Goofs for
The Dark Knight (2008) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: The cooling ducts on the side of Bruce Wayne's Lamborghini Murciélago LP640 are closed at the beginning of the scene, then open. They're motorized, but they take time to open and close.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene on the MCU roof, Det. Ramirez holds a cup of coffee with two hands, then one hand, then two hands again.
  
  
• Continuity: In the hospital, when The Joker places the gun in Two-Face's hand and points it at his own head, he cocks the hammer. When the camera faces Two-Face, The Joker's finger is over the hammer. When it's facing The Joker, it's not there.
  
  

• Continuity: When Batman beats The Joker in the holding cell, The Joker's hands change position as Batman pins him to the wall. When the camera faces The Joker, his hands are gripping Batman's arms from below, with the fingers pointing up. When the camera faces Batman, The Joker's hands are holding Batman's arms from above, with his fingers pointing down.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the final shot, several non-illuminated lights are at the end of the ramp. They are Bebee Night Lights, which were used to light most of the night chase scene.
  
  
• Continuity: When Batman is interrogating The Joker, we can see The Joker's suspenders on his left shoulder. After cutting to Batman, the suspenders are back under his vest.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Gordon shuts the heavy iron door as he walks into the interrogation cell to question The Joker. The reflection in the mirror shows the door swinging open again. That means the door was unlocked, and it's much lighter than it looks.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Gotham General Hospital is the administration building for the old Brach's Candy factory in Chicago. When the building is going up in flames, and the aerial shot swings around to the one side, you can see that windows in the back are different, and the interior is gutted.
  
  
• Continuity: In Hong Kong Harbor, the seaplane lands right next to Bruce Wayne's yacht, leaving a large wake. In the next scene, when Bruce and Alfred are talking on the yacht, the wake has completely disappeared.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The school bus backs up into the bank hard, and goes almost halfway into the building. When The Joker drives it out, the bus has no scratches or dents.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bruce picks up one of the gauntlets, the blades are closed. Bruce opens the blades and accidentally fires them off. When he puts it back in the drawer, the blades are back on the gauntlet, and closed.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Immediately after the Joker's "magic trick," part of the table is covered in dimples, from the actor repeatedly stabbing it with the pencil.
  
  
• Continuity: After the Joker shoves the grenade into the bank manager's mouth, he removes his mask with his right hand. In the next shot, he takes off his mask with his left hand.
  
  
• Continuity: During the bank heist, the Joker isn't wearing makeup on his eyelids. When he removes the mask, he has black makeup over his eyelids.
  
  
• Continuity: The year on the coin that Two Face uses for coin flips changes from 1929 to 1922 back to 1929 again.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the Joker is talking on the loud speaker to the people on the boats, he says they have to press the button on the detonator. However, the detonator required a person to turn a key.
  
  
• Continuity: After the Joker tells the citizens of Gotham that he wants Mr. Reese dead in an hour or he will blow up a hospital, Bruce leaves to go to his Lamborghini. While Bruce crosses the room saying "I need you plugged in checking Gordon's men and their families," the TV in the background goes from showing a news broadcast to instantly being off as Bruce passes in front of it.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jim Gordon puts a shotgun to Joker's head after the street chase in Gotham, he is wearing a pair of glasses. Seconds later when he opens the armored car door to let Harvey Dent out, he is wearing a different pair.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the beginning of the film, during the bank robbery, you can see the shadow of the steadicam operator as he passes the vault door.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In The first scene, when the bus is leaving out of the bank, you can clearly see the Imax camera in the reflection of the window.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When Batman gets hit by the bazooka intended for the SWAT truck holding Dent and he ejects himself, as he speeds away on his bike, the street sign above him clearly says "Heathrow" on it, which is in London, where part of "The Dark Knight" was filmed.
  
  
• Continuity: When we see the video of The Joker interrogating the fake Batman and he points the camera at himself, his teeth are really yellow and ugly. But when Bruce is watching the same video at his bunker, and the computer it's analyzing the Joker's face, his teeth are all white and clean.
  
