NOTE: This article obviously contains SPOILERS. Proceed at your own risk!
Official Summary
After Harvey Dent’s accident, both Batman and Bruce Wayne must work to stop the D.A. on his quest for the wrong sort of justice.
My Summary
After becoming physically disfigured in an attack ordered by Rupert Thorne, Batman must stop an increasingly-unhinged Harvey Dent from taking revenge against the crime boss and his men.
Voice Cast
Hamish Linklater as Batman / Bruce Wayne
Diedrich Bader as Harvey Dent / Two-Face
Michelle C. Bonilla as Detective Renee Montoya
John DiMaggio as Detective Harvey Bullock, Jerry, Mugger
Eric Morgan Stuart as Commissioner James Gordon
Jason Watkins as Alfred Pennyworth
Gary Anthony Williams as Detective Arnold Flass, Old Man
Kimberly Brooks as Waitress
Josh Keaton as Matthew
Vincent Piazza as Tony Zito
William Salyers as Mayor Jessop, Emil Potter
Kari Wahlgren as Maggie Cain
Cedric Yarbrough as Rupert Thorne
Commentary
I don’t think we—as comic book and animation fans—really appreciate how the creative team of Batman: The Animated Series (BTAS) transformed the character of Two-Face, both in terms of origin and design. One of the major Batman villains to not appear on the ‘60s television series (according to TV Guide, actor Clint Eastwood almost played the villain, but the show was cancelled before it could happen; “Clint”), he was also never adapted for any of the previous animated Batman shows, which means that his appearances were limited to the comics for decades (and these appearances were, according to YouTube channel Serum Lake, a hodgepodge of sloppy writing and continuity). So, considering what they brought to the table, it’s somehow fitting that Producer Bruce Timm got two shots at adapting him (them?) for the small screen.
To be fair, the credit for Two-Face’s BTAS incarnation largely goes to producer and writer Alan Burnett, who pitched the original story. Described by Burnett as “the first guy I wanted to work on” (qtd. in Jankiewicz), the Two-Face origin story got fast-tracked due to a shortage of scripts at the beginning, as recounted by Director Dan Riba in a September 2017 Back Issue! interview:
At that point, Bruce [Timm] and Eric [Radomski] wanted to hold off on Two-Face as long as possible to establish Harvey Dent as a friend of Bruce Wayne, and—fortunately and unfortunately—Alan came up with such a wonderful story. They went, “Oh, my gosh, we love this! We have to do it.” That idea of spending a season with Harvey Dent as a character before he was Two-Face kind of went out the window, because we had the story. They were desperate for stories that worked and were the real Batman. So, they went, “This is it. This, we have to do this.” So, the casualty was, we lost that aspect. But they were kind of desperate for a really good storyline that worked. (qtd. in Trumbull)
As a consequence, Harvey Dent only appeared in two BTAS episodes prior to the two-part episode “Two-Face”: “On Leather Wings” (the mandatory character cameo in the pilot) and “Pretty Poison” (which established his friendship with Bruce Wayne). Of course, even with a good storyline, Bruce Timm revealed in a 1993 interview with Wild Cartoon Kingdom that Broadcast Standards & Practices had some issues with the episode:
We had problems with “Two-Face” initially because we began the show with how Harvey Dent was like before he became Two-Face, when he was a schizophrenic. [Broadcast Standards & Practice] said, “Okay, since you’re playing him as a schizophrenic, we just want to make sure it’s all scientifically accurate.” So, we had to call in a psychiatrist to read the script and vouch for the fact that this is actually the way people who have schizophrenic problems really are so that we weren’t misleading children about mental illness. (qtd. in Alvarez and Gore)
(With apologies to Bruce Timm, it is worth mentioning that schizophrenia is a different medical condition than dissociative identity disorder [which was previously called multiple personality disorder until 1994], though they do possess overlapping symptoms.)
