Edward Nygma (Gotham)

"You're trying to lure me into a false sense of security while the claws of your investigation close around me, eh? Is that it, my little man? You take me to be a fool? We'll see about your little plan Jim Gordon, we'll see. I can make plans on my own..."

- Nygma starts planning against Gordon. "I want this to be a slow, painful death. One of a thousand deep cuts. First we take away his mind... and then, when this bird is broken and alone, we do the humane thing and put him out of his misery."

- Nygma explains his revenge on Penguin

Edward "Ed" Nygma is a character in the DC Comics television show, Gotham, in which he appears as the supporting protagonist in the first season, before developing into one of the series' antagonists during the second season. In the Mad City arc of the third season he becomes the primary antagonist of Oswald Cobblepot's story arc, and is set to become one of the main antagonists in the Heroes Rise arc.

He was portrayed by Cory Michael Smith, and is the show's version of the Riddler, a notable supervillain in Batman's Rogues Gallery.

In the first season, he is a supporting character and works as a police forensics investigator for the Gotham City Police Department, who normally gives Harvey Bullock and James Gordon results of crime scenes. He is also shown for having a love for puzzles, and despite lacking empathy does not act as a villain for a majority of the first season. A subplot involving Edward shows his interest in colleague Kristen Kringle. His start of darkness occurs when he murders her abusive boyfriend Tom Dougherty, which shows him having a breakdown and in the last episode of season 1, having an argument with himself.

In season 2, Edward begins his journey to villainy when he is shown to have developed a split personality/schizophrenia and accidentally kills Kristen when confessing that he murdered Tom. His darker side soon takes over when Edward soon realizes he takes pleasure in getting off with his crimes. Edward further develops into one of the antagonists as he begins plotting against Jim Gordon, who he wrongfully believes is suspecting him of Kringle's disappearance. Although Nygma manages to frame Gordon for a murder Nygma committed, Gordon is able to clear his name. Nygma is imprisoned in Arkham Asylum but Penguin, now planning to become mayor of Gotham, arranges him to be declared sane.

Nygma is released from Arkham and helps Penguin to achieve his goal and is named Penguin's Chief of Staff. However, when Penguin orders a hit on Nygma's girlfriend Isabella out of jealousy, Nygma - with Barbara Kean, Tabitha Galavan and Butch Gilzean - declares war on Penguin's empire, devoted to bringing it to shambles.

Personality
Edward is normally cheerful and friendly; however, he came off as weird and outright irritating towards his work colleagues. They specifically found this for his love of riddles, and his continued use of them while explaining what he had discovered during his work. Edward is also very knowledgeable about factual trivia which he thinks is a helpful matter, however it is actually another source of why his colleagues find him annoying. He has shown to be a genius-level intellect although his unorthodox methods of finding clues has led to him being questioned by his superiors. However, he still remains loyal and a very necessary element for the police service.

Edward appears desperate for a friend or even the slightest hint of companionship, possibly due to his childhood of neglect and insecurities, which was shown as he took an instant shine to the new cop, Jim Gordon, simply because he solved his riddle while meeting the first time as most of his colleagues don't even let him finish, let alone answer one of his "brain-teasers."

However Edward does have a reputation among the GCPD for misbehaving equipment. Cases of this are pretending to be a coroner while "dissecting" a watermelon for Kringle and using the same room to "surgically remove onions from (his) takeout." Once the actual coroner, Doctor Guerra, discovered him examining a murder victims body without clearance, he had him suspended. Edward appears to suffer from OCD such as organizing Kringle's Evidence Room in the way he wanted after being left in charge. An example of Edward's most immoral rule-breaking deed was when he framed Doctor Guerra for hoarding body parts out of revenge for getting him suspended.

Edward does express a more altruistic side however. When he had discovered that his crush, Kristin Kringle was being abused by her boyfriend, Officer Tom Dougherty he went over to defend her despite Kringle's objections and ignoring the fact that Dougherty exceeded him physically. Another example was when he saved Kringle from being shot when the Maniacs invaded the GCPD and when he nursed an injured Penguin back to health.

His attempts at romance are feeble at best. Although Edward does constantly try to impress Kringle, it never pans his way, such as writing a love letter for her which is discovered by her then-boyfriend Arnold Flass, which was used to humiliate him and planting a bullet inside a cupcake which was an attempt at a romantic metaphor. Edward was eternally optimistic; he had hope that he and Kringle would still be a couple despite her outright rejecting him multiple times, ironically this determination was a factor of why Kringle found him unlikable.

However, as the series continued, something began to affect Edward's psyche. Because of the humiliation and abuse he has suffered all of his life and in his work place he slowly suffers from a breakdown until he actually had a mental collapse when confronting Dougherty at Kringle's home and ends up stabbing him multiple times which resulted in a magnitude of emotions: shock at what he had done and hysterical laughter while all the while muttering to himself "Oh, dear" at the sight of Dougherty's corpse.

After murdering Dougherty, Edward tries to resist his new persona but was seen arguing with himself and his "dark side" in the evidence room when he had discovered that the letter he had forged told Dougherty leaving Gotham left a clue that he was the one who actually killed him. Edward's schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder became all too clear; he had no capacity for remorse or mercy even taking some joy in murdering people, developing a much darker and sadistic personality and becoming a shameless serial killer and psychopath. What is shown from this "Evil Ed" persona (a name given by many fans) is that he was reckless and arrogant, he had hidden clues in his forged Dougherty letter by spelling out his name NYGMA at the beginning of every sentence and nearly admitting to Kringle that he had killed Dougherty during their dinner. Eventually after accidentally murdering Kringle while trying to subdue her, then later hiding her body in GCPD, he discovered that he enjoyed getting away with murder and embraced his darkness, which was proven when he remorselessly killed a hunter while he was discarding Kringle's body in the forest.

