Christopher Nolan is so enamoured with on-location filming and practical effects that it was impossible he wasn't going to show up at least twice on this list. If you think welding a train onto a truck is impressive, Nolan pretty much did the building equivalent. In order to accurately simulate the scene in which The Joker blows up a hospital in Gotham (decked out in his now-famous nurse's uniform) Nolan had builders construct the hospital around an abandoned parking lot. In essence, the structure of the parking lot was used as a foundation upon which the hospital façade was built, significantly reducing the cost of the scene (which was likely already ludicrously expensive) while maintaining its weight and realism. The hospital set was then rigged with a huge amount of explosives, all of which were meticulously planned so that the building would collapse in the correct order and at the right time. It took around two weeks for all of this to be set up, which is understandable when you consider how dangerously close Heath Ledger and the crew were to the hospital. They also had to plan for the amusing moment when it appears The Joker's detonator stops working, which is commonly misreported as improvisation but was apparently entirely scripted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2az9YtNuFZg
