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Two-Face embodies both the gangster and super-villain sides of Batman's expansive rogues gallery.
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00:00Let's talk about Two-Face. Now, Two-Face was created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger and appeared
00:05in Detective Comics number 66 in 1942. And there's a lot that we as fans of comics know about
00:12Two-Face. He is Harvey Dent. He's unable to make any major decisions without flipping a two-headed
00:17coin that is scarred on one side. The left side of his face is horribly scarred by acid,
00:22and that he's a very charismatic and excellent public speaker. Plus, he's pretty handy with a
00:27pair of jewel pistols that he always carries. So these are the things that we know about Two-Face.
00:31But what about 10 things that we don't? Well, that's why I'm here today. As I'm Jules,
00:35this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 things that every DC comic fan forgets about Two-Face.
00:4210. Harvey Wasn't the Only Two-Face While Harvey Dent is the one true Two-Face,
00:48there have been a number of people who have portrayed the villain over the years. The
00:52first imposter was Two-Face's own Butler Wilkins, who used makeup to become Two-Face,
00:57and make it appear that the recently recovered Dent had relapsed and destroyed his own face once more.
01:02The second, and one of the most tragic, was actor Paul Sloan. Sloan was filming a documentary on
01:07Harvey Dent, and a jealous prop master had replaced fake acid with real acid, leading Sloan to believe
01:12that he was Two-Face, and then went on a crime spree. He's healed by Batman, and then re-disfigured
01:17by Two-Face himself in the hopes that he would continue to commit crimes to confuse Batman.
01:22George Blake is the third Two-Face imposter and the second to use makeup. He used makeup on the
01:27opposite side of his face to Dent, so it was obvious to Batman that he was a fraud. And on
01:32the villain-run Planet Earth-3, a heroic character named Three-Face has three distinct personalities
01:37and differentiates them with makeup. And she is also the mother of sometimes titan, Jula Dent.
01:439. The Character Is Based On A Horror Classic
01:46It should come as no surprise that Batman co-creator Bob Kane drew inspiration from the
01:50story Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But it was from the 1931 film and not the original 1886 novel
01:57The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from which the writer took his inspiration.
02:02In the film, Dr. Henry Jekyll believes that every man has the capacity for both good and evil inside
02:08them, and experiments with a mixture of drugs that unleashes his sadistic, a moral alter-ego,
02:13Edward Hyde. Hyde abuses and then eventually murders a music hall singer that Jekyll had
02:18saved from a fight, and assaults Jekyll's fiancé and murders her father. Hyde was eventually killed
02:23and transforms back into Jekyll. Kane also drew a great deal of inspiration from the pulp character
02:29The Black Bat. Not only is he a bat-themed character that fights crime, similar to what
02:33would become The Batman, but The Black Bat's alter-ego is Anthony Quinn, a district attorney who is blinded
02:39and disfigured after acid is thrown at him by a criminal.
02:438. He has a complicated relationship with a GCPD detective
02:47Two-Face found love in the most unlikely of places, but it was a love that was entirely one-sided.
02:53During the No Man's Land saga, where Gotham City was ravaged by a devastating earthquake and
02:58temporarily cut off from the rest of the nation by government mandate, Gotham City police detective
03:02Renee Montoya and Two-Face met. Renee appealed to the Harvey side of his persona and was very kind
03:08to him. At one point, Dent sent flowers to Renee, and she came to visit him in Arkham Asylum. But Dent
03:14mistook this kindness for affection and began to fall in love with the detective. Montoya rejected
03:20Harvey, and the unrequited love turned into an obsession. Two-Face framed the detective for murder,
03:25outed her as a lesbian, and orchestrated a prison break to make her a fugitive. Dent did all of this
03:31to leave Renee with nothing so that she would have to come running back to him, and unsurprisingly,
03:36it didn't happen. Even after all of the hell that Two-Face put her through, Renee still saved Harvey's
03:41life. Now the faceless hero The Question, Renee stops Two-Face from killing himself by convincing
03:47the Harvey Dent side of the persona that he still is a good man.
