Did you crack the Riddler mystery in The Dark Knight? Across Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, a wide selection of villains from the Rogues Gallery are featured, including Scarecrow, Bane, Ra's al Ghul, Two-Face and, of course, the Joker. One of the more infamous characters that fails to appear is The Riddler, otherwise known as Edward Nygma. There was a general consensus among fans that Riddler's cerebral approach would've been a natural fit within Nolan's grittier Batman, and the sociopath was heavily rumored to be the prime antagonist in The Dark Knight Rises before Tom Hardy was cast as Bane.

However, the Riddler already existed, in a fashion, before Nolan's third movie. In The Dark Knight, a Wayne Enterprises employee named Coleman Reese figures out his employer is really the Batman and attempts to blackmail Bruce Wayne in return for keeping the secret. When Morgan Freeman's Lucius Fox refuses to play ball, Reese takes his story to the media and accidentally makes himself an assassination target with the Joker taking exception to the idea of knowing Batman's true identity.

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While Coleman Reese is a relatively minor figure in The Dark Knight, some fans have suggested he might be far more interesting than one might initially think, and that Reese is actually a Riddler Easter egg. The theory comes from Lucius Fox referring to Coleman as "Mr. Reese" on several occasions, which sounds identical to "mysteries" when spoken out loud. This mirrors The Riddler's naming pun of E. Nygma sounding like "enigma." While this alone isn't enough to draw a line between Riddler and Reese, there are several other comparisons between the two. Just like Reese, Nygma is one of the few characters to figure out Batman's identity in the comic books and he tries to use that knowledge to blackmail Bruce Wayne. Additionally, Nygma worked for Wayne Enterprises in both the Zero Year comics and in the Batman Forever movie.

Batman Villain Riddler Comic Art

All of these consistencies can't be entirely coincidental, and it wouldn't be unlike Nolan to slip a subtle Easter egg of this kind into one of his movies, with references towards Clayface and Victor Zsasz also sprinkled into the trilogy. The question is whether the connection between Reese and Riddler is just a knowing wink to Batman fans, or whether Reese is actually the Riddler of Nolan's Batman universe. The former seems more likely, since the two characters have quite different personalities and Reese's arc is over fairly quickly.

With that said, Coleman Reese could perhaps be considered an allegory for the Riddler of sorts, similar to how Joseph Gordon-Levitt's John Blake isn't Robin in The Dark Knight Rises but, at the same time, there is an intentional level of similarity between the two. Maybe, knowing that he wasn't ever going to use the Riddler as a proper villain, Nolan found a sneaky way to include the Nygma in a way that might not be obvious upon first watch. Whether Coleman Reese was the Riddler, or whether The Dark Knight's most hateful character just referenced the Batman villain isn't clear, but it's this attention to detail that helped define Nolan's trilogy as a landmark undertaking.

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