About

"You Merely Adopted the Darkness" is a memorable quote uttered by the main villain character Bane from the 2012 superhero action film The Dark Knight Rises. Online, the quote has inspired a series of image macros featuring custom captions based on the phrasal template “You merely adopted the X, I was born in it, molded by it,” in a similar vein to the snowcloning of Bane's another memorable quote "When Gotham is Ashes, You Have My Permission to Die".

Origin

In The Dark Knight Rises, the character Bane taunts Batman while searching for him for him in a dark room, asserting that the superhero "merely adopted the darkness" (shown below).

The earliest known image macro featuring a variation of the quote was highlighted on the Cheezburger site Memebase^[3] on August 16th, 2012, featuring a photoshopped picture of comedian Bill Cosby with a Bane mask superimposed over his face (shown below).

Spread

On December 2nd, 2012, FunnyJunk^[4] user sideffect submitted an image macro of Bane with a caption mocking kids complaining about broadband Internet speed (shown below). In two years, the post garnered more than 74,000 views and 2,400 upvotes.

On August 30th, 2013, Redditor EliteZealot submitted an image macro of the character Hank Hill from the animated television series King of the Hill wearing a face mask with the caption "But you merely adopted the propane / I was born in it, molded by it" to the /r/funny^[2] subreddit. Prior to being archived, the post gained over 2,500 votes (84% upvoted).

On June 5th, 2014, comedy writer Brian Altano^[1] tweeted a picture of a Bane action figure with the caption "You merely adopted the bargain bin. I was born in it, molded by it" (shown below). In the first two months, the tweet gathered over 1,200 favorites and 970 retweets.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References