Comic Book / Batman: Dark Victory

aka: Dark Victory

"So... We're both orphans..."

Batman: Dark Victory is a 13-part comic book series written by Jeph Loeb and drawn by Tim Sale. The series is a sequel to Batman: The Long Halloween and was originally published from 1999 to 2000 by DC Comics. The series takes place primarily during the third/fourth year of Batman's career. The plot centers on a series of murders involving Gotham City police officers by a mysterious serial killer only known as The Hangman. Central to the storyline is a territory war between Two-Face and the remnants of the Falcone mob, led by Sofia Falcone. The story brings closure to many characters introduced in Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, and also re-tells of the origins of Dick Grayson, the first Robin, and his adoption by Bruce Wayne.

Christian Bale, who played Batman for The Dark Knight Trilogy, cites this series as his favorite Batman story.

In 2004, Loeb and Sale produced a follow-up titled Catwoman: When in Rome, focusing on Catwoman's movements in Italy. The story takes place during the events of Dark Victory, between Valentine's Day (when Catwoman leaves Gotham) and Thanksgiving.

Not to be confused with the 1939 film Dark Victory starring Bette Davis.

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This series provides examples of:

• Action Girl: Detective Julia Lopez is a female cop who endures the violent crimes investigated in the story and confronts the criminals.
• Adaptational Hairstyle Change: Chief O'Hara is depicted with a mustache, when his incarnation in the live-action show he originated from and his Earth-One and Earth-Two counterparts (aside from the latter having one by the time he takes over as police commissioner during Helena Wayne's career as the Huntress) were all clean-shaven.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Two-Face and crew stumble into the Batcave entirely by accident while escaping their own demolished sewer lair. Batman and a debuting Robin stop them from capitalizing though.
• Ascended Extra: In The Long Halloween, the Penguin only appeared briefly in the last issue as one of the criminals Two-Face gathered to confront Carmine Falcone. Here, while he still doesn't have as big of a role as some of the other members of Batman's Rogues Gallery, he gets to be the spotlight villain of the sixth issue and even gets dialogue.
• Asshole Victim: The second to fifth victims were the Dirty Cops from Batman: Year One:
  • Gillian Loeb, who was part of the Big Bad Duumvirate in Year One and whose crimes including being league with Falcone and Maroni, ordering a firebombing on an abandoned building (which killed some homeless people), attempting to use Gordon's affair with Sarah Essen to blackmail him, and being an accessory to the kidnapping of Gordon's son. His brief appearance in this story had him rub Gordon's face in Harvey's transformation into Two-Face and the death of Chief O'Hara and not-subtly imply he's going to use what happened to try to get his job back from Gordon, which is halted by his death shortly thereafter.
  • Arnold John Flass, Gordon's former partner, was corrupt, prone to abusing his authority. He's found dead in the alley behind a strip club where he'd been working as a bouncer.
  • Branden, the SWAT commander, who partook in said firebombing and blackmail attempt. Nonetheless, Gordon specifically notes that despite being a "zealot", he didn't deserve to be murdered.
  • Frank Pratt, who was one of Branden's subordinates and tried to shoot a cat, which got him punched through a wall by Batman. As with Loeb, he gets one more dick moment in as he's killed shortly after he tried to shoot Batman in retaliation for being punched through the wall.
• Back for the Dead: Far more egregious than the deaths of the various gangsters in Batman: Year One and Maroni, but many of the various cops from Year One return only to die by the Hangman. A modern version of Chief O'Hara is also introduced for the same purpose.
• Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop: The Gotham City Police Department is still a cesspool of corruption and greed, but Gordon is working to clean it up and has already made significant progress since Year One and The Long Halloween. Many characters discuss the different stages of the GCPD, remembering the distant past when it was full of proud and honest cops, the immediate past when it was filled with nothing but disgust, and the present, when people on both sides of the line are hoping to direct the future to one or the other.
• Bald of Evil: Both Calendar Man and Sofia Falcone are bald criminals.

