Riddler vs Arcade

00:23
Welcome to the Dynamic Duel Podcast, a weekly show where we review superhero films and debate the superiority between Marvel and DC by comparing their characters in stat-based battle simulations. I'm Marvelous Joe. And I'm his twin brother, Johnny DC. And in this episode, we will be finding out who would win in a fight between the Riddler and Arcade, the X-Men villain. This is going to be one of the more unique dual episodes that we've ever done. We're dealing with characters that don't really get into physical altercations. They prefer to fight with their mind. They're all about prep time.

00:53
Yeah, these characters create these elaborate traps for the heroes they go up against, but also considering the fact that we don't take environment into account, we had to get creative when it came to finding a way to pit these characters against each other. Yeah, so go ahead and stay tuned to later on this episode when we actually delve into this match and run the simulations and find out who would win. Before we get into that duel matchup, we're going to go over the news from the past week, of which there wasn't very much. We'll be talking about

01:19
how the John Wick director, Chats Tihelsky, is going to be directing the action scenes for the Birds of Prey movie. As always, you can look up the segment times in the episode description to go ahead and jump to whatever topic you wanna listen to. But before we get into the news, we just wanna give a quick shout out to Ben O'Neill, who gave us a second review on iTunes. Yeah, I guess he has two accounts or something. Or he's just using someone else's account. I don't know quite how Apple would feel about that. Hey, you know what? We got a rating. We got a rating. We got a rating. We're at 138.

01:48
We're that much closer to our 200 ratings on Apple Podcasts. Once we get to 200 ratings, Ron Tomatoes says we're eligible to have our reviews of Marvel and DC films count toward those films tomato meters. Which is a huge dream of ours. We have wanted to be film critics ever since we were in high school. So if you guys can help us get there, it'd be hugely appreciated. We love putting this show together for you guys every week. And if you guys could just give back by doing that, it'd be fantastic. Yes, please and thank you. But now that that's done, quick to the no prize.

02:19
So a No Prize is an award that Marvel used to give out up until the 90s to fans. Our version, the Dynamic Duel No Prize, is a digital award that we post on social media that I personally draw for those who we feel gave the best answer to our question of the week. Last week's question was, what character from the Spider-Man comics do you most want to see Phil Lord and Chris Miller adapt into a live action television series? And this is coming off the news that Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who are the producers of the Into the Spider-Verse movie,

02:49
They signed a contract with Sony to develop several live action Spider-Man based television series. So we got a lot of great answers of the shows that you guys would like to see. The first honorable mention goes to Anna Kosasa, who gave the answer of Squadron Sinister and the Grandmaster. Now this was not an answer that was really Spider-Man adjacent. I don't consider the Squadron Supreme or Squadron Sinister to be part of the Spider-Man universe. It's possible that she may have meant Sinister 6, but she also mentioned the Grandmaster, so I'm not sure. Either way...

03:18
A show involving these characters, especially the Grandmaster, would be pretty damn incredible. Christian Rubito also gets honorable mention for his answer of Hydro Man. Yeah, Hydro Man. I don't know if he might be the only one that wants a television show based on Hydro Man. That being said, I do agree that Hydro Man is severely underrated. It would have been cool to maybe see him down the line, like way down the line in a Spider-Man movie. Although they kind of use that up with the Elementals from Far From Home. But he's pretty powerful. Honorable mention also goes to Caleb Albers, who gave the answer of Spider-Man 2099.

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He was afraid that this answer was gonna be like the quote basic bitch answer. And it was and it was because lots of other people answered Spider-Man 2099, including Chris Castaneda, Tim Brown and Matthew Gonzalez. Although Matthew Gonzalez also mentioned Spider-Punk. What I really like about Spider-Man 2099, though, is that in some ways, this is the perfect answer. And that's probably why so many people gave it because you have such an opportunity for like high concept, high octane science fiction action within this. It could be like Tron.

04:16
meets Fifth Element meets Spider-Man. Sold. Exactly. So many great things, so many cool things that can be done with a Spider-Man 2099 show. So yeah, great answer, guys. Jeff Miles Jr. also gets honorable mention for his answer of Miles Morales and Gwen Stacy. Yeah, he wants to see that relationship further develop in a television show, although I think Sony's gonna prefer to explore that within the Spider-Verse sequel that they're making. In the animated universe that they've established. Right.

04:42
Honorable mention goes to John Spies for also giving the answer of Miles Morales. And Harrison Fox gave the answer of Spider-Gwen, as did Matt Estes. Honorable mention goes to Joel Seagrave who said that he wants a Clone Saga television show, which could be really fascinating. You know, the Clone Saga was a series from the 90s that Marvel put out that was often derided by fans because it left us questioning whether or not Peter Parker was actually, you know, the real Peter Parker or not. I think that's kind of a fascinating concept.

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especially when it's explored on its own outside of, you know, everything else that is Peter Parker related. Just like seeing what they're getting up to, I think, would make a pretty decent show. It's interesting how you could explore both Peter Parker's clones and his multiverse selves. There's like so many, just so many different versions of Spider-Man in the Marvel Comics universe. And I think Joel Segrave mentioned that if anyone could get that right, it's Phil Lord and Chris Miller. Yeah, definitely. They're great writers. Aaron Alexander Jones also gave the answer of the Clone Saga.