  
• Continuity: During the big-rig chase scene the length of the trailer attached to the truck changes. In one shot the truck is making a right hand turn and has a 14' trailer attached to it but when it blows up and flips over it is clearly a 48' or 53' trailer.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Salvatore Maroni gets into the car towards the end of the movie, you can see the background moving (like the car is already in motion) before he actually enters the car and sits down.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the holding cell, when Batman smashes the Joker against the wall, a camera with a blue LED/LCD screen and two people from the crew reflect on the right mirror.
  
  
• Continuity: At the end of the bank heist, as the Joker climbs aboard the bus, the body of the driver he just shot disappears.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When the SWAT truck is thrown to the river, the shadow of the helicopter camera can be seen reflecting in the street border.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene where Batman jumps from the spiral parking lot ramp onto the scarecrow's van, Batman is seen falling as the van appears to his left under him. He should land on the van facing it's left side - but in the cut scene directly afterward he lands facing the same direction as the van.
  
  
• Continuity: During the beginning the movie, the police department is labeled as GCPD. During the chase scene after Harvey turns himself in as Batman, all of the armored vehicles have only GPD on the side of them.
  
  
• Continuity: Just before Batman jumps onto scarecrow's van, the van is traveling at a fast speed. However, as soon as Batman falls onto the van, the van is traveling slow.
  
  
• Continuity: When Harvey has Gordon's son and is saying to Batman "The world is cruel and the only morality in a cruel world is chance", he takes his coin up. In the first scene the good side is towards the camera but in the next scene the coin has turned to the bad side.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Batman drops onto Doctor Crane's van, it is clear that the van was stopping before Batman lands on the roof.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When Gordon and the two GPD officers are evacuating Coleman Reese, and the man fires the gun through the window, there's a trolley going by that says "Chicago Trolley Co" on the top in white letters when it should say Gotham.
  
  
• Continuity: Even though Batman shot off the spikes on his arm to get the Joker off of him, when he goes to stop Harvey both of his arms still have the trademark spikes.
  
  
• Continuity: During the chase, the Batpod sequence jumps from place to place, but inaccurately. First, Batman shoots out the glass window of the mall, then is seen riding up a ramp that wasn't there previously, then breaks the glass. After exiting the mall, the Batpod cruises through an intersection, but then jumps to turning into an ally.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Batman has the sonar vision on, he can see shadows of objects like the SWAT members and the Joker's dogs. Sonar would not pick up these shadows. However, it is likely that the software which interprets the sonar data and creates the virtual display would draw shadows for visibility's sake. A 3D scene of same-colored objects would be very difficult to understand or see what is going on without shading, and so shading would be applied after the sonar data is received.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: During the interrogation scene when Gordon leaves the room and the lights come on, you can see the Joker (Heath Ledger) close his eyes and brace himself to have his head slammed into the desk before Batman (Christian Bale) touches him. However, he was probably blinking from the bright lights coming on after he was in the dark for so long.
  
  
• Continuity: During most of the bank heist, The Joker has brown hair. After the bus crashes through the bank wall, his hair is green.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Rachel is thrown out the window and Batman dives out to save her, we never see Batman go back up to his flat to flood out the Joker and his gang. However, with his trusty grapple hook, he could have done so in short time, and, having just received a vicious beating, the Joker's thugs were likely eager to get out of there. Simply because scenes aren't shown doesn't mean events didn't take place.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The Joker claims he rigged the ferries with diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate and although diesel fuel normally only combusts under pressure and not with the addition of heat, ammonium nitrate/fuel oil (AN/FO) is a widely used explosive, even with diesel fuel.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When they are trying to get Reese to safety, going into the alley and out of the building, you can see a cameraman running down the stairs after the police and Gordon. This cameraman is the one GCN reporter Mike Engle tells to follow him while he is reporting.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: As the bus is driving away after the Joker blows up the hospital, you can see an IMAX camera in the seat opposite of him. This was to film a shot on the bus that was deleted (as explained in the special features).
  
  
• Factual errors: In the scene where Bruce is attempting to reconstruct the fingerprint from a shattered bullet, he says to Fox "And there's the print from when he pushed the round into the clip". The fingerprint would be on the shell casing, which is ejected from any semi-automatic weapon, not the bullet.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the opening scenes establishing the bank heist, immediately after the grappling gun shot, the eye-holes in the Joker's mask do not show what's behind them as they would if they were actual eye-holes. They glow lighter than the background until blacked out digitally when the truck appears.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In real life, an arrestee wearing the level of makeup that the Joker wears would be made to wash it off as part of the detaining process, yet the Joker wears his "war paint" the entire time he's in police custody. However, the cops were probably in such a rush to contain him they felt it was a waste of time.
  
