The Dark Knight Saga/WMG

""Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.""

- Batman, The Dark Knight

The Joker is Koh.
I've been Spending too much time on the A:tLA page. Anyway, Koh is basically a troll anyhow and he did tell Aang that they would meet again (disregard the online game thingy). So! Going with the theory that the Spirit World is Just another dimension, Koh got bored with the avatarverse and peeked into the nolanverse. He spotted a man with an interesting face 'Jack Napier' after he had a be abused by his father, mutilated and self mutilated. I think even Napier would have some kind of reaction to Koh. Koh would then steal his face, put on some make up and seek out the nolanverse equivalent of the Avatar who is... Harvey Dent! Koh, still in his joker body/face also 'stole' Dent's face. or at least half. Harvey Dent is the Avatar.

The reason he wears makeup is because he wants to mimic his REAL face on the face of the man he stole.

Commissioner Gordon will die in Rises.
He's a likable major character in an action movie, on the verge of retirement, and was in the hospital in the first trailer. How much you wanna bet his last words will be "and you'll never have to?"

Nolan will eventually make a movie of The Dark Knight Returns
When the title of the third film was revealed, a pretty good number of people complained that it sounded awkward, and that they should have chosen a catchier title. Understandably, a few people wondered why he didn't bother to include the hero's name in the title. Could it be that he wanted to make the title sound similar to The Dark Knight Returns so that the name could be used for a fourth movie? The Dark Knight Rises being followed by The Dark Knight Returns--it definitely sounds fitting. Sure, Nolan has said that he wants Rises to definitively end the series, but that doesn't preclude the possibility of making a Distant Finale at some indeterminate point in the future. Theoretically, a Returns movie could function more as an epilogue to the series than as a sequel, and it would give him a chance to examine Batman's legacy and the effect that his crusade has on Gotham in the long run. Hell, he could even make a Batman Beyond movie, and it would serve pretty much the same purpose.

The series will end with Jimmy Gordon becoming Gotham's new superhero
The eight-year gap between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises seems a little odd, especially since only four years have passed between those two movies in the real world. So why the time-skip? Could it be that they wanted to end the series at a point when Commissioner Gordon's son would be old enough to take up crime-fighting? The first trailer for Rises seems to imply that there's a distinct possibility that Gordon won't live through the third movie--this could give Gordon Jr. the motivation to become a vigilante, and it would give him a good origin story that mirrors Bruce's. Also, the fact that Bane is the villain of the series' final movie means that there's a distinct possibility that Bruce will wind up paralyzed by the end--if this does happen, he'll need someone to act as his successor.
 * I would like this far better than what happened to him in the comics.

The League of Shadows is still around, and still as strong as ever
The big revelation about Henri Ducard being Ra's Al-Ghul still leaves an important question unanswered. As anyone who's read the comics knows, the name "Ra's Al-Ghul" means "The Demon's Head" in Arabic--why the hell would a clan of ninjas based in the mountains of East Asia take their marching orders from someone with an Arabic code-name? This is particularly surprising since, as Ducard indicates, the name has been passed down by the League's leaders for thousands of years. The answer? The League of Shadows that Bruce fought in the first movie was just a cell of a much larger organization whose leadership is based in the Middle East. By foiling their first attempt to destroy Gotham, Bruce merely got the attention of the really powerful men in the League's inner circle. By the time Rises comes around, they'll have had around ten years to plan their revenge against him. Maybe they're the ones holding Bane's leash...

The Joker renamed the two dogs "Bud and Lou" at the end...
..since that's what his hyenas were called.

The Dark Knight Saga is in the same universe as Get Smart.
The Joker explicitly states to Harvey Dent, "I'm an agent of KAOS." KAOS recruited the Joker to devastate Gotham City, much like The League of Shadows, except for political or financial purposes. CONTROL hesitated to intervene because of the wild card that is Batman. However, now that Batman is temporarily out of the picture, CONTROL will send in Agent 99, aka Selina Kyle under the guise of Catwoman to disrupt KAOS' operations. Thus, Anne Hathaway is actually reprising her role from the Get Smart film in The Dark Knight Rises.

Batman is Patrick Bateman.
It was already heavily implied in American Psycho that Patrick Bateman's murders & general Axe Craziness was in fact all part of a delusion; he broke down even further, reimagining himself as he'd like to be (a good person, basically; note the similarity between the names Bateman and Batman) and reimagining New York as a highly stylised Gotham City. The Joker is a manifestation of all of Bateman's dark urges, the same urges that were manifesting themselves as fantasies of murder, mutilation & mayhem in American Psycho. & who knows? Perhaps Harvey Dent is based on a real-life DA candidate that Bateman doesn't trust, & perhaps Dr. Jonathan Crane was a psychiatrist Bateman saw (that's assuming someone finally noticed that he needs one) with whom he wasn't comfortable, &c., &c.. The lack of major female rôles is a consequence of Bateman's sexist tendencies. OR, even better, all of American Psycho was a delusion suffered by Bale's character in The Machinist, in an Inception-like maze of dreams within dreams.

Ra's al-Ghul is still alive.
The man has built a career around escaping death, and all we saw of his "demise" was the train crashing. Who's to say he couldn't have gotten to safety? After all, most of Begins was a lead-up to The Reveal that (the real) Ra's wasn't dead.
 * His appearance in Part 3 would be a great way to bookend the series, and would probably occur just prior to the endgame, likely with something like, "How many times do I have to tell you that Ra's al-Ghul is immortal?" and The Reveal that he's been manipulating things from behind the scenes throughout "The Dark Knight" and afterward, including the entire plot of the third movie which would come with its own false reveal.
 * Confirmed?

The Joker is a troll.
He causes chaos and havoc for the lulz, corrupts people, and his face bears a resemblance to the Trollface/Coolface mascot. He was probably an internet troll who decided to go public.
 * Yeah, but, he likes Maggie Gyllenhaal, so he can't be a troll.
 * He held a knife against her cheek and blew her up. He was like "Hello, beautiful (lol jk chipmunkface)"
 * This Troper is a geek, her sister refuses to read comics but will see the odd comic film. Coming out of the film, Troper and Troper's Sister were discussing Joker's makeup. Troper's Sister responded "He hasn't perfected putting it on yet." Then it hit me. There was no chemical spill, no tragic backstory...or we'd have seen one. This Joker is just a guy who decided to put on makeup and be a dick to Batman because he found it amusing.

Batman will die or, at the very least, be horribly crippled in the third movie.
This will push the Darker and Edgier angle of the series to its logical extreme.
 * After he is crippled, the Batman mantle will be taken up by Jean-Paul Valley.
 * And the movie will be titled Knightfall.
 * Well, the third movie, The Dark Knight Rises, now stars Bane. And we all know what that means...
 * This article makes a very good case as to why Nolan would do this.

Batman never intended for Harvey to die
Remember the scene where Batman holds a mafia guy over a ledge to scare him and he retorts that "a fall from this height wouldn't kill me" to which Batman says "I know. I'm counting on it" and drops him anyway? That's exactly what he'd hope would happen to Harvey when he tackled him!
 * That's not WMG. That's just canon.
 * I don't believe Harvey's dead. Just because of Rule Of He's Still Alive In The Comics.
 * Then you should get used to Rule of Nolan's Movies Are Set On Their Own Free Continuity With Beginning Middle And End - Which Is TDKR.

The Joker can be two people.
Before you start throwing rotten fruit at me, just listen. What we need are a face, a body, and a voice. The face and body, we can get easily. The voice WILL be difficult. Now, who do we know that can pull off a Joker voice?

Mark Hamill.

Before you start to kill me, I've already run this by a friend who is cookoo for comic puffs, and he agrees with it!


 * Have you seen Mark Hamill do a live Joker laugh? Youtube it, it's frightening. It would WORK.
 * I seriously think Mark Hamill could play him physically, just much older. Hell, if Heath Ledger could be made scary...
 * We don't need Mark. Youtube. Joker Blogs. Search it NOW!
 * Just get Cere Proc to replicate the voice like they did for Roger Ebert. Pouring a few million into perfecting a voice that doesn't have actually to be generated on the fly should do nicely. After that, it's all mo-cap.
 * Two words: Harley Quinn.
 * One problem: Nolan has said he "wouldn't be comfortable" with having the Joker in the next Batman film.

The Joker is actually Ronald McDonald
Well, it makes sense when you really think about it.
 * There's even photographic evidence!

The Joker is incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
Current administration notwithstanding, the Gotham City Police have the Joker in custody. His actions legally classify him as a terrorist and they've seen how much damage he can do when he's incarcerated even at the maximum security that a holding cell can provide. So they turn him over to the Federal Government as a prime terrorism suspect, the feds ship him to some sort of overseas prison or perhaps to a prison ship. Now suppose The Joker (being The Joker) escapes from Gitmo and begins wreaking havoc throughout Cuba. The feds send in the Marines to kill him and napalm a significant patch of jungle in hopes of ending the Joker for good. This can all happen off-screen and explain the Joker's absence. Bonus points for continuing the "burn the forest down" metaphor.
 * Reconstructive Magic Plastic Surgery could account for the change of actor, and smoke damage could account for the change in voice. (Hey, if Futurama could do it...)

The Joker will be executed between The Dark Knight and the third movie
He's not the type to plead "not guilty" or enter an insanity plea which would keep him out of Arkham. He would gleefully and proudly take responsibility for all the destruction, death, and mayhem he caused. All that admitted premeditated murder only warrents one punishment. Plus it's a nice explaination to get rid of the Joker after Ledger's death and could impact the story when mysterious Joker-style crimes start popping up again.
 * You have never read of comic book in your entire life, have you? The Joker ALWAYS pleads Insanity, and he ALWAYS gets it. Also, he did in-fact plead Not Guilty once, because he honestly didn't kill the person they said he did. This is how Batman knew he was telling the truth, and he begrudgingly set out to find who was trying to frame the Joker.
 * I have read more comic books than it took to push the Flaming Carrot over the edge and this is not about comics, this is about the realism the movies are trying to establish and there is simply no way the Joker is making it to a third movie alive, he will either be exceuted or killed in prison. He's pissed off way too many people in that city to realistically be allowed to live.
 * Actually (speaking as a psychologist) the Joker could, potentially, plead insanity; all he'd have to do is convince people that he legitimately did not know that what he was doing was wrong, OR that he was compelled to do it by his mental illness and had no way of resisting. It has been demonstrated in the films that Gotham is the type of town where "convincing" a jury is easy enough if you have enough money to go around... though in the Joker's case, that would probably be a lot of money. (Let's hope he didn't burn all of those millions of dollars, hm?)
 * The thing is though is that the Joker wouldn't do that because he honestly doesn't think he's insane, he'd either plead guilty (because he's proud he did it) or not guilty (just for the fun of screwing with people during the proceedings).
 * The Joker could be declared mentally incompetent and be slung in Arkham until he is found competent again. That's unlikely, though.
 * He wouldn't be. He's legally a terrorist, and would be considered a federal-level criminal. Any evidence of bribery (and this trial would a case under national scrutiny) would get the case kicked up to a higher circuit court. In any realistic case he'd be in solitary for life, disappeared by Homeland Security, tortured in some Eastern European country, and detained somewhere, or put to death.
 * Also, pleading insanity is actually very difficult.
 * Or they'll pull the whole "he's gone but we won't say why" option.

