He is known for taking delight in using riddles and puzzles within his criminal plots. This often led to him leaving clues for Gothom City Police or Batman to solve.

Nigma did this in a way to present himself as intellectually superior, this made his crimes flamboyant and ostentatious.

While he is normally portrayed as a smooth-talking and quirky character with an abnormally high IQ, later versions depicted him with an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

He is generally depicted wearing green, often with a bowler hat and mask and his outfit having a question mark somewhere on it. The question mark is his visual motif.

His love for puzzles began when he was in school; a teacher announced that there would a contest for who could solve a puzzle the fastest. Nigma took this to another level by breaking into his teacher’s office and practicing the puzzle until he could finish it in less than a minute.

This led him to winning the competition. After that he fully embraced puzzles and became a carnival employee who often cheated his customers out of money with strange puzzles and mind games.

After he lost interest in carnival attendees he became the Riddler so he could have greater challenges.

The Riddler has been portrayed by Frank Gorshin in the 1960’s Batman television series, Jim Carey in the 1995 film Batman Forever and Cory Micheal Smith on the TV series Gotham.

Nigma was ranked IGN’s 59th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time in 2009.