Get the Bane Backstory That Christopher Nolan Cut From ‘The Dark Knight Rises’

In Christopher Nolan's 'The Dark Knight Rises' Batman/Bruce Wayne faces his most dangerous and enigmatic foe yet: the muscular, masked Bane (Tom Hardy). There were a lot of questions left unanswered about his character, and it appears those answers were left on the cutting room floor.

Well, except for an answer to "what the hell does his voice sound like?" which is a question that's been eating away at our collective pop culture consciousness for weeks now.

In an interview with GQ, costume designer Lindy Hemming was discussing Bane with the interviewer when she inadvertently began discussing scenes that she didn't realize had been removed from the film. It seems that there was much more to Bane's backstory than just the brief glimpse of his face in the prison. Hemming describes an early version of his mask and the reason for his particular wardrobe choices:

The thing that you should have seen during that sequence is [Bane] being injured in his youth. So one of the fundamental things about his costume is that he has this scar from the back injury. Even if he hasn't got the bulletproof vest on, he still has to wear the waist belt and the braces. In that scene in the prison, where he's learning to fight the same way Batman learned to fight, he's wearing an early version of his waist belt. It's showing support, but it's not the finished one he eventually wears. He's also wearing an early version of his gas mask, all glued together ... If you look at the film, unless they've cut it—and I'm sure they haven't—there's a whole early section for Tom Hardy where he's fighting and being taunted by people. He's got chains on him, and he's standing on a wooden thing while people are attacking him. And in that scene, he's wearing a much more ragged, primitive version of the mask.

That sounds like a pretty awesome scene, but it gets better when Hemming is informed by the interviewer that the scene she's referring to wasn't in the finished film:

Well that's an awful shame, but I suppose you have to cut things. I won't elaborate on it too much, because it isn't in the film, but there was another section that showed you why he had the mask and where it came from.

Hopefully Christopher Nolan finds it in his heart to include these scenes in the extras on the Blu-ray release. How awesome would it be to see where Bane's mask came from and to see him training to become the imposing, ideological menace that breaks Batman?