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* Bane's motto seems to be "the fire rises". He says the phrase in the prologue, and it's turned up on T-shirts and so forth. Think back to ''The Dark Knight'', when Alfred tells Bruce "some men just want to watch the world '''burn'''".
* Notice that the movie posters are showing progressively less of the actual Batman and more emphasis on his logo, showing his transition from more a mere man to a symbol. [[Batman Begins]] has batman taking up most of the image, and the symbol is a tiny thing hovering above the title. [[The Dark Knight]] shrinks Batman down to half the image and puts TWO much larger bat symbols OVER the batman. [[The Dark Knight Rises]] Is just the symbol appearing out of the collapsing city, showing that he's now become an intangible construct of your Batman fearing mind. The same is done with Gotham city, being incorporated more and more into the poster. I have no idea about this really, his growing commitment to the city maybe.
** He's a symbol not only of fear, but also of Gotham City. Without Gotham City, there is no Batman -- butBatman—but without Batman, is there a Gotham City?
* ''[[Batman Begins]]'' and ''[[The Dark Knight]]''. I was recently thinking back on Batman's "One Rule" he tells Joker about, and how he refuses to let the Joker fall to his death despite having refused to save Ra's Al Ghul in ''Batman Begins'', and then it hit me. The line where Batman says "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you" takes on a whole meaning when you remember that the comic version of this character is IMMORTAL. Batman knows that the fall won't kill him, and so he lets him fall in the same way he did the mobster in ''The Dark Knight''.
** The problem with that, however, is that it would seem that Batman doesn't know this about Ra's Al Ghul, or that Ra's isn't immortal in the movies. When the decoy Al Ghul is crushed in the mansion at the beginning of the movie, Bruce is of the opinion that he's dead. This is confirmed later in the movie during his birthday party when some random rich woman introduces him to "Ra's Al Ghul", and he tells the imposter "You aren't Ra's Al Ghul. I watched him die."
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**** You get a small decrease in overall liquidity, but actually, having less currency in circulation is de-inflationary. Not that it matters much today anyway, when most of the money in existence is purely digital.
** In the scene where Harvey Dent is at the dinner party, shortly before the Joker arrives, he has a conversation with Alfred. He asks him "So you've known Rachel your whole life?". He replies "Not yet, sir." {{spoiler|Guess who dies first?}}
** At first, I passed off the "only burning my half" as a brilliant example of The Joker's humor. It wasn't until later that I thought about how vital this scene is to setting The Joker up as Batman's mirror. To be a mirror, his motives have to be as pure as Batman's are. He's as dedicated to mayhem as Batman is to justice. He's more than a man -- heman—he's a force. For that to be legitimate, money can't play into things. The money scene, which for any other villain would be the sum of all their efforts, their crowning moment before the hero intervenes to set things right, instead serves as an opportunity for The Joker to declare exactly what kind of man he is. Money doesn't matter to him. He's doing this because Gotham deserves a "better class of criminal", one that isn’t in this for monetary gains.
** "Only burning half." Foreshadowing, ''foreshadowing, '''foreshadowing'''! ''
*** One problem, that scene came AFTER Harvey's disfigurement.
*** I never noticed that, that's interesting! And it gets me thinking: specifically, the Joker says, "I'm only burning my half." (I checked). Now, what is the Joker trying to prove throughout the movie? That everyone is as ugly on the inside as he is. By saying he's only burning ''his'' half, it implies that the half of Harvey that he burns is already "his" - that is, there was already the potential for madness and evil in Harvey. The Joker (or so he believes) only brings it to the surface. The burns visually represent Two-Face's "evil" side, but the burns themselves were only part of the equation.
**** Well, of course there was already potential for madness and evil in Harvey. [[Acceptable Targets|He's a lawyer.]] - Smerf
*** To add another foreshadowing twist, remember Alfred's story to Bruce Wayne about his trip to Borneo and met the sadistic leader with a horde of diamonds he did not care about having as a warning about the Joker's behavior. "Only burning half." --The—The Unknown
**** Which makes the Joker, in a way, better than Alfred's company--theycompany—they burned the whole forest down for money, while the Joker is burning his half of the mob money.
**** Yep, it's pretty unsubtle: "Some men don't care about money. Some men '''just wanna watch the world burn.'''"
**** Also, the Joker says "only burning ''my'' half" - claiming full responsibility for Harvey's transformation, that the "evil" half of Harvey essentially belongs to him.
