Fan Decodes The Riddler’s Message in THE BATMAN Trailer

DC released the first trailer for Matt Reeves’ The Batman this past weekend and fans loved it for sure. This trailer was excellent and it looks like Batman is going to a fun and thrilling ride. It’s like a Batman story combined with David Fincher’s Se7en.

In the trailer, Paul Dano‘s The Riddler left a message/riddle for Robert Pattinson’s Batman. In the scene Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) is examining a high profile murder in which a card was left on the victim for The Batman. The card asks: “What does a liar do when he’s dead?” Then there is a coded message on the opposite side of the card.

A fan named Andrew has explained that coded message, and according to him, the broken code is, “He lies still”. Here’s the Tweet sent out with the message. He also describes how he figured it out.

So hyped for Matt Reeve’s Batman Movie, I decided to solve The Riddler’s code. #TheBatman pic.twitter.com/vsxVxucedv

— Andrew Lane (@TheMasterD101) August 23, 2020

He then cracks down how he resolved the riddle, explaining that he examined the different symbols to find recurring ones and then used a process of elimination by first trying the word “Batman” before using the commonly used letters in the English language.

Game designer Mike Selinker also thought out the code and he broke down his whole process of how to work out a puzzle. You can check out his method and analysis in the Twitter thread below:

In the new #TheBatmanTrailer, the Riddler leaves a card with the question “What does a liar do when he’s dead?” I could just solve it like a riddle (and did), but it’s a good opportunity to show how to solve a puzzle by brute force, so you’re sure of the answer. Here goes. (1/12) pic.twitter.com/sHveBmU2Pt

— Mike Selinker (@mikeselinker) August 23, 2020

The Batman will be an awesome movie that will lean into Batman in his detective mode. The director said that it’s going to tell a long and psychological story and proved that the movie will not be an origin story. However, it will support his origin and how it’s still something that he’s “majorly struggling” with.

There will be a series of murders and crimes that start taking place in Gotham and as Batman investigates those things, they begin to reveal the darkness of Gotham City to him. It’s also been said that this is a character-driven story that will focus on the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth. DC Films President Walter Hamada confirmed that this movie will tell the Batman “year two” story.

When talking about the story, Reeves said:

“The idea is that we’re in YouTube. It’s the Gotham experiment, it’s a criminal… experiment he’s trying to figure out what he can do that can finally change this place. In our story, he’s in that mode that’s where you meet him and you see that he is charting what he’s doing and it seems that he’s not having any of the effect that he wants to have yet and that is when the murders start to happen and then the murders begin to describe sort of the history of Gotham in a way that only reinforces what he knows about constant. It opens up a whole new world of corruption that went much farther.”

The film also stars Zoe Kravitz as Cat Woman, Andy Serkis as Alfred, Jayme Lawson as Bella Reál, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, and Peter Sarsgaard as Gil Colson. Gil Perez-Abraham (Orange is the New Black), Charlie Carver (Teen Wolf), and Max Carver have also been cast in not mentioned roles.

The Batman will hit theaters on October 1, 2021.