05:39
Salvador Martinez gave the answer of a man spider. It's when Peter Parker mutated into a spider. And he said that the series could follow Madam Webb trying to put a stop to him. And he said a twist at the end could be that man spider fuses with carnage, which would be so deadly and pretty bad ass. Ken Johnson gets honorable mention for his answer of Craven. Yeah, that would be a fantastic show. I'm not sure quite how it would work. I guess you would have him like hunting a different quarry like every week.

06:05
It could be like, you know, dog the bounty hunter, but without without the bounty, just the hunter, you know, I totally see like a fat craving, just like balding spring bear mace in people's face. Right. Exactly. They believe that Sony is currently working on a live action feature length film for this character and much in the same way that they're working on Morbius and Venom. Yeah, that's the rumor. Colby Hentges gave the answer of Superior Spider-Man, which I think would be a fantastic mini series. Superior Spider-Man was a great book. I love the aesthetic.

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of the character. Like I wish that was just Peter Parker, like not Doctor Octopus. Just give all that gear to Peter Parker. He should have adapted all those upgrades that Doctor Octopus made to his whole getup when he became Spider-Man. Right? Yeah. And finally, Red Hood gave the answer of Spider-X, Blood Spider, or Ezekiel Sims, who are probably like the three most obscure characters in Spider-Man anthology.

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You know, having only been in a handful of issues themselves. Yeah, I think I only know one of those characters. But you know, a television show is a great way to explore these characters and develop them even further. But the winner of this week's No Prize goes to C.J. Kraft for his answer of Spider-Man Noir. And the way he described the show made it seem like basically Sin City. I would love to see a Spider-Man Noir meets like Sin City type show. That one just really captured my imagination.

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just as much as a Spider-Man 2099 show would capture my imagination. Really, both of those ideas have equal merit, but CJ Kraft was the only one that gave the Spider-Man no answer, so he gave it to him, basically. Yeah, I love the visual look of what Robert Rodriguez did with the Sin City live action movies. It's just so stylish, it's so cool. And now make it more 1930s and add Spider-Man into the mix. Boom. So congrats to CJ Kraft. You win this week's No Prize, so Jonathan will go ahead and draw. Who are you drawing this week? I'm drawing Arcade.

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You're gonna get a drawing of Arcade that we'll post to social media, go ahead and check that out. If you, the listener, want to win your own No Prize, go ahead and stay tuned to later on this episode when we ask another question of the week. Now that that's done, on to the news!

08:12
Okay, so the Hollywood Reporter broke the news a few days ago that John Wick director Chad Stahelski is going to design and tackle new action scenes for the Birds of Prey film dropping next February. Now there's two different ways you can take this news. Essentially the first way that I took it was, oh, Birds of Prey, you know, the movie's in trouble, it doesn't have good enough action, they're gonna have to bring in someone to help fix this movie, kind of like the way they had to fix Rogue One with Star Wars. Or like World War Z. Yeah.

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But those movies turned out great. They did actually. What's the other way you could take it? The other way you could take it is that, hey, you know, a lot of these directors don't actually shoot a lot of the action scenes in their films. Like take the Russo brothers, for example, they use a lot of second unit direction when it comes to high octane action. That's one of the reasons why The Winter Soldier was so good. And guess who directed the action scenes in The Winter Soldier? Chad Stahelski. What, he did? Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah, he's also done Ninja Assassin, he's done The Hunger Games.

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He started off actually as Keanu Reeves stunt double in The Matrix before breaking into direction. His stunt firm, I think it's called 8711, was already working on this film, doing the stunts for it. And they're like, they're doing insane stunt work right now. If you've seen any of the John Wick films, you know how crazy their stuff is. He's directed all of the John Wick films. He co-directed the first John Wick with David Leitch, who later went on to work on films like Deadpool 2. Right, right.

09:38
What's interesting here is that he is taking an uncredited role directing these action scenes. Well, he's not getting a director credit. I think that's what they were mentioning. I assume that he's still going to get credited for his stunt work. I mean, his firm will, but the shots he's directing will be uncredited. My interpretation of that uncredited news would be that he wouldn't get a co-director credit, given that he's a big name. Yeah, I guess we'll see when it comes out. I think this is good news. It is good news. It is. It is great news.

10:05
If you're gonna get any action director to direct your action scenes, get the fucking guy that did John Wick in Winter Soldier. In my opinion, he is like the biggest name in stunt work and action scenes in the business right now. So hopefully by him taking this work, maybe he'll get a bigger DC Comics character to work with in the future. What characters would you like to see him work with? Personally, I've always wanted to see a question film. He's not superhuman, so there'd be an opportunity for a lot of stunt work. It's pretty gritty. Yeah.

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But all of that could also probably describe the Birds of Prey. So it seems like it's a good fit. Yeah, the Birds of Prey have never been really overtly superpowered. So you can get really grounded with the action. Exactly, exactly. And actually, I just realized if David Leitch directed Deadpool, Stahelski should direct Deathstroke. Oh, that would be sweet. That movie needs to be made. His action style is probably more suited to someone like Deathstroke than, say, the Birds of Prey, because Deathstroke uses guns. Does anyone from Birds of Prey use guns? Huntress uses a crossbow. Harley Quinn uses guns. Oh, that's true.

