The Dark Knight Caused 911 Calls After Citizens Thought They'd Witnessed A Real Police Chase

Directed by Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight hit cinemas in 2008, and instantly took the world by storm! Its success was largely down to Heath Ledger’s entrancing performance as the Joker, which posthumously won him the Oscar for best actor in a supporting role.

Here are 8 awesome facts about the film…

1) Chicago Police Department got a lot of calls about the Batmobile

The car chase in the film, where police cars are pursuing the Batmobile, was actually filmed down Lake Street in Chicago. The Police Department received numerous calls from worried residents, stating that the police were involved in a chase with a mysterious black vehicle.

2) Two-Face’s disfigurement was added using CGI for a reason

Whilst Two-Face’s injuries could have been convincingly added using prosthetics, Christopher Nolan and his team agreed that the best way to achieve the desired look was through using CGI. This is because Two-Face had half his face burnt away, and any prosthetics would only pad out and add to Aaron Eckhart’s face, instead of taking away from it.

3) A huge commercial success

Released the same year as Iron Man, the MCU hadn’t really gotten going by this point. Therefore, The Dark Knight was the first comic book movie in history to hit the $1 billion mark in the worldwide box office – an incredible achievement.

4) A $500,000 IMAX camera was destroyed filming The Dark Knight

Back when the film was being made, only four IMAX cameras existed in the entire world. During the scene with the S.W.A.T. trucks, one of these four IMAX cameras was destroyed. It cost a whopping $500,000, and put a big dent in the film’s budget.

5) Sid Vicious

When he was developing the character and getting into the mind of the Joker, Heath Ledger isolated himself in a motel room for six weeks whilst he worked on his voice. One of the inspirations for the look of the character was Sid Vicious, from the Sex Pistols.

6) Bruce Wayne’s Lamborghini has a secret meaning

In The Dark Knight, we see Bruce Wayne speeding through the streets in a very flashy black Lamborghini Murcielago. But if you’re not hot on your Spanish, you might not realise that murcielago means ‘bat.’ Bruce Wayne is dropping a little hint to his identity for all of Gotham to see!

7) Rachel is a relation of Dick Grayson

In the script, Rachel mentions that she’s related to the Grayson family, and she also mentions Dick by name. Christopher Nolan cut it from the final film, though, as he didn’t want to get fans hopes up that Robin would appear in a later movie.

8) A vibrating cake made a news station evacuate

As part of the promotions for the movie, a website related to The Dark Knight mailed out cakes to various news stations, supposedly sent from the Joker. The cakes had wires poking out of them, and mobile phones inside to make them vibrate. The PR stunt went wrong when a station called the police and the building got evacuated whilst a bomb squad could investigate.

There you have it – 8 amazing pieces of The Dark Knight Trivia.