Carmine Falcone is an interesting character in the history of Batman villains. The story he was first created for, Year One, he's theoretically the Big Bad but really a back ground character mostly, Leob and Flass are the more direct antagonists so Gordon is the real protagonist.
The Long Halloween fleshes him out some, drawing on Godfather imagery, but he's still not much of a Supervillian there, the story is ultimately about his demise.
In Batman Begins Nolan based him on very modern depictions of crime bosses, his name being Italian didn't influence how he was written much at all.
Gotham marks the first time I know of in which we really see the character at a time that isn't just as his empire is about to fall to the advent of the freaks. Yet the dialogue of the show constantly acted like he was about to fall anyway, everyone thinks he's become old and soft and weak.
At the end of Viper I like many others I'm sure thought of The Godfather seeing him in that hat feeding pigeons. It was an interesting contrast as Maroni has a more Goodfellas/Casino vibe.
As of the end of Penguin's Umbrella we realize that indeed this Falcone is not an old push over yet. He and the Oswald are going to be quite formidable.
And of course I now find myself thinking of Paul Feval's Colonel Bozzo-Corona from
The Blackcoats.
I find it very unlikely that's intentional, that the writers of this show are familiar with the Novels published by BlackCoatPress.
Part of it because of The Godfather imagery, The Colonel is compared to Vito Corleone often, but I've always found that a very superficial comparison, The Colonel is much more Evil then either Vito or Michael. And his level of respectability in society is well beyond what Vito has in Part I, more like what Michael's trying o achieve with the Imobolari deal in Part III.
Gotham's status as a Prequel where we know Gordon will fail which we've talked about before. Now I'm realizing how that's similar to everything Stableford said about Feval's decision to make Prequel novels with
Salem Street and
The Invisible Woman, where continuity demanded none of the Habit Noirs we know from the prior Novels will be brought down.
And now I'm really loving that, this Falcone will be like The Colonel. People will keep trying to bring him down but they never will. And Oswald I'm thinking could be his Lecoq.
