Gotham Chronicle Viral Site Launches

FOX's Gotham is enjoying one of the perks of being a Batman-themed project: a spiffy viral marketing campaign.

The Hollywood Reporter had the story first, and the image above, as you can see by the watermark.

Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight was one of the first movies to really use Internet-based viral marketing to its (then-)fullest potential, and while The Dark Knight Rises failed to capture the imagination in the same way, their viral campaign was still cooler than most movies. A site for Gotham, ostensibly built around one of the local newspapers, is a commonsense move.

Ironically, it's the Gotham Gazette that's generally spotted in the DC Comics Universe, whereas the viral site revolves around the Gotham Chronicle, a paper which as far as we can tell first surfaced (as the Gotham City Chronicle) as part of a special edition that the San Francisco Chronicle did for last year's "Batkid" festivities in the city.

One place where Gotham inserted the "City" back into things is in the name of Gotham University -- a college whose comic-book alumni include The Scarecrow, Spoiler and Booster Gold -- is now "Gotham City University," per a story about Edward Nygma winning an award (and, of course, using a riddle for his acceptance speech).

Unlike The Flash and Arrow or even Constantine, it seems as though the Easter eggs in Gotham will be infrequent, except where they're pointing you down a specific path for characters like Nygma. That piece is full of perfect spots to drop in a familiar name or locale, but as far as we can tell or a quick search of the DC Wiki tells us, names like Zelda Merman and "Evidence Quarterly" are new inventions for the series -- that is unless Merman is Zelda the Great, but that's a long-shot.

Carmine Falcone -- the organized crime figure implied to have been involved in the deaths of the Waynes in the Nolanverse -- will apparently appear in the series. The actor who plays him appears (from the image below) to be John Doman, a veteran character actor known for roles on Oz, The Wire and most recently as mob boss Paddy Doyle on TNT's Rizzoli and Isles.

Falcone was an invention of, appropriately enough, Batman: Year One, one of the most seminal reworkings of the Dark Knight's origin, written by Frank Miller and drawn by David Mazzucchelli. An animated film was made based on that miniseries which starred Ben McKenzie -- Jim Gordon in Gotham -- as Batman.

Also of interest: A number of meme-style images intended to give the audience a sense of The Penguin, Catwoman and Jim Gordon. Gordon's identifies him as the son of a former DA -- who wants to bet he was Harvey Dent's mentor or inspiration at some point?