Each of the Batman trilogy movies earned heaps of appreciation from the audience as well as the critics, and one must have thought the director Christopher Nolan finished off the series in style with The Dark Knight Rises. But the astounding fact is what we saw as The Dark Knight Rises wasn't actually the same thing that the third Batman movie was supposed to be.
During the release of Batman Begins way back in 2005, writer David Goyer revealed that The Joker would be brought down but not killed in the second movie. He would return and ultimately go on trial in the third movie. The death of Heath Ledger, obviously, forced drastic changes in the script and caused the initial reluctance that Nolan showed when asked to come up with a third Batman movie.
Two-Face or Harley Dent would have also appeared alongside The Joker, but was left out as he couldn't make much of an impression without The Joker. Bane and Catwoman were actually not supposed to appear in The Dark Knight Rises. But it was the great loss of Ledger's death that deprived us from watching a completely different version of The Dark Knight Rises, perhaps a better one.