Baneposting

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About

Baneposting is the act of referencing and parodying an awkward dialogue between a CIA agent and the captive villain Bane from the opening scene of the 2012 DC superhero action film The Dark Knight Rises, the final installment of the Batman film trilogy directed by Christopher Nolan.

Origin

In early December 2011, a video clip of the prologue sequence from the then-upcoming 2012 superhero film The Dark Knight Rises was leaked online.^[10] The prologue features a CIA agent (played by Aidan Gillen) threatening three men with sacks over their heads aboard a moving airplane, explaining the first one to give up information would not be thrown out of the plane. The first two men are silent, but the third begins to talk with a muffled sounding voice. When the sack is pulled off, the man is revealed as Bane (played by Tom Hardy). He then reveals he plans to crash the plane, which he does with the help of his associates, before escaping himself.

On December 11th, 2011, an audio file of the leaked scene was posted to 4chan's /tv/ (Television & Film) board,^[1] featuring the following dialogue between Bane and the CIA agent (shown below). Soon, commenters in the thread began scrutinizing the last two lines in the dialogue, as some misinterpreted Bane's interspersed quote "[it would be extremely painful] …for you" as a double-entendre with suggestive connotations, i.e., "[I'm a big guy] …for you."

CIA agent: "If I pull that [mask] off, will you die?"
Bane: "It would be extremely painful…"
CIA agent: "You're a big guy."
Bane: "…for you."

Spread

On July 23rd, 2012, a user started a thread on a forum hosted on GameFAQs^[11] titled "Bane: It would be extremely painful…." discussing the quote and exchange. On August 9th, 2012, Reddit user captinc added a thread titled "Settle a stupid argument about Bane's line for me please!" to the r/Batman^[12] subreddit, explaining he questioned the subtext of the exchange, saying:

"In the opening scene of TDKR when the man asks Bane if he dies if the mask comes off Bane says "it will be very painful" the man follows it up with "Youre a big guy" When of course Bane says "For You." So my friends seem to think Bane is saying "im a big guy for you" where as I claim he is saying "It will be very painful, for you"
can someone please clear this up for me!"

On January 24th, 2014, YouTuber Muh Waifu^[9] uploaded a video titled "The Dark Tyrone Roges," which features two testimonal spokespersons known as Rog & Tyrone reciting the scene's dialog in a monotone style. As of September 2014, the video has gained over 90,000 views. On April 3rd, 2014, YouTuber Real Human Bean^[7] uploaded a video titled "/tv/ dubs The Dark Knight Rises" which featured the scene dubbed with cartoonish sound effects. As of September 2014, the video has gained over 35,000 videos.

On April 23rd, 2014, it was announced that Tom Hardy would be joining in an Ask Me Anything with director Steven Knight on Reddit^[2] to promote their film LOCKE. When 4chan users discovered that Tom was partaking in the thread, users decided to "raid" the interview by asking him questions pertaining to the now-infamous scene from The Dark Knight Rises, while users were encouraged to downvote legitimate questions about the subject of the interview and only upvote questions featuring references to that opening scene. The thread received more than 1,000 upvotes and over 1,200 replies. By the next day, the AMA thread was featured on several sites including Yahoo Canada^[3] and the Daily Dot^[4], and a screenshot collage of the thread was later submitted to /r/4chan subreddit,^[5] which received over 100 upvotes.

The AMA raid renewed interest in the scene and corresponding meme. On May 12th, 2014, SoundCloud user Masketta Man released a four-part musical tribute titled "UUUU", which utilizes lines taken from the film. As of September 2014, the most listened to track has received over 20,000 plays.

On June 25th, 2014, YouTuber kekallday^[8] uploaded a video titled "Bane Star (Big Guy For You) ft. CIA" which features the scene with a cover of the Smash Mouth song "All Star" layered over it. As of September 2014, the video has gained over 62,000 views.

Association With Germanwings Flight 9525

On March 24, 2015, Germanwings Flight 9525 crashed in the French Alps after French air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane less than an hour after takeoff. In the days following the crash, users on 8chan's /bane/ board began to note several similarities between the crash and the opening scene of The Dark Knight Rises (shown below).

CIAss

On March 31st, 2014, an anonymous user on /tv/ posted a still from the plane scene of the CIA agent's backside.^[13] The image has since been reposted on [s4s] and /tv/ multiple times.

A cropped version of the image, uploaded to /tv/ first on June 5th, 2014^[14], has been reuploaded for more than 2000 times on [s4s], making it the most reposted image on the board.^[15] There are also numerous photoshop parodies of the image. There are also single serving sites dedicated to the meme.^[16]