Back in January, Warner Bros. Pictures officially announced that Tom Hardy (Inception, Warrior) was cast as Bane in director Christopher Nolan‘s forthcoming, final entry in his Bat-Trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises.

Now, with more than a year to go before the caped crusader returns to the big-screen to battle the aforementioned villain, the viral campaign has officially begun. Warner Bros. launched the first official website for the film at TheDark KnightRises.com , which currently contains only an audio file. An intrepid fan had the foresight to pull the audio file into an audio editing program and view the spectrum for the seemingly indecipherable audio track.

What they saw was this (below).

A Twitter hashtag #TheFireRises , which led to another page on the official site thedarkknightrises.com/image.html that featured a hidden image, of which more was revealed as more and more people tweeted the hashtag, until it was completely visible. What was unleashed was the image below, featuring Tom Hardy‘s BANE!

[Click Image To Blow Sh!t Up]

The Dark Knight Rises is slated to hit theaters on July 20th, 2012.

[Source] JoBlo