History Headscratchers / TheDarkKnight

** One of the special features on the DVD features development of the Batpod, and they had actually thought of this danger. Originally they decided that the memory technology in the cape would allow it to fold up into a backpack shape so it would be out of the way. When they tested the pod using the costume, however, the cape never got snagged in anything, so they abandoned the pack idea--though it ''did'' fold up for Lau's extraction setpiece.

** While a monorail and two rail system are incompatible, it is possible for a city to have both. This was very much the case in ''Batman Begins'', the Chicago 'L' tracks can be seen in a number of scenes in that movie as well.

*** Reese didn't work for Wayne Enterprises, he worked for an independent firm who was called in to look at Lao's books for the merger (not an uncommon practice in corporate mergers). Note Fox's line: "Let me get this straight: You think that your ''client'', one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands. And your plan is to blackmail this person? Good luck." "Client" not "boss".

*** If Batman kills the Joker, then he wins. If Batman doesn't kill the Joker, he continues his plan to grab Lao and blow up the MCU - which means he wins. XanatosGambit.

*** They weren't convicted yet. Realistically, such a large case would take a long time. Dent didn't even imagine that they would be convicted, he just wanted to charge them all so that the entire mob would be off the streets for a few months and the commissioner and mayor could do some real good in the interim. Then Joker appeared. Dent didn't just kill a few people, he murdered the head of the very crime syndicate he was in the middle of prosecuting. At very least, the District Attorney murdering your co-defendant is more than enough grounds to get your case dismissed for malicious prosecution.
** It was a maverick stunt that'd only work because of Dent's popularity, the mayor mentions this to Dent. The fact is Dent was on too high a pedestal: he was seen taking risks no attorney should try and in private threatened to kill Thomas Schiff in the aftermath of Gordon's assumed death. He was unbalanced in private, but a white knight in public. Batman pointed out to Dent that any scandal that affected him would undo all his work.

** Harvey could move fine. The reason he was stuck in bed was that he was ''tied down''. Joker undoes the restraints ''while'' he's talking with Dent.

** Money and fear, a potent combination. There's a new player in town, and he pays well. So you go work for him -- and it's only once you've joined his crew that you realize he's crazier than a smashed windshield and about as healthy to be around as Mary Mallon.\\
The obvious thing to do then is quit, right? But then one of your colleagues starts talking about getting out with his share, and that's when the Joker takes him to one side and gives him his... severance package.

*** Yup, Joker is remarkably good at preying on people's own particular psychology in order to get them to do what he wants. His conversation with Harvey should have aptly demonstrated that. Once he figures out how your brain ticks, he tailors his manipulations accordingly, which is part of what makes him so terrifying. You literally have no way of knowing if anything he says is a lie to convince you to do what he wants, or not. This applies to crazy people as well as sane ones. Hell, for all we know, that whole conversation with Batman at the end was actually a gambit on his part to make sure that Batman ''never'' killed him, rather than an attempt to goad him into doing just that. When it's all tolled up at the end of the film, Batman's a wanted fugitive, the white knight of Gotham is dead, and the whole city is terrified of him - and there are about ten other ways his plan could have worked out to his favor even if things had gone differently.

** Because '''it was a trap that was intended to draw out the Joker.''' The fact that they had clearly set everything up so that they would be drawing the Joker out in the first place should have made that fact blindingly obvious. (also, flying him out on a helicopter would be a bad idea; all the Joker needs is a single surface to air missile....)

* Batman lets himself be framed for Dent's murders so Dent's reputation is preserved. The prime reason for this seems to be so the cases against the five hundred-odd Mob members won't be thrown out (in an earlier scene, Batman calls Dent's ''stand'' against organized crime as the first legitimate ray of light in Gotham in decades. Dent himself asks the Mayor to consider what can be done with 18 months or so of clean streets.) But if that's right, then Batman's gesture was either unneeded or futile: the case against the Mob depended entirely on Lao's testimony as their banker, and Lao (it is implied, if not on screen) was killed by the Joker in the fire that burned up the Mob's money. At that point Dent's reputation doesn't make a spot of difference to the RICO case at all.

