Bane And Bain: Some Finding Connection Between ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Villain And Romney Firm

Bane is the name of the villain in the upcoming Batman installation, “The Dark Knight Rises,” and Bain Capital is the name of the controversial venture capital company once headed by Mitt Romney. Some people apparently think the same names are not a coincidence.

Some conservatives are saying that the villain was selected as a dig at Romney and his work at Bain, which has a history of closing down companies it acquires and sending jobs overseas.

Leading the charge, not surprisingly, is Rush Limbaugh. On his radio show Limbaugh pushed the Bane and Bain conspiracy, suggesting that the villain was selected on purpose to create a negative association for Romney, CBS News reported.

“Do you think that it is accidental, that the name of the really vicious, fire-breathing, four-eyed, whatever-it-is villain in this movie is named Bane?” Limbaugh said on his show.

But the film does have some political messages, CBS News notes. In one scene Bruce Wayne, the billionaire who is secretly Batman, is warned by a woman that there’s “a storm coming” for people who “live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”

Christopher Nolan, director of “The Dark Knight Rises,” said the movie does have some messages about the nation’s economic climate. He told Entertainment Weekly:

The notion of economic fairness creeps into the film, and the reason is twofold: One, Bruce Wayne is a billionaire. It has to be addressed. We’ve never done that before. But two, there are a lot of things in life, and economics is one of them, where we have to take a lot of what we’re told on trust, because most of us feel like we don’t have the analytical tools to know what’s going on. So in making a movie about dishonesty, really, it’s one of the things we think about.

It’s unlikely that the Bane and Bain connection is intentional. The Bane villain first appeared in Batman comics in the early 1990s, and the character was selected as the focus of “The Dark Knight Rises” before Romney even won the Republican primary.

Some democrats are even conceding that the film’s economic themes and the Bane and Bain connection could hurt Romney, intentional or not.

“I wouldn’t usually say I agree with Rush Limbaugh, but if the Bain attack becomes a Bane caricature in a cartoon, in a popular movie, the Obama campaign couldn’t be happier,” Democratic strategist Michael Meehan told CBS News.

Do you think the Bane and Bain connection was intentional?