Characters / Gotham - Edward Nygma

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Edward Nygma/The Riddler

"Spread the word to all your friends. The Riddler is coming!"

Played By: Cory Michael Smith

"This is who I am. It was just finally admitting the truth to myself. Well, that and murdering some people."

A crime scene analyst who works for the Gotham City Police Department and often presents his information in riddles. After his accidental killing of his crush's abusive boyfriend, he starts a downward spiral that involves him killing his girlfriend, framing Gordon for it and eventually becoming the full-fledged Riddler in season 3.

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Tropes A-I

• Accidental Murder: He accidentally strangles his girlfriend Kristen while trying desperately to prevent her freaking out over the revelation he killed her abusive ex-boyfriend Tom.
• Adaptational Badass: One of the most formidable versions of the Riddler yet seen. Without Batman around to rival him he's the Evil Genius of the show and nowhere near as bogged down with his riddling compulsion as the comics.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Red-haired in the comics but dark-haired here. Played with as he originally had black hair in the comics but is almost exclusively drawn as a redhead nowadays.
• Adaptational Heroism: Downplayed, but much of his descent into darkness is spurred on by his love for certain characters and desire to help them. He kills Tom to protect Miss Kringle, in season 3 helps Oswald become mayor out of genuine friendship and after falling in love with Isabella goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Oswald for killing her. In "They Did What?" he willingly stays to help Gordon and Oswald stop Bane destroying Gotham.
• Adaptational Jerkass: After his Face–Heel Turn. In the comics, he was only an evil mastermind with a quirk for riddles. He was one of Batman's friendliest enemies and even became a rival detective of Batman's for a time. In the show, he becomes an Ax-Crazy serial killer, murdering several people in an attempt to cover up his tracks. He then frames Gordon for the murder of a fellow officer, sending him to Blackgate. He is shown to have little remorse in retrospect for the murders he commits, saying that they free him.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: At the start. He has No Social Skills and is often smug and annoying with his riddles, but he's a competent and effective police forensic scientist who often provides Gordon and Bullock with critical information. Most notable when he finds out Gordon's been fired - he informs Gordon he intends to protest to the highest authority (even if he's not sure who that is) and actually gives Gordon an awkward hug before leaving. Needless to say, after becoming the Riddler that all goes out the window - but even then there's far more focus on his genuine Villainous Friendship with Penguin.
• Admiring the Abomination: His reaction to several people collapsing as their bones turn to dust inside them is an awestruck "Fascinating!" He later shows an interest in crimes beyond the forensics.
• Affably Evil: Upon his initial descent into villainy, Nygma retains his dorky and eccentric demeanor.
• Age Lift: Riddler is now apparently around Gordon's age, while usually he is around Batman's age.
• Ambiguously Bi: While he is clearly attracted to women, with Kristen, Isabella and Lee, his friendship with Oswald can get very intense, even spelling out "love" as the reason he cleaned up his campaign.
• Ambiguous Situation: In season 5 - he's blacking out and waking up randomly all over the now-derelict city. He assumes it's the Ed personality, but isn't aware that he's been in the care of Hugo Strange - who actually put a mind-control chip in his head, rendering him Brainwashed and Crazy whenever Eduardo needed a killer inside Gotham.
• Arc Villain: At the start of latter halves of both seasons 2 and 3.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • He and Oswald became this to each other after Oswald murdered Ed's girlfriend and Ed destroyed Oswald's criminal empire. Eventually subverted after Penguin reawakens his Riddler personality and later saves his life from Sofia's men - when Riddler later betrays him he tells him he has no ill will towards him, he's just doing it to protect Lee.
  • He can also be considered one for Gordon, seeing as he framed Jim for murder and may have indirectly caused Lee's miscarriage. Resurfaces in season 4 where he starts getting paranoid Gordon will take the now-Tetch afflicted Lee away from him.
  • Also develops a fixation on Lucius Fox in season 3 after Fox proves capable of working out his riddles.
• Armor-Piercing Question: When he realises Penguin is going to rig an election he has an excellent chance of winning fairly, he pays a little girl to feed Oswald compliments about getting rid of Strange's monsters. A delighted Penguin mouths off that people look at him differently now and genuinely appreciate him - then Ed reveals the ruse, just to show him how hollow paid adulation is.
  Ed: And how do you feel now?
• Attention Whore: He is the Riddler, after all. Before his Face–Heel Turn he's simply desperate for someone to appreciate his skills, all the more so as he's routinely belittled by Bullock. After becoming the Riddler it manifests in his monumental ego testing others with riddles, usually in front of others, so he can prove he's the smartest man in the room.
