#oncerbat

My guesses are that most of them started out as pretty menial or everyday workers--Egghead worked as a food processing factory hand, Shame as a dolly grip on a film set, the Puzzler as a teacher, the Bookworm as an unsuccessful freelance author, the Archer as a community theater actor, and the Minstrel as a struggling singer.  Being a rogue is a pretty glamorous lot in Gotham City since you’re never out of the papers, so they figured it would be a lot more fun to turn to crime instead of continue on with their normal lot in life.  Of course, Batman was quick to show them that crime doesn’t pay.

Louie the Lilac and Ma Parker are career mobsters.  It’s safe to say being a criminal runs in the family, so they just followed what they thought was their natural path.

The Sandman and Minerva were always crooked business owners who formerly hadn’t aspired to anything bigger than money-laundering.  Becoming a high-profile criminal was just the next step up.

The Siren was always the kind of person who would rather cause trouble than make an honest living; ever since she found out she was a metahuman as a little girl, she got a lot of mileage out of making her classmates do what she told them.  Singing professionally is fun, sure, but not as much fun as pulling off the perfect crime.

Marsha Queen of Diamonds and Black Widow were similar, except they were willing to be a little more secretive.  Judging by Black Widow’s vastly different appearance in the comics, I can surmise that she’s actually a witch as opposed to Marsha only playing at being one, and that gave her a boost of power that enabled her to toy with and kill the men who got close to her.  Both of them loved being important and being the center of attention, but whereas Black Widow was driven to murder from a broken heart and never looked back, Marsha just rolled with the convenient accident that caused her first husband’s death and used it to her advantage.

Nora Clavicle was a member of the 1968 roster of the Court of Owls, an underground group of rich asswipes masquerading as charitable activists when in reality they just want to see Gotham run rampant with crime.  She was never a feminist--she just wanted a convenient trustworthy label to get by in high society.

Lord Ffogg and Lady Peasoup also got into crime for the fun of it--if you’re relatively unimportant members of the aristocracy no one ever pays attention to, you’ve got to make your name somehow.  And if it involves thumbing your nose at the other lords and ladies stealing your spotlight, so much the better.  Lady Peasoup especially was a childhood troublemaker and wanted to raise “her girls” the same way.

The Clock King and Jervis Tetch--or rather, the man calling himself Jervis Tetch (the Mad Hatter in the comics at the time was an imposter, so I’m rolling with the theory that Show!Mad Hatter is also an imposter)--were also career thieves after being driven out of the art community.  The Clock King was a little kinder and gentler than his considerably bloodthirstier cousin, but they both turned to crime to lash out against the communities that rejected them.

And then of course there’s Dr. Cassandra, last in a long line of alchemists who succeeded where her ancestors failed.  Turning to crime just felt like the biggest and best outlet for her accomplishments, especially with her husband’s encouragement.