When looking at Paul Dano's version of the Riddler, many have compared the interpretation to the real life Zodiac Killer. Dano's performance will be seen in full in the upcoming The Batman. In an interview with Collider, the project's director Matt Reeves talked about how a significant reason he picked the Riddler as the main antagonist was the Zodiac himself.

Reeves discussed how the Zodiac's method of committing his crimes, which was leaving a trail of clues, ciphers, and communications to the police, in a sick game of cat and mouse, sounds like a "horrifying version of the Riddler." The Riddler is well known for leaving clues or riddles for Batman to figure out.

While explaining why his hopes for the film, Reeves said:

"I wanted to do a Batman story where he was already Batman, but he still was in early days, had to find a way to sort of really evolve. I wanted to do a story that the investigation of this particular mystery would lead him back to something very personal, and would rock him to his core. So knowing that I wanted to do that kind of thing, I started sort of, from Long Halloween, I was thinking about the sort of Calendar Man and the idea of the different sort of killings. Then this idea came to me and I thought, well, we do a thing where at these crimes, there's correspondence left for the Batman."

The director said that a large part of Batman's character is in "being anonymous", and how disturbing it would be if the anonymity were disrupted. He explained:

"I thought, well, that's a great way in. As I started thinking about that and trying to ground it, I thought about the Zodiac. I thought about how the Zodiac, in this horrific way, left all of this sort of disturbing, these ciphers and these communications to the police and to the newspapers and how unsettling that was."

'I Thought, Wow, That Actually Sounds Like a Horrifying Version of the Riddler'

Reeves went into further detail when he described the Riddler:

"I thought, wow, that actually sounds like a horrifying version of the Riddler, because he was leaving all these puzzles. So the Riddler was part of the conception very early on in trying to figure out, which of the Rogues Gallery characters would communicate in that way with Batman. So that happened right away. Then I started thinking, well, to me, what's interesting, like I said before, it's not his origin, but I thought it would be interesting, that as you followed the details of the crime, that it would take him across the paths of these other characters." The Riddler was in plans for the script from an early stage.

When the Riddler was first created in 1948, social media did not exist. Since the Zodiac committed his murders in the late 1960s, the technology incorporated to help connect people was not a reality. A major difference between the early appearances in comics, as well as the Zodiac, and the movie will be the use of social media. Reeves talked about the Riddler's use of the medium when he said:

"It was very important to me that Gotham not be New York, not be Chicago, not be any particular city, I wanted you to feel like, wow, this is a place we've never been before, but it feels absolutely like an iconic American city, a really corrupt, messed up place, but I wanted it to be much of our world. As I was doing that, I was thinking, okay, so he wouldn't write to the Chronicle the way that Zodiac did. He would start using social media, because that's what it would be. And this idea of the kind of viral communication, I just wanted it to be very much of our world. So that's kind of how that came about."

The Batman will arrive exclusively in theaters on March 4. Additional co-stars include Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Zoe Kravitz as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, Colin Ferrell as Oswald Cobblepot/ Penguin, and John Turturro as Carmine Falcone.