*** Dent takes Lao to court to testify. You only see the scene before they leave where Dent throws him a bullet-proof vest and mentions they are going to court, but that's enough to show that Lao got his testimony out of the way before his untimely death. Plus the goal was not to convict all 500 hundred of them. Only the top mafia guys could afford to make bail; all the lower and mid-range guys would not be able to afford to make bail, and it was expected that most would plead out when it became apparent their bosses wouldn't come to their rescue (since they aren't making any money because most of their guys on the streets are in prison). With the Joker's spree of terror going on those 490 guys would have some hope of getting let out, but once his efforts to corrupt Batman and Dent failed they had Lao's testimony on record and the prosecuting attorney has just become Gotham's martyr. With no way to discredit Dent's prosecution and Lao's rather damning testimony combined with the Joker's spree still on the minds of many gothamites the RICO case is pretty much decided against the mob.

** He, uh, ''didn't'' make a deal with the mobsters to kill Batman. That was why he had to walk out with a whole pile of grenades ready to blow in the first place. It was after Batman captured Lao that the mob actually called the Joker, and in that case, it was clear they called him to break Lao out of jail so they could keep their money safe.
*** The mobster who decided to hire him (Chechen?) said 'He's right. We have to fix real problem. Batman'. And it didn't say anywhere that they hired him on different terms.
*** But the terms ''were'' different at that point, because the police had Lao, which changed ''everything.'' As long as Lao was in police custody, their money was literally ''gone''. And that was the problem in the first place: the police ''and'' Batman were targeting the mob's money. The Joker solved that by getting their money back.

*** Depending on how long Gordon had to stay "dead", Stephens may also have made an excuse that with all the people the Joker killed, the morgue had been backed up with corpses to be autopsied, so Gordon's autopsy would just have to wait in line.

* How come, once the SWAT team finds out about the disguised hostage ruse, do none of Joker's goons get off a shot? You'd think with the cops closing in they'd be letting loose.
** Presumably they were following orders not to shoot the cops until the cops shot the hostages. As for why, possibly they wanted to cops to have empty clips or be distracted clearing the bodies that had been shot.

** The police and DA may have enough plausible deniability here ("Can you prove we work with him? No, he's just a vigilante who works alone."). Also, if Hong Kong and China's governments (granted, that's a complicated situation right there) are sufficiently anti-corruption, they aren't going to be overly offended that a businessman probably widely known to have shady dealings was forcibly deported, again by a vigilante that they'd reasonably expect would soon be apprehended by the law in America. Basically, "it's America's mess, let them take care of it".

** While a monorail and two rail system are incompatible, it is possible they have both. You would need to switch trains.

** Depending on which origin is canon at the moment, Alfred's been everything from a British Army battlefield medic to former MI5. It's widely accepted the Alfred is a RetiredBadAss.

* Of course, Batman and the cops are colluding together to pretend that Gordon was shot dead by The Joker so as better to lure The Joker out to where he can be captured. Fine. But when the cops tell Barbara Gordon about his death, she condemns Batman who happens to be perching nearby because "You brought this craziness upon us!". Does the masquerade ''really'' need to go that far, that he thinks he should be seen by Gordon's family acting as if he's hanging his head in shame? What purpose does it serve- he doesn't really need to convince The Joker's people/the mob's people on the force in that scene that the death actually happened, does he? Because either they aren't in on the scheme in the first place, or if they are, then they would have told the bad guys that it's all a ruse. So what contingency which he's CrazyPrepared for is this meant to account for? If it's not an act and he actually feels guilty about faking Gordon's death at the family's emotional expense, well it's all well and good to show empathy for her, but wouldn't his time be better spent preparing to intercept Joker's intervention against the convoy?

*** The fingerprint was planted as a distraction/troll, so doesn't really matter how it was "supposed" to get there. If genuine, though, the fingerprint could have been from taking it out of its box, not loading it.

** It's pure HollywoodScience, but here's the logic behind it: Batman takes the brick with the bullet from the room. He then shoots the same calibre bullet into the same material, with the bullet presumably marked in some way. He then analyses the bullet ''he'' shot to see how the bullet shattered. He then uses ''that'' data to virtually reconstruct the bullet he found in the wall. From that, he gets the fingerprint from when the bullet was put in the chamber. He takes the fingerprint and matches it in an OmniscientDatabase to find the address.\\
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[[folder: Batpod Design Flaws]]

[[folder: Rachel: For her Protection?]]

[[folder: Cellphones, Lau extraction]]

[[folder: What does Alfred have against Harvey Dent?]]

[[folder: Deranged killer in the car? I'll keep driving, boss.]]

[[folder: Torturing the Joker?]]

[[folder: Why did he call himself The Joker?]]

[[folder: Faking Gordon's Death]]

[[folder: Did they miss the "prisoners" part?]]

