50 Fun Facts About The Dark Knight

Who directed The Dark Knight (2008)?

Nolan co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Jonathan, and had never made a sequel before this one.

Which actor played the Joker in The Dark Knight?

Ledger spent about a month secluded in a hotel room reading comics to prepare, and always applied the Joker's lipstick himself.

The Dark Knight is the sequel to which 2005 film?

Nolan was not sure the first film would be successful enough to warrant a sequel, despite ending it with a Joker card tease.

Which real city stood in for most of Gotham City during filming?

Nolan liked the city's architecture; the opening bank heist was shot inside the Old Main Post Office there.

Which character does Aaron Eckhart play?

Eckhart and Nolan deliberately ignored Tommy Lee Jones's pink-haired take on the character from Batman Forever.

Who plays Alfred Pennyworth in the film?

Caine said he forgot his lines during one scene because Ledger's performance was so stunning.

Which actress replaced Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes?

Holmes chose to make the crime comedy Mad Money instead; Gyllenhaal approached Rachel as a completely new character.

Who plays Wayne Enterprises CEO Lucius Fox?

Fox supplies Batman's gear and, at the end, destroys the sonar surveillance network he considers unethical.

Gary Oldman plays which Gotham police figure?

Gordon fakes his own death mid-film and is promoted to commissioner after the Joker kills Loeb.

What Wayne Enterprises accountant flees to Hong Kong with the mob's money?

Batman snatches him back from a skyscraper with a C-130 sky-hook; the Joker later burns him alive atop the cash pile.

Which structure does the Joker blow up while dressed as a nurse?

The explosion was filmed at a former Brach's candy factory in Chicago that was already scheduled for demolition.

In the film's climax, what kind of vessels does the Joker rig to explode?

Navy Pier played Gotham Harbor; no real vessels fit, so the crew built ferry facades on top of barges.

Which employee tries to expose Batman's identity, prompting the Joker to demand his death?

He works out the secret from Wayne Enterprises' Applied Sciences designs, and Bruce has to save him from would-be assassins.

What does Alfred burn at the end of the film?

The letter says Rachel chose Dent, and Alfred conceals it to spare Bruce the pain.

How does Two-Face decide the fate of the people he confronts?

His lucky two-headed coin ends up scarred on one side, introducing real chance for the first time.

Whom does Batman tackle Dent to save in the final confrontation?

Dent falls to his death, and Batman agrees to take the blame for his crimes so Gotham keeps its 'white knight'.

According to Alfred, what do some men simply want to do?

The line, delivered while explaining a bandit he hunted in Burma, became one of the film's most quoted and meme-ready pieces of dialogue.

Who delivers the line 'You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain'?

Jonathan Nolan considered it the script's most important line, and it arrived late in the writing.

What object does the Joker make 'disappear' in his famous trick at the mob meeting?

He slams a henchman's head down onto it; the moment is regularly cited among the film's most iconic scenes.

How many different stories does the Joker tell about how he got his scars?

One involves an abusive father, the other self-mutilation for a wife; the film never says which, if either, is true.

What was the Joker's marketing catchphrase printed on 11,000 defaced dollar bills at San Diego Comic-Con?

The bills led finders to a location; the viral game was run by 42 Entertainment across a full year of events.

Which crime bosses are played by Eric Roberts, Michael Jai White and Ritchie Coster respectively?

Maroni later gets his legs broken by Batman during the hunt for the Joker; Gambol dies at the wrong end of a knife.

Which villain from the previous film makes a cameo, played again by Cillian Murphy?

Batman captures him in a parking garage along with a gang of copycat Batmen in the film's early scenes.

Which US senator, still in office in 2008, has a cameo in The Dark Knight?

The Vermont senator and Batman fan gets threatened by the Joker at the fundraiser, and appeared in several other Batman productions.

What roughly was the film's production budget?

Filming ran from April to November 2007 in Chicago, Hong Kong and on English sets, and finished on time and under budget.