• Bat Signal: The traditional signal makes several appearances.
• Belated Happy Ending: At least for Batman. While The Long Halloween ended with Batman committed to his lonely crusade despite no ending in sight, Dark Victory ends with the beginning of the Batman/Robin partnership. Even though Batman’s crusade is still eternal… now he’s not alone.
• Berserk Button: During Two-Face’s cross-examination of the Calendar Man, the latter is about to reveal who Holiday was before Two-Face cuts him off at gunpoint, clearly agitated. This also serves as a subtle hint that the reveal at the end of The Long Halloween was legitimate.
• Big Bad Ensemble: The main antagonist's of the comic are Two-Face, Sofia Falcone and the mysterious Hangman Killer. Then the Hangman Killer actually turns out to be Sofia, who is then killed by Two-Face near the end of the story. And then the Joker starts getting froggy towards the end.
• Bookends: At the start of the story, Batman says "I'm alone", because Harvey Dent, his closest ally is now a villain. The last line in the comic is "I'm not alone anymore" because Batman now will work alongside Robin.
• Break the Cutie: Mario Falcone honestly believes that he can make the Falcone family a legitimate and respected part of Gotham City's upper crust, much like the Wayne's, and even helps the DA's office take down the remainder of his family's criminal organization. It does not end well.
• Cain and Abel: Sofia Falcone and her brother Alberto.
• Call-Back:
  • When questioned on Dent's whereabouts, Sofia quips "Dead, I hope. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy."
  • Subverted and Played With. The solution to the first puzzle/clue left by The Hangman killer seems to be "None of you are safe", which would be an Ironic Echo of part of Batman's threat/Badass Boast to Gotham's corrupt ruling elite, when he invaded their party. Carmine Falcone was present for this, and could very well have related this to his daughter, Sofia Falcone/Gigante, who of course turns out to be The Hangman. Knowing Batman would recognize the reference, it is likely The Hangman was counting on Batman immediately jumping to the ultimately incorrect conclusion that that was the puzzle's answer, instead of "Nine of you are safe" (the correct answer), cleverly using a Batman Gambit against the Trope Namer himself, to plant this Red Herring.
  • In The Long Halloween, Holiday deliberately left the Riddler alive on April Fools' Day. In this story, April Fools' Day is yet again a holiday where nobody dies—Commissioner Gordon does get a noose placed around his neck, but Two-Face cuts him free. It's deliberately left ambiguous as to whether the Hangman was behind the initial assault, or if Two-Face himself set up the situation to prove that he wasn't the killer.
  • At Carmine Falcone's birthday memorial in the first issue, Selina remarks that it's hot out, "but not as hot as the night Johnny Viti got married," which is exactly what she herself predicted people would someday say in the first issue of The Long Halloween.
• The Cloud Cuckoolander Was Right: About midway through the story, during his assault upon the Falcone household, The Joker conjectures that Sofia Gigante is in fact not paralyzed. He even prefaces his theory with "Call me crazy..." And as it turns out, he's right- Sofia is completely mobile and is in fact The Hangman.
• The Commissioner Gordon: This series sees Gordon's actual promotion to Commissioner (though it happened between this and TLH) and the continued evolution of his relationship with Batman.
• Cop Killer: Outside of Alberto and the attempts on Batman and Two-Face, all of the Hangman's victims were cops.
• Dating Catwoman: Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle are already in a steady relationship as their doubles become attracted to one another, and they actually break up as the series progresses.
• Crazy-Prepared: Sofia Falcone, as the Hangman, tries to make Batman one of her last victims. Good thing Batman fitted himself with an armored neck brace just in case.
• Death by Origin Story: As this story is partly an updated retelling of how Dick Grayson entered Bruce Wayne's life and became Batman's sidekick Robin, we of course see Dick's parents the Flying Graysons get killed.
• Death Is Cheap: Two-Face misuses the trust Solomon Grundy has in Harvey Dent, and he removes an electric grid from a sewerpipe so that Two-Face and some rogues can make their escape.
  Two-Face: He's died before.
• Designated Girl Fight: Implied in the last chapter, when Two-Face's "freak" contingent takes out the remaining heads of the mafia's Five Families. Poison Ivy is assigned to kill Lucia Viti and succeeds, though readers don't see it happen.