The Joker knew Batman was Bruce Wayne
Its quite clear that during his Hannibal Lecture, the Joker figured out that Batman was in love with Rachel, and he's already ruled out Harvey Dent being Batman. From there, it wouldn't be hard to run down the list of men who've been involved with Rachel, romantically or otherwise. From there, it wouldn't be hard to figure out which ones would have the resources and capabilities to do what Batman does. Who sits at the top of that list? Bruce Wayne. Now, why doesn't the Joker act on this? Because he doesn't care.
 * Oh but he does act on this. Forcing Batman to kill the man who stole his gal, which would of course lead to him questioning his morals, and then the dilemma of "Am I killing Two-Face for being an evil bitch, or am I killing Harvey Dent for stealing my bitch?"
 * Except that The Joker went out of his way to prevent the blackmailer from revealing who Batman is because he didn't want the secret spoiled. But that didn't mean he mightn't have suspected it. Yet as Lois Lane said as regards the Clark Kent/Superman thing when Supes revealed himself to her, "Suspecting something and believing it aren't necessarily the same thing."
 * Its not about Batman the person, its about Batman the symbol; if it got out that Bruce was Batman, the police would move in, and he'd be arrested. That would destroy the person, and leave the symbol in tact. Also, it would shift the public's attention off the symbol and onto the person. Joker wanted to destroy the whole concept of batman, not the person. He needed Batman as, for all intents and purposes, a separate entity from Bruce.

The Joker lied about his Prisoner's Dilemma
Both boat pilots were given the detonator to their own boat. The Joker lied when he said he was giving them the detonator to the other boat. I have absolutely no evidence for this, it just seems like something the Joker would do.
 * Alternatively, there were no explosives on any of the boats. He expected both sets of passengers to use the detonators, and letting everyone live with that guilt probably seemed funnier to him than killing them.
 * Alternatively, each detonator would blow up both boats. This would fit the Joker's personality even more.
 * Or even the Joker didn't know what detonator did what.
 * The best thing about all three detonators blowing up both boats is that the Joker's entire explanation would still have been true: Each captain's detonator would blow up the other boat (along with his own), and his own boat would not blow up at midnight (because it already would have blown up when his detonator was used). Sure, some information was left out, but nothing he said would actually have been false.
 * The detonators blow up something entirely random. They push the button, and the camera does a fast cut to something random exploding.
 * Possibly the hospital.
 * Or the yellow van.
 * Maybe the detonators blow up THE JOKER!
 * As I said on the Fridge Brilliance page or somewhere, the great thing about the situation is that there's no telling what would have happened. The Joker's extreme unpredictability is what makes him the bogeyman of even the most vastly superpowered fellow DCU supervillains.
 * All three detonators only blow up the prisoners' boat. The Joker would get to tell the public that the civilians resorted to murder, no matter what the actual outcome was.

The Prisoner's Dilemma would have done exactly what it claimed to.

 * Related to above. What reason does the Joker have to lie? The outcome as he's planned it is perfect one way or the other as he sees it. Either a whole bunch of civilians get blown up, in which case the prisoners would be blamed, or the boat staff would be blamed, or the boat full of civilians have just blown up an entire boat of other people, and the social experiment has proven that ordinary people are able to kill people if pushed too far, which is what the Joker already tried to prove with Two-Face and Batman himself. He has absolutely no reason for lying.
 * He had no reason to lie about the respective locations of Rachel and Harvey Dent, and he also had no reason to lie about where his scars came from. He's a liar. The reason is because it amuses him. If it did exactly what he said it would do, it would be terrible, but everybody would have known what to expect. But if he was lying, then the thesis statement of the social experiment is still valid, but now, in addition, he has wrought even more chaos.
 * He did have a reason to lie about where Rachel and Harvey were: namely, to fuck Batman's shit up. imagine how Batman felt when he saw it was Harvey? Now imagine, he's up fighting the Joker, suddenly one of the boats explodes. The Joker leers at Batman, his twisted grin splitting his pale face. "You see, Bats, each boat had a detonator, and each group was told it would blow up the other boat. But really it blew up their own boat!" Batman: "..."
 * New possibility. He did have a valid reason to lie. Because it's funny.

Mr. Reese uses his deductive reasoning and attention to detail to figure out who Batman really is, an ability shown by someone else... Mister Reese = Mysteries = The Riddler!
Makes as much sense as "E. Nigma"
 * After he was "saved" by Bruce Wayne from being killed, Reese decided to back off for awhile until the Joker situation is resolved or contained. Then he come back to stalk Batman/Bruce Wayne. As we see in the film, Reese is interested in making money and is not happy when Bruce disagrees with Lau's proposal. He may or may not be aware that Lau was a criminal. In the second sequel, not only will he try to blackmail Bruce for money or he'll reveal his secret identity, but he'll also figure out what really happened to Harvey Dent. He'll learn that Batman, Gordon and the few cops are hiding the truth that Harvey killed people, thus threatening people's faith and hopes. Reese may also find out that Rachel chose Harvey and emotionally defeat Batman (temporarily). If Harvey DOES come back, then Reese will probably tell Harvey that Bruce is Batman and tricks him into thinking he let Rachel die because if Bruce can't have her no one can.
 * The Nolanverse has stayed faithful to the comics as far as names go. Origins, not so much but Riddler wouldn't be the same without the E.Nigma.

Mister Reese is actually Mister E.
Eventually, he'll lose his eyes in an accident and get involved with magic.

Dent/Two-Face survived.
Expanding on this, Word of God only confirmed the death of Harvey Dent. Not Two-Face.

So did Rachel Dawes.
The equation: Some inconsistencies in her death scene + It's been announced that the actress who played Rachel may (with a big maybe) play Catwoman in the next sequel = Rachel survived and is to become Selina Kyle/the Catwoman!
 * We can only hope!
 * It also makes sense because, in the story that part of the movie is based on, Harvey's wife survives, and she goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge because of what happened to him.
 * Jossed; Selina Kyle is played by Anne Hathaway and is a separate character.
 * And, at any rate, if Rachel Dawes survived, she'd probably be called Phantasm. "Bruce Wayne...your angel of death awaits."

If this is JUST gonna be a trilogy, then I'm Elvis, my dad is Bigfoot and my mom is Wonder Woman
Let's be realist here. Do you REALLY think Warner Bros is gonna kill one of their most lucrative cash cows? That is NOT a smart business decision, at all. Trust me, we are gonna get Dark Knight 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.... (just like the Saw movies).
 * Yo, Elvis Bigfoot, son of Diana. :P
 * The films with Nolan are going to end with three. Warner will almost certainly make more with someone else, hopefully not resulting in another Schumacher debacle.
 * Schumacle?
 * So when is New Line going to make Lord of the Rings 4?
 * Well, that's a limited literary adaptation, while Batman has over 60 years of comics and tens of villains to draw on. And on a technical note to that claim, Observe!

The Joker's scars were self-inflicted.
Consider his fascination with knives, and the way he's always drawing attention to his scars. It's reasonable to imagine that he did them himself, not to cheer up some phony-baloney wife or anything, but as another part of his theatrical image, another layer of "war paint". Or he did it because he was bored one day - this is The Joker, after all.
 * To go even further, he made them specifically so he could tell people bull about how he got his scars.
 * A theory flying about in Batman boards before the film came out was that the one scar was part of an accident or an attack and the other is self-inflicted, to even it up.
 * This, plus the bullet theory from just below, is the most likely. Here are some high detail images of some "Heath Ledger as The Joker" action figures. The scar on the right cheek is clearly a carved smile, while the left cheek looks considerably messier. It actually looks like a hole instead of a cut.

The Joker's scars were NOT self-inflicted.
His reaction when Gambol and the Chechen call him a freak suggests that this is not exactly his favorite nickname, although he refers to himself as such. It seems likely that the wounds that caused the scars were inflicted when he was quite young, and the taunting over it led to his aversion to being called a freak. The different stories about their origins - all of them horrific - is a coping mechanism that allows him to scare the crap out of people without sharing the painful truth behind it. (Note that this possibility, while sad, does not excuse any of the horrible things that he does, nor am I trying to say that it does.)
 * I'm thinking his origin will be based on The Killing Joke.
 * I had a thought that Jack Napier had his face shot by a sniper, the bullet only hit the side of his face and blew up the cheeks. Think about it, why is it always a knife? A bullet can do the same thing.

One of the Joker's scars was not self-inflicted, but the other was
Looking at the scars, one is a very clean, recognizable smile. The other is a mangled mess. While this troper was looking at facial appliances at a party shop for his Joker costume, he noticed that a .38 bullet wound appliance looks almost exactly like the mangled scar. So the first wound was inflicted on him by someone else, the other by himself to "even things out". Which leads us to...

The Joker told the truth about his scars.
The cleanly cut smiling scar was from his father, Joker gives a similar one to his victim after the story. The messy scar was self-inflicted for his wife.

The Joker's Start of Darkness had something to do with the Mob
While the Joker wreaks havoc indiscriminately thoughout the movie, he seems to have a thing for organized crime. He specifically chooses a mob bank for the opening heist, he walks into a meeting of the different gangs fully armed and prepared to detonate the entire building, and when telling Batman he doesn't want to kill him specifically states that he would have to "go back to robbing mob banks?". Both of his stories involve a woman close to him being harmed, which could be him leading up to telling Batman a story about his "poor beautiful daughter" before Bats catches him by surprise. Going with either the WMG above or the completely not self-inflicted WMG, it would make sense if he had somehow survived getting shot IN THE MOUTH by a mobster for whatever reason, possibly actually losing a woman close to him in the process. The incident makes him undergo a self-Hannibal Lecture that sets him on the path we see in the movie.
 * Well, you see, it's because it's organized crime.

Mike Engel will become The Question.
After his torture at the hands of the Joker, he's severely imbalanced. He'll be inspired by the idea of a Batman that kills and don a faceless mask.
 * Vic Sage (The Question's secret identity) is a news anchor, that's what inspired this Wild Mass Guess. And Mike Engel was the news anchor who starred in the Gotham Tonight featurettes and appeared several times in the movie. Was hung upside down and read the Joker's threat? Played by Anthony Michael Hall? Any of this ringin' a bell?

The blonde kid from Batman Begins is named Jason Todd
Just for fun

The Joker is Tyler Durden/The Narrator of Fight Club
In the original novel, the Narrator ended up in a mental institution after shooting himself in the head to eliminate Tyler. Given Tyler and the Joker's mutual love for anarchy, skill in recruiting mooks, and the Narrator's past history of Dissociative Identity Disorder, what's to say he didn't undergo another personality fragmentation and end up as a murderous clown?
 * And, in the novel, both his cheeks are torn to pieces by the end. Hmmm...
 * "You wanna know how I got these scars? I had a split personality, you see..."
 * "And my alter ego looked like Brad Pitt and he was insane--he wanted to destroy the world. So I took a gun to my mouth to try to stop him. Instead, I became him. But I don't look like Brad Pitt--why can't I look like Brad Pitt? If I am him, then I should look like him, right? Then why do I look like this?"
 * Would the logical conclusion be, that Joker is the way older Calvin?
 * NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! NO! NONONONONO! * whimper* ...
 * Considering The Joker's M.O. and Calvin Ball this seems quite likely...
 * He and Joker also share a taste for being hit, and laughing manically while this is happening.
 * Also, the Narrator is sometimes referred to as "Jack". It's unclear how canonical this is, but the Tim Burton films do have that as the Joker's real name...

Bruce Wayne IS the Joker
Bruce Wayne is seriously messed up. He stalks the night dressed as a bat. He NEEDS his psychotic side to be unleashed. So he develops another persona, The Joker, his evil split personality, who does all the things Batman wants to, but can't.
 * This means that every scene in which the Joker and Batman are together it is within Batmans mind. When he beats the shit out of the Joker in the interrogation it is, in fact the Joker beating himself up. He's the only one that doesn't understand that he has a split personality. Batman never goes to find Rachel in the warehouse, he understands what will happen and imagines it because he is the Joker.
 * The fight scene at the end is his internal conflict being resolved.
 * The scars? Make up. Prosthetics. Heath Ledger pulled it off, why not Bruce Wayne?
 * Bruce kills Rachel because he has come to despise her.
 * He kills the innocents of Gotham because he realizes that they resent him and he's returning the favor.
 * He drives Harvey insane because he stole Rachel.
 * He can never get his story right because he's making it up as he goes along.
 * Did you see I'm Not There? Batman and The Joker are the same man, and his name is Bob Dylan!

