150 Easter Eggs In The Dark Knight I Noticed After Watching The Christopher Nolan Trilogy

How do you make one of the best superhero movies ever made even better?

Simply, you break down all the ins and outs of the movie to show 150 insane details and easter eggs that Nolan left in his Dark Knight Trilogy.

Now like all films in the set, The Dark Knight opens with the Batsymbol surrounded by something that will hold a significant meaning in the movie. In Begins it was bats which represented fear, in Rises it was ice-breaking to show Bane and in The Dark Knight, we see it flying through fire. Fire is a wild and chaotic thing whereas the Batsymbol is steady in its shape. This shows the battle between batman and the Joker who represent both order and chaos.
In the movie, Alfred states that some men just want to watch the world burn and the Joker even uses fire at several points in the film.
Rachel is killed with it, Harvey is burned and the hospital is blown up in a massive destruction.
The film is very much laced with the idea of duality as not only is there, of course, Batman and The Joker but Harvey Dent ends up becoming Two-Face.
However, it extends far beyond this and can be seen in a lot of aspects of the film.
Joker takes 2 hostages in both Harvey and Rachel.
He kills two people called Harvey and Dent.
He makes two boats have a stand-off and in the final battle makes the hostages swap clothes with his men.
Joker also wants half of the gangster’s money and there are always two sides to every coin. No, I’m not talking about Harvey Dent’s lucky one but the film in general.
Now after this opening shot we cut to a long one over the Gotham skyline in which a window is suddenly broken and the jokers gang swoop down. This imagery very much carries the idea that the peace in Gotham has been shattered and the clowns are descending on the city.
Cut to the Joker and if you look in the distance you can actually see a Spider-man movie poster making this finally the epic Marvel and DC collabo that we’ve all been waiting for.
We hear the Joker goons talk about a five-way split which is then corrected to six. This shows that Joker told each and every one of them something different and hid the bus driver because it’s all part of his plan.
Throughout the movie he says (include audio clip says this to Harvey in the hospital) “Do I look like a guy with a plan”
Now though he doesn’t the genius of the Joker is that he’s always one step ahead of everyone else. After Gamble interrupts his speech with the mobsters he starts reciting the outline of what he plans to do.
Later in the movie when talking to the boats we can see him reading off a piece of paper showing that he does indeed pre-plan what he’s going to say and do.
During the mobster meeting, he points at the television to say that he hates schemers but he himself is one and he just wants to seem like a wild dog because well….that’s all a part of his plan.
Now the mask that The Joker wears during the heist is actually calling back to the 1966 Batman TV show in which the Joker donned it in an episode “The Joker Is Wild.”
The entire strategy that The Joker uses here which is to make the robbers take out one another plays on his understanding that humans are self-centred and selfish. Everyone will kill others so that they can get something better and this model is very much used for the boats at the end, though he’s unable to correctly guess the outcome there.
Joker throws the entire team under the bus literally and unmasks saying the infamous line ‘WHATEVER DOESN’T KILL YOU SIMPLY MAKES YOU STRANGER’
This is of course a play on the term whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and throughout the movie, Joker does twist and turn certain sayings.
There is of course the changing of the van to read Slaughter Is The Best Medicine and let’s put a smile on that face, something which refers to giving a person a Glasgow smile rather than cheering them up.
Now Joker of course received this Glasgow smile himself and unlike all those that have come before, this Joker actually applied the white paint himself. Typically his skin is bleached but throughout the movie, if you look closely at Joker’s hands you will see that there is white paint on his fingertips.
Ledger actually put the makeup on himself rather than using the on-set team as he wanted to have an organic feel to the character rather than one who was simply pruned for a movie.
Joker escapes into the bus after putting a gas grenade in the bank manager’s mouth and we can see that the string from its pin is tied to the bottom of his jacket.
This means that when he drives off it will unhook it and we later see something similar when he goes to the gangsters and has a lot of explosives in his coat.
We then go to Jim Gordon standing beside the Bat-signal, since begins this has become a staple of the GCPD and at the end of the dark knight rises one of the most iconic shots is him standing beside a repaired signal echoing this moment.
