Professor Moriarty in other media

Updated on Jan 12, 2024

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Professor James Moriarty is a fictional character in some of the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He has appeared in several forms outside of the original stories.

Radio

Orson Welles played Professor Moriarty opposite Sir John Gielgud's Holmes in the 1950s series broadcast of The Final Problem.

In the BBC Radio 4 November 1992 broadcast of The Final Problem and 24 February 1993 broadcast of The Empty House, Moriarty was played by Michael Pennington.

In the BBC Radio March 1997 broadcast of The Valley of Fear, Moriarty is eventually revealed to be the narrator of the story; the narrator was played by Ronald Pickup.

In the 1999 BBC radio comedy series The Newly Discovered Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty was played by Geoffrey Whitehead.

Film

Norman McKinnel appeared as Moriarty in the The Sleeping Cardinal.

Lyn Harding appeared as Moriarty in The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes and Silver Blaze.

George Zucco appeared as Moriarty in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Lionel Atwill appeared as Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon.

Henry Daniell appeared as Moriarty in The Woman in Green.

Leo McKern portrayed a comedic Moriarty in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother.

Laurence Olivier appeared as Moriarty in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976). However, in this version he is not the story's villain, but merely a harmless man who becomes an increasingly paranoid victim of Holmes' delusions, based on the fact that Moriarty indirectly contributed to the death of Holmes' mother, who was his lover.

In Young Sherlock Holmes, Anthony Higgins plays Holmes' schoolmaster, Rathe, who turns out to be an evil mastermind. During the long credit roll at the end of the film, Rathe is seen walking to an inn and signs the ledger as "Moriarty", indicating he will become Holmes' archenemy. Higgins portrayed Holmes in Sherlock Holmes Returns, making him one of only two actors to portray both Holmes and Moriarty on film (Richard Roxburgh being the other; Orson Welles played both Holmes and Moriarty in radio programmes).

Paul Freeman appeared as Moriarty in Without a Clue (1988); the film revolves around the premise that Dr. Watson (Ben Kingsley), who is the real crime-solving genius, has hired a boozy, out of work actor (Michael Caine) to play "Holmes". Moriarty is aware of the deception and refers to "Holmes" as "that imbecile", as opposed to Watson, whom he grudgingly respects.

Anthony Andrews appeared as Moriarty in Hands of a Murderer.

In the anime film Case Closed: The Phantom of Baker Street, Professor Moriarty tells Conan that he trained Jack the Ripper when Jack was a street urchin.

Vincent D'Onofrio appeared as Moriarty in Sherlock: Case of Evil.

In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), the film adaptation of the graphic novel by Alan Moore, Richard Roxburgh portrays the main antagonist named the Phantom, whose true identity was eventually revealed to be Professor James Moriarty

In the 2009 film, Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty appears as a shadowy, mysterious villain employing Irene Adler. The role is uncredited; director Guy Ritchie declined to reveal the actor who voiced the role. Jared Harris played the role in the sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. In the second film, Moriarty and Holmes attend a European Peace Conference held near the Reichenbach Falls which Moriarty seeks to sabotage, and the two plunge down from a balcony overlooking the falls, Holmes being too injured to defeat Moriarty in a straight fight but knowing that Moriarty will go after Watson if he lives. While Holmes is shown to have survived, Moriarty's fate is less certain.

Television

Eric Porter portrayed Moriarty in two episodes of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes: "The Red-Headed League" and "The Final Problem", and briefly in the Return of Sherlock Holmes episode: "The Empty House". The first two stories were filmed in 1985, with Jeremy Brett as Holmes, and David Burke as Watson, and the third in 1986 with Edward Hardwicke taking over the role of Watson. He also appeared as a hallucination in the Return of Sherlock Holmes episode "The Devil's Foot". In the feature-length episode The Eligible Bachelor (an adaptation of "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor"), Holmes describes Moriarty as "a giant of evil" and says, "I regret Moriarty's death [because] without him, I have to deal with distressed children, cat-owners—pygmies, pygmies of triviality. You see, Moriarty combined science with evil. Organization with precision. Vision with perception. I know of only one person that he misjudged. Me."

