hey there gothamites a couple quick things before we get started i'm very excited to announce that
we're going into full-on production with these documentaries what does that mean it means that
we're pushing to get these out to you guys on a weekly basis it's very clear that you've been
enjoying them so we want to keep cranking them out basically what that means is working very
hard to get more scripts done and you'll probably see them start rolling out weekly
starting in june now we can get ready to jump into the riddler episode but before we do that
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Riddle me this: what do liars do after death?
This question, among many others, marked the reign of terror that plagued
Gotham for many years. Questions that stumped police, confused the general public, and led
to the murders of numerous people. Questions that could only seemingly be answered by the Bat-Man.
These questions cropped up from 1925-1928
and came from one man: Edward Nygma, or as he was better known the Riddler.
Due to recent acquisition of the police files pertaining to the Riddler's activity,
we now know more to the story of this deranged criminal.
Born into a family of good standing and comfortable assets, he was an only
child who was the pride of his mother, a socialite, and his father, one of Gotham's
most sought-after attorneys. From a very young age, everyone could see that Edward was special.
He was much more aware of the goings-on of the world than other children his age. This awareness
soon matured into what really made him unique: his intellect. With the gift that was his intelligence
also came a curse. He found that he would often be bored by many of his friends and family. Edward
became obsessed with riddles and puzzles, anything that would help him with his ever-present boredom.
Chasing the thrill of and always seeking the next challenge to overcome.
His parents spent their many resources in fostering Edward's gift, even though
they may not have understood his fascination with the riddles or games as he called them.
But they did see it as a way to focus his talents.
Edward enjoyed these puzzles not just for the challenge, he also loved to flaunt his
self-described intellectual superiority to people whom he considered to be beneath him.
Edward's hubris was on par with his intelligence. His mind was sharp and
so was his interaction with others, as he had no patience to suffer fools.
When he grew into young adulthood, his parents sent him to Gotham University to follow in his
father's footsteps and study law. It was there that he was introduced to the ideas
of German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. Soon Edward became obsessed with Nietzsche's
philosophical theory of the ubermensch. This theory stated that if one was transcended
beyond normal levels of consciousness, like one such as Edward Nygma considered himself to be,
they were exempt from the normal morals that influenced the average man.
"Nietzsche's ubermensch theory is a fascinating concept when you think about it.
On one hand, you have the idea that one can aspire to be more than the outdated moral values
that they're made out to be; to transcend the average humanity as it were. On the other hand,
you have someone like Edward Nygma who saw this as an excuse to
commit the gruesome murders that he did and chalk it up to being above society's morals.
While the city of Metropolis had their "Superman," Gotham had the Riddler."
What Edward took this to mean was he was exempt from the average morality of society
due to his advanced intellect and his station in life. Using his knowledge of the law system,
he strove to contrive the perfect crime. He would commit murder and get away with it. And
he had the perfect victims in mind: a classmate who consistently annoyed him with his ineptitude,
and his intellectual rival in the class. One to kill, one to frame.
He spent a great deal of time poring over the details of his plan, what day, what time,
what setting. Nygma knew that in certain instances, one could leave absolutely no trace
of oneself at a crime scene. The evidence had to be indisputable. Then the day finally arrived.
He executed his plan quickly and suddenly so that he could utilize the element of surprise,
and murdered the classmate that annoyed him using a knife. The knife belonged to his rival classmate
and was a family heirloom. He left this at the scene of the crime so that there would
be no doubt who the supposed perpetrator was. He then planted one of the victims
belongings in his rival's jacket, a handkerchief belonging to the victim, covered in fresh blood.
When police arrived at the scene of the crime, linking the knife to Nygma's classmate,
they immediately took him into custody and searched his things, finding the
item belonging to the victim. The innocent man was locked away, and Edward Nygma walked free.
The thrill of the idea Edward experienced during the planning and execution of the crime
was soon over. A new feeling of disappointment crept in, as the crime was all too easy.
As the years went on, he graduated from Gotham University and became a very successful lawyer,
with no one the wiser as to the atrocity he had committed.
While he was successful, he began to realize that he was also very bored.
The life of a lawyer had become dull to him, and he yearned for excitement again.
His mind constantly went back to the perfect crime he had committed in college,
and his mind reached an inevitable conclusion: he was to begin killing again.
With each person he killed, his flair increased and his ambition grew. By the time he had
murdered eight people, the police still had no clue who was behind the killing spree.
