[2] Nightcrawler, the superhero identity of Kurt Wagner, is a member of a fictional subspecies of humanity known as mutants, who possess an X-gene that can cause possible physical mutations and in many cases grants some form of superhuman ability.
His physical mutations include indigo-colored velvety fur which allows him to become nearly invisible in shadows, two-toed feet and three-fingered hands, yellow eyes, pointed ears, and a prehensile tail.
He was portrayed by Alan Cumming in the feature film X2 (2003), while Kodi Smit-McPhee played a younger version of Nightcrawler in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), Deadpool 2 (2018) and Dark Phoenix (2019).
[14] Margali Szardos, a sorceress and a Manouche Roma queen, allegedly found Kurt an hour after his birth, in a small roadside shelter in the Black Forest with his father lying dead on the road outside.
[18] Margali took the newborn Nightcrawler to a small Bavarian circus named Herr Getmann's Traveling Menagerie where she worked as a fortune teller as a cover for her activities as a sorceress.
[24] Sometime later, Nightcrawler fought Shagreen the Sorcerer and became lost in various dimensions, including the manifestation of a fairy tale his teammate Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) had once told to Illyana Rasputin (Magik).
[44] Later[volume & issue needed], Nightcrawler served as the new leader of the Uncanny X-Men team alongside Wolverine, Bishop, Psylocke, Cannonball, and Marvel Girl.
Afterwards, Professor X recruited him, along with Darwin, Havok, Marvel Girl, Warpath, and Polaris, to participate in a space mission to stop Vulcan from laying waste to the Shi'ar empire.
A trip back to Germany renewed his conviction through an encounter with a boy cursed by gypsies into demonic form, a brush with Mephisto, and a romantic fling, before he returned to San Francisco to aid the X-Men against a foe they struggled with, lacking his help.
While attempting to reunite with Amanda Sefton, he was duped by her mother Margali Szardos to grant her sanctuary at the school, where she forcefully extracted the knowledge about the Beyond from Beast and Storm to open a portal to the Afterlife.
[71] Afterward, Nightcrawler and Scorpion Boy engaged the Crimson Pirates, who acted on behalf of Tullamore Voge, over the custody of a young mutant named Ziggy Karst,[72] who subsequently joined the Jean Grey School.
[73] The fight ended with the Pirates kidnapping Ziggy and Scorpion Boy and fatally stabbing Nightcrawler; but on his way to the afterlife he was intercepted by Amanda, Wolverine and the Phoenix, who encouraged him to return.
[83] However, Nightcrawler, Sable and Mystique worked out a ruse to infiltrate the Orchis base, and they freed Warlock, who had earlier been captured by Nimrod,[84] and whose Technarchy virus had been used by Vulture to create the Hounds.
[87] In a final, dying effort to rescue the mutant-messiah Hope, he teleported them both from Las Vegas, Nevada to the mutant safehold Utopia, just off the coast of San Francisco, California, a distance of more than 410 mi (660 km).
[88] His effective teleport range was extended after his revival both due to outside assistance and a later enhancement to his powers, thanks to a deal he made with a demonic race of Bamfs loaned to him by Azazel.
[95] At one point shortly after his initial introduction, it was suggested that he could actually travel through shadows (in much the same way Psylocke did after exposure to the Crimson Dawn) and this was shown in Bizarre Adventures, but never really touched upon after that.
His tail is strong enough to not only support his body weight, but also lift an adult man completely off the ground at the same time, and is deft enough to fight with while wielding a sword[93] or blunt object.
[93] Aside from the abilities granted by his mutation, Nightcrawler is a superb fencer and skilled hand-to-hand combatant, to the point of being able to stalemate super-beings as powerful as Captain Britain.
Nightcrawler is sent by Magneto to Avalon, an Antarctic utopia where humans and mutants peacefully coexist, to bring Destiny back to the United States to confirm Bishop's claims.
[116] He is openly hostile concerning being mistaken with his alternative self; at one point he roughly shoves Kitty aside when she mistakes him for a returned-from-the-dead main universe Nightcrawler, declaring that he is not back and does not know her.
When the Ultimate version of Reed Richards travels to the Marvel Zombies Universe, Nightcrawler is among the zombified superheroes who attack him in the ruins of New York, but the attempt failed.
[volume & issue needed] In the "Old Man Logan" storyline, Nightcrawler is among the X-Men who perish at the hands of Wolverine when he is tricked by Mysterio into believing his friends are super-villains attacking the mansion.
As the science and magic teams quitted their post to assist the X-Men, Illyana and Kurt teleported inside the building to target the force field, maintained only by Hank McCoy and Strange.
As Jean Grey had Bamfy immobilized and tried to connect with him, Madelyne stepped in and put him under her own control claiming that Kurt's mind had been destroyed when Darkchild turned him into a massive dragon.
[volume & issue needed] Nightcrawler is originally portrayed as a friendly, humorous man with a zest for high adventure that has gained him the friendship of many fellow X-Men.
One of Kurt's closest friends was Angel, with whom he "misused" the Danger Room for Pirates of the Caribbean-like "role-playing" sessions under the name of "the dread Captain Blue Tail," as it is shown that he is a fan of the movie.
Kurt's demon-like physiology grants him dark indigo skin (unlike the 616 version in which he is covered with a thin blue fur), a prehensile tail, superhuman acrobatic ability, and control over bonding between his molecules, which allows him to cling to any surface.
[131] In the futuristic Universe X maxi-series by Jim Krueger and Alex Ross, it is revealed that Nightcrawler became amnesiac and was displaced in time, finally becoming Belasco, a long-time enemy of the X-Men.
[volume & issue needed] In What if the all-new, all-different X-Men had never existed?, an embittered Nightcrawler, having never been recruited by Professor Xavier, was talked into a life of crime by Erik the Red.
Kurt is a human wearing a blue demon mask and a costume tail as well was an acrobat with sharpened nails, as well as an agent of the German-based Weapon X under his fiancée Jimaine Szardos (alias The Red Rose).