11:03
Ultimately, I think this movie may have the best action scenes we've ever seen in a DC film. Well, that's a short bar to clear, honestly. Oh, fuck off. Name a great DC action scene. Uh, Batman v Superman, the warehouse scene. That's like the only one. The only like grounded one. There's plenty of action scenes. Yeah, that are crap. Oh, oh, okay. Black Manta versus Aquaman was crap. Okay, no, that was pretty good actually.

11:32
Wonder Woman and the enemy soldiers in the town was crap? Nah, yeah you're right. They've had a few, they've had a few. Superman versus Zod was crap? No, yeah that was totally shit. I can't give you that one. I wouldn't expect you to know good action. This all brings us to our question of the week. What is the most important thing in a movie?

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What is your favorite action scene in a Marvel or DC film? Post your answer to our Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or email us at dyna We'll pick our favorite answer and draw that person a dynamic duel no prize that we'll post to social media. But that does it for all the news. There's nothing really else too much to talk about that's not a rumor. So who knows, maybe next week will be a heavy news week. But now let's get into our main event where we pit Arcade against Riddler and find out who will be the champion.

12:37
Alright, Arcade versus Riddler. We have a primarily X-Men villain in Arcade and a Batman villain in the Riddler. Two characters who primarily fight using not their fists, but their brains. And of course we're doing this match now, having just come off of our review of Batman Hush last week, in which the Riddler played a pretty prominent role. He was so great in that movie, in Batman Hush. So we knew that we had to use him for a duel in this episode, and who better to pit him against than Marvel's own suit wearing puzzling trickster, Arcade.

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Now if this is your first time listening to one of our duel episodes, the way we determine the winner between these two characters is we run a series of Monte Carlo simulations using the characters' base stats. Now these stats are randomized along a normal distribution which is a bell curve and that represents all the different variables that take place in battle. We use the stats that are given in the Marvel official power rankings and we extrapolate the DC character stats from those criteria.

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And we also incorporate a few more stats just to make a more robust simulation. We take this approach because Joseph and I are both heavily biased in favor of either DC or Marvel. Right. And this is the most scientific approach that we could think of to determine the answer of who would win. Exactly. It was the same approach that Spike TV did in their show Deadliest Warrior that was on the air about 10 or so years ago. Probably more than that now. Yeah. The simulation results give us a percentage of wins for each character because

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There's always one way a character can defeat another, always a way for Batman to defeat Superman. Right, so no character ever wins 100% of the time if we've done our job right in picking a fair matchup. So we don't consider fan votes, and we don't consider like extraordinary feats of strength that are uncharacteristic for the character. Right. 90% of the time. It's just these base stats with simulations. Now before we run these simulations, we like to go into the histories and abilities of each character. I think it's my turn to go first with Arcade.

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Now I'm not sure how many people out there actually know a lot about the history of arcade given that he hasn't been in a whole lot of comic book issues. I don't remember him from the cartoon at all. You don't? No. He was in X-Men Evolution, he was even in Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon. Oh wow. Yeah, he's been in a lot of different things. Primarily though, I think he really works best in the video games. I remember the arcade boss battle in Marvel Ultimate Alliance. The whole murder world level was incredible. He was a villain that was like tailor-made for video games. What was the name like, arcade?

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You would hope so. Right, exactly. So little is known about the villain Arcade's early history. Even his real name has never been revealed. He has told, however, that he was born to an incredibly wealthy family and had a lifelong fixation with toys and games. His father detested his childish hobbies and abused Arcade when he was young. On his 21st birthday, his parents withdrew his trust fund, and in retaliation, Arcade killed his parents with a car bomb, inheriting all their wealth.

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It's unknown if that story is actually part of Arcade's past or not, or if he made it up just for his own sick enjoyment. What is known is that as a young adult, Arcade turned his enjoyment of murder into a career as an assassin, charging $1 million per contract. Over time, he grew bored of killing people using conventional means, and started using his technological genius to build elaborate murder traps in a mobile facility he called Murderworld.

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He based his traps on his targets greatest fears and weaknesses. By vetting his victims and learning everything about them, he could tailor his deadly machinations to provide them with the most amount of despair, while simultaneously providing himself with the most amount of amusement. He enjoys watching people die. Though Arcade loved relishing how much his victims suffered, he would often laugh at and taunt them through a loudspeaker, he would always give them a tiny chance of escape for sport. Though no one ever escaped.

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Murderworld made him renowned in the criminal underworld, and he took on the codename Arcade. He's a lot like Jigsaw from the Saw films. Yeah, pretty much. And I guess like the Riddler from the Arkham games. Yeah, although Arcade is a little bit more whimsical, or at least he used to be. Like one of his most memorable appearances was when he put the X-Men in a giant pinball machine. That sounds cool, actually. So Arcade hired two assistants. Mr. Chambers, his chief engineer, and Miss Locke, a martial arts expert and field agent,

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to lure Arcade's victims into Murder World. She was also Arcade's lover, and the two often played deadly games with each other for the thrill. Over time, Arcade killed numerous conventional targets and eventually grew bored again, but a contract to kill Captain Britain led to the first Murder World escape, and brought a newfound enjoyment to Arcade, who decided he would dedicate his resources toward killing superheroes. Not for the money, but for the challenge.

