Norman Bates
Norman Bates is a fictional character created by writer Robert Bloch as the central character in his novel Psycho. The character was based on real-life serial killer Ed Gein.
Bates was portrayed by Anthony Perkins in Alfred Hitchcock's seminal film adaptation of Bloch's novel. Perkins' performance is so iconic it seems to have become the basis for the much of the myth of the modern serial killer. Bates was later played by Vince Vaughn in Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake of the Hitchcock classic.
The novel version of Bates and the film version differ in some key areas. In the novel, Bates is in his mid-to-late forties, short, overweight, bald, and wears glasses, and is overtly rude and creepy. In the movie, he is tall, slender, handsome, nervous around women, and he is in his early twenties. Reportedly, Alfred Hitchcock, when working on the film, decided that he wanted audiences to be able to sympathize with Bates and genuinely like the character, so he made him more of a "boy next door," which also served to make the film's final revelation all the more unsettling.
Bates suffered emotional (and possibly sexual) abuse at the hands of his mother, who preached to him that women and sex were evil. The two of them lived alone together in a very unhealthy state of emotional dependance after the death of Bates' father. When Bates was a teenager, however, his mother took a lover, making him insanely jealous. He murdered them both with strychnine and preserved his mother's corpse. Bates developed multiple personality disorder, assuming his mother's personality, repressing her death as a way to escape the guilt of murdering her. As "Norman," he ran the family motel and lived in total isolation; as "Mother", Bates dressed up in a wig and her clothing and spoke to himself in her voice. As his mother had in life, Bates' "mother" personality dominated him, forbidding him to make any friends and killing anyone who interfered with their relationship, especially attractive young women. As Norman, he was horrified to find yet another body, but seemed undisturbed about disposing of the corpse.
After he murdered a young woman named Mary Crane (called Marion Crane in the film) and a private investigator sent to look for her, he was arrested and sent to an institution, where the "mother" personality completely took hold; he completely became his mother.
It should be noted that the "Shower Scene" in the novel differs from that of the movie in that Norman/mother actual cuts Mary's head off as opposed to the repetative stabbing she suffers in the film. Also Norman becomes Mother after getting himself drunk and passing out allowing for him to form an excuse for the the murders that Mother performs in the novel.
Bates was released from the institution 22 years later, but the "mother" personality eventually resurfaced and he started murdering people again. After another arrest and institutionalization, he married one of the hospital's nurses. When his wife became pregnant, however, he tried to kill her and himself by locking them both up in his mother's old house and setting it on fire; he wanted to prevent another of his "cursed" line from coming into the world. He relented at the last minute, however, when his wife professed her love for him, and they escaped. After they had their child, Bates finally overcame his mother's psychological hold on him.
While he entered the public consciousness as a villain (albeit one with some sympathetic qualities), he developed throughout the film's sequels into a tragic character and the series' protagonist.
In the pilot episode of the failed TV series Bates Motel, Bates, who was never released from the institution, befriended Alex Kelly, a fellow inmate who murdered his stepfather, and willed ownership of the titular inn to him before dying of old age. As the pilot never developed into a series and bears almost no relation to previous novels or films, it is considered non-canon.
Bates also died in the book Psycho II, Bloch's 1982 sequel to his novel.