8 Mysteries Even Batman Couldn't Solve
Those posers and puzzles too tough for even the World's Greatest Detective to handle.
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00:00 So, amongst the world of comic book heroes and villains, few people have as much intelligence
00:05 and smarts as Batman. For as long as there's been a Batman, there's been the character's
00:10 world's greatest detective nickname. Time and time again, we've seen Batman break
00:14 down a case or a crime scene in minute detail. In terms of mankind, there isn't a human
00:19 being on the Earth who can outsmart Bruce Wayne. Well, most of the time, at least.
00:24 You see, there are actually some mysteries that even bats couldn't solve, and that's
00:28 what we're here to talk about today. As I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and
00:31 these are 8 Mysteries That Even Batman Couldn't Solve.
00:34 8. The Unsolved Riddle – The Last Riddler Story
00:38 What's got wings that do not fly, arms that have no hands, and eyes that cannot see? That
00:44 right there, that's the riddle that not even Batman could solve.
00:47 Taking place in the Batman Adventures #10's aptly titled The Last Riddler Story, here
00:52 we find a Riddler who's questioning his life choices. When his goons come to break
00:56 him out of prison, Nygma tells them that the game is up, the run is over, and that he's
01:01 done with being the Riddler. After this mob pleads with their boss, Eddie
01:05 relents and decides to take one last strike getting one over on the Caped Crusader. If
01:10 he succeeds, he's back to a life of crime. If he fails, he's hanging up the bowler
01:14 hat and cane for good. Surprisingly, though, the Riddler manages to actually get the better
01:19 of Batman here. Sure, the Dark Knight is a little preoccupied with debuting villains
01:23 Mastermind, Mr. Nice, and The Professor, but the fact of the matter is that Batman was
01:28 unable to solve Nygma's riddle in this tale. For those wondering, said riddle relates to
01:32 a jeweled eagle that Riddler successfully steals. While Batman couldn't solve the
01:36 mystery of this riddle, he did manage to give a swift beating to Riddler after being tipped
01:41 off by The Professor. Still, being locked up didn't ruin the spirits of E-Nygma, for
01:46 he was ecstatic at Batman admitting that Riddler had outsmarted him.
01:50 7. The Other Holiday Killer – The Long Halloween
01:54 Released throughout 1996 and into 1997, The Long Halloween is a landmark benchmark story
02:00 that forces the world's greatest detective to live up to that particular moniker. The
02:04 thing is, is that while Batman deduces that the mysterious holiday killer of the tale
02:08 is actually two people, the Caped Crusader doesn't seem to realise that there was actually
02:13 a third person behind the murders of this tale. In The Long Halloween, Holiday strikes
02:18 on each public holiday, fatally shooting a new victim each and every month. While this
02:22 very much features a who's who of Batman's rogues gallery, the story also plays out in
02:27 the backdrop of a raging war between two crime families. As part of the same war, District
02:32 Attorney Harvey Dent winds up with acid thrown into his face in a move that sees him become
02:36 the nefarious Two-Face. And while Harvey is rightfully pinned as Holiday, it's similarly
02:41 worked out by Batman that Alberto Falcone, the runt of the Falcone family, is also Holiday.
02:48 But what's shown in the final panels of The Long Halloween, though, is that Dent's
02:51 wife, Gilda, was another who portrayed Holiday, with her responsible for the initial few murders
02:57 as part of her plan to ease the pressures on her husband so that they could start a
03:01 family. Where Gilda is concerned, Batman never picked up on her being the third wheel of
03:06 the Holiday puzzle.
