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The Dark Knight Saga: Difference between revisions
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* [[Elaborate Underground Base]]: The Batcave in the first movie. In the second, the Batcave is basically a big white room underneath some Wayne company property with some equipment, a computer, and an incinerator. Everything else pops out of the walls.
** It's mentioned in the film that reconstruction of Wayne Manor was still taking place, so the "Whitecave" was a temporary solution.
** Bruce operating out of a penthouse (complete with secret passage hiding a spare costume) was something of a [[Shout
** Going by recent television spots, in ''The Dark Knight Rises'' the Batcave has been expanded into an even more elaborate underground base.
* [[Equal Opportunity Evil]]: The League of Shadows is multiracial, and Sal Maroni employs gangsters of pretty much any nationality.
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* [[Hannibal Lecture]]: ''Do not talk to the Joker.'' Talking to the Joker can lead to ''listening to the Joker,'' and that will be very bad for your mind. You'd be better off snorting lines with Crane.
** At the start of the third act of ''Batman Begins'', Ra's al Ghul delivers a harangue that firmly establishes his status as a genocidal [[Knight Templar]].
* [[Hello, Attorney!]]: Both Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent. Maggie Gyllenhall's portrayal of Rachel is ''usually'' seen more like this than Katie Holmes', though.
* [[Hey, It's That Guy!]]: Wow, [[Star Trek Nemesis|Shinzon]] really packed on some muscle!
* [[Honor Before Reason]]: To the absolute extreme.
* [[Improbable Aiming Skills]]: Deadshot in ''Gotham Knight''. When we meet him, he headshots a guy from what looks like a mile away. Through a window, into a crowded party, through a sky filled with fireworks, and from a moving Ferris wheel. He also times it so it ''snaps a cocktail glass in half'', while it's being carried.
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* [[Save the Villain]]: Played straight with Ducard, then later [[The Dog Shot First|subverted]]. Played straight with {{spoiler|The Joker}}. Played straight ''and'' subverted with {{spoiler|Two-Face}}
* [[Science Hero]]: Nolan's vision of Batman perfectly fits the trope, as Bruce Wayne relies on his company's cutting-edge technology to create his superhero persona and provide himself with useful gadgets. Also, Lucius Fox, an [[Omnidisciplinary Scientist]] responsible for creating Batman's gizmos.
* [[Self
* [[Sequel Hook]]: Joker's calling card in the final scene of ''Batman Begins'', and the fact {{spoiler|Batman's a wanted criminal}} at the end of ''The Dark Knight''.
** ''[[The Dark Knight]]'' offers a surprising subversion. When {{spoiler|Two-Face}} makes his big appearance near the climax, most viewers naturally assumed that he was being set up as the villain of the third movie. Nope. {{spoiler|He dies less than an hour after he's introduced}}.
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* [[Armor-Piercing Slap]]: Rachel delivers ''two'' of these to Bruce after he shows her the gun with which he planned on murdering Joe Chill before an assassin hired by Falcone beat him to it.
* [[Ax Crazy]]: Mr. Zsasz. Though he's pretty quiet during his small amount of screen time, the tie-in video game displays him as very much so.
* [[Bad Cop, Incompetent Cop]]: Supposedly most of Gotham's police are portrayed as corrupt. Gordon and Loeb are the only apparent exceptions to this (though you might assume Loeb is fairly incompetent).
{{quote| '''Batman''': You're a good cop. One of the few.<br />
'''Gordon''': What do you want?<br />
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* [[Face Death With Dignity]]: Ducard took his death rather well. Then again, he is {{spoiler|Ra's Al Ghul, who may or may not be immortal.}}
* [[Face Your Fears]]: A major theme. Ducard tells Bruce to breathe in his fears, to become fear so as to conquer it, makes him open a case of bats during training, etc... but after Bruce leaves the League of Shadows he decides to walk into a cave where he surrounds himself with bats, and he learns to not let fear get in his way... hence his later courage in confronting crime.