[[folder: HIT ME!]]

[[folder: Ridiculously sensitive car bomb trigger]]

[[folder: Batman is more Method than Bale or Ledger!]]

[[folder: Why not break the Joker's limbs?]]

[[folder: No common sense among thieves?]]

[[folder: No bandages for burn victims]]

[[folder: Joker's goons not getting off a shot]]

[[folder: Wouldn't Lau's extraction cause a huge diplomatic incident?]]

** True, the Joker wants to create a city gone mad, but he wants to do it to prove that it can be done, and seems only interested in Gotham. Ra's, however, makes it pretty clear that he would do this to ''every society in the world'' if he has to. If one had to kill only one of them, it would definitely be Ra's.

* Not really a big one; but who makes Joker's clothes? Does he hire a goon to do it or does he sit at home next to a sewing machine making them?

** Why id they ignore the guy the Joker kill with the pencil? This guy was a high ranking mobster, enough so to warrant him being present in the meeting and the Joker murders him and the mobsters just kind of ignored his death. Joker clearly has no problem killing and/or robbing mobsters so why would they get HIM of all people to kill Batman when he could just as easily turn on them.

** Not all of them wanted him. Gambol didn't want him and it was his man who was killed. The Chechen looked impressed by the pencil killing, and he was the most eager to hire Joker. Maroni only looked interested once the Joker started to explain his plan. Once Gambol was killed and Dent took things into high gear, then that's when they got desperate enough to hire him.

** Oh they definitely did. Right after Joker pulls the bus out of the bank and drives away, cop cars ''immediately'' pull up to the bank. Perhaps one of the bank tellers phoned 911 while they were hiding? Or maybe someone called from outside the bank after they heard a ton of gunfire from inside.

** Most likely. You could presume it was one of his guys who managed to blend into the chaos right after Joker shot Gordon by mistake, and then tried to get off one more shot of opportunity at either the mayor or perhaps Dent. But a cop managed to intercepted him, and the subsequent shots are him firing in the air in desperation as the cop holds his arm up into the sky to keep the situation relatively safe.

* Thee's a priority shift of trying to evacuate the hospitals when Joker threatens to blow one up, but right before that they had all been gearing up to storm the place where Maroni told them he was going to be. If there was a possibility of stopping the explosion by taking down the Joker shouldn't they have sent at least one squad car to the location? I mean, Joker winds up going to the very hospital he plans to blow up, but they didn't know that.

** Each robber was only told to kill ONE guy, and to keep it a secret from the others. Joker probably said something along the lines of "They'll stop complaining when they get a bigger cut" and no one questioned further until they were getting shot.

*** Enough was shown in both movies to indicate that Bruce was a bit of a RichIdiot. It's very likely that no one would have believed him. His only proof seemed to be the Tumbler and he gave those blue prints to Fox. What is he going to say now, "Oh, I saw blueprints for the Batmobile at Wayne Enterprises but they're gone now... but anyway, that rich jerk who burned down his own house is really the Batman."

** How many people know Bruce Wayne and Rachel Dawes' backstory together? Probably Alfred, maybe Dent and...well, that's probably pretty much it. Given Bruce's facade of dating a different girl every other week, who's going to even ''remember'' that the assistant DA was his friend as a kid? Plus, as has been established, by this point everyone knows Bruce as a RichIdiotWithNoDayJob, who sleeps all day and parties all night. Who would think that he's Batman solely on the evidence that Batman chose to go after a girl that at one point in the past was a close friend of Bruce?

* Eco-terrorism? Animal lives? Alfred's unit burned down the forest ''[[KillEmAll killing everyone in it]]''. They destroyed the forest that was hiding the bandit's gang ''and'' the villagers who were giving him shelter. The local warlords, the colonial government, and possibly Alfred in his younger ruthless days, likely viewed it as a necessary act of counter-insurgency. But he's not proud of that act now, and he's certainly not suggesting that Bruce burn down Gotham since Bruce turned down that option in the last movie.

** The MoralDissonance was already there in the first movie, when Batman decided that [[TechnicalPacifist letting Rah's Al Ghul die in an explosion was totally okay]] when he could have, say, ''saved him and had him arrested''. The issue of Batman's No Killing rule and his varying respect of it has been raised in the comics over the years, but it hasn't in the new movies... as unbelievable as it may seem to most Dark Knight fanboys: Batman not being called out for his double standards limited some people's enjoyment of the movies.