10 Things DC Comics Want You To Forget About Two-Face

3. His Obsession With Twos Was A Little Goofy

As we said up top, the coin toss is one of the most simple and chilling aspects of Javier Bardem's assassin character in No Country For Old Men, and that's ripped off wholesale from Two-Face. More than any other member of Batman's rogues gallery, the morality and duality of Harvey Dent and his criminal enterprises are complex and nuanced, a skilfull balance of genuine insanity and a good man driven to do bad things. That duality is encapsulated in his coin, one side scratched, which he flips to decide almost every action in his life - but usually, and most dramatically, to decide what happens to those who cross him. The coin itself has its own dark backstory, introduced alongside Dent's history of childhood abuse in Batman: Year One. It turns out that Harvey's father used to beat him on a regular basis, but the likelihood of him getting a pasting relied on where that coin ended up; later, imbued with all that significance and violent psychic energy, the coin becomes as complex a totem as the character of Two-Face himself. Which is pretty cool, and absolutely not what the Two-Face character started out as. It wasn't the duality that was his gimmick but the number two. We're not getting all Sesame Street sponsor on you, lots of Two-Face's early appearances were brought to you by the number two, like robbing buildings with "2" in the address, or only committing crimes when the time's 22:22. It was goofy as heck, even for Golden Age superhero comics, and also made it incredibly easy for Batman to solve any and all crimes he was involved in. Because they always involved the number two. If Two-Face had stuck with this number thing, you can bet The Dark Knight would have been a lot less po-faced and dramatic. Maybe more educational.