He’s greeted by Ramierez who I think is based loosely on Detective Montoya from the comics. However, the latter is a good guy whereas Ramierez is a crooked cop. She mentions her mother being checked into the hospital and this of course becomes leverage later on when Joker threatens to blow one up. She is indebted to the gang because of her mother’s medical bills and it does ask the question, would you turn to crime to save your family?
Cut to Batman carrying out a drug bust on the scarecrow and we’re introduced to Batman copycats which are based on the Sons of Batman from The Dark Knight Returns comics.
Batman’s attacked by a dog and dogs actually pop up quite a lot in the film.
Now when upgrading his armour, Bruce asks how it’ll hold up against Dogs which references this moment, Joker is referred to as a mad dog and the Joker later says to the Chechian that when a dog goes hungry that he’ll find out how loyal they really are.
Now the Joker attacks Batman with dogs at the end of the movie and it could be because he found out from a second-hand source that he was vulnerable to them because of this opening drug bust.
Batman goes to Gordon who is in a bank vault and the character holds up a picture of the joker. On it, we can see the numbers 2008/07/18. Reverse these and you get the date 18th of July 2008 which is the day that the movie was released in cinemas.
Next, we go to Batman’s temporary Batcave in which we see him stitching up his arm. This scar would actually later appear in the dark knight rises when we see the character in the cave.
Bruce is keeping an eye on both Rachel and Harvey and we see a fakeout court scene with the two. In the comics, it was during a trial that Harvey had acid thrown at him by Ganster Maroni and he became Two-Face. However here he’s almost shot showing a slight misdirect.
The gun doesn’t go off and Dent says (use audio clip please) “If you want to kill a public servant, I suggest you buy American”.
Later in the movie the first person dent kills is public servant detective Wuertz who he murders with a Smith And Wesson…aka an American handgun.
Now it is possible that this gun came from Mr Lau as we learn that they both it and he are Chinese. Before you call me a racist yeah, Maroni was working with Mr Lau so it does make sense that he could get him black market weaponry.
Now Maroni himself in the long Halloween was sort of a rival to Falcone who in the last movie was taken down by Batman. Though the pair have worked together as well I do like that he’s the next in succession in the film canon.
We see Gordon and Dent meeting and there’s a lot of duality in this scene. Both know that the other one has a darker side to them and that they have to work with what they’re given.
Gordon refers to him as the White Knight which too brings up the idea of opposites in the title of The Dark Knight. This idea of mirroring is shown of course in Two-Face but also in that Harvey works in the dark and in the light to achieve Justice whereas Batman has to stick to the shadows.
Later on, a piece of paper is held up over Harvey’s face to make him look like Batman but this being white hammers home the idea of being a white night.
Harvey hints that he’s well aware that he’s labelled Two-Face by Gordon’s colleagues and this motif is even carried across to his double-sided coin which has two faces on it.
The idea that there’s no way to really win with it either shows how manipulative that he can be and how he presents things in a certain way whilst hiding the truth.
At the end of the movie, Gordon gives a speech about the fallen white night in front of a giant picture of him and if you look very closely this is crooked, showing that the character himself was too.
We see Bruce asking Lucius for some upgrades and he makes a joke about being able to turn his head. Pretty much all the Batman movies before and have this have seen a cowl with a solid neck so this is sort of a meta-joke about the costume design.
We’re also introduced to Colman Reese who I think may actually be The Dark Knight’s version of the Riddler. Similar to the Riddler in the comics, Reese figures out who Batman is but he doesn’t tell anyone because a riddle that everyone knows the answer to isn’t worth saying.
Reese’s name itself could also be a play on the way that the Riddler aka Edward E Nygma is often called Mr E or Mr E Nygma. Mr Reese…Mystery? Ok, might be reaching there.
Jump to Bruce taking out the Prima Ballerina for some Prima Pizza and the conversation moves on to how Batman in some ways is like a Roman protector. In Begins Ra’s al Ghul too brought up Rome and how corruption caused the League Of Shadows to bring down the empire, hinting at this idea of duality once more. Rome could be seen as good or bad depending on who you ask and it’s a nice recurring motif across the movies.
