Batman comics have featured the character Bane since the 1990s. His first appearance was in 1993. He was also a character in the forgettable Batman & Robin in 1997. Chris Nolan decided to make Bane the adversary in his 2012 opus Dark Knight Rises, which had been in the works for the past several years.

And yet Rush Limbaugh seems to think it’s a conspiracy (he’s just asking the questions here) that Nolan decided to name the adversary Bane at a time when Mitt Romney is running for president and his business experience consists of founding and working at Bain Capital.

“Do you think 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 asked his listeners.

Limbaugh did note that the film, the sequel to the 2008 blockbuster The Dark Knight, has been in the works for a long time, with a summer 2012 release date long part of the plan.

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“So this evil villain in the new Batman movie is named Bane. And there’s discussion out there as to whether or not this was purposeful and whether or not it will influence voters. It’s going to have a lot of people,” he continued. “The audience is going to be huge. A lot of people are going to see the movie. And it’s a lot of brain-dead people — entertainment, the pop culture crowd — and they’re going to hear Bane in the movie and they’re going to associate Bain.

“And the thought is that when they’re going to start paying attention to the campaign later in the year,” Limbaugh asserted, “and Obama and the Democrats keep talking about Bain, not Bain Capital but Romney and Bain, that these people will start thinking back to the Batman movies, ‘Oh yeah, I know who that is!’ “

He then read from a Washington Times editorial that made the connection between Romney and Batman, as well.

Presumably, Limbaugh doesn’t know the history of Batman and his enemies; Bane was not invented for this film, as he first appeared in 1993 in a storyline called Knightfall. That was a year before Romney made his first bid for elected office, his unsuccessful 1994 run against Ted Kennedy for the U.S. Senate.