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***** Actually the idea that the detonator on each boat blew up the actual boats they were on would be in a reference to the early "Only burning my half" scene. Look at it like this: The Joker wants to bring humanity's true nature to the surface, to show how they're like him, to show that they're ''his'' people. Whoever pulled the trigger would be his people, and that would be the half that burned in a fiery explosion. --Meraxa
**** Am I the only person who, upon hearing the Joker's statement regarding the bombs on the ferries, assumed that had one of the detonators been triggered, '''''both''''' ferries would have exploded? Because ''that'' would have been in character for the Joker?
**** I'd always had a problem with the "it'd blow up your own/both boats" theory, and I just now realized why, conveniently in a moment of [[Fridge Brilliance]]. Joker is trying to prove [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters]], right? If the people who turned the key died, they would be dead bastards. However, if they were to actually live through the ordeal, ''they would go through the rest of their lives knowing Joker was right, and that they sentenced hundreds of people to their deaths.'' How's THAT for breaking Gotham's spirit?
**** Well, consider this: If it was rigged to blow up the boat that gave in, he could have ''never explained this''. As a result, everyone on the surviving boat would be viewed as the people who blew up a bunch of others in cold blood. Most of the boat, in fact, would probably have no idea it wasn't true, and would be suspicious of the rest of the passengers, thinking they did it. And god help whoever happened to be near the controller at that point; they'd probably never be trusted again. So he gets some extra psycho irony to laugh about: not only do the people who take his [[Schmuck Bait]] die, the other group gets viewed as evil no matter what they actually did.
***** Alternately, the Joker probably guessed it would be the "good people" who pushed the button since they had more to live for. I always thought he would have let Gotham remain under the idea that the thugs killed a bunch of innocent citizens to save themselves just long enough for a lynch mob to form, then after utter mayhem erupts and a few more people die, call the news and tell everyone the truth. That'd give Gotham something to chew on.
**** On the other hand, the detonator was in clear view the whole time, and even if Joker were to create suspicion like that, each person on the boat would still be convinced of their own innocence. It works a whole lot better for Joker to prove [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters]] if he were to actually make people kill each other; it just doesn't seem like something Joker would lie about this time. True, he could have the guy holding the detonator look like the bad guy without his doing anything, but how much better would it work out for him if he successfully proved people can be made into monsters, as his victims actually realize this for themselves?
****** I had a weird moment of Brilliance with this scene; you see, I had always been absolutely certain that the Joker had given the people on the boats the detonator for their own bombs; it wasn't until later that I realized that the fact is never mention or implied or as some mention not that at all! I just knew it because that was what the Joker do and there was no need to establish that.
*** It's entirely possible that ''neither'' boat would have blown up. ''That'' would be quite a prank, wouldn't it? And still sit on the detonator's conscience all his/her life. I think that may be part of the point: that there is no telling what would have happened. Maybe neither boat, maybe both boats, maybe the same, maybe the other. Maybe it wouldn't have been an explosion at all but his laughing gag or something. ''With the Joker, you just don't know''. His unpredictability is his deadliest forte.
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*** To add more,"Give it to me and I'll do what you should have done 10 minutes ago." [[Like You Would Really Do It|Some of us think that scary black man is going to blow them up]]. {{spoiler|He didn't.}} The brilliant part is, he basically telling the cop: "Give it to me and I'll do what you should have done ''[[What the Hell, Hero?|as sworn officer of this state and public servant]]'', 10 minutes ago."
**** That's not Fridge Brilliance. That exactly how you're supposed to interpret the scene from the first viewing.
** In a movie full of [[Ironic Echo|Ironic Echoes]]es, one struck me hard, just days after getting the DVD, even though I saw it in the theater. Harvey and his trademark two-headed coin, an obvious sign of things to come, is first indicative of not his reliance on chance, but his apparent vigilant philosophy, as noted by Rachel: "You create your own luck?. It demonstrates just how far things have gone when Joker pulls his [[Hannibal Lecture]] and convinces him that luck and chance are inescapable. Despite the fact that Harvey and Rachel weren't targeted by chance at all, nor that he'd be the one saved instead of Rachel, Joker successfully convinces him that it was so. And thus he creates the Two-Face we all know and cringe from. - Kryptik
*** And on top of that, as I realized on rewatching it on DVD myself, Two-Face's coin ''doesn't'' work with pure randomness: it comes up good head, then bad head, then good head and so on in a perfectly alternating pattern until the end. The instrument Two-Face uses to enact random chance is perfectly, mechanically predictable, which tells you just how twisted he is (and helps undercut the Joker's logic). - Omar Karindu
**** Uh, I think that was just an unfortunate coincidence that it turned out that way, since there's never any suggestion that Two-Face is cheating on the coin toss (at least, not after his double-headed coin is burned on one side anyway). --Arcane Azmadi
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{{quote|Alfred: "I thought I'd prepare a little supper... (Bruce looks out his window, silent). Very well, then."