Harvey says “you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain” though this could be referring to his journey in the movie I’ve always taken it as Batman’s because he in the end allows people to see him as the bad guy.
The Joker goes and has his meeting with the mob in which he does the disappearing pencil trick. This was actually shot over 2 days and it had 22 takes. Nolan being Nolan wanted to do the stunt for real and this leads to three knockouts over the course of filming it. In the end, the stuntman swiped away the pencil at the last second, leading to what is an incredible scene.
Now the funny thing about this scene is that when Joker says something serious that the mobsters laugh but when he’s telling jokes they don’t. This is seen in pretty much all the lines of dialogues and shows that he’s not really a clown even though people find him funny.
We join Batman, Harvey and Gordon on the roof and this scene massively echoes The Long Halloween in which they meet in a similar scene.
They realise that they need Lau and as Batman is the only one who doesn’t have a jurisdiction that he’s the man for the job. Bruce enlists the help of Lucius who wants to use something known as Skyhook which was a real technique developed by the CIA in order to quickly get troops out who were behind enemy lines.
Lucius also gives Batman his new armour and we see how the gauntlets fire off which is something that he uses to help defeat the Joker with later on.
Throughout these movies, there’s lip service paid to the armour being weak on the sides and Talia later would exploit this in The Dark Knight rises when she stabs Bruce in his weak point. As we know she and Bane gained access to Batman’s armoury in that movie so it makes sense that they’d study the Achilles heel in the armour and exploit it.
After a hit is put out on his head, the joker fakes his own death to be taken to Gamble. He tells a story about how he got the scars and this alters throughout the movie which is actually a callback to the Killing Joke. In that Joker said if he had a past he’d prefer it to be multiple choice and the chaotic nature of his backstory shows how much of an unreliable narrator he is.
Joker gets gambles’ sidekicks to fight each other to the death to be in his gang and this idea of getting people to turn on one another was of course in the bank heist and later is used in the boats.
Batman goes to China with Lucius and we see how Sonar is used on a phone to scan the building. Later on, we learn that Bruce actually transformed all of Gotham’s cellphones into a sonar across the city in order to do this.
Lucius at one point actually questions why he’s dumping money into mobiles and he says he’s playing it close to the vest, signifying that this was his plan the whole time.
Now this movie is very reactionary to the fallout of 9/11 and much in the same way that the US government was accused of spying on its own people in order to catch terrorists, Bruce does the same thing.
The movie really makes you question whether an authoritarian figure should be able to hack into people’s privacy to catch the bad guys and it’s a very deep subject to cover in a superhero film.
Now Bruce busts into Lau’s building and the solid backpack thing that we see the cape folded up into is actually something Nolan wanted to adopt for the Batpod. He was worried that the cape would get caught in the back wheel and yank the rider’s head off and though that wasn’t the case it’s nice that the idea of it makes it across here.
When Bruce shoots bombs against the window we can see a countdown timer of roughly 2 minutes and 30 seconds and this is actually how long the scene lasts before they explode showing how well Nolan likes to edit things to ticking clocks.
Not long after we go to the mayor’s office and see that the Joker has started killing some of the copycats. He leaves a card on one saying will the real Batman please stand up which I think is a reference to Eminem and all the copycats that he had.
Turns out that the Batman dude who asked Bruce at the start what makes him any different has been killed and we see a handheld video made by Heath Ledger himself that accounts for the victim’s death. These sort of homemade hostage films became prevalent with the release of handheld digital cameras and of course cell phones which pits the movie even closer to reality.
Now at Bruce’s penthouse, there’s a party being held. Alfred and Harvey meet for the first time and the former says that he hasn’t known Rachel her whole life just yet which could be the scriptwriters playing up the fact that he will eventually have known her entire life. BOOOOM (show explosion).
Bruce enters asking Where Is Harvey and later on, when the Joker arrives at the party he does the exact same thing. This shows that the two are closer than you’d think and there’s another moment that highlights their similarities.