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and teams such as X-Men, X-Factor, and Excalibur. But although the heroes kept escaping, Arcade at least managed to avoid capture himself each time. One day, while recuperating from his latest failure, he grew angry and stabbed his lover Miss Locke too deep while they were in bed playing with a knife. Unable to cope with the idea that he murdered her, he convinced himself that Wolverine had done it, and employed the mutant illusionist mastermind to help him get his revenge.

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Mastermind learned the truth and turned on Arcade, imprisoning him in a murder world in his own mind. Arcade later recovered and went on to terrorize superheroes such as Deadpool, Hercules, and Black Cat, once teaming up with the mystical villain Nightmare to create a murder world that was a terrifying labyrinth. However, Arcade still had yet to keep a hero from escaping. After learning that most other villains thought of him as a gimmicky joke, Arcade grew depressed and decided that playing for amusement...

18:18
was less important than playing to win. He hired a new assistant named Miss Coriander who helped him build a murder world in Antarctica using nanotechnology, as well as a special suit that would grant him god-like powers within the facility. He captured young teenage heroes from Avengers Academy, the Runaways, and Xavier School for the Gifted, and told them they would have to kill each other, and that only the survivor would escape. In the Avengers Arena miniseries, he pretty much admitted that he stole the idea from the Hunger Games books.

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I was gonna say Battle Royale. Yeah, but... Well... The young heroes instantly rebelled, but he used his god powers to kill Metal from the Avengers Academy. Red Raven then tried to escape, but she broke her neck by slamming into the facility's barrier. Oh jeez. The teens fled and hid across Murderworld, creating alliances just as Arcade hoped. He manipulated the terrain and drew them toward each other with supplies and weapons, leading to a hero named Anachronism killing Kid Brittain.

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The Game of Death brought out the dark side of the hero Apex, who killed Avengers Academy teammate Justin Seifert and Runaways member Nico Minoru. Although Nico managed to resurrect herself and in turn killed Apex and Deathlock it, who is the cyborg daughter of the creator of the Deathlock program. When the Avengers began investigating the teens' disappearance, Arcade used robots wearing the dead teens' skin to convince them everything was fine. As more of the teens died...

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it seemed Arcade had finally achieved success as a supervillain. The contest was cut short however when Deathlocket was revealed to have survived her death and accessed Murderworld's control panel. But Arcade managed to teleport away and uploaded the events of that Murderworld to YouTube, finally earning him respect among his peers. The story was so brutal. I highly suggest reading Avengers Arena if you haven't already. You already know the ending, but you know, you knew the ending of Hunger Games.

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before you saw that or read the book, so you know, read it. I highly recommend it. So a few of the surviving heroes from the Antarctic murder world managed to track Arcade down by going undercover in the Masters of Evil. They strapped into the front of a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier as they flew around on their missions, and that was the last that he was seen. Holy cow. Now Arcade has a genius level intellect and is an expert when it comes to electronics, robotics, engineering, and design.

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He even taught himself to master the She-R holographic technology that once powered the X-Men's danger room training sessions. He prefers not to fight, but has a history involving some hand-to-hand training. He also has equipped various personal defense weapons, but instead he prefers to defeat his enemies in Murder World, as his main weakness is definitely his intense need for entertaining mental stimulation. And that's arcade. He has like super ADD. And you combine that with violent psychopathic tendencies, and you have a recipe for disaster.

21:06
He's a really fascinating villain, one that I really never gave enough credit until I read up on him. That recipe for disaster is pretty close to the recipe that made the Riddler as well. Really? There's some strong connections there. Interesting, let's hear it. Now the Riddler, aka Edward Nigma, is one of the most notorious and ridiculed villains of Batman's Rogue's gallery. Born Edward Nashton, he grew up to an abusive father and absentee mother. While in school at a young age, Edward's teacher promised a prize

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to the student who could solve a puzzle the fastest. Showing both compulsive and narcissistic tendencies early on, Edward broke into the school at night to figure out how to solve the puzzle in under a minute, and when he did it the next day, he was given a book of riddles as a prize. Edward's intelligence was often praised, but not by his father, who disliked his son being smarter than him and often accused him of cheating, something Edward himself would

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later in life. His father's beatings only drove Edward's obsession with proving his intellectual superiority, suffering from severe insecurity-borne distress if he was unable to do so. Like a surprising many of Batman's villains, the Riddler worked early on at a carnival, where he used his deductive skills to cheat the carnival goers out of their money. Wishing to move up in the world, he changed his name to Edward Nigma.

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and climbed up the corporate world to become the chief strategist at Wayne Enterprises during Bruce Wayne's worldwide travels in preparation to fight crime in Gotham City. With Edward's shady backdoor schemes and profiteering exposed upon Bruce Wayne's return, Edward's career was left in ruins. Wishing revenge against Wayne Enterprises and all of the idiots in Gotham City, Edward

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during a hurricane as the Riddler, making him the first masked villain of Batman's crime-fighting career post-New 52. Further threatening the city with explosive weather balloons, the Riddler's secret location was eventually tracked down by Batman, and when the Riddler threatened to blow up the city unless Batman could solve twelve of his riddles, Batman surprisingly answered by punching the Riddler in the face.

