programming, we have a tiny request for our viewers. Please consider being a Marvelous Videos subscriber. Like and comment on our videos, and click the bell button to get notified when we add new ones. We would be grateful, and we hope to provide you with the greatest nerdy stuff possible. Let us jump right into the video without further ado.
We have a modest request before we begin our explanation.
If you enjoy our content, please consider supporting us by subscribing to our channel; it is a simple gesture for you, but it means a lot to us; thank you, and let us get started.
Jane Doe: Backstory
One of the supervillains from DC’s esteemed gallery of rogues, Jane Doe is an enemy of Batman. She also happens to be the enemy of The Great White Shark.
Her antics are kind of similar to that of a chameleon or a shapeshifter but she’s none of that. She’s a regular human who is a serial killer and excels at assuming the identity of others. She keeps doing this until she feels satisfied with emulating the appearance and personality of whoever she picks.
She makes her first appearance after assuming the identity of an Arkham Asylum psychiatrist known as Dr. Anne Carver. She was definitely not her first victim though as a series of murders helped her land in the asylum itself.
Jane Doe would observe someone for months to pick up on their traits, and behavioral patterns, and basically learn them better than they themselves did. She would then kill her target and wear their skin as her new skin as she would morph herself into a different person.
With this ability, she was able to outwit the Gotham City Police Department and even Batman for quite some time until her luck finally ran out. After the murder cases committed by her stacked up, Batman was able to procure enough proof to get Jane Doe. He then brought her to Arkham Asylum himself, but things didn’t stay that simple.
In the asylum, Jane Doe was entrusted to the doctor we just spoke of, Anne Carver, the chief psychiatrist. Batman hoped for her to get cured, which is obviously not likely.
Jane Doe would diligently attend her sessions with the doctor. She tried to separate herself from the other patients by being sincere about wanting to get better. Of course, she actually did not want to get better and go straight. She was observing the psychiatrist, who was about to be her next victim.
After she was done collecting the information she needed to steal Dr. Anne Carver’s identity, she murdered her. She carved the doctor’s skin to be her own and became Dr. Anne Carver herself. She could even mold her speaking voice and speech delivery accordingly.
The doctor kept a tribal mask in her office. Jane Doe hid her head behind that mask and put the rest of her body in a freezer, hoping to use it in the future, if and when required.
She was successful at bluffing everyone with her new persona and no one suspected that something was wrong with the doctor. Not the patients, not the workers and the personnel, and not even Aaron Cash, a security guard who was in love with Dr. Carver.
However, the thing with Jane Doe is that she needs to keep up the act of morphing into new people because the parts she has taken from her victims will obviously decay. Since the Anne Carver’s identity was relatively new, Jane could now take her time in finding the next victim who she would like to become.
By the time she makes her first appearance, she is already Dr. Anne Carver.
When the billionaire criminal Warren White was brought to Arkham Asylum, Jane Doe found her new target. Poor guy thought that an asylum instead of prison was a benefit for him.
Jane realized that Warren lived a life that Jane would love. A billionaire with all the luxury in the world, well, that’s the ideal situation. Within the walls of the asylum, Warren White found himself terrified. The environment was terrible and the criminals would often abuse him. He wanted to get out as fast as he could. So, he tried to strike a deal with Dr. Anne Carver (or Jane Doe). He decided to bribe her in exchange for being sent to a minimum-security prison.
Jane had destroyed the paperwork of Dr. Carver to alleviate herself from possible troubles. She also agreed to take Warren White’s bribes, albeit half-heartedly. Jeremiah Arkham or the second Black Mask was aware of what Jane was up to. He had his personal grievances against White. Apparently, Jeremiah Arkham lost his pension because of the corrupt business Warren White conducted at his brokerage firm.
After gathering the necessary information required to turn into Warren White, Jane Doe commenced her plan. She captured him in a subzero temperature cell and locked him in there. She then decided to kill him and steal his funds.
However, this plan got foiled by Batman, who was not the only one who had recognized how Dr. Anne Carver wasn’t truly herself. He had figured out what went down with Jane Doe and the doctor and she was eventually exposed and imprisoned for her actions. White also found the body of the real Dr. Anne Carver.
Later, Warren became the Great White Shark and became an enemy of Jane Doe, hoping to get his revenge.
During the altercation with Batman, he tried to have a dialogue with her. Jane Doe revealed that she felt empty from within, which is why she preferred to steal the identities of others. While the guards tried to take her back to her cell, she had a massive breakdown due to her trauma. As a person, she was completely broken and hollow. A curious case of a woman without a personality of her own, Jane Doe felt like she had no identity of herself, which is why she needed to emulate someone else if she wanted to be happy.
For a better understanding of why she behaves this way, let us water down her situation. There are lots of people who have a definitive identity, preferences, likes, and dislikes. They act according to those things.