Most of The Dark Knight never happens- it is simply Bruce's fantasy.
At the start of the film, Harvey has mostly cleaned up the city. Without the outrageous levels of crime, Batman is no longer wanted or needed by the city, who now want white knight lawkeepers rather than uncontrollable vigilantes. But Bruce Wayne still needs Batman. He needs to escape the monotony and loneliness of a life with one (busy) friend and no challenges or responsibilities. He needs to be respected and feared for something other than the wealth his parents' deaths brought him. Most of all, he still needs further revenge on criminals for his parents' deaths. The Dark Knight is his guilty fantasy, where his deepest desires play out:
 * A new, unrepentantly evil and extremely dangerous criminal appears, who only Batman can deal with. He tortures and kills the people who impersonate Batman, the people of Gotham (who no longer need Batman) and the legal system that is replacing Batman.
 * Lucius, Bruce's only close companion and parent substitute, is close to perfect- competent at everything, very wise and incorruptible.
 * Rachel dies for choosing a relationship with another man over waiting for him.
 * Harvey, who stole both Rachel and Batman's reason for existing, loses Rachel, suffers horribly, proves not to have the moral fortitude to deal with her death without turning evil (unlike Bruce) and is killed by Batman.
 * Tellingly, by the end of the film, nearly every single protagonist in the film who's not entirely a Red Shirt has been forced to choose between their loved ones and doing the right thing, just as Bruce is being forced to choose between honouring his parents' memory by continuing to be Batman and doing the right thing and gracefully retiring as the now unnecessary Batman.

The Joker is a demon
The Joker came out of nowhere, has no identity, no past and seems to exist solely to cause chaos. Evil people in real life have at least something else they like to do besides cause trouble and always have some kind of past. It could be that the Joker is a demon or spirit sent to cause chaos and misery on Earth. He could also be sent by God as a test of people's faith and righteousness if I may dip into my inner Christian. I know it's part of the mystery of the character, but Two-Face and Batman and Scarecrow got histories so why not the Joker? Even he can't get his own history straight with his "Why So Serious?" tales that change every time he tells it. Either he is that much of a psychopath or he doesn't have a history at all.
 * For a similar idea, one could say that Randall Flagg of The Stand and The Dark Tower series is the Joker - both are surprisingly charismatic for being violently insane, scarily competent with evil, ambiguous in history, and both are servants of chaos and destruction.
 * Maybe the thief in Alfred's story was the same demon?
 * Joker is one of the Masks of Nyarlathotep. He even calls himself an avatar of chaos - not far from that to the Crawling Chaos.
 * The Joker really is an agent of Chaos, specifically Tzeenetch. Sure, he says he's not a schemer, but that's exactly what a real schemer would want you to think.
 * "I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself. And look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets."
 * Demonic Possession has become nearly a Dead Horse Trope. Its modern equivalent is Alien Abduction. The Joker is...really an alien!

The Joker is Loki
Loki could pull off some pretty freaky stuff, and if the rest of the Asgard got fed up and kicked him out, he'd have to find someone else to torment. Even without his supernatural power, he's still got the knowledge and motivation to cause chaos in the human world. If Joker is freakier than Loki, it could be because a) Loki went crazier and that's why he was kicked out, or b) he went completely unhinged as a result of being exiled.
 * "Wanna know how I got these scars? Well, there was this time I wagered my head to a bunch of dwarves..."
 * It makes so much sense! D: He went Crazy after he was impregnated by the horse and his brother used his eight legged demon horse son as a steed!

The Joker was a former Yakuza member
I can't think of any other reason for the dragon tattoo.
 * ...He likes dragons, and tattoos?
 * Gordon says that the Joker has no fingerprints. Yakuza members burn their fingertips to achieve this.
 * He's that guy from Ichi the Killer?
 * That guy DOES have vibrant hair and a purple longcoat...

The Joker is J.D. from Heathers
J.D. didn't really kill himself, this was just a cover story he convinced Veronica to tell. Reasoning: Christian Slater's performance got compared to Jack Nicholson's work, but as far as Jokers go, his performance bore a scary resemblance to Heath Ledger's.
 * "Greetings and Salutations Commissioner..."

The Joker is The Almighty Janitor from Scrubs
They both have malleable backstories, and they're both advocates for chaos For the Lulz.
 * He accidentally killed J.D in a prank gone wrong. Instead of admitting his guilt, he convinced himself it was part of the joke.
 * (Summons army of squirrels)"Why so serious?"
 * So does this mean Squirrel Girl is the Joker's daughter? (5th and 7th entries)

The Joker is...Ennis del Mar of Brokeback Mountain.
Driven insane by the death of his beloved Jack, Ennis takes on the persona of the Joker and pretends to be insane and uses his vendetta against logic & the Batman as a smokescreen for his true plot - to do away with Jack's long-lost big-city big-shot sister whose casual homophobic abuse of her brother contributed to his emotional problems and led to his death, causing her to create a false identity for herself as Rachel Dawes.
 * ...oh please no.

Nolanverse Joker has Congenital Analgia
He never once appears to feel pain. Even when the detonator is shot out of his hand with the bat-spikes, his reaction seems more like surprise. His disfiguring scars are the result of a minor injury which went untreated & became infected, which is a common problem with people who have the condition. This may also be the source of his lack of empathy; he himself has no concept of pain, and so he doesn't understand when other people feel it & has long since given up trying.
 * Heath Ledger's Joker appears to have pain when Batman interrogates him, but continues to act all-powerful, anyway. That pause before he says "see?' is telling.
 * That could easily have been the Joker checking to see if his jaw or teeth were broken, or his lips had split. And remember, Batman went for the head first, so Joker was "all fuzzy."
 * Oooor maybe he's a run of the mill sadomasochist? I always assumed he got pleasure out of the pain or some such.

The Joker Was a Doctor, ME, Coroner, Undertaker or something that required medical training
This seems to come out of nowhere, but how else did he keep the poor mook with the bomb in his stomach alive for a relatively long period of time after its implantation? An ME or coroner (or even a doctor depending on where they practiced) would have to deal with some really sick crap for their job, the different scar stories could have been inspired by things he actually saw before he went over the edge.
 * Maybe he had some mooks with medical training? But that's actually a really cool idea. Explains why he's so damn good at finding inventive ways to hurt people. Though the Joker as a funeral home director would just scare the crap out of me.

Nolanverse Joker abuses painkillers
This touches on some of the reasoning behind the Congenital Analgia WMG and an ambiguous scene from the non-canon Joker TPB using a very Nolanverse-esque Joker. If you watch, the Joker walks with a fairly pronounced limp throughout the movie. During my first viewing I assumed it was from the truck crash, but watching again, he has the same shuffle in the bank, implying he has some sort of damage to either his leg(s) or back. Despite this, he doesn't seem to feel much pain, even jumping into the bus and hopping across the seats, but as this troper's experience managing long-term pain with opiates (Vicodin and Percocet, NOT at the same time) can attest, it's entirely possible to do things that would normally cause you to collapse in agony... so long as it doesn't take long. This would also account for the Joker's... somewhat, ahh... unique way of phrasing. He's literally choosing every word, making sure he's saying exactly what he means. Add onto that the fact that Ledger died from an accidental prescription drug overdose that included Vicodin and Percocet...
 * If you combine this WMG with the WMG that the Joker is a doctor of some sort, it can only mean one thing. The Joker is really House!
 * Nolanverse Bane has had his Venom replaced with aerosol painkillers, so this looks more likely now...

Lau has a daughter
Lau, the Chinese account who hid the money for the mobs and fled back to Hong Kong, was killed by the Joker who tie him on top of his half of the money and burned it. Before Batman took him back to Gotham, he was seen talking on the phone. To who? His wife? Supposedly he's married, and has a daughter named Sandra. They may or may not be aware of his criminal activities. But when it got out that Lau is dead, his family was devastated. His daughter blamed the Batman for causing his death. So she left home and began her journey training to fight Batman. She may even meet with the League of Shadows, who are willing to train her since they both want revenge on Bruce Wayne/Batman. By the time she faces the Batman, she takes the name "Lady Shiva". Lau's last name may reveal to be Woosan.
 * Lau was his last name. Note how Lucius calls him "Mr. Lau."
 * Hmmm... a gangster with a daughter, who's murdered by another gangster? In a Demythtified Batman setting that could always use a non-Batgirl-or-Robin sidekick? Huntress.
 * Daughter named Sandra? Possibly short for...Cassandra?

Batman rebuilds his surveillance sonar engine
Like the fact that it's immoral is going to stop him.
 * Moreover, he will program it into attack drones and set it to monitor his own actions, to destroy him if he goes too far.
 * He'll rebuilt it in the cave(WITH A BUNCH OF SCRAPS) under his still-being-rebuild mansion. Can anyone say, Batcomputer?
 * When this troper saw TDK for the first time, exposure to the 60's cartoon series from a young age made me sure the sonar rig would be the Batcomputer. Hoping for future rights to say I Knew It!!

Heath Ledger's death was a PR trick and a means for his personal gain
I know that this by all reasons borders to what's okay to say and what is not, but it has bothered me since it happened it needs to be said. Don't get me wrong, Heath Ledgers death was extremely tragic, but it boosted this already insanely hyped movie to unearthly proportions. And not only that, it ended his acting career at the highest point it by all probability was going to be able to reach. There is no possibility for his career to go downwards from his death and on, and the movie will always be remembered not only for his astonishing acting, but also for being the last movie he was in. I seriously waited for him to pop up from nowhere and go "Tada, magic trick!". But, that unfortunately never happened. May he rest forever.
 * Some people figure that similar motivations were behind Michael Jackson's recent death.
 * He did appear in one more movie, but was unable to finish filming due to, well, dying. I believe it's called the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, though I might be wrong.
 * Knowing what the last "magic trick" he did as The Joker was like, I think we can feel grateful we were spared another one.

Batman had a more... selfish reason for taking the blame for Two-Face's killings
In The Dark Knight, Batman seemed to have a hard time interrogating Sal Marone when he was trying to track down the Joker. Sal knew, just as he mentioned everyone else knew, that Batman didn't kill. So the worst thing he could do to them is beat them to a pulp, or break their legs like Sal. It'll heal. They'll get better. But if they rat on him, someone else will kill them. Batman realized that his Thou Shalt Not Kill policy was starting to become a liability. But the dilemma was that he wouldn't kill, otherwise he would become like them. So he takes a third option: he creates the illusion of a Batman that does kill. If word got out that Batman lost it and killed those mob bosses and crooked cops, criminals would fear him more and he wouldn't have to get his hands dirty. Basically he gets to have his cake and eat it too.
 * That's probably one of his reasons, yes.

The Joker drove Dr. Crane insane
It's practically guaranteed that the Joker was held in Arkham Asylum during the events of Batman Begins. Perhaps some time before Bruce returned to Gotham, Dr. Crane (who might've been a regular psychiatrist at the time) was doing some counseling sessions with Mr. "Glasgow Smile" in an attempt to get inside his head. He would toy with Crane by pretending to play along. Each day Joker would tell his story in a way that completely contradicted what he told the previous day. When Crane finally calls him on it, Joker delivers a Hannibal Lecture about how he doesn't really care about making him "better," he just wants to find out what made him sick so Crane could write another book or something (Yeah, I know, you've heard this before), and how Joker knew that's what he wanted by dangling it in front of him like a cat toy. Hell, he might've even said something like, "once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Joker is the only thing that makes sense." This ultimately turns Dr. Crane into the Nietzsche Wannabe that he is at the beginning of the movie.

Dr. Crane drove the Joker insane
Pre-madness Joker is a rather panicky sort barely scratching by in The Narrows. Maybe he has an unstable home life, maybe he just worries about everything. Either way, when Scarecrow's fear toxin breaks out it's Armageddon in his head. Everything that ever frightened him hits without respite, flicking from nightmare to nightmare. He goes nuts. Not only could this support the multiple-choice past, it could also explain how he got those scars to begin with. That crowd in BB did get pretty violent...