In the aforementioned September 2017 Back Issue! interview, Burnett discussed his thought process in plotting the episode and scripting his take on the character:
I always thought that Harvey should have already been a split personality before the accident, and whatever control he has over his psychosis ended when his face became disfigured. I also went to a child psychiatrist to ask about how multiple personalities were created. I thought there was some kind of sexually abusive element, which I wanted to avoid, and learned that there’s a variety of non-sexual reasons people develop these personalities.
I always thought of Harvey as a rich, goody-good kid who felt guilty about a minor offense, and the guilt kept building within him like water from a dripping faucet. Out of this, a course and angry side of him emerged, which became the monster. The monster would castigate the good side. (qtd. in Trumbull)
As a result, the BTAS episode “Two-Face” began with Harvey Dent attempting to deal with his darker side—called Big Bad Harv—through therapy, only to have any hope of recovery destroyed because of crime boss Rupert Thorne (who attempted to blackmail him over the information) and a chemical explosion. And while it is unknown exactly what happened to his mental state in that incendiary moment, I’ve long suspected that Harvey Dent and Big Bad Harv vied for control of their psyche with neither gaining an advantage until, to compensate, his mind created a third personality—the one we recognize as Two-Face. It then became Two-Face’s job to arbitrate between the two forceful personalities (or alters), and he does so through the flip of a coin so as to remain impartial. Finally, in a moment of chance, Two-Face decided to turn to crime as a means to get revenge against Thorne, only to find that the lifestyle was a natural fit.
Of course, even the most well-executed characterization can fall apart in animation if it lacks strong visual and audible components and, fortunately, BTAS was more than up to the task. Whereas the Batman comics of old settled on orange-and-purple bifurcated suits and green or purple disfigurement—which, in regard to Tommy Lee Jones’ makeup in 1995’s Batman Forever, Entertainment Weekly film critic Owen Gleiberman referred to it as resembling “exploding eggplant”—BTAS went with a suit colored in a sharp contrast of black-and-white accompanied by a blue deformity that, for the first time, appears to actually cover the entirety of the left half of his body (no doubt due to the chemicals present during the explosion). For the longest time, I could not figure out exactly why the creative team went with blue (aside from toy marketability), but the aforementioned Serum Lake discussed in a recent video how the color resembles a “film negative from the days of analogue photography” (Mears). For comparison, here’s an image of BTAS Two-Face and a pic of actor David Corenswet where the right half of the image is inverted in Photoshop:
As for the voice, Voice Director Andrea Romano cast the late actor Richard Moll, the man best known for playing the lovable giant Bull on Night Court, but he quickly proved himself to be a terrifying force in the recording booth … after some experimentation:
I’ve done a lot of voiceover auditions, and it’s tough to get in. So, it was a delight to get something like Batman. When I first came in, they wanted more of a Marlon Brando kind of thing [BRANDO GODFATHER VOICE], so I did that. Then, when I started to read on the first episode, I was trying that, but it wasn’t quite happening. So, I went into the voice I used for the sorcerer Xusia in The Sword and the Sorcerer [BREATHY, GROWLING VOICE]: “Why do you have need of me? You are a king with an army.” The producers said, “That’s it. Stick with that,” so that became the voice. (qtd. in Counts)
The resulting character redesign became as iconic as the reboots made to Clayface, Mister Freeze, and Poison Ivy. As a result, multiple Batman artists have modeled elements of the BTAS visual into their adaptations, as have the creative teams of Justice League Action (2016-2018), Harley Quinn (2019-current), and the 2018 direct-to-video Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay. In the end, the BTAS creative team succeeded in Two-Face’s first adaptation, which meant that, for Caped Crusader, Timm needed an equally strong take for his second pass.
As discussed previously, Bruce Timm was motivated by both second chances and the prospect of reimagining the series free from the confines of children’s programming. In October 2021, he laid out his manifesto for Caped Crusader at DC FanDome:
One of my elevator pitch versions of this show is that it’s more Batman: The Animated Series than Batman: The Animated Series. […] There were certain limitations on what we can do in terms of adult content, in terms of violence and adult themes. My idea is basically to say, “Okay, it’s 1990 again, I get to do what I want to do this time, and I got J.J. [Abrams] and Matt [Reeves] backing me up.”
