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"My name is Alex Sartorius. Doctor Alex Sartorius. And this? Well I suppose this is my confession."
—Alex Sartorius confessing to his crimes

Alexander Sartorius, preferring to be called Doctor Phosphorus, was a skilled biomedical scientist and the co-founder of Stagg Enterprises, who created Cloudburst. Following an attempt by Simon Stagg to silence Alex from revealing secrets about Stagg Enterprises by locking him in a chamber and exposing him to a raw sample of the chemicals that create the Scarecrow's fear toxin, Sartorius's body chemistry was fundamentally altered to phosphorus so that his skin would permanently burn in an eternal flame. For his mutation, Sartorius — now calling himself Doctor Phosphorus — swore to make Gotham pay.

Biography

Before Arkham Knight Incident

Alex Sartorius was raised in a Catholic family, but chose science over faith and became an ingenious scientist.  Sartorius co-founded the pharmaceutical company Stagg Enterprises with his friend Simon Stagg, who took the business side of things while Alex, not being fond of attention and simply wanting to help people, took the science parts. Despite much of the good the company did, Stagg Enterprises went broke and Simon started making Alex perform illegal human-experiments to create bio-weapons for the government, other countries, and criminals like the Scarecrow. This greatly damaged Alex's psychological state and made him require anxiety medications in order to function.

Eventually, the burden of guilt became too much for Alex and he recorded tapes confessing to Stagg Enterprises' involvement with the Scarecrow. Not long after, Stagg summoned him and accused him of betrayal. Alex was put in one of Stagg Enterprises' own human-experimentation chambers and subjected to doses of fear toxin which caused him to believe that his body was consumed by fire. Sartorius's body was changed, as his skin would burn at any contact and his skeleton showed through his skin. Burning forever, Sartorius started a quest for revenge against the people he blamed for his terrible fate.

Sartorius would later adopt the identity of Doctor Phosphorus to become a supervillain and wreak havoc across Gotham City.

Trivia

  • In the comics, Dr. Alexander Sartorius is transformed into Doctor Phosphorus following exposure to a reactor core in an accident caused by Rupert Thorne.
  • When Alex first introduces himself during his confession tapes, his last name is misspelled in the subtitles the second time he says it to have an additional "O" in it. So instead of "Sartorius" it's spelled "Sartorious", however when the Militia call out his name at the end of the last tape it's spelled correctly.
  • Alex's fear-gas hallucination being him burning up in flames is an allusion to his character's comic-book counterpart.
  • Doctor Phosphorus is mentioned in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, in the form of Notorious Weapons named after him, which could indicate that Alex became Doctor Phosphorus at some point.

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