Batman fans have been anxiously awaiting the Friday opening of "The Dark Knight Rises," but it seems event he caped crusader's newest flick couldn't escape politics during an election year.
Thanks to a bizarre coincidence involving the new villain and Mitt Romney's old company, a popular conservative commentator is aflutter with theories about how the movie is showing political parallels.
In the movie, Batman tries to protect Gotham from a pumped-up bad guy named Bane, and Rush Limbaugh seems to think that the summer blockbuster is hoping to be the bane of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.
"Do you think its accidental that the name of the really vicious, fire-breathing, four-eyed, whatever-it-is villain in this movie is named Bane?" he asked.
Earlier in the week, Limbaugh called the movie a liberal attack on Romney, saying even though the villain's name is spelled differently, it still sounds like the venture capital company Romney founded in the 1980s. The Obama campaign has accused Bain Capital of killing jobs instead of creating them, though Romney has denied it.
Yet, Batman superfan Michael Harmon told FOX 9 News Bane has been around for more than 20 years.
"In the end, he confronts Batman, bests him in hand-to-hand combat and breaks him over his knee," Harmon said of the comic books. "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes, a comic book character is just a comic book character."
Ironically, another political conspiracy theory claims that the movie is also taking a page from the Occupy Wall Street effort to take on the 1 percent by drawing parallels between Romney's wealth and Bruce Wayne's; however, at least one protestor who spent months occupying Peavey Plaza said that's "ridiculous."