23:30
That's pretty good. Diagnosed with a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, Edward was sentenced to Arkham Asylum for psychiatric treatment. To learn more about Batman, check out our Batman vs. Moon Knight episode. So after proving himself a valuable criminal profiler and apt informant of Gotham's underworld to the police force, the Riddler eventually grew bored at Arkham and walked out simply by reciting the names of the guards' loved ones as they confronted him. Huh.

23:58
Offering to team up with the Joker to kill Batman, the Riddler was instead shot by the Clown Prince of Crime, starting a large-scale gang war known as the War of Jokes and Riddles, in which Batman's rogues divided their loyalties into two factions, the Joker's or the Riddler's. Batman eventually sided with the Riddler in an attempt to stem the amount of innocent bystanders killed in the supervillain feud, though by the end, Batman nearly killed the Riddler in anger.

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and Edward and the Joker were sent back to Arkham. You can of course learn more about the Joker in our Joker vs Green Goblin episode. During one of his stints at the asylum, the Riddler was freed along with the rest of Batman's enemies by the villain Bane during the Nightfall storyline, which you can learn more about in our Bane vs Iron Fist episode. The Riddler, psychologically incapable of not leaving clues to stop his crimes,

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sent several letters to the Gotham Police Department, all of which were ignored as the police were overwhelmed by the other Arkham villains out causing mayhem. After the Riddler's henchmen abandoned him after they grew tired of waiting for the police to fall into his trap, the Riddler hijacked a local news television show in a bid for attention, holding the live audience hostage with a bomb detonator.

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He was thwarted by Robin alone after the sidekick deduced that the Riddler's bomb was fake. Now, considered an incompetent joke amongst Gotham's underworld for most of his career, the Riddler was elevated to a new threatening level during the Hush storyline when the Riddler bathed in a rejuvenating Lazarus pit in a desperate move to cure a malignant tumor that had developed in his brain.

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Brought about by the Lazarus Pit, the Riddler deduced that Batman's real identity was Bruce Wayne, and he teamed with the villain Hush to mastermind a plan that nearly drove Batman insane as Bruce Wayne's loved ones were targeted by nearly every member of his rogue's gallery. Batman prevailed in the end and reminded the captured Riddler that a riddle everyone knew the answer to was worthless, ensuring that the Riddler kept his secret identity.

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During the Infinite Crisis storyline, the Riddler joined the ranks of the Secret Society of Super-Villains, only to be knocked unconscious and put in a coma by the hero Shining Knight. Waking up a year later with amnesia, Edward amassed a small fortune legally as a private investigator, frequently helping Batman and other heroes solve crimes for some time, before he was caught in an explosion during a heroic escapade that re-triggered his psychosis.

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Whether he's plotting schemes against Batman, Green Arrow, or even The Flash, The Riddler is pretty inconsistent when it comes to success, sometimes failing in hilarious fashion and other times proving himself frighteningly capable and underestimated. While the jury's out on whether or not he's as intelligent as he claims to be, and though he has no powers or physical abilities of note, he does have a genius level of intellect.

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capable of crafting elaborate death traps and lethal weapons, more likely than not designed around a question mark motif, like his staff, which has served successfully as a trigger for various tricks and snares, and somewhat less successfully as a combat weapon. That's the Riddler. Yeah, there were quite a few similarities there. Two fascinating villains. Let's go ahead and find out who would win in a fight.

27:40
Now before we run the simulations, what we'd like to do on this podcast is kind of improvise a scenario and talk about how we think one of these 1000 simulated battles would actually play out. We don't set any rules for this battle, save for the fact that the characters don't know anything about each other when they first meet, other than that the other one is a threat that needs to be put down. And the fight takes place in an environment that plays no bearing on the match itself. In a non-environment, as it were. Now these rules would normally apply to our duel episodes.

28:09
However, this one, we're taking a different approach. This improvised scenario is not actually 100% improvised. Since these characters fight more with their brains than with their fists, we did a little bit of prep work and you'll see what I mean as we get into it. So the characters start off 50 yards apart from each other on a non-environment field. Who goes first? The Riddler. Okay. Right away he goes, riddle me this. So obviously these characters, like,

28:37
They don't really fight hand to hand. So we figure that what they'll end up doing is they'll end up talking it out basically and try to figure out exactly which of them is smarter. Now to that end, both Jonathan and I have prepared riddles for each other and logic puzzles to kind of simulate this battle of the minds, if you will. So the characters, they sit down next to each other. Arcade pulls out these taser discs that he usually uses to strap onto victims that he's luring into murder world.

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and he straps a taser disc onto himself and to the Riddler, and the scenario is this. The characters each have to answer five riddles. Whoever gets the most incorrect gets zapped and electrocuted and dies. And that's how the speculation is gonna play out. This is already gonna be a horrible speculation. I am nowhere near as intelligent as the Riddler. I'm nervous, I'm super nervous about this. For Arcade, I didn't develop riddles so much as theme existing logic puzzles to the X-Men characters.

29:35
Riddles, some of them actually are riddles that the Riddler has actually used in the comics. Uh-huh. Not all of them, but hopefully they're clever enough to stump you. Okay, so let's get into it. Okay, okay, okay. Riddle me this. Alright. It holds most knowledge that's ever been said, but is not the brain and is not the head. To feathers, they're masters, both bane and boon, respectively when empty and when full. The feathers make me think it's like a quill. Is it a pen?