In the cartoon Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, Moriarty (voiced by Richard Newman) was the villain behind nearly all the crimes. He had been cloned back to life by a rogue geneticist, requiring Holmes to be 'resurrected' as well in order to match him. The body of the original Moriarty was still covered in ice behind the waterfall he fell from during his battle with Holmes.

John Huston portrayed Moriarty in the made-for-TV movie Sherlock Holmes in New York opposite Roger Moore's Holmes, attempting to rob the Bank of New York while threatening Irene Adler's son to prevent Holmes from investigating, although Holmes and Watson are able to rescue the son and solve the crime, regardless.

In the Soviet series of television films The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson by Igor Maslennikov, Moriarty was played by Viktor Yevgrafov and voiced by Oleg Dahl in the second film of the series.

A holodeck simulation of Professor Moriarty, played by actor Daniel Davis, appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes "Elementary, Dear Data" and "Ship in a Bottle", accidentally achieving an artificial sentience when Geordi LaForge asks the holodeck to create an opponent able to defeat Data (rather than Sherlock Holmes).

Moriarty appears as a holographic character in the Futurama episode "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch", where he comes out of the Holoshed of the Nimbus with Attila the Hun, Jack The Ripper, and Evil (Abraham) Lincoln.

"Elementary My Dear Winston", the third episode for the 1989 season of The Real Ghostbusters, features Holmes, Watson and Moriarty by way of "belief made manifest": so many people believed in them that they became real. Moriarty now has supernatural powers and employs the Hound of the Baskervilles as his henchman. Holmes and Moriarty are both sucked into the Ghostbusters' storage facility while wrestling, in the same manner as the conclusion of "The Final Problem".

An anthropomorphic incarnation of Moriarty appeared in the anime series Sherlock Hound, voiced by Chikao Ōtsuka for Japanese and Hamilton Camp for English. During the series, Moriarty is the main villain behind every crime in almost each episode. As the characters were depicted as anthropomorphic dogs, Moriarty himself is seen closely resembling a wolf.

Jim Moriarty is played by actor Andrew Scott in the modern-day BBC adaptation, Sherlock, as a psychopathic "consulting criminal" who develops a murderous obsession with Holmes. He appears behind the scenes for most of the first two seasons, creating a series of apparent suicides and then setting up a sequence of events where Holmes must solve key mysteries before people are blown up by timed bomb vests, culminating in a confrontation in a swimming pool that is cut short by an unexplained phone call that prompts Moriarty to depart to deal with other matters. In the Series 2 finale "The Reichenbach Fall", he briefly assumes the identity of Richard Brook ("reicher Brach" in German), creating the illusion that Holmes is behind his crimes and paid him to assume the role of Moriarty. Through this he destroys Holmes' reputation and also threatens his friends to drive him to suicide. He seemingly shoots himself in the climax of the episode, but, at the end of the later episode "His Last Vow", his face appears on TV screens across the country. Although Holmes spends most of the subsequent special ("The Abominable Bride") in an elaborate hallucination of a similar case in the 1890s to try to determine how Moriarty might have survived, he eventually concludes that Moriarty is genuinely dead, but had planned in advance to have others carry out his plans after his own death. During "The Six Thatchers", Holmes states his confidence that Moriarty's plans will go into action at some future date, but makes it clear that he will currently act as normal as he is certain that Moriarty's trap will make itself obvious when the time is right.

Moriarty appeared in two episodes of the animated series BraveStarr, voiced by Jonathan Harris.