The Joker is from Sandman
Either he is a nightmare clown who escaped the Dreaming or he's someone from Delirium's realm. That's why there were no records of him.
 * The Corinthian would be all over that. Admit it. Like the Corinthian, who presumably doesn't leave fingerprints or physical evidence besides his victims (mutilated in his calling-card fashion), the Joker can only be tracked by the trail of damage he leaves. They would so get it on get along like a house on fire.

Dr. Crane is secretly a country boy.
If the fear toxin affects all living things, the horses the mounted policemen rode at the end of Batman Begins should have been panicking too. Even if the toxin doesn't affect animals, horses are some of the jumpiest animals in the world. Sure, they're well-trained police horses, but everyone is panicking, screaming, and who knows what happened to their riders so the horses would be pretty spooked, and yet Dr. Crane managed to get hold of one and ride it, even getting it to rear for him when he was trying to intimidate Rachel Dawes? Either that was a really blatant case of Did Not Do Research (horses do not act like that for just anyone!) or this is not Dr. Crane's first rodeo.
 * Hmmm, it does sometimes sound like he's hiding SOME kind of accent.
 * Like maybe an antiquated Connecticut or colonial Westchester accent?
 * And scarecrows aren't exactly used in cities.
 * In this troper's personal continuity, Crane is so a former country boy. Something about his demeanor...
 * Anyone who likes this idea may enjoy the Year One: Scarecrow comic.
 * Maybe the toxin really only works on human brain chemistry, and the whole "effects all living things" was just a lie or mistake?
 * Still wouldn't change the fact that all the chaos in the streets would spook a horse. Gunfire, screams... I mean the sheer would set a horse off. trust me, I know. Horses a jumpy little bitches.

Ramirez will search for redemption and will follow the steps of Renee Montoya.
After the events in Dark Knight, Ramirez will be devastated and will vow to become a better cop and person to atone for what she did. While some people are born heroes some are made, and since she is still breathing it isn't too late yet.
 * Or in a little different possibility she resigns/is expelled from the police force after the events and still will try to atone for what she did. Becoming eventually the Question. (Being the successor of this universe version Vic is a possibility...)
 * What about introducing Montoya herself? The villain(s) in the third movie will have to be incredibly hardcore, so Batman could use some more allies. Montoya is such a complex character in her own right that the movie wouldn't even need to show her becoming the Question (another masked hero might take the focus off Batman, and the poor dear needs his franchise back after the Joker took over...) but a few suble in-jokes that reference her future and appease the comic fans couldn't hurt.
 * Interesting as this idea would be, it's possible that Ramirez died off-screen. At the end of The Dark Knight, Gordon mentions that Two-Face killed five people, two of whom were cops. The only cops Two-Face was shown interacting with were Gordon, who he obviously didn't kill; Wuerzt, who he killed; and Ramirez, who he decided to spare, but knocked out with a Tap on the Head before he left. Apparently, in spite of what Harvey intended, the blow was fatal.
 * Gordon doesn't say Two-Face killed five people; he said "5 dead, 2 of 'em cops, you can't sweep this up." Wuertz, Moroni, Moroni's driver, the cop that was killed in the hospital (Gordon wouldn't be able to pin it on the Joker because as far as the GPD is concerned, the Hannibal Lecture never happened) and Harvey himself (though as some would say, not necessarily Two-Face).
 * Ramirez was clearly just an Expy of Montoya to begin with anyway, so who knows?
 * The problem from a fandom point of view that Montoya is incredibly upstanding, so Ramirez could never be a true Expy beyond the fact that she's a hispanic cop who Gordon likes. Montoya had the opportunity to kill someone who she knew absolutely, with incontrivertable proof and a practica confession, had killed her partner, but she still couldn't do it because it was wrong. Montoya isn't someone who could sell out like Ramirez did. If Ramirez really did become explictly a Montoya clone then the fans of Montoya and the Question would go nuts (I might not be a traditional fanboy, but for me this would be the one step too far over the line for the Nolanverse.)

Mr. Reese's discovery of Batman's identity was a set up for a new, more traditional Batmobile.
No doubt Fox told Bruce how Reese figured out the secret, and both of them are probably thinking someone else might figure it out, particularly those in the military who might have commissioned the Tumbler in the first place. And with the Tumbler destroyed, Batman's gonna need a new vehicle. So, rather than take an off-the-shelf military project and paint it black again, Bruce is probably going to take a high performance sports car, and heavily modify it, adding armor, weapons, etc., to the point where most wouldn't even be able to tell what car it was originally based on.
 * Maybe the very same Lambourghini he raced to the scene in during that very same sequence?

Admittedly, this is mostly wishful thinking cuz I love the classic Batmobile look, but a Troper can hope, can't he?
 * Yes he can. Imagine how great the trailer for the 3rd movie could be with a straight-up honest-to-God Batmobile.
 * That means, he'll have to find a mechanic who can build a new stylistic Batmobile. Maybe an old friend of Lucius Fox.
 * Yeah! A mute, hunchbacked, homeless friend of Lucius Fox. Named Ed.
 * ...What.
 * It's a reference to a rather unknown (by the public) character from the Bat-comics by the name of Harold, who was a mute, hunchbacked social outcast that happened to be very good with electronics and engineering. He worked on several upgrades for the Batmobile and outfitted the Bat-cave with various security devices. The average Bat-comic reader that didn't grow up in the nineties will most likely remember him as the C-List Fodder guy that got shot near the end of the "Hush" arc.

The mobs of Gotham will lose their control of the city.
After all the work Harvey has done to put them behind bars and Gordon becoming commissioner, the mob influence will virtually die out by the next sequel. It helps more that everyone believes that Batman killed Harvey, the mobs now believe that Batman ditched the no-killing rule. Without the mobs, criminals like the Joker and Scarecrow will take over. Plus, the crooked cops still working for the mobs will either be found out or forced to sever their connections with them.
 * Not to mention all the mob bosses that were killed in the cross-fire: Sal Maroni, Gamble, and the Chechen with the dogs. And, half of the mob's funds went up in flames thanks to the Joker, and Mr. Lau, the mob's last resort for laundering their money, is dead.

God has a sense of irony
Think about it. Two Face dies in the movie and Eckhart lives in real life. The Joker lives in the movie and Heath dies in real life.

Barbara wants her father's approval.
Granted, its never been stated that Gordon's daughter is named "Barbara," but...well, come on, we all know it. Furthermore, she was present when Two-Face confirmed that daddy loved James Jr. more than her. Sounds like someone might decide to put on a batsuit and try to win daddy's approval.
 * Remember, also, that comics canon states that Barbara is actually Gordon's niece and that she is adopted. Can we say "abandonment complex driving her to seek approval"? Yes, we can.

The Joker has ascended to the status of a really viral meme
There will be copycats. At least one of them will be a really scary, serious contender who comes forward as the new Joker.
 * That's who'll show up in the later movie(s). It may or may not be a different person each time.
 * Joker is Gotham's Anonymous.
 * So the Joker is yet another Stand Alone Complex.
 * Copycats? Maybe we'll get Jokerz in the next film.

The Joker is the Joker Spirit from Persona 2
And that's where the new Joker will come from; people trying to check their voicemail.

The Joker isn't wearing makeup
I know he never fell into a chemical bath this time, but maybe his face is simply tattooed, and he was actually wearing makeup in that scene where his face is flesh-coloured.
 * But how does that explain the visible white makeup residue on his hands during the hospital scene?
 * I got news for you. This ain't make-up!

The Joker is...Charlie Brown.
The scars come from a freak accident from a failed attempt to kick a football.
 * Of course!
 * And his first victim was the Kite-Eating-Tree.
 * Either that, or a bad line drive.

Ramirez is suffering from unrequited love for Commissioner Gordon.
Something about the look on her face when he asks about her mother and the way she screams "No Commissioner" and lunges to hold him back at the warehouse makes it seem like her feelings toward him are more than professional admiration.
 * Barbara (his wife) finds out and thinks James is having an affair. So she leaves him, taking her son with her while their daughter stays. Maybe the real reason is the stress of keeping the truth about Two-Face a secret and believes Gotham City isn't safe for anyone anymore.
 * Or, Ramirez is Gordon's daughter. Hence the look about her mother. Leaves some interesting possibilities open, doesn't it?

Bane will be a member of the League of Shadows
It's shown how the League of Shadows recruits those who have been the victims of great injustice, and that they are willing to look in prison's to do so. Bane's backstory with him having been imprisoned for his fathers crime fills the injustice part. He can be recruited, but unlike Bruce, when the time comes, he embraces the eye for an eye mentality. His mask is just his way of showing that he will not be intimidated by Batman's tactics, and that he regards himself as Batmans equal or better.
 * Did you read my story?

The Joker was part of a whole family of Complete Monsters, stretching back as far as the beginning of the 20th century.
I don't know who was this before the beginning of the 20th century, But the evil began, as far as I know, With a particularly memorable man named Frank Booth. He had an illegitimate child sometime before the movie, And this force of evil passed from him into his son, Hannibal. Sometime before Red Dragon, When Lecter was still free, He had a son, Not that he knew. This son grew up to be the man who would become the Joker. He traveled for a while, Becoming slowly more monstrous as he looked for Hannibal, Then the two met and had a duel between two Monsters. The man who would become the Joker won, proving that he had surpassed Hannibal in every way. Although, Before Hannibal died, He gave his successor a distinctive mark as what he thought was a gift...Two cuts, One along each cheek.
 * And what if Hannibal Lecter had an older brother?
 * The Fireflys?
 * Maybe Wednesday had a child.

The Joker knows that he's the villain in a Batman movie
The Joker does everything that he does because he knows that no one is real, not even him, that they all exist solely to entertain their audience. He knows that he can't beat Batman, because Batman is the hero, and he isn't insane enough to fancy that escaping into the real world is an actual possibility, so he does the only thing he can do, he targets the audience with the moral dilemmas he creates. He doesn't care about how Batman reacts to him, or how the people of Gotham City do. He knows that they'll make the "right" choices in the end and he'll loose. What he does care about is the audience in the real world. He wants to make them think for a moment about what they would do in similar situations. Would they sacrifice themselves for stangers? Would they murder strangers to save themselves? He knows that if they're forced to think about these things most of them won't have easy answers, because they don't live in a movie.
 * That's actually a good idea. It could be a symptom of the Joker's insanity. After all, the also insane Deadpool knows that he is in a comic book

The Joker's scars were inflicted by Carmine Falcone.
It would be nicely ironic if the same man was responsible for creating both Batman and The Joker.
 * (1) That's not what "ironic" means. (2) It was never established that Carmine Falcone was responsible for creating Batman. Chill was operating on his own. Falcone just happened to share a cell with him afterward.
 * Actually, Carmine gave a rather stirring speech ("You always fear what you don't understand") to Bruce just moments before he took off on his seven year journey, so it's hard to argue that he didn't have a major role in creating Batman (and thus causing his own eventual downfall).

Rachel Dawes is really Raven.
And this is just her latest adventure. And when she got blown up, she reformed somewhere in South America.

Rachel Dawes is really Raven.
Why not?

Rachel Dawes is really Raven.
How else could she know that Batman would save Harvey?
 * Only she didn't know. That's precisely the point of the dialog between her and Harvey before Batman arrives: we see that she's really convinced that Bruce will come for her (like he would have if the Joker didn't lie to him) and she's trying to help by asking him if he can somehow save himself because she thinks it's the only chance he has. She says she accepts to marry him because she thinks it's the last chance she has to do so before HE dies (in a way it would have been cruel if she knew she was going to blow up and leave him behind). And the expression on her face when she hears Harvey yell at Batman on the other side of the line is sheer surprise. That's why this scene is so poignant, we really believe that Batman will save Rachel and so does she.