* [[Finish Him!]]: Ducard's final test in ''Begins.'' Bruce, of course, refuses, and then {{spoiler|defeats a whole ninja school by himself}} in order to get away.
* [[Flower From the Mountaintop]]: The blue flower at the base of the mountain range, which Bruce must carry to the top (making it an inversion). More plot significant than most, as its powerful hallucinogenc effects become the source of Scarecrow's fear gas.
* [[Fly At the Camera Ending]]: Batman gliding off a rooftop and into the camera.
* [[Four Eyes, Zero Soul]]: Dr. Jonathan Crane.
* [[Freudian Excuse]]: Henri Ducard expresses a potential candidate for this while still a mentor to Bruce Wayne, though whether it is true or not is left unclear...
{{quote| ''I wasn't always here in the mountains. [[Harsher in Hindsight|Once I had a wife... my great love... she was taken from me.]] Like you, I was forced to learn there are those without decency, who must be fought without hesitation, without pity.''}}
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** Joe Chill learned more about Falcone than the latter would have liked.
** Falcone himself got a Karmic Permanent Madness when he revealed how much he knew about Crane and his operation, and tried to blackmail him.
* [[Hellish Horse]]/[[Horsemen of the Apocalypse]]: <s> Dr. Jonathan Crane</s> Scarecrow rides a horse he stole from mounted police {{spoiler|when his fear toxin is released upon Gotham City. To the little boy with Rachel Dawes, who is affected by the drug, the horse appears to have [[Red Eyes, Take Warning|red eyes]] and [[Breath Weapon|breathe fire from its nostrils]], and Scarecrow looks like a veritable Horseman of the Apocalypse}}. Or, you know, the headless horseman from [[Sleepy Hollow|the Ichabod Crane story]].
* [[The Hero's Journey]]: {{spoiler|After being told of a chance to join the League of Shadows, Bruce climbs the mountains and manages to fight off Ra's Al Ghul. After defeating the League to return to Gotham, he gains weaponry, becomes Batman, enlists the help of Lucius Fox and saves Gotham from the League, freeing the people from chaos.}}
* [[High Altitude Interrogation]]: Batman performs this on Det. Flass, repeatedly dropping him and lifting him back up from mere inches away from the ground with his batclaw.
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* [[The Voiceless]]: Zsasz, though he doesn't have much time on-screen...
* [[Water Source Tampering]]: A variant: Scarecrow laced Gotham's water supply with his fear toxin for months, without anyone realizing it. The toxin had no effect in this form. {{spoiler|It needed to be absorbed through the lungs to have an effect—the bad guys' ultimate plan was to use a microwave emitter to vaporize Gotham's entire water supply, thereby exposing the whole city.}}
* [[Wham! Episode]]: After {{spoiler|Ra's Al Ghul}} visits Bruce, {{spoiler|Wayne Manor is burnt down; Thomas Wayne's monorail prominent throughout the movie is used to spread Scarecrow's fear gas throughout the city; there are mass prison breakouts including Arkham Asylum and Bruce is left for dead as Wayne Manor crumbles. Fortunately, Alfred pulls a [[Big Damn Heroes]] moment; enabling Bruce to escape the manor...which leads to Batman saving most of the city (the Narrows, full of the poor and criminals, have all been driven insane by Scarecrow's fear toxin; emphasized by everyone there viewing Batman as a literal monster and trying to kill him) and leaving his [[Evil Mentor|mentor]]; Ra's Al Ghul (a prominent and major villain in the comics), to die in an explosion caused by destroying both the monorail tracks and the monorail itself.}}
* [[Xanatos Gambit]]: When Batman encounters Ra's al Ghul in the train, Batman starts jabbing at the train's controls with a knife, to at least make it look like he's trying to stop the train (he actually ends up locking the controls). {{spoiler|However, he already sent Gordon to make a gap in the train's elevated tracks, such that the train would be destroyed if it wasn't stopped.}}
{{quote| '''Ra's al Ghul''': You're just an ordinary man in a cape. That's why you couldn't fight injustice, and that's why you can't stop this train.<br />
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* [[Ax Crazy]]: The Joker is the living embodiment of this trope.
