James Moriarty (A Game of Shadows)

Professor James Moriarty appears in an obscured and uncredited role in the 2009 film Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, and returns as the main antagonist in the 2011 sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Moriarty is a genius math professor and an author at Cambridge University, but secretly he is operating as a crime lord and a terrorist. He is also Sherlock Holmes' archenemy.

He was portrayed by Jared Harris who played Mac McGrath in Mr. Deeds, and David Robert Jones.

Early Dealings
Moriarty discretely hires Sherlock Holmes' former lover and antagonist, Irene Adler, to discover the whereabouts of missing scientist Luke Reordan - ironically by hiring Holmes. Moriarty is aware that Lord Henry Blackwood is coordinating the construction of a groundbreaking device that is controlled via radio--the receiver being a component he is eager to obtain for financial gain. After Adler successfully hires Holmes, she later rendezvouses with Moriarty in a carriage, which an incognito Holmes purposefully stumbles into while attempt to eavesdrop on the interview. Moriarty silently threatens Holmes at gunpoint, driving the detective away. Adler soon becomes overwhelmed by her mission and attempts to flee via train, but Moriarty ominously confronts her aboard the boxcar and coerces further service from her in exchange for Holmes' life.

After Blackwood's plan goes awry and he is killed, Moriarty makes his move: impersonating a police officer, he approaches the scene of the crime where the device has been located, murdering the stationed officer with his pistol and leaving with the radio receiver in tow.

A Game of Shadows
During the film, Sherlock Holmes comes into conflict with Moriarty after the latter poisons Irene Adler to death, deeming her expendable after she succumbs to her feelings for Holmes. During his inquiries into Moriarty's criminal activities, Holmes learns that the professor had managed to "buy, scheme or murder" his way into various businesses, including arms and chemical weaponry, without leaving any criminal evidence that could be traced back to him. In order to create a demand for his vast supply of weaponry, Moriarty attempts to provoke a world war using bombs and by sending an assassin into a crucial conference using an early form of plastic surgery. At one point in the film, Moriarty captures Holmes and tortures him while singing the German song "Die Forelle" by Franz Schubert.

With Dr. John Watson having deduced his assassin's identity in Switzerland while Moriarty is occupied in a chess game with Holmes, Holmes reveals to Moriarty that he had managed to steal the professor's personal diary containing all the information on his empire and investments. Having cracked the code needed to decipher his handwriting, Holmes had sent the diary back to London for his colleagues to work on, reducing Moriarty's enormous fortune to practically nothing.

Infuriated by having lost the fortune he worked so hard to get, Moriarty responds with evidently seething anger but still remaining calm by telling Holmes that he will develop the most excruciatingly painful and slow ways to kill both Watson and his wife in retaliation for what Holmes has done to him and soon he and Holmes calculate a potentially oncoming violent altercation. Moriaty proves to be able to predict accurately the scenario of the fight as well as Sherlock could and Sherlock realizes that he would inevitably lose a fight with Moriaty due to an injury in his shoulder sustained during his recent torture by Moriarty. Wanting to protect Watson from Moriarty's revenge, Holmes instead grapples Moriarty over the balcony and they both tumble into the Reichenbach Falls, while a horrified Watson watches from afar. Holmes is later shown to have survived the fall, presumably due to having taken his brother Mycroft's oxygen breathing apparatus with him, while Moriarty is most likely dead.

However, Sherlock Holmes has recently announced a third film, implying that Moriarty could return.

Appearance
When Sherlock Holmes first happens across Moriarty, the professor is secluded in shadows, but can be seen wearing fine leather gloves, a Cambridge PhD hood and a top hat. He is armed with a spring-activated, small caliber pistol hidden up his right sleeve. Despite being cunning and upper-class, Moriarty fails to clean the residue chalk from his clothing.

Personnality
Professor James Moriarty maintains the facade of a celebrated academic and author, while he is in fact infinitely devious. Due to his cautious nature, the vast sum of his criminal activities are virtually untraceable to anyone without access to his encoded notebook. While discussing his illicit conduct, Moriarty never directly acknowledges its explicit nature, always remaining seemingly hypothetical. While generally calm and collected, he does have limits to his patience, finally losing his temper in the finale during his assault on Holmes but his rage is not blinded rage since he can control and channel his rage to analyze and counter-attack Holmes mental and physical attack perfectly.