• Ax-Crazy: After suffering a serious Sanity Slippage, Nygma begins killing people left and right while trying to hide his ex-girlfriend's corpse, to the point where he fully embraces the idea of killing others because it provides a sense of power to him. He kinda sorta acts somewhere close to his old self (albeit colder and with more arrogance) during his Villainous Friendship with Penguin in season 3, but he goes off the deep end once more after finding out Isabella was murdered by Penguin. By the end of Season 3 he's the Riddler in full and any trace of the basically decent Ed is buried under the Riddler's massive ego and a pile of bodies.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In "Mad Grey Dawn."
• Badass Boast:
  • A particularly good one, given how well he lives up to it over season 3:
  Hallucination Penguin: I hate to burst your bubble, but no one is going to be afraid of "The Riddler".
  Ed: Maybe not yet. But they will be.
  • Again at the end of season 5, where the people's lack of appreciation for his bravery leads to a serious case of Sanity Slippage.
  Riddler: Common criminals? Never again. I've shown this city who I truly am once before, and I will do it again! They will BOW to the Riddler, and they won't get up until I permit them to!
• Badass in a Nice Suit: He starts wearing his trademark green suit and bowler hat in Season 3.
• Batman Gambit: Pulls off a spectacular one on Gordon in "Mad Grey Dawn" to disgrace him.
• Berserk Button: He's got a few, most of which stem from him viewing himself as a No-Respect Guy - as his darker side takes over, don't insult him or physically attack him. Don't EVER harm people he loves (as Tom and Penguin find out the hard way), don't get his riddles wrong, and always call him the Riddler. Lately, telling him Lee doesn't love him is another good way to get on his bad side^note As shown in "Thirteen Stitches", he seems to have gotten over his love for Lee, though given his awkward hesitation when Penguin asks if they're taking on Bane because he still has feelings for her, there's some ambiguity there. - and definitely don't name your dog after him.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: While they frequently try to kill each other, at the end of the day he and Penguin will probably end up working together.
• Big "NO!": After realizing that he killed Kristen.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: His compulsion with riddles, which ended up working to his advantage in "Mad Grey Dawn", ends up being his downfall when a riddle about death buys the GCPD enough time to close in on him.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: When Hugo Strange resurrects him, he puts a mind-control chip in his head, leading him to be remote-controlled into atrocities like the Haven bombing by Eduardo.
• Break the Cutie: He commits his first murder on Miss Kringle's Abusive Boyfriend, triggering his Start of Darkness.
• Bullying a Dragon: It's implied his bullying a not-so-catatonic Jeremiah Valeska was the reason he was set up as the fall guy for bombing Wayne Towers.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Deconstructed. While he's unquestionably an excellent forensic scientist, his many weird aspects constantly antagonize Essen, Bullock and (at first) Ms. Kringle, leaving him neither liked nor respected by anyone apart from Gordon. Ironically it's only when the Riddler parts of his personality start surfacing that he starts to be trusted more by his colleagues.
• Butt-Monkey: During the final quarter of the second season, after he had been busted. Not only is he shipped off to Arkham, he also has a foiled escape attempt which results in his being briefly locked up with one of Arkham's most rabid inmates, and then in the season finale he gets used and betrayed by both Strange and Gordon.
• Came Back Wrong: Being frozen in ice hasn't done wonders for his intelligence, in fact he's suffered a huge blow in cognitive thinking and no longer able to solve his favorite riddles. He spends much of his time post-thawing trying to get it back. This is because the Ed personality is now back in control. It takes Penguin of all people to snap him back to himself.
• Cartwright Curse: Be it by his own hand or just plain bad luck, Nygma can never seem to have a girlfriend survive a relationship with him. Having Penguin be in love with him certainly didn't help. Poor Isabella...
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Deconstructed. His unusualness is the main reason he's so ostracized.
• The Comically Serious: Occasionally.
  Riddler: We have a great deal to talk about. But first... Did you name your dog after me?!
• Complexity Addiction: As Penguin points out just before having him frozen, he needs to compulsively see something through in as exacting a fashion as possible, meaning he'll always throw out the simple way of doing things in order to show off his own intelligence - even if it costs him in the long run.
• The Corrupter: Believe it or not, but he manages to convince the Penguin to enjoy the fact that his mother is dead because now she can no longer hold him back. It takes a while, but Penguin is seen to get progressively worse from this point on.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • As shown in "Into the Woods", he keeps a chair in his apartment secretly wired to his building's electricity, apparently just on the off chance that he'll ever need to knock out somebody who happens to be sitting there.
  • His season 5 lair has pressure-sensitive IEDs at random points round it —and a heart monitor to detonate them if Riddler's heartbeat changes too much.