Harvey and Rachel's deaths will ultimately benefit Gotham.
Think of it. After the deaths of two of their most dedicated crusaders, and the Batman apparently goes rogue, Gotham comes to be seen as the worst place in the state. As a result, it becomes a dumping ground for honest, sane cops from other areas who all the corrupt cops regard as a pain in the ass. Like Serpico. As good cops come in, and replace the bad cops, Gotham gradually becomes a utopia.

Harvey and Rachel are dead, but they will be in the next movie.
After all that happened in the last movie, and the way it ended, Bruce Wayne starts losing sleep, and it takes its toll on him. Eventually he starts hallucinating, and Harvey, Rachel, and his parents start appearing and talking to him, kind of like Tommy Gavin in Rescue Me.
 * "Why couldn't you save me?"

The third film will incorporate its main story elements from The Dark Knight Returns.
This just has to happen. Batman has disappeared from the public eye for a few years, with the city united against him, and Gotham enjoys a brief period of peace and prosperity (at least as much as Gotham could hope to expect) before falling back into chaos at the hands of a massive gang, possibly led by the Riddler. Bats decides he has to return to the fold, and, of course, it doesn't go well. Gordon is on his last breath of tolerance as well, struggling to keep the city intact. This could lead to a massive showdown between Bats and the final villain, as well as give rise to the possibility of introducing Robin and Catwoman. Plus, it would be a great opportunity for Batman to teach the "copycats" from the previous film how to be effective crime-fighters, just like the "Sons of Batman" from the comic, as they will probably be among the few who still believe in him after his disappearance. As far as this troper is concerned, this is the way to go.
 * Probably to try something different from the established comic book mythos, Robin will not be Dick Grayson. Instead, it will be either Jason Todd (a street orphan whose circus acrobat parents were killed by the main villain) or Tim Drake (Batman fan who needs his help to find his kidnapped parents).

The Nolan films take place around the Burton films
Because I am working on a time line of the Omniverse (every single connected fictional universe from the DCU to Disneyland) I like to stream line as much of the universes together as possible (i.e. making the non-DCAU shows fit into the DCAU, (more on that on the DCAU WMG page)), I've done the same for the Batman films, all of them. The only exceptions being the animated films as they take place in the DCAU and the Adam West film as it takes place in the Adamwestverse (I'm also going to go ahead and say that the two serials from the 40s take place in the same universe as Adam West, for the simple fact that the Robin's from the West series and the serials are from the same mold as it were, the Legends of the Superheros also take place in this universe as Adam West's Batman as Frank Gorshin plays the Riddler in both of them). Any way, I'm thinking the time line would go somthing like this;

~Most of Batman Begins, all the way up until Ras Al' Ghul meets his demise on the train. ~The beginning of Batman (1989 film), up until the Jack Naiper becomes the Joker.

~The final scenes of Batman Begins.

~The rest of Batman (1989) stop just before Joker kidnaps Vicki Vale

~The Dark Knight

~The end of Batman (1989), with the Joker kidnapping Vicki and eventually falling to his death.

~The rest of the Batman films (from Batman Returns to Batman and Robin)

~Birds of Prey the TV series would take place next, in the future.

As for the Catwoman film, I haven't seen it, but I know that it doesn't star Selina Kyle like Batman Returns does, so who knows. I guess it could fit in at some point before Birds of Prey TV series. So yeah...
 * And the burned-out part of the Narrows is rebuilt and nicknamed "New Gotham", thus fitting the BOP continuity.
 * It actually doesn't make sense. In the Nolanverse, Bruce KNEW and SAW that Joe Chill killed his parents. There's no such "Jack Napier" in the scene. Plus, we all know that Bruce's one true love is Rachel. So...he is swinging to Vicki Vale all along? And why would he downgrade his suit from that in Batman Begins to that in Batman (considering the armor didn't take tangible damage)? Try to explain how Napier's boss will fill in when you realize that the underground crime of Gotham is run by Falcone (even before Bruce's parents died) THEN Maroni. This WMG is the least plausible among the list.
 * This troper thinks this idea is still cool and could work. You just have to remove Harvey Dent's presence at the end of Batman and change the news report about Harvey Dent early in Batman Forever. In fact, an early script of the 1989 film included Bruce being trained by Henri Drucard and Gordon consoling young Bruce. For more ideas for your timeline, check out this site, it includes profiles on characters from the Tim Burton/Schumacher films and notes from scripts. This troper is also doing something similar, like having Harvey Dent in Batman Returns as in the original script and changing Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, and Catwoman to fit the style of the first two movies, and the canceled Batman Triumphant would follow.

The fear toxin is harmful when digested
It's just the effects are a lot more subtle. The toxin stays in the human body and slowly builds up waiting for the right trigger: fear. Adrenaline releases the toxin into the brain… only by this point either it's lost it's effects or a limit form of Immunity has develop so that rather going outright ballstothewallmad the subject feels an additive euphoric and increased inability to separate reality from fantasy. Gotham being an high density urban environment means that that only regular physical danger that the average person is likely to face is criminal in nature, (i.e. good old cops and robbers). Because of this people who commit (or are exposed to) violent crimes start to take more risk and slowly lose connection with social norms. this can only lead to one thing: a new more dangerous breed of criminal.

Super Villains.

Think of it a as sort of non super power Meta Origin to batman's growing Rogues Gallery. when someone stress in Gotham there's a very real chance they flip out put on a absurd outfit and blow up a bank because their brain are chemically wired that way. A Crime Related Mental Disorder if you will.

Now this is speculation admittedly but it helps explain the rather odd actions of many characters in Dark Knight. Such as why Harvey Dent (an upstanding DA, vowed to protect and serve) after a tragedy and injury quickly becomes little better (or gimmicky) than the psychos he puts away. why the Batman inspired vigilantes think they can fight crime wearing Hockey pads. As well as How the joker can easily recruit people for his anarchy. The man's violently insane and offers nothing but a war with the police. However In the mind of the average Gotham street gangster this doesn't seem like a bad idea because basically they're high with him around him. hell the Joker suggest this with his last lines.

Insanity is a lot like gravity, all it takes is a little push.

The Riddler vs. The Penguin in a gang war. Call them something a little less Batman-camp but make it fairly thinly veiled. Batman has to clean up the streets with his growly voice of doom.

The Joker is Ferris Bueller
Think about it, he's a young prototype of the Joker from The Dark Knight. They both have no rules and in spite of being rather unlikable (Ferris being a manipulative, ungrateful bastard and Joker a clearly violent and insane psychopath), have an inexplicable talent for being charismatic and getting people to follow their orders. Clearly, at some point the backlash from Ferris' bullshit antics during the movie (his faking a terminal illness and causing so much money to be spent for nothing) will cause widespread contempt for the Bueller family to spread through Chicago like wildfire, prompting them to move to Gotham city.

Ferris hasn't learned anything, though, and continues to fuck around and cause trouble, and his father takes to the bottle to cope, and as the problem continues to fester unchecked, he becomes abusive, while the "maturing" Ferris starts to become a juvenile criminal of a much stickier kind than he was in the past (gets into fights and starts ransacking people's homes, in other words worse stuff than abusing his friends' trust and wasting their time). This culminates in the "Why so serious" scene which Joker relates to Gambol how he got those scars. Ferris' life goes downhill from there pretty fast.

Rachel Dawes is a (the?) villain for the final film
NO, NOT AS CATWOMAN. If you notice the camera angles during the scene when Rachel was supposed to be blown away, you only see the background explode and her hair swishing in the wind. What if she really wasn't at the location Joker said she was? It was never explicitly said that her body was found. Joker's game may not have ended with Harvey Dent and he is sitting back, waiting for Rachel to react to the revelation of Harvey's true nature and his violent death at 'the hands of Batman'. Rachel could attempt a crusade of her own as a harbinger of true justice and tormenting Bruce/Batman as a means of revenge for all the pain he's indirectly put her through.
 * And she takes up the mantle of

Batman is The Messiah
Gotham is only a small part of humanity's overall decay. Bruce/Batman is pit against the Joker, a harbinger of chaos (see WMG above), and strives to protect and prove that there is hope for humanity. He may or may not be aware of his role as an agent of God, but there is something about the myth of the Batman that is important for him to maintain, explaining the lengths he goes to 'be what Gotham (i.e.:humanity) needs him to be'.

Ras Al Ghul is the Joker
After nearly having been killed by the runaway train, he manages to escape, but also went insane over his massive failure. He dons war-paint and murders people to get Batman's attention. When that didn't work, he decided to infiltrate the mafia underworld to get hired by them and concoct a huge plan that not only made Bruce/Batman re-think his quest and end up branding him a fugitive, it also got rid of several corrupt bureacrats and most of the mobsters. His original goal was to save Gotham from its own corruption and he succeeded in a way, as The Joker. It was the perfect revenge.
 * Also explains why he doesn't have fingerprints or any other form of identification.

No matter what they do, the third film will suck
There is an unbreakable ancient curse over superhero movies that condemn them to repeat the same pattern:

1st is Cool - 2nd is AWESOME! - 3rd is crappy - 4th is DAMN TERRIBLE - 20 years hiatus - Reboot that re-starts the chain

Superman did it, Batman did it, Spiderman is doing it and Dark Knight will do it. Sorry, but You Can't Fight Fate.
 * What about... wait... well maybe... X-Men...? Dang, you might be on to something here.
 * Hopefully, the third movie will break this curse and become the most awesome sequel! Just like how Toy Story 3 became a more awesome Disney sequel.
 * If anyone can break the curse, it's Nolan. But really, it's not like it's an absolute. For instance, who thinks Batman Returns was better than Batman?
 * I don't, but a lot of people I know think it was.
 * In all the examples of third movies sucking, the original director was replaced after the second film. (Or in the middle of the second film.) Donner was replaced with Lester. Batman's Burton was replaced with Schumacher. Spider-Man ... well, okay. That one was on Raimi. X-Men's Singer left and was replaced with Ratner. Keeping the same creative team could be an important factor in making a non-sucky third film of a trilogy.
 * To be fair to Sam Raimi, the studio pretty much forced him to include Venom, a character he said he hated, and that required a massive rewrite, possibly at the last minute. It's true that he was still responsible for the movie that came out, but it was probably more to flip off the execs that screwed with his plans than anything.
 * You know technically Spiderman is being rebooted with a different...well everything but it didn't wait 20 years. So this might bode well somehow for the possibility of the third film being on the same level as the first at least.
 * X-Men: The Last Stand wasn't as good as the first two, but it wasn't terrible; and while Origins was terrible, First Class didn't take 20 years and wasn't a reboot of the series.
 * This troper, personally, likes all the aforementioned films described as sucking, except for a couple (namely, the Superman sequels and Batman and Robin.) So, YMMV heavily on the existence of this curse in the first place.

Batman or Iron Man: one of them will break the aforementioned curse
Both follow the curse so far, and are set for their third movie.
 * Iron Man 2 wasn't as good as the first one. Not by a long shot.

Rachel will kill Scarecrow.
So, let's say she comes back as another vigilante(maybe Catwoman, maybe not), and her ordeal has caused her to abandon the no-kill policy she inspired Bruce to adopt, so we need to see her kill someone, to indicate she's changed. Who better than the man who almost turned her into a vegetable?

The Joker's real plan was to corrupt Rachel.
Crazy people can smell their own, so he must have realized Harvey was hardly the white knight he was made out to be, and that turning him into a psycho would be no challenge at all. If they do have it that Carmine Falcone inflicted his scars, it's possible he was there the night Bruce confronted him, and may have overheard Rachel browbeating him. From this, as well as Batman suddenly appearing practically the day Bruce Wayne returns, he may know Bruce is Batman. Then, the night of the party, he sees Rachel, and remembers her, and decides to test her, by getting right in her face. She passes when she knees him in the balls, and he decides, "This chick is way more fun than Harvey! Let's see what I can do with her!"

