King Tut

King Tut's History

King Tut is in fact William Omaha McElroy, a highly regarded professor of Egyptology at Yale University. One day he was at work when a student protest turned vicious, and rocks were thrown. One such rock hit McElroy, knocking him out. When he regained consciousness, he believed that he was the reincarnation of King Tutankhamun and that Gotham was the ancient city of Thebes. His ultimate goal was to claim Gotham—that is, Thebes—as his own. His antipathy towards Batman and Robin was based on the concept that they had tried to stop him, and as such were regarded as rebels against his throne.

His speech was laced with Egyptian history lessons, his curses and praises directed toward Egyptian gods. His hideouts were decorated with his Egyptian artifacts and his partners in crime were dressed in ancient Egyptian costumes. Indeed, they refered to him as royalty. When anyone dared to question the veracity of his claims, he would get extremely irate, insisting that he was the "Nabob of the Nile" or the "Moon God of Thoth and stuff like that."

He was a rather emotional villain, going from joy to anger and then into sadness in a matter of moments. He also had a tendency to be sadistic, insisting that while he detests violence, he loves a little torture, which he called "good clean fun." As much as he hated Batman, he seemed to hate Robin even more, as on one occasion he had the Boy Wonder suspended above a crocodile pit, and another time planned to have him boiled in a vat of oil. He invested so much time and effort into his capers he often broke down and cried when things came crumbling down around him. It was usually at this time, when he became his old self once again. Sometimes he was hit on the head and this awakened the professor, and sometimes he snapped out of it himself. When he first came to Gotham, King Tut built a sphinx to shout out his demands to Gotham City. Other schemes for world domination included hypnotizing Gotham with deadly juice from scarabs and holding a millionaire's daughter for ransom. Most of the time when he was defeated by Batman, he reverted to his normal scholarly self with no memory of what had transpired.

He was also one of the only two villains in the series (the other being Egghead) to uncover Batman's secret identity as Bruce Wayne, by putting a tracer on the Batmobile. Fortunately, at Tut's challenge, Bruce Wayne appeared "with" Batman by having a Batman dummy drive up with Robin and Bruce use ventriloquism to make the dummy speak.

However, in another episode King Tut and his underlings, while tunneling underneath Wayne Manor, accidentally mined into the Batcave. This confirmed King Tut's earlier suspicions that Batman and Bruce Wayne were indeed one and the same. After confronting the Dynamic Duo saying that they would have to kill him and his accomplices to stop them from telling the world their secret, a fierce fight ensued with the evil Pharaoh making his escape while the heroes spray his tutlings and henchwoman with Batnesia gas to wipe out out any trace of what they had seen.

King Tut raced down the shaft and found Commissioner Gordon, Chief O'Hara and Batgirl at the end. The Dynamic Duo followed him and arrived just as the villain was about to reveal their true identities. Fortunately his loud voice made the roof of the shaft collapse on top of him, making him change back to his normal self once again with no memory of what he had learned.