system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Bane

I understand Bane from The Dark Knight Rises is a very, very complex character. Please explain him, his personality, and his motives like I am a 5 year old little dummy who doesn't know anything about him.
gpt
Depends if you want to know about Bane from TDKR or from the actual graphic novels; they're a bit different. The most detailed character information is from the graphic novels.

In the novels, his back story is that he is born within one of the worst prisons in the world, somewhere in South America, and is made to serve out the remainder of his dead father's life sentence. Throughout the time he was imprisoned in this hellhole, he develops on his natural abilities: he becomes extremely intelligent, reading eveything he finds, and gets hench and becomes awesome at fighting. Notably, throughout his time in prison his dreams get plagued by an image of a bat.

After becoming essentially the 'badass' of this prison, he gets chosen to become a test subject for an experimental drug called 'Venom'. Once taken, Bane becomes insanely strong and powerful, but has to take it every twelve hours or he suffers from intense withdrawal effects.

In the Knightfall storyline (which TDKR is loosely based on), he escapes the prison and heads to Gotham City. He does this because he wants to destroy Batman - he is fascinated by him because like in prison, Gotham is ruled by fear, only it is fear of Batman and not Bane. He also believes Batman is a bat from his nightmares and believes it is fate that he must fight Batman.

He then breaks open Arkham Asylum, unleashing all the supervillains, and Batman is forced to run himself ragged trying to capture them all. When Batman is on his last legs, Bane emerges, breaks his back, and essentially takes over Gotham City. Oh yeah, and Bane works out Batman = Bruce Wayne before they battle.

Now in the movie TDKR, they change it around a bit. Bane's mask supplies him with anesthetic rather than venom (presumably to make the film more 'realistic'). His motivation is different also; it is revealed that he was actually Talia Al-Ghul's accomplice and his whole scheme was actually part of the League of Shadows. This kind of spoiled the movie a bit for me as once this is revealed Bane seems less menacing.