30:05
No. Is it a book? No. No, close though. Is it a bookshelf? No. How many answers do you get? As many as I fucking need. I'm not as smart as Arcade, okay? Is it, so it's close to a book? Okay, is it a piece of paper? Yeah. Is it a letter? Yeah. There you go. It's paper. Paper. Okay, awesome. Yeah, writers use like feathered cool pens and you know, when the page is full of writing, it's good. And when it's empty, it's not.

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Okay, yeah, that's what I figured. Yeah, after like five tries. I thought it was like when the pen was full of ink as opposed to when the pen was empty. Nah, anyway, Arcade does not get zapped because I got the answer right. Oh gosh. Now, okay, now Arcade has a puzzle for the Riddler. At 9 a.m. multiple men caught a cold and began sneezing at the start of every minute. Every time he sneezed, he created a duplicate of himself with the same exact cold.

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and each time a duplicate sneezed, it created its own duplicate. At exactly 9.06 a.m., his apartment was half full of dupes. At what time will his apartment be completely full? That's an easy one. I mean, if he's doubling every minute and then at 9.06, his apartment is half full, it means at 9.07, it will be full. Correct. You're right. Whatever. It was an easy one. It was an easy one. Yeah. Yeah. The number of multiple men doubles each minute.

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Therefore you can say that at 9-07 his apartment is full, being half full the previous minute. Okay, I don't get zapped either then. Yay. Alright. Riddle me this. Okay. I'm always moving forward, never looking back. My end limit, no one knows. More of me, they lack. Like a river, I do flow. Like a bird, I fly. Now go on and take a guess. What, say you, am I? It's either a clock or time. Motherfucker.

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Time, yeah it's time. Time? Yeah, that makes sense. Cause time flies, it always goes forward, you can never go back in time. That was an easy one. Okay, yeah, I guess so. You're right, it was an easy one. I wanted it to be easy. Alright, alright, next puzzle for the Riddler. The villain Toad is stuck in a muddy hole 100 feet deep and is trying to get out. Every minute he jumps up 25 feet but slides down 24 feet.

32:32
How long does it take Toad to leap out the hole? Oh, this is like the frog in the well. Yes, except it's Toad in the hole as opposed to a frog in a well. Okay, ah, math, okay. It's not that hard of math. Essentially, he's going up a foot a minute? Correct. Okay, but by 75 minutes, 75 minutes, right? Because 75 minutes, all he'll need is one more jump. Oh, so 76 minutes. Correct, as 76 minutes or an hour and 16 minutes.

33:01
Will take him up to a height of 76 feet at which point when he leaps he'll leap 25 feet as usual He'll leap out of the hole and you won't slide back down nice Always worried for a second I was gonna do the math on that one right a lot of people say it'll take him a hundred minutes for that one and Calculating the one foot per minute thing, but they don't think about that last jump. Yeah, okay good Thank you. You're doing pretty well so far. Okay. I'm trying to stump you. I'm trying Let's see if I could do it with this next one riddle me this okay when I'm quick. I am deadly

33:29
A rock, shell, and bone medley. As a man, I'd make you dream nearby ocean, sea, and stream. Rock, shell, and bone medley. Makes me think it's like a wave or something, but what makes you dream? Sleep? Like what puts you to sleep? Like laying by the ocean puts you to sleep? No? Is that? Sandman! Sand! Oh, mother- Yes. Sand? Yeah, it's sand. Yeah!

33:57
I was worried about that third line as I was reading it. I was like, oh, this is too easy. Yeah, that kind of gives it away. The whole as a man I make you sleep thing. That's really the whole riddle. Yeah. Yeah, that's the whole riddle right there. All right. So next puzzle for the Riddler. You are Nightcrawler. You are trying to save Juggernaut, Deadpool and a Chimichanga from the roof of a burning building. You have to teleport all three to the safety of the street below, but you can only teleport.

34:27
one at a time. Now you can't leave Deadpool all alone with the chimichanga because he'll eat it. You can't leave Juggernaut all alone with Deadpool because he'll rip Deadpool to shreds. Now in what sequence can you safely teleport all three from the burning building to the street? Can't you just have Deadpool eat the chimichanga? What's wrong with him eating the- You have to save the chimichanga, that's part of the rules of the puzzle. You have to save the Juggernaut, Deadpool, and the chimichanga from the burning building through teleportation.

34:55
Okay. Again, you can only teleport one at a time and you can't leave Deadpool alone with either the chimichanga and you can't leave him alone with the juggernaut. Okay. So what's the sequence? Okay, so like okay, so juggernaut is not gonna eat the chimichanga? Correct, right. Yeah, he's safe with the chimichanga. Okay. Okay, so Nightcrawler will teleport Deadpool first and then go back for juggernaut. Okay. Okay, so then he takes juggernaut across the street.

35:24
But he he could take Deadpool back to the burning building, right? Correct. Yes. OK. Well, then he takes Deadpool back to the burning building, grabs the chimichanga, goes back across the street, leaves the chimichanga with Juggernaut and then goes back for Deadpool and brings him back across the street. So all are safe now. Yep. You got it. You got it. Fuck. I thought that would be a hard one. It's just it's just a lot. It takes a lot of back and forth. Yeah. Basically, if you just remember that Juggernaut is safe with the chimichanga, then you kind of work from there. Yeah. Then it's it's pretty straightforward. Yeah.

