Recently unearthed Suicide Squad concept art has given us a look at two unused characters that never made it to the movie. One was a frankly completely hilarious looking take on King Shark, with the concept of a shark-man in a Hawaiian shirt perhaps being a little crazier than the film was willing to go. The other, however, might give us the first glimpse of the DCEU’s take on one of the most iconic Batman villains of the 1990s: Bane.
Now, you’re going to have to squint a bit, but IÂ think the piece of concept art below shows Bane’s mask tucked away in the lower left corner. That, or it could just be a random skull. You decide.
While I doubt that this is an official indication of the direction they’d take Bane if he were to appear in a DCEU movie, it’s still a nice little Easter Egg from concept artist Peter Mitchell Rubin and right now, the closest we’ve gotten to the character turning up in the shared universe.
Of course, Bane is no stranger to the big screen. He first appeared in the execrable Batman & Robin in 1997, where the hulking criminal mastermind was reduced to a grunting henchman who just yelled “BANE!” a lot. His most high-profile appearance to date, though, was definitely in Christopher Nolan’s 2012 The Dark Knight Rises, where he was played brilliantly (though sometimes incomprehensibly) by Tom Hardy.
He’ll next pop up in Gotham, played by Shane West. Fox recently unveiled a picture of West in full costume and it didn’t exactly go down well with traditionalist Bane fans. It’s worth remembering, though, that West is playing Eduardo Torrance, who appears to be based on Edmund Dorrance, the father of Bane in the comics. As such, this is likely just a proto-version of the villain and not Gotham‘s adaptation of the actual juggernaut destined to be Batman’s nemesis.
Either way, all this shows that the character is still very much on the minds of the creatives at Warner Bros. And who knows, maybe James Gunn’s Suicide Squad 2 will bring him into the fold?
