The people of *Gotham City* faced a very hard time. The mob was still on its height and was only slowly taken its powers (to a large part by *Harvey Dent*), there was corruption all over the governmental institutions. While the *Batman* did his best to fight crime, it was still a very dark situation when a masked vigilante has to do what the police and the government are unable to do. And in contrast to this, *Harvey Dent* as district attorney was a man, who  fought this corruption and organized crime, an unmasked and official crime-fighter. He was the white and shiny knight contrasting the *Batman* and was a spark of hope at the horizon of *Gotham* city:

> *Bruce Wayne:* You know that day that you once told me about, when Gotham would no longer need Batman? It's coming.
> 
> *Rachel Dawes:* Bruce. You can't ask me to wait for that.
> 
> *Bruce Wayne:* It's happening now. Harvey is that hero. He locked up half of the city's criminals, and he did it without wearing a mask.
> **Gotham needs a hero with a face.**

Now the *Joker* wanted to show, that not just each and every citizen of *Gotham* was able to be dragged onto his level and into the chaos, but especially one of the best and shiniest of them all, and with this he succeeded.

> *Batman:* Because you were the best of us. He wanted to prove that even someone as good as you could fall.
> 
> *Two-Face:* And he was right.

Nobody cares if a masked vigilante goes postal and kills people he thinks to be evil, but after this hard time the people of *Gotham* had to endure, if they would have known that their white knight *Harvey Dent* was as evil and crazy as everybody else, they would have completely lost their hope in this city and a future where masked individuals are not needed to keep the city from falling apart. *Harvey* may not have been the *"hero they deserved, but the hero they currently needed"*.