• Creepy Cute: In-Universe and out. He's very dorky and not bad-looking in a nerdy way, but even before his Sanity Slippage his cheerful scientific curiosity about horrific crimes and awkward expressions of affection toward Miss Kringle can go beyond normal social awkwardness and endearing quirkiness into disturbing territory.
  Miss Kringle: I think you left this on my desk.
  Edward: It's a riddle.
  Miss Kringle: It's a cupcake with a live bullet in it.
  Edward: It's a riddle.
  Miss Kringle: It's weird and menacing and inedible.
• Curse of The Ancients: Just before he's arrested for murder and obstruction and perversion of justice: "Aw, crud." In fact, during the final quarter of the second season he shows a tendency to resort to this when things go to hell.
• Deadpan Snarker: His split personality has a tendency to snark towards him. For example, in "Damned If You Do", when he appears in a mirror and Nygma accuses him of copying him:
  Split!Nygma: Dude. It's a mirror, it's how they work.
• Dastardly Dapper Derby: Once he becomes the Riddler in full he's rarely seen without his black bowler hat. In season 4 it's almost a Hat of Power, as wearing it denotes the shift from the more benign Ed personality back to the murderous Riddler - he's got it even in Ed's mirror-bound hallucinations of him. The hat may have originally belonged to Oswald, since he was seen wearing a similar one in Season 2.
• Delighting in Riddles: His signature style, which really annoys his colleagues. Becomes a lot less humourous from season 2 onwards, becoming harbingers of death if you get them wrong...
• Devious Daggers: After his descent into villainy he seems to have a hidden blade on him at all times, especially from season 4 onwards.
• Disney Death: At the end of Season 4, he and Lee stab each other seemingly to death. Thanks to the Penguin and Hugo Strange it doesn't stick.
• The Dog Bites Back:
  • After the ME gets him suspended, Nygma does a little digging. Turns out the ME likes to steal body parts. (Or Nygma planted them to frame him.) One anonymous tip off later...
  • When Nygma discovers that Kristen Kringle's boyfriend Tom is abusing her, he confronts Tom who just blows him off. Later that night, Nygma waits outside Kringle's house when Tom comes around drunk and stumbling. Nygma confronts him again. Tom gut punches Nygma. Nygma retaliates by stabbing Tom AT LEAST a dozen times. Afterwards, he has quite the breakdown, simultaneously laughing and freaking out.
  • Then there's his paying Penguin back for murdering Isabella by ruining his mayorship, driving him to near-insanity and killing him (though that part didn't stick).
• Double Agent: He's a murderer who's working for the GCPD's forensics division.
• Dragon with an Agenda: The Riddler flat-out states he has no interest in running the criminal underworld, but willingly helps others like Penguin, Barbara, and Lee take control of it to pursue his own goals.
• The Dreaded: Him entering the GCPD precinct in "Anything for You" is enough to make everyone in the building turn silent.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: The rest of the police often take his brilliant forensics work for granted, and in particular because they think he's annoying, they often shoo him away as soon as possible or ignore him. One of the principal reasons he ends up going down the path he does.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • When he bumps into Selina (who's looking for Firefly) during his Arkham escape attempt, he warns her the hell away from Hugo Strange. All the more notable as he barely knows her at this point.
  • After he figures out what he thinks is his other personality committed the Haven bombing he's utterly horrified he could have killed so many people, including children. In subsequent conversation with Jim, he clarifies that while he's killed a ton of people who have hurt him personally, he doesn't go in for the mass murder of those he doesn't know.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Wigs the hell out when Lucius Fox answers one of his riddles, quite reasonably, with the answer love (Ed's answer was loneliness). Used against him in season 4, when Lee gives him a riddle he easily works out the answer to: I love you. Except, due to this (and lingering feelings for Lee) he's incapable of actually saying it out loud.
• Evil Feels Good: His murder of Kristen is anything but - but when he's able to fob Lee Thompkins off while disposing of her body, his split personality is then able to make him admit that while killing Kristen was terrible, killing her and outsmarting Lee to get away with it felt, in his own words, "beautiful".
• Evil Genius: Possibly the smartest character on the whole show, rivaled only by the likes of Bruce Wayne, Lucius Fox (whom he calls to his face "the second smartest man in Gotham"), and Jeremiah Valeska. If it weren't for his compulsions and split personality tripping him up, he'd be unstoppable.
• Evil Is Petty: Like the comics Riddler, he tends to react to people getting his riddles right rather poorly. He also once killed an actor playing Hamlet because he found his performance underwhelming.
