Gotham's Blackgate Penitentiary once had a Gallows Tree from which 313 criminals with death sentences were hanged. The wood from that tree was whittled by an inmate into the puppet Scarface, and that inmate was murdered by Arnold Wesker, a man who soon fell under Scarface's influence. While most believe that Scarface is simply a tool through which Wesker, as the criminal mastermind, the Ventriloquist, acts out a dark side to his personality, Wesker himself believes that Scarface is possessed by the souls of who died beneath the gallows Tree, and the puppet actually motivates him to commit the duo's many crimes.