  
• Continuity: After Batman had thrown the Joker up against the wall in the interrogation scene, the Joker is holding Batman's arms. The Joker's hands keep switching from holding his arm on the inside then to the outside.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Harvey Dent hangs up on Commissioner Gordon, a standard telephony off-hook signal can be heard on Gordon's cell phone. This is a signal used in standard land-line telephone exchanges and would not be applicable on a wireless phone network, which works differently.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Batman is breaking into Lao's building in Hong Kong, it cuts to clips of Lao and his security guards and co-workers speaking Chinese. In China, there are two different languages; Mandarin and Cantonese. Lao and the others are speaking the Mandarin dialect of Chinese, when in actuality, they should be speaking Cantonese since Cantonese is the main dialect of Hong Kong.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: After The Joker blows up the hospital and sits down on his bus, a crew member in the back can allegedly be seen cuing the bus driver. But this might simply be one of Joker's goons, informing the driver that the boss was on board and they should be getting out.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: As the time line between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight is only 6 months, Gordon's son has gone from an infant child in a short but briefly scene in Begins to (supposedly) a ten year old child in TDK. But Gordon has three children, two boys and a girl. The ten year old was not shown in Batman Begins, and the infant boy was not shown in this movie.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When the Joker is shooting at Batman on the Batpod as he comes toward him, we see on the building behind the Joker a banner saying "Sweet Home Chicago" - the actual location where the downtown scene was shot. But this can be explained as an advertisement from a travel agent, a musical or concert, or any other event bearing the Chicago name, but taking place in Gotham.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the bus enters the bank, its doesn't actually hit the robber. You can see a big distance between the bus and the robber, yet the robber gets knocked over and dies.
  
  
• Factual errors: Their was concern that the silent alarm in the opening sequence did not call 911. Silent Alarms call alarm companies or it least a data system that can interpret the alarm signal.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When he and Alfred are on the pleasure yacht, Bruce is picked up by a plane capable of water landings. When he does the sky-hook to pick up Lau, the plane that retrieves him is a C-130 Commando Solo, incapable of water landings. Given that the first plane was there just to pick Bruce up and get him to Hong Kong via non-official means, there is no reason to suspect that it's crew knew him to be Batman. Likewise, the crew of the plane that picks him up in the "sky-hook" operation would have no reason to suspect him to be Bruce Wayne, given that he's in his Batman outfit when they pick him up and he's not shown to reveal himself as Bruce.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Bruce and Lucius digitally reconstruct the shattered bullet to get the finger print off of it, Bruce says "And there's the thumb print he left when he pushed the round into the clip." Whilst the correct term for the item in question is a "magazine", clip and magazine were synonymous terms until the First World War and "clip" is still in general use for referring to a device for loading cartridges into a firearm. It's technically incorrect but Bruce is neither ex-military nor shown to be a firearms expert or enthusiast so would be fairly likely to use the words clip and magazine interchangeably.
  
  
• Continuity: In some shots you see the cops/detectives wearing uniform with GCPD (Gotham City Police Department) on them and in other shots you see the vehicles written as GPD.
  
  
• Continuity: During the bank heist before the school bus comes you see more than 6 bags full of cash. When the Joker loads the cash bags onto the bus you see only four bags being loaded onto the bus.
  
  
• Plot holes: Anna Ramirez calls Barbara Gordon, asking her to pack up the kids and take them to 250 52nd Street. Anna tells Barbara she will call off the units outside her apartment so Barbara can sneak out. However, Harvey Dent knocks Anna apparently unconscious before Anna has the chance to make any such call.
  
  
• Continuity: When Marioni arrives at the hospital and confronts Gordon he is standing. But Batman "interrogated" Marioni and threw him off a building where he landed on his legs. Therefore Marioni should be injured and he would not be able to stand.
  
