Here's my take on Professor Jonathan Crane:
There's so many different versions of him, so here is basically my own version. This version isn't based on one piece of Batman media in particular and takes bits and pieces! Should I like, call this the ChronicBeansverse or something? Chronicverse? Idk but I'ma just roll with it.
TW: Trypanophobia (Needles), Past Abuse, Religious Trauma, Cult-like Behaviors, Human Experimentation (Fear Toxin Use), Kidnapping
💉 Okay, so in my version of Jonathan Crane's backstory, he has a similar one to the Year One: Batman/Scarecrow version, with a few added points. Whilst not explicitly a cult of any sort, many members of the Keeny Family take their love of God and Christianity to a very cultish degree. The church they went to was a normal, healthy church environment with no extreme views; the Keeny family just took it to another level. This, alongside his great-grandmother's abuse, has caused Jonathan to have a large amount of religious trauma and impacted the way he views religion as a whole. He genuinely fears it and those who follow religion, actively avoiding them due to a fear that they will hurt him in some way. The same goes for birds, due to their use in his abuse.
💉 The events during his school years didn't actually happen in this universe. During school, he was just seen as the quiet kid, or kind of like a ghost. Nobody really noticed him, so nobody really bullied him. What ended up causing his love of fear was him realizing that, for the more devoted and fanatic members of his family, they used fear to keep him and others in line. They'd threaten, they'd damn, and they'd use any fear tactic to get others to do their will. So, in a desperate attempt to gain some level of control in his life, he vowed to find a way to instill that same fear into them.
💉 There is ONE family member whom Jonathan liked, which was his younger cousin, John Keeny. John was a pretty nice boy to him, seemingly unaware of the abuse their great-grandmother was putting him through or the fact that other family members didn't like Jonathan due to his illegitimacy, but seemed to disappear after a while. John is currently living in Gotham, but Jonathan doesn't know that. I might make a post on John Keeny later on.
💉 In this little universe, Jonathan Crane works as a professor of psychology at Gotham University. He is generally seen as a strict professor, with a few exceptions. He truly wants to see his students succeed, which is why he is so strict. The only students he sees as exceptions are those who have special needs, such as a learning disability or a physical one. They may not be able to come into class in time to meet his strict schedule, or may have difficulty reading the textbooks he requires them to use, etc. So, instead, he'll work more directly with them to accommodate for them, such as tutoring after class or simply checking in on them more often during normal class time to make sure they are doing fine.
💉 He's one of the newer villains, who still hasn't been noticed by the masses of Gotham. So, he still has his job, and doesn't even have his Scarecrow villain persona or costume. He does have a lab in the basement of his house, where he performs experiments of unwilling test subjects using his fear toxin. So, for now, the few villains who know about him call him a "fledgling criminal", with those few villains being The Riddler and The Penguin. Jonathan is completely unaware that these two know he is a criminal, nor has he ever spoken to or met them in his life.
💉 What he has been doing, as of current, is plucking random people off the streets of Gotham and keeping them in his basement, using the fear toxin on them. There are currently three different forms he has made of the fear toxin: a powdered version that can be used to lace food or drinks, an injectable version, and a gas version that can be used in open air or large spaces. So far, he has found the injection to be the strongest, with the gas being the weakest, but effecting many at once.
💉 Once he's done with a "patient", he will knock them out before tossing them back to the streets, leaving them scared and confused. They usually don't remember much of what happened, either, as a side effect of the fear toxin is foggy memories or a complete loss of memory for a certain time period before, during, and after exposure. They know SOMETHING happened, but not what. This has helped Jonathan in hiding his activities from the police.
💉 He doesn't have any real plans of making a villain persona (aka the Scarecrow), since he doesn't see a need for one. While he is making his fear toxin, as of current, he has no plans to use it for crimes like robbery, murder, or the likes. He would only need a villain persona if he planned to do crimes out in the open, right? He doesn't plan for his toxin to escape his basement, at least, not for now. His toxin is made out of a desire to learn more about fear. He is a researcher at heart, with his experimentation being done out of the purest, most sadistic form of curiosity. Why ruin it by using it for something other than research? It isn't even complete, yet!