The Joker has one of the most recognizable faces in the world of DC Comics thanks to his unique clown look, no matter which version of the character you watch, which has raised the question of why Harvey Dent didn’t recognize him in The Dark Knight – and here’s why. After a rough patch in the 1990s with Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, the Caped Crusader got another chance on the big screen in Batman Begins, the first entry in what would become Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy.
Batman Begins introduced the audience to Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne/Batman and Nolan’s vision of Gotham City, along with the type of problems the city would deal with in this new version. The success of Batman Begins made way for two sequels – The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises – each with different villains and issues to deal with. The Dark Knight is still regarded as not only the best entry in the trilogy but also one of the best superhero movies ever made. The movie saw Batman coming face to face with the Joker (Heath Ledger), who was the one responsible for the emergence of another villain: Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), who became Two-Face after one of the Joker’s plans to mess with Batman led to half of his body being burned.
Dent survived the explosion but was left severely disfigured, thus becoming the classic Batman villain “Two-Face”, and the audience witnessed how he went from Gotham’s potential hero to a very dangerous villain, and it was in big part thanks to the Joker – and not just because he caused the explosion that left him with half his body burned. When Dent was recovering at the hospital, the Joker decided to pay a visit, but in order to blend in, he dressed up as a nurse, but he was still wearing his iconic clown make-up. Dent was resting when the Joker arrived and moved his bed so he could sit, prompting Dent to wake up, but he didn’t react to having the Joker in front of him until the latter removed his face mask, which even though covered half of his face, his eye makeup was still visible and thus made it easy to recognize him, yet Dent didn’t.
This has been questioned by fans for years, as it does seem strange that he wouldn’t know that the Joker was standing right in front of him until he took the mask off. However, this can be justified by Dent’s condition, as he was in recovery from a very recent and severe accident and thus wouldn’t have been fully conscious of his surroundings. Minutes before this encounter, Dent had woken up to realize that half his face was gone and Rachel had died, so he was still in shock. Many viewers have pointed out that he would have seen the Joker with his left eye (the one on his burned side), but it’s highly unlikely that he would have been able to see properly or at all after been burned so severely. Many have explained that, while it’s somewhat possible that he could still move his left eye, he wouldn’t have been able to see clearly or he would have been blind on that eye, thus justifying that he didn’t recognize the Joker – plus, he was sleeping when the Joker moved his bed, which along with the trauma he had gone through, wouldn’t have allowed him to have an immediate reaction to seeing the Joker until he removed his mask.
Surely, this “plot hole” or weird detail in The Dark Knight doesn’t affect the story at all, as Dent would have reacted the same way he did no matter when he recognized the Joker, and the latter would have carried on with his plan anyway (even if the Joker claimed to not be a guy with a plan). There are many details like this in the Dark Knight trilogy that have been questioned for years, but this is one of the most harmless ones, yet one that made fans very curious about Harvey Dent and his condition.