When Bruce walks out onto the Balcony he tosses away the Champagne and when Joker comes in he grabs a glass and spills the contents everywhere. This shows that both like to keep a clear head and that they only make it seem like they drink for appearances.
Bruce brings up Harvey’s campaign slogan “I Believe In Harvey Dent” which is actually a line from The Long Halloween.
When Joker enters the party Michael Caine’s Alfred was actually meant to say something but he was so shocked by the performance that he completely forgot his line.
Amongst the party guests, namely the old man Joker grabs is none other than Senator Patrick Layhee who’s a huge Batman fan. (spelt senator Patrick Leahy I just wanna get the pronunciation right). He’s actually appeared in several Batman movies and was blown up in the senate during BVS.
Joker lets Rachel fall out the window and Batman has to dive out after her which apparently lets him know that the pair care about each other but meh, I dunno I kinda feel like he would’ve done it to anyone.
Anyway cut to Alfred and Bruce talking about what he wants and Alfred tells the story about how some men just want to watch the world burn. Bruce says that criminals aren’t complicated and this is a callback to Ras Al Ghul who said the same thing to him in Batman Begins.
I absolutely love the way that Bruce is trying to scan Joker’s face to find a file for him but none exists. We never get a true backstory for the Joker in this movie and his anonymity is one of his greatest weapons.
Batman digs a bullet out of a wall to find a fingerprint on it and I believe that the bullet wall in Tenet was referencing this scene due to the colour of the wall. It’s a reach.
Cut to the Mayor’s funeral and The Joker makes it seem like he’s going to be sniping the official because that’s what tends to happen in assassinations. However, he’s always misdirecting people and he actually goes in with his men disguised as guards because they’ll be able to carry guns. He knows that Batman will find him and lures him to a location in the hopes that he can be taken out by a sniper and though it doesn’t go according to plan it still shows his ingenuity.
Harvey captures a guard played by David Dastmalchain who’s been cast in several comic book properties including Gotham, Ant-Man and the upcoming Suicide Squad movie.
Harvey holds him at gunpoint and we can see that one side of his face is almost completely in the shadow…foreshadowing his turn and darker side.
Batman talks him down and in hindsight, we know that because of his coin he never would’ve killed him, but it still shows that Harvey is willing to mentally torture someone.
He holds a press conference and we hear the line from a heckler (play audio clip) “things are worse than ever” which is a call back to when Rachel said the same thing in Batman begins.
Now Gordon’s death is faked showing that just like Batman he has to operate outside of the jurisdiction and so on to catch this new kind of criminal.
The car chase takes place and the Batpod bursts out the Batmobile. In the run-up to the film, it was said by Nolan that the Batpod was actually in Batman begins you just had to look very closely and this is of course where it was all along.
I kinda see this scene as being similar to the one in Batman returns in which the Batmobile is destroyed but the dark knight is still able to go on due to a pod coming out of it.
Batman and the joker face down on the road which foreshadows the idea of an unstoppable force hitting an immovable object.
Harvey is seemingly saved but he’s escorted to Detective Weurts by Ramierez and as we later learn they are working for the mob.
Joker is placed in a cell and I love how amongst his knives that there’s a potato peeler.
One of his henchmen is brought in and we learn that he has a cellphone bomb inside of him. Similar to Batman, The Joker has weaponised cellphones in a way to further his gains which is a great little mirroring between the two.
Batman and Joker have a conversation with each other and Joker even hints that the police will hunt Batman which is of course how the movie ends.
The Joker says You Complete Me and this moment is a call back to Jerry Maguire, something that Lego Batman watches in his solo movie bringing the two franchises together.
Joker discusses interrogation tactics such as not going for the head which likely shows that he was involved in some sort of torture.
Later in the movie Joker talks about how things are all part of the plan even if they’re horrible and mentions a group of soldiers being blown up which many have theorised confirms the theory that he is in fact an Iraq War vet.
If this is true then he could’ve been a military interrogator that was attacked by insurgents and the scars that we see on his face actually come from a bomb.