• Evil Is Hammy: Once he goes bad, he starts acting much more theatrical than usual (in a creepy sort of way). When she hears he plans to investigate the Court of Owls in his own way, Barbara has this to say.
  Barbara: You're going to make a big production of this, aren't you?
• Evil Laugh: Has an outstanding cackle that comes up whenever things go his way, particularly in seasons 4 and 5. Best heard in the closing moments of this video.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Whenever his Riddler persona surfaces, his voice becomes much deeper and gravelly than his more high-pitched and nasally Ed side.
• Expy: His Split Personality seems to be a combination of both the Frank Gorshin and Jim Carrey Riddler personalities. Similarly, the struggle between said personalities is also heavily reminiscent of Harvey Dent/Two Face (especially after that character is Put on a Bus after season 2).
• Face–Heel Turn: After murdering the girl who he loved, Nygma begins to fully embrace his lust for evil. By the end of season 2 he's the Riddler in all but name, and season 3 has him not only take the name but don the iconic green suit.
• Faux Affably Evil: By the middle of season 3 the Riddler (with his attendant massive ego) is in full control. He's still polite and cheerful, but God help you if you piss him off.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The license plate on his car says "RIDL LVR". While it's short for "Riddle Lover", it's also a mere letter away from "RIDDLER".
  • In "A Bitter Pill to Swallow" he tells Oswald his most crippling weakness is love. Virtually all of Ed's problems with Oswald and Lee in seasons 3 and 4 come about due to his love for them.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: He still wears glasses after pulling his Face–Heel Turn.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: On the GCPD initially - he's brilliant but annoys everyone with his insistence on riddles and over-enthusiasm for the weirder cases they take. Jim's the only one that likes him, but even that's strained sometimes. Gets better once he starts dating Kristen, as Jim and Lee Thompkins try and befriend him outside of work. Then he kills Kristen and it all falls apart.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: In season 1 Nygma is just the GCPD's forensic scientist. In season 3, he's a feared criminal genius that can even pose a threat to the Court of Owls.
• The GM Is a Cheating Bastard: When Lucius is able to come up with quite reasonable answers to his riddles to save Harvey's life, he insists only his answers count. Then when Lucius gives the correct answer to the last one, Riddler almost kills Harvey anyway to give himself time to get away.
• Harmless Freezing: Played with. Being frozen for several months by Mr. Freeze causes muscle atrophy which he recovers from in a few days, but it also causes some sort of brain damage, as he is unable to come up with any good riddles.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: In season 5's "They Did What?" where he goes on a long Motive Rant about how he only helped Gotham so he could take it for himself. Tellingly, he does all this while looking at himself in a mirror - but unlike in season 2 and 4, there's no other personality to talk back to him, implying the Riddler is all that's left.
• Hidden Depths: This version of the Riddler is a pretty decent pianist.
• Human Popsicle: At the end of "Heavydirtysoul", Penguin has Mr. Freeze turn Nygma into one, which he plans to use as the centerpiece of his new club, the Iceberg Lounge. That is, until his Loony Fan Myrtle Jenkins thaws him out in "They Who Hide Behind Masks".
• Hypocrite: While he had a point that Oswald must not have really loved him because if he had he would have valued his happiness rather than killed Isabella for being his competition, Ed isn't exactly good at valuing his loved ones more than himself, either (and he later attempts to kill Jim Gordon for the same petty reasons). After killing Ms. Kringle in season one, he got lost in grief for about a day before deciding that killing the person he loved had freed him to become the person he was meant to be and made him stronger. His later romance with Lee ends even worse, with him attempting to kill her and admitting that it felt good to do so, which only lends credibility to Oswald's claim that if he didn't kill Isabella, Ed would have done it himself eventually.
  • He lambasts Oswald for being opportunistic and disloyal; while Oswald doesn't deny it, he fires back (quite justifiably) that Ed is hardly qualified to throw stones.
• Iconic Outfit: In Season 3, he starts wearing dark green suit jackets akin to the Riddler's iconic look. In "How the Riddler Got His Name", he finally dons his classic bright green suit and bowler hat. The Time Skip finale takes things further with a question-mark adorned jacket courtesy of Jeremiah Valeska.
• I Just Want to Be Special: All he wants is respect from his coworkers and to be seen as good guy. Which makes his inevitable fall from grace all the more harsh.
• I Know You Know I Know: Regarding Gordon figuring out about his being responsible for the frameup.
• It's All About Me: In the second half of Season 4, Jeremiah is about to either level the entire city or plunge it into total chaos, and all he is able to think about is how much Lee loves him and how he can get her to be with him.

