The Batman Fan Decodes Riddler’s Message in Trailer

DC FanDome gave fans a lot to be excited about in the world of DC films on Saturday with looks at The Suicide Squad, Black Adam, Zack Snyder’s Justice League and more, but the biggest and most exciting reveal came at the end of the event with the release of the teaser trailer for Matt Reeves‘ The Batman. The Robert Pattinson-starring film is nowhere near completion, but the trailer still offered fans a lot to both get excited about and unpack, including a very clever message from Paul Dano’s The Riddler. Now, one fan has solved it.

Early in The Batman trailer (which you can check out for yourself above if you haven’t already seen it), we see Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) investigating a high profile murder in which a card was left on the victim for The Batman. The card itself is a riddle that asks, “what does a liar do when he’s dead?” while a coded message appears on the opposite side of the card. The answer, according to a fan who took the time to crack the code, is “he lies still”.

“So hyped for Matt Reeves’ Batman Movie, I decided to solve The Riddler’s code,” fan Andrew Lane wrote on Twitter. He then breaks down how he solved it, explaining in replies that he analyzed the different symbols to identify recurring ones and then used essentially a process of elimination by first trying the word “Batman” before considering commonly used letters in the English language.

Interestingly, Lane is not the only person who worked to crack the code. Game designer Mike Selinker also took a crack at the code and broke down his entire process of how to solve a puzzle by brute force on social media as well.

While the actual riddle itself isn’t especially complex — it’s a simple play on the complexity of the English language as the word “still” can be both a term of time and a term of movement while “lie” can refer to the act of deception as well as not moving — it’s fascinating to see the two approaches to the puzzle, especially as they both give fans some insight that they can use as more footage and trailers from The Batman are released in the future which may contain even more cryptic puzzles for fans to solve while they wait for the film’s release.

As for why The Riddler is sending messages to Batman, that’s something the film will explore as the film is, as Reeves explained at DC FanDome, an origin for Batman’s Rogues Gallery.

“I guess the one thing about the Rogues Gallery is that it actually, in a weird way, this is the origins of a lot of our Rogues Gallery characters… so that’s all incredibly exciting,” Reeves said. “So Selena isn’t Catwoman yet, that’s actually part of the journey. Oz [Cobblepot] is not yet the kingpin that he’s going to become, he’s The Penguin — in fact he doesn’t like being called The Penguin — and The Riddler is just emerging for the first time, so that’s all incredibly exciting.”

The Batman is set to hit theaters on October 1, 2021.

What do you think about The Riddler’s message for Batman? Did you try to crack the code? Let us know in the comment section!