03:07 6. The Hangman - Dark Victory
03:10 Following on from the events of the excellent Long Halloween, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale return
03:15 three years later with the similarly great Dark Victory. Continuing on in the aftermath
03:20 of the Holiday killer, this time the mystery at play revolved around a cop-killing criminal
03:24 known as the Hangman. It would eventually be revealed that the Hangman was actually
03:28 Sofia Gigante, but Batman himself wasn't able to figure that out. Instead, it was Catwoman
03:34 who did all the heavy lifting on that front. Digging deep into the mystery of the Hangman
03:38 and the Falcone family, Selina Kyle discovered that Sofia was the mysterious killer. Rather
03:43 than having been left paraplegic after the events of the Long Halloween, Sofia instead
03:47 pretended to be wheelchair-bound throughout Dark Victory as a way of making her the last
03:52 suspect for the murders seen throughout this tale. For the Caped Crusader and Jim Gordon,
03:57 they were unable to solve this riddle, and the puzzle of the Hangman was only solved
04:01 by Selina. Well, that and the small matter of Sofia outing herself as the Hangman at
04:05 the tale's close, where she reveals her identity as she tries to kill Two-Face.
04:09 5. The Complexities of Hush, Hush
04:12 Batman, Hush is one of the all-time great Batman stories. With the mysterious titular
04:17 rogue debuting here, part of the fun of this Jeff Loeb and Jim Lee story was seeing who
04:22 Hush really was. The eventual reveal would see Bruce Wayne's believed dead childhood
04:27 friend Tommy Elliott as the man behind this villainous, bandage-wearing persona. Not just
04:32 did Bruce not work out that Hush and Tommy were one and the same, even worse for the
04:36 Dark Knight was the fact that Elliott had completely and utterly manipulated him for
04:39 weeks and months. Adding further to Batman's embarrassment, he also didn't work out the
04:44 mystery behind Tommy's motivation.
04:46 With Elliott's father dying in a car crash when Tommy was just a child, it was explained
04:50 how the rogue hated Bruce's father Thomas for saving the life of Tommy's mother after
04:54 that crash. The future Hush was the person who had orchestrated this crash by severing
04:59 brake lines, with the intention being for him to inherit his parents' millions. To
05:03 pour even more salt into the wound, Batman Hush also saw Tommy concoct a plan that duped
05:09 the Caped Crusader into believing the long-dead Jason Todd was back from the grave. He wasn't,
05:14 it was just Hush utilising Clayface's abilities to fool Bats, although Jason would return
05:19 a year or so after that story wrapped up.
05:21 4. The Death of the Flying Graysons - Long Shadows
05:25 Following the events of Final Crisis, Bruce Wayne was dead, well, actually just sent back
05:30 in time. With Gotham City in need of somebody to take over the Cape and Cal, it would be
05:34 Dick Grayson who would eventually take on the Batman moniker. In one of the earlier
05:38 stories of this time as the Caped Crusader, Batman #691's Long Shadows sees Dick battle
05:43 Two-Face in the Batcave. Once that fight's out of the way, Grayson and Alfred decide
05:47 to strip back the cave and have something of a tidy up of the place. It's here, though,
05:51 that this new Batman finds a USB drive that throws the established cannon right up into
05:56 the air.
05:57 For the majority of the character's published lifespan, the parents of Dick Grayson were
06:00 murdered as part of an organised hit, yet Batman #691 suggested that there was more
06:05 to the death of John and Mary Grayson. Dick inspects a USB drive found hidden in the base
06:10 of the case holding Jason Todd's old Robin suit. There he finds that Bruce had previously
06:15 been working on the old Flying Grayson's case, for Wayne felt that he hadn't managed
06:19 to fully unearth the truth about those murders. Unfortunately for readers, much like Dick,
06:23 we never got an answer to this, as the subject was bizarrely never touched upon again.
06:28 3. He Couldn't Save Alfred - City of Bane
06:32 Not a mystery in the same sense of one of the Riddler's infamous riddles, or in the
06:35 same sense as a secret identity of a new rogue, but here it was more that Batman fell foul
06:40 of a conundrum. And by 'fell foul', that shockingly meant the very real, and very permanent
06:44 - at least so far - death of Alfred Pennyworth.
