The Clichés are Having a Ball
1) I recently watched Casablanca again with some friends, like ya do, and realized that every time I see it, everyone in the movie is flirting with Rick Blaine more. I know the movie isn't changing, so I guess it's just a question of Which Show I'm Watching. (Who was it who started that quasi-meme a while back about what show[s] you're watching when you watch e.g. Atlantis--are you watching the Teyla Is Awesome Show, the Stuff Gets Blowed Up Show, etc.? It's really hard to search for, but some of you must know what I'm talking about.)
2) Per Umberto Eco:
These three unhappy (or Impossible) loves take the form of a Triangle. But in the archetypal love-triangle there is a Betrayed Husband and a Victorious Lover. Here instead both men are betrayed and suffer a loss, but, in this defeat (and over and above it) an additional element plays a part, so subtly that one is hardly aware of it. It is that, quite subliminally, a hint of male or Socratic love is established. Rick admires Victor, Victor is ambiguously attracted to Rick, and it almost seems at a certain point as if each of the two were playing out the duel of sacrifice in order to please the other.
...so yeah, the love triangle in The Dark Knight is pretty much the love triangle from Casablanca y/n?
Rachel Dawes and Ilsa Lund also both have the distinction of being badass[1] and quite able to hold their own among absurdly powerful and/or dangerous men--and, when they get the opportunity to express opinions, being right about practically everything--but ultimately left without agency at the most crucial moments in their own stories. Rachel doesn't even get to communicate her last intended message to Bruce, because Alfred decides it's better for Bruce that the message be destroyed. (Dear Bruce: I guess when you operate on a policy of concealing things from people For Their Own Good, you shouldn't be surprised if someone else pulls the same trick on you...)
Oh, and as it happens, since Bruce is operating under a wrong belief about Rachel's feelings, he intends to conceal what he thinks is the truth from Harvey--much as Rick tells that chivalrous lie to Victor at the end of Casablanca about Ilsa not loving Rick anymore--but ironically [no, really, it is ironic!], Bruce's lie-of-omission is the truth. Not that it makes any sense that Bruce expresses the intent to conceal Rachel's apparent plans from Harvey, because in order to understand anything at all about the Rachel/Bruce situation and why she was "going to wait for [him]" you pretty much have to KNOW THAT BRUCE IS BATMAN. But that's more in the realm of attempting to get the plot to make literal sense, which is a losing proposition with either of these movies.
[1] Ilsa packs heat and sneaks into Rick's apartment in the middle of the night with Nazis everywhere, and Rachel faces down the Joker and gets dropped off a building, people. They eat danger for goddamn breakfast.