Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Rachel Dawes and Aaron Eckhart is Harvey Dent

• This is the first Batman film to not have Batman in the title.

• Matt Damon was Christopher Nolan’s first choice for the role of Harvey Dent, but Matt turned it down. Before Aaron Eckhart was cast, other actors considered included Hugh Jackman, Ryan Phillippe, Liev Schreiber and Josh Lucas.

• As a joke, one batsuit was made with nipples, like in Batman & Robin (1997). It was presented to Christian Bale as the real batsuit, but he knew instantly it was a joke, having seen a few design pictures during pre-production. He did pose for some publicity photos in the “nipple” suit, though.

• Robin Williams, Lachy Hulme, Paul Bettany, and Adrien Brody all wanted to play the Joker before Heath Ledger was cast. When asked, “Why Heath Ledger as Joker?” Christopher Nolan said, “Because he’s fearless.”

Christian Bale is Batman

• Before Maggie Gyllenhaal replaced Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes, Rachel McAdams and Emily Blunt were linked to the part.

• Christopher Nolan has a son named Rory, which explains the working title, Rory’s First Kiss, while filming on the streets of Chicago in April 2007. The filming was carried out under the fake movie title. Fliers regarding the filming carried this title, complete with a fake RFK logo for the movie and an address for the film’s production offices.

• On Thanksgiving weekend (2007), fake four-page tabloid-sized Gotham Times newspapers were distributed at various public events. Headlined “City at War — Batman Saves Entire Family”, every article teased events in the film, and everything in the handout was geared towards the film, including the weather (“Gloomy and overcast...”) and advertisements for Gotham National Bank, the Gotham Girl Guides and recruitment for the Gotham Police Department.

• To prepare for his role as the Joker, Heath Ledger lived alone in a hotel room for a month, formulating the character’s psychology, posture and voice (the last one he found most difficult to do). He started a diary, in which he wrote down the Joker’s thoughts and feelings to guide himself during his performance. He was also given Alan Moore’s comic Batman: The Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth to read. Ledger also took inspiration from A Clockwork Orange (1971)’s Alex and Sid Vicious.

• Christopher Nolan cites the film Heat (1995), starring Al Pacino and Robert De Nero, as a major influence on this movie.

Heath Ledger is superb as the enigmatic Joker

• In Sir Michael Caine’s opinion, Heath Ledger beat the odds and topped Jack Nicholson’s Joker from Batman (1989): “Jack was like a clown figure, benign but wicked, maybe a killer old uncle. He could be funny and make you laugh. Heath’s gone in a completely different direction to Jack, he’s like a really scary psychopath. He’s a lovely guy and his Joker is going to be a hell of a revelation in this picture.” Caine bases this belief on a scene where the Joker pays a visit to Wayne Manor. He’d never met Ledger before, so when Ledger arrived and performed he gave Caine such a fright he forgot his lines.

• Aaron Eckhart described his portrayal of Harvey Dent as simultaneously coming from and being apart from the same world as Batman (Dent is the White Knight of Gotham, as opposed to the Dark Knight). His challenge was “looking for the similarities and the tension between the two; to find what’s similar to Batman and then what’s opposite to him”. Eckhart prepared for his role by studying split personalities.

• The Joker make-up was composed of three pieces of stamped silicone, which took less than an hour to apply to Heath Ledger on each day of shooting. Ledger described it as “new technology which is much quicker to apply than regular prosthetics”; he felt he was not wearing any make-up at all.

• An explosion was filmed at Battersea Power Station in London. The fireball triggered calls from panic-stricken local residents, who feared a terrorist attack on the out-of-use Station.