On the other hand, there are people for whom the identity is blurred and reduced. It is hard for them to know what they want and what they like. As a result, they find solace by hopping onto bandwagons and getting behind trends, because, humans are social creatures. They need to feel like they are a part of something. Being on a bandwagon with others helps achieve that.
With Jane Doe, the blurry identity has obviously blown way out of proportion as she is a fictional character in a world of superheroes after all. So naturally, instead of wanting to be trendy just like others, she wants to turn into another person to fill that emptiness within her. She needed to steal their lives to compensate for the lack of having her own identity and life.
New 52
In the New 52 continuity, Jane Doe’s origin story is altered. Here, during her first encounter with Batman, she is seen as someone who is trying to steal the assets of a week-old dead Gotham socialite called Vivian Wenner. Batman tries to get her but with some help from Wrath, she manages to evade him.
Later, Wrath presents Jane Doe with a deal to be a ‘man on the inside’ for him in the Gotham City Police Department. Jane accepted the offer and went with it.
She later captured Harvey Bullock and assumed his identity. Batman met up with him but realizes that this is not the real Harvey Bullock. Jane Doe ultimately sheds her identity and fights Batman. After being taken down by the psychiatrist Dr. Abigail Wilburn, Bullock’s body is found locked in the basement. Jane Doe is subsequently taken to the Arkham Asylum while she sets her eyes on Batman to be her new victim. However, she had become infatuated with Wilburn and wanted to take her face by killing her
Dr. Wilburn later became the psychotherapist to whom Jane Doe was entrusted in the asylum. However, it is revealed that Jane Doe was just talking to herself while other doctors at Arkham looked over her actions.
What Makes Jane Doe So Dangerous?
Jane Doe’s trauma response requires her to assume the identities of others. She can manipulate her voice into becoming like the person she wants to become. She can mimic their behavior, way of speech, style, and everything. She also assumes their appearance by wearing their skin. She is almost like a shapeshifter, except she does it all by herself and does not have any crazy superpower. However, as Jane Doe, she has no skin. She is nothing but muscle and tissue.
Jane Doe carries a radio so that she can imitate voices better. She also spends a significant amount of time gathering information regarding her victims for the perfect mimicry.
She can even emulate the thought patterns of her victims. For example, as Dr. Anne Carver, Jane Doe was aware of Aaron Cash being in love with her or the doctor. But, she also knew that Dr. Carver wasn’t interested in Cash at all. In fact, she claimed that after Cash lost his hand to Killer Croc, Dr. Carver was disgusted by it and could never love him.
She has taken her understanding of human nature on another level. When she assumes the identities of others, she literally blends herself into their skin.
With reference to her abilities, she is quite skilled at hand-to-hand combat. She is also excelled when it comes to formulating strategies or psychologically manipulating someone.
When it comes to weapons and equipment, Jane Doe carries convenient and easy-to-use weapons such as knives or guns. She is also very resourceful and keeping the severed body parts of her victims helps.
Live-Action Version Of Jane Doe In Supergirl
Jane Doe appears in The CW superhero series Supergirl. However, she is not the character she is in the comics. Since the name Jane Doe literally refers to someone who is identified, the CW show has its storyline with reference to that.
Here, Jane Doe is an unidentified woman who is later dubbed Bizarro by Cat Grant. She was initially a patient with brain trauma. After being transformed by Lord Technologies, she turned into a kind of a clone of Supergirl.
Being a victim of brain trauma from a car accident, she spent two years in a coma. She had no family to visit her during this time. Later, she was relocated to Lord Technologies where Maxwell Lord ordered for her to be kept on a drip that had black liquid in it.
J’onn J’onzz was the one who found out about Maxwell’s interference here as Jane Doe seemed to have been preserved and altered.
In fact, the disappearing black eye drop was used to turn her into a clone of Supergirl while hating her at the same time. She even intends to kill the Kryptonian superbeing.
As a duplicate of Supergirl, they have similar powers. However, Jane Doe’s powers are opposite to that of what Supergirl has. Instead of having freeze breath and heat vision, she has flame breath and shoots beams of cold from her eyes.
Apart from this, she has all the abilities possessed by Supergirl. She has super strength, super speed, extreme durability, flight, and is invulnerable, more or less. Even the green Kryptonite powers her up. But it does disfigure her and make her skin chalky.
However, she is vulnerable to the blue Kryptonite, which Kara uses to stop her.
Jane Doe or Bizarro spent several months being brain dead during her period of comatose. As a result, her intellect is stunted and she speaks in simple phrases like ‘Cookie Monster’.
As a combatant, she is pretty good with hand-to-hand and close-quarter combat. In fact, she is good enough to land several hits on Supergirl herself.
Jane Doe’s creepy story and skillset give rise to a lot of burning questions. Here’s to hoping that we will get her childhood origin story soon because considering how broken she is, that’s got to be super intense!
What did you think of Jane Doe? Did you enjoy this video? If yes, then don’t forget to like and comment on this video. Till then, goodbye. And have a nice one!