The Joker: Tell your men they work for me now. This is my city.
The Chechen: They won't work for a freak.
The Joker: (mocking accent) Freack?? Why don't we cut you up into little pieces and feed you to your pooches? And then we'll see just how loyal a hungry dog really is!
The Chechen was Gotham City's Chechen mob boss.
Biography
Early life
The man who would be called The Chechen was born and raised in Chechnya, by parents he believed were "poor and ignorant". He witnessed many atrocities in his youth.
Arrival in Gotham
The Chechen's outfit, once weak due to Carmine Falcone's near monopoly on illegal drug trafficking and political corruption, found new strength picking up the pieces of Falcone's empire after his fall. He was a participant in the turf wars of Gotham, but with the wars over he has now formed something of a friendship with Sal Maroni, eating and discussing business with him. His main interest seems to be drugs, but as Falcone's shipments have stopped and with Batman and Harvey Dent arresting or scaring away most reliable suppliers, he desperately enters a deal with the the Scarecrow to supply drugs. Understandably, he is enraged to learn the true nature of the drugs the freak sold to him. By the start of the movie, he confronts the Scarecrow with his men and a pack of Rottweiler attack-dogs at his side. As Crane gleefully reminds him he is the Chechen's only available supplier in Gotham, several Batman impersonators attack them, causing the Chechen to wisely flee the scene before the real Batman appears.
He later forms an alliance with fellow mob leaders Sal Maroni, the Italian mob boss, Lau, the Chinese mob boss, and Gambol, the black mob boss to launder the mobs profits. When the Joker unexpectedly arrives at a business meeting between the crime lords, the Chechen tells Gambol to let the Joker speak of his proposition and (possibly due to barely escaping an encounter with Batman himself) seems the most interested in the Joker's deal. The Chechen suggested to Maroni that they hire the Joker, and were soon taken to court along with dozens of other criminals at once.
After the Joker broke himself and Lau out of prison, he meets him at a container ship where the Joker was given his reward of half the mob's money. Curious about what the Joker would spend it all on, the Chechen was shocked when the Joker set fire to the entire pile of money, along with Lau, and tried to claim the both all of the Chechen's men as his own, and Gotham itself as "his" city.
However, when the Chechen defiantly said that his men wouldn't work for a "freak" like the Joker, the Joker snapped and had the Chechen's own men drag him away to "chop him up into little pieces" and feed his remains to his three rottweilers.
Appearances
- The Dark Knight
- The Dark Knight (Book)
Behind the scenes
- The Chechen's real name is never revealed in the movies.
- A similar character from the Nolan franchise is Yuri Dimitrov.