[Spoilers!] Dark Knight

[Waffuru]

They have to give Harvey Dent a funeral because if he lives then all the criminals he put away will be freed. Batman fell the same distance that Dent did and was able to run away after a few minutes. They were willing to lie about murders that Two Face had commited. Why wouldn't they lie about his death? There's no casket, only his portrait. If he'd died from the fall, they would've given up his body. No, I bet they said he died in the hospital explosion... before any of the murders took place so no one could even know that he had survived and he would be impossible to link to those murders. Their hopes of cleaning up the city die with the death of Harvey's reputation as Gotham's White Knight. He is probably being secretly treated in Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. When you are as rich as Bruce Wayne, you can cover things up pretty easily.



See? No casket, no body, no Dent.

Also, I've seen this movie 4 times.

edit: I also know that Nolan wants to avoid what the other movies did in regards to killing villains. He wants to make sure that these villians can return because the other movies had pretty much ruined a villian in hour and a half and they were quickly writing themselves into a corner. He wouldn't kill a villian without at the very least an opening for them to come back. Ra's al Ghul comes back through the use of the Lazarus Pit in the comics more than once.