Abilities

 * Genius Level Intellect: Moriaty is extremely intelligent, considered to be the equal of Sherlock Holmes, something that even Holmes himself admits to after examining his handwriting. He is easily capable of outsmarting even the strongest of opponents in a battle of wits. A deadly strategist and tactician, Moriaty was capable of easily deducing what a person is doing with a simple glance. He even managed to fool Holmes due to his great ruthlessness granting him an advantage over the world's smartest detective and came very close to outsmarting him. While Sherlock ultimately proved smarter when they engaged in intellectual matches by chess and later a violent altercation, Moriaty had came very close to winning in their chess contest and Sherlock had to resort to knocking both of them down to the Reichebench Falls to outsmart and defeat him, a move that was certainly completely unexpected as Moriaty clearly did not believe Sherlock would be suicidal and desperate enough to stop him to do such.
 * Musical Appitude: Moriaty waa quite knowledgeable of many Opera songs due to his intrest in the field and he displayed high levels of knowledge in piano music, appearing to be particularly excellent and intrested in Schubert songs. He also proved to be an excellent singer, able to fluently play Schubert's Die Forelle while ignoring Sherlock's screams of pain.
 * Polymath: Much like Sherlock Holmes, Moriaty is excellent in a wide variety of academic fields. He is an ingeniously skillful and knowledgeable Mathematician, as he was distinguished as one of the best Professors of Mathematics at Cambridge University's history and apparently having a particular affinity for Binomeal theorem, as he wrote a treatise on the binomial theorem. He was also very accomplished and knowledgeable in the study of Astronomy, as evidenced by his abillity to publish the renowned book The Dynamics Of An Asteroid.
 * Business Management: He is also an excellent master of financial and economic matters, as displayed by his abillity to skillfully handle and expand the effiency of the war tools industries that he took over.
 * Multilingualism: Moriaty is also a knowledgeable and capable polyglot, being fluent with a number of languages, and has the habit of carefully encoding his notebook to keep his criminal activities secret.
 * Strategist: Moriaty is an exceptional strategist, orchestrating the takeover of multiple industries through a wide variety of methods - legal and criminal - all for the purposes of engineering a world war for the sake of greater profit. He even planted fake clues in a wine cellar hideout convincingly enough to perfectly misdirect Sherlock. His strategical appitude is displayed in his great prowess in chess-play, as when he and Holmes duelled in a chessboard, Moriaty gave Holmes extreme difficulty and almost defeated him until he eventually lost.
 * Prediction: Like Holmes, he too can predict accurate possibilities in any scenario, mainly how a fight will play out. This was a trait which frightened Holmes, as a combination of his combat abilities and predictive foresight would allow Moriaty to best him due to being injured at the time.
 * Mental control: Moriarty has extremely strong mental control, as he was able to restrain his rage of having been crippled financially to a considerable degree, able to still quite cordially talk with and even light Holmes's cigeratte for him, and while he soon furiously attacks Holmes, he was still perfectly able to fight with Holmes both mentally and physically without his rage hampering his prowess and he even seemed to be able to channel his rage to become even more formidable and ferocious while retaining self-control.
 * Martial Artist: He is a highly adept combatant, particularly in boxing. Even as a young student, his talents and capabillity in boxing was great enough to earn him the title of "Boxing Champion of Cambridge". Describing himself as highly compotent and unpredictable as a martial artist, Moriaty displayed himself to be an evasively agile fighter with a huge amount of skill in brawling when he and Holmes calculated a fight and Moriaty not only held his own but even outmatched Sherlock due to his injury. His style emphasized mainly in strong boxing punches, blocks as well as pressuring an opponent whilst exploiting his or her weakness. While he preferred using strikes and deflects, he displayed profiency in using grapple moves. He also had a particular affinity and tendency to redirect and block, swaying his opponent's momentum, and then moving in with a flurry of frenzied and concentrated attacks.
 * Weapon Mastery: Moriaty also proved to be quite capable in the use of weapons, carrying a four shot pepperbox deringer under a mechanism hidden under his sleeve and being able to quickly bring it out and use it to a devastating effect, taking out some of Sherlock's followers when he attempted to prevent Sherlock from escaping.

Formerly

 * Vast Resources: Being the owner of numerous corporations around the world, he has access to considerable resources, most prominently a sizably large private fortune. But due to Holmes exposing him, his wealth was confiscated by Scotland Yard.

Trivia

 * In the theatrical release of Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty was voiced by an unknown actor. Following the casting of Jared Harris for A Game of Shadows, Guy Ritchie had the character's scenes re-dubbed for further releases.
 * Brad Pitt, Gary Oldman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Penn and Javier Bardem were considered to play Moriarty.
 * The Jared Harris interpretation of James Moriarty bears a strong resemblance to purported Moriarty inspiration Adam Worth, including a beard. He dresses in a fine manner that would appear to be unassuming for a veteran Cambridge professor. This Moriaty however should be noted to be a depraved and darker adaptation of the character since the BBC adaptation as he kills mostly or nearly injures Holmes, allies as he murdered Adler with no utter empathy and his polite behavior is a act to hide his depraved nature.