A recent poster for DC's upcoming superhero film The Batman was found to have hidden messages on it that only become visible when a black light is shone on them.
The secret was revealed by Twitter user Nervatel, who noticed the markings on a physical version of one of the film's theatrical posters featuring Robert Pattinson's Batman and Zoë Kravitz's Catwoman standing side-by-side. Borrowing a black light from a coworker, Nervatel posted photos of the hidden messages, which were now visible. Specifically, the film's title becomes a target by the villain Riddler's classic question mark insignia, which acts as a center of a pair of crosshairs. In the top two corners of the poster, a cryptic message also reads, "You are a part of this too," and "Find out why."
The black light also reveals that underneath the message is a series of hieroglyphs. The same hieroglyphics appeared in the recent "Bat and the Cat" trailer alongside the film's March 4 release date. The cipher had been decoded by many fans across the Internet as "You are el rata alada," which translates to "You are the winged rat." Fans who were able to uncover the December trailer's coded message were also directed to follow the clues to rataalada.com, a promotional website for The Batman that allows riddle-solvers to access exclusive bonus images from the film if they can correctly solve three of The Riddler's questions.
The poster's hidden messaging should look familiar to those who have been watching the trailers for The Batman, which revealed The Riddler (Paul Dano) has been targeting Gotham City's elite and leaving cryptic messages for Batman.
Director and co-writer Matt Reeves also recently revealed The Riddler's mysterious ciphers were inspired by real-life serial murderer The Zodiac Killer. "The premise of the movie is that the Riddler is kind of molded in an almost Zodiac Killer sort of mode, and is killing very prominent figures in Gotham, and they are the pillars of society," the director explained at the time.
Dano's Riddler notably appeared in a leaked scene from The Batman, which features Bruce Wayne attending a funeral where he briefly notices The Riddler on the church's balcony. The service is interrupted when an SUV crashes into the church and the driver is revealed to be a hostage with his mouth taped shut and a bomb strapped to his neck. A note taped to his chest is addressed to Batman.
The Batman releases in theaters on March 4.
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