03:507. He was left out of the 1960s Batman series
03:54Two-Face is one of the few top-tier villains of Batman's rogues gallery that wasn't featured
03:59in the iconic 1960s Batman television series. This was probably because Harvey Dent's face
04:04was deemed too frightening for the kid-friendly audience, but that doesn't mean that the character
04:08was completely forgotten. Prolific science fiction writer Harlan Ellison wrote a Two-Face story for
04:14the series in 1968, and then young actor Clint Eastwood had been cast to play, but the series
04:20had been cancelled by that time. The Batman 66 The Lost Episode two-issue comic was produced
04:25based on Ellison's script and had a Two-Face that fits the aesthetic of the series.
04:30Lesser-known Batman villain False Face was a mask-wearing surrogate for Two-Face in the series
04:34and only appeared in two episodes, True or False Face and Holy Rat Race. False Face was later revealed
04:41to be the also-emitted Clay Face in the Batman 66 comic book. False Face has appeared five times in
04:46the Batman 66 comic book to date.
04:486. Batman's Giant Penny Originally Had Nothing to Do With Two-Face
04:52The giant penny in the Batcave is one of the three most iconic trophies that Batman owns,
04:58along with a giant Joker card and, of course, the mechanical Tyrannosaurus Rex. The penny weighs
05:02in at 216 pounds and resembles a copper penny with the year 1947 on it, obviously at gigantic size.
05:09The interesting thing is, though, is that the penny has been wrongly attributed to Two-Face when only
05:14a cartoon and recent comics have linked the coin to the character. The penny was originally attributed
05:19to a low-level villain named Joe Coyne, the penny plunderer. During a robbery, he found the
05:24register filled only with pennies, and he saw this failure as a sign to base all of his crimes on the
05:29pursuit of the near-worthless tender. The giant penny and a valuable one-cent stamp were the valuables
05:35that Coyne was after when he was easily bested by Batman. Later, Lucius Fox, the CFO of Wayne
05:40Enterprises, used the penny to thwart the Riddler when it was being used as a giant art installation.
05:45It was Batman the Animated Series episode Almost Got Him that saw Batman strapped to the penny and
05:50flipped into the air, about to be crushed. Single issues of various comics put Coyne,
05:55Two-Face, and the penny together into one story.
05:585. Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent Knew Each Other as Children
06:01The new 52 reboot made further connections to the lives of Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent,
06:06connecting their lives in places that had never been connected before. For years,
06:10Harvey's politician father would get drunk and beat him, and it would sometimes give Harvey the
06:14chance to get out of the beating by the flip of a coin toss. Harvey eventually had enough. He tied up
06:19his father and left him in their house for several days until the police discovered him. The younger
06:24Dent was captured and sent to Arkham Boys' Rehabilitation Home, and there he met a young
06:28and rather serious Bruce Wayne who was still traumatized by the recent murders of his father
06:32and mother, and the two became friends. The young boys entered into a pact. Bruce agreed to kill Dent's
06:39abusive father, and Harvey would agree to kill the Wayne's murderer, who was low-level thug Joe Chill.
06:44However, Harvey decided to give his father a second chance when the man expressed remorse and
06:48reminted his coin to have two heads, as a gesture that he would never beat Harvey again. Bruce thought
06:54that this was naive, but left Dent to begin his life anew as he set his own into motion.
06:594. Duality and the number two
07:02Although it was not originally part of the character, the concept of duality and variations on the number
07:07two soon became an important part of the gimmick behind Two-Face. While not as belabored as heavily
07:12as bird crimes for the Penguin or Riddler's Riddles, it was not uncommon to see doubles somewhere in the
07:17vicinity of Two-Face. Because of his physical beauty and charismatic nature, Dent earned the nickname
07:22of Apollo, the Greek god of the sun, music, and many more things. After his transformation into Two-Face,
07:28Dent has identified more with the god Janus. Janus is the god of duality, beginnings, endings,
07:34transitions, time, and passages. The number two became a key element in Two-Face's life as well.