• Dramatic Irony: During the climax, Batman muses that Sofia Gigante was determined to destroy Harvey Dent and all the good he accomplished. The irony is that all the good that Harvey represented and accomplished had already been destroyed by Two-Face.
• Dying Clue: A variation in that it's an inadvertent one. When the final Hangman victim, Laureen Wilcox, is strung up, they leave their radio on, and choke out the words "But...we had..." Later, Mario Falcone hears the recording and, upon learning the victim's name, correctly guesses that the intended message was "We had a deal," as there's an "L. Wilcox" on the family payroll. The clue makes Batman and Commissioner Gordon realize that Sofia Gigante is the Hangman.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The Major Crimes Unit is an established part of the Batman mythos and is a division of the Gotham City Police Department founded by Commissioner Gordon. It is tasked with dealing with the supervillains and major crimes in Gotham. The seeds of the MCU are planted when Gordon selects seven honest cops from the GCPD to report directly to him and help him deal with opponents that the rest of the department is too corrupt or unprepared to deal with. One of the cops is corrupt.
• End of an Age: The whole series, and The Long Halloween before it, deal largely with the (very, very, violent) death of organized crime in Gotham and the refocusing of power towards the familiar Rogues and freaks. Dent's plan, as weirdly noble as plans go, to wipe out the Falcone family is so successful that by the end of the story it's the freaks and mental cases like him and the Joker who are left with the real criminal power in Gotham.
• The Falcone Family has a black man named Edward Skeevers working for them.
• Evil Matriarch: Sofia Falcone Gigante has taken over her father's place. Lucia Viti, Sofia's cousin and daughter of the late Carla Viti, appears as a potential rival for Sofia.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Poison Ivy calls out Two-Face when he allows Grundy to sacrifice himself in ripping off a high-voltage gate, after Grundy had been so loyal to him. Of course, Two-Face reminds her that, as an immortal zombie, to Grundy Death Is a Slap on the Wrist.
• Eviler than Thou: The Joker gives this to Two-Face.
• Exact Words: Comes up when Two-Face saves Gordon from a hanging during April Fools' Day. He says that Harvey Dent isn't the Hangman before escaping. Gordon and Batman both discuss the wording and given Harvey's multiple personality disorder, wonder if Harvey was trying to say he was innocent...but that Two-Face is guilty.
• Expy:
  • The series continues to do this for the Falcone family being ones for the Corleone family, as in addition to Alberto being one for Fredo and Sofia being a Gender Flipped Sonny, Mario is one of Michael.
  • Detective Julia Lopez, a Hispanic woman that is one of the few honest Gotham cops that Commissioner Gordon selects to serve in his elite investigative taskforce, is a re-imagining of recurring Batman supporting character Renee Montoya, a character created for Batman: The Animated Series and adapted into the comics,
  • This series continues to portray Calendar Man as Hannibal Lecter, as was previously done in The Long Halloween.
• Facial Horror: Catwoman reveals to Batman that when it looked like Sofia Falcone fell and was crippled, she'd actually been thrown into an office on the floor beneath them. In the process, Sofia was sent through a window and had her entire face sliced off.
• Fat Bastard: Tony Zucco, the head of the Falcone family's transport and trucking interests. He tries to double-cross the Falcones by using the Haly Circus to get drugs across state lines for his personal gain, and kills the Grayson parents as a threat to Mr. Haly to force him to comply with the plan.
• Finger in the Mail: Someone steals the body of previous untouchable crime lord Big Bad Carmine Falcone (who was killed by Two Face in an attempt to "do what is necessary" to take down organized crime) and, later, sends his daughter, who has taken over the crime family, his finger, which her aide recognizes as an "old style message," meaning that someone means to take everything from her, "piece by piece." At the end, the person who stole the body is revealed to be Two Face who, throughout the story, was acting leading nearly all of Batman's rogues gallery to take down the Falcone family and its associates.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Sofia Falcone first appears in this story, the left side of her face has scars on similar to the ones Carmine received from Catwoman. Anyone who remembers the ending of The Long Halloween will recall Catwoman scratched the right side like she did to Carmine. When this at first seems like an artistic error, this is acknowledged by Catwoman later on when recalls what she did to Sofia. And then explains Sofia had her face sheared off by broken glass when she was thrown through a window on the floor beneath them. Sofia gave herself the scars after plastic surgeons reconstructed her face, but because she was looking in a mirror she did it to the wrong side. The presence of the scars from the story's beginning are the first hint Sofia's not what she seems.