* [[Badass]]: Aside from the obvious, special mention goes to Harvey Dent, {{spoiler|pre-Two Face}}. A witness pulls a gun on him from the witness stand, and without missing a beat, Dent disarms him, decks him and recommends he buy his weapons American next time he wants to assassinate the DA.
* [[Bad Cop, Incompetent Cop]]: Discussed. Even with Jim Gordon in charge, the Major Crimes Unit (in a nice [[Shout
* [[Bad Guys Play Pool]]: One of Gotham's major gangsters is seen playing pool before {{spoiler|[[Evil Versus Evil|Joker comes in and murders him]].}}
* [[Badass Bystander]]: The Bank manager in the opening gives us the page image. Despite being a Mob banker there are many people who enjoy his reactions far too much.
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{{quote| '''Bruce Wayne''': Sonar. [[Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?|Just like a...]]<br />
'''Lucius Fox''': [[Implied Answer|Like a submarine, Mr. Wayne. Like a submarine]]. }}
* [[Cool Bike]]: The Batpod. Apparently the center part where the rider sits is gyro-stabilized, as it's always upright. Batman catches up with the Joker by taking some [[Excuse Me, Coming Through|major shortcuts]] in the chase sequence, and re-emerges into Joker's view by tumbling out of an alley... while still staying upright. Batman can even drive it up a wall, flip over backwards, and it'll spin around and keep Bats' ears pointing upward.
* [[The Corrupter]]: The Joker, of course. He drives Harvey Dent ''insane'' just by giving him an [[Blatant Lies|obviously false]] monologue about how he's an "Agent of Chaos" with no plans whatsoever.
** Among other things.
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* [[Exact Words]]: A peril both of working with and of confronting the Joker.
** And a real world example with Christopher Nolan's statement that {{spoiler|Harvey didn't survive the fall. Many fans take this as an implication that the good man Harvey Dent died, leaving only the evil Two Face.}}
* [[Excuse Me, Coming Through]]: People run to get out of Batman's way when he drives the Batcycle through a mall.
* [[Expy]]: Detective Wuertz was originally going to be Detective Harvey Bullock, a long-time member of the Batman supporting cast from the comics, and Detective Ramirez was going to be Detective Renee Montoya, who was created for ''[[Batman the Animated Series|Batman: The Animated Series]]'' and was then [[Canon Immigrant|introduced into the comics]]. The producers decided to recreate them as original characters because of what happens in the third act, which did not match the character of the characters as previously established. This is clearest in ''Batman: Gotham Knight'', an animated anthology film that bridged ''Batman Begins'' and ''The Dark Knight'', which introduced Ramirez and featured her partnered with Montoya's comic-book partner [[Gotham Central|Crispus Allen]].
* [[Eye Scream]]: ''"How about a magic trick? I'm going to make this pencil disappear."''
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{{quote| '''Bruce''': I knew the mob wouldn't go down without a fight, but this is different. They crossed the line.<br />
'''Alfred''': You crossed the line first, sir. You squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of desperation. And in their desperation they turned to a man they didn't fully understand. }}
* [[Good Cop, Bad Cop]]: The Joker accurately predicts that Gordon intends to use a form of this interrogation technique. However, {{spoiler|he's caught off guard by discovering that the bad cop is Batman ...even though he still doesn't talk until he wants to.}}
* [[Good Is Boring]]: Subverted, in that the one who thinks so and stands up for the opposite is the Joker.
* [[Good Is Not Dumb]]: Batman is portrayed as such; most of the plot revolves around the Joker trying to get Batman to break his moral code and prove that, deep down, everybody is just like him and that [[Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids|Batman's idealism is misplaced]].