Joker's final Sadistic Choice was also a Xanatos Gambit: Whichever person lived would hate Batman for letting the other die.
If Harvey died, Rachel would be that much easier to turn against Bruce--thus, Harley Quinn. Ditto for Rachel--Rachel dead=Harvey Two-Face.

Alfred is a retired James Bond
Let's see the evidence he is very obviously a Retired Badass Normal, he was a British secret agent and he doesn't get surprised. Besides James Bond is an alias used by the best agent of the MI6. Which could lead to this scene:

Alfred aproches Bruce, who is talking to Daniel Craig in a tux Do you need something Master Wayne

No Alfred, Thank you.

And you Mr...

Bond, Jam..

James Bond, good to see that the boys are getting original, Mr Craig.

Or add a reveal that M was Alfred's Bond Girl.
 * Which would make Lucius Q. Suddenly it all adds up....

The third film will be Lighter and Softer (or at least lighter, anyway).
This occurred to me the very first time I saw the trailer and heard Harvey Dent say, "The night is always darkest before the dawn...but the dawn IS coming!" Because it would all be well in keeping with the traditional interpretation of the three-act structure of a trilogy.

Vicki Vale will be in Batman 3
Rachel is now dead, and it is highly unlikely that she will return, due to the, for the most part, realistic feel that these 2 movies have going for them. It's possible that there will be no woman/love interest, but there will probably be someone to fill the role left by Rachel. Vicki Vale is a photo journalist, and the Batman's recent turn to crime as perceived by the public is news that she might cover. In fact, unlike in '89, she might be staunchly against Batman, and might have an agenda of exposing even more of his crimes.

Batman Really Becomes Batman in the Third Film
In Batman Begins, Batman's methodology, gadgets and even his costume borrow elements that have been developed earlier for other purposes and his League of Assassins training. Even his first Bat-signal is really, really makeshift. In the second film, he gets a new specially-made suit, but is still driving around the Tumbler, which is unmodified apart from the addition of the Bat-Pod. This is all justified in that the series is aiming to be more real-word based. In the third film, Batman really comes into his own and will get to drive a more customized Batmobile and his gadgets will be more original.

The Joker is Cobb from Nolan's first film, Following.
Both characters are Spooks with no past and the ability to completely disappear when they wish. Both make their living as theives and contract killers. Both are believers in the importance of dressing well. Both like to operate from the "dead spaces" of large cities. Both are silver-tongued decievers, spinning philosophical monologues on their crimes and tricking anyone who listens into serving as their Unwitting Pawn. Both pull off very elaborate Batman Gambits with almost no hitches. Both of them are more interested in sending a message than in earning money.

Clearly, sometime after the end of Following, Cobb manages to tick off the wrong mobster and gets a permanent smile put on his face. He flees to the US, but the damage is already done. Cobb gains a thorough hatred of organized crime, and changes his personal philosophy from sociopathic hedonism to something worse. Finally, a combination of Batman's example and exposure to Crane's fear toxin inspires him to be reborn as Batman's opposite, a clown and an avatar of chaos.
 * Also, the Mystery Man from David Lynch's Lost Highway is an aged Joker, probably twenty years or so after the Batman continuity.

The Joker was right, he was just unlucky.
In the social experiment, it wasn't the noble aspects of the human spirit choosing to do the right thing that prevented the people on the boats from blowing each other(or themselves) up. For the civilians, they clearly voted 4 to 1 in favor of blowing up the other boat. It was groupthink, peer pressure, and shame that stayed their hand, not human decency. None of them were willing to step up, infront of all those judging eyes, and be the one to do it. They just sat, like sheep, hoping someone else would have the guts. If there had been a single sociopath on that boat(which, statistically, there should have been) or someone who had something really worth living for, they would have taken the detonator and blown the other boat straight to hell.

On the inmate's boat, the guy with the detonator let the prisoner take it fully expecting that he was going to blow up the other boat. He wanted to, but he couldn't stand the thought of having to face judgement for doing it himself. Again, it was dumb luck that the prisoner was a good enough person to throw it overboard- or perhaps he wasn't, maybe he was a sadist who was intentionally trying to get them all killed.

In either case, the Joker was right about the ugly face of humanity. He just overestimated their survival instinct.


 * I agree. The problem with the Joker's last experiment is that being in a crowd defused everyone's sense of responsibility. ("Somebody else can detonate the other boat.") If they had to take action to stop the other boat from blowing up, but passivity would have saved them, the Joker's plan might have worked!


 * I see it possible that some people on the boat were like the ones at the beginning of this page and thought the explosions wouldn´t necessarily blow up the other ship but themselves, or maybe something different like an orphanage.

The Joker eventually becomes Jigsaw.
(This is actually a friend's theory but I like it.) Let's assume that Nolanverse Arkham is not a Cardboard Prison like in the comics. They get hold of the Joker, and immediately put him on heavy medication with intensive (perhaps even illegal therapy). Over the years, they manage to drill morality into his head, some civil rights lawyers get involved and negotiate his release. What they and the doctors have failed to realize is that they've failed to drill in empathy and he's still just as crazy as ever, but now with an obsession with morality.

"I killed these people" is a covert admission that Batman may resort to murder in future.
But only in extreme circumstances. Thing is, The Joker and, we can assume, future villains following in his footsteps have created conditions as desperate as this for Bats to resort to such a thing. And how can they escalate past him killing? At the very least, he'll publically fake murdering some mooks, in a very elaborate manner, to "confirm" the rumours about him.

The Joker is D-Fens
We never see the body after he got shot, so it's possible he survived. Of course, after his wife and daughter left him, he wouldn't have much left to live for, and being a former missile engineer would explain how he knows so much about explosives.

The Joker is the AU version of the protagonist from The Adjustment Bureau
He failed to escape Richardson and his men and ended up getting lobotomized. He went insane from this and adapted a Rage Against the Heavens attitude to try and screw around with "The Plan" as much as he could. The "wife" he was referring to when he talked to Rachel was in fact Elise. He just couldn't fully remember her.

The Joker has several moments of pure lucidity during the film
The popular theory is that the Joker is always, completely, totally insane. I actually think that during the course of the movie the Joker has a quite a few moments where he is completely sane and being completely honest, he just spends so much time in his own world no one can tell. I can't exactly explain why, has a lot to do with Ledger's acting, there's just a slight undercurrent to his attitude and his voice during certain scenes.
 * I think Joker really was pissed at Batman for slamming his head into the table in the interrogation room. Not for the pain, but because he thinks Batman is above being that crude and unsubtle. In other words if the Goddamn Batman is going to go bad cop on you, you expect something a little more then just a bang on the head.
 * I think he meant it when he told Batman that he thought Batman letting Dent take the fall as the Batman was cold, even for him.
 * I think he was honestly impressed at Dent's plan to let him live or die based on the flip of a coin. For a guy as far our as the Joker, it probably does impress him to be put into a situation that is out there even for him.
 * I think he was being purely matter of factual when he response to an outraged mobster asking "Do you think you can steal from us!" with a simple, direct, deadpan "Yeah."
 * Harvey was much more insane than the Joker. The Joker knows he is messed up, that itself is lucidity manifested, while harvey just left everything to a coin.

The Joker was faking insanity the whole time
The makeup, the clothes, the weird speech patterns - the whole thing is a deliberate act. Why? He was thinking ahead. Way ahead. He knows if he gets captured, he can cop an insanity plea. He probably already has a fail-safe to get him out of Arkham. In short, he's not crazy - he's Crazy Prepared.

ALL of the characters on screen are Expys of some other character in some other continuity

 * Lau is The Calculator.
 * The Scary Black Man on the boat is Killer Croc.
 * The boat prisoner certainly resembles the alternative version of Croc seen in Azrello's "Joker" comic.
 * The Jumpy Thug at the dock is an obscure one-off thug named Bigger Melvin.
 * The Gotham Bank Manager is the Penny Plunderer.
 * The mental patient that Harvey Dent intimidates (Thomas Schiff) is the Mad Hatter.
 * Rachel Dawes is Julie Madison.
 * Mr. Earle is an expy of Max Shrek.
 * As said above, the blonde boy in Begins is Jason Todd.
 * Gambol is Carlton Duquesne.
 * The fat prisoner with the cell phone in his chest is Humpty-Dumpty.
 * The news anchor Mike Engel is Jack Ryder, minus the Creeper alter-ego.
 * Or as suggested above, he's Vic Sage, the original Question.
 * As suggested above, Mr. Reese (Mysteries) is the Riddler.

Both stories that the Joker told are the truth, but with the roles reversed

 * It was THE JOKER who carved his mother with a knife, and "put a smile on that face" for his father.
 * Likewise, it was the Joker who got in deep with the Sharks and gets his trademark grin from them (or maybe one half, and the other was self-inflicted). His wife's "leaving" may have been literal, figurative, or both on separate occasions.
 * Had he been able to tell Batman another story, we would have had another wrinkle in the tale.

A lot of Dark Knight could have been avoided if Sgt. Foley existed in it.
RAMIREZ! Bring down the mob, stop Joker and his plans, save Rachel and Harvey and buy me a burger!

Like the Joker, The Riddler will seem to have no past and no contacts, but for different reasons...

 * Because his name is Leonard and he thinks Batman is his new "John G".

The Joker is the protagonist from Fight Club.

 * No Name Given
 * The bullet wound Norton's character self-inflicts at the end of Fight Club is consistent with the Joker's scar.
 * After leading a revolution and blowing up those buildings, the character got a taste for anarchy maybe after running from law enforcement.
 * A tragedy involving Marla could send him totally over the deep end.
 * He already has problems with sanity. Maybe Tyler came back with a vengeance and obliterated everything else in his head.
 * The Joker's and Tyler's knowledge of chemistry and tendencies toward being Crazy Prepared are consistent.

The Dark Knight Rises will end with Bruce accepting an invitation to a special charity show at Haley's Circus
The main attraction will be The Flying Graysons.

The Dark Knight Rises will begin with a nightmare sequence, going back to "that night".
In the nightmare, Bruce saves Rachel, but then she ends up horribly burned. This would be an interesting foreshadowing to her not being dead, but now being a total psycho.
 * If it's not bad enough, the dream will end with Rachel screaming that she doesn't love Bruce anymore, that she chose to marry Harvey Dent. This will linger on his mind, and will tell Alfred if Rachel ever said anything to him the night of her death. He'll noticed Alfred seem hesitant at first before he said no. Later he'll tell him to come clean about the letter he burned. Bruce will understandably be upset at not only Rachel's decision, but for Alfred breaking his trust. Eventually, Bruce forgives him.

The Joker is a manifestation of the Crimson King
He says "I am an agent of chaos..." In other words, he's an agent of the Random/the Red/Dis. It is also possible that he is one of Randall Flagg's forms. Indeed, the Marvel Universe is confirmed in Wolves Of The Calla to be a part of the Dark Tower multiverse, and since The DCU often crosses over with the Marvel Universe, it's not too far-fetched.

Scarecrow will be the villian in The Dark Knight Rises
He'll reveal he was actually a competent villian all along.
 * It would be a nice way to bookend the series. And besides, Scarecrow is actually just as scary as the Joker when you sit there and think about it. Fear toxin in the air vents of City Hall or the police department could wreak havoc in seconds, assuming people aren't already innoculated after the events of Batman Begins. And Nolan obviously loves the idea of foils, and Scarecrow wasn't fully explored as a character, and therefore his role as a foil wasn't fully realized. (Batman uses fear as a means to an end, for Scarecrow fear is the end, Batman chose bats because they scare him, Scarecrow chose a scarecrow because it scares what scares him, etc ...)