Alfred: "I thought I'd prepare a little breakfast... Very well, then." }}
** This troper recognized that when Alfred gave the line in the second film, which only made the dialogue that followed so much more brilliant and wrenching. In the first movie, Bruce Wayne is just a little boy, who was in no way responsible for his parents' death -- anddeath—and as with the second movie, he asks Alfred, in effect, whether he was responsible for the deaths that have just occurred. Alfred's response is clear in the first movie: it was not Bruce's fault. But in the second movie, rather than ''comfort'' Bruce Wayne, he addresses him as an adult: "You spat in the faces of Gotham's criminals. Did you not think there would be some casualties?" It's both an acknowledgment by Alfred that Bruce is an adult fully capable of making his own decisions, and also a restatement of the sorrow, if not slight disapproval, that Alfred has for Batman. Bruce had the excuse of being a child and being innocent when Alfred first comforts him this way; in the second movie, he's neither a child nor an innocent, so Alfred serves it to him straight. Even so, that scene from the first movie is one of my [[Tear Jerker]] favorites; I still cry like a baby when that one comes up, and to have that scene restated and then raked over was like pulling a scab off a healed wound. Brilliant. --Saintheart
* In the opening, Joker hides among the bank robbers working for him. During the car chase scene, Gordon hides among the cops. There's a recurring theme of hiding things, all though the movie.
** Not just hiding, but hiding in plain sight. Both those examples, as well as Joker hiding among the cops during the assassination attempt, are all hiding in plain sight.
*** It's even present in the ''first shot'' of the film. Remember the film starts with the Joker having his clown mask ''off''. He doesn't remove it at any point to put his makeup on during the opening sequence, with the conclusion being he had it on the entire time he was just standing there in the middle of the street, quite openly, for everyone to see his face. He is hiding right there in plain sight.
**** And yet no one even looked twice at him. A subtle commentary on how evil is always within us, we just don't recognize it--orit—or don't ''want'' to recognize it?
**** Notice how little concern citizens on the street have as The Joker and his thugs come out of their Suburban and run to the bank entrance.
***** If you saw a man, in a city notoriously full of crazies, looking like that, would you do anything about it? I know I would just get the hell out ASAP.
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* This Troper has realized that the League of Shadows and the Joker are actually similer. Both belive that humans are bastards, and try to force people into evil acts to justify their actions! The League claimed Gotham was a cesspit of corruption and crime. But they caused a lot of that by putting the city in a deppresion, increasing the desperation, and thus people who would turn to crime because of that desperation. And in doing so, they would have criminals they could kill. The Joker is always trying to prove that deep down inside everyone is just as ugly as he is. He does it by forcing them into sadistic choices, and mind rapes.
** If you think about it, the Shadows and the Joker came to the same basic conclusion about human nature, but took it in opposite directions. The [[Lo S]] think [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters]] but essentially want to scare humanity straight with dramatic examples of punishing evil, and they manipulated the citizens of Gotham towards crime to get the most dramatic example they could. Joker thinks [[Humans Are Bastardsthe Real Monsters]], but he revels in it and wants to force everybody else to do so as well. So the Shadows' response was to adopt an impossibly stric and rigid moral code all about punishing evil, while the Joker's was to gleefully abandon morality altogether.
* One way Sal Maroni could've survived the crash (i.e. Harvey Two-Face keeping his word) is that Harvey Two-Face deliberately unbuckled himself to shield Maroni and then, after the crash, Maroni was scared so shitless he actually fled Gotham! That may explain why he doesn't appear in ''Rises''--because—because he was too scared shitless of the Gotham DA and had lived under a rock for the last eight years!
* The Joker's declaration that "I think you and I are destined to do this forever". He's not talking about a rematch! He no longer cares if he gets imprisoned forever or even executed for his crimes. He ''already'' won when Batman ''failed'' to rescue the woman he loved. The Joker ''knows'' that Batman is the sort of person who would obsess over every mistake he made, wondering if he could have done something different and saved her. That's why they two of them will be battling ''forever''.
* In Batman Begins, Bruce says that as a symbol, he can be incorruptible. At first, I thought that the ending of The Dark Knight proved him wrong: by taking the blame for Harvey's crimes, he corrupted the symbol (Batman). However, I later realized that there is a character in The Dark Knight who was corrupted as a man, but remained uncorruptible as a symbol: Harvey Dent.
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