Tropes J-Z

• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Initially. While Edward can be an obnoxious, egotistical and pretentious know-it-all who comes off as really creepy at times, he's actually very kind and friendly to those he considers friends like Jim, Sarah, Ms. Kringle, etc. Most of his jerkass behavior is directed towards terrible people (Arnold Flass, the medical examiner) or just a side effect of his anti-social disorder. Hugely subverted later on, as the Riddler personality takes over more fully and he becomes steadily more Ax-Crazy.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: At the start of "How the Riddler Got His Name" he's still maintaining the pretence of being part of the (now-missing, presumed dead) Mayor Cobblepot's staff, with the GCPD suspecting nothing about his killing Penguin even though they hate him anyway. But Oswald's belief Ed would be nothing without him needles him into going on a episode-long rampage that outs him to the police and city, killing 6 people to find someone who understands him, revealing himself to Lucius Fox and almost killing Harvey. Lucius expresses utter confusion as to why he'd do something so blatantly insane - but none of it matters to him, as he's now discovered who he truly is: The Riddler.
• Karma Houdini: Subverted: it's implied he gets a pardon for all his crimes after helping save Gotham from Bane. However, his rage at being overlooked in favour of Gordon's heroism kills any remaining trace of decency in him and leads him back to crime. By the Distant Finale he's been marooned in Arkham for a decade and is decidedly more unhinged.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch:
  • Killing Miss Kringle's Abusive Boyfriend.
  • Shooting the Penguin and dumping his body in the bay for killing his new girlfriend and depriving him a life of happiness.
• The Lab Rat: Starts off as one before his Start of Darkness. Tends to annoy his coworkers by giving out information in riddle-form.
• Lack of Empathy: Not overtly malicious, but part of his obsessive behavior, combined with his profession as a forensic investigator - which means that he sees horrific murders as exciting puzzles to solve, not really focusing on the death of another human being. Most of these are within the realm of professional detachment, but in "Viper", Nygma is practically giddy when describing what he has learned about the advanced new super-drug hitting the streets - including how it invariably kills users within a day by destroying the calcium in their bones. A hooker strung-out on the drug then horrifically dies in front of him, her brittle bones snapping under her own weight. Instead of being repulsed by her death, he simply beams "fascinating!" - like a child who just found a really interesting crossword puzzle. After his Face–Heel Turn, he fully embraces how good it is to make other suffer in order to give himself a sense of power over them.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After shooting Penguin at the docks and letting his body fall into the river, Penguin has him frozen by Mr. Freeze half a season later at the exact same pier. He's even manipulated into thinking the location was his own idea.
• Lean and Mean: After completing his Face–Heel Turn, he begins his transformation into the Riddler, who was always a Non-Action Big Bad on account of his lack of muscle mass.
• Love Makes You Evil: He killed Tom to protect Miss Kringle, but it led to his Start of Darkness. Then, it gets even worse when he accidentally kills Miss Kringle himself when she rejects him after learning the truth. Ironically, it's Penguin's love for him - killing Isabella - that finally snaps him, as he goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Penguin that ends in his (seeming) death and Ed becoming the Riddler in full.
• Love Redeems: Played straight but ends tragically. While Ed is in a relationship with Kristen Kringle he gradually becomes more stable. As admitted by the second persona after Ed accidently kills her, he would've vanished completely before long had she lived.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: He tries to invoke this by performing an autopsy in "The Mask", and goes through the process just fine until the actual medical examiner comes in and tells him off.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • After he kills Tom, he realizes that he won't be coming back to normal anytime soon.
  • He accidentally strangles Miss Kringle in a fit of panic, but realizes too late that he killed her.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Nygma is briefly seen holding a coffee mug with the Riddler's trademark question mark on the side.
  • He also might be a big walking one to the Batman: Arkham Series version of the Riddler, given that Arkham Origins revealed that prior to becoming the Riddler or even the pre-Riddler alias of "Enigma", he was a member of the GCPD.
  • The bright green suit and black bowler hat that he sports as the Riddler is very much a modernized, updated version of Frank Gorshin's suit◊ from the 1960's TV series. In the finale he gets a new outfit◊ even more closely resembling Gorshin's question mark outfit.
  • The name of the game show that he hosts in the Narrows? The Riddle Factory.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: His excessive paranoia over Kristen's death leads him to mistake Jim's relatively innocent queries over Kristen's disappearance as a sign that he's been rumbled, and moves to frame Gordon - a move that ends up exposing him to the rest of the GCPD. If he'd not acted, he may well have gotten away with it.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Played with: he's a lot more hands on than many incarnations of the character, with an impressive list of people he's personally murdered, but he still tries to stay out of fighting the show's more capable characters. Played for laughs in "Ruin" when he tries and fails to pull a paper folder from Lucius Fox's grasp. It's so pathetic that Lucius just looks bored the whole time.
