Movies News Talk
Unbelievably, Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy features a fourth installment hidden away. Released in 2008, Batman: Gotham Knight is an animated film and is rather significant for the narrative! The last movie in the trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, subtly references Gotham Knight two times to provide the Dark Knight's world more complexity.
Commissioner Gordon is taken prisoner by Bane's goons early in The Dark Knight Rises; Detective John Blake, the trilogy's Robin equivalent, returns to save him. Blake's GCPD superiors make a sarcastic remark about Gordon discovering any "giant alligators," while he is looking for him. Though initially it would seem like just a haphazard joke, it is actually a reference to Killer Croc, a character debuted in Gotham Knight.
Born Waylan Jones, Killer Croc in Gotham Knight is a super strong enforcer for Scarecrow. A rare skin condition gives him a reptile look; he lacks superpowers. Killer Croc fights Batman in Gotham's sewers in one of the short stories, but he manages to flee capture. Given this, it appears that Blake's superiors are actually referring to Killer Croc, who is still missing during The Dark Knight Rises.
Scarecrow reappears in The Dark Knight Rises, supervising a kangaroo court, once Bane takes over Gotham City. He offers those under trial a choice between death and "exile," but exile is essentially a death sentence since it compels individuals to walk across a frozen river, inevitably causing them to fall through the ice and die.
Well, Scarecrow does this not once but rather on several times. He already has a fictitious trial in Gotham Knight, and it is quite similar to The Dark Knight Rises. Recovering from Rachel Dawes's taser attack in Batman Begins, Scarecrow is building a gang in the sewers in Gotham Knight. He brings Cardinal O'Fallon to the sewers after getting Killer Croc to abduct him, and conducts a sham trial to have him killed. Batman stops the execution at last, but it seems Scarecrow enjoys these kangaroo courts.
Though Gotham Knight was an animated film, Christopher Nolan provided some creative direction on it. Although Nolan wanted the film to remain true to the grounded style of the live-action movies, Killer Croc's original design included a tail and Nolan asked for it to be eliminated. Nolan's only main ask was this, which reveals how much he valued ensuring Gotham Knight complemented his general Dark Knight universe vision.
David S. Goyer, who also co-wrote the screenplays for all three live-action films in the trilogy, wrote the Gotham Knight tale from which The Dark Knight Rises draws. He might have included references to Gotham Knight in The Dark Knight Rises in order to underline the animated film's position within the Dark Knight trilogy.
Thus, pay attention to these subdued references to Gotham Knight the next time you are viewing The Dark Knight Rises. It reminds us that the Dark Knight world's apparently little details can be linked and give the narrative still another degree of complexity.