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The Riddler in the real FBI case files
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Codebreaking tools
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Zodiac-like characters and connections in vintage comics, TV shows, and movies
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Codemaking and codebreaking in old comics, TV shows, and pulp fiction
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Classical cryptography, secret decoder wheels, and other vintage crypto toys
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The Mikado, and its connections to both Zodiac and Batman
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And Ovaltine. 🙂
Riddler in the upcoming Batman movie is based on the Zodiac Killer.
Director says, “[Zodiac] was the ‘real-life’ Riddler for his practice of communicating with ciphers and riddles”
That was too much!
This was an outstanding video, David. You managed to put in so many of the topics related to codes, comics, movies, and popular culture, all in one video. A really wonderful job. Thank you for this.
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@russ-thompson Yes, I included a clip of the director saying that in my video. He definitely left no doubt about Zodiac’s influence. 🙂
@serya Thank you very much!
@doranchak BTW I am still totally blown away by your team’s solving the Z 340! Huge congratulations to you all for such tenacious and intelligent work!
That was too much!
Yes David’s videos are truly inspiring!
I would like to take us back to the 1966 Batman TV show, Episode 52 – Batman’s Satisfaction, the one that has a segment about ciphering.
First, Batman and Robin discover that the letters J, Q and Z are missing from Pinky Pinkston’s alphabet soup. And it turns out that these same three letters are missing from the Z408. At first glance, the odds of that happening would seem pretty high.
But.. As those are the most rarely used letters of the English language, they would be rarely used in just about anyone else’s attempt at writing a message, whether in the context of ciphering or not.
Second, Robin exclaims that “There’s more letters in this alphabet soup than there are in the alphabet”. And that is true of Zodiac’s ciphers as well: there are indeed more symbols than letters in the alphabet.
These two notions demonstrate that the episode’s writer, Charles Hoffman, or his researchers, had an interest in letter frequencies and ciphering. And in the context of campy TV comedy, that is much less common for sure!
