Film Theory: David Fincher's Se7en Is Set In Gotham Before Batman

3. There's A Ready-Made Rogues' Gallery

Rewatching Se7en, it becomes clear just how expertly Fincher employs world-building to create a palpable atmosphere of toxic dread, by depicting a city that, like Gotham, is completely absorbed by corruption and moral bankruptcy at every level.

Se7en isn't just content to depict its decay through Doe's actions, though - the majority of his victims represent problematic aspects of society in one way or another.

For instance, it's easy to imagine how a character like Leland Orser's lust victim (pictured above) - who was forced at gunpoint to rape a prostitute with a bladed strap-on - could become a deranged villain in the future, riddled with PTSD after what Doe made him do.

Then there's sloth victim Victor (Michael Reid MacKay), who while technically more of a vegetable than a functioning human being and implied to have little time left to live, is nevertheless grotesque enough to fit the bill of a classically terrifying Batman antagonist should he find a way to escape the hospital.

Even outside of the main plot, Fincher does a fantastic job hinting at the overabundance of fear pervading throughout the city.

Crimes can frequently be heard going on outside both Mills and Somerset's apartments, Somerset drives past a dead body on the sidewalk at one point, and even tells a grim story where a man got robbed the night before, only to be additionally stabbed in both eyes by the attacker for no reason.

But perhaps the most Batman-inspired crime comes in the form of the rampant corruption implied in the city's police force.

Somerset tells Mills that the press frequently bribes the police to get crime scene tip-offs, and at the end of the film, it's suggested that John Doe used similar means to find out Mills' address and murder his wife.

And in a neat coincidence, character actor Mark Boone Junior appears in Se7en as a corrupt FBI agent who accepts a bribe from Somerset to access some FBI files, and Junior then shows up in Batman Begins as, you guessed it, a corrupt cop partial to being bribed. It sure seems like he got a demotion from the FBI, though.

This all adds up to a cesspool of criminals, both violent reprobates and white-collar offenders, that bears an uncanny resemblance to the grim Gotham City envisioned before Batman showed up to save it.

But there is one human constant across these two stories, and of course, it's Morgan Freeman...