Why does the Joker keep licking his lips? Is it just a tick he has?

Is the Joker supposed to have a high tolerance for pain/injury or something? Some examples: 1)Batman slams his head down hard on a table, violently punches his fingers, slams his head/face into the glass, and then punches him in the face during the interrogation scene, and the Joker simply laughs it off, and doesn't seem to have any broken fingers nor a concussion. 2) When Batman causes the truck to flip over, the Joker walks away without any visible injuries and although he stumbles and falls once, he seems to be perfectly fine. 3) Batman slices him in the face with his zipline, throws him off the building and then yanks him up. Again, no injury (at least a broken ankle?). Does the Joker simply not care about feeling pain, or perhaps even enjoys it due to his insanity? Do the comics ever touch upon this? Because in "The Dark Knight" he's able to withstand some serious physical punishment, the extent of which not many people would be able to.

Why does Maroni know where the Joker will be "this afternoon"? He tells Gordon in the hospital as Gordon visits Dent. And why comes the Chechen visit the Joker in the warehouse? From who does HE know where the Joker is? Did the Joker tell them where he keeps the money? And if he did so: why did he tell them where it was if he just wants to burn it?

Did Harvey Dent die? I've heard theories that he did die, but I've heard that he didn't die but they told everyone that he did because they didn't want people to know that he became a villain. I was just wondering which one is true.

In the scene where Batman makes the semi flip over, and the Joker stumbles out of the wreckage, what kind of gun is he using?

This has been killing me since I saw the movie in theaters: in the final fight between Joker and Batman, Batman gets caught up in some netting in the room they're fighting in, and as Joker moves in he says, "All the old familiar places" as he begins attacking Batman. What does that mean? The only explanation I can think of is that it might be an allusion to Tim Burton's Batman in which Joker and Batman fight at the top of a building.

In the scene where Batman shows Lucius his giant sonar thing, why is he talking in his big scary voice? Lucius knows who he is, so why does he bother disguising his voice? [It's habit, and a sensible one at that. When he's in the mask, when he's being Batman, he uses the voice, even if the person he's with knows who he is. If he drops back to his normal voice with some people, it sets the precedent for using it while wearing the cowl, which means that he's more likely to slip up and use it around people who don't know, potentially revealing his true identity. If he sticks rigidly to using the voice when kitted up as Batman, regardless of situation, it minimises that possibility.]

Quite at the end of the movie, as Gordon and his men are on top of the building opposite the Prewitt building, Batman talks to him and tells him to wait a few minutes. Then Gordon says that he won't wait because the people on the ferries will blow each other up. But why does he know? The Joker just told the people on the ferries. Batman knew as well because he could hear everything going on on the ferries, but he didn't tell Gordon. So from who does he learn this? [Someone with a cell phone on one of the ferries might have been able to call out, or The Joker could have broadcast his message on the Police Band as well. Likely the latter, since he likes an audience. Then again no reason Batman couldn't have informed Gordon offscreen.]

I'd like to know how it's possible that Joker wasn't tied up more efficiently, i.e. in a straitjacket. And WHY, oh WHY was there a policeman INSIDE??? It looks really ridiculous in those circumstances. [What, it's ridiculous to have somebody watching a prisoner, nice and close to make the point that he's being watched, to try to stop any escape attempt before it happened? It didn't work, sure, but that doesn't make doing so stupid. Maybe they should have spent time getting the Joker a strait-jacket, maybe they should have spent time going over the holding room with a fine toothcomb to make sure that there aren't any shards of glass big enough to be used as a weapon, maybe they should have done a lot of things differently, but they've got other priorities at that particular point, most notably getting to two of Gotham City's public officials before they get blown to hell. They felt that Stephens, an experienced officer, would be capable of handling the supposedly unarmed Joker. Being wrong doesn't make them ridiculous.]

Did the Joker originally want to kill Harvey Dent during the convoy chase? If Dent had been blown up, the kidnapping scenario could not have happened, and Joker implies this was his "ace in the hole" plan. So what were Joker's intentions? [No, he definitely doesn't intend to kill Dent - at that point, he can't dismiss the possibility that Dent could be Batman, who he wants to keep alive because it's just more fun that way. The convoy chase is, at least, in part, designed to draw Batman out - Joker knows that, if Dent isn't Batman, there's no way that the Caped Crusader wouldn't intervene in a situation like that. If Batman doesn't show, then, in all probability, Dent is Batman and Joker can focus on him. Batman shows up, thus eliminating Dent from consideration, allowing the Joker to go to the next stage of his plan, the kidnapping scenario.]

