Sal Maroni (Gotham)

"Don't call her babes, or toots, or what have you. It's a women's lib thing" - Sal Maroni belittling Fish Mooney before he gets killed.

Sal Maroni was an Italian-American crime lord in Gotham City who was the head of the Maroni crime family, a rising criminal organization that rivalled Carmine Falcone's older and more established family.

He is portrayed by David Zayas, who also portrayed General Garza in The Expendables.

Maroni is the don of the Maroni crime family, and, despite being considerably feared and powerful, is known as the second to Falcone at the beginning of the series. His ultimate goal is to break free if the mould and ultimately succeed Falcone who he saw as week and fragile at best and useless at worst.

Maroni casually befriends a restaurant worker named Paolo who works at his restaurant, who is really Oswald Cobblepot under a new alias, given that he is officially dead.

Maroni makes a power play for the new development at the Arkham Asylum site, and even contracts Richard Gladwell to take out the Mayor, Aubrey James. Maroni catches Cobblepot snooping on the job and tells him to mind his own business. Maroni's restaurant is raided by masked attackers, who try to rob it. Cobblepot saves most of the money, and Maroni promotes him to manager - unaware that Cobblepot himself had instigated the robbery. The upshot is that, in an attempt to appease both sides in the power struggle, Mayor James puts forward a hybrid plan, giving Don Falcone a low-income housing area to build, but granting Maroni the rights he wanted to waste disposal.

Sal Maroni makes plans to rob a casino owned by Carmine Falcone. Carmine Falcone meets with the mob leaders on his side to detail about what to do with Sal Maroni. Sal Maroni later watches the news of the "Viper" drug when he thinks that they might be of good use. Oswald tells Sal Maroni that he knows the janitor there that might be of help to them. Sal Maroni claims that "Penguin" is a good name for him. Oswald later tells Sal Maroni that his real name and how he used to work for Fish Mooney until Carmine Falcone's men tried to kill him. Sal Maroni then pins Oswald's head to the table.

Sal Maroni later sends his right-hand man to pick up James Gordon at the police station where Sal Maroni wants to see him about Oswald Cobblepot. James Gordon is brought to Sal Maroni at his restaurant where he wants to get confirmation about Oswald's story about Carmine Falcone to determine who is telling the truth. Sal Maroni hears from Jim Gordon about his investigation on Thomas and Martha Wayne and how he covered up Oswald's death to fool Carmine Falcone, Fish Mooney, and the Gotham City Police Department. Sal Maroni sees that Oswald is right and spares his life while letting Gordon go. Sal Maroni instructs Gordon to keep their meeting private and that he might call on him again. After Gordon leaves, Sal Maroni plans to use Oswald Cobblepot in his fight against Carmine Falcone. Later that night, Oswald and Sal await their men to come back from their heist at the casino. Upon the heist being complete, Sal has Frankie drive off.

Maroni forms an alliance with former crime boss Fish Mooney upon her return to Gotham, with the plan to kill Carmine Falcone and for them to rule Gotham. During the mob war Maroni forms an alliance with police commissioner Gillian Loeb and sends his men to kill Falcone who is in hospital. However this plan is stopped by Jim Gordon, who saves Falcone and escapes the hospital with him, Harvey Bullock, Oswald Cobblepot and Butch Gilzean in an ambulance. But later they are captured by Fish and her gang at Falcone's warehouse and are tied up. Maroni arrives with his men and is pleased.

But things go awry when Maroni begins to foolishly make sexist remarks towards Fish, and although insisting he is only joking he continues to jibe her and refer to her as "babes" after he told her to chill out and she responded she was which he refused to believe. Her response telling him not to call her babes prompted him to openly mock her and insist it was him being polite. Eventually, he relented and accepted her offer of partnership with him as the main partner. Being sexist, he repeated it when tested her to see if she knew what partner she was before being very condescending and calling her babe once again and "apologising" for it as this was the last time. He then went on a pretentious speal about killing fslcone and controlling Gotham before addressing Fish and calling her babe again before telling her to relax. After he turned and mockingly told his men not to call her babes or any other sexist nicknames. Fish had had enough and, when Maroni turned back to her, shot Maroni in the temple, and quoted "I am relaxed". This killed him instantly and caused a firefight to break out between the two factions.

Trivia

 * Sal Maroni, in the original DC comics, scarred district attorney, Harvey Dent, to turn him into the villain Two-Face. But other sources suggest it was rival mafia boss Carmine Falcone that did it.