In the US television series Elementary, Moriarty is equated with Irene Adler (played by Natalie Dormer). As with Moriarty, she is first mentioned in the twelfth episode of the first season ("M"). Holmes tracks an apparent serial killer who uses the name "M"; upon his capture, he is discovered to be Sebastian Moran, Moriarty's henchman, whose seemingly random murders were actually assassinations carried out for his employer, whom he claims to have never met. In the season finale, "Irene Adler" is revealed to be an alias created by Moriarty in order to get close to Holmes and observe him (a male voice who spoke to Holmes as "Moriarty" over the telephone is revealed to be a hired actor). The episode "We Are Everyone" reveals her true name as Jamie Moriarty and she continues to write letters to Holmes from prison. She briefly escapes prison to assist in an investigation of a kidnapping of a girl who is revealed to be her daughter, abducted by the man who acted as Moriarty in past conversations, but willingly returns to custody after her daughter is safe. Despite being in prison, she later arranges for a ruthless crime boss to be assassinated after the woman attempts to kill Joan, sending Joan a letter to confirm her involvement. In the last episodes of Season Four, Sherlock and Joan meet the father of Moriarty's child, who has taken over her organization after her incarceration, but he is arrested thanks to the actions of Sherlock's father Morland, who takes over the operation to ensure that none of its assets can be used against Sherlock and Joan.

In the Russian-produced Sherlock Holmes series by Andrey Kavun, Moriarty was played by actor Alexey Gorbunov. Moriarty is a mathematics professor (played by Alexey Gorbunov) who attempts to assassinate the Queen. He appeared as the head of a London-wide criminal network called "The Cabmen Gang".

In the NHK puppetry Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty is tall and blond deputy headmaster of Beeton School where Holmes and Watson study and live, and has a face with two different aspects: one of which looks calm but the other looks severe. Though he always behaves gentlemanly, he is strict with pupils especially Holmes who behaves at his own pace. He usually calls a pupil by his/her given name and surname and Watson is called "John Hamish Watson" by him. He is voiced by Masashi Ebara.

Moriarty is a recurring character in season 2 of The Librarians, where is he is played by David S. Lee. Here, Moriarty has been brought to life by Prospero as a Fictional and is forced to serve as his strategist. Though he maintains his loyalty to Prospero throughout the season, he eventually betrays him in the final episode, only to be banished back to his story as punishment. At the last second, he reveals that the only way to beat Prospero is to destroy his staff.

Theatre

In the William Gillette play, Moriarty was played on Broadway in the original (1899–1900) run by George Wessells (and again in 1905), then by Frank Keenan (1928), John Miltern (1929–30) and Philip Locke, Clive Revill and Alan Sues from 1974–76.

In the play Sherlock Holmes by Ouida Rathbone (wife of actor Basil Rathbone), which ran at the New Century Theatre in New York City for only three performances from 30–31 October 1953, Moriarty was played by Thomas Gomez.

Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke played Holmes and Watson in the Sherlock Holmes TV series made by Granada Television. Eric Porter played the professor. In the late 1980s, Brett and Hardwicke appeared in the stage play The Secret of Sherlock Holmes by Jeremy Paul, a regular contributor to the series. The only characters in the play are Holmes and Watson and it highlights many aspects of their relationship from their first meeting to the Reichenbach Falls. In the second half it is indicated that Moriarty never existed: he was a figment of the imagination of Holmes who needed a worthy enemy as much as he needed a devoted friend like Watson. In The Final Problem, Watson and Moriarty never actually meet in person.

Literature

In Neil Gaiman's Hugo Award winning short-story A Study in Emerald, the Moriarty and Holmes of an alternate history reverse roles. Moriarty (who, although never named as such in the story, is identified as the author of Dynamics of an Asteroid) is hired to investigate a murder. The murder has apparently been carried out by Sherlock Holmes (who signs his name Rache, an allusion to Doyle's first novella starring Holmes and Watson, A Study in Scarlet, in which "Rache" — German for "revenge" — is found written above the body of a murder victim), and Dr Watson. The story is narrated by Colonel Sebastian Moran, given the rank of Major (Ret.) by Gaiman.