• No Social Skills: He's blissfully unaware of how weird he comes across, and is convinced everyone at the station is his buddy. He also doesn't notice basic social cues, often standing around smiling after people have stopped speaking to him, not realizing that they non-verbally want him to leave. Interestingly subverted when he becomes the Riddler - he's far more confident and able to interact normally with others (even if those others are psychopaths like Penguin and Barbara).
• "Not So Different" Remark: He compares himself to the Penguin, informing Cobblepot that they are both evil men who should embrace their true murderous intentions now that the people most important to them can no longer hold them back.
• Oblivious to Love: He's genuinely clueless that Oswald is in love with him in season 3. It takes Barbara, of all people, to spell it out for him.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Gordon is desperately trying to get in touch with Leslie Thompkins because he believes the Ogre is after her, he demands to know where she is. Nygma pauses for a second and simply and straightforwardly tells Gordon what he knows.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: In the grand finale, once Batman and the Joker begin their game, Nygma just gets so overshadowed by the two that he practically becomes a nuisance rather than the villainous mastermind he dreamed of being.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: He shoots Penguin and dumps his body in the bay for killing his beloved Isabella, despite the mob boss begging for forgiveness.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • He and Penguin despise each other by late season 3 - but still agree to work together because both know they can't escape the Court of Owls' prison without each other. Riddler even insists on a six-hour window where they would not go after each other after getting out, and both abide by it.
  • He helps Jim unravel Jeremiah Valeska's plan, not because he cares about Gotham being reduced to rubble, but because he's hoping to use the info to ensure a new life for him and Lee elsewhere.
  • Invoked by its absence in season 5: he's able to convince Barbara that he was an Unwitting Pawn in the Haven bombing by pointing out that, in their long history together, when had he ever done anything as pointlessly stupid as that atrocity?

• The Rival: He considers himself as one for Jim, especially when it comes to their feelings for Lee. Jim considers him more of an Unknown Rival, given at that point he has stopping Jeremiah blowing up the city on his plate.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • In the final episode of Season One he realizes that he unconsciously left a clue pointing at himself after killing Tom, and begins to break at the seams, having fits of paranoia and hearing voices. Come season two he's headed right into Gollum-esque arguments with his own evil urges via a mirror. Then he accidentally murders his girlfriend Kristen in a fit of blind panic. In Season 2, he deteriorates to the point where he's become an Ax-Crazy psychopath.
  • Again in the finale: he acts far more manic than before due to spending ten years in Arkham.
• Save the Villain: He treats the Penguin after finding him wounded in the forest.
• Say My Name: After numerous episodes of Penguin refusing to name Ed's alter-ego out of spite, his finally calling Ed the Riddler in season 4 (because he's desperate enough to need him to get out of Arkham) causes the Riddler personality bubbling beneath Ed's surface to take over once more.
• Sherlock Scan: Deduces Barbara is pregnant within seconds of seeing her in "Ace Chemicals".
• Skewed Priorities: Played for Drama. Having Lee turn into the woman he was meant to be with as his top priority leads to him kidnapping and attempting to murder Gordon, which in turn leads to him not having enough time to find and disarm all of Jeremiah's bombs.
• Slasher Smile: After transitioning into a villain, he starts smirking evilly after embracing his inner darkness.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: Speaks in riddles, is a forensic scientist, and wears big browline glasses.
• Smug Snake: Rubs his freedom and position of power in the faces of Lee and Barnes.
• The Sociopath: Played with. He freely admits that the people of the Narrows can all “drown in a stew of their own filth, and I won’t lose a wink of sleep,” but he helps them anyway because he genuinely cares about Lee. By the end of the series, this attitude is given a callback when he gives a truly terrifying speech to Oswald about how he felt absolutely nothing for the Gotham citizens he had just fought beside, and he only desires to never be like them again and completely rule them. However, mere moments later, he passes up a chance to literally stab Oswald in the back and genuinely, affectionately embraces his friend with tears in his eyes.
• Spanner in the Works: He has Jim followed by his people when he goes to rescue Lee from the GCPD in season 4, and specifically orders they make sure he isn't harmed so Lee doesn't blame him. If it weren't for this, Jim would have been atomized by Jeremiah's bomb and wouldn't have been around to derail the future Joker's plan later in the episode.
