Real Name: Harvey
Dent Two-Face
Real Name: Harvey
Dent
Identity/Class: Human, physically and psychologically scarred
Occupation: Criminally insane;
formerly district attorney
Affiliations: Rachel Dawes
Known Relatives: Harry Dent (father, deceased), Lucy Dent (mother, deceased)
Aliases: Batman, Gotham's White Knight, Harvey Two-Face
Base of Operations: Gotham City
First Appearance: The Dark Knight (Warner Bros.
Pictures, 2008)
Powers/Abilities: Harvey Dent is an exceptionally competent prosecuting lawyer, but following a severe physical and emotional trauma he suffered a psychotic break and is now suffers from having two conflicting sides to his personality, one decent and merciful and the other brutal and merciless, driven to acts of extreme violence. He suffers from an extreme compulsion to choose which side to follow at any given moment through the toss of a two-headed coin, one side of which is scarred like his own face. When the unmarked side comes up, Dent follows his better nature's preferences; when the scarred side wins, he follows his murderous instincts.
Though not superhuman, Dent is an extremely fit man with good reflexes, excellent stamina, and a exceptionally high pain threshold. He is competent both in hand-to-hand combat and with pistols.
Height:
5'11"
Weight: 165 lbs.
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Blond
History: Gotham was a city long at the mercy of rampant criminals aided by widespread corruption among the law-enforcers of the city, from the police through the judiciary. However, in the late 2000s that began to change with the advent of the vigilante dubbed the Batman, and the rising to prominence of two stalwartly honest men determined to clean out corruption: Detective James Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, with the press dubbing Dent "Gotham's White Knight," while the corrupt and criminal gifting him the less flattering sobriquet "Harvey Two-Face," possibly at least in part because he would sometimes offer those he was prosecuting two options for how he would deal with them, lenient or harshly, only to decide the outcome by tossing a two-headed coin, thus ensuring only one offer was ever on the table. Despite Dent dating and then becoming engaged to Rachel Dawes, the woman that Batman secretly loved, the three men became staunch allies in their joint bid to root out Gotham's underworld. Unfortunately, at the same time a new anarchic threat was arising there, in the form of the insane Joker, a man whose only goal was to unleash the chaos he believed lay under the surface of society and every person in it. When he threatened to murder innocents unless Batman publicly unmasked, Dent falsely announced that he was the vigilante, believing that Batman was too much a force of good to destroy by revealing his secret identity, and was thus arrested for Batman's vigilante activities. Correctly surmising that Joker would target the police convoy taking Dent to prison, Gordon and the real Batman used this to lure out and capture Joker, with Batman's public intervention also proving that Dent was not the crimefighter.
Joker subsequently escaped from custody and abducted both Dent and Dawes, placing each in different locations surrounded by timer-detonated explosives, then taunted Batman with their locations having only left his foe time to save one. Batman chose Dawes, a choice Dent himself agreed with, but the ever-manipulative Joker lied about which hostage was at what site, and as a result Batman found himself rescuing Dent instead. With moments to spare and Dent angrily protesting that Batman should be rescuing Rachel, not him, the vigilante got Dent out of the building before the bomb went off, but Dent had partially soaked himself in gasoline while earlier trying to break free of his bonds, and this now ignited, badly burning one side of his face. Waking in hospital Dent learned that Rachel was dead, and his mind cracked. With the Joker's bombs having left Dent's two-headed coin marked on one side, Dent embraced the derogatory nickname Two-Face, and his insanity only grew when the Joker visited the hospital to check out his handiwork; confronting Dent, Joker espoused his belief that chaos was fairer, and offered to let Dent kill him, but Dent chose to let the coin decide and it came up on the clean side. Two-Face then set out to confront everyone else he held responsible for Rachel's demise, both criminals and corrupt cops. When he kidnapped Gordon's son and threatened to kill him, desiring to make Gordon feel the same loss he was feeling, Batman intervened, and to save the boy tackled Two-Face off a building to fall to his death.
Believing the city still needed heroes and that Dent's actions as Two-Face would jeopardize all the cases he had won, Batman decided to take the blame for the murders Two-Face had committed so that Dent's name and legacy would remain untarnished.
Comments: Created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, adapted for The Dark Knight movie by David S. Goyer and Christpher Nolan, portrayed by Aaron Eckhart.
Appearance checklist (not including reprints):
CLARIFICATIONS:
Two-Face should not be confused with:
First Posted: Circa 20/06/2011
Last updated: 06/10/2022
Any Additions/Corrections? Please let me know.
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