06:47 The puzzle presented to the Caped Crusader here was that if the Bat family remained in
06:51 Gotham, Alfred would be murdered. So Bruce Wayne headed off to Paris with Selina Kyle
06:56 while the rest of our heroes kept out of sight. As for who had made this threat, that was
07:00 the Flashpoint timeline's Thomas Wayne, aka that world's iteration of Batman. With
07:05 Bane at his side, Thomas had taken over Gotham City, handed Bruce a beating, and threatened
07:10 to take the life of Alfred should any heroes refuse to leave Gotham. For our regular Batman,
07:15 readers saw him ponder how he could actually win here, how he could return to Gotham yet
07:20 keep Pennyworth safe. That was the mystery, that was the puzzle, that was the poser, all
07:25 the while Bruce contemplated retiring for a quiet life with Selina.
07:28 It would be Alfred who forced Batman's hand here, sending him a coded message to assure
07:33 Bat that he'd managed to escape and get himself out of Gotham. Of course, he hadn't,
07:37 and the resurfacing of Damian Wayne's Robin in Gotham resulted in Bane snapping the neck
07:41 of Alfred, which the iconic butler had intended to happen, so that it would give Batman the
07:46 motivation to return and take down these rogues.
07:50 2. How the Joker Returned - Batman Beyond, Return of the Joker
07:54 It wasn't just one Batman who couldn't solve this mystery, as not even two Bat-Men
07:59 could crack the code behind the core plot of the stunning Batman Beyond, Return of the
08:03 Joker animated movie. Released in 2000, this picture takes place in the 2040s landscape
08:09 of the Batman Beyond show. With Terry McGuiness, the present-day Batman, operating under the
08:13 stewardship of Bruce Wayne, this future pairing is thrown for a loop when the long-deceased
08:18 Joker returns to cause chaos. The mystery element here is just how exactly the Joker
08:23 is alive and well 40 years after he took his last breath. Neither Terry nor Bruce can decipher
08:28 this situation, and even more problematic is that the resurrected clown prince of crime
08:32 knows all of his old rival's secrets, including that his Batman is Bruce Wayne.
08:37 It would be revealed that the Joker had implemented a genetic chip in Tim Drake during Drake's
08:41 younger days as Robin, with this chip turning the older Tim into a replica of Mr. J. This
08:46 scheme is shut down by Terry's Batman before Joker can fully take over Tim's body, but
08:51 the only reason we find out the truth to this mystery is because the jester of genocide
08:55 himself decided to let everyone in on his master plan.
08:59 1. The Puzzle That Is Onomatopoeia
09:02 Created by Kevin Smith and Phil Hester for their 2002 run on Green Arrow, Onomatopoeia
09:07 is one of the most fascinating modern villains in comics. He's also sadly a rogue that
09:11 has been criminally underused since his first appearance. Despite being introduced as an
09:16 emerald archer villain, this unique bad guy is one who has also had the odd tussle with
09:20 Batman. In particular, Smith and Walt Flanagan's The Widening Gaia tale in 2009 had Onomatopoeia
09:26 completely outsmart the world's greatest detective.
09:29 To this day, the real identity of this criminal is a mystery that is yet to be solved. His
09:33 face has never been seen, his chillingly normal family life has been seen, we've heard about
09:38 his past work in the mundane world of insurance, but not even Bruce Wayne has been able to
09:42 crack the mystique that surrounds this serial killer.
09:45 For those not familiar with this character, he's a brutal and cold murderer who forever
09:49 remains mute bar to mimic the sound of certain moments, such as mirroring the "slit"
09:54 noise as he slits Silver St. Cloud's throat. Even worse, that murder only took place because
09:59 he's been invited to the Batcave by the Dark Knight. Having earned the trust of Batman
10:03 as a new vigilante dubbed Baphomet, Onomatopoeia was shown the Batcave and even had Bruce unmask
10:09 in front of him, all of which climaxed in the rogue revealing his real identity and
10:13 slaughtering St. Cloud.
10:14 And there we go my friends, those were 8 mysteries that even Batman couldn't solve. I hope
10:17 that you enjoyed that and please let me know what you thought about it down in the comments
10:21 section below. As always I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Twitter @RetroJWithAZero
10:25 or you can swing by Live and Let's Dice where I do all of my streaming outside of work and
10:28 it'd be great to see you over there. As always I've been Jules, you have been awesome,
10:32 never forget that and I'll speak to you soon, bye.