In a 2006 comic book story featuring Lee Falk's The Phantom, the 19th Phantom has to fight Prof. Moriarty; the climax of the story features the Phantom and Moriarty falling down a waterfall in the Bangalla jungle. At the end of the story, Moriarty is shown to be alive, as he returns to London to find "a detective named Sherlock Holmes".

In Nicholas Meyer's 1976 novel, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Prof. Moriarty is portrayed as Holmes' childhood mathematics tutor, a whining little man with a guilty secret. He is incensed to hear that Holmes, apparently under the influence of cocaine, has depicted him as a criminal mastermind. Due to Holmes' worsening condition, Moriarty threatens to tell the authorities about Holmes' addiction. Dr. Watson seeks the help of Sigmund Freud, who uncovers the truth behind Holmes' perception of "the Napoleon of Crime". This is one of many works to seize on the fact that Moriarty never actually shows his face in the Holmes canon. The novel, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, was made into a 1976 film and starred Laurence Olivier as a very different sort of Professor Moriarty.

In the 1979 novel, Enter the Lion: A Posthumous Memoir of Mycroft Holmes, written by Michael P. Hodel and Sean M. Wright, Jerrold Moriarty, the father of the Moriarty brothers, is Mycroft Holmes' immediate superior in the Foreign Office and plays an important part in a plot by former Confederate officers to involve the British government in a scheme to overthrow the United States government. His exposure by Mycroft and Sherlock leads to his suicide to avoid arrest, for which Professor Moriarty blames the Holmes brothers, and provides an explanation as to the antagonism between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty. The Professor himself makes two appearances in the novel. .

John Gardner has written three novels featuring the arch-villain: The Return of Moriarty, in which the Professor, like Holmes, is shown to have survived the meeting at the Reichenbach, The Revenge of Moriarty and Moriarty (released posthumously in 2008 after the author's death in 2007). In these novels, Moriarty is depicted as a Victorian-era Al Capone or Don Corleone, who single-handedly controls London's organised crime structure. "The Professor" is not really Moriarty, but Moriarty's younger brother, also named James, and as brilliant as his older brother, whom he impersonates, disgraces, and murders, later stealing the decedent's identity.

Moriarty appears in Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Recruited from university by British Intelligence, he supposedly set up his criminal empire as part of an undercover operation to monitor crime in London which got out of hand, to the point where the 'cover' became more real to Moriarty than his role in British Intelligence. Having survived the encounter with Holmes, he went on to become head of British Intelligence under the code-name "M" but still maintained his criminal interests. He instigated the creation of the League as a covert ops unit with plausible deniability and used them to recover an anti-gravity mineral called Cavorite which had been stolen by his crime lord rival The Doctor. He used the Cavorite to bomb the East End of London in an attempt to destroy The Doctor but was thwarted by the League which had uncovered the double-cross. Following his supposed death (indicated, but not clearly portrayed, as he "falls" into the sky while clutching the Cavorite), he was ironically succeeded as "M" by Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's older brother. In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, it is suggested that Jack Kerouac's Dean Moriarty (from On the Road) is his great-grandson, and the rivalry between the two criminals is continued by the fact that The Doctor's great-grandson is Kerouac's other creation, Doctor Sax. In the third volume, set more than six decades later, Mina Murray comes across his carcass, still holding onto the cavorite inside a block of ice floating through space.

Kim Newman has written a series of short stories about Moriarty, narrated Watson-style by Colonel Moran, in which Moriarty interacts with many of his fictional contemporaries. They have been collected in Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles. One of the stories, "The Red Planet League", first appeared in Gaslight Grimoire. Another story, "The Adventure of the Greek Invertebrate" (a play on "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", which introduced Sherlock Holmes' brother Mycroft), features Professor Moriarty's two brothers, also named James, the colonel and the station master, and offers an explanation for the lack of variety in their forenames. The last story, "The Problem of the Final Adventure", retells The Adventure of the Final Problem from the other side, revealing there was more going on than Watson (and perhaps Holmes) realised.