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* [[The Hyena]]: The Joker, of course
* [[I Am Spartacus]]: When the Joker threatens to keep killing people until Batman unmasks and turns himself in, {{spoiler|Harvey Dent makes a public confession that ''he'' is Batman and surrenders to the police.}}
* [[I'm Not a Hero,
* [[Indy Ploy]]: The Joker claims to be doing this, but it's really, really unlikely most of the time, considering the fact that he knew exactly how everyone in the city would react {{spoiler|right up until the grand finale,}} with Batman himself being the only wild card, and a minor one at that. Considering how well everything worked out, it's more likely he's falling back on the character's long standing similarity to Batman, doing what he can to plan ahead and making up what he can't.
{{quote| '''Joker:''' Do I really look like a guy with a plan?}}
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* [[Money to Burn]]: "I'm a man of simple tastes... dynamite... gunpowder... and gasoline. Do you know what all of these things have in common? They're cheap!" And what does he do with said items? {{spoiler|(among other things) Why, what the trope says, of course...''literally''.}}
* [[Monster Clown]]: Joker, obviously.
* [[Morally
* [[Multiple Choice Past]]: In a nod to the comics (especially ''[[The Killing Joke]]''), the Joker gives several tragic backstories about himself. "Wanna know how I got these scars?"
* [[Mythology Gag]]: Joker's method of driving Two-Face to madness was very similar to a storyarc in ''Gotham Knights'' where Two-Face was getting close to being rehabilitated, but then Joker drives him insane again by implying that Bruce Wayne and Grace Lamont were having an affair.
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* [[Never Trust a Trailer]]: The trailer and pre-release material present the Bat-Pod as if it's just Batman's new toy. The truth is, however, more sobering. {{spoiler|It's the Batmobile's ejection system, and the only reason Batman is using it is because the Batmobile was destroyed.}}
* [[Nietzsche Wannabe]]: {{spoiler|Two-Face}}, with his talk of Chance being the only moral law in the world. The Joker ''would'' be a [[Nietzsche Wannabe]], except that wouldn't nearly ''begin'' to encompass his craziness. At the beginning of the film, he paraphrases a quote from Nietzsche: "I believe whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you... ''stranger''."
* [[No
** This is because, of course, the Joker's combat flailing would be no match for a trained fighter whose outfit is made of super-advanced body armor. Among all of this, though, is that the sonar headset Batman is wearing happens to be malfunctioning in part from the blow to the head Joker opens with. Toe to toe, in a fair fight, the Joker is OBVIOUSLY outclassed. That's why he never fights fair.
{{quote| '''Joker:''' "You didn't think I'd risk losing the battle for Gotham's soul...in a fistfight with you?" }}
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{{quote| '''Maroni''': This madness... it's just too much.<br />
'''Gordon''': You should have thought of that before you let that clown out of the box. }}
* [[Shout
** Possibly also a reference to [[The Musical|that musical]] [[Vaporware|they never made.]]
** William Fichtner as the banker with the shotgun in the opening heist was an intentional [[Casting Gag]] by Nolan, who built the sequence as an homage to ''[[Heat]]''.
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* [[Shut UP, Hannibal]]: Batman to the Joker.
{{quote| '''Batman''': What were you trying to prove? That deep down, everyone's as ugly as you? You're ''alone''!}}
* [["Shut Up" Kiss]]: Harvey to Rachael, after his press conference.
* [[Smash the Symbol]] {{spoiler|This moment is after [[Batman]] said he would take the blame for Harvey Dent's murders; it's implied that people are smashing the bat-signal to symbolize their increasing disapproval of Batman. This is a somewhat unconventional approach to this trope, seeing as how rather than portraying it as destroying the symbol of a villain, it is instead destroying the symbol of a hero who is (willingly) being mistaken for a villain.}}
* [[Smug Snake]]: Maroni. [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/88/RobertsMaroni.jpg/250px-RobertsMaroni.jpg Just look at that smile].
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* [[Trauma Conga Line]]: Harvey Dent loses {{spoiler|the love of his life and half of his face in one day}}. It doesn't take much for The Joker to [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope|push him over the edge]] after that.
* [[Troll]]: What [[The Joker]] will resort to when his target has no other obvious flaw [[Mind Rape|he can utilize to get inside their heads.]]