  • Once Alberto is released, he's seen smoking in virtually every appearance. It turns out that the cigarettes are laced with Scarecrow's fear toxin as part of the Calendar Man's revenge ploy against Alberto.
  • When the Falcones are all held for questioning by Gordon after the Mother's Day attacks, Batman and Porter spar outside the interrogation room. Batman questions her and Alberto's history together at Harvard, but Porter states Alberto had already left for Oxford by the time she transferred to Harvard. She also gets angry Batman is digging into her private life. When she later goes missing in issue #12, Bruce investigates Porter's apartment and finds a Gotham University yearbook. He discovers Porter had transferred to Harvard from Gotham University and that she knew the then-Professor Harvey Dent (who left her a personal note in the yearbook). Most interestingly, Porter switched schools the same year Harvey married Gilda. Reading between the lines, Bruce correctly infers Porter and Harvey had an affair and that Two-Face capitalized on that old attraction to use Porter as a mole.
• Gaslighting: What The Calender Man tries to do to Alberto Falcone. He nearly succeeds, too.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Calendar Man’s motivation for “haunting” Alberto is because he feels he’s being forgotten thanks to the much more famous and sensational “Holiday” killings.
• Happily Married: Harvey Dent draws on this to overcome Poison Ivy's seduction powers and states that "Harvey" is a married man. Of course, Harvey's status does not impact what Two-Face is allowed to do with a woman...
• Harmless Freezing: Downplayed. When Gordon's team of cops heads into the sewers to track down Two-Face and his supervillain gang, Gordon himself and Julia Lopez run into Mr. Freeze, who promptly entraps the latter in ice. Gordon smashes her free in a matter of seconds, and she's able to talk immediately, although she does admit that her blood was already slowing down. She's forced to sit out for the rest of the search, but is ultimately none the worse for the wear.
• Homage: Lots to The Godfather, often lampshaded by Beat panels of the other characters staring dumbfounded at the person who just quoted it.
• Idiot Ball: Commissioner Gordon grabs this repeatedly after forming his elite squad of officers. Despite knowing that the Hangman is striking down cops—especially those connected with Harvey Dent and Gordon himself—he still sends members of the group out on errands alone, such as going to get a car for the others. This inevitably ends with the officers' deaths, and yet he keeps on making the same mistake. Possibly justified in that it's meant to show just how unprepared Gordon (and by extension the GCPD) is to take on the serial killer.
• Joker Jury: In this case, a Two-Face one.
• Karmic Death:
  • Tony Zucco, the Fat Bastard who murdered Dick Grayson's parents, has a coronary and dies while Batman and Robin pursue him.
  • After spending the whole story hanging the victims of her Hangman murder spree, Sofia Falcone herself is hung after Two-Face puts a bullet in her head.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Former commissioner Gillian Loeb reappears in issue 2 to rub Gordon's face in the Hangman murders and Harvey Dent's transformation into Two-Face, and to not-subtly implies he intends to use what's going on to get his job back from Gordon. The issue literally ends with the reveal of Loeb's corpse, a victim of the Hangman.
  • Pratt, Branden's second-in-command and fellow corrupt cop, tries to shoot Batman as revenge for Bats punching him through a wall during the events of Year One^note itself a response for Pratt trying to shoot a cat while searching for Batman through the wreckage of a building that was bombed on Loeb's orders. Not only is Batman wearing body armor, but when Batman comes to, he finds that the Hangman got to Pratt in the meantime.
  • Two-Face and Joker get into a standoff that ends with Two-Face beating Joker down in retaliation for the way Joker assaulted and humiliated him in front of his wife back when he was still Harvey Dent. And then the laser loops back around when Joker shoots him off a cliff in the end.
• Luke, You Are My Father: Selina Kyle has reason to believe she is Carmine Falcone's illegitimate daughter.

