Christopher Dent was the alcoholic father of Harvey Dent.
History[]
Before Arkham Shadow Incident[]
Christopher Dent was at one point married and had two children, a son named Harvey, and a daughter named Alexandra. However, the family soon split up, with Christopher being left with Harvey, and his wife leaving with Alexandra. Christopher would go on to be both physically and emotionally abusive towards Harvey. As a result, Harvey was later taken to live in Leslie Thompkins' home for youths.
One day, Harvey came home with his friend Bruce Wayne, and told his father in a heated argument that he was leaving for good. Christopher then decided to flip his coin. Heads, he can leave. Tails, he will receive the worst beating he’s ever gotten. It landed on tails, and Christopher proceeded to beat Harvey. Bruce attempted to stop him, trying his best to protect Harvey but getting a bruised eye in the process, and the two boys were locked in a closet. However, Christopher later released them, and strangely showed no recollection of how they got in there, and acted in a far kinder manner to both his son and Bruce when letting them out and assuring them everything was ok, implying he suffered from dissociative identity disorder.
Years later, Harvey, now a lawyer, began running for District Attorney. However, Harvey never told his father of his bid to run as D.A. until it was announced on the news. Reacting to this news Christopher began belittling and mocking his son, telling Harvey that he will fail, as he believed that all Dents were mentally unwell, even gloating that his wife left him, knowing that he was unwell, going on to say that Harvey becoming D.A. all of Gotham will in turn know Harvey was as well. In response to this Harvey proceeded to suddenly head butt his father, and was held back by Bruce after attacking Christopher.
It’s unknown what happened to Christopher afterwards, or if Harvey even stayed in contact with his father or eventually cut ties with him.
Legacy[]
Christopher's abuse of Harvey left a profound psychological impact on his psyche, as the younger Dent developed intense anger problems because of his abusive father. This was first seen and became apparent during one court case Harvey prosecuted, in which a man abused and starved his eight year old son. When the man took the stand and claimed his son deserved it, Harvey, seeing his father in this man, started beating him up, until he was held back. While the press and the public were overall positive of Dent beating the man for his abuse, Harvey felt incredibly embarrassed by his outburst and issued an apology soon after.
Like his father Harvey would go on to develop dissociative identity disorder, which eventually led to him becoming Two-Face.
During the Rat-King incident, after being exposed to Jonathan Crane's "Project Umbra" Batman had a hallucination in which during the argument between Harvey and his father, a shadow version of himself killed Christopher before he could beat Harvey.
Trivia[]
- Christopher shows signs of having dissociative identity disorder like his son: his voice would take on a more gravelly tone whenever his alternate personality would take over, and initially Christopher would retain no memory of what he did while his second personality was in control, as shown when he finds his son and Bruce locked in his closet and is confused as to how they got locked in.
- Christopher is implied to be antisocial and standoffish, as evident by him assuming that solicitors were at his door to harass him, when in fact it was Harvey and Bruce.