First look at Tom Hardy as Bane in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

The viral campaign for The Dark Knight Rises kicked off yesterday after the official website for the film went live. Just like The Dark Knight, this film will engage fans in what should turn out to be a wild game of deciphering clues and finding “hidden treasures” that will unlock and reveal items from the upcoming film. If you visit TheDarkKnightRises.com, you are greeted by a strange audio clip of some chanting. There is also another portion of the site that updates whenever someone tweeted the hashtag #thefirerises, which led to the revealing of Tom Hardy as Bane.

But before the official image was revealed, users went through the website’s code and discovered a link to the actual image of Bane, which we have for you after the jump.

The Dark Knight Rises will be directed by Christopher Nolan and stars Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Marion Cotillard, Josh Pence, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Caine and is expected to hit theaters July 20, 2012.