• Split Personality: He hallucinates a dark reflection of himself urging him to perform evil by giving in to his inner hate. It's later made clear that this second personality is the Riddler persona, who acts as a separate being from Edward. Given an interesting twist in season 4 - the Riddler personality is back in the driver's seat, but starts hallucinating the Ed persona, needling him about falling for Lee Thompkins. This time out, the Ed personality is considerably more calm and confident, while the Riddler is much more stressed and less in control, to the point that if a viewer unfamiliar with the show were to watch the scenes they share, it'd be difficult to tell which personality was which.
• Split-Personality Merge: At the end of "Mommy's Little Monster." Inverted at the end of "Queen Takes Knight", where the two have split again.
• Stalker with a Crush: He comes across this way with Kristen Kringle, since given his No Social Skills and love for riddles, it comes off as creepy.
• The Starscream: After figuring out that Penguin had put a hit on Isabella. Though unlike most examples he doesn't seek to supplant Penguin, merely ruin his happiness the same way Penguin ruined his.
• Start of Darkness: Killing Tom was this. Cemented further by his killing Kristen when she freaks out over his revealing this.
• Suppressed Rage: In response to being called names (yet again) by Bullock, he crushes the cryogenically frozen rose he was holding in one hand. It's the slow sound of the rose cracking apart that really sells it.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • His attempts at performing the duties of the medical examiner eventually get him suspended when said medical examiner goes to Captain Essen in "The Fearsome Dr. Crane" and threatens to go over her head over the issue. Fortunately, he ends up coming back when the ME's own medical improprieties are revealed.
  • Deducing the only way out of Gotham is via submarine is all well and good, but actually building one from scratch taxes even his formidable abilities - especially as Penguin thinks his share of the partnership consists of getting snacks for them.
• Taking the Bullet: During the police massacre in "Knock, Knock", he manages to save Kringle this way. Fortunately, it wasn't a fatal shot. He also pushes Oswald out of the way of Butch Gilzean’s murderous wrath.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Lampshaded in "Anything for You". When he, as Mayor Cobblepot's Chief of Staff, pulls rank on Captain Barnes, Barnes reminds him how lucky he is to be in his current position after everything in eight simple words.
  Barnes: Every dog has his day, Nygma. Enjoy yours.
• Took a Level in Badass: He goes from the GCPD's nerdy crime scene analyst that nobody except Gordon liked to a master criminal even the Court of Owls regarded as a Spanner in the Works in the space of three seasons.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: After he pulls his Face–Heel Turn.
• Tragic Villain: This version of Nygma is the most sympathetic portrayal of the villain in live action.
• Traitor Shot: He gets plenty after his Face–Heel Turn, including several in "Mad Grey Dawn", one of which takes place when Gordon's arrested.
• Underestimating Badassery: Inverted. He's actually overestimating badassery when he assumes that Jim Gordon has caught on to his murders and seeks to eliminate him in order to cover his tracks, despite Gordon literally knowing nothing about Nygma's Face–Heel Turn.
• Undying Loyalty: To Oswald in Season 3, risking his life for him on more than one occasion and committing all his considerable brainpower and resources towards his friend's success, at one point even sincerely telling Oswald that he’d do anything for him. Obviously broken during their fall out, but by the time their friendship is repaired in Season 5, writers confirm that Ed is only defending Gotham from Bane because Oswald is there. In the Time Skip finale, he even blindly follows the escape plan laid out for him because he thought Oswald was behind it.
• The Unfettered: He regards himself as this after Kristen's death. He passes along this philosophy to the Penguin as well, convincing him that the Galavans' murder of his mother has removed his only weakness. Subverted though: subsequent seasons show that he's still tethered to people he cares about, like Oswald and Lee, both of whom influence his behavior for better and worse.
• Unwitting Pawn: Of the future Bane, courtesy of a mind-control chip in his head. Unfortunately, the Time Skip finale also sees him become this to a not-so-comatose Joker.
• Villain Decay: After he escapes from his frozen prison, the Riddler loses his magnificent intelligence and credibility as a once feared villain of Gotham. He's eventually forced to survive on the streets acting as a pathetic mugger before he teams up with Solomon Grundy, who's essentially his meal ticket and the only reason why he's not down under even further. Comes roaring back later in the season once Penguin reawakens his Riddler personality. Then again in the grand finale, where he and Penguin get effortlessly beat up by the Batman. His final scene is both him and Oswald being too afraid of the caped crusader to consider a rematch. Needless to say, Riddler has not made himself a feared powerhouse in Gotham like he used to be.
• Villain Protagonist: Behind Gordon, Bruce and Penguin he's become perhaps the most focused-on character in the show, with significant portions of each season spent exploring his gradual descent into insanity, his revenge on Penguin, return to his Riddler persona and complex relationship with Thompkins.