Edward's serial killer identity has shown to be short-tempered, forward and downright arrogant, an example was when he slammed a drawer, angry at himself for leaving a clue about his involvement in Dougherty's demise and telling Penguin that his mother dying was because of his own weakness. However he was also able to project a calmness and confidence in his movements and words, something which surprised Gordon, for as long as he had known Edward he had always appeared shy and insecure. Edward still kept his powerful intelligence, able to cleverly hide the remains of his victims and could recognize it would be beneficial for him if he struck a partnership with Penguin after he had saved his life.

In spite of Edward's intelligence, he is shown to be quite paranoid, especially when he thinks someone is on to him, like when he believed Jim was close to the sudden disappearance of Kristen or when he fell for Gordon's trap when he thought the latter was going to find Kristen.

Victims
Kill count: 13
 * Tom Dougherty - Stabbed.
 * Kristin Kringle - Choked (accident).
 * Unnamed Hunter - Hit in the head with a shovel.
 * Leonard - Killed together with Oswald Cobblepot.
 * Carl Pinkney - Bludgeoned with a crowbar.
 * Jim Gordon - Shot in the leg (survived).
 * Butch Gilzean - Tortured with electroshock.
 * Tabitha Galavan - Chopped her hand off.
 * Tarquin Stemmel - indirectly; framed for hoarding Elijah's Van Dahl's body.
 * Two unnamed gangsters - Both shot.
 * Oswald Cobblepot - Shot and thrown into the river (survived).
 * 6 unnamed people - Killed after they failed his test

Episode appearances
{| class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed wikitable" width="100%" ! Appearances for Edward Nygma

Season 1

 * "Pilot"
 * "Selina Kyle"
 * "Arkham"
 * "Viper"
 * "Spirit of the Goat"
 * "The Mask"
 * "Harvey Dent"
 * "Lovecraft"
 * "What The Little Bird Told Him"
 * "Welcome Back, Jim Gordon"
 * "The Fearsome Dr. Crane"
 * "The Scarecrow"
 * "The Blind Fortune Teller"
 * "Everyone Has a Cobblepot"
 * "Beasts of Prey"
 * "Under the Knife"
 * "The Anvil or the Hammer"
 * "All Happy Families Are Alike"

Season 2

 * "Rise of the Villains: Damned If You Do..."
 * "Rise of the Villains: Knock, Knock"
 * "Rise of the Villains: Strike Force"
 * "Rise of the Villains: Scarification"
 * "Rise of the Villains: By Fire"
 * "Rise of the Villains: Mommy's Little Monster"
 * "Rise of the Villains: Tonight’s the Night"
 * "Rise of the Villains: A Bitter Pill to Swallow"
 * "Rise of the Villains: The Son of Gotham"
 * "Rise of the Villains: Worse Than A Crime"
 * "Wrath of the Villains: Mr. Freeze"
 * "Wrath of the Villains: This Ball of Mud and Meanness"
 * "Wrath of the Villains: Mad Grey Dawn"
 * "Wrath of the Villains: Prisoners"
 * "Wrath of the Villains: Into the Woods"
 * "Wrath of the Villains: Azrael"
 * "Wrath of the Villains: Unleashed"
 * "Wrath of the Villains: A Legion of Horribles"
 * "Wrath of the Villains: Transference"

Season 3

 * "Mad City: Better to Reign in Hell..."
 * "Mad City: Look Into My Eyes"
 * "Mad City: New Day Rising"
 * "Mad City: Anything for You"
 * "Mad City: Follow the White Rabbit"
 * "Mad City: Red Queen"
 * "Mad City: Blood Rush"
 * "Mad City: The Executioner"
 * "Mad City: Time Bomb"
 * "Mad City: Beware the Green-Eyed Monster"
 * }

Trivia

 * Edward working for the Gotham City Police Department is probably taken from the Arkham video game series Riddler, who was shown working for the G.C.P.D in the prequel game Batman: Arkham Origins.
 * Also, when Edward's "dark side" speaks to him, it distorts, similar to how Riddler's voice does when he speaks to Batman in the Arkham games.
 * The device he built to torture Tabitha and Butch might be another reference to the games, as the Riddler builds multiple elaborate death traps in the game Batman: Arkham City.
 * Edward's relationship with his alternate personality is similar to the relationship between the unnamed Narrator and Tyler Durden in the 1999 film Fight Club.
 * In some versions of the character he has the surname "Nashton", where he ends up taking the name Nigma (sometimes spelled Nygma depending on the writers).
 * Like most of his DC incarnations, Nygma always has an inability to tell a permanent lie. Even if he manages to get away with a lie like how he murdered Tom, he always leaves a clue about what actually happened, similar to how he made sure in each left margin, it spelled out "NYGMA".
 * He may also tell half truths. One instance is how he told Leslie Thompkins about his fight with Kristen, but leaves out the part where he killed her. Another occurrence is when he admits that Kristen "left" Gotham to be with Tom Dougherty (Via afterlife).
 * Another example is his description of Tom Dougherty as "rotten". Naturally, Gordon assumed that Nygma was talking about Dougherty's personality, but Nygma was secretly referring to the fact that Dougherty was dead and decomposing.
 * His license plate is "RIDL LVR".
 * He is the most ruthless and violent version of the Riddler, being behind that of the "Batman: Earth One" incarnation.
 * This incarnation begins to craft his Riddler persona and gimmick years prior to Bruce Wayne becoming Batman.