ost of the fun of The Dark Knight’s advertising campaign has been watching how gradually information has been doles out to the public. Sure, as with any Hollywood movie, the cast was general knowledge before the cameras started rolling. But once production began the publicity department has been very careful about the information they leak out. In the age of the internet, rabid fans will constantly discuss and debate any upcoming film, particularly one as geek-centric as a Batman movie. Left unchecked, footage will be stolen and stills will be taken from the set without permission. Information will get to the fans. It’s just a matter of how and when.

The people behind The Dark Knight have been conscious about this from the beginning and orchestrated an incredibly precise and organized internet advertising campaign that has been giving out information faster than any fanboy could upload a blurry cell phone camera pic. A full year ago, the first Dark Knight website appeared, giving the world a peak at Heath Ledger’s unique version of the Joker. Since then, the studio has been ladling out information, footage, and photos to fans, who have been hungrily following along like children following a trail of breadcrumbs in the forest. The studio has been very careful about what they’ve shown and played their hands pretty close to their chests. But there was one secret that the fans have known since the beginning: the fact that Two Face will be appearing in the movie.

There was one Dark Knight secret that the fans have known since the beginning: the fact that Two Face will be appearing in the movie.

Aaron Eckhart was announced to star as Harvey Dent very early on in the process. As any decent comic book geek will tell you, Dent is the once upstanding lawyer who was transformed into the scarred, villainous Two-Face. While the studio named Eckhart’s character, they refused to comment on whether or not he would become Two-Face in the movie. Fans assumed that it was inevitable, but the studio wouldn’t budge. They merely sent out more photos of the Joker to make the internet geeks cream their jeans and stop asking pesky questions about anything else. Once Heath Ledger met his untimely demise there was an understandable desire to cut down on the Joker-centric publicity. It was time to drop the Two-Face bomb.

It happened very slowly. Websites produced by Warner Brothers started uploading fake Gotham City Newspapers on the internet discussing Harvey Dent’s war on crime. While director Christopher’s Nolan’s approach to the Batman series has been to infuse it with as much realism as possible, it seemed very unlikely that Nolan would ever make a Batman movie entirely about a righteous young lawyer setting things right in the courts of a scary city. No, it had to be Two-Face set up. Then this trailer was released offering the faintest glimpses of The Dark Knight’s secondary villain: