Then strange murders and break-ins start popping up with virtually no evidence. Perfect crimes with the only piece of evidence: a single name: Mister E. There is DNA of Bruce Wayne’s good friend Thomas Elliot, whom Nashton suspects. Batman however thinks it was planted and believes it to be the work of a delusional serial killer named Arnold Etchison who escaped into the narrows a year and a half ago.
Batman starts noticing a pattern in the murders and shows up to one as Mister E. is just finishing cleaning up. He chases him, a man in a trench coat and bandages covering his face. He manages to lose Batman.
A third murder has HAHAHAHA written all over the walls.
Batman nor the MCU and Nashton can figure it out.
I'd make this movie as close to a mystery/detective movie as possible. And get really Noir and close to the detective roots. I’d throw off the audience with evidence leading to other possible candidates. So much so, that even the audience is questioning who the murderer is at times (thinking maybe Two-face is back? Maybe it's the joker...Maybe a new villain?) figuring it out along with Batman, rather than Batman being one step ahead of the audience.
So Gordon suggests the MCU pause their hunt for Batman and work with him. Nashton surprisingly agrees. In fact he arranges a meeting with Batman. They pool their info and decide to go to Arkham.
They go to Arkham to speak with a “familiar friend” and an certain intern who has been taking care of that friend. Batman’s “contact” sits in the shadows of his cell (and we never really see his face), in a scene much like “Silence of the Lambs.” He asks Batman to leave the room, and speaks to Nashton privately. He can sense something about the detective and begins to plant the seed of insanity and brings things to light. Batman talks to the intern outside (she tells him she feels somewhat bad for the “inmate”
, but Bruce secretly listens through the wall with his cowl earpiece thing. Outside of the Asylum, Nashton loses it; it's been eating too much at him and the conversation he just had makes him realize it. Nashton attacks Batman and attempts to remove the caped crusader's mask. We really see the raw side of "Riddler" as he lets loose on batman and even in his madness brings a logical argument to why the world would be better without batman. "How would you feel if the cop on the corner wore a mask? Protecting your streets, your house, your family? Ask yourself... Ask yourself!! With that mask....who are you protecting!?"
[FONT="]Batman goes to sulk as he always does and reflect on what Nashton said to him.
He goes back to all the crime scenes. He was missing something at the crime scenes. He goes back to the first strange murder scene. He finds some barely BARELY noticable clue, in the form of a riddle or a cipher or trivia, all with a new signature, “E. Nygma.” Which leads to the next committed crime scene and so on. And they get more psychotic as he visits the more recently-committed ones. The most recent one, batman walks into a seedy apartment, looks around and switches his cowl lenses between IR, UV, etc. When he switches to a certain lens, the walls light up with a eerie luminescent glow. The walls are covered with ramblings rather than logical riddles, "WHO IS THE BATMAN" "WHY THE MASK?" "WHO ARE YOU PROTECTING?" "WHAT'S BIG AND BLACK AND FLIES?" and what not.
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