[…] What this does is that it gives us the opportunity to say, “Okay, well, the versions of Joker and Catwoman and Penguin—those versions that we did on Batman: The Animated Series were really great and iconic, but there’s lots of different ways we can take those characters that we hope will be just as iconic and just as powerful.”
With the freedom to remake the wheel and a new generation of creative talent behind him, Timm set out to build a Two-Face that was different from the one he built before. The first, most obvious change is that, this time, Timm was able to spend “a season with Harvey Dent as a character before he was Two-Face,” as was his original intention in BTAS (qtd. in Trumbull). Whereas Harvey Dent only appeared in two episodes prior to the transformation, here he is a recurring member of the supporting cast in multiple episodes, only appearing as “Two-Face” (though the name is never used in the series) in the final two episodes of Season One.
Also, in contrast to the previous series, where Harvey Dent is a moral, decent man who succumbed to his demons, this incarnation was pretty comfortable with his demons from the get-go. While this D.A. may not be in bed initially with Rupert Thorne like Detectives Flass and Bullock are, he is crooked in his own way, kissing up to the city’s wealthy elite by going for harsh sentences for accused proletariat while, at the same time, taking a lighter hand with Gotham’s aristocracy (getting Bruce Wayne counseling for attacking a reporter in “Kiss of the Catwoman,” rather than jail or fines; getting former rich girl Selina Kyle off for her first Catwoman offense in the aforementioned episode). Of course, this “tough on crime” civil servant had asperations for becoming mayor in the upcoming election, but he found he had difficulty appealing to the working class, which cost him support and donations. Finally, on the verge of losing the election, he accepted help from Thorne, which cost him dearly when—in a moment of hubris—he double-crossed his silent partner to do the right thing, resulting in becoming victim to an acid attack by Thorne henchman Tony Zito. However, in a twist unique to the series, here Dent’s scarred side is on his right while his pristine side is on his left, thus playing up the reversal from his BTAS counterpart. In an August 5, 2024 post on Anime Superhero, Timm discussed the new Harvey Dent:
My daughter and I were talking one day, and she happened to mention an article she’d read about disfigured people almost always being presented as freaks and monsters in movies and T.V. shows and how unfair and cruel that is to real people who have facial scarring or other disfigurements. It gave me the idea to flip Harvey’s two halves.
Basically, he’s spent most of his life as a handsome, charming, entitled schnook. After being disfigured, for the first time, he knows what it’s like to be feared and loathed by people for something that’s beyond his control, and [he] gains a level of empathy for others that he never had before. In a weird way, his facial scarring doesn’t make him a monster, it actually makes him a better person—well, half of him, anyway.
[…] Trying to keep the camera on the “correct” side throughout the two-parter was a real struggle, and we weren’t 100% successful, but I think we did it in enough “key” scenes that the idea does come across.
We even foreshadowed the concept in “…And Be a Villain.” When Harvey says to Montoya, “You’ll want to be on my good side, Renee,” notice which side of his face he turns toward her. (b.t.)
He continued in another Anime Superhero post later that day:
The way we ended up playing it is that the shock of having been disfigured by Zito’s acid caused a psychotic break. If Harvey had a “good side” and a “bad side” before (as most people do, to various degrees), the acid incident split them and exaggerated them—his “good side” became much kinder and empathetic, and his “bad side” became much more nasty, rage-filled, and prone to violence. But each separate personality could take over at any moment, without warning, sometimes in mid-sentence (we thought that would be a fun twist on the visual “Jekyll and Hyde” dichotomy, not requiring a trigger to set off his “bad side,” like Norman Bates or the Hulk).
Once his “bad side” got really revved up, it was hard for his “good side” to keep him under control. Working himself up into a murderous rage doesn’t seem completely far-fetched to me, under those circumstances. But [your mileage may vary]. (b.t.)
