Hm, this Bane seems to be different from previous incarnations of Bane I'm familiar with. In TAS he was just a strong man pumped with chemicals that gave him big muscles. Similarly in Batman and Robin.
Here he seems to be a not particularly muscled terrorist in a gas mask?
In the comics he's also a super genius, which is what Nolan is going for here. I think he cut out the Venom.
Hardy also got pretty buff for this role:
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Fast Falcon ate my bracket for dinner in the guru contest.