Moriarty appears in a short story by Donald Thomas, in his collection The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes, as the mastermind of a blackmail plot involving the alleged bigamy of Prince George. His younger brother, Col. James Moriarty, appears as the antagonist of another short story in Thomas' The Execution of Sherlock Holmes.

In The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes, set during Holmes' three-year fake "death", Holmes encounters Moriarty during his trip in Tibet, where he learns that Moriarty is actually "the Dark One", a former Tibetan mystic possessing great psychic powers who lost his memories in an attack on the Dalai Lama, only for his near-death experience on the Reichenbach Falls to restore his memory, albeit leaving him horribly crippled and disfigured by his injuries. He attempts to acquire a legendary crystal that would allow him to wield even greater power, but, although Moriarty acquires the crystal, boosting his powers and healing his injuries, he is defeated when it is revealed that Holmes is partly possessed by the spirit of the Dark One's old rival, allowing Holmes to wield similar powers to Moriarty's and delay him long enough for Holmes' ally, Huree Chunder Mockerjee, to knock the crystal away from Moriarty and into Holmes' hands, allowing Holmes to turn Moriarty's powers against him, vaporising his body and destroying him once and for all.

In Anthony Horowitz' 2011 novel, The House of Silk, the first "official" (authorised by Doyle's estate) Holmes story since Doyle's death, a chapter is dedicated to Watson's meeting with a secretive criminal mastermind. This character is not definitively identified, however it is heavily implied that he is James Moriarty. Watson later states that he believes this to be the case, and in an appendix Horowitz states the identity of the character outright. Moriarty also appears as a corpse in the sequel to this novel, in which Pinkerton detective Frederick Chase is investigating the events that took place at the Reichenbach Falls. However it turns out at the end of the book that the corpse in fact belonged to a man murdered by Moriarty and that Frederick Chase is himself Moriarty in disguise.

In Paco Ignacio Taibo II's "The Return of the Tigers of Malaysia", Dr James Moriarty appears as the mastermind behind the attacks on Sandokan and his friend Yanez.

In The Cthulhu Casebooks by James Lovegrove- presenting an alternate version of Holmes' cases where he and Watson regularly faced the Great Old Ones of H. P. Lovecraft's work- Moriarty is the antagonist of the first novel, Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows, where he attempts various sacrifices to win the aid of the old god Nyarlathotep, but is drawn in by his would-be god when he attempts to sacrifice Holmes, Watson, Mycroft and Gregson, although Holmes speculates that he has some plan to return.

Video games

In the mobile game Fate/Grand Order, Moriarty is an Archer class servant and the antagonist of the Shinjuku chapter.

In the computer adventure Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, Holmes encounters Moriarty locked in a Switzerland mental hospital in 1895 (four years after "The Final Problem"), where the Professor has suffered severe brain injuries from the Falls. Not recognising Holmes in disguise, Moriarty is tricked into thinking his nemesis is in the hospital lobby, and charges from his cell in a frenzy, giving Holmes a diversion so he may investigate the asylum's secrets further. In the opening of the sequel, Sherlock Holmes versus Arsène Lupin, or Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis, there has been no word of any mental recovery or escape attempts by Moriarty. Holmes remarks to Watson, "If there had, we would be on the way to Switzerland already." In The Testament of Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty returns as the main antagonist who tries to frame Holmes and create anarchy. In Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter, Moriarty's death continues to haunt Holmes due to the fact that Sherlock adopted Moriarty's daughter Katelyn and is living in fear of her discovering the truth about her biological father and following in his footsteps. After Kate is kidnapped Holmes discovers Moriarty's crypt and a message he left for Kate where it's revealed Moriarty anticipated both his death and Kate's adoption, he attempts to convince her to turn against Holmes and continue his work.

References

Professor Moriarty in other media Wikipedia

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