• Meaningful Name:
  • Mario Falcone claims that, with his majority control of the legitimate Falcone businesses, Sofia Falcone is no longer allowed to use the Falcone name. She now uses "Sofia Gigante," which had previous been used as her married name. "Gigante" is the Italian word for "Giant", and Sofia clearly is The Big Girl of the Falcone siblings.
  • The new District Attorney is named Janice Porter. "Janice" sounds like "Janus," the Roman god of beginnings and endings who is literally two-faced. Considering that Janice is double-crossing everyone by working alongside Gordon, Mario Falcone, and Harvey Dent simultaneously, she's definitely duplicitous. Even the last name is a hint: Janus is also the god of doorways, and in British English, "porter" is the term used for a doorman.
• The Mole: District Attorney Janice Porter is sleeping with and feeding information to Two-Face, Mario is feeding Porter information on the Falcone Crime Family, and Detective Laureen Wilcox is working for the Falcone Crime Family
• Murder by Cremation: Almost happens to Catwoman.
• Mythology Gag: One of the crimefighter names Dick Grayson considers is Bat-Mite.
• Never Found the Body: Two-Face falls into a crevasse at the end of the story. Batman, not yet having learned better at this point in his career, tells Gordon that his death is as sure as it can be without having the actual body.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Two-Face delivers one to no less than the goddamn JOKER when the clown attempts to shoot him and take over. This serves not only to reassert Harvey's authority, but also as payback for Joker's beatdown of Dent in front of Dent's wife in "The Long Halloween". Joker later gets his own payback.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Two-Face shoots Porter, he doesn't bother to flip his coin, a rare sign that both sides of Dent's personality are in agreement about what Two-Face is doing.
• Obfuscating Disability: Sofia Falcone, to hide that she's really the Hangman.
• Officer O'Hara : A version of Chief O'Hara from the '60s Batman (1966) series briefly appears before becoming the first victim of the Hangman, but his personality is a far cry from the old 60s show's version.
• Only in It for the Money: Mr. Freeze doesn't give a damn what Two-Face's plans are, he just wants his payment. (Obviously to work on curing Nora, though that's not mentioned directly)
• Redemption Equals Death: Alberto Falcone really is cured of his homicidal tendencies, and this is what results in Sofia strangling him.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Laureen Wilcox sells out the GCPD by working with Sofia Falcone, even after the fellow members of her squad begin to become victims of the Hangman. True to form, Wilcox herself ends up as the last Hangman target, despite protesting that "we had a deal."
• Rose-Tinted Narrative: Sofia remembers her father as a traditional boss who refused to work with freaks. She forgets that Falcone hired Poison Ivy to seduce Bruce Wayne along with breaking Scarecrow out of Arkham Asylum.
• The Reveal: Hangman turns out to be Sofia Gigante, faking her condition all along.

