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Christian Bale spent two movies complaining that the Batsuit's neck piece didn't let him turn his head, so for this one the costume team finally built in an articulated neck. There's even a little in-joke moment where Lucius Fox tells Bruce the new suit lets him 'turn his head' - a wink at exactly that gripe.
Look closely during the hospital scene with Harvey Dent and you'll notice the Joker isn't wearing his gloves for once, and there's makeup smeared on his fingers. Heath Ledger came up with that detail himself, on the idea that the Joker applies his own face paint and would naturally get some on his hands.
Michael Caine has said in later interviews that the whole idea of Alfred having a military past came from him, not Nolan's script. That backstory is what gives weight to the 'some men just want to watch the world burn' speech he gives Bruce partway through the film.
The fictional Gotham license plates dotted around the film were deliberately designed to look almost identical to real Illinois plates. It meant that whenever an actual Illinois-plated car slipped into a shot by accident, nobody in the audience would notice the difference.
Nolan had wanted to shoot on IMAX cameras for years, and this was his chance - The Dark Knight became the first non-documentary feature ever filmed with them. Only a handful of sequences got the full IMAX treatment, but it set the template for how he'd shoot every Batman film after.
This was the very first comic book movie to cross a billion dollars worldwide, a milestone that feels almost routine for superhero films now but was completely unheard of back in 2008.
That bus smashing backwards into the bank during the opening heist looked simple on screen but was a nightmare to actually pull off. The crew had to strip the bus down, reassemble it inside a disused post office behind a hidden false wall, then fire it backwards with an air cannon.
While the crew filmed the chase sequence along Lake Street, actual Chicago residents started phoning the police, convinced they were watching a genuine pursuit involving a mystery dark vehicle tearing through the streets.
Wayne Baker, the technician and consultant who helped run the IMAX cameras on set, sneaks in a brief cameo of his own. It's the only shot in the entire film that's a genuine close-up captured in the IMAX format, a nice bit of behind-the-scenes recognition tucked into the finished movie.
Before Heath Ledger locked the role down in mid-2006, the studio floated names like Paul Bettany, Adrien Brody, Steve Carell and even Robin Williams for the Joker. It's strange to picture now given how completely Ledger's version has come to define the character.