The writers meant for the second movie to be a superhero-themed retelling of the epic poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.
Joker is clearly the Evilly Affable Satanic figure with an agenda to overthrow the present social order. He'll kill people himself, but his chief MO seems to be either to tempt or corrupt others to fit into his plan. Harvey Dent is basically Adam. He ultimately gives into the Joker. The climax of the film, while also an homage to the 1989 film, is similar to the climax of Paradise Regained, where Satan falls off a building after failing to tempt Jesus.
 * "Ever danced with the devil in the pale moon light?"
 * This fits in with the first one, which had many allusions to the story of Faust. Just like Dr. Faust, Bruce Wayne is a dissatisfied intellectual who yearns for more than his social standing can give him. It's at this critical time that Ra's Al Ghul comes in and offers Bruce the chance to become a legend, just like Mephistopheles. Another parallel includes Bruce's relationship with Rachel, whose innocence stands as potential collateral damage for Bruce's vigilantism. And like later interpretations of the Faustian legend, Bruce ultimately rejects Rha's deceptions and strives for the greater good. And to top it all off? The play that the Waynes go to see on the night of their murder is Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele, a retelling of Faust. This just leaves the question: which gothic pseudo-Christian myth involving the devil will The Dark Knight Rises be based on? Dante's Inferno?

Bane will break Batman halfway through The Dark Knight Rises
As a part of the whole rising concept, Batman will reach rock bottom at one point in the film. Shortly after that Bane will break Batmans back. At this point Bruce will question whether or not to continue being Batman. Bruce will realize that Gotham needs Batman and will from that point "rise".

Batman was aware the Joker switched Harvey's and Rachel's locations
...and saved Dent on purpose. Upon hearing the locations, Batman must have realized or at least suspected the Joker was pulling a trick play. In the few seconds he had, Bruce made the impossible choice: oldest friend and the love of his life, or Gotham's White Knight? He upheld his duty as Batman to do what was ultimately best for Gotham, and saved the District Attorney who had still had a duty to combat the city's crime. This isn't to say he signed Rachel's death warrant, he still hoped Gordon would make it to her in time, but Batman did what he needed to do. As for why he told Gordon he was going after Rachel- there simply wasn't enough time to explain, and if he said he was going for Harvey they would head for the same location.

Bane will actually be the Big Bad of The Dark Knight Rises
Bane, in most animiated canons and the movies, is a bounty hunter hired to kill Batman or generally a minion, where in the comics, he was working of his own accord and after breaking Batman's back to increase his reputation and because of a nightmare he had of a demonic bat, as well as figuring out Batman's secret identity. After doing so he became the ruler of the Gothum criminal underworld. So he may be the main antongist of the film as opposed to a secondary one. It'd also fit into a scene in the Batman Begins film, when Batman was gliding over the city and the effects of Scarecrow's fear gas was making people see him as a demonic bat. Bane was among them and has been seeking a way to kill Batman believing he's the same bat from his dreams. This works by making him a more complex character than the brute in Batman and Robin as well, possibly even making him sympathatic.

Rachel's role in The Dark Knight Rises will mirror that of Jason Todd
Considering how pissed off she was at Bruce before her supposed death in The Dark Knight, and the fact he also allegedly died in an explosion, it makes sense that she would come back at him in a manner similar to Jason.

Miranda Tate is Talia al Ghul
It's been announced that Marion Cotillard's character in Rises will simply be a member of the Wayne Enterprises board who wants to help Bruce reestablish his father's philanthropic work. It's also been rumoured that a young Ra's al Ghul has been cast for the film, which suggests he's going to have some involvement on the plot, which is why until the Tate announcement everyone was guessing that Cotillard would be playing Talia. And it's entirely possible that she still is.
 * If you're going after the man who killed your father and destroyed everything he built, the first thing you want to do (as a Criminal Mastermind) is destroy everything his father built. What better way to begin than by getting yourself on the board of his father's company? It's all a cunning scheme to destroy the Wayne Foundation (or its movie universe equivalent). "Tate" could even be a deliberate misspelling of "Tete", the French for "head" (Talia's alias when she went corporate in the comics).
 * Think about the name Miranda for a second. The most famous Miranda is the one from Shakespeare's the Tempest, the daughter of the aging wizard Prospero, who lived in sheltered isolation under her father's care, growing dependent on him even as he plots against a world that wrong him. Sounds a lot like Talia and her dad. The only other people Miranda encountered before the shipwreck that kicks off the story are the brutish yet cunning Caliban, who grew up in isolation on this prison island, and the graceful spirit Ariel. Caliban sounds ALOT like Bane, and Aerial's grace and femininity (though originally male, Ariel is usually depicted as female in modern stagings) recalls Catwoman. Ariel even comes from the Hebrew words for "Lion of the Lord." What are three of the major themes of the Tempest? Theatricality ("all the world's a stage"), change, and knowing when it's time to step down.
 * Actually, "All the world's a stage..." was from As You Like It. But other than that...wow. That's one of the best theories about Miranda I've seen so far.

The Joker was a League of Shadows Sleeper Agent
The apparent destruction of the League "activated" him. His plot to destroy Gotham's soul was an act of pure spite on the League's behalf, to show Batman that his efforts to save Gotham the "noble" way were in vain.

Batman did intentionally kill Harvey...out of mercy.
Given the state of the guy, the only thing that could possibly have been keeping him alive at that point was revenge. Bruce, knowing the nature of revenge, knew that, no matter who he killed, he would keep seeing more targets, and he would never stop until even his rage wasn't enough to hold him together, and in the meantime, he'd continue to be in unimaginable pain. So, Bruce did what he had to, even if it did technically mean breaking his one rule.
 * Not to mention Harvey refused to take painkillers. He was literally in a lot of pain only being able to move thanks to his insanity.

The Joker is really Malcolm Wilkerson.
Or, rather, a physical manifestation of various aspects of the Wilkerson brothers' psyches. The brothers tried a magick ritual one Halloween night to play the mother of all pranks on Lois and Hal, and, being the short-sighted idiots they were, accidently pissed off some force on the other side that killed them and used their souls to build a monster. Reese's sadism, Malcolm's intelligence, Francis' determination to rebel, and Dewey's artistic tendencies, all rolled into the most evil motherfucker on God's green earth, determined to do what the boys did best: Upset the natural order and create chaos.

The Dark Knight Rises will be an adaptation of Frank Miller's The Killing Joke
During the endgame of the film, Bane will capture Gordon's daughter and attempt to put her in a wheelchair, but Batman will intervene. Bane gives him a Sadistic Choice. Let young Gordon's legs get broken, or have your own legs get brokwn. Batman will sacrifice himself to save her. And as a new day dawns on Gotham, Gordon will note how they will always remember The Dark Knight.
 * Alan Moore wrote the Killing Joke, and breaking legs won't really cripple you for life, unless you really destroy them. It's spinal cord injuries that cause that kind of damage - that's what Barbara Gordon and Batman both suffered.
 * My points till stand.
 * Unlike Barbara.
 * Zing!

Bane won't use Venom
The promo image just shows Tom Hardy with a Cool Mask and a little extra muscle, and not much to suggest he'll use Venom. Instead Nolan and Hardy will concentrate on Bane's personality and do away with his gimmick, like how Ra's al Ghul didn't have his Lazarus Pits and Joker didn't have laughing gas (and other toys).

Ra's al-Ghul is a Legacy Character
Instead of actually being immortal like in the comics, the identity "Ra's al-Ghul" is passed down and assumed by every leader of the League of Shadows. In Batman Begins, the character's original name actually was Henri Ducard. The story he told Bruce about his wife was true, but it happened before he took on the "Ra's al-Ghul" identity.

The Joker doesn't actually know his own backstory
He may have had actual motives for his destructive behavior at one point, but The Dark Side Will Make You Forget.

Dent was the second cop killed
It was mentioned earlier in TDK that Harvey Dent had worked Internal Officers before becoming a DA so when Gordon says "five dead two of them cops" he is referring to Maroni, his driver, the other man he killed to get in the car, Wuertz, and Harvey himself.
 * Possibly Jossed. The other cop might have been then one Joker shot outside of Harvey's hospital room.

Black Widow in this timeline was/is/will be The Vamp meets I'm a Humanitarian.
Hence her appellation.

King Tut in this timeline was an escapee from Arkham.
He escaped in Batman Begins and Batman caught him soon after.

Bane breaks Gordon, not Batman
He doesn't just want to break him physically, but mentally and emotionally, so he goes after his one true friend within Gotham (at least what everyone already perceives Gordon as) instead of Batman directly. Gordon's trauma is what ultimately leads to Batman's redemption as he takes on Bane.
 * Suggested at least by the trailer, which features Gordon in the hospital. Hmm....

Bane will get close to doing the move that breaks Batman's back
But Batman will manage to get away just before it happens.

The man shown in the background behind Batman in the teaser is...
Red Hood. At the end of the teaser, if you look in the background when Batman and Bane are shown face to face, you can just about see someone watching them.

Rises was originally supposed to be titled Knightfall
What with the "every journey has an end" theme the trailers have been expressing, making a title a reference to rising (as in, from a depression) seems a bit inappropriate. Nolan probably planned to call it Knightfall, or something else along those lines, but the ever-wonderful executives forced him to change the title as an obviously shamless way to cash in on the success of The Dark Knight.

Batman will end up having to save Miranda from Rachel.
If Rachel does come back, this will be inevitable.

Alfred is Alfie.
A couple of decades after the swingin' sixties, Alfred "Alfie" Elkins decided to move to Gotham City and settle down. Also, his life detoured to Burma somewhere along the way.

Bruce was more affected by Ducard's (Ra's Al Ghul's) betrayal than he let on.
There are a couple hints over the series that he was close to Ducard while at the league of shadows, what with Ducard having been his mentor. When the house burned down, the only life Bruce tried to save, aside from his own, was Ducard's. Also note that, while Bruce disagrees with several of Ducard's philosophies, (i.e. when a city becomes corrupt, it must be destroyed,) he took others to heart, such as the idea that a symbol is much more powerful than a person could ever be. There's also another philosophy from Batman Begins that gets brought back in The Dark Knight: early in Begins, while training Bruce, Ducard mentions that criminals aren't complicated, which is brought back by Bruce in the sequel, when trying to figure out what the Joker wanted. All this seems to indicate that the two were relatively close in the league of shadows. Thus, when Bruce realizes that Ducard had been Ra's Al Ghul the whole time, and Ducard proceeded to burn down his house and make multiple attempts on his life, if affected Bruce more than we see. One possible example is when a beam of wood falls down on Bruce and pins him to the ground. Even though he's prepared himself for eventualities like this, he's unwilling to lift the wood, until Alfred comes along and helps him to his feet. No comment on any implications if this theory is true...

The Joker is an AU version of Giygas.
Why not? They're both Nightmare Fuel personified, they both create memes every time they speak, they both all-too-often wear leather pants, they both corrupt multiple people when they appear, both are working from obscure, twisted motives- if they're working from any motives at all... Need I go on?

Rises will show Alfred's badass side
His military career has been alluded to multiple times, as well as the subtle implication that it would be a waste not to showcase his hidden talents.

Lucius Fox is actually Xzibit.
He heard you like bikes, so he put a bike in your car so you can drive while you drive.

The Joker's origin is similar to that of The Killing Joke.
Half of his stories were true, because he remembered them wrong. He did get a blade stuck in his mouth after the woman he loved the most died. There was gambling involved, and 'sharks' too. Let's see. fired from his job at a chemical plant.
 * 1. Jack Napier lives a pathetic life in the Narrows. You can have a small look at it in Batman Begins, where you can hear a woman screaming at a man to get a job. That is because Napier just got
 * 2. He decides to join the mob as a small-time gangster in order to feed his pregnant wife. Their target for a robbing is going to be the plant he worked at, as such, he will go there as the "Red Hood.".
 * 3. He learns that his wife has been killed in a household accident involving an oven fire. This is what happens to Rachel in the Dark Knight. He tries to weasel out, but the mob forces his hand.
 * 4. The heist at the plant goes awry - in an act of revenge, one of the criminals take out a knife and sticks the blade in his mouth, creating the smile the Joker is famous for.
 * 5. The police arrives - The Joker, the last man of the team, is scared out of his mind and makes a run for it. He escapes by jumping in a polluted river, which turns his hair a sickly shade of brown/green.
 * 6. Once he comes out of the water, he runs to a nearby bar and goes for the bathrooms. There, he looks at himself in the mirror. The pollution has changed the color of his hair; over his face is some sort of white substance, similar to the one found inside lightbulbs, his eyesockets are dark because he has not slept in days, and finally, his mouth and lips are bright red due to the blood still coming out from his fresh wounds. Mr. J hides in a corner and starts chuckling.
 * The owners of the bar find him there, and, unable to get any info out of him, decide to have him placed in Arkham. He does not stay there for long, though, and is out in the open in the finale of Batman Begins.