His balance of criminal activity and work were fairly even,
although Edward alienated himself from his family, and he took no romantic interests. He didn't find
his parents intellectually stimulating enough, and romance was not an option for such a self-obsessed
man as he. He eventually found his way back home, murdering his parents as they had been
an obstacle to his ascent, and so it only seemed fitting to remove that obstacle from his path.
Never mind that they were the people that raised him.
His ambition and confidence increased to the point that he taunted the police by leaving riddles,
questions at the scene of the crime. He would leave clues as to his identity and information,
but the police were not trained for this type of criminal and struggled to solve them.
Commissioner James Gordon enlisted the help of the Bat-Man in taking on these riddles.
It was one of the first times that Gotham's Police collaborated with the vigilante,
and it certainly wouldn't be the last. One by one, the Bat-Man solved Nygma's riddles,
and the trail inevitably led back to Edward. Once they had the true
identity of the Riddler, it didn't take long to track him down and lock him up.
"So you want to know about my uncle, Uncle Bullock. Yeah, well
the year was, it was 1920... I don't know, it was 1920 something, and Uncle Bullock,
oh man, Uncle Bullock and the GCPD - let me tell you - they were at their wit's
end with this guy. He called himself the Riddler. Yeah, the Riddler because riddle after riddle,
it was like some sort of, I don't know, a gimmick. Everybody has a gimmick. And there was no end
in sight to the killings, or even the madness. It made them desperate, you know, it made them
desperate. Even desperate enough to turn to the guy they'd also been hunting not that long ago,
the Bat-Man. Yeah, and the Bat-Man, he was getting results, and so they brought him in.
It was like a new chapter in Gotham City, the police department, and they were they were
beginning to turn things around, you know. It just started turning, just like that, and
it ended up helping them in the end. But you know, between you and me, the guy's nuts."
He was encouraged by his legal counsel to plead insanity. Edward would have no
such thing being said about him. His crime should be studied as examples of perfection.
He chose to dismiss his defense team and represent himself. If the evidence was not so overwhelming,
he may have had a chance, but Edward was handed a life sentence at Blackgate Federal Penitentiary.
Located on a solvated island in Gotham Bay,
the remote location and harsh environment that surrounded it made escaping not an option.
"You see, Arkham Asylum was meant for the criminally insane, the ones that society had
cast out. But when all these super criminals began to appear in Gotham, the city realized
that Arkham just wasn't enough. Blackgate was retrofitted with everything it would need to house
special case criminals ,like Victor Fries, Kirk Langstrom, Waylon Jones, to name a few.
It only made sense that someone like Edward Nygma would end up there. Blackgate had the
facilities to contain a man whose intellect was so sharp, that he would escape any normal prison."
After many years of incarceration, Edward Nygma had become extremely agitated and bored.
He was slightly relieved by his responsibilities of being caretaker of the penitentiary library,
but he was still cursed by his own mind. Eventually, the agitation gave way to compliance.
When Tim Drake, or Red Wing, as he was now known in the crime fighting world, came to a dead end in
his investigation of the sequence killer Victor Szars, Tim had the idea to interview Nygma.
He hoped this would give him insight into what made thrill murderers like him tick.
The Riddler, now much more amicable due to the years behind bars, readily cooperated.
Tim was not prepared for the games the Riddler would play with him. Edward did help of course
in the capture of Mr. Szars, but he used the relationship with Tim as an opportunity
to attempt an escape. It was thwarted at the last minute by the Red Wing and the Spoiler.
The interaction was not wasted. It was an early attempt at what eventually became
criminal profiling. Tim Drake utilized this new technique, and pioneered it for a new
generation of law enforcement during his career later in life with the FBI.
Edward Nygma lived out his days in Blackgate. Even though he was compliant with his imprisonment now,
he still resented the guards and hated the Bat-Man for putting him there. He may have
been resigned to his fate, but he would never forget the one who was responsible for it.
His idea of the perfect crime was not as perfect as he would have liked to believe,
and his self-proclaimed genius and moral recuse were ambiguous at best.
The Bat-Man was able to see through his trickery and put an end to the reign of the Riddler.
While the Riddler hated the Bat-Man, he also had a grudging respect for the vigilante.
The Bat had bested him intellectually, and that truth haunted Nygma and seeded
doubt in his own mind about his beliefs and philosophies.
Riddler died in Blackgate many years later, and no one mourned for his death
as he had alienated himself from society by claiming to be intellectually superior.
His parents were dead by his own hands. He had no family or friends to speak of.
When he died, he died alone. The Riddler's reign was over.
What do liars do after death? They lie still.