HBO's *The Penguin* reframes the catastrophic flooding of Gotham, first depicted in *The Batman*, as a deeply personal tragedy through the character of Victor Aguilar, who loses his parents and sister in the disaster. This shift in perspective changes how viewers understand the film's broader themes, showing that the Riddler's supposed war on corruption actually devastated Gotham's poorest residents rather than the elite he claimed to be targeting, while the city's crime families emerged largely unscathed and even profitable.

The series uses Victor's loss, revealed through an intimate flashback sequence, to explain why he becomes vulnerable to the mentorship of Oz Cobb, who fills the void left by his family and draws him into organised crime. Unlike Bruce Wayne, whose parents' murder gives him a clear moral mission, Victor is shaped mainly by the absence of guidance rather than a specific quest for justice, making him more susceptible to the criminal underworld. This ultimately leads him to kill a rival Maroni henchman, cementing his path within the mob and reshaping how the flood's consequences in *The Batman* should be understood.