Former Gotham City District Attorney Harvey Dent is well-entrenched as the underworld crime boss Two-Face, and continues to be a major threat to Batman and Gotham City.
Two-Face was formerly Gotham City's crusading District Attorney. A celebrated and brilliant lawyer, Harvey Dent was feared by Gotham's criminals and adored by the public. But Dent harbored a darker side, one that he successfully hid from the world, until a chemical explosion forever scarred the left side of his body. This traumatic incident brought Harvey's psychotic personality to the surface, and Gotham's District Attorney became the notorious kingpin known as Two-Face.
Batman: The Animated Series
Two-Face in Batman: The Animated Series
Harvey Dent was the District Attorney of Gotham City, as well as a child friend of millionaire Bruce Wayne, secretly the hero Batman. In his first act as DA, he and Bruce were to dig the first shovelful of dirt in the construction of Stonegate Penitentiary.
Five years later, Harvey started dating Pamela Isley. One night, the couple were at a restaurant, waiting on Bruce. It was there that Dent proposed to Isley, having falling so much in love, despite only knowing her for a week. As soon as Bruce arrived (late as usual), Isley planted a kiss in Harvey's lips and left. Moments later, as he told Bruce of his proposal, Harvey fell unconscious. He was later discovered to have been poisoned by Isley, alias Poison Ivy. She had marked Harvey as a "murderer" for his part in arranging the construction of Stonegate Penitentiary. The excavation had involved bulldozing a field of wildflowers, including a rare wild rose that would have gone extinct, had she not saved it first. So the kiss she gave him was a poison concocted from the flower disguised as lipstick. Fortunately, Batman extracted a cure from Ivy and had it administered to Harvey.
Unknown to everyone else in Gotham City, Dent suffered from deep-seated psychological trauma resulting from years of repressing anger. As a child, another personality was created inside Harvey, who would come to be called Big Bad Harv. Big Bad Harv would sometimes show himself whenever Harvey were to become incredibly angry, causing him to seek therapy. Mob boss Rupert Thorne gets a hold of his psychiatric file and plans to blackmail him unless he were to do him favors. Big Bad Harv broke out, and he had a fight with Thorne and his men. When the brawl ensued between Dent and Thorne's men, a freak explosion horribly disfigured the left side of Dent's body. The trauma was powerful enough to force two of his personalities to mixed up, and left Harvey in a state where right and wrong no longer held any meaning.
Two-Face in The New Batman Adventures.
After the accident, he became a twisted vigilante known as "Two-Face" and soon began his own crusade to bring Thorne down, something the law deliberately failed to do. During his crusade, he framed Commissioner Gordon for taking bribes from Rupert Thorne with help from Gil Mason. He feels as though this is the way he was meant to be, living in a world of chaos, without the order and justice he once upheld and believed in. Dent's world revolves around chance, more specifically the flip of his coin. It is no ordinary coin as it is double sided, clean on one side, and covered by scars on the other. Every decision Two-Face makes falls on the flip of his coin. It is judge, jury, and executioner. When the "Good Heads" turns up, Harvey is in control. When it's "Bad Heads", however, Big Bad Harv becomes more dominant to two face's body than Harvey can ever be. Yet, there always seems to be a piece of Harvey which is strong enough to linger within the mind of Two-Face when he is committing his ungodly acts. However, Two-Face is the dominant personality. In subsequent episodes of the show, Two-Face became the supervillain he is in the comics. Despite his and Batman's constant fights with each other, Bruce Wayne never gives up on his old friend.
In one occasion, Two-Face met with Poison Ivy in a poker game with the Joker, the Penguin, and Killer Croc (secretly Batman in disguise). Ivy told Harvey that he was still looking "halfway decent." Two-Face confessed that part of him wanted to strangle Ivy for poisoning him, while the other half desired to run her over with a truck. This is where only two sides of Two-Face agreed with each other.
Two-Face's opposing personalities are constantly at war, but as Batman learns, it is usually the bad side that wins. Two-Face moderates his inner conflict with a special coin that is scratched on one side. He uses this coin as the arbiter of his own brand of demented justice, flipping the coin to determine his decisions. Without the coin, Two-Face is lost in a world in which no clear answer exists, and Batman understood he could always use this weakness to his advantage.
The New Batman Adventures
The alternate reality Two-Face in Justice League.
In the final episode, Two-Face's personality fragmented a second time, creating a third personality called "The Judge" (voiced by Malachi Throne), a violent court-themed vigilante that attempted to eliminate all of Gotham's denizens, even brutally attacking and defeating master criminals such as the Penguin, Killer Croc, and the Riddler. Two-Face, looking to eradicate this new threat to him, had no idea that he himself was The Judge. At the end of the episode he was sent back to Arkham Asylum. This was his last appearance in the DCAU, though an alternate reality version of him made a cameo appearance during the Justice League episode "A Better World". This version of Two-Face was among the many supervillains lobotomized by that reality's Superman. He served as a janitor at Arkham Asylum.
Additionally, an android version of Two-Face also had a cameo in an episode of Batman Beyond.
Appearances
Batman: The Animated Series
- On Leather Wings (As Harvey Dent)
- Pretty Poison (As Harvey Dent)
- Two-Face Part I (As Harvey Dent)
- Two-Face Part II
- The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne
- Dreams In Darkness (cameo)
- Almost Got 'Im
- Shadow of the Bat Part I
- Shadow of the Bat Part II
- Trial
- Second Chance