Now in this scene, the Joker makes Batman choose between Harvey and Rachel and says that he will have to choose who lives and who dies. It’s revealed that the Joker actually gives Batman the opposite locations but in some ways, he was telling the truth. Joker said he will have to choose who dies Batman chooses to go to Rachel who is revealed to be Harvey, therefore in choosing Rachel he was actually choosing her to die and yeah, he’s a slippery character that lad.
He reveals that Dent is being held at 250 52nd st. Saying that again as in 2 50 50 2nd street there’s this idea of there being two twos in it and 50 50 which foreshadows him becoming two face.
Joker actually allows Batman to beat the crap out of him and we can see later on that he uses a shattered piece of the mirror to take a policeman hostage. This guy was also in dead space which I’ll never forget. When he’s sitting against the cracked mirror we can see the glass behind him and piece together how he was able to get out.
Now the shots of Rachel and Harvey actually foreshadow their fate. Rachel is pretty much in complete darkness whereas half of Harvey’s face is lit, hinting to us what’s going to happen next.
Joker escapes and they honestly could’ve stopped the movie there and I think it would’ve been one of the best made.
Alfred almost gives Bruce a letter from Rachel and in the Dark Knight Rises, we hear more about this bringing the moment full circle.
In the hospital, Harvey lifts up his coin and sees that the other half of it is burned and that’s because his other half got burned…sorry I had to do that joke.
No, it is scarred on one side and not the other which is lucky as he can now use that as a cool little character gimmick…ey having that.
The Joker holds all the hospital’s hostage and puts a hit out on Mr Reese meaning that Batman has to save him. As mentioned in our Begins breakdown this is actually a Lamborghini Murcielago which means bat in Spanish. Nice little character gimmick there too.
The Joker references burning half the money which could also be a nod to how he burned half of Harvey.
Joker has the hospitals cleared out so that he can swoop in and take him without any guards and I always found it hilarious how it was only after he took off the mask that Harvey realised who he was.
When he allows Harvey to hold his life in his hand he actually holds back the hammer on the gun showing that even if he lost the flip he wouldn’t lose and would get out of the situation without dying.
Joker blows up the hospital and contrary to popular belief this wasn’t just one take and made up there and there. Heath practised it over and over again to get everything down so that when the explosion did go off the performance looked amazing.
The Joker records another hostage video with the GNN news correspondent and we can see that he’s hung him upside down almost like a Batman.
Batman enacts his final plan with help from Lucius and Harvey goes on a quest for revenge. When Maroni is just about to get in the car if you slow down the footage you can actually see that Harvey grabs his henchman and pulls him out the way, explaining how the switcheroo was carried out.
Harvey also takes off his seatbelt when he’s in it just before it flips showing how he managed to get out.
Batman storms Joker’s hideout and we can see the sonar which looks very similar to his Detective Vision.
So far Joker has been right about human nature but I love how in this one we prove them wrong and humanity wins in the fight for Gotham’s soul.
Batman manages to catch the Joker and saves his life showing that he is the true hero that will do good no matter what. He talks to him upside down showing that the pair have opposing ideologies and it’s one of the most haunting ways to say farewell to the character.
Now the beauty of Joker’s plan here is that he wanted to show Batman that the police would turn on him and in taking down the SWAT team they eventually do.
Batman goes to Harvey and saves his son by diving over the edge with Harvey. Bruce’s fall and later limp explains why he has one in the Dark Knight rises and it’s likely that only his cape catching the air is what stopped him from dying.
Gordon says (play audio clip) “thank you” and batman says you don’t have to which is of course playing on the ending of Batman Begins in which The Caped Crusader said he’d never have to.
Batman takes the fall for Harvey and he lives long enough to see himself become the villain, the hero that Gotham Deserves but not the one it needs. Harvey is someone who represents them as one of the people that they can aspire to be whereas if people try and become Batman they’ll end up like the sons and will break the law rather than uphold it. For now, Batman knows that he must sacrifice his image in order to serve the greater good and hopes that people will aspire to be more akin to Harvey than him, making him the true hero of it all.

That ends the movie and I really hope you enjoyed the breakdown, a lot of work went into this and it took so long to write so if you enjoyed it then make sure you check out our full breakdown of Batman Begins which will be linked on screen right now.