On Tuesday night’s edition of “The Rachel Maddow Show,” host Rachel Maddow delved into Rush Limbaugh’s latest flight of fancy, the supposed connection between Tom Hardy’s character in the new Batman film, “The Dark Knight Rises,” a villain named Bane, and Bain Capital, the venture capitalist group founded by former Massachusetts governor and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. The villain’s name, Limbaugh said, is just another smear by liberals against conservatives, in spite of the fact that, as Maddow pointed out, the character Bane has been around for decades, the movie has been in production for years and the Republican Party has only known for a few weeks that Romney will be their nominee in the fall.

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Let’s see if we can unpack this, shall we? As Maddow pointed out, during his show yesterday, Limbaugh discovered that there’s a Batman film coming out with an ominously named villain.

“Do you know the name of the villain in this movie?” he asked. “Bane. The villain in ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is named Bane, B-A-N-E. What is the name of the venture capital firm that Romney ran, and around which there’s this make-believe controversy? Bain.”

Yes, Rush Limbaugh, if you close your eyes, the two words are exactly the same!

“The movie has been in the works for a long time, the release date has been known, summer 2012 for a long time. Do you think that it is accidental that the name of the really vicious, fire-breathing, four-eyed whatever-it-is villain in this movie is named Bane?” he insisted.

“Yes, you see, because the villains in Batman were pre-named DECADES IN ADVANCE of the 2012 election, in which one of the candidates would have a contested affiliation with a company named Bain!” mocked Maddow. “That’s why they named that villain Bane!”

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Maddow pointed out other secret liberal plants in the world of entertainment. “Gone with the Wind,” for example, was an opening salvo from the green energy movement, and the character Apollo Creed from the “Rocky” movies is proof that the moon landing was faked.

In its decision to only take in information from within the safe confines of its own epistemological bubble, the American right has become “addicted to conspiracy theories,” said Maddow. The results can be hilarious, like Limbaugh’s misfire at the “Dark Knight” franchise, or all too real and tragic, like the destruction of ACORN or the disenfranchisement of black voters because Republicans are busy chasing down mythical cases of voter fraud.

Watch the clip, embedded via MSNBC, below:

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