35:53
Alright, next. Riddle me this. Reaching stiffly for the sky, I bare my fingers when it's cold. In warmth, I wear an emerald glove, and in between I dress in gold. Uh, reach gloved hands to the cold sky? Yeah, dressing in green and gold. Yes. In warmth, I wear- Oh, it's a tree! Or a branch. Okay, alright. Yeah, it's a tree. It's either a branch or a tree. That one was obvious.

36:22
Okay. I suck. These are way easy. The Riddler is a horrible, horrible deliverer of riddles. Alright, Riddler's turn. So Mirage, from the New Mutants, encounters a bear in a wasteland at night, where no one else is around. Mistaking it for the Demon Bear, Mirage runs away to the north by 20 yards. The bear runs away to the west by 30 yards. Suddenly, Mirage stops...

36:50
She aims her psionic bow directly south and shoots the bear with a neural arrow. What color was the bear? What the fuck? Why does it matter if she shoots him? She would have missed because he wasn't there to begin with. She aims directly south and she shoots him. But he's not there because he's 30 yards west. That doesn't make any sense. The question is, what color is the bear, sir? You never said the color. Brown. The bear is brown. Bears are brown.

37:19
BOOM you just got electrocuted! Riddler just got electrocuted! Zzzz

37:49
You used Euclidean geometry on me. Yeah, actually Einstein wrote this riddle. Really? Yeah, except obviously he didn't use Mirage and the demon bear, it was just a hunter and a polar bear. First of all, you said a wasteland. Yeah, the North Pole's a fucking wasteland. Whatever, fine. All right, your turn. Yay, I'm winning. Okay, here we go. Last one, prepare to be electrocuted. Riddle me this.

38:18
What's the beginning of eternity, the end of time and space, the beginning of every end, and the end of every race? I know this one. What? I've heard this one before. It's the letter E. Fuck! Right? What? The beginning of eternity, the end of time and space, time and space ends with the letter E. The beginning of every end. Yeah. And the end of every race. Right. Well look at you! I got them all right! Alright, here's the last puzzle for the Riddler.

38:45
Beast is developing a chemical solution to power the X-Jet with alternative fuels. His new formula calls for exactly 4 liters of liquid nitrogen. The problem is he only has an unmarked 5 liter Erlenmeyer flask and an unmarked 3 liter Erlenmeyer flask. How can he use these flasks to measure out the 4 liters of liquid that he needs? Why are all of yours involving math?

39:13
That's what I want to know. This is barely math. It's like elementary addition and subtraction math. Okay. Yeah. So they're unmarked flasks and he needs four liters. Right. Did you ever see Die Hard with a Vengeance? This puzzle was in that movie. Oh yeah? Yeah. Awesome, I should have seen the movie. I know how to do it. I would fill up the five liter flask. Uh-huh. And then I would empty three of the liters.

39:41
into the three liter flask. Right, you'd fill that three liter flask up. Right, all the way to the top. So I would, I know I would have two liters in the five liter flask. Right. And three liters in the three liter flask. Correct. So I just need to figure out how to get rid of the one and the three liter. Well, where's the nitrogen coming from? It's coming from a liquid nitrogen tank. You can pour liquid out too, is all I'm saying. Just dump it on the floor, you know. He has an unlimited supply of liquid nitrogen. Okay, that's good to know.

40:12
Okay, so I still have five liters. I'll empty out the three liter flask, put the two liters that I still have in the five liter flask into the three liter flask. Right? So it's one liter away from being full. Correct. And there's nothing in the five liter flask now. Right. Okay, well then I'll just fill up the five liter flask and then empty one liter of it into the three liter flask. So I have four left over in the five.

40:40
and I'll just dump whatever's in the three liter flask. And you have your four liter right there. Boom, boom. You got it. I'm smart, dude. All I know is that we've come to the end of the riddles and the puzzles and the Riddler was the only one that got any of these questions wrong. So guess what? Arcade presses his trigger and the Riddler gets zapped and electrocuted until he dies. Yeah, except that the Riddler used a reverse frequency.

41:07
Analyzer on his cane what to redirect the frequency to arcade and he got electrocuted He doesn't have a sucker. It's a reverse frequency Versus transmission frequencies shut up. That's cheating. No. Yeah, that's fine. Well, okay the river cheats Well, he cheats all the time. Yes What little did you know that arcade wouldn't dare risk putting an electrified taser disc on his own body? Not knowing whether or not he would know the answers and get out of this alive. So

41:35
He actually just projected a hologram of himself right there. That was a hologram that was answering these questions. In reality, Arcade's been standing behind Riddler this whole time, and he just shoots him with a gun. Oh yeah? Yeah. Well, little did you know that the Riddler noticed that Arcade was a hologram through his powers of deduction, and he knew that the real one was probably up behind him. What? So before Arcade could fire that gun, the Riddler spins around in his chair and uses his cane to knock the gun out of Arcade's hand.

