The often-overlooked fourth installment of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy is subtly referenced in The Dark Knight Rises. The critically-acclaimed trilogy gave viewers a relatively realistic take on the Batman mythos, showing Bruce Wayne’s process of creating his Batman persona and pitting him against grounded versions of classic Batman foes. The Dark Knight franchise is relatively small, with only a few spinoff properties, such as novel and video game adaptations and live-action shorts that are included as extras on The Dark Knight’s DVD release, but the animated film Batman: Gotham Knight, serves as the trilogy’s unofficial fourth installment.

Gotham Knight came out in 2008, shortly before the theatrical release of The Dark Knight, and is a canonical part of Nolan’s Batman story. Set between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Gotham Knight continues Batman’s story through six vignettes, with different creative teams of artists and writers working on each short. Gotham Knight further develops the lore of Nolan’s Dark Knight universe and makes the characterization of Christian Bale’s Batman even more robust, showing previously unseen portions of his training and pitting him against new villains. The Dark Knight Rises solidifies the film’s canonicity through two subtle references.

John Blake Gets A Sarcastic Killer Croc Reference

Early on in The Dark Knight Rises, Commissioner Gorden gets captured by Bane’s henchmen, though he narrowly escapes with serious wounds. Detective John Blake – the trilogy’s Robin equivalent – rescues him, taking note of his warnings about an army beneath Gotham City. When discussing his findings with Bruce Wayne, Blake notes that his superiors at the GCPD sarcastically asked him if he found any “giant alligators” in response. While this could easily be written off as a simple joke, given the events of Gotham Knight, this comes off more as a reference to Killer Croc.

Gotham Knight introduced a new iteration of Killer Croc – born Waylan Jones – to the Dark Knight trilogy. This iteration of Croc is incredibly strong and has a reptilian appearance due to a rare skin condition, but nevertheless lacks superpowers. Appearing in the vignette “In Darkness Dwells,” Killer Croc is an enforcer for Scarecrow, briefly battling Batman in Gotham’s sewers. Croc evades capture by the end of the vignette, making his whereabouts unknown by the events of The Dark Knight Rises. With this in mind, Blake’s superiors in the GCPD were most likely genuinely referencing Killer Croc with their remark.

Scarecrow’s First Kangaroo Court Was In Gotham Knight

Following Bane’s takeover of Gotham City, Scarecrow reappears in The Dark Knight Rises, presiding over a kangaroo court. In a bit of morbid comedy, Scarecrow inevitably gives those on “trial” (Gotham’s elite) a choice between death and “exile,” which are ultimately indistinguishable, as exile forces them to walk across a frozen river, inevitably resulting in them falling through the ice and dying of hypothermia. As shown in Gotham Knight, this was not the first time that Scarecrow presided over a false trial, as he is shown doing nearly the same thing in the vignette “In Darkness Dwells.”

“In Darkness Dwells” sees Scarecrow – still recovering from Rachel Dawes’s taser attack from Batman Begins – forming a criminal gang in the sewers of Gotham City. Frustrated with the social outreach programs of Cardinal O’Fallon denying him potential henchmen, Scarecrow has Killer Croc kidnap him and bring him to the sewers, where Scarecrow holds a sham trial for O’Fallon, intending to execute him before Batman’s intervention. Amusingly, Scarecrow seems to have taken a liking to this practice, as he continues to preside over a kangaroo court upon being freed by Bane. Only this time, his executions were far more successful.

How Christopher Nolan Ensured Gotham Knight Would Fit His Universe

The creative teams of Gotham Knight, notably, had a large degree of freedom when making their respective vignettes, but the film did receive some creative input from Christopher Nolan himself. According to co-director Bruce Timm, the original design for Killer Croc gave him a tail, which Nolan asked to be removed. Nolan wanted the film to match the grounded take on Batman seen in the live-action films, and this was his only notable request for Gotham Knight.

The Gotham Knight vignette that The Dark Knight Rises references – “In Darkness Dwells” – was written by David S. Goyer. Goyer also co-wrote the stories of all three films in The Dark Knight trilogy, so it is fitting that the vignette is the most closely tied to the live-action films. Goyer might have also included the two references to the vignette in The Dark Knight Rises, reinforcing Gotham Knight’s place in the Dark Knight trilogy.