Batman fans  Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy pretty fondly. We look back on how well these movies managed to tell stories about their central hero that were dark and gritty without becoming parodies of themselves. The movies are also widely beloved for their careful plotting, their great casting, and their ability to weave complex ideas into stories that are already compelling.

Like all movies, though, the films in Nolan’s trilogy aren't perfect. The plotting isn’t always logical, and sometimes it exists only to put the characters in specific situations. There’s still tons to love in this trilogy, of course. They’re great to look at, and they provided us with a template for how we could take our superheroes seriously. They made Batman cool again, but that doesn’t mean that everything about them adds up. Here are the 15 Biggest Plot Holes In The Dark Knight Trilogy.

15. Bane's Extra Body

The Dark Knight Rises has one of the great opening action sequences of all time. During the sequence, as Bane hijacks and crashes a CIA plane, Bane leaves one of his men behind to die and explains that he must, or authorities will suspect that the doctor that Bane has extracted is missing. That might have made sense if the movie was made 50 years ago.

The Dark Knight Rises is set in the present day, though, which means that the bodies could likely be identified by their DNA or dental records. There would be no reason to leave the extra body behind, because it could very quickly be identified as the wrong body.

For all of Bane’s careful planning, it seems as though some of his decisions aren’t entirely rooted in logic. This decision works to show ruthless Bane is, but it may not ultimately be the smartest move he could have made.

14. "Playing This One Close to the Chest"

Early in The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne tells Lucius that he’s planning to “play this one pretty close to the chest.” The line doesn’t stick out in any particular way, and largely seems to exist so that we understand how secretive Batman will eventually be about his plan. Later in the film, after Harvey Dent discovers that Gordon pretended to kill himself, he remarks that Gordon really does keep things close to the chest.

It’s an interesting callback in the script, but it’s one that makes no sense logically. The second exchange features none of the characters from the first, and there’s no way that Dent would have heard that expression before. It’s the kind of thing that’s hard to notice, but actually makes fairly little sense. Script callbacks are nice in moderation, but they have to make sense logically. In The Dark Knight, this particular callback just doesn’t make sense.

13. Nobody Notices Batman Uses Wayne Tech

So Lucius Fox gives Bruce Wayne most of his gear, and he’s ultimately instrumental in allowing Batman to function asa superhero. It makes enough sense for Lucius to help Bruce out, but there must have been other people who worked on for Wayne technology gear. After all, it wasn’t really designed to be used by Batman. Many of the programs were designed by the research and development department, and as such, were probably designed by scientists.

When Batman arrives on the scene, he uses tons of gear that the scientists would definitely recognize. They worked on the gear after all, and would deg it for Wayne Enterprises. As a result, it’d be pretty hard to keep Bruce’s identity a secret once he showed up in a small tank that had likely taken a team of scientists to design. All three films glide over that gap in logic, which is understandable. They wouldn’t be nearly as fun if Wayne was discovered immediately.

12. Bane's Five Month Plan

When Bane takes over Gotham, he shows incredible force. He manages to cut the city off from the rest of the world, and successfully holds its citizens hostage for five straight months. The question is, why? Five months seems like an incredibly arbitrary amount of time, and it’s likely only a part of Bane’s plans because Bruce would require that much time to recover from his injuries.

Of course, you could conceivably argue that Bane held Gotham hostage for such a long time because he wanted to attain total control, and break the spirits of anyone who wanted to rise against him. Still, if Bane had been willing to act more quickly, he might have actually pulled off his scheme and destroyed the city. Instead, he simply sits around and waits for Batman to come back and save the day. Really, Bane’s loss was his own doing. He had a win in the bag, and he threw it away because of some arbitrary deadline.

11. The Decoy Ra's Al Ghul Twist

In Batman Begins, we’re led to believe that Ra’s Al Ghul is someone other than Liam Neeson, a decoy played by Ken Watanabe. Neeson is instead playing someone named Henri Ducard, who trains Bruce and ushers him into the League of Shadows. When Bruce learns the true purpose of the League of Shadows, he turns against the organization out of a belief that Gotham can be saved.