42:03
Alright, okay, so now this is just like a full-on brawl then, eh? Let's do it! We're not fighting with our brains anymore? Come at me, bro. So, Arcade lunges at Riddler and pounces on him, knocks him off his chair, and starts choking the shit out of him. How are you gonna choke someone with a long metal cane, who's hitting you in the head? Well, Arcade gets hit in the head and he rolls away, and then... No, he's out. He's been knocked unconscious. No, no, you know, he's concussed. He's not unconscious. But he, like, throws up his fist, and like this hard light...

42:31
holographic like boxing glove on a spring shoots out and punches Riddler in the face knocking him out cold. Hard light? Yeah, it's Shiar technology. Okay, well if Arcade isn't knocked unconscious with the cane, the Riddler isn't with the boxing glove. That's fair I guess. And then the Riddler pulls out a gun and shoots Arcade in the face. Except Arcade leaps out of the way and he starts flying using these air stepper shoes that he has, or he can like walk on air.

42:59
What the fuck is this shit? Yeah, he has those. And then he just drops a bomb onto the Riddler. Okay well as the bomb is dropping, that's when the Riddler is like, RIDDLE ME THIS! I see without seeing. To me, darkness is as clear as daylight. What am I? Arcade says who gives a shit, and then Riddler blows up. A bat! And so he swings his cane like a bat, knocking the bomb back at Arcade. You got that riddle from Batman Forever.

43:26
It was the only thing I could come up with at the last minute for a bat. Okay, so allegedly this is the type of bomb that could be batted upwards Yes. and still not explode. Whatever. We'll end our improvised scenario there where either Arcade gets blown up with his own bomb or the Riddler gets blown up with Arcade's bomb. And we'll go ahead and run the simulations and find out which of these characters wins this match.

43:54
Alright, as much as I wanted that to be a battle of minds, you made it devolve into a battle of fists in the end. What? Yeah, with your transmitter reversal device. They had to start punching each other because they couldn't electrocute each other. Now intelligence wise, these guys are probably on par with each other. Now I would say that Riddler has a higher success rate in the comics than Arcade. However Arcade frequently goes up against more powerful heroes than I would say the Riddler does.

44:21
For the most part, the Riddler usually sticks to Gotham City in Batman, but he's taken his gig to Central City to fight the Flash before. That being said, it's pretty rare. Yeah, the rest of their stats were also pretty comparable in addition to their intelligence. It's hard to say exactly what equipment each of these characters has on them, so we kind of went with what you could consider default weapons. For Riddler, it included his cane, as well as some question mark flashbangs and a gun, a pistol. Arcade, that was even harder.

44:50
but we assume that he had some kind of holographic image inducer, maybe some explosives, maybe a gun. So that being said, we figured Arcade could probably deliver a higher damage level than Riddler at any average given moment. Correct, because basically he's just dealing with technology that's a little bit more advanced than Riddler typically works with. Right. But in terms of like, you know, strength, speed, durability... They're average. They're not typically lifting weights, you know? The only things these guys are lifting are...

45:19
Pencils to fill out their Sudoku. Right, exactly. Alright, so who do you think won between these two characters? I'm pretty convinced it's Arcade. Just because of the few stats where he ranks higher than the Red Lurin, namely damage and evasiveness, we figured that his holograms would make him a little bit more tricky with his illusion casting and possible force field generation. Right, again it all comes down to the toys that they're using at the moment. So that being said...

45:47
The winner of the Riddler vs Arcade is... You're correct, it's Arcade. What a cheater! Arcade won 651 matches out of the 1000 simulations. The Riddler only won 349. So it wasn't that close of a match. No, I'm not surprised. When one character is higher than another character, even if it's by a little bit in multiple stats, it's gonna skew the results in their favor. By skew, you mean...

46:16
totally stop, totally annihilate. What a cheater. Totally win. I'm just in character right now, what a cheater. That does it for this episode. Arcade beats Riddler 65.1% of the time. Go ahead and reach out to us guys, let us know what you thought about this matchup. And you can do that on social media, on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Just visit our website, dynamicduel.com, and you can get links to all of our social media profiles.

46:42
If you visit our website at dynamicduel.com, you'll also find a link to our merchandise store, which is on T-Public. And if you use that link, you could get a discount on your first order of t-shirts or phone cases or stickers. Stickers are awesome. Stickers are fricking awesome. And they're only like $2. Yeah, definitely give those a check out. That does it for this episode. In our next episode, we will be reviewing an X-Men film, since we're kind of on the theme of X-Men with the villain, Arcade. We're gonna be reviewing an earlier X-Men movie.

47:11
X-Men Days of Future Past, which I think is one of the better X-Men films. It's definitely one of the more interesting and it's certainly novel in the way that the two X-Men generation casts kind of meet together in this one movie. So really looking forward to talking about that film. Go ahead and watch it again if you guys haven't seen it recently and we'll be back next week to go ahead and talk about it. Please don't forget to share, subscribe, rate or review our podcast on whatever platform you're listening to us on. It goes a long way in helping spread the word about the show. Again we're trying to get to 200 ratings.

47:41
specifically on iTunes, but if you're listening to us somewhere else, such as Spotify or Stitcher, please don't forget to subscribe or rate us. Hope you guys enjoyed, we'll talk to you guys next time. Up, up and away, true believers.