At 164 minutes, I'm surprised anything was cut from The Dark Knight Rises, but it looks like at least a couple scenes were left on the cutting room floor.  In an interview with GQ, costume designer Lindy Hemming talks about a flashback sequence involving Bane (Tom Hardy).  Hemming hasn't seen the finished film, so she assumed the scene had made the final cut.  The audience never learns much about Bane other than the mask is a breathing device that stops him from being in incredible pain, and also a spoiler that I won't reveal here.

Hit the jump for more details on the deleted scene.

Speaking to GQ [via Vulture], Hemming says of the scene:

The thing that you should have seen during that sequence is [Bane] being injured in his youth. So one of the fundamental things about his costume is that he has this scar from the back injury. Even if he hasn't got the bulletproof vest on, he still has to wear the waist belt and the braces. In that scene in the prison, where he's learning to fight the same way Batman learned to fight, he's wearing an early version of his waist belt. It's showing support, but it's not the finished one he eventually wears. He's also wearing an early version of his gas mask, all glued together ... If you look at the film, unless they've cut it—and I'm sure they haven't—there's a whole early section for Tom Hardy where he's fighting and being taunted by people. He's got chains on him, and he's standing on a wooden thing while people are attacking him. And in that scene, he's wearing a much more ragged, primitive version of the mask.

While I don't think The Dark Knight Rises needs to be any longer, and I can understand why the scene was cut, this sequence sounds incredibly cool.  I would like to see what Hemming designed as the "primitive version" of the mask.  I'm also curious about how closely Christopher Nolan mirrored Bane's training scenes to Bruce Wayne's from Batman Begins.

The GQ writer later informs Hemming that the scene didn't make the final cut, and she says she won't go into further details, but then she adds that there's another scene "that showed you why he had the mask and where it came from."  I assume she's talking about the finished mask rather than the primitive one she previously mentioned.

Here's hoping that these scenes will end up on the Blu-ray/DVD.  It's worth noting that neither the Blu-ray/DVD for Batman Begins nor the one for The Dark Knight contain deleted scenes.