Of course, a character such as this requires a strong voice actor to convey this complexity, which Caped Crusader fortunately had in returning Batman actor Diedrich Bader, who formerly played a more Silver Age Dark Knight in Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2008-2011). Throughout Season One, Bader successfully portrayed Dent as a smarmy, networking politician—picture his take on Booster Gold from Justice League Action, but with a lighter touch—while, at the same time, showing moments of genuine anguish as he compromised his principles to achieve his goals. And later, when he becomes disfigured, his Dent develops two voices—a “good side” that is soft-spoken, remorseful, and apprehensive; and a “bad side” that sounds much like Dent before the attack, but with the added element of sounding courser, more guttural, when angry. To facilitate this dichotomy, the storyboarding took great pains to focus on the appropriate side of his face when one side is speaking.
(One gets a sense that this Harvey Dent was in the early stages of developing his dissociative identity disorder. Had he survived the end of the season, his warring personalities may have become more distinctive and representative of the classic Two-Face if he resurfaced in future episodes.)
Bader’s performance was embraced by Producer James Tucker, who was also producer of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and he singled it out as a highlight in a June 2024 interview with Vanity Fair, saying how “[w]hen we started the show, I’m like, ‘Well, he’s my Batman.’ […] At first, it was hard for me and, by the end, now I hear him, and I immediately think of Harvey. I don’t think of my Batman anymore. He did some nuanced things with Harvey” (qtd. in Breznican).
As for his physical appearance, Harvey Dent’s disfigurement at the hands of Tony Zito in Caped Crusader is extremely understated compared to previous incarnations, and this time the damage is kept solely to his head. There’s no charred skin, no exposed muscle tissue, and no extreme discoloration (though his naturally black hair is now a dingy, unkempt gray on the “damaged” side). With his shadowed pockmarks and jagged teeth, his scarred side—at worst—looks like the early stages of rot one might find with a horror movie zombie. Rounding the look out, this Dent merely wears his regular street clothes; he has no flashy suit for a supervillain costume. Of all the Two-Faces, this one is the least likely to sell action figures, which—to Bruce Timm—was precisely the point.
For a comic book villain most notably defined by duality and dichotomy, it is fitting that both of Timm’s Two-Face characters are mirrored opposites of each other. Peering through the looking glass, Caped Crusader’s Harvey Dent would see a noble man turned villainous by tragic circumstance, with the right half of his face heroically pristine, and the left side horrifically deformed, representing the darker personality within. In contrast, the BTAS Two-Face would see a morally compromised man who, for the first time, feels empathy for others, and he suspects that he may deserve the cruel fate foisted upon him. Only here, it is the unblemished, left side that is the bad guy, while the sympathetic, remorseful right side bears the scars of their transgressions.
Stray Observations
The title of the episode, “The Killer Inside Me,” is was inspired by the 1952 crime novel by author Jim Thompson.
Harvey Dent’s dream of his election victory is a reference to Orson Welles’ hugely influential 1941 film Citizen Kane, specifically the scene featuring Charles Foster Kane’s campaign speech at Madison Square Garden.
In “Night Ride,” it was implied that Harvey Dent came from money, as Mayor Jessop accused him of trying to buy the election just like “Mommy and Daddy taught him to do.” And he does appear to come from means, as he has enough money to bribe Maggie Cain to give up her boyfriend, Tony Vito, so she could leave town. However, “The Killer Inside Me” begins by showing off Dent’s rather meager apartment. Perhaps he deliberately chooses to live below his means in an attempt to present himself as an “average, working citizen” to appeal to voters.
During Commissioner Gordon’s talk with the detectives, it’s interesting to see Flass and Bullock attempt to answer Gordon’s questions. Presumably, they are aware of Dent’s dealings with Thorne and the nature of the attack, but they can’t say that. On the other hand, they are being truthful when they say Dent “can’t remember” who attacked him, presumably because, in order to finger Thorne, he must admit to taking his money.