• Samus Is a Girl: The Hangman is really Sofia Gigante.
• Seduction-Proof Marriage: Played with by Two-Face. Harvey Dent still regards himself as married to Gilda, but his Two-Face identity isn't, so he invokes and ignores this trope whenever it's convenient. For example, he fights off Poison Ivy's pheromones by remembering his love for Gilda. He also has an affair with another woman, the new DA, Janice Porter, but when he decides he no longer needs her:
  Porter: Tell them, Harvey! Tell them that I love you and you love—
  [gunshot]
  Two-Face: Harvey Dent is a married man, Porter. Don't ever forget that.
• Self-Serving Memory: Sofia rebuffs Alberto’s pleas for medical attention after getting shot by the Calendar Man by stating their father was once hit five times in the chest and “shrugged it off”, neglecting to remember he required emergency surgery from Dr. Thomas Wayne to survive. It’s likely Sofia is intentionally remembering it wrong to justify to herself killing Alberto.
• Series Continuity Error:
  • Arnold Flass is among the Hangman's victims—despite Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight Annual #2 showing him alive when Jim Gordon and Sarah Essen marry.
  • Jefferson Skeevers ratted out Arnold Flass in Batman: Year One, yet his brother works for the Falcones.
  • Cleverly subverted and exploited by Loeb and Sale with Sofia's facial scars from The Long Halloween. For the entire series, the scars are on the wrong side of Sofia's face and it looks like it's a significant continuity error (or alternately that Sale simply opted for Art Evolution of Sofia's design between projects). Instead, it eventually turns out the scars being on the wrong side of Sofia's face is a plot point and crucial to the resolution of the mystery.
• Shout-Out:
  • During the Joker's drive-by-shooting on Mother's Day, the Clown quotes (and misquotes) lines from White Heat, Taxi! and Chinatown.
  • The image of Joker pushing Sofia in a wheelchair down the stairs is influenced by Kiss of Death. This is also a possible Mythology Gag with Frank Gorshin referencing Tommy Udo as an influence for the Riddler in Batman (1966)
  • In keeping with this incarnation of Chief O'Hara being inspired by Jim Malone from The Untouchables (1987), we first meet him walking on a bridge and meeting with Commissioner Gordon, much like Malone's introductory scene had him patrolling a bridge when he first meets Eliot Ness.
  • The Columbus Day Massacre (where Two-Face murders all of the remaining mafiosi in Gotham) is reminiscent of the end of The Godfather. Similarly, the arrival of Carmine’s finger to Sofia evokes a similar scene where Solozzo sends the Corleones a dead fish in Luca Brasi’s vest to let them know Luca is dead.
  • Alberto in his bed with the dead and bloody body of Janice Porter refers to the horse head scene in The Godfather.
  • Sofia telling Porter and Gordon that the men at Carmine's grave are private detectives licensed to carry firearms is almost verbatim what Tom Hagen says to Captain Mc Cluskey in The Godfather.
• The Smurfette Principle: Laureen Wilcox is the only female victim of the Hangman. Before her death, it's even lampshaded that all of the serial killer's targets have been men.
• Spotting the Thread:
  • Dick is the one to realize that the first note from the Hangman is saying “nine of you are safe,” referring to the hierarchy of the Gotham Mob network. It’s the first point where Bruce realizes Dick might actually be a good partner for Batman.
  • Alberto is haunted by the voice of his father throughout the whole story, and when he finds Janice Porter's corpse in his bed, the entity urges him to kill himself. Alberto, however, knows that Carmine, for all of his flaws, would never go so far as to tell a son he truly loved to commit suicide. It's enough to break his paranoia and have him shoot a nearby mirror instead, which reveals that the Calendar Man was secretly behind "Carmine's" ghostly presence.
• The Starscream: Joker constantly tries to undermine Two-Face's authority though Dent keeps him forcibly in check. Joker eventually just shoots him at the end.
• Take Up My Sword: Detective Lopez is considering leaving the force at the end of the series, but Gordon convinces her to stay when he explains that Chief O'Hara wanted to make the Gotham Police a respectable and honorable organization again. Now that O'Hara is dead Gordon will need a new Chief of Police, and Lopez decides to continue where O'Hara left off.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Issue #12 reveals Porter became infatuated with the pre-DA Harvey Dent while she was at Gotham University (and before he married Gilda). When Porter returns to Gotham and becomes the new DA, Two-Face capitalizes on this old infatuation to turn Porter into his mole inside Gotham law enforcement.
• The Tooth Hurts: Joker is ultimately subdued by Robin smacking him in the mouth with a pool cue, shattering a number of Joker's teeth and implicitly breaking his jaw in the process.
• Vasquez Always Dies: Averted. Gotham's elite cop team has two women on it, the Latina Action Girl Julia Lopez and the white Laureen Wilcox, who seems kinder. Lopez ends up surviving the story and is even tapped as Gordon's new Chief of Police, while Wilcox is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing and traitor who ends up as a Hangman victim.
• Vorpal Pillow: Sofia kills her brother Alberto with a pillow. A Justified Trope seeing as he was already crippled by the aftermath of The Long Halloween, and was shot just a few hours beforehand.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: What the Joker implies Harvey Dent still is.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • The fate of Carmine Falcone's body. It is revealed that Two Face has kept it as a trophy using Mister Freeze's technology.
  • Played straight with the Riddler during the original publication. After having a minor supporting role in the early chapters, he vanishes after Two-Face's mock trial on April Fools' Day. Averted in the long run as Catwoman: When in Rome addresses Edward Nygma's whereabouts after April Fools' Day.
• What You Are in the Dark: Alberto is haunted by the voice of his late father, which repeatedly urges him to take up a gun and become Holiday again. Eventually, one of Holiday's signature guns is left in Alberto's room, and the voice outright tells him to kill Sofia, who is sitting helplessly in the next room. Alberto picks up the revolver, opens the door...and chooses not to murder his sister, revealing that his homicidal urges are truly gone. Unfortunately, Redemption Equals Death is in full play here.
• Wham Line: Nine of you are safe.
• You Are Not Alone: When Dick laments how alone he is now that his parents are gone, Alfred remembers a similar lamentation Bruce made right after his parents’ deaths. While Alfred let Bruce walk out of the room without saying anything, he makes a different choice this time around.
  Alfred: "I can only tell you something, Dick, something I wish I said a long time ago to someone else. You are not alone. I imagine you will never be again."
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Harvey Dent does this to Janice Porter

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