He’s been popular in other media, too. In Batman and Robin, the movie that sank the franchise for a decade, Bane appeared as Poison Ivy’s mute henchman, played by wrestler Jeep “The Mercenary” Swenson. (Swenson died shortly thereafter.) Here, he was scrawny until injected with Venom (a plant derivative in the movie), as opposed to the comic’s version of a big guy who gets bigger.
Bane’s appeared in several of the Batman animated series. In his first appearance on the classic Batman: The Animated Series, he was presented as a hired gun. A mobster paid him to come to town and take on Batman, so there
was no personal component to his mission. Aside from that, he was very close to the classic Bane – he went after Batman on a physical and mental level. Of course, this version of Batman hadn’t spent several months rounding up his entire Rogue’s Gallery, so he managed to escape spinal trauma. He appeared several more times, once taking on Superman (who was dressed as Batman for reasons that are complicated and awesome) and losing badly. The early 2000s series, The Batman played Bane as a crazed brute, who for some reason had bright red skin. And in the current Brave and the Bold, he returned to the “little guy who gets big” version.
My favorite part of this was that Bane was in prison serving his father’s life sentence.
That never fails to crack me up – it’s a pretty sweet system of criminal justice. “Man, that guy’s hard to catch. Wait, he’s got a kid? Let’s just lock him up. You want to get a sandwich?”
In a way, it makes SOME sense. Maybe his parental guilt would lead him to turn himself in.