How exactly is Dent puking without getting vomit on the bandages covering the right side of his mouth?
Once again, Batman’s inability to read a room or empathize with others becomes a liability. In an attempt to grill Dent for information about the attack, Bruce Wayne drags the extremely depressed and traumatized man out to dinner, which causes him to snap. Even Alfred realized that this was a bad idea. Couldn’t Bruce have just stayed in with Dent and ordered takeout instead?
Unlike classic Two-Face, who is committed to chance and duality, Dent only gives others the illusion of chance. He knows that his trick coin is double-headed when he asks others to call the flip, but others (like the man in the alley or Barbara Gordon in “In Treacherous Waters”) don’t know that.
Look, I understand the need to simplify things, but isn’t calling the dive bar that Dent visits “Bar” a little too on the nose? It doesn’t have to be named like a Simpsons establishment, but something distinctive and non-generic would be add to the sense of verisimilitude in the story. Even a callback to the Stacked Deck from BTAS would have sufficed.
Rupert Thorne’s son, Matthew, looks a lot like a pre-Spider-Man Peter Parker or one of Timm’s early designs for Batman Beyond’s Terry McGinnis (pictured above right).
Some viewers have speculated that mob henchman Tony Zito may have been designed to resemble actor Jonathan Banks, who played secondary villain Zack in the 1984 action / comedy film Beverly Hills Cop.
The scene with Batman on the roof of Harvey Dent’s car is reminiscent of a Two-Face promotional image from BTAS.
Works Cited
Alvarez, Gabriel and Chris Gore. “Batman Reanimated.” Wild Cartoon Kingdom. 1993. 52-65. Print.
Breznican, Anthony. “Meet the New Voices of Batman, Harley Quinn, and Catwoman: Exclusive.” Vanity Fair. Condé Nast. 20 Jun. 2024. Web. 20 Jun. 2024. <https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/batman-caped-crusader-voices>.
b.t. Comment on “’Batman: Caped Crusader’ Season One Talkback (Spoilers).” Anime Superhero. XenForo Ltd. 5 Aug. 2024. <https://animesuperhero.com/forums/threads/batman-caped-crusader-season-one-talkback-spoilers.5799833/post-87961552>. Accessed 13 Sept. 2024.
---. Comment on “’Batman: Caped Crusader’ Season One Talkback (Spoilers).” Anime Superhero. XenForo Ltd. 5 Aug. 2024. <https://animesuperhero.com/forums/threads/batman-caped-crusader-season-one-talkback-spoilers.5799833/post-87961575>. Accessed 13 Sept. 2024.
“Clint Eastwood | Celebrity Biography.” Internet Archive. Internet Archive. 3 May 2016. <https://web.archive.org/web/20160503104646/https://www.tvguide.com/celebrities/clint-eastwood/bio/145220/>. Accessed 5 Jan. 2025.
Counts, Kyle. “Animated Face.” Comics Scene Presents Batman and Other Dark Heroes. 1993. 62. Print.
“DC FanDome 2021.” YouTube. Uploaded by DC. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RADmFACrWWQ>. Accessed 27 Jun. 2024.
Gleiberman, Owen. “Batman Forever.” Entertainment Weekly. Dotdash Meredith. 23 Jun. 1995. <https://ew.com/article/1995/06/23/batman-forever-2/>. Accessed 5 Jan. 2025.
Jankiewicz, Pat. “Animated Knights.” Comics Scene. Oct. 1992. 33-40, 60. Print.
Mears, Luke. “Batman’s Best Villain | Two-Face | Batman the Animated Series.” YouTube. Uploaded by Serum Lake. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jttHFo8hTuI>. Accessed 4 Jan. 2025.
Trumbull, John. “Batman: The Animated Series at 25: An Oral History.” Back Issue! Sept. 2017. 2-22. Print.
Images courtesy of Prime Video, Warner Bros. Discovery, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, DC Comics, and David Corenswet.