The Dark Knight (film)/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Let's put a smile on that face!
  • From the sequel, The Dark Knight: A fat lunatic complains of stomach pains and rants that the Joker told him that a light would come from his stomach in this high, childish tone. It comes out of his stomach all right...in the form of a bomb the Joker implanted inside of him.
    • The Joker himself is a potent combination of Nightmare Fuel and premium Paranoia Fuel. If he's after you then he will get to you somehow, no matter how impossible it should be, and carve a smile onto your face with a knife.
    • If the Joker ever asks if you want to see a magic trick, the correct answer is and always will be no. He'll do it anyway, but at least you saw it coming.
      • (Rim shot.)
      • But how would the guy see the magic trick with that pencil...oh.
      • Ever notice that the Joker actually stabbed the sharp end into the table? That means he forced the dull, rubber end through the guy's skull.
      • One of the most terrifying Joker-related scenes comes from when Batman interrogates him and the Joker reveals he's kidnapped Rachel in addition to Harvey, and they both have mere minutes to live. Batman goes berserk and starts trying to beat their location out of the Joker, up to bashing his head against a reinforced glass window so hard the window actually cracks. All Batman's severe beating does to Joker? It only makes him laugh HARDER!
      • On the same note - right at the very end, when Batman throws the Joker off the rooftop. Joker's reaction? Laughing maniacally every inch of the way... and being disappointed when Batman saves him.
      • The scene that really horrifies is the scene where the Joker tells Rachel the second scar story. Something about the whole scene reeks of sexual predation, and to make it even more horrible, there's the fact she knees him in the nuts, which is usually the best defense a woman has against a male attacker, and he actually LIKES it!
      • One of the most Nightmare Fuel-filled moments was surprisingly one of the most low-key; when the Joker is videotaping/shooting his nightmare-porn of Brian the Batman Impersonator and orders Brian to "Look at me! Look! At! Me!"
        • That was the scene that, aside from the Magic Trick, made everyone in the theater sit up and take notice of Ledger's performance.
          • That scene gets worse when Brian is done delivering the Joker's message and is of no more use to him. The camera cuts out just as Joker descends on the panicked hostage.
          • "Batman must take off his mask and turn himself in. Oh, and everyday he doesn't people will die. Starting tonight. I'm a man of my word." *laughs*
          • The Joker's little Would You Like to Hear How They Died? speech.
    • The defining moment for the Joker was standing in the street as the Batpod race towards him muttering "Come on, come on, I want you to do it, I want you to do it." He is utterly prepared to actually die just to corrupt the Batman. After that, you realize that there was really no stopping him.
    • The Joker pales in comparison to Two-Face's scar-ified half of his face. What is keeping his EYEBALL in the SOCKET!?
      • The first iterations of Two-face were much more realistic, with less extensive damage; test audiences actually found the more subdued, realistic damage to be so unsettling, to the point of unintentional Nausea Fuel, that the Two-Face we currently see was used instead.
      • The optic nerve and the eye muscles, which apparently did not receive any damage from the fire, since he can move his left eye just as well as the right one.
    • The worst part about Two-Face was when he kidnapped Gordon's family, and Commissioner Gordon, whom many tropers strongly identify as a father figure, cried and begged helplessly for their lives. The thought of a father being unable to protect his children is just pure Nightmare Fuel.
      • It says a lot that, in a movie featuring the most terrifying version of the Joker ever, the scariest scene is one that he's not even in.
    • How about where Batman drops the guy off the balcony and (presumably) shatters the guy's legs?
  • This line from the Joker. Granted, he was more or less saying it to screw with the cops, but still:

"Do you want to know why I use a knife? Guns are too quick, you can't savor all the.....little emotions. You see, in their last moments, people show you who they really are. So in a way, I knew your friends better than you ever did. Would you like to know which of them were cowards?"

  • Alfred's speech on being in Burma, just because of how true it felt.

Alfred: A long time ago, I was in Burma, my friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never found anyone who traded with him. One day I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.
Bruce: Then why steal them?
Alfred: Because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

    • Important to note, when Alfred later finishes the story with how they caught the bandit, he flatly states, "We burned the forest down." Who watched the world burn? Alfred did. He was once a man so cold and unrelenting that he would burn everything around him to get at his objective.
  • Some premature Fridge Horror here, if that makes sense: as of the end of The Dark Knight, Gotham blames Batman just as much as the Joker for the events of the film, so much so that they are willing to throw Batman to the dogs (both proverbially and literally) on the off-chance that the Joker will keep his word and leave Gotham. And now, as of the Rises trailer, the police department is now willing to forgive Batman of the murders he took credit for if he stops Bane. Not only is this a neat little parallel of the situation before, but more terrifyingly, consider the implications of them wanting to bring back Batman: there is someone more terrifying and destructive than the Joker.
  • Three words: "Why so serious?"
  • Harvey Dent screaming in silent agony in the hospital after realizing that Rachel died. From there his Sanity Slippage is evident, especially following The Joker's disturbing Hannibal Lecture on him.
    • The Joker handing Harvey Dent a gun and telling him to unleash chaos on the city, even holding the gun to his head in a further attempt to corrupt Dent.
  • The Joker aims to destroy Gotham City from the inside out, and part of his "plan" involves attempts to corrupt the city's heroes — Batman and Harvey Dent — by making their lives hell until they snap...thankfully he doesn't succeed with Batman, with Harvey Dent he's more successful however...
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