12 Most Notorious Batman Urban Legends

4. The Delayed Explosion Scene In The Dark Knight Was Ad-Libbed

Verdict: Untrue.

As a mark of Heath Ledger's genius performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight Rises, the story goes that he ad-libbed one of the film's most notorious scenes: when Mr J tries to blow up the hospital but is foiled by a faulty remote.

Rumour always had it that the malfunction was unintentional and Ledger styled it out so well that it made it into the final film. Which is a nice, romantic myth, but a made up one, unfortunately.

As revealed in the film's blu-ray special editions, the scene was shot as it was shown in the final cut and the delay was deliberate, in order to allow Ledger to be right next to the building when he tried to blow it up first. The scene was "endlessly rehearsed" according to the in-film Focus Point description, which specifies 12 different dry runs.

So it might have been ad-libbed in rehearsal, but what we see clearly isn't an in-the-moment improvisation.