Carmine Falcone (DC)

"People from your world have so much to lose. Now, you think because your mommy and your daddy got shot, you know about the ugly side of life, but you don't. You've never tasted desperate. You're Bruce Wayne, the Prince of Gotham; you'd have to go a thousand miles to meet someone who didn't know your name. So, don't come down here with your anger, trying to prove something to yourself. This is a world you'll never understand. And you always fear what you don't understand."

- Falcone to a young Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins.

Carmine "The Roman" Falcone is DC Comics villain most prominently featured in the Batman comics and media. During Batman: Year One and Batman: The Long Halloween, he is a major antagonist and controls much of the Gotham City criminal underworld, which is referred to as "The Roman Empire".

History
During the events of Batman: Year One, Falcone virtually runs Gotham City, with the mayor, city council, and Police Commissioner Gillian B. Loeb in his pocket. However, his power base comes under attack with the arrival of the mysterious vigilante, Batman, who quickly destabalizes much of Falcone's holdings and his hold over the criminal underworld becomes greatly dimished.

During the events of The Long Halloween, one of Falcone's private warehouses containing millions of dollars in stolen cash, is found and destroyed by Batman and District Attorney Harvey Dent. Falcone becomes infuriated at Dent's efforts to stop his operations, he convinces his longstanding rival, Sal Maroni, to kill Dent during the trial against him. Maroni throws a vial of acid at Dent, disfiguring the entire left side of his face, but not killing him. Dent goes insane and becomes Two-Face. At the end of the novel, Two-Face breaks into Falcone's mansion and murders him.

Batman Begins
Falcone appears in Christopher Nolan's film Batman Begins as the tertiary antagonist, portrayed by Tom Wilkinson. Like in Batman: Year One (which a great deal of the movie's plot is based on), Falcone controls the criminal underworld and much of Gotham City; he is effectively above the law as most government officials are either on his payroll or afraid of him (James Gordon, back then just a Sergeant, is one of the few members of the GCPD who are not on his side.) He has Joe Chill (the murderer of Bruce Wayne's parents with whom he shared a cell) killed for threatening to testify against him depriving Bruce Wayne of the chance to take his own revenge.

Bruce confronts him at an underground establishment and tells Falcone that not everyone in Gotham is afraid of him. Falcone dismisses the young billionaire as a harmless nuisance telling him that real power comes from being feared, that Bruce does not understand the criminal world, and that people fear what they do not understand, and furthermore infuriates Wayne by insulting his father for "begging like a dog" to Chill to spare them the night he killed his parents. This inspires Wayne to travel the world in a journey that culminates in his transformation into Batman. When Falcone goes into business with Dr. Jonathan Crane and a mysterious accomplice, he smuggles a fear toxin into Gotham and Crane, who runs Arkham Asylum, diagnoses Falcone's henchmen as insane when they are arrested so they can avoid prison. Batman foils the plot and leaves Falcone unconscious on the scene. While in prison, Falcone tries to blackmail Crane into allowing him a part in the upcoming fear toxin project. Crane instead gasses him with the fear toxin, leaving him in a state of psychosis. He is briefly seen in Arkham when Batman goes to rescue Rachel Dawes from Scarecrow and was not seen when Ra's al Ghul's men released all the inmates in Arkham.

Post-Batman Begins
Following his events of Batman Begins, Sal Maroni becomes the leader of the Falcone crime family.

While it is briefly mentioned by Harvey Dent during Maroni's trial in The Dark Knight that Falcone was still incarcerated within Arkham Asylum, his general fate is undetermined. It is unknown whether he has recovered from Scarecrow's fear toxin or not.