07:39He would hire identical twin henchmen and commit crimes on a day with two in the date,
07:43or precisely at 2.22 in the day. Two-Face might commit crimes in buildings with two in the address,
07:48rob two of something, or two establishments at once, rob it twice, or some other variation on the
07:53theme. And remember that every aspect of these crimes was determined by a flip of his coin.
07:583. The coin has its own history
08:00As much as the near-perfectly divided face of the man himself, Two-Face's coin is an icon image that
08:06holds a revered, if somewhat morbid, place in comics history. Two-Face uses the coin to make
08:11most, if not all, of his major decisions. Many times, Two-Face's own elaborate plans have become
08:16undone thanks to the good side of the coin turning up. In early continuity, the coin was the good luck
08:21charm of a crime boss, Sal Maroney. After Maroney threw acid at Dent and created Two-Face,
08:26Dent scarred up one of the sides of the two-headed coin, so that there was now a perfect or good side
08:31and a marred or evil side, just as he saw himself. Later, the coin was said to be owned by his abusive
08:37father, and he would flip it to see if young Harvey could skip the beating for the night.
08:40The younger Dent rarely won. When Harvey's dad showed remorse, he showed him a two-sided coin
08:45with the same image on both sides, which was a coin that he took and scarred up when he became Two-Face.
08:512. Origin Changes
08:53So the origin of Two-Face has remained mostly unchanged throughout the various comic ages,
08:58but nothing remains the same forever. In the very beginning, Two-Face was named Harvey Kent.
09:02The last name was changed to Dent to avoid confusion with Superman's alter-ego Clark Kent.
09:07This version was later retconned to have been cured, and was now the friend of the retired Bruce
09:11Wayne on Earth-2. The most well-known origin of Two-Face saw crusading and attractive district
09:16attorney Harvey Dent hammering mob boss Sal Maroney on the witness stand before the mobster threw acid
09:21at Dent's face, with only Batman deflecting half of the shot, so it only struck his left side.
09:26This drove Dent insane, and he took Maroney's lucky two-headed coin, scarring one side as his own,
09:31and used it to make his decisions between doing good or evil. In the New 52 continuity, Dent is the
09:37lawyer for the McKillen crime family. Twin sisters Sharon and Erin place a contract on Commissioner
09:41Gordon, and this prompts Bruce Wayne to fund Dent's run for district attorney.
09:45The sisters are prosecuted and sentenced to life in prison. Shannon kills herself,
09:50and Erin escapes as her corpse. Erin breaks into Dent's house, kills his wife,
09:54and then pours acid on his face, creating Two-Face.
09:581. Two-Face suffers from real-world mental disorders
10:02While the concepts behind Two-Face are placed firmly in the pages of comic books, many of the
10:06issues that torture the mind of Harvey Dent are all too real. Dent grew up with an alcoholic,
10:12abusive father who would flip a coin to give the boy a chance to skip a beating,
10:15which he rarely won, and this caused Dent to grow up with severe paranoia and a lot of unresolved
10:20anger issues. When Dent was scarred, he had a full psychotic breakdown and developed
10:24disassociative identity disorder. This condition manifests when two or more distinctive personalities
10:30exist in one person. The disorder usually accompanies memory gaps between the times that
10:34the individual personalities are in control, and the foundation of the disorder in Dent can be traced
10:39back directly to his childhood abuse. Two-Face is Dent's alter ego, or second distinct personality
10:45that seems to share at least partial, if not equal space in Dent's psyche. The split is so complete
10:51that Dent and Two-Face have occasionally been seen having arguments with themselves, or himself.
10:56Only the coin seems to keep a balance between the brilliant and noble Dent and the evil and
11:01utterly deranged Two-Face.
11:02And there we go my friends, those were 10 things that every DC Comics fan forgets about Two-Face.
11:07I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in the
11:10comments section below. As always I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Twitter
11:14at RetroJWithAZero, or you can swing by Live and Let's Dice where I do all of my Warhammer
11:19battle reports and streaming outside of work, and it'd be great to see you over there.
11:23As always I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon.
11:27Bye.
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