The Dark Knight was the first major feature film to shoot sequences with which camera format?

About 28 minutes of the finished film, roughly 15-20 percent, was shot in the large format.

What kind of aircraft does Batman catch in mid-flight to make his escape with Lau?

The 'sky hook' extraction was filmed in the last nine days of production, in Hong Kong; a skyscraper-to-skyscraper leap there was cancelled when officials refused a helicopter permit.

What kind of vehicle did Nolan insist on flipping for real rather than using CGI?

The stunt was staged on LaSalle Street in Chicago, the same street used for the police funeral procession.

What is the name of Batman's motorcycle-like vehicle that ejects from the Tumbler?

It was so unwieldy that only stuntman Jean Pierre Goy could ride it, after months of training.

The film is dedicated to Ledger and to which crew member who died during a stunt rehearsal?

He was a stuntman killed while rehearsing a Tumbler stunt in England.

Which painter's work, suggested by Nolan, influenced the Joker's smeared makeup?

His 1953 Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X was the touchstone; makeup artist John Caglione Jr. wanted it to look worn for days.

Which 1990s comic-book miniseries about Batman, Dent and the GCPD lieutenant influenced the screenplay?

The Nolans also drew on the crime dramas Heat and The Godfather rather than typical superhero films.

Which 1995 crime film was a stated influence on the screenplay?

The Michael Mann film's tone helped make the script read more like a crime drama than a superhero movie.

How many Academy Award nominations did The Dark Knight receive?

It won two, for Best Supporting Actor and a sound award; that win stopped Slumdog Millionaire's clean sweep.

Besides Ledger's acting award, which Oscar did the film win?

Sound editor Richard King took the award; Wally Pfister's cinematography was among the six other nominations that lost.

Ledger became only the second performer in history to do what at the Oscars?

Peter Finch, for Network (1976), was the first; Ledger's family accepted on his behalf.

What was the film's record-breaking US opening weekend gross?

It beat Spider-Man 3's record and did it in a then-record 4,366 theaters.

The Dark Knight became only the fourth film ever to cross which worldwide box-office milestone?

An Oscar-season reissue in early 2009 pushed it over the line; it finished at about $1.003 billion.

Who composed the score alongside Hans Zimmer?

Zimmer handled the Joker's razor-scraped two-note theme while Howard wrote the elegant material for Harvey Dent.

The Joker's suite on the soundtrack shares its name with which of his catchphrases?

The nine-minute piece is built around just two notes, played on electric cello and strings tortured with razor blades.

Which honor did the US Library of Congress bestow on The Dark Knight in 2020?

The registry preserves films deemed culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.

What is the film's running time?

Nolan and editor Lee Smith took an 'aggressive editorial approach' to land it there.

Which 2012 film concluded Nolan's trilogy?

It out-grossed its predecessor but proved more divisive with audiences.

Where were the scenes of Rachel held hostage among gasoline barrels filmed?

The Bat Bunker, meanwhile, took six weeks to build inside a hangar at Cardington.

The under-construction Trump International Hotel and Tower doubled as which Gotham location?

It is where Batman and the Joker have their final confrontation among the hostages dressed as clowns.

Which Hong Kong actor's role was largely cut after a personal scandal?

His scenes were mostly removed following a 2008 sex photo scandal.

On its home-video launch day, how many copies did the film sell across DVD and Blu-ray?

Blu-ray was about a quarter of that, breaking Iron Man's format record and signalling the disc's rise.

Which musician turned down a role as the bank manager or a corrupt cop because he was recording an album?

He was busy making Dwight Sings Buck; William Fichtner ended up as the shotgun-toting bank manager.

Under what ruse title did The Dark Knight film in Chicago to avoid attention?

The media quickly uncovered the truth; thirteen weeks of filming were estimated to have generated $45 million for the city.

Roughly how much of The Dark Knight's running time is IMAX footage?

That is 15-20% of the film; Nolan had wanted about 40 minutes and had Wally Pfister's crew train on the equipment from January 2007.