The Riddler was the chosen alias of criminal genius Edward Nygma. After being rejected by his idol Bruce Wayne for one of his inventions, he turned to crime and used his scientific knowledge for evil.
Early Life[]
Edward Nygma was the smartest one in his family, this made his abusive father envious so much that he would smush the graded papers in Edward's face. He broke into his school to solve a puzzle in under one minute.
Batman Forever[]
Nygma conducting his experiments.
Edward Nygma became a researcher under the employment of Wayne Enterprises, and had developed a device to beam television directly to a person's brain. Bruce Wayne, Nygma's secret idol, convinced that mind manipulation would raise too many questions, turns the idea down, but Nygma continues to work on it after hours. When Fred Stickley, the head of the research department, discovers Nygma's clandestine overtime, Nygma knocks Stickley unconscious, ties him to a chair, and then uses him to test his device, discovering that he can use it to absorb people's knowledge. Realizing Wayne was right about it being mind manipulation, Stickley fires Nygma, but Nygma murders Stickley, doctors the security tapes to make Stickley's death look like a suicide, and then resigns from Wayne Enterprises. Edward Nygma, who has been stalking Wayne and leaving riddles for him, is inspired and delighted by watching Two-Face's raid at the circus on live television and creates his own alter-ego in the form of The Riddler, a master of puzzles and quizzes. He perfects his brain-manipulation device into a system, "The Box", which beams signals to and from the human brain in order to simulate an immersive television viewing experience.
This has the side effect of allowing the Riddler to read viewers' minds, as well as augmenting his own intelligence. Using his device, the Riddler finds Two-Face in his lair, and proposed a deal with to use his brain-manipulation device to discover Batman's true identity. Seeing the advantage of the device, Two-Face agrees (due to his coin marking heads in favour of the deal), and they become partners-in-crime in order to fund mass-production of the device. With enough capital to start mass-production of his invention, the Riddler then readopts his Nygma identityand opens his own business called NygmaTech, selling thousands of his devices to many Gotham citizens, who finds his invention very impressive. The Riddler then builds his main base of operations on Claw Island which was ten miles away from Gotham City.
Gallery[]