* [[Two
* [[Under the Truck]]: Not a chase scene, since the Joker is coming at Batman head on in a truck, while Batman races towards him on the Batpod. However Batman fires two tow cables that hit the truck and then proceeds to weave in and out between the wheels of the trailer to tie it up. Because the Batpod is built low to the ground and the truck is quite high off the ground, he doesn't need to slide, just drive normally.
* [[The Unfettered]]: The Joker.
* [[Unflinching Walk]]: {{spoiler|Lucius Fox}}.
** Played for laughs with the Joker when he {{spoiler|blows up the Gotham General Hospital}}. He starts walking away without looking back, only to notice the explosions have stopped. Joker turns around and starts fiddling with the detanator, but nothing happens. He fiddles with the detonator some more, until he's startled by a ''huge'' explosion. Joker then resumes walking away without looking back...only now he's walking much faster than before.
* [[Unhand Them, Villain!]]: The Joker does this to Rachel when Batman tells him to let her go. She happens to be hanging halfway out a window.
{{quote| '''Joker''': Very poor choice of words!}}
* [[Unreliable Narrator]]: The Joker, naturally.
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** He's not trying to wake them up, he's trying to break them down so they'll be at his level. Tyler thought he was at the top; [[The Joker]] knows he's at the bottom, ''and loves it''.
** [[The Joker]] also loves chaos, is definitely [[Ax Crazy]] and enjoys ruining lives [[For the Evulz]]; he isn't that well intentioned...he seems to want [[To Create a Playground For Evil]] and wants to break Gotham's hope; as he says so to Batman at the Prewitt Building. It's why he {{spoiler|drove Harvey Dent insane at the hospital}}. Judging by his [[Mind Rape|speech that broke]] {{spoiler|Harvey Dent}}; he probably wanted {{spoiler|Harvey}} to believe he's well intentioned, so {{spoiler|Two-Face}} would embrace both chaos and murder (effectively {{spoiler|making Harvey a [[Fallen Hero]]}} which if found out]]; would ruin Gotham's hope).
* [[Wham! Episode]]: The end of the second act, which ''starts'' with {{spoiler|Harvey and Rachel getting kidnapped}} and ends with {{spoiler|Rachel's death.}} ''None'' of the protagonists emerge unscathed.
* [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic]]: There seems to be a subtle theme about dogs in The Dark Knight. Seriously. Go back and watch it again, looking out for references to, and appearances by, dogs. The meaning behind them is debatable, but it can't be coincidence.
** Dogs are a symbol for the Joker. He's the "dog chasing cars" and the ultimate cynic. At first, the Chechen mobster has dogs on a leash -- to deal with Batman -- but by the end the dogs are turned against their former master in the same way the Joker basically overthrew the mobsters' control. Also, there's probably some Cerberus thing you could take from the three dogs.
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** Lucius makes it clear that he is ''not happy'' with Batman's plan to {{spoiler|use sonarised mobile phones to eavesdrop on the entire city and track down the Joker.}}
* [[What You Are in The Dark]]: The Joker tries to do this on Batman, Harvey Dent, and a lot of citizens/criminals of Gotham on the boats. {{spoiler|Only Harvey falls, while both Batman and the citizens/criminals both decide not to blow each other up. Batman even [[Lampshades]] this trope by asking the Joker why he was doing this.}}
* [[Where's the Kaboom?]]: Well, more "Where's the Rest of the Kaboom? Clickclickclick''[[Oh Crap]]''"
* [[Why Am I Ticking?]]: Joker orchestrates a prison break with a cell-phone bomb, which is sewn inside the body of one of his mooks.
* [[Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?]]: Why doesn't the Joker just shoot Batman? Because {{spoiler|he doesn't ''want'' to. Batman's just too much fun!}}
** [[Joker Immunity|And why doesn't anyone shoot the Joker?]]
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'''Joker (to Harvey Dent):''' I just took your little plan and I turned it on itself. }}
* [[Your Mom]]: The Joker used this insult about Gambol's grandmom to make him pissed.
* [[Zero
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