Your Punishment Must Be More Severe

About

Your Punishment Must Be More Severe is a memorable quote uttered by the character Bane (played by Tom Hardy) from the 2012 superhero film The Dark Knight Rises. Online, the line has been used in various image macros and exploitables as the set up to various jokes about things the meme's author finds painful.

Origin

On April 30th, 2012, the official YouTube account of the studio that produced The Dark Knight Rises, Warner Bros. Pictures, released the third trailer for the film. In the trailer, the character Batman (played by Christian Bale) asks Bane, "Why don't you just kill me?" Bane responds, "Your Punishment Must Be More Severe." The trailer (shown below) received more than 33 million views in six years.

On July 20th, 2012, the website Meme Generator ^[1] posted a screen capture of Bane from the scene. The phrase became a popular caption for the image (shown below).

Spread

Exploitable Comic

On July 26th, 2012, the webcomic Pleated Jeans^[2] posted a comic of the moment. However, in the comic, Batman's punishment is being unable to connect to the internet. The post (shown below, left) received more than 28,000 views.

Five years later, on May 27th, 2017, the website me.me^[3] posted an exploitable of the comic in which the the third panel of Batman reading Facebook posts about politics (shown below, center).

On April 8th, 2018, the Twitter ^[4] account for ShitpostBot 5000 posted a variation in which Batman is playing the video game Roblox. The post (shown below, right) received more than 200 retweets and 1,500 likes in four months.

On July 31st, Redditor ^[5] thegreatestpretender post a variation in which Batman is watching a YouTube compilation of memes based on the video game Fortnite. The post (shown below) received more than 4,900 points (98% upvoted) and 80 comments.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References