  
• Continuity: After Batman hits the Joker a few times, the Joker is on the ground telling Batman about Harvey and Rachel. The Batman grabs the Joker and when the Joker is talking to him, all of his teeth are yellow, except his bottom front teeth, which are bright and white.
  
  
• Errors in geography: At the beginning of the movie, during the heist, the robbers enter through the front doors(lets call this wall "north" and the wall that the bus crashes through is "west"). Well at the end of the robbery when the bus leaves and the camera shows the exterior of the bank, the bus makes a right turn (merges with the other buses which are running directly parallel with the front wall "north"). Well this is wrong since the bus only made a 90 degree turn, which would of made it directly perpendicular with the "north" wall instead of parallel as it is depicted in the film. In order for the bus to have merged with the other buses and proceed driving parallel with the "north" wall, it would have had to make a 180 degree turn instead of the 90 degree that was depicted in the film. You also know for a fact that the bus crashes through the "west" wall because throughout the heist, you can clearly see the windows that are shown later on the outside when the buses are leaving.
  
  
• Continuity: During the chase scene on the lower street level the truck in which the Joker is riding hits the right side of the SWAT truck, however the SWAT truck flies off into the river as though it had been hit on it's left side. Furthermore the road changes from a gradual right turn immediately to a gradual left turn. In the special features the original shots of the SWAT truck going into the river reveal that it was correctly shot such that the truck appears to be hit from the right side but the film was simply reversed.
  
  
• Continuity: During the chase scene when the tumbler collides with the garbage truck and immediately turns around, the road is completely empty. Not only should the armored truck be visible, but also the other cars which the truck must pass.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the mob meeting near the beginning of the film, Lau seems to be able to see everything that is happening in the meeting room from his plane. Yet there is no camera on the monitor or anywhere else in the meeting room that would send him video to look at.
  
  
• Continuity: When Lucius Fox confronts Bruce Wayne about what R&D's secret project is, Bruce tells him that he is "playing this one pretty close to the chest." Later on, after the big-rig chase when Gordon opens the back of the armored truck and Harvey Dent sees Gordon is still alive, Harvey says "you really do like to play things close to the chest" as if Gordon had said it to Harvey before instead of Bruce saying it to Lucius.
  
  
• Continuity: During the bank heist scene the hair of some of Joker's henchmen continually changes from the natural color, to green, and then back. This is especially noticeable with Grumpy.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Batman's voice has been criticized for being artificial-sounding and unnaturally gravelly. In the promotions for the preceding movie, Batman Begins, the cowl is revealed to have a microphone/speaker that alters and amplifies Bruce Wayne's voice to disguise his identity and increase intimidation.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Bruce, his date, Rachel, and Harvey meet in the restaurant, Bruce says he will "put two tables together." In the next shot, we see all four sitting around a single table. This wasn't meant to be taken literally, since he owned the restaurant his staff would have made sure that his guests were seated on a larger table.
  
  
• Continuity: In the bank heist scene, where the robbers enter the bank, one grabs the police officer standing near the entrance, drags him to a counter, hits him in the back, which causes the cop to collapse. Apparently one hit to the back isn't enough, because later on in the scene, we see the hit on the back repeated.
  
  
• Continuity: The length of The Joker's hair changes throughout the course of the movie on several occasions. It begins mid length then changes to long, then back to short.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Harvey is in the hospital which the Joker plans on blowing up, you can see make-up on his pillow which has rubbed off from the "burnt" side of his face. Actually the movie makers did this on purpose, it its supposed to be "ashes" or pieces of Harvey's burnt side rubbing off onto the pillow
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the beginning shot of the movie where the camera closes in to a windowed building, you could see the helicopter reflecting on the windows, carrying the camera, on the very left-hand side.
  
  

• Continuity: SPOILER: When the Tumbler comes to a rest after being hit by the Joker's RPG, it clearly lands on it's roof - yet a split second later, it lands upright.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: SPOILER: On top of Gordon making a statement about Two-Face's killings when he would've been far too busy to know what Two-Face was up to, his numbers are also off. He claims that Two-Face killed five people and that two were cops. Two-Face only kills three people: Wertz, Maroni, and his driver. Of the three, only Wertz was a cop. However, it is possible that Dent killed some people off screen.
  
  

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