While Bruce believes he’s wiped out the League of Shadows, the organization eventually returns to attack Gotham at the end of the film, when we discover that Neeson is actually Ra’s Al Ghul. The reveal is a neat one, for sure, but it’s not really a logical one. It’s not like Ra’s Al Ghul expected Bruce to turn against him. After all, Ducard/Ra’s thought Bruce was planning to up. In the end, it seems like this secret was kept not for logical reasons, but in order to deliver a stellar surprise to audiences in the third act.

10. The Bridge Signal

When Batman returns to Gotham at the end of The Dark Knight Rises, he does so to take back his city and end Bane’s reign. Given that goal, he probably could have made better use of the element of surprise. Instead, Batman decides to set up an elaborate pyrotechnic display in the shape of a bat to signal his return, which required a convoluted plan to execute, in and of itself.

For the signal to successfully appear, Batman would have had to know that Gordon would walk out onto the ice, and that he wouldn’t fall through, and that he would grab the flare to light up the bridge. While it certainly makes for a cool image, and may even work as a tactic for intimidating Bane, Batman probably could have made better use of the element surprise. He might have beaten Bane faster if he didn’t let the guy know he was back.

9. Gordon Sends Every Cop in Gotham into the Tunnels

Commissioner Gordon tended to be a pretty adept leader throughout his run in The Dark Knight trilogy. Unfortunately, Gordon made one crucial error during The Dark Knight Rises that ultimately allowed the city to be shut down. When Gordon ordered every officer in the city to go underground to flush Bane out, he played right into the villain’s hand.

It’s still unclear why Gordon made this decision, though. He’s not generally a dumb guy, and he must have known that sending all of his men to one place wasn’t a great idea. What’s more, we don’t know why Bane thought Gordon would make such a dumb move in the first place. Nobody acted the way they should here, and it’s only because of Gordon’s stupidity that Bane is able to take over the city. Gordon’s usually more careful than this, which only makes this plotting feel like a greater betrayal of his character.

8. The Monorail Fight

The climactic battle in Batman Begins takes place on a train, but we don’t really get a sense why that is. Sure, it’s cool that Batman and Ra's Al Ghul get to have a showdown on a moving train, but that’s about the only reason they should be on it. Ra’s Al Ghul is ostensibly using the train to get the vaporizer to Wayne Tower, which is close to the city’s water supply. If he really wanted to vaporize all of the city’s water, why wouldn’t he just start in Wayne Tower?

Even if you can buy his reasons for being on the monorail, it’s even harder to understand what Batman is doing there. He’d already told Gordon to cut the train off before it reached Wayne Tower, so it’s unclear why he needed to be there at all. Batman knew the train wasn’t going to make it, but he went to fight Ra’s anyway. Perhaps he did so just to settle some sort of personal score, but that doesn’t mean it was a smart move. In fact, it makes it even stupider.

7. Where'd Coleman Reese Go?

Coleman Reese? He’s the guy who managed to figure out that Bruce Wayne was Batman simply by pouring over old Wayne Enterprise records. Reese ultimately decides not to reveal Wayne’s secret identity after Wayne saves his life. Still, in the aftermath of The Dark Knight’s climax, it seems like Reese should probably have come forward with the information. After all, the general public believed that Batman was responsible for all the crimes that Harvey Dent actually committed, and for the death of Harvey himself.

Considering the fact that Batman became enemy number one, Reese had some information that might have been useful in finding him. Alas, after Wayne saves his life, we never hear from Reese again. It appears as though Reese believes wholeheartedly that Batman exists to do good, and can’t be persuaded that he was responsible for all of that death. Of course, it’s also possible that Nolan simply forgot about him.

6. Gordon's Fake Death

Many of the plans in The Dark Knight are confusing, and not just because they’re hard to follow. The Joker’s plan is absurdly complicated, but he’s not alone. Jim Gordon’s decision to fake his own death is both confusing and strange. It’s unclear how Gordon knew that the Joker would carry out an assassination attempt on the Mayor, which is what gives him the opportunity to fake his own death.

What’s more, it’s unclear exactly what Gordon planned to accomplish by faking his own death. He tried to keep his family safe by killing himself, sure, but it seems as though the Joker could still have been captured had Gordon been alive. Gordon’s return makes for a nice surprise in a film that’s packed with them, but it’s unclear when he chose to begin this plan, and what his reasons were.

Gordon’s plan requires a lot of knowledge that he just doesn’t have, and what’s more, the plan probably wasn't even necessary.