• Villain Respect: Notably for someone who mocks most others as intellectual inferiors, has this for Lucius Fox, even going so far as to call him the Second-Smartest Man in the City.
• Villainous Breakdown: Is having a drawn out one after killing Penguin, as his episode-long rampage in "How the Riddler Got His Name" is essentially his trying to find himself after killing his best friend. And again at the end of season 3 when he realises how thoroughly Penguin has outsmarted him.
• Villainous BSoD: Suffers a serious meltdown upon realizing that he accidentally murdered his girlfriend Kristen. Has another one after (supposedly) killing Penguin, as Oswald's taunt Ed is nothing without him provokes him to go on an episode-long rampage to define his own identity.
• Villainous Friendship: With the Penguin, beginning midway through Season 2. Even when it looks like he betrayed the Penguin, it's soon revealed that whatever it was he did, it was to further the Penguin's cause. It's one such revelation that gets him named the Penguin's Chief of Staff upon his election as Mayor of Gotham. Not remotely surprisingly, it all goes wrong, and they spend much of season 3 trying to kill each other. Season 4 sees a reconciliation of sorts after Oswald lets the Riddler personality loose again, and in season 5 the two even share a laugh about how weird their relationship is after Riddler murders Mr. Penn.
• Villainous Rescue: Saves Martin from Sofia Falcone's thugs at Penguin's behest. Even tells him they'll get ice cream afterwards.
• Villainous Valour: Played with when Bane comes for Barbara: Riddler claims his and Penguin taking on Bane with an improvised oxygen tank bomb was solely so he could steal back the part for their submarine she'd stolen. Except he clearly does that before the two villains have to face the armoured psycho, so there's definitely some of this in play, even if it ends in the two of them abandoning the ladies to their fate.
• Walking Spoiler: After season 2 it's tough to hide that his time as the GCPD's forensic specialist doesn't end well...
• We Used to Be Friends: With Gordon. When they're waiting for the Court of Owls' representatives in season 3, Jim reminisces over their respective failed relationships and shows regret things went so badly between them.
• Wicked Cultured: Keen enough on Shakespeare that he offs an actor playing Hamlet because he found his performance so underwhelming.
• Wife-Basher Basher: Well it's more like "Wife Basher Slasher," when he knifes Tom to death over and over and over again.
• Wild Card: He doesn't really care about the city's power structures or running Gotham (and admits as much to Barbara), but he'll help the other villains or hinder them depending on whether it suits his goals.
• Worthy Opponent: He's got a grudging respect for Lucius Fox, the only one at the GCPD that proves capable of both solving his riddles and working out his motives. He notably leaves him alive at the end of "How the Riddler Got His Name" and in season 5 even refers to him as "the second smartest man in Gotham".
• Would Hit a Girl: Accidentally murdered Kristen in season 2, though he genuinely didn't mean that one. He stabbed Lee in "No Man's Land" when he believes she still has feelings for Gordon (though, as he points out when they meet again in season 5, she stabbed him first). Later throws a wheelchair-bound old woman to her death in "Ruin" after realizing she'd seen his other personality commit the Haven bombing.
• Wrong Genre Savvy:
  • He's implied to be deliberately trying to position himself as the Plucky Comic Relief of the cops with his line "Everyone needs some humor in their lives." See all the above for how well it works.
  • Played with in his belief he can be The Hero of his and Kristen's story - with his plucky "stop right there Buster!" he really seems to think his warning the larger, drunk Tom (who he knows can be violent) to first leave Kirsten alone, then leave Gotham will work. Then it turns out that he had the foresight to bring a knife with him, indicating he'd at least planned for the possibility of killing Tom...
  • In the finale he still seems to think he's in a Villainous Friendship with Barbara, reminiscing on how awesome she used to be and laying out his plans to her - just as he had done in seasons prior. Unfortunately, her Heel–Face Turn is genuine, and she's just stalling so Selina can knock him out.
• 0% Approval Rating:
  • For the GCPD in the first half of season 3. When Mayor Oswald appoints him his liason with the GCPD - everybody hates him for his prior actions. Bullock loathes him for his prior framing of Jim, Lee punches him for Kristen's murder (and dares him to do something about it given she's marrying Carmine Falcone's son) and Barnes even makes it clear that he only tolerates his presence at the station because he likes his own job more than he dislikes Nygma. Lucius is the only one that even tries to work with him out of a grudging respect for his intellect.[[/labelnote]]
  • Becomes this for the populace of Gotham in season 5 after it gets out he was the one responsible for the Haven bombing. Averted later on, when Gordon finds out he was being controlled by a chip inserted by Strange, and controlled by Eduardo. Also one of the few times Nygma is completely horrified by "his" actions.

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