Does Joker really want to kill Batman at first? He says explicitly during the interrogation, "I don't want to kill you." Yet earlier he told the mob "It's simple, kill the Batman," and he says later (when he makes the threat on the hospital) that he's changed his mind. So did he want to kill Batman at first? And at what point exactly did he change his mind? [The Joker has his own agenda, which is basically the promotion of anarchy in Gotham City. With both the police and the mob gunning for him, that's going to be tricky to do. He can hardly ally himself with the police, so he tells the mob what they want to hear to get them off his back while he takes over. There's no particular indication that he ever really wants to kill Batman.]

If Bruce Wayne's penthouse was so safe, how did the Joker manage to bust into it during the fund-raising party? Also, if the penthouse was safe, why in the world did Alfred let the girlfriend just leave? [The Joker got in there during the chaos of a party; people are coming and going, guests, caterers, waiters - security is inevitably going to be compromised under such circumstances. Later on, when only Bruce and Alfred should be present, the place is much more secure. As for Alfred letting Rachel leave, what choice does he have? He can hardly keep her there against her will. Short of resorting to physical restraint, he can't stop her leaving and trying to do so, when she's already angry at Bruce for letting Harvey pretend to be Batman, would only annoy her further.]

Batman talked about jumping out of an airplane to capture the money man in China. What happened to that scene? Did he do it off-screen, just to enter the country illegally? [Yes, just did it off-screen with the aim of entering the country illegally. Not really a terribly important thing to actually show - they mention how he intends to get in there, then we see him in Hong Kong, so we can assume that it went well. Showing it would just have slowed down the pace of the film.]

The money the Joker burns - why did he get it? I thought he wants to have the money for killing Batman. And he has neither killed him nor unmasked him. So why did the Mob give him the money? They knew that Dent wasn't the real Batman. [He stole it. He took Lau from police custody, found out where he stashed all the mob money and simply took it.]

In the scene where Wayne and Fox are looking at the new Batman stuff. Wayne ask Fox if the armor will stop and dog attack and Fox asks if its for a Rottweiler or Chihuahua. Fox then says it will stop a cat. So does that mean that Catwoman will be in the next movie? [No. It's an off-handed jokey comment by Fox, don't read anything more into it than that. It is, of course, possible that Catwoman could appear in a sequel, but the simple fact is that Christopher Nolan gave no thought to a possible sequel while putting this film together, preferring to focus on the job at hand, and has only recently started considering possible story ideas for a third film that, at this point, he's not even committed to making. If Catwoman serves the story that he decides that he wants to tell, he'll include her, otherwise, he won't. But there's no point in looking for foreshadowing in The Dark Knight, because there really isn't any.]

In the "sonar room" scene, did Fox say that the population of Gotham was thirty million or did I hear that wrong? [Yes, he did say 30 million people.]

After Batman crashes the Batpod and the Joker comes over to do whatever it was he had in mind to Batman, there are two of his thugs waiting for him, one rolling Batman over and one whom you briefly see on the far left edge of the screen (you can see his mask). One of the thugs gets electrocuted and is incapacitated, but what happened to the other one? He apparently didn't see or make any attempt to stop Gordon, who by the way is the only cop around for a few blocks (save the other guy in the police van who was presumably still guarding Dent). Gordon couldn't have incapacitated him since he approached the Joker from behind, when the Joker was facing the second henchman. [The henchman has probably left the area. The Joker has just attacked the other henchman. Would you have stayed?]

Who is the actor that plays the bank clerk at the start of the film (the one with the shotgun)? He's really familiar, but I can't put a name to his face. [It's William Fichtner. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001209/]

Not related to movie. Did Christian Bale get work done on his teeth? In Batman Begins, his teeth were quite crooked and his jawline was quite distinct. In this movie they seem straight and perfect. [Yes. definitely. His teeth look much straighter in this movie.]

In the courtroom scene, the mob guy suddenly pulls out a gun and attempts to kill Harvey Dent. How was he able to get a gun into the court building? Surely the metal detectors and/or security would have easily caught him? [Dent specifically describes it as a ceramic gun, which is presumably designed not to set off metal detectors. It's arguable that security should have frisked him more closely, but as the witness was expected to be cooperative, based on his previously sworn statement, it's understandable that they didn't consider him a major threat and simply relied on the metal detectors.]