Facts from The Dark Knight and Batman Begins that will play into The Dark Knight Rises
1. Two Face is dead. The fall killed him. And even if that fall didn’t, his refusal of medication and the period of time for which is burns were vulnerable would have killed him from infection. The body can only handle so much shock.
2. The Joker is alive. Nolan has said that he won’t use the Joker, but the fact remains that he is alive. I would venture to say that like the Batman imposter's, this will lead to some “Joker “ imposter's, perhaps in the form of some cameo’s for other characters like The Ventriloquist or Mad Hatter
3. Salvatore Maroni (and his driver and body guard), Det. Wuertz, The Chechen, Gambol (and two of his thugs) are dead, and Carmine Falcone is still locked up in Arkham, perhaps with Scarecrow. Gordon said 5 were dead at the end of TDK, that includes 3 in Maroni’s car, Wuertz, and maybe it was supposed to be Ramirez, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is that Maroni died in the car wreck, based off of the text. There is no clear head of the crime syndicate.
4. EVERY mobster that Harvey Dent locked up, outside of the big players, is still in jail. They couldn’t have made bail as commented by Dent, and many of them if not all of them were on the ferry in TDK. Batman and Gordon lied about the killings to keep these men locked up, and there is no reason to believe that they are not still locked up.
5. The mob’s money was burnt to a crisp by the Joker. This might be debatable, but at minimum, we know that Joker burnt half of the Mob’s money. I’m going to venture to say that he ended up burning all of it, when he took over the Chechen’s men and killed him. Guess what, illegally laundered money isn’t insured like the rest of ours is at a bank. The mob has no money.
6. The Narrows is still lost, and nut cases are still running around. Nothing new was ever mentioned about them in TDK, so I assume this is still true. Once again, this could help play into fun cameos like I mentioned in #2
7. Wayne Manor is under construction. As of TDK it was, hopefully we can see a Christopher Nolan fully functional and realized Bat Cave.
8. Mr. Earle is a rich man with motive to ruin Bruce Wayne. Just a thought to ponder.
9. There will need to be a new DA of Gotham City, as both Harvey and the ADA, Rachel, were killed.
10. With Wuertz dead, and Ramirez almost certainly under investigation or in jail, they will need a new head of the MCU Batman Manhunt.
11. Apparently there are no more money launderers in Gotham, as indicated by Lau.
12. At this point, the GPD’s biggest mission is finding Batman. No major mob threat, maybe some nut jobs pulling shenanigans, but Batman is priority number 1. How will Gordon and Batman handle this?
13. This is a question. What actually happened to Lau? Die in the fire? Get out and get to Hong Kong? I don’t know, but it will have to have an impact on the next film.
14. Kyle Reese is not the Riddler.
I like to think that some of these are indisputable, some of them aren’t. But I think these are things within Nolan’s story that need to be taken into account for the Finale. No random henchmen or serial killers, this film needs to be about Gotham’s redemption, and by such Bruce Wayne and Batman’s redemption.