- "Bruce Wayne was right. You demented, bizarre, unethical toad! It is brain manipulation!"
- ―Fred Stickley to Edward Nygma after the experiment.[src]
Fred Stickley was a supervisor of the Electronics Division for Wayne Enterprises.
History
Fred Stickley was the head of the research department of Wayne Enterprises. One particular day, while Stickley showed Bruce Wayne the inventions at Wayne Enterprises, they were interrupted by Edward Nygma, a worker who idolized Bruce and who did not get on well with Stickley. Edward showed Bruce his invention which would beam T.V. signals into people's brains. Edward was hoping to get it accepted even though Stickley had terminated the project that morning, but Bruce rejected it, said that it "raises too many questions", and left. Stickley then angrily ordered Edward back to work.
Later that evening, Stickley saw Edward testing out his invention. Angrily, he went to contact security, but was knocked out by Edward, who strapped him to a rolling chair and tested the invention on him. It worked pretty well, as Stickley actually started to enjoy it while seeing several bass fish swimming from the screen. However, the result also transferred most of Stickley's knowledge into Edward's mind, and increased his IQ greatly. Although Stickley was unaffected by the process, he saw it as a serious breach of ethics and threatened to report Edward to the authorities after he fired him, but Edward responded by pushing Stickley out of the window and to his death in the reservoir below.
Edward wrote a suicide note in Stickley's handwriting and forged the cameras to show a simulation of Stickley madly jumping out of the window himself. His death was ruled a suicide, but Bruce eventually discovered Edward's role in Stickley's demise.
In Other Media
Stickley was somewhat similar to (and possibly inspired by) Batman: The Animated Series character Daniel Mockridge who appeared in The Riddler's first episode "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?", due to the fact that both were mustached business men who worked with and had a position over Edward Nygma, both were cruel to him (Stickley undermined his work while Mockridge cheated him out of a fortune), and when Nygma became the Riddler, he attempted to kill both of them (the only difference being that Nygma successfully killed Stickley while in the animated series, the Riddler failed to kill Mockridge, but instilled a lifelong fear of the Riddler's return in him which left the Riddler satisfied).