Dark Knight Rises is going to end with Bruce adopting Dick Grayson, or at least end with him attending Haly's Circus.
Ok hear me out, Nolan said that as long as he is directing there won't be a Robin for a while. This was stated because Dick was only a child when batman was starting out. However he did not say how old Dick was at the time. Our guess would be depending how old Bruce is in this continuity. If he were say in his early twenties. Dick would be 2 - 4 years old. In his late twenties to early thirties 8 - 12. Now it is debatable, but 8 - 12 was the argument of how old Dick was in the comics when he first started out as Robin. It was when his parents died, and it was when Bruce adopted him. Another way Nolan would get away with it would be that he only said Robin wasn't gonna be in the movie. He never said anything about the aliases. Plus back then Robin hasn't even been invented yet so he could have Tim, Dick and Jason around and we wouldn't know it until they were referred to by name. Another way of going about this would be that Barbra Gordon was still a child in Dark Knight, and depending on what continuity she would either be younger than or the same age as Dick. Lastly, Nolan said as long as "He" is directing there wouldn't be a Robin. Though Rises has been noted to be the last of the Nolan Trilogy, if it's successful they can green-light another sequel. Nolan may not direct it but somebody else would. For all we know it's his way of saying "I done the Batman story, get someone else to do Robin."
 * There's been theories floating around that Dick may very well be in the movie, just not at Robin yet. The big idea is that Bruce adopts him after his parents are killed in one of Bane's attacks.

Nolan is including Catwoman and Miranda Tate as a response criticism of the way he handles female characters
Over the course of two movies there has only been one major female character (Rachel) and she is killed off two-thirds of the way through The Dark Knight. Nolan has somewhat of a notorious history of killing off female characters just to give his male characters something to angst over, of which Rachel is one example. (Others include Leonard's wife, Borden AND Angiers' wives and Mal). Now it's his final Batman movie and suddenly there are not only two major female characters (Catwoman and Miranda Tate, and that's not even buying into the theory that Miranda is Talia) but also at least one other supporting female character (a "streetwise Gotham girl", most likely Holly Robinson) Nolan has already admitted to being aware of his tendency to treat female characters this way, so perhaps this is his way of making up for it - by adding a host of female characters to the cast. Whether he knows what he's doing is, of course, something we'll have to wait and see.

Bane will come to Gotham claiming to know who the Batman is and goes on a reign of terror to break him. The only problem? He thinks that Batman's Harvey Dent not Bruce Wayne
There have been promo photo's taken that we see Bane holding up a picture of Harvey Dent whilst stood on a batmobile. The thing is however, that he's proclaiming that Gotham's White Knight isn't dead at all... instead he's the Dark Knight and Bane is convinved that he faked his own death to act as Batman full time.

Before Joker became the Joker, he was a tailor.
An offhand by Gordon mentioned that J's clothes were apparently custom made with no tags. Since I can't imagine any store selling that set of clothes, especially the purple overcoat, it makes sense if he was a tailor before he went bonkers and made his own clothes.
 * ...The whole point of custom made clothes is that you can ask a tailor for whatever you want and as long as you have enough money they'll make it without asking questions.

Alfred was in the SAS
]] He tells a story about fighting a warlord in Borneo. Guess what the SAS was doing in the 60s. Fighting the Indonesians, helping the British colonizers and winning the hearts and minds of the people in Borneo.

Batman will kill Bane by disabling his mask
In many confrontations between the two, Batman would cut off his supply of Venom to defeat him. His mask seems to be a substitute for Venom, which appears to not be in the film. Since his anesthetic-pumping mask is keeping him alive, Batman may disable it, unintentionally or not, to win. Perhaps a thrown Batarang after he has been paralyzed...

Alfred is really a retired Harry Palmer
Sorry if this moves any top WMGs here but this guess is a pretty good one. Think about it both characters are played by Michael Caine, both wear glasses, both are trained former military special ops guys. both are pretty good gourmet chefs, so to add to the many other "Alfred is really" WMGs Dark Knight Alfred is really retired british spy Harry Palmer in disguise.

Harry was probably friends of someone in the Wayne family (either Bruce s grandfather or one of his uncles) due to Wayne Corps military interests (which have included British special ops or MI 5). At some unseen point Harry was named as infant Bruce's godfather. And at some other point Harry took the job as the Wayne butler simply because he was starting to get bored with his retired life.

After the death of Bruce's parents however Harry's role as godparent and caregiver became more serious. So throughout Bruce's bodyguard as well as Manny (Man Nanny).

Bane wants to destroy Gotham with a nuclear bomb
It's recently been revealed that Alon Abouboul's "mad scientist" is a nuclear scientist. Perhaps he will be recruited by Bane to create a bomb to destroy Gotham.

Bruce knows Bane
Just a little theory inspired by the trailer for TDKR. After leaving Gotham to live among criminals, Bruce crossed paths with Bane in prison, possibly at some sort of brawl or an attempted breakout. Supposing it's also true Bane later became a member of the League of Shadows as hypothesized above, he might also have been the one who tipped them off about Wayne in the first place.

Bane will be The Dragon
To who is anyone's guess.
 * Ra's al-Ghul who turns out to be either somehow alive or immortal, maybe?
 * Alternatively, Bane was Ra's dragon, but was Dragon His Feet in Begins and has since become a Dragon Ascendant. In the comics, Bane was Ras' second choice for heir to the League of Shadows after Bats turned him down. Maybe the same thing happened here, only off screen.
 * Talia is a strong candidate for being revealed as The Man Behind the Man.

Bane is manipulating and will betray Catwoman
The trailers seemed to suggest that they're working together and Selina seems to have a grudge against Bruce Wayne and the rest of Gotham's elite. At some point she will either realize the true horror of his plan or figure out that Bane plans on throwing her to the wolves once he's done with her, at which point she will defect and aid Batman.

In Rises Bruce has already adopted a young Dick Grayson
Although not actively grooming him to be a crimefighter certain similarities between Bruce and Dick are what prompt Alfred's Tear Jerker speech heard in the trailer. The speech is less about his failing Bruce and more about his refusal to fail Dick.

Miranda Tate is a female Expy of Derek Powers
The trilogy will end with Bruce either dying or going into seclusion, and she will become the new CEO of Wayne Enterprises. Over the course of 30 years (give or take) she'll end up going batshit (heh) insane and becoming an evil Corrupt Corporate Executive. At some point, she'll order the assassination of Warren McGinnis, and Bruce will take Warren's son Terry under his wing as the new Batman. Nolan has said repeatedly that Rises will definitively end Bruce Wayne's story--but if someone else really wanted to keep the story going without resorting to a complete reboot, a Batman Beyond movie could definitely be a possibility. Christian Bale would probably go along with it, if only for the artistic challenge of playing a seventy-something Bruce Wayne. And much like the above WMG about The Dark Knight Returns, it would sound very fitting if the series began with Batman Begins and ended with Batman Beyond.

Bane will use a freedom fighter image or believe he's one
Based on early snippets of his voice which have him talking about "liberation" and "take control of your city", he might go with a Rebel Leader image to get the masses of Gotham on his side. This ties in to my next theory that since the Big Bad of each Batman film sought the self-destruction of Gotham City thorugh various methods, Bane will too. Ra's al Ghul (Batman Begins) wanted to use fear, The Joker (The Dark Knight) wanted to use chaos, so Bane (The Dark Knight Rises) will use self-righteousness to get the Gothamites to destroy themselves by having them think they're doing what is right. This also ties in to what the secondary villain are like since Scarecrow produces fear gas, Harvey Dent gets warped into Two-Face by chaos, and Catwoman will probably have self-righteous motives.
 * It also makes sense, because those three themes are also aspects of Batman: a self-appointed vigilante who terrorizes criminals has to walk a fine line if he doesn't want to give into madness (the chaos of DK), to overcome his own fears (as in Begins), or become a self-righteous, solipsistic tool(in this hypothetical version of DKR).

Rises will be dedicated to the memory of Heath Ledger.
Because come on. It's too perfect not to happen.

Batman's scallops will turn the tide during his final fight with Bane.
Because they did in both his fight with Ras and the Joker.

Jim Gordon is Sirius Black with Amnesia.
The Actor Rule (idea shamelessly stolen from here). This is what really happened after Sirius. He ended up lost and confused in a muggle city with fractured memories of his own life. He remembers the name "James" is important so he becomes "James" or rather Jim Gordon.

Bane will figure out Batman's identity.
The newest trailer shows them fighting in what looks like the batcave, my guess being that he figure's out Bruce Wayne is Batman (in a way possibly similar to DAVE from The Batman) breaks into the batcave and beats the ever living crap out of him. Showing just how much of a threat he is.

Who is Bruce kissing in the latest trailer?
It doesn't look like Marion Cotillard, it sure as hell doesn't look like Anne Hathaway, in fact, if I didn't know any better, it actually looks like...
 * It is Marion Cotillard. Looks just like her, because it is her.
 * It looks vaguely like Marion.
 * Same highly distinctive sleepy eyes and prominent chin and facial structure, same everything else. It's Cotillard. Gyllenhaal is also really easy to pick out of a police line-up, and it isn't her.

There will be a nod to the Joker
After the credits we'll have a stinger in Arkham Asylum. We see a cell door hanging open, a guard dead on the ground and either a convientaly placed playing card or manical laughter echoing down the halls. This way they could give a nod to the Joker's status as Batman's nemesis without having to show him and let the series end on a 'The Adventure Continues' note.
 * That seems kinda clichéd. I was thinking it would be cool if, during a scene with Bane releasing prisoners, one of his men would find a locked cell, open it to free the guy inside, only to find it completely empty...save for red and black graffiti all over the walls, and a few notes of Joker's theme from the previous movie's soundtrack playing. Confused, he backs out and continues his job. This would imply that Joker had already escaped from Arkham by himself, as he always does, but just like his origin story we wouldn't have any idea how he did it or where he is by the end of the story. It would also be a fitting send off to Heath Ledger. It probably won't happen, but it's just what I would do if I were Christopher Nolan.
 * There's bound to be something, even if it's simple. They threw one into Begins, and I think it would be appropriate to throw one in here. His impact in Dark Knight was too strong to just pretend he doesn't have a presence in Gotham anymore, even if behind bars.

Jossed by Nolan. There won't be any mention to the Joker.

Bane's "anesthetic" is actually an inhalant form of Venom
It would fit in with the rest of the series (powerful drugs in aerosol form), as well as remaining faithful to the comics. Venom would increase Bane's strength, as well as his tolerance for pain, allowing him to get through his chronic pain and stand up to Batman in one on one combat.

Catwoman will be a Marxist.

 * Jossed by her whispering in Bruce's ear that, "You don't owe these people anything." If she were a Marxist she wouldn't tell the richest man in the country, if not the world, that he didn't owe anything to anyone.
 * We don't know the context of the line, and Batman is a such an unusual man and so incredibly self-sacrificing that she may simply be making an exception. For all we know, she could be talking about figures of power and authority who want Batman back once Bane goes on a rampage.

Commissioner Loeb was just as corrupt as he was in the comics.
The real reason he set up a task force for Batman was that the latter was hitting the mob. In Dark Knight, the reason he wasn't taking the Joker's threat seriously is because he thought the mob had his back.