5. Bane's Origin
Even the earliest marketing contained images of a pit seen from below, and chanting (which translated at "Rise"), and was used to push the uprising element of the narrative. As the story unfolds that metaphor becomes more explicitly explored, as Bane casts the broken Bruce Wayne into the pit prison to watch his beloved Gotham die by the super-villain's hand. This sequence gives rise to Bane's origin story, which takes elements from recognisable versions of the story and initially presents Bane as a child born into the hell of the prison, where his mother is left to rot after an elicit affair with none other than Ra's Al Ghul. So Bane appears to be Ra's son and heir, explaining his rise to the head of the League of Shadows, and his vengeful need to break the Bat. Suffering at the hands of the other inmates, including enduring the injuries that require his mask to regulate his horrific pain, Bane is seen escaping the pit thanks to a largely unseen guardian angel, making the nigh-impossible leap to freedom that many had tried and failed to make and joining the League. But that's not quite it, and as the film progresses it turns out that the child wasn't Bane at all - which would explain the fact that the supposedly horrific injuries he endured are noticeably absent on his body as he escapes the pit. Bane was in fact the Guardian Angel type left in the pit by the prodigal child of Ra's Al Ghul, who suffered his injuries as a result of his assisting the child, and who was eventually rescued from the pit when Ra's Al Ghul returned to wreak vengeance on the prison for the death of his lover. By then of course, he had been mangled by his injuries and the inadequate medical assistance of the morphine-addicted prison doctor (who Bruce Wayne meets during